I have no particular point in mind, but a few things I wish to type. So.


Casey's livejournal's second-most-recent post is this one line: "People my age: flakey, self-obsessed, given to group think." I've read it about six times and find myself wondering if he means all of them are all of that or all of them fit into one of those categories. Then I think about whether or not there was a reason for him to be thinking about me at that moment (because this is what I do, not because it is logical, not because I believe or want to believe that he was, simply because this is what I do.) And I pick my label from the three, wondering whether or not I fit the label "self-obsessed", wondering whether or not he believes I am self-obsessed (I know the answer, I am fairly sure, to the latter.)

Then it gets slightly more emotional than I want it to be, so I minimize the window and stare at the picture of myself that is my desktop.



Yeah.


At least I know that I am not only self-obsessed, I also tend to obsess about other people: him, at one point, and often when I am thinking about my life, and my potential, and all the things that could be happening as I mop the maroon-tiled floor of my own little McDonald's. Katie, a girl I met at the Outright prom, who danced with me in such a way that I wish my whole life could be more like it was in that moment: exhilirating, full of intrigue, sexy and carefree and fun..I suppose "carefree" doesn't belong there. As her hands slid up and down my torso, I wanted so badly just to feel it and nothing more, and yet all I could think of was how to play it cool once the song ended, and did she really want to dance with me, or was she going one round with everyone on the floor, and will she be disappointed when I turn around and sees my face (she was behind me), or has she seen me? And everything else.

Katie was confident. And with good reason. Katie was beautiful.

I am not confident, and I only feel beautiful from time to time, when I take a particularly good picture of myself. Which, Casey, happens to be why it's my desktop background.

Jerk.


Chad, I've obsessed over Chad quite a bit, too. Last night I spent about four hours online with him, engaged in what I believe could maybe be classified as flirtation, but you never know with a man like him (which is a large portion of the appeal.) About the fifth time I reassured him of his absolute sexual prowess (from what I remember), I was certain I was saying things that I shouldn't, things I wouldn't want Zack to read, things that I wasn't going to enjoy confessing to him later, but I knew I would.

I do not lie to Zack. I do not leave key things out.


I found a file on the computer indicating that three years ago, Zack threatened Casey online, pending the end of our complicated three-way relationship (act one.) I heard nothing about it from either of them, and I'm not sure casey ever actually got these messages.

This qualifies as a key thing that Zack has left out. So no matter what I say to Chad or anyone else, I always have that self-righteousness to fall back on.

Because that's what makes a marriage, really.


I wish I had started this with a specific point. Then I'd know when I was ready to stop. I don't think I am, yet.


Zack. Since the night, that one night, I've spent a lot of time obsessing about him. I think, perhaps, I am beginning to distract myself from that again. Scared, perhaps, of being dependent (and knowing how truly dependent I am.)

Zack bought a book called "The Nimrod Flipout" which is of short stories written by...some Jew, I think. Said he read a review in Time or Newsweek or something (what the hell is he doing reading Time or Newsweek?) and he's read a little of it so far, thinks it's pretty good. I thoght I might like to get hooked on another humorous short-story writer, so I've been picking through them while on the toilet. I don't like them much. I can't decide if I'm missing the point, or if this is just the writing the kind of writing that Casey and I discussed once as being "The kind of writing that a person of lesser intelligence would just assume was good."

I would like to know what Casey would think of "The Nimrod Flipout". I would like to read Casey's short stories, the ones he linked to on his livejournal on his third-latest post, and give him the feedback he's looking for (and exactly the feedback he's looking for, so he'd realize what he was missing. Because that, quite simply, is what I do.) But I can't, I won't, I won't let myself. Sometimes I think I will. The night Zack almost left me, I thought about how I planned to read them the next day. And I thought about Chad. And I would have thought about Katie, if I'd met her yet.


This post is anticlimatic. Like the stories in the book.

On with it.

Uhm....what the fuck?




On with it.

When I take my dog for a run, I bring a plastic baggie with me. Then, if he poops, when he's done I bend over and pretend to pick it up, but don't. That way, I will look conscientious to anyone who might be watching from a distance, but I won't have to carry around a baggy full of poo.


---


Take some time with that one paragraph, if you like. It was supposed to be a slick one-liner of a post, but those who know me best have come to realize that I am never brief. If I were, those three quick sentences would serve as a chuckling musing to those who took it on that level, and a pondersome ignition of imagination to those who took it further. I, for instance, upon thinking that very thing could not leave it at the half-smile of a reaction I initially had, and as I jogged along, I wondered about the deeper implications. At somewhere within 2.5 pounds of 150-- a little less a week ago, a little more today-- I now have a very similar body to what I did my later years of high school. This serves as a very useful segue to a trane of thought about how I've changed since then.

In high school, I understood that it was not what people thought of me that mattered, but what I truly was on the inside. Clearly, the above demonstrates that things have changed. But is it somewhat unfair to get down on myself over the ostensible decline of my moral character? After all, high school is...well, it certainly is differently from real life, or what serves as "real life" in my little corner of the world, isn't it? Perhaps in high school I didn't care what anyone thought. But that was easier back then, wasn't it? In an arena where everyone is noticing everyone else, and there is a tremendous amount of peer pressure from every direction, perhaps it's the most intelligent thing to do to simply shirk off the desire to be acknoweldged, and rise above the influence. And certainly, in High School, no one ever questioned my intelligence. I had, I believe, something of a presence there: perhaps for my intelligence, perhaps for my candor, and also a little, perhaps, for the unassuming way I could sit in any room, take on an air of neutrality and just look at people, watch them. I don't know-- I think, perhaps, that's what Mike R. saw in me. It was pretty recently that he instant messaged me, after a long time, and we got into a discussion about those days. I barely knew him then, but I noticed him, and apparently he noticed me.

Rusted Iron Knee: you've always terribly interested me
FieryGwenivere: likewise, my dear.
Rusted Iron Knee: i remember way back to looking at you and feeling that you had some sort of aura around you that i knew everybody felt

It took me much longer than I thought it would to find that piece of conversation, included, more than likely, for the sole purpose of my vanity, and the search for it has ruined my train of thought; no matter. I suppose that loss of continuity, in itself, segues easily enough back to where I was headed, which was the difference between the "fuck the world, I am Me!" me of high school and the "Somehow, I really do feel better about myself when my outfit is color-coordinated." me of today. It's a different environment, I find myself arguing: where once I was seen as either an esoteric gem or an eccentric misfit among assembly-line array of slack-jawed teens, now I'm an workaday adult who may be just as intelligent as always, but who's somehow fallen behind the ranks of the clone army. Where once attention was lavished upon me by my teachers and criticism hurled at me by my peers, now the only oppurtunity to be noticed at all may be the criticism I sometimes receive; the only way to achieve any degree of notability is to be what it's recommended I be. Not someone who has an aura around her that everyone feels, but someone who wears green shoes with a green shirt. Not someone who commands attention in her offbeat ways and gentle confidence, but someone who picks up her dog's crap with a little baggy. Or so you think.


We only go about a half a mile, since I've already been exercising. I alternate between jogging and walking, unable to maintain a steady jog for more than a few minutes, unless someone happens to be sitting on their porch or driving slowly by, then I'm forced to keep it up until I'm out of sight. When I come home, there is a light, glittering sweat evenly coating the ruddy skin of my face. Caring about myself as I do, though subtly and insecurely, I find the sight to be appealing, but I understand that this is a sentiment that I could not share with anyone who was not in love with me. I appreciate the moment, looking in the mirror, but quickly hear my inner demons piping up to spoil it, and then, disappointed, I can't look.


There are things I don't like about myself, particularly, and though I can make light of it, I suppose that first catchy little paragraph is one of them. I suppose I'm not proud of where I've gone in life, in terms of both accomplishments and little, personal truths. Morals. Heart. My cavalier approach to human decency.

But as I slow down to a walk, when a car drives out of sight, I watch how the morning fog looms around the tops of a row of pines in the distance, and I listen to the different birds chatter from all directions. We walk by an old tree, and I notice a pattern in it's bark and stop to touch it, lay my hand on it to feel the texture.

I understand that these are the things that make me beautiful.

On with it.

The conclusion to the infamous night of pain depicted vaguely in the last entry was that Zack's doubts about our ability to stay together stem from his frustrations concerning our sexual life.

It's time to face the vaginismus head-on. I started the weight loss thing as a way to feel better about my body, as a sort of forerunner to dealing with my intimate problem, and while I'm still quite a few inches away from a flat stomach and miles of confidence, twenty-five pounds later, I think i've done enough so that I can knock it out of the position of being my first priority. It's time to take my new body and make it work the way I need it to. It's time to save my marriage, and my life. It's time to do this.


My original plan for tonight was to do some of the writing assignments from my "treating vaginismus" workbook that I've so casually put off, put off by how work-like they seemed. However, in my attempts to locate this book, I became sidetracked with what I found-- my Mr. Hall journals. I remembered one particularly telling entry, written on my eighteenth birthday, that seemed like it would be relevant in a discussion of the history of my vaginismus. I found it, and, having not re-read it, I've decided to type it up, right here, right now. Let's see what was in my mind that night together, shall we?

----

1:52 AM
Thursday, July 18th 2002

Having been born at around Two AM, the closest approximation I can get is that I turn 18 in 8 minutes. This seems to me, more overwhelmingly than anything else, to be a good reason to start a new logbook.

"Overwhelmingly", on second thought, was not an appropriate word to use there-- what I ewas trying to get at was that no other reaction to this somewhat notable day is taking any particular precedence-- it's the middle of the night, and for lack of being able to sleep, I have spent the last hour or so indulging in a new low-- Late night programming on the Oxygen (TM) Women's Network.

It started out innocently enough with my curiousity and bemusement in "The Sunday Night Sex Show"-- a rerun, obviously, but new to me. The show is basically like Loveline, a show that used to air on MTV based on the premise of two guys, one youngish, Adam Corolla, and one middle-aged, Dr. Drew, discussing very odd sexual things, especially the unique, if not warped, sexual questions of their numerous callers. (I am so frustrated by my large handwriting.) The show was a curiousity to me for years, in an age where I knew far lessabout sex, and the experience of sexual things, than I do today-- which, incidentally, still isn't much beyond the factual and trivial-- and I would look forward to summer nights-- the only time I could afford to stay up as late as it was on-- watching it in my kitchen, with the volume turned all the way down, so very paranoid to be caught mid-caller who was asking if it was unhealthy for him to do "penis tricks", like wrapping his dick around his wrist like a watch. (In all the shows I saw, that call has always stood out the most in my memory.)

"The Sunday Nigh Sex Show" is almost exactly the same as Loveline, minus the male callers and the MTV appeal, except that it replaces the youngish and middle-aged male hosts with a single female somewhere in her mid-seventies. Take your grandmother-- as she was when you were growing up, and not as she is now...which I can only presume is dead-- and picture her talking to women about their sexual secretions and masturbating a rubber penis demonstratively ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. This is the disturbance level of this show. And yet, like a deer in high beams, I sat there frozen in awe and shock, trying to surpress the outburst of what would have been something between a giggle and a blood-curdling scream as the grandmother discussed herself, masturbating in a hot tub.

After "The Sunday Night Sex Show" came some show with a VERY black hostess and a MUCH blacker cohost that I watched merely because it's deceptive advertising led me to believe that it was going to be greatly about porno, as only five minutes of it was. And after that, I hit rock bottom with the better part of a rerun of "Love, American Style."

Managing the intelligence to shut that off, I watched the window for a moment and listened to it rain, thinking by then that it might be a pleasant way to turn 18. But it wasn't-- it was depressing. And the television had been depressing-- to be almost entirely blased to a 70-something-year-old-woman stick her fingers into a talking a great length about a rubber vagina on TV is a sad thing, especially so prematurely as tender age of....17, 364 days, 22 1/2 hours, and certainly none of the shows I'd seen would ever compare to that first clandestine affair I had in my kitchen every summer night with Loveline-- Loveline, which taught me so much, about sex, about relationships, about the dangers of wearing a penis like a watch. It was loveline, or, more accurately, a book based on the show that taught me it was normal that I couldn't, and can't, have an orgasm, and that made concrete my decision to remain a virgin until I was 18.

I think that is what has me truly stressed. Virginity. Sex. Issues and experiences that, very suddenly, I don't feel ready for. I find myself questioning now if my decision to wait for an arbitrary number, my insistance on it wasn't just a way to protect myself from having to face the idea of it. And I find myself wondering if it will be good, if it will be different from the disappointing, scary sexual experiences of my past. I find myself wondering if it will even be bearable, or how much I will cry, or, if I don't, will it be because I want to protect the emotions of my partner-- of Jeff?-- and if, in that protection itself, I'll be made to feel distant from him, bitter that I have to keep my emotions, angry at him-- or towards him, at myself that I can't just stand up and scream I FEEL USED! I FEEL RAPED! I FEEL AS IF TIME AND SPACE AND CIRCUMSTANCE FORCED ME INTO THIS AGAINST MY WILL, AS SOOM SHOWBOAT OF MY WANING AFFECTIONS FOR YOU, AND I HAD NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER! And I would break down, and begin to cry and mutter that I wasn't ready for this, that I took away my own right to choose and that something must be so wrong with me, so very wrong with me, and that I'm broken and impure and nothing's ever gonna be the same again. And then I'd just cry and cry and not be able to say anything, and though he'd have been holding me before, than I'd shirk off his touch and curl up into a fetal position, longing to be whole again, unbroken, pure-- if I ever have been a day in my cognizant life.

But it won't happen that way, and that was the whole point of what I was trying to be saying-- at most, I suspect, I'll shed a single tear, and-- if he notices (a big "if") I'll smile at him, so fakely that I won't even mean for him to know it's not fake and lie in such a way that I'll be baiting him to beg for the truth, but he'll be all too willing to be assured, and so I'll lay next to him, turned away or on top of him so he can't see my face as I always do when I'm deeply, pseudo-privately upset, leaving him to assume, as he always fucking does, that my face gives off some message of contentment, or of mere exhaustion, or something to that affect-- how the hell should I know what he's thinking? I'm not looking at his face, either. I guess I'm assuming, too.

My hand hurts, and my writing is naturally big, something I can only remedy with a concentration that I lacked through those last, emotional pages.

Obviously, my cloudy past is a concern in how I'll feel about sex-- Before it has a chance to be broken by Jeff, I'll need to have a doctor check if I have a hymen, as a step in my slow, ongoing investigation into the world of whatever sexual abuse is buried deep in my defensive self-conscious. the examination of whether or not I have one, in itself, is a very disturbing thing for most girls who have been sexually abused, or so was told to me by the Sexual Assault Crisis Center Drop-In Counselor, Kathy Hance, during the one time I ever saw her, back when the notion to uncover my past seemed more urgent. And if it is confirmed that I have no hymen and, therefore, was probably raped, I have no idea what my reaction to that will be, but my best guess is that, after such news, I will not be ready for sex. (I can only guess that, having read what I've written thus far, your reaction must be something along the lines of the fact that there's absolutely no indication that I'm ready for sex now, in fact there seems every indication that I'm not. I am right there at that conclusion with you, however I am desperately trying to hide the evidence, which is why it's being buried in this journal instead of, say, in an e-mail to Jeff.)

Another source of my anxiety in all of this is Chad. Not having my logbook back from you yet (which would be a hint, were it not for the fact that by the time you read this, you will have returned it...I hope) I have no way of knowing how much you know already about the blossoming relationship of me and Chad amist the pre-lain grass of Jeff and I-- suffice it to say it as concisely as someone like I possibly can, I started feeling for Chad so gradually that by the time I was ready to put a stop to it, it couldn't be stopped, which lead to my trying to kiss him-- against my better judgement-- at his house after his prom, and his stopping me-- NOT against his better judgement-- which lead me to e-mailing Jeff, confessing that there was someone else and that I had a decision to make, which lead to his asking me never to try to kiss Chad again unless I should choose to end our (mine and Jeff's) relationship, which shouldn't have lead to me trying to kiss Chad again and, over the course of weeks, succeeding-- This tmie, against his better judgement and mine-- because I was convinced at this point that I would break up with Jeff because of Chad, despite Chad's assertion that he did not want a relationship with me, not for lack of attraction to me, but for such practical reasons as his impending departure for college.

Star Wars. It was during Star Wars, episode one, while we were the only ones in the theater that my effort of placing my lips around his, sucking, sometimes slipping my tongue into his mouth, and verbally assuring him every time he asked that it was fine, it was okay, there wasn't anything left to lose anymore finally paid off. He kissed me, and he kissed me again, and at some point in the movie I remember he kissed my neck, and I felt elation-- afterwards, we went back to his house and, after some discussion over whether or not there was anything to feel bad about, we made out on his couch.

It was that first night that the notion started dawning on me. Him sitting up, and I sort of straddling him, we kissed and he touched me. He touched me. His hands started at my shoulders, my neck and my hair, maybe, and then down to the part I remember-- sliding over my breasts, not lingering there but just sliding over them to my stomach, filling me with sexual sensation, but in a classy way, a beautiful way. And then he'd slide back up, and after a while-- long enough for me to think I had been dreaming it the first time, down again, over me again, down to my hips, both of his hands in a slow, gentle unison. It started then, and continued when I couldn't stop thinking about those moments that night, and grew when I couldn't stop bragging to Jenn about it, and when, at work, I'd put my hands in my pockets and the feeling of two hands covering the bulges of my hip bone would remind me of him, and by the next time I saw him, and the next time he touched me like that, I was assured-- I wanted, truly wanted for the first time, to make love. And I wanted to give my virginity to Chad.

I've never been one to be all gun-ho for the notion of waiting to find the right guy, but my body and heart were convinced that the right guy had leaped out at me. It seemed almost a trivial detail, in the face of such perfect fate, that I was still with Jeff who, incidentally, I did, and do, love. I assumed I'd tell him and we'd break up-- but by the second time I tasted Chad, it was only a matter of days before the St. Peter's Fiesta, when Jenn, Jeff and I wre all going to Massachussetts together for a week-- I decided that it would indefinitely be best to wait before I sprand the bad news on him, not only to spare a disaster for all three of us, but to pay homage to a great relationship with one last good week.

Because of how soar my hand is, as well as how tired I'm growing, I'll spare details about the week and say merely this-- the time we spent there made a few things clear for me- A., Jeff and I still had the potential to work together if I could get over Chad, B- guilt really, really sucks and C,- despite the fun and love I was sharing with Jeff, I couldn't wait to get home and see Chad again. All of these things in combination were very, very painful and very, very confusing.

I arrived home, at long last, to bad news-- Cody, my ferret, who I had left in the condition of sick was now dead. My initial reaction was to walk around the house in hysterics. My secondary reaction was to call Chad.

He wasn't home. Unable to bear the evening alone, I went to Jesse's and almost cheated on Jeff again in a vulnerable mix of grief and apathy. The next day, when I finally talked to Chad, he gave his deepest condolences on Cody. I asked to see him.

He told me he was getting back together with his ex-girlfriend, whom I'd always suspected he had feelings for.

There's a lot more to say about this-- about my heartbreak in general, and Edna St. Vincent Millay poetry, and my status with him now, weeks later, but my hand aches so. Suffice to say, which seems to be a phrase I use a lot, that Jeff still does not know about my infidelity-- I've put off telling him for many reasons, not all of which are mine...but we'll get into that later.

There's no more rain to depress me, and I'm tired so I should sleep, having popped the cherry of yet another logbook with the battering ram of my life. Having come into my eighteenth year like a writer, doing what I do best.


Getting ink all over my hands,
Linda


---


I think that post might have been easier on some of my readers, one in particular, if I had censored it somewhat. But censorship isn't what's going to get me through this.


Quite some time later, my hand still aches from writing that post. I'm going to bed.

On with it.

Things have been bad.


Last night was the summit, I suppose, of a proverbial mountain of hardship. Last night, things were said that it will take a lifetime to get over. Last night, I almost lost more than I thought it possible to lose. I experienced a full range of emotion when faced with the reality that the little corner of the world I have carved out and made my own might no longer be mine, might never really have been: anger, hysterical sadness, and more than anything, denial.

I guess I can tell myself that since it seems to have turned out I was right, that he is still in love with me, that it wasn't really denial when I told myself it couldn't be true, it couldn't be true, it couldn't be true. But I'll never really know as well as I thought I knew a day or so ago, anymore.

Last night ended with a drunken man telling me he was sorry, baffled with my enduring, though shaken, love for him; with sitting in the wal*mart parking lot in the car with my mother, who came at 5AM to pick me up, confessing to her that I believe the root of my vaginismus was a childhood molestation; with two messages left via telephone for two of my oldest friends: one, for Jeff, frantic, teary and hysterical, the other, for Jeremey, marked by the eery calm that only comes with the sedate realization that no matter how bad your problems get, there is always one rather ultimate solution.


I won't be the same after last night. I won't take so much for granted, I won't make the same fledgling mistakes. And I won't be able to hear the slightest weakness of conviction in Zack's voice when he assures me that he still loves me without it breaking my heart, all over again.

But I won't let him see it break, either.

Last night, I laid alone in a room, waiting for him to make up his mind, and something occured to me. While I've drawn, evidently, one too many parallels between my intellectual compatibility with Casey and what I have with Zack-- I hesitate before using the word "love", for fear it might be inadequate, for lack of the cocky confidence I once had that surely, it was true-- one more came to mind that I couldn't escape: I lost Casey because there were all these parts to me that he couldn't love or even accept, and I couldn't keep them to my damn self. It seemed, last night, that that may have turned out to be true with Zack, as well.


So I will keep my mouth shut, I will try. And he will have to work long and hard to convince me to open up again, because he is not Casey: Zack is not someone, whom without, I could write long entries about missing to help me deal with the pain. Zack is someone, whom without, it seems I could not write, I could not breathe. It seems to me, that after last night, Zack is someone, whom without, I could not go on.


I feel detached from those words write now: ashamed to write them, and questioning whether or not they are true. Surely, I tell myself, I am a strong and independent person. Surely, I tell myself, I could get over the pain.


But I think back to last night, and watch it like a movie in my mind: not feeling the emotions, because it was only be sheer luck that they didn't kill me the first time...if they didn't. I think back, and I see myself begging, begging for him to assure me that he was still in love with me. Pleading with him, going into denial, assuring myself that as soon as my mother took me out the door, he'd realize the error of his ways. Through tears, I told him, "I'll have my cell phone on the whole time. I want you to realize it's not true, realize you still love me, and when you do, you just call me. I'll be waiting for you to call." I told him, "You married me. You promised me you'd always love me-- that day, and over and over again, and just two weeks ago-- you told me you'd always love me, no matter what. This isn't fair, this isn't possible. You love me, you love me, you love me. It's not possible that you don't love me-- how could you not love me? How could you not love me? How could you not love me? We're supposed to be trees together."

And I kissed his neck as he cried, for seeing what he was doing to me, for seeing how not myself he was. "I'll be waiting for you to call. You just need some time to think-- when you try to go to sleep without me, you'll realize you need me. You'll realize you still want to be trees. You can come get me-- I'll be waiting for you."


I don't feel what I felt last night-- I will not be capable of feeling that again for a long time. I don't feel, right now, that I would be willing to beg him if he was willing to leave me-- but I still have the evidence, sharply focused in the back of my mind. I was not me, for fear we would not be us. I was not me, for fear that he was not him.

I would beg again. I do not like to admit it, but I would.


I am so uneasy. I am so unsure. The things I said to him, the argument that I made. The tears that I cried, and the way that I kissed him, and waited for him, and forced him to look at me-- the things he must of seen in my eyes.

I'll never get over the possibility that he is lying, so that he does not have to see me go through pain. Because of the evidence. Because of what he said last night:

"I care about you, and I don't want to see you get hurt, but..."






on with it.

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.

Today, "coffee lady" came into work and held a conversation with me, as she often does. "Coffee Lady" is thusly monikered because, on a daily basis, she comes in and orders a coffee, which she demands be made fresh (thus forcing us to throw out whatever perfectly good coffee was already sitting there, and, normally, later to throw out the rest of the pot brewed for her, as she comes in the mid-afternoon, not peak coffee hours), then pays the reduced senior citizen rate of seventy-five cents for it. This senior discount is something McDonald's has embraced both to foster a healthy morning crowd of retirees and as a matter of public policy, helping those indigent elderly make ends meet while still being able to enjoy a warm drink and a social atmosphere. While Coffee Lady's Lexus may not run on dreams alone, I still cannot help but think that she's not exactly the kind of person that the generous discount was intended for. A wealthy Yarmouth widow, her face is a mix of the remains of what must have been striking youthful beauty and a stern, commanding quality that would strike fear in the heart of any maid. Bluntness combines with an unquestioning sense of entitlement to create a presence that shakes the weak into submission, a submission which she then rewards them for. Indeed, my opinions of her have softened sense christmas, when I-- along with the two other managers who willingly comply to her unreasonably high standard of coffee-- was given my christmas bribe: a card with a small monetary reminder that if you can achieve nothing else in a thankless job like McDonald's, you should always strive to make rich people happy.

Coffee Lady and I made small talk, as we always do, as we waited for her pot of hot, fresh control over me brewed. I never know what else to say, so I end up talking about myself to pass the time. This is unlike me: when forced to interact in a work or school setting with people I don't feel are my friends, I always try to put forth the impression that I don't expect them to care about my life, and they, for god's sake, shouldn't expect me to care about theirs. It's amazing how seldomly this works, but it's a theory I'm not willing to let die. Having covered all I cared to about school and future work prospects in a previous chat, we somehow wondered upon to topic of weight loss. I normally will not publicly divulge a number that's within two pounds of the actual amount of weight I have lost, for fear that I will bloat the next day and it will make a liar out of me, however I gave coffee lady a pretty accurate reading: while it may not hold completely true tomorrw or the next day, I have, as of right now, lost twenty pounds. (*Red Green does a happy penguin dance.*) I mentioned to her that I didn't believe it showed that much, but she said that it did. She said I've done very well, considering "wear I started."

Uhm.

I think the fears I once had that I always looked even worse than I believed I did are beginning to be confirmed. People always say the exact opposite is true-- that you are your own worst critic, that you shouldn't trust the way you think you look, that "you are not as fat as you imagine." I never really thought I was fat-- overweight, yes, but I guess I never really thought it was noticeable if I was fully dressed. Sure, I hated the way I looked when I was naked, and I self-consciously tugged at the sides of my shirts, which always seemed to creep up and reveal the flabby flanks of my sides (something I'm noticing is happening much less now, happily), but somehow, the idea that other people truly saw me as, god forbid, chubby, did not register. I would mention how I felt I needed to lose weight and always be utterly hurt and surprised when people did not respond with the requisite "Oh, but you don't need to lose weight! You're thin!" like they did when I was younger. It reminds me of this large black woman comic I watched a few months ago talking about how she is "reversed anorexic", meaning she looks in the mirror and thinks she's really skinny. I guess, against all odds, that was me.

By the way, a few comments of "Hey, you're crazy. You were never fat!" would not be unappreciated here. I'll even pretend I never wrote this paragraph. I'll feel redeemed and you'll feel sensitive and sincere, and we'll float with Cleopatra down the river of denial.


With only five pounds to go till my goal of 155 (after which I believe I'll still have to work to achieve my goals of touching my toes, dancing for 45 minutes without breaking a sweat, being able to do pull-ups or size ten pants), I have one true concern gnawing at me: When I've lost all this weight, and I've whitened my teeth, and put highlights in my hair, and am generally looking supermodel-level hot all the time, I fear people will mistake my occasional standoffishness as snobbery based on beauty, as opposed to what it really is: intellectual snobbery. I mean, okay, I'll be hotter than you. But what's really important is that I'm smarter than you. By a lot. Now people may never get to know the real reason while I'll never let them get to know me. And that's sad.

See? Beautiful people have their problems, too.


On with it.

Barb, the prominent law professor on the Lewiston Campus of Andover, seems to perhaps be working overtime to undo any offense she feels she may have caused me in Family Law class, proclaiming time and time again how she does not care for marriage, preferring instead to "shack up" with a partner. There's no convenient way for me to tell her that I'm not offneded, that I, in fact, don't particularly care for marriage, either; I just did it, that's all. Call it naivety, love-induced craziness, or a social experiment. But kids, don't try this one at home.

This is not to say I'm cynical about my marriage. My marriage is probably about as ideal as any union riddled with the perpetual roadblocks of vaginismus and povery could get. It's marriage in general that I've been cynical about all my life, and I retain that cynicism, still. Like my last name, my negativity towards all things traditional and based upon foundations of "love" and "family" was not something I was willing to give up simply because I happened to be wearing an elaborate white dress. I wasn't going to lose my identity at any cost, even if it wasn't that good of an identity to begin with.

I asked Barb a question the other day about the practice of Zack's helplessly uninformed adjunct professor, and since she has taken the initiative to try to get to know him, through me. She said earlier today that "she kinda liked him", which, she continued, she knew sounded odd, being that she'd never actually spoken to him. To this, I replied "Not speaking to Zack is one of the best reasons to like him. It's certainly on my top five list." I meant only to jokingly acknowledge that it's his shy quietness that is perhaps most appealing to him, that unobtrusive, watchful nature that makes him so endearing. I take it, however, that she may have taken it in the same cynical tone with which I wrote on my mid-mod exam today, in response to the question "What is marriage?": "Let the suckers walking down the aisle figure it out."

She spoke to him for the first time while I was talking my Law of Business Organizations final-- he stopped by the classroom to find out if I was already testing. Later, she reported that she hoped I wouldn't be offended, but she found him cute. A dazzling smile, she said. I think Zack's gorgeous-- big, expressive eyes, Depp-esque bone structure, perfect little nose, but I seldom find people who agree, or express their agreement. The approval of a sixty-year-old presumed lesbian? Sweet.


I have no specific point, just time between finishing my exams and Zack's release, so I thought I'd write. Sorry to waste your time if you were hoping for a snappy wrap-up.

On with it.