you’d think that silence would be peaceful. but really, it’s painful.

I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable nighttime conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no light in the room.

You never get involved in the people's lives? The ones you're inhabiting?" I shake my head. "You try to leave the lives the way you found them." "Yeah." "But what about Justin? What made that so different?" "You," I say.

instead i head to the computer and it's like i turn into a little girl who's just seen her first rainbow. i get all giddy and nervous and hopeful and despairing and i tell myself not to look obsessively at my buddy list, but it might as well be projected onto the insides of my eyelids. at 8:05 his name pops up, and i start to count. i only get to twelve before his IM pops up.

People are rarely as attractive in reality as they are in the eyes of the people who are in love with them. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.

You never let things go unanswered for too long. Emails. Phone calls. Questions. As if you know the waiting is the hardest part for me.

There was a pause. I was still scared by every gap in our conversation, fearing that this was it, the point where we had nothing left to say. I was still trying to impress you, and I still wanted to be impressed by you, so I could pass along pieces of your impressiveness to my friends, convincing myself this was possible.