We'll always want more.

I hate you too, religion. Go die in a bucket.
You've cost me my best friend. You're the reason I'm procrastinating on replying to an email from said best friend that's headed "Dear, dear Melanie"; agonizes about the physical temptation he wouldn't be able to resist if we were together; ends with "We'll always want more"; and is signed "Very depressed, Micheal."

He is completely right and I agree with everything he said, including the part where he said we shouldn't hang out or communicate for awhile. Fuck. Ow. Let's just stop ripping each other's hearts out. That's a good idea.

Wednesday evening I called him to see if he wanted to go see a student union movie on our usual Thursday if I could get Katie to go with us. We ended up talking about--no. We ended up sighing those frustrated little puffy sighs that are just short of screams (at least mine were) at the situation after I wondered out loud if there was any possible way for us to work since we do love each other so much. He asked for time to write down his feelings.
Okay, fair enough.
I read those feelings on a j-school Mac in the vis com lab at 7:45am yesterday. I'd spent the better part of 36 hours alternately mooning over the possibility of finally being able to hold his hand and steeling myself for the exact words he ended up sending me.
It wasn't anything I didn't expect, but it was nothing I hoped for. And oh, the guilt and the shame and the lust and the shame again and...just...ow. Stop hurting him! And me!
He sounded like he hates himself for mentioning this, but he said he'd like to go through C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity with me. While at the state collegiate press association conference thingy my class field tripped up to, I saw a box of discarded books in their student union lobby.

This was one of them.

I liberated it (along with almost-new copies of The Bell Jar and a Flannery O'Connor collection. My fuck, the things people throw away) with the plans of reading it by myself. I already don't like the couple of sections I've scanned, but said scanning was done at 2am under slightly buzzed conditions.
This read may be doomed from its start, but I can try in my own (sober) way and give it enough respect to stay open to learning something even as it guts the happy part of my soul.

That's how I get over the loves of my life--with booze and other people. Blueberry margarita and Ed's friend the Librarian, you are my new friends.