i can't decide what i miss most: derek or portland. but i won't be here too long. execpt i talked to him again today and he thinks his mother might make him go back to montana for christmas. i don't know what that means. he hates thinking about plans so i don't like to ask him too many questions about the future. all i know is that he thought i was being ridiculous when i was worrying about when i'd see him again.

i am like an infant sometimes. when mommy is out of sight for a second the baby starts crying. until it learns that things can exist out of sight. trusting the future when mommy will come back. i swear whenever i'm here my real life feels like a dream. the last three months were some of the strangest and most exciting times of my life. and now it feels like none of that ever happened. because it is out of sight. all of that, california, donna and sam, portland, derek, adventures. it's all fading. i think it's because of the way i approach everything. extremes. no continuity. it's hard to love the way i do. but i don't know how to be something else.

"It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert wth what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother."

a few days ago derek and i were lying in bed talking about why sex feels different with different people. sometimes, with other people, it used to feel like nothing. completely numb. i was trying to figure out why everything feels so amazing with him. his answer was that we allow ourselves to be more open and vulnerable with each other. that made sense. vulnerable.

"I know they argue about whether or not it's right, whether the baby is alive at this point or that point in its growth inside the womb. This wasn't about that. It wasn't what the lawyers did. It wasn't what the doctors did, it wasn't what the woman did. It was what the mother and father did together."