8:15 p.m. - 09/14/02
:/i lived a whole life in one night\:
I hate being alone at night. The darkness is intrinsic, penetrating. It comes from all sides, wafting in and out. I miss always having people to hold even when the sun is on the other side of the world. I miss so much so badly even now.
Dear Red,
It's been so long. I can't imagine what it means in your time. I still wonder what three months with you could equal in the world outside. If I look at one year as inadequate to get through something similar, how long did three months last? If relationships I built for years falter when compared with you, how long was I really there? I'm scared you won't like me if you here these things; I don't want to upset you. I'm supposed to be all better now, or at least, not better in predictable ways. I'm supposed to struggle now and again, but now how badly I want this. I'm not supposed to stare at the phone nights thinking how much I want to call you, feeling the pain and the tears well up, even though they're frozen and they will not come. Thinking maybe this will be the night, maybe I will call you tonight, only to realize, no...I can't talk to you. Not when I miss you so much. Not when you might not understand. I can't stand up against the distance, against the possibility it will be less than what I had with you. I can't promise myself I won't disintegrate if I say I love you and you don't say it back. So I don't say anything at all.
You never touched me, Red. Not until the very end. You never held me. You never held my hand. You never said you loved me. You never let me feel safe saying it. So why am I so sure I do? And why do I need so badly for this to be true? How do I still know that what I had with you was the best thing I've ever had, maybe that I ever *will have,* and need so badly for you to call that love? So many lesser, painful things have been called love; I want to believe that what I'm searching for is something like what I had with you. I need you. Even now, I need you, and it's so painful that I can't express that just because it's true. It's so painful that the one reason I can't be on the phone with you is because I need you. How much I need you might come through in my voice, and then where would I be.
Heat in my stomach, in my throat, stinging my eyes. I allow my imagination to wander through the phone lines; I allow myself to dream the rarest dream. And the pain roars up, and I know I am not dramatizing this, I am not pretending; it is real. I still want you more than anything. I still watch bad television because someone looks like, feels like, talks like part of you. I recklessly avoid all thoughts of you only to rock within them for a night. I run only to hit you at a higher speed. I love you and I miss you and I need you to love me. I know it isn't right and it isn't politically correct and it isn't the American dream. But it's my dream. I know you think that getting better is supposed to be something different, something that allows me to go out into the world and love it, but I don't love the world. I love you. I love you, for showing me the world, for teaching me how deeply I could feel, for teaching me how fully safe I could be. I love you for making the deepest part of the night and the earliest part of the morning feel safe, for making food feel safe, for taking my pulse each morning and always wishing me good night. I love you for all the times you didn't kick me out of the office, and all the times you're doing so brought up the feelings/ words I needed to stay there. I love everyone of your faces, even those that are growing so blurry, so sketched. I love that when I dream of you, you're still so real. That when I see little bits of you - yarn, songs, movies - scattered about, the pain is still so sharp. I can't let it get any less. It could never lessen, but if it wanted to, I wouldn't let it. Because I love you, I love you, I love you, and I won't let that go.
Even if it means I can never tell you. Even if it means my whole three months of last-years go by without speaking to you. If suddenly it is November 11th, and I never got the nerve to call. I can't let it go; that might hurt even more. In my life, I've been able to turn any memory into what I needed it to be- to erase, dissect, revise them. But I can't let that happen with you. You're everything good I have in this world all at once. You're everything I do not have.
Everything I need...is...
Julie put that song up in Atomgirl when I wasn't able to update. And it comes to me right now. Dar is on the stereo, and Dar means Sara and I are in the art room late at night. She's painting an image-project she doesn't realize the quality of, and I'm scribbling with pastels, or maybe making someone a poster, a note. There's glitter everywhere, and later in the week, we'll be punished for messing up the art room, even though we didn't. When I go to bed tonight, Dixie will have already been asleep for hours. When I go to bed tonight, it will be a long time before Tracy follows suit. She might wake me in the night, to show me what she bought on outing. I so rarely go. I'd rather stay, stay in the beauty, the safety, not remember the world outside. I'd rather be safe, so they can come home to me, and prove they are still real.
I want to be woken up in the middle of the night by you. By your realness. I want to never forget and never be forgotten.
And it's your fault I love you so much, so why can't you say yes, Mary, yes, we understand? Why didn't you teach me to risk this *one last thing*?
love, as if it weren't redundent,
Mary
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