30 XII 2002 - 14:40 - nihil est super

New: a summary for those who don't want to slog through the entry.

Wah wah wah woe is me wah wah wah I suck. Thank you.

I'll be fine in a day or two.

I got up briefly this morning at 7 to wish my eldest sister as she flew off to Massachusetts to visit her significant other for a couple of weeks. Then I sort of went back to sleep until 9, and when I got up, the entire house was empty.

I used to be good at being alone, but now I think it wears on me, as if it were an ill-fitted mask. I'll stop in the middle of making my bed and feel a certain unpleasant emptiness steal over me. I think it's to do with certain changes felt: I am still quite capable of carrying out a conversation with myself in up to three voices with dense texture, but I'm no longer nearly as willing to do so, and when I do, it's not as fulfilling.

I need contact with people now. I suppose I always did, but I was better at hiding it before. Now every departure, every separation, begins to feel a very fresh loss, and I wish it weren't coming that way. I feel as if, having had sisters who have been away for school since I was three, I should be more than used to the cycle of departure and arrival -- pleasantly dulled, somehow, but instead it now feels like a learned equation: someone comes home, there is the ecstasy of recognition and a week or two of happiness, and then there is always the loss.

I worry that I've learned this a little too well -- that I'm always waiting for the next argument that will estrange me from my friends, that I'm always half-expecting my friends to disappear, that I'm always afraid that happiness has terrible consequences.

I spoke earlier in the week with my sister about how difficult it seems it will be for anyone to live with any one of us -- how our little neuroses seem so difficult to deal with. In retrospect, what seems amusing is how little faith either of us has in the resiliency of others and the willingness of others to forgive in exchange for forgiveness...

all the same, I can't imagine a saint who'd want to put up with me. Certainly all of the above betrays a lack of self-confidence, but I think it's also what I've told myself should be learned.

Which lends itself well to the simple commandment: 'Unlearn it, then!'

What I hate is that this sensitivity to the absence of all others hasn't seemed to make me better in my behavior -- I feel terrible about being called away in the middle of a conversation long afterwards, but if I could have taken the time to explain before I left, how much better that would be... I still remember how good it felt when B. kept telling me he'd be back for the second half of class over the summer (although it was unnecessary, and part of me was amused by how much it seemed he was treating me like a favored pet dog, it still felt good) and yet I don't seem to be doing it.

How is it that being sensitive to something hasn't forced me to consider it for others? What kind of monster am I?

5 PM: By which I mean: how have what I value and what I do become so different, and why did I allow it to happen?