January 21, 2003 | 8:51 AM

I got an email last night asking me about diaryland ettiquette, for which I felt flattered and rather surprised, since I don�t know if anyone has had worse diaryland ettiquette in the past than I have.

Which as of now, is something that�s going to change. There are many things I could say in this entry. I could recount the numerous valid reasons regarding why I feel devastated and utterly betrayed. I could spill blood all over this screen and be exactly what someone once accused me of�on the attack armed with saying out loud all the things people don�t want said. And if I did that, it would only be to fulfill an ugly vindictiveness. I would be purposefully embarrassing and hurting other people just to make a point. And I would also be indulging the dismissive argument that has been used numerous times against me�that I am overemotional and irrational and thus everything I say and feel is unwarranted and automatically discounted. Which in this case, it is most certainly not.

So instead of exorcising pain in this forum, which has been my modus opperendi for some time, I am going to allow that pain to sit. I am not going to cut it out and put it on display for all to see. Part of that is out of deference and respect for others, a skill that has been long overdo for me. And part of it is because something I would like to learn is how to conduct myself with dignity and restraint even during the most upsetting of periods. And part of it is because right now, I too have cancer in my heart�of a different kind. It is a cancer that is eating away the stored up and rotting false belief system I have clung to for years and years, the naivete and gullibility and delusion that caused me to misplace my trust and affection and believe things that were said to me that I wanted to believe while disregarding my own gut instinct. I am going to let that cancer grow and grow and harden me so that I can truly learn the lesson I should have learned years ago, something which would have saved me a great deal of pain and wasted time. I am going to come out of this a different person in many ways�I can already feel it happening. It needed to happen. This is something that in a year, I will be most thankful I went through because the person I was�the needy, delusional, manipulative, non-discerning person who refused to read between the lines and blindly accepted everything she was told not out of stupidity but out of sheer laziness and cowardice�the person who clung desperately to the past and refused to confront reality, is not someone I want to be.

And another lesson I learned, one that has been a long slow process, but has finally been driven home, is that in any friendship, I need to treat people exactly the way I feel I deserve to be treated, and expect other people to do the same. That I have a right to my own deeply held values and beliefs as long as those values and beliefs are based on an actual moral code as opposed to my own emotional response to any given situation. And that if others treat me in a way that is counter to my own deeply held ethics, rather than attempting to make someone else�s behavior different, or hang around hoping that at some point it will be, for my own psychological health and emotional wellbeing, I should re-evaluate that relationship and most likely terminate it. The flip side of that is that if I live by that moral code, it is one I also have to impose upon myself when dealing with others. And that is something I have done to some extent but not nearly enough. In certain ways I have not been a good friend to many people who love me. However, by from now on demanding the honesty and respect I know I deserve, I will be able to give more freely of myself to the people I love and who love me.

After this pain is through hardening me up and buffing my personal resolve to a bright steel sheen, I hope to reach a place of forgiveness, understanding, and distant fondness. However, some things are broken and they do not get fixed. Nor should they be.

The past is dead.

Welcome to the new age.