September 17, 2002 | 9:36 AM

I have been burning the candle at both ends since August. I�ve been out five nights a week and up until all hours, and working two jobs and reading and writing a ton. Last night was Debbie and Josh and Buddy L. and bourbon and a brand new mix tape.

I just feel like I wasted so much fucking time and now I want to fit everything in, sleep be damned.

When I think about what I used to want from life, and what I want now, there is such an immense chasm between the two. And when I think about how I used to feel�about myself, the world, other people�and how I feel now, it�s so separate from me. Like I�m just an actress and being that person, that girl who lived the life I used to lead, was just a role I played in a long running hit show night after night.

The long suffering, whiny, (highly critical) blank slate girlfriend.

I can�t imagine being her. Yet she comes back to haunt me every day. Her life bleeds into mine. I�ll catch details of her existence-- her pschic dust leaves traces, still floating in the air and settling in the corners of my day. When I walk into my house at 3:00 AM, I remember how she used to spend that hour rocking back and forth on her unmade dirty sheeted bed, biting her nails in the dark, the same Jonathon Richman song playing over and over again, just waiting for a phone call that never came.

When I�m cooking dinner for my friends in my apartment, I remember how she used to hide in her room while guests were over, feeling ashamed and insecure, knowing that her only job in the social situation was to be

The lame girlfriend

Duped, pathetic, mistrustful. Her big sad presence making all the cute girls at the kitchen table ill at ease.

The lame girlfriend

The obligatory setpiece.

She would sit there listening to the same stories over and over about the place she used to work and the life she used to lead. Her words in response stilted and blunt or overly solicitous.

Unwanted. Ugly. Uncomfortable. Untalented.

The lame girlfriend

When I look at the message light blinking on my answering machine, I remember all the messages she used to erase from people who cared about her,

Hey... I�ve called ten times. OK... call me back, I guess.

I remember how she would pick up the phone and dial a few numbers, then promptly hang it up again. The thought of trying to sound normal, the thought of trying to sound like a human being crushed any desire to keep in touch with the outside world. She wasn�t normal. She had ceased being even real. She was just a character in someone else�s story. She was flat. She was a plot arc. She had no will and no direction. She was there merely to react.

The lame girlfriend

I hated being her. Hated it. Hated that play. Hated the set. Hated the lines I said day after day. But I couldn�t deviate from the script. I spent every waking hour breathlessly waiting for the third act, waiting for the fake tacked on Hollywood ending. The one where our hero realizes that the dull pleading domestic princess he�s been ambivalent about actually is his one true love. And they walk off together hand in hand into the Technicolor sunset, into the void, absorbed by the screen before all goes black.

But there was a Hollywood ending, sort of.

There was no sunset, no blank screen, no cliched lines. There was pain and fuck ups and a sadness that cut through the bedrock of my life and left deep, fossilized grooves-- a design that will not disappear or fade.

But

I got to stop being her. And I got to start being me.

This isn�t a play. This isn�t THE SAGA. This is real life. And I fucking love it. I love every minute of it.

But damn�t I really need to get some sleep soon. Otherwise, Oscar Wilde is going to come to life again and start talking to me about vampires.

And even Josh and Debbie and Buddy L., god bless em� and their friendship, aren�t worth being locked up in the psyche ward due to lack of sleep.

Well, maybe they are.

We�ll see.