Minding My Own

This weekend--while waiting in David's hotel room to meet up with him in Philadelphia--I once again read his journal.

I think this makes me an Awesome Super-Sleuthing Genius. Kind of like a modern-day Nancy Drew. Only far hotter.

You may disagree. But, if so, whatever you do, don't tell me about it in an e-mail. Just stop reading this now and go devour a different stranger's on-line journal. And don't read tomorrow either, when I'll be writing about how I used to unwrap the Christmas presents that my mom hid in her closet, and then re-wrap them, but tell her I'd unwrapped them anyway, so she'd feel guilty about not being able to surprise me, and then go out and buy me more stuff.

Because I did that too.

For all of those left reading, let's just state the obvious, and move on: I am a Journal Reader.

Put a journal in your carry-on baggage, underneath a pile of papers and some boxer shorts, and I will find that sucker and read the shit out of it--not once, but several times--and then put it back underneath the pile of papers and the boxer shorts, being careful to make sure that the papers remain in the exact order they did when I first rifled through them AND that the corner of your purple elephant boxers peeps out of the zipper in just the way it did when I first saw your suitcase and decided to dive into it face-first like a Hollywood reporter rummaging furiously through JLo's rotten, day-old garbage.

It ain't pretty, but it's true.

And you know what?

Thank. God.

Thank God I'm a Journal Reader. Because if I wasn't, I'd have gotten off the phone with David after telling him I wanted to end things, and felt so sad about losing someone who cared about me so much.

If I hadn't read his journal, when he called to ask if I'd meet up with him in Philly just nine days after we'd broken up, I might've sat in his hotel room, planning how to tell him that I thought I'd ended things too quickly. Might've waited anxiously, rehearsing the speech in which I asked if we could try to work things out.

In the months ahead, I might've read and re-read the postcards he wrote me, the letters, the notes. I would've thought of the trip. Our Thanksgiving plans. I would've felt such bewilderment--would've wondered over and over what I had done to make his affections change so drastically.

But since I did read his journal, I now know that he had doubted his feelings about me for weeks, but that he kept stringing me along, biding his time, even deciding--in a remarkable show of bravery and maturity for a 31 year-old male--to avoid talking to me directly about any of it and to just let things "peter out."

Because I read that thing from cover to cover, I know that the letters, the postcards, the trip, the invitations, the words--the whole relationship--every fucking minute of it--he described as "an impulse." Berated himself for, once again, being so impulsive. Like I'm some too-expensive pair of shoes.

I read it and now I know that, TWO DAYS after we broke up he hooked up with some woman at a conference in Chicago. And then went on a date with a new woman who just started at his office. And, still later, catalogued yet another encounter with a woman who approached him on the street and "did all the work." All in the first week--the first WEEK--after we stopped seeing each other.

I also know that I'm a fucking MUCH better writer than he'll ever be.

And I know that my anger made making out with him later. That. Much. Hotter.

Pesky impulses.