Joe's Dream

Joe was tiered as a ghost. As he sat hunched against the cold cement building, his eyes looked down at the ground, looked beyond the cement, looked at nothing.

His legs were bent, one arm resting on a knee, the other collapsed between his legs, his fore arm resting in the crook of his crotch. His mind was quiet, empty. He barely knew if he was alive or not.

The clopping of expensive shoes walking by barely peeked his interest,
“spare some change?” he muttered, loud enough for the young woman to hear, but quiet enough for her to pretend she didn’t. She sped up, or slowed down, to Joe they were the same, as two loose quarters fell at his feet. His eyes fell on them, drawn away from the nothing that’d had him transfixed. He collected the coins one at a time, using his broken blackened fingernails to pry them from the concrete.

In his early days, the very earliest days he could remember, he had called himself the cardboard poet. He’d fancied himself a noble artist, if only as a joke. On old boxes confiscated from behind restaurants he’d scrawl his works.

“too old to work, need money for food”

“lost my job, need your help”

“sick and tiered, will work for food, god bless”

These had been his haikus, the sonnets of the street, his contribution to the world. He would often think to himself that, if everything else was exactly the same, ever blade of grass every drop of rain was in precisely the same place, but he wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be the same world would it? He made the whole world what it was.
Joe once watched a woman walk across the street to avoid him, she tripped over the curb, and broke her wrist as she hit the ground. Where ever she had been going, now she wasn’t. Joe had wondered how many things would change as a result of that woman not getting to where she was going. Watched as people stopped to help her. in 2 minutes simply by being, Joe had changed the whole street.
But that was so long ago, and even a man who knew he made the world what it was had hard times. As year after year went by, and he spent night after night in the cold, Joe began growing old. And as hard as life can be to a man, life can be harder to a man on the streets. Soon Joe started losing his memories, losing his thoughts. He stopped holding signs, his beard grew long and grey, blackened only by dirt.
Joe had stopped bathing himself in public bathrooms, stopped roaming the streets. His clothes seemed to become his unchanging skin, his face covered in wrinkles deep and long.
The less Joe thought, the faster his mind slipped from him. And since it took no intelligence to beg, his mind almost completely disappeared. He forgot everything, his name, his past. It seemed a man with no history had no cause, except that to live. He would scrape just enough change together to buy a burger across the street. And then return to his spot and sit again. His body taking the look and shape of a pile of trash, so that people walking by sometimes didn’t even know they’d passed a living being.
Joe could hardly even be said to exist anymore. He no longer effected the street, he was merely a prop, akin to a light post or a post. A dead body would have meant more than him
As the day wore on, and darkness fell, Joe stood. He walked the 3 blocks to the shelter. He got in line with the other bums, all in their own stages, all in their own type of poverty. Joe sat on the ground between them. And stared back at the nothing.
At 7 the line started moving, Joe stumbled to his feet again, his muscles as atrophied as his brain. The man in front of him stepped up to the desk,

“What’s your name sir?” the woman behind the desk asked, ready to write it down in her log book.

“Mark,” the man replied gruffly and walked on.

“name sir?”

Joe couldn’t remember so he muttered “mark” and followed the man down the hall.

Joe sat on the cot, then lay down. The lights were all still on, the men around him talking loud and soft. Joe fell asleep.
Black, as Joe slept there was black, nothing. Nothing like the nothing he stared at all day. Black, but not black. It’s was not black at all really, but blue, dark blue, but it was getting lighter. It was a sky, a sky with a sun. The sun bust into Joe’s eyes and Joe gasped. He flung his head around and looked down at his body, it was small. He looked around, grass, a driveway, a car. This was his house. This is where Joe had lived. As he floated around this old memory, suddenly a car pulled in behind the one in the driveway. Suddenly from the car bust his family, his parents. All his friends, all the people he’d ever known. They smiled and laughed as they ran to him. His eyes awake with strength. He ran to meet them. That burning golden orb above them heating them, warming their beaming hearts.
But now the day was done, and the sun was gone. In it’s place a bright full moon cast shadows over the grass, but it’s wasn’t his yard anymore. As Joe stood there in the white light of the moon he saw he was in an infinite meadow, with small trees here and there. He marveled at the expanse. Unimaginable space was covered in uncountable stars. Joe held his hands up to drink it all in, but at his feet he felt rubbing. He looked down to see a fox, playing around his ankles. He laughed and bent down to pet it but it darted away, stood still, then looked back at Joe

“Play with me” he seemed to say and Joe chased after him. Joe flew. His feet carrying him faster than any man could go, over grass and trees and suddenly up into the air. He laughed as he and his friend bounded through the earth and sky. Spinning and darting with every imaginable trick. They soared together up higher and higher, to touch the moon.

But the fox was falling now. And Joe couldn’t do anything. Suddenly he could no longer soar through the air but was being drawn down to earth slowly. He wanted to dive after his plummeting friend but he seemed stuck as in a snow globe. He watched the fox falling, for days, for weeks, as the sun and moon flew faster and faster around him, and all he could do was watch. The fox hit the ground, and as quickly as he hit Joe was with him.
Joe stood next to a eucalyptus tree, glowing with it’s own moon light. He bent next to the fox, he picked up the soft red body. He screamed at the eternal heavens, and dug into his friends warm fur. His sadness filled the universe, his pain echoed through everything. Joe cried.

The lights popped, and Joe’s eyes popped open. Laying on his cot tears still on his cheek. He looked at the crusty grey ceiling, the men around him raising for the day. The dreams were still buzzing in his head, he remembered the grass under his feet, the smiles of his friends and family, the joy of flying, the pain of his loss. He thought about the wolf, or was it a lion? or was it… well he was in the woods right? no, he couldn’t have been flying in the woods, was he flying? He had seen his friends, he couldn’t remember who had they been, they had called his name, what was it…?
Every moment the lights above him flickered, more and more memories of the night faded. He sat up in his cot to try and remember, but by the time he’d reached an erect position, it was all gone. And all Joe felt was confused.
Joe stood, his legs week and shaking. He walked down the hall, past the desk, the woman calling after him,
“good day mark!” Joe just kept walking, out the door, down the street, three blocks to his spot.
He put one hand on the side of his building, and slid slowly down to sit. His eyes looked at the fast food place, the few people already on the street, and then settled on nothing. His eyes fixed, his mouth dry, Joe couldn’t sense the passing of time, but with the sound of shoes again approaching, Joe muttered softly,

“spare change”

The sound of walking stopped, then coins were placed in Joe’s hand. The woman tried to catch his gaze, but Joe didn’t look up, seeing only nothing.
As she walked away the quarter in Joe’s hand fumbled and fell to the ground. Joe looked up, as it rolled a few feet away. He leaned forward, crawling onto his hands and knees to reach out far enough to snatch his piece of metal from the walk. But as he reached, the coins still left in Joe’s pocket from the day before came tumbling out onto the street.
Two dimes, five pennies, a quarter and a nickel all hit the pavement in order. And suddenly with the sound of 9 coins ringing in his ear, Joe remembered the stars.
With the stars the moon and with the moon the night, and then day. From the day everything flooded back. His eyes were broken from nothing and Joe took in everything. He saw the world as if for the first time, and as he saw it all, Joe gasped. And with his head suddenly full, awakened and dreaming, Joe stood,

Joe smiled,

and Joe slowly walked away.

the story of Rye part 5 the end for now

Part 5 the final part for now

I had been thinking about earthquakes all day. I’m not claiming psychic powers by any means, but that day I was thinking about earthquakes. Actually I was wishing for an earthquake. It is a common fantasy for me, when things start going really bad in my life, or I’m just unhappy with where I am, I imagine an earthquake that destroys my home, and everything I know. I fantasize about being a hero and saving lives, about mourning the deaths of those I couldn’t save, but most importantly starting completely and utterly over from scratch, having no food no money no life at all and having to build it all up from the bottom again. Of course it’s not something I would actually wish for, but when things start going wrong, it’s just what my mind goes to.
May 12th 2008 I came home to my mom telling me about the earthquake in China. I was surprised. My first reaction was not all that bad, China is huge, about the size of the US. I thought it was rather unlikely that it had effected people I knew. But I did jump on the computer right away to check it out.
It took me a moment to find out that it had been a massive earthquake. It was rated a 7.9 and had been felt across almost the whole country. A second later I found the epicenter had been right in the center of rural Sichuan. Sichuan, the capitol of which was Chengdu, which is where Rye lived, and where I had spent so much time.
I started franticly searching for news stories. I turned on all my messengers and wrote an e-mail to Rye, I tried calling her but the phones weren’t working, though that was normal. I was terrified. I tried everything in my power to get in contact with her. And every moment I waited I was looking up and learning more things about the quake, like how the epicenter had been in Sichuan, but they had felt it in Beijing. that’s like having an earthquake in LA and feeling it in Ohio. The stories of how many people were being found dead under piles of rubble that used to be apartments were growing. And I began to be convinced that Rye was dead. And then for the first time in 5 months, for the first time since I had heard about Rye cheating on me. I finally started to cry. I cried about everything that had happened, I cried because I knew even though I hated her, and even though she had hurt me so much, I still loved her. No matter what happened I couldn’t stop that.
I don’t remember where my parents were then, I can’t remember if they were watching me cry or if they noticed at all. I did it quietly to myself, just let my tears start pouring down over my cheeks. I had lost so much already. And now I thought I had lost it all.
Finally though as my head was leaning against my desk, I heard MSN alert me to a new message. It was Rye, and I was suddenly so relieved. I immediately started asking if she was ok, if her parents were ok, I asked about all the other people I knew in Sichuan, asked if she knew about them.
She told me the earthquake had hit while she was at home. She said she thought6 she was going to die because it was shaking so hard. They were getting after shocks regularly. And every time one hit she thought it was going to be another big quake, her and her family were scared to death they would not live much longer. They wouldn’t be sleeping in their apartment anymore, they had built a shelter out in a local park.
For the next few days I would hear horror stories about how every time some alert would come about another earthquake, they would jump in their car to get away, though they didn’t know where they were going. And there never was another earthquake, though the after shocks kept coming for over a month. All her friends were ok, and her family was fine. But everyone was terrified.
The epicenter was right near the Wolong Panda Reserve, a place I had gone to 3 times with Rye, we would later find a few of the pandas had died. I also found out that the town at Qingchen Shan, the town at the bottom of the mountain we had climbed had been leveled. And most of the buildings on the mountain had been destroyed. I still don’t know, but have little hope for the fate of the little hotel perched so dangerously on stilts hanging over the cliff where me and Rye had our first kiss, and have no way of knowing what happened to the family that lived there.
Me and Rye started talking regularly again. Mostly we talked about the earthquake, I was still so worried about her and her family, but as worry dissipated, eventually we came back to old topics, and in time the pain started flowing back into me. I of course found out she was talking the Australian guy still, probably more than she was talking to me. She was still making her plans to go to Holland, she had her visa and all her papers ready, she was just waiting for the time when she would go. In the 3 months I had been planning my trip to move to Holland, I had looked up everything I could about surviving in Europe with no money. Camping spots, where to get money, where I could sleep for free, I was going to invest in a tent and sleeping bag and all the things I would need to survive there. So even when I decided not to go, I felt at least that I would know a bit about the place she was going because of all the research I had done.
But as we started to fight again, and I started feeling all that old pain reforming. I decided it was still too soon, I told her I couldn’t talk to her for a while longer, I wasn’t ready to be her friend yet. I was working at a camp that summer, and so I figured I could just spend the next 3 months away from her, and when I got back I might feel better.
A week or two before camp started though we started talking online again every once in a while. This was tense, but fine. She was just a few weeks away from going off to Holland, and I was happy to be going to camp. I was still in a lot of pain pretty much all the time, but I at least felt like things were going to be ok. I made plans to not check my e-mail for the next 5 or 6 weeks, at which point we had a mid summer break and I would go home for 4 days.
Camp was great for me. It didn’t quite take my mind off things but it kept me busy at least, so I just kept working even though I would have liked to just sit and wallow quite a few times. It wasn’t perfect though. Sometimes when we had our weekend break, and I didn’t have any people around me, I would end up in a tree house, usually end up screaming kicking and punching the trees with as much force as I could. I had a lot of pain still in me, a lot of anger that wasn’t going away.
After the 5 weeks though I came home for my break. It was the 4th of July and I was happy to be home, though more happy that it was only a short time, I liked being on my own out in the woods more. As per my decision I only then finally checked my e-mail and turned on my computer. I opened MSN and there was Rye online. And next to her name, where it said her status were just the words “Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane” now immediately I was a bit worried, a little confused. As far as I knew she had left for Holland a week or two after I had gone to camp. I said hi, and after a long wait she said hi back. I asked her where she was and she said “guess” and I said I was pretty sure she was in Holland but why does her thing say Brisbane? It took her a lot of time where she said a lot of things that weren’t answers before she finally told me that in fact she was not in Holland, in fact she was in Australia at that moment. It seemed in 2 weeks she had suddenly made the decision to cancel her long held plans to go to Holland, and instead enrolled in a school in Australia. In a city very near to that son of a bitch boy. I kept thinking that I had learned the last truth, that there wasn’t going to be any more of these horrible surprises. But every time there was something new. There was some new item she would tell me that would send me right back to the beginning of this whole episode. My heart had been crushed, and then healed slightly, then shot, then stepped on then run through a paper shredder. Of course I immediately started shouting at her in type. I was so angry again. I couldn’t stand how she kept doing this to me, how she kept hurting me over and over. How could she be so down right mean? I mean cruelly horribly mean, like she didn’t care how much she hurt me, like it didn’t matter to her at all?
Before I returned to camp, I sent her one more angry e-mail. A long cruel angry destructive e-mail because I just wanted her to feel as bad as I did. The rest of camp was less good. At one point I punched a large saw blade in front of the kids though I don’t think anyone saw me. It busted up my hand pretty bad and they were afraid I had broken it though it turned out to be ok. I spent more time on the weekends alone, more time sulking. I could believe my life had turned this way. I couldn’t believe I was the one going through all this pain. The thing about having your heart broken is that you live entirely in clichés. Everything you do is exactly the same as every break up song, and every emo poem you’ve ever read, and suddenly you understand that lots of people have gone through the same thing, but you didn’t realize that it was this, that this is what they were talking about, how this is how bad it felt.
To have the person you loved and trusted more than anyone in the world, come at you with a knife, and just cut you over and over and over, not caring that it hurts you, just doing it. To have the person you taught you what the meaning of love really was, turn around and tell you they don’t love you anymore.
I was suicidal at that time, not while I was at camp, but during the events, earlier, I had thought from time to time about just ending everything. It was a very very dark time for me. I lost some friends because of how dark I got. I hurt the people around me.
When I got home from camp, there was a response to my angry e-mail waiting for me. She told me that I was manipulative, that I was cruel. And she said she didn’t want me to write her any more e-mails. After all this time though, after all this anger I finally realized that I could never move on as long as I was still talking with her. I sent her an e-mail telling her I agreed, we shouldn’t talk to each other anymore, I said I was sorry for the monstrous things I’d said in the last half year. I said I was sorry that this is how love had to end.
She sent back this e-mail “Tian yi you don't need to worry about anything. I don't hate you and never will. whenever I think back, it's all the happiness I shared with you.. I know you dont mean for what you did and said after our breakup. You are not angry or bad person, i know who you are and I always believe you for who you are. I hope you well and there's something between you and me is eternal for me. I am happy that your the first person I ever loved. Yun”
I always hated how she could make me love her more, while twisting the knife.
that was the last I’ve heard from her. I haven’t talked with her since august of 2008.
Right now, I am still very hurt. I hate the lessons that I’ve learned, that I learned against my will, the things I believe now that I never wanted to believe and that I hate my self for thinking, that love cannot conquer the world, that I cannot trust anyone, that the world is not magical like I thought it was, instead it’s just plain, an average place where horrible things can happen everyday. I hate that I don’t think I could ever love someone again, at the level I loved her, and that I will always compare everything I feel in the future to the love I had for her. I will never feel safe again giving my heart to someone and so I don’t know if I ever will.
I believe I am suffering from PTSD now. If I see a picture of her, or hear something about her, my heart starts to beat so hard I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I’ve stopped crying again for the most part, though any time I see something about the earthquake again the tears start flowing. I don’t know what will happen to me, the worst part now is I’ve lost a great deal of hope. I feel like I experienced the most wonderful thing of my life, and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that again. Life these days feels so dull and boring. Even exciting things don’t excite me like they used to. I just feel terrified a lot of the time, and I hate when fear controls me, but now it does. Now I am under the finger of fear, and it tells me what to do and where to go. It tells me what I can’t do.
Most importantly this story never ended, there was no conclusion. I don’t know what will happen, I don’t know if I will ever see her again. It’s hard to believe I could go my whole life and never see her again. She was everything to me, there was a whole year, over 12 months that I thought I would be with her for the rest of my life. How can you just say goodbye to someone like that? I don’t know what’s going to happen to me now. I think I’m on my way up. I am slowly getting better. The bad days are getting fewer and fewer, I’m not as depressed as I used to be. I am, one step at a time, moving back to a regular life. But at the moment I feel like the man who fought the dragon and lost. What happens to those people? Are there any stories about them?

story of Rye part 4

Part 4

We stayed together for about 3 or 4 months, I can’t remember exactly how long, with no major problems. It was painful to be sure, being separated from the person you love, trying to maintain a relationship though a crappy phone line that constantly disconnects, internet that fails, and snail mail that is unreliable and slow. But we made do. And despite the problems, I thought we’d found a good coasting speed. We could talk with each other face to face on web cams when the internet was working well enough. And though we were both trying to live our lives, we were making time for each other. But unbeknownst to me trouble was brewing.

I didn’t want to see it, and so continued to believe that things were fine. But there were signs a less consumed person might have seen. Though we had always had out little arguments. They usually ended pretty quick, and I though they usually made us stronger as a couple, at one point she told me about these doubts she was having, she told me it felt like I was drifting away from her. I reassured her as best as I could that I loved her as much as ever, and that I could never imagine my life with out her. It alleviated the situation in my eyes, but I didn’t see that it had simply made her not want to talk about it any more, because it wasn’t that she felt I was drifting away from her, it was in fact that she felt herself drifting away from me.

Around this time she told me about a new friend she’d made online. This was nothing new, Rye was constantly making new friends on her various networking sites. She was the type of person to have 500 friends that she didn’t know that well, but she had a fair bit that she actually knew very well. She would generally tell me about all the ones she was close with at all. So When she started telling me about this new friend of hers I wasn’t surprised. But from her words I felt an instant and deep loathing for him. I knew in an instant that he was flirting with her, and I chalked it up to naiveté that she didn’t see it. She told him about me and she told me how he had discounted me, told her he was better than me. I hated him, though it didn’t get me very angry. I had no reason to be afraid, I trusted Rye with every fiber of my being. I trusted her with my whole life. I knew she would never cheat on me. Besides she was in China, and this guy was from Australia. It really wasn’t an issue at all.

A bit later another of Rye’s friends came to visit her in China. A British girl named Jo. Rye was constantly making friends with people from all over the world. She was an amazing person who had a gift for friendship. She had literally hundreds of friends all over, which is why I had always felt so lucky that of all the people she knew in her life, she had chosen me as her life partner.

I understood lately that Rye had been lonely. Most of her close friends lived far away now, going to schools in other parts of China or studying abroad in other places. So I was really happy when Jo came to China. I was happy that Rye had someone to be with, and though it meant Rye spent less time online I knew it was only temporary and I was much more happy that Rye was spending time with a friend than just sitting around talking to me all the time. Besides this, after me and Rye decided to make this long distance thing work, she had also recommitted herself to the au pair America program. She was going to try for another family, this time in New York. In our eyes New York seemed infinitely closer than she was now, we were idealistic and believed that I would be able to go visit her, and hopefully she could come live with me afterwards for a few months before returning to China. But it was a stressful process still, which further made me glad she could go out with Jo and go to clubs had have fun and forget about it for the most part.

Pain, worry, confusion. After Jo had been there about a week I was talking with Rye online, and out of the blue she told me that the boy from Australia, the one and only friend that she had out of the thousands that I actually had a problem with, was coming to China to visit her, in fact he would be there the next day, she said she didn’t know why she hadn’t told me this. I was confused, because she had never been purposely dishonest with me before, but confusion is really where it stopped. In the same conversation she asked me if I thought she should not go hangout with him, and I responded “I trust you” because I truly did. I was worried of course, but I was more worried that he was going to try and pull something. That he might hurt her, or attack her or something. I never in my wildest dreams thought that she would ever cheat on me at all. I couldn’t imagine that.

I can’t remember if I talked with her after that. I think I’m sure I must have, in addition to chatting online, we were also sending e-mails so I can’t remember if I ever talked with her in real time. But just about that time was her Visa interview for her American visa. We were both sure it would go through, though I can’t remember why. But just at that time I got an e-mail from her saying that she had been turned down for her visa again. I was so sad. And above all I know she felt that she had let me down, because she wanted it, but she knew how much I wanted it too. This is when I lost contact with her.

For 4 days, I didn’t talk with her, I was online every day, I tried calling her, tried messaging her, and e-mails. But I didn’t hear anything. I started getting depressed, started getting terrified. Though maybe she had been kidnapped, been raped by that son of a bitch. I was so scared of what might be going on on the other side of the world. But finally after 4 days, I was on the computer and she came online. And I was so relived. I asked where she’d been and why I hadn’t been able to get in contact with her and she told me she’d just been going out to clubs with Jo, and that guy and one of her Chinese friends. I pushed a little asking why she hadn’t been able to even send me an e-mail or anything, and that was apparently all the pushing she needed to tell me, suddenly out of the blue, that she had kissed him, kissed that Australian fuck!

I fell out of my chair. My heart beating so hard I thought it would explode and send chunks of my flesh and bones splattering against the walls. I punched the cement ground of my basement 3 times, hard, as my hard started to swell up I started shouting through my key board. Not sentences, just WHAT, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? YOU KISSED HIM? RYE, RYE, ARE YOU THERE? HELLO? WHY AREN”T YOU TALKING TO ME? She didn’t respond for a while. And I couldn’t stand it. How dare she not respond how dare she say that and just leave it. I can’t explain what I was feeling at the time. I felt like I shouldn’t. every part of me felt like it needed to be doing something other that what it was. I felt like I imagine a slug must when it‘s covered in salt, so much pain it will crawl out of it’s own skin. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin at that moment. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t stand it. Finally she told me, she said she had kissed him in a club, the were drinking a bit, and that they had been holding hands, which frankly made it hurt so much worse. If they had simply been making out it wouldn’t have hurt so bad, I could understand drunken making out. To know they had been holding hands on the street, they were having a real relationship. Sex would have been better than that.

I didn’t cry, I couldn’t, in fact I wouldn’t cry for the next 4 months or so. I didn’t eat anything for the next 3 days, because everything in my body was trying to evacuate as fast as possible. If I ate anything it would fly through my system and out the other end in an hour. I didn’t sleep for 3 days either. I spent all my time online trying to talk with her. Calling her on the phone, sending her text messages. I started making demands, told her she couldn’t see him any more, she agreed, told her she couldn’t go out with friends anymore, she agreed. Told her she needed to commit to staying around and talking with me at least every day so we could work this out, she agreed. In fact anything I said she agreed with instantly, but in practice she didn’t agree to any of it.

At this point I’d gone so far off the deep end, I was trying to control her in every possible way, I was trying to make her do exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t think of anything but her all the time. She didn’t stop going out to clubs, I’d call her regularly, and if I even got through she usually wouldn’t pick up, and if she did, there was loud music in the back ground. I would yell at her. Scream at her. Tell her how I was trying to hold everything together, why wasn’t she helping me, why didn’t she want to fix this? Why wouldn’t she talk with me, I told her I was dieing, told her I couldn’t stand to do anything in my life now, told her how much pain I was in. Why was she making me do all the work. Why couldn’t she meet me half way?

At one point a few weeks later, she left on a ski trip with Jo, and her Chinese friend. I called her while she was there. She was with her friends when she picked up and I could hear them in the background. And I heard a distinct male voice. I asked who it was she told me it was a friend of the other Chinese girl. That he was from Ireland. I didn’t question it, I couldn’t stand to question it. But in fact I would find out later that that was in fact him again, that Australian ass hole. She was on a 3 day trip with him in the mountains.

Of course I can’t remember all the things that were said. It took about 3 months I think, though I could be wrong about that, 3 months of me desperately trying to hold things together. And in this time I came up with the following plan. Since Rye had failed to get a visa to the US she was going to Holland to go to school. She would be there for 3 years. I was willing to do anything in the world to hold us together, and I could see that we couldn’t maintain a relationship while being so far apart. So I decided I would move to Holland. I would get a job, and work till I had a bit of money, then go to Holland and live there. I would sleep in the streets if I had to, though I was looking for programs in which I could get a place to live and food in exchange for work. I was ready to spend my days in any manner of pain and suffering if it meant I would be with her. I would die for her. I knew it. Even if she was now telling me she didn’t know if she wanted to be with me. Even though she told me that her love had faded. Even as I heard her voice telling me she didn’t love me anymore. I would give everything I had to this.

I took a job painting my house, getting paid by my parents. Then took a job at a summer camp I’d worked at before. With a plan things were looking up. But the conversations online and on the phone continued. And by the end of 3 months I was beginning to see something. Though that guy had gone back to Australia, she told me she was still talking to him regularly even though she said she wouldn’t. she told me she didn’t think that kissing him was just a mistake, she said a lot of things, and when I asked if she loved him she said “I don’t know”

Among the things I said: I hate you, you’re killing me, you are a terrible person, how can you do this to me, bitch, slut, fuck you, go to hell, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

Me: “how can you do this, don’t you see how this is killing me, you are killing me!!”
Her: “well what do you want me to do?”
Me: “I want you to die, I want you to just go in a small room and kill yourself”
Her: long pause “that’s not your choice.”

She took a lot of abuse from me, a lot of days of me simply screaming, me yelling maybe she felt that she had to take it, maybe she felt that she deserved it. But she almost always stayed calm through it. She would cry, she would listen quietly, and sometimes she would yell back, but rarely. She mostly just stood it. I hated how she could be so calm, it was unfair that she could do something like that to make me love her more, while I hated her so much.
I sometimes wondered, if she had just died, If she had been killed by someone or something, would it have hurt as bad? I thought if she had died, at least I would always know that she had loved me. I wondered how many people who had really found complete true love, love that had grown and matured, love that had been shared love. How many people had heard the person they loved turn around in an instant and tell them they didn’t love them anymore.

I realized after that 3 month period that I had failed. I realized that our relationship was doomed, and it was time to simply break up. Finally I told her, I wouldn’t come to Holland to see her. I hoped we could be friends, but I needed some time alone to not think about her for a while, so I wouldn’t be talking with her online for a month or two.

But once again bad luck would intervene, because soon, the earthquake would break our silence.