From: ST201026@brownvm.brown.edu (nathan marsh)
Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: chronology of a failing relationship
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 12:33:15 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

Friday: My parents were visiting, and I felt angst about my relationship
with them.  They don't put any pressure on me, they pay for my
education, and they have no clue how awful I sometimes feel.  But I
can't feel any emotion towards them, and this bothers me.  A lot.  Then
I felt angst about my relationship with my SO.  It was the feeling of
impending doom that no matter how good things are now, there has to be
an end sometime, and how soon will it be before I'm alone again.  I felt
paralysed, and couldn't go out.  I spent the evening lying in bed.

Saturday: My SO got stoned, and completely freaked out.  I spent the night
holding her and telling her that I was right there and the room wasn't
spinning.

Sunday: I gave her a copy of a story I had written about two years ago, when
things seemed *very* dark.  She is one of the few people I know who would
understand the significance of a lot of things in it.

Wednesday: I dropped by her place to visit, but her phone was busy and I
couldn't get in.  I spent half an hour standing outside in the cold trying to
toss beer cans and stones against her window to get her attention.  Finally
someone else let me in and I went up to see her.  She was on the phone with a
friend from home, and I sat there with her.  After a while she hung up and we
talked.  We sat out on the stairway and talked about our bad experiences with
police, etc.  Finally, it was 3:00 AM, and I had to be up at 8:00 the next
morning.  We were saying goodbye and I though that she wanted to run away as
fast as possible and have no physical contact with me.  I kissed her anyway.

Thursday: We both got stonned and were laughing and making up goofy shit and
all of a sudden she put her head in her hands again and started mumbling.
She said "I should go home now," and I felt this sort of slipping, unsteady
feeling like when you're standing on ice or driving on flooded roads.  Tben
she mumbled something about "not sure...relationship...can't concentrate,"
and I thought, "this is where it ends," and I felt like I was falling.  She
left and I hugged her for what I though might be the last time.

Friday: Threw a party.  She came by earlier, but neither of us is comfortable
showing afection in public, so we didn't.  Then some of her friends came by,
and I felt like I was chasing her around trying to talk to her.  Then they
left to go to another party.  I asked her to come back later and she said she
would.  Soem time later, her friends came back and said they couldn't find
her, they didn't know where she was, and they thought she had come back to by
place.  I knew she hadn't, and asked her friends to call me if they found her.
Then I sat around and drank more beer and wondered what the hell was going on.
Sometime later her friends found her at her place, just hanging out.

Saturday:  (Halloween)  She called around 7:00, I didn't know what I was doing,
she said she was going to see a movie.  I asked her to call me when she got
back, maybe we'd do something.  Waited around for her to call, finally went to
bed at 11:30, and she never called.

Sunday: We compared noted on what shitty saturday nights we had had.  Then we
talked for a while about meaningless stuff.  I was too afraid of the answer
to ask what had happened to us.

MOnday: I left a message on her machine at around 8:00, becuase I was going
to a friends place.  I thought on they way back I would stop and visit her,
and maybe get some of my CD's back, because I really wanted to listen to them.
I called my answering machine at 12:00, but there were no calls.  I called her
and her roommate answered, and she wasn't in.

Tuesday: She left a message on my answering machine at 10 AM, said she had had
a crazy night and hadn't gotten back until 5:30.  I called her and dropped by
that afternoon.  She came out into the hall and said "I have to tell you about
last night.  It was so crazy.  I did *so* much coke last night."  She told me
how she had been at an International Socialists' Organization meeting, and then
they went to hang out at someone's house, and then someone had coke, and she
tried it and liked it so much she did about five lines.  Then a friend of hers
she hadn't seen in a week or two dropped by, and they were catching up, and I
felt like a third wheel.  And some guy from the ISO called, and she went into
the hall with the phone and closed the door.  And then the three of us left
and went our own ways.  When I got home I wrote the following:
  "I've got that feeling again, all the energy running down my arms and into
   my fingertips, it's like my fingers are twitching, it's a glowing sort of
   filled up feeling.
  "I've got all this nervous energy an I can feel it swelling in my and it's
   like I'm going to burst, no it's like I'll supernovae and drench everyone
   else with radiation and blind them with light.
  "I've got this aching need, but the problem is, there's nothing I want to
   do, in fact I don't want to do *anything*, but I need to just *do*.

I thought I had conquered thuis feeling last year.
I called her later that night and left a message on her machine.

Wednesday: She didn't call back, so I left another message.  A few other
friends called, and I jumpped every time the phone rang.  Just before I
went to bed, I called, but her machine picked up, and I hung up.

Thursday: I came home at about 11 AM today, and the little red light on my
answering machine that tells you if you have messages refused to blink.
Just that steady red glow.

 -And I felt like I was lugging a body on my back...
 -nathan marsh
 -st201026@brownvm.brown.edu