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Don't tell the story the way the character thinks it should be told. They're inevitably wrong. Like a magician's trick. Like the pirate-magician who stood on stage and said, cheek to tongue in cheek, "hey, kid, you're looking too hard, you're making me nervous. Blink once in a while, whydon'tya."
The first place to start is the mirror-house. Fear starts when there's anticipation. It's not just a setting. There's a reason why she snaps.
The first place to start is the mirror-house. Fear starts when there's anticipation. It's not just a setting. There's a reason why she snaps.
AUGH.
I want to write about Yin, who's a terrible person, staggered by loss and slightly manipulative, and the mystery behind his mother, the soldier of the suicide cult, and their vanishing, and the way in which he brings a god down to earth and forces it to take back its curse and to listen. I want to give the librarian a name, I want to give the noble and the servant and the ambassadors their names, I want to do this research and sink into the thought of the books and another court and another culture and the false heir to a throne who needs him, and I want thisssssss.
I want to write about Idony, who goes by Dawn at school, and who is thoroughly unimpressed by her talented poison-breeding erhu-playing family with all their miniature feuds and incapabilities, and who's constantly sorting them out with a straight face while calling them on their idiocies. I want her to find the dragon in the basement and then to go on to the larger mystery of who is trying to kill her family off while also marveling at the stupidity of a plan that requires all of them to stay locked up in the mansion while she attempts to solve it with the only people she feels she can trust, who are not adults.
I want to write Rin and A's ridiculous fairytale conman adventures, and how A falls in love with the wrong girl and Rin gets over her crush because wonder's more interesting than pining and the Marquise learns through them how to be human and all together they split the lands apart and put it together again -- not even in a better way, necessarily, so much as a way more convenient for humans, because they're selfish and teenagers and cleverer than anybody else! I EVEN WANT TO DO THE FUCKING CROSSOVER down the line with Cameron's exorcist set. :(
Rin is clever and Dawn is practical and Yin is thinly, dreamily malicious, which means all of them have a sense of humor that Lise, at the moment, doesn't. It comes out here and there but largely she's so obsessed by the thought of Connor and finding him that she gets grim and savage. She's very angry about it in a way I've completely lost the way to empathise with -- I just don't care as much as she does! I WANT HER TO BE INTERESTING BUT SHE'S SO MAD AND YET SHE REFRAINS FROM PUNCHING PEOPLE (why does she do this except to progress with the story? augh!!) and I always forget to write in that she wants to punch people. It is like a constant thought droning at the back of her mind!
WHY IS EVERYTHING EFFORT.
I want to write about Yin, who's a terrible person, staggered by loss and slightly manipulative, and the mystery behind his mother, the soldier of the suicide cult, and their vanishing, and the way in which he brings a god down to earth and forces it to take back its curse and to listen. I want to give the librarian a name, I want to give the noble and the servant and the ambassadors their names, I want to do this research and sink into the thought of the books and another court and another culture and the false heir to a throne who needs him, and I want thisssssss.
I want to write about Idony, who goes by Dawn at school, and who is thoroughly unimpressed by her talented poison-breeding erhu-playing family with all their miniature feuds and incapabilities, and who's constantly sorting them out with a straight face while calling them on their idiocies. I want her to find the dragon in the basement and then to go on to the larger mystery of who is trying to kill her family off while also marveling at the stupidity of a plan that requires all of them to stay locked up in the mansion while she attempts to solve it with the only people she feels she can trust, who are not adults.
I want to write Rin and A's ridiculous fairytale conman adventures, and how A falls in love with the wrong girl and Rin gets over her crush because wonder's more interesting than pining and the Marquise learns through them how to be human and all together they split the lands apart and put it together again -- not even in a better way, necessarily, so much as a way more convenient for humans, because they're selfish and teenagers and cleverer than anybody else! I EVEN WANT TO DO THE FUCKING CROSSOVER down the line with Cameron's exorcist set. :(
Rin is clever and Dawn is practical and Yin is thinly, dreamily malicious, which means all of them have a sense of humor that Lise, at the moment, doesn't. It comes out here and there but largely she's so obsessed by the thought of Connor and finding him that she gets grim and savage. She's very angry about it in a way I've completely lost the way to empathise with -- I just don't care as much as she does! I WANT HER TO BE INTERESTING BUT SHE'S SO MAD AND YET SHE REFRAINS FROM PUNCHING PEOPLE (why does she do this except to progress with the story? augh!!) and I always forget to write in that she wants to punch people. It is like a constant thought droning at the back of her mind!
WHY IS EVERYTHING EFFORT.
I wonder how long it's going to take you to learn that some people don't deserve that kind of extravagant affection.
I wonder if I'm not spitefuly jealous. Ah, me. It's not like I'd really take any better care of you, but I resent other people fucking it up.
I wonder if I'm not spitefuly jealous. Ah, me. It's not like I'd really take any better care of you, but I resent other people fucking it up.
It doesn't feel like I'm leaving in days. It doesn't feel like anything. I only ever seem to journal in times of great stress -- that conference hotel early in 2012 when I couldn't figure out how to pay the fucking bill and sat at the desk crying -- but I need to tell it. I only ever seem to be myself in front of an audience, but this is. Too personal. Isn't it?
So I'm writing it to you. No, not an imaginary figure, but actually You. This is a public post; it begs discovery, and let's be fair: part of the hook in any good street magic show's that all the clues are there for how the trick's really being played. If I have a choice regarding what I'm going to grow up into (and please let that thing involve coherence, for a start), then I'd like to be human sleight of hand.
Someday I'll stop hiding things, stop lying and stop being afraid. Probably not today.
Back to subject: mixed feelings about leaving home. Got blackout drunk again last night and fell asleep while hoping that I'd manage to do my applications. Of course, I didn't manage them. Woke up with the same mild anxiety that I always get in lieu of actual hangovers (except on 80-proof silver rum, god, that shit was awful to me last year) and now I'm writing this instead of doing anything productive. Thinking, in part: maybe if I talk this out, I'll be less scared. Thinking: it's better than actually being useful. Thinking: so many magazines of supporting your child at university lying around the house, so many SAT prep books. I'm proud (?) of my baby sister, but I'm envious too. Mum gave up on me a long time ago. She knew she'd never win with me -- I am, at least, that good -- so, being an Aries*, she gave up rather than lose.
(* I pretend that I buy into horoscope shit partly because it's funny to have a character trope and partly because a lot of it fits so well. I'm no longer sure whether I'm pretending, or only pretending to pretend. Scorn's involved. A lot of scorn.)
Running around in my head's the thought: I could get a retail job here, move out into the city and build up my funds before I go anywhere else. Move from state to state. Mum, S. and the lot all have good points: this plan isn't stable, I am not emotionally stable, and I am running away from at least ten different things (including reality!) just by plotting this out. This house is a delusion. It hasn't been home since I moved to Cleveland -- the loft wasn't home either. I feel like I'm trying on a stranger's kid gloves every time I move through the rooms.
What I fear most, as I told S., is this lack of stability. I'm a liar, sure, but I'm emotional and sentimental as hell: I need an anchor before I can go wandering. Ange is not an anchor; she's a relief. I don't feel safe loving anybody (the idea of reciprocity as ugly only comes, I imagine, from the fear that one day it'll end) so I fixate on my baby sister and pour all my affection into this single relationship. In part, this helps; it means I'm not vicious about my jealousy and the support she gets from mum. It means that I don't feel utterly alone. In part, it makes me angry -- because this isn't a balanced relationship either. I don't expect to get devotion -- as the past's proven over and over, devotion only makes me resentful, makes me cut ties and run.
But my closest friends are an emotional flake with whom I have fights and long distances for the sheer sake of catharsis, who analyses her relationships even more than I do, who doesn't need an anchor because she's always been secure in herself -- and an absolute moral compass who makes me feel like a pet. Excessively emotional (which I am) and protective in that yappy, bite-y way chihuahuas have. But it means that there's a certain level of restraint that goes into both those relationships, and I can't work with that. I need at least one relationship where I can be wholly selfish and absolute and endlessly affectionate: the anchor, the fixed point. And I can't talk about these things to either of them, because this admission is a self-indulgence in itself. I don't need to be this sentimental. So it goes into the feeling of unreality too. This concept of needing an anchor is bullshit, and only exists because I can't seem to believe in myself, so must depend on other people to give me worth.
(I imagine the audience concept ties back to this too.)
Rambling. If this were meant to be anything other than temporary relief, I'd go back and edit, but as it is, let's try stream-of-consciousness. So I lack anchors emotionally, and soon I'll lose the physical anchor: soon there will be no fixed point, no "home". I've never been entirely comfortable in this house, but it's always been here. Lucky. All those sevens. It's familiar (which breeds contempt), but as I'm contemptuous of myself too, it's been -- company. Better than no company. I am terrified of this concept of being completely anchorless, no one to love, no point to go back to, nothing I want out of life but the possibility of an eternal drift.
The last is a lie, of course. Wanting makes the possibility of failure. Maybe I do want to write. Maybe I'm scared, still, of failing that too. Either way, nothing's being written, and at the end of the day, words on a page are all that count, and my pages have run blank for an awfully long time.
Anchor, anchor. What an ugly word. I feel formless: I haven't grown into anything.
(Ditto.)
So I'm leaving on Sunday and all I can think is I don't want to leave her. The closest I get to an emotional anchor. The idea that, if I stay, the house will stay here for me too. The whole idea of exiting has an unreality to it, because I've looked up mid-points but I haven't actually started to pack. That is, of course, my method -- and as S. pointed out, for someone like me, moving isn't really a complicated process beyond the physical dimensions. But it's unreal, and as long as it's unreal, it's a nebulous and ugly fear.
New starts and a new regime. It sounds so hopeful when you put it like that. I don't know if I can believe in it, that's all.
So I'm writing it to you. No, not an imaginary figure, but actually You. This is a public post; it begs discovery, and let's be fair: part of the hook in any good street magic show's that all the clues are there for how the trick's really being played. If I have a choice regarding what I'm going to grow up into (and please let that thing involve coherence, for a start), then I'd like to be human sleight of hand.
Someday I'll stop hiding things, stop lying and stop being afraid. Probably not today.
Back to subject: mixed feelings about leaving home. Got blackout drunk again last night and fell asleep while hoping that I'd manage to do my applications. Of course, I didn't manage them. Woke up with the same mild anxiety that I always get in lieu of actual hangovers (except on 80-proof silver rum, god, that shit was awful to me last year) and now I'm writing this instead of doing anything productive. Thinking, in part: maybe if I talk this out, I'll be less scared. Thinking: it's better than actually being useful. Thinking: so many magazines of supporting your child at university lying around the house, so many SAT prep books. I'm proud (?) of my baby sister, but I'm envious too. Mum gave up on me a long time ago. She knew she'd never win with me -- I am, at least, that good -- so, being an Aries*, she gave up rather than lose.
(* I pretend that I buy into horoscope shit partly because it's funny to have a character trope and partly because a lot of it fits so well. I'm no longer sure whether I'm pretending, or only pretending to pretend. Scorn's involved. A lot of scorn.)
Running around in my head's the thought: I could get a retail job here, move out into the city and build up my funds before I go anywhere else. Move from state to state. Mum, S. and the lot all have good points: this plan isn't stable, I am not emotionally stable, and I am running away from at least ten different things (including reality!) just by plotting this out. This house is a delusion. It hasn't been home since I moved to Cleveland -- the loft wasn't home either. I feel like I'm trying on a stranger's kid gloves every time I move through the rooms.
What I fear most, as I told S., is this lack of stability. I'm a liar, sure, but I'm emotional and sentimental as hell: I need an anchor before I can go wandering. Ange is not an anchor; she's a relief. I don't feel safe loving anybody (the idea of reciprocity as ugly only comes, I imagine, from the fear that one day it'll end) so I fixate on my baby sister and pour all my affection into this single relationship. In part, this helps; it means I'm not vicious about my jealousy and the support she gets from mum. It means that I don't feel utterly alone. In part, it makes me angry -- because this isn't a balanced relationship either. I don't expect to get devotion -- as the past's proven over and over, devotion only makes me resentful, makes me cut ties and run.
But my closest friends are an emotional flake with whom I have fights and long distances for the sheer sake of catharsis, who analyses her relationships even more than I do, who doesn't need an anchor because she's always been secure in herself -- and an absolute moral compass who makes me feel like a pet. Excessively emotional (which I am) and protective in that yappy, bite-y way chihuahuas have. But it means that there's a certain level of restraint that goes into both those relationships, and I can't work with that. I need at least one relationship where I can be wholly selfish and absolute and endlessly affectionate: the anchor, the fixed point. And I can't talk about these things to either of them, because this admission is a self-indulgence in itself. I don't need to be this sentimental. So it goes into the feeling of unreality too. This concept of needing an anchor is bullshit, and only exists because I can't seem to believe in myself, so must depend on other people to give me worth.
(I imagine the audience concept ties back to this too.)
Rambling. If this were meant to be anything other than temporary relief, I'd go back and edit, but as it is, let's try stream-of-consciousness. So I lack anchors emotionally, and soon I'll lose the physical anchor: soon there will be no fixed point, no "home". I've never been entirely comfortable in this house, but it's always been here. Lucky. All those sevens. It's familiar (which breeds contempt), but as I'm contemptuous of myself too, it's been -- company. Better than no company. I am terrified of this concept of being completely anchorless, no one to love, no point to go back to, nothing I want out of life but the possibility of an eternal drift.
The last is a lie, of course. Wanting makes the possibility of failure. Maybe I do want to write. Maybe I'm scared, still, of failing that too. Either way, nothing's being written, and at the end of the day, words on a page are all that count, and my pages have run blank for an awfully long time.
Anchor, anchor. What an ugly word. I feel formless: I haven't grown into anything.
(Ditto.)
So I'm leaving on Sunday and all I can think is I don't want to leave her. The closest I get to an emotional anchor. The idea that, if I stay, the house will stay here for me too. The whole idea of exiting has an unreality to it, because I've looked up mid-points but I haven't actually started to pack. That is, of course, my method -- and as S. pointed out, for someone like me, moving isn't really a complicated process beyond the physical dimensions. But it's unreal, and as long as it's unreal, it's a nebulous and ugly fear.
New starts and a new regime. It sounds so hopeful when you put it like that. I don't know if I can believe in it, that's all.
Edited 2014-02-25 15:15 (UTC)
I lied. I'm not scared yet. Fear needs -- the desire to do something. I think of fear as the vague nausea of momentum. This is inertia, slowing down until I can't move -- I blink and an hour goes by. Like sleep, but without the pleasure of being unconscious of myself; I am acutely conscious that I am not doing anything. I'm aware that my feet are sanding numb, that it's cold and I've overeaten in hopes that the pleasure of food will knock this out of me too. I have so many ways to knock me out of myself.
I don't think I'm afraid of the move so much as the uncertainty. Why am I going? (I know why.) Why am I headed there? (That too.) What'll I do once I get there, where am I going to be in six months, what'll I be doing, is this right, is this fair, is this a good idea (this, at least, is solidly a no-no-no), aren't I going to miss her, do I really want to leave this nest with all my things in it, all my books that I haven't touched or put back, this dully familiar town? Everyone else has left: I'm the last one clinging to the remains. I always am, somehow -- though there's really no somehow about it. I'm bad at pretending that I'm not sentimental as hell.
I don't know what I want to say. I want an audience I'm aware of, too. I have one -- I have two, hell, five, and two of them I might even want to talk to. But it feels like a burden. It feels stupid -- I know too many nice people, know too thoroughly the idea that if you give someone your sinking weights and you tell them you're drowning, they'll feel obligated to carry what you can't. I don't want to obligate anybody to me. That's not the nice way to think about it -- I just hate the idea of a debt. (I hate the idea of making someone sick of me the way I've always gotten sick of the people who told me all their problems and never fixed them -- but fixing goes in circles, requires movement, and I can't.)
At least here, with an audience in the theoretical, we have the pretense that maybe I'm imagining things. Maybe you don't exist and I don't owe you anything.
I don't think I'm afraid of the move so much as the uncertainty. Why am I going? (I know why.) Why am I headed there? (That too.) What'll I do once I get there, where am I going to be in six months, what'll I be doing, is this right, is this fair, is this a good idea (this, at least, is solidly a no-no-no), aren't I going to miss her, do I really want to leave this nest with all my things in it, all my books that I haven't touched or put back, this dully familiar town? Everyone else has left: I'm the last one clinging to the remains. I always am, somehow -- though there's really no somehow about it. I'm bad at pretending that I'm not sentimental as hell.
I don't know what I want to say. I want an audience I'm aware of, too. I have one -- I have two, hell, five, and two of them I might even want to talk to. But it feels like a burden. It feels stupid -- I know too many nice people, know too thoroughly the idea that if you give someone your sinking weights and you tell them you're drowning, they'll feel obligated to carry what you can't. I don't want to obligate anybody to me. That's not the nice way to think about it -- I just hate the idea of a debt. (I hate the idea of making someone sick of me the way I've always gotten sick of the people who told me all their problems and never fixed them -- but fixing goes in circles, requires movement, and I can't.)
At least here, with an audience in the theoretical, we have the pretense that maybe I'm imagining things. Maybe you don't exist and I don't owe you anything.
I keep telling S. that a hazy direction and the slightest desire is better than nothing and none. But desire's a delusion you tell yourself to get on: this is my shape, this is the stuff of me, and I orient towards the so-and-so like a compass-point. Metaphors only get you so far. We're not compasses. We project half the levels in Maslow's silly hierarchy. Why? To comfort. To invent. Because we can -- because at the end of the day, for every level climbed, there's only more to crawl. There is no end to wanting.
I'm barely chasing, at this point. Thinking of J., oddly, and the insecure bullshit we talked about. This isn't a chase at all. This is me putting myself in the vicinity of a happy accident and lowering my lashes just in case the right person's looking. That's not how you get what you want, dumbass.
I'm barely chasing, at this point. Thinking of J., oddly, and the insecure bullshit we talked about. This isn't a chase at all. This is me putting myself in the vicinity of a happy accident and lowering my lashes just in case the right person's looking. That's not how you get what you want, dumbass.
" Personally, I’m a mess of conflicting impulses—I’m independent and greedy and I also want to belong and share and be a part of the whole. I doubt that I’m the only one who feels this way. It’s the core of monster making, actually. Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable—your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers—and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves. "
. . .
This is happening to you because I don't want to be here.
. . .
This is happening to you because I don't want to be here.
Edited 2014-02-27 15:15 (UTC)
1. The kind of night bad enough that you actually try to drink vodka straight.
(The foretaste's like water, the aftertaste's like the kind of thing you only wish you could throw up.)
2. Nobody's going to love you until you get your shit together. It doesn't work the other way around. Nothing does.
3. Everything hurts and I can't even admit to being a failure, because once that happens, what the fuck is there going to be left?
I am so so so sick of this. I am sick of being the one who's constantly doing all right. Who's okay with sinking.
(The foretaste's like water, the aftertaste's like the kind of thing you only wish you could throw up.)
2. Nobody's going to love you until you get your shit together. It doesn't work the other way around. Nothing does.
3. Everything hurts and I can't even admit to being a failure, because once that happens, what the fuck is there going to be left?
I am so so so sick of this. I am sick of being the one who's constantly doing all right. Who's okay with sinking.
"Leaving was inevitable."
I forgot that was Fushimi's line for a second! I'm very sleepy, I think -- it's been a crowded sort of day, if a very mindless one. I'm excited to go, (I really am, I think, somewhere underneath the blank stretch,) and the sentiment's true, if not for the reasons of that awful fictional character: everyone separates from everyone else! I'll miss you, I'll miss you, I'm missing you already as you sprawl upstairs, as you stomp around in your ugly green bathrobe like a skinny teenage dinosaur, missing you in every tense. It's dumb. I'm tired and this is at least a little bit of a misdirected fixation.
We'll figure something out. I have to believe in that.
I forgot that was Fushimi's line for a second! I'm very sleepy, I think -- it's been a crowded sort of day, if a very mindless one. I'm excited to go, (I really am, I think, somewhere underneath the blank stretch,) and the sentiment's true, if not for the reasons of that awful fictional character: everyone separates from everyone else! I'll miss you, I'll miss you, I'm missing you already as you sprawl upstairs, as you stomp around in your ugly green bathrobe like a skinny teenage dinosaur, missing you in every tense. It's dumb. I'm tired and this is at least a little bit of a misdirected fixation.
We'll figure something out. I have to believe in that.
It'll all work out! This is really a K-provoked day! (ProvoKed???)
Rationally, if I'm detached, I should find it easier than this. I'm not detached at all. I'm scared and I'm emotional as hell in spurts, it just has a tendency to shut down on me.
I don't know why I'm taking the photo with me. (Pictured: a man, early twenties, Asian with an awkward shock of dark hair, half-grinning as a little girl in a red dress swings up on his arm. She has a bowlcut, the chubbiness of childhood, and his thin eyes. It's an ugly combination. In his other hand, the flat cardboard envelope -- a diploma, you'd guess, by the black robe that stretches over his shabby trouser knees.) I should, I think, want to remember this conversation --
w: Hey, hey! You still have Dad's address?
m: Why?
w: I found my photo of him! I'm thinking about sending it to him, make him remember that I exist and feel bad about it. Think it'll work?
m: [ shrug ] He's not going to care.
This probably says a lot about me more than him, really.
Rationally, if I'm detached, I should find it easier than this. I'm not detached at all. I'm scared and I'm emotional as hell in spurts, it just has a tendency to shut down on me.
I don't know why I'm taking the photo with me. (Pictured: a man, early twenties, Asian with an awkward shock of dark hair, half-grinning as a little girl in a red dress swings up on his arm. She has a bowlcut, the chubbiness of childhood, and his thin eyes. It's an ugly combination. In his other hand, the flat cardboard envelope -- a diploma, you'd guess, by the black robe that stretches over his shabby trouser knees.) I should, I think, want to remember this conversation --
w: Hey, hey! You still have Dad's address?
m: Why?
w: I found my photo of him! I'm thinking about sending it to him, make him remember that I exist and feel bad about it. Think it'll work?
m: [ shrug ] He's not going to care.
This probably says a lot about me more than him, really.
Edited 2014-03-04 04:16 (UTC)
This isn't a secret.
I don't have secrets -- you need to have people to keep from before you can define anything as hidden. And I'm running away right now. I cut my ties in Canada, in the midwest. I am trying to disappear into somebody else.
Nausea's dying down, thank god. I'm talking in circles because I don't know what I want to say. I'm getting older and I'm seeing a little more than I used to -- and that has to be enough. God, I can only hope. I'm two years late, two years behind as it is. What good's the extra degree done me? Bought me a little time. This is still a matter of buying time.
Oh, that's right. I got here -- and I haven't settled yet, so there's a vague feeling that it isn't too late yet. I could go away, still. I should go. Why am I here? Running from, running to. I don't miss them yet -- well, it's only been a few weeks, and I've always lived by the vaguest thread of the notion that if it's out of sight, it's irrelevant. Not even out of mind. Nonexistent.
I am here because I live out all my worst ideas.
At the core I still, I think, want to write. I want to live like a sentimentalist.
Well, no. I want to tell stories. To a particular person. There's a difference between that and the idea of writing, which is product. You can't tell to a void.
But I want, I want. I'm here because I can't figure out what I want, and so I started with the most basic direction: away. "I don't want to be here," and there I ran, straight across the country. Lingering because I can't stand the thought of going back. I don't know why. It isn't as if we didn't fix most of our problems --
What a lie! Even if we've mended them for now, it'll never be enough. Like a drunkard, eating emptily.* I've never felt like enough was a thing. I just don't know what I want, beyond "more than this."
Well--right now I just wish I wasn't so fucking nauseous. (Nauseated? This, I don't know, although nauseated implies an outside effect.) And I want to be safe--racking up new levels on Maslow's outdated hierarchy.
And I love you, oddly.** I wanted to say it somewhere. I haven't been telling you anything for weeks and I don't know why (I do know why: telling you things makes them real), but I love you. I'm a sentimentalist, can't be helped / tamed / whatever, and we're not the absolute best of friends and maybe this is our plateau, but hey. I -- don't know what to say, what promises to make or things to trade or compare for the sentiment. I just do. Absolutely.
I'll see about starting with effort (!!!) the day after tomorrow. Just one more day to tote the weary load, Scarlett. And someday you'll be home.
(* Like a drunkard eating, emptily. Like, a drunkard eating emptily.
See how the comma placement changes all the nuance?
** Comma placement makes no difference here; in all the ways it could be meant, I do.)
I don't have secrets -- you need to have people to keep from before you can define anything as hidden. And I'm running away right now. I cut my ties in Canada, in the midwest. I am trying to disappear into somebody else.
Nausea's dying down, thank god. I'm talking in circles because I don't know what I want to say. I'm getting older and I'm seeing a little more than I used to -- and that has to be enough. God, I can only hope. I'm two years late, two years behind as it is. What good's the extra degree done me? Bought me a little time. This is still a matter of buying time.
Oh, that's right. I got here -- and I haven't settled yet, so there's a vague feeling that it isn't too late yet. I could go away, still. I should go. Why am I here? Running from, running to. I don't miss them yet -- well, it's only been a few weeks, and I've always lived by the vaguest thread of the notion that if it's out of sight, it's irrelevant. Not even out of mind. Nonexistent.
I am here because I live out all my worst ideas.
At the core I still, I think, want to write. I want to live like a sentimentalist.
Well, no. I want to tell stories. To a particular person. There's a difference between that and the idea of writing, which is product. You can't tell to a void.
But I want, I want. I'm here because I can't figure out what I want, and so I started with the most basic direction: away. "I don't want to be here," and there I ran, straight across the country. Lingering because I can't stand the thought of going back. I don't know why. It isn't as if we didn't fix most of our problems --
What a lie! Even if we've mended them for now, it'll never be enough. Like a drunkard, eating emptily.* I've never felt like enough was a thing. I just don't know what I want, beyond "more than this."
Well--right now I just wish I wasn't so fucking nauseous. (Nauseated? This, I don't know, although nauseated implies an outside effect.) And I want to be safe--racking up new levels on Maslow's outdated hierarchy.
And I love you, oddly.** I wanted to say it somewhere. I haven't been telling you anything for weeks and I don't know why (I do know why: telling you things makes them real), but I love you. I'm a sentimentalist, can't be helped / tamed / whatever, and we're not the absolute best of friends and maybe this is our plateau, but hey. I -- don't know what to say, what promises to make or things to trade or compare for the sentiment. I just do. Absolutely.
I'll see about starting with effort (!!!) the day after tomorrow. Just one more day to tote the weary load, Scarlett. And someday you'll be home.
(* Like a drunkard eating, emptily. Like, a drunkard eating emptily.
See how the comma placement changes all the nuance?
** Comma placement makes no difference here; in all the ways it could be meant, I do.)
Oh! I remember what I originally wanted to say!
Orange hasn't dulled that much -- she's just expanded her text and started talking about things beyond the body. She's at her best when she's discussing the actual-sensual, physicality in literalisms, but her plot is shit and her character voices are bland, if generally accurate.
I'm so mad. BE A BETTER WRITER.
Orange hasn't dulled that much -- she's just expanded her text and started talking about things beyond the body. She's at her best when she's discussing the actual-sensual, physicality in literalisms, but her plot is shit and her character voices are bland, if generally accurate.
I'm so mad. BE A BETTER WRITER.
Sometimes I just get super-bitter and I want to talk about it unreasonably and ask for advice from someone likely to get back to me within the day. But my best friend is constantly traveling and MIA and good at what she does and the one person I do trust with everything is stressed to fuck and back and I feel stupid and petty bringing up things that are mostly in my head, to which the only solution is "get over it." And my mother, o my mother, I can imagine the reaction she'd have -- the same old one-shouldered shrug and "well, if you want to do it, you better do it."
Don't ever mistake that for encouragement. It's wholly apathy. This idea that nobody can fight me, so why even bother casting off decent advice?
And o my father, too. "How old are you now? Sorry, lost track of time after I got a son."
And o this bottle of vodka, which did not provide me enough to get drunk and productive, only enough to spoil a perfectly nice mug of orange juice. Tipsy and talkative and bitter -- I should look into stocking up on better alcohol. Rum, possibly. I never got as upset on rum.
(Uuuugh, alcohol. I keep telling myself that I'm probably not an alcoholic if I can't actually tolerate alcohol, but I drink alone, I'm vaguely depressed, and I turn to it for confidence boosts because I don't believe I'm capable of accomplishing anything otherwise. The solution to everything I need is support and company, but between fear of neediness and contempt of pity, there is no achieving the exact handholding I require in short order. And so, of course, there is fear of alcoholism.)
Is this a good idea? Is going a good idea? Every city is a foreign city right now, but at least this place is nice. And cheap-ish. And not tenanted by cats and strange people and there's a possibility of something longer-term. And it's in the right state. It's been a month and I'm already settling into a rut, so it'll be good to get out of it and go elsewhere, but I am beginning to run out of funds! I should've moved last year. I wonder what else would be different if I had?
(I would've crashed in the mountains and burned out hard. I'm still amazed I got across the country without a single parking ticket despite breaking limits left and right, jesus o. christ.)
I just need a sign that what I'm doing will get me closer to something I want. Anything to want. I don't know, I don't know, I keep telling S. that it feels like being a compass needle in a faintly magnetised field. I know, vaguely, where north is. But it's distant, and in the interspersing space there's nothing.
There's so much left to do and I'm so unsure that I've booked the room correctly. I should contact later today.
After I've had a drink.
I do so many stupid things. I am afraid, and undistracted, and so I know that I do.
Don't ever mistake that for encouragement. It's wholly apathy. This idea that nobody can fight me, so why even bother casting off decent advice?
And o my father, too. "How old are you now? Sorry, lost track of time after I got a son."
And o this bottle of vodka, which did not provide me enough to get drunk and productive, only enough to spoil a perfectly nice mug of orange juice. Tipsy and talkative and bitter -- I should look into stocking up on better alcohol. Rum, possibly. I never got as upset on rum.
(Uuuugh, alcohol. I keep telling myself that I'm probably not an alcoholic if I can't actually tolerate alcohol, but I drink alone, I'm vaguely depressed, and I turn to it for confidence boosts because I don't believe I'm capable of accomplishing anything otherwise. The solution to everything I need is support and company, but between fear of neediness and contempt of pity, there is no achieving the exact handholding I require in short order. And so, of course, there is fear of alcoholism.)
Is this a good idea? Is going a good idea? Every city is a foreign city right now, but at least this place is nice. And cheap-ish. And not tenanted by cats and strange people and there's a possibility of something longer-term. And it's in the right state. It's been a month and I'm already settling into a rut, so it'll be good to get out of it and go elsewhere, but I am beginning to run out of funds! I should've moved last year. I wonder what else would be different if I had?
(I would've crashed in the mountains and burned out hard. I'm still amazed I got across the country without a single parking ticket despite breaking limits left and right, jesus o. christ.)
I just need a sign that what I'm doing will get me closer to something I want. Anything to want. I don't know, I don't know, I keep telling S. that it feels like being a compass needle in a faintly magnetised field. I know, vaguely, where north is. But it's distant, and in the interspersing space there's nothing.
There's so much left to do and I'm so unsure that I've booked the room correctly. I should contact later today.
After I've had a drink.
I do so many stupid things. I am afraid, and undistracted, and so I know that I do.
I keep wondering what I did wrong.
Granted, I am a manipulative bitch (and worse, a manipulative bitch who isn't even very good at it!) and a lot of the blame is mine. But. (But.)
I typed out a comment then erased it. Even here I can't say it. Family bullshit always will be both nouns. That's hilarious.
I feel so desperately needy.
Granted, I am a manipulative bitch (and worse, a manipulative bitch who isn't even very good at it!) and a lot of the blame is mine. But. (But.)
I typed out a comment then erased it. Even here I can't say it. Family bullshit always will be both nouns. That's hilarious.
I feel so desperately needy.
One of those days where I want to be rampantly insecure about everything. Do you really like me as much as I like you? Are you just playing along out of pity, am I imposing when I throw everything at you, can you tell, actually, how much I fake it?
God, even looking at this set makes me nauseous. Self-pity's a boring fuck.
God, even looking at this set makes me nauseous. Self-pity's a boring fuck.
Stuff I miss: hot pot, not being scared, my dad.
I don't even remember how old he is. I know his birthday, I know the name of the first piano he bought me, I know that he likes grilled meat -- well, all steak-like meats, really. But I don't remember that.
Logically, I only miss him because I cut off contact with her. One side goes down, the other comes up.
It's not even technically her fault. I'm the one who wastes time. I'm the one who keeps faking it, and getting caught.
I don't even remember how old he is. I know his birthday, I know the name of the first piano he bought me, I know that he likes grilled meat -- well, all steak-like meats, really. But I don't remember that.
Logically, I only miss him because I cut off contact with her. One side goes down, the other comes up.
It's not even technically her fault. I'm the one who wastes time. I'm the one who keeps faking it, and getting caught.
I keep talking about my feelings. Like maybe things'll get better if I do.
This is me: all fits and starts and no follow-through.
The truth is, of course, that I only want to contact him to see if he's taken it back yet. If he'll be proud of me yet. Nothing to do with birthdays at all.
The other truth is that I want money. What other use do I have for parents, right?
This makes me sick. I make me sick.
This is me: all fits and starts and no follow-through.
The truth is, of course, that I only want to contact him to see if he's taken it back yet. If he'll be proud of me yet. Nothing to do with birthdays at all.
The other truth is that I want money. What other use do I have for parents, right?
This makes me sick. I make me sick.
Let's talk about contentment!
I think of contentment as a settling sort of word -- it's not happiness, where you've achieved and feel the glow of reward and success. It's a fulfilled condition. Contentment says, I can live with the things I have right now and be satisfied. It's a very conditional sort of joy, dependent on factors that may not last.
Those conditions are really on tenterhooks for me, but today they're still satisfied, and so I'm -- content. I'm doing a few unhealthy things and not achieving enough to get me where I need to be, but as long as these particular conditions last. Well.
It's been a while since that happened.
I think of contentment as a settling sort of word -- it's not happiness, where you've achieved and feel the glow of reward and success. It's a fulfilled condition. Contentment says, I can live with the things I have right now and be satisfied. It's a very conditional sort of joy, dependent on factors that may not last.
Those conditions are really on tenterhooks for me, but today they're still satisfied, and so I'm -- content. I'm doing a few unhealthy things and not achieving enough to get me where I need to be, but as long as these particular conditions last. Well.
It's been a while since that happened.
Does it mean less if I say it or if I don't? I'm burning up sleep time just to sit here, so I guess it has to.
I feel worthless. I feel stupid and insignificant and worthless and pathetic and needy and I need to get over that. It's stupid how these little fuckups accumulate in my mind and become not obstacles that I need to care of, but actual reflections on who I am, and come to affect everything else that I need to do until every new fuckup feels like another whittling off the splinter that is me.
I feel unnecessary. Which, really, relates to the first thing: worthless people can't determine whether they're any good. I don't know anybody worthwhile who loves me. It's hard, therefore, to consider this worthwhile.
I feel the urgent need to get drunk.
That, at least, is a simple question with a simple answer.
I feel worthless. I feel stupid and insignificant and worthless and pathetic and needy and I need to get over that. It's stupid how these little fuckups accumulate in my mind and become not obstacles that I need to care of, but actual reflections on who I am, and come to affect everything else that I need to do until every new fuckup feels like another whittling off the splinter that is me.
I feel unnecessary. Which, really, relates to the first thing: worthless people can't determine whether they're any good. I don't know anybody worthwhile who loves me. It's hard, therefore, to consider this worthwhile.
I feel the urgent need to get drunk.
That, at least, is a simple question with a simple answer.
I like how every bit of relationship advice I ever give is just "CUT YOUR TIES AND RUN THE FUCK AWAY ONCE THE BUTTERFLIES ARE OVER." That's it -- that's my entire perspective.
I have this. Thing. About people. I hate half-measures, it seems like the most uncomfortable way to live. Either I'm all in and all over you or we're not anything and I could walk away at any point. There's this image that sticks about the way I behave, and it's the smooth movement of cracking open the ribs, scooping out heart and liver and dangling organs while the recipient says in faint horror, I didn't actually need to see all that, I know you're alive, fucking god's sake. It's all I ever want, when I'm involved! For the other party to be as involved as me.
It goes away eventually, of course. It always does.
I have this. Thing. About people. I hate half-measures, it seems like the most uncomfortable way to live. Either I'm all in and all over you or we're not anything and I could walk away at any point. There's this image that sticks about the way I behave, and it's the smooth movement of cracking open the ribs, scooping out heart and liver and dangling organs while the recipient says in faint horror, I didn't actually need to see all that, I know you're alive, fucking god's sake. It's all I ever want, when I'm involved! For the other party to be as involved as me.
It goes away eventually, of course. It always does.
I need to be happy in order to be motivated. To get anything done. And my happiness is terrifyingly precarious: dependent on a status quo and a single motivator I could lose at any moment. I can risk anything that I don't really need but no, no, not this.
I can't even manage to hold my place. For god's sake.
I can't even manage to hold my place. For god's sake.
In a moment of clarity --
Is this what happiness feels like? I don't know. I genuinely don't. It feels like forever since I've been really happy, properly and contentedly and sustainably. Every fear I have right now is only fear of potential loss: of losing the things I have, rather than fear of anything continued. There's so much to gain! I know what I want. I know how I can get to what I need. I'm sustaining myself (a little bit clumsily, but -)!
It'd be a mediocre existence, here as much as anything, if only I weren't predisposed to be happy here by default. The fucking traffic is murder and the cyclists are crazy like crows.
But I'm happy. If I can keep everything the way it is until I have to go, if I leave on time, if everything falls into place and I'm set to go where I should be.
Things worked out after all. I'm happy. How strange.
Is this what happiness feels like? I don't know. I genuinely don't. It feels like forever since I've been really happy, properly and contentedly and sustainably. Every fear I have right now is only fear of potential loss: of losing the things I have, rather than fear of anything continued. There's so much to gain! I know what I want. I know how I can get to what I need. I'm sustaining myself (a little bit clumsily, but -)!
It'd be a mediocre existence, here as much as anything, if only I weren't predisposed to be happy here by default. The fucking traffic is murder and the cyclists are crazy like crows.
But I'm happy. If I can keep everything the way it is until I have to go, if I leave on time, if everything falls into place and I'm set to go where I should be.
Things worked out after all. I'm happy. How strange.
So maybe I'll always live life like a fucking tilt-a-whirl, thinking, it's a kick, it's a thrill until the goddamn ride turns a little and the world seems cut at a whole different angle. Maybe I'll never know when I'm happy except in retrospect.
Herodotus was an asshole if ever there was one.
It's still fear of loss, is all, fear of loss only, but how do you diminish that? Loss is still fucking terrifying. I'm standing on my own and I'm building my own foundations, but there isn't enough there yet to be solid.
I have good reason to be terrified, is what I'm saying.
Motherfucking day.
Herodotus was an asshole if ever there was one.
It's still fear of loss, is all, fear of loss only, but how do you diminish that? Loss is still fucking terrifying. I'm standing on my own and I'm building my own foundations, but there isn't enough there yet to be solid.
I have good reason to be terrified, is what I'm saying.
Motherfucking day.
Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.
End-to-end, a day full of fucking frustrations. I'm not sad and I'm only a little afraid. 90% of this is probably just frustration.
FUTURE SELF, if you wanna pitch in and tell me how the goddamn date goes, THAT WOULD ALSO BE GREAT OF YOU. Just get in a fucking time machine and tell me something works out.
End-to-end, a day full of fucking frustrations. I'm not sad and I'm only a little afraid. 90% of this is probably just frustration.
FUTURE SELF, if you wanna pitch in and tell me how the goddamn date goes, THAT WOULD ALSO BE GREAT OF YOU. Just get in a fucking time machine and tell me something works out.
It's as C. said. You always conceive of yourself as the finished product, end of the road. Every day. It's only in retrospect that you realise your universe was expanding.
There was a time before this, and then I grew into this, and so I'll grow into more.
I just don't remember it hurting like this before. New cities and new people, but always the old aches, the same pains.
I don't feel like I'm growing up at all. I'm still the same stupid kid that I was seven years ago. What was the point?
There was a time before this, and then I grew into this, and so I'll grow into more.
I just don't remember it hurting like this before. New cities and new people, but always the old aches, the same pains.
I don't feel like I'm growing up at all. I'm still the same stupid kid that I was seven years ago. What was the point?
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