Abby and I just watched Malcolm X, the 1992 Spike Lee Joint. It’s style summoned some very close-to-home memories from that dark year, so I dove into my journal.

I like to imagine these notes are like Kafka’s or Camus’, but they sometimes sound like they came from a high school girl.
These pearls only scratch the surface of what it was like for me that year, but it’s a good start…
• Return to me, and return to me what you have taken.
• Have you ever noticed that it’s the strong who think the strong should survive?
• Part of me wants her to be happy, and part of me wants her.
• I can see you in your navy peacoat, white scarf, snow melting on your glasses, under the street light.
• Sarcasm chasm.
• And yet, today, I failed to hold anyone close, tell anyone I love them, laugh, cry, have fun. What the hell am I doing?
• Tears always require imagination.
• It’s funny how the most boring people I know find me among the most boring people they know.
• Those who seem to be hiding something are usually hiding the fact that they have nothing to hide.
• Slow dance and mean it.
• Home is a moment.
• Before I go, I’d like to 1. Be famous 2. Get rich 3. Feed the world 4. Marry. Don’t be ridiculous. Who’s gonna marry me?
• If I leave, there’s no chance anyone will want me to leave.
• I’d rather eat cereal than hallucinate.
• Alone. What a wonderful word. Sometimes it’s all that needs to be said.
• I don’t want what you have. I want what you are.
• Today was made of tears.
• Misheard lyric: “The dummy between your legs.” Actual lyric: “The damage accumulates.”
• I hold myself tight because no one else will. Not even you.
• (An exhaustive list of women I dated or wanted to date, along with their best and worst characteristics.)
• I stand still and time passes through me.
• Love is an acquired taste.
• Slow-dancing with my imagination.
• “I’m really glad,” she said, not knowing how much it meant to me and how happy I was the hear her say it, “that you started coming over on Friday nights.”
• There is no place in heaven or on earth better than in my arms.
• She chants and she cries and she holds this night as sacred as I.
• We rise to the levels of strength and bravery that our lives demand.
• Somehow it means more to have someone observe than I am lonely than it does to merely be lonely.
• Most people are made up of their bad habits and broken dreams.
• How does it feel? It feels like I am in a pressure chamber, and it’s all pressing on me, making me smaller, harder. Sometimes I feel like I will disappear completely. Right now, as I sit hunched and write backhanded and yarn tearfully, I remember than no matter who or where you are, you are not thinking about me.
• Don’t go. Stay. Don’t stray.
• The future is up for grabs, and the past is up for review.
• I looked at myself in the cold, harsh, judgmental light of that damned mirror and saw so much of myself I had to look away.
• Read me like a book. I dare you.
• I can still smell her on me, the smell of perfume and tears.
• Her whole life has left her unprepared for the kind of openness I offer.
• 3:13 am. You awaken mysteriously to the sound of my voice calling your name. You hear in me my need, my gifts, my love, my life. You sit up and look around. All seems as it should.
• I sit by the window and listen as the wind chimes play the loneliest song ever written.
• Her soft voice touches me with its illusion.
• The words loomed large when she said, “I love Richard.” Never mind that the rest of the sentence was, “because he always brings cookies.”
• Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was the music, but I swear I could hardly bear the next moment.
• You keep me alive by needing me in your life. Telling you who I am is who I am.
• And you, whose caring ends the minute you walk out that door…
• Even if you have nothing to hide, don’t hide.
• The opposite of hurt is hope.
• The train to yesterday leaves tomorrow.
• Tonight the windy mist does a disappointing job hiding my tears. Miserable weather.
• When I’m with you, I’m as unlonely as I ever need to be.
• The future is our only choice.
• Bachelorhood: the freedom to joylessly masturbate to the uninspired pornography of my imagination.
• “You’re one of the most obvious people I’ve ever met.” ~M
• “Do they abandon you, or do you drive them away?” ~F
• Peace doesn’t come from what you do, but from who you are.
• If there is a god, I want to look him in the eyes. Is that the idea behind mirrors?
• Message from girlfriend on answering machine: “Meat loaf. Pot roast. Yankee pot roast. English pot roast. T-bone steak cut from the side of a cow. Round steak. Rib eye. Fillet mignon. Fried crab. Oyster on the half shell. Pork ribs. BBQ beef, dripping, glistening with sauce. McDonald’s Big Mac. Ooo, I have a deep voice. Hamburger meat, nice and lean and frying in a pan forever and ever. Chicken noodle soup. Beefy vegetable soup. …uh… (BEEP).”
• “Part of your heart you only use when you’re in love.” ~J
• A single wish: don’t let it end in tears.
• I give because I need to give.
• She cried.
• There have been hours beyond darkness in which I was totally alone.
• Good men make mistakes.
August 15, 1992: My first flying lesson.
• You awaken. The pillow is cool, but for a moment it seems like someone is there with you. It’s me.
• Silence wraps around me like a boa constrictor.
• There is nothing inside my heart that is outside my reach.
• Cool night. Footsteps on the stairs. Clouds witness my tension as I wait for Darla or Lee or the last person I’ll ever see.
• Fire and wind from the sky laugh at my frail heart as I sit in the unwelcome darkness and miss your smile.
• Missing her comes in waves. Soon they will sweep me away.
• Dressed in black, I walk the night, not among the shadows, but as the shadows.
• Sometimes it feels like if you were to cut me open, my anger and pain would flood the world.
• “Swirling toilet of despair.” ~Aria
• I have blurred visions.
• The trouble with sex with M is that you’d have to get along with her for at least a whole day, and I can’t imagine being able to do that.
• The chocolate of truth
• Perspective: use it or lose it.
• If I believed in god, I’d hate him, but my disbelief deprives me of that luxury.
• When the New Order comes, anyone uttering the word “codependent” will spend six months in a reeducation camp.
• “Hello, Richard. I just wanted to tell you that life is a tragic and terrible struggle that is made harder by the fact that as a race, we are all tragically flawed. See you this weekend. Bye.” ~David, on my answering machine
On the morning of December 20, 1992, my flight instructor signed my logbook and got out of the airplane, and I flew solo for the first time. In addition to the first giant step to becoming a pilot, it was a symbolically high moment in my personal life. My 1992 was over.

I’d really like to see that exhaustive list.
I’d like to see ALL the lists. Were you a theist I’d suggest God enjoys your love of irony.
Yes, the full list, please.