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I wake up at 5a.m. and take great relief in the fact I don't have to leave the bed for some time. I lay there, drifting in and out of labored sleep, occasionally turning my head to look at the red digital numbers on the clock to see that only 5 minutes have passed at each interval. Relief is followed by despair, then surrender into sleep once again, all the way up until the shrill whine of the alarm when I fumble for the iPad to check my daily mail, the sorry lot of spam correspondence: Groupon, Living Social, Expedia, Google Alerts.

It's raining outside again. I can see the drops hitting the puddles on the roof of the building across the way. There is something mildly comforting about the fact that today I am taking the train up to the office in Greenwich, CT. It doesn't happen much anymore and there is something about the old routine that puts me in autopilot, allows me to shut off my brain for at least ten hours until I'm taking the train back into the City. The L train is late. When it comes, we cram inside, barely squeezing in enough for the automatic door to shut. At Union Square, I join the crowd of sardines making it up the narrow stairway to the 4 & 5 trains. At Grand Central, I go up the familiar set up steps into the familiar hallway, past the MAC store, the Tumi store (he had luggage from there; the strap broke; he was mad about that), the jewelry stores, l'Occitane (he once bought me something from there and this thought leads me into making mental notes of what gifts I bought him compared to what gifts he bought me). I stop at Zaro's for my morning coffee (the price has risen by ten cents since I last came here). I go to Track 21 and find my way to the front of the train, sit in the first car, on the left side, near the window, put my headphones on, turn it to Pandora, lean back, exhale long, look at myself in the window reflection, check my work email.

It's still raining when we get to the Port Chester train station. I pull out my umbrella, wait at the station until the shuttle van comes to pick us up, the muttered "hello" to the driver, the zombie slump at the seat starting out of the window as suburbia passes by: the high school football field, the perfect white picket fences, then the office complex, the puddles on the brick walk, the muttered "goodbye" to the driver.

There is another obligatory muttered and meaningless "hello" to the receptionist as I enter. There is the routine at the coffee machine (two Splenda, half&half), the march to my desk, the checking of voicemails, the revving up of the computer, the taking off of coats, opening email. Apple approved our investor app today so I must announce that. There is a bug, so I must retract that announcement. There is mail to open and sort. I immediately head to R's office to suggest lunch (as if I have to--we have lunch every time I come up to this office). He says it's a soup day so we decide on Chinese.

The morning passes somehow in a fog of allergy medicine, then it is lunch. R drives and complains about his girlfriend, asks about my travails. I give him the barest glimpse. We have lunch. I order two beers. He pays for it. He talks about how the rudder broke off his boat. We return.

Soon the work day will be over, and I will board the van to the train station and get on the train to Grand Central and take the subway back to my apartment where I will unlock the door and come inside and breathe a sigh of relief that another day is done and past, and the door is shut behind me and I don't have to hold up the front anymore. I will wilt on the coach and take off my shoes and know not what to do with myself until I fall asleep. Maybe eat. Maybe watch TV. Maybe read. Days will pass like this.

If you're lucky, there are 20 perfect days in New York every year. You get ten in the Spring and another ten in the Fall. They are days where the sun is out and the sky is clear and it is warm enough to wear shorts, but there is still a breeze and it's not humid or muggy. There is no need for an AC and all the restaurants have their doors propped wide and you can sleep at night with the window cracked open. I call them Seattle Summer Days, because that's what Seattle gets at its peak. Instead, New York gets it as its seasonal "transition" days. This past weekend was definitely two of our twenty-day allotment.

On Saturday, I went to Coney Island with a friend. We walked along the boardwalk. We had hot-dogs and ice-cream and beer. We visited the aquarium and laughed at the seals and the people. At night, back in the city, I met up with the girls at Miss Lily's, a trendy Jamaican diner with beautiful people and the best jerk chicken. I tried to remind myself that instead of such an awesome day, if I were with M, I'd be in New Jersey hanging out with his family for his older sister's birthday. Still, I couldn't help missing him a little.

On Sunday, after my morning coffee at my cafe, I went to Queens to visit with Ryan. We went to the Museum of the Moving Image, which is actually extremely cool and very impressive. I could have spent hours there. We saw a screening of Rushmore, then I took the train back to the city where I met up at Camille's to watch Game of Thrones and Mad Men.

Really, on the surface, it was an awesome weekend. It couldn't have been any better. Except that the reel in my head kept replaying the past six months--what happened? where did it go wrong? what could I have done differently? what is happening right now? is he going to come back, or is this it? I've been dating again. There are three men in rotation, and I like none of them.

Today, I woke to torrential downpour and gray skies. It's harder to forget when the weather is like this for some reason. This weekend, I'm going camping with some friends from work. M was supposed to come with me and we had been looking forward to the trip when we were together. He had even bought a new tent. Now I'm going alone and sharing a tent with a friend. But the point is that I am doing something every day, keeping busy, putting on a face and pretending until it's real.

For the past six months or so, Nora has been wanting to make money selling lemonade. I managed to convince her that not many people would buy lemonade in December in Seattle. But I told her that in the summer she could probably sell quite a lot if she set up a stand at my parents' house on a heavily trafficked street near the beach.

Last weekend was hot and sunny and my parents were holding a yard sale as part of West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day. Perfect! The day before the sale, Nora made signs, bought lemons and carried them home from the produce stand, juiced all of them, and helped me boil sugar and water. Sarah baked some cookies for her to sell too. We set out the next morning with our lemon juice, sugar syrup, ice, cooler, cups, signs, cookies, and red wagon. (She insisted on the wagon because she'd seen some neighborhood kids selling lemonade out of a wagon last summer.)

There were plenty of people out in the neighborhood, and Nora greeted everyone who passed by with an eager "Want to buy some lemonade and cookies?" She kept at it for several hours, stopping only when we were out of several supplies and I told her we needed to get home. Her share of the profit was about $15 (net of lemons and after sharing the cookie revenue with Sarah, the baker) which represents several months' allowance for her. Not bad for a five-year-old, I think!

I stopped crying some time on Friday night. It was a sunny weekend and not so bad. I did my things: read at my coffee shop, got my nails done, had dinner with a friend. Even though I am in no way ready, I went on a date on Sunday... just to remind myself what it was like. He was not my type of guy, but we still had an interesting conversation and it was good to remind myself that I'm the one making choices. It reminds me of my first date with M: I was the one who made the choice that time too. I thought, "Sure, I can do another date."

But there are still bouts of hopeless depth that get me all of a sudden. I am still wrapping my head around: What happened? What exactly happened??!?! I tell myself the story over and over. I laid out the entire happenings to my friend on Saturday, hoping that a detailed analysis could divine where something went wrong, how I could have made this better. But no amount of logic or reasoning seems enough to answer that question. I just keep asking myself, "What happened?!?" Is he going to think he made a mistake eventually? Is he going to regret this and try to come back? Does he miss me? I mean, I thought he liked me. A lot. I thought he cared about me and saw this future for us. I thought he was confident. I thought, I thought, I thought... I just can't wrap my head around it. Is his case of "I'm not ready for a relationship" actually another one of those "I'm not ready for a relationship with YOU"? Was it me? Was he just freaked out by something I did or the way I was? What awful thing did I do to make him run away? I mean, there were lots of issues. I was compromising a lot because I wanted it to work. There was even a part of me that sort of lost hope in the future a few weeks ago. Maybe he saw that.

I keep going in this circle of thinking. But ultimately, it just always ends up here: I'm hurt. I miss him. I don't see how this happened. I'm hurt. I miss him. I miss him. I can't believe this happened. I'm so hurt. How does he not miss me like this too?