Written Wednesday May 31st

I am in love again.

If true happiness is born of repetition, not adventure and discovery,
then what is it that I am doing wrong.

I didn't expect to see him Monday evening. By then. He had nearly been
forgotten. Instead I spent all day with his friends drinking tequila
and trying not to drown in three feet of water. Later, I opened the
familiar door of the decrepit house only to find this boy walking
towards me. I don't recall my reaction, if it was happiness, relief,
disgust. He told me it was a pleasant surprise, I told him it was more
like a curse. I don't think he understood because he looked into my
eyes searching for an explanation, but gave up with a shake of his
head and an awkward laugh.

Earlier that day his friends asked the question they have been asking
a lot lately, if I will miss him when he leaves. I laughed only
because I needed a distraction while I searched for an appropriate
answer. No, of course not I eventually replied. He called me a liar
but then retracted his assessment of my response. He offered only the
observation that I always seemed so happy in the company of this boy.
I smiled and said it was because in his company I am always drunk.
Apparently that is hilarious, but truly it was only an internal denial
of my true feelings which for whatever reason I can't bear to speak,
only to think and to write.

The light bulb beside my bed burns hot and I half wonder if it will catch fire.

I'm waiting only for darkness, but it is slow to come tonight.

I imagine that when he leaves I will simply flick an emotional switch
buried deep between memories and multiplication tables in my little
mind and then move on as if neither he nor I existed as anything other
than singular beings. Precedent adds to my faith in this assumption. A
been there, done that sort of attitude emerges.

But Monday I spent all night laying naked next to him, our hands
occasionally finding one another and briefly entwining until one of us
found that the gesture meant too much and had to let go. My sleep was
unusually fitful and I awoke often to find him looking at me,
seemingly searching for something. But soon, dreams were
indistinguishable from reality and I couldn't determine whether what
just happened had actually happened. He began to sweep away the hair
from my face, outlining the contours with his fingers. He kissed me
softly, but the intensity hastened, the wanting, the needing, the
requiring only compounding with desperation. Afterwards, we both lay
still in the suffocating humidity, the sun just barely breaching the
horizon and I was pretty sure what made this relationship so
attractive was its destiny to fail and dissolve. I'm cautious to call
what I felt happiness, but one never knows.

Tomorrow, I have promised to call the man who you could say ruined and
entire year of my little life. I don't know if I actually will, it
depends on how insipid I am feeling. He was a man who once introduced
me to his friends as his future wife, a man who forced me to grow up
and had no idea he was responsible for much a striking change in my
behavior and spirit. Some parts of me, the vindictive ones, would like
to see him and other parts, the weak one who used to get drunk only to
find a corner to cry in, are warning against any kind of rendezvous.
Acknowledging weakness has never been my style and honestly, my
curiosity is bolstering my boldness.