loose-leaf legal, 07-28-2007
Written on a sheet of yellow legal pad loose-leaf, sitting in the car at the Safeway by my new apartment. I had been thinking as I did my errands around the house and driving around and I just felt like the words were going to spill out of me, splash out into the world and evaporate (or drown me) if I didn’t get them out. (I didn’t end up going into Safeway, either. I went home after the deluge.)
I had the sheet of loose-leaf in my car because John wrote directions on it for me to get back from his new apartment (when I ended up lost in Alexandria, somehow, by a route I’ve never quite been able to replicate). I keep it folded up in a little paper pocket folder in the back of my main journal.
I transcribed this completely unedited. The only additions are in brackets.
I need to write so badly. I’m losing the details of my life and god knows this seems to be an important time. I am scribbling this in the car in the parking lot of the safeway, trying to capture the sentences that were ripe in my mind only a moment before, but they slide through my fingers like smoke. Dammit! Goddammit!
I know the last few entries I’ve written [in my journal] were slipping down the path of “Dear Diary, let me tell you about my day”—outside events, outside in—if “in” at all. But the inside stuff is dramatic. It’s important. I need to understand it, remember it, not let it disappear with ticket stubs and miles and hours and days.
It’s raining—cold rain. I was listening to the mix CD Patrick gave me on the drive here and thinking. I shopped today at the [Takoma Park] co-op for the first time, soaked from rain, hauling my new guitar on my back, bumping into people… and forgetting the chicken.
And on the drive here, I was thinking about the way the raindrops caught in my arm hairs, glistened, chilled me, evaporated in the jet of the car’s air conditioning, and the plasticky pool toy smell of my MuseumsQuartier umbrella mixing with the earthy smell of all the lovely trees in my neighbor’s yard as I put my big suitcase in the storage shed, which itself smelled surprisingly reminiscent of another storage shed from so long ago.
And I need to write about Justin, the good times and bad. The late night trips to Silver Diner (when I needed to let loose more). The DVDs, new pillows, and Pho. The escalating fights, how he took on my worst traits as a mantle he could wear. The physicality—the spiral down death of our relationship. The patronizing, glassy-eyed night at the diner I wanted to punch him for being in love with me still. The nerve. The cheese fries, the crisp scallions. These things need to be remembered, understood, reserved. The games. The arguments. The times I thought my life was perfect, so content I could melt into the universe, just so happy I could bust and melt away. The [happy] crying at Christmas. The problems I let him convince me didn’t exist. The finality of it all—the way it ended—four! and half! months ago! Did I get over it too soon? How do I simply resolve, and then… get over it so instantly? Did I love him?
[Of course I loved him.]
