Square peg in a round hole

June 25, 1980

I’m here and awake with an empty feeling biting at me, change swirling around inside my head like a chill breeze I can’t actually feel because of the heat wave.

I feel as if I can never go back.

She didn’t call last night, and I’m scared she won’t call this morning even when the clock reaches an acceptable hour.

She may never call me again.

Last night before she left I ranted on about working class hero I forgot all about her, and how saddled with her own worries she is, so that when I looked up, I saw she was crying.

I’m weary now, and afraid – a terrible combination.

She did leave smiling, but even that seemed a struggle, no smile ever really makes up for tears.

But then, she confuses me at every turn.

She doesn’t always tell me what she really feels so that when she does call, I have to listen for her tone.

She confesses a lot to me, but I’m not sure if this is her reaction to internal pain or love.

I’m not always sure there is a difference because the definition of love is so ambiguous.

I see imitations on the TV faces, and hear it coming out of the mouths of people who act out roles.

Everything seems as polluted as the river, with no way to make it clean again – with her or the world.

I ache for a river that flows clear through which I can look to the bottom and see all there is to see, rather than this murky, brown sludge through which we all must trudge.

I don’t even know how I feel.

Something stirs in my chest, harmonizing with my heartbeat, but I can’t absolutely define it as love.

It’s not the palm-sweating, below-the-belt kind of feeling I always associated with love, although that ache aches in me as well.

It’s not the dime store novel kind of love either – so easily described and later dismissed – although I also ache for life to be so simple as to be explained by a glossy cover with a provocative image.

I’m confused, trying to come to grips with feelings I don’t at all understand, trying to fit passion for one thing in the same box with passion for everything else, but it is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

It just won’t fit.