((The following entry is scribbled in large, round letters that take up too much room on many pages of her battered old journal. The lines are not tidy, nor the characters even in size, suggesting they were written by a barely-literate, troubled or agitated hand.))
Why?
Why did it have to end that way?
Why do we argue like we do?
Why do I get so angry? Why does he seem always on the verge of anger, but holding it in?
Let it out!
Why do things start out so nicely? So pleasant.
Don't you know that ugly, awful, terrible memories will not let things stay pleasant? So leave them alone! Stop trying to open the box! Just LEAVE THEM INSIDE.
That way, we could end an evening in the same, nice way it starts.
Dumb, he called me.
I know he didn't mean it to hurt. I've been called lots of things and they didn't hurt half so much as that word did.
It were like I were suddenly ten summers' old again. The kids at the river tricking me. The boys acting like they wanted to kiss me. The pretty girl dared them to do it. She watched nearby. Their laughing gave them away. That were - WAS - the first time I felt that sick feeling in my gut. Tricked. Lied to. Humiliated.
DUMB.
I can't bear it ever since. I think it was made worse by him.
And that's how I felt last eve. Storming away from the falls. I felt that same feeling.
That same, AWFUL feeling.
That sick, hurting knot in my guts. It hurts so you can't breathe. It makes you want to break something and weep at the same time.
I hadn't felt that since he had his hold on me. So long ago. It felt so familiar. Like it hadn't been long ago at all, but only yesterday. And I hated that, too.
That feeling that you're all wrong. Just wrong. No matter what you say, think, do, feel. NOPE, STOP, DON'T EVEN BOTHER. You're already wrong. You can't be right. You'll never be good enough. If you speak, you're wrong. If you're silent, you're stubborn. If you're sad, you're selfish. If you're angry, you're childish. If you long for a touch, you're smothering and needy. If you feel ANYTHING... it's the wrong feeling.
"Ego, ego, ego. Miss "Nobody Understands Me". Dumb."
((A large space here indicates the writer may have left the entry for some time and come back to it later.))
Couldn't he have just played a song and talked of the weather or the roads?
But I can't ask anyone to be anything but what they are. Because that's how I live. I have to be what I am. The good, the bad, and all the in-between.
Maybe he's too much like me.
Blunt and free with his tongue.
I see anger in his eyes. I hear it under his voice. He holds it in. He almost didn't last eve. I wish he'd let it out. I'd rather a broken arm than words cutting my heart. Broken arms heal faster.
How can I stop feeling the things that I feel?
How can a river stop flowing?
Only if the rains bottle up and the sun beats down and the water slowly drains away to mud and things begin to fester and stink in the stagnant murk left behind.
Maybe that's what my heart is like.
I thought it was something... decent. If not good. Salvageable, at least.
Maybe it's just a rotten bog of dammed-up feeling and broken things.
Even Ivan's beautiful love couldn't fix me. My broken parts never seemed to trouble him. He had sweetness and patience enough to bear it all, and then some. The only man I ever felt so free around. I could let all the "me" flow out, and it was never wrong. The jests, the anger, the tears. But I guess even that didn't make me into a better creature in the end. All the DUMBNESS is still there. Stupid, clumsy, worthless...
I hate people.
I'd give anything to die and be with Pa and Ma.
I don't mean that.
I'm sorry, I guess.
I wanted to throw the feather back in his face. Throw it off the rocks and watch it flutter and dance slowly away on the waterfall mist. But I couldn't make myself do it. I can't do that. I can't take a kindness and turn it into a cruelty.
Doesn't he understand? He said he wanted to, but in the same breath, he called me dumb. You don't fling hurtful words at a person you want to know better. It's like kicking a dog and then wondering why it slinks away instead of sitting at your feet and wagging its tail.
If you want someone to trust you, you have to be trustworthy.
But doesn't that mean I have to be the same way?
I said hurtful things, too.
Am I trustworthy?
But then, I didn't ask him to slice open his chest and show me the worst sores on his heart, either.
Gods, I'm so tired. Stop writing, Narys. You don't make any bloody sense, anyway.
I'm sorry.
