He keeps on saying that he loves me, and I know that he wants me to say the same thing back, but I can't. I mean, I care about him, I'd be awfully upset if anything happened to him, and I feel affection for him...but I know that isn't what he'll be thinking I mean if I apply the label "love" to that, even though I could conceivably be called love in other contexts, such as with a brother or child or friend. This makes me feel sad.

But the kind of love that rips your guts out, that approaches insanity, where you'd do anything at all for someone, where you live and breathe sustained by the sight or mere thought of the one you love....I haven't felt that way in a while, and I don't know if I really want to again. It's too scary, it hurts too much.

The truth of it is that I just feel sort of blank and empty inside. It's like the lines from an Elton John song: "I want love, but it's impossible....a man like me is dead in places, other men feel liberated...I can't love shot full of holes, I don't feel nothing, I just feel cold.." That's how I feel right now. It isn't that I don't love him, it's just that I feel so wrung out and worn down and stressed out that I scarcely feel anything else.

Maybe love is for other people, one of the many pleasant things that are for other people, normal people, not people like me. Still, he loves me, and that means something. My heart can't be much broken right now, but his can. So, I should try to work it out for his sake, and maybe my feeling will return after a while...