17/08/2003 - 7:01 p.m.

Don't kiss me?

Don't kiss me! I'm sick.
I've a cold from my hair to my toes.
My nose is quite runny,
My head feels all funny,
And I breathe through my mouth like a fish.

Don't kiss me! Oh please,
I implore you, or else what I've got you'll soon have.
What a pair we shall make
When both our poor heads ache!
That's a fate that I surely don't wish.

Now's not the time to cuddle;
I don't feel like any great beauty.
Just brew me some teas
As I cough and I wheeze.
From that I'll know that you care.

Don't kiss me! Not yet,
My poor nose is stuffed up to my ears.
Embrace not your Kate
Or she'll soon suffocate-
I can't kiss you and still breathe the air!

I've been sick all week, and I think I'm just finally about over it. That was the commemorative poem. Quite a feat as it didn't take a bit of effort on my part: I sat down and it wrote itself.

Not that anyone is around to endanger themselves in that manner. I go back to school on Thursday; it seems a most dreadful long time. Nathan gets back from Texas on Wedneday at the earliest.

I wonder if it was such a good idea for me to agree to call him every day. He misses me more than I miss him- I've "adjusted" back to living without him. (As horrible as that sounds considering what it is I've had to adjust back to.) Humans are adaptable and adjustable, myself particuarly. Well, not entirely. I find myself reaching for a hand that isn't there more often than I like to admit, but I'm resigned to his absence and it doesn't bother me too much. Nathan still misses me pretty constantly, unless I'm much mistaken. It seems that the results of him missing me comes out much the same as his depression.

Much like letting a crying camper phone home, I doubt there are positive effects of him getting phone calls from me. Talking to me doesn't make anything any better because I'm still not there, and half the time I manage to say something to make him worry or to upset him: everything from mentioning my sickness and the extreme boredom of my life currently to thoughts about next year.

Last night I mentioned that I didn't think I'd be staying with him in the apartment as often as he would like me to. He was hurt. I had sort of presumed he would be, and when he told me that he was, it got me to wondering a lot more about the idea.

My reasons for staying in my room are mostly those of "propriety". My roommate is going to be from Poland, so I may as well spend some of the time there, try and seem hospitable. My parents and I are paying for the room, so I ought to stay there more than I stay at the apartment. Teri Ann isn't going to tell me if she thinks I spend too much time hanging around doing nothing. She's my friend, but I'll bet she won't want me hanging around as an attachment to Nathan. That won't be a good thing for any of the three of us. This last one is the most compelling, but the one most driven by paranoia. If I bring it up, both of them will adamantly deny it, and it's not a huge deal in my mind until it happens.

However, I'm just about certain that Nathan isn't seeing the points that I'm making. At the moment, in spite of my trying to explain, he just sees it "what does she want to do more? be with me, or be in her room?" And, since I said I need to spend some time in my room, to him it looks like the latter.

So, which do I care for? Loyalty to those I love, or a desire to do what is expected of me? Written in those terms, it seems quite obvious. I've never done what was expected of me.