1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I wondered aloud to Pasha recently how peculiar my life is. Why is it exactly the way it has ended up? It's so easy for it to have been so different. Small differences could have had such huge impacts. Things that were a given but could so easily have been different.

"Tender Mercies" was on TV. I had forgotten about that movie. It had been on the film syllabus for Prof. Morris's class. What a perfect title, so fitting to catch that on TV now.

Why couldn't the 'rents have been just a little bit different? How different would I be if they had just shown just a bit of concern, had a bit of presence, tried to be parents beyond providing the basic necessities? How different would my life be now?

Instead, the relationship is so specific, and I'm caught in a trap where I hate them, but I can't break away from them. They rule my life despite my personal rebellion, but I can't make things happen in my life. How would I be if they were open-minded, aware that another reality exists, knew more about the world around them? What if they weren't so greedy and attached to the rule of money?

Why Amina? What happened with her was so specific. She was the one. She is the person I've been looking for all my life and might have looked for through other lives. I've always believed that once I was in a relationship that I really wanted to be in, when I had found the one, I would be able to stay in it no matter what obstacles we faced. All I had to do was show my love and true emotions and be honest with them and her. Communicate and commit. It didn't work. None of it worked, I couldn't do it. She broke it off and I still don't understand it.

The 'rents and Amina, the two biggest influence on my life and they together have landed me so specifically where I am now, wallowing in my own self-destruction. Nothing left inside but alcohol and liking it that way. I could be a true alcoholic and drink myself into stupors, become emotionally unstable and numb at the same time, not be able to control it, become dysfunctional so that it could be pointed at and called a problem. That could be me.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I'm holding onto nothing. This isn't a matter of keeping faith, it's a matter of being a sucker and playing the part of a complete fool. It isn't hope, it isn't idealism or romanticism, it's STUPIDITY. I'm not going to hope anymore for Amina to come back. As far as I'm concerned, she's gone. That's how I have to live my life. Like I had the love of my life, and now she's gone. No pretending god has anything to do with it. Angels? Absolutely. This is leading to something and I need to follow them. I'm not going to write about Amina any more.

Day thirty-six

I thought I might be regretting taking this leave of absence, but I woke up one morning to make it to a 9:00 ManAlive class and distinctly remember not regretting being out of school.

Yesterday, for the hell of it, I went out in my car to go to a bookstore. Just to get out of the apartment. Today, I went to see the movie, "In the Name of the Father", and then saw a boring band in the evening. Pathetic.

It's cloudy and rainy and fittingly dreary. My life is run into a wall. I guess I did start this year off symbolically. I drove off and got lost in a fog, driving in a way no one else was - fast and recklessly. Here I am now in a fog, being reckless.

Tomorrow is another start of a new year and it's appropriately going to be raining. Why should I care? Why should I care if I have to cut my hair?

Day thirty-five

A stretch of cloudy, rainy days have been forecast. I can't figure out what I'm doing with my life. It's hard to get motivated. It's hard to get out of bed in the morning. It's hard to deal with the white-trash fuckheads upstairs. I'm going to move, but the earliest I can do it is the end of March.

It's hard to see anything in the future. It's hard to get motivated. It's hard to want a future. I'm nothing without Amina, I hinged too much of my confidence and worth on her; a side-effect of hinging my reality on her.

I don't have goals. I always thought I did, I always thought my goals would make themselves apparent, but at this point there is nothing. Even if I got a job to support myself, so what? If I broke off from the 'rents and never had to deal with them again, so what? Would that make me happy? They are the focus of my struggles in life and I have to get rid of them, but what comes next? Always the question what next?

I have a problem with commitment. Up to now, there has always been something next, something to look forward to, an imminent change. Finding a steady job with no end or change in sight is a horrifying thought. It would mean stagnation. To be bound down and lose my freedom, just to earn money. Freedom is a privilege kindly granted to me by money.

"How do you think I've been? Nothing's changed, my life has been miserable. Forgive my rudeness, but I don't care to discuss superficial details of my life which don't mean anything to you, or me for that matter. You have no idea what my life has become, you have no idea what effect you've had on me.

"I can look back at particular instances in my life and I can claim to have been confused. Now I can honestly say that I can't remember any time where I was truly confused as I am now. I thought I was confused when I was grappling with Hiromi and Luyên. Those were difficult times, but that wasn't confusion. That was indecision and selfishness; trying to get whatever I could.

"I wasn't confused when I was going through the mental hospitals. That was a direct and obvious consequence of the mixture of the 'rents and me. What happened to me was natural in those circumstances; it was normal in that situation. It wasn't confusion.

"What happened between us, that is confusion. For every thought I have of you, I have another contradictory thought. An anti-matter thought for every matter thought I have of you. Each are established and immutable fact, each with equal validity, but they can't exist together, that is confusion.

"I think of one of those thoughts and recognize the facts. Those thoughts lead me to consider the other thoughts and I realize that those are also facts. The thoughts keep leading back and forth to each other, both refusing to exist in the same space, both contradicting one another. They form a feedback loop and there are no solutions and no answers. That's what happens in my mind every time I think of you.

"I can't stay drunk enough to stay out of that feedback-thought-loop. All the things I've said to you were real and true. You may convince yourself otherwise and conjure clever excuses to justify anything you do with a clear conscience, but then you're far removed from anything that resembles my reality. But I suppose that is your starting point in processing anything I have to say to you.

"I have nothing to say besides this and nothing I want to hear from you. I asked you not to call unless you need me. Good-bye."

Day thirty-four

"Then all the years of abuse came washing over me; a revelation; an epiphany. Suddenly I was awake and saw my whole life as I should have seen it long ago, when we were dating in college. But I also knew that even if I had known, I wouldn't have done anything about it; just as I don't know if I'll do anything about it now.

"All the psychological games he played, the cuts, bruises, scars, the tests of endurance and discipline; they weren't normal. They shouldn't exist in a healthy relationship. But what good is it for me to realize it if he doesn't. There's no way for me to get away from him, it's just physically impossible.

"He turned me against my parents and there's no chance of reconciliation now. The things he's convinced me of are real now, I can't convince myself otherwise. I can't turn to any family now, there's only him. He's made me dependent upon him.

"His drinking problem isn't my fault. He keeps blaming me for it, but it has nothing to do with me. How can it be my fault when I've tried and hoped so hard to stop him without making him feel like I was pushing or imposing on him? If he had any inkling that I was in any position of power, he'd snuff it out with a heavy hand. I tried in every way possible for me. It can't be my fault. He's wrong.

"It's out of control. I can never tell if he's drunk or not. He's so controlled. Sometimes I'll see him drink and it will have no effect on his behavior. The only way I know if he's drunk or not if I see him drink. But it's hard, I know it's having an effect on our relationship. He's as sharp as a knife and he manipulates it so scars never show; not where anyone will ever see him. He's so angry and he's able to direct his anger like a laser. It has kept me where I am for years.

"He expects to control me and my life, he demands the authority to call the shots and make all the decisions. Even when I know he's wrong, I can only go along with him, he's too dominant. For all the strength I know I have, I know I couldn't go against him. He knows me too well, he knows how to make me react in any way he wants me to.

"He expects me to be there to nurture him. He expects me to be weaker and to be there for support, and when necessary, to be his whipping stone. He uses me to sharpen his knife. I'm not afraid of him, but I can't leave him, it's physically impossible. I just don't know how to stop him.

"So he cuts and cuts and confuses me with his confusion. He controls me with my inability to take control. I need him and he needs me. And he hurts me because I can't protect myself and there is no one who will protect me."

Day thirty-three

Hearts have been broken before. Why is she affecting me so profoundly? Why did she mean so much to me? Why did so much of my worth reside in her? What did she catalyze in my being? In the sea of love . . . it's really a bay and it still has no shores.

I'm tortured by existence. I feel like I'm dragging each day like an unwanted weight. I despair each morning that I awake. All because of her. All because of what I thought we were. All because that was wrong. Those things she said about me, where did it all come from?

I can drag each weary day to the next weary day. Live, breathe, pump blood, spend energy, replenish energy, all with no life at all. I'm supposed to be learning something about life. I'm supposed to be finding something about my nature.

My memories of Amina are filled with embarrassment and shame. I was so wrong about her. She couldn't have said all of the hurtful and malicious things if a sliver of what I thought we were was accurate.

Hearts have been broken before. Why is Amina different? What was Amina?

OK, What was Amina?

Amina tied into everything. She became a part of my world, she was a part of me and everything around me and everything I noticed, everything that caught my interest, everything I reacted to. Amina helped my senses come alive, she brought color to the world around me, substance to the reality I perceived. She was ingrained in me, she got in between my molecules, she flowed in my blood and I breathed her in and breathed her out. Now that she's gone, everything around me and everything I perceive is her residue.

And none if it was even fucking real.

Day thirty-two

Ecliptic light along the horizon, shooting outwards from where the sun just set as if coming from the sun itself. The sky so serene, the lights of San Francisco flicker in time with the ripples of the Bay. Each ripple a dot, a point of color, of light, in a picture, a painting, on a Sunday, or a Saturday. The hills of Marin and the scratches of clouds silhouetted against the red and the orange. The Golden Gate Bridge stark black, contrast defining the lines.

It's peaceful. Amina left me as resolutely and expediently as the sun sinks below the horizon. Left over is the blackest of blacks against a grand display of colors getting richer by the minute as they fade to the indigo of the night sky. The pink ecliptic light trails like memories.

The space between the water and the suspended roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge. A sliver of space, insignificant compared to the dusk sky. So far to fall. Silhouette of San Francisco, silhouette of Marin, the static ripples of the Bay. The suicide zone, the secret world that has no secrecy, with Coit Tower giving the finger all the way down.

This is the place I come to yearn for Amina and touch the desperation she has refused to know. This is where I mix the confusion of hating her and wanting her, and debate with myself whether she was or we were real or not. Whether or not it happened and if it did, what was it?

Day after day, her memory gets more painful, the things she said, the pebble she stuck in my shoe, digs more deeply into my soul.

She was a coward. She was pathetic. I picture her in my mind. On my face an expression of doubt and incredulity. "What you did and the way you did it...pathetic." For once, I'm on the end expressing it.

Day thirty-one

Another day of practicing, running, cooking, and showering. My life is a total mess. I can't keep drunk enough. At the same time I feel that everything is perfect and just how it should be. One reality doesn't fade without another reality becoming more apparent.

Reality is unbearably constricting. The borders and barriers, every object in existence is plainly identifiable and separate. One day the borders and all they contain will break and dissolve and all substance will flow and fuse with all other substance like a raindrop into a brook, a brook into a stream, a stream into a river, rivers into oceans. Nothing will be defined by the borders that demarcate it.

Or is it a matter of phasing and frequencies? Realities existing at certain "frequencies", and things slightly out of phase are less real to one another. Things totally out of phase are in completely different realities.

Going insane is opting for another reality, one different from the norm. Dying is an extreme example. Dying is a trade of realities. There's nothing special about living this life here and now, it's just biological function and feeling with a variable of personality. There's nothing wrong with turning it all off and opting for something else. That we as individuals "exist" is a conceit. It's an attachment that feeds our desire to be here and gain materially.

So much goes through my head and gets interpreted in different ways. Has my self-confidence and sense of worth been shattered because of Amina? She simply phased herself out of my life by phasing me out of hers. What are these analogies of?

My life is in shambles, I'm a complete mess, and everything is perfect. I don't understand it. But I have confidence that I can do whatever I want now, even die, and that whatever force has been guiding my life thus far will know that if I choose to die, I have enough knowledge and experience to know what I want and to know what I'm doing. I know of the guidance, I know I've been in some way blessed, and if I choose to die, it is a decision under guidance.

Day thirty

An unexpectedly cold and breezy day. I practice and practice. Last week's rehearsal was unsatisfactory and my confidence was shattered. I pushed myself to learn all the maps, all the tempos and be able to take control if the need arises. A bit late.

I had another meeting with Anh-thu and Linda for the storytelling project and it looks like our responsibilities are starting to coalesce. There's nothing like a sense of purpose to pull oneself out of a funk.

Day twenty nine

So there's a progression. Fatal peril is the breaking point and is followed by a manifestation of objectification. Then there is a chase where the batterer and victim are in some way brought into proximity with each other. And then there is the decision to strike.

And there I was in the class with people who had gone through the whole progression. And they either had the police called on them, or they realized what they had to lose if they didn't get some help to stop their battering. I could identify being in some parts of the progression, but I never hit anyone. Why was it still applicable, why did I feel that there was a reason I was in the class? Why did I feel like a batterer?

"The kids would scratch themselves and make cuts and scars on their arms," Linda was saying over dim sum. We had to meet regarding the storytelling project and we decided to have dim sum. "They would scratch themselves and it's like a manifestation of a pain they're feeling inside. They feel pain inside and no one can see it and so no one knows it's there, and so they scratch themselves so that they can point to it and say, 'Look, I'm hurting."'

I nonchalantly tugged my sleeves down my arms a bit. Her observations were uncomfortably astute. My brow furrowed. I kept silent so as to not show it was a topic I knew up close and personal.

"They're creating proof of something that's intangible and so difficult to show. But then I don't know, it's just some theory someone had, I don't know if it's right or wrong, or if I believe it or not," she added just in case she wasn't getting through. She got through, more than I was about to show.

The frustration is huge these days, not a thing to do, not a thing to say. It's just myself and being trapped in my mind. I'm just alone. I think of Amina and I could just burst into tears no matter where I am.

Sometimes I have moments of euphoria. Hearing a certain song, or seeing a double rainbow. Beautiful sight. I could feel a bubbling of joy and see the lights dotting the mountain sides and the brighter stars in the clear skies overhead. Anything. It's only that much more difficult to have this emptiness right next to it.

It's all the same, all borne out of the same thing. Why did she do it? I just feel like I'm getting more and more confused every day. Every day just gets darker and darker and more and more lonely and futile.

Day twenty eight

Best thing that ever could have happened? Then why do I feel so awful? Why can't I stop thinking about her for even a moment? Why is my life so completely empty? She haunts me and my every thought in every waking hour. I can't do anything without thoughts of her aligned on the fringes. My entire life and everything around me is marked by her signature. I can't believe my life. I can't believe I'm alive.

Like a fish out of water, out of step and out of place.

I swear to God I'm not a batterer, I swear to God I'm not a violent man. I am not a violent man. My name is Steve, my authority figure is slave-driver. My name is Eric, my authority figure is shot-caller. My name is Mark, my authority figure is boss of the house, but I haven't seen him for a while now. My name is Koji, my authority figure is a secret world, though not necessarily secrecy.

I am not a violent man. I agree to not have any weapons where they can be easily reached.

I agree not to drink alcohol or take drugs six hours before class and six hours after class...

"Have you had a drink tonight?" he asked from across the room, even though it was clearly debatable whether he had a drink or not.

"No."

"He turned to me, "Have you?". What a trick situation to find myself in.

"No," I answered after a pause.

My "authority figure"? I am allowed to have a drink six hours before and after. I am not one of these people and alcohol does not affect me like it might these people. Alcohol doesn't affect me in any significant way anymore. I just had a drink, no one's even going to be suspicious. My authority figure is silence, isolation, a secret world with just my memories and present reality to torment me. I am not a batterer, I don't have anyone to batter. I am not violent, I don't have anyone anymore.

Fatal peril. I have seen fatal peril before, I know what it is and what it means, although perhaps not like these people experienced. I have a memory of a fatal peril that was actually handled quite well. We were being punished, my brothers and me. Father had called us into his room, the master bedroom, the master's bedroom. His authority figure must have been master of the house, lord of money.

I remember being not very concerned about what he was punishing us for, I was getting kind of sick of it and wasn't taking him very seriously anymore. No fear. He used his favorite weapon which had been so effective in the past. It was a strip of plastic "Hot Wheels" racing track that we had played with as kids, and he had shaved down the end so that it made quite a whip. It had become a thing to fear. It was orange.

He went through a round or whipping the backs of our outstretched hands for whatever it was we had done wrong. Looking back, I don't think he was using all his force. But looking back, I can't remember if he usually did or if it was more of a disciplinary gesture. Not this time, but he must have been seething at something. I remember the look on his face when he finished, and held his stance with his weapon, staring us down.

A laugh escaped from me, not defiant, not inflammatory. I just felt a laugh come up and out. He looked at me. Fatal peril. He was seething, he had just finished whipping us, and I...laughed? He had no idea how to react, his authority figure was smacked on its ass. He could have gotten more angry, he could have whipped me in his rage, he could have started yelling, re-establishing his authority. But he had more dignity than that. He was not a small man by any stretch, and the peril wasn't fatal.

His face broke into a laugh and he asked what I was laughing at. I think he called me stupid in Japanese and dismissed us. He never whipped us again after that. I must have been twelve or thirteen years old.

Day twenty seven

Amina accused me of alienating people, of being closed off, anti-social, and that it was my fault that I had lost everyone and only had her to rely on.

She had no idea what she was talking about. In the end, she had no idea about me, she was just against me.

What did she know about my relationship with other people? If they faded from my life, it was partly because of her. Pasha and Frances both faded from my life after Amina and I got together. Diem didn't fare much better.

It was so much more complicated than she cared to see. She just saw an opportunity to push me away. She threw every name she could think of at me and accused me of alienating them. Bitch.

Frances called from England today. It was so nice to hear her, and it seems she's digging her way out of her relationship messes. Those messes were part of the reason I couldn't communicate with her anymore. I couldn't differentiate between what was the truth and what she was making up. But now she's coming back to the U.S., going to Seattle chasing another relationship, but not one fraught with inconsistencies and neurotic obsessions. Presumably. If she's not lying to herself and me.

Pasha last week, Frances this week. I wonder how things would have been if we had stayed close and in touch during my year with Amina. I have a suspicion that our friendships wouldn't have survived if they were around while Amina was happening.

Day twenty six

It's finally raining. Finally. It felt like a pleasant Spring rain when I left this morning for downtown Oakland on foot with my green raincoat that I had bought in Kyoto and an umbrella. Clouds greyed the skies from horizon to horizon as I walked along the lakeside.

Not much traffic out on a Sunday morning. Not many people in the law library either. I was only going to photocopy the new legislation on diversion programs that Antonio wanted to know about. I just needed to find it.

I had little to go on. I didn't even know what diversion was when he first mentioned it. All he gave me was the name of the person who sponsored the bill, the fact that it was passed very recently, and it has something to do with diversion programs and might affect programs like ManAIive.

I had to learn about diversion and what the current law was. I dug into my memory for where to start legal research. I went to West's Annotated Codes and looked for "diversion". Nothing. I looked for "parole" and "probation". Nothing. Wait, in the assignment, we started in the CalJur's. I went there and looked. Nothing.

Wonderful. I know what I want, I know what I'm looking for, I don't know where it is or how to go about finding it, but I know that it's all in here. Somewhere amidst these volumes and stacks is what I want. All I have to do is walk down the right path, open the right books, and notice the right clues.

I wandered and pondered a bit and flipped through some more possible volumes and topics in the West's. Then something lying on top of a shelf in plain view caught my eye. Some digest of new legislation. I took it to a desk and started flipping through it and bingo! Diversion. Of course, see Penal Codes.

I went back to West's under Penal Codes and there it was. It felt so good finding it; knowing it was definitely there, searching for it, failing, searching more, hitting a bit of luck and finding it. It was satisfying, but not something I want to do for a living.

I still had to find the new legislation that Antonio was seeking. For that I had to ask the librarian. He pointed to the shelves, "The green volumes have everything the legislature just passed."

I searched through the green volumes, figuring out how they were formatted and how I might go about finding the exact legislation I was looking for. I went volume by volume, looking through the tables of contents and indexes, looking for a windfall. Then boom, I found it, confirmed by the name John Burton who sponsored the bill. Maybe I'm not a total loser.

Day twenty five

I got a scribble on a postcard from Amina today in response to a request I made before she broke off communications. For some reason it offended me that she had thought of me. I recalled the time I asked her if she had thought of me over a certain period of three days and she responded, ". . . no", in the same way she may have answered if I had asked her if she had thought about what she wanted to put on her tombstone. No, it was different, she seemed almost proud and glad to be able to tell me that.

It burned to have physical proof of her existence in my hand. It hurt to think that there was some time of which I was unaware that she had thought of me to write this scribble. She doesn't exist in my life anymore. I don't need proof of her existence. The scribble on the postcard went immediately into the trash.

I also got a letter from Diem. She hadn't gotten the two letters I had sent her at the end of December and beginning of January, but she was aware of them. They hadn't reached her yet. There was something missing between Diem and me, something had left with Amina.

I locked my bike to a signpost outside the courthouse and looked up at the sky. It looked like rain. As long as it didn't start in the next two hours. With my Macintosh slung over my right shoulder, I strode over to the 13th Street entrance of the courthouse. The halls were empty. I saw the guard down the hall away from his post. As I approached the lectern with the sign-in book, near the bank of elevators, he took a few tentative steps until he saw that I knew to sign in. I got into an elevator and pushed the button for the second floor.

I stepped out of the elevator and stopped and looked towards the entrance of the law library. I reached into the inner pocket of my denim jacket and pulled out Diem's letter, tapped it against my hand a few times and carefully tore it open along one end. I read it through once. She said nice things, she expressed concern, care, and anxiety. Something was missing.

I took a step towards the library and paused again. Diem is in Ohio; a place I would like to burn from my memory. She is living a life that is far in my past and has no connection to what I'm doing now. Everything in my life is new and different. Diem and I were very close. Too close to survive the changes.

I leafed through the three pages and then tried to read the letter over again. I barely skimmed the first page. I walked to the trash can near the elevators, pushed the letter and the envelope in, and walked into the library.

I went to a show this evening in San Francisco Chinatown featuring Asian American hip-hop groups. Some groups were good, one was really good, but most were poor, lacking in originality, charisma, good material, talent, and presence. It's hard getting quality Asian American groups and acts, but then Kevin and I didn't exactly have the audience eating out of our hands at Ohana.

Day twenty four

I brought in my Riverhead to get worked on because I'm getting an intolerable amount of buzz from the neck. As long as I was in Berkeley, I saw the movie "Blue". Booo! An art movie from France. There was no point to the film, no themes, no issues. I couldn't find any reason for the making of the film. It didn't say anything and it didn't show what it did very well. It's the first movie in a "Tricolor" trilogy. I wasn't moved to want to catch the next two films, "White" and "Red". (*future note: "Blue" is a much better movie upon second viewing and with a little more sophistication in film viewing).

I met with Karen today regarding a storytelling project that Ohana is doing and I told her I couldn't take on the whole project because it's a project that stretches into Summer months and I can't commit that far ahead. She said it was alright since she had two other people interested in the project. She also briefed me on a smaller project coming up, coordinating a multimedia performance event in the Ohana space with Asian American jazz musicians, led by Harold Yen, a dancer, and a mural painter.

Rehearsal with the R&B band this evening was uninspiring. The problem could be my electric set. I just can't get a good feel out of it. I play it like an acoustic set, that might be the problem. I also think that Donna and I are a weak rhythm section, both because of inexperience. She doesn't have a feel, but she has an attitude like she thinks she has a feel and that's kind of annoying.

Day twenty three

I saw the movie “Naked” for $2.50 in Berkeley. It had a little too much unnecessary violence; violence with no redeeming factor, no message. Even in trying to convey the degeneration of England and Western society, I think the violence in “Naked” was more explicit than necessary for the message. It was just malice.

Yesterday I went to San Francisco to meet Antonio at ManAlive. It’s an organization that I saw in AsiaWeek that counsels men who batter their partners. Antonio basically runs the whole thing; very nice guy. We talked for only a short bit, he gave me a rundown of the organization and how it is set up and the goals it has.

He sent me off right away on a project. I have to look up new "diversion" laws and tell him what they mean and what impact they can have on people in the program. Diversion programs allow men who are arrested for domestic violence misdemeanors to seek counseling instead of going to jail. They aim to rehabilitate rather than punish.

So I was back in a law library, the one in the Oakland municipal courthouse. I actually liked the research, it was a sense of purpose for something I thought was important. But it doesn't mean I want to go back to law school. I'm not going to think about that until I have to.

Day twenty two

To give up; to drown in the sea of love because that's all you can do when there are no shores, no safety. Just faith without death. Symbolic horizons to strive for but never reach.

If nothing works out, my current life takes its course and everything will still have been perfect. Life goes on; both the material world and the spiritual world that works behind the scenes.

The leading actor leaves the stage, and the scene continues in a continuing play. That's it for now, the scene ends and another starts. The crew handles the lights, sound, props; flipping switches, moving faders on the light board, listening to the stage manager giving cues from the control booth. There's a cue and another actor emerges into the light, delivering lines written by someone who specialized in writing lines.

There's a tap on the actor's shoulder and another actor whispers praise or encouragement. The actor watches from the wings to get an assessment of how things are going after departing the stage; it looks good, the audience likes it. God loves the stories. Someone from costumes taps the actor on the shoulder and the actor goes backstage for a costume change.

Make-up check, into character, wait for the prompt, enter in another costume; in on another scene. It's just a different costume. Anyone can see that.

Day twenty one

The things she said.
Am I slowly getting over her?
Was she even ever here?

My feelings fluctuate between certainty that she'll come back and that I wouldn't put up any barriers, and resentment and utter incredulity at the things she said.

Her presence haunts me - knowing she was here and very real, and feeling that she was never here and hardly exists anymore. Hardly exists.

She is what grounded my own existence. It is me who I feel hardly exists. I don't exist anymore.

I can't measure how real she made me and everything around me. Sometimes I can't believe she was here and a part of my life. I can't believe I could have found her.

Her presence pervaded my every moment. I would go outside and she was part of the air, the skies, the sun and clouds.

She was part of the buildings that lined the roads, the lady looking out of a darkened, second story window, the sounds of traffic and neighbors talking and children playing.

She was part of the feel of the road, the bumps, the gravity, the momentum, the smells, the wind. She brought me to life.

Without her, I would have continued in a darkened, deadened state, not knowing what it meant to truly love, to exist. Without her now, I touched the dream, I held the dream, I had the dream.

The things she said; how coldly she told me that her only future options were in New York or Pakistan, and that her parents were trying to line up jobs for her and were already looking into prospective husbands for her. It was cold. It was like I never knew her. She deftly invalidated my existence or any impact on her life. Everything she said was moving towards our separation.

I have no idea how to reconcile the desire to have her back and the hurtful things she said and the coldness with which she said them. I want her back, I certainly need her, she's part of my life and part of me, but I don't know if it's possible. A huge conflict presents itself. The sea of love.