(no subject)

[azurelunatic]

February 1, 1997

Saturday afternoons with your body itching of the chlorine that you weren’t quite able to wash all the way off are some of the most lonely times in the world, even if your family or even some of it is at home. Especially if Shawn is at Circle Hot Springs and goofing off and having fun at a party that I wasn’t invited to…

It’s even more lonely to have given yourself, heart and soul (although not body) to a guy who you mean literally nothing to. That’s what I’ve done. I know it’s not right. I should forget him. I should haul my ass out of his life so damn fast that he won’t even notice that I’ve left. So why don’t I? Because I have this attachment to him that is threatening to choke me if I even attempt it, even as it is slowly killing me as I let it be and let my energy drain into him.

I will not talk to Emily today if she calls.

I cannot. I cannot afford to. I will not call Hannah; that would be just plain pesky. I will not call any of my friends out of short-distance, and Shawn is not home.

I wish I had E-mail so I could send something to Kim, who is the dear person she is, the darling she has to be in order to be in Josh’s life.

I love what I know of you, Shawn. I reach out to you, trusting you, wanting you to trust me. But you don’t trust me quite that much, and you most especially don’t want me to trust you. You’re indifferent, which really stings more than anything I could imagine. Josh is indifferent too. Indifference. Are these the wages of my transgressions? If it be so, then I will immerse myself. Shawn, I wish you were here to talk to me at this moment. Unsettling thought, that just the thought of the one that has caused the problems should settle me.

Introspective Saturday afternoons should be shunned at all costs. The cost of them is too high. I do not want to die; I do not want myself to want to die.

I cannot talk to Emily if she calls today because it will upset me more than anything else and it will not be a good thing.

I need serious help.

I hate my family.

I do need help.

This is why I don’t go swimming anymore. There’s too much time in the afternoon if I do. I have no desire for more empty time in my life. I don’t want depressing emptiness. I don’t want to be doing this. I’ve come uncentered. That’s not good. Why did I come uncentered? It’s the reaction setting in a few days too late. I now need him to listen to me in turn. That has unbalanced me. If I receive that much of an outpouring, I need to pour out to him in turn. But he didn’t let me. I didn’t get the chance to. It’s got to be one of those rare times around this house where the house is deserted and it’s a reasonable hour to be pouring out a heart—I can’t have my father listening; that would not be good. I can’t have Julie or Mama listening either. I guess sometimes I’d be indifferent to them as well.

Shawn, please take the time to care. Care about something now in your butterfly-life.

He loved who I was. What was Terrible Tuesday really all about? Was it a manifestation of his problems? Should I take it literally, figuratively, internally; not at all?

I hated it when it seemed that his Monkey character was taking over him entirely.

He is scared of my memory, but at the same time it fascinates him. He remembers so few things clearly that it scares me—his memory scares me, as mine does him. Mutual fright and interest—oh, Shawn—be a friend. Be a lover. But be a trusting, trusted friend first—I look for that before I look for a lover. I was mistakenly thinking that sexual intimacy would fill the gap that the lack of our emotional intimacy is causing.

“…the first girl to ever convinse me of loves existanse,” Shawn wrote in that letter, of ‘Milly Durbin, the most incredibly gorgeous girl ever to exist on this planet or any other. But now, fortunately, he realizes that it was just (fortunately, fortunately—or is it?) a case of very strong mutual infatuation— “not quite a one-night stand but pretty close.” Or whatever the hell.