Thoughts

April 5, 2007. She’s sitting on the couch with her legs up facing the kitchen, and she can’t seem to shake this verse in her head. She’s trying to think of the next line, but it never comes. But there’s still tomorrow / Forget the sorrow… Then nothing. It comes in a filter and leaves in a blur; there’s still music there, but it’s so loud and confusingly quiet at the same time that there are no discernable words. Forget the sorrow, she thinks to herself. It seems an appropriate line for tonight. Memories fade in and out of mind: seeing him first in the morning, crying during lunch break, laughing at her stupidity, then crying again later that evening. There’s still tomorrow, and tonight is her last night in this apartment.

It’s okay.

April 14, 2007. She had her PC set up and usable for the first time in almost a year. Everything in her life was going so smoothly: a new job — her dream job, starting within the week; a new apartment to sooth the soul — silence after work, silence on her days off, and trash in the trash can; she’d finished a few books in just one week and started a few more, keeping her thoughts open and her mind flowing; and, what she feels the most important, on this PC she just set up, she found all of her old unfinished stories. It’s like Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales, except she gets to finish them, rewrite them, make them shine.

April 15, 2007. Maybe it seems funny or a little strange but we just got to that point where we can voluntarily leave each other’s presence, and it just happened tonight, just 10 minutes ago, so it’s a little hard. Yes, we have different work schedules and different days off, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about just moving into an apartment and spending every moment together that we can, but choosing to go to Walmart alone for whatever reason, leaving me here to read and feel that loss that comes with realizing that fairy tales aren’t real and some day I will have to grow up, too.

April 17, 2007. Have you ever been so hurt that you actually felt alone, even if you cared about the people around you? Have you ever so identified with a song or an album that even though you felt alone in this world, you felt almost connected while listening to it? I’m listening to the soundtrack to the movie Troy, not because Troy is my favorite movie, but because I can imagine some of the scenes in the Iliad so vividly while I’m listening to it that I don’t feel so alone anymore. Homer has always had a calming effect on me. He brings me back to life.

Iliad. Find: Book 21, Lines 462-466.

April 24, 2007. Seven hundred and eighteen books and counting… I sit here with my legs on his lap, the exhaustion creeping in from playing Tetris with boxes full of knowledge and entertainment, love stories and escape routes. I wonder if having the word document is enough: do I really want to record all 718 books into my library database? Yes, I answer myself; yes, I do. If not to show off, then at least for reference when I’m standing in the middle of a bookstore wondering if I’ve bought this book before. It looks familiar… But then, after a while, they all do.

April 30, 2007. Sometimes when I think of you I just want to cry. What I’m usually thinking is that the side I got to know was the side that you wish you were, not the person who you actually were. And then I think that sometimes it seems like it’s this way with everyone. That’s what makes me want to cry. It makes me feel so totally alone, that everyone who I know may actually be entirely someone else. I wished you would have changed that perception, but you were just like them.

May 3, 2007. Today I discovered that I don’t like Breyer’s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. I’ll have to remember to stick to something better, like Ben&Jerry’s. I’ve spent the last 45 minutes picking out the cookie dough pieces and shoving the melted, bland white ice cream to the side with the back of my spoon. On that note, I’m on a diet, but you wouldn’t be able to tell based on how

ferociously

I’ve been hunting for these cookie dough pieces. I miss college sometimes. Homework was such a distraction from menial activities such as this.