melancholy

Today I was very busy. Faculty meetings in the morning; same old stuff. Not too much exciting, although I am looking forward to teaching. The meetings, I could do without, as they say. But it was ok. I came home exhausted (I barely slept last night, the usual insomnia) and took a little nap with Tuna lying next to me. Then I went and moved the car. Then I came home and read the newspaper. Y. came and said that Friday night he had to go to a colleague's birthday dinner. This plunged me into a deep sense of sadness, one that had threatened to take over earlier today. Why was I sad? I was sad because I would not go to the dinner, because it would not be possible, because such is the nature of the world that he could not bring me to the dinner, and I felt tired and sick and beaten down by having to fight over these types of things, and having to feel weird and strange and bizarre, yes, even here in enlightened New York City, because I am not married with kids and a wife and...oh...it is not worth going on and on because these are the kinds of issues that we are supposed to have settled in ourselves years ago, as if the pain of all of that can just be rinsed off and abolished. I wish it were so simple. I couldn't even talk about it with him; it would not be fair and would do no good. He can not change these things any more than I can. And then I sat with my cat Pomona and saw how thin she has become, how clouded her old eyes are, and I think she is starting to waste away, maybe sick with something inside her, an old cat, so sweet and with me for so long, and I started to cry, and now I just want to sleep forever...