Saturday

I can't believe how long it's been since I last wrote. I also can't believe it's Saturday... again. Time goes so fast. It always scared me, before, how fast time went. It's so ironic that I came out here because I was afraid I would die without having fulfilled any meaningful purpose in life.

Anyway, today being Saturday means today is homework day again. I always feel behind and lately unmotivated to do my homework. I know I need to finish these classes to finalize my teaching credential. There was a time when I loved school. But this just feels like a hoop I have to jump through and I'm sick of it.

I read a book by Alice Munro called Lives of Girls and Women. It was a really great book--a series of short stories, really, about a girl who lives in a small town in Canada. It didn't all connect until the end. As she grew up, she grew apart from everybody and in an effort to belong lost hold of herself. She drifted apart from her best friend because the other girl dropped out of school, as did most people, and got a job, then spent all her free time buying things for when she got married and putting up with drunken men she didn't really like because she was "supposed" to find a husband. Del, however, stayed in school, and thought she might get a scholarship to go to college, which was her only ticket out of her hometown. And yet this choice didn't satisfy her either.

This is the kind of book I want to write, the kind of book I hope my novel is although I'm not really sure. It saddened me, though, to read it... I get depressed when I read sad books or watch sad movies, so I have to be careful. And then... and then a little part of me thought about Dave and how as much as we were soulmates, he didn't understand about books. My love of literature was a world that was foreign to him, even though he wrote songs and we could connect through music. And as much as I loved him, sometimes I was lonely for someone to share the books with.

I think he knew that, although I tried to keep it secret from him that there was this hole in his understanding of me. Maybe that's why he took it personally that I left. I wasn't leaving him, but I think he feared we would drift apart because I was entering a world more appropriate to who I really was.

I feel guilty thinking all this because I really did love him, and I feel as if it's a betrayal of his memory to think that we were better suited as friends than as lovers, just as in life I felt it was a betrayal to be attracted to other men even though he said he wanted us to have an open relationship and that the only thing that mattered was our friendship, not whether we ever went further than that.

Anyway the ironic difference between me and Del is that she broke up with her non-intelelctual boyfriend because he tried to fore her to get baptized, while I wholeheartedly embraced my baptism and my commitment to God.

It's strange how I did secretly want these few months apart from Dave to try to figure out who I was and then come back to him stronger. I think if he had been able to come out here he would have been pleased with who I'd become.

I'm working on my next Toastmasters speech, to be given in a few weeks. We can choose any subject; the point is to do an organized 5-7 minute speech. I'm going to do mine on the topic of recapturing who you were meant to be rather than who you once were.

As always I owe my inspiration to Dave, who was second only in my love to God.