a recollection

i'm forcing myself not to look. i came back last night, to kelly. i just haven't heard from her since. expected a message when i woke this morning. thought of it first thing, heart skipped a beat. nice way to start one's day. played it cool to myself, didn't rush getting downstairs. stopped for chapstick like always. and opened the computer to... nothing. she was online even. what a world i live in, waiting for messages online. she was there and then she was gone. i waited all day and she never showed. saw she had returned tonight but still no dice. maybe i should write her? she's probably busy. maybe she is ignoring me as well. i wouldn't blame her. i'm an awful friend. i will write her tomorrow, a text maybe. i can't find any good words right now.

i'm writing by the light of the christmas tree. i love having a tree around. no ornaments on it yet, just strung with lights and sitting off my right hand shoulder like a missile prepped and ready to launch. or a japanese office building half filled, late into the night.

i cut on the fire earlier, pulled over the little red and white checkerboard fabric bench with the wood frame to sit on. it's a layout i use quite frequently, probably every day during the cooler months. i walked over and got some chapstick and noticed it as i was returning. how familiar it all is. checking all the time for a message on the computer. i would have guessed, if you'd asked me six years ago, that i would be better off somehow by now. that i would have grown or changed myself around enough such that i wouldn't still be entertaining such situations. six years ago i would be sitting in the same spot on the same bench. i'd have the door to the sunporch, over on the left, open just so - and held with a chair - such that it would reflect to my eye the computer screen on the porch. it was a beautiful and simple geometrical arrangement. i can't remember when i came up with it but it was brilliant. from the screen, off the glass of the door, to me. i could sit in front of the fire watching television and glance over without getting up to see if jessica had arrived and left me a message. moved on? not quite.

the only other way i would set it up was if she was away and i'd program a sound - always a cow's moo - to sound if she returned. that moo sound will still give me the chills if i hear it. funny how those things stick with you.

i wrote danielle the other night, a long letter going on about my whole situation. about the loneliness and depression and self-loathing that i've become so cozy with. i forgot to mention the martyrdom... how i felt better being away from kelly for such imaginative reasons. like that i couldn't possibly be but a burden to her, one that i'd so graciously relieved her of in my absence. that i could feel - without even talking to her - how i was slipping out of her life. this is the last thing i want, really, but i could tell, somehow, that she was happier without me around. that i knew this without knowing it and it was keeping me away. i forgot to mention all that.

i remember writing a long time ago - freshman year probably - a retrospective about my time with jessica in high school. all my memories of her in one long post. i haven't and am not about to do the same thing with kelly but it reminded me... the first time i spoke to her was on the floor in the lounge of luter dorm at wake while she was talking to ka. i kept stealing the computer or something or telling her what to write and finally she left to run back to her room and told me to talk to kelly for a bit. so i did. she told me that we were like the same person, her and i. she might have even said we'd be perfect for each other, i can't remember. i do remember talking about belle & sebastian. i think i thought it would impress her. i knew she was into music. i still have two files ka forwarded to me, from ben folds' songs for silverman lp. ones she'd played on a record player and recorded for me. i can hear all the crackles and blips. i treated them with reverence back then and still have probably only listened to them once. i remember looking up her picture when i got back to my room and thinking how interesting it was. how i wasn't immediately attracted to her above all others but that she was someone i should get to know. today it's one of my favorite pictures of anyone. ever. things change without telling me.

i think sometimes now about songs she sent me, mixes we make for each other. i stop to consider like i never did before about what if anything they mean. when did she send this? was it during the time she felt so strongly over me? did she choose this song with me in mind? i don't know that i've ever come to any real conclusion over this but i do wonder. i do choose my songs more carefully now.

good luck and goodbye