February 14th, 1978
Happy Valentine’s Day, Laredo.
Just heard on the news that the Russian Flu is in Washington now– and considered in epidemic proportions already. Wonderful winter.
I suppose I should be philosophical about all this, and realize that years from now I will remember this event as just one of many dreams that I have lived through. I suppose that content is not nearly so important in retrospect as approach. My personal philosophy insists that one cannot control one’s destiny. That the important elements to one’s life are not decided upon, but rather, happen to you.
I feel like a condemned man– waiting for death. I feel like my days are numbered. The only goal I have pursued for the past three years (since my breakup with Richard) has been independence. Trying to establish a home for myself. I have managed to acquire and hang onto an apartment full of furniture. Now everything is hanging in midair. Losing this apartment has become much more of a disaster than I had imagined it could be. Moving here, I realized that I was risking the possibility of not getting the apartment. I never imaged the catastrophe not getting it would actually be.
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Finding myself without an apartment and forced to move in the dead of winter with virtually no money to do it on. Lonely and loveless and scared to death of the idea of having to start a new life in a new apartment somewhere in the city. I called a Realty Company (CAPITAL LETTERS) today, and got all excited over a one bedroom that was coming up in the building up Wisconsin Avenue. I arranged to see the apartment tomorrow. I was too excited to wait– so tonight after work I took the bus there and found the apartment. A dreary, run down red brick affair that occupied an entire city block with not a tree in sight. Nothing but a Roy Rogers across the street and Wisconsin Avenue traffic droning at the doorstep. I walked up and down the block trying to find some charm to the situation. Nothing materialized. A couple of apartments had the shades open and I looked into dark small rooms with sad kitchens and fat old men standing at sinks.
Damn it! I am desperate. I am being forced to move and I have very little time to deal with it. And here I am being choosey because a place is not “charming.“ But I cannot move into a place that depresses me. I cannot afford to do that now. That’s stepping backward.
Good God, whoever imagined that life could be so confusing?