Saying GoodBye to something else...

(Before I posted this, it was nice to see those banner ads changed!)

As I started writing this, the words to the Goodbye Girl started going through my head.

Let me tell you Goodbye doesn't mean forever
Let me tell you Goodbye doesn't mean we'll never been together again...

Oh, shut up.

I was jogging last night at the gym and started performing a little mental housecleaning. Do you ever do this? Run a diagnostic on your brain to see if everything's still there?

No? I'm just crazy?

Well, what else are you going to do on a treadmill except read the closed captioning on the televisions?

I did find something missing. It was rather remarkable - so remarkable, in fact, that I kept checking. Even this morning, it's still gone. This missing thing? I can't recall what it was like to be with Rosa. Oh, I can recall Rosa. I can recall some of the times we had together. But the feel of those times - her presence in a room or warmth against me - is gone, it seems.

I was telling Tim this weekend that my misery these days comes more from plain-old loneliness than from the absence of Rosa. Sure, I miss Rosa - but I don't seem to pine for her so much. To steal an old line from myself: my agony has turned into mere misery.

The saddest thing about memory, of course, is that it's impossible to mourn something you don't remember. My memories of Rosa are of inestimable value and they are slowly slipping away, which is probably for the very best. (In the end, I'm the only one who cherished us anyway. Why shouldn't I let them go?)

You may say this is another step towards "closure", that word we so often, and incorrectly, use these days. I would challenge that and say that it's a step down the road that has been foisted upon me, a road towards a future I never wanted and despise as I go into it. Rosa is gone forever and I'm left with a life lived in solitude.

... I need a drink.