A Thousand Pieces ~ Part One

December 7

It's 11:07 on a Friday night. I can't sleep. I should be out doing something, probably, but that doesn't really appeal to me right now. Nothing has since he left.

My calendar tells me it's been a month, but it seems like longer. Scratch that - it seems like a hell of a lot less. I can still imagine him sitting here next to me, tucking my hair behind my ear because he knows I like it.

That's in the past now, though, and I feel unbelievably wrong to agonize over my own pathetic sorrows. I want to stop needing him so badly, but like most things, that's easier said than done. If only I could forget him, maybe I could forget how to love him.

Angie told me to start a journal. When she broke up with her boyfriend this summer, she said it helped a lot to get her feelings out on paper. My situation is a lot different from hers, so I don't think it's going to work that well for me…but like I said, it's 11:07 on a Friday night, and I can't sleep.

Oh, damn. I just remembered something AJ did for me once. It was a Friday night, kind of like this one, but it wasn't so cold out. I think it was in September, but I'm not quite sure. Time makes my memory blurry.

I was sick that night - sick in bed with a fever and a terrible cough. AJ called, and I told him to stay home so that he wouldn't catch whatever it was that I had. Five minutes later, he was on my doorstep with take-out chicken noodle soup from the diner around the corner, and a new book of poetry by my favorite poet. He read it to me until I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, he was curled up in the easy chair across from my bed, snoring his head off.

I can't write any more tonight. Remembering hurts, and it's going to make me cry. I don't like crying.

December 12

This time of year depresses me a lot. Holidays, everybody acting all cheerful. Well, I'm not feeling very festive right now. It's been a hell of a day.

I found a picture of us this morning, one that I'd never seen before. It had fallen behind my desk. I was cleaning up some of the stuff I had left lying around, and I accidentally knocked a pen over the back edge. When I moved the desk to get it, the picture was there. I sat and stared at it for fifteen minutes.

Neither of us knew that our picture was being taken at that moment. In it, AJ and I are laughing, our arms around each others' shoulders. We don't even know the photographer is there - that's how wrapped up we are in each other. We look so alive.

Why can't I feel that alive now? This picture brings back a rush of reminiscing. He and I used to have so much fun together. Life was like one big game to us, one big puzzle, and we were only one clue away from the answer to it all. Now the pieces have fallen apart, and I'm back to where I started - only this time, I'm worse off, because I know what it's like to be on top of the world. I've had the taste of love's triumph on my tongue, and now that it's gone, I feel emptier than if I had never tasted it at all.

Angie and her new boyfriend are out tonight. So I'm here again, alone, left with nothing to do except write in this journal. I still don't think it's going to help me very much, but it's better than sitting and staring at the wall or listening to depressing music.

It just started to snow. The flakes are piling up against my window. I remember once, last February, when AJ and I had a snowball fight at three in the morning. We were on vacation in Boston, one of those rare times when the two of us could escape from the world without ten bodyguards following us around. We were out walking in the middle of the night - (we were two night owls, he and I were) - and suddenly it began to snow. Soon we were both covered in ice and mushy, melting snowflakes. We played in the snow until the urge overcame us, and we raced back to the hotel to make love.

Memories like that make me want to bring him back. If only I could. Then maybe I wouldn't be sitting here, writing in this stupid journal. Maybe he and I would be out there in the dark, squeezing life as hard as we could and not letting go until we'd wrung out the very last drop.

December 14

Howie called me today. To ask how I was doing. It's so good to know that he still remembers me, still remembers the times we all shared together. I started crying on the phone to him. I felt so ashamed, but he said he didn't mind. Listening to me, he almost started crying too. Howie is a great friend.

Angie says I need to give this journal some form of organization. Since when does Angie know everything? But she is my best friend, so I'll believe her. She says that I should start at the beginning and work my way toward the end, a little bit at a time. That way I can have some form of closure when I'm finished.

So I'll have to start with the day we met. I guess you could say we just kind of…bumped into each other.

I was less than a month away from graduating from college. That would put this whole thing at about May of last year. A year and a half ago. I was going to school at Columbia, in New York City of course. I was running down the street, back to my apartment, carrying a bag of groceries. I'm not sure why I was running. Oh yeah, that's right - I was going to be late for a date with my then-boyfriend, Tyler. He wasn't anything special, but I liked him well enough, I guess.

Anyway, so I was running, and I turned a corner, and - BAM! Out of nowhere, some guy ran straight into me, and my groceries went flying everywhere. I was pissed as hell - (I always have had a temper) - and I started going on and on about how I was running late and I didn't have time to deal with this.

The guy, who I didn't really look at directly at first, because I was running around trying to pick up my groceries, apologized profusely and started to help me pick everything up from off the ground. When we were done, we both stood up at the same time, and I looked into his eyes. I stopped talking. I couldn't move. Neither could he. We just stared into each other's eyes for about two minutes straight.

He asked me out to dinner that night. On the way home, I called Tyler on my cell and told him that I wouldn't be able to make our date. Tyler never heard from me again.

Even good memories like this one make me feel lost. Angie just got home, and she wants to talk to me. I'm done remembering for tonight.

~

Continue to part two

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