So today is the day before Jay's wedding. I'm surprised that my feelings are so free of ambivalence or awkwardness. Guess that's one of the benefits of time, lots and lots of time. Seven and a half years to be exact. And so, in honor of him and everything I can still remember - I'm listening to Victorialand by the Cocteau Twins right now. (Unfortunately, David's playing Frank Black or something similarly loud & anti-Cocteau at the same time.)


A couple weekends ago, as I was going through my old boxes of memorabilia, I decided to flip through the leather photo album he bought in Latvia and filled up with pictures of us. I also read some of the letters he wrote me while were were still in school together, as well as from the following summer. You know, I'd love to read my own letters to him, given how much I enjoyed poring over the ones I'd written to Susan during Freshman & Sophomore years.

But anyway, those letters from him had none of the fascination and deep meaning that they used to. Skimming through them, though, I had no problem recalling the way they used to hold me in such thrall, and how I loved to read and reread the ones from when we first met and got together, to flood my mind again with memories of what I had been feeling at the time. To relive that short phase of not eating and not caring at all about food, or sleep, or anything except seeing him & talking to him - what a high I got from that.

But so soon I remember how it got all mixed up with sadness -- and this very CD, although initially something that filled me with joy to hear, eventually became a reminder of the bitterness and loneliness I felt as we were growing apart, and how my uncontrollable insecurities and paranoia only served to inflame his faults and weakness for other women's attentions. As I recall, I was unable to listen to this CD for about 4 years after we broke up. How could I let him take my darling Twins from me?

So here's to letting go -- and hanging on.