D.I.D

I had yet another thrilling telephone conversation with my mother the other day--She calls me out of obligation, I imagine, to make sure I'm still alive. Keeping tabs on her offspring I guess..She prefers to keep the phone calls short and general unless my tone is more morose than usual , as it is. I am so stressed out and I can't focus and I have so many assignments coming up. I have a sense of true despair and I swear if I were even able to anymore, I would have just spent the whole day choking back tears. But apparently, according to mother, I'm an emotional cripple.

Not only did she deride my time management skills, but, knowing how overwhelmed I am, she continued to press me for what sort of idea I've come up with for what I'm going to do next year. She keeps suggesting I go to school and study something else before doing my English MA. I wonder how I'm supposed to afford all this education and still survive as well as keeping hold on the ever weakening cord tying together my body and mind. I feel rather unhinged these days, but I really don't want to go back on any pills They make me sick and depressed (more so--because I don't like the idea of having to take something to appear normal)...Incidentally, I've not managed to get any work done at all, despite a 4 hr stint in the library today. I feel incredibly stupid, incompetent and very empty.

My mother likes to use herself as an example of how collected someone can be, how things always work out. She told me I was young and pretty and should get myself out there. I was cruel and told her I wasn't like her--she's gone through quite a few boyfriends since finally kicking out the psychopath I'm embarrassed to call father (apparently, according to a source, he's started drinking heavily, which is probably the only reason I haven't got more psycho death threats). When I told her I've never been into dating and that I have a real problem with trust and physicality (when I was little, I was one of those flinching, "I don't like to be touched" children who got permission to stay in and read at recess rather than engage in messy sports), she reacted more strongly to this, than when I told her I might just be suffering a total mental breakdown and I thought I'd die any time now--the woman cares, apparently. She got all huffy and said something along the lines of --in a really incredulous, snide way, "So you want to be alone forever?!"...'Mother' can't understand, that unlike her, I don't need someone else to complete me...I feel far to rent apart already from my personal stuff and I really don't feel up to sharing this information with someone who expects things from me. It makes me ill. But then everything does. Mother suggested I was in love with my sadness and was quite pathetic. I told her not to quote Pumpkins lyrics and I wouldn't reprimand her for her poor choice in men and her idiocy in the case of her ill-fated marriage.

She somehow thinks my unwillingness to date comes from a really shallow place and that I must have high expectations--which is ridiculous considering the only people I've ever dated turned out to be incredibly well-intentioned, understanding, sweet people, but with serious substance/alcohol abuse/mental/criminal problems. I don't think I carry high expectations. maybe that's my problem. Hurrah for low self-esteems and reluctant co-dependence. At least I'm not in search of a prop to help me along. That would be cruel. If someone "nice" expresses interest, it's terrifying because they couldn't possibly get a lot of my issues--there are many--I am bad luck--every one I know, everything I touch seems to rot. All my friends have been in and out of hospitals this year. One of them overdosed repeatedly on sleeping pills. Going home is nothing but depression and subsequently, a lot of hours alone, watching television until 5am, as none of the people from home are healthy enough to do things with me. It's either idleness alone or drinking with acquaintances over a bar with really loud music to limit conversation. I can handle it. Spackle on some makeup. Make myself smile for once. pretend I enjoy people. etcetera. Makes me can't wait for christmas.

I have a headache. It's terrible. I hope I don't die but I really don't feel alive

Even Now

I think we live in a culture of shame and guilt. These two are the only tangible sentiments people really instill on their children. Everything everywhere is constantly criticized. If it's not being criticized outwardly by someone else, you're doing it to yourself, making awfully sure to self-edit and censor your actual feelings because you know nothing in this life can be kept secret for more than a few moments. Treasure those moments while they're happening, because in an hour or so, at least in my experience, the self-criticism comes to torment me and I experience an enormous, unbearable urge to leave where I am and run home to proceed to dwell on every sentence uttered, every possibly obnoxious look, strange posture or uncomfortable silence. I hate that I am this way and I know I 'm not alone in mental mind fucking, but I think I may be a more extreme case.

Speaking of minds, mine feels a little clogged these days. Each hour seems more uninspired than the next and I don't feel as though I can actually function in society anymore (and I was making such an effort for awhile). There's nothing to say that hasn't been said. There's little to do that hasn't been done (for a poor student that is). I know what there is to look forward to and I want none of it. I'm not exactly saying i'd like to die (it's a thought that has thankfully, terrified me of late), it's just that I'm not so sure I'd like to live, which leads me to question whether I really know what that means, since I do appear to have grasped the concept of breathing. Inoutinout and all that. Yay for me.

I wake up constantly in the night. All week I've had nightmares. I've barely slept. This is not unusual, but I think I prefer my blank dreams where all I see is black. I feel a sense of foreboding and I don't feel very healthy. I shut my eyes and my sleep feels too heavy and 2 minutes into shut-eye, I sit up so fast, terrifed that my heart has shut down and that a quick jolt is all it needs, walk around the room, check for intruders (a mirror hanging on the door is not a wise move for the paranoiac)...Settle into bed again. Take a tylenol. Close my eyes. Sleep for 10 minutes and repeat until daylight. I usually sleep uninterruptedly from 6-830 AM at which point my alarm goes off and I get terrified that I was supposed to have set it earlier because there's so much I put off doing the night before and there's never anytime for anything or anyone and I hate that. I hate that.

I hate that I refuse to allow myself meaningful connections with people. I can only socialize when I have a drink (and I, even then, end up hating the things I do, how I look, how I feel, so I get another one and just try to be the fun, interesting person at the bloody party--that's how it always is and I don't see a way out). It's not that I drink often, but when I do, I drink a lot, and that's what people remember, because I'm actually existing outside of my personal space. It's the only time I ever really talk and have things I feel like saying.

2 people in my life want me to take the year off next year and check myself in to a place I don't quite feel like mentioning here, and I realize they care (although I have my doubts--it may just be the only thing that hasn't been tried, a convenient solution to my messy mind) but I can't actually foresee improvement in my current state. Everything culminates. Everything in my whole goddamned life has culminated to this moment, now, where i feel horrible and am using this blog as a means to avoid doing other, unhealthier things. I forget nothing. I repress nothing. It's all on the surface and I've become so ashamed of it, so guilty for seeing it in myself when I wake up, that I can't leave the house until it's been conveniently tucked away in a backpocket or other.

And so here we are with all our wisdom and our headaches and weight and loneliness and lies and denial and repression and disgust and moments of wanting to act on impulse so so badly. Here we are, alone with our current standard of living and looking at life in the third person. It makes me very sad that even now, I can never say the things I want to say.

Halloween

I really love Halloween and dressing up...Or maybe I just love dressing up because well I'm sick of what I and everybody else looks like on a day to day basis. That's right, you people all make me a little sick. hah. We all wear masks anyways, you know, covering up some aspect of ourselves to appear better than you actually are. I do it and so do you, so whatever. It sucks that we don't live in a world where honesty is appreciated--even if society suggests that policy-wise, it's number one. So come Halloween, we're still wearing masks, or layers of make up and outlandish clothes, etcetera, but hey, despite being covered in fake blood and gangrenous sores, you're not bullshitting. So drink up, eat candy, and don't blog when you're drunk-ish and worried about work in a few hrs.

Try not to break shit, hurt people or burn things down in your halloween glee. Take a tylenol before bed with a glass of water and swallow back the urge to puke. It should be fine.

Tainted

I've been reading Blake's Innocence and Experience and now I am very depressed--but in a good way because all I do is read and read and very rarely do I actually feel the need to pay heed to what lies beneath the words...

Not all children are naiive and not all adults are wise and all knowing as far as goes the world. I wonder where I fit. I know I am not naive because I feel sick to death with nearly everything that goes on around me these days--yet I live in a very privelleged portion of the world and do not expect to see certain horrors that others, decades younger than myself have since grown immune to, if not flourished into rational, thinking beings, within. But maybe it is naiive of me to think that the things I've witnessed are unspeakable. Does it work on a scale? Certainly, I am not wise. I've met very few who are and those who call themselves so are the most naiive of all.

I barely know whether to call myself child or adult. Psychologically I've felt the same way since about 12 or so, and chronologically (including all the idle years and those I continue to waste) I am an adult. Yet, I distance myself, as always from adult things. Here it is important to note that not all children in their innocence are happy (no skipping and catching butterflies in green untainted meadows for me, I'm afraid). Some are innocent of the trappings and corruptions of the world, but live in the horrible hell of their own mind. Are they innocent, when all they see is grey and sadness, death and rot, tears and blood?

It would be so easy to say, "Oh he was corrupted by a book."--Wasn't a Dorian Gray tainted in this manner?--how simple would that be,to be able to pinpoint the undesirable object in order to destroy it? But an innocent whose corrupter was his or herself, maybe through being left too often to dwell quietly in shame in tiny bedrooms with flourescent humming lamps, drowning in the waters of fears and possibilities conjured by the terrified mind, has nothing material to destroy but his or herself. How can innocence possibly be maintained in the face of such a startling revelation? it passes quickly away, as fast as the handfull of pills reaches to the mouth and drops again, as fast as catching one's reflection in the gleam of a shiny new razorblade, faster still than the time it takes for said gleam to became tarnished with the sacrificial slice of the first cut. Innocence and blood. How fucking biblical of me.. Perhaps I ought to be Catholic...(lalala...I didn't just say that...)

Anyway, yeah, I think the loss of innocence is like the breaking point into the maddening adult world we call society. Like, at some unnameable point, we all have a mental breakdown and go insane. Except we're not insane as we know it--we're normal. Those of us who cannot tolerate life and the world and people and their society and maybe walk around with 5 winter coats on in the middle of summer and a daisy in their hats because they feel like it, are clearly mad. Because they're adults. Because they're insane. Because they don't give a goddamn. Because. I cannot personally escape this world that makes me sick. I don't have it in me to be insane enough to escape from consumerism, life, society, etc, but I can't possibly flourish here as others do. I'll grow sicker and sicker and work and work, and make money and become invisible until I'm as pale as the off white standard wallpaper in my workstation--and then, one day, finally, when my spirit has finally broken and I no longer care enough to notice or write depressive blogs about my state, I will die and my money will serve to buy me a nice pine box and a slab of granite (to make sure I stay weighted the fuck down). "They'll" be forcing me to return to an earth I know nothing about through virtue of pretending to be well-adjusted to modern urban society-- no time to play in that sandbox, I'm afraid, though it does look kind of fun, whatever will they say?--and like the nice adult I am, I'll politely stay down and let the lid close over my head.

Sleep

Another shitty night of insomnia-driven self-reflection. Now I'm tired and depressed....I think I should make an effort to like pills a little more, but that just raises more issues of what I should be relying on, if anything. I passed the wee hours reading accounts of highly depressive people's suicide attempts on the internet--I was bored and really, it was either that or read all about celebrity eating disorders/drug abuse. I swear, it was a tough decision (I'm sure), but if I get to the point where I'm tired enough to start plastering celebrity-type images on my fridge, I think I'd rather just take the fucking sleep pill and pass out for a solid 8 hours. At least, if my mind starts giving me (what now appear to be expected) awful thoughts, said thoughts will be restrained within the confines of sleep and muscle relaxant (you know, to prevent any incidences of murder by somnabulism). It's a nice thought, actually. Sleep could provide me with (the apparently more) constructive habits, like regular dreaming, which would maybe (?--or am I just romanticizing the concept of dream--I should re-read Casteneda) help me not feel so fucking cynical and repulsed. I feel too young to be so bitter and it just isn't cool anymore.

Knowing me though, I'd probably have another nightmare.

I think I want to drink a bit tonight.

Dumb Mute

Everytime I try to write it just doesn't work out--Why--Only I can say why. And now here I sit and my vocabulary won't allow me to say what I want to say.

Today in class we talked about how literature and language is so closely connected as far as aboriginal stories are concerned. Because their tradition is oral, translation in English is, as my prof says, like kissing someone through a veil. Close, but too much is lost in the translation to actually like it, or get the meaning the story teller and those who understand his language, understands. I thought that was a pretty nice analogy, kissing someone through a veil. Being who I am, I immediately got off track and silently sat there thinking not of native literature, interesting as it is (it is!), but rather of the secrecy we all feel so compelled to keep from those closest to us.

Someone can know you, or think he/she does, and you can feel like they do too, but really, it's simply yet another case, like all previous such cases, of testing the limits. How close is just too damn close? How many hours can one actually spend in the company of just one other person before slinking out the door on potentially false pretenses? For someone with no connection to the mob, a secret lover on the side, or a job as a private investigator, this avoidance of actual time and intimacy in the closest of relationships, simply will not do. Stick to the surface. Please, don't be superficial, but can you make it quick?

I read this back and feel awful. But that's how I feel (awful?) and I guess i simply cannot have it any other way.

Really bad headache..Took a Nytol in the tub. Need to sleep. Listening to "A is for Accident" by the Dresden Dolls...

Contact

She slowly and carefully crossed her legs

All the while watching him from

the corner of her eye.

She grazed every inch of his body with

the tips her lashes

(You know how it goes).

Ernest and gawking she says,

"Friend come home with me,"

or

"I'll take the couch."

I'm tired of taking the bus and having nowhere to look and so, inevitably I watch people, looking quickly away when they watch me back. Yes. I practice human contact through the most awkward of gestures and I'm sure I've made many people nervous or at the very least, annoyed. This is the easiest way to observe others as very rarely do you ever need to actually speak to your targets (unless they're confrontational). I realize it's not always pleasant to be caught staring, but if you're good at what you do, you can generally manage to quickly blur your field of vision with a glassy, empty looking gaze, verging on the pretense of deep philosophical thought (or drugs). I look but do not see, say your eyes straining to avoid any focal point whatsoever. It may seem to some like yet another mundane daily occurence that everyone occupies themselves with from time to time--and to most extents it definitely is. However, try as I might to avoid some of the thoughts I have, it occurs to me often that we come into contact with enormous amounts of people every day...We pass countless individuals on the street, at school, in stores. They clog shopping centres, and congest hallways. They occupy the same space as me and sometimes, whether by circumstance or interest, eye contact will be made, just for a second. Most likely, I'll never see this person again. It seems only natural to me to study faces on the bus, you know, just in case. Future refence.

Day after day, I see the same people, older women with tired looks and clotted, black mascara on the 5 o'clock bus commuting home (I would assume). They read romance novels; their gaze intent on the page--truth is, they don't know where to put their eyes either.

I don't know what it is about women and romance novels...Personally, I've never bothered to take them seriously, rolling my eyes in dramatic gestures, smirking my cynical, judgemental little smirk (which even I begin to weary of), turning a deaf ear to reason at the mention of Danielle Steele. Lust I think, somewhat condescendingly as I see the paperbackcovers with their cheesy paintings of long haired, open shirted men.

Then I think that lust, as riduculous as romance novels seem to me, is rather an addiction for the lonely who feed their hearts with remnants of romantic possibility. Minds charged with painful desires and memories of intense embrace. Lame, I think. The fact that my hostile, antisocial little mind thinks this depresses me most, however. I'm not sure I've ever felt a great deal of want for anybody. Admiration for certain people, their appearance, mannerisms, and such have not gone unrealized, true, but never quite so that I feel a need to let said person into my world, make a habit of letting them share my bed, or use up my toothpaste. Certainly not. Maybe 'I just don't want to feel anything anymore'. --Is this a phrase coined for people who have actually felt?--or am I also eligible to utter such an atrocity? In some of my more worried moments I wonder whether I've simply fallen for the appeal of loneliness and the sad sort of freedom it offers...("in love with my sadness?"--SP), like, me against a world that's paired off and are sitting on the couch, making out.

Ugh. Quite simply, ugh.

I am so sick and tired of the same old things over and over again. This city is getting me down. Highly lacking. I refuse to go out and "enjoy" Ottawa nightlife anymore and people think there's something definitely wrong with my social skills--Perhaps those who judge my character are deluded, but given the intense annoyance I feel for most strangers from the get-go these days, I'll leave the question open for further speculation. It's like how in almost all North American cities, there'll be a strip of megastores (Loblaws, McDonald's Chapters, Payless, Shopper's DrugMart, Second Cup). You drive for 10 minutes before the eerie notion occurs that you've arrived in your place of departure. Except, instead of Second Cup and McDonald's, there'll be a conveninetly located Starbucks and Burger King, respectively, to serve all your caffeine and meat/garbage related needs. This, is what Ottawa's nightlife is like.

Clubs, with the same god awful, 'please-molest-me-as-I grind-up-against-some-stranger's-hip,' "music" deafen and upset the inexperienced, while girls sometimes pretend to make out with their best friends in order to attract guys who are so programmed by the media to think that because Maxim tells them so, 'Hot girl-on-girl" action is desirable to x percentage of men. Ergo, not becoming aroused and a) Copping a feel or b) Making conversation with the alleged lesbians in the hope they'll be accepting of a third, male companion, ultimately threatens their identities as good, heterosexual, predominately college males wearing over-priced hip-hop apparel.-- Because a) They have no sense of personal fashion, or b) It coincides with the aesthetic of barely there tank-tops laced with J-Lo inspired sequins, and ass-cleavage revealing parasucos that so charmingly allow hip pudge to spill over the sides, like an awkwardly made vase/kiln explosion.

It makes me miserable that the world is drowning in fluff (mostly pink). And being wholly repulsed by this (and hopefully, therefore, immune to it), I refuse to be here when the last of us get sucked in. But where, really, can I go....?

Expectations

MSN bugged out on me, so now, hours later and realizing that anyone who was still awake at 1:30am is most certainly asleep, I've decided once more to blog.

I'm a little concerned about the whole idea of keeping a sort of journal online. I know that it doesn't really matter, I certainly don't mind who reads it, it's really more the fact that I'm definitely the sort of diarist who writes inconsistently and generally while in the thralls of some sort of maudlin--worse is that said maudlin worms its way, coil by repulsive coil into my brain, shape-shifting beyond my control into nostalgic sentimentalities and cliches beyond even my extremely low level of tolerance as far as 'annoying' goes. If anyone reads this...know that you've been warned..I fear, for the most part that this journal is going to then end up a sort of compilation of late night ramblings soaked in self-pity and reeking of exhaustion, if of course it smelled (see, unclever wordplay about how my blog stinks). Whatever, I guess I just feel the bruising pressure of expectation staring to creep in on me and am currently engaged in a sort of mad scramble to "Fix it!", make things a bit easier, more organized, before I realize to my horror, that I've simply run out of time, that there are no more available hours and that the 78 minutes I spent staring at a hangnail (or something equally inane) is non-refundable.

It is not really a wish of mine to merely do nothing. That would seem pointless. I know people who've achieved their goals, and seem alright, satisfied. A job that pays the rent, food, pot, beer, cable. 'Nicegreattvisfunnyohnonotanotherrealityshowhahaahah'....I get almost manic, have a drink and cut my visits short, fearing what come to pass if I don't sober up and return to my apartment and read my textbooks from midnight to 6 in the morning...like a sort of gasping sprint to make up for time lost in blatant procrastination...

I used to be much more diligent, "A conscientious student." I organized everything by date, handed things in weeks early, suffered crippling send-me-home headaches if I failed to be the best...I really didn't have a lot else. So it seemed to make sense at the time. I have no idea when indifference fogged my perfectionist vision. Somewhere between CEGEP and University? I can't remember the last time I worked more than 2 days on an essay due in (precisely) 2 days. Not to say that I haven't done well, but even comments from profs exclaiming in block letters and bad writing that I've clearly put a lot of time into something, does not send me into a fit of self-satisfied and yet, so, so sneakily self contained glee in my ability to bullshit my way through school...I feel lately like I am being deceptive, but people see me as some sort of thing or another and who am I to ruin their fucking expectations...? I wouldn't want to say something out of character...Perhaps I've gotten myself in too far. Any alteration from the expected would result in me, having to explain myself to people I don't want to talk to in the first place, but being easily embarrassed and inarticulate in stressful social situations, I usually mutter something about being tired, clutch my scribbled on cardboard coffee cup liner a bit tighter and skip outside for a breath of smoggy air and nicotine...This is, essentially, so Aletha...so much Aletha all at once, I've overloaded their pathetic little linear thinking minds and they become confused as to why they ever thought I was acting out of the norm-- garrulous, optimistic, wistful, flirty even. A trick the mind plays. A full moon (lunatics can't resist). Something in the water. 'Buy bottled. Not Dasani.'

And so, repulsed with myself for being influenced by others, but consoled by the fact that 'they' appreciate and wish for a static me, I often end up in ironic situations where I contemplate self-love and self-hate, and wonder which would be preferable, or if they're even that, that different in the first place. And so, with a little annoyance, I remain myself (because though it's far too tiring, I don't tend to find a lot of other options--unless of course I start developing personae, speaking in tongues, and hushing up when the mental health officials pay me a house call)...Yes, I remain myself, it's true...But to what end?!

Yes, people expect too much. People expect you to smile when you work, which seems strange, very strange to me..People at work tell me all the time I look miserable, a little unwell. Can't I smile a bit..? This makes me uncomfortable. I hardly regard the disturbingly frequent amounts of ice cream people consume year round human and when one of the said purchasers of 21oz of cheesecake flavored dairy sludge ($4.82) tells me I look ill and yet, still wants me to bare my teeth in a show of compliance, acceptance of society's obsession with gratification by any means, I feel incredibly digusted by said request. A circus side show expected to perform. My lower lip quivers out of sync with the twitch in my left eyeball. It's the best I can offer. I generally remain stony-faced, tell them I've had a 7 hour shift and haven't yet managed to take my 15 minute break and would they like a bag or a second spoon? If they leave a tip I feel like a charity case beggar with her legs lopped off (scooting around on a plank with rollerskate wheels, rusty, no less) by some freak occurence or injustice...I hate my job and I hate working with people who want. I wrote my letter of resignation a couple of days ago, after (not really) trying for 2 full years to imitate the chipper intonations ("HIiiiiii therrrrre....Can I help youuuu?) of my pony-tail wearing coworkers...My last day is October 6th...

I hope that with all the free-time, this feeling, the void, willl be filled, that I can write, draw, socialize on my own time, not rush. I want to feel conscientious again. Creative. I miss the feeling of (and this sounds incredibly dorky, but it's true) textbooks at school that are simply too hard to put down until they are read, complete with immaculate handwritten notes. Maybe this is an avoidance of some other more pertinent issues, regression at a certain level, but it seems like a highly compelling if a little obsessive place to be right now.

I expect the sky to stay the same, a constant in an uncertain world, which is sort of strange considering its lack of order, its polar flare-ups, its manic depressiveness. I felt sick today because I had a headache and didn't want to go to work. As I was walking to the bus stop, I felt like I might pass out from the pressure on my temples and the edges of my vison kept changing--shrinking, growing--as I looked upward. It was tilted and far too wide, the rain didn't help. It seemed unpredictable as hell and my doubts made me open my book on the bus and try not to be carsick.

Introitus

I don't know why I'm blogging. Maybe I'm lonely. Maybe one day something will happen to me and they'll say I never made an effort to reach out to humanity, but then, the few people I've allowed to read this journal will inform them that no, I kept a blog, and the officials will immediately unroll their eyes and see me in a whole new light. I don't care who reads this. Very few people know me anyway. It's almost funny (and I say almost, because my laughter would be kind of forced and you'd know it) that by reading things I have to say here, people I'll never see will know me better than people I converse with in the day to day existence I occassionally call my life (if grudgingly so).

I'm kind of down today. My dog (a Bernese Mountain dog named Buddah) just died of bone cancer at age 6...He went to sleep under the apple tree and my mother has hired a backhoe to dig a hole big enough for his massive body in the rocky land (too hard to dig by hand) where he died. I despise myself for thinking that this is almost picturesque. Kind of like, it's better than a hospital bed. He went without warning, no one crowded him in his final days, he died by himself, left alone to do his thing like he always wanted to do. I think I have terribly romantic notions about death. Images of falling apple blossoms were coming to mind while my mother was telling me what happened, through tears, on the phone today...I hate to hear her cry. I hate to hear anyone cry. I don't think it's any sort of weakness in people, but when it comes to myself, I'm more harsh, I think. I just never know what to say. I think, truthfully though, the problem is that people are sometimes comfortable enough with their emotions to allow me to see them at an unpleasant time..I can never allow for this in myself. A lot of people must think I lack compassion. I don't, not really. I just don't think I've ever allowed for anyone to return the favor..

I think I’ve become far too inward lately, and for someone like myself, who is primarily introspective, more silent self-examination, criticism and neurosis isn’t necessarily a good thing.

I think I am too often surrounded by negativity…my family is generally miserable, far too shrill or far too quiet, nitpicking, analytic. My friends from high school who are still in my home town keep killing themselves or hurting themselves and going home is far too horrible for me to deal with--I don’t think I’ll do it again. I am not strong enough to spend my vacation visiting psych wards or eating disorder clinics. I do not need the threat of restraining orders being broken and the potential for personal violence being inflicted upon me. I guess I kind of just got to thinking--it occurs to me that it seems each and every one of us (those of us who are aware that a problem exists, those who admit to being sad, although not without a sense of shame, as the case often tends to be) is thoroughly aware of the infinitude of possibilities existent on this planet and yet that nothing would come of this endlessness but just that—more leeway; more endlessness. With this armor; this bearing of sublime futility, we carry on in our day-to-day lives. Reasonably, what else could we ever hoped to accomplish?

This is what is getting me down--but it doesn’t really seem like anything else is even possible, you know? There is no alternative. I decided a week ago, exactly, after amiably calling off my joke of a relationship, to unintentionally (at least on a conscious level) correct the numbing void in my heart with a wide spectrum of righteously defended yet highly disruptive distractions. I’ve decided to try at least to appreciate little things that I generally bypass or sometimes roll my eyes at--It might not make me feel better, but I’ll feel a bit more whole knowing that my observation of a moment where I otherwise would have overlooked it, makes the moment more complete. That I was in the moment, causes more potential for personal definition: This girl was here when the old man’s dog gave him a look that said, “I can run and break my leash whenever I wish, but I won’t because you’re frail now, and I love you.” All this as opposed to: “This is a girl. An old man walked by with a dog.” It is strange how an awakening can be both beautiful and horrible at the same time. Sort of funny, but the knee-slapping, side-splitting existential humor that we are all privileged enough as human beings to have limitless access to is not always easy to handle, at least for me.

I often do not like to speak. I never really have. I wonder if my silence is offensive? Maybe people think I'm just really shy or out of the loop, or drunk and stupid. It just feels like I’ve wasted lots of things I might have said to so many people. And the thought of all the sentences I might have said makes me tired. It’s like there’s a swarm of wasted words--like insects--perched on my shoulderblades, dragging them down to the desk where I‘m sitting. I wanted to know why I've got to be this way. Other people seem so ..so..ok. Or maybe they're just better at seeming that way. I smoke too many cigarettes sometimes. I’m probably too thin. I care very very little for what people tell me though. More silent listening. I very rarely pay heed. If I do, no one gets any credit--There doesn’t seem like there’d be much of a point in giving someone credit in fixing me a bit--because I am not a possession. I doubt I’d be very satisfying, if I were. Probably depress the hell out of the other toys in the chest. Make them cut themselves or something….(this is where I laugh).

Anyway, big fucking day at the DQ tomorrow.