I called J.
01/08/2003

I decided to walk to work today. I left Horatio the bike and Hamlet the Helmet at home, resisted the busses that passed me by as I walked up the hill from Haight and Divisadero. Instead, I took my time, even stopped at a cafŽ for a change from the work coffee (which if I can get to it first, I make Strong). I thought about J during the walk. Thought I should call him, say something. What, I didn't know. I just knew I had to stop playing my one-sided mind game of stubbornly waiting for him to respond to my last email, or to pick up the phone. I could say, "I think your silence means something, and I would like to know what it is beyond the usual busy schedule." I could say, "I called because you never responded to my email, and I need your parents' mailing address." Or simply, "Hi. How have you been?" Or "Fuck you. You make me unhappy, and I usually use 'unhappy' so sparingly that now it lets me know it's time to go." I knew I wouldn't say that. And I knew I had to say something; call, empower myself, find out where we are with our first conflict, and then decide if I can continue this.

I thought about Suren and Andy again -- about how by criticizing people so that in the end, I may get the attention/care/respect I deserve, I end up isolating them so I get even less than before. Then come the guilt and sadness. I felt I messed up again; I pushed J past his limits so now he is gone. I wished things could have gone back to normal again. Phone conversations, laughs, talking shit about idiots we knowÉ

Got to work, had decent classes, but a shitty shitty faculty meeting (more on that in another entry), lost it, cried, came back home, smoked a cigarette, had some vanilla Stoli and coke, and called J. Not there. Little later, called again. He answered, as casually as always. I told him I had decided to wait for his response, but then chose to call him anyway because I have been thinking about himÉa lot. He said he didn't think he had to respond to my email; he read it and absorbed it. I clarified: I didn't expect a response to the content of the email, but a response as in a message back. And I wouldn't have thought about it much when he took four days to write back any other time, but given our last conversation was a heavy one, I thought silence meant something. Nope. Apparently, it did not mean anything other than his being busy as usual. He repeated that nothing has changed for him since our last conversation. Whew. This is what I wanted. We're back to normal. I'll go with it for a while.