Thoughts on Ellie B's wedding, except of course that's not really what they're thoughts about at all...

He’s not sleeping.

I know he’s not sleeping.

And now this: he can’t even flirt with me. I’m all dressed up, looking pretty good, though maybe not as, well, a m a z i n g as I have on other occasions. But surely looking good enough for him to flirt with me.

And he, might I say, still looks pretty good in a tux. I wonder who did his tie for him?

I miss the intimacy of that.

Let’s be real, here: I miss the flirting.

Which I know is wrong, because after the flirting I would end up at home eating ice cream and drinking wine and throwing things at my flatmate’s cat (oh, wait, no – that’s someone else) and more often than not – sobbing my heart out into my pillow, hoping my flatmate wouldn’t hear, because how pathetic is that? The little secretary’s unrequited crush on her handsome, driven, ambitious, intelligent boss. Ugh. I hate the cliché. Hate it.

Do I really want that? That daily heartbreak? The feeling pathetic?

No. Of course I don’t want that.

I don’t want that part of it. But I miss the flirting part. The part where just for a few minutes, a few seconds, a few hundredths of a second sometimes, I see in his eyes what I saw at Inauguration or at the Hospital or that snowy December 23rd. Well, that wasn’t his eyes. That was him almost giving himself away with his words. But I miss that part too.

Not the emotions that hit afterwards. I don’t miss those. I miss the kidding-myself-that-this-might-be-ever-going-somewhere seconds. I miss those moments when I’m almost sure I see my own feelings reflected in his beautiful eyes.

I miss our intimacy.

I miss looking after him. He’s not sleeping. I doubt a vegetable has crossed his line of sight, let alone his lips, in a good few months now.

He can’t even flirt with me.

I know, I k n o w what I said about the peppermint creams. But he’s not okay, and someone needs to look after him, and I want that to be me. Not just because I can’t bear the thought of that being anyone else, though I will freely(ish) admit that’s a large part of it. Just because...

Because...

Oh, for Pete's sake, Donna. Say it. It’s a diary. No one is ever going to read it. You need to face facts so you can deal with them.

Because looking after him is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And have him look after me.

And have him tell me I look amazing more than once every eight years.

Oh, good grief. How did I end up back at Square One? How?

Focus, girl. There’s an election in six weeks. And you really want to win this thing. Remember?