What she really meant is that the long distance sucks, but we're really very happy to be dating. But seriously, everybody else knew before us? Before me, at least. But her too?

I'm not really sure what I'm doing here, and because when I think of this thing (I don't even want to say blog because I hate blogs--I don't even like the word blog), I imagine my arms firmly, nervously open and holding an old, dear friend that I've neglected for too long simply because I'm a big jerk. It's 5 03 AM and I simply decided just a little while ago that sleep wasn't going to happen. And let me tell you, realizing this was a huge relief. I feel more awake now than I have in days. So here I am, thinking of all the people--some of the people I love the most in the world--that have trouble sleeping at night, turning this way and that, feeling trapped under their sheets.

I'm here, old friend, because I'm unhappy. Happy is boring. Happy writing is boring. Even happy movies often begin with something awful. The set-up: a disaster; a divorce; a man who loves a woman but the woman is dating another man, a richer man, and she has a smile on her face and is wearing a fancy dress and the first man is in jail anyway. Things like that. So let's try this.

A boy is awake at 5 in the morning and whenever he looks at the person sitting across from him, whenever he remembers the person on the other end of the phone, whenever he drafts up an email, he can't think of a single thing that he actually wants to say. So his conversations dance lightly upon frivolities, rehearsals of actual conversations until his partner says something colored with truth that they can build on. His phone calls end quickly and uncomfortably. His emails go unwritten. A voice is a wonderful privilege, he knows. Like having enough money to give away, it's something that most everybody actually has, but few actually carry out. And anyway, a professor once said in a lecture, most of us get by with grunts and moans. Lately, he feels doesn't even have that.

His head aches slightly, from lack of sleep or dehydration or caffeine withdrawal, he doesn't know. In the school where he taught English Conversation, mostly to students that were just as old as he was, the students would claim a visit to the hospital because of a headache or a cough. They would miss entire weeks of classes, validated with a wrinkly stack of medication receipts stamped with red, official ink. He saw the vendors for these seals and crests in the city, where he and his colleagues would explore for dinner and the pleasant glow of neon lights and the buzz of beer. Two months in to the semester, he simply stopped logging attendance. He used the papers they brought in as scratch paper, feeding them into his printer for carrying hard copies of online articles to read in the courtyard, where he often took his breaks. When he was through, he would leave them in random lockers, empty classrooms, bathroom stalls, benches, and next to the coffee machines so as to encourage his students.

His head aches slightly and he wants a cigarette, but has quit. And anyway, if he would be at all relieved from an intake of nicotine, he'd be startled with himself. So, this is better.

But he wants better than not being addicted to nicotine.