Here I go again.

I think my Boy is disappointed that I do not want to go to dinner. I am sorry. I am also tired and not-hungry and I don't feel like going somewhere. I am dirty and I am wearing dirty clothes and my hair is sticking up and I am a little bit tipsy and I have no inclination whatsoever to change any of that. Although come to think of it a shower might feel pretty good. But it would take I think too much effort. I am much more in the lie in bed and read and periodically come visit the computer and be disappointed that no one is updating kind of mood.

This diary is not the way I write. It is the way I talk. Proposals and Documents -- what I typically write these days -- are also not the way I write. But the way I write, fiction anyway, is useless for a diary. It doesn't make enough sense. And it doesn't sound like me, not the me that communicates to people, anyway.

Also I think my Friend is disappointed that I do not want to go to dinner. She and her husband invited us. At least I assume so, I am ignoring her phone calls and her email. Fuck it. I'm not in the mood to deal with her, either.

sio was bemoaning the fact that no one seems to believe in love at 19. That it's puppy love or whatever.

So what?

I mean, what has had more songs written about, books written about, been more mooned over, had more nostalgia, or been more missed than puppy love?

Maybe I am by myself in this, but I doubt it. I was so much more able, and better able, to fall in love then than I am now. I loved many things and many people. I could be in love with a television program. Or a boy or a girl. I do not mean this in the callous sense. I mean that it was meaningful. That I loved, and deeply and truly and madly and it was good. There were times when you could fall in love with a sunset or someone's smile. Or a book or a song or your best friend. And your boyfriend. A comic book, a coaster, a shirt, a color.

Today? I have been ruined. Ruined by all of it. My first glance at something is one of suspicion, of mistrust. Everything and everyone must prove themselves to me before I can be enthusiastic. This is also okay. My love these days is reserved for people and for things that I have determined over time I want to give. Which is a good thing. This way the people and things I love -- it is not a crush, it is not an infatuation, it is something deeper and longer and more based in who I am than who I want to be or be with. And it is calmer. And it is something I treasure.

But that is not to say that the people and things I loved then mean less. Hardly. I look back on them still, today, with love. I think of them and my heart fills up, something that is rare in my life now. So, sio, take what you have and hold on tight and love it. Love it for what it is. It doesn't have to be any more -- or any less -- than that.

This may seem a bit sad. This entry, this writing, I mean. In some ways, it is. In others, it is not, not at all.

Now I am more sure of myself than I ever was. Happier to be who I am than I ever was. More interesting to myself. More able to get through the days. I do not believe I am so cynical. I believe that I am who I am, and I do not think I am so unrealistic about that.

At 19, I fell in love with R. The one that gave me herpes. Also the one that gave me two years of his life, and who loved me, very much. Who was much older than I (twenty years), and thus taught me what a proper lover is. And I still love him. He was and is a very good man. He is still meaningful to me, and he taught me a lot about myself and about relationships. There are days I miss him, even though I love my current Boy very much. Before that, most of my boys were stupid choices on my part and theirs. But I still must love them for what they were. For at the very least the moments -- usually in the middle of the night -- where they seemed beautiful, alive. For helping to make me, me.

So much in life is so silly, so frivolous. The fact that I must be presentable when necessary. Bills. cars and people and clothes and conversations I don't particularly want to have but must. So very many things.

And to me, at least, my adolescence was a time when things were not so silly, so frivolous. I was so intent. So serious. And the things I was intent on or serious about? Today would seem so silly, so frivolous. But that does not matter. What matters is that it was okay. It was okay then.

Okay to be in love with a song, with a skirt, with your best friend. Okay to be in love with driving far long distances to do nothing in particular once you got to where you were going.

Now? Now the joy comes from such smaller things. From my dog with her head in my lap. From the boy holding me at night, so tightly that I cannot escape, so that I will not escape, because in his sleep he has to hang on. From this, from finding people here than I am meaningful to. From my baby sister giving me the look when my mother is my mother. From my employees staying even when we cannot pay them everything that is due. From these kinds of things.

It's funny. Funny that as life moves on the things that mean something get smaller and smaller but that you can love them just as much as the things that were so huge, so improbable, so awe-striking once.

I have not written anything here that made me cry in a long time. I suppose it was time. Sorry to have been so self-indulgent with the prose, all.

onehanded