25 years: a retrospective (part 9)

22 March 1993

I spent the night unpacking, writing, and typing my Comp. paper, and reading some of Blue Highways. My alienation grew. I just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep my life away. I don’t belong here, I kept thinking to myself. I don’t belong anywhere.

Today only heightened my sense of self-hate. I was down in the J-Hall computer lab for awhile, typing up my fake news story. It struck me that I am not good at anything. Writing? Yeah, right. That’s why I haven’t written a poem for months, and I am incapable of even writing a short story. Schoolwork? Hardly. … I don’t even like school anymore. I don’t like journalism or writing or any such goals. I want to go to England, but what would I do once I got there? I hate working, socializing, doing things on my own, thinking. The thought of getting a real job, getting married … is unthinkable. I don’t want to do anything. And how can I even expect to get friends in England, if I am incapable of making friends here ... 2 hours from home? I probably ought to kill myself, but I don’t have the energy to do the actual deed. I ought to go for long walks to clear my head, but I’m too damn tired. I ought to write my ass off, practice photography, dream…but I’m too numb. That’s what all of this is. Numbness. I can’t feel anything anymore. I’m just stumbling on through life, my GPA a falsity, my looks a mess, with no friends or social life, and no goals for the future. … I want to go into hiding, like I plan to do in my single room next year. I just want to totally live by myself, surrounded by books, tapes, notebooks, plants, candles, TV, pets, in a world where I never have to leave my hole except to buy food every once in awhile. I want to be a hermit, a recluse, a loner. I never want to have to face people, date, work, or deal with everyday life. If this is so, why don’t I just drop out of school, move to London, and live in the slums, stealing money to survive on?

Because I’m afraid.

Damnit.

4 April 1993

It just struck me that I’ve been having nightmares about the mountains.

I don’t remember them, of course. But I know they’re there. They haunt me—those blue, stifling monoliths that change with the weather. Sometimes they’re hazy and pale, sometimes sharp and black. They consume my thoughts, my poetry, my dreams. The mountains, and [this city] itself, are poison. They look like the scars on my wrist, which are chameleon-like, too. They change from glossy red to dull purple-black and everything in between. I’ve taken to stroking them unconsciously, every free moment I’ve got.

18 April 1993

You know…self-hatred is a heavy cross to bear. Maybe that’s why so many people end up crucifying themselves upon it.

5 May 1993

Tonight was a big Beverly Hills/Melrose Place night. It’s weird how extremely excited we get over those damn shows. We were “pumped.” Lisa, XT, MB, MB, and I all crashed in here, freaking over everything that happened in the shows, especially Melrose. When Melrose ended, we hit “mute” and just listened to the howls and screams from the other dorms and quads outside. It sounded like a riot. Weird.

14 May 1993

I just got back from Nay Aug Park. It’s an absolutely beautiful day, and I decided to avoid my usual thinking spot (since the park was so crowded); thus, I stumbled across a new place by a stream, bright with sunshine and a canvas of electric green leaves above me. Across the stream was a family of geese/ducks and their babies. They were so sweet looking. However, on my side there was a viciously hissing duck who followed my every movement with his suspicious eyes. I had visions of him waiting for me around the corner, ready to leap up and rip out my femoral artery, or of him flying out of the bushes in slow motion, ripping out my femoral artery, then munching hungrily on my flesh. I was honestly getting a little bit nervous there. “Oh my god,” I kept exclaiming to myself, “I’m gonna have to mace a DUCK!!!” I left the main stream, which was shrouded in shade and a peaceful kind of quiet. I sat on a rock for a long time, swishing my bare feet in the cold, clear water. Soon I grew tired of that and started to actually wade in the water, carefully feeling my feet over the smooth, slimy stones. It felt invigorating and wonderful, like I was a child again, unleashed into the perfect realms of summer.

Oh…while I was at the main stream, I made a good cut on my left wrist and smeared the blood on each page of my term paper and news story. I had some difficulty getting them to burn, but they finally did, leaving wisps of grey paper to sail off down the stream. I feel better now.

31 May 1993

If things don’t work out once I’m in England, I’ll do one of two things: commit suicide, or fake my own death. I’ll send a British telegram home, telling everyone that I burned to death in an accident, and that my belongings will be sent home, sans my body, since there will be no body. The telegram will state that in my will, I requested that the bulk of my clothes, books, tapes, etc., to be given to charity, while my photo albums, poems, scrapbooks, etc., are buried. That way, I will get to keep everything of personal value and necessity, to carry me into the depths of my new life. With this new life, I would either stay in London or move into the small seaside cottage of my dreams. I would get a minimal job that would give me enough money to stay stocked in food and pay my bills, and then I would proceed to live a solitary existence of being an eccentric, slightly mad, non-conformist writer. I wouldn’t have to worry about paying off college loans or finding a “real” job, which is good considering I have no fucking clue what I want to do with my life, anyway. Oh my God! Doesn’t this plan sound outrageous and fantastic?! What if I could actually pull it off? Hell, if I play my cards right, I might even get home in time to stop by my funeral. I always wanted to do that, to see who would cry, who would miss me. That imagined lifestyle is the one I always secretly craved, I think. Being alone and free and dark on a desolate, grey, English beach. Just me and my haunted mind, and maybe even a little bit of writing.

Yes! YES!

18 July 1993

On Friday and Saturday nights I found myself with Missy and Foster (on Friday, Kelly was along, too) at Gretna Lake, just hanging off the pier and attempting to catch minnows in cups. My, what typical teenagers are we. It was nice, anyway; very summery with the sun setting behind the dark trees which were calmly reflected on the lake’s smooth, warm surface.

19 July 1993

She asked me, after some time had passed, whether I wanted to go climb the school with her. At first I said “no,” because of being so tired, but then I changed my mind. We walked up to the school in our bare feet, surrounded by the dead silence of the dark night. She climbed onto the roof from the perch of one of the white window ledges, but I couldn’t seem to make it from that point. Instead, I took the easy way out, standing on one of the railings and scurrying up to the roof ledge which hung over the doors between the gym and aud. buildings. It was only 3 or 4 steps up the wall, but it was still a challenge for me. What an experience! To be wandering around the roof of your high school at like 2:30 in the morning, wearing your pajamas and no shoes, seems to be an unreal, almost mystical experience. I kept thinking that I was sleepwalking; that I would wake up suddenly and find myself on the roof alone, with no clue how I got there, and no clue how to get down. Anyway…Laura and I plopped down on the ledge of the back of the library building, talking for a very long time in the light rain. It was absolutely marvelous. Getting down was a little tricky at first, but somehow managed to swing it. We got back to my house at 4 a.m., after a close encounter with a cop (he was sitting in a squad car in front of the school; we were afraid that he would find us suspicious-looking since we were walking around barefoot at such an insane hour. He didn’t do anything to us, though).

2 August 1993

On Friday night, Terry, Missy, Heather, and I went to People’s in Hershey, clad in strange garb to harass Shawn, who wasn’t even working. We felt like assholes. We then went to Long John Silver’s to see Charlie, and Heather and Terry went into Wendy’s for food while Miss and I stood outside at the payphone, attempting to call Seebs. Two guys who wanted to use the phone stared at us in amazement, complimenting my Angel of Death motif. I told them that we were en route to a costume party, but then Terry came along and said that no, we weren’t on our way to a costume party…we were from Ohio.

18 September 1993

You want to know what’s so pathetic about all of this, most of all? England is really the only dream I’ve got. I mean, sure, I want literary success, but you know that that will never happen. I never even write anything! I also want true love, but with my psychological state, I can only laugh at that baby. Forget it—I’ll die a cold, virgin spinster. So where does that leave me? Just with England. Just to be there. I have no other goals or aspirations. I shouldn’t be, and don’t want to be, in college. I hate my major. I have no idea what I want to be or do. I always thought that I wanted to go into print journalism, but I despise newswriting and I dread interviewing, researching, etc. I have no talents or academic strong points. God…I’m really doomed, aren’t I? No career, no love life at all, no will to do anything. Really, the only thing I can think of doing is living a life of self-imposed isolation in a cozy cabin on some empty, grey, beach…spending my days reading and walking and vegging, maybe earning enough money to live on by doing something from the home. I don’t want to have to go out into this merciless, cruel world and fight.

25 September 1993

By 6:30, Cathy still hadn’t called, so I called her and left a message on her machine, asking if she still wanted to do something. She called me back awhile later, and we made plans to attempt Blues Street. She came by with Kris at approx. 9:30, borrowed my black turtleneck and yin-yang necklace (in an attempt to look older), and we set off, in our “mature” clothes and our air of fake confidence. I wore my black dress pants, black t-shirt, brown plaid blazer, black mocs, and big silver hoops. I put my hair up in a knot, with a curly chunk hanging down. They told me that I could pass for 25. Wow!

5 February 1994

If I commit suicide, it’ll be like this: I’ll go home for the weekend, borrow the car, drive to a secluded spot with Rowlf and a Tori Amos tape blaring on the tape deck, and stuff a rag into the exhaust pipe. While waiting to die, I’ll probably slash a wrist and write “MEA CULPA” in blood on the window.

4 March 1994

Sometimes I get scared and think “I don’t really want to die,” and then I start to ponder over a suicide attempt, something really lame like slitting my wrists or OD’ing on pills. Then I’d just be stashed away in a mental hospital. I don’t know if I could handle that. I imagine the faces and reactions of my family and friends afterwards—the disappointment, the disapproval, the uncomfortable shame. At least if I’m dead, I won’t be able to see it all. Imagine being in a mental hospital for god-knows-how-long, with no freedom and eyes watching my every move and drugs to keep me in a stupor. I’ve always said how blissful an escape insanity and asylums would be, but then I read The Loony Bin Trip and it turned me off of the peculiar world of hospitalization. Both ends, a hospital and death, terrify me so much. But I can’t just stay as I am. I can’t continue on like this, so much in pain, yet so removed from feeling.

11 April 1994

“In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down and cut him till he cried out, in his anger and his shame, ‘I am leaving, I am leaving,’ but the fighter still remains…”

That is me. Everything in life is cutting me, making me scream, “I am leaving! I am leaving!” but the fighter in me won’t listen, won’t give up. I’m trying to kill her, and though my hands are covered in her blood, she won’t die. “Lie down!” I shriek at her. “For Chrissake, just lie down! I’m so tired, I have to go!” She doesn’t say anything, but I can feel her staring at me from her dark corner. She watches me. I can’t leave, I can’t kill myself until she lies down and shuts up, even though she utters only silence. She is all the doubts swirling thickly in my head. She is the fighter that made me pick up a course selection book today and work out a schedule for next year, in case I don’t get to go abroad. She is the one who holds onto me tightly, despite my screams of “Let me go!” and my furious, struggling kicks. She won’t let me go, and she won’t tell me why.

18 February 1995

I was about to leave for [central] London today when Jorge popped in, on his way out to the newsagent and college. I slyly suggested that he go with me to the post office, so I didn’t have to complain about Terry’s lost letter by myself. He readily accepted. We went to the newsagent in Greenwich, to the post office where they nicely gave me a form to fill out, to a secondhand bookstore (I bought 2 books for 10p each), and then to the train station right in time to catch our train (he had decided to go with me into London). I bought my ticket home at Travel Cuts, and it was much more expensive than I realized. Sav’s gonna shit when I tell her tomorrow. Because I had to fork out dosh for a travelcard, I decided to make the most of it and go to Covent Garden, so I could buy the shoes I saw in Just Seventeen which I really liked. The shoes looked ugly up close, but Jorge and I still had a long, enjoyable stroll around Covent Garden, making it worthwhile. He actually stole 2 CDs—something that’s unheard of! I bought a cool skirt and a pair of pants for £5 each. I also got a light lunch. We finally got to see the Doc Martens department store, and one of the employees complimented the CHiPs book I was carrying around. Jorge was forced to spend £1 (roughly) on a flower some crone stuffed into my hand. We eventually walked our way to Charing Cross and immediately caught a train home. Annida cooked us pasta, and I took a 1 ½ hr nap before we were scheduled to start cooking for our Greek-cum-international night. It was brilliant! The kitchen was like the U.N., crammed with different nationalities—people from the U.S., Greece, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Norway, England, etc. There was a ton of food, including Coke, ice cream, and coffee, and afterwards a lot of us plopped in the hall outside the kitchen and sang with a guitar until a tutor came along to complain. Apparently a few people had complained about the noise. It was only 9:15 p.m., but I couldn’t blame them. We were very loud.

23 August 1995

I hate when people treat me like I’m an unbalanced little child who needs to be watched out for, protected, or chided when I’m “bad.” So many people in my life do that to me. Oh, just you wait, you fucking bastards. One day I will crack open that little black box inside of me, and I will find my Voice, and you catty, immature little shitheads will find out exactly what I’m made of. You will find that I am strong and that I can destroy you. This becomes my mantra…I am strong, I am proud, I am beautiful, I am loud. I deserve respect, and you will never, ever walk on me again, nor betray me, nor think of me as being less than you. And when I become successful and happy one day, you will eat my dust.

2 September 1995

Another cycle begins. There is the cycle of the seasons…right now, autumn is tip-toeing in, although it is still rather unremarkable. September is bleeding slowly through the trees, a coolness tinges the day beneath gleaming blue skies. I am sitting in Nay Aug Park, feeling about as peaceful as I am able to feel. I couldn’t find one of my original thinking spots, so I settled down in the vicinity of the other, about halfway down between the trail and the gurgling stream. The rocks I am sitting on are well-shaded, both from the pleasantly warm sun and from potential people wandering through the park. It is calm, still, and quiet (if I can just ignore the cars whizzing by on I-81!). The leaves are beginning to change—I saw blood red leaf carcasses in the park, while all of those around me here are butter-yellow, aged. There is a low wind that shakes them fro their perches and sends them whirling into space. I think, perhaps, that autumn is my favourite season. It never fails to drive me into pensiveness, and to build up my strength reserves for the slow approach of winter. The other cycle that churns is one in my life, as if I am coming full circle from one of the old me’s. After a year away, I am back in this park, with my journal and bookbag, as if I never left. Also, lately I have been encountering many people who were a part of my Freshman year landscape: friends, classmates, dormmates. I haven’t seen most of them since that time. It is providing me with a sense of closure—another full circle, that of my university career, is becoming complete. They are reflecting on their lives together, and all the memories they created, during these four years. I cannot do that, so I am dwelling on my own life alone, how it has changed and how I have changed since I first came here.

14 September 1995

Yesterday I was struck with the thought of circles. “Circles and circles and circles again, the girl’s in circles and circles—got to stop spinning.” When I first fell in love with those lyrics sophomore year, they held an entirely different meaning. I saw myself as being so fucked up by life, I was running around in uncontrollable circles, becoming sick, dizzy, exhausted, but unable to stop. I was going nowhere but in a slow spiral to my death. Now I’m seeing them as a more concrete vision of my life and its own cycles of alienation and fitting in. Everything (nearly) that has suffocated me and forced me to emotionally grow up a little bit more has been a circle.

In 6th grade, the thing to do was go roller skating at the Casino. I loved roller skating, but not in that context. I ended up following D. and the popular kids around, feeling left out and eager to be their friends. We skated endlessly in circles, flirting with boys, giggling about them in the toilets, trying to look cool and haughty and grown-up. I swallowed my rancid dislike of it all—the falsity, the insignificance, the awkwardness. I think I broke away once, skated in the opposite direction, and sat aside by myself. I don’t know if I ever went back to those circles, to that teeming angst of pre-adolescent rituals.

In Junior High, and even into 9th grade, I got sucked into another circle. The thing to do was go to the football games and walk around the stadium in endless circles. We were packs of vicious, calm and collected, overly-made up wolves, out to catch guys, laugh at the Jr. High underdogs, and gossip madly. We were slipping and sliding up the social ladder. Popularity was of utmost importance. I hated it. It was pointless, braving the cold like that in repetitive motions…I thought my huge, fake grin, coated with frosty pink lipstick, would forever engrave my face. This particular ritual was at its worst when I did it with D. Once more, I didn’t belong, and everyone knew it. I followed after her pack of cheerleaders like a panting dog, always on the outskirts, hating the bile of my fakeness and mock shallowness. I was an extra in a huge overly-theatrical play I knew nothing about. I stopped in the midst of that circle, too, one night. They never noticed and they proceeded on, without looking back. I don’t think I ever looked back myself.

The summer after graduation, the circle of the Loop sucked me in. I once enjoyed it, until it became too frequently done (every night for hours on end). That was the first summer of discontent with my friends. After senior week we drifted and that soured the thrill of the Loop. It became too obnoxious and fake for me. This time, I didn’t stop alone. I had Heather by my side, and we broke the circle together.

Freshman year began with an attempt to fall into the circle of party-hopping on the Hill. The neighbourhood itself formed one huge circle, but its content was the real circular trap. I loathed those parties, and I never belonged for a second. My pathetic attempts at forgetting that sad fact were yanked away from me that night everyone ran off without me when I stopped to talk to J. for a second. His sarcastic laughter at my plight slapped me in the face. He showed no mercy because he KNEW I didn’t belong with them…he knew I was better than them, and my following them was an incredible waste. That slap woke me up fast.

The pub scene in England bothered me, but it wasn’t a circle. It lost its fun factor when it became so boringly routine—the same pub every night with the same people. At least I was wanted there. It didn’t take me long to slip away and do my own thing. Does this experience count?

I’m too old and too wise now to fall into the circle of State Street, to strive exhaustedly to belong where I don’t belong. If I try to follow along and become a wild partying, beer-drinking, chain-smoking, pot-inhaling, TLC-listening member of the Strip, I’ll totally lose my sense of self. They don’t expect me to, just like the groups in the past, but I almost have to; otherwise, I’ll be the 5th wheel, the extra piece of the puzzle. I won’t connect. Therefore, I’m losing them. But I’d rather lose them than myself and my self-respect.

9 October 1995

Another appropriate quote—“…it’s taken me all this time to find out what I need.” It has taken me all this time to find out what I need…what do I need? I need to make peace with that angry stranger inside of me, and calm her rage. I need to make peace with my Voice so that she will be free, and therefore I will be free. I need to find general peace within myself, as was as find my heart. I need England. I need strength. I need to not feel inferior in my friends’ eyes. I need to reclaim myself.

2 November 1995

A return to this month of brownness. All around me are dying leaves, although a few retain their butter-coloured glare. They hang on fiercely beneath these chalky skies, and I admire them for that. The days are relatively cool, but I have been so hot lately. I realized that the heat is coming from within me. I feel it rolling in tired waves within me, breaking against my skin. It is a fever stirring restlessly…perhaps it will melt my coldness, or at least thaw it a bit. A logical explanation is that it is my Zoloft that is making me so hot … A more distinct explanation would be that I am finally starting to burst out of the cocoon I am in, and my Voice is struggling out of the little black box in which it is trapped. That is the fever, this metamorphosis. I am becoming alive, I am becoming strong. I am taking control over these friends of mine who are hurting me over and over again. I have this urge to take a walk down the railroad tracks, which I haven’t found time to do yet. With every pounding footfall I will thrust this self-hatred and alienation right out of me. I will come full circle to that terrible night in April when I ran down the tracks and banged my head beneath the bridge, weeping in utter desertion. Shall I bang my head again, slash my wrists, and cry and cry? God, how I long for that release. My mantra can be “let go” or “there is a light,” as I shake and sob beneath that high, damp bridge. As with the first time, it will be an act of re-claiming myself.

undated entry from 1996

Not knowing where to go or who to turn to when the love corrodes and I am alone on a Friday night, beneath the glaring kitchen lights with a fresh wound on my wrist. The poison leaving a guilty tang in my throat, a burning in my stomach. I am so unprepared for the darkness, when it strikes I must purge it immediately. My wrist is crying again. Sacred blood tainted by being smeared on an ordinary paper towel, then shoved in the pocket of my jacket, forgotten. Oh god, this wanting to talk to someone. No one I need is home. Cheeks blotchy, eyes the color of pink fire. A cold glass of milk to wash away the secret powder I have pulled into me to kill the monster without killing me. Despising myself because I can’t let go of what must be released, because I can’t stop blaming myself, can’t stop believing that I will be nothing without this love. All this hatred. A weakness snakes through my arms. The poison swims through me and perhaps now I am too weak to hold on to this love so stubbornly, though it is now a shell of weightlessness, and should not strain my grasp as much as it does. The burning eyes, the dull pangs of headache, the inability to choke back the sobs that grow and break like tumors, splashing the malignancy of all this hollowness into every corner of my insides. Am I dying? Foolish girl who died so long ago and refuses to understand that she is dead. Already I have died—there is no more to lose. My whole body is burning and yet I am cold. Fear is a fire, darkness is a fire, my love is a fire and it has reduced me to ashes. Kill this beast that consumes my ashes. I am nothing, jesus, I am nothing but emptiness and loneliness and fear and scars and the death that will not die. Wish I could cut more. Only a little blood escapes to avoid contamination, and it feels blessed to be saved from that. I am polluted, I am wrong, there is something so terribly wrong inside me, something crawling, something malignant. Darkness that feeds on me. Exhaustion. I want to go away.

17 March 1996

On Friday Kara was chanting, “I know somebody who wants to kiss you!” and I wrangled it out of her. Apparently a bisexual girl on my floor, Nicole, thinks I’m beautiful and interesting and deep, and she’d like something to happen between us, but she won’t try it, because we both have boyfriends. I was really surprised…I don’t know what surprised me more—finding out that she likes me, or finding out that she and Kara think I’m “beautiful.” I still can’t see myself as even moderately okay-looking. I got a chance to meet her later, when she and Kara popped around, while Terry was here. … She seems interesting herself, but I guess she does more drugs than Kara, and that prospect doesn’t thrill me. She’s not the first person to deem me deep and enigmatic without actually knowing me. How can strangers decide such a thing? Is it because of how I dress, or is there honestly some mysterious, intelligent air around me? I wish I could see it. Sometimes I feel so damn shallow and stupid.

17 June 1996

I had another breakdown this afternoon. I can’t help it…things just seem to keep slipping away from me. I’m so afraid I’m losing control of everything. It’s so tempting to grab a razor and slash my wrists to regain some of that control, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t do it for awhile. I thought about ingesting some poison, or taking Inderol, or crashing on a lot of sleeping pills, etc., tonight. So far I haven’t done anything. I thought about killing myself. Instead I’m sitting at the kitchen table, wearily listening to my Amadeus soundtrack discs and the gentle patter of the rain outside.

I was having a breakdown because I’m so depressed about my life right now, and about my increasingly bleak future. Such things could probably be handled if I had the strength of friends to guide me through, to support me and hold me and cheer me up. I don’t think I’m asking for too much when I say that. I feel so alone, so unbelievably alone. And coupled with the stress of not being able to find a job, as well as the fear that I won’t be able to find a job in England, either, I’m overwhelmed.

15 August 1996

The story of my fucking life!!! I swear to goddess, I don’t know what the hell is keeping me afloat anymore. For 8 years I drowned in a nearly-constant depression even when life was okay. So with the way things are now, I should be dead. And buried. Or at least in Philhaven, unable to hold on to sanity any longer. I can’t get a job, everything that could possibly keep me from England is happening, and I can’t keep any friends! I am a disgusting repellent thing incapable of getting any friends! I mean, the only friends I have left are those that are hundreds or thousands of miles away and don’t have to deal with me. I can’t even get Laura or Joel to return my calls! Now Jorge is joining the bandwagon. Oh Christ…I just want to feel liked. I just want to feel liked. I don’t want this loneliness anymore. I want to feel…okay. I want miracles, I guess. I want a boyfriend who isn’t disgusted by me. I want to stop writing this before I start bawling and free-falling down into that ravine again.

10 September 1996

This is it, this is permanence. This is also the official onslaught of my wretched adulthood: living on my own, juggling rent and bills, managing my life without running to Mom every time things get overwhelming, working at a “real job” without periods of rest like I have when temping, paying off college loans, etc. Studying abroad was difficult because of culture shock, not knowing anybody, and all of the firsts I experienced. Nevertheless, it was still safe.

… On top of that, a new terror lies waiting. I’m so afraid that things aren’t going to work out—either because I won’t find a job or because I won’t be able to handle things emotionally or financially. I’m afraid that I’ll just end up fighting with and falling away from all my friends there, like I did here, and I’ll wind up all alone. I so desperately want this to be a new beginning for me, one that’s positive and not negative like my last new beginning, and I’m also afraid that this move won’t save me or change me or chase away my demons for even a little bit.

I’m afraid that I’m going to fail at the one thing I have ever truly wanted. I’ve already failed as a writer and a girlfriend; how can I stand failing at this, too?

18 September 1996

Christ, no wonder I’ve been feeling such overwhelming disassociative numbness lately. I don’t feel much anymore, and I can’t even tell you the last time I cried. Why should I feel anything? I’m invisible, after all. At least that’s what they’ve been trying to tell me this past year. I don’t matter, I don’t exist. Jen has no feelings, no personality, no substance. She is a shadow on our fringe, and eventually night will come and she’ll bleed away into the other shadows and we won’t have to waste all this energy pretending she isn’t there anymore. Ignore her and she will go away. What did it take to make me go away? More than night, I can tell you that. In a few of my poems, I wrote lines about my being air, and it never seemed more true than now, when all I am anymore is air, cool emptiness, devoid of everything but still felt by others, even though I am invisible. I am so alien to myself now. Okay, so I emerged from my “season in hell” (four seasons in hell, actually, but who’s counting), and now it’s autumn again, time for the bountiful harvest, the reaping of that which my darkness has sown, and I was expecting…I don’t know, color, damnit…big orange pumpkins and dazzling foliage and…rebirth. Stupid me, I forgot that spring is the season of rebirth; autumn is the harbinger of winter’s stoic futility and barrenness. Instead of rebirth I got redeath.

3 October 1996

I’m scared that I’m making a mistake, but I know that I can’t change my mind and stay behind. I’d never forgive myself. I have to give this encompassing dream of mine a shot. If I stay here, I’ll continue to not have a life. I’ll continue to be scarred by The Group. I won’t grow, mature, let go, begin to find myself. I have to be away to do all that. Leaving the safety and comfort of home is a sacrifice I have to make to give this dream of mine a shot. No one is forcing me to go. If this isn’t truly what I want, I could just stay here, and know that home is the right choice for me after all, and be satisfied with that choice. If I go and it’s not as wonderful an experience as I hope it will be, I can always come home again. Was it Thomas Wolfe who said “You can’t go home again”? I think that you can’t go home and reclaim yourself, and your life, as it used to be. I found that out when I returned from England. On the surface, things were the same, but far below. They had changed. So I guess you can go home again, but it will never be the same home; something will be different, missing: the old self that you left behind in the dust, only half-dead and not deeply buried, but too weak to rise up and reclaim you. Your distance and separation from home have taken you too far from that self to let it resume its control of you. I’m longing for that separation, because the self that I am now is not a good self. She’s not bad, either, but she’s too worn out, too unhealthy, too mad with emotional grief to benefit me. She’ll kill me. “I should have murdered this, that murders me.” I shall murder her by leaving her behind, by seeking a new self thousands of miles away. And if she follows me, I’ll have to gently, yet forcibly, pusher her away. “Go home, you are not needed here anymore.” But, if “everything that has been shall be again,” then will she find me in the future? Will she control me again one day? Will she just haunt me, so a new self can never take root? Or will the Voice of the Furious Girl kill her once and for all, preventing her from re-assuming any of her old power? I guess we will see…

26 October 1996

Maybe I should simply blame myself for allowing them to affect me as deeply as they did. I didn’t have to let all of this ensuing pain and confusion happen. I could have ripped them off of me like a band-aid ripped off of a wound quickly. There is a quick sting of pain, and then it’s over. Instead I chose to hang onto them stubbornly, so it was like a long, slow ripping of the band-aid, which stretched the pain on and on, and left a throbbing after-ache. Fine, blame them for being shitty, immature, hurtful people, but blame myself more for letting them get to me in such an all-consuming way, rather than shoving them aside with a disgusted shake of my head and a smile of freedom.

I hope I’m not as terrible a person as I make myself out to be in this entry. Maybe before this year happened, I was sometimes self-centered, immature, and annoying (well, I know that’s true), but then after this year, all those things were heightened, plus I became neurotic, timid, confused, plus I became even more cold, conniving, and backstabbing as a reaction to their being cold, conniving, and backstabbing. I became them. Or I was so tired of being hurt, I shut off my heart, stomped out any desire to be nice, caring, and faithful. After all, being those things (even though I wasn’t ever 100% nice, caring, and faithful!) didn’t get me anywhere before; in fact, they made me feel even more humiliated …

12 November 1996

And why do I want this so much? I’ve pondered this for years. Why England? Why London? I’ve always basically said that there is no good reason for this goal of mine; it just IS. Some of the best things in life don’t make any real sense. They can’t be explained or rationalized or analyzed. Perhaps my desire to go to England falls into that category. I’ve also speculated that I want to go to England because some psychically intuitive side of my unconscious knows that I will find whatever it is that I am looking for. I will find closure to these gaps in my soul, and completion of my Self. I will find that ever-elusive inner Voice of mine.

29 April 1997

Me and my dull life. But I’m hanging on by a thread. I wasn’t lying when I told Terry, a long while ago, that I’m walking a very thin thread over a very deep, dark abyss. If I think about my employment situation and my medical insurance situation and my England situation, a profound sense of horror ensnares me—it is something I simply cannot face. So I don’t think about anything at all. I can practically picture my mind as an extremely deep trench and my thoughts as barnacles floating on its surface. I can actually feel my thoughts deliberately stopping at a shallow level, as if there is a wall between that level and the depths beyond. I mean, I can see that wall in front of me, preventing me from going any further, preventing me from thinking anything other than trivial, insipid thoughts. I’m suppressing the horror. Because if I don’t, I will plunge into a depression so endless, so ghastly… It’s been so long since I’ve been in the darkness that deep. I don’t want to go back there. I can’t go back there. I’m afraid, though, that in the process of my willful suppression, I’m losing my ability to be strong and independent. I’m so afraid of everything. I’m becoming so helpless. I feel sick at the thought of making simple phone calls to strangers, whether it is to inquire about something or to sell an ad for work. I make Mom do everything for me. Everything overwhelms me. If she asks me to do more than one task at a time, I feel the stress of it all oozing through my pores. It’s crazy—I’m as helpless as a fucking child. I can’t think about mundane aspects of daily living, possibly because I won’t let myself think about more important, deeper things, such as my terrifying problems. How do I expect to ever move away from home and get a real job if I can’t even manage my life as it is now? I think the only reason Zoloft is helping to keep me afloat these days because I enable it to do so. By not thinking about my problems, I make them, and the depression the cause, disappear (sort of) and therefore my Zoloft has a lot less work to do. I’m making it easier for my medicine to take away the shadows of my constant, years’ long depression. Oh god, I can’t even think about this here.

3 October 1997

The emptiness remains. I continue to think of cutting myself, although the thought does not consume me. It rises like a vapor, then disappears. Or hides, temporarily. I hate the grayness almost as much as I hate the black. It has been a long time since I’ve been in the black. I can almost forget its sour taste in my mouth, the ache it creates in my stomach as my muscles clench and my nerves jangle off the hook. St. Zoloft, you keep the horror at bay, but aren’t you growing weary yet? Why do you even bother to fight for me anymore? Because it is your reason for existence? Are you giving up on me now? Is that why a mist as thick as split-pea soup is swirling around my ankles? I look down into it nervously and I believe I see monsters scurrying by, like in the story “The Mist.” Monsters whose mere sight could drive me insane.

14 November 1997

My main concern these days is how I’m going to handle moving [to the DC area]. It means navigating terrifying waters while learning how to swim. My flailing dredges up unexpected monsters who live in darkness beneath the water. I need to remind myself that I’m not being forced to do this—I don’t have to do this. It’s not like when I was “forced” to repeatedly return to the scary, depressing arms of [college]. My moving is purely a choice and I can back out if I want. Yet, if I stay here, I’ll continue to wither, so there’s really not much of a choice in the end. I must go. I’m standing on a pier, facing those “terrifying waters” with the comfort of home behind me. It is familiar, it is safe, but the sun is blazing and there’s no water to drink and I know that if I turn away from the water and return to land, I’ll slowly waste away. If I dive into the water, I might drown. It seems like a no-win situation. But the water offers a better chance—I might find myself floating, not drowning; I might even find myself swimming. I won’t find myself doing anything, though, if I remain on land.

I suppose I can comfort myself by establishing small rituals and having my stuff around me, so that I feel like I’m home, and by making myself familiar with places (learning the metro, studying a map of Arlington, marking my territory). Go places. Keep busy.

I am afraid.

Yes, okay, so say those words. Say them over and over until they become your litany of sorrow, your mantra of hope. Say them until they stop making sense, until they sound like you’re babbling in a foreign tongue. I am afraid I am afraid I am afraid I am afraid. And know that it is okay to be afraid. You would, in fact, be strange if you weren’t afraid. Know that being afraid doesn’t give you a license for cowardice or failure. You’re strong enough to fight this fear, and you won’t regret doing so.

As I have in my quote book: You might be disappointed if you fail, but you’re doomed if you don’t try.” Amen

25 May 1998

During dinner I burst out, “What do normal people talk about at dinner parties?!” and no one knew! We attempted “normal” conversation for five minutes, and we failed miserably. But I love it. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

25 August 1998

I shouldn’t blame my Serzone for as much as I do. It (and its predecessor Zoloft) gave me back my life. I am a bitch for clinging to it like a lover, then turning around and stabbing it in the back. I just can’t help but wonder sometimes, at what price did it give me back my life? Are the disintegrating memory, concentration, creativity, and passion worth the absence of depression? The paradox is that it gave me back my life, but in the process stole a small part of my life—the part that gave the voice I hear in my old journal entries.

But I really am crazy if I think it is acceptable for me to stop my Serzone in order to reclaim some of the positive things it stole from me. Ironically, while it is the re-reading of old journal entries that makes me question the validity of Serzone, it is also in the re-reading of those entries that I become aware of what horror the medicine smothered for me. Reading those entries last night made me realize just how far I have come, and just how terrible that darkness was in which I drowned. If I stopped taking my meds, my decision would effect not only my life (my ability to do my job, remain independent, and get involved in another relationship, should one come my way), but it would affect my future and, more importantly, it would effect everyone around me. Kristen. My parents. My friends. Besides, what good would a renewed clarity in my thinking do if I can’t drag my thoughts out of their depressive mire? Not only that, my medicine also gives me happiness, to a certain degree. I was so miserable before I started taking it. That’s the bottom line. I can’t subject myself to that ceaseless dysthymia and those sudden, crashing black spells. I can’t forget all those times I managed to keep my head above water, only to find the steel-tipped boot of depression kicking me violently in the back, knocking the wind out of me and sending me back down. The decision makes itself. I need no part in it.

But it sucks. I’m a relatively healthy 24 year old and I know that I will have to be on medicine for the rest of my life. I know that I am at the mercy of the chemicals in my brain. Other people have normal amounts of serotonin in their brains and I can’t have what they take for granted. It makes me angry. It also makes me angry that I didn’t take medicine all those years that I suffered. I was scared to take it. But it could have changed my life drastically! When I think of all the hours I wasted crying, hating, obsessing! I can’t do anything about it now, though. All I can do is accept the fact that it happened and know that it might have happened for a reason. At the very least, there’s a lesson to be learned from my years of mental anguish. I’m more empathetic to the mentally ill. I was humbled by this force greater than myself racking my brain. I wrote some semi-decent stuff. I became stronger. I got to know myself better …

14 September 1998

At 9500 feet, the door opened and that’s when my stomach dropped and fear finally hit me. The wind was roaring outside and the landscape was swirling below and the knowledge hit me that I had to leap out into that unknown space as soon as we hit 10,000 feet. Kristen and her instructor jumped first. Then Mike (who was attached to my back so tightly, skydiving experts call the position “nuts to butts”) and I scooted over to the door and I had to step out of the plane, resting my feet on this little step outside, while Mike stayed in the plane. The wind was blowing my feet everywhere and Mike had to yell at me to keep them in place. We were warned beforehand that if your feet slip under that step, they will “snap off” (our teacher’s words exactly). I barely had time to get my feet on that step before Mike was pushing us out. I don’t know if he yelled anything as a preparation or not. I remember screaming, and I remember the sky and landscape below whipping about madly, and then we were sailing downward. The funny thing is that I totally forgot to assume the proper position when we first jumped, so I basically forced us into a wild tailspin that lasted for 2000 feet!! Mike told me that later, and I couldn’t believe it. I only remember flipping once, yet the reality is that we flipped over and over and over for 2000 feet! I think it freaked him out, because it was such a loss of control! Because of this, we lost altitude quickly, and before I knew it, it was time to pull the ripcord. That happens between 5500 and 5000 feet. Like I said before, there are several things you’re supposed to do when you first jump and when you prepare to pull the ripcord, and I forgot to do all of them. I guess the only thing that really matters, though, is that you pull the ripcord at the right altitude and don’t lose it afterward, and I did all of that right. He yelled at me to pull, and I did, and we were jerked violently as the parachute opened. The harness goes beneath your legs, so bear in mind that this was one hell of a painful jerk! It was a breathtaking, beautiful sight as we drifted downward. It was so quiet—we could talk normally to one another. He even explained to me what I had done wrong to cause us to spin as we floated down. He didn’t say anything about me leaving out all of the other little steps I missed. We were in central, rural Virginia, so below us I saw only trees, fields, country roads, a huge lake and the little airport we took off from. I think I had my legs in the wrong position as we descended, though. I had to stick my hands into two large loop things which would allow me to steer the parachute. I had trouble doing it initially (I think I wasn’t clearly understanding what he was asking me to do; I was too busy gaping at the scenery), but then things were going okay. Luckily Mike helped me steer. We even did a 360° turn, which was pretty fun. As we prepared to land, there were three steps that had to be taken, and I screwed one of them up briefly, and then sorted things out (I believe he said “arms up” and I put my legs up instead). The only problem is that my legs didn’t stay in the right position, and so instead of landing gently on our knees, we crashed to the ground, with him on top of me. Neither of us was hurt. As you can see, managing my legs was my major problem throughout this adventure! I think it’s understandable that I forgot what to do. I didn’t have a lot of training, and it was overwhelming to be flying out of a plane at 10,000 feet. The things we were supposed to do in the air had to be done quickly and efficiently, and who can remember that when plummeting to the earth at god-knows-what-speed?

6 October 1998

Right now I feel as if that old beast depression (Why didn’t I ever give it a name? Other than the Shadowman, I mean. Why didn’t I ever name it something like Walter or Mary or Charles?) and Fate (or Bad Luck) jumped into my path as I was walking down the street, minding my own business, and they are hassling me and taunting me. They laugh at me, spit on me, call me names, refuse to let me proceed. Will they tire of this and go away? Or will they descend upon me, beating the crap out of me? It’s the not knowing that burns. I can’t do much more than wait, and attempt to be calm about things.

1 May 2000

Would I want to know the truth? Again, not really. Repression is the mind’s way of protecting you, and I partially want to stay protected like that. I know myself, and I know the way my mind can dwell on things, obsessing over them until I am an exhausted, shattered wreck. Do you honestly think that I could have such terrible memories and then be able to move on with my life? Do you think my mind wouldn’t collapse in on itself after rehashing the memories over and over again? There’d be no easy escape once that door was opened. There would be no shutting off that valve once it is initially loosened from its rusty locked position. So why would I not want to stay ignorant? Isn’t ignorance bliss? Not always—that’s the problem. Ignorance isn’t bliss when you’re ignoring signs that you’re suffering from a serious disease that could be fatal. It isn’t bliss when the repressed truths start spraying through your concrete cracks like weeds, infecting you until you are only living a shadowy half-life. After all, repressed doesn’t equal non-existent. If something is repressed, it doesn’t cease to exist within you. It is lying dormant in your consciousness, but remains very much alive in your subconscious. If affects everything about you, whether you realize it or not. If I learned that something did, indeed, happen to me, it would explain all my issues … And if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better for me to confront the subconscious disease and start battling my way through it, so all the issues will go away?

But the thing is, I’m acting as though I have a choice in the matter, and I don’t. How can I have a choice with something that is subconscious? If it wants to stay hidden, it will stay hidden no matter what I do to coax it out, and if it wants to come out, nothing on earth that I do will keep it buried, short of developing a swift addiction to drugs and alcohol, or forcing myself into some kind of disassociative breakdown. The closest thing to a choice I have is me saying, Okay, I’m ready to face the dark monster, and thus opening myself up to the potential experience. Perhaps when I’m receptive enough, that’s when the knowledge will come. Like if I made myself truly receptive to learn about my past life experiences, there’s a good chance memories and dreams will start appearing that will show me the way. But do I want to make myself receptive to the truth via dreams or flashbacks?

I don’t want to think about this right now!!

10 April 2001

Am I depressed? I know how utterly ridiculous that sounds…for the past few days, I have been saying over and over how depressed I feel and how much I feel like crying. I don’t mean now per se. It’s pretty obvious that I’m wrangling my way through some level of depression right now. I mean in general. I am becoming increasingly…I don’t know, I just seem to be increasingly overwhelmed by little things and increasingly desirous of being left alone. I put off doing everything—dishes, cleaning, grocery shopping, responding to emails. I rarely call anybody anymore just to talk. When I’m not working on weekends, I just want to stay in my apartment and not see anyone or go anywhere. But the strange thing is this: I don’t feel depressed. I mean, yes, lately I have been feeling depressed. Before this began, though, I didn’t feel particularly depressed. I joked around with my coworkers, chatting with them all day long. I sang along with CDs on my way to work, when not thinking about silly memories and grinning. I danced around my kitchen with Plath and Shoah, playing games with them, talking to them in silly voices. I looked forward to things: the shore on my birthday, the Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Massachusetts for Christmas.

Basically, it all conflicts with my experiences with depression. All those years spent fighting with it—I never doubted for a second that I was seriously depressed. Even in good times, I could see the darkness encroaching. Am I now dealing with a brand new side of depression? Am I now one of those people who experiences depression via frustratingly indirect means, such as appetite changes, sleep pattern changes, inexplicable exhaustion, faltering memory? Is it inside of me again? If so, how can I fight it when I can’t really see it? Well, it has always been inside of me. I knew all along that my meds were only tranquilizing the monster, not killing him. I knew that he would wake up at any time. But if he really is reawakening right now, why does he look and feel so differently?

Or am I just re-descending into that same old land, and because it has been a couple years since I have been there, I simply don’t recognize it anymore? ... Maybe I am back in the same suburb of Hell in which I spent so many years, but it has changed so much since I’ve been gone, I simply don’t recognize it anymore. Or maybe it hasn’t exactly changed…maybe it has just receded from my memory due to the distance between us, and that’s why I’m not recognizing it. It seems rather illogical—after all, it hasn’t been that long since I was in the trenches—but I guess it’s possible that I tried to forget as much about depression as I could, and in doing so, rendered myself unable to recognize it when it came face-to-face with me again.

At the back of my mind has always been this terror that I would slip again, and I would not only have to face the monster again, I would also have to face something worse. Basically, I have feared that I will have a full-fledged nervous breakdown in my lifetime. Either a depressive breakdown (like the one experienced by Martha Manning, whose depression—despite not being directly suicidal—was so severe, she had to be hospitalized and receive several ECT treatments) or a breakdown far more insidious. As if I’ll walk up one morning and suddenly find myself seeing or hearing things that others are not seeing/hearing…

26 January 2001

I have spent the bulk of this afternoon completely engrossed in reading the online journal of some 22-year-old girl. At first I was rolling my eyes and thinking that her entries were obnoxious, because she was saying how much she envied the Columbine killers and victims, and I thought she was some bratty Marilyn Manson-listening pseudo-angst-ridden teen. But as I read back to some of her high school and college entries, I found that we had a lot in common. Severe depression, fears of insanity, self-injury, thoughts that are way too deep and analytical for a teenager, etc. And it just stunned me because it made me realize how far I’ve come. I feel like a completely different person from who I was at 16, or 19, or 21. I know that’s par for the course…something would be seriously wrong with me if I had the same mentality at 26 as I did five or 10 years ago. But…I don’t know. I guess I only expected my maturity level to change, as well as my goals and aspirations. Not my personality. And that’s the impression I’m getting from reading this girl’s journal. I feel like I am a different person. It’s not just that I don’t write half as much as I used to and I don’t cry as much and don’t create as much. It’s more than that…more than my outlook and my mental state. It’s everything: it’s my thought processes, it’s the way my heart feels, it’s everything. And I’m not quite sure if that’s a good thing or not. I feel like I need to reclaim fragments of that Other Me. Subconsciously, I have known this for a while. That’s why I’m growing my hair out. Sometime after my last haircut, on Christmas Eve, 1999, I subconsciously made the decision to not cut it again. Over a year later, I am finally going home for a trim, but that’s all it is—a trim that will remove the split ends. I am keeping my hair long. I will continue to grow it for who knows how long. I rationalized that I am doing so because I just need a change. My hair has been fluctuating among varying degrees of shortness since…when? Spring 1997? I wanted a change. I wanted to be able to wear a ponytail and bun again. I wanted to say, “Hey, I’m officially in my late 20s, but I’m still young and cool enough to wear long hair.” Never mind that my hair is far more manageable when it is short, and far more professional and adult-looking. Somewhere along the line, I began to realize that I was growing my hair long for another reason—a desire to reconnect with my old me. Long hair reminds me of England and senior year. England, despite its shortcomings (obsessing over Terry, homesickness, not enough cash, Bitch O’Grady) is a positive connotation to make in my head. But senior year was a mess. Part of me wants to be able to grow my hair out to the length it was during senior year and immediately after, when my life sucked and emotionally I was a shattered wreck, so I can see that it is possible to have long hair and a good life. Then I will be able to associate long hair with my life as it is now, not as it was when I was 21-22. Crazy, I guess. I’m just trying to say that in a lot of ways, I’m trying to reconnect with who I used to be, so I can try to leech out of her spirit some of her dark creativity, her complexity, her desire to write, her guardedness, her desire to absorb the meaning of every little thing in life. I am in such a fog now, and she was so aware…and that makes me jealous. To paraphrase my one poem, I am covered in a protective membrane now, while she was all sharp edges and hooks. I want to feel those hooks again. Is it possible to reclaim those things without also inheriting the crushing weight of her depression? Can I have my cake and eat it, too? I pride myself on being in touch with both my dark and light sides, but let’s face it, I’m considerably more in touch with my light side than my dark side these days. And the dark side I am in touch with isn’t the same dark side I knew 5 years ago. Maybe a part of me is craving a return to that dark side. I don’t know why that would be. It’s like playing Russian roulette. I can’t have that dark side without the depression, the self-injury, the suicidal urges, the high-strung worrying/panicking/obsessing, the screeching emotions, the bawling, the helplessness, the desire to hurt people I love. Yet I am still licking my chops and craving that old dark side, even at the risk of regaining all those terrible things.

13 July 2004

On Saturday I actually engaged in a social activity. Because I’m an old lady (and a hermit to boot), I prepared for an actual night on the town by sleeping 11 hours the night before, drinking a huge mug of coffee when I woke up, and then taking a four-hour nap in the afternoon. All that—just so I’d be able to stay awake at the Black Cat! Andrea … and I met at 10pm and at first it seemed like everybody there was a 22-year-old hipster. I felt really out of place and really unstylish, despite my platform sandals and hipster glasses. I don’t think I look old, but I still hoped that nobody would call me Granny. But then the place got jammed and I did see people who looked older than me, and non-hipsters showed up, making me feel better. From 10:30 until 2 we danced nonstop, minus a quick jaunt to the bathroom and a quick run to the bar for ice water. It was Britpop night, but their definition of Britpop is pretty screwed up, because they played REM, Blondie, and loads of bands I didn’t recognize, but who didn’t sound British at all. However, they did play some songs from The Cure and The Smiths, so I was satisfied.

27 September 2004

This duck tour ruled. I mean, it’s a cool experience to begin with, but upping the ante is the fact that our driver was this awesome queen named Captain Jim, who wore a personalized hat and a belt covered in macaws and toucans. Since Missy and I were on this tour, you know some cool shit happened. Like, when we were sitting in the duck outside Union Station, waiting for the tour to begin, a bunch of preppy jocks walked by us (they looked like the ordinary and bland Abercrombie & Fitch-clad folks you’d see on [my previous college] campus) and all of a sudden one of them yelled, “WHAT WILL YOU DO ON JUDGEMENT DAY?!” We cracked up. Oh, and when he was beginning the tour, Captain Jim exclaimed, “It’s a beautiful day to die!” Other highlights:

• when we passed a copy on a beautiful gray horse, Captain Jim called out, “Prance, horse, PRANCE!”
• when we passed the Christopher Columbus statue in front of Union Station, Capt. Jim said something like, “He came to America with three boats: the Nina, the Pinta, and the ‘Thatsa my boata!’” He did this in an exaggerated Italian accent.
• Missy and I (who were sitting together) heard a strange noise as we were approaching the WWII memorial. “What was that?” she gasped. “I think someone just threw a beverage at us!” I cried. We couldn’t stop laughing, which was unfortunate, because veterans were standing at the memorial and it was all very somber, and we didn’t want them to think we were laughing at them.
• the middle-aged people sitting behind us were talking dirty the whole time. I didn’t hear anything, but Charlie (who was sitting behind me) heard everything. He said they were talking about “wet boxes” and other sleazy euphemisms.
• when Captain Jim talked about the British burning down DC during the War of 1812, one of those middle-agers hissed, “Bastards!” Later, when Capt. Jim was asking us if we knew all the US territories, one of the middle-agers muttered “Iraq,” which was pretty funny.
• when we were out on the Potomac, right by National Airport, Capt. Jim was obsessed with the airplanes landing right by us and kept yelling, “Big duck! Here’s another big duck! He’s got his lights on for us!” I was so confused at first, because I thought he was talking about the other DC Duck boats, and yet I couldn’t see anything. We had to sit there on the water, watching endless planes go by.
• when our tour went by the Capitol, Charlie asked if it was the White House. I was like, “Even Richard knew that this is the Capitol, and he’s British!”

24 January 2005

Things were cool for a while but then a bunch of angry chicks began hitting and rattling the fence and demanding to be let through to the parade route. This—and the flag-burning—was rather appalling, because we just wanted it to be a peaceful protest, and zealots were making us look like a pack of crazy, rabid animals. They were giving the rest of us a bad name. Eventually some people managed to break down a section of the fence. Missy and I looked at each other, yelled “SHIT!!”, and immediately started rushing away from the fence. We didn’t want to be crushed (in case a mob formed and tried to rush the fence), and we didn’t want to be arrested or shot by snipers. We weren’t there to cause trouble or break any laws, after all. We stood against the front of the Willard, several feet away from the craziness at the fence. We didn’t want to flee too far, because we wanted to watch the action, but we also wanted to keep a safe distance between us and the mob. Soon the riot police appeared and, as they attempted to rehook the fallen section of the fence, they began spraying something at the crowd. It looked like water coming from a hose. “Is that water?” I asked Missy and Kelley. Since they could smell it, they exclaimed, “Oh god, no, it’s tear gas!” We hurriedly whipped around so we were facing the Willard, and we pulled up our scarves and covered our faces. Lots of people really got nailed and their friends had to pour bottled water into their burning eyes. They were coughing and one guy was lying motionless on the ground. Two really nice guys from Boston—who, like us, had been complaining about the barbarity of some of the protestors—stood between us and the police and shielded us as best they could from the tear gas. We were coughing a lot and my throat was burning and I felt nauseous.

Another section of the fence a bit farther down the street was knocked over and some of the protestors were hurling things (ice, maybe?) at the riot police. So more tear-gassing ensued, and even though they weren’t really close to it, we got hit by it. Thankfully our eyes weren’t hit or anything; we just had more throat-burning and coughing. At this point some of the anarchist protestors were burning the coffins that were carried during our march. The air was filled with ashes (it honestly looked like snow!) and acrid smoke, on top of the tear gas and pepper spray coming again and again from the cops. At this point we met a cool guy from Montana who chatted with us, and we just kind of hung out with our scarves over our faces, watching the chaos.

15 February 2005

I’m not quite sure what I want. Part of me wants to maintain my life of celibacy and solitude, because the alternative (dating, love, romance) is way too complicated and it really terrifies me. Like, to a pathological degree. But another part of me wants to break out of that self-cloistered life. I see healthy, thriving relationships, and I think, “Wow, I’d love to experience that. I’m cool with being on my own when that’s the way things have to be, but ultimately, I want a partnership.” I’d never want to surrender all my solitude, because it’s way too important to me, but there are times when I’m game for a life containing both solitude and companionship. Yet I’m paralyzed with fear whenever I think about taking steps in that direction—like going out on dates and responding to personal ads. I just wonder why this has to be so difficult for me. Normal people start dating in their teens and they never stop. Maybe serial dating/marrying isn’t the healthiest ting in the world, but I still watch them in wonder. How do they do it? How do they get that many people to want them? How do they go from relationship to relationship without fear or damage? It’s inconceivable to me. Even people who only occasionally date seem comfortable with the process of getting to know someone and surviving heartbreak. Why is it such an issue for me? Why is there such terror and trepidation involved?

But I’m still young, and if I do manage to achieve and sustain a relationship, I’d like it to happen now. I lament my squandered twenties. Those years were fulfilling in their own way, I guess, but I really should’ve spent them sowing wild oats and dating people casually, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re in your twenties, right? And I look at some of the qualities I dig in guys—the dark, witty, snarky, pop-culturey things; the geek-chic glasses; the indie vibe—and I have trouble seeing those qualities in older people, so I fear that if I don’t date someone like that now, I’ll lose my chance, because the older I get, the lower my chances of snaring someone with those qualities. It’s stupid! What, all guys toss their Converse and geeky glasses in a big bonfire when they hit 40? They suddenly stop laughing at The Onion and start watching Diagnosis Murder reruns? I doubt it. And I must remind myself that the truly important qualities in a man—gentleness, romanticism, loyalty, kindness—don’t fade when he gets older.

19 June 2005

I’ve seen a lot of extraordinary things on this trip, and I’ve enjoyed myself immensely many, many times, but I can honestly say that today was—hands down—the best day of the trip.
I am so in love with Iceland’s countryside!!! Well, no surprises there, really. I knew I’d swoon over the place. I just didn’t know I’d swoon this hard. The little corner of the countryside that I saw today was the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen. And I say that as someone who has been to the top of Mt. Pilatus in the Swiss Alps and the heart of the achingly gorgeous Scottish Highlands. The Golden Circle’s beauty was so sharp, so luminous, it broke my heart. It was painfully beautiful.

20 June 2005

I’m going home. I’m really honest-to-christ going home (although the plane hasn’t even taken off yet). On one hand, this vacation flew by, as all vacations do. On the other hand, a lifetime has passed since I last sat in Beltway gridlock, hunkered down for 7 hours in my cubicle, paid bills, did laundry, petted my cats. It’s so hard to comprehend the fact that all those things will rush toward me again, full throttle, in less than 24 hours.

It stings to know that I probably won’t darken Europe’s doorstep again for at least two years, if not longer. And I may never see Finland, Estonia, Russia, and Iceland again, no matter how badly I’d like to. But I’m also glad to be going home. Not glad to resume house-hunting, freelancing, laundry, commuting, and bill-paying, but glad to see my cats, family, and friends again. Glad to sleep in my own luscious bed again. Glad to sort through my souvenirs. Glad to no longer have to recycle grimy, sweaty clothes pulled from a wrinkled heap in a suitcase. And glad to eat my favorite cereals again!

12 August 2005

I’ve been in a bit of a funk again. I’m once again in that mindset of fearing that I’m becoming depressed again, but in a way that is different from how depression felt in the past (courtesy of my meds). Maybe it’s just poor nutrition, though. I just have very little energy. I mean, my physical energy levels are the same as ever, but mentally I don’t have the energy to do much. Everything feels like a chore. In light of that, attempting to buy a house suddenly seems insurmountable and terrifying, and I feel paralyzed. … I don’t feel like I’m in a fog, but I do feel like I’m mired in stasis. I can’t move forward (buying a house) or backward (unpacking all my boxes and resolving myself to staying in my apartment indefinitely). It’s such a strange, exhausting state of mind.