All I need is a very small thing. Just—-anything to let me know that the boy is thinking of me as he goes about his day, and I go about mine. A little text, a quick phone call, a short note on my God-damned Facebook wall would do the trick, for Christ’s sake. That’s *all* I need, and then after that I can focus on myself just enough, focus on anything I need to, balance things—and as a lover I become quite well-rounded, neither clingy nor too distant. And I am able to achieve a fantastic night’s sleep. And everyone is happy.
But—-but, but, if I don’t get that little hint, those few words, then I become insane. Just like that. I am insane with hurt, jealousy, possessiveness, fanaticism, self-hatred, rampant imagination and anxiety. It is so heavy, it is an actual pain in my heart, and I lose the will to do just about anything. Sleep is all I am in the mood to do, and it is seldom easy to achieve in this state. It wakes me in the night. I think of nothing else than of how I have been wronged, what is wrong with him, what is wrong with me. What is wrong that I can never be the only girl in a boy’s heart, or at least the one at the very top of it.

I don’t mean to sound ridiculous and romantic, but I would *kill* for a boyfriend to obsess over me, if I liked him enough. Zack doesn’t count because the only reason he was obsessed with me was because he was gay and still holding on to the slight notion that he could still like a girl, and also I hated his obsession because of that and because we were never together, I had never wanted to be with him, due to the fact that he is, you know, gay. So Zack doesn’t count.
But my God, I want a boyfriend to be insanely, consumingly jealous for my attention. I want him to be irritated when I talk to other guys, and for him to be upset when I choose to hang out with my girlfriends instead of him. I want him to text me constantly, and want him to want to see me every other day. Mind you, I don’t want a stalker, but just a boyfriend who wants no one but me, sees only me. Mom says I’d get tired of it, and other girls who have had obsessive boyfriends say that I’d hate it, but then again I sort of get the feeling that none of those girls nor my mother know what it’s like to *obsess*. I would love someone like Peter, absolutely love for someone to be possessive of me. That week and a half when Peter was approaching possessiveness of me was absolute heaven. I wouldn’t get tired of it, not me. The only way I’d definitely, definitely hate it is if the boy started to change himself for me, to fit to my needs and opinions and such. That gets old real fast, I know that without even having experienced it.

All that is something I would *love* to have in a boy—-but under no circumstances do I *need* it. I just need—-that tiny, effortless reassurance that he likes me enough to have me in his thoughts from time to time every day, with pleasure. Just that and I’m good, blissfully happy. But without it, without it…I am one of the most pitiful, lovesick middle-class girls to inhabit the planet. I want to sleep and forget, but sleep is so long in coming and then I wake in the night, and straightaway I think of him, and also in the morning, and every waking moment until—-if—-I get those few words from him.
I want to break things, tear my hair out, anything to numb this perpetual, stifling pain I walk around with. I do not cry for him. What I feel suffocates me too much for that, drains all the energy a girl would normally have for crying. In lieu of crying for the boy I can not, can not stop thinking about him. What am I going to do? Just what am I going to do? I shall have no luck with him or any other boy, carrying on like this. Hell, I’ll have no luck just making it in the world as a person, if I carry on like this.
But how do I detach the dream of love from my heart? It is rooted there fast, and seamlessly. Sometimes it becomes hard to breathe.