It is Valentines Day. Mark is at work until 1:30, and I should be, too, but rather I am sitting on my bed, stoned, typing this up because I can’t handle alone all the things I am feeling. Sometimes I suspect writing to be the absolute most self important thing on the planet, but other times it’s just that all of this, this indefinable thing called life is too much to bear and I need to purge it, rid myself of it’s contents and look at it spread before me, coherent and understandable. Writing affords me that opportunity.

I have never before been this person that I am now. I share my love with a man I could never make whole and who could never complete me, and I am aware of this even as I am sharing it. I ache for more, but fear I won’t find it, so I cling to what I have now no matter how unsatisfying and hurtful it is, and this is true for both he and I.

I needed to write Mark something for Valentines Day. I don't get off the hook with one-line cards because I am a writer, and people tend to expect more from me because it's what I do.

But I coudn’t think of anything to write him. So I went to my e mail, to the folder where I stashed away all the love letters between Josh and myself, the ones we wrote before he broke my heart, left me without breath against a bathroom wall, gasping and grasping for something to heal, something to numb this unbearable pain in my heart. I thought I might be able to steal kisses from those letters, but no such luck. What I wrote to Josh is never what I could say to Mark...it was meant for Josh, and besides, I would never mean it if I said it to Mark. I was overwhelmed with the memory of how my love used to feel, just how deep it went, and now my heart aches.

How did I lose everything to him? He has me still, and I can't get myself back.

I miss feeling things so real, so intense and warm and radiant.

Almost two years have gone by, and this is still an open wound, bound for infection.