terrible fucking hurricane of greedy emotion

April 1995

I don’t know why I feel so low, or rather I know only too well. But I really do fight it. To break it down is fighting it. I don’t mean to drag you into my pit of doom. I do sometimes need a hand up from it.

Making love isn’t everything. Sometimes it would just feel so good if you would hold me and reassure me. Not of your feelings for me which I don’t doubt really. Not any more than you sometimes do.

I know my crying makes you angry, but you’re not responsible for either causing it or making it stop. If I feel like crying to you it’s just that letting it out makes me feel better.

I need so much to feel understood, that you feel some compassion for me, that I’m not an exasperating, debilitating freak. Sometimes I feel like I’m just supposed to come around when I’m ready to be happy and supportive, and go away when I feel miserable and sick.

My neuroses are overbearing sometimes. A little cuddling goes a long way. It isn’t good that I focus on sex so much. I think I’ve made you afraid to come near me, or you think I’m constantly unsatisfied. I’m wonderfully satisfied by you and always feel great before, during, afterwards, thinking about it two days later.

I do understand that you’re not an indolent dilettante like moi. And you’re right. A week is not a long time. Especially last week. And I do try to not come on to you all the time. I’m only human, though.

And I shouldn’t have gotten all uppity last week about don’t kiss and fondle me if you’re not going to put out. Because that was stupid and cutting off my nose to spite my face and alienating to you.

Kissing and fondling and going to sleep is just great. I love to kiss and fondle you. Do you know that just laying flat on your back or your stomach and not moving, you look and say and feel so sexy that you are an amazing lover just like that.

I don’t feel like it’s an effort to make love to you, but I know it’s different for men. There’s already a lot of pressure socially and intimately. And emotionally between us I feel like you sometimes regard me as an obligation or responsibility, another pressure.

Maybe I should just give you a whole bunch of space. Me, I sometimes need a whole bunch of close.

It was pretty nauseating how I revered my other ex. He was fabulously smart and sensitive, charming, funny, loving and patient. It was obvious I didn’t deserve him. I was crazy, and he was sane. God, I miss him.

He always took such good care of me. He would hold me and rock me when I felt anxious or sad. He called me beautiful baby, his little baby, or sometimes little mama. I was little mama, and he was big daddy. He was so strong. He had those big arms.

Sometimes I would sling my knees over his arm, cling around his neck, just cry into his chest while he shhhh’d me. It was after we learned to nip it in the bud. I would start to get the sick feeling in my stomach, and I would just call him on the phone or curl right into his lap. He loved to cuddle with me. We were both such fiends for touch.

You hate me, I would bawl mercilessly. You hate me, you wish I was dead. He held all my limbs to my body so I couldn’t punch or kick myself. How many times did he get hit accidentally?

Other times I resented him so much I thought my head would explode. I wasn’t all crazy. I was beautiful and smart and worthwhile and perfect, too. Sometimes I would shriek myself into oblivion and he would just sit there staring at the floor.

And even in the highest peak of my dementia I would think, that’s right, good for you, don’t indulge me, teach me how to go off and indulge myself.

I wrote you a letter of apology and it makes me sick. Now I’d like to come over to your house and ball it up and ram it down your throat.

Why do you always say, “I love you,” like you’re complaining. I feel pretty hurt and isolated and sad. It’s very painful to think about you right now.

I have a hard time accepting all of the responsibility for our problems. I am the terrible fucking hurricane of greedy emotion, and you the lone islander clinging sideways to a tree.

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