Britney

We’re going away on the 18th. I check out enough books from school to tide me over in case I finish Helter Skelter on the road—Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman and The Velvet Underground top the pile. The anticipation bites my ankles. I giggle and welcome its corrosion. Spring settles into December outside as fog outlines the bare figures of littleleaf lindens.

This boy….this boy has liked me since ninth grade and I had no idea. I used to like him until I got involved with my first girlfriend. I wrote a diary entry at 14 about him briefly holding my hand, and it makes me think wow. We go to incredible lengths to appease our desires for others, even when it seems unrequited and simply not meant to happen. I feel foolish. Not only am I laughing and dancing at the edge of the cliff without realizing that the rock beneath me crumbles with every step, even after I fall I am lost in my blissful ignorance.

But romantic feelings complicate things! You see yourself differently. You question certain things: How can I hate men so intensely and still find myself embracing soft spots in my armor? I covered the cracks and now I am widening them. You see others differently. You think, How can you like me so much? How can you feel so irrevocably for someone for so long? How can I be so oblivious?

For once, I am very in love with being single. I can’t be myself for two people right now. Everything must settle. ♦