Mimi-chan Returns

Day 338: Saturday, February 11, 2012

It’s Saturday and I’m at the gym. No one’s here so I can listen to my own music and can climb in peace with my own thoughts. After this, I will be meeting the girl I like to talk about the T.B. zine. Actually I have to tell her about how I used my allotted money to pay the bills so I can’t release the zine quite yet as well as I’m no longer doing the Barnacles exhibition, which I originally asked her to design fliers for- all which is not very good news for her and I worry that she will be more mad and sick of me than the last time we met... but today, for some reason, I feel much better. Maybe after being so down yesterday, things look brighter; and the bad feelings I carried since I met her last are no longer there.

I realize that I’ve been writing about her for nine months now... After I found out that she had been reading Barnacles, I always believed that I could win her over with it, but now as it drags on and she told me twice that she doesn't want to be with me, I know that each time I write about her now, I’m just killing what slim chance that I hope still exists. In the end, what does it mean to like someone to the point where you think of him or her everyday for almost an entire year; and is it all meaningless if they don’t like you back? Yuki and I had a conversation yesterday when we were making dinner together. She mentioned that it is exactly one month till the anniversary of the quake, or the beginning of T.B., which was my original deadline. When she asked me what I was going to do, I told her the truth, which was that I didn't know because knowing when to quit is one of the hardest questions to answer.

After the gym, when I’m on my way to see her, she texts me that she needs another fifteen minutes to hang her laundry, so I tell her I will just wait outside with Mimi-chan until she is ready. When I get to her house, I make a clicking sound and Mimi-chan runs out on cue. I haven’t seen her for maybe four or five months and immediately notice that she has gotten fat. She comes over very needy-like and puts her paws on my knees. I understand what she wants so I sit down on the ground and she nestles in my lap.

Ten minutes pass by and then fifteen, but I don't mind...



Eventually I look up from petting Mimi and there she is walking towards me in the cold without a jacket, covering her mouth, and smiling at the both of us. Right away I can tell she is no longer sick of me anymore and right away I know the answer to my question: I don’t think it was meaningless these past nine months because in the end, even though she could not give me what I wanted from her, she gave me something else- what that is? I have no idea, but I guess I will someday.