[Some more from the journals]

07MAY04
0138

Her name is Angel. Beautiful and ironic. She is graduating with a degree in psychology. She is not from around here. She doesn't sleep at night. She reads.

She is a lot like me. This is not a good thing. This means that she will like me; find me charming, attractive, funny, caring, adventurous, intelligent, creative, and easy-goingly-manic.

This means that despite everything I am to her, I lack that romantic glimmer that will catch her eye and tell her, "This is the one."

I am not enough to keep her.

There is not enough of me yet. Not here. Not now.

If she gives me nothing more, she will have already given me what I need.

The knowledge is like being on the verge of tears; brimming up behind my eyes, held in check only by deep, steady breaths.

Tomorrow I will have more information to help me decide. What I want. Hell, I cannot pretend that this equation calls for an equal amount of desire and what I believe myself capable of accomplishing.

A degree in Philosophy, with a minor in English or Biology? Law school? Copyright law as my profession?

Still noble. Still protecting people's rights. What a hero.

I can accomplish this. I just don't want to do it alone. I'm so afraid of going out there by myself. Knowing that I am the only one that has my back is not comforting. I don't have to trust me because I know me.

Perhaps, now that I sit and think, I have been instilled with a conscience that causes me to feel guilty for having new friends. Causes me to feel as if I were a man cheating on his spouse just because I am sharing new experiences.

I feel like the monster in the Marvin Martian cartoon. Only instead of being all hair,, I am all mystery. And if someday, I were to let someone too close, too far inside, they would find that if they shave away all of the mystery they will find at its core...nothing at all. Perhaps the merest mote of dust, little more than a cloud requires to form around.

There isn't room for everything. Not in my room, not on my bookshelves, not in my head.

Not even in these inexpensive composition notebooks that I have in great supply.

Jaded. Disillusioned. Unmotivated. Existential.

I can't see the abyss surrounding me. But when I close my eyes when the world is quiet enough I can hear the void. I listen to a symphony of music that isn't an I imagine myself waltzing alone, my arms eternally outstretched, waiting for a partner that will never have this dance, that will never tap the nothing on the shoulder, cut in, and ask, "May I have this dance?"

Self-indulgent. But informative.

Narcissistic. But very, very, helpful.