Well it's been about 3 weeks since we last met, and much longer since we last sat down to a meal and a decent conversation together. Maybe if this carries on for longer everything will subside again, even if it's just for a year or so it would be worthwhile not to be like this.

Since I started this blog, I haven't been as troubled as I usually am. But the frequency of my thoughts of you is no less - maybe more frequent but always with the confidence that I can talk about it. Or externalise it. That's probably enough for the time being.

H knows there's something. I'm an absentee wife, even when my husband is right next to me. I'm a ghost. He's not stupid - he knows. Even if he doesn't know why, it's affecting our marriage. I think of the years ahead and I just can't imagine. If you're still going to be in my head like this 10 years from now, I think my marriage will definitely be over. The trick is probably not to think about the time passing, or the years ahead - God knows how long we will live anyway - and just live one day at a time. I will avoid thinking about you one day at a time. I've done this for so long that it's almost second nature.

Why does it have to be you and not anyone else? I can safely say there is no one else. No one will haunt me the way you have. No memory will follow me like a wretched spirit the way yours has. It's almost like we have something between us that transcends this life, this lifetime. After all, when you look at the time and the quality of time that we spend with each other, it really hasn't been much at all. Not even enough to sustain a casual friendship, if you ask me.

You tell me then, since you always seem to have all the answers.

What is it between us now? It's some kind of twilight relationship. Maybe the word "relationship" is appropriate. It's more than an acquaintance for sure but I don't think it deserves the use of the word "relationship".

Sometimes when I don't hear from you for a while, part of me hopes it is finally over between us and my life can move on to the next chapter. Maybe even a happier chapter. One where I don't spend at least an hour a day thinking about what we could have been. I don't know what to do with my feelings - I certainly haven't been able to ignore them. They simmer down, fester for a while - a few months, even a year, then come back up when I least expect them. What was it... a year? when I met H and fell for him and we got engaged, then pregnant, then married? All the while I was smug and happy thinking that I had left you, no, us, behind for good.

Even wrote you a few times just to stay in touch and to feel that sense of triumph that I had somehow gotten away with it. Then WHAM it all came back one night on the plane ride back from Melbourne. I was bored, sleepy but not able to sleep, didn't want to watch any more in-flight movies ... so I listened to some music. And somewhere in the next 4 hours, you stole back into my heart. I can't remember what the songs even were. Only the one by James Blunt, which really hasn't got anything to do with you. I remember being half asleep and in tears at the same time, then I woke up to the horrible knowledge that I was right back to where I started, only now, I had a son and a husband and everything had been okay when I got on the plane but now ... I'm back.

I'm going to sleep soon. Before I sleep, I read a little just to get my mind off everything. Especially you. But I know that tomorrow, I'll wake up, check my phone, tell myself that you've forgotten us and spend the next 45 minutes trying to figure out how I got here.

How did we get here? It's been slightly over 11 years. I first called you up on 13 February 1995 to ask you out for tea. You met me in the library. You had blue jeans and a polo short sleeve shirt, I wore my favourite white esprit dress. Told my friends I had asked you out for tea - they said I was crazy. I think your friends thought you were crazy too. Just remind them that I never asked you for your notes.

I think it started for me when you kissed the back of my neck for the first time in my mother's living room. It was as though the floodlights came on in my head, some kind of karmic flash and you know I thought the next day that it was probably just the moment, but you know what? i've never felt quite the same way again. I've not had another 'moment'. Think of it what you will. I think it was because in some subconscious part of my mind, I knew I had found you.

I feel absolutely ridiculous typing out these things. God knows I've read countless versions of this teenage lovesick nonsense and I know that even I will find this sickening when I read it again. Haven't kept a diary since I was about 15 and my mother read my diary. I can't keep anything in this house for obvious reasons. So after giving it quite a lot of thought, I decided this was the best way. A completely paperless record that I can access anywhere. An anonymous blog that no one will see because of its strange name. There is still a risk I know. But if I keep this in my head, I will go mad; in fact maybe I'm already insane but don't know it. Wouldn't that be classic?

I don't think I will tell even you. Because I think the you I take with me everywhere is not the you I meet for lunch and coffee. You're so much harder to talk to, and so much more cynical than the person I knew 11 years ago. I know the song says that "something's lost and something's gained/ in living every day". But so much of what I remember of you seems to be missing. You seem to be bent on feeling nothing. And I'm so sad that things are this way. You'll never understand how much I miss the person I still remember so well.

I'll keep this blog for a month and see. Then for the sake of my son and H, I'll probably delete it.
But for now, it serves a truly useful purpose and that is I get to empty out all the thoughts swirling round in my head which are driving me insane. I think of you mid-sentence when I'm working. You're always with me one way or the other. You're in my ipod, in the songs i've downloaded into my computer, in my head when I go to work and come home, and every morning I check my phone hoping that I have a message from you.

Is this complete delusion, all these feelings I have? Surely it must be. How can I have such strong feelings for you after all this time, after you've got married, I've got married, I have a kid... I still think if you ever have any children, that my feelings will fade. or yours. Yours will fade and then I'll have no choice but to forget all about us. Even using "us" is a joke. There never was an "us", was there? There wasn't.

I'm making a mess of my marriage.

There are so many little things that even a person as self-centred as me would do for a loved one, that it never occurs for me to do for H. He asks me if I do care for him and I say yes. I want to mean it. But every day on my way to work and on my way home, basically when my mind is free to drift off anywhere it wants to go, it goes to you. I think about you with regret, with sadness, with love, with lust, and a host of other emotions I can't identify. If I don't say these things that I feel, I will go insane.

I stand outside this woman's work, this woman's world.
I should be crying, but I just can't let it show.
I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking
Of all the things I should've said,
That I never said.
All the things we should've done,
That we never did.
All the things I should've given,
But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go, make it go away now.

Here

This is me.

Now that I've set this up, maybe this will be an outlet for all the things I want to say but I can't.