I like to carry a pad around with me everywhere. It's nearly run out now, there can only be a few pages left, but i carry it round all the same. It's become as essential as taking a book everywhere i go. I write various things in it. There are pages from a third diary in there, generally written on bus journeys, (I do a surprising amount of my thinking on bus journeys.) a few starts at blog entries, from when i couldn't wait until i had a keyboard at my fingers, and it is on this pad that i also write all of my letters. That isn't many any more, but i still write a few. I know this is nonsense, but i sort of feel as if in writing continually in the same pad i imbue every page with a little of myself, whether or not i've written on it yet. Also in there are, or soon will be, my abortive attempts ("Abortive attempt" has become a far overused phrase now, hasn't it. This will be the last time i use, apart from perhaps when i'm speaking. I'm already boycotting "happy belated birthday".) at fiction. The only one in there so far picks up from a letter i wrote to J, swearing i was going to cut myself off from various of my friends. Pretty much as soon as i'd written the letter i knew it was nonsense, but to utterly convince myself of this, that i was making the right choice in not excising J, i started writing a story imagining that i had sent the letter. It never got beyond a second page (Excluding five pages of letter.) but i had a vague plot worked out in my mind, and those two pages turned out to be enough. Mostly. Obviously i still had regrets, took up wistfulness occassionally, but mostly it worked.

So it makes sense to carry on doing things like this, i think. At the very least it'll keep me in practice. I don't want to wake up in ten years' time and realise i couldn't write a word of prose if i tried. I know exactly where i need to change my life. There is a moment, i still remember it clearly, when E walked straight past me. I should have talked to him, but i'm a coward. So now i'm going to write a me that did ask him. And he won't have been turned down, not at first, because for one thing that'll make far too dull a story, but neither will he be immediately and passionately kissed by E, as that is patently ridiculous. Even more ridiculous, that is, than the idea of me getting up the courage to talk to him. That did nearly happen. Sort of. I almost looked him in the eye, at least.

You see, i've been fantasising again. Yearning, even. It isn't good for me to yearn. There's nothing wrong with a bit of fantasy but yearning is bad. I end up believing the fantasy. Last night, in my insomnia, i thought about E. I'm confused, you see, about his recent behaviour (As reported by S and J). He seems to have been smirking and grinning in their presence. S saw him at the bus stop a couple of days ago (I'm not sure how they feel about being assistant stalkers.) and said he kept looking over (Both E and S were with friends.) at them and smiling. That, surely, is odd behaviour. Not what you expect from Mr. "Stop bugging me", (Who, in this country, actually says "bugging"? Bizarre.) is it? So somewhere inside me, soimething decides that this obviously because he's starting to belive the stuff i said was true. Obviously he's at the very least flattered, but most likely falling in love with me. Unfortunately, this delusional part of myself seems rather persuasive, and i've never been too susceptible to logic anyway.

A few nights before it was J again. I'd convinced myself that he was probably in love with me but too scared to tell me because of how i'd reacted last time. I imagined conversations between J and S about how he couldn't tell me because i'd just reject him. It's quite amazing how vain i can be. Then, the day after, i spoke to him and realised how this was completely not the case. I started wondering if he actually cared about me at all. For a while now i've been saying "I love you" at the end of conversations, because i do, or did, love him. I've got confused again now. but then i saw that maybe i shouldn't be saying it. He responded, generally, but he never said it first. He's said before he has "weird love feelings", but i began to wonder, and still do, really, if those feeling had dissipated. And it isn't really something i can ask without seeming even more of an obsessive. So the nub and gist of it is i'm no longer in love with J. Though i probably will be again next time i see him. I sort of hope so, he's nice to be in love with, whether or not he loves back.

And then, of course, there's the poor fool who's fallen in love with me. This is the most confusing thing of all. I just have no idea what to do, what to say. Because he deserves to be loved. But i don't. Not like that. I've hardly seen him in ages, and when i do i don't know how i should speak to him. I'm afraid of being arrogant, or patronising, or any number of things i often end up being. I don't want to assume it's a huge passionate love, because why should anyone feel that for me? If i do think that then i'm vain. But then i end up belittling his feelings, which really is just as bad. And i think we need to talk about it, but neither of us seems willing to start such conversation. And i doubt either of us knows what we'd say if it did start.