i.

-- i'm on the wrong side of the ocean
-- which ocean?
-- all of them.

ii.

i think maybe the worst part of what i'm doing - this half-loving, half-indifferent state that i am in - is that i know i have this huge capacity for love inside of me, and i'm not using it.

iii.

"first he turns to you
then he turns to her
so you try to hurt him back
but it breaks your body down
so you try to love bigger
bigger still
but it...it`s too late

"so take a lesson from the strangeness you feel
and know you`ll never be the same
and find it in your heart to kneel down and say
i gave my love didn`t i?
and i gave it big...sometimes
and i gave it in my own sweet time
i`m just leaving

-- jane siberry, love is everything

iv.

i have been here for almost two months. i know that the way things were at home before i left was artificial, and that if i went back for good it wouldn't stay like that. but c. went out with some friends tonight, and i just didn't have the energy to go out and smile and nod and laugh when other people laugh or try so hard to pay attention and to understand so that i can make an occasional comment or at least respond properly when i am asked a question. i know it might sound provincial, and the sixteen-seventeen-eighteen year old me who dressed up and spoke french all day the first friday of every month would probably be appalled, but i just miss my language! and i miss my friends. i miss wanting to go out with other people and not ever wanting to leave once i get there. i miss having so much fun that the time goes by too quickly. i don't think i've laughed till my belly hurt since I got here.

v.

i'm trying-- i'm trying to drink away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away.

-- modest mouse, polar opposites

vi.

so what is keeping me here?

vii.

sometimes i hear a song with lyrics or music so enthraling that its like i want to turn inside out. thats the only way i can articulate it.

-- me in 2003, http://goldenball.diaryland.com/1000mhour.html

viii.

i used to think that every time i talked to e. it meant something. even up until this year, the second day after new years, i told him what i did on new years eve (bruised knees pt. i) , and as he was leaving in a taxi, all i could think was "kiss me goodbye kiss me goodbye kiss me goodbye". of course he wasn't going to kiss me goodbye! i still had(have) a boyfriend and we were in front of a group of friends and anyway! the person you're stupidly in love with when you're dumb and seventeen and eighteen and completely unable to communicate in order to give it a chance of maybe working out is not supposed to be someone that you are still stupidly quote unquote in love with when you are twenty two almost twenty three and living with your boyfriend on another continent. tonight we started talking and i am so over hearing about where he's going to grad school and then not being asked any questions in return. i guess it's a sign that i might finally be done with it if i don't even care to pick up the conversation when he leaves it off-- compared with the vast archives I've got of msn conversations from ca. 2004-2006. but let's not kid ourselves: if he pursued me and i was unattached i would be his in a minute. there might be a show of hesitation but really�

he once warned someone not to quote leonard cohen to me, lest i fall in love.

ix.

could i maybe please go back and do it all over again?

x.

i dreamt about breaking up with c. last night - among other things - and it honestly wasn't even really that bad. my dreams are sort of the best part of my day-- which is sad; i'm going to bed.