Diary of a Woman in Love

Introductions

I'm not a very athletic person.

When the weather's nice, I take a slight detour on my walk home from work across the university's campus to watch the tennis players practice. The way their arms stretch and their torsos twist and their legs bend to launch them from one end of the court to the other always impresses me. I think to myself, I could never do that, every time I watch them play. And it's not just their movements. The speed they have to do all these internal calculations, where the ball is going, how hard they need to hit it, where they need to send it, where they need to be standing next to respond to their opponent, all subconsciously, it's impossible to comprehend I think. Sometimes I wonder if even they know what sort of miracles they're performing. I hope they do. I hope they know how special they are and how that specialness gives me joy every time I get to see it.

There's a lot of things I'm not good at, that I'm acutely aware of, so I live vicariously through others who are great at things. I go to the symphony to see people play the instruments I could never excel at. I go to poetry readings to hear the thoughts of people more self-aware than I put into words I'd never think to use. I subscribe to fashion magazines and watch makeup gurus on YouTube. I ask my friends questions about their hobbies to hear them talk about things I know nothing about. The world is full of such amazing people, after all, and their lives and their worlds are intriguing to me, as someone who's been bored of my own life for quite a while. I wonder sometimes if that's wrong, if I'm a bad person for using people like this, but I prefer not to think about it much. Not everything needs an answer. I'm allowed to simply enjoy things.

Something else I enjoy, and the reason why I'm writing this all down in the first place, is the presence of probably the most beautiful, amazing, inspiring, and intelligent woman on Earth. She has no idea I feel this way and I have no intention of telling her, but the more time I spend around her, the more it eats away at me, so I've decided to put into words in a little book I keep in my nightstand drawer all the thoughts running around my head. I need to tell someone, and I need no one to know, so the compromise is ink on paper, in shadow, at night, every night, until these feelings die or I die. This diary then is like a form of therapy, except it costs less and I can say whatever I want without needing to worry about making someone else uncomfortable. So with all that out of the way, like any good therapy session I'm going to start at the beginning.