10-13-03 - 11:09 p.m.
Tonight, consulting the hot-water-muse, I gave myself the first good look in a long time. What I saw was my prided legs blotchy white and red and covered in hair. I started to wonder, when did I get this way? How come there's no razor in here? Did I actually have sex with these legs? My mind starts to wander to baggy patterned underwear I've been wearing, of forgotten hair under hats. . . I've let myself get frumpy. It occured to me right then that it'd been a month -- dead on a month, and I never even thought of it. Although I did think of him. It's been a long month.
After three days of no talking -- the longest we've gone -- he called me with anticipation but really nothing to say. With no idle chatter in me, I expressed the disappointment I have over poet's group. I felt like an alien, I said. I got attached to them, and they don't miss me. They don't respond to my emails. He told me I had too many expectations, and I began to cry. "I only have the expectations I hold for myself! I care about them, why can't they care about me?" The irony of my words didn't hit me. "You've only known them a few months." "You don't understand," I said. "I have two types of interactions with people: acquaintances and relationships. Relationships involve caring." "The group is poetic, not social, Amy." After I got off the phone, I cried and cried and my Mom held me. She is the same way -- casual friendships are difficult. Intimate relationships are impossible and necessary.
It wasn't until several hours later that I realized what these words resembled. I am constantly looking for the same type of validation and not finding it. Perhaps my notions of being loved are unrealistic, but I will never give up on that. I think, though, that I do tend to perceive myself as rejected and look for ample proof that I am not. This is the truth of the pain I am feeling: It is BAT I feel isolated from. It is BAT I want to show that he loves me. I miss the poet's group, but perhaps, as I first discovered it with him, this is an extension of my missing him. Of the things that he has given me that no one else could, this is one of the principal things. I don't know how he plans to acheive the growth he talks of. .
