the solipsist in love

okay, can we just not do this for one goddamn second? i am not wearing a face right now, or at least the one i’m wearing isn’t anything i’m proud of. i am going to write something and i don’t know what it will sound like — maybe foreign, maybe like everything else i’ve ever written, and i could analyze what those two outcomes might mean but i don’t care. just, ok, ok, ok.

i have worked through the weekend. technically there is one more day of weekend but it is booked solid for working. weeking workend. i don’t miss my social life because it’s tenuous on the best weeks. i do miss cheeseburgers with sam, and sunny days on hawthorne, the easygoing ambience of portland. but i don’t know what else i miss. the last months of portland i was clawing to get out. i kept wishing to be unnamed elsewheres. sometimes i named them after boys: LA, boston. what a fucking joke.

everything is closing in, flattening, so that nothing can look only good or only bad–all the facets merging to make a lightless gray.

i am compiling possible pieces for my writing sample and i have nine that have some hope, and only one of them is not about botched romance, and of the other eight, only two others are not about some very real piece of my history. broken boys in rows like dolls. i read travis’s livejournal as i sometimes do and as of two weeks ago there is some girl, some crazy-about-him girl, and he is overwhelmed with joy and gratitude and his ever-present fear. my old professor tells me that his latest ex-wife is sending him emails twice a week, saying stupid shit, and that all he wants is to have a real conversation about the end of their marriage, and all she can do is pull this adolescent passive-aggressive bullshit. sam is dating a girl and he is happy and excited and, i’m sure, good to her. a friend in portland goes through the same motions, meeting boys, losing them, walking away in disgust, wondering what’s wrong with him. i tell him, you’re fine. your standards are reasonable. other friends find no one, and keep waiting and dreaming. others talk about romance, about commitment, and their partnerships make me want to run thousands of miles away from their bicker, bicker, bicker. a famous okcupid couple has it out on their journal posts, airing their ugly secrets for their bloodthirsty friends. i read through all six hundred comments.

it doesn’t matter what the story is. i feel like i am drowning in them, they are all sounding the same. right now, i don’t feel like i believe in this kind of happiness. it either doesn’t exist, or it is far out of my grasp, and quite possibly i am kicking it away at the same time that i reach for it, exhausting myself at both ends, pushing and pulling.

this is what i get for spending the weekend alone.

i’m tired of myself now.

it is the hope that kills me. i have put it aside to make room for other things, and now i’m afraid to pick it up again. tell me: is it worth it?