so pathologically indifferent sometimes

May, 1995

I can’t believe how badly I miss Jackson.

The only thing is just to get through it. I miss him so much. I thought I was in love with him. I thought this might be the one for good. Isn’t that stupid. I don’t think I felt that way about Paul.

I really did sometimes think we would get married and have kids. I kind of wanted that, or maybe I just want it with somebody and went hanging it on you, and you did the same.

I think this whole thing was so emotionally intense for so long I guess it needs to cool down so we can live without destroying each other.

It feels pretty terrible to feel so alone. I miss you and I still want to be with you I just want things to be different than they were, and I have the saddest feeling they couldn’t be. If they could have been, they would have been different.

Why do things happen the way they do. When you approve of me I feel great. Everybody wants to feel like their lover loves them. You told me I was too demonstrative. I’ve never been with somebody who is so pathologically indifferent sometimes.

Haven’t spoken to Ava since she came by on Thursday and played Listen to How Fabulous I Am. She’s so high on herself, her promotion at work, her plans to go to Paris with her sister this spring. I’m sure she knows about the fight with Jackson, how he threw me out of his house, how I sobbed and begged him to let me stay.

Well fuck it, the two of them can sit around discussing me, like I used to discuss him with her and her with him, I don’t care. I am rubber and they are glue. And they both live right down the block, what a fucking nightmare.

I left a copy of the paper out so she had to congratulate me on the new piece, ha ha. You could hear how hard it was for her to say congratulations. She started to tell me about “what [I] missed” at the café on Friday, while I was home trying not to claw my own eyes out and punch bloody holes in my legs. Blahblah Hyphenated-Hyphen was there, she said. Jackson loves his work. I said yeah, I’m focusing more on prose than poetry these days, the paper wants me to contribute regularly.

Monday:

If it was all my fault at least I could do something to change it.

I didn’t mean to be too emotionally dependent. Why did you have to be so critical all the time? Sometimes I felt so disliked by you. And yet I’m still in love with you, for some reason it feels good to think about loving you.

I could picture being with you and moving to a house with you and having kids with you. Can you imagine? I have ha thoughts of spending the rest of my life with you, until we’re old. I love you, crankster.

I would love it if we could start over, take each other’s hand and say we would be there and love each other. And know that it was good, know that we could be happy together, loving each other openly and so honest I would want to be so honest with you. I would want to say “I’m happy for you about your new job but also makes me feel like shit, I mean, I definitely want you to have it, no question, but sometimes I actually feel competitive with you.” Why do I feel competitive?

I miss being honest with you. When we were friends everything wasn’t so much at stake. Why do I remember our friendship so fondly? Was it all that great? I remember feeling like you could be a jerk, but liking the fact that you wanted to fuck me. I felt like you wanted more from me than I wanted from you. When did that change?

I should call him tonight. I want to call you right now but what will happen? What do I want? I don’t want to see him, or maybe I do, desperately, but I don’t want to be desperate!

I probably screwed it up now, now you don’t want this, you feel better without it, something does feel somehow resolved.

I don’t want to make you bash your head into walls ever again. I don’t want to be a bad thing. I try so hard to be a good thing.

Thursday

Jackson called Saturday night and left a message on the machine. He sounded angry and bitchy as usual. So glad I didn’t answer. I guess I’m supposed to be grateful that he called, but I’m not calling him back. If he wants me to stay, he’s going to have to beg, the way I begged him.

Thank god for the new shrink. Judith. I was crying and crying on her couch last week because I know I have to walk away from him, and I don’t want to. I just want him to love me again, the way he did before we got together.

I was saying that maybe I am the problem. Jackson loved me until he saw who I really am.

Judith said it’s not you, you’re not crazy. She says everybody’s been telling me my whole life that I’m the problem child, but I’m not. I didn’t run away from home to live in a shelter because I was bad or crazy. It’s the opposite. Leaving my crazy mother and her crazy situation was the only sane thing to do. Which is so true.

The problem is that then people look at you and say oh, she’s a runaway, she’s a bad kid. A delinquent, promiscuous drug user, in my case also true. Judith says I took on the definition of myself as a bad kid, which makes it easy for people to label me that way, and it all becomes a cycle.

Felt a million times better after the session. I must have looked high when I got to work, my eyes were puffy and I was in a great mood. But then I went to the bathroom later, put my thumb in my mouth and felt like I wanted to cry. Why didn’t someone explain this to me before? I’m not bad, I’m not, and I wasted all this time.

Judith says I should tell my mother that I can’t have lunch next weekend. I’d love to, believe me, but I can’t. She’d hit the roof. It seems so simple when I’m there in Judith’s office, just tell my mother I can’t make it this time and I’ll see her in two weeks. But if it was that easy I’d have done it long ago. Judith says okay, but remember that it’s your decision to see her or not see her. You don’t owe her anything. I wish I could see it that way.

(To read the girl bomb diaries in chronological order, click here.)