For a moment all came back, they were all here with me, I missed M and S. They were soft and warm, beautiful and understanding. I remembered holding them, touching them, just being near to them. I could almost feel the warmth of their touch, the way they looked at me. I remembered and I felt a bubble form in my throat, a sensation of true loss as tears started forming, but of course with me, didn’t actually form. They live in my mind, I see them, happy and sad, they come to me and I console them and myself. They then temporarily leave, only to come back later, with less clarity but more force.

I met A and we ended up in a bar that I like. We chatted about many things, some intellectual, some not, and I started touching her, kissing her. It made no sense at the time, but it felt good, and I liked holding her in my hands. The same night I wrote her a kind of letter that I haven’t written in a long while. I really don’t know why but I felt that there is something in her that draws me in. Then, no response for 3 days. It felt like eternity, as if I had given a piece of myself and was missing my part. We met up again, and we had a good time — though she was keeping distance. We met again today and now it’s over and I feel bad about it. I wish I knew why, but it’s too late now. I fear we won’t see each other again. Probably it’s better this way, but I feel a bit sad and, strangely, a bit ashamed.

I remember the time I was there, when things seemed overly complicated and I wasn’t sure that what I was doing was right. I looked in the mirror and saw a different person than what I was meant to be. What is right and what is wrong is not only a question of universal morality but of what we can do and cannot do. Sometime I feel like entangling myself in my own net of intrigue. It’s not because I don’t find my own life interesting enough, but I wish to project a different image.

It’s strange thing how our projected self-image changes our behaviour, instead of the other way around. I read the everyday sexism blog and wonder — how many times have I committed some form of sexism? How often do I look down on some women just because they look or act in a specific way? And how often do they look down on me just because the way I act or the way I look? Am I just reflecting on some of these women what they project on me? And if so, is that right? Should I try to explain, or is there nothing to explain, because really, it’s like telling someone without the correct vocalizations how to speak Chinese — if you are not familiar with the sounds, it’s not that you can’t pronounce them, it’s that you can’t even hear them. Are we miscommunicating because, in a sense, we don’t even hear what the other is saying even though we are trying to listen? And if so, should we instead try to go back to the basics, to words and syllables, explaining what each means? Maybe I am simply intellectualizing that I’m unable or unwilling to listen and change, instead trying to force my way through complicated situations using my intellect.

I met someone who told me: the fact that I didn’t want to intellectualize things frustrated her. I find this interesting, as I have been trying to intellectualize so many things that I feel like I have forgotten to understand instead and incorporate their meanings into my everyday life. I remember this film, where the question is asked: if we would meet ourselves, what would we say to ourselves? I wonder if I would enjoy my own company and whether I should change so that I would enjoy it more. I wonder if I would agree with my moral choices and if I would judge myself on them.

I got a typewriter to write a letter to S. It’s a letter of sorrow, a letter of joy. The joy of her having spent time with me, and the sorrow of loosing her. I re-read some of our old conversations where she seems to avoid saying something in every letter… In this letter I avoided nothing, and it’s good to be honest but I fear it’s not really new and it’ll just come off as something crazy. Maybe I am crazy, maybe we all are. I remember this quote I sent her in one of my very first emails: “We are fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance”. It’s a Japanese saying. I think we ought to be dancing, even when the music is over and the band is packing up. That’s especially when we should dance. When it’s too late and there is nobody to dance for but ourselves.

The other letter I wrote to K. I never quite thanked for for all she did for me. I never asked for her forgiveness for all the stupid things I did — mostly of letting her slip by, not caring for a reason I still don’t understand. I wasn’t tired, and I was interested — it happened in a way that made no sense. Maybe it’s not supposed to make any sense, maybe it’s all just feelings that cannot be expressed in any way. We try and we fail. Maybe this time, I managed to express myself well in both letters. Probably not.

I met E in a bar with my friends, as we usually are, hanging out, passing time. I invited her to a club and sometime later we went. Lately, a lot of affection has gathered up in me, and I gave all of it to her, and she didn’t mind, but didn’t care about it, either. It was just me, my feelings and her, three distinct entities in the vastness of space and time, floating through like silent globs of light, with seemingly no effect on one another. I gave her all the affection I wanted to give others, and she didn’t care but sometimes it felt as if something broke in her, as if things were different than what she pretended them to be. But then we were back again, in our own little worlds with the affection just floating, as if its energy was from another star, not from us, sometimes shining white-hot, sometimes fading like the moon when clouds fog our view and then again it was there but it was blinding and too much. Then she went home and I was stuck with this bright orb and tried to take it home with me, but I couldn’t and it was just there in the morning glowing and I was tired and lonely.

Today I met her again, the affection was still there, I couldn’t and wouldn’t control it, but there were others and they came and talked and I got tired and lonely. So I faded away the only way I knew by trying to be harsh and insensitive and I thought it will be fine but I still felt the same way and I told her I’ll miss her and I will. She could give so much more but doesn’t want to for reasons that are to remain forever mysterious and lonely and strong, as one is when feelings are not shared. Vulnerability is hard and can’t be forced…

I traveled to another city in another country, where for a brief moment, I met C. I had a terrible time that day, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  She was eating ice cream in a corner when I first saw her — short, tender and attentive, with a small scar, almost like a pendant on a thin, invisible necklace. I sat down at the bar, drank a couple of drinks and talked with her. We ended up going to eat out together.

At first I thought it’ll be a fun time, nothing very notable, maybe we’ll make out, spend some time together. Something, however, dawned on me when I first held her close to me. Maybe it was the way we were laughing so much together, or how bright and fun she was, or her quiet but vivid way of being. I remember telling her things that I tell few and I remember feeling in a way that I haven’t felt for a long while — simply worthy of existing. It was good holding her and being affectionate towards her. She was really good to me and enjoyed what I had to give — something that I can really value.

This wonderful experience only remains as pieces of memories now, faded and partially forgotten, like something that we find in an old drawer and it brings back more of a feeling than something concrete. I can’t see her in my mind, but I remember the affection I gave and the affection she gave, and it feels good.

Now he’s gone I don’t know why
Until this day, sometimes I cry
He didn’t even say goodbye
He didn’t take the time to lie

I remember an oddly specific dream: the day I met S, at night when I went to bed I could barely sleep. I dreamed that we are together strolling on a sidewalk, she leaves me behind on a corner and never looks back. The next day, in bed, I told her about this dream.

This reminds me of K, who once wrote me that one night she saw two things in her dreams: “The one I saw about you, is that you aren’t here to stay. The one I saw about me, is that I will give you all of me.”

Yesterday night I dreamt of S. We were outside of an abandoned industrial site where we ran into one another. It was a long-forgotten place full of mystery and opportunity, the kind of place that has a history, a certain charm and some sadness in the broken, graffitied-over walls. I was curious in a soft way about what has happened to her. It made me happy to hear about her and sad that we were no longer together. A form of emptiness overcame me, as if I were a shell of myself and no more.

Lately, I often also daydream about her. I wish I could tell her how much I miss her and how lovely I think she is. I often remember the sweet moments we had, like when she woke me up with a kiss, slept while hugging me, or jumped on me when she found me at a party. Small, maybe inconsequential things, yet to me they convey a form of caring that I’ve had very little of lately. I feel that the little time we spent together has made worthwhile the long stretches of time I spend struggling with life.

I’m re-listening to an artist’s songs that I first heard about a decade ago, and the lyrics “it’s easier to dream with you than to be awake alone or with someone else” ring in my head. He apparently has been in a drug-induced state for the past decade, and though I haven’t been, the texts speak to me. I have given it some thought, and it’s easy to find fun, or intelligent women, or even women who care about me. It’s just really hard to find someone amazing. Someone who takes you to places that you haven’t been and yet you feel safe and at home there. Someone you feel like you could wake up next to every day — and who actually wants to wake up with you every day.

I feel like I don’t belong, and never did. I see all these people having fun, having friends, going out and I see all my friendships erode and all my relationships fail. I have had this from an early age. I was always the odd one out, the one people picked on, the one everyone had to make fun of, humiliate in front of others in order to belong in the group, the group that I was never part of — merely a tool to hold it together. This behaviour of the group was not a question of intelligence, refinedness or any other higher quality of the members. It was true for all peoples and all ages, all the time, every time. Rarely, if ever, did I find myself part of a group where I felt secure, where I could say with confidence that I belonged.

I felt like my friends were just putting up with me, kind of feeling sad for what I had to go through, and were friends only to pity me. I felt the same with S sometimes, that she pitied me, that I was just a burden to her. I felt the same with the others, too. Not all, but many. This realisation, that the girls I date are just like all the others, that they just pity me, only occurred to me recently, but it rings true, and very-very sad. It’s as if I have no escape, not even in close relationships am I free from all this pressure to belong and to look out for the next blow I’ll get, be it physical (in the early days) or psychological. I feel like I don’t belong, not to this place, not to this planet, not to this society. I’m afraid that I won’t change now, that I’ll be an outsider forever, alone, in my own small universe.