I'm feeling melancholy. Not like a few days ago, when the melancholy was threatening to suffocate me in my own, allegedly safe bed. I couldn't even talk to Noah about it then. Now I've started talking to him again, and it lifts the fog to a manageable level. I need that...just the knowledge that at the end of the day I can go home and he will be there, hugging me and drawing out any and all of the sadness and frustration that the day-to-day crap embeds in my skin. He's the one thing I really look forward to. Not just him. Yes, the him-in-himself is definitely worth that kind of devotion. But also the idea of him, and also the interaction between the two of us. The part of me that comes out only for him, and the us that exists, that becomes a single existence when we are in the same room. All day I wait for that, and some days it feels like the rest of the world is not quite real...almost unreadable, like the last of a pile of carbon copies.

I'm not sure what has brought on the melancholy. I hate that such a cool word denotes such a terrible thing. No, it's not even terrible, is it? It's...bland. Anyway, I think maybe I have some brain chemistry issues or something. I am happy, and most of the time I act like it. I like my job, school is neat, Noah is AMAZING. And most of the time I am conscious of all that and it makes me smile and I can handle everything. But every once in a while I get in a funk and it's all downhill for a few days. So dumb.

You know, I really envy people who have their life together. At least there are people I know who certainly seem to have it all together, but maybe they are all screwed up too, and just better at making it look good. I have always wanted to get to a point in life when the perpetual knot in my stomach would go away, and I would stop feeling like there was always something important that I was forgetting to do. When I was in college, I thought it would come when I graduated. But then other things popped up, in lieu of school work and whatnot, so it never went away.

I mean, there are all the things you have to do, like work and school and paying bills. That takes a lot of time and money and effort and all. And then there are the things you want to do, like keep your journal up and work on your writing and read lots of good books, good enough to take you out of the real world for a while and make you want to press on and finish the story, but then leave you thirsty for more when it's over, like you wished it had a thousand sequels. And then I want to spend as much time as possible with Noah, not while reading and writing, but so that we can really interact and get to know each other better every day. We've been doing that for over a year now, and although I sometimes feel like I know everything there is to know about him, I always want more, or to watch reruns of each other over and over again. And that makes me want to skip out on the things you have to do, because I'd rather lose that list than any other. But then how would you eat? It's a damn shame.

I just read this over and it makes me sound worse off than I truly am. Maybe I'm just tired of this stage. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The other night we were talking about Andy, another of those times that Noah brings it up and I am struggling to keep control and not go over the edge and not scream that I don't want to talk about it and I don't want it to have to be a part of his world, and I want to be mine, only mine, even though I can't possible contain it all in myself. And Noah said it was the three of us, for the long haul. He didn't say it accusatorily, or sadly, or regretfully. It's a fact for him and he just wanted me to know that he knew that, that he's accepted it, that I need to accept it too. Funny, isn't it? That he would be more accepting of it, more cheerful about it, than I would. He says he loves him in a way...loves the part of me that Andy created with his influence, his love, his time invested in me, and when he goes to Ripon he can feel Andy's presence there as much as I can. He never met him and that makes him sad and he's more than willing to accept him in his life, as part of OURlife, for the rest of it. Did you know there were people like that in the world? I sure didn't. And I still feel guilty that he has to have this intruder in his life all the time, I still don't want him to be overwhelmed by it. Whose problem is it then? Not his, mine.