how to fight loneliness

I made a really, really, REALLY big mistake about 3 years and 4 months ago. And I still think about it every single day.

i found god on the corner of bloor and devonshire

It's been about a year and a half and I guess you're probably never going to talk to me again. Instead, you'll talk to all of my best friends, my exboyfriends, the people who inadvertently chose sides. You'll treat those other girls like you used to treat me. You'll ignore every single message I try to send you, and you'll keep me blocked on MSN. You'll (unintentionally) remind me every single day that I should have run after you and told you not to go and tried to work it out with you. You'll (unintentionally?) make me question if what you said was right--Maybe I should have looked right in front of me.

You'll act like you don't miss me, but I'm really hoping you still do.

You were my best friend for five years and we talked for five hours and yelled for five minutes and threw it all away in five seconds. Those years, those hours, those minutes boiled down to mere seconds and it was over a lot faster than it should have been. And it's hard to get something back from someone when they're resistant and distant and pretending to be nonexistent.

I still read that letter you wrote me the night before you left. I hope one day I'll start reading it less than I do, and I'll finally get on from this. If you're not coming back--absolutelyundernocircumstancesnotachanceinthewholeknownworld--I'm not going to wait forever just hoping that you do.

i'm losing you and it's effortless.

It is in her bedroom, with her gone to shower, that he finds himself anxious yet curious, coaxed into her life—her collection of nail polish, her crocheted pillows. It is a cozy bedroom, all personality and memories. She is a student, and her bedroom reflects chaos and cleverness. But it is also charming, the colours warm, bright, marked by content. Kind of like her, he contemplates. He touches her things, her bed sheets, picture frame, laptop. He feels uncomfortable in this room.

On her dresser, near the window, he sees a handmade book. He listens for the shower and hesitates before opening it. It is filled with pictures, words, scraps of paper. The words are short sentences, small phrases with sharp meanings. Beside, above, below the words are pictures—pictures of her, with, most importantly, other guys. He flips through the pages, and begins to see a pattern. The pictures, from beginning to end, are of the same guy.

He stops at a page. The picture is dead centre, staring, taunting. The words are sparse and followed by a broken heart. He mouths them: Forever? For always? For now. The words “for now” are bold. He picks at the edge of the journal and broods. He recognizes the face. Before him, there was him. She had mentioned him briefly. Passed it off with a wave of her hand, kissed his cheek for comfort. “Nothing but history,” she had said, alleging its triviality. He had treated her poorly, his words always biting. He remembers the look in her eyes. Wonders: Was that nostalgia?

He turns a few more pages. The picture is off to the left, the faces smiling, the heads turned towards each other. The entry is verbose, bursting with words. Some lines are emphasized, others are scrawled quickly. The most prominent line is capitalized. It reads: I WOULD JUST DISAPPEAR IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU LIKE NAILS IN MY FEET. He recoils. She said the same thing to him the other day, running her fingers along his. Breathing the words as if they were honest, smiling as if they were true. “I’ve never said these words,” she promises, “to anyone.”

“I will never let you leave,” he had said, again and again, “But I’d rather hold your hand than nail your feet to the ground.”

His eyes start to burn. The shower is still running. He turns to the last page, sees the last picture, dominant on the page, the orange timestamp overbearing: a month ago yesterday. It seems so blinding that he pushes the book back on the dresser. His eyes focus on the words above the picture: He loves me … We should be okay. He chews the inside of his cheek, and remembers last month. They had been together for three months by that point. They had sat under the stars together the night before this picture was taken. They had carefully exposed their hearts, shared, smiled, laughed their way closer together. Then, at exactly 11:11, they made wishes. And though he swore never to say what it was, the smile she had was knowing. He ensconced himself into her side, kissed at her shoulders, pale and freckly, held her tighter and tighter, and tried to become one. Later, as the moon reflected in glass buildings, he looked at her and said: “I love you.”



The shower is off. He closes the book and sits on the edge of her bed. He looks across the room at himself in the mirror, sees a boy behind dark hair, alone, deceived, a fool, a victim. He hears the door of the bathroom swing open. She walks in, towel around her body. She pulls her hair back and tightens it. She smiles and looks at him. He looks away.

another night with him, but i'm always wanting you.

new word:
periphrasis: a roundabout way of speaking or writing; circumlocution.

if this ain't love, then how do we get out?

"A child doesn't know much about a man's face but feels what most of us believe all our lives, that he can tell a good face from a bad. The soldiers who performed their duty, handing back to mothers the severed heads of daughters--with braids and hairclips still in place--did not have evil in their faces. There was no perversion of features while they did their deeds. Where was their hatred, their disgust, if not even in their eyes, rolling invisibly back in their sockets, focused on the unanswerable fact of having gone too far? There's the possibility that if one can't see it in the face, then there's no conscience left to arouse. But that explanation is obviously false, for some laughed as they poked out eyes with sticks, as they smashed infants' skulls against the good bricks of good houses. For a long time I believed one learns nothing from a man's face. When Athos held me by the shoulders, when he said, 'Look at me, look at me' to convince me of his goodness, he couldn't know how he terrified me, how meaningless the words. If truth is not in the face, then where is it? In the hands! In the hands."

(Anne Michael, Fugitive Pieces)