Author and Columnist
I know your secret. I do not think you do and would deny it vehemently if called on it.
Your terror of being thought a fool drives you. You recoil from the ridiculous nature of some Pagans, fearing that judgment of them will splash back on you through association -- your major, your passions, your relationships. Name anything. You look over your shoulder to spy if someone -- not even a particular someone; no one of consequence whose opinion would matter -- is wrinkling their nose.
And I'm not telling you they're not doing this. They may be. They likely are from time to time. I am telling you how unworthy this is of the great sacrifice of you perpetually expurgating yourself. Let yourself be the fool to know the sting will never be much or long. Liberate yourself to more fully live your life.
You stay with Emily in part because you don't want the stain of having been misled. You are deep in the sunk cost and would rather double down than cut your losses. You return to thoughts of Kate as though winning back the young lover who spurned you openly will make your suffering for her (for yourself, because she barely wants it) rational and justified. How would it strike you to know how I, decades in your future, cringe at what a fool you are? Would that make you burn? Would it impel you to make other choices?
Standing up straight, admitting you were a fool, taking your lumps and a bow, and leaving the stage would have been braver. Be foolish without self-consciousness. You attend so many rituals -- almost every -- where you scan for someone doubtful so you can assure them you aren't really one of those people. This feared person is not present. Why would they be? The only time you unclench and let yourself embrace the experience is at Free Spirit Gathering, where everyone is Pagan, few are showing off, and you feel no pressure to make an exception of yourself to the audience. Must I say it is one of the more impactful experiences you have, one of the more sacred, or can we take that as given? When you cease being status-seeking, approval-seeking, and submit fully to the moment, your life opens further and allows in what you truly want and cannot name.
2001.12.04
Those I am surrounded by daily are privilege to have formed these social bonds with strangers they were forced to interact with. They are, as such, learning a lesson that I, in my relative solitude, am not and cannot.
I would prefer that this is not something that niggled at you for years. At your work in the library, you are surrounded primarily by your elders -- often rather elderly. When a new librarian within five years of your age, a blonde named Elenore, arrives, you ache to befriend her.
But you do not. You do not feel worthy of her, but you feel a persistent -- and possibly only friendly -- crush on her.
You can be social with strangers but only in short bursts. You do not feel capable of ending up on other people's adventures, which is why, in your adulthood, you will try so hard to be the social planner of your group of friends. This is a different level of frustration, as they do not care much, which triggers your rejection sensitivity. As noted before, your supposed friends often agree to your plans and don't show up.
Remember when Kelly Iversen said she was on her way to pick you up, leaving you waiting on your porch for over an hour because she opted to hang out with Cheryl Verdile instead? Cheryl did not care for Kelly and found her inferior, but you were a known quantity. You wanted to be around Kelly -- not enough to date her for more than a few days twice, but enough that you fooled around in her parents' car often -- so she didn't need to regard you with any particular interest.
It is like that with half your friends at this point in your life. (Less the hooking up, usually.) You are available, but they want someone cooler than you or do not care enough about what is important to you/other people's feelings.
You should mull over why you call them your closest friends.
I wish I could still feel romantic;
Then love yourself for a while. Do not force yourself further into this relationship with Emily.
Her greatest blessing for you both would be to call you perfidious and dump you. You are not worth the pain and effort she endures, but she was too used to self-injury for your relationship to feel anything but familiar.
I cannot feel that I am good to her, because often I am more interested in the texture of rotting leaves than picking flowers and serenading.
You want to be a romantic without any romance involved. You want to be seen as elevated when you are in the same muck as everyone else. You are too concerned with being seen appreciating the scent -- not that you do, simply that you wish to be perceived as such.
I feel decidedly selfish because I often regard my time with Emily as nothing more than hanging out with one of my best friends.
You break up with her in so many of these entries. She just doesn't let you off the hook.
She is your friend. It is noxious to you both that she is your lover.
However, I don't regard her with the insatiability that I regard past loves with.
I could talk about limerance and immaturity, but you would turn it into doggerel.
You were never great at picking the healthiest option.
For all her desirable qualities, the only way Emily could have fully had you would have been to leave you alone for a year, during which you both condensed a decade of therapy.
And you still would likely not want her -- and I cannot imagine she would want you.
I want to walk through forests, read on rocks, and explore the unseen world of nature. And I think I can only be satisfied if I am doing alone. At least at first.
Then do it. It pains me how many experiences (like studying abroad) you neglected because you were dating someone and would not be if you took that leap.
I desire to remember, in that reticent corner of my soul, that sex is appealing.
Sex with the right person is more fantastic, fun, connecting, and sexier than you can currently imagine.
I do not want to count the number of times you were forced or forced yourself into having sex with someone.
Within a month, you will want to melt into sex with the woman you date after Emily -- if she had pushed the issue more, it might have happened within two weeks. You can't imagine what it is like for someone to give themselves so entirely and without an outside agenda to the act.
With my wife, I said I would not sleep with her until I knew I loved her. That lasted several weeks, and I fought myself every step to relent. They found this charming.
When it is the right person, you don't resist or question.
Today, while reading and eating in the SUB, I heard some vapid girl boasting to her male companion
Your misogynistic elitism born of insecurity is not attractive or welcome.
she had the most amazing sex of her life the prior night. I expected I would feel a bit of a sardonic disgust that this lass didn't modulate her voice when sharing this little tidbit. So you can understand my personal dissonance when I found that I was jealous.
Because you want to have amazing sex, possibly with her.
You protest too much against liking sex. No one wants to be around a sex-negative scold.
Before Emily, the last time you had sex was a week before Kate left you. Kate had profound and justified sex issues, which you did not help by adopting vicarious trauma. But, for this last time, the sex between you was intimate and total. You said it felt like the two of you connected within her, something that was a first for you.
Then she left you.
The reason that sex was superb is that she knew she was giving you up and no longer had a reason to hold back. Maybe that knowledge tainted your perception of sex, though your subsequent flings with her did more damage.
You did not want sex with Emily. She forced you the first time, and, as stated, you hated her and yourself for letting it happen. You stayed with her partly because you felt so sullied for letting it happen that you unconsciously decided that not having it be a one-night mistake might lessen its impact. That does not make actual sense, but it was a factor.
You would not say it overtly, but you piled on your sexual issues and were not processing any of them.
I remember sex, the mere thought of making love, literally breath taking.
Once, after Kate dumped you for a few days -- let's not speculate why -- you got back together and promptly had a torrid session that left your ears ringing.
You did not find the idea "breathtaking." You held your breath so long it bordered on hypoxia. I do not mean this as an analogy.
I don't know what changed. The whole interim between Kate leaving and my finding Emily just mangled things.
"I don't know what changed," he says, immediately naming what changed. Though, of course, the mangling lasted until the day you wrote this entry and will go beyond this.
I think that, in one way, this journal has taken the place of a degree of intimacy I once shared with others.
"I feel a lack of connection, so I publicly say these things to no one. Why isn't this working?"
Hey, buddy. Try being intimate -- not sexual -- with someone in your life. If they reject you, they aren't worth it, and you've lost nothing of value. If they embrace you, then you are in an exponentially better place than you presently are.
If you had let someone in your life counsel you about Emily -- and the issues that led you to feel as you do -- you may have thought you had backup to do what would improve your life.
But, no, you will write these things and never let anyone in (because they would rather hear a personal cry for help than hear a general one), feeling lonely and lacking the whole time.
Here is my evidence. Prior to the creation and subsequent addiction to this journal, I would write long letters confessing my successes and/or failures to someone with whom I felt intimate, usually a girlfriend or Sarah. The journal supplanted this need.
Kate hated this, as you would crib letters to her for journal entries and vice versa. You want intimacy, but you undercut it.
Kate was complaining to Emily and me on Friday that I told her I wrote her an e-mail and she expected quite a bit more than my couplet of lines. M retorted that I never write long e-mails. Kate shot me a glance, because she was often the recipient of my long letters.
Several times a day, my wife and I exchange emails. When I am home and they are at work, they text me through their lunch break.
We have been apart fewer than two weeks in our relationship and still find reasons to communicate.
Even with the woman after Emily, you will exchange long letters and chat online daily. Granted, that is sometimes because of relationship stress, but it is more than you give Emily. You accept that confidentiality is a crucial part of intimacy. "I am communicating this to you alone, not throwing open the window and making love to the world."
I think my brain justifies that I would write largely the same thing in a letter to Emily or Sarah that I am writing here.
You either would not or should not.
And who mentioned Sarah? No one! She was not a part of this, but see how you wiggle her into the conversation anyway.
I am a fan of some of Anne Rice's work, having read all but one Vampire Chronicle.
The last book in the series reveals owl aliens created vampires from the microplastic of the dome over Atlantis. Is this a spoiler? Yes. Do you want to read a book that substitutes "some ancient, blood-hungry spirit" with that? No. No, you do not.
You may overestimate her work as being worth your attention.
I informed her because it was an antique copy of Introduction to Metaphysics and I was interested to know what he had to say. She derided me for reading his work, behaving in a snobbish manner.
I cannot guarantee you read that book, but Kate is as much of a snob as you are, possibly for the same reason. She is more confident in her insecurity.
Just because she followed The [wannabe literati] Boys around like a lost, soggy puppy and decided to go to bed with the worst offender of pseudo-intellectualism, doesn't give her validity in tossing off other schools of thought.
You are such a jealous monkey.
Most of The Boys were as insecure and acting out, as they were being snobby as a SUNY school. If you go to Harvard or Yale, the attitude is expected. You all matriculated at a school known for pot smoking and Long Island Elementary Education majors. Your pomposity is undeserved.
In addition to my wants of late, I want to live in a different world. I want September eleventh to have never occurred. Not for the noble reasons other espouse, though I am not against them. But I am being wholly selfish here. I am damned tired of living in this jingoistic, paranoid, freedom-depriving country.
Oh, bad news. The terrorists won on 9/11. They cripple America and, by dint of it, many Western countries. It didn't have to be that way, but a terrorist attack on New York (and, to a much lesser extent, the Pentagon) was too politically expedient not to be abused by the government. Why let a national tragedy go to waste?
Even now, twenty-two years later, the aftershocks of 9/11 rule us. We threw liberty under the bus for security -- then did not get security. The ostentation of it? Conservatism built of fear? Islamophobia (and increased general phobia of The Other)? Both sides of the political aisle deciding they cared more about demonizing their colleagues than fostering the nation, leading to the ideological split widening so there was almost no overlap -- which does not begin to make sense? Without a doubt.
Security? Not a chance.
I fantasize about what the world at present would be like had the attacks been averted -- and they might have been for any number of reasons, some of which are so tiny as to be laughable, others of which involve not funding and training Osama bin Laden or not conceding the Florida vote count when you would have won, Al Gore.
But that isn't what happened. The seeming upward momentum of the country, the comfort of the nineties bleeding into the new millennium, was at once quashed. Again, not by the terrorists. By the world governments seeing their chances to become more authoritarian and enrich their military contractor donors. I can think of few things occurring on the national stage that don't treat the collapse of the Twin Towers as their grandparent (maybe not the pandemic, at least not without a bit of massaging). More personally, the effect of the attacks led to the economy that prevents me from owning a home, along with most people of my generation. Mine and those who followed have a lower quality of living, less wealth, and far fewer prospects than the Baby Boomers, the first time that trajectory not only plateaued but plummetted in at least a hundred years. Where we should rationally be working fewer hours for more money -- when the minimum wage is stagnant, but costs and inflation go up, it means that pay is worth much less -- people have three jobs to have a third of their parents' opportunities.
It didn't have to be that way, but the government let the terrorists win because it was profitable. There is nothing better than an unambiguous enemy to point your citizens to while you pick their pockets.
The United States should be protecting our rights, else they are the enemy.
"Protecting our rights" isn't exactly the United States' motto; they have never considered that much of a priority.
You might as well take the "to protect and serve" on police badges as a mandate, something court cases have proven false. The police are, according to legal precedent, under no obligation to protect anyone ever. (This goes back to 1856, the case of South vs. Maryland, and has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court.)
Emily jokingly suggests holding a coup because the Constitution grants citizens the right to do so against tyrannical government.
Hey, so, it's funny that you should mention that! The former president -- who would have never been within a hundred miles of the White House if it were not for his inflammatory, nonsensical rhetoric piggybacking off the firebrands who made millions off 9/11 -- had his followers stage an insurrection to stop the vote count. He had already lost -- and lost badly -- but his ego couldn't suffer this (we have texts and phone calls from him, submitted by the other parties in court). His followers? They were labeled racist, sexist, Islamophobic, xenophobic nationalists -- in a grand and obvious political blunder, that president's opponent gave them the proud badge of "deplorables." Were they all? No. Many of them were looking for a wild iconoclast out of dissatisfaction with the government, though he espoused having no real love for the country or his followers except for what they could do for him.
Did the insurrectionists possess enough of these qualities to be stoked into being traitors by a man who was twice impeached and allegedly committed crimes in the higher double digits for which he will be going to trial for years? Apparently so. Did some of them want to murder politicians and lynch the vice president? Oh, very much.
So, to sum up, the terrorists on 9/11 circuitously ended up installing someone who tried to overthrow the American government and who openly cozied up to extreme authoritarian leaders. This is egg on the USA's face, as we are usually the ones installing wannabe dictators to overthrow the government of other countries.
Without 9/11, we would have had another boring white guy in the White House, of course. Someone who wanted the job and was more willing to play toward the center and accomplish little. An alternate dimension without 9/11 will not be a utopia, just less dystopic.
2001.12.05
I received a rather frenzied call from Miss Sarah. Instantly, she sounded very different. However, I attributed it to an altered state of mind or an illicit substance. Often, these are immensely safe bets.
You are her favorite drunk dial. I wish you wouldn't be so eager to answer.
In less than thirty seconds, she revealed twice that she had had "The Sex."
Gods, how I cringe to relive this moment.
You were so incensed that she had sex -- that she enjoyed it -- not simply not with you (as you were never a contender) but with someone with whom she did not feel romantic. How dare a young woman have sex for sex's sake! For pleasure! How dare she not have sex issues when you think you are righteous for your trauma and self-flagellation!
So, as I have begun to state above, on the twenty-seventh on November, thereabout, Miss Sarah deigned to give her body and much vied after maidenhead to a man by the name of Tom.
I wish to punch you in the sternum for using the word "maidenhead." How haughty and puritanical! (I know you are using it for effect, ironically to color this as momentous, but the outcome is that I want to put a hairline fracture in your ribs.)
No one needs to subscribe to your idea of purity, Sarah, most of all.
She might have been sharing a significant event in her life, or this might only have been goading. She knew how you felt about her -- or how she thought and wanted you to feel about her. She enjoyed your jealousy, though she gets irritated at this entry, which is well within her rights. Let's circle back to how intimacy requires confidentiality. Sarah wanted to announce to you she was no longer a virgin, but she did not give you permission to republish that news on the internet.
From her telling, she knew forever such would go down (do pardon my phrasing) blah blah blah prophecy-cakes.
Sarah is the Manic Pixie of a young adult coming-of-age novel, but she doesn't care to inspire some stodgy boy to discover himself through her wildness.
We do not believe her, as she would have maintained a month ago that the privilege would certainly belong to Jake or Ben.
Yeah, it might have. She didn't totally care who it was, though she persists in swearing that Jake is her one true love, destined to unite with her forever.
This does not happen, but it is pretty for her to think so.
This isn't to discount Tom. I don't remember much about him, but she was attached. I'm sure he was worthy of a few rolls in her hay.
So, sex was had. It was excruciatingly painful and likely unnecessarily bloody, but it was had. Sarah said it was the closest she has ever come to god in all possible meanings.
Did she say it was painful and bloody, or did you wish it?
The "come to god" line isn't a bad one. I might steal it.
I stated that is there was this level of unpleasantness, it likely meant that her body was not ready and that she didn't really want to do this just yet; she was rushing. She brushed that off, stating that her mind did even if her body did not.
Which is totally fair of her. She knows herself and the situation. You get the retold, edited version with a fresh coat of lacquer. She had time to figure out how it should sound.
If nothing else -- and she is quite a lot else -- Sarah is a storyteller in the best ways.
She stated, matter-of-factly, that this was because she had not made love, she had sex.
Correct, and there is nothing wrong with that, especially for her.
She preached to me that I do not know what it is like to just have sex without loving someone, and told me how great it was.
Incorrect, and there is something wrong with that, especially for you.
You have had sex with someone you do not love. You told them you loved them. You thought you should love them if you let them have sex with you.
It wasn't even sex then. Sex is neutral, able to take on the flavors of the situation, and this was not.
It was not great. With all my experience, I do not think it would be great. I do not say this with any prudishness. I've had experiences with someone I loved that exceed anything I've heard from my friends' one-night stands, but I do not begrudge anyone these.
This is not to suggest I don't wish you had a few flings to know you could, and the world wouldn't collapse around you.
She has an addictive personality. She is the sort that dies very young and very tragically because there is no way that she will ever become old.
Wow, rude.
It's not necessarily inaccurate, but it's horrid to say about a friend.
Sarah does deal with addictions, first indulging in her early-twentysomething delight, then finding these had worn out their welcome into her thirties.
She looked the addictions in their eyes and triumphed over them through no lack of hard work.
Melissa, who was cut from a similar cloth, never could. Melissa had a more acutely addictive personality and, consequently, more addictions to face. With a different network around her, with a few minor tweaks at the right moment, she might have done better -- maybe it wouldn't have been forever, but it could have been longer.
However, that did not happen. In a sense, Melissa is not unlike the WTC. A tragedy occurred, though it might not have, and it collapsed a future with better promise. She enabled the people who terrorized her early on, and a part of her couldn't get over it.
Not that it goes with my analogy, but Melissa was plagued by the feeling that she was not pretty. Had she looked like Sarah -- or looked even as wide-eyed and thin as she did the summer she did meth -- she might have had the confidence to believe in her future. Growing up with two eighties-beautiful sisters and being plain hobbled her self-esteem, contributing to what she did. Would she still have done truly improbable amounts of drugs? Would she have slept with anyone who implied it and cheated whenever she felt a relationship was going well? I can't say for sure, but I suspect she would have played her cards better.
She cannot help that doctors kept prescribing her opiates, then pulling them away, leading her to return to heroin. (Hey, do you know what caused the prevalence of opium in America? 9/11! Afghan farmers essentially had to start growing this crop to survive financially. I knew we'd get back to 9/11!)
So the introduction of this pleasurable activity that not only feels splendid, but grants her coquettish control over boys (sex has been this girl's tool since she got over her awkward phase), has led her to become a nymphomaniac, at least temporarily.
Good for her!
Oh, wait. Are you trying to disparage Sarah, hypocrite? I distinctly remember what you and Jen got up to once that cork was popped and how sore you both were for weeks. You worked abdominal muscles you didn't know you had.
She bitched (for that is the only proper word) that Tom had went off and she wanted to bed him again. He is having issues because he broke up with his girlfriend of a year and a half only two short weeks ago. I asked Sarah if she knew she was rebound sex. She acknowledged that this was indeed a part of it, which surprised me.
Sarah is bright and mostly self-aware. This is among the reasons you persist in being attracted to her.
If, after years of thrilling at being a tease, you could get sex on demand, don't you think you would mope a little that the giver was out of arm's reach?
she enjoyed corrupting him and causing him this strife as much as she enjoyed the act itself.
She is telling on herself. Corruption is one of her hobbies.
Sarah is, more or less, plotting her future conquests. I don't believe I am on the list, in case you were curious. I don't quite think I would like if I were.
You might have been and would have loved it.
Oh, wait. You have a girlfriend? Emily? Who can read this? It's weird that you bring up sex and an attractive woman.
Also, it would not have been worth it if you had been on Sarah's list.
Once, when you are briefly single because you broke up with Emily (good for you!), you tried to kiss Sarah. She rebuffed you. Decades later, Sarah will express disappointment that you would have cheated on Emily and is relieved when you say you were not dating anyone when you tried. You assumed Sarah religiously read this site, so you didn't have to say it aloud. I cannot say I wish you had told her overtly. The outcome might have been momentarily worth it and miserable within days.
I can't see how you would have remained friends. She would not have wanted to shackle herself to you, no matter how good you might be in bed -- I don't recall your prowess. And you would not have wanted to taste her wildness beyond a few gulps.
Sarah said that she would likely stop once she got to Ben, and then wed him.
To my knowledge, Sarah is still unwed. We do not talk often, but I would have heard somehow.
Ben married someone else, then possibly got divorced.
Demonstrating the near Dickensian convenience of narrative, you know who does have sex with Ben? Melissa, when she is outrageously cheating on someone who is trying to build a life with her. He is also not single, which is precisely Melissa's type: romantically unavailable but eager to use drugs and her.
(This is not to cast aspersions at all on Ben. He treated her the best she could stand, but she made her implicit terms plain. If he gave in to loving her and being her partner, she would already have one foot out the door.)
What, perhaps, bothers me most about Sarah's actions is that she behaved the most arrogantly in my presence that I have ever experienced. She saw herself as this beautiful witch who could shape her reality to suit her.
You are jealous. We covered this.
What bothers you is she is right, and you hate that you agree.
She is arrogant, though. So are you. You buck most against those who remind you of your insecurity and defenses.
But she seems disconnected with the humility and humanity she once had. She forgets that she was once the unpopular, overweight girl that I alone loved and tried to kiss. That I wanted to hear sing only to me when everyone else was screaming for her to sing Top 20 Jewel songs.
Oh, how awful you are. Sarah doesn't owe you a thing because you wanted to kiss her before she hit a growth spurt. I am sure she was never "unpopular." The closest she came was being gossipy and fey at a summer program for gifted teens.
It is a dick move to phrase things this way.
I worry, and maybe hope for her sake, that she will get some sort of comeuppance because of her arrogance.
It may be a good reminder that you can be a horrible and entitled person. Your type is not rare these days, but society rightly reviles them. I hope your evolution means these incel malcontents can grow past their obnoxiousness or at least feel shame about it.
You are far more arrogant than a twenty-year-old who just got laid for the first time. She is just excitedly Sarah, more gloating and teasing than arrogant.
I do not want my Sarah to be a slut, I confess. I want her to have incredible experiences and drink deep the cup of life. But I have the hardest time believing she will be best served with empty sexual encounters.
See, I do have a sense of morality.
How dare you mistake sourness at grapes you will never taste for morality.
Sarah is having her experience. Torrid sex is far from the worst thing she is doing. If you could do as she does, you might, but you are too up your ass.
Emily sobbed on me, at first only admitting that she was stressed over her test and her mother telling her that she had better not gain any weight.
Her weight is an obsession she cannot escape. I cannot imagine anything that matters more to her or that she might not trade if it meant she could be thin. She can't keep food down or will resist eating at all. She told me once that this was the worst addiction because there was no way she could avoid the dining room the way an alcoholic can the bar. She trains relentlessly, for as many hours a day as she can, but her body is too starved for calories to let her fat burn enough to reveal her muscles. I doubt she has a day that was not ruled by this at this point in her life.
Emily got to the root of what was bothering her: my prior entry.
As well it should! You fawn over these young women.
In her position, I would not even have this relationship conversation. I would dump you and make clear to the world why -- not that you don't provide her the receipts in triplicate.
She half-sighed out that she worried that I was going to leave her, that I did not love her, and so on. I assured her that I would tell her as much, if I did not want to be with her.
You write it. You make it last so Emily can fixate on the words. She can have no respite from the doubts.
You love her, so you should leave her.
She also stated that she was furiously jealous of Kate (more likely she meant Katie, but you know what she means) for having had this passionate relationship with me.
Yes, because you have not persisted in having a passionate relationship with Kate, if mainly in your head.
Katie is thoroughly in the past tense, though you fantasize about her still. But, no, it is Kate who makes her jealous, Kate who can twist you to her whims, Kate whom you hate and love.
I reminded Emily that Katie and I were fighting almost as much as we were kissing, that my prior relationship was fraught with many problems (albeit different ones), that it was far from ideal.
I do not know that this is totally honest, but it is partially true. Your relationship with Kate was about as good as it could be, but one should not exalt any relationship that began in high school.
Emily stated that she knew these things, but still wanted me to feel like that toward her.
And why wouldn't she? You would sacrifice your dignity for Kate. What would you sacrifice for Emily at this point? Not what you do sacrifice, but what you would consciously?
When we began dating, I thought Katie was to be nothing more than a rebound crush.
She was somewhat, but you cleaved to her quickly enough.
I thought she was dating oher men.
I wonder if you did or would. You were the first man with whom Kate had a relationship, something she made clear.
I thought she was far more sexually experienced than I was.
I assume this was because she used drugs, which is an odd prejudice.
She, evidently, thought I would just be some silly boy she used as a fling and forget about.
I'm glad she didn't, of course, but this wouldn't have been the worst use to which she could have put you at that time.
It might have done you a world of good to have some torrid summer romance and accept that you could have sex with someone and then move on with your life.
I worry that I am painting Emily into the corner I occupied in my relationship with Kate and cannot forgive myself if this is so.
I don't forgive you.
(Okay, yes, I do. You are doing a lousy thing to people who deserve better. However, this endeavor aims to understand where I came from and my missteps, which does not always mean liking you but looking at you without any pretense. I need to incorporate an unnecessarily hazy view of who you are with how I have become. I must reconcile my misdeeds to deserve my growth.)
For the record, I do love her. For the record, I do not currently have any intention of leaving her.
You had to throw that currently in there, didn't you?
For the record, I have no intention of marrying anyone right now. For the record, I have no interest, romantic or sexual, in anyone other than Emily right now.
I would not have said I was precisely in a marrying mindset when I met my wife -- not with them or anyone.
You have plenty of sexual interest in people, though notably with people you have not seen in years or who do not want you -- in a few ways, your cloth is not so different from Melissa's. You are avoidant, hoping that covers you from accusations -- including your own.
So, bad news about that...
For the record, I still feel slimy, yet arid, inside.
If you are going to be this emotional desert amphibian, you should acknowledge that these feelings should compel change. You shouldn't feel this way all the time.
2001.12.08
So, are we all quite clear that I am in deep smit with this girl?
We are not. You are trying to convince others (and a little yourself) rather than confronting the issues.
After this man left, my co-worker whispered to me that he was the Archangel. I raised my eyebrows at this designation, as he did not seem like a member of the Assisted Care Facility (aka mental institution). She explained that this man comes in and tried to recruit students, mainly women, telling them that he is a martial arts expert and a literal angel.
I have not slotted this guy into my fiction.
I mean, I haven't until just now.
I am reconstructing this quote entirely from memory so I may be slightly inaccurate, "Yeah, this is a really liberal campus, which is cool. But, like, there is this club on campus called PSU, right? They are disgusting. My friend tried to go to one of their meetings and they grabbed her hand and licked it. No wonder no one considers them a real club!"
They don't put their best foot forward, that is for sure.
My teacher mumbled out that witchcraft isn't something people should play with, pronounced that it was not a religion, and reminded the class that many ritual murders happen every year.
He was a spooky pan-European man, which is precisely the type to intone such lies.
He has about as much business saying this in front of a classroom than unquestioningly reading aloud from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I feel that PSU is preying upon those who are shaky enough in their faith that they can be manipulated.
Making them like many religious organizations. I do not think this is an accurate accusation for most on campus. The Christians, Jews, and Muslims are happy enough for community and, to my knowledge, were not recruiting outside their ranks at the dining hall or licking people (I can be nearly sure of the latter). I could excuse that Paganism, for all its talk of being pre-Christian, is a reasonably new reconstruction and reimagining. But, no, it is because PSU leans toward being obnoxious and unsettling. You shouldn't be a model minority, but they are poor examples of your spirituality.