July 15, 2002 | 5:35 PM

My friend Joe�s book is out and you can buy it HERE.

I urge you to do so, as he is the greatest rock �n� roll writer this side of Lester Bangs, and the most fun man in the world to get drunk with. He also authors beautiful, intense, crazed emails and makes excellent nachos. He is a hero and dear friend.

I am also thanked in the forward, so of course I have to say all this.

Today I left work early to go to my RU-486 follow-up appointment but on the bus I started crying uncontrollably and never got there. I went home, called my doctor and left word that I had a �work related emergency� and would need to reschedule. Then I burrowed under the covers and sobbed until my nose actually started bleeding.

Cute.

It�s strange�one evening I feel OK, sociable, reasonably lucid. The next I am stricken with a grief that I can only relate to losing my father at age twelve. But I�m not twelve anymore, and nobody died. I broke up a relationship and ended a pregnancy in its earliest stages. These are unfortunate circumstances but hardly the greatest of life�s tragedies. Yet I feel like I�m drowning.

I feel as though I am rotting from the inside out, that I have been gutted and stuffed and am no longer a real person. I have to stand outside of myself in order to exist. I have become automated and lack spontanety and life is devoid of meaning and metaphor; it all just feels like a sick postmodern joke. I can't take pleasure in anything and I don�t trust my own judgement. I don�t trust my feelings and I don�t know what sick poisoned part of me insists on loving people and things that are basically killing me. Why am I so driven to people who are incapable of loving me by the very nature of who they are? Something went horribly wrong and I�m sure it has to do with my dead father and my abusive ex-stepfather. Obviously it does. And I�ve been to therapy and I�ve tried a gazillion different things and nothing will root out this sickness. I have a radar embedded in my heart that zeros in on emotionally unavailable men who I cling to desperately, blindly hoping that they will change when it is perfectly obvious to everyone in the world that they won�t.

It�s my reason for living almost�gaining love and acceptance from men who can only love and accept me in the most inconsistent and dysfunctional way. It�s almost as though I relish being used. Do I have some kind of sick martyr complex? I'm like this dumb puppy waiting to be loved and petted and taken care of. It's sick sick SICK. Look where this has gotten me? It�s fucking pathetic.

I have learned to hate myself and I have no respect for how weak and lame I am when it comes to men.

If only he hadn�t caught up with me that day I caught him in the stall and I tried to run away.

If only I had run to Megan�s like I planned.

If only I had never gone out that night to Giuhama with Angus.

If only I wasn�t so fucking retarded.

I honestly think that I am so sick that I absolutely should never ever be romantically involved in even the most transient way with anyone ever again. I think that the only way I have any fighting chance of a meaningful existence is to be completely and totally autonomous.

I have to set rules and limits and I have to stick to them.

I�m like a fucking heroin addict. I gotta get this bad love outta my system and wean myself off of it once and for all.