Heartbreak hotel.

May 30, 2001
"Tonight was like a movie.  It all began like this...
I drove up to the Speedway to pick up my pet pig, Smokey, from Nate, who had kept him for the night.  We exchanged hellos and said our goodbyes.  He wished me luck on finding an apartment, I hoped he wouldn't get too fucked up at Paul's house.  I wanted to tell him [that I want to break up with him] but the words clung to my throat.  I went to the apartments, found one, put down a deposit.  Before all this, and before I go on, I called Paul's house and asked Nate to pick me up from work at 9:30 because I wouldn't have a car and I knew then that he was already blazing.  I worked the whole night and was surprised when he didn't show up at 9:20 or 9:25 or even 9:30.  At 9:35 I called his phone and asked him where he was.  At Paul's.  Did you forget about me?  What?  Picking me up at 9:30?  What time is it now?  9:40.  Oh baby, I'm so sorry.  I'm on my way right now.
Five minutes later his drunk ass shows up.  I know instantly that I don't want him to drive.  He can barely talk straight.
He's telling me what he did tonight.  Now I'm crying.  He smoked.  Drank.  Took two zanis...just like everyone else, all those pill poppers.  He told me just the other day that he didn't do that anymore.
He's apologizing.  I cry, hard.  Drive off the road a little.  It's pouring rain.
He's apologizing but he's drunk.  This has got to stop.  I tell him never to be fucked up around me again, that it's breaking my heart.  He says he'll do anything for me.  He loves me.  So much.  More than anything in this whole world.  He'd give up anything fro me.  And this drug stuff, this has got to stop, it's pulling us apart.  Please forgive me, baby, please, I love you so much, I would kill myself if I lost you.  I tell him I forgive him.  He can't stop apologizing.  He's crying.  I pull up to the gas station.  It's pouring rain.  We stop and talk and cry in the jeep until I tell him what time it is.  He's supposed to be at that job, unloading boxes at a warehouse, at 10:30.  It's 10:24, we're driving down the road to my house.  I just want to blurt it out [that I want to dump him].  He keeps repeating himself.  Right before he leaves, we're standing in the rain.
The manager at the warehouse calls his cell phone twice, he has to go.  I'm scared to death, it's pouring all over town, he's drunk and I know he's going to speed.  I don't want to tell him now because I'm afraid he'll forget by morning but I have to tell him at some point.  He promises he won't forget, but I don't say anything.  He says, I love you more than anybody in this whole world.  The phone rings again, he has to go.  I love you, he says, as he rolls out of the driveway.  I love you, I mouth, but I don't think he sees me.  He drives off; I stand in the same spot, holding Smokey, in the rain, in the night.  I wish you were here."

Playing it cool.

1/4/99
"Wow, I"m still not getting used to the transition of this being 1999.
I actually talked to my friends today.  I had quite an interesting conversation with Carrie.  I told her how I loved Indiana and why I hadn't talked to anyone until then (they thought I just got in town).  She ask what I was planning on doing tonight.  I told her about Greg's surprise party, and I asked what they were planning on.  She said, oh, we don't know.  Mike was just curious.  I was like Mike?  Yeah, you know Mike...Mike P.  I knew all along who she was talking about, I just didn't know why she was talking about him."

Who the fuck do you think you're kidding?

Today is a bad day for me.  A really rough, open-a-vein-bad kind of day, you know?  

So I found this entry appropriate.

12/15/98
"Bruce told me the other morning that he's tried to figure me out.  I've re-read the letter a thousand times, trying to see why he thinks I'm perplexing, why I'm so 'distant.'  He calls it my 'safety mechanism' - my mask.  He tells me that I'm causing myself a great deal of heartache and that I'm missing out on something great.

From Bruce: 'It's not like I wouldn't have told you anyway, had I the time, and you weren't so distant.'

And then, part of his poem to me:

Did you paint you windows purple to hide a
multi-colored madness?
To shelter cold-confusion from distant eyes
that see your sadness?
It's easy to keep your mouth closed,
It's easy to stay away
Until your heart swells much too large
for the mask you've given it."

What if I'd been a ...cowgirl?

March 25, 2000

"What if we'd moved back to Texas and Mom had had a kid?  Hmmm....maybe I would be living in California or Japan right now, if she had married a Navy guy or any sort of military man.  What if we had stayed in Dallas?  I would be so different.  Maybe a cowgirl.  And I'd drive a big Chevy truck and blare Garth.  Maybe I'd fall into a rock-n-roll crowd there too.  Are you who you are always?  Maybe I'd be sitting on the floor in my room at 11:50 on a Saturday night writing in my journal.
I wonder what I'm going to be like when I grow up.  When I'm an adult out there doing all that responsible adult stuff.  I hope I don't get caught up in the hassles of life.  I want to remember how to have fun - I want laugh a lot and be true to myself.  Maybe I'll still be into art and music and the beauty of this poetic world."

Today I am in a bad mood.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed....at least, that is one way to describe it.  But this isn't a modern day journal, so I'll get to pulling up the old stuff.

9/16/98
"Last night I was sitting outside on my Granny's porch writing, when, out of the stillness of a warm autumn night, I hear my [step]cousin and her about-to-be ex-husband and his momma screaming at each other in the middle of the road, throwing around lots of F words and other obscenities.  The cops came.
I tried to remind myself that they are just rednecks, mean ones, but they just wouldn't shut up."

Yes, this is them, the two on the left.  No blood relation (important note).