shield

July 18, 2004
10.07p

up to mendocino this weekend for an early birthday thing and just to leave the city and traffic and noise and cell phones and all the things we really should be doing all the time. two days of she-and-i and i think it was real. i mean i'm pretty sure, there was the redwood drive and the champagne, the checking in and the rolling and tangling on a bed so big it made me want to jump and frolic allaround. and the dinner and breakfast and everything everything, lorca and lighthouses and secrets and just so great, and a sad time too.

always a sad time with us, it is how we are. i love her and there is a way that sometimes when i look at her it makes my heart a bit sore.

but i realized sitting across the table from her how at times when she is sad it makes me panic a little and i want to say something or do something, talk her out of it, but that isn't always the best thing. her sadness, it is reasonable, maybe even necessary. so this time i noticed and i sat there without saying all those things i already said too many times before. and i felt afraid.

sometimes i find myself hiding my own sadness from her, as much as it's possible for me to hide anything from her, anyway. but you know, all that, we said all those things already too. or maybe i'm just rationalizing this part of me that wants sometimes to shield myself and people i love the most from things we need to feel through. i did that with david always, too. trying to be someone's anesthetic, is that really helping?

mostly it seems strange how everything is happier and brighter than in so long, very long, brighter than i for awhile thought it could get again. but these overwhelming moments...

it's intense when two sad people are so together. but who else could have any chance of understanding?