January 1, 2000

Being with no company is infinitely superior to being with bad company. I lock myself up night and day. I must keep Carol at bay. She thinks she knows me, that I need her, am lost without her. I may be lost, but it has nothing to do with Carol. Fulfillment would never come by her hand. Lost, frustrated, my struggle is a challenge of necessity.

My struggle is a challenge of necessity.

How can Mary be so energetic about such simple things? (You probably think that I'm starting a new topic, an unrelated thread, but read on.) I can still see her smiling face, beaming through my classroom, over the joke we just had, the christmas pageant she played in, the fun she knew she would experience during her two-week vacation.

I, on the other hand, feel like a man not yet back from the hospital, not yet convalescing, though doctors say recovery is just around the corner, to reintroduce me the patient to the things that gave life its sense of fullness, soon to breeze by, mostly unnoticed.

Mary is that fullness, like a spring breeze outside of my window. I see her gaze, read that expression of joy in her ever-deep dancing eyes, and see a fragment of myself, of the way I used to be.

See what bad company will do for you? Will I ever get back there? To whomever is reading this, I'm not usually this morose!

Warm days, balmy nights, sunshine through feathered clouds. You think Mary is like the sunshine? Not at all. One day I'll open the window to be drawn into her warm spring rain.

Today's journal has been influenced by the persistence of a cold and dreary season, locked inside, little to do. I never liked New Year's Day.

Will this holiday never end? Time to get back to school...