It's so easy to be happy here, despite the constant loneliness of being surrounded by people but never seeing
you. It gives the happiness an edge, but I can't deny that college life is better than I expected. Better even than I had hoped during my most desperate high school moments.
At the same time, it's so easy to be unhappy here. I am desperate to share everything with you, to be with you throughout this time. I think that would be my personal definition of
perfect. It's easy to be unhappy just because I'm so happy without being able to show you.
I've joined Pirate Club and Fever. I've gone to Fall Fest, I've gone to frats. I've been to the cafeteria and to restaurants, where I ordered off the children's menu and felt delightfuly cheap.
Walking back to the dorm this evening I stopped to pet some guy's dog. I hadn't petted a dog in four days. It felt like four years. I need to get a fish or a plant or something. Something to lavish affection on.
I have a lot of unused affection right now.
In compliance with Angela's wishes, I will update.
I have violent dreams. I dream about Sean kicking Brad's ass and writing insults on him in his own blood. I dream about my brother trying to murder me. I dream about breaking people's arms with a metal rod. I dream about stalking people through the woods. I dream about shooting out the gas tank of a car to make it explode in the face of my pursuers.
When I wake up, I'm still tired. Sometimes it entertains me to think that these images aren't dreams at all, but a secret secondary life that even I am not fully aware of.
I fell asleep on the couch with Simon yesterday afternoon. Dreamed of crazy things. I woke up with his fingers clutching mine and his eyelashes two fine black slashes across his sleeping face. I figure nothing but that is real. And I mean nothing.
I fell asleep last night in my bed with my arm around the stuffed pig that my grandmother gave me. When I woke up at 5am the pig was on the floor and I was caught in a twisted web of blanket. Twice recently I have fallen out of bed, waking up to the sudden impact of my face against the floor.
What does all of it mean? It means nothing. I already told you what is real. Everything else, it means nothing.
I feel good today.
It's been so long since I've been here that I had forgotten my password to log in. But that doesn't really bother me. There are a lot of things I'd like to forget.
Today has been a dream. Sometimes it's easier to reject reality than to accept that what is confronting you is true. I have been fighting life with lies but they all crumble away sooner or later and then the people you lied to are just pissed off and you've got nothing left to fight with.
I guess my problem is that I lack some important qualities: respect for authority, love for what I'm told to love, worry regarding what is supposed to be important, and hatred for what I'm told to hate.
I guess I don't have a problem at all. I don't even have a problem with people having a problem with that, or with me.
I've been slapped in the face with a beautiful past and it is nearly as surreal as the present. Kids from Durham days that remember my name and face and want to see me again. Kids who used to be the same stupid kid that I was. Kids who are older and more attractive now. Ah oops I'm not supposed to be concerned with physical attraction, am I?
I love you, Simon. Regardless of anything and everything that has ever happened or will ever happen, or maybe
because of anything and everything that has ever happened or will ever happen.
I can't believe how much I love you.
Those kids in Durham, me included, were like some crazy idealistic image of childhood. Or at least that's how my memory plays it back. Like it was too good to be real. Must have been man-made. And probably it was. Probably I made all this up in my head.
Probably I made up the construction of shelters in the woods, the yellow school bus rusting in my back yard, sailing through the air on the neighbors' hammock, flying across the creek on a rope tied to a tree branch, water balloon wars, and day after day of riding our bikes through the hot streets. Probably life was just as flawed and ridiculous as it is now. I just don't want to remember it that way.
These names that keep popping up, they hardly make sense. Jonah and Ryan and all those Magellan kids. I feel like I can't touch them, like the second I try they'll just evaporate. I kind of feel that way about everything.
Except you. I desperately want to hold on to you right now. I don't know what else to do. I guess there isn't anything else to do. Just hold on.
Why am I here writing? Why am I doing anything? I don't know. I haven't got any answers. All I've got is this massive, heartwrenching, possibly foolish love for you.
So stupid I've got to write it on the internet where no one gives a shit about reading it. Where no one gives a shit about anything at all.
