Every so often I skim old entries, mostly the ones involving Doug or Alan and the things I wrote trying to justify those relationships, or explain them, or put a shine on them that I hoped would make me believe things could work.

The written word is surprisingly powerful, and more than a few times I've used it -- knowingly or otherwise -- to sell myself on something that I didn't, in my heart, believe. I wrote about feeling hurt and lost, and pretended it didn't have anything to do with Alan. I tried to tell myself that Doug and I worked, or would work, or could work, even when both then and now I already knew that not to be the case.

It's not that I think I'm a liar; just that words have a special power of persuasion, and I knew that, and I used it on myself. I wanted certain things to be true, and so I wrote them into being.

Okay, that's an overstatement: It sounds like I've fictionalized stuff on here, and I haven't. Never would. My sin, rather, is one of omission. And while I recognize that it's my right to protect certain feelings or events from public consumption, it's also unfair to myself. The journal isn't therapy if I'm afraid of who's reading, and if I feel restricted from full disclosure. I cringe a little, for instance, when I read about how I never honestly admitted that I'd been having doubts about Doug long before we broke up the first time. I never explained -- in part out of misplaced deference to him -- all the other drama in my involvement with Alan. Like the girl from Iceland who predated me, and whom he didn't break up with officially until halfway through our nebulous association. And the wavering. The irritating tug-of-war: "I want you/I can't have you/I must have you/I'm not ready." Mostly, I didn't want anyone to know, because I didn't want to have to justify why I kept him in my life. Because I didn't know why. I thought I had a feeling. I thought he had a feeling; actually, I think he did, but my error was believing he was mature enough to handle it. My mistake was thinking I might be the one who inspired him to take a risk. Grow up. Let go.

And so Doug came around again, and irrespective of his obvious merits as a person and a friend, I looked fondly on the idea of a reconciliation because I knew I could trust it. Beyond a shadow of doubt, I believed in everything he put before me. And it seemed unfathomable to me to reject -- or fail to reciprocate -- something that pure, that sure. They were the right feelings, the right words, coming out of the wrong mouth. Not that Alan's was the right one; it clearly wasn't. But somehow Doug's wasn't, either.

I tried to make myself believe things could change, and that time would fix it and spark things that had lain dormant for far, far longer than I care to remember or admit. I wrote about giving it a fair chance, even though in the back of my mind I suspect I already knew it wasn't going to end happily. But here, I could put the words to paper, and maybe they would spring to life. Maybe I'd prophesize something that would self-fulfill. Not because I was or am desperate to pair off, but because there was a simple beauty in what Doug was telling me and feeling, and I would have been a lucky girl indeed if I'd been able to make that work for me. And I knew that. So I clung to him longer than I should have, unable to believe I'd be that lucky ever again -- and, toxically, wondering if I should settle for luck instead of real love.

And so my romantic history contains one guy I could trust but couldn't be with, and a guy I could be with but couldn't trust. The net effect of this is that I've become paranoid about relationships.

That's one reason I haven't written anything about Kevin yet: that idiotic fear of jinxing things that seem to be going so well.

I'm not sure when I became that person -- the one who's ready with a cringe, constantly anticipating the need to deploy it. Partly, I'm gun-shy, assuming that everything that starts off making me happy will end in some kind of problem. Not to lay it at Alan's feet, but that relationship definitely made me a little skittish about trusting my instincts. That, coupled with the fact that I admitted pretty often in this space that I was giddily happy with him, make me nervous about writing those things about anybody else. Those words have a nasty bite when they come back around and open their chopping maws.

Kevin isn't Alan, though, and he's not Doug. He doesn't come with drama, he doesn't incite it, and he doesn't have enough baggage to fill a flight out of town. He doesn't judge who I am or what I do. He's the guy I'm dating, and he's great, and I wouldn't change a thing about him or how we are together.

It's been about three months. I'm not looking forward and I'm not looking back -- I'm just happily in the moment, hoping for more moments, and it feels good. Until I spend too much time alone with my thoughts, that is, at which point my ridiculous paranoid mind makes me wonder from which direction the catastrophe will come that will doubtless shatter my illusion that everything's going fine.

Truly, I think it stinks that I can't sit back and say that a guy I like really likes me, without having to immediately add qualifiers like, "At least for now," or "At least, I think he does," or other destructive little tags. What I want to do is just continue to feel what I do when I'm with him, which is nothing but good things. And so I'm going to start by eradicating my fear that putting something in print tempts fate to jinx me.

I like the way he smiles at me. I like how he makes me feel -- pretty, special, fun. Worthwhile. I like that there's no drama. I like that I always want to hang out with him because just being in his company lifts me. And while I can't speak for him on this matter, I do know that he doesn�t give me cause to question myself. The way he acts around me, the way he treats me, doesn't make me wish I were something more, something else, or someone else. He's brilliant at what he does, and he'll be brilliant at the other things he wants to attempt. He's uncomplicated company in the very best sense -- I'm always laughing, always grinning, always full. He doesn't stress me out or make me nervous, and he doesn't make me sad. I don't hang up the phone feeling lost.

So isn't it an ugly rub that all the things that seem to be going smoothly have me paranoid that the other shoe will drop?

And I love shoes, too; I don't want one to be used for evil. Hopefully putting stuff to paper will be a step in teaching myself not to worry about what's coming in the future. If something does happen to muck this up, I'll be awfully irritated at myself for not enjoying it while it lasted. And I shouldn't, in life, expect that happiness and contentment are fleeting simply because they have been in the past.

So, I give you my boyfriend, Kevin. I like him. I'm going to Vegas with him this weekend. And I'm not going to wait any longer for the sky to fall.

In yesterday's entry, I recounted an anecdote from Saturday's race in which a woman next to me sported a shirt that read, "I'm Running To End Stroke," whereas mine simply said, "College: It's Not Just For Binge Drinking Anymore."

This led to some spirited, and in some parts highly inappropriate, conversation between Jessica, Carrie, Lauren and me about the t-shirt that would most aptly share with the world our charitable cause.

That being, running to downsize our beer guts.

So with the help of the folks at the ubiquitous Caf� Press, we've come up with the first in what might end up being a series of shirts based on the theory Jessica and I coined today: "Sometimes vanity and philanthropy are one and the same."

Head on over to our new store, branded for the moment by our other online venture, Drunky But Funky. We've started with really simple running-related parody shirts, and if the demand is there we might play around with expanding that concept while also offering some stuff emblazoned with just the DbF logo. A beer stein, for instance, is forthcoming.

We're just having fun, and we wanted to give a laugh to all the budding runners, gymrats, and boozehounds among you. Enjoy.

Someone got here by searching for: silhouette of couple tap dancing Reading: Piles and piles of old Heat magazines that my sister brought back from the U.K. in January. Listening to: The compilation CDs she brought back. Thanks, Julie! You are brilliant.