even when i'm feeling wildly displeased with you, you still end up being the person that i trust and talk to the most. ...ridiculous, but reasonable.
on the outer part of me, i'm annoyed as hell; at my core, though, the most constant part of my personality hasn't changed. i still like you more than anyone else i know, and i still love and cherish you deeply, even if imperfectly. that outer skin of annoyance will peel off, but that heart of love isn't going anywhere.

i'm glad there's a greater range of feeling between us now. you never lacked that range of feeling. i was the one who came into this relationship seven years ago with only two modes in which i could interact with you - sad or happy. even then, i was only comfortable when i came before you in the latter mode. i'm becoming a little more convinced of my own love for you, now, and i think this is helping me understand the way you operate when you're with me.

is this how you are, God? you can feel anger, sorrow, hope, disappointment, joy, amusement.. and know that these feelings never threaten our relationship because at your core, you love me constantly?
this seems quite likely.

(oh i like you.)

there may be more to it, though..
i think you also know that at my core, i love you constantly. i'm just immature in my love. in all my mistakes, the overwhelming majority of them have been committed with a heart that desired to love you and a mind, body and soul that were immature in their ability to translate that love into action.
anger, frustration, joy, sorrow, victories, losses -
"man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart." you're not scared of all the other emotions i exhibit because you've known something that i'm just beginning to learn: my love is the most real part of me. you made me in your own image; you planted this love, you're growing it up to look like yours.


every time i understand us more clearly, i find that you + i fit together better than i could have ever anticipated...

yesterday i said that conflict was a way of affirming what is present between two people. two days ago i said that this boy is, admittedly, a big deal because he is the convergence of many things i have been blessed with or burdened by in the past year, thus in dealing with this situation, i am actually dealing with an entanglement of hopes, disappointments, beliefs and values that were thrown into sharper relief by the consequences of our friendship.
it is about a boy, in some ways, but the deeper substance of this problem is not about a boy at all. for the second time this year and for the second time in my life ...i'm angry before you, jesus. the more religious version of me from a few years ago would have been appalled by the idea of anger before God, but as of now, even in the midst of my frustration, i'm satisfied that i've found the freedom to be consciously, deliberately ugly in your presence. i've been angry in the past, i'm sure, but this is only the second time i've trusted you enough to uncensor myself. anger is intimate. rage is intimate.


i feel, i think that you set a task before me that i tried to undertake only to find it too difficult. i feel like you gave me someone to love and befriend and i did it incorrectly
i feel that my broken heart is my own fault, that you weren't there to stop its breaking because maybe i was supposed to say "no" earlier to stop it myself, meaning that the ensuing tears, fury, humiliation and powerless indignation are all mine to clean up. it's been months, and the cleanup has not been successful. this is how i handle my life: the question, now, is whether or not it is good enough for you.
so. jesus. am i good enough? i failed a significant part of the life you put in front of me. do you still want me as a bride? as a partner? maybe i won't be able to keep up. maybe i'll get tired, and i'll leave you before you leave me first.
that journal entry i wrote last night was less inhibited and polished, compared to what i'm writing right now. i find that it describes the contents of my head a little more directly -

if you want me, speak even when i'm silent. when i've walked and found no viable destinations, come pick me up from where i've stopped.
please be gentle to me, gentler than i deserve
be unkind and you'll lose me
i don't want to be lost
i'm scared you'll be unkind and lose me when i didn't want to be lost.

- i thought i was supposed to love this boy and be as gracious, kind, and faithful as you would have been in my place. in the end i couldn't do it. in the aftermath i couldn't bear it. so are you going to be impatient with me now, after i've failed one task and failed to rehabilitate properly?
this is really about you and me. it's like a marriage in which two people are intending to stay together no matter what, but there are lovers on the outside that manifest the insecurities and hidden desires one party has brought into the household.
we both know which party i am.


i
just want to know
that you'd chase me down
and that you'd be able to tell that even when i'm running away
i am really, desperately hoping that you'll come after me.

two months ago i wrote in my journal that i'd like the boy and i to have a screaming match - in public, preferably - during which i'd set aside my scruples about never making accusatory remarks or shaming people, and give a clear, unexaggerated, but very blunt assessment of this entire situation.
the idea of having an audience present appealed to me, as i've been thinking about why people like to have witnesses at their wedding ceremonies, or, less commonly, during their acts of sexual intercourse. in viewing such intimate, deeply relational undertakings, witnesses see indicators of all the intangible and easily extinguished components of who these people are when they are together.

in my journal, i wrote that this boy seems to have shaped me in ways i can't yet understand. that turbulent, important, and sometimes very lovely (lonely? i can't read my own handwriting) friendship was so greedy and powerful that i sometimes feel as if i've had my substance consumed by all that intensity. i often feel that others cannot see this, or, more accurately, with what they do see, they cannot understand what occurred. that boy, having been protected from my mess by both me and himself, has also never given me a word, or a single honest look, indicating his understanding of how the ways in which we fit together contributed to this outcome. i wanted to have this public screaming match in order to ensure that i'm not the only one who remembers, or the only one who knows.
tonight, though, i found that i may have lost my interest in that fight. conflict is a way of affirming what is present between two people, and having others witness conflict is a way of making sure that whatever is present is also widely known. this way, if either of those two people decides to forget anything that has transpired, the other is not left thinking that perhaps, the entire matter was imagined, and the responsibility for their situation is entirely their own.
as of now i no longer want a fight, i no longer want an audience. remembering makes me tired, so now i would like to forget. then, perhaps, it would be easier to move throughout my city, school and community without being arrested by an unanticipated presence, and to avoid that inconvenient period of disintegration that always follows. i'd be able to enter certain places without feeling as if i was flinching all the time.
it makes me sad to think that i'd rather forget, but to keep that memory requires a fight. even when i am the only participant, i find that i no longer have the energy to endure.

let's bring this skin-to-skin to the place in which you are not an idea but a person, frightening and glorious, & make contact so brilliant that it sears me.

he's present throughout the week
but i especially enjoyed today, during which he and i drifted around like an island
onto a bus that we rode unobtrusively, thinking and smiling privately at one another
before disembarking onto the marina, where it was quiet, empty and brilliant in the early morning, surrounded by miles and miles of water
to sit with one another outside of berkeley, san francisco, oakland, and san jose
in a place where i have no memory of ever having visited with anyone
except him.