Kevyn called last night. She'd been worried about me because I'd been so far away when we'd all met at Colin's a few weeks ago. (She thought I'd "just been depressed.") So I finally told family about the crush. I'm glad it was Kevyn, only a year older and also single. She's recently been on the Julie-side of my problem, though to a more extreme extent, when a first date brought long-stemmed red roses with him. I told her what I'd said to Julie right away at the coffee shop. She applauded my boldness. I asked her what she thought would be the intentions of someone who told her she was fascinating, and she said that word was a dead-cinch indication of romantic intent. Well, at least Julie was not naive there. I had no delusion that it was an innocuous word--of course, I knew it would have an impact--but I didn't have a clue that it was so specifically fraught. She also felt that I was far from the ordinary guy in wanting the truth behind a rejection.
Kevyn asked me, "What's so attractive about her?" I assumed she meant besides her obvious external beauty. I said, after a long, blank pause, "No one's ever asked me that." I didn't know. A flickering light briefly illuminated an ugly thought: that despite my protestation, this may really have been an "attraction of convenience," that only Julie's proximity and availability were attractive to me. This afternoon, as I stared uncaringly at a football game, I felt so far from any new thought on this problem that I, not very flippantly, decided I'd have to leave the resolution up to a breakthrough on the scale of epiphany. Is that what happens when we finally give up on ourselves: we start grasping at Fate's lapels and plead to be bailed out of the nightmare? That would be my plan if I could give up the reins. For me, it equates to giving myself over to religion--not while I still have a thought--however idiotic and unhelpful--in my head. Though an awful feeling tells me I must succumb sometime. It's just like sleep, right? I don't stand a chance. Sleep is certainly an attractive offer. Along with a lobotomy.
I was nodding on the sofa, thinking how nice an early night's bed would be after today's early arisal, when I thought about how I'd awaken. Could I possibly feel any better, face Julie any more naturally, be any less envious of the people she chose to talk to? One long stupid question. My neck, which had just gotten stiffer with the growing (now waning) day somehow found a new standard of ossification. Maybe writing would help, though. What?! Can it possibly be measured how stupid I am? How impenetrable my brain is to its own thoughts? Words are all I have, and yet they're all I have. No meaning. No context to my heart whatsoever.
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