The girl

Hi there. Me again.

Mind if I pull up a chair a minute? I can't sleep. Big doctor's appointment in the morning. I'm dreading it.

I don't like carrying on about myself. Not really. But I just feel so darn awful.

I can't explain the pain if you've never had a stone. And I so hope you never have. Wouldn't wish this on ya for anything. If you have had one, you know then. We'll wink at each other, nod silently, share the secret handshake.

Wanna hear a little secret? Part of the reason why this is so difficult is because she's not here to help me through this. No use asking. I'm not going to tell you who. Suffice to say, she isn't here.

So I curl up in the orange and white blanket my mother made for me, watch movies and listen to my music. I search for meaning in a Robert Altman film that doesn't make much sense, drown my soul for the hundredth time in RobinElla's sweet heartbreak song, lose myself in the prose of my heroes Hemingway and Faulkner. Anything to forget the pain.

Mostly, I sleep.

Isn't it funny, the barriers we erect? So afraid to mean what we say and say what we mean that we end up going through life, to borrow another's phrase, in a state of quiet desperation, knowing what we need but not knowing just how to get it, or sometimes even why we need it.

There was this girl one time. No, not the one you think. I didn't go to high school with this one.

She was almost the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my life. (There's an exception, but I'm not going to tell you who.) Anyway, she was smart, full of ambition, funny, independent, free-thinking --- all the things you could ask for.

Last time I saw her, it was turning colder, the leaves had changed, the sky painted dark and gray. She and her sister and another fella were eating yogurt at a chain dessert place down west. I didn't even know she was in the room until she walked up. I noticed her eyes first, then watched my heart, as if I were a witness detached from the scene, as it leaped into my throat.

It was impossible, I knew that. And yet, the heart doesn't know such boundaries. It doesn't lie in fear or worry about getting rejected or broken. Our minds do all that.

No, the heart just loves. Like wild horses, the heart roams fast and free, and can not be contained. Often times reason or sense or propriety have little to do with it.

Anyway. I've thought about that girl at least once a day for three years.

And you know something? Whatever it is I feel for her in my heart hurts me more now than these kidney stones ever could.

Now tell me. Where's the justice in that?

I gotta get some sleep. Here's a quarter. Put it in the jukebox over in the corner and play something sad. "Teardrops," maybe? Turn it up really loud.

Goodnight.