November 1–December 31, 2004 — Two-toned hair

I’ve only ever felt happy because of a girl. My friends tell me this is a poor idea, that I need to find happiness in what I’m doing and the people who will consistently be there for me, but I’ve only felt contentment in friendship, and never consistently.

There’s a girl who lives near me and works near me. I see her a lot between where I live and where I work. Sometimes I see her on a streetcar while I’m walking down the street; sometimes we’ll make eye contact. I still don’t know her name. I doubt I’ll ever know it. She already makes me happier than almost anyone in Toronto. I would probably be a happier person if that weren’t the case.

There are other girls, too. One I only see on Thursdays, always around 11:00 am. I plan my day around it, leaving the house hoping to run into her and switching sides of the street depending on which side I’ve run into her on before.

There’s a fragment of a sentence that’s been with me since high school. I’d changed it around in my mind so much that not many of the words were the same as when I’d first read them. I spent hours trying to find the sentence again, only remembering which book it was in and that it was on a right-facing page in the edition I read.

It turns out the sentence is, “...the growing volume of her absence began to weigh upon me in the windy grayness.”

I remember reading it when I’d never known the weight of anyone’s absence and thinking that it must be a devastating thing. I remember thinking that sentence was brilliant, and I remember wondering when I would find someone whose absence would have a mass and a volume. Maybe I was hoping people would be as easily conquered as physics problems, that I could avoid those moments of devastation if I worked through the math of them.

I guess by now I’ve felt a person’s absence. But even that has a shape and form. It’s the void that scares me, the ache of not missing someone in particular, of just wanting someone to care about.

I feel like I’m forgetting the shapes of feelings and how to recognize the flashes in someone’s eyes. I feel like my own eyes are getting duller, like they only show desperation.

Today’s a Thursday, and I didn’t see that girl on my walk to work. I haven’t in awhile, but there’s a new girl now. I know where she works, but I’ll never go in. I’ll never talk to her. We’ve made eye contact, but my eyes are always blank; I feel like I’m looking at something behind her. I feel like if she’d only let me I could drain some of her energy and find something I’ve lost.

All I know about her is that she’s pretty and that I like her hair a lot. I won’t pretend that isn’t enough.