November 19, 2020:

Sad dream. I awaken in an unwanted state of confrontation with feelings she can't share.

Not a new insight. Situation normal, as it has been for half a decade.

Yet at bottom this all is about a different emotion than the one right now. Loneliness. Where there's a person who fills me in an unexpected way. Not as fully as that one so long ago. Partially, and probably that's a good thing, where fear of false totalization is thankfully absent. Still. More than literally anyone I've known in three decades of exile.

So that there's a sadness. That she shares her life so partially.

Her private-ness is in part, I think, her compassionate means of shielding me from hurts she knows I'd experience and which she can do nothing about. On the whole I'm probably grateful.

Perhaps though there's a hint of mistrust. Perhaps it's that hint, that obscurely tart little tang of an inkling, which, at this moment, widens the lonely space she otherwise partially fills.