Inopportune insomnia
(Warning: Melodrama. This stuff belongs at 5 a.m., where I'd like to leave it.)

I must have had too much coffee. I should have been asleep hours ago, especially with the late nights I know are coming later in the week, when my papers are due. Instead I hovered somewhere between sleepy and asleep. My tired eyes were open, staring at the darkness.

Uncontrollably, the day's events drifted through my head. My history class had our final meeting in my living room. It was crowded fun. We ate African food, bullshitted about Nigeria, nationalism, etc. A couple people got a little drunk. Shannon, the girl I wrote about a week ago, came up to me in the hall as she was leaving. She thanked me again for hosting; I told her it was good getting to know her over the semester; she smiled; we shook hands and said good-bye. I felt odd. She really was about the closest thing to the perfect girl I've met in I don't know how long. I had no regrets, no disappointment, just a curiousity about what if . . .

I turned over in bed, the word perfect now running through my head. My thoughts drifted back to last night, when I ran into Brandy, a 325M friend. I thought about how after a good amount of small talk, she'd tentatively broached the subject of Christa. No, I don't ever talk to her anymore. Yeah, Lan told me. It made me mad for a couple days, but then I had to let it go. I don't really want to talk about her. Coming back to me in bed, I let down my guard and thought about Christa in a way I hadn't done for months--not since the wounds were still fresh.

I thought, of course, about all the mixed signals she sent out, and I played that tired game of trying to figure out what the hell had been going through her head and her heart during our time together. But I knew at best this game would never have any resolution, and at worst it would only hurt in speculative ways that were self-inflicted. Strangely, forcing myself to think about something else, but unable to let go of her immediately, I thought about those few weeks leading up to us getting together. I thought of those first hints that she liked me--it feels so trite, the word like--the way she looked at me sometimes, or the way she smiled, or the hug that squeezed just a bit harder than normal, or when she unexpectedly snuggled against me on the couch. I used to shiver internally in these moments. More than the girl, it was this tingling, sickening feeling I missed so much, the thrill it gave me to feel that unsure, unspoken energy between us. I'd opened a window somewhere deep in my chest, and I felt an ache begin to emanate from it. The pain was a concoction of loneliness, dissapointment, and confusion--not attached to only Christa but all mixed up with her. There was no point to it, so I closed that line of thought.

My mind was still fixated on that word, perfect, and I drifted to that night on Christa's porch. From all the words in all the conversations, I'm never sure which sentences my memory will choose to fixate on. My head under a pillow, I could still hear Christa saying, "We're perfect for each other," when explaining why she didn't want to date me but she wanted to marry me. A year later, I finally understand why I can't rid myself of this sentence. She didn't say that I was perfect. There was something more symbiotic to our relationship. It meant that all the things about me there were to love were so incredible that she was willing to overlook what wasn't perfect. And she indicated that I could do the same for her. It was a crazy, selfish thing for her to say, but it was just believable enough to draw me in to its illusion, ready as I was at that time to believe such a sentiment.

I don't think about her much these days, but I know now that's out of necessity. It bothers me that this stuff can still haunt me, that I haven't forgotten her so much as ignored her--hell, after all she dragged me through, after all the nonsense I was supposed to put up with, it bothers me that her memory can have any effect on me. It seems like a sick paradox of the brain to realize that once you love someone, you probably never stop, no matter how much you grow to hate that person. Then again, nothing is healthy about loving someone and never telling them because you didn't want to admit it to yourself. Like all of the contradictions of that relationship--and I'd venture like the contradictions of all failed loves--I have one more inconsistency to add to the mix: the hope that by writing this down and sharing it with others I can somehow forget it.