Long entry.
I feel as though I've been sick for a long time and finally received my diagnosis. I can't avoid it anymore. What everyone has been telling me is right. Wrong place, wrong man, wrong life. Maybe.
The other day, I was talking to H in the kitchen--something about the campaign and some get out the vote ideas I had, blah, blah blah. And he stopped me and said, "What's up with you?"
"What do you mean, what's up with me?"
"You're so..." he seemed to rummage around for a word "...energized. Happy." He looked a little suspicious but I could tell he was pleased, too. And for no real reason at all, I felt guilty.
"Aren't I generally happy?"
"Well, no." Then he added, "not like this, anyway," but I was stuck on the first part of his sentence. Not happy? Well, no.
I think of myself as happy with fits of depression. Happy in spite of anxiety, nerves, shyness. Or if not happy, at least not exactly unhappy. But if I compare the way I feel now to the way I felt just a couple of weeks ago... then I have to say... well, no.
I go for a walk around the apartment complex--same old trees, same old hedges, same old everything--but something feels new. I'm not happy. Haven't been happy. But suddenly I feel as though it might be possible. I haven't had one of my nervous attacks since C and I met. Not in the last two weeks, at least, which I know isn't much--but it's mainly the way I feel right now.
As I said, I feel as though I've been sick for a very long time. And I'm still not well. I can tell, because I can detect a note of obsession, of hysteria, in my thoughts. I'm on the verge of forgetting who he is. I don't even really know him.
But here's what I feel: this sense of expectation when I sit down at my computer with my glass of wine and my random thoughts. Pleasure that I have met someone who seems oddly similar to me. Expansiveness--the desire to communicate. I'm reaching for words the way I haven't in a long time. Because he writes with such commitment and skill. Because he seems interested in what I think. Because he seems to recognize some of what I say--we share somewhat similar reference points. Because he isn't afraid of sex.
I never thought that it would please me so much to talk about poetry, or at least to know that if I toss out a line he might, just might, catch it. That makes me feel so much less lonely.
I have a glimmer of what people mean when they talk about meeting someone and "knowing" where they are supposed to be. What I don't know is how much of this is delusional. What I especially don't know is what to do with this. I don't know what it means. Do I leave H? Where will I go? Certainly not to C. Impossible. Ridiculous.
And I don't know how to embrace this friend in my life in a safe, respectful way that won't hurt anyone. I don't want to lose someone who has taught me so much. And I don't, whatever happens, want to hurt H. I love him.
But, you know, I was out walking and looking at the same old surroundings, same old cars, same old day... and a line from Rilke popped into my head. I don't know how, but I have to change my life.