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You know that old commercial with the guy explaining to the world about how he's just a T-shirt & Jeans type of guy? He's not a fancy gourmet foods and black tie guy, or an art-film, cell-phone, triple latte kind of guy; but just a plain T-shirt & jeans guy looking for... actually I can't really remember what the commercial was trying to sell. In any case, I am not a diary type of guy.

I've tried several times throughout my life, always lasting just over a week before falling into boredom and leaving the book to collect dust. Different things have triggered each iteration of my self-cataloguing and analyzing venture. I think the first time was when I got a nifty little metal box with a lock and key so that I could put super secret baubles and keepsakes in; so I clearly needed something super secret to keep in there. At that point in my life, also known as age 13, there was really nothing going on to warrant such meticulous detail as a diary. After a few days of writing "nothing much happened today" and "same as yesterday," I decided that the whole ordeal must be a girl thing and stopped.

The next instance occurred in high school, when Heather, this smart girl that sat next to me in remedial physics class (we both got in because the honors class conflicted with our schedules, it was clearly a sign from some higher being), kept one religiously. My high school brain, bent and twisted by lunch periods, herds of people who consistently blockaded the busiest stairwell with their vapid conversations, and rigid social structure which resigned me to the 'hopelessly misunderstood' rung of the ladder very early on, made the oh-so-obvious connection that Heather would like boys who kept a likewise daily account of their lives. Certainly she'd like these journal-oriented boys much more than the kid who sits next to her in Physics. So I went out and bought a fancy fountain pen and a fancy book with fancy colored paper made specifically for use as a diary (or a restaurant ledger) and went to work.

Not much had changed since age 13. After a first entry of great length (as this will no doubt compare), my daily ruminations quickly dwindled to that of "school day" and "weekend." Heather showed no noticeable change, so I quickly gave it up yet again.

There were several more tries of course. One time, after a friend forced me into it, I signed onto an online journal service that lets everyone in the world read your entries and leave you pity messages or spam for adult websites. Each trial had a similar verdict: death within the month. All I got out of it was the idea of writing to myself as some unseen audience, like I was narrating an ongoing movie of my life; or maybe that's just all those viewings of Ferris Bueller's Day Off coming back to haunt me. In any case, I bet in my 28 years I've amassed maybe 25 pages of journal entries. I've written more email than that.

So why am I trying it again? What's triggered me to think that this time will be different? What could drive me to retread this concept? A woman of course.

Her name was Bianca. Actually it still is Bianca, although clearly not my Bianca anymore. We've been together for just under a year. We've had our ups, we've had our downs, but I've also been genuinely happy with her for the majority of the time, longer than I've spent with any other girlfriend. We even had a shared account. Isn't that like insurance against a break-up? Doesn't she have to file a claim or something two weeks beforehand?

It was two weeks ago. She called me up from work. I could hear the hippy roots music that they always play in those Indy-coffee houses. She said 'What's up?' I said 'Nothing'. She didn't say anything. I said 'What's up?' and she says "I don't have fun with you anymore.' Silence. I don't know if I was still trying to figure out what that meant or if I was waiting to see if she would say anything else, either way I just sat there. Eventually she asked if I was still there and I asked her what that meant and she said that it meant she didn't have any fun with me any more and I asked if that meant that we weren't together anymore and she said she guessed so. After that a customer came up and she had to go.

What the FUCK!?

At first it was denial. It'd happened before, and we'd always got back together the next day or that night. The next day though, when she hadn't called back, I started to rethink things. After a while I felt a bit of relief, then a bit of sadness, then a bit of regret, then I figured I was over it. I waited another day or two and she finally called. A bit of triumph passed through me, but much to my surprise she was just calling to see if I could bring her clothes over to her place and see about the account being split. Then, perhaps as an afterthought, she said she'd still like to be friends.

WHAT THE FUCK!?

I was clearly not over anything. Something bent or broke or disappeared in me and I started really thinking hard about this. The more I thought, the more I wanted her back. The more frenzied I became at the fact that she didn't have any fun with me anymore, the less I slept. I started taking these walks in the middle of the night, walking out amidst the snowdrifts and iced-over roads and cover a few miles, adrift in thought, showing up later with frozen snot on the tip of my nose and a crazed look in my eye. After a few days of this I had come up with a plan. I'd show up at her work, wait for her to get off, then talk things over with her. I'd explain that I needed her back and that I could change and that she simply couldn't leave. It was simply an impossibility.

Needless to say, things did not go as planned... I ended up playing the part of the sobbing Ex who hasn't let go, she ended up saying very warm things that I knew she didn't mean, and that was that: Things were dead, flies were buzzing, the headstone was carved.


So that pretty much brings me up to date. I've never understood this principle of writing to myself, spending time just thinking and verbalizing things that no one will ever see. Now it makes a certain sense. It's almost as if this page is an adult-equivalent of an imaginary friend. He doesn't have a thick pelt of fur or a really big axe or spiky tail, and he can't beat the crap out of anyone I tell him to, but he listens very well and proves himself as very loyal. Still though, I wonder if this will last any longer than before.


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