I was woken up a bit ago by a phone call.

It was one of the places I have finally been able to discern as familiar and not comfortable.

It has been springing upon me lately, in the occasionally successful attempt to catch me off guard - vulnerable to the pleabargaining of my empathy, my good nature.

I cannot escape it's septic clutching of my understanding. I cannot muster up the courage of a reboot. Of draining the same wounds.

I fear it winds around me. I fear that in this anklegrab situation, my only resource is silence and ignorance.

How dare you say now that you love me.

There is no longer the time nor place for such a thing.

We all meander through lives that consist of windows of opportunity.

When you skip a window, there's no going back, and it's closed.

I have said it was a good dream. Maybe it was only meant for that.

You cannot ever be a safety net. You cannot ever unhurt me.

What I have pledged to is both those things. He is a prop for my growing. An anchor rock for my starfish heart.

He is all that is great and good in my days ahead.

How could I forsake that?

No, the moment I agreed contained all moments.

I can trust him to pull me solidly alongside him. I am a greater person in his presence. He lifts and cradles me.

I didn't need someone on my own plane. I needed a way to grow up.

I would apologize for being myself if it was what made you love me, and what made this hurt you.

But what apology can one lay across the truth? Is it my place to apologize.

You love my possibility. The idyllic way you have painted me for yourself. You loved my attention.

But he loves me as what I am, not as the things I could be for him.

And that - THAT - is a crucial realization.

At this impossible 3 am hour, I can nearly touch the abstractions, it's all so clear.

I do not love you. You are no comfort, no step up into the darkness toward which faith in someone propels me.

You won't find or plant in me that irresolve.

I am not yours. Forever.

From my Phone...

Mellow day. Mayhaps it was even somber... I was too busy not talking and distracting myself to notice which.

And now I'm sitting on a window ledge outside at Borders, waiting for a ride home.

And I have to post this in spurts so my phone doesn't log me out.

Went and saw The Holiday today. I laughed and cried. Then I hated myself for relating to a chick flick. And because now I think Jack Black is mainly obnoxious, and not funny.

Then I walked to Borders, where I spent the day reading graphic novels by Craig Thompson. I really like his style. And his book Blankets is amazing. It moved me.

I want to go home and draw my own autobiographical comic book.

Sketchbook/journals were on sale for $4. I bought 3.

Maybe I'll do illustrated books of my poetry.

I felt outside of myself today. I keep going back to that quote from Everything Is Illuminated:

To write is to have second chances. What, then, do you mean when you say you were born to be a writer?

I have spent the last few years skirting the avoidable centers of my life. Now it's not just mine anymore, and I am plunging headlong into my personal Louisiana Purchase territory.

But it's okay now. I have found my Clark. And we shall explore it all together.

More and more I realize that my life to this point was just building. That the actual living doesn't happen until you're whole. And that you can't be whole until you find the person who completes you.

And while I rejoice in the prospect of excavating, scouting the dense jungles of my future life, I feel I have spent the week mourning my imminent departure from the world I will be leaving on the fringes.

There is much I have not the words, or presence of mind, to clearly articulate to that end.

Today I pondered the subtle, nuanced differences between familiarity and comfort.

And the difference between my then and now is defined by the noise of falling snow on fallen snow.

The sound of a change of heart is just as loud.