Wednesday, May 3, 2000

She is on her first day of the new job.  LIFE SUCKS.  I hear that
frequently from her.  It is not a happy time.  A few days ago, sitting
opposite me, facing the other direction, I see her with head down, a
pout on her lips, eyes turned sharply to look in my direction: I don't
want to go!  Her complaint about life is the same.  She has forgotten
her reasons for doing this: a job with a good income and benefits, an
opportunity to develop herself professionally, a situation that will
solve her immigration/visa question.  This opportunity will help her
do all that.  But those reasons seem to have disappeared in a
depression and unhappiness.  It is just a job.


Monday, May 22, 2000

In an email she describes living out a fantasy with her new man.  This
shatters me. The skin is smoldering. My conscious thoughts seem to be
of two things - her and whatever else is in the moment.  They spent
the weekend at a local fancy hotel.  We know what that means: true
love.  And I'm far from the picture.  Although it is odd how I'm being
so well informed.  Is she as intimate with him as she is with me?  I
can speak confidently of being more well informed of her last
relationship than the man she was with for three years.  Some of that
is due to his being so unconscious and narcissistic.

And what should I expect of her?  30 years younger than me.  I
continue to be too short, too old, too balding, too chubby.  The only
TOO I'm not is rich.  Who knows if even being rich and having the
emotional quality of our relationship would be enough.  She can have
her choice of a lot of men.


Tuesday, May 23, 2000 (email sent to her today)

A combination of guilt and jealous feelings have made it impossible
for me to sleep more than 3 or 4 hours the last two days.

The guilt comes from my bad behavior towards you.  The jealous part is
from you not asking me to live out your recent fantasy adventure.
But, as you've learned over the last six months, life is not often
fair, and doesn't always work out the way we want.

Thoughts about my mistreatment and bad behavior towards another women
more than 25 years ago filled me with nearly overwhelming dread for my
soul this morning as I thought of my daughter who will be 28 next
month.  ... (edited out remarks).  But I digress.

My wicked thoughts towards you, and wanting to cut at you are wrong
and evil.  At the same time I ache to resume the contact we have had
the last several months.  These feeling are like a tornado inside,
twisting and distorting all of my picture of you--not unlike what they
have done to another man, who shall remain nameless, in, and
apparently fading from, your life during this same time.

Learning to live with your being happy with someone other than myself
is my present and urgent task.  Punishment for myself, and recompense
for you, includes a number of surprises to be presented over the
coming days.

And let me end by saying that love is not only blind, but also very
stupid--which I have been recently, in fact, all my life, now that I
think of it. Remember those love songs we made such fun of?  Or, as
the Romans used to say: Parebus cum parebus.

Oh, and I can't quit without saying that you really are one of my best
friends ever--on a par with you-know-who, even.

Now I'm thinking to rewrite and elaborate on some of the above.  At
this rate you will never see this.

There, now I've gone and said this.  That feels much better.


Friday, May 26, 2000

No word from her for several days except that she liked my recent
confessional email.  But from me there are the most dreadful and awful
of imaginary fates for her.  They are too much to say.  He and some of
his friends abuse her.  She gets an STD.  They are in a traffic
accident--he doesn't visit her in the hospital.  On and on with
wanting her to experience some pain--real pain, unlike my internally
generated paid.  Where does that come from you ask?  Get with the
program.  We are made, we evolved to be this way.  It happens beyond
our control.  Certainly beyond mine.  These scenarios come to me out
of the blue.  I only put them some place other than in my brain.


Saturday, May 27, 2000

My imagination of the day is that, for what ever reason, its over and
she comes back to me being significant in her life again.  What was
that scenario?  It was dreadful.  It left me feeling ashamed of
gloating, but ecstatic that I a part of her life.


Sunday, May 28, 2000

Today's scenario came from a remark she made some weeks ago.  It was
about how "we don't repeat".  That is, in our conversations we are
always talking about either new things or things we've discussed
before--but with new developments.  She liked that about our
relationship.  There was always something new in either the verbal,
intellectual, physical, and other realms.  She is easily bored.  So
I'm thinkin: she's gonna get bored real quick and realize she Mr Now
are starting to repeat themselves.  This will lead her to give him up
when she imagines a lifetime of the same old thing, or that he has no
new ideas.  And so she brings herself back to me for that.  And I'm
happy.  Of course, at the expense of someone else being miserable.

Monday, May 29, 2000

The obsession has diminished.  There were some first moments that
were visible yesterday.  The burning is gone.  Early morning still
finds me immediately and fully awake and ruminating on it.  On her.
It won't go away except for brief moments.

Tuesday, May 30, 2000

Up way too early this morning.  No more than 4-5 hours sleep each
day for some days now.  Took a late afternoon nap.  Less than an
hour.  On waking there was a sense of not knowing who I was or where
I was.  My brain is so furiously working on one thing so many hours
of the day that it, me, I, us, am/are exhausted.  But the moments
of "something other than her" increase.

She called today.  There was some laughing at things.  Like in the
old days.  Some fun made of Oops! I did it again.  She seems not to
have anyone to make fun of contemporary pop songs.  I don't probe
at that too much.  Sort of..., she says, to my inquiry.

There's a haircut in her future.  She's called to ask me about a
hair cutting place.  Bad choice.  She knows who to call about a
place for that.  Aha, I think.  Something is going on.  Reminds me
of my mother going to the hairdresser when some big storm was
coming up in the family.  She speaks and writes almost nothing of
the new love in her life.  Has it suddenly fizzled, or is that not
to distress me?  Fizzled, obviously.  Or so I wish.