Somewhere to Plant the Flag (12/26/08 Friday)

Now, think about this thing I've been calling "obsession" all this time: Has it been anything more than overthinking? That's what I've been wondering since Shawn equated the two the other day. I told her then that the thinking was to keep the emotions from taking over. Considering the alternative, Julie would be glad to allow me the obsession. If I'd let the emotions have their way, the humiliation would have heen hers as well, and spectacular. Tuckahoe would not be anywhere near far enough away. Can you say Witness Protection Program? Eventually, The Fool actually won out, but it wasn't for a lack of effort to contain him. He simply mutated, like a virus, adapting to my rational strategies. I mean, what but a perversion of rationale would have made me believe taping that picture to my bike was a benign thing? The more I think about it, the less I can believe any of this was about Julie, but that she was the reason I gave myself to keep obsessing. This dichotomy I was overseeing was what was truly fascinating me, not Julie, but without her there was no battlefield on which to stage the fight. Julie was the proverbial street I had to take it to in order to give it a context outside the abstract, to give theory a practical test. I have not begun rereading the journal, but I don't think it will belie my memory of some important points; e.g., I never actually imagined Julie as my girlfriend, and I never thought I was in love. Given the reins, The Fool could not have helped but whip those horses right over the cliff into the Grand Chasm of Humiliation.

I'm not looking forward to work tomorrow any more than I have been all month. I'm not thoroughly resigned to "faking it," am not sure how well I can do it on even a rudimentary level, whatever that would be. Matt says it's less an artifice than a bravado, which he defines simply as a refusal to be cowardly. With that in mind, I may pull it off. Tuesday's avoidance did nothing to restore me to the good graces of my coworkers. It felt cowardly and should not be tolerated in the future.