Dear Diary: A Volume of Me Talking to a Book at 1am

January 14

Dear diary,

I got up and found a notebook because it’s the fourth night I haven’t been able to sleep. Ever since it happened, I lie awake, thinking about him, going back over every conversation we ever had; what I could have done differently; what I said; what he said; what we did together. I ask myself if it was my fault. I tell myself it was. I tell myself it wasn’t. I tell myself I hate him. I admit to myself I love him. I cry. I stop crying. My head hurts. I shut my eyes, trying to relieve the aching and I see his face behind my eyelids. I curse my life and the day and the night and the next day. An endless cycle of misery. And you, my poor diary, get to hear about it.

January 15

Dear diary,

Hello, here I am again. It is 1am and I haven’t gotten ready for bed. I’m watching TV. I feel coldly smug today. I am telling myself I am better off without him; that if he didn’t see my value, then he didn’t deserve me. I have steadied my shaking nerves. I have gathered the broken pieces of my heart and tenderly brushed them off, telling them we will all be fine. 

January 16

Dear diary,

I hate everything. I wish I were dead. I came home from work and curled up in my bed without even getting undressed. I am weary. I cannot hold the pieces of my heart together. They are beyond hope. They are dying without each other but are too broken to reassemble. They all lie on the floor of my soul, gasping for breath; reaching their tiny hands toward each other, seeking comfort and nourishment. But none of them can reach the others. We will all die alone with our tears.

January 18

Dear diary,

I will never sleep again. I am vaguely surprised I can still get out of bed. It is 2am and I have watched four and a half movies so far. The fifth one is still playing. It’s about a couple who got divorced after five years of marriage. I suppose I should be happy I never got married. It would be worse to have to split bank accounts; divide furniture; to move and change addresses, et cetera. It’s bad enough as it is. I still have too much of his stuff here, plus a whole category of might-be-his/might-be-mine. Which of these DVDs are his? This yellow phone charger is his, I know, but it went to his old phone and his new phone has a different one. I’m the only one who uses the yellow one. Do I give it back? Do I keep it? Do I throw it away? It seems a waste to toss out or give back a good charger. I'd have to buy a new one. But also I hate looking at it. It mocks me. It says to me, “I can see him anytime I want, but you can’t.”

Do I want to see him though? I kind of hate him. 

January 21

Dear diary,

Last night I ended up looking at pictures of him on my phone and then stalking his social media to find more pictures. I laughed and cried and hated myself and hated him, loved him, cursed him, wept for him. What is my life?

January 23

Dear diary,

I have neglected you for two days. All I did over the weekend was sleep and watch television; sometimes both at the same time. I might have eaten something, but I’m not sure. I deleted some pictures of him at some point and then cried that they were gone forever and spent probably an hour researching how to retrieve deleted things on my laptop. Turns out you can’t undelete. I wish I could delete him from my mind.

January 24

Dear diary,

I just read what I wrote last. Delete him from my mind? How does one get to the point where one would actually wish to delete four years of one’s life from one's memory? Are we so angry? So hurt? Do I regret my choices so much that I am willing to give up four years of my precious life? We made so many good memories, he and I. Do I really need to get rid of them all in an attempt to get rid of my hurt? Does the pain triumph over the joy?

January 25

Dear diary,

Wow, I really waxed philosophical last night, didn’t I? That’s not who I am tonight. I wish I could die. I miss him so much. I wish I could forget this pain. Nothing is worth this. People voluntarily do this. I voluntarily did this! We all start relationships knowing they are a risk. How can we not consider the risks? What a stupid human race. 

January 28

Dear diary,

I got you out to write things down, but now I don’t really feel like talking. I gave his stuff back to him today. Goodnight.

January 30

Dear diary,

Tonight I brought you outside to my balcony for a change of scenery. It is 1:15am and the city is quiet. I hear an occasional shout, or siren, or car going by, but mostly the city is quiet. My mind is fairly quiet as well. He is gone forever. I deleted him off my social media and deleted all our pictures. I thought of that time I researched how to undelete pictures, and found myself smiling, shaking my head at myself. Maybe I can do this. I feel lighter, without his things and pictures. A light breeze is blowing, soothing my tired eyes that are wide open. Maybe I’ll go take a nice hot shower.

February 4

Dear diary,

I hate everything. I came home from work, laid down on my bed, and cried for about an hour. Then I fell asleep. I woke up around 10pm and laid in my bed for another hour. I couldn’t think or move. Finally I got up to take a shower. I feel empty. Do I miss him? I'm not sure I do. I'm tired of thinking about him. I'm tired of crying. I am tired of replaying our dates and conversations in my mind. I am tired of looking at his face every time I close my eyes. I am tired.

February 10

Dear diary,

One month since that terrible day. I don’t have much to say tonight. Yesterday my best friend told me she never liked him. She never liked him? She was the one who told me to go for it when he asked me out the first time. She gushed about how cute we looked together. She never liked him? I screamed at her that if she didn’t like him she should have told me. She said she hadn’t wanted to, because I seemed so happy. “Happy?” I screamed at her. “Do I look happy right now to you?”

I feel bad that I screamed but I don’t know how to apologize. “I’m sorry I’m mad that you weren’t honest”?

“I’m sorry I couldn’t read your mind”?

“I’m sorry you betrayed me”?

I can’t think about this right now. This turned out to be a pretty long entry for one that began with, “I don’t have much to say.”

February 11

Dear diary,

I told another friend of ours what my best friend said. She listened in silence and I felt terrible, like I was gossiping the whole time. But I couldn’t keep it to myself. I felt so betrayed and angry.

Among the things that she finally said, after a long silence while I cried, was, “You can’t change what someone did. You can only decide what you’re going to do about it now.”

She said I should be honest and say that I was hurt, and why, and how we can be better, more faithful friends in the future. “You don’t need to apologize,” she said. “You have nothing to apologize for. But you do need to work through this with her so it doesn’t damage your friendship.”

 “What if she won’t apologize?” I wept, “What if I pour out my soul and she doesn’t care?”

My wise friend shook her head. “You can’t live in the what-ifs,” she said.

I then went on to question her friendship with me, to ask if she had liked him. After she said she had, I asked her how could I tell if she were lying about it. She just smiled and told me I couldn’t choose negativity. She is right. 

February 13

Dear diary,

I talked to my best friend and she cried and told me she would be a better friend in the future. We were so sappy that I’m frankly embarrassed and will not write about it. I feel better, though. I feel we are closer after having a difficult and embarrassing talk. We were able to be honest about our friendship and how we can build each other up. I think we are better friends now that we were before. We faced a test and passed. At least one good thing has come from the aftermath of that terrible day.

February 20

Dear diary,

I’ve neglected you a surprising amount of time. I have been doing okay. Only weekly crying sessions instead of daily ones, so I count that as good. I have good friends, a good job, and a nice apartment to live in. I can do this. One month and ten days. Valentine’s day was six days ago. I was determined to hide. I wore black to work like a real drama queen. I decided I would delete all my social media and hide in my house all evening. But my friends--my best friend and the wise one I told you about before--would have none of it. They picked me up from work and took me to a new restaurant none of us had been to before. We went to a movie at the theater across town that we don't usually go to, and then we went out for drinks. They dropped me off at home; mellow, if not completely happy. I have nice friends. I cried after I got home, partly from the emptiness inside me, but partly out of gratitude for the people who love me.

February 23

Dear diary,

1am again, and I’m watching television. I can’t turn it off. I’m scared of the silence, so I leave it on. I watch shows and movies until I fall asleep. When I get home after work and press the button on the remote, the screen that comes up says, “Are you still watching?” with “Continue” and “Exit” options below. It has waited patiently for me all day. It is the one reliable thing in my entire unreliable life.

February 24

Dear diary, 

It is 1:23am and I am cackling out loud at the last sentence I wrote above. Unreliable life? What a drama queen. My life is the most reliable it has ever been. Work. Food. Watch TV into the wee hours of the morning. Fall asleep. Wake up. Work. Repeat. My life has never been so reliable. It has fewer variables than ever before. What is variable? The parking spaces available at the grocery store? I am still laughing. I hope the neighbors can’t hear me.

March 1

Dear diary,

You’ve become my friend in the wee hours of the morning. Somehow, all the hours until the end of midnight are “nighttime” and I can justify being awake but still a functioning human. But once I see the clock hit 1:00 and I’m still awake with my thoughts, I can’t pretend to be functional. And I start writing. I’m tired. I don’t know what to do when I think about him. I have so many good memories of him. I have so few bad memories. Why should the bad ones triumph? Why can't I tell a story that begins, “That reminds of when he and I went to . . . .”? I hate thinking about him because I can only think about the loss. There has to be a way to preserve the joys. 

March 7

Dear diary,

I will never sleep again. You and coffee are my best friends. Someone told me the other day he was dating again. And sent me screenshots. Why would someone do this? Why would I want to know? Why hurt me? But something held me back from lashing out at my friend. If I’m being completely honest, I like knowing. It’s like pressing down on a toothache. Aggravating the pain is somehow soothing. A paradox. I feel the pain in the pit of my stomach and it spreads up into my head. My actual teeth hurt. 

May 2

Dear diary,

I have actively and passively ignored you by turns these past many weeks. I have reached to pick you up and write in you, but stopped myself because I knew if I opened you, I’d read back over my previous entries and all their black and white nausea. That’s a good word. Nausea. I play the same scenes over in my head time after time. I feel the same emotions. I fight back tears over the same memories. I cry over the same lost future. I tell myself the same consolations; pray the same prayers. Time after time. Day after day. My mind is caught in a cycle; an indoor running track that I cannot get off. I run past the same posters, the same paint on the walls, the same cracks in the concrete. I cannot stop. I cannot slow down. I cannot shut my eyes. All I can hope is that one day I will collapse from exhaustion and curl up and shut my eyes.

October 7

Dear diary,

I have neglected you again. This is not because I started sleeping; far from it. After I wrote the last entry, I picked you up and threw you as hard as I could against the opposite wall of my bedroom. You hit it flat and slid down conveniently behind my dresser. There I left you until tonight. I’m sorry about throwing you.

Anyway, I pulled you out to tell you I think I have found my answer.

My friend wanted to watch the sunset, so we got dinner and went down to the beach. The sky was partly overcast, but the horizon was clear. When the sun dropped below the clouds in all its red, evening glory, the sky lit up with heavenly fire. Shimmering gold, hazy orange, cotton-candy pink; each edge of cloud and wisp of mist was a different shade of shining, glowing color. “This sunset is amazing,” my friend said. “I came out here the other night for it, but there were no clouds so there was no beauty.”

I was barely listening, but after a second her words came back like an echo on the wind. There were no clouds so there was no beauty.

I do not have words to describe what I felt in this moment. I cried silently, with tears that blurred my vision, but suddenly everything was clear.

We equate clear skies with happiness and clouds with sorrow, but in a sunset it's the clouds that reflect the light and illuminate beauty beyond description. I can love someone purely and graciously without being loved in return. I can cherish the happy memories while acknowledging the sad ones. I can let go of anger and be grateful for the things I’ve learned and the person I have become. I can let go of bitterness and embrace the opportunity to love deeply, without reservations, compromises, or wishings-back. I can let the sunshine of joy and peace shine on the clouds in my life; turning them from grey to gold, from black to shining pink and orange. Thank God for grace and mercy. 

I’m sure I will have many more late nights with you, diary. I will struggle. I will cry. I will be up late at night staring at the wall, questioning. But if I can cling to this truth I learned on the beach at sunset, I think I can make it and that I can love again.