12:12

godammit. Am I ever going to stop missing him? Am I ever going to stop being haunted? I’ve been calling the end of J. a ‘breakup’ just to use a conventional term. But it’s really a ‘vanishing’.

I can’t even be angry about it. Or I’m past that. I was treated appallingly towards that end, but it had nothing to do with me, and it’s something I’ll probably never understand. I mean, how do you completely sever from someone from whom the last time you were with it was in their arms, like a baby. Or from whom the last time you called was with such pleasure and ease [this was a huge step for him].
How does it happen that a week later I'm talking to a different person? I call, he picks up, and in a tense voice says he’s in the middle of a disaster work crisis and will call back in a minute, but he never calls back. Ever. In one week. After seven months of getting closer to a person. I will never, ever, understand that. And i squirm at how I let myself bleed, in phone calls, in emails, with no response, while i was trying to grasp what was happening. But of course I'm not sorry for any of it.

And then there are the obsessive drive-bys of his house I've been doing. At first they were comforting, like being close to him, and then just obsessive; and now maybe less frequent and obsessive, but more of a curiosity or game, to see if anything changes. Because, for the past month and a half, NOTHING has changed and no one is home. His car is there, parked in the same fucking spot, in the same position; even at hours when it shouldn’t be there, it hasn’t fucking moved, and obviously no one is home, even though the car is. Recently I go back just to see if anything has changed, if the car is gone, or if another one has come, if the shutters have been opened, or if a light is on. I have to stop this, really, but I let myself indulge. Now I just want to see that car move or I want to see it gone. I want to see a sign of life or change.

All I do know is that he struggles with something he can’t control or navigate.
And I know that he’s extraordinarily disciplined and guarded and in need of control. And that he has the constitution and ability to shut off and cut out, mercilessly, those things that cause him pain, or disturb him – at whatever cost to himself or others. This I’ve known. This is how I know I’ll never see him again.

And I’m missing him even more in this land of idiots with no sense of humor, that I find myself in.
But you know, there have been some very good things to come out of this miami misadventure – though, they won’t add to up to shit if I don’t start putting together the things I’ve learned here.

And how many shining people do I need, really? Just a few, even if we’re surrounded by our idiot kingdoms – giselle at the school, and me with the group, and paul, even if it’s just for one evening, in the atrium.
Here we are.