Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat, shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation
-- Men at Work, "Overkill"

I cried tonight. I can hardly believe how overdone and cliché this sounds, but I left the concert building after Kelsey Wild had finished. I walked through the parking lot. I hid next to a Dumpster. I slid down the side until I was sitting in dirt oddly scattered on the gravel. I put my face in my hands. And then I cried, for lack of a better word. It was crying in everything but the tears. The tears stayed in my eyes. But everything else--the ragged gasping, the involuntary facial contortions--it all happened. In my personal case, this was a big deal.

Everything tonight reminded me that I couldn't be with her, that the obstacles were too big for her to live with, that I would throw all caution and rationality and cares about other people to the winds at just the suggestion of holding her hand but that she couldn't do it. Even the upbeat parts of the Imaginary Heroes set only helped remind me of how happy I could be if we had the relationship that I've been dreaming about lately. It all only hammered into me how much I wanted to just grab her and dance and go nuts and not care about anything but her and us and we and together and forever in an instant. I felt a blow to the gut when I saw JohnBrown and Val being mildly dorky but still cute while dancing together, knowing that I couldn't have that something so simple but joyful. It killed me so terribly that she wasn't next to me when I was all alone on that relatively crowded gym floor. It hurt when she scoffed during Kelsey Wild after I told her I was lonely sitting down while she stood up, even though she sat for the rest of the songs after that. I felt my ribs being squeezed when my leg incidentally touched her foot and she shifted her position so that we weren't touching at all anymore. I felt the dark pull of despair and depression when I saw that even the slightest, most innocent contact--the kind that would be nothing special among friends, especially good ones, but took on monumental, epic proportions with her--could not happen.

I want to finish my cry. I want to feel the hot tears stain my cheeks and feel the salty dryness of emotional pressure released. I want to feel drained and dead-tired, if for nothing else than to stop me from my own personal overkill. I keep on thinking that I wish my life were less complicated, that I could go back to only having to worry about my next homework assignment or how soon I could watch the newest episode of "Heroes" online. But then I think of her, and of the ridiculous intensity and confusing mix of emotions I feel when I'm around her most of the time, and I really can't make that trade. Even though I know I might be technically happier on average by not really caring that much about anything as compared to driving myself insane and replaying scenarios over and over again, the vaguest possibility of a near future for her and me always persists. It doesn't just survive like a cockroach, it explodes into ecstatic hope at the slightest misconstrued "hint" that she might choose me now. We get along so swimmingly during the times that I am confident that I'll eventually be able to be with her for real, probably because those are the only times that I can be around her and not be beaten in the face with the cruel knowledge of our impossibility.

She says I'm being melodramatic, that I take everything too personally. What she doesn't realize is that because she is SHE, things that would normally not matter much either way to me with other people become all-important. I can't help over-analyzing every move she makes or every time she speaks, because I am always desperately searching for clues that my dream is coming true. It's scary how much of my emotional happiness she carries in her soft hands, but for some reason, that's not anything close to enough to get me to jump out.

Somehow, those blissful hours and days of playful pure comfort have been enough to keep me going this long, but tonight...tonight I felt broken. I felt abandoned, discarded, unworthy. See, no matter how much the rest of me realizes the situation is anything but black and white, there's this little part of that keeps saying, "If she really cared about you, she would put you and your happiness above the other girl and everybody else." Of course, the rest of me couldn't stand to force her to be my girlfriend using a guilt tactic like that, and I don't even think that what the little part of me says all the time is really true.

Is this my punishment for ambition and hope? Am I doomed to live a life right now of unfulfilled, impossible promise? I can't even think straight anymore. Maybe it'll be clearer in the morning, but I somehow doubt it. I'm trapped.