The word abandonment comes to mind—my abandoning John, John abandoning me to his death, a place where I don’t matter to him anymore? My ego interferes there—my desire to matter to someone, to disprove my unshakable belief that people are ultimately, fundamentally indifferent to me. Eventually John would have had to become indifferent to me when he could finally see through my weak mortal self, when he would finally have no further need of me. For the very finite love that limited us in life, there is an infinite love that takes place in the course of survival, a love in which one feels the power of the memory of the dead.
— journal entry, 12 August 1989
rlboyington 