how to explain...

How do I describe the twenty four hours between yesterday and today? It seems as if time crawled, it seems as if it's been a millennium and not just a day.
Last night I got ahold of Ariel finally, a girl who is 18 and a sophomore in college (she is really smart) who is the older sister of someone in Josh's grade. She has been helping him. I talked to her for a long time about a lot of stuff. We could really relate on abuse issues, as she'd been through it too. Whenver I discover another victim I am always both relieved and happy while being depressed and angry- relieved/happy that I am not alone, depressed/angry that I am not alone. It is a battle between the need for companionship and the desire to just ameleorate the situation.
She didn't know about Josh's problems with ...abusing... (I guess is the technical word although not my preferred choice of word) his brother/cousins. I've been so alone with the issue since December, and I've been threatening to tell someone if he doesn't, but I trusted him when he said he would. Now I understand he's not capable of going through with that, and also he's sunk so low that his word means nothing to him (or to me) now.
He did tell Ariel though. So I wasn't alone. And Ariel, being stronger than me in some way, knew we had to do something right away. We all three talked until 3 in the morning. Josh finally refused to tell his parents and wouldn't promise not to kill himself over night. I agreed to call Ariel at 7 in the morning and we'd call Josh's parents.
I fell into bed, exhuasted, but I couldn't sleep. Everything was over between us, and I knew that. I knew also that his life and healing were more important than us. But it hurts... it hurts to love someone and then for there to suddenly be no possibility of a real future relationship. Everything in me still loved him, and I felt like there was no way I could leave him. But I knew I had to, for both of us, and he knew it too and told Ariel he would break up with me.
I fell asleep at 4 and woke up at 7. I dragged out the calling card and woke up Ariel. I tried to do three-way calling but it wouldn't work with the card. I tried without the card and it still wouldn't work. So Ariel agreed to call.
I hope that I have courage like that someday... courage to do something incredibly hard with the strength with which she did it. I would have called if I had to, but she was so much more brave about it than I could be.

(WRITTEN 04-09) Now his parents know. They're going to make him get help. They talked about putting him in a center. I hope they don't. I'm not allowed to see him for a while, and I'm encouraged to just be his friend from now on. He can't use the internet. He was so focused on his future, always, that he didn't understand that it could never come if he didn't fix the present... for him, it will appear as if I am tearing his life apart. I wish he was mad at me, but Ariel says he is not. I want him to scream at me. I don't want this helpless defeat. Ariel went see him yesterday and she said he could barely talk, he was just curled up in a little ball. I wish I could be there... I wish I could hold him... not in any way remotely sexual, but in the way that you hold a tiny dog that has been alone all night... I need him now more than ever, I will never stop needing him in some way, but he matters now, and what we are or were is something of the past, maybe something that was simply necessary to get him to this point, to get him to the help he needs.

Yesterday I played my cello solo on three hours of sleep. I was too agitated to sleep on the way to Bozeman but too tired to read. I came home and sat in my house drumming my fingers. I felt like I was going crazy. To have lost what I loved more than anything, all in one day, and so definitely... I could feel the sorrow inside me but it was buried, and I couldn't feel it yet, and I still can't, and that scares me.
I called Erin. She knew I needed her so we went to Starbucks and then I slept over at her house. I was so tired, from all these days blurring into each other, that I just talked and talked about everything. She listened, and talked when it made sense for her too. She knew I just needed to talk. I just needed to be with someone, even if inside of me I was still so far away.

I don't know how I will ever forgive myself for doing this to Josh, although I don't regret it for an instant. I don't know how I will ever forgive myself for doing this to myself. I trusted love this time, and it was a mistake because I am left broken. I have a best friend whose life is falling apart... I have memories... and past that nothing... He meant more to me than any boy ever has before and maybe ever will romantically, but to save his life I had to shatter any romantic connection.

That is what hurts... that is what makes me still feel dizzy and blurred, even though I got nine hours of sleep last night, dead to the world on Erin's bedroom floor. I want to cry. I want to cut but I told Ariel I wouldn't. I want to feel it. I know inside me that it hurts more than anything, to lose him, and I want whatever is trying to protect me from that pain to just let go and let me feel it. I need to hurt. I need to scream and get angry and cry so long that when I'm done I feel new again.

I won't believe love is like this, but it always has been for me... I love someone so much, I take a chance, and in the end the love for them is what kills me. It never works out. I am left with the tatters. There is the rational, logical part of me that knows that it could never work now, not between me and him.

And there is the part that reads all the emails he ever sent me, including the very first way back in June... the part that listens to the CD of love songs he made for me... the part that thinks about kissing him in the climbing gym, and in the snow, and everything in the world feeling possible in that instant... and that part of me is shredding slowly into confetti.

I have lost all of that to save him... and I am left with him, and he is what I loved, and the only way to have him was to let him go...

I don't know how to explain the pain. It is worse, I think, than anything I can remember feeling before. Even if I cannot feel it yet. The fact that it is totally mentally debilitating is proof that even though it hasn't arrived in full-force, it is already beginning its threat to destroy me.

I need, more than anything, to be held in his arms right now... and that is the one thing that I cannot possibly have.

(I got all superiors on my three solos and my ensamble. District doesn't seem to matter much at the moment though).