this is not enough.
I dream a lot about Mikel and Ilya together, but I almost never remember it waking up. I can remember their presence, the way they feel. Only last night I dreamt I was a shark, or some other ugly thing with dead eyes (Ilyukha was also a shark, but a more beautiful one - it suited him somehow), and there was something chasing me that I didn't know how to fight against, and didn't even know what it was. There was nothing to do but keep running, Ilyukha leading me down away from the surface of the water, down to the blackest and most cold parts of the ocean where hardly anything else could survive. It was never far enough. Whenever I thought we had reached the bottom of the ocean floor, there was always some chasm, and it would turn out to go down deeper, for miles and miles that I couldn't even have imagined. But it was never far enough, and Mikel was up there somewhere (in what form I don't know) closer to the air, to the warmth and the light, so far that I couldn't see him or contact him, and I'm sure he didn't know where I went or why ...

...

Of course we're in a bad way. Mikel is sick and won't talk to me until he's feeling better. I worry about him. I don't want to do anything in life but treat him well. I realized the other day, right before I was going to sleep, it just came into my mind - "I don't give a shit about anything but Mikel." Somehow or another, I just gave up. If I hadn't met him, I don't know where I'd be, or in what form. Probably I would be dead, or close to it.

I don't know why I keep hurting him. I'll say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, never on purpose, and although it kills me every time, it keeps on happening, almost every night these past few weeks I talk to him, and although I'm always gentle with him, and don't lash out or yell he ends up crying. (And poor Ilyukha somehow winds up hearing all of the details. He must think I'm a terrible person, or at least pathetic and weak.) It's as if I can't avoid it somehow. Everything was perfect up until a few weeks ago. We were in a bad way maybe twice before - no, I think three times. And the first time I hurt him it cut so deep into my heart that for a minute I thought, "No, I can't talk to him again, I can't bear looking at him now that I've done this to him." For a minute I even thought I stopped loving him, because I just couldn't bear to love him having hurt him like that. It felt like dying, worse than dying ... it was the worst I had ever felt in my life. Like a piece of my soul withered away, or rotted.

I don't ever mean to hurt him. I don't know why I'm not put together as well as other people, that I can't say "I don't want to hurt him" and simply don't, like normal people do. I'm too weak and I keep on making mistakes. I'm not a very good person, or I'm not experienced enough, or I have no self-control or don't the hell think things through ... I almost wish he'd leave me. I don't know if I have it together enough to keep from hurting him. Why do I have to treat him so badly? My whole heart wants to keep from hurting him, I'm not doing it because I'm a bad person or because I want to, but it seems the situation is unavoidable.

I don't really know what it means to be faithful. Am I supposed to be disgusted when anyone else touches me, or not find anyone else attractive? If a good-looking guy touches me I'm not going to hate it. Does that make me a bad person? I really can't help how my body responds. A good-looking guy kissed me, when I was drunk, I got hard, and for a minute I was longing to have real sex, because I am so lonely without Mishenka, without his touch and without ever really having him, but not with him, so I pushed him away. I didn't take him because I want only Mikel. I'm not saying that there was no sin, or that I wasn't in the wrong. But does it mean that I don't love him enough, that he's not enough for me, does that make me such a bad person that he has to leave me now? A khotet' mal'chika po-vashemu, ne prestuplenie?

Ya ne ponimayu, pro chego ty govorish' - Da, khochu seksa (s toboj tol'ko), da, ya khochu lyubov' na samom dele, da, ya neudovletvoryonnyj, da, ya neschastnyj! Ochen' trudno, zhivite tol'ko slovami lyubvi.

Does that mean "I'm not enough for you" like he says, that I don't love him in such a way that I can simply talk to him and that burns out all desire to want to lay him or hold him, kiss him, breathe him in? Is this failing on either of our parts, or a crime? It doesn't mean that I want to leave him, because whatever I have with him makes me happier than anything I could have with anyone else, and in this he's more than enough. I don't understand it ... I don't know what to think about myself. What I do know is that unless he makes me I am not going to leave him, and don't want to leave him, and I don't want him to make me go, not over this. I don't know what to do.