FieryGwenivere: I feel like ruining the moment by asking questions I'm only half-sure I want answered. I should probably just go.

I guess I'm growing up.

"And so you get six months to adapt,
And you get two more to leave town.
In the event that you do adapt,
We still might not want you around.
But I fell for the promise
Of a life with a purpose
But I know that's impossible now.
And so I drink to stay warm,
And to kill selected memories,
Because I just can’t think anymore about that or about her tonight.

I give myself three days to feel better,
Or else I swear I'm driving off a fucking cliff.
Because if I can't learn to make myself feel better,
Then how can I expect anyone else to give a shit?

And I scream for the sunlight,
Or a car to take me anywhere,
Just get me past this dead and eternal snow.
Because I swear that I am dying,
Slowly, but it's happening,
And if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere,
Just take me there.
Just take me there.
Just take me there
Just lie to me and say,
Lie to me and say,
it’s going to be alright,
its going to be alright,
its going to be alright."
~Bright Eyes, If Winter Ends


On with it.

I come online to discover that someone I was talking to earlier who claimed they needed to go to bed has come back online, and instantly I am taken back to another time, another person. It was the beginning, sort of: we already knew each other's merits but were ignorant of each other's faults. I was just getting really serious about Zack and he was just getting out of a serious relationship with someone else, and the conversation that night had gone to the topic of "what if?"

What if we keep finding out things to like about each other? What if we've got too much in common? What if we spend so much time together that we fall for each other?

We mulled over it for a little while-- openly and honestly, without the stigma that would, later in our relationship, accompany this kind of topic with frustrated disdain. We talked openly about our anxiety that we might be too compatible, who we might hurt. Our intellects told us that it was a bad idea, that, for the sake of all that meant anything to us at that time, we should stay away in that regard. He being the more intellectual of the two of us settled on that, telling me we were smart, we could avoid something so obvious, so glaring.

Said he had to go, and I posed one more what if:

"What if...when we talk about how we might fall for each other, what we mean is that we might have already?"


The question went unanswered, and he logged off, to go to bed. But the question was fresh in my mind, and I stayed up an hour more, thinking about it, unable to sleep. Hoping something would happen.

And then he came back online.

He'd always been the more intellctual of the two of us, but I had infiltrated him, and his guard was down. I asked him what he was doing back. That moment, he was more like me than he'd ever been (a fatal flaw, but who's?) when he said "I've been thinking about it, and you're right. I know the next time I'm stuck in math class, I'll be thinking about sitting at the coast with you. I may be in love with you."

I don't remember what I said, or even exactly how he said what he did, and I know that any misquote is probably a terrible betrayal of the truth. But I remember it my way, and he remembers it his. Which, I think, is to not remember it at all.


I don't want back that kind of love from him, but I'd give everything I have if he'd be willing to acknowledge that we had it, for a little while. For as long as it lasted, I was divided between the two of them-- it wasn't a matter of loving Zack more than ultimately led me to where I am now. But Zack knew what I needed, how I needed it...or at least, I believed he did. Anyway, Zack was offering more of himself.

He offered, well...now I realize that what he had to offer was more of me.


It was that night that I wrote this entry, where I posed the question of what should I fight for? "My life, or my love?"


In eight days, that will be three years ago. I am sitting here, surrounded by trailer, listening to the laundry was my McDonald's uniform, about to journey boldly to nowhere special with a degree from Last Chance U. I barely write in this, and when I do, it's sappy shit mourning the life I could have had.


It's not that he begrudged me my decision, or didn't try to respect it. It's just that the part of me that he loved was the part I gave up.


I'm sorry what was left of me left such a bitter taste in your mouth. I'm sorry I have to live with that taste in mine.

On with it.

"Ghost" By the Indigo Girls plays. For what feels like the hundredth time, I load the website that represents the only evidence of him that I will allow in the same room with me. I click on the "userinfo" link, and I'm there, staring at it, again. A picture I modified, along with the caption:

"Thanks, Linda."

My name. Written by him. There...indefinitely, until he takes it down. And it stays there, unflinching-- a little conversation between he and I that replays every time I read it. He thanks me. I cry.

It feels, every time, like it's happening right then. I hear him acknowledge me, say my name. He probably hasn't given it a single thought in a year. But that's how it feels.


I have this thing about my name. I'm always afraid, when I'm a conversation with someone I'm interested in, someone I like or, god forbid, love, and when I'm getting some degree of reciprocation-- I always expect on some level that they don't know it's me they're talking to. I remember feeling it with Mike daGomes, on the phone, at the end of freshmen year, I think it was. I'd been in love with him forever, since I'd known him, which would make it since the first grade. He'd known it as long as it'd been true, but, as always, there was no reciprocation: friendship, nothing more. Until that year-- that one month, really. Suddenly, it changed for him, I don't know why. I was the same, I think, but he and I were hanging out more, in a group with Jill and Heather and Torrie...and one day, he was just...interested.

And for, I don't know, two weeks, maybe less, we'd have these long conversations on the phone, and he'd say the kind of cheesy romantic things that can paralyze an awkward freshmen girl who'd never been kissed-- how good it felt to be on the phone with me, listening to me breathe, how nice I looked in certain shirts I owned. I remember I'd be on the phone with him, drowning in the deliciousness of it all, and when suddenly he'd say my name, I'd be jolted, shocked almost that I wasn't just tricking him into believing he was loving someone else. I remember sharing that fear with him, once I realized it, and I remember him assuring me that it was crazy, that this was for real.

For real until his teenaged moodswing hit, and out of nowhere he fell for the other girl who wanted him...my best friend, at the time. Without ever discussing it with me, he'd moved on from me to her, and when I was left wondering why he was avoiding me in the halls and the calls stopped coming, it was a mutual friend who had to tell me.

"He's been crazy with guilt, and worrying about how to tell you. Honestly, Linda, he's been chain-smoking over it."

I remember that, at the time, that was little consolation. Now, though...things have changed. They're married now, Jill and Mike, and for years, I haven't harbored and resentment towards the way they got together. And it's nice, I guess, to think of someone...worried and guilty at the thought of hurting me. Someone who wasn't left unphased by the loss of me...of us.





Of the things we would say to each other. The things only I could appreciate in you, only you could appreciate in me.

Maybe no one will ever know you the way I did. Did you ever stop to think it wasn't just the girl you were losing, it was also the things in yourself that only she understood? Okay, so I was a mess for, like, ever. But we finished each other's sentences. Gave each other knowing looks when we understood some irony that no one else would acknowledge. You'll never find anyone to argue with you quite the way I did. To look at you and lose her train of thought. To share your passion for passion, to share you disgust with the lifeless quality of life, to slam you against a brick wall or put you in a headlock.

Or will you?

The more I think about it, the more I know what I really fear is that just anyone could fill my place. Anyone could ignite that spark in you that I thought was only mine, while mine forever go unlit: it's you who's irreplaceable. And did you ever know my name?

You'd hate this verbose emo shit. I guess it's a good thing I banned you from here. Nothing will ever stop me from hoping you're still reading, though. I'll never stop wanting to continue this indirect, imagined conversation.

That's the problem with this song, too-- this one line: "There's not enough room in the world for my pain." I wouldn't even have a problem with it, but he wouldn't be able to stand that kind of egocentric pity. I hear him scoff at it every time I play it, and I have to ignore it, because it moves on so quickly to words so poignant and true that I can't believe even he would be able to deny them:

"Now, the Mississippi's mighty
But it starts in Minnesota.
At a place you could walk across with five steps down.
And I guess that's how you started,
Like a pinprick to my heart,
But at this point you rush right through me and I start to drown."

There's some parallel I want to draw here, between the song and that line and me. How he could always appreciate the parts that were poetic and well-conceived, but then emotions started to rule, and I'd lose all ability to express myself in any except the most base and obvious ways, and I was nothing more than a ruined song. I don't know, there's a better way to say it. But it's only appropriate that I can't figure out what that is.

I can't tell, though, if it's the little things like this that are what I've lost, or the reason I've lost them.

That probably didn't make sense.


I wonder if you'd understand.



On with it.