ii. There is a saying on the online Catholic encyclopedia on the net: Everything Catholic is documented. My life is pretty much the same way. It could be relived -- I do relive it -- virtually through the documents.

I've kept her letters, and even copies of some of my letters to her. Just about every scrap of paper with her handwriting or name on it I happened to ever have come into possession of is carefully boxed away.

My diary tells our story. To be fair, it tells my story, but my story is about her. From the night she first came into my life to the night she left, and even my searching until I found her and recovering after I'd lost her, she is there. How we were after she had told me to leave her, for example, is documented:

Today, I was over at my kinda sorta ex girlfriend's house. (It is really sad. We both love each other so much, and yet it is ending around us. As it has to, since she is going to New York and everything and doesn't want me to feel bound to her, and of course as in any relationship there are many folds to the issue. Still, it is sad. I've never loved anyone like that. The only other girl I ever loved at all took me about a year to get over, and even then I didn't get over her until I started going with A. Anyway.)

She was packing her stuff for a garage sale and moving. It was so fucking depressing. So fucking draining. I wanted to be there with her, and she wanted me there, but it was hard.

Geez. I forgot where I'm going with this. It was just driving me crazy to be there. Like, it was just SO REAL, if that makes any sense. So true, not ideal or transcendent, just a couple of people packing old stuff away and trying not to recall their memories. So depressing.

She gave me a couple of books -- four actually -- and some incense, and returned an ankh I gave her long ago. I walked off with some of her photographs, and I don't know if she knows I have them. I also prevailed upon her to give me the champagne glass from the prom we went to together. Perhaps, years and years from now, if she is not married and we meet again it would bring back memories to drag those out, but then who wants memories, anyway.

And it didn't help that I had that Concrete Blonde song stuck in my head: "I don't need a hero / I don't need a soldier / Did when I was younger / Now that I am older... / I don't need a father / I don't want to be your mother" &c. Concrete Blonde is good, but so depressing. So dark and so down. Probably why it is so good.

Well, I am surprised how much I have gone on about this. There are obviously feelings I am suppressing, and I am not even consciously aware of everything I have typed. From time to time it is like I become aware I am at my keyboard, but as I sit here and stare at the keys it is like the words flow through me, not from me. I don't know what else to say, but then I didn't know I would say all this. I can see on distant shores tears welling up, but they are not in my dry eyes. I can feel that I should be crying, that I want to cry, but I cannot. I feel dead, and I wish I were. I feel numb, and in a way that is a blessing; in a way that is a curse. I expect I will feel it someday. All must be paid eventually, as the parable teaches. I just don't feel it now, and I don't want to bring myself to.

I don't know how much more I can say. The deepest, darkest thoughts I have now are that I failed her. In a very real way, I failed her. In my fallibility and simple evil, I have failed her. She, the innocent girl, has suffered because the watchman was asleep at his horn. Did the Lord not tell me to pay particular attention to that passage in Ezekiel? Allah is merciful, but I am dense as granite sometimes.

I failed her, and only through the omnipotent power of God can this be undone. Strike that, of course, for the past can never be undone. Sins can be covered, but they cannot be undone. I don't know. I don't know.

How do I feel? Am I numbed? Am I hollowed? I have that crushed feeling of sadness, that sadness that the sensitive human being carries from seeing the pain of the world. I don't know. There is nothing more true than that in this entire diatribe.

I have said nothing. For every idle word, I will have an accounting in the end time. Tomorrow, I expect to see her after she gets off work. Shockingly, I don't even have the urge to simply cut her out of my life. Had this happened mere weeks ago that is exactly what I think I would have done. I would have hung up the phone and not answered it again. Oh! how many times I lived through that scene, for did the Lord not tell me time and time again that this would happen? But no, I obstinately refused to believe it.

There is no point in continuing this. I will just say what I have said before. I think I will wrap this up and get some sleep before work tomorrow. When I awake I may be in pain again, but I have my pills in my bag, and on the way to work or at any time during the day I can relieve my depression. I am only concerned that I am going to sink into the addiction I sank into before I quit ginseng -- at A.'s request.

And so, I sign off.

Or here, when my loss was beginning to creep through into my conscious mind:

The tears finally came. I went to bed and lit a stick of the incense A. gave me, and it reminded me -- still reminds me -- so powerfully of her room and all the wonderful nights I've spent there that I began sobbing. I know I was loud, and I am glad God allowed the living room to be empty. I am glad God is allowing me to bear this cross alone and not burden my family with it. There is a selfish part of me that wants to bring my tears to someone else, to find a shoulder to cry on and a hand to stroke my hair, lips to kiss my tears away, but I suffer alone, and I offer it to the Lord for the conversion of sinners. Rather, for A. and A. alone. I love her more than my own soul.

But how worried can I be? In the Garden, Christ sweated blood. I know that is possible for a human body to do in cases of emotional stress. How much can I care about A. if I do not sweat blood in imitation of Christ? Under the law, there is no salvation without the shedding of blood. Can my sweat and tears be enough for her salvation?

My grief is such that I feel myself trembling at the edge of breakdown. If I was smart I would put out this incense, but instead I tremble and grieve and I feel the tears below the surface again. I think I will read and go to sleep. I am not going to get over this tonight. The Lord, I feel, is mercifully going to allow me to suffer longer and harder for A. Maybe a breakdown will come in the next couple of days, or maybe I'll hold it below the surface.

Or maybe I'll die of a broken heart.

It obviously tore me up pretty bad. I encapsulated it in a letter to her:

If we can't be friends, we can at least be lovers. You know the rest.

I hide behind others' words, but they are words we both know. I let them speak so I can sit back and pretend I'm aloof.

* * * * *

You tell me there is something coming for me. I wish I had your faith. Without you, there is nothing for me. I was suicidal when we met. You brought me past that, simply by your presence, by acting like you cared. I know you did, but it was because you convinced me through your actions that I began to trust you, and to feel I was worth allowing to live. I have nothing to live for now. I would kill myself, but why? I have nothing to die for. What could be heaven if you didn't want me? What could be hell beyond that?

There is nothing for me now, in this world or the next.

Where should I turn? Ideals? I don't care about them. People don't want to be helped. If after all we've been through together you can cast me away, why should I go through that -- the caring, the loving -- for something that I cannot feel and people who will not even pretend they appreciate it? Friends? They all desert you in the end. God? There is nothing I can do to make Him better, and the only thing I'd want from Him is you. Another girl? You have quenched my lusts. I do not even desire another girl. All I could want from her is something to fill my arms and someone to listen to my complaints. She could not heal me; she could only anesthetize me.

No, there is nothing for me now save inertia, and the incurable optimism that makes me live with the insane hope that as long as we both live we can yet be together.

And yet, even as I write this, I know I do not live while we are apart. I only exist.

I never sent it to her, of course. Or any of the other like it. They are all boxed away. She had dealt herself out of my life, what right did I have to force my miseries on her? She knew what she had done to me. It would not be fair -- though it is tempting -- to say she did not care. She did. She does. She just felt she had to get away.

I could have sent it to her, eventually. She said she always wanted to keep in touch. Not long after she left, I received this in the mail:

#INCLUDE LetterII

I never replied. It didn't even have a return address, and I didn't wait for the promised follow-up. I trust it would have come. She hated me, but she still loved me. I've just never had that kind of patience.