Entry 27 - Sculpting Skin While Falling Off a Cliff

Every gift I’ve ever given has been in the hope that someone will pay attention and return it back to me, magically transformed into love, affection, thoughtfulness, or even just kindness. A good conversation of compassion. Listening and receiving with care and courtesy. It’s a good gift, not just the physical thing given, but all the frou-frou crap that makes up the context for its issue.

I’ll tell you a secret. I’m having trouble thinking about anything but him. I am being incontrovertibly dumb because what could possibly happen in the next eight weeks? Nothing, that’s what. Amazing that I was jealous of her, annoying that I wanted to listen to him. And he hasn’t seen me for four years anyway. Amazing that it’s only now that I exist. I didn’t think I would miss this place, but it already feels like I’m saying goodbye. Stupid girls. My world is about to change. I’m stepping over the cliff and something in me wants to turn and look up as I fall. X fears being alone. Is it any different for me? I almost made a friend this year. I’ll have to give her up. Suffering. Wisdom. Whatever. I almost made a place for myself. For the first time (in a long time), I can feel like I belong—with X, with XX, I’m a piece of people’s lives. Sort of. And now, I’ll start over with nothing. It is hard. It doesn’t make me want to change my mind, but it does make me wistful. Uncertainty, melancholia, regret for all the things I did and didn’t do. I can’t talk. Can’t say the things that maybe should be said. Everything I can do with language, and I’m standing here, silent, mouth open and nothing is coming out.

Did I think I was funny? Charming? Witty? Did I really think those things? Was I anything other than sad? Tonight, it’s enough to just sit in the dark and realize it’s all over. These moments of shaping skin that make me see what wasn’t there yesterday and that lie to me. By tomorrow, all this will be gone. Just another illusion twisting me around.