The calm exterior facade hid the inner turmoil as he tried hard to keep inside himself without it boiling over. It took all of his strength to still the wretchings and turnings of his freshly broken heart. He hung up the phone feeling completely drained. There were no questions in his mind. There was no movement to be seen in the room. The quiet humming of the computer was all that occupied his mindless reverie as he sat there stunned by the words she had said to him. After two minutes, one-hundred twenty seconds that seemed like epochs of Earth's primordial history, he awoke from his waking dream. It's over he thought. The distance between his hopes and reality differed so far from each other that they could never be reconciled. He had planned his life around her, his entire future ha dlain in the palm of her hand now cruelly thrown to the ground, another piece of another worthless dream left among all the others that had come before. It wasn't any different from any of his relationships of past. He had hoped to God it would be different this time, that this would be the one, that what he felt for her she would return... but that was not to be the case. Things will always mean different things to people. That was a fact of life. But how could he possibly feel this way for her when she was so far from him, in both distance and emotions. He stirred his feet to move from the bed. But he could not. His leaden legs stayed firmly planted on the floor. After fighting with his extremities he moved to study his new nouns and phrases for the day. Studying may take his mind off it temporarily, but the pain would stay with him for a long time to come. Maybe its all just a nightmare he thought to himself praying that it this cruel joke would end soon.

8.03.2002

The idea of her with another person, whether emotionally or physically, gave him a pounding pressure on both sides of his head. It was like a rusted 6 inch drill bit to the back of his head, scraping away incessantly as flakes of skull burned off until the drill burrowed its way into his skull. His breathing slowed as he tried to calm his nerves. The combination of slowly brooding anger, a quiet headache, a heartache that continued to be with him, and his hunger for phsyical affection turned him into the equivalent of the aftermath of an emotional head-on collision. He would not show it, not to his friends, not to his family, not to strangers, but he had to reveal his frustration to himself every waking moment of the day. His outward appearance showed nothing of the inner turmoil. He continued to laugh at funny jokes, workout obsessively, eat his usual meals and listen to his normal selection of sappy songs as if nothing had happened at all, but everyone arouhd him knew that there was rage mixing around in a torrential hurricane-force storm within his heart. He didn't want to let her go. He didn't want to see her with another man. He was her perfect match; the coup de grace in a ten thousand piece puzzle board. She wanted to see other people, see how other people could make her feel, if he was truly the one for her. Was he a mark that others could not surpass? He once felt the same way, when he first got to college, and it tok a long time to mature past that stage but he was ready to settle down now and be with her, and have her forever. He wanted to marry her! He had even made plans for his proposal; it was to be an unforgettable affair, as grand as a poor, young, college student could make it. But now the plans lay unfinished, unable to be finished. When would she return to him? Not even fate knew for all the power rested with her. If she returned he would be there waiting for her indefinitely.