I am erika, who is Teppy, who is Sean, who is meara.

Is meara Spartacus?

Me too. Is this like that thing where when you sex with someone you're having sex with everyone he ever had sex with?

I have NOT had sex with Spartacus.

Spartacus had sex?

Huh. Who knew?

Spartacus had sex?

He must have. He was hanging around with thousands of hunky Roman men. I would have.

I was going to say, if you trust Dalton Trumbo's interpretation, then yes, Spartacus definitely had sex.

I don't have wisdom to speak about 2004 yet. It was a year.

A few years from now—when I take the long view of things—2004 will most likely be seen as a milestone year for me. Some truly spectacular things happened.

The Smay-Zahas wedding was a joyous occasion, easily the most beautiful wedding I ever attended. Hec and JZ are so very in love and so obviously perfect for each other.

A week later was the F2F. That was a year's worth of fun in the span of a few days. If those two events were the only ones I attended all year, I would be content (and exhausted).

I finally got to meet Nilly, who is even more amazing in person than online.

I got to visit Lee's cabin in Maine, along with DX. Again, much fun was to be had, and Lee is a gracious host.

I am grateful for the other Buffista events I got to attend—The billytea farewell at KristinT's and the Lost in the Grooves reading in Chicago.

But...

I'm still going to therapy four times a week. It's clear now that I have a boatload of repressed emotions, relating to an abused childhood, that I need to deal with. The extent to with I blame myself for what happened continues to amaze me. We peel off one layer of self-loathing in therapy, only to find yet another layer of self-loathing. The 2004 elections only served to heighten my sense that my problems are too big for me to handle—I don't have control over them and I can't change them.

Whenever I get too close or too intimate with someone I pull back—sometimes quite abruptly. I spend too many weekends alone and miserable in my apartment. I know that all I have to do is call someone, yet I don't. I moved into my apartment in 2003, yet I still haven't furnished it, over a year later. In short, there are lots of simple things I could do to make myself happier, but I don't.

I need to keep myself in a constant state of unhappiness as a way of repressing my emotions. If I ever decided that I was happy in the present, then I would have to deal with all the things that have happened to me in the past.

At least now, I have a certain amount of awareness as to why I do a lot of the self-destructive things I do. Hopefully, in 2005 I can build on that.

Tom, I don't think I have adequate words for this, but -- you are amazing. And brave as hell. And I say that knowing more than a little about trying to deal in the present with family bullshit from the past.

And on top of that, you're just plain nifty.

What Steph said.

Tom is well beyond nifty, and into complete cool.