07-21-03 - 7:01 p.m.
he treats me the way i used to treat the patrick. get close, pull away. it was a repeating pattern, documented here; i turned off my phone, i turned off my heart, i turned him away, i constantly tested him. love me? prove it. love me? show it. love me? suffer. the 'boy does it now, afraid of hurt, so much like me it's laughable, but i'm not laughing. a dose of my own medicine makes me wonder how patrick, whose real name was jimmy, endured it. he never gave up, not until i made him choose. i wanted to matter, i've always wanted to matter, to the man who beat me, to the man who neglected me, to the man whose marriage meant more than my soul. i want to matter now, to this complex and beguiling man who has killed for cattle but won't extend his heart beyond hollow cowgirl fucking on the tailgate of a truck. i love you, he says, handing me a fistful of flowers, but i don't know what love is. i don't know how to love. so instead of risk and the possibility of hurt, he pushes me away, and here i am, as lonely as i was when jimmy loved me, and if i weren't so drunk i'd knock on the codger's door, the way i often do in my dreams. fuck you, i'd say. fuck you for disarming my wary heart. fuck you.