03.31.05 - 12:03 a.m.

i promised al that i would write in here tonight so that she has something to do at work tomorrow.

I wonder if my life will be like this forever, providing small moments of relief to my friends who live in the world. I cant think of a better life.

Sal and i broke up. Yes. One month and two days. Somehow it feels as if putting days and months on it seems silly because it feels like no time at all has passed and it feels like all the time in the world. It feels like it never happened at all, and it feels like the only thing that has happened.

I cant tell up from down. I cant tell before from after. There is no timeline. I think in ten years i will remember this time, and all i will have to say, is 'jesus' and shake my head. I think i have written five journal entries in ten months. The journal entries eleven months ago were lonely and scared. My entries now are lonely and scared. There is a difference though. There is some difference. I cant believe, actually, how unbelievably similar the five entries are. Three of daimon, two of sal. All of them, sad and scared and something else, something like resistance. Now, i dont have that. I dont have resistance now, and i didnt have resistance eleven months ago.

Maybe resistance isnt the right word, because the lack of it seems negative.

In those entries, i was a gemini. Weighing each side of both arguments, staying with him, not staying with him. Things really werent so bad. They werent, with daimon, yes, it was bad, but vicariously because i wasnt directly involved.

With sal. Sal. Sal. He has a new girlfriend. All i can think of is five months ago when daimon called me desparate and drunk and apologizing for calling me, apologizing for not calling me before, apologizing and crying and i told him that i was seeing someone new and had been for two weeks. Somehow, it only occured to him that we had been broken up for two weeks and not that i had been dating sal for two weeks. The latter would have broken my heart if i was him.

Im watching sal, and he knows i can see him and hes whispering in her ear and hes playing with her hair and then, hes kissing her on the mouth, in front of me. Which means several obvious and not obvious things. Hes trying to hurt me. Hes trying to cancel his hurt by putting it onto me. They say holding on to anger only hurts the one whos holding it. absurd. it hurts both, maybe equally.

the thing is, i wanted him to be bigger than that. What i wanted was for him to see that it was his fault, but instead, since i broke up with him, it was mine. And other such mature thoughts, these thoughts that run through my head all the time.

And as i listen to the cd that i made for daimons birthday and write about the breakup with sal, it occurs to me that im walking out of a tornado. Im taking the first steps out of a storm, and cars are falling around me, and pieces of peoples homes, and im just walking out of the storm with my hands over my head.

And somehow i miss the storm.

Somehow i miss coming home and knowing that sal is sitting on the couch and watching tv and that for the next four hours all i have to think about is sal and i and sal and i and sal and i and nothing else in the world. And then i will sit on the couch and watch him get ready for work, the nervous way that he has making sure that he has everything. And sometimes he would let me watch him shave and i would sit cross legged on the toilet and pick at my toenails and we would talk a little and i would sneak long glances at his dress pants and the belt and the bare tan chest and the white shaving cream like a shock. And he would respond without taking his eyes off the mirror and his arms and at the end of his arms the hands that loved me, and there would be silence and nothing but our breathing and the scratching of the razor against his face and the rinsing in the sink, and the water that splased out on my leg that i let sit. There is that that i will miss. There is that, and one thousand other things that stop me in the middle of class, when im driving home, in the middle of sessions, in the middle beginning start of everything i do.

Couples making out are hard, couples holding hands are hard. But what is infinitely harder than that is finding one of his socks under the couch and spreading it out on my lap and watching it. There is that and there is sitting on the couch, by myself now, with no one.

The no one aspect is hard. That is hard. I guess that is the hardest, and oddly enough, that is the thing i missed the most when i was with him. I go back and look at the old entries and all they are is me complaining about not having my space. But along with losing my space, i lost myself, so when i got my space back, there wasnt anyone to put in it. People kept shooing me back in, get in there and make it girl. Wake up in the morning and go to work, take pleasure in the little things that happen everyday. and i kept telling people, i just need to get back to myself. I just need to get my self back. My self.

As it turns out, having your self back isnt as much fun as having sal back. Your self is your self. Your self is the most important thing but its the first thing we toss away. I will never understand that. I was so jealous, SO jealous of people that werent in relationships when i was with sal. Now im not with sal and im miserable.

Maybe miserable is the wrong word. Im walking out of a ten month long tornado with my hands over my head. Thats all im doing. And sometimes that translates to sitting on the couch by myself smoking cigarettes and not doing anything. Sometimes that means going out with my friends and getting drunk drunk drunk and being 25 and talking about who is cute and who needs to stop flirting with who and somehow, nothing ends up feeling right. I dont know if things ever felt right with sal, but holding hands with someone is the great salve.

Holding hands and walking down the street makes everything in the world okay. Things seem like they are going to be so much easier if youre with someone. In my situation, more often than not, i was frustrated. Frustrated. Thats the best way i can think of looking at it. I wasnt sure what the frustration stemmed from, but it was there, nagging, and i ignored it and ignored it and ignored it, always. Until i didnt, and then i yelled at my friends, and i couldnt understand anything and i waited for sal to make it better and he never did because he didnt know what to make better because i couldnt talk to him and when i told him i couldnt talk to him he told me i could talk to him anytime i needed to and then he yelled at me.

The point is. I didnt trust the person that he was, and thats the impossible thing. I think, in relationships, if you dont trust the PERSON that you are with, then nothing that they say or do is going to change anything. Daimon, especially, NEVER ONCE got angry with me. Never. He never got angry with me because he was keeping a secret so huge that he didnt have room to do anything but support that.

The terrible night that sal and i broke up i was sitting against the radiator, i couldnt get warm. He was sitting on the couch and then he was sitting on the floor and then he was up putting his jacket on and collecting all of his things and he wouldnt talk to me because i wanted to talk to him about his drinking and he didnt want to do that so he started a fight instead. Then we talked about breaking up and then i am crying, he switches positions, he doesnt think we should break up, wants to be with me forever, he is trying to hug me and i want him off me because him touching me feels like the worst punishment because, of course, all i want to do is hold him and cry and let him rub my back and take a shower and admonish myself and come out and then have to get dressed because he will certainly want to go to a bar. As were standing there fighting and its terrible he asks to a bar or something because he has to get out of the house, and maybe that was it, but that wasnt it, it was the yelling. It was the yelling and it was the way that my heart wanted to tear out of my chest because i was so anxious about having him there and so anxious about losing him. And i tell him that im not the right girl for him, that i cant stand him picking fights with me. He tells me that he doesnt want to pick fights with me, he doesnt mean to. He's sorry, he'll do everything he can, hell get therapy.

And then, the worst part, "Im begging you, Im sitting here begging you not to do this. I think we have something rare, and youre ending it. I think youre making a huge mistake."

And not all of me is sure that i didnt make a big mistake. That is the worst part. Maybe we did have something rare, i dont know, this is only my second relationship. Maybe we had something rare and i threw it away. Maybe i will date for fifteen more years and then i will be forty and then i will realize that i threw something rare away and i will never forgive myself.

Were so accustomed, in this world that we live in, that we DESERVE. We deserve this and we deserve that and i deserve better than him, and i deserve something better than what he gave me. But what happened to making things work. What happened to finding love and holding onto it? What happened to that? When i think of it this way, it makes me wonder, did i do something terribly wrong. I believe that sal did love me as much or as right as he knew how to do. How is that not enough? How does that end up still being wrong? How can you love someone and it not be right?

Everything is so easy these days. You like someone, move in with them. Dont like them anymore, move out. Marry someone, divorce them. What do you turn to as a barometer in a world where everything is possible?

And i asked him, what am i doing wrong, tell me what i can work on
--the only thing that youre doing wrong is ending us.

and for some reason, thats the only thing i can think of, that and missing him. Just missing his presence. And the last thing i want to do is race to another guy. Daimon was so hurt when i told him i was seeing sal and i didnt understand it, nothing about him seemed valid or true. Seeing sal with the new girl makes me want to call daimon and apologize. I know. I know now. I have been crying for 32 days, and in the meantime, sal is kissing a waitress from his bar. And was he already thinking of her? Did he already have her in mind? Does he miss me, did he really love me, was he even attracted to me, does he think of me, does he think about the time we spent together, does he think about holding my hand, does he think about the time he reached up and held my hand in the middle of the night, does he think of the time that we were taking the bus to dulles and i stopped the driver so he could pee on the side of the road. These are things that i will never know. These are terrible things that i will never know.

Somehow, though, i feel. Somehow i feel like i did the right thing. Whatever that means. When i ask and ask and ask and ask myself what i did it for, when i put it out to the universe, that quiet part of my soul somehow nods and holds my hand.

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