04.22.05 - 2:05 a.m.

geez.

life is just more than it ever seems it could be.

especially funny because i re-submitted my first chapter for workshop this week and it got shot down.

And it got shot down because its hard to open twenty five doors and alude to twenty five others and to realize whats a door and what needs to be a wall and what needs to not be in the house at all.

But God? God is the MASTER storyteller.
Your door is the door that he gave you, but he somehow maintains everyone else's doors at the same time.

Its still so weird for me to go to marx. Now that everything has changed for me, how in the world does MY God remember to work with all those other doors, earls and sasans and sasans brothers cousin, and the magician and the new bartender? All still living their lives, and somehow, my coming in of their door and then walking back out has changed things, but not even negatively.

And none of them are calling me on the phone, and none of them see me everyday. But somehow i run into leah on the street and she thinks to call me the next morning and ask me to a party. I go to marx with my friends from school, entirely unrelated except for the fact that theyve been privy to the tellable aspects of my life, and there, i dance with earl and i watch the magician change quarters into dimes, and the cousin still stares at my boobs and earl still tells me that i feel good, and the owner still kisses me on both cheeks after he sees his cousin do it.

And then sweet javie, who still wraps his arms around me like i didnt break his best friends heart, and his best friend didnt break mine.

And i guess what i am trying to say, is that somehow, i still exist. Me, as a person, independently of EVERYTHING else, of s and of ALL of those nights that we spent together, and ALL of the time and fights, yelling and drinking and parking and walking and fucking and talking and changing clothes and watching tv and eating breakfast...that all that time, people were still walking in and out of their doors, and that after all of that, i am still kate.

that i. am. still.

and maybe this is one of those things that you realize at a certain age. But that no one hates me there. That our relationship did not annihilate me. That regardless, the cousin is still going to look at my boobs, and earl is still going to hug me because "i feel good."

And alison told me this story about a boyfriend she had once who wanted to write a book about the love letters he had received in his life. He wanted to collect them in a book and talk about what he had learned from each situation. And she was telling me the story in terms of something that was to be learned from d, but i assumed that she was talking about me, because...thats me. That is something that i would think about doing. She was so shocked that anyone could create an entire tome to themselves..."these are all the people that love me, and these are the ways they did it because finally i cant find enough love for myself, so i have to create a book from someone elses."

She thought it was absurd, i thought it made all the sense in the world.

And i dont know what that says about me...im not sure at all, but i think its less about "being loved" and more about having your existence validated. And she was arguing that no one can do that for you, and ideally, i agree in a self-help book kind of way. I would love to exist myself. But why, then, do alison write? Why have we made fiction, writing, telling a story part of our lives? We have done it because there is something fucking intoxicating about pulling the needle of life out of the haystack and running around the field showing people: "Look! Look! Do you know how AMAZING it is that i have found this? Do you know that i found this thing to say out of all the bullshit and filler life gives you? I have found this thing, and the part that makes it so amazing is that YOU, YOU, whoever the fuck you are, YOU have felt this thing too, and that connects us. It makes an impossible connection between you, and me. And isnt that amazing."

I think this is what her boyfriend wanted with his book full of love letters, "I have made connections. I have reached out into the impossible world, and amazingly, against all odds, i have found a hand that fits perfectly into mine." I would say thats worth writing a book over. If anything is worth writing a book over its that.

Less than love, its just the impressiveness that he has found connection.

And i talked to d tonight. Huddled against the outside wall as i have been more than i want to remember talking to him before. And i am listening to him talk, and i am feeling as i felt when we were together. And he is telling me that he is sorry and that i didnt do anything wrong and that he just wants to talk to me to explain some things, and then, i started feeling angry. That breathless, scared feeling that i, remarkably dont HAVE to deal with anymore. That terrible, helpless feeling that this person is not in the same world that i am but is trying to play by the same rules. And i cant make him feel better, and that is not my responsibility anymore and i got out of the situation because i realized that it was a situation that wasnt mine to gauge, meter, water, put in the sun, put in the shade, like an exotic plant controlled by a set of specifics that i would never be able to guess at. And d is at an apartment in nashville and i am standing outside of a bar in dc and i am letting myself be drunk because i am tired of being the table that everything is thrown upon when coming in the door. And that i am here, and that he is there, and that I am separate from him now, separate from s. Now, i am me.

And i guess that is what made me feel happy about tonight. That people exist in and of themselves. Which means, of course, that I can exist in and of myself, and this is the most encouraging thing ive felt in awhile.

Because people there dont know me as 'the girl who let s go' now they talk to me about who i was before i met s, and it had never occured to me that i existed there before him. People have been so kind as to put that relationship aside, and remember that before him, i was someone. Maybe someone else, but before him, i still was. I was.

This seems obvious but it was a relief that no one seems to hold that decision against me, and when s walks in, they will talk to him as the person that existed without me.

I dont think that this means that i will be okay when i actually have s and marx in the same place, in fact, i think i might start to fall apart under the weight of being two people at once, but maybe im moving toward the possibility? Maybe?

And earls parting words: "I see you and you look great, and you look happy, and i think you are better off now then you ever were before, and thats all im going to say."

And who knows what he is telling s, maybe the same thing, and maybe he is absolutely right. But he tells me this and he's right. They are simple rules, but somehow he is right. I AM better off, and probably S is better off. And that, is that.

And however a blind man does it, Sasan already knows that i was in with josh last night and who KNOWS who told him, and its amazing that people talk about me at all, because these days my world seems both impossibly large and at the same time, confined to the inches in front of my walking feet, but its as if i have gone to bed in a closet and have woken up in parking lot; the space is welcome but also terrifying, and slowly slowly slowly i am feeling about...taking short steps, stopping for rest, turning in circles, starting out and then returning, but existing and trying to keep up with people that have always been in the parking lot.

Its overwhelming, and sometimes so incomprehensibly lonely, but maybe its the only worthwhile way. I cant even imagine s's existence, it seems an impossibility separate from me, but i know that he has one, and that it doesnt include me. And sometimes this makes me so so so sad--actually, most of the time this makes me sad and baffled, but i know its the truth. And i dont know what will happen when i am in the parking lot and out of all the people in the lot, we somehow stumble into each other. Its going to be all i can do to not wish for the closet where the walls are around the both of you and not endless miles of space, and if i find that he is holding someones hand in the parking lot it will break my heart, but i guess i can understand. Who would want to do it alone.

But its the only way i can be right now. And its hard to know, KNOW that i dont have the strength to watch him hold someone else's hand, and i dont know if you would ever really get over that. Or, i dont know if i will ever really get over that, but the difficulty of it makes me feel like its the only thing worth doing.

"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us, are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then taht which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful...perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."

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