24 February 1983
Yesterday me and Barb tried to solve a mystery about Andrea’s old house. Since Barb was here mom had to say yes when I asked if I could go down to her house to play Coleco Vision. I was doomed! I didn’t know how to play, not even Pac-man!! But she taught me how to play, it was fun.
30 April 1984
Nanny’s birthday was good. I was crying all night because of our [timed test]. I’m scared. Emily got a car. I’m grounded for playing out too long. I don’t feel good. Today’s gym and art. I HATE school. Let’s give Teela a hand. Tell a lie. Trouble is an awful thing to do. Tell a lie. Sorry.
P.S. Please make me pass.
27 September 1985
Ma and I got into a fight this morning because she doesn’t have the money to give me allowance. Now I can’t get crayons and colored chalk like I wanted. Why oh why do we have to be poor? I still didn’t get my clothes from layaway!
18/19 April 1986
Today was D.’s party. Since we weren’t invited to Angela’s snobby party, D. had one. First we saw Kristy’s show, Anything Goes, it was at Lebanon Valley College. Then we went to D.’s and watched MTV, ate candy and soda (I liked the Disney cookies) and ordered pizza. Later we composed a song, worked on the computer and took pictures and slept 4 hours. We then woke up and played “hide the money.” Later I went to Nanny’s so they could babysit me.
2 January 1987
My temperature was still 104 this morning but now it dropped to 102. It’s snowing really hard and I wanna go sledding but I can’t. That’s not fair!
5 May 1988
I feel like I’m losing my mind trying to keep track of everything. My brain is an empty void which just can’t hold anything. And you know me, Miss Worry Wart of 1988. Moving along, though, today in gym Jen and I won one of the 880 races, not only because she’s fast, but because I really booked it. Everybody says they never saw me go that fast. I never even thought about it much. Maybe I’m a good sprinter!
25 March 1989
As strange as it sounds, I sometimes feel like I’m (and I quote Jennifer Saunders) teetering on the edge of mental oblivion. It’s not just that I can feel as if I’m going mad, at times, but I’m worried that all the depression I experience now will somehow build up, and make me crazy. What if I end up killing myself one day? I don’t want to; but there are times when I’m so “black” I can’t be cheered by anything. God! Is this normal? Is this just adolescence? If I was to be suffering from anything, it’s not manic depressiveness, or else I’d like never leave my room. Sometimes I feel myself cracking when I’m alone. For instance, I’ll “live out” scenes from how I pray my future will be. It’s the only way I can cope with life at times, but is it okay? Oh, yes, I want to scream and kick and cry and dance in the moonlight…as Pink Floyd says, I feel like I’m “waiting for the worms.” And why not? I mean, I have a lot to be depressed at, so why shouldn’t I build a wall to be in perfect isolation behind? But I WANT reality. I want London and writing and true love…
God, what am I talking about? I should think I was making myself insane. What I have is depression, simple as that. Or is it more? Please don’t laugh. It’s like playing a piano out of tune, all of this is. I really do need someone, because all of this didn’t just pop up now. Look at all my diaries. I’ve always been depressed. Now I need the help.
21 April 1990
I’m angry at Kris because she had fits at me for taking a shower when I could be answering the pounding door of her majesty. I hate that everybody hates me for being me and not them. I hate my whole family and my friends and Bob and Todd and I hate everyone who lies behind each other’s backs.
I should stop here, but I’m not going to, because I must tell you about yesterday. I went with Drama Club to Philly Zoo, and then the Riverfront Dinner Theatre. I had a wonderful time. I loathe most zoos, but being there on my own with Michelle, Michelle, and Missy especially, it was fun. The food was good and the show was brilliant—“Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Shine Up?” I guess I enjoyed it because I’m Catholic. The best part was when Michelle (F) and I twice escaped the madding crowd by walking out to the pier-like porch (it was big) that surrounded the restaurant. …we discovered the wave god and made sacrifices to his power. Mystical, magical things actually happened. We kicked our shoes off and stood in the freezing wind and stared at the night…it was a beautiful experience. The water was black and cold and a great expanse of ribbon about us. The bridge over it was lit in blue against the cloudy night sky. We walked, bonded, became one in the decimated night. Nothing better.
16 March 1991
This is a classic case of falling into a pit of black head-on with no landing gear waiting for me. Of course I don’t know if I’ll ever hit the bottom or not. I wish I would. I’m sick of falling. I just wish I’d smash against the land of nails beneath my descent. Crash. Smash. Bleed ‘n burn, baby, it’s the end.
2 March 1992
At one point, amidst the shallow comfort of the hours, I have made an indirect resolution to die. I am dying now, as I write this. Slowly, as my medication drains from my blood, furiously trying to cling to my system in order to keep me alive, I begin to fall, to feel myself approach closedown. I am ready to sleep.
Whether or not I die now is up to destiny, and God. I have stopped taking my Inderol, and I will do no more. If I die, good; if I live, then that’s how it will be. There’s no point to me hanging around here anymore, though. I really have no friends left; the silly, pointless pursuit of D. that I have is hopeless (and every chance I have to possibly just see him manages to fail); I have never felt love and will never feel love; and there’s nothing in the future to look forward to, because there’s absolutely no hope of me succeeding in anything. I think I’m just taking up an uncomfortable space in everyone’s lives, and it would be better if I just exeunt quietly. I feel nothing about anything, and oh God … I am so damn scared. I don’t even think I can attempt to fight this overwhelming, stifling, sour fear anymore, because there’s no reason to win. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m frightened of dying, death, living. Living scares me more than absolutely everything else.
Last night I slashed up my right wrist with my razor blade. The sight of those veins sickened me; always has. I wanted to scar them to show them that I am on the verge of defeating the very life that pumps through their fingers.
Please…let this happen…
28 March 1993
Around 3am (right after I went to bed), I got another long-distance call, from some guy who mumbled that he wanted to know my bra size. I said, “No, sorry,” and hung up on him, leaving the phone off the hook the rest of the night. Yet another party prank to add to Marybeth’s and my growing list. I was really disturbed last night, since Missy told me about the ghost of a suicide that’s been haunting Madonna Hall lately. It scared me into turning on all the lights and locking my door. I was convinced that my poster of James Dean was watching me (his eyes do appear to move), and then I got the bra phone call, which sounded like James Dean’s voice. Great, I thought. James Dean’s calling me from the grave to find out my bra size.
1 April 1994
…it meant squeezing 6 people in Joel’s awesomely decrepit car. … We went to Moonshine to walk around the graves (Missy and Becky Miller were particularly disturbed by it), to a church playground off Rt. 72, to the A-C Elementary school playground, sort of cruised the loop, and went on a reign of destruction, putting construction cones on Mr. Campbell and Kristy H’s cars, stealing reflectors off the roadside, stealing “road closed” signs, etc. We were being very loud and obnoxious, yee-hawing everytime we passed the Frog Hallow Tavern, screaming at people we passed, veering all over the road and parking lots, and having odd sing-alongs.
18 February 1995
On Friday I did my college errands and then came back here to write my Moderns essay. Annida’s brother came for an overnight visit, and I hung with the two of them and Silvia in the music room before dinner. Afterwards, Annida, Panos, and I went to Surrey Quays. … We stayed in Annida’s room for awhile and decided to go to the Duke. Silvia and Jorge, back from his first official date with Lucy, joined us. Didn’t do much there. They drank orange juice and played a video game; I sat at our table and immersed myself in my mags. Panos clamored to go to Greenwich, and everyone was for it but me and Annida. They talked us into it. We went to Greenwich in the bitter cold (this was around 11:15 p.m. or so), singing songs the whole way. We got chips at our favourite place and ate them along the river, taking photos of each other. There was a drunken Scotsman playing guitar and singing near us, with some other drunk Brits, and Jorge went to talk to them, to our unease. They were really nice and invited us to join them. So we sat with them until 1 a.m., singing many different songs, with strangers drifting in and out of our little crowd. I felt so peaceful and happy, especially when they played “Wish You Were Here.” Then my feet started hurting, because my sneakers have holes in them, and I couldn’t feel them anymore, so I suggested we leave.
12 March 1996
I feel uncertain, as if I’m standing on a shaky precipice, not sure if I’m plummeting or on solid ground. I’m stuck in a weird kind of downward spiral. On one hand, I’m getting sick, and that’s starting to weigh me down. Since yesterday morning, I’ve had intermittent headaches and sore throats, and now I’m starting to feel nauseous, too. On the other hand, grey wisps of depression are starting to flutter about me, like a dirty mist. That began yesterday morning, too. Actually, it started Sunday night. Not only do I have no reason for this to hit me, but it’s also hard to endure, because my Zoloft has succeeded in keeping my depression at bay for a while now, and I’m not used to the helplessness of it. I had forgotten how frustrating it is, how evil, how draining. I was even feeling disconnected from the depression agonies of the people on my mailing lists, as if I couldn’t relate to that darkness anymore. Now I can, and this depression isn’t even that bad. It’s more of a heavy melancholy. It’s making me feel physically more ill, and I’m getting more short-tempered at my surroundings, which makes the depression worse. I’m frazzled at my workload, my noisy neighbor, whose TV is blaring right now, as always, my stifling schedule, having to eat the same food in the cafeteria, always surrounded by the same people and places. I need to get the hell out of here. Everything affects everything else, until I’m trapped in another vicious cycle of negative emotions…that downward spiral.
5 August 1997
It’s always there, a dark, menacing specter that I can’t shake. It trails me, it is my shadow. Although my head is finally above its surface, I feel as though it continues to affect everything I do, every move I make. I live by these strange, restrictive rules about how much I can do and how much I can handle before the threat of Depression becomes imminent, manifesting itself in the form of feeling overwhelmed. That’s what I Fear most of all…feeling overwhelmed by my life and tasks, because that usually leads to hopelessness and helplessness, which brings about the Depression that darkens my whole being. So I live carefully, cautiously, as if I have a sixth sense that enables me to sniff approaching Depressions.
12 March 1998
Ironically, the news of his illness is falling at the same time I’m starting to smell the crackling ozone of depression lightning. I don’t know if it will amount to a storm or not, but it worries the hell out of me. Jeff’s illness should remind me of how valuable life is, and how lucky I am, but all I can dwell on is the fine mist of gray that is starting to coat my world.
12 August 1999
Dinner was good, and from there we went into Adams Morgan where parking was of course impossible and the streets were jammed with bodies. The heat was incredibly intense. I wore my long, black, filmy skirt from England because my eczema made me look like a monster, and the skirt felt disgusting sticking to my skin. Beyond that, though, I was happy to be with everybody and wanted to go to Adams Morgan. The first place we went to was horrible. Scott said that it normally isn’t that jammed. It reminded Dave and me of a Scranton party, but worse, because people were packed in like sardines and the heat caused fat rivulets of sweat to pour from us. My entire body burned from my sweat, because apart from the horrendous flare up within a flare up on my legs, I also had patches of eczema on my arms and armpits. I felt like I couldn’t breathe in there. We had to migrate upstairs because there was absolutely no way to move or talk downstairs, and the upstairs kind of freaked me out. It was filled with long, sagging, dirty couches full of people. No torn leather seats to be found, but the gross fabric of the sofas made me uneasy. Dave and I both refused to sit down on them. He said he couldn’t breathe, either, so we downed our drinks (mine was water!) and went for a walk through a nearby ghetto. By the time we got back to the bar, everyone was waiting for us outside. Next stop was a pool hall that was deliciously air conditioned, but so crowded, we wouldn’t have been able to snare a table for over an hour. We left again (me with my skirt sticking into my underwear after I went to the bathroom—thank god I caught it in time!) and went to a coffeehouse place nearby. That, too, was jammed. We were just about to give up and call it a night when Dave and I decided to stop into Angles (he’s been sort of obsessed with it ever since we took him on New Year’s night). Surprisingly, it wasn’t crowded, and it was nice and cool. We got a table in the back and the guys played several rounds of pool. Somebody told Scott that sitting on a torn leather seat means that your family will die (I hope they didn’t attribute that to me or I’d be horrified! I may be afraid of torn leather seats, but when I told Dave kiddingly at New Year’s that his family was going to die because he sat on a torn leather seat, I swear I was only joking!) Scott pointed to a torn leather seat and said in a deadpan way, “There’s another family-killer over there.” Later he sat on it and exclaimed, “Whoops! I just killed my family again!” I think I got home around 2am on Sunday morning.
1 December 2000
Part of me wants to call Dr. Kaufman and ask her to increase my meds. But you can’t drive a barb of heartbreak out of your body by sedating it with antidepressants. And I’m already struggling with the side effects that plague me from the mere 20mg I take each day. However, I just think that if my meds are increased, my chances of descending into depression as I struggle to get over him will decrease. My ceaseless thinking about him and obsessive over-analysis of everything will decrease, too. Isn’t that a good thing?
In the end, he’s just a guy. Just [one] single guy. He has no right to determine my moods or my self-esteem. And maybe he’s not even the one I love…maybe he’s just a mask I stapled onto my desire to have somebody. Maybe I was just craving somebody so badly, and nobody came along for me to pine over and strive for, and then there was F., and I just shifted all those unresolved emotions his way, but it’s not him I want, per se…it’s just the idea of having somebody…
Right now, all I want is to have my mood stabilized. I hate this feeling of losing control. Sometimes, no matter how upset I am over him, I’m basically okay with the whole thing, like now. I just feel removed, numb. In that numbness lies strength and determination to get over him and focus on myself. Fine, great. That’s how it should be. But that’s not always how it is. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to maintain that removed, strong nature of mine, I’m a fucking mess over him.
… no matter how much I’m telling myself today that it’s okay to want to break down and mourn him and even want to slash my wrists, I just can’t do it. I guess that’s human nature, for the most part—you fluctuate in how strong and how weak your willpower can be. But being like that is messy and unreliable and it reminds me too much of my utter lack of control over my moods and emotions during the years my depression remained untreated—another reason why upping my dosage is starting to look pretty damn good.
song heard most recently before posting:
Where Is Home?—Bloc Party
Friday, November 07, 2008
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
VICTORY! and 25 years: a retrospective (part 6)
It’s an historic and exciting day in the United States! Obama’s victory is a joyful occasion, and I’m equally thrilled that Prop 2 overwhelmingly passed in California. Sure, in terms of Obama’s victory, my snarky side is snarling, “What the hell took you so long, America?” Like SomeEcards said in one of their most recent cards: “We’ve now learned that a decimated economy, a clusterfucked war, and the worst-run Republican campaign in history is all it takes for America to elect a black guy.” I mean, really, why did it take so long for a black person to be nominated president? And why hasn’t a woman, Hispanic, Jew, etc, etc, gotten there yet? Ah well, I’ll focus on the positive today—and there is a lot to be positive about!
I am, however, deeply worried that white supremacist nutcases will use Obama as their target practice. I worry that people are expecting miracles and if he doesn’t deliver them right away, they’ll start saying, “See? That’s why a black person shouldn’t be president” or “I knew the Democrats were talking shit when they said they could fix things.”
Still, at my core I believe we made the right decision in nominating him, and I really believe he’s going to bring energizing change to this country. It will undoubtedly be a long haul out of the quagmire we’re stuck in, but I honestly see light finally becoming visible at the end of the tunnel.
And now back to the past...
23 February 1987
Today something extremely awful happened to me. Fluffy died. Dad took her to the vet and when I came home from school, she wasn’t there. I cried to myself all night. I can’t believe it, I mean honestly can’t believe it. I’m so lonely and sad I could die.
17 March 1999
Last night was the worst. I was in the middle of my little, private memorial service for Benny when Dad called to tell me it was all over. He had just buried Benny, under the tree in our yard, like Mom requested. At the vet’s, Benny died quickly and painlessly. He was knocked out almost immediately, and his heart stopped maybe a minute later. My dear, sweet, beloved cuddly Benny. My little blond ragamuffin. My handsome golden man. He has been in my life since I was 13 ½ , and we watched each other grow up. Dad reminisced about the day we brought Benny home, which I don’t really remember. But I have so many good memories of him…when he was a puppy and would just race through the house on hyper binges, a tan streak whirling by…when we would take him up to the hockey field at LHS and just let him run and run…when he would wrestle with the end of my sleeve, teeth latched on, growling as I whipped him aback and forth by moving my sleeve…seems so long ago. Before I left on Sunday, I frantically pawed through Mom’s box of photos, looking for a picture of Benny and me that was taken shortly after I got him. I was a little eighth grader holding him in my arms. I wanted to frame that picture, and now I can’t find it. Oh god, my sweet, adorable boy. It will be so strange to go home at Easter and not have him be there. In honor of him, I bought a wood-burning kit at Wal-Mart on Saturday and I’m going to make him a tombstone this weekend. I also threw together the funeral mix I’ve been wanting to make for ages. It was originally planned for my own funeral, but I’ve been listening to it in my car for the past two days, and I listened to it during my memorial service last night, so it honors Benny’s death as well.
Leaving on Sunday was so incredibly difficult. I managed to fight back gulping tears until Mom walked me to my car, and then I started crying. She cried too. When I was saying goodbye to him, I told him that Nanny would be waiting for him on the other side, and he wouldn’t have any trouble breathing again, and his heart would no longer hurt, and he’d be able to run and play like he was a puppy again. It broke my heart. I couldn’t even look at him or touch him one last time before I headed out the door. I had to flee, because I was afraid I’d never be able to leave him if I held him again. I have an ache in my gut when I think about this. I hope he knows how much I love him—how much I always loved him.
29 June 2001
So, as you can see, everyone has been extremely wonderful. What matters most of all to me is that people recognize that this is a big loss. A lot of folks probably think that losing a pet is no big deal and they completely undermine how gun-wrenching the situation can be. I love that so many people took the time to let me know that they truly sympathize and understand that I have a right to be hurt.
It has been horrible in so many ways. It is horrible when I think about finding his lifeless body lying in the yard, ensnared in that dreadful chain-link fence. It is horrible when I think about how lonely and scared he must have been. It is horrible when I blame myself for not nailing shut the living room window screen and not hearing him escape because I sleep like death with my fan on full-blast at the foot of my bed. It is horrible when I see Plath standing alone when I bring out the treat jar. It is horrible when the litterbox is only half-full in the morning and the food bowl is only half-empty. It is horrible when I look at the corner—now empty—where Shoah’s blanket used to be, usually with him curled on top of it. It is horrible when I look at the purple catbed where he used to lie all the time. It is horrible when I see only one face at the window as I pull into the driveway, rather than two faces. It is horrible when I ache to pet Shoah under the chin, comb him … and spank him until he drops to the ground, rolling around and purring.
Did I remember to tell him that I love him the day before he died? I know I was cooing over him as he slept on his blanket, and I remember petting him on the chin at that time, too. Just the other day he was lying in the closet and I teased him about being gay, and then reached out my arm to lightly touch his outstretched arm, and he didn’t pull his paw away. So we lay there, facing each other, hand and paw outstretched, lightly touching. Did I remember to tell him that I love him after I put him in the ground?
I feel numb and lost. I feel even more listless than usual when it comes to doing anything and thinking about anything. Sometimes I feel like there is a barb of sorrow lodged in my heart; other times it feels more like I “took a knife, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.”
I want this to be okay for both Plath and me. I want Shoah to be okay, and at peace. Oh, my sweet, beautiful, squeaky, soft, wonderful little boy!!
4 July 1988
I’m home alone now, but in a few minutes Dad is picking me up to eat at Rachel’s. I’m pissed at him and Mom. They’re enough to drive a depressed kid to suicide. They know how “sensitive” I am, and how easily I can be brought down, yet Dad goes ahead and asks me why I’m such a loner. Yes! Can you imagine? Worse yet, besides always picking on me and telling me also what a “loner” I am, Mom gives me a lecture about how rude I was Friday night for not staying in the kitchen and talking to Louise and company. She says her and Louise were discussing it on Saturday. Well, I’m so-o-o-r-r-r-y socialites, but maybe that’s how I want to live my fucking life!!! God, they get me so #!9!* MAD at them I could die.
10 June 1997
My world just keeps collapsing further and further. There is scarcely anything left to fall down upon me. I would not be exaggerating if I said that I am exhausted from the enormity of the weight of my life bearing down on me, and that I am a nervous wreck from it all. I am a tightly-packed bundle of nerves. I feel nauseous and my hands won’t stop shaking. I feel like bawling, but I can’t. I feel like a caged animal.
7 November 1993
After I got up this morning and did my morning routine, plus the dishes, I went for a long walk down the tracks, all the way to my dreaded tunnel. It’s cloudy and getting increasingly colder outside, so I bundled up and listened to Tori on my walkman. They replaced the rotting, extremely dangerous footbridge that spanned the stream alongside the tracks with a rusty, solid one. I was thankful, and sat there for a while, letting my feet dangle high over the rushing water, resting my cold face in my thick, warm gloves, and immersing myself in thought. I stood at the mouth of the tunnel with clenched fists and a furrowed brow, mesmerized by its dark deceit. It started to briefly flurry while I stood there, which I thought was an odd sort of symbolic justice. I glanced into the decrepit tunnel that is parallel to it, but I got away from it as quickly as possible, because it was even more terrifying than the original. I kept expecting a murderous bum to emerge from one of the tunnels and attack me, or a mirror image of me to appear at the opposite end of the tunnel, doing everything that I did, beckoning me to cross over to the other side, where everything is extremely right (my grades are perfect, I’m dating D., etc.) or extremely wrong, like in the beginning of Tales from the Darkside, where the scenery gets flipped to negative and everything becomes menacing, malignant.
25 February 1985
Remember when I went to the hospital to see Dr. Vanucci? Well, on March 1st I have to go again. Yucckkkk! Ma and I have to get up at 1:30 in the morning so that I fall asleep while they’re taking tests for two hours. (To see how my brain works.) Well, I WON’T fall asleep. Ma told me that I can’t go to bed early because I’ll be sleeping on the sofa bed with her, and they won’t want me to. I don’t go to school that day! Wish me luck!!!
5 October 1989
Sometimes I really do think I’m crazy. If I’m home alone, I hear movements below me, voices that don’t exist. Tonight I had an itch on my leg, so I scratched and scratched. It got all puffy and the skin got raw and peeled; I’d almost think it was diseased, ready to fall off. I can’t wait to get out of here, but I’m so frightened to. I’m going to go out there someday, conquer London, and create a vast empire of wealth for myself. Then I can come back and show them all! But first I need to learn to survive, before learning to fly.
But meanwhile…Mr. Webb liked my friendship essay! He actually said I had talent, something I had lost all faith in. I wish I could get back to the basics, to reality, to firm ground, to where things are safe…
4 May 2000
In the end, it boils down to this: I smell a depression coming. A few minutes ago I finally emailed Angela, Dave, and Mark, for the first time today, and told them I can smell those puppies coming from a mile away—I know them like the back of my hand. And it’s like when a storm is coming and the hairs on your arms might stand up and the static of expectation shivers through you. Not all menacing, encroaching storms amount to anything. Some of them are false alarms, but until the time hits, you don’t know for sure how big it will be, or how completely it will fizzle out without a trace. So right now, I see one coming…I smell it, I feel it, but I don’t know if it will amount to anything or not.
… I’ll just muddle through as always, until it gets easier or I get stronger and stop longing to disappear into a black hole that exists separately from death.
17 May 2004
Oh my god! I had a gorgeously wonderful surprise 30th birthday party thrown for me on Saturday!!!!! I haven’t had one of those since my 16th birthday! (My study abroad farewell party was supposed to be a surprise, but unfortunately, Joel let the secret slip beforehand. Bastard). I am so glad it stayed a secret. Elizabeth came really close to revealing the secret, and I’m so glad Heather stopped her!
My reflexes were so unbelievably slow yesterday! It must have been the heat and tiredness … When we walked into the restaurant, I noticed a 30 centerpiece on a table and I said, “Oh look, someone is celebrating their 30th birthday.” Then I saw Gates. I dimly thought, “Hey, there’s Gates” and for some reason it didn’t strike me as odd that Gates was sitting in a Chuck E. Cheese in Silver Spring. Then everyone yelled “Surprise!” and it was only then that I realized that I knew everybody sitting at the long table at which Gates was sitting. And yet, at the same time, I didn’t register the fact that they were there for me. Honest to god, I stared at them incomprehensively and blankly and it didn’t sink in that they were there for a surprise party for me. It must have taken me a good 5-10 seconds to realize what was happening!!! It was utterly surreal to see—for the first time—people from different areas of my life sitting all together at one table. Skevy caught the whole thing on video (via her digital camera); she said my reaction was priceless!
July 1984
Do you know what? I bought a portfolio to turn into a PRIVATE poem book. The best I ever made. And Barb thinks it’s for both of us! Yes, how I hate her! She says she’s getting a new haircut. But she won’t tell me what it’s going to be like. It’s probably gonna be a crewcut!
Why I hate Barbara slam book
person – Barbara
body – flat chested
clothes – Ugg! Out of style, way out!!!
family – grody
hair – ugly, icky, and plain
face – deranged
personality – brags, bossy, I think I’ll make a book, 101 reasons to hate Barb!
22 December 1985
Today Steve broke up with me. I’m not heartbroken or anything like that though.
22 May 1990
I hate Bob.
He says I’m a fruitloop who thinks I’m from London. He says I played with his dead…ha ha, no HEAD. I played with his head and he doesn’t know how he ever liked me. I wonder why all’s he ever does is talk constantly about people, but never to their face. I told Tami to tell him to go to hell. I wish I could dye my hair black and paint my eyes red and “dance in torn sheets in the rain.”
I wish I could go crazy and die.
1 October 1991
I wonder what it is that kills me slowly. I wonder what it is that creeps inside of me and steals my mind…
I have never felt so uncertain, so unfulfilled, so…restless before. What is missing from me? This has been going on for some time now. Is it because my position in school is so unsettled this year? I’ve always been so proud of my non-conformist ways, but now, being surrounded by scathing jocks, preppies, and cheerleaders, it has become my weakness. **I** am weak. I cannot face them anymore. This is all just too painful…this hatred of myself, this sudden doubting of my ways. Shut up Jen! I’m too scared to continue with that.
8 May 1992
In exactly one week, it will be Prom. I haven’t really thought much about it yet. I guess I’m nervous, and not real eager to go. Maybe the Grantville Holiday Inn will mysteriously explode soon. I hope.
21 June 1993
Yesterday, Gatesy, Missy, Foster, Heather, and I spent the afternoon swimming in Gatesy’s dad’s pool. It felt wonderful in the midst of this eternal, disgusting heat wave we’ve been having. Foster had a nervous breakdown when Heather kiddingly dunked her. Both Foster and Missy aren’t real water-friendly. Missy (who’s also developed an odd fear of going to bed while nobody else is awake) is terrified to go under water at all, and Foster will only go down if her nose is firmly clamped shut, because she “can’t breathe” underwater. Who can? Jeez. I love being underwater with my eyes open; it’s like a strange, distorted, intense new world. Many of my friends have such irrational fears: water, fire, sleeping, being buried alive. And what are my fears? Um, let’s see…love, sex, living, getting touched…just your typical 19-year-old fears. Yeah, right. Why do I always get things backwards?
10 February 1994
If I don’t somehow release this crushing blackness, it will kill me. Suicide hangs over me like a heavy, empty, moist grey sky. The thought of performing it consumes me.
10 January 2005
Afterwards we went secondhand shopping in Takoma Park, and since I had a Christmas gift certificate to Polly Sue’s, I spent some of it on a fabulous ’50s-style A-line tweed skirt, a bluish-silver 1960s party dress, and an atomic symbol ring. Deborah was gushing on and on to Virginia about how much she loves my sense of style. People at work are really hot for my clothing. They’ve got this idea that I’m very stylish, which seems really silly to me, because I’m like, “Did you ever see me in high school? Frump to the max.” Deborah said to Virginia, “one time she came to work in this vintage cocktail dress and silver heels and…” It made me giggle, because it sounded so ridiculous. I mean, it’s true, I did wear those things, but who in this day and age shows up to work—at a nonprofit, no less?—wearing a vintage cocktail dress and silver heels? Sometimes I wonder about myself.
song heard most recently before posting:
It’s Only Love—Heather Nova
I am, however, deeply worried that white supremacist nutcases will use Obama as their target practice. I worry that people are expecting miracles and if he doesn’t deliver them right away, they’ll start saying, “See? That’s why a black person shouldn’t be president” or “I knew the Democrats were talking shit when they said they could fix things.”
Still, at my core I believe we made the right decision in nominating him, and I really believe he’s going to bring energizing change to this country. It will undoubtedly be a long haul out of the quagmire we’re stuck in, but I honestly see light finally becoming visible at the end of the tunnel.
And now back to the past...
23 February 1987
Today something extremely awful happened to me. Fluffy died. Dad took her to the vet and when I came home from school, she wasn’t there. I cried to myself all night. I can’t believe it, I mean honestly can’t believe it. I’m so lonely and sad I could die.
17 March 1999
Last night was the worst. I was in the middle of my little, private memorial service for Benny when Dad called to tell me it was all over. He had just buried Benny, under the tree in our yard, like Mom requested. At the vet’s, Benny died quickly and painlessly. He was knocked out almost immediately, and his heart stopped maybe a minute later. My dear, sweet, beloved cuddly Benny. My little blond ragamuffin. My handsome golden man. He has been in my life since I was 13 ½ , and we watched each other grow up. Dad reminisced about the day we brought Benny home, which I don’t really remember. But I have so many good memories of him…when he was a puppy and would just race through the house on hyper binges, a tan streak whirling by…when we would take him up to the hockey field at LHS and just let him run and run…when he would wrestle with the end of my sleeve, teeth latched on, growling as I whipped him aback and forth by moving my sleeve…seems so long ago. Before I left on Sunday, I frantically pawed through Mom’s box of photos, looking for a picture of Benny and me that was taken shortly after I got him. I was a little eighth grader holding him in my arms. I wanted to frame that picture, and now I can’t find it. Oh god, my sweet, adorable boy. It will be so strange to go home at Easter and not have him be there. In honor of him, I bought a wood-burning kit at Wal-Mart on Saturday and I’m going to make him a tombstone this weekend. I also threw together the funeral mix I’ve been wanting to make for ages. It was originally planned for my own funeral, but I’ve been listening to it in my car for the past two days, and I listened to it during my memorial service last night, so it honors Benny’s death as well.
Leaving on Sunday was so incredibly difficult. I managed to fight back gulping tears until Mom walked me to my car, and then I started crying. She cried too. When I was saying goodbye to him, I told him that Nanny would be waiting for him on the other side, and he wouldn’t have any trouble breathing again, and his heart would no longer hurt, and he’d be able to run and play like he was a puppy again. It broke my heart. I couldn’t even look at him or touch him one last time before I headed out the door. I had to flee, because I was afraid I’d never be able to leave him if I held him again. I have an ache in my gut when I think about this. I hope he knows how much I love him—how much I always loved him.
29 June 2001
So, as you can see, everyone has been extremely wonderful. What matters most of all to me is that people recognize that this is a big loss. A lot of folks probably think that losing a pet is no big deal and they completely undermine how gun-wrenching the situation can be. I love that so many people took the time to let me know that they truly sympathize and understand that I have a right to be hurt.
It has been horrible in so many ways. It is horrible when I think about finding his lifeless body lying in the yard, ensnared in that dreadful chain-link fence. It is horrible when I think about how lonely and scared he must have been. It is horrible when I blame myself for not nailing shut the living room window screen and not hearing him escape because I sleep like death with my fan on full-blast at the foot of my bed. It is horrible when I see Plath standing alone when I bring out the treat jar. It is horrible when the litterbox is only half-full in the morning and the food bowl is only half-empty. It is horrible when I look at the corner—now empty—where Shoah’s blanket used to be, usually with him curled on top of it. It is horrible when I look at the purple catbed where he used to lie all the time. It is horrible when I see only one face at the window as I pull into the driveway, rather than two faces. It is horrible when I ache to pet Shoah under the chin, comb him … and spank him until he drops to the ground, rolling around and purring.
Did I remember to tell him that I love him the day before he died? I know I was cooing over him as he slept on his blanket, and I remember petting him on the chin at that time, too. Just the other day he was lying in the closet and I teased him about being gay, and then reached out my arm to lightly touch his outstretched arm, and he didn’t pull his paw away. So we lay there, facing each other, hand and paw outstretched, lightly touching. Did I remember to tell him that I love him after I put him in the ground?
I feel numb and lost. I feel even more listless than usual when it comes to doing anything and thinking about anything. Sometimes I feel like there is a barb of sorrow lodged in my heart; other times it feels more like I “took a knife, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.”
I want this to be okay for both Plath and me. I want Shoah to be okay, and at peace. Oh, my sweet, beautiful, squeaky, soft, wonderful little boy!!
4 July 1988
I’m home alone now, but in a few minutes Dad is picking me up to eat at Rachel’s. I’m pissed at him and Mom. They’re enough to drive a depressed kid to suicide. They know how “sensitive” I am, and how easily I can be brought down, yet Dad goes ahead and asks me why I’m such a loner. Yes! Can you imagine? Worse yet, besides always picking on me and telling me also what a “loner” I am, Mom gives me a lecture about how rude I was Friday night for not staying in the kitchen and talking to Louise and company. She says her and Louise were discussing it on Saturday. Well, I’m so-o-o-r-r-r-y socialites, but maybe that’s how I want to live my fucking life!!! God, they get me so #!9!* MAD at them I could die.
10 June 1997
My world just keeps collapsing further and further. There is scarcely anything left to fall down upon me. I would not be exaggerating if I said that I am exhausted from the enormity of the weight of my life bearing down on me, and that I am a nervous wreck from it all. I am a tightly-packed bundle of nerves. I feel nauseous and my hands won’t stop shaking. I feel like bawling, but I can’t. I feel like a caged animal.
7 November 1993
After I got up this morning and did my morning routine, plus the dishes, I went for a long walk down the tracks, all the way to my dreaded tunnel. It’s cloudy and getting increasingly colder outside, so I bundled up and listened to Tori on my walkman. They replaced the rotting, extremely dangerous footbridge that spanned the stream alongside the tracks with a rusty, solid one. I was thankful, and sat there for a while, letting my feet dangle high over the rushing water, resting my cold face in my thick, warm gloves, and immersing myself in thought. I stood at the mouth of the tunnel with clenched fists and a furrowed brow, mesmerized by its dark deceit. It started to briefly flurry while I stood there, which I thought was an odd sort of symbolic justice. I glanced into the decrepit tunnel that is parallel to it, but I got away from it as quickly as possible, because it was even more terrifying than the original. I kept expecting a murderous bum to emerge from one of the tunnels and attack me, or a mirror image of me to appear at the opposite end of the tunnel, doing everything that I did, beckoning me to cross over to the other side, where everything is extremely right (my grades are perfect, I’m dating D., etc.) or extremely wrong, like in the beginning of Tales from the Darkside, where the scenery gets flipped to negative and everything becomes menacing, malignant.
25 February 1985
Remember when I went to the hospital to see Dr. Vanucci? Well, on March 1st I have to go again. Yucckkkk! Ma and I have to get up at 1:30 in the morning so that I fall asleep while they’re taking tests for two hours. (To see how my brain works.) Well, I WON’T fall asleep. Ma told me that I can’t go to bed early because I’ll be sleeping on the sofa bed with her, and they won’t want me to. I don’t go to school that day! Wish me luck!!!
5 October 1989
Sometimes I really do think I’m crazy. If I’m home alone, I hear movements below me, voices that don’t exist. Tonight I had an itch on my leg, so I scratched and scratched. It got all puffy and the skin got raw and peeled; I’d almost think it was diseased, ready to fall off. I can’t wait to get out of here, but I’m so frightened to. I’m going to go out there someday, conquer London, and create a vast empire of wealth for myself. Then I can come back and show them all! But first I need to learn to survive, before learning to fly.
But meanwhile…Mr. Webb liked my friendship essay! He actually said I had talent, something I had lost all faith in. I wish I could get back to the basics, to reality, to firm ground, to where things are safe…
4 May 2000
In the end, it boils down to this: I smell a depression coming. A few minutes ago I finally emailed Angela, Dave, and Mark, for the first time today, and told them I can smell those puppies coming from a mile away—I know them like the back of my hand. And it’s like when a storm is coming and the hairs on your arms might stand up and the static of expectation shivers through you. Not all menacing, encroaching storms amount to anything. Some of them are false alarms, but until the time hits, you don’t know for sure how big it will be, or how completely it will fizzle out without a trace. So right now, I see one coming…I smell it, I feel it, but I don’t know if it will amount to anything or not.
… I’ll just muddle through as always, until it gets easier or I get stronger and stop longing to disappear into a black hole that exists separately from death.
17 May 2004
Oh my god! I had a gorgeously wonderful surprise 30th birthday party thrown for me on Saturday!!!!! I haven’t had one of those since my 16th birthday! (My study abroad farewell party was supposed to be a surprise, but unfortunately, Joel let the secret slip beforehand. Bastard). I am so glad it stayed a secret. Elizabeth came really close to revealing the secret, and I’m so glad Heather stopped her!
My reflexes were so unbelievably slow yesterday! It must have been the heat and tiredness … When we walked into the restaurant, I noticed a 30 centerpiece on a table and I said, “Oh look, someone is celebrating their 30th birthday.” Then I saw Gates. I dimly thought, “Hey, there’s Gates” and for some reason it didn’t strike me as odd that Gates was sitting in a Chuck E. Cheese in Silver Spring. Then everyone yelled “Surprise!” and it was only then that I realized that I knew everybody sitting at the long table at which Gates was sitting. And yet, at the same time, I didn’t register the fact that they were there for me. Honest to god, I stared at them incomprehensively and blankly and it didn’t sink in that they were there for a surprise party for me. It must have taken me a good 5-10 seconds to realize what was happening!!! It was utterly surreal to see—for the first time—people from different areas of my life sitting all together at one table. Skevy caught the whole thing on video (via her digital camera); she said my reaction was priceless!
July 1984
Do you know what? I bought a portfolio to turn into a PRIVATE poem book. The best I ever made. And Barb thinks it’s for both of us! Yes, how I hate her! She says she’s getting a new haircut. But she won’t tell me what it’s going to be like. It’s probably gonna be a crewcut!
Why I hate Barbara slam book
person – Barbara
body – flat chested
clothes – Ugg! Out of style, way out!!!
family – grody
hair – ugly, icky, and plain
face – deranged
personality – brags, bossy, I think I’ll make a book, 101 reasons to hate Barb!
22 December 1985
Today Steve broke up with me. I’m not heartbroken or anything like that though.
22 May 1990
I hate Bob.
He says I’m a fruitloop who thinks I’m from London. He says I played with his dead…ha ha, no HEAD. I played with his head and he doesn’t know how he ever liked me. I wonder why all’s he ever does is talk constantly about people, but never to their face. I told Tami to tell him to go to hell. I wish I could dye my hair black and paint my eyes red and “dance in torn sheets in the rain.”
I wish I could go crazy and die.
1 October 1991
I wonder what it is that kills me slowly. I wonder what it is that creeps inside of me and steals my mind…
I have never felt so uncertain, so unfulfilled, so…restless before. What is missing from me? This has been going on for some time now. Is it because my position in school is so unsettled this year? I’ve always been so proud of my non-conformist ways, but now, being surrounded by scathing jocks, preppies, and cheerleaders, it has become my weakness. **I** am weak. I cannot face them anymore. This is all just too painful…this hatred of myself, this sudden doubting of my ways. Shut up Jen! I’m too scared to continue with that.
8 May 1992
In exactly one week, it will be Prom. I haven’t really thought much about it yet. I guess I’m nervous, and not real eager to go. Maybe the Grantville Holiday Inn will mysteriously explode soon. I hope.
21 June 1993
Yesterday, Gatesy, Missy, Foster, Heather, and I spent the afternoon swimming in Gatesy’s dad’s pool. It felt wonderful in the midst of this eternal, disgusting heat wave we’ve been having. Foster had a nervous breakdown when Heather kiddingly dunked her. Both Foster and Missy aren’t real water-friendly. Missy (who’s also developed an odd fear of going to bed while nobody else is awake) is terrified to go under water at all, and Foster will only go down if her nose is firmly clamped shut, because she “can’t breathe” underwater. Who can? Jeez. I love being underwater with my eyes open; it’s like a strange, distorted, intense new world. Many of my friends have such irrational fears: water, fire, sleeping, being buried alive. And what are my fears? Um, let’s see…love, sex, living, getting touched…just your typical 19-year-old fears. Yeah, right. Why do I always get things backwards?
10 February 1994
If I don’t somehow release this crushing blackness, it will kill me. Suicide hangs over me like a heavy, empty, moist grey sky. The thought of performing it consumes me.
10 January 2005
Afterwards we went secondhand shopping in Takoma Park, and since I had a Christmas gift certificate to Polly Sue’s, I spent some of it on a fabulous ’50s-style A-line tweed skirt, a bluish-silver 1960s party dress, and an atomic symbol ring. Deborah was gushing on and on to Virginia about how much she loves my sense of style. People at work are really hot for my clothing. They’ve got this idea that I’m very stylish, which seems really silly to me, because I’m like, “Did you ever see me in high school? Frump to the max.” Deborah said to Virginia, “one time she came to work in this vintage cocktail dress and silver heels and…” It made me giggle, because it sounded so ridiculous. I mean, it’s true, I did wear those things, but who in this day and age shows up to work—at a nonprofit, no less?—wearing a vintage cocktail dress and silver heels? Sometimes I wonder about myself.
song heard most recently before posting:
It’s Only Love—Heather Nova
Monday, October 27, 2008
interlude: R.I.P., Tessa
Tessa M. ? − October 23, 2008
At my office we’re lucky to have a thriving dogs-in-the-workplace policy, and my department was home to one very special resident: a Cocker spaniel mix named Tessa. I was raised with dogs—I was in my early twenties before cats strutted into my life—and although I love my cats with every cell of my body and would walk through fire for them, there’s something about a dog’s love that just can’t be replicated. I miss it. Tessa graciously filled that void with a heady mix of gentleness and gusto.
On Thursday, October 23, Tessa passed away unexpectedly. She hadn’t been feeling well on Wednesday and was far more subdued than usual. As I rubbed her ears and wished her well, I had no idea it would be the last time I’d ever see her. Work just isn’t the same without her; suddenly there’s a Tessa-shaped hole in our department.
She was the best part of each workday; I was excited to arrive at the office just to see her. Sometimes I’d find her waiting at my department’s front doggy gate; other times I’d be settled in my cubicle before I’d hear the familiar jangling of her tags as she raced into my cube to greet me (and check out my garbage can for scraps, of course!). I would take breaks multiple times during the day just to rub her silky ears and scratch her back. I loved seeing her periodically saunter by my cubicle with her sassy little walk, always on the hunt for a vigorous petting, a treat, or a discarded morsel of food.
I adored that girl. When her parents went on a weeklong vacation over the summer, Tessa stayed at a doggy daycare boarding facility that had webcams, and I found myself checking the webcams at least twice a day, hoping to catch a glimpse of that little black and tan dervish. She was a spitfire, to be sure; she figured out how to open desk drawers with her teeth, to get to the treats buried within, and she managed to unlock the doggy gate on more than one occasion, streaking off into the bowels of the office with unbridled joy. She stole food from all of us at one point or another, but oh did we love her. We just couldn’t be angry with her, no matter what her doggy transgressions may have been.
What’s remarkable, given her energy and mischievous spark, is that Tessa wasn’t even a puppy—she was believed to be 10 years old. She was adopted this past January from a rescue group, Oldies But Goodies, specializing in the placement of older and elderly Cocker spaniels. She was only with us for 10 months, but during that time she made one hell of an impression. I liken it to the northern lights: a chance encounter, a wondrous blaze of luminous beauty that’s here and gone, never to be replicated in quite the same way again.
Her parents, Angela and Zack, deserve accolades for adopting an older dog. So many people are bewitched by the fuzzy bundle of undeniable adorableness that is a puppy—the idea of adopting an older dog, much less an elderly dog, never even crosses their minds. Hell, until Tessa came along, it never crossed my mind. Others are reluctant to undertake such an adoption because of increased veterinary care expenses and a heightened fear of impending loss. There’s this idea of “Oh, I don’t want to adopt a dog only to have him die on me a few months later!” What they fail to recognize is life’s lack of guarantees. Through accident or unexpected illness, a puppy can die just as easily as an older dog. Sadly, nothing is ever certain.
There’s an AIDS memorial inscription in my quotations collection: To love something you know will die is holy. Whenever we willfully choose to assume the responsibility of loving someone, we do so with the knowledge that we could lose that person or animal. It’s not something most people choose to dwell on, although those of us with morose inclinations often keep this knowledge alive in our periphery. The truth is that a thread of mortality constantly runs through the fabric of life, and whether we ignore it or not, it’s still there. But it blends in so seamlessly, it’s almost imperceptible—except in situations where death, illness, or serious accidents cause it to flare into everyone’s line of sight.
Those who choose to bring an older animal into their hearts are at once beautiful and brave because they openly acknowledge this mortality and refuse to let it intimidate them. I’m not religious in the least, but I love that aforementioned inscription’s use of the word holy to describe the act of loving someone even in the face of impending loss.
In taking a chance on her, Tessa’s parents gave her what were undoubtedly the best 10 months of her life. The happenings of her first decade remain a mystery, but given the fact that she was a stray and two bullets were found inside of her, we can only assume those years were far from ideal. But then, in the home stretch, she found a loving family with all its accompanying pleasures: toys, treats, kisses, walks, adoration, safety. The next time I adopt an animal, you can be sure I’ll follow Angela and Zack's lead and choose one who is older—one who needs a second chance like the one given to Tessa.
Angela created a lovely memorial slideshow for Tessa; you can view it here.
Rest in peace, Tessa!
song heard most recently before posting:
The Drop—Peter Gabriel
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
25 years: a retrospective (part 5)
6 September 1983
Fluffy’s Birthday was GREAT! We had streamer letters and everything! Tomorrow’s school! I’m kinda anxious and scared. I’m really gonna have butterflies! But we go at 10 I think and leave at 2. The school lunches are 90¢ this year! A lot. Soon it will be a million dollars.
31 December 1983
Well, tomorrow’s Jan. I just want to say, thank you and I love you very much. Since you helped me through problems. I really want to thank you. Even though I didn’t write in you every day I still love you. You were my best friend in my whole life. When I had a problem I could only tell it to you. Even though I got another diary it won’t be the same. I’ll really miss you. Good bye! Happy new year!
31 December, last day of 1985
Tonight Nanny and Papa come over and we have to go to church. Today Andrea called and she was crying because a friend, Michelle (Kris knew her too) died today. See, her mother fell asleep with a cigarette and the house burned down killing her and her mother. It’s sad. Well, tomorrow is 1986 and then the day after we go back to school. Yuck! I plan to take lots of pictures tonight and tomorrow. Sunday was fun and Heather went too. We went to see SPIES LIKE US. I can’t wait till tonight! I made lots of noisemakers. Well, I better go now. I’m having a spasm in my hand. Happy New Year!
31 December 1989
This officially is my last entry of the decade. It seems scary in an overwhelming sense, because what remains? I’m almost sorry I didn’t pay more attention to the eighties. Suddenly they’ve slipped by, leaving me with a cold, unfamiliar stretch of ten years to endure. Will they be great? Will they be the beginning of the end? Just think…next time I exit a decade I’ll be twenty-five years old! Maybe I’ll be married and have kids. What lies ahead? It’s hard to fuse the line between beginnings and endings. In one second the transition from the end of December in the end of the 80s goes to the beginning of January in the beginning of the 90s.
Stop my speculating! Wow, do I have gas. Sorry. I conclude my darling eighties as I conclude every other year…with my family, and lots of pensive thought on what lies ahead, though I know time will fly and soon I’ll be reading over my worries and predictions in you.
God bless you … and me, in the 1990s yet to come. I love you.
16 January 1997
I need to do something creative and fulfilling soon. I really need to get off my ass this weekend and, say, take black & white pictures or begin the mosaic project that I want to make for Terry, Heather, and Annida. When I’m at work, I get all these inspiring ideas to do everything from creative projects to just cleaning my room, organizing my things, etc. I never do any of it. The second I get home, I’m tired and apathetic and lazy. I change into comfortable clothes, eat dinner, and watch TV until it’s time to go to bed. Sometimes I do a little reading. It has been getting worse lately. And now my mind is getting as lethargic and mired in mud as my body and my personality. I can’t think. I can’t concentrate or remember anything. I keep making the stupidest, most embarrassing mistakes [at work], because everything goes in one ear and out the other, with no traces remaining. I feel like I am in a constant daze or mental fog. First my body seemed to die, and I became more listless than usual. Then my creativity began to die. I can’t write anymore, or think up cool projects, or anything else like that. In other words, my voice died. Now my mental prowess is dying. I am not myself anymore…
14 March 2000
I realize that it isn’t because I long for F.—he isn’t who I’m pining for, even though it was his body I embraced in my dream and his face I kissed so passionately. He was just a mask worn over an idea, and the mask was his because he’s the one I’ve been interested in lately. But it is the idea that I am truly in love with, the idea that I long to obtain. The idea is my old, desperate longing for The One. Whether he could be considered my soulmate or not, he is the one I am meant to spend my life with. I am such a fucking romantic…I just think that love and romance and sex and relationships are divine primal unions…the closest thing to god I will ever be able to touch. … At my core, I have the utmost respect for those aforementioned things. I don’t take them lightly at all. They are gifts to be treasured and all I really want out of this life is to have a chance to celebrate them with The One, whoever he may be. F. is just the latest face I have stapled onto the intangible man of my dreams. When I feel such intense sadness at my attempts to let F. go, it isn’t him I’m sad to lose—it’s the light that flutters in my heart whenever I begin to resurrect those old dreams of finding and obtaining The One. When I let my numb heart defrost a little bit and let a new crush in, I am swamped with such wondrous, positive emotions, and of course I hesitate to let them go when it’s time to let go of the futile crush.
Oh god, my appetite for this mysterious One is almost palpable. I breathe it, I sweat it. I want nothing more than to just hold him…not even kissing him or making love with him, but just holding him. I can’t stop thinking about how warm and secure his arms will feel around me, how perfectly we will make our bodies fit into one another when we curl up in bed together. Even though I can’t smell, I think of burying my face in his skin and breathing in his warm, moist, salt-scent. I think of him loving me and accepting me completely, and not seeing all of the flaws I see in myself. Yet he wouldn’t put me on a pedestal and think of me as being infallible, because that pressure would be too much for me to bear, and it would minimize my dark attributes which I readily accept. I think of how being him won’t just be safe and secure and comforting, but how it will carry tremendous, thunderous energy, too…When we are together, the molecules around us will jar and dance and vibrate with our electricity. What I am seeking is magic, in all its subtle and not-so-subtle forms. A love so intense that I want to cry when I am not with him; yet I will not be absorbed into him, unable to function on my own. I guess what I’m seeking is an unobtainable miracle that I just can’t absolve…
11 August 2004
It’s really the longing that bothers me most of all. I don’t want to long for anybody. I want to be the pumpkin whose inner flesh and seeds are scooped out, leaving a smooth, hallow, lovely shell. I was doing so well in my quest for asexual numbness, but then I began periodically tripping over curbs of desire, falling to my knees and scraping them open. These are no smooth, hallow, lovely scrapes—they are messy, damp, raw. They sting. They take ages to heal. And even after they heal, there are scars left behind. I don’t want to long for anybody. I want my heart to belong to me alone (well…along with my family, friends, and cats, of course!). There’s not enough room in it for a mysterious Him. There’s not enough room for both of us. One of us must be blotted out, and I don’t want it to be me.
I slide back into my pessimistic view that romantic love in its purest form is nearly scientifically impossible in the end. How are we really expected to find good matches in a world this big? Sure, you can register with match.com, but what if your best matches are only registered on other personal ad sites, or aren’t registered anywhere at all? Or what if they are placing ads in San Francisco or Toronto newspapers, which you’ll never see? What if your best matches live far away? How am I supposed to meet a Perfect Match if he lives in fucking North Dakota? And what is a Perfect Match, anyway? What are the odds I’ll find a guy who is attractive to me physically and possesses all the emotional and mental traits I seek? And what are the odds that this guy would feel the same way about me? If he exists, and I somehow find him, what if he happens to be married? Or gay? Or in prison? Or a drug addict? What if he just doesn’t see me as his perfect mate? What if he’s totally perfect except for the teensy-weensy problem of abusiveness? What if we’re sexually incompatible? Or what if he’s perfect but he’s got a terminal disease? The list is endless. And so bear little hope that I will ever find a good match for me. Plus I don’t want to risk potential heartbreak. I could meet someone and fall in love, only to have him dump me three years down the line. Most people can deal with the heartbreak and move on to someone new, but I dwell on things and obsess to the point of having my head explode. It is extremely difficult for me to let things go. And men aren’t exactly lining up around the block to date me, so if I manage to luck into a good relationship and it fails, odds are, that is my last chance—or at least my last chance when I’m young. If it takes me over 30 years to find one guy, it’s safe to assume that it’d take me another 30 years to find a second guy. Or maybe it would take longer.
17 June 1985
Ma spilled a drawer of Kris’ earrings and I helped her clean them up before Kris found out and then she goes to me “stop your complaining.” Humff! That’s not fair and then she tells Kris. Geez, I know I’m just an afterthought after Kris was born. On Saturday Kelly and Scott slept over, we saw the GOONIES. Data and Mouth were (from the movie) SO cute.
21 June 1989
If only I was prettier. I have this horrible rash on my legs, so I’m running around in pants since I’m so ashamed. My face is all out of shape, and I must radiate coldness, or something. Cold and ugly, and no one likes me. God, what do you do when life hurts so much? I couldn’t kill myself, couldn’t go mad…sometimes I just don’t know what to do.
1 April 1994
Darkness continues to sizzle over me again, like the sizzling coffee that is brewing beside me. It is interrupted by momentary flashes of light; just enough to make the black more agonizing when it strikes. I am tired. I woke up at 8:15 this morning, even though I only got to bed after 2 a.m. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of the sleeplessness, the stomach pains, the numb spots on my head, the crying spells, the feeling that everyone hates me so very much. I feel like: “Circles and circles and circles again, the girl’s in circles and circles—got to stop spinning…” I feel like I’m spinning around in rough, rapid circles in the middle of a field, like I did when I was little. I turn faster and faster…and I grow dizzy, nauseous, exhausted, disoriented. This is the part where I’m supposed to collapse to the ground and relax as the rest of the world continues to swirl sickly above me. But I can’t stop. I can’t stop spinning and I must stop…
10 May 1996
England. Here’s the part where I go off on a selfish tangent, as if Nanny is only worthy of a paragraph prelude to my life and problems. I love her. I will never stop loving her with the force I felt on the day she died. Perhaps that’s the only thing that matters—how fiercely and deeply I anchor her inside of me, not how many times I dutifully visit her grave. Or perhaps I’m just rationalizing my shittiness again. I seem to be quite good at doing that. Anyway, my head tells me that it’s probably not a good idea to go to England. The intense financial strain, social strains, and legal strains may make it more trouble than it’s worth. I could be walking from one friendship frying pan into another, since a lot of my London pals have been somewhat distant or absent lately. My heart, however, tells me that it is the right thing to do. It has been pulling me mercilessly along towards England since I was fourteen. It has to be more to it than the fact that London is a brilliant city that I love. There has to be some reason why moving there feels like my destiny. Nothing really happened during my year abroad to satiate the curiosity I feel towards this puzzling need to live there. In fact, I spent a good portion of my time there mildly homesick, and eagerly looking forward to returning home. Maybe a great success will befall me once I’m there, like how Tori Amos only got successful once she moved to England. Maybe it will only be a calm, simple peacefulness—I’ll get my dream job, live in my dream house, get more wonderful friends, and just generally find a happiness that may’ve eluded me if I had stayed in the States, for whatever reason.
19 May 1999
Here I am, sitting in the Gate 54 waiting area at Newark Airport, listening to my Funeral Mix and trying to ignore the icy rivulets of fear trickling inside my stomach like drippings down a slimy sewer wall. My favorite song, “Gloomy Winter,” is playing. I just caught a glimpse of some girl who looks like Annida out of the corner of my eye. The landscape beyond the window in front of me is half-dead, a listless blue gray. The runway is still wet from the showers we encountered while driving here.
Two and a half years later, I have finally, finally reached this point. Had somebody told me on that dark October day in 1996 that it would take me two years and seven months to return to England, I would have curled up in a corner and died.
I was surprisingly okay until I walked into the airport. Then a dim, all-encompassing fear filled me, although I surely appear outwardly calm. I thought by now I’d be a hysterical, diarrhea-splattered mess. I can feel that large Frosty that Dad bought me en route churning in my stomach, though.
I am so afraid. I think that even if I knew that they will definitely let me into the country, I would still be afraid. What if my money doesn’t last? What if the conference is horrible? What if Annida and I don’t get along? Oh god, my feet are numb and my hands are clammy.
20 May 1999
I’m in! I’m in! I’m in! I’m in! I’m in! I’m in!!!!!
Now all I have to do is stop SHAKING!!!!
24 November 1990
Mum says Bush now forbids anyone in the army from leaving, even if their time is up. And everyone is getting drafted right and left. She said that’s a sure sign of war, this containing of troops. The president is all set for war.
I never lived during a war. At first I thought it was an exciting, if not grotesque, prospect, but now it’s scary. They have nuclear weapons, don’t they? And they’re being controlled by a madman. I know one person over there—Todd S. I wonder how it would change here, besides having a horrific gasoline ration. Suppose we all die. Oh God.
Last year at this time the world seemed to be catapulted into perfection. The Berlin Wall was down. Ceausescu was killed. Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland were free. In Central America, terrible leaders were being thrown out. Even Russia is barely Communistic anymore. Now this. Thatcher is out of parliament in England, too; whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know. Damn the Middle East. I’m 16! I don’t want to get bombed.
14 January 1991
…so I lay in bed crying. We tremble over the basin of history, of anticipation, of war. I never thought it would come to this, whatever this is. Yes, the 15th is upon us, and no one knows what eachother is doing. I just heard on the radio speeches (excerpts) from Bush, Hussein, and Congress set to “From a Distance.” It was so sad. I’m so afraid. I don’t know what to think; I’m against war, of course, but there’s so much I don’t know about what’s going on, I’m kind of neutral. God save us from ourselves.
Yes, from a distance God is watching us…and shaking his head in sorrow at what he sees.
Can write no more.
15 January 1991 (10:58pm)
One hour until war.
“All we are saying is give peace a chance…”
16 January 1991
Oh God oh God oh God
There’s no way I can tell you how I feel now, how unreal this is. I am incapable of describing it.
We are at war. War.
At about 7 pm they started pulling tanks up to Iraq, and bombers. I heard it on the radio on my way to Boscovs. It was coming, and there’s no way to stop it. A few minutes later, on my way home, as I drove slowly through the thick fog, the DJ on WINK 104 said suddenly, “We are now officially at war.” I was so shaken. Missy and I talked on the phone about it for awhile, then since then I’ve been watching the news on all the TV stations. Bush’s address was on at 9. I even noticed on Channel 17, which was carrying a basketball game, that they calmly ran the words, “The United States is now at war with Iraq.” And they went on with the game. How can those crowds cheer when they know? This isn’t real, it can’t be. Where is the massive black cloud, stifling and filled with thunder, which is supposed to descend with war? Will life go one? I’ll get up at 7, go to school, dance at musical…and we’ll be at war.
I am now watching MTV. Even on MTV, the filth of our government exists. Kurt Loder is broadcasting from a huge protest in Times Square. Every video has to do with peace, especially the re-release of “Give Peace a Chance.” On MTV: The End of the Innocence, Pray, Give Peace a Chance, A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, Something to Believe In, Let Love Rule.
This scares me … more than you would ever believe. They have nuclear bombs. They have terrorists in our country now (what happens if they get a hold of TMI?). They have a leader who is determined to bring us, and his own country, down with his fall. Those nuclear bombs scare me so much I have nightmares. And we, as a nation, are bound in this together. I think of [how] even the stars in California, who exist in perfect TV worlds, are a part of this war. The government…the rich…the poor…me.
Missy’s cousin and Jenn’s uncle are both in the aerial war going on now (but the news says Iraq gives little resistance in that war) and I’m afraid of their dying.
I feel guilty at times. I feel guilty because parts of me want the excitement and horror of war to grow, and last, but then my conscience catches up and says “You are mad. What if you are nuclear bombed? This could be the end.” So I start shaking like a cold, wet leaf, and wait in fear of this.
3 September 1988
I think that if I have to hear one more fucking lecture out of my fucking mother, I’m going to fucking die. She always does it to me. Always! This time it was because she thinks I’m wasting my money on a Lost Boys tape. What else am I supposed to do with the money? Why I want the tape I can’t explain. I have to wait till this Friday to get it, though. Once again I have this “dead” feeling around me. It’s like a heavy weight that makes me feel like I have to cry. I won’t though. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
16 September 1989
I’m not sure I can honestly say I feel at least a little better. It scares me sometimes, how nothing can ever penetrate the somber cloud above my head. Look at me, I’m fifteen years old, young, alive, semi-healthy, and I hate life! I loathe it! Now, can you tell me that’s normal? Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do about anything. I’m so afraid of everything, so afraid of living. It’s strange…sometimes I’ll be doing something, and suddenly just want to die. Let God give me cancer, or kill me. I don’t care. Oh please! Pull me away from this.
… Why am I torturing myself so? I mean, what is really wrong with me? I want to see a psychiatrist, but I’m so goddamn protective of my feelings and emotions, I’m afraid it would never work. I wish someone would tell me why I’m on one side of the mirror, and can’t break through.
20 November 1992
I can feel that it’s back again, crawling on my soul like a cancerous shadow. I can’t explain it—it’s just a stinking blackness that’s bleeding me dry. Oh, blood. Oh good Christ. Blood. Like a drug, I need to slash my wrist very badly right now. I need to feel that power, to feel as if I have some degree of control over my twisted life, my twisted thoughts.
28 August 1993
… we had the first annual stalking awards. There were three ties, but I still majorly cleaned up. I won 7 ribbons, after barely voting for myself! I guess that you could say that I’m the Queen o’ Stalking. We all (Gatesy, Heller, Foster, Laura, Terry, Shawn, Missy, and I) went to Yummy’s Chinese Restaurant in Palmyra for a very long period of time, to eat huge amounts of food and be very loud and obnoxious. I had to take almost my entire plate of “Buddha Supreme” along in the car with me, since it was only served to me about ten minutes before we left. Then I got the idea to leave it, uncovered, on Gatesy’s neighbor’s doorstep. Someone else suggested that it be left on Ben’s instead. So, Laura, Terry, Shawn, Missy, and I went to the adult bookstore along Rt. 422, and we three chicks went in, sort of embarrassed, and shamefacedly bought a cheap plastic dildo, which we stuck up out of my gooey Chinese food, leaving it on Ben and Psycho Jackie’s doorstep. Laura and I were the ones who crept stealthily through the dark and left it in there, giggling madly. Terry invited us to go swimming quietly in his neighbors’ pool, which they let him use anytime he wants. It was a beautiful night—clear, warm, with a visible moon. The pool water was just right. We were reveling in the fact that we were finally nightswimming, and in the spirit of the moment, with modesty cast alongside the pool with our clothing and bathing suits, we went skinnydipping. [We were] swirling about naked in a pool, exhilarated and wondering what would happen if Terry’s neighbors discovered five naked teenagers (four of them total strangers) swimming about in their pool at 2 a.m. … I never felt more alive in my life then I did at that very time. Alive and free. Unchained. Wicked.
6 December 2004
We were there for around three hours and the waiters and other patrons were probably so glad to see us leave. We were loud and kept screaming with laughter and we said our usual round of inappropriate things. At one point Charlie mentioned his boyfriend, and then he got this panicked look on his face, as if he expected someone to kill him on the spot for being gay. We laughed at the idea of someone whipping out a gun and shooting him in the head three seconds after he said the word “boyfriend.” So during the rest of dinner, Missy and I would periodically yell “Bang!” at Charlie and he’d slump over in his chair. And, being the dorks that we are, we all decided to trade driver’s licenses so we could laugh at one another’s photos. Charlie was like, “Ready, set, pass to your left!” I laughed so hard at Boot’s license photo, I literally couldn’t breathe. I was in pain. Bob’s photo makes it look like he’s got hydroencephalitis and is standing in front of a funhouse mirror. Danielle’s photo has the Crazy Eyes. Charlie roared with laughter when he saw that Missy’s license claims she only weighs 200 pounds. She fired back, “Well, your license says that you’re male!” and I shrieked “BURN!!!!” at him.
Ha, and at one point, Charlie asked me how old I thought Gates's fiance was, and I said, “I dunno…30?” and everyone laughed because he’s only 23. Whoops!
Oh, and I’ve gotten Missy completely obsessed with the idea of going on The Amazing Race with Charlie. So we spent a good part of dinner discussing our future audition tapes and how we’d act on TAR. Missy and Charlie are obsessed with being called “America’s Sweethearts” and having all of America fall in love with them, based on their TAR performance. Danielle and Tony are going to be another team, and Bootsy and I are going to be a third team. Missy said the tagline beneath us will say “vegan and fister.” “Hey, I’m not a vegan!” I cried. Naturally Boot didn’t follow it up with “And I’m not a fister!”…because, well, he is.
2 February 1994
The most fucked up thing ever just happened to me. I was crossing Linden St. between J-Hall and Hyland Hall to come to this class, and I had to walk through two grimy men. One stopped me and refused to let me proceed, because he was entranced by my nose ring. He asked me why I have it and his eyes rolled in different directions. He was very hard to understand. He told me secretively that he had his balls pierced. I tried to act nice and calm by saying “Oh really?” and asking him if it hurt, etc. He said “no” but that it stung a bit. I said that mine didn’t hurt either. I thought he asked me if I screamed, but he must’ve actually asked me if I creamed. I said “no.” He goes “You didn’t cream?” and grabbed me again as I tried to walk away. He asked me how many kids I had and I exclaimed “None! I have to go!” He put his arm around me and pulled me in tight and asked me if I wanted to start having them right then and there with him. I thought “Oh my god, he’s going to rape me,” even though there were students milling around. I said “No!” and broke away to class.
14 September 1995
Anyway, in the bathroom … I sobbed my eyes out and hyperventilated for a good half hour. I tried to retch into the toilet, I pinched my arm repeatedly [to try to] wake myself up, and I rolled around fetally on the floor. It really was like some nightmare. I felt utterly alone. I literally could not stop crying, and it really frightened me.
14 January 1986
I’ve got shocking news. Ma got a job! I’ll die. She will be home when I get home, and only work 4 days a week and I might get a increase in allowance but here are bad things:
we won’t go to Hershey Park
I’ll be all alone every day
I’ll have to vacuum and dust my room
we won’t go to Park City
we won’t go to pool
works summer
there’s no way now to go on vacation
or, if Fluffy dies I’ll really be all alone forever. I’ll never speak to Ma again!!!
18 February 1987
I’m starting to get irritated at Wendy. She’s always borrowing pens and pencils and never returning them. She also says that we’re best friends in school but as soon as we’re near other friends she practically ignores me. I have to run errands for her too, sometimes. I wish I’d be pretty and popular and never have to worry about these problems.
song heard most recently before posting:
Yes—Coldplay
Fluffy’s Birthday was GREAT! We had streamer letters and everything! Tomorrow’s school! I’m kinda anxious and scared. I’m really gonna have butterflies! But we go at 10 I think and leave at 2. The school lunches are 90¢ this year! A lot. Soon it will be a million dollars.
31 December 1983
Well, tomorrow’s Jan. I just want to say, thank you and I love you very much. Since you helped me through problems. I really want to thank you. Even though I didn’t write in you every day I still love you. You were my best friend in my whole life. When I had a problem I could only tell it to you. Even though I got another diary it won’t be the same. I’ll really miss you. Good bye! Happy new year!
31 December, last day of 1985
Tonight Nanny and Papa come over and we have to go to church. Today Andrea called and she was crying because a friend, Michelle (Kris knew her too) died today. See, her mother fell asleep with a cigarette and the house burned down killing her and her mother. It’s sad. Well, tomorrow is 1986 and then the day after we go back to school. Yuck! I plan to take lots of pictures tonight and tomorrow. Sunday was fun and Heather went too. We went to see SPIES LIKE US. I can’t wait till tonight! I made lots of noisemakers. Well, I better go now. I’m having a spasm in my hand. Happy New Year!
31 December 1989
This officially is my last entry of the decade. It seems scary in an overwhelming sense, because what remains? I’m almost sorry I didn’t pay more attention to the eighties. Suddenly they’ve slipped by, leaving me with a cold, unfamiliar stretch of ten years to endure. Will they be great? Will they be the beginning of the end? Just think…next time I exit a decade I’ll be twenty-five years old! Maybe I’ll be married and have kids. What lies ahead? It’s hard to fuse the line between beginnings and endings. In one second the transition from the end of December in the end of the 80s goes to the beginning of January in the beginning of the 90s.
Stop my speculating! Wow, do I have gas. Sorry. I conclude my darling eighties as I conclude every other year…with my family, and lots of pensive thought on what lies ahead, though I know time will fly and soon I’ll be reading over my worries and predictions in you.
God bless you … and me, in the 1990s yet to come. I love you.
16 January 1997
I need to do something creative and fulfilling soon. I really need to get off my ass this weekend and, say, take black & white pictures or begin the mosaic project that I want to make for Terry, Heather, and Annida. When I’m at work, I get all these inspiring ideas to do everything from creative projects to just cleaning my room, organizing my things, etc. I never do any of it. The second I get home, I’m tired and apathetic and lazy. I change into comfortable clothes, eat dinner, and watch TV until it’s time to go to bed. Sometimes I do a little reading. It has been getting worse lately. And now my mind is getting as lethargic and mired in mud as my body and my personality. I can’t think. I can’t concentrate or remember anything. I keep making the stupidest, most embarrassing mistakes [at work], because everything goes in one ear and out the other, with no traces remaining. I feel like I am in a constant daze or mental fog. First my body seemed to die, and I became more listless than usual. Then my creativity began to die. I can’t write anymore, or think up cool projects, or anything else like that. In other words, my voice died. Now my mental prowess is dying. I am not myself anymore…
14 March 2000
I realize that it isn’t because I long for F.—he isn’t who I’m pining for, even though it was his body I embraced in my dream and his face I kissed so passionately. He was just a mask worn over an idea, and the mask was his because he’s the one I’ve been interested in lately. But it is the idea that I am truly in love with, the idea that I long to obtain. The idea is my old, desperate longing for The One. Whether he could be considered my soulmate or not, he is the one I am meant to spend my life with. I am such a fucking romantic…I just think that love and romance and sex and relationships are divine primal unions…the closest thing to god I will ever be able to touch. … At my core, I have the utmost respect for those aforementioned things. I don’t take them lightly at all. They are gifts to be treasured and all I really want out of this life is to have a chance to celebrate them with The One, whoever he may be. F. is just the latest face I have stapled onto the intangible man of my dreams. When I feel such intense sadness at my attempts to let F. go, it isn’t him I’m sad to lose—it’s the light that flutters in my heart whenever I begin to resurrect those old dreams of finding and obtaining The One. When I let my numb heart defrost a little bit and let a new crush in, I am swamped with such wondrous, positive emotions, and of course I hesitate to let them go when it’s time to let go of the futile crush.
Oh god, my appetite for this mysterious One is almost palpable. I breathe it, I sweat it. I want nothing more than to just hold him…not even kissing him or making love with him, but just holding him. I can’t stop thinking about how warm and secure his arms will feel around me, how perfectly we will make our bodies fit into one another when we curl up in bed together. Even though I can’t smell, I think of burying my face in his skin and breathing in his warm, moist, salt-scent. I think of him loving me and accepting me completely, and not seeing all of the flaws I see in myself. Yet he wouldn’t put me on a pedestal and think of me as being infallible, because that pressure would be too much for me to bear, and it would minimize my dark attributes which I readily accept. I think of how being him won’t just be safe and secure and comforting, but how it will carry tremendous, thunderous energy, too…When we are together, the molecules around us will jar and dance and vibrate with our electricity. What I am seeking is magic, in all its subtle and not-so-subtle forms. A love so intense that I want to cry when I am not with him; yet I will not be absorbed into him, unable to function on my own. I guess what I’m seeking is an unobtainable miracle that I just can’t absolve…
11 August 2004
It’s really the longing that bothers me most of all. I don’t want to long for anybody. I want to be the pumpkin whose inner flesh and seeds are scooped out, leaving a smooth, hallow, lovely shell. I was doing so well in my quest for asexual numbness, but then I began periodically tripping over curbs of desire, falling to my knees and scraping them open. These are no smooth, hallow, lovely scrapes—they are messy, damp, raw. They sting. They take ages to heal. And even after they heal, there are scars left behind. I don’t want to long for anybody. I want my heart to belong to me alone (well…along with my family, friends, and cats, of course!). There’s not enough room in it for a mysterious Him. There’s not enough room for both of us. One of us must be blotted out, and I don’t want it to be me.
I slide back into my pessimistic view that romantic love in its purest form is nearly scientifically impossible in the end. How are we really expected to find good matches in a world this big? Sure, you can register with match.com, but what if your best matches are only registered on other personal ad sites, or aren’t registered anywhere at all? Or what if they are placing ads in San Francisco or Toronto newspapers, which you’ll never see? What if your best matches live far away? How am I supposed to meet a Perfect Match if he lives in fucking North Dakota? And what is a Perfect Match, anyway? What are the odds I’ll find a guy who is attractive to me physically and possesses all the emotional and mental traits I seek? And what are the odds that this guy would feel the same way about me? If he exists, and I somehow find him, what if he happens to be married? Or gay? Or in prison? Or a drug addict? What if he just doesn’t see me as his perfect mate? What if he’s totally perfect except for the teensy-weensy problem of abusiveness? What if we’re sexually incompatible? Or what if he’s perfect but he’s got a terminal disease? The list is endless. And so bear little hope that I will ever find a good match for me. Plus I don’t want to risk potential heartbreak. I could meet someone and fall in love, only to have him dump me three years down the line. Most people can deal with the heartbreak and move on to someone new, but I dwell on things and obsess to the point of having my head explode. It is extremely difficult for me to let things go. And men aren’t exactly lining up around the block to date me, so if I manage to luck into a good relationship and it fails, odds are, that is my last chance—or at least my last chance when I’m young. If it takes me over 30 years to find one guy, it’s safe to assume that it’d take me another 30 years to find a second guy. Or maybe it would take longer.
17 June 1985
Ma spilled a drawer of Kris’ earrings and I helped her clean them up before Kris found out and then she goes to me “stop your complaining.” Humff! That’s not fair and then she tells Kris. Geez, I know I’m just an afterthought after Kris was born. On Saturday Kelly and Scott slept over, we saw the GOONIES. Data and Mouth were (from the movie) SO cute.
21 June 1989
If only I was prettier. I have this horrible rash on my legs, so I’m running around in pants since I’m so ashamed. My face is all out of shape, and I must radiate coldness, or something. Cold and ugly, and no one likes me. God, what do you do when life hurts so much? I couldn’t kill myself, couldn’t go mad…sometimes I just don’t know what to do.
1 April 1994
Darkness continues to sizzle over me again, like the sizzling coffee that is brewing beside me. It is interrupted by momentary flashes of light; just enough to make the black more agonizing when it strikes. I am tired. I woke up at 8:15 this morning, even though I only got to bed after 2 a.m. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of the sleeplessness, the stomach pains, the numb spots on my head, the crying spells, the feeling that everyone hates me so very much. I feel like: “Circles and circles and circles again, the girl’s in circles and circles—got to stop spinning…” I feel like I’m spinning around in rough, rapid circles in the middle of a field, like I did when I was little. I turn faster and faster…and I grow dizzy, nauseous, exhausted, disoriented. This is the part where I’m supposed to collapse to the ground and relax as the rest of the world continues to swirl sickly above me. But I can’t stop. I can’t stop spinning and I must stop…
10 May 1996
England. Here’s the part where I go off on a selfish tangent, as if Nanny is only worthy of a paragraph prelude to my life and problems. I love her. I will never stop loving her with the force I felt on the day she died. Perhaps that’s the only thing that matters—how fiercely and deeply I anchor her inside of me, not how many times I dutifully visit her grave. Or perhaps I’m just rationalizing my shittiness again. I seem to be quite good at doing that. Anyway, my head tells me that it’s probably not a good idea to go to England. The intense financial strain, social strains, and legal strains may make it more trouble than it’s worth. I could be walking from one friendship frying pan into another, since a lot of my London pals have been somewhat distant or absent lately. My heart, however, tells me that it is the right thing to do. It has been pulling me mercilessly along towards England since I was fourteen. It has to be more to it than the fact that London is a brilliant city that I love. There has to be some reason why moving there feels like my destiny. Nothing really happened during my year abroad to satiate the curiosity I feel towards this puzzling need to live there. In fact, I spent a good portion of my time there mildly homesick, and eagerly looking forward to returning home. Maybe a great success will befall me once I’m there, like how Tori Amos only got successful once she moved to England. Maybe it will only be a calm, simple peacefulness—I’ll get my dream job, live in my dream house, get more wonderful friends, and just generally find a happiness that may’ve eluded me if I had stayed in the States, for whatever reason.
19 May 1999
Here I am, sitting in the Gate 54 waiting area at Newark Airport, listening to my Funeral Mix and trying to ignore the icy rivulets of fear trickling inside my stomach like drippings down a slimy sewer wall. My favorite song, “Gloomy Winter,” is playing. I just caught a glimpse of some girl who looks like Annida out of the corner of my eye. The landscape beyond the window in front of me is half-dead, a listless blue gray. The runway is still wet from the showers we encountered while driving here.
Two and a half years later, I have finally, finally reached this point. Had somebody told me on that dark October day in 1996 that it would take me two years and seven months to return to England, I would have curled up in a corner and died.
I was surprisingly okay until I walked into the airport. Then a dim, all-encompassing fear filled me, although I surely appear outwardly calm. I thought by now I’d be a hysterical, diarrhea-splattered mess. I can feel that large Frosty that Dad bought me en route churning in my stomach, though.
I am so afraid. I think that even if I knew that they will definitely let me into the country, I would still be afraid. What if my money doesn’t last? What if the conference is horrible? What if Annida and I don’t get along? Oh god, my feet are numb and my hands are clammy.
20 May 1999
I’m in! I’m in! I’m in! I’m in! I’m in! I’m in!!!!!
Now all I have to do is stop SHAKING!!!!
24 November 1990
Mum says Bush now forbids anyone in the army from leaving, even if their time is up. And everyone is getting drafted right and left. She said that’s a sure sign of war, this containing of troops. The president is all set for war.
I never lived during a war. At first I thought it was an exciting, if not grotesque, prospect, but now it’s scary. They have nuclear weapons, don’t they? And they’re being controlled by a madman. I know one person over there—Todd S. I wonder how it would change here, besides having a horrific gasoline ration. Suppose we all die. Oh God.
Last year at this time the world seemed to be catapulted into perfection. The Berlin Wall was down. Ceausescu was killed. Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland were free. In Central America, terrible leaders were being thrown out. Even Russia is barely Communistic anymore. Now this. Thatcher is out of parliament in England, too; whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know. Damn the Middle East. I’m 16! I don’t want to get bombed.
14 January 1991
…so I lay in bed crying. We tremble over the basin of history, of anticipation, of war. I never thought it would come to this, whatever this is. Yes, the 15th is upon us, and no one knows what eachother is doing. I just heard on the radio speeches (excerpts) from Bush, Hussein, and Congress set to “From a Distance.” It was so sad. I’m so afraid. I don’t know what to think; I’m against war, of course, but there’s so much I don’t know about what’s going on, I’m kind of neutral. God save us from ourselves.
Yes, from a distance God is watching us…and shaking his head in sorrow at what he sees.
Can write no more.
15 January 1991 (10:58pm)
One hour until war.
“All we are saying is give peace a chance…”
16 January 1991
Oh God oh God oh God
There’s no way I can tell you how I feel now, how unreal this is. I am incapable of describing it.
We are at war. War.
At about 7 pm they started pulling tanks up to Iraq, and bombers. I heard it on the radio on my way to Boscovs. It was coming, and there’s no way to stop it. A few minutes later, on my way home, as I drove slowly through the thick fog, the DJ on WINK 104 said suddenly, “We are now officially at war.” I was so shaken. Missy and I talked on the phone about it for awhile, then since then I’ve been watching the news on all the TV stations. Bush’s address was on at 9. I even noticed on Channel 17, which was carrying a basketball game, that they calmly ran the words, “The United States is now at war with Iraq.” And they went on with the game. How can those crowds cheer when they know? This isn’t real, it can’t be. Where is the massive black cloud, stifling and filled with thunder, which is supposed to descend with war? Will life go one? I’ll get up at 7, go to school, dance at musical…and we’ll be at war.
I am now watching MTV. Even on MTV, the filth of our government exists. Kurt Loder is broadcasting from a huge protest in Times Square. Every video has to do with peace, especially the re-release of “Give Peace a Chance.” On MTV: The End of the Innocence, Pray, Give Peace a Chance, A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, Something to Believe In, Let Love Rule.
This scares me … more than you would ever believe. They have nuclear bombs. They have terrorists in our country now (what happens if they get a hold of TMI?). They have a leader who is determined to bring us, and his own country, down with his fall. Those nuclear bombs scare me so much I have nightmares. And we, as a nation, are bound in this together. I think of [how] even the stars in California, who exist in perfect TV worlds, are a part of this war. The government…the rich…the poor…me.
Missy’s cousin and Jenn’s uncle are both in the aerial war going on now (but the news says Iraq gives little resistance in that war) and I’m afraid of their dying.
I feel guilty at times. I feel guilty because parts of me want the excitement and horror of war to grow, and last, but then my conscience catches up and says “You are mad. What if you are nuclear bombed? This could be the end.” So I start shaking like a cold, wet leaf, and wait in fear of this.
3 September 1988
I think that if I have to hear one more fucking lecture out of my fucking mother, I’m going to fucking die. She always does it to me. Always! This time it was because she thinks I’m wasting my money on a Lost Boys tape. What else am I supposed to do with the money? Why I want the tape I can’t explain. I have to wait till this Friday to get it, though. Once again I have this “dead” feeling around me. It’s like a heavy weight that makes me feel like I have to cry. I won’t though. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
16 September 1989
I’m not sure I can honestly say I feel at least a little better. It scares me sometimes, how nothing can ever penetrate the somber cloud above my head. Look at me, I’m fifteen years old, young, alive, semi-healthy, and I hate life! I loathe it! Now, can you tell me that’s normal? Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do about anything. I’m so afraid of everything, so afraid of living. It’s strange…sometimes I’ll be doing something, and suddenly just want to die. Let God give me cancer, or kill me. I don’t care. Oh please! Pull me away from this.
… Why am I torturing myself so? I mean, what is really wrong with me? I want to see a psychiatrist, but I’m so goddamn protective of my feelings and emotions, I’m afraid it would never work. I wish someone would tell me why I’m on one side of the mirror, and can’t break through.
20 November 1992
I can feel that it’s back again, crawling on my soul like a cancerous shadow. I can’t explain it—it’s just a stinking blackness that’s bleeding me dry. Oh, blood. Oh good Christ. Blood. Like a drug, I need to slash my wrist very badly right now. I need to feel that power, to feel as if I have some degree of control over my twisted life, my twisted thoughts.
28 August 1993
… we had the first annual stalking awards. There were three ties, but I still majorly cleaned up. I won 7 ribbons, after barely voting for myself! I guess that you could say that I’m the Queen o’ Stalking. We all (Gatesy, Heller, Foster, Laura, Terry, Shawn, Missy, and I) went to Yummy’s Chinese Restaurant in Palmyra for a very long period of time, to eat huge amounts of food and be very loud and obnoxious. I had to take almost my entire plate of “Buddha Supreme” along in the car with me, since it was only served to me about ten minutes before we left. Then I got the idea to leave it, uncovered, on Gatesy’s neighbor’s doorstep. Someone else suggested that it be left on Ben’s instead. So, Laura, Terry, Shawn, Missy, and I went to the adult bookstore along Rt. 422, and we three chicks went in, sort of embarrassed, and shamefacedly bought a cheap plastic dildo, which we stuck up out of my gooey Chinese food, leaving it on Ben and Psycho Jackie’s doorstep. Laura and I were the ones who crept stealthily through the dark and left it in there, giggling madly. Terry invited us to go swimming quietly in his neighbors’ pool, which they let him use anytime he wants. It was a beautiful night—clear, warm, with a visible moon. The pool water was just right. We were reveling in the fact that we were finally nightswimming, and in the spirit of the moment, with modesty cast alongside the pool with our clothing and bathing suits, we went skinnydipping. [We were] swirling about naked in a pool, exhilarated and wondering what would happen if Terry’s neighbors discovered five naked teenagers (four of them total strangers) swimming about in their pool at 2 a.m. … I never felt more alive in my life then I did at that very time. Alive and free. Unchained. Wicked.
6 December 2004
We were there for around three hours and the waiters and other patrons were probably so glad to see us leave. We were loud and kept screaming with laughter and we said our usual round of inappropriate things. At one point Charlie mentioned his boyfriend, and then he got this panicked look on his face, as if he expected someone to kill him on the spot for being gay. We laughed at the idea of someone whipping out a gun and shooting him in the head three seconds after he said the word “boyfriend.” So during the rest of dinner, Missy and I would periodically yell “Bang!” at Charlie and he’d slump over in his chair. And, being the dorks that we are, we all decided to trade driver’s licenses so we could laugh at one another’s photos. Charlie was like, “Ready, set, pass to your left!” I laughed so hard at Boot’s license photo, I literally couldn’t breathe. I was in pain. Bob’s photo makes it look like he’s got hydroencephalitis and is standing in front of a funhouse mirror. Danielle’s photo has the Crazy Eyes. Charlie roared with laughter when he saw that Missy’s license claims she only weighs 200 pounds. She fired back, “Well, your license says that you’re male!” and I shrieked “BURN!!!!” at him.
Ha, and at one point, Charlie asked me how old I thought Gates's fiance was, and I said, “I dunno…30?” and everyone laughed because he’s only 23. Whoops!
Oh, and I’ve gotten Missy completely obsessed with the idea of going on The Amazing Race with Charlie. So we spent a good part of dinner discussing our future audition tapes and how we’d act on TAR. Missy and Charlie are obsessed with being called “America’s Sweethearts” and having all of America fall in love with them, based on their TAR performance. Danielle and Tony are going to be another team, and Bootsy and I are going to be a third team. Missy said the tagline beneath us will say “vegan and fister.” “Hey, I’m not a vegan!” I cried. Naturally Boot didn’t follow it up with “And I’m not a fister!”…because, well, he is.
2 February 1994
The most fucked up thing ever just happened to me. I was crossing Linden St. between J-Hall and Hyland Hall to come to this class, and I had to walk through two grimy men. One stopped me and refused to let me proceed, because he was entranced by my nose ring. He asked me why I have it and his eyes rolled in different directions. He was very hard to understand. He told me secretively that he had his balls pierced. I tried to act nice and calm by saying “Oh really?” and asking him if it hurt, etc. He said “no” but that it stung a bit. I said that mine didn’t hurt either. I thought he asked me if I screamed, but he must’ve actually asked me if I creamed. I said “no.” He goes “You didn’t cream?” and grabbed me again as I tried to walk away. He asked me how many kids I had and I exclaimed “None! I have to go!” He put his arm around me and pulled me in tight and asked me if I wanted to start having them right then and there with him. I thought “Oh my god, he’s going to rape me,” even though there were students milling around. I said “No!” and broke away to class.
14 September 1995
Anyway, in the bathroom … I sobbed my eyes out and hyperventilated for a good half hour. I tried to retch into the toilet, I pinched my arm repeatedly [to try to] wake myself up, and I rolled around fetally on the floor. It really was like some nightmare. I felt utterly alone. I literally could not stop crying, and it really frightened me.
14 January 1986
I’ve got shocking news. Ma got a job! I’ll die. She will be home when I get home, and only work 4 days a week and I might get a increase in allowance but here are bad things:
we won’t go to Hershey Park
I’ll be all alone every day
I’ll have to vacuum and dust my room
we won’t go to Park City
we won’t go to pool
works summer
there’s no way now to go on vacation
or, if Fluffy dies I’ll really be all alone forever. I’ll never speak to Ma again!!!
18 February 1987
I’m starting to get irritated at Wendy. She’s always borrowing pens and pencils and never returning them. She also says that we’re best friends in school but as soon as we’re near other friends she practically ignores me. I have to run errands for her too, sometimes. I wish I’d be pretty and popular and never have to worry about these problems.
song heard most recently before posting:
Yes—Coldplay
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
25 years: a retrospective (part 4)
26 May 1983
My hair looks like a boy hair cut! Mommy curl ironed it a little though. It still looks like a boy hair cut. My birthday’s soon here!! I’m getting an ODIE DOLL!!!!!!!!
8 November 1984
I hate Ma! She’s making me go get a haircut in 15 minutes. At that dumb beauty salon. I’m really crying because I don’t wanna go. She says she’ll pay me a dollar and she wants the nicest lady to work on me. She treats me like a baby. I’ll have to not speak to her. I bumped my head on the bars. It hurts my head, stomach, all hurt.
4 June 1985
Tomorrow is the last day of school. Amy T. is my BEST friend. I brought in cupcakes today. Everyone sang to me. It’s my birthday! I have the BEST class: everyone was signing autograph books. I got everyone’s name but 6 people. I’ll get them tomorrow. I got Manny’s and Matt’s. Oh boy! I got a Care Bear! from Maggie. Cheer Bear. He’s cute. Amy gave me an Anastasia book as another present. At exactly 9:10 PM tonight I’ll be 11!
Oh boy!
30 March 1986
Today is Easter and was fun. First, I got a good Easter basket and in it was a J pin. Then we went to the Pancake House to eat breakfast. I had eggs, cereal, etc. Kris and I fought when we went home but then I rode my bike and when I got back, the whole family went on a bike ride. Kris and I exchanged bikes then Daddy tried to fix hers because it’s broken. While he did that we wrote all over the house in chalk. Then we went to Nanny’s and ate a delicious meal and I watched MTV. Since it was hot out, I went outside barefoot many times, it felt good on my toes, and found a golf ball! Kris and I toured the houses across the street and found a huge dirt and stone mountain, climbed it, and found a poorer housing development. That was neat too.
11 March 1987
Today D. acted cold towards me. She said stuff like I’m a copycat, and I’m stupid and that she wasn’t getting a Hershey pass anymore. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I hope she changes her mind. Punky said that she thought D. and Angie were best friends. That’s probably true. I mean, if we were best friends, she’d write me notes, act NICE, call me, say “hi” in the halls, and sit with me at lunch. None of those things happen. I’m so confused about friends and all. I wish I were REAL popular. That’s why I’m not sure if I’ll have a birthday party. Because I have hardly any friends. It’s just not fair! I also wish that I’d find a new best friend. That would show her I’m no loser.
27 May 1988
God, I am mad. Kris just said that I looked like I’m doing coke just because I’m tired and my nose is red. Well let me tell you—I am NOT. I’m tired because of Olympic Day and gym class today. My nose is red because it got sunburned yesterday. I told her this, but I don’t think she believed me. That’s the second person who thinks I’m using drugs. Mom told me a few days ago at Nanny’s that she thought I was on drugs in the past. Now I see why people who are accused get so mad at school. Don’t they know I would never use drugs? It’s true! In my book (and please don’t think I sound like a commercial) drugs are stupid. The only reason I act(ed) the way I do because I was, and still am, going through a hard period in my life. And I wouldn’t classify it as DRUGS, but ADOLESCENCE.
4 June 1989
Today’s my birthday, but it doesn’t feel like it, and I’m not yet fifteen. Everyone’s at Baccalaureate. I’m supposed to be studying for my A.M. final; however, I left my book in my locker and the school doors are locked, so I can’t. Antoinette said you need to use common sense for it. Nan and Papa are coming over for cake tonight, which looks brilliant with its British flag on it. … I was reading back over last year’s diary, with my hang ups and struggles. How I’ve changed! What will I be like a year from now? So much has happened…yet so little remains. Yesterday existed, today is here, and tomorrow is an illusion, an image, a dream. In a flick of a moment it could all change, and that’s what frightens me.
4 June 1990
One year later, it’s my birthday. In four minutes (no, make that three) I’ll be 16. I’m writing to you because one year ago I wrote about my feelings of the times, and wondered where I’d be in one year. Well, here I am, a true survivor.
It’s 9:10. I’m 16. Oh God, is that old. Now I closed my eyes and it’s 9:11. It’s official. I’m 16.
One year ago, I closed my eyes to my parents’ rage, praying for hope, and now they’re divorced. I speculated on my freshman year, now I’m reaching towards my junior. Life works in funny ways. I wonder where I’ll be one year from now, when I’m almost a senior.
19 April 1991
I wanted to kill them all this afternoon. I wanted to scream and kill and run, but I don’t think I have enough strength to do that, do I? I don’t have enough strength to do much of anything, except maybe lie down and die. I’m too much of a wimp to do even that. They’re probably all downstairs talking about me now. Oh God. Oh God! Oh God! Why must it be like this? Why must I bleed inside as I do? It’s always there…this monster of utter and pure and religious darkness…
10 May 1992
Have we drifted apart because we have nothing in common anymore? Did we ever? Maybe I’m a little too weird and off-the-wall for them. Maybe I threaten the safety of their comfortable little world. Maybe I’m just a fucking nut who is mega-crazy for thinking that anyone could possibly want to spend any time with me. Of course that’s got to be it. Others see the insanity in me that I only suspect exists. They’ve known longer than me that I’m a useless, hopeless, revolting, pathetic little shit who’s unfortunately stuck on the bottom of their shoes. They keep trying to wipe me off on the pavement, but I just won’t go. If I did go, would they notice? Would they mind? Would they keep on walking or stop to laugh at me smeared on the ground? Sometimes, when I think of dying, it’s a beautiful thought. The word “suicide” is entwined with flowers and happiness and light. I don’t want to live to be 18. I don’t want to work this summer, or go on senior week, or go off to college, or grow up to be stuck in some shit-town, working at a menial job and paying off college loans for the rest of my life. I only want to curl up and die in secrecy…to go away for awhile. To never have to dream this sour dream of life again. Its odor is choking me. I’d rather die by my own hand than by life’s, especially when I continuously feel as if I’m losing my mind. My brain has huge holes in it, I’m constantly plagued by anxiety, I can’t even bloody spell anymore! … Am I supposed to scavenge up the tattered shreds of my life and build something with it? Or am I supposed to throw them in the ocean and cover myself with the wet sand of darkness, betrayal, lies, and hatred, until I’m totally buried, and no one can see me anymore? I wish God, if there is one, would let me know. Why the hell does s(he) keep me hanging on like this—lonely, confused, afraid. I’ve never been in an accident, I’m never sick, I’ve never even broken a bone, for Christ’s sake!
“How does it feel to never be allowed to die…?”
22 June 1993
While I was writing to you, I began to inexplicably cry. Sort of ashamed, I headed for the attic with my box of pills and razor blades. Once there, I bawled my eyes out, mumbling to myself about how I’m so sick of holding everything in. I grabbed a razor blade and made one deep (borderline vein) slash in my right wrist, which gushed endless blood. Kristen called me to dinner, and frantically I mopped up the blood and dried my tears; a bunch of Kleenex, a maxi pad, and an ace bandage covered the wound.
I am I am I am
15 December 1994
Oh god, everything’s falling apart. I’m falling apart, but that’s nothing new. I’m beginning to cry again now. Things like these inevitably lead to my lashing out at myself in self-beratement. I think that I’ll never do anything with my life, and that I’ll have to kill myself before graduation, anyway, so I may as well do it now. You can’t know how badly I need to slit my wrists as I sit here writing this.
11 September 1995
By the way…on Friday night, he and I went to Farley’s for drinks. We got hassled by three drunk townies, and afterwards we tried to steal a parking meter that lay felled in the middle of the street. We were unsuccessful, as it was quite heavy. We couldn’t even get any money out of it. So, we went to the library to do e-mail, which was kind of fun in its patheticness. After all, it was like 1 a.m. and we were in the library on a Friday night, being cybergeeks like the other losers there.
19 February 1996
Anyway…spending so much time reading about gothic things and vampires this weekend got me thinking about being gothic. On the outside, I don’t look very goth, and other goths might look down on me for that, claiming I’m not “real.” However, I feel that I’m more goth than goth poseurs who dress like it, listen to all the goth bands, etc., but do it all for image purposes. I’m just as goth as people who look and act like it, and genuinely believe in it. I once looked pretty goth…I had the dyed-black hair, the constant pale face and blood-red lips, and wore almost all black. The pale face remains, and sometimes I have the red lips and black clothes, too. It doesn’t matter how I look, though; what matters is how I feel. The true state of gothic isn’t what bands you listen to, or how bizarre you can make yourself look, but how attracted you are to the dark side. And the dark side covers a wide range of genres. I’ve been into many dark things for years…depression, insanity, suicide, death, cemeteries, horror…shallower things like the colour black, dark poems and photos and winter, and more serious things, like a fascination for the occult, Satanism (a studious interest! That’s it!) paganism and witchcraft, and the paranormal…dark, wicked sense of humour…and above all, a burning interest in the dark side of regular life. Every person and every place has a dark side. Shadows lurk under the brightest, most plastically perfect façades of people and suburbia. That’s a powerfully intriguing thing, and I think that’s what makes me gothic. I examine the dark side of everything, of myself. And if, along the way, I maintain an interst in gothic literature, The Cure, Highgate Cemetery, Elizabeth Bathory, and vampires, and I own a black velvet cape and black lipstick, then all the better. Carpe noctum, baby…
10 June 1997
When I was at one tourist mecca (which invites you to join in “The Amish Experience” in a top-of-the-line multimedia theater and laser show, even though the Amish don’t even believe in electricity or cars for chrissake—what a contradiction!), I saw a large group of elementary school students having lunch on what was obviously their class field trip. There was one adorable boy who was eating lunch all by himself on the fringes, looking sad, yet looking like he was struggling to maintain some sense of dignity at being alone while everyone else chattered and sat in groups of friends. I just wanted to cry. I felt like hugging him and exclaiming, “I understand! I, too, spent my life on the fringes of my asshole classmates’ warped little hierarchal caste system!! It will get better!” But then I thought to myself, “No, it doesn’t get better! It’s my 23rd birthday and I’m all alone today, just like I’m alone every night!!” Oh, it was too depressing for words.
4 June 1998
I turn 24 today! I’m a little apprehensive and a little hopeful. In a way, it feels right, like it did when it became 1998. 24 is an even number, so it seems harmonious. Not to mention the fact that I lost my virginity in room 24, and I now live in apartment 24. My life is rather hellish right now, but apartment 24 is a safe place. Will age 24 be a safe place? I hope so.
… What will age 24 bring? Love? A sense of peace? A fulfilling career? I’ve come quite far since my last birthday. I’ll reward myself for that and refuse to beat myself up for what I’ve failed to accomplish. As far as I’m concerned, what I’ve achieved more than makes up for what I haven’t done. And there’s always this upcoming year…
I’ll never be 23 again. I’m sliding further and further away from my teen years and the excusable follies of youth, although I’m still quite young—so very young. There is still time to burn before I must be established in life, completely and thoroughly. But what if there isn’t time? Everybody has limited time, limited chances. Wasting both time and chances is almost a sin. What if I don’t get to accomplish anything significant (to myself or others) before I run out of time and chances?
The sun is disappearing. A gray beach is a good beach.
17 June 1999
I thought it was a smart idea—it’s better to nip something before it even becomes a bud than to try and claw your way out of a depression after you’ve crashed down the hole. After we hung up, it occurred to me that maybe my misanthropy is actually the beginnings of a depression. I was startled and distressed by this. My depression generally doesn’t manifest itself in an anti-people sentiment. I mean, yeah, I guess when I’m depressed I often want to be alone, but that’s more so I can sulk and cry and feel black in peace, and not because I hate people so much I want to kill them. But this feels so different from my normal depressions, which can barely even be described. Or maybe it’s just been so long since I’ve had a true depression, I don’t even remember its little nuances. Whatever the root, I’m not happy about this. I’m terrified it will blossom into something more.
18 January 2000
I can’t believe that I’m dealing with all of this at once without cracking, or at least without slitting my wrists. I want to cry so badly, but I don’t think I can. Perhaps the Paxil and St. John’s Wort have made me immune. I think about slitting my wrists…but I honestly don’t think it would be therapeutic for me anymore. It would just hurt, and then I’d have the added aggravation of needing to hide my wrists from my coworkers and rental office workers/potential landlords.
I try telling myself, It could be worse. And I know it could be. I could be living on the streets, or unemployed, or sick. I could be dealing with death after death in my life, like poor Nina H. I am grateful for the things I have. … Slitting my wrists and writing in my journal may have hauled my exhausted, immobilized ass through depression, but they can’t find me a place to live or get me the bank loan that I need.
Yeah, occasionally those old, sweet desires for death resurface, but I really don’t want to die right now. It’s more like my desire to “just go away for a while.” I used to ingest poison partially to self-injure away my pain, and partially because I hoped that I would lapse into a coma from it. So I sort of think about doing that again, but in a way, I’m too tired to even try it. And a little too scared.
19 November 2001
… it is better to be unpopular, strong, independent, and capable of enjoying time alone than to be popular, afraid of being alone, and needy of a group dynamic. I know this, but it doesn’t make it any easier to just sit here knowing that I’m only capable of attracting freaks while A. goes on and on about how many men worship her. It makes me doubt myself and my worth as a person. It makes me depressed because it reminds me that most of the world doesn’t appreciate what I feel are my assets: my dark, witty, self-deprecating sense of humor; my love of staying home and doing low-key, intimate, sometimes wacky activities with friends rather than constantly going to crowded bars and huge parties with a wide social group; my ability to be intense/serious/introverted and yet silly/goofy/friendly; my lack of a desire to drink, smoke, and do drugs; my nonconformity; my creativity. To me, and I guess to my friends, those things make me cool. To the outside world, those things make me a geek and a waste of time—maybe even scary. Or, worse maybe those things make me unremarkable and unmemorable, which is why K. and W. and most of [that] crowd don’t remember ever meeting me after we met several times.
I need to just…I don’t know…I need to just be alone and lick my wounds and try to convince myself that I am an okay person and someday I’ll find a guy who realizes that and finds pale, geeky, cerebral, unique, creative, dark-humored former self-injurers on antidepressants sexy…
6 March 2002
Oh god I feel like I’ve got one foot in the grave of depression and another foot on solid ground. I hate this grinding dichotomy inside of me. If I’m going to be depressed, then I almost want to be solely depressed so I can deal with it and get better. I don’t like these bumpings and rumblings beneath me, barely shirring my calm surface, yet active all the same. What’s worse: staring at the placid Loch Ness, not seeing anything moving in its depths yet knowing that there’s some hideous monster down there, breathing and living and surviving completely hidden, or actually seeing the monster in all its mind-shattering glory?
Part of me wants to just stop everything and go to bed and not wake up. She doesn’t want to work, talk to anybody, clean her apartment, play with her cats, do the laundry, pay bills, and so on and so on. Everything exhausts her. Everything overwhelms her. She doesn’t want a social life. She doesn’t want a relationship. She doesn’t want to look for a new job. She doesn’t want to petsit. She doesn’t want to ever advance above her current mediocre state of working as a lowly coordinator and living in an overpriced basement apartment in the dreary suburb of Beltsville. Forget about taking it one day at a time—she can barely make it one step at a time.
Then there is the other part of me who still sings in the car during her commute, laughs uproariously at the emails sent to her by friends, giggles at the random thoughts she has when driving home from work. She wants to work on her website, find a new job, save money for a trip to Finland, find a boyfriend, learn pottery-making. She feels ashamed of her lack of a social life and wants to improve it. She’s excited to attend the two happy hours planned for this Thursday and next Friday. She’s excited that the scale claims she has lost six pounds.
What does this mean? Do I have some kind of mild multiple personality disorder? Cyclothymia? Or is it just a regular depression gestating in a womb completely reformed by my antidepressants?
23 December 2003
After that, we headed to a bar in Alexandria which has karaoke on weekends. We met up with two of Missy’s fellow Clay Aiken fanatics—Tony and his girlfriend Danielle—and had a fucking blast. Danielle sang one song and Charlie was scheduled to sing one, too, but we had to leave before his name was called because Gates got totally trashed and sick. (After drinking that bottle of wine at the Indian restaurant, she proceeded to drink—at the Rock It Grill—something like three super-strong melonballs, three Long Island iced teas, and a gin and tonic.) I guess it was around 12:30 that we left, because Gates had passed out at the table, prompting numerous people to come up to us and say, “Uh, is your friend okay?” Then she woke up and came very close to vomiting, and we had to rush her to the bathroom, past an angry line of women waiting to use the john, so she could vomit into the toilet, instead of puking on herself at the table.
Anyway, this is a fabulous place and is a haven for drunk misfits. One of them even started breakdancing while two people sang a duet from Grease. Whoever heard of breakdancing to music from Grease??? We had a great time watching those drunk misfits sing their hearts out. Two of the guys I liked best weren’t drunk at all, and they were actually talented. One looked like a meek, gay, mild-mannered businessman, and we expected him to sing a treacly love song. Hell no! He belted out an amazing rendition of Welcome to the Jungle! He sounded just like Axl Rose. And he didn’t even need to use the screen at all—he knew all the words! We were flabbergasted. It was just so surreal to hear “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby, and you’re gonna diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!!” screeching out of this anonymous cardigan-wearing businessman. Another guy—who looked like a run-of-the-mill frat boy jock—also sounded just like Axl Rose when he bellowed (by heart) a fierce rendition of Paradise City.
There were these two other guys I really liked, and they were both drunk as skunks. The first slurred and gyrated his way through I Fought the Law, and at one point he fell and almost knocked over all the karaoke equipment. Yet the karaoke DJ didn’t force the guy to stop and get off the stage! He let him continue until the very end. When a bunch of people started booing him, he yelled, “Boo yourself!” and repeatedly thrust the microphone into his crotch. The second guy was middle-aged and also did a lot of crotch-grabbing. I can’t even begin to explain to you how hilarious he was as he sang this one Stone Temple Pilots song (I can’t remember the title). For some reason, every time he sang the line “when the dogs begin to smell her,” Missy and I lost control. We were laughing so hard, we were literally in pain and we couldn’t catch our breath. Occasionally one of us would gasp, “It hurts!” or “I…can’t…breathe!” I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years, and I am honestly astounded I didn’t pee my pants.
And there was a half-hour or so when the DJ halted the karaoke and played dance music instead, so everyone could crowd onto the tiny dance floor. A surreal moment happened when Santa Claus came into the bar, and after hugging a few people and downing a few drinks, went out into the dance floor and was dancing and grinding to Nelly’s song Hot In Here (“It’s getting hot in here / so take off all your clothes”). It was so strange to see Santa in that position!!
On the way to the bar, Gates repeatedly farted and burped in the car. Her burps were grotesque because they sounded like dry-heaves. Charlie and Missy kept saying to me, “You can’t comprehend how bad her farts smell! … Imagine sewage left outside for three days during the middle of summer. Her farts smell worse than that.” There was one time—a few months ago—when Charlie actually threw up on himself because Gates’s farts were so nasty! They literally made him puke! So, on Saturday night I was actually glad to be anosmic.
5 July 2004
I don’t plan to talk politics with Olivia. Whether she’s two or twelve, I don’t plan to secretly smuggle her into political marches and preach to her about why she needs to be pro-choice and anti-religion and anti-Fox News. It’s fucking ridiculous to do that to someone else’s child. She’s not a puppet—she’ll be entitled to make her own choices. But when she’s older, I want her to know that when it comes to ideology, she will be entitled to make her own choices. If she chooses to be conservative and bigoted … well, I won’t like it, but I’ll accept it, as long as she reaches those viewpoints on her own and isn’t just blindly copying [people]. Too many kids don’t realize that in a world of adult-inflicted rules and restrictions, they do still have freedom of thought. It’s not my goal to inflict my beliefs onto her. All I want to do, when she’s older, is to help her realize that it’s a big world out there—a world full of lots of different people, races, religions, and beliefs. Nobody is uniform and everybody needs to find an ideological belief system that feels right to them. If you don’t like somebody’s belief system, fine, complain about it all you want, but just don’t do it to that person’s face or—even worse—try to convert them to your side.
2 June 2005
Being a Lostphile, I of course am sitting here at my boarding gate at BWI sneaking glances at the other waiting passengers. If we crash on a desert island, what will these people mean to me? Who’s the Jack of this group? The Locke? The Hurley? Will I have to build a new island society with these people? Jesus, I hope not, because every other person is middle-aged and frumpy. There’s a bitchy-looking chick, curled up in on herself, chortling occasionally as she reads Bridget Jones’s Diary. Now she’s making a call on her cell phone. There’s a smiley man with Down syndrome. A granola-crunching sort of couple carrying an REI bag. A teen with casually tousled sea-tossed blonde waves, looking slightly bored and reading Us Weekly. A kinda cute, kinda geeky-looking Indian guy reading a book and listening to an iPod (like me!). An old woman in a wheelchair. A little girl in blue track pants. Are these the people who will die a fiery horrific death with me? Will we face Lostzilla together?
song heard most recently before posting:
That’s It, I Quit, I’m Moving On—Adele
My hair looks like a boy hair cut! Mommy curl ironed it a little though. It still looks like a boy hair cut. My birthday’s soon here!! I’m getting an ODIE DOLL!!!!!!!!
8 November 1984
I hate Ma! She’s making me go get a haircut in 15 minutes. At that dumb beauty salon. I’m really crying because I don’t wanna go. She says she’ll pay me a dollar and she wants the nicest lady to work on me. She treats me like a baby. I’ll have to not speak to her. I bumped my head on the bars. It hurts my head, stomach, all hurt.
4 June 1985
Tomorrow is the last day of school. Amy T. is my BEST friend. I brought in cupcakes today. Everyone sang to me. It’s my birthday! I have the BEST class: everyone was signing autograph books. I got everyone’s name but 6 people. I’ll get them tomorrow. I got Manny’s and Matt’s. Oh boy! I got a Care Bear! from Maggie. Cheer Bear. He’s cute. Amy gave me an Anastasia book as another present. At exactly 9:10 PM tonight I’ll be 11!
Oh boy!
30 March 1986
Today is Easter and was fun. First, I got a good Easter basket and in it was a J pin. Then we went to the Pancake House to eat breakfast. I had eggs, cereal, etc. Kris and I fought when we went home but then I rode my bike and when I got back, the whole family went on a bike ride. Kris and I exchanged bikes then Daddy tried to fix hers because it’s broken. While he did that we wrote all over the house in chalk. Then we went to Nanny’s and ate a delicious meal and I watched MTV. Since it was hot out, I went outside barefoot many times, it felt good on my toes, and found a golf ball! Kris and I toured the houses across the street and found a huge dirt and stone mountain, climbed it, and found a poorer housing development. That was neat too.
11 March 1987
Today D. acted cold towards me. She said stuff like I’m a copycat, and I’m stupid and that she wasn’t getting a Hershey pass anymore. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I hope she changes her mind. Punky said that she thought D. and Angie were best friends. That’s probably true. I mean, if we were best friends, she’d write me notes, act NICE, call me, say “hi” in the halls, and sit with me at lunch. None of those things happen. I’m so confused about friends and all. I wish I were REAL popular. That’s why I’m not sure if I’ll have a birthday party. Because I have hardly any friends. It’s just not fair! I also wish that I’d find a new best friend. That would show her I’m no loser.
27 May 1988
God, I am mad. Kris just said that I looked like I’m doing coke just because I’m tired and my nose is red. Well let me tell you—I am NOT. I’m tired because of Olympic Day and gym class today. My nose is red because it got sunburned yesterday. I told her this, but I don’t think she believed me. That’s the second person who thinks I’m using drugs. Mom told me a few days ago at Nanny’s that she thought I was on drugs in the past. Now I see why people who are accused get so mad at school. Don’t they know I would never use drugs? It’s true! In my book (and please don’t think I sound like a commercial) drugs are stupid. The only reason I act(ed) the way I do because I was, and still am, going through a hard period in my life. And I wouldn’t classify it as DRUGS, but ADOLESCENCE.
4 June 1989
Today’s my birthday, but it doesn’t feel like it, and I’m not yet fifteen. Everyone’s at Baccalaureate. I’m supposed to be studying for my A.M. final; however, I left my book in my locker and the school doors are locked, so I can’t. Antoinette said you need to use common sense for it. Nan and Papa are coming over for cake tonight, which looks brilliant with its British flag on it. … I was reading back over last year’s diary, with my hang ups and struggles. How I’ve changed! What will I be like a year from now? So much has happened…yet so little remains. Yesterday existed, today is here, and tomorrow is an illusion, an image, a dream. In a flick of a moment it could all change, and that’s what frightens me.
4 June 1990
One year later, it’s my birthday. In four minutes (no, make that three) I’ll be 16. I’m writing to you because one year ago I wrote about my feelings of the times, and wondered where I’d be in one year. Well, here I am, a true survivor.
It’s 9:10. I’m 16. Oh God, is that old. Now I closed my eyes and it’s 9:11. It’s official. I’m 16.
One year ago, I closed my eyes to my parents’ rage, praying for hope, and now they’re divorced. I speculated on my freshman year, now I’m reaching towards my junior. Life works in funny ways. I wonder where I’ll be one year from now, when I’m almost a senior.
19 April 1991
I wanted to kill them all this afternoon. I wanted to scream and kill and run, but I don’t think I have enough strength to do that, do I? I don’t have enough strength to do much of anything, except maybe lie down and die. I’m too much of a wimp to do even that. They’re probably all downstairs talking about me now. Oh God. Oh God! Oh God! Why must it be like this? Why must I bleed inside as I do? It’s always there…this monster of utter and pure and religious darkness…
10 May 1992
Have we drifted apart because we have nothing in common anymore? Did we ever? Maybe I’m a little too weird and off-the-wall for them. Maybe I threaten the safety of their comfortable little world. Maybe I’m just a fucking nut who is mega-crazy for thinking that anyone could possibly want to spend any time with me. Of course that’s got to be it. Others see the insanity in me that I only suspect exists. They’ve known longer than me that I’m a useless, hopeless, revolting, pathetic little shit who’s unfortunately stuck on the bottom of their shoes. They keep trying to wipe me off on the pavement, but I just won’t go. If I did go, would they notice? Would they mind? Would they keep on walking or stop to laugh at me smeared on the ground? Sometimes, when I think of dying, it’s a beautiful thought. The word “suicide” is entwined with flowers and happiness and light. I don’t want to live to be 18. I don’t want to work this summer, or go on senior week, or go off to college, or grow up to be stuck in some shit-town, working at a menial job and paying off college loans for the rest of my life. I only want to curl up and die in secrecy…to go away for awhile. To never have to dream this sour dream of life again. Its odor is choking me. I’d rather die by my own hand than by life’s, especially when I continuously feel as if I’m losing my mind. My brain has huge holes in it, I’m constantly plagued by anxiety, I can’t even bloody spell anymore! … Am I supposed to scavenge up the tattered shreds of my life and build something with it? Or am I supposed to throw them in the ocean and cover myself with the wet sand of darkness, betrayal, lies, and hatred, until I’m totally buried, and no one can see me anymore? I wish God, if there is one, would let me know. Why the hell does s(he) keep me hanging on like this—lonely, confused, afraid. I’ve never been in an accident, I’m never sick, I’ve never even broken a bone, for Christ’s sake!
“How does it feel to never be allowed to die…?”
22 June 1993
While I was writing to you, I began to inexplicably cry. Sort of ashamed, I headed for the attic with my box of pills and razor blades. Once there, I bawled my eyes out, mumbling to myself about how I’m so sick of holding everything in. I grabbed a razor blade and made one deep (borderline vein) slash in my right wrist, which gushed endless blood. Kristen called me to dinner, and frantically I mopped up the blood and dried my tears; a bunch of Kleenex, a maxi pad, and an ace bandage covered the wound.
I am I am I am
15 December 1994
Oh god, everything’s falling apart. I’m falling apart, but that’s nothing new. I’m beginning to cry again now. Things like these inevitably lead to my lashing out at myself in self-beratement. I think that I’ll never do anything with my life, and that I’ll have to kill myself before graduation, anyway, so I may as well do it now. You can’t know how badly I need to slit my wrists as I sit here writing this.
11 September 1995
By the way…on Friday night, he and I went to Farley’s for drinks. We got hassled by three drunk townies, and afterwards we tried to steal a parking meter that lay felled in the middle of the street. We were unsuccessful, as it was quite heavy. We couldn’t even get any money out of it. So, we went to the library to do e-mail, which was kind of fun in its patheticness. After all, it was like 1 a.m. and we were in the library on a Friday night, being cybergeeks like the other losers there.
19 February 1996
Anyway…spending so much time reading about gothic things and vampires this weekend got me thinking about being gothic. On the outside, I don’t look very goth, and other goths might look down on me for that, claiming I’m not “real.” However, I feel that I’m more goth than goth poseurs who dress like it, listen to all the goth bands, etc., but do it all for image purposes. I’m just as goth as people who look and act like it, and genuinely believe in it. I once looked pretty goth…I had the dyed-black hair, the constant pale face and blood-red lips, and wore almost all black. The pale face remains, and sometimes I have the red lips and black clothes, too. It doesn’t matter how I look, though; what matters is how I feel. The true state of gothic isn’t what bands you listen to, or how bizarre you can make yourself look, but how attracted you are to the dark side. And the dark side covers a wide range of genres. I’ve been into many dark things for years…depression, insanity, suicide, death, cemeteries, horror…shallower things like the colour black, dark poems and photos and winter, and more serious things, like a fascination for the occult, Satanism (a studious interest! That’s it!) paganism and witchcraft, and the paranormal…dark, wicked sense of humour…and above all, a burning interest in the dark side of regular life. Every person and every place has a dark side. Shadows lurk under the brightest, most plastically perfect façades of people and suburbia. That’s a powerfully intriguing thing, and I think that’s what makes me gothic. I examine the dark side of everything, of myself. And if, along the way, I maintain an interst in gothic literature, The Cure, Highgate Cemetery, Elizabeth Bathory, and vampires, and I own a black velvet cape and black lipstick, then all the better. Carpe noctum, baby…
10 June 1997
When I was at one tourist mecca (which invites you to join in “The Amish Experience” in a top-of-the-line multimedia theater and laser show, even though the Amish don’t even believe in electricity or cars for chrissake—what a contradiction!), I saw a large group of elementary school students having lunch on what was obviously their class field trip. There was one adorable boy who was eating lunch all by himself on the fringes, looking sad, yet looking like he was struggling to maintain some sense of dignity at being alone while everyone else chattered and sat in groups of friends. I just wanted to cry. I felt like hugging him and exclaiming, “I understand! I, too, spent my life on the fringes of my asshole classmates’ warped little hierarchal caste system!! It will get better!” But then I thought to myself, “No, it doesn’t get better! It’s my 23rd birthday and I’m all alone today, just like I’m alone every night!!” Oh, it was too depressing for words.
4 June 1998
I turn 24 today! I’m a little apprehensive and a little hopeful. In a way, it feels right, like it did when it became 1998. 24 is an even number, so it seems harmonious. Not to mention the fact that I lost my virginity in room 24, and I now live in apartment 24. My life is rather hellish right now, but apartment 24 is a safe place. Will age 24 be a safe place? I hope so.
… What will age 24 bring? Love? A sense of peace? A fulfilling career? I’ve come quite far since my last birthday. I’ll reward myself for that and refuse to beat myself up for what I’ve failed to accomplish. As far as I’m concerned, what I’ve achieved more than makes up for what I haven’t done. And there’s always this upcoming year…
I’ll never be 23 again. I’m sliding further and further away from my teen years and the excusable follies of youth, although I’m still quite young—so very young. There is still time to burn before I must be established in life, completely and thoroughly. But what if there isn’t time? Everybody has limited time, limited chances. Wasting both time and chances is almost a sin. What if I don’t get to accomplish anything significant (to myself or others) before I run out of time and chances?
The sun is disappearing. A gray beach is a good beach.
17 June 1999
I thought it was a smart idea—it’s better to nip something before it even becomes a bud than to try and claw your way out of a depression after you’ve crashed down the hole. After we hung up, it occurred to me that maybe my misanthropy is actually the beginnings of a depression. I was startled and distressed by this. My depression generally doesn’t manifest itself in an anti-people sentiment. I mean, yeah, I guess when I’m depressed I often want to be alone, but that’s more so I can sulk and cry and feel black in peace, and not because I hate people so much I want to kill them. But this feels so different from my normal depressions, which can barely even be described. Or maybe it’s just been so long since I’ve had a true depression, I don’t even remember its little nuances. Whatever the root, I’m not happy about this. I’m terrified it will blossom into something more.
18 January 2000
I can’t believe that I’m dealing with all of this at once without cracking, or at least without slitting my wrists. I want to cry so badly, but I don’t think I can. Perhaps the Paxil and St. John’s Wort have made me immune. I think about slitting my wrists…but I honestly don’t think it would be therapeutic for me anymore. It would just hurt, and then I’d have the added aggravation of needing to hide my wrists from my coworkers and rental office workers/potential landlords.
I try telling myself, It could be worse. And I know it could be. I could be living on the streets, or unemployed, or sick. I could be dealing with death after death in my life, like poor Nina H. I am grateful for the things I have. … Slitting my wrists and writing in my journal may have hauled my exhausted, immobilized ass through depression, but they can’t find me a place to live or get me the bank loan that I need.
Yeah, occasionally those old, sweet desires for death resurface, but I really don’t want to die right now. It’s more like my desire to “just go away for a while.” I used to ingest poison partially to self-injure away my pain, and partially because I hoped that I would lapse into a coma from it. So I sort of think about doing that again, but in a way, I’m too tired to even try it. And a little too scared.
19 November 2001
… it is better to be unpopular, strong, independent, and capable of enjoying time alone than to be popular, afraid of being alone, and needy of a group dynamic. I know this, but it doesn’t make it any easier to just sit here knowing that I’m only capable of attracting freaks while A. goes on and on about how many men worship her. It makes me doubt myself and my worth as a person. It makes me depressed because it reminds me that most of the world doesn’t appreciate what I feel are my assets: my dark, witty, self-deprecating sense of humor; my love of staying home and doing low-key, intimate, sometimes wacky activities with friends rather than constantly going to crowded bars and huge parties with a wide social group; my ability to be intense/serious/introverted and yet silly/goofy/friendly; my lack of a desire to drink, smoke, and do drugs; my nonconformity; my creativity. To me, and I guess to my friends, those things make me cool. To the outside world, those things make me a geek and a waste of time—maybe even scary. Or, worse maybe those things make me unremarkable and unmemorable, which is why K. and W. and most of [that] crowd don’t remember ever meeting me after we met several times.
I need to just…I don’t know…I need to just be alone and lick my wounds and try to convince myself that I am an okay person and someday I’ll find a guy who realizes that and finds pale, geeky, cerebral, unique, creative, dark-humored former self-injurers on antidepressants sexy…
6 March 2002
Oh god I feel like I’ve got one foot in the grave of depression and another foot on solid ground. I hate this grinding dichotomy inside of me. If I’m going to be depressed, then I almost want to be solely depressed so I can deal with it and get better. I don’t like these bumpings and rumblings beneath me, barely shirring my calm surface, yet active all the same. What’s worse: staring at the placid Loch Ness, not seeing anything moving in its depths yet knowing that there’s some hideous monster down there, breathing and living and surviving completely hidden, or actually seeing the monster in all its mind-shattering glory?
Part of me wants to just stop everything and go to bed and not wake up. She doesn’t want to work, talk to anybody, clean her apartment, play with her cats, do the laundry, pay bills, and so on and so on. Everything exhausts her. Everything overwhelms her. She doesn’t want a social life. She doesn’t want a relationship. She doesn’t want to look for a new job. She doesn’t want to petsit. She doesn’t want to ever advance above her current mediocre state of working as a lowly coordinator and living in an overpriced basement apartment in the dreary suburb of Beltsville. Forget about taking it one day at a time—she can barely make it one step at a time.
Then there is the other part of me who still sings in the car during her commute, laughs uproariously at the emails sent to her by friends, giggles at the random thoughts she has when driving home from work. She wants to work on her website, find a new job, save money for a trip to Finland, find a boyfriend, learn pottery-making. She feels ashamed of her lack of a social life and wants to improve it. She’s excited to attend the two happy hours planned for this Thursday and next Friday. She’s excited that the scale claims she has lost six pounds.
What does this mean? Do I have some kind of mild multiple personality disorder? Cyclothymia? Or is it just a regular depression gestating in a womb completely reformed by my antidepressants?
23 December 2003
After that, we headed to a bar in Alexandria which has karaoke on weekends. We met up with two of Missy’s fellow Clay Aiken fanatics—Tony and his girlfriend Danielle—and had a fucking blast. Danielle sang one song and Charlie was scheduled to sing one, too, but we had to leave before his name was called because Gates got totally trashed and sick. (After drinking that bottle of wine at the Indian restaurant, she proceeded to drink—at the Rock It Grill—something like three super-strong melonballs, three Long Island iced teas, and a gin and tonic.) I guess it was around 12:30 that we left, because Gates had passed out at the table, prompting numerous people to come up to us and say, “Uh, is your friend okay?” Then she woke up and came very close to vomiting, and we had to rush her to the bathroom, past an angry line of women waiting to use the john, so she could vomit into the toilet, instead of puking on herself at the table.
Anyway, this is a fabulous place and is a haven for drunk misfits. One of them even started breakdancing while two people sang a duet from Grease. Whoever heard of breakdancing to music from Grease??? We had a great time watching those drunk misfits sing their hearts out. Two of the guys I liked best weren’t drunk at all, and they were actually talented. One looked like a meek, gay, mild-mannered businessman, and we expected him to sing a treacly love song. Hell no! He belted out an amazing rendition of Welcome to the Jungle! He sounded just like Axl Rose. And he didn’t even need to use the screen at all—he knew all the words! We were flabbergasted. It was just so surreal to hear “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby, and you’re gonna diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!!” screeching out of this anonymous cardigan-wearing businessman. Another guy—who looked like a run-of-the-mill frat boy jock—also sounded just like Axl Rose when he bellowed (by heart) a fierce rendition of Paradise City.
There were these two other guys I really liked, and they were both drunk as skunks. The first slurred and gyrated his way through I Fought the Law, and at one point he fell and almost knocked over all the karaoke equipment. Yet the karaoke DJ didn’t force the guy to stop and get off the stage! He let him continue until the very end. When a bunch of people started booing him, he yelled, “Boo yourself!” and repeatedly thrust the microphone into his crotch. The second guy was middle-aged and also did a lot of crotch-grabbing. I can’t even begin to explain to you how hilarious he was as he sang this one Stone Temple Pilots song (I can’t remember the title). For some reason, every time he sang the line “when the dogs begin to smell her,” Missy and I lost control. We were laughing so hard, we were literally in pain and we couldn’t catch our breath. Occasionally one of us would gasp, “It hurts!” or “I…can’t…breathe!” I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years, and I am honestly astounded I didn’t pee my pants.
And there was a half-hour or so when the DJ halted the karaoke and played dance music instead, so everyone could crowd onto the tiny dance floor. A surreal moment happened when Santa Claus came into the bar, and after hugging a few people and downing a few drinks, went out into the dance floor and was dancing and grinding to Nelly’s song Hot In Here (“It’s getting hot in here / so take off all your clothes”). It was so strange to see Santa in that position!!
On the way to the bar, Gates repeatedly farted and burped in the car. Her burps were grotesque because they sounded like dry-heaves. Charlie and Missy kept saying to me, “You can’t comprehend how bad her farts smell! … Imagine sewage left outside for three days during the middle of summer. Her farts smell worse than that.” There was one time—a few months ago—when Charlie actually threw up on himself because Gates’s farts were so nasty! They literally made him puke! So, on Saturday night I was actually glad to be anosmic.
5 July 2004
I don’t plan to talk politics with Olivia. Whether she’s two or twelve, I don’t plan to secretly smuggle her into political marches and preach to her about why she needs to be pro-choice and anti-religion and anti-Fox News. It’s fucking ridiculous to do that to someone else’s child. She’s not a puppet—she’ll be entitled to make her own choices. But when she’s older, I want her to know that when it comes to ideology, she will be entitled to make her own choices. If she chooses to be conservative and bigoted … well, I won’t like it, but I’ll accept it, as long as she reaches those viewpoints on her own and isn’t just blindly copying [people]. Too many kids don’t realize that in a world of adult-inflicted rules and restrictions, they do still have freedom of thought. It’s not my goal to inflict my beliefs onto her. All I want to do, when she’s older, is to help her realize that it’s a big world out there—a world full of lots of different people, races, religions, and beliefs. Nobody is uniform and everybody needs to find an ideological belief system that feels right to them. If you don’t like somebody’s belief system, fine, complain about it all you want, but just don’t do it to that person’s face or—even worse—try to convert them to your side.
2 June 2005
Being a Lostphile, I of course am sitting here at my boarding gate at BWI sneaking glances at the other waiting passengers. If we crash on a desert island, what will these people mean to me? Who’s the Jack of this group? The Locke? The Hurley? Will I have to build a new island society with these people? Jesus, I hope not, because every other person is middle-aged and frumpy. There’s a bitchy-looking chick, curled up in on herself, chortling occasionally as she reads Bridget Jones’s Diary. Now she’s making a call on her cell phone. There’s a smiley man with Down syndrome. A granola-crunching sort of couple carrying an REI bag. A teen with casually tousled sea-tossed blonde waves, looking slightly bored and reading Us Weekly. A kinda cute, kinda geeky-looking Indian guy reading a book and listening to an iPod (like me!). An old woman in a wheelchair. A little girl in blue track pants. Are these the people who will die a fiery horrific death with me? Will we face Lostzilla together?
song heard most recently before posting:
That’s It, I Quit, I’m Moving On—Adele
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