peripathetic

Extract from my notebook, written earlier this evening. It's me feeling melancholy, just so you know:

--
So much has changed. So much is still the same. It's approaching early evening in this little loft room in Bath, and the skies have greyed again. I'm sitting here and he is in London. Or is he? I don't know. I'm in Bath more than a year, maybe more than 2, after he left it. He lived just less than a minute from here. In a few days I'll be in London. And he'll just have left it. I'll be wondering where he was, who he saw. I'm not in love with him, but I do love him.

But I'm still smitten. I can't help it. Things don't wear off that easy for me. I don't like them to. But sometimes I wish they would. What did I want anyway? To go out with him, definitely. I still want to. But. The distance between Belfast and him?! What the fuck was I thinking?! -- I know. The hopeful thoughts of bliss and effort which can bear fruit because you're hopeful. The thoughts we get scared of thinking in a responsible, ordered, grown-up world. I want to be responsible but I don't want my emotions to be always squashed by so much logic. You're too far away, you don't know him well enough, you're incompatible, you can't manage those distances, forget him but keep him, don't kiss him just hold him, you can't love him.

I really hate this grown-up thing. It mars a little bit of my hope every year, maybe. And even the people I thought were magic enough to hope turn out not to hope as stupidly, innocently high as I do.

But I'm still smitten. I can't help it. And he can't help me. Or maybe he can. I want him to help me through this, out the other side into balanced crazy affectionate funny serious wacky close friendship. I want him to notice the wobbles in my voice in the inbetween times and lift me down from my wild hopes into the fluffy sureness of his continued presence in my life.

It will be.
So hard.
But worth it. Because.
Whatever else he is, he is my friend.