I didn't really forget the anniversary. I only forgot the actual date of the thing. It's been on my mind for weeks, if not months. I really thought it was tomorrow. But it wasn't tomorrow, it was last Tuesday.

Oops.

I'd thought that I'd write about this. Maybe tell the story of that night. I dunno, maybe I still will. It's a good story, I think, even though the ending wasn't particularly happy. But I'm not going to write that story right now. Nope, right now, I'm going to make you people read two entries I wrote last year. Two days, and five days, after that night.

Maybe these two entries are enough. Maybe there's no need to tell the story.

everything

Well, I did it.

I said the most important words I've ever said, to the most wonderful person I've ever known.

I told her everything. Ev. Rey. Thing.

And now...

I just don't know.

I've got nothing left. I've done all I can do. I've said all I can say.

Maybe I've ruined everything. But if I did, at least it was with the truth. If those words turn out to be my final words to her*, then it's fitting that they were also the most important. The most real.

And the most overdue. Mustn't forget that.

---

It's so tempting to stop now. Writing. Talking. Communicating in any way with anyone at all.

It all seems so trivial to me now.

Lesser purposes and all that...

* - They were not.

I remember how I felt when I wrote that. An incredible feeling of relief accompanied with an almost overwhelming feeling of dread. I hardly wrote anything else until Saturday night, when I once again scribbled into my notebook.

dilemma

Sitting at Rich O's, at night. Stupid, I know. I was going to sit over on the weirdo Sportstime side, but they were packed. Over here, at least I'm able to sit.

Anyway, I kinda feel like I should be writing something about some thoughts that have been rattling around in the dark places inside my head. Thoughts that will neither go away nor venture into the light. Because these thoughts have never been fully illuminated, I fear that this entry will probably be disjointed crap. This is in contrast to my usual drivel, which is at least somewhat jointed, and sometimes it's not even crap. You have been warned.

---

The thing is, I only meant to make a statement. To finally get the entire truth out there. I'd say something like laying all my cards on the table, but this is no fucking game to me.

I realized that I was taking a very serious risk, but frankly, at the time, I didn't feel like I had much left to lose. I was rapidly dying anyway. So it was, at least partly, an act of desperation on my part, the statement that I made. I guess I wanted my dying words to mean something. More than that, I wanted them to be heard. And they were. They certainly were.

But all along, from the time I started considering it, through the time I was saying it, and even during the conversation that ensued, it was always a statement. Telling the truth, and nothing else.

It was never a question.

It was certainly never a request.

So why, I wonder, why do I wait so impatiently for an answer to a question I never asked?

Why, I wonder, do I long for a response to a request I never made?

This is my dilemma.

I could have asked the question, but the question wasn't the point. The statement was the point. Besides, deep down I knew that I wasn't ready for the pain that the answer might bring. I could have even made the request, but it would have been ludicrous to do so, without the answer to the question. I may be insane, but I'm not that insane.

The statement leads to the question leads to the request. That's just the way it works. And I stopped at the statement. I stopped myself, or she stopped me. I don't know. All I know is that I did stop, rather abruptly. Jarringly, you might say.

Which was fine with me. That had been my plan, such as it was, when I started. But I screwed up. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was distracted, after all.

See, I didn't need to ask the question, and I didn't need to make the request.

They were implied. Or inferred. Whatever.

And so, now I wait. For an answer to a question I never quite asked, and for a response to a request I never quite made.

This is my dilemma. This is my life.

And you know, that was my life for the next several months. And they were the most wonderful and the most horrible months of my life. And I still feel like I'm waiting, but no longer for an answer or for a response. Now, I'm waiting for a release, and that's something that I can only get from myself.

I'm not there yet, not to that point where I can turn my back on this. At best, I sometimes manage to feel oddly detached. At worst, I miss her so much I can't think of anything else and I'm lucky that breaths and heartbeats don't require conscious effort.

Most of the time I'm somewhere in the middle. Sad, but resigned.

I suppose that's normal.