I have had the most unbelievable 2007; A. has gone, on New Years’ Day. It is both a measure of my eccentricity and desperation that I have responded with no small measure of determination to set things right. There is no more analysis, or gnashing of teeth, and even though I am reduced to a lurching, pensive mess, there is purpose in what I am doing. I have written reams, roamed far and wide in search of clarity and comprehension, and have only energy and willpower left to expend. In all my years, I have done some impossible, incredible, fantastic things. At 26, am I still capable of more? As it turns out, I am. But what is more surprising is how rational and quiet, how focused I am.
What of December? Shrouded in gloom, even before the New Year, I laboured long and hard at items that took up far too much of my time. I spent it in a half-daze, waiting not only for the year to end but for a spark to set me off. Now, I think back to the days I spent attending class, struggling to get started, and of course, with perfect hindsight, should have seen my desperate bookshopping and yearning for solitude as an instinctive defensive mechanism at what was happening so very subtly to me, and her. Every single response was not, as I thought, a discordant alignment of the planets, but rather an intuitive, visceral response to an unknown threat.
In Siam Reap, as I found myself distracted from reality and basking in the brilliant, golden sunshine, slipping between ruins and bars, cafes, strangers, I found sustenance.
No, I will not yield.