Thursday, 24 March 1994

Dear S,

The Day of Reckoning is at hand, this day is filled with strange portents.  The cock did crow at midnight blackest, the cow’s teats did issue forth Grants Scotch Whiskey (we’re keeping that cow) and the sky did crack open and wobblesome jelly desserts poured forth on the innocent street dwellers.  This night I do split with Leah.  Am I so insensitive that I can make jokes about it?  I asked Brett about this and he thought it showed I have perspective on it.  As usual, I’m not sure.  I don’t really feel bad for joking about it, though if Leah found out I would feel bad, so I suppose that I really shouldn’t make light of this rather heavy situation.  I guess the joking about it is a survival mechanism.  If I was deadly earnest about it the whole time I think I’d go nuts.

A few hours later (1:30pm)

I don’t feel so jolly now.  I guess it’s because the clock ticks away relentlessly drawing me ever nearer the watershed.  I’m getting this feeling in my chest, it’s the same as last time I left her.  It’s odd, not a pain, or a tightness, but a certain heavy emptiness.  I don’t know how to explain it without making it sound like high-school poetry.  The pain is central, under my sternum, and it comes and goes.  My hands perspire.  What is this pain? It frustrates me.  Do you have any experience of such things?  Is this a normal occurrence? I wish I could suffer in dignified silence, not especially in regard to this particular incident, but in regard to all my little grips and whinges.  I don’t mean to upset you Sis, I’m not “twisting in the fires of Hell” or anything, just wavering in the winds of Moral Purgatory.  That said, does that mean that this is a temporary pain?  A momentary flare?  That is part of what worries me, will I feel better?  They say that time heals all wounds. Except amputation, I suspect.

The goddamn frustration of indecision never leaves me.   I can just never seem to be happy with the choices I make.  I have a trick I used to use to make decisions.  I would flip a coin, and gauge my first reaction, the one that comes a split second before the others.  If I was disappointed in the coin’s flip, then I would go against it and vice versa.  Eventually it stopped working because I could no longer gauge my first reaction.  The anticipation tainted it, and it was no longer readable.  Do you know what I mean?  That split second reaction from the pit of your stomach, “your heart of hearts”.  I over-analyse so much that I can’t discern it from my intellectual choices.  What I am trying to say is that if you try too hard to listen to your heart of hearts, you can’t hear it at all, and that is why I don’t know if what I am doing is right or not.  This time I am determined not to waiver.

My sack of woe is now empty, Sis.  You have it all before you, it’s time for me to scuttle off this page and prepare myself for the deed at hand.  I have my opening phrase, and it’s all I need to get started.

I’ll write again soon.