ineptitude

trying to scotch tape the brain together today. tape is not strong enough. brain cleaves in pieces and i cannot see or drive or walk. left work early and it's not the kind of work you can do that with. 

getting seriously scared this isn't side effects but an actual inability to deal with reality.

you know you can flick ants and they keep on walking wherever they land? would that i were that resilient. i'm not here too much to learn to do that these days, these strange sunny-rainy desert days. 

confusion

can't concentrate on nothing. can't do nothing. switching back and forth between dissociated and useless and amped up and useless and i think it's these meds, i do, i don't know what to do with myself, can't sit still can't even watch the boob tube, boredom all day all the day long but i can't do nothing.

i'm so frustrated i want to explode. 

symptom or random occurrence?

i think i would feel a lot less cuckoo if my eyelid would just stop twitching. it's been three days of hell.

 three days of twitching too.

naked

they say today is a new beginning but really it's the valium sleep in between that resets, that eight hours of nothing and old echoes of dreams of thinness, and this morning i feel crazy but i feel here. 

it's meant to rain today and if it does i think i won't wear a raincoat just in case, let the cold water run down the back of my neck. i'm not taking any chances. 

derealized

nothing is real except the ice on my neck and the coldness running down my back and ice on my temples and i am trying to make the cars around me real so i do not hit them. and when the rain comes i crank down the window on the freeway and let the rain splash my face, who cares how dirty, i just want to feel present and not gone gone gone like all day like those conversations i've forgotten like how i wasn't myself

and she said maybe this friendship is triggering as well as helpful
and i heard everything you confided today was a lie because you want to be like her
and i said nothing back 
and i am angry but i cannot feel it because nothing feels real anyhow

i'm sliding back and forth, the present's a haze most of the day



and i didn't do the thing which would make me feel better because i am afraid to drive and now i am afraid to talk to you because you've invalidated me in my head or maybe in real life

but i don't remember what happened for parts of today and i'm scared, i'm so scared and you've taken my friendship away and i don't trust you there's no one to talk to

hungry eyes

i hear the old songs and someone is strangling my heart, muscle and blood pumping and panicked rattled breaths and i stumble over the dogs because i cannot think, do not see. rip the headphones out. too much comfort in those melodies, too much closeness. i lie and say i'm stronger without. convince myself. sticks and stones. 

an old photo today of someone's hand on my thigh, tattered edges. i stopped breathing long ago. i asked for it for kindness because someone else's wasn't. i can't forget. 

my hands are cold my feet are cold paralysis grips my heart and i saw in the mirror today at ballet the dead dead eyes and i don't want this i just don't know what to do with all of it, i don't want this reality but it's mine, it is mine

a rare and lovely feeling

sometimes there is one thing that pulls you out of the mire, even for a moment. or two. or the day and the morning after when you are sore in the good way where even past lives of hurt and pain cannot dare touch.

i am exhausted, and i did good work today, and i am calm.

on paralysis, of the morning variety

i want to sleep in the daylight when it's safe and stay in bed where it's safe and hold the puppy and talk to everyone i know.

but.

there's something to be said for fighting the past and being brave. i'm trying to remember how.

surprisingly

there's a 3 where the 1 was and something has shifted. but i'm not one of those who writes when they're ok. a sudden longing for my hemingway books stored in a garage in the valley or maybe they're lost forever, i won't know, and i'm trapped in this in-between place where i do not know the things that belong to me. you took so much and pretended you didn't.

i'm not living in my head but in the past again. i'm spending days fist to my gut because i want a physical reason. you ought to have socked me before i called the cops but that would've made it believable, wouldn't it?

ambiguity and lies and i'll never know, i'll never know.

who i'm talking to here is interchangeable, depending. you two are each other, don't you know. my god i hope you know who you are but you'll never read this. you'll never have the luxury.

the road goes ever on and on

i'm living more in the present than in my head these days. i'm told it's a good thing, i'm halfway there. 


so this blog is going private. it's going to be different, i'd imagine, i can't say how. but let me know if you still want to read. 

one day we'll have this all straightened out

why can't everything just be somebody else's fault, just once?

if i could really believe it maybe i could've had the appropriate comeback, said all those things thought of later, and not withered into an apologizing pathetic mess. 


as it is don't think i'm worth nothing. i've left a note stapled to his palm tree saying:

Kindly post a sign if you'd prefer our dogs not pee on your lawn. 

We understand that you are not an animal person, but surely you're aware that, like yourself, dogs have to go.

How are we to know that you will wait until after the pee to speak up, when, helpless, all we can do is shout apologies over your insults? How do you propose we rectify the situation now?

We do not appreciate being yelled at simply because we did not know. 

anonymous, of course. i'm eagerly awaiting the retaliation. this should be good. 

again

i feel dead. 

each time as if the first time. that thrill of excitement coupled with a vague familiarity. has this happened before? what happens next? 


now that i'm dead, what can i accomplish?

please

no whisperings nor scurryings in the brain, just some quiet before the confusion takes over, please, just that, please

whiplash

and so drink wine in the dead of night because your back hurts, chain-smoke as if it kills the pain rather than occupying endless hours. wear your grandmother's old silk robe that smells of lavender and tobacco, don't bother about tying the sash. when rouge-stained cigarettes and ash coat the floor take a valium, take whatever they've given you, pass out right there until your spine wakes you screaming. 


and for heaven's sake don't show the girl who loves you how useless you are, clean up the wine before she wakes, brush your teeth, don't tell her how you're dead sure somewhere down by your gut that this will go on forever and she ought to leave you before you slip away into a cripple, a wino, a waif.

it's always about time, isn't it?

what is there to say? i'm blissfully happy, and to write is to think and to think brings fear. 


i'm starting to realise that quantitative priorities may not, indeed, be priorities at all, and here i am left adjusting to what other people call living. it's a terribly strange process. i feel upside down, with that same giddiness and my head about to burst. the first inclination is of course to keep track of all of this, write it and analyse it and let it slip me back into a familiar melancholy.


i suppose i shouldn't want to. 


yes, it's all rather mixed up these days. 

and so: she and i, we're dashing off to see the redwoods this weekend, the first road trip, it's going to be magnificent, yes! and quite intense if you're one of those still fumbling about with living. but hey, trees and wine and cigarettes and weed and the california coast, and maybe i'll just lose myself in the woods for a time, come back when something makes sense, or nothing at all.

i won't let you go

but i'm just so afraid of not being alone

this is called bravery

what is there to say? i'm avoiding those black welling pits inside me because i'm just so fucking happy. but they're boring through me, i smoke too much, i'm afraid to sleep, sporadic moments of panic spread hairline cracks and i feel so fragile.


i have to deal with them. i am scared of nothing else on this earth. but i have to. 

terrors in the night

take pills to sleep and instead dream of dismembered body parts, dragging my own legs through the grass. late-night friends' cigarette smoke wafts in through the window and is it hot or just me that's soaked in sweat? reach to call 911 because my mother is threatening to kill me. i don't know what's dream anymore, what's waking, i'm turned upside down, i can't stop chain smoking because that's the most i do anymore. i've become so benign, so happy, so frightened. 

this is the unknown, the shady area no one talks about. what do i do in the interim, when things are better but not yet whole? 

i'm not east coast anymore, you know

why must i always be in airports, eating terrible things? i'm gone now, no more mother with her questions and secret covetous glances, no more cousins no more bug bites no more beautiful green land and ancient trees, no more crickets, no more cottage being slowly overtaken by the earth.


i found i could touch everything again, on the wooden swing with the wind on my face at sunset. isn't it always thus? it's terribly cliche but it's so, you can't always love the things you loved as a child, and i spent the remaining days on the roof and writing and staring out into the trees, trying to imagine how to make my own sanctuary like this in the west.

my mother said so i hear you're seeing someone and TELL ME ABOUT HER and i blushed and turned up the water so i could feign not hearing her because the key is navigating these situations so they occur in the right time and place. or maybe i am just a coward. it is easier to assume she will not approve, one more black mark, one more reason to not go home.


and now. will all her piercing looks and stabs in the gut come gushing forth in tears and sick and blood this week? will she have gotten in and felled me to my knees? stay tuned i guess. i'm feeling ambivalent.

lake house

i don't own this place anymore. i've lost the ability to frolic. too many people are watching, the dynamic has changed, the blueberries won't ripen until late july and i have forgotten how to lose myself. 

i'm not all here, i'm drunk on too much wine in a family that doesn't drink, i'm throwing up in the woods behind the house in the dark, i'm in the cottage listening to the rain fall on the roof and it's lovely here but i'm numb, i'm as if underwater, in a dream, i can't quite touch.

i'm just waiting. i just want to go home to the girl i can't tell anyone about.