#126

I’m in a reverie again. This lightly blue, slightly somber landscape of happy memories tugs at my heart in ways very little can. Longing. That’s what it is. I haven’t longed for anything for a long time. A long time for me, anyway. It’s been months since I’ve wanted anything as much as I do now. But the funny thing is….I don’t even know what I want. I just know I want.

I know some of the things I want. I know that I do hope for some things. Maybe that’s what I want so badly. Maybe I just want everything to work out and I just don’t realize they’re as important to me as they are.

I worry that I’m not giving those hopes enough time of day. I know I hope and I know I dream…but for nearly all of them…I feel hopeless about. They all seem virtually impossible. The things I want most…I want to be accepted into the Jewish culture…I want Jacinta back in my life in a loving sort of way, even if it’s not dating (but I want that too, I think) instead of this tense and oversensitive place that we’re at now…I just want things to be good between us again….I want my family and I to be on good terms with one another…I want to help people profoundly, I want more than just being a nice person…I want to be loved by someone special to me…I want to live and be in a place where I feel loved and accepted and cared for by many rather than just one or two…I want to get into Brown and I want to be respected as a good person and liked too. I don’t want to be hurt anymore, I don’t want to lose anymore. I want to be happy. I want to be happy.

All of these things seem like they’ll never happen. When I think and try to use my logic…I see very little hope. I’m going to try anyway because I’m too stupid to want the things that I can actually reach…

The fact of the matter is that I don’t understand the Jewish culture very well because I wasn’t raised in it and the only person I really know is Jacinta and she and I…yeah. I’ve been accepted for the most people who are ‘Jewish’ but know very little about the faith and have very little faith period, if any. The rest seem to just smile and nod and then ignore me when it comes to things like faith. I really feel unaccepted and unimportant in that sphere, even if they like me on a friend level. It’s like…the faith is something to be kept just around those who know and hidden from anyone else. I don’t feel accepted at all by the people I want to relate to, to the people who really do believe and who I can talk to and feel close to, even if it’s just because of similarity of beliefs. There’s a brotherhood in that faith, I know there is, I can feel it. It’s just like being one of the broken, one of the damaged…a brotherhood I’m very much a part of. There’s an unspoken knowledge of each other, even if you’re wildly different in opinions and tempermant, just because you both came from terrible home situations. There’s this unspoken understanding and it binds you together in ways that are impossible in words to describe adequately. The truly Jewish have that too, I can feel it. I can sense it amongst them. I hope that when I move I won’t be slashdotted by those there…but I don’t have much hope for that. I haven’t grown up the way they have and I’m always going to be different for that no matter what I do.

My family and I….that’s going to be so difficult and the problems I have with them are going to persist if we get back on talking terms. My mother and I have been on weird terms ever since we split apart. I’ve forgiven her for everything…but the tenseness between us still is there…from the moment I stabbed Fritz to the moments when I drop by to visit my sisters, the tenseness is almost tangible. You could easily reach out and touch it if you tried, I think. We’re not nearly as aggressive with each other as, say, we were a year ago, it’s almost completely civil now when we talk…but the tenseness is still there. I don’t know how to deal with it. And…I don’t want to do it alone. I’m going to be touchy with her and I know it. I really want someone to be there with me to help keep me focused and to help me with my emotion when I’m around her because I’m going to be easily upset around her. I know I will. I don’t know if I could do it alone. I really don’t. Same with my father, though the tenseness with him isn’t anywhere near as much. The fact of the matter is I just don’t care about him as much. I care a lot about my mother…I love her a lot and I think that’s why she bothers me so much when we get into tiffs. With my Dad…I can just not care. I used to look up to him and want to be like him and like the things he liked but…I became disenchanted with him. I learned just how dumb I really was at the time. He’s done a lot of bad things in his life and he’s very, very much like me…I don’t think he knew exactly what he wanted and he overreacted and thus reacted poorly, just like I do, with me. And with my mother. I think he might have found what he was looking for, just because I know what I want, what I’m looking for. I think he’s happy with his life now, with Becky and Lucas. I know it is….just because I know he and I are the splitting image of each other. To him…I know what I am to him. He worries about me and he honestly wants the best for me but he doesn’t know how to control himself sometimes. I understand that…I had a helluva time learning control myself, too. Maybe it’s like me and my mother, for him. I also know he’s been bothered ever since his dad died because he didn’t care for his dad at all because his Dad used to beat on him too. My mother told me once that she knew him and that’s why he keeps trying to get in contact with me. It’s because he doesn’t want me to go to his funeral and not care. He doesn’t want the same thing to happen between us. The thought almost makes me cry…and I never cry. And I am. I don’t want it to happen either, I think. But it’s going to be hard. Going to be so hard to be the first one to move. I better move on…this subject is bothering me more than it should.

Jacinta….I want things to be ok between the two of us, too. I want these stupid, stupid tiffs to stop. I hate fighting with her, it really upsets me even though so little else can these days. It’s stupid really, why we’re so sensitive with one another. If we would stop to think about it, we’d know that the other loves us, they STILL love us despite what happens, and that that’s going to be the bottom line. We’re not trying to attack each other, we’re not trying to fight. Argh, and yet we sometimes do. I really don’t like it, I’m trying not to do it anymore. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong so I could fix it, I miss our openness and our love and our talks. She’s quite possibly the best conversation I’ve ever had on this entire planet out of absolutely everyone I’ve met. I think she might even be better than Amy and my Grandmother…both of whom have incredible conversation and understanding and knowledge too. It just never gets old. I really wish we talked more. Talked like we used to. And dating…thinking of that makes me want to cry too. I miss her so much, especially holding her, even though I only had such a short amount of time to do so. But I still remember…I know how she curves and what she smells like and the way her chest rumbles slightly when she talks and the way she kisses. But that’s nothing new, that’s nothing different. I’ve said that a

thousand times. I know I want her back, I know that, of all things, that’s probably the one thing I want most. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about that. I’ve said before that I wouldn’t date her if she asked me and that’s true. But I think….that it’s not like how I put it. I don’t spite her. I’m just afraid. I’m afraid of being with her again because I know it’d be so easy to lose her again. It’d hurt so much to lose something so precious. I’d do absolutely anything that she’d be happy…and to not be able to or to make her hurt, that absolutely destroys me, even more than the loss for me and all the way she enriches my life, too. That would be important too, that would burn for a long long time too, but hurting her just by being me, by being who I am, by having my name and by being born when I was, that would be the worst. I’m scared of that, I’m deathly afraid. Me. Mr. I’m not afraid of anything. Governed by fear. Sometimes I hate how I need to be more honest with myself than I used to be. I don’t like being scared to the point of rejecting something more important than the entire world.

I miss her a lot…looking at her prom pictures burned, too. She was so absolutely gorgeous and she was smiling and it made me feel like I was right there beside her, too. I just wanted to see how pretty she looked, I knew she would be because she is, I hadn’t expected the photos would be like that. I hadn’t realized they’d snap me back into one of those icy fantasy-visions with her. Not just someone, but her. I saw her talking to her friends and I stood there and just watched her. Then she turned towards me and saw me. She said my name, I said hers. She smiled at me and I walked to her on instinct and wrapped my arms around her tight. She hugged me back too, much tighter than she usually does, like she does when she’s worried or emotional. And I started to cry on her shoulder. I don’t know why, I don’t know if I was happy to be with her again, I don’t know if it was I was letting out all the hurts and pains that I know I’ve been bottling up over the breakup and everything or if it was something else. Maybe it was a little bit of all three. She just held on to me and I held on to her, too. I was so worried that she’d push me away, that she wouldn’t let me and that I’d make her look stupid but she didn’t care. She just kept hugging me tightly and I stopped and just held onto her too.

I wonder if I cry when we see each other again. I somehow know we will. Eventually. I hope I don’t…I don’t want her to push me away.