1347 La Loma, Berkeley

October 1995

I just can't be waiting for Shiho to make a decision about her life in order to feel my feet on solid ground. From the point she considered going back to her ex, the concept of us as a couple ceased to exist. The essential element of loyalty disappeared from our relationship. Loyalty is promising to be on my side. Betrayal is promising to be on my side and then being on someone else's. Shiho waffling around with her feelings means that she is not my girlfriend. She isn't what she said she was to me.

If Shiho has a decision to make, that means her feelings toward this jerk of an ex-boyfriend are strong enough to challenge or counteract any feelings she has towards me. She is being pulled by a guy who dumped her for another woman, and now wants her back after that relationship didn't work out. It's an insult that she's even considering going back to him. I'm that disposable. Fuck that.

I know Shiho wants to break up, I know it probably better than she does. She just doesn't know how to do it because she can't get a grip on her feelings. She's never been able to get a grip on her feelings and deal with them, which is precisely why we never went out in high school. She's never been decisive and she has never been able to act, and that always bothered me about her.

She continues to profess that she wants this relationship to continue and she comes across as sincere, but she's not into it. I can tell. It's like the other times we started going out and then were separated and then got interested in other people. The only difference this time is that I don't have someone else. But the feeling I get from her is the same as the other times.

We talked about my visiting her at the end of December. That's not going to happen. She said that she would have to find a way of hiding me or otherwise preventing her ex from knowing I was there because he's a very jealous type. Both Nobuko and Cat concur that is a serious dis. They've been playing devil's advocate against my talk of breaking up with Shiho, but on this one they agreed that what she said was an unconditional dis. If I'm visiting her, that means I'm her boyfriend, but she has to hide me from her ex because he's jealous? This is the first time it ever occurred to me to say 'fuck Shiho'.

This is what I think has been going on: Shiho went back to Japan and things were up in the air as to whether our relationship would continue. She had to see what her ex was going to do. After a month, she finally wrote to me and mentioned that he had not been able to break up with the woman for whom he dumped Shiho. That, to me, explains why she did not break up with me within the month as I predicted. She couldn't break up with me until he had broken up with the other woman.

Why didn't he break up with the other woman? He says that she hasn't been letting him break up. I swear, I have never heard of anything so ridiculous. If he wanted to break up to go back to Shiho, he would have. I think the real excuse for his not breaking up with the other woman is because the safety net that Shiho is so willing to provide is not guaranteed as long as she is going out with me. I'm assuming Shiho had the backbone to tell him she's going out with me. Not even that is certain. If he knew Shiho wasn't going out with me, he would know he could go back to Shiho and would have broken up with the other woman.

I am not going to be a party to this. They are both spineless, indecisive, self-interested, wishy-washy wimps. They deserve each other. He is willing to walk all over Shiho and take her for granted, and she is willing to be walked over and be taken for granted. I can do better than that.

On the other hand, perhaps it isn't in Shiho's nature to make a decision like this. She characteristically has not been able to come down on one side of the fence or the other when faced with a major decision. A major decision just like this. So instead of making a decision, she clams up, freezes, shuts off and hopes the decision gets decided without her doing anything and goes away. She decides to do nothing and maintain the status quo and resigns herself to stay with me and represents that we are a couple, hoping that me or her ex-boyfriend does something so that she doesn't have to.

Well, it worked. I'm not going to be dragged along in her waiting game; if she can't make a decision, I will. Which is what she wanted all along. Clever. Very, very clever.

I got photos back today from the last day Shiho was here. I wasn't psyched to get them back, they didn't make me happy, the images didn't make me nostalgic or long for her. I looked at the pictures, and I felt something particularly unfamiliar and I found it disturbing when I realized that the feeling was envy.

I am envious of Shiho. I feel resentment towards her for her stability; for being attractive, for feeling a connection to her family, for having a good job, for being popular and sought after, for having a hobby and having some talent in it. In return, she doesn't recognize anything that I do or has meaning to me. She makes me feel insignificant and worthless. I gave her my demo and she dismissed it as "interesting".

Since we started going out, she hasn't reacted to much. Her silence has been eloquence. She doesn't want to make me anything important or special; she keeps me at arms distance emotionally. It's for her own protection and she puts nothing out on the line. It has hardly been a mutual relationship.

I owe Shiho nothing. I have no duty to take her feelings into consideration. All I know is that what I know has been without her help. If I'm wrong about anything, she has been a major player in contributing to it. I'm not responsible for her inability to communicate. But I don't think I'm wrong about this.

I find myself becoming jealous. Jealousy and envy - feelings that I do not want under any condition. And here I am. If being in this situation means having those feelings, I'd rather get out of this situation. It would be a personal downfall. Right and wrong and better and worse have no play in this. I should not be subjected to this situation which subjects me to having these feelings.

She has written me once since we've started going out. That in itself says a lot. It means her heart is not really in this relationship; her heart is still being pulled elsewhere. I deserve better than that. I don't see any room to give her benefit of doubt. It is clear where she stands.

I can't think of a reason why I should stay with Shiho or put up with this situation any longer. Why should I even be nice about it? Why should I care about her feelings. I am insulted, demeaned, disrespected. She has been tactless, cowardly. I find no reason to retain a single positive emotion for her. Has she blown away ten years of friendship? Ten years of friendship; what does that mean anyway?

We have created in our minds what we've been to each other during this entire period. Except for this last time when my eyes finally opened and realized how much I love her. Until this point, though, any claim that we were special to each other has been unfounded. She had a crush on me in high school and we were best friends. The times we decided to go out, it wasn't because we loved each other genuinely in the present, but only based on the past history as friends. We never knew each other well enough to really love each other in the present. She has never understood me enough to love me. The woman I fell in love with this past summer, I could have met this summer. We didn't need the past ten years for me to fall in love with her now.

I was concerned about appearances. I want to break up, but I wanted to make it look good. I didn't want to seem like a jerk. I didn't want the news to come as a surprise. I wanted to make it look like it's been something I've been grappling with for a while. How stupid. Breaking up with her, regardless of how sudden or tactless, would be welcomed by her. The next time she calls, that's it. This relationship is over. I'm closing with Shiho and she is out of my life for good.