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1:13 p.m. - 2002-04-12 I am so fucking hurt. I am just so fucking hurt I can barely stand it. I am tired of people telling me that I picked the wrong kind of woman to pin my hopes of reciprocation on. I am tired of having everybody tell me that her way of dealing with it, running, hiding, blaming, distracting herself, has nothing to do with me. I am tired of having people say to me that I should know better than to expect better from her, that she is incapable, that she can�t or won�t, even if she should. What they are all saying to me is that I was wrong to love her, to expect anything more from her. I was wrong to think that if I treated her differently than the rest of the world did, she would treat me differently than she treats the rest of the world. Let go of the attachment. Don�t read her journal. Don�t concern yourself with her return to the devices that hurt her so much. It hurts me too. For my own reasons of course. I have deep-seated issues with having my feelings disregarded, having my efforts go unacknowledged. Person after person tells me that I picked the wrong woman. That I deserve better than a girl who would treat me with so little thought. But I saw the other part of her. I met the girl who wanted different for herself, the one who saw past the interaction to the result, instead of just the interaction. I loved her when she was that girl, and I loved her when she wasn�t that girl too. On Saturday night we moved the last of her stuff out. We went to dinner; we talked about what we had been through. She gave me back my keys and left, and I felt good about it all. She admitted that she was running. Admitted that she was telling half-truths to whoever would listen to build support for herself. Admitted that I meant something more to her than the painful interactions we had. She told me that she loved me and that she wanted to try to consider me, the way a friend would. Then I sat with myself and faced the fact that no matter how we were unable to support each other, no matter how our dynamic got unhealthy and irreparable, no matter how true and important it was for us to be separated�completely, I still would miss the loving interactions that we shared every single day. As I faced the fact that within three days I would have doubled the number of nights we had spent apart, and fathomed how much I would miss seeing her behind the door when I came home, under the sheets as I made the bed with her in it, in the shower with her hair slicked back and her smile beaming� I have no escape. I get no rest. In my frustration I make others try to keep up with me, maybe in the hopes that they will rather than try to escape my break-neck pace, help me to learn to slow down. Rather than run for the cover that I bomb and dismantle with such furor, they will face me head on and sooth me out of my mechanical, maniacal methods. I ask for help, but I�m like the man in the water begging for company on the swim to a distant shore that may or may not be reachable. The first step is to abandon your safety raft and get in and swim, and as I tread water and wait I grow impatient and slash at your inflatable devices. Force you to have no choice. I tried to pull her along in her little inner tube, but I couldn�t paddle for both of us. She was scared to get in, maybe for good reason, maybe she knew she was not yet strong enough to make it to that shore, and now as her focus turns from the shore back to the rest of the world floating in that water, the rest of the people content to lend you a patch for your raft, inflate it a little more for you if you promise to do the same for them, I am left exhausted and without even a pair of water wings to keep myself up. People try to do it for me too. They blow into the little inflation nipple on my boat, but I didn�t just pop the thing, I shredded it. So today I go to the doctor to buy a life jacket in the form of a pill or capsule. It will be made of a solid core, unpopable. It will keep me from realizing where I am and where I would rather be. It will let me enjoy the party again without questioning if the hour is getting too late for all of us to make it back to shore. It will take my sharpness away from me I hope. It will keep me from popping the beach balls and floating mattresses. It will make people safe from me. We can all lose ourselves in the moment together again. And it will be bullshit.
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