November 25, 2021:
When my brain was broken I stood up the beautiful girl I'd loved for years. That one who'd loved to wrestle, and lose.
In the dorm during a different kind of depression I'd lacked the initiative to follow-through. She'd have been mine, then, but I'd have needed to be far more energetic and vastly more in charge than I was then prepared to be.
Later for years I wrote her over the summers. I'd ride my bike down Clairemont Drive to a spot I liked in Mission Bay Park, read Althusser and Trotsky and write diary-like letters to the beautiful girl now far away.
When I moved north she was there for a time, somehow. She asked me to lunch, telling our mutual friend, "I had such a crush on him at school..." We agreed to meet on Market Street but my brain was so broken that I forgot.
Later for years I pictured her standing amid lunchtime crowds, waiting fruitlessly for me. I hated that picture so very much, as I hate it again today, remembering.