Evidence

It turns out that I have two journals.  There's the ugly, brown journal that I write in from time-to-time and then there's what I like to think of as my travel notebook.  I bought it a mere four months after I bought the ugly, brown journal, partly because the second notebook is conveniently-sized, lightweight and durable, making it more travel-friendly, but also because when you're on an overnight train in Egypt, it looks a lot cooler to whip out a black, Moleskine ("the legendary notebook of artists, writers, intellectuals and travelers") than it does to whip out an ugly, very journal-looking journal.

So yesterday, I was trying to find something to bring around the city with me and remembered my travel notebook.  Looking for the first empty page, I flipped past foreign hotel phone numbers and phonetic spellings of "thank you" and "hello" in four other languages before discovering that the last thing I wrote in my Moleskine was a journal entry about 'D'.

I couldn't bring myself to read what I had written.  From the first few lines, I realized I had written it just after our third date, which meant that it was right about the time that I started thinking he was perfect for me.  I couldn't read any further.  I knew it was probably a girlish gushing of all the things that I had learned and liked about him so far, and I just did NOT want to think about how much I liked him or how hopeful I was at the time.

In the last month or so, I honestly haven't thought about him that much.  Which unfortunately also made me realize that if I wasn't even thinking about him, then for sure, he was not thinking about me...  In any case, working non-stop, going out-of-town and seeing 'E' were all great distractions this month.  Of course, every now and then, 'D' did seep into my thoughts.  Usually when I try to get over someone, I try to forget what I liked about them and focus on all the negatives.  I haven't really done that with 'D' (although I will admit that when I saw him for the first time two weeks ago, I did think to myself, I am definitely cuter than him).  Instead, my thoughts have centered more on whether I really liked him specifically or whether I just really liked the idea of him.  The idea of dating someone who could fit into my life.  The idea of not going on any more first dates.  The idea of being 26 and ready.

I do think all of this is true.  So much of life is about timing, and surely timing did affect my state-of-mind when I started dating 'D'.  Yes, he did fit a lot of my "criteria" but would I have thought he was that great if I had met him two years ago?  Probably not.

Still, no matter how much I try to make why I liked him less about him and more about me, the evidence that could potentially contradict all of this there, in that travel notebook, in my own handwriting, unread.