Okay, when did I become that girl who attracts drama? Because seriously, lately, when it rains� it regurgitates my romantic life all over my unsuspecting lap.

Hunky Cameraman showed up in Los Angeles.

So right after Doug asked for me back and a vindictive, literal-minded feather floated over and knocked me to the floor, I was confronted with Hunky Cameraman wanting to see me.

Okay, let's pause to wonder: What the fuck is up lately? Is something in the water here? Is Cupid pissing in our reservoir? Because between this and Doug and Lauren's nasty surprise, we're all fairly flabbergasted at how The Summer of Excessive Drinking And Inappropriate Behavior suddenly morphed into The Summer of Excessive Drama and Reincarnated Boyfriends.

The following is an actual conversation that took place in my apartment today:

I can't imagine what gets to come next. Jessica is probably half-expecting all her exes to skydive onto her front deck bearing roses, arsenic, and a baby. Maybe someone I've yet to meet will show up and explain to me why he can't see me any more. Or maybe Mike, my first love, will call me out of the blue to tell me that, a decade later, he's having my baby.

If some cloaked and dank-smelling spirit shows up in the middle of the night with a lantern and a long lesson I'm supposed to learn about all this, I will calmly take that lesson and use it to inflict the kind of pain upon this ghost that would rock the undead right off their immortal coils.

The kicker with Hunky Cameraman is that his visit is exactly the opposite of Doug's. Painful in a completely different way.

He's with someone. In Los Angeles. Who he met on the job and who lives practically two blocks away from my old apartment � the one in which I lived when we started seeing each other.

Basically, this meant I had to deal with laying eyes on him and all the emotions that would engender in me, plus the fact that he's criss-crossing the country for someone else. Someone who isn't me.

This fucking hurt.

He told me that the second all those details came to light, his first thought was how it would look to me. I guess that's nice. He also said they started it casually and it just sort of kept going and became a little more serious, but that it needed to end because they were fighting and their personalities didn't mesh. "It's not� it's not this," he said, gesturing between the two of us. "It's not fun and jokes and laid-back, relaxing times, or spur-of-the-moment decisions to grab a pint together. I know it's not fair to say that, but � it's not like this. I miss this." And his voice cracked and he looked miserable, like Atlas on a Texas summer day.

Luckily for my emotional state, that was not an entreaty for reconciliation, just a statement of the facts. And as much as I appreciated knowing that he too values our rapport, it's never easy hearing someone say that everything he's looking for is in you, except that ostensibly it's not precisely you he wants.

And honestly, I knew he'd be getting out there, so it's not unexpected to hear that he's dating. Because we're staying friends, I knew I'd be seeing him again someday, so it made sense to agree to hang out and float the test balloon just to gauge how painful this whole thing was going to be. As hard as it was at first, it felt good letting him talk about his relationship with this girl simply because it sent is firmly, probably irrevocably, down the friendship road. It'll be hard to backtrack once we start sharing with each other the details like that which friends without pasts swap effortlessly.

There were moments. Unpleasant little moments. The kind of moments that don't make me feel very mature. The moment, for instance, when I wondered why he was going to such trouble to end things nicely and carefully with a girl who he claims was a casual thing. Because what does that make me? Why didn't I get the same treatment? Was I less important somehow? I don't actually believe that's true. I tell myself that things ended weirdly because there were more emotions attached with me, and that he was scared to do it in person because he'd be unable to � after all, he told me he didn't come see me when he was in California with his parents because "if I saw you, I'd want to be with you, and I couldn't be with you because I couldn�t give you what you deserved." Who knows. It's both flattering and heartening to hear him call and say he'd much rather be hanging out with me shooting the shit than dealing with her, but at the same time, it hurts, because� well, it just hurts. I know he only means it in the sense that we, as people, as friends, click in a really spectacular and special way. But still. It brings back all the questions I had in my head.

You always want to be the one who makes the commitment-phobe change his ways, but the sad reality is, he has to change them without anyone. And you want to be the one he wants to take with him around the world, or the one who makes him want to stay right where he is, but in reality, he should want to start dreaming with you rather than choosing one predetermined destiny or another on his own.

And those are the biggest problems, I suppose, for me: He couldn't make the step to Us from Heather and Me. And that's okay. And probably for the best. I never asked him to, and wouldn't have. But it doesn't mean I don't still hurt about him and wish he'd wanted to go there. It doesn�t mean that hugging him didn't pick at a really fresh wound.

I have no idea what else it means. All I know is that my head is swimming. The guy I probably wanted more is the one I can't have. Won't have. It doesn't mean I've made a decision about Doug; it just means that the lingering feelings in my heart are for someone else, and I don't know what they are or how long they'll last or even how strong they really are.

Seeing him would be hard, I knew. It was my choice to do it. I'm not sorry I did it. But, wow, I'm annoyed that it hurt as much as it did -- not because of anything he said, but just because he is who he is, and that is someone who I cared about a lot more than I care to admit, to him or to you or to myself.

I'm tired of crying. I'm just tired. I'm tired of not knowing how I feel at any given second. Fed up with being unable to articulate it. Sick of wondering what's right and what's wrong. Completely over the struggle to turn off my head and just go with my gut. Annoyed that my gut only seems to want potato chips.

If my ex-boyfriend from Calgary contacts me in the next week, I'm going to pay Lauren five dollars to jump on my head until it breaks.

I need a rest. Lately I've been taking care of these people -- Doug sounded like a kicked puppy tonight on the phone, so much so that he felt he had to call back and apologize for it while still sounding exactly the same, and the cameraman wrestled with yet more awful discussions with his woman -- and I just want one of them to take care of me for a second.

And that won't happen any time soon, so here I sit just stressing and wishing this didn't all feel so huge and heavy.

Someone got here by searching for: women porn makers Reading: A little book I like to call, What The Fuck Is With Ex-Boyfriends These Days, Anyway? Eating: A little meal I like to call, "No, really, this is too fucking much." And also, junk food.