Bite the bullet.

Five years ago I was traipsing around the hills of Northern San Diego, wondering when I'd see my new! favorite! person! next.

Today I'm sitting in my a tiny room in an outer borough of DC, wondering if I'll ever see him again.

Either the physical person who has persisted from then to now, or the intangible person I felt so strongly about. Our contact these days is reduced to text messages about taxes, paperwork, and the dozen boxes he's holding in storage for me.

Next free day I have could be devoted to picking up those last boxes, fortifying and labling them, and sending them ahead to California, where I will once again roost. I could do it under the cover of workday, slip in, haul out, leave his storage key under the mat. Other than the lump over foot and the sixteen words hidden deep in his cell phone, he wouldn't know the difference. No confrontation to take coveted items off his shelves. I'd give up and be gone, my will and influence departed from his life, no say over what he does with time, money, goods.

The waves created by this tectonic shift in my life have lessened over time. They're less frequent, no longer a daily occurrence, but when the swells do come, they are sometimes enough to capsize me. On those days I'm bleak and hungry, but I'm not sure for what.

Last time I saw him, the day I packed the last of my belongings, I could barely look him in the eye. Shamefully I hid the muddy chaos of my mental state. I wanted to ask "what are you feeling? how are you doing, really? what do you think of...." The trailing off would gesture to the frayed ends between us. There's a clear division, like that painting I once made with two trees nearly but not quite bridging the chasm between them. The wind might blow branches over the tug-of-war line in the middle, but they never really overlap, never connect. Did we used to? Could we again? Should we?

But I can't start that conversation. It'd be pointless, masochistic, and a repetition of every reason I cried on the floor of the guestroom in the first place.

* * *

3.14.06 was actually ripe with livejournal posts. It's interesting to look back on how much hasn't changed.

aw, crap.

I clicked on the game chef link on someone's LJ... and the design bug bit me.

The transmission of this post was interrupted by me having the sudden desire to draw a picture of myself getting gnawed on by nine giant bugs.

*fallsover*

I AM AN ANNIE OF IRONY, SELF DEFEATING AND SELF ENHANCING AT EVERY TURN!

... I want to write about that. I really do. I want to follow up and say how I'm always pulled in six creative directions, how my art is as crappy now as it was then, how Mike gets on my case about never knowing what I want to pursue, but this blast from the past (exactly 5 years ago!) subverts that impulse:

Most of my time since Friday night has been spent wrapped up in arm and/or brain with him. We partied (for three hours) in Escondido on Saturday, we did creative things (for two hours) in Oceanside on Sunday, we drove (for four hours) to Upland and back Monday.

The potential separation came up in conversation once. My brain is split, the left hemisphere not knowing what the right hemisphere is caring about, and vice versa. I throw myself towards college with the same gusto I throw myself into a vat of hearts juice, and my brain can't reconcile the incompatibility. This came up in conversation once, and he said, "I don't know what to say yet, but I don't think we could do long-distance." I pretty much agree. Neither of us are good on the phone, and he does many times better in person than he does via text.

At that point in time I'd applied to school in Savannah and planned a campus visit with my folks. On that trip I would find out I'd been accepted, and was so certain about the way life was going, purchase an engagement gift for him (for when the time came).

I suppose that era was so ripe with romantic brainsplatter that reading my diary for any day in 2006 would yield the same shuddering angst. Same or worse.

* * *

I'm getting divorced and moving back to CA. I'll live with my parents, find a meager job, and go to school, shooting for journalism.

These are the things going on in my life.