Feel-Like-Shit-Diary

Thursday, 07 February 2002

"I love you" - how she dreaded those words. They sounded like solid
ground one could built houses on, but mostly they were either a
concrete floor that hurt like hell when one hit it coming down or
brittle floorboards bound to break one's ankle.
These words haunted her, and no matter what she did, they were the
first to come to her head when waking up in the morning and the last
ones she thought of before sleep came at night.
Sleep these days was not a slow drifting away into oblivion but
something like a tunnel she could creep into and hide.
6 more weeks to go, but to go where? There was no destination to that
journey - or if there was she dreaded arrival even before she set
off.
No pleasure cruise but something more of a pilgrimage to her own self.
How she wished she could walk up Croagh Patrick barefoot instead of
being caught in motionless waiting, like a fly in an ointment. Bleeding
feet she wished for, not a bleeding heart.
"Get your head into something, girl" she heard him say and knew he was
right. But right now her energy was running low, she was drained from
letting him get close to her again, from letting him in. Right now, she
could not even dig up the energy to push him away.
She had not wanted this to happen. She had been certain that they would
meet as friends this time, after so much silence the distance should
have been big enough to be on the safe side. She had relied on him to
be in control, to keep her at bay. Had she known what she was in for
she most likely would
not have met him.
As it was now, part of her could not help but try to figure out what
all this had been about. She hated that part of herself: a part that
held her hostage, not even telling her how high the ransom would be or
in which currency it could be paid.
She was locked in the bleak room of her solitude, alone with questions
she did not like to ask, thoughts she did not like to think and
feelings she did not like to feel. At war with herself, a victim of
emotional terrorism, a casualty in a civil war against memories and
painful experiences. She tried to build barricades against the
invaders, throw petrol bombs of anger at them. Anger was a useful
weapon: blame him and his words and actions for all this turmoil. Her
mind made him the enemy - fucking sniper, emotionally invading her and
then drawing back behind his peace line. In moments she could see him
like this, a conqueror who had jumped her boundaries and had raped her,
using her as a military training area for a field exercise in his war
of emotions, she felt better, almost free.
But then she loved him. She could neither help nor understand it and
there was no way round it, no other label would fit the feelings she
had for him. She knew because it hurt when he said he could be her
friend but not her lover. The pain she felt told her that this was what
she wanted them to be - lovers not friends. Even knowing that this was
not what they could live up to, that there never would be anything like
this possible between them. But the definition was important for her to
feel right about it, to be in tune with what she had seen and felt last
time they had met. She was fighting for her own emotional sanity again
- refusing to feel not lovable enough. There it was again, the little
girl that blamed it all on herself, the loneliness, the waiting spells.
Again part of her felt unable to bind a person she loved to herself, to
make him stay.

Knowing that he could not stay, could not come with her, did not make
things any easier. Never would they have a chance to find out what they
mend to each other. Friendship would have been possible after having
lived through some kind of weird love affaire, no matter how
unsuccessful such an enterprise would have been. No matter if they had
fought, or pissed each other off or just bored each other eventually,
they would have had a chance of becoming friends or at least being glad
to be rid of each other. The whole thing would have been lived through,
"real" and, as all love affaires, would have sorted itself out in the
end.
Now the offer of friendship seemed like derision. He did not want and
need anything from her that for her would make a good friendship: the
exchange of ideas and feelings, of laughter and tears about life's
absurdities, the respect and the admiration one feels for a friend. All
this mend closeness and caused new feelings - feelings he might not
want and need.
So he kept her away from him, put her in some place in his mind where
she could not cause too much damage. He defused her, the emotional
bomb, understandably sheltering his own peace of mind.
She knew she would have to do the same, eventually. For peace
enforcement she would have to get rid of him, uproot him from her soul
and her mind.
It hurt like hell, every time they met and parted again. Confusion and
desperation were the utmost feelings after each meeting. Most of all
because this never could be lived through: each encounter would be like
a half open door through which she could get a glimpse of what she
wanted and needed. But the door he closed behind him when he left was
the door that was closed in her face right then and there, refusing her
entrance to his life and his feelings, warding here off.
So the ransom she would have to pay to get free, would be to accept
what all this did to her - that she couldn't feel any other way, that
she could just be herself, that she could not and would not change for
him and that she had to leave things as they are.
She had to let go of him and of the wish to be his lover and to return
to her own life and make it safe ground for herself.
She had another 6 weeks to go until she could tell him that: face to
face, taking him into her arms one last time and then, finally, let
go!