A minute ago, I had few scattered moments of believing that I had done the right thing, as evidenced by the tweets that I will leave up, for the time being. That confidence, it wanes.

At four o'clock today, I got a message from you on my phone with one simple request-- one that I was, apparently, destined to ignore. At four o'clock for you, I shed the first tears that were exclusively for you. They weren't the last. I haven't yet seen the last.

At twenty minutes after midnight or so, my entire right leg fell through the hole in porch, twisting my left foot as I fell. I screamed aloud in the night, letting it seem that it was for the pain of the fall. It might have been a little, but as I lapsed into sobs, even Zack knew that it was for you. He'd be a fool not to; I've been acting pretty crazy all night; I told him what I did. I told him why I did it.


At maybe 7:45 this morning, I was fuming mad at Mr. L. I was calling him anything insulting that vaguely fit. I was calling him a hippy (there's a tweet on that one), a new-aged joke. I was railing at the idea of a sixty-ish, unmarried man who sleeps with women right about half his age and undermines the important of marriage-- sure, he wants me to get mine now that I'm twenty-something, but by the time I'm his age, I'll be worthless, having avoided marriage my whole life at his suggestion, and found myself unmarketable to a world of men who want only younger women. That's what happen to girls like me when we listen to men like him. Sure, he wants me and my superior genes to join his free love movement now (not for himself, mind you. Even angry at him as I was, I can't allege that. It's just not true.) But once I grow up, I'll get put out to pasture.

Not everyone has your particular set of problems, Mr. L. I could leave Zack now and spend the rest of my life bedding anyone who I find mildly interesting and still never have the problems you talked about in session today (edited for content on August 20th.) I'm gonna have some owning up to if he actually reads this, but whatever, fuck him.) So maybe we shouldn't be as concerned with the pursuit of Linda's perfect orgasm-- this bullshit idea that, in reality, may never, probably will never happen-- and focus on Linda's semi-charmed life.

I love my husband, goddamn it. Even if, as you (Mr. L, not you-you.) pointed out, I'm currently in love with someone else. I'm not gonna blow every blip on the radar. Was this whole thing some sort of bizarre, sick reverse psychology thing? Because, if not, remind me to bring a paper and pencil and make note of your justification of this advice next time. Because everyone, everyone thinks you're fucking crazy.

For those of you who aren't able to keep up, Mr. L said that I should sleep with another guy. The other guy. The one I've just gone through a pseudo-breakup with, mostly out of fear that, with the infallible one's blessing, I would give in.

So yeah, Mr. L. Fuck you. And yeah, I'll see you on the 18th. Trust me. I'll be there.



Maybe you won't read this ever again. Maybe I won't be able to make you understand how hard this is for me-- the way I typed out that last text message and stared at it for maybe twenty minutes, floating my thumb above the "send" button. When I finally hit it, I instantly had no idea if I had done it on accident or not. I waited and waited, hoping for some further protest. You probably have more pride than that. And then, there's the possibility that I got you into some serious shit on your end. If that's the case, then, christ, I'm sorry. I wish I could have waited. In that moment, I didn't feel like I could.

It that seems selfish, you'll have to understand that I was somehow paralyzed by the earlier conversation which ended so suddenly. I could do nothing but wait for the situation to resolve itself. I couldn't write my damn essay, I couldn't watch TV. I didn't eat. I did masturbate briefly, and to no happy end-- Mr. L would be satisfied by my dissatisfaction, as proof of his point. (Didn't I say fuck you? Fuck you.) I had things to do, and I had no interest, no will to do them, till I found some sort of closure. I was hoping it would just be closure to the conversation...I guess it wasn't. I guess by the time I finished typing it out, I guess by the time I maybe-accidentally hit "send", it was more definitive than that. One way or another...I don't know. There's part of me that keeps saying it "had to happen."

But I shouldn't have risked getting you in trouble. I'm sorry. And it should have been in person. I'm sorry. And it should have been a thousand years from now. God, I'm sorry.


I want to see you again. I want to discuss it in person. I want us to find whatever comfortable place we're going to get to, to be sure that you'll make good on that promise that you'll care about me even when I'm not half naked and halfway done. Or, if we're never going to find someplace "comfortable", then fine. I want to search for it and miss. I want to know definitively that we're always going to be holding back some deeper connection, some seed that longs to take root, some ever-streaming tail of a firework, always maybe about to burst. (That must have been the description you were talking about the other day...the firework one.)

Without my noticing, U2's "With or Without You" has come on in background. Again, one of those moments where I suddenly love a song. Maybe more profound if I'd realized it was happening earlier.

"Sleight of hand and twist of fate,
On a bed of nails, she makes me wait.
And I wait without you."

I hope you come here again. I hope you read this. I want to see you...I know it won't be soon. If I could have accepted that, if I weren't so fitful at the thought of it, maybe none of this would have happened.


On with it.

It has to end. It has to end. It has to end.

I was blunt, I was cruel, and I was right. I was straightforward, I was consistent, and I was right. I was hurtful, I was hurt, and I was right.

It can't go on like this. This loneliness that can only be tempered by one person, that stings ever more harshly when surrounded by a sea of people that are not the right one. This torture that is a problem without resolution, this sick melancholy which is addiction to melancholy.

It has to end.

I don't like who I am in his absence, what I do to those who represent a lack of him. And anyway, it's not safe anymore-- that was part of the appeal initially, was it not? I am scared by intimacy, but so drawn to it despite that I go and press up against it, caged, like an animal in a zoo. Some fierce predator that I long so long to touch that I stretch my fingers through the chain link fence, but would dare not approach in the open savannah.

Poetic bullshit. Where's Casey to slap me silly?

It's not safe anymore, with the building of the desperation. With Mr. L's approval. Having explored every other option except those with are entirely taboo. It's not safe anymore, and, because of that, it will become safer-- I will lack response to it. I will pull back, into myself, fingers intact.

Or will I?

It has to end. It has to end. It has to end, before I can find out.

I will pull back into myself and be safe, be intact, be worthless. I will pull back into myself and waste the rest of my life being safe. I will pull back into myself until the ennui makes me crazy again, until I fall back into the same patterns and find some other cage, some other large, powerful beast who will ignite my imagination from a distance, who will make my fingers ache, and the pattern of the Zoo, it goes wildly in circles like the rides they have there: merry-go-round, ferris wheel, roller coaster.

Round and round. Up and down. Over and over, ad nauseum, quite literally.

"Something here will eventually have to explode."

Am I talking myself into or out of something? It's hard to tell anymore.

If I can manage a paradigm shift by the next time I see him, I might get out with my awful little life in tact. Maybe I will have gotten out without breaking anyone's heart. Maybe I won't have.


I don't know what I want. I don't know how to get it. I know I can't follow Mr. L's advice. I know I can't keep trading hours of misery for a few scattered minutes of...a different kind of misery, the kind that would be like joy if it could sit still for a minute, if it could relax. A relief tempered by the knowledge that the pain comes on again, and soon.

I can't trade all of these hours for those minutes, and I can't trade the rest of my life to turn those minutes into hours. It has to end. It has to end.



Tell me what I want. Be here, to change my mind. Tell me that getting rid of you doesn't actually make my life easier or better, it just lets me fall into these same patterns again. Tell me that even if Mr. L wasn't right, maybe he was pointing me in the right direction. Tell me to spend just a little bit longer with you. Take a lesson from me, and don't let me leave.

Except that you can't do that from where you are.


On with it.