There's this word that means something like "the physical manifestation of emotion in the body," but I can't seem to think of it. I'm not even sure it exists. It should exist. It's a very important feeling. Why does your heart hurt when someone you love doesn't love you back? It has nothing to do with your heart, but still the area behind your ribcage HURTS so bad you think you might have to excavate and replace it. Why, when things end, does my abdomen feel so empty? Not my stomach, but the area above my stomach, below my ribcage where my diaphragm resides? Why do I have to ask, to know?

Today I realized that, being a senior girl, which would usually afford me all sorts of mystery and charm and desirability, I am far too easy a target. I temporarily attach myself to people and settings and situations such that I must seem desperate for friends or SOMETHING, because I give so much time to new people. It's a product of me being fickle and unable to commit strongly to any one thing, but I'm not the type of girl who has one group of friends until death do us part. I become engrossed with new people. And then, I'm afraid, I get bored of them. Of course, there are the ones that stick with me and I'm always happy to see, but otherwise I become temporarily enamored and then done. But, while I'm enamored, it's that painful, obsessive, over-the-top type of enamored. The I-need-so-much-attention-from-you-right-now type of enamored. The bad kind. The neurotic girl kind. I'm afraid that's what I've become. That and vain.

This probably couldn't be a more accurate description of this juncture in my life: "I never have relationships with [boys]--only relations. It depresses me to think that I've never had sex with anyone who really loved me. Sometimes I wonder if having sex with a [boy] who doesn't love me is like felling a tree, alone, in a forest: no one hears about it; it didn't happen." -Jonathan Safran Foer "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease."

The nights are so quiet these days. Everyone studying. Everyone slowly imploding. It's so unfortunate that the last days we all have together as four classes on this campus are spent with hunched backs and blurry eyes and only late night, minor manifestations of how we ever felt about each other. I would love to be over this place. But I'm not. And it pulses like a great subterranean beast and wakes me up at night.