i went out to dinner tonight with my friend jesse and his wife jackie. i've known jackie for about three or four years now, i'd say. i always thought she was a really cool girl. i've been talking to jesse about playing in a band with scott and me. he seems open to the idea. we had a good dinner at that bastion of good suburban taste: applebee's.

the meat of this story involves jesse and jackie's amazingly cute daughter joon. she's still a little tyke, barely a toddler, but she's just the cutest thing ever. i just hung out across the table from her, chatting with someone with an obvious language barrier. she'd smile at me, i'd give her a big thumbs up. i seemed to entertain her. that may be an easy thing to do with a one year-old…i'm not sure.

so i sat at the table and i realized that jackie and jesse are both a few years younger than me. a happy, married couple. i mean…she still brings him lunch every day. they're an amazing couple with an amazingly beautiful child. here i am, 25, freshly dumped by a girl that lives 1000 miles away. no real future outlook. aside from our mutual tastes in music and a common workplace, my life and jesse's are almost complete opposites. i don't envy him as much as respect him, if that makes sense.

i know that some day i want a little kid of my own to spoil. someone to share all of this with. i don't think i want to be married tomorrow, but i know that someday i want to be with that girl. my biggest problem right now is that, up until a few weeks ago, i thought that i had found that very girl. i'm slowly realizing how wrong i was and it's a huge downer. i'm having a hard time dealing with the fact that all of these deep connections i had with this girl may now amount to nothing. i'm constantly reaching out to her for some kind of emotion and i just get the door slammed back in my face.

i feel like some stupid, broken-hearted robot who's set on "self-destruct."

then again, right now, somehow, you're making me smile.