friday june 22 2001    |    10:52 p.m.

i miss him right now. i miss him and i hate him and then i miss him again.

when i went to tell him i was leaving, he was sitting on the floor of his bedroom, not knowing what to do, or pretending not to. he looked at me with those sad doe eyes i never quite brought myself to trust fully, and i said something incoherent, and all the while i wanted him to scoop me in his arms and tell me not to go and i also wanted to SHAKE him, shout at him how could this be happening?, just shake him until the pieces rattled back into place somewhere in his head or his heart or i don't know.

it was impossible. impossible, the entire time, it was like some un-believable movie, a farce, we're in love and how could this be happening?

denise told me on the phone today, you weren't in love with him, you know. for some reason that calmed me. i think we both fooled ourselves a lot. we wanted everything to be perfect, absolutely perfect, and that's impossible and it just wasn't. we built everything up to unreasonable uncomfortable levels and then the foundations cracked. they weren't very sound to begin with i guess.

but god i miss the feeling. like no matter what happens it can't be that bad, because he's in my life. and our seven- or eight-hour-long phone calls, all night, every night. if we went out we would call each other when we got back, whatever hour it might have been. most weekends we would stay home to talk to each other, and i would raid the liquor cabinet and make gin and tonics and rum and cokes while he drank kool-aid and vodka or rolling rocks or whatever was around, and we would get silly together, and get off the phone only when we were about to fall asleep. and now the thought that all that is gone for good, that the phone doesn't ring anymore really -- although i still jump when it does, -- that he has to stop existing just like that, from one day to the next . . .

i'm nauseous.

columbus wasn't like i remembered it either. empty and littered. halfheartedly green. claustrophobic. maybe it's just better in the winter. nothing was quite right, nothing.

the night at don pablo's with his friend chris was awful. i think chris could tell. i didn't let myself.

you can't escape from anything until there's somewhere good to go. repeat it like a mantra. as badly, as desperately as i want to escape. that wasn't good enough. i just escaped, i didn't go anywhere, and so it was a nightmare instead of an escape. i don't know if anywhere is good enough.

but still i miss him. the idea of him more than anything i suppose. what i thought he could have been. and maybe i can't help feeling that i fucked up. after all that, how could he have been like he was . . . after all the things he said to me and all the plans we made . . . it comes back to me and all i can do is shake. what happened . . . what happened . . .

i want to stop feeling for a few weeks, turn myself off until all this is over.