Part 15, the Diary

 

 

Monica sat on the couch and stared into space. It was the next day, and Chandler had been hostile all morning, before he took off to get some work done. Monica was unsure what to make of his hostility, and unsure over how to make everything okay again. She was not going to give in to him, she felt she was right, and nothing he said could convince her otherwise. But she still realised that the first attempt of reconciliation should come from her, since she’d caused him enough harm and pain to last for a lifetime, she owed him to show that she cared and wanted things to be all right between them again.

 

"How do we work this out?" she said out loud. "I believe one thing, he believes another. I won’t budge, he can’t make me tell him lies. I don’t remember what my reason for not telling him was, and if he doesn’t believe that then he doesn’t deserve the truth if I knew what it was."

 

She sighed and shook her head.

 

‘Get a grip, Mon!’ she thought. ‘Chandler deserves the truth and so much more. He deserves much better than you, he deserves a woman who…’

 

Monica looked down on her hands. She didn’t know the continuation of that sentence. She didn’t really know what she thought Chandler deserved. All she knew was that he deserved better than her.

 

‘Should I bend?’ she thought. ‘Should I give in to him this once? Do I owe him that? And will a lie make him feel better?’

 

She shook her head and leaned back on the couch. She turned her head to the TV and decided that the soap opera that was on didn’t interest her, so she shut it off.

 

‘I wonder what the others are up to’ she thought. ‘They’ve surely noticed that we’re gone. Or that he’s gone, anyway.’ She frowned, getting back to the previous line of thoughts. ‘No, I won’t give in to Chandler. He may deserve allot from me, but not this. Not when he treated me the way he did last night. I don’t even think he loves me anymore, and I think he realised that last night and started to hate me.’

 

She rose and went into the bedroom, starting to unpack the bag they’d brought. Among the clothes she noticed a book that looked familiar.

 

‘What’s my diary doing here?’ she thought, and picked it up.

 

Sitting down on the bed she opened the diary and saw her handwriting fill pages, telling stories of what happened over a year ago. She opened the book a large amount of pages later, and now saw Chandler’s handwriting.

 

‘What the…?’ she thought.

 

She quickly looked up the page where her own handwriting had been replaced by his. Her last entry had been the day before the accident, his a few days after, while she was in the coma.

 

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ she thought. ‘Is this his diary now? Or am I allowed to read this? And why did he even open my diary to begin with?’

 

"Monica, if you ever read this, and I hope you will" she read.

 

‘So he wants me to read this, that’s for sure…’ she thought. ‘Well then I might as well. And he’s written allot too.’

 

She closed the book and put it away, then rose to continue unpacking.

 

‘I’m not so sure I want to read what he’s written in there’ she thought. ‘I don’t want to hear about all of the pain I’ve caused him. And I’d feel like a spy, reading his thoughts like that. Even with his permission.’

 

But once she had unpacked everything she ended up sitting on the bed again, the diary in her hands.

 

‘I’ll read the first entry’ she thought. ‘And then I can determine weather or not I should read anything else.’

 

"Monica, if you ever read this, and I hope you will, I would like to apologize for writing in your diary. And I promise you, I haven’t read anything. But I needed to see your handwriting, needed to see something that was so typically you, and the diary was on your nightstand so I picked it up… I realized I couldn’t look at anything other than the dates, because I won’t invade your privacy like that. So forgive me, and I love you very much. CB."

 

"Not much of a first note…" Monica said to herself. "Well, at least it doesn’t tell me why he’s written so many other entries." She looked at the next one, dated the next day.

 

"Well, here I am, writing in your diary again… I hope you don’t mind Mon, but I felt so much better after writing to you in here yesterday, so I’m thinking of continuing to write… And it’s for you to read, this is all for you, not for me. Not as much, anyway. And if you god forbid should die, I hope you’ll read this from wherever you are. And if you live then you will know how much I’ve thought about you.

 

I won’t say anything about the accident, not right now, it’s too vividly clear and painful. I just wish I’d be struck with amnesia and forget everything that happened during that one awful day."

 

‘Trust me,’ Monica thought, ‘you’d never ever want to have amnesia.’

 

"I thought it would all be so much easier now, though… And in part it is. You’re alive. My heart can beat in it’s normal pace again. But you’re still not guaranteed to stay alive. If you die on me now Mon, then I’ll just… I just don’t think that I’m strong enough for that. The guys tell me that I’m wrong, that the strength I showed at the hospital that day proved that I’m strong, but they are so far from the truth. To be strong is to dare to show your emotions, to dare to cry, scream and go hysterical. I kept it all inside of me that day, but honey you know I desperately wanted to loose it completely and let myself bring out the emotions. Gosh, listen to me, I sound like I’m living in the 19th century… Anyway, I love you Monica, forgive me for writing in your diary, and don’t be mad at me for continuing with it. CB."

 

The next entry was made three days later.

 

"Okay, I confess. I’m scared out of my mind. The doctors say that the longer you stay in this condition, the worse the odds get. And I hate you for doing this to me, I hate you so much for putting me through this pain and fear, you’d better come back to me or I’ll hate you forever!

 

Oh gosh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean that, forgive me! But I am so scared! You have no clue what it’s like, seeing someone you love in this condition, seeing someone you need so desperately, slipping away from you with every minute. Come back to me, I need you, can’t you see that, Mon? Don’t you know how desperately I need you to be here next to me? And if you do, then why are you still beyond my reach?

 

I want to tell you all of this and so much more, each time I sit by your bedside. But it’s harder to say words than to write words, and I am so scared that I will say something to you that I might regret forever. Like what I just wrote earlier, for example. And it’s easier to deal with in writing, because if you ever read this then I know that you will also read about how sorry I am.

 

Have I by the way told you that I owe your life to Joey? You’ve got his left kidney now, and hopefully that will help you recover. And Joey will always have my gratitude for that, even though I know he didn’t do this for me. He did it for you, because he loves you. Everyone does. So don’t desert us know. We love you, Monica. CB."

 

Monica turned the page, having decided to read some more. The next entry was made just over a week after the accident.

 

"Monica, I miss you, I miss you, miss you! Right now that’s all in my head, I miss you, I miss you so damned much I could just fill this entire page, and then a few more, with just writing that I miss you. And you’re not dead, so how will I feel if you die? Please don’t leave me, I can’t handle dealing with all of this, seeing you in this condition, missing you. I know they say that there’s always enough sorrow and grief to go around, but how come I seem to have gotten many times my share?

 

I miss you! I miss you in the lonely mornings when I wake up all alone, knowing that there’s no one beside me that I can turn to and snuggle with. I miss you when I have breakfast all alone, nothing tastes good anymore. Nothing tastes at all. I found some leftovers in the freezer from that casserole you made two weeks ago. I wasn’t sure if it was eatable anymore, but I micro waved it anyway, and it’s the only thing that’s tasted anything since you were taken away from me. Gosh, listen to me, I sound as if you’re dead. It’s just that I miss you so much, you are too far away from me, I can’t reach you. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. I miss you whenever I set foot at Central Perk, and I even miss you when I’m with you at the hospital. I never really know if anything else than your body is there, maybe your mind is somewhere else. And I miss you when I get home in the evenings and no one greets me with a smile that I know is reserved for me. And when I go to sleep, which is either in the guest room, on the couch or over at Joey’s place, I lie awake for hours, missing you. I’m so used to having your body next to mine when I’m going to sleep, that trying to sleep alone feels wrong. I often fall asleep while visiting you at the hospital, because then you’re near.

 

I’m sorry sweetie, I didn’t mean to rant like this, but you have no idea what my loss feels like! Someone might as well have ripped half of my body away. I would rather be paralysed completely for the rest of my life, than loose you. And I know for sure that it’s true, because there is nothing that I wouldn’t trade to get this feeling to go away, to get you back.

 

Will it always be like this, Mon? Am I doomed to miss you for the rest of my life? Can I continue to live if I’ll constantly have to deal with being alone, acting happy for friends and family, wondering what could have been, and missing you, missing you, I will miss you for ever and ever!

 

I hope you can somehow read this, or somehow read my mind. Which I guess is the same as reading this. It’s like I’m not even aware that I’m writing, the words are just being written by my hand as I think them.

 

I miss you, miss you, miss you, miss you! CB."

 

Monica looked up from the diary and took a deep breath. She almost started to cry, she’d had no idea that he’d been this desperate. He’d talked about how afraid he was of loosing her when he’d been at her bedside, but he’d never really spelled it out like this.

 

‘I can’t read anymore of this!’ she thought, closed the book and placed it in her nightstand drawer. ‘Chandler’s emotions are so strong, and I am not worthy of them. I can’t betray him by reading this, I love him too much.’

 

Chandler came home a few hours later. He said hello, but not much else. Monica made dinner, and they ate in silence.

 

"So we’re playing the silence game?" Monica carefully said, as they finished off dinner.

 

"We might as well" Chandler replied. "You don’t say much that is true. So why should I waste my time listening?"

 

Monica bit her bottom lip and quickly rose to gather the dishes. His comment had hurt far more than intended, but she refused to cry in his presence. She wished that he would leave, to go buy a newspaper or anything else. She wanted to be alone, so she could cry. She recalled that Chandler had written something about how strength was to be able to cry and show your emotions, but she didn’t care. If he wanted to think of her as weak then that was up to him.

 

Chandler went to bed early, tired from working and from all of the emotional storms he’d been through during the past two days. He noticed that the bag was unpacked, and wondered where the diary was. If Monica didn’t remember it, then where had she put it? And if she did remember it, had she opened it?

 

Monica joined him shortly after, also tired. But before she went to sleep she sat in bed for a while, writing in a small notepad.

 

"What are you doing?" Chandler asked, not really interested, mostly out to break the thick and icy tension.

 

"I’m starting a new diary" Monica told him. "I can’t seem to find the one I had last year. It must have been thrown in the trash, or something."

 

So Monica didn’t have it. Then who did? Where was it? Chandler couldn’t figure it out, he was so sure he’d packed it the night before. But maybe it was still in the bag where he usually kept it. The bag was actually an old backpack with a lock, and he kept it there, along with a few other things from his "past life" where he could lock it up. He didn’t want anyone to be snooping around. He shrugged his shoulders and decided to let it go. Wherever it was, it was without reach for anyone.

 

The next day Chandler left early for work, leaving Monica all alone again.

 

‘I don’t understand him’ she thought. ‘He must know how disoriented I feel, how lonely and abandoned. And yet he hurries off to work as soon as possible.’

 

After a while Monica took out the diary. She had lied to Chandler the night before, but she felt so lousy reading through it, and she wanted to read a few more entries. She knew that he’d written it all for her, but he surely didn’t feel the same way about her anymore, so maybe he didn’t want her to read it. After all, it was intended for his girlfriend Monica, not his ex-girlfriend Monica. And Monica wasn’t sure if she was his girlfriend again or not.

 

She read through his entries that came before the day after her awakening. When she came to that part she realised she wouldn’t be reading about her past self anymore, she’d be reading about the person she’d been for over a year.

 

"I can’t even tell you… I am so very happy and relieved… It’s like an answered prayer, you are awake again! Honey I can’t even begin to describe my feelings at this moment, just like I never really could describe how I felt when you were in a coma.

 

I love you, and now my days of missing are over!

 

Just about twelve hours ago I was sitting next to you, talking about my missing and about how I can’t take living without you. And then I fell asleep and woke up by your voice saying my name. My name. You said Chandler, and it was like a sign to me! Maybe all you needed was for me to tell you in spoken words what I have written down here. Although I didn’t quote my past entries, I did tell you how I can’t go on living without you, living with the pain, and I spelled out my heart for you completely. And then you wake me up by saying my name. I love you, I love you more than you can imagine!"

 

Monica noticed that he no longer wrote CB after his entry, and she wondered if he’d forgotten it in his excitement.

 

‘Excitement over me waking up’ she thought. ‘It’s so tough to comprehend that you can affect someone’s life like that. That there is someone who loves me that much. But it’s a great thing to know, and I love him that much too.’

 

Chandler’s next entry came a few days later.

 

"I thought the pain was over. I really did. And Monica, darling, I am not accusing you of anything, but the way you look at me has changed, and that hurts. Amnesia, the doctor tells me. Can it really be that you might never ever know me again? You’re so unsure, I can tell that, it must be tough not being able to put a name to a familiar face, or perhaps a face to a familiar name. But I have no doubt you will recover, you’ve gotten through this much, haven’t you? There’s no reason to believe you won’t get passed anything further. CB."

 

"He left his initials again" Monica noted. Then she nearly closed the diary again. "My gosh" she said, shaking her head. "Chandler am I really allowed to read all of this?"

 

"I hope you don’t disapprove." Chandler continued in the diary. "But I am going to continue writing for you in here, until you can take over the task of filling this diary."

 

Monica looked at the page, and then looked at how many other pages there were like that one.

 

‘It’s taken a long time,’ she thought, "but I think that I’m finally ready to take over now."

 

Three hours passed. By now Monica had read as far as when she’d returned from the hospital. She was in the middle of reading his entry right after she’d come home.

 

"So now you’re home, but things still aren’t as they should. I hardly ever admit it except for while writing in here, and I only admit it here because I can’t lie to you. Last night when we went to bed together I forgot about your situation in the joy of having you back, and I rolled over and put my arm around you. You froze the minute I touched you. And it hurt Monica, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt! But you’re not the one to blame, neither of us are. Can I ever touch you again? Will you ever go to sleep in my arms again, like you used to do? I knew all along that I was too happy and too lucky for it to last. And it didn’t last. But why did it have to affect you? You’re so much better than me, and you deserve to be happy all of your life. Not being struck by something like this. CB."

 

"I heard you cry last night. You probably thought I was asleep, but I heard your sobs. It’s the physical pain I guess, you’re injured so bad that you’ll probably always feel the pain… But I also think that you were crying over how you can’t remember anymore. And I wanted so badly to turn around and pull you into a hug, to comfort you. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable, that would only make it worse for you.

 

Sweetie I love you, I really do, and I refuse to believe that this attitude you seem to have gotten is something that will last. How could it be that I’ve waited for something that would never come again? I refuse to believe that that would be the case, because if I did then I would loose my mind. CB."

 

Monica continued to read, and after a while she came across the night when she had tricked Chandler.

 

"I don’t believe that you have done this! Right now Monica Geller I hate you! And have you ever known how hard it is to hate someone that you love? You can’t, and that drives me insane, since I need to hate you!

 

You tricked me! I thought you were all mine again, but you were only pulling some sick trick on me! And here I am still, spelling out all of my feelings and all of my agony to you! All of those things that I just can’t say to your face, but that I would have no problem saying to the Monica of the beginning of 2000.

 

Why did you have to do this? Am I a total idiot for loving you so badly? Am I even loving you, or someone you were? Who are you these days? And who am I writing to? Is it fair to say that I’m writing to You, or am I actually writing to the former You? To tell you the truth, I don’t want to find out. How come there has to be two You anyway? Why can’t you just be who you were?

 

I once asked you why you kept a diary, and you told me it was because you could always write down your feelings in it. Well you were wrong, because all of the feelings that are stacked up inside of me are too difficult to put on paper. Maybe the whole concept of words is silly, because there are so many things that I’m right now feeling that I don’t know any words for.

 

Betrayal is one of the words I do know. I have never felt so betrayed in my life. But that’s a different issue, I don’t want to get lost in rants of how mad I am at you for doing this to me, because I don’t know what You I’m turning to.

 

I guess it’s like what you said to me once, something about how the deepest feelings are also the ones kept deepest inside, among everything that’s never said. You know, we used to be able to just look at each other and read each other’s minds. I feared such connection all my life, because I never wanted to be an open book for another human being. But now I find myself missing that. And even if we re-establish that connection, will it ever be the same?

 

I guess you’ve wanted to know, if you’ve ever started reading this, why I’ve continued writing in your diary. I guess lately it seems as if all I’m doing is criticizing you."

 

‘Whatever criticism you’ve written in here,’ Monica thought, ‘I’ve totally deserved.’

 

"Trust me, my sweetheart, I am not out to complain about you. At first I only wrote in here to easen the pain, and to get to tell you everything I needed you to know. But then you woke up, and I could tell you everything to your face. And lord knows I tried, Monica, but you weren’t willing to listen, I made you uncomfortable. You might feel guilty now, reading this, if you ever do read this, but it’s not your fault. It’s what’s happened to you, and you can’t change that anymore than I can.

 

But when it comes to me continuing to write in this, it feels good to write in here. It’s as if I’m continuing your story. Okay, I know that sounded tacky, but between us there’s never been anything that’s said what we could and could not tell each other.

 

I’ve thought at times that I should just hand you the diary, let you read it all from beginning to my last entry. After all, it is your diary. But I’ve always given up on that idea immediately, and there are two reasons for that. Dr. Barkley told us that we shouldn’t give you your memories in hand, that you had to remember it all on your own, and we should only help you by giving you plausible keys. That’s one reason. Reading your own diary would definetely hand you allot of information about your past in hand, and that would be wrong I guess… And the second reason has nothing to do with any medical stuff, no doctors are involved. Call me crazy Monica, but you are so different now. You’re not the Monica I knew and fell in love with. With that I’m not saying I don’t love you anymore, you are the love of my life still. But I feel as if by letting you read your past entries I betray that Monica from the past that stole my heart. It’s almost as if the entries you’ve made in this diary are the only things that are left of who you were. And I can’t sell you out like that, it would be letting a stranger read your diary, and I love you so much that I will protect your private entries. I haven’t read them myself.

 

Don’t get me wrong now, at this moment I am still so furious with you that you can’t even know, but the Monica from a year ago didn’t do anything, why should I sell her out? CB."

 

"Sell me out to myself…" Monica muttered. "Now that’s ironic…"

 

She suddenly got an impulse, grabbed a pen and found the nearest blank paper in the diary.

 

"Chandler, you know who this is," she wrote, then paused. She thought for a second, and then she felt the words coming.

 

"I have read part of your entries by now. I’ve read as far as the entry you made the night I pulled that horrible trick on you. And I am so moved by what you have written this far, have you any idea what it means to me to get it clarified that you feel so strongly about me? I don’t even understand how you could still love me, I have been so mean and cruel. And I don’t really know if you do love me anymore. I know that I am not the person I used to be, but on the other hand I’m not either the person I have been for a year now. I don’t really know who I am, and neither do you. But I’m thinking that you must have lost your love for me by now. My guess is that you could face me acting as I did earlier because I didn’t remember who you were, and you knew that I didn’t act that way carrying strong feelings for you. But last night that changed, I remembered you and our love, and now you know that I love you just as I did before. So now it must be harder for you to deal with my new me. I don’t even want to have a new Me, but that’s the way it is, honey. I can’t change that. This year has changed me, it’s had an impact on my personality that I can’t change. I can’t go back to being the Monica I was, but I want you to know that my love for you is as strong as ever. And I will do whatever it takes to earn your love for real, I want you to love me like I am now and not just for the parts of me that are the same as before. Confusing it might sound, but true it is. You are the love of my life, now and always, and we both know that. I’ve been so lost this year without your constant love and support. Not that it hasn’t been there, I just haven’t realized I should take it. With your love, trust, support and above all forgiveness I am sure I can get back on my feet and become the person I need to be, which is much closer to who I was then who I am now. You have honoured and respected me all through this, you haven’t read a single entry in my diary, as far as I know. But you can if you want to, I have no secrets from you anymore, you deserve the truth and nothing else. I haven’t read any of my own entries myself, and I guess that if you read through the entry I mentioned earlier that I’d just read, you’ll see why. Right now I want to offer you the truth. I can’t give it to you, but Monica a year ago can. You have my permission to read my diary from the very first entry to this one, or any entry I might add later on. But I am urging you to read any entry that might give you an explanation to why I never let you know about the pregnancy. I hate telling you lies now, so please, read it and find out. And I hope that whatever my reason was you’ll be able to forgive me. I love you so."

 

She put the pen aside and looked up the next unread entry from Chandler. She read a couple of entries that mostly dealt with his agony over being tricked by her like that.

 

"I felt like I’d been taken from heaven to hell, in just a few seconds" one of them said. "One minute you are all mine again, and the next… You cannot imagine how it felt, I was so absorbed with my strong love for you, and then I realised it was just a trick."

 

Monica shook her head and tried to focus on just reading, trying not to get caught up in guilt. It was too late for that now anyway. She noticed that there all of a sudden was a leap in the entries. For nearly two weeks Chandler hadn’t written anything at all.

 

"I have kept away from this diary for a week or so… Okay, I know exactly for how many days, but that’s beside the point. I guess you might like to know why.

 

I have a thousand questions, and this diary contains the answers to all of them. Did you ever truly love me? Who was that George-fellow really? Was I making you happy? And how come I never got to hear you tell me I was going to be a father?

 

The thing is that I can’t read the answers. They are within my reach, but I can’t read them. It’s not fair to you, weather or not you really loved me you still deserve to be able to keep some things a secret. Even though it hurts so much not knowing why you never told me about the baby, and if you loved me really.

 

I haven’t doubted your love for a single second, babe, but some of the things you said tonight… You said that you didn’t believe that you could forget someone you love truly and completely, and yet you’d forgotten me, so how could you have really loved me? How much do you really know about this, and how much are you making up? Can you forget the strongest love you’ve felt, or is that downright impossible? I hope it is not, because as long as it isn’t there’s still hope that you loved me once. But it hurts so damned much to know that there’s nothing left of your love. They say you need to be two to love, but I know it’s not true. You can be in love on your own, just ask me, ‘cause I am. Loving has nothing to do with weather or not the other person feels it back, it’s all about caring so much for another person that you are ready to burst with the emotion. Maybe you just can’t fall in love on your own… I did have feelings for you long before we ended up in bed together, but I didn’t get to the point of real love until we got together.

 

Maybe I always felt it stronger than you did. Is that possible? Could that be an explanation to why I still feel this while you don’t? And if things had been the other way around, would you still have loved me? Would you? I wish I knew the answer to that.

 

Sometimes I wonder which one of us has the hardest time. I have to go on living life as if nothing is different, walk in the same traces, do the same things, only you aren’t there by my side as you should be. That way I have a pure hell. For you nothing is familiar, and I guess that is just as hard. You don’t recognize anything, there’s no real security in your life, I guess that’s one of the reasons why you do this. It does explain why you aren’t the same, because you need to get tougher to survive during those circumstances. And this whole experience has taught me something valuable. Being loved is not always as important as loving. You know they say that it’s better to love and to loose than to never love at all, and I know that it’s true. And I am thankful that you at least got to love before the accident. And I pray you will get to love again, even if it won’t be me that you love. I sure hope it will be, though. But the point is that I am the one who loves, you are the one who’s loved, and still I think that my life might be brighter than yours. I have something, someone to live for, whilst you, forgive me Monica, don’t anymore. Or maybe you do, what do I really know? But it’s not as it used to be.

 

By now I’m sure you’ll probably never read this far. Who has the interest to read this much, huh? Who would devote much time to read through my rants, that mostly sound just the same? I love you, I really do, I love you, and this is still all for you I’m writing, but I’ve realized now that you probably won’t read through it all. CB."

 

Monica grabbed her pen again and wrote another entry right after her last one.

 

"Do you know how right you are about everything? I think you’ve missed your calling, you should have been a shrink or something. You understand me, like no one else. You’re wrong about one thing though, and I’m sure you know what, I have the interest to read anything you’ve written in this diary. After all, it was written for me. So who should read it if not me? And your words deserve to be read, not so much for what you’ve written but for all the emotions and secret messages I find behind the lines. I think we might very well re-establish our connection that you spoke about. I feel like I become more and more like my old self for every one of your entries that I read. And you are very right about the loving thing. And Chandler, one thing I want you to know, there is nothing that I am more thankful of than having your love, that I’ve been loved by you. If you love as devotedly as you do, and you stick by it as strongly as you do, then the person who you love is the luckiest person alive. And I hope I can compensate you for all of your miseries, and that all of my love will be enough for you. But Chandler if it’s not then I hope you someday find some woman who will love you the same way you loved me. Because you of all people deserve it."

 

Monica put away the pen and went back to reading the entries. She hoped Chandler would be home soon, she wanted him to read what she’d written to him, and she wanted to patch things up again. If there was even just one fifth left of his love for her, then they would be able to work things out without any problems. And her love for him grew stronger by the minute. She felt like she had an entire year of strong love to catch up on.

 

‘God I wish this had never happened’ she thought. ‘But on the other hand it has truly showed me how real love looks like. Romeo can take a hike, I know a man who loves much more and so much more real.’

 

The clock on Chandler’s nightstand showed that the time was 14:57. Monica was still reading the diary entries. Chandler had written some really long ones the last week, and each one took about twenty minutes for Monica to read, since she always reflected on what he’d written, and realized more and more what the past year had been like for him. And with that realisation she grew more and more afraid of finding out that Chandler no longer loved her.

 

"Can I take it if you no longer love me, Chandler?" she wrote, when she for the third time made her own entry. "Am I destined to love you without getting any love back, like you have loved me during this year?"

 

"Tonight I’ve watched you kiss Pete Becker. I’ve watched you kiss him like you’ve kissed me at times. I’ve actually seen you kiss the man who brought all of this on, even though he didn’t do it intentionally. Why is it that every time I feel like I’ve really reached rock bottom, something else happens that makes me realize that pain is never-ending, and will grow deeper all the time? I know what puts an end to all of this, but that’s not something I can count upon happening. After a year, actually one year tomorrow (the anniversary of the accident, now that’s something to celebrate, isn’t it?), there is nothing that can make me think you’ll remember. I still hope though, hope is the last thing that abandons the man. But right now I really don’t know…

 

I wonder what it’s like, babe. What it’s like to not remember your past. And to not remember a love like ours. Even if you never really loved me you must still admit that there was something truly special about the way we were in love.

 

I miss you! I miss you, I miss you, I can’t go on without you! I know I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but the feeling that something so important has gone lost and you might not ever get it back hurts! I hurts so bad, and even though I see you every single day I can’t really reach you now either. And I can’t tell you how much I love you, which I at least could do when you were in the coma. I don’t want to go back to that stage, but I would like to just once look at you and tell you how badly I love you. But I’m too afraid of how you would react if I did. So instead I write down my feelings in here, hoping that one day you will read them. And hopefully by then I won’t be missing you anymore. Hopefully by then I will see love in your eyes when I look into them. CB."

 

That was Chandler’s last full entry. He’d started an entry later on, but it was unfinished.

 

"There’s no worse ache than heartache. I’m not even going to bother to write about my aching heart and my depression today, it feels as if the depression is getting a hold of me. Is this all because of you, or do I have myself to blame? I don’t really blame you, you’re not aware of how much you’re hurting me. You probably don’t remember what it’s like to love like this, so you wouldn’t know the pain I’m going through. And as I’ve said before, you can’t hate someone you love. And I do love you, we’ve established that so many times by now.

 

I want my girlfriend back! I don’t want to go on alone! We were so damned close, we were like two missing pieces in each other’s puzzles. You completed my life, and I think I completed yours. But I guess that if I want to continue using the puzzle metaphor, that the difference between us now is that while I’m missing the most important piece, you’re missing almost all the pieces. Okay, that’s enough of me being poetic or whatever, there’s something else that’s on my mind, something I really want to vent to you…"

 

That was the last thing he’d written. Monica realized that he’d most likely been interrupted while writing, and hadn’t gotten around to continue with telling her whatever it was that he’d had on his mind.

 

She grabbed the pen again and decided to write a fourth and final entry for now.

 

"Well if we decide to stick with your puzzle metaphor then this is what I think… I think that my puzzle now has the most important piece, only I’m not so sure where it goes. And there are a whole lot of other pieces missing so I can’t really see the picture on the puzzle clearly. In your case I think you know where to look for the missing piece, and I know that if you choose to find it in me then you will find it soon. I’m not going to take up more room or much of your time with this entry, but I guess that I need to tell you that I love you. Really, I do. I was hurt by you last night and the night before, I won’t deny that, but I still love you most of all. Can’t we make this work? I really want to give it a try, but I guess it might be doomed… I have this really crazy memory of making a choice on the day of the accident, and that I didn’t make the choice I was supposed to. So then our lives got screwed up. Obviously I’m talking about a choice made after the accident and not before, but I’m not really sure what this memory is all about, so I won’t get into that any more, it would just confuse us both. Did I ever tell you that the first memory of an incident that I got back was about you? I was reading one of the books you’d brought me at the hospital, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I remembered that I had cut off your toe when I was eighteen… What ever happened with that toe, I can’t remember. Did they reattach it? It’s strange, some parts of different situations are a blur, I can’t remember them at all. It’s like the end of "It". Or the beginning of "It", for that matter. But the point is that you were the first person I remembered a situation with. Not one of our best moments perhaps, but it was still something about you and me. And I’ll tell you the truth, I feel so stupid and IQ lacking, for not realizing that you’ve been loving me for real all this time, and for not remembering you. You deserve to be remembered, almost all of my happiest memories include you… Not that I have many memories, but still… Love you, hope you still love me… Monica Geller."

 

She sighed and slammed the diary shut. Then she left it inside a shirt that she placed on the bed for Chandler to find.