But Feel Free to Email Me with Suggestions (6/6/09 Saturday)

Julie was back yesterday. We still said nothing to each other, and the only eye contact was a confrontation. I stared in her eyes as we were approaching each other in the workroom. She tilted her chin toward the side on which I was about to pass her, and her eyebrows rose just-perceptibly. I felt as if I were being taunted or dared to speak. I didn't. Over the course of the day the knot spread across the back of my neck. It's still there today, another full workday with Julie. Since "thinking about you," not a word has passed between us that didn't pertain directly to work. It's been dark. It's defeatist and pathetic to resign myself to this state, but how do I get out of it? Yesterday, "it's up to you" never entered my mind, but I heard it very early on today. Most days I resent it, and today is one of those days. Each time I tell myself, "she knows," I have to remind myself of what she knows; and now I also have to ask, "How is that important?" It's fading. I'm losing grip of it. Yet as I do I am experiencing vague fantasies of Julie coming around, warming up to me, talking to me, wanting to know me. Those have to go away if I'm to prevent myself from doing something catastrophically stupid to effect their realization. I can't entertain that kind of hope. I have written "My Mid-Life Crisis" on the back of her picture on my fender. I figure that's in the category of She Knows, so seeing that won't elicit any more than a puzzled look from the clueless, a smirk from the clued-in, and a roll of the eyes from Julie. Hell, what more could I do, at this stage of the game, that could produce more than benign effect? It's best I don't try to answer that.