One week tonight since the fire in my eyes dimmed. One week since the world lost so much of its color. (Sorry for the melodrama.)

I'm really starting to worry about how much I want to kiss someone. Currently, I have three potentials, Bachelorettes Nos. 1, 2, and 3. Bachelorette No. 1 seems the most interested, but I am not; there's just something all wrong about her. Bachelorette No. 2 calls me Michael, which slays me, but we move in very different social circles. Things could go either way with Bachelorette No. 3; we could date or just be good friends. I don't trust myself, because I'm afraid that what I really want is for us to be friends but that I'm not thinking clearly at the moment so I'll try to make us more than friends. And underlying it all is the question of how I could possibly date anyone feeling as I do about Lindsay. (All of this presupposes that any of the three Bachelorettes would be receptive to my advances, a feat of great hubris on my part.) I will marry Lindsay or die in the attempt. But that could take years; what am I to do in the meantime? Should I wait for her with monkish devotion? Could I casually date, always knowing that it is not the girl I'm with I truly want? Would that be horridly unfair to any girl I'm seeing? Or, is it acceptable to enter and continue a relationship with no intention of it ever being anything but impermanent? I will not have any part in being with someone merely as a distraction. But, if I genuinely like someone, is it permissible to act on those feeling, even though my unrequitted feelings for Lindsay are so much stronger? Would it be kosher to just set Lindsay aside and carry on acting on my other impulses? These are questions I have been gently grappling with all these long months while Lindsay hid him from me. Now brought into sharp focus by her status as Jake's girlfriend.