Schmuck to the Second Power

"You are what you love, not what loves you." -Adaptation

"I was reading about how sometimes after people die, their loved ones think they have come back. They get this sense. I'm not talking about fantasizing that they are alive, but they really feel like the person is alive, but what they never talk about is, what if it happened? what would happen then?"-Truly Madly Deeply

When I was with Eric, I had this journal. It was this really nice leather bound one with cream pages. My mother gave it to me. She's given me enough journals and stationery to open my own Kate's Paperie. ( she's very encouraging of the writing thing) Anyway, I had this beautiful journal for a while, but I never used it. I have this habit of starting journals and abadoning them about half way through and then instead of taking that one back up, I would just start a different one. So I had this really nice one, and I didn't want it to be just another half finished journal. And then I met Eric and I went and got that journal out and started writing in it because I knew when I met him it was the start of something amazing. I wanted it saved, preserved.

And the day he left me, I took that journal, with maybe only about 60 pages left, and put it in my underwear drawer. I have not opened it since. When I got low on underwear I see it mocking me. And until this week I have never felt the urge to open it. I have never felt the urge to take it up gain.

But this week I have. And part of it has to do with a situation that I can not write about here. A situation that I am bound to silence on for a huge variety of reasons. But because of this situation, I want to start writing in the journal again. But I am afraid to open it. Afraid of what will confront me when I do.

We all have these ideas about who we are, these myths of our own identity. I tend to see myself in one aspect as a victim of male desire. Men want me, and I want to make them happy, and so I give in. But some men I have been involved with pointed that I was not the victim, but often was the aggressor, or at least that is how it felt to them, that I not only wanted male desire but I demanded it. And this disturbs me, because I don't feel like an aggressor at all. So then I become all confused about what really happened and who am I really and how much I contributing to huge mess that is my life. And I am afraid to look in these journals and see who I really was, see how things really were, to begin to seperate out the fantasy of that life and that girl from the real me.

One of the things that I wrote about the Florida trip is that hanging out with Ma Belle Ami, someone has known me close to a decade, is that he made me realize how much I changed for the better. Generally I look at myself of the past and I look at myself now and I think I have utterly degenerated ( le mot du jour-the word of the day). But Ma Belle Ami made me realize that in many ways I have improved.

And that should be a good thing, but it just makes me realize how much my perception of even myself is off.

Now I could just start writing in the journal you say. Right sure, because I have such iron clad self control that I would be able NOT to look at all those entries I wrote poolside in las vegas.

and of the situation of which I can not write, but some of you may have guessed of which I speak, what if the cure is worse than the disease? What if I have traded one kind of pain, a real one, for a phantom pain? A fantasy simply to keep me entertained.

I do know this about myself, I am not a person who can not live long without the fantasy of love. I need to believe that I have the possibility of it. And yet in two years, the few men (3) that I could have loved are all in their own ways unattainable. Am I doing it to myself? Do I pick them because I don't want to go through it again? Or do I do it because I am one of those stubborn women who thinks she want s a challenge to prove her worth? Or am I just plain stupid?

Do I write in the journal again or should I remain in fear of words that I wrote two years ago?

The answer always seems so simple when its stated. But even reading the email Eric sent me on 9-11 reduced me to tears (I was going to use it for the glamour essay), what will the journal do. It also has his love letters in it. The only love letters I have ever received.

So sad for a writer.