Vaguely suicidal.

No matter what I do, however happily or unhappily, I feel like I am wasting my life.

Make it stop.

I went to bed sick last night & was so cold, so cold that I couldn’t be reached. Maybe I had a fever. Awake, asleep, awake, asleep, awake, asleep until I saw only an hour or so had passed. I had a dream that left me inconsolably sad; I was reduced to sobbing. Maybe part of it was the congestion, but my sobbing was so loud & so heavy that it sounded wet. Fishlike. It disgusted me. It concerned me. The intensity of it. It was as though I was watching myself & could do nothing. I felt like a spectator again. I’ve been feeling closed off lately, or separate from myself… Before bed I told a friend that I’ve been unable to cry. I’ve never cried like that before. I don’t know how to describe it. Anything I could say would be inadequate. It was so intense that I felt afraid, I think. I had a nonsense dream. The only narrative part of it involved me trying to burn my own house down with everyone inside. I lit the carpet with a match and a fuse, cartoonish. The flames reached my dog’s little paws & with fear and regret I stamped them out with the palms of my hand; it hurt. I felt horribly guilty. Then the Gull showed me a painting of a house on fire & said it was supposed to be a painting of me. It was red & fleshy. The dream is so distant now, but when I tried to write about it earlier today, I cried again.

When I woke up last night crying, I was thinking about going to Hell. I thought I was going to Hell. Even though I don’t believe in Hell. I was convinced.

I saw a deer in the parking lot before class. “It’s a sign.”

It’s a down day for me; walking back to class from the bathroom something suddenly grabbed my heart & I spun around to had to go right instead of left, in a circle. I felt anxious as just a passenger while Angeline drove me home. I have a cold & sneezed on one of my Yoshitomo Nara shirts.

I don’t know what to do with myself, my hands.

I was talking to Angeline in the car & said that I don’t think my current mental… whatever has to do with school at all, that it would’ve happened regardless of where I am or what I’m doing. It was freeing to ascribe my failures & lackings to myself & not my circumstances. Acceptance, not blame. I don’t know. Maybe it’s good to say no matter where I go, I will stumble. Its inevitability is comforting.

I put on my sweatshirt to sleep in & it smells like the bus.

Riding the bus home I realized I would be in the same place three months from now; I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but its immensity was awful. It was too clear to look at without hurting. I am scared of the present & scared of the future. I’m in a state where I see the present as a refuge from the future & the future as a refuge from the present; both are horrible to me, both send me hiding.

I had a bad dream last night that someone was driving the car while I was sitting in the passenger seat. After three loops, they started their fourth even though it felt awful & wrong. They locked the door so I couldn’t get out.

I’m very tired.

My own body feels like a sarcophagus.

• When I drive I’m scared I hit someone but didn’t notice. Or that I ran over someone’s pet & didn’t notice.
• That I didn’t check correctly while driving & will cause an accident, so I recheck, recheck, recheck. Then people honk.
• Not noticing.
• Making left turns.
• Some left turns are okay if I practice a lot. If I make a right turn to enter somewhere & a left turn to leave, then they even out. U-turns are almost always bad & count as worse left turns.
• Doing something I really don’t want to do against my will, like suicide.
• Breaking my neck on stairs.
• My family or friends dying in their sleep if I don’t tell them I love [them], goodnight.
• That my alarm is not set, so I check it over & over again before I sleep.
• Two loops instead of three or five (or sometimes eight).
• Praying incorrectly or too much.
• Being sick in public.
• Crying in public.
• Not being able to leave a place.
• Something happening to me & there being no one to tell Seagull or Lisa.
• Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Freak accidents.

My lilies crossed the border from blooming into wilting & I threw them away. Petals on my desk.

I have some less remarkable flowers in another vase now, my little white stars, my blinking lights, but it's their plainness, their unremarkableness that is special.

I feel paralyzed. I’ve been sitting still overcome by nothing but my own thoughts.

I bought bleach & dye but did not use them.

We’re going on a field trip tomorrow & I’m dreading it. I feel horribly worried & afraid.

I once said that I identified with the feeling of the breeze, because it is good to see yourself in something that cannot be overcome or destroyed. That’s still true, but I’ve started seeing myself in the tall grasses. Part of it is their movement, the gentle dance & sway, another iteration of the breeze, but there is also something about the grass itself. Maybe it is good to see ourselves in something temporary.

Tomorrow I’m going to be wearing school bus yellow.

I told Angeline that I can’t drive & have to count loops & avoid left turns & about the almost wreck & the stairs, all with minimum detail & apologetic clarifications & she said she will pick me up & drive me home so we can spend time together on Tuesday. The place is seven minutes away from my house.

I don’t have to be good all the time.
Being good won’t fix anything.

Seagull asked me what I thought about the Three Little Pigs. I’ve never found any particular morality in it. She said that as a child, she interpreted it literally & simply saw it as a story where one pig makes a house of straw and gets eaten, one pig makes a house of sticks & gets eaten, & one pig makes a house of brick & does not get eaten. It’s a story where two pigs don’t know they’re supposed to make houses made of brick, & so they get eaten. I did not interpret it so literally, but I found the same answer: Naïveté gets punished; nature culls.

I have been making fortifications of nonsensical thoughts: right turns, the numbers three and five (and sometimes eight), restarting things when I count incorrectly, taking the elevator instead of the stairs. I’ve been so afraid lately & so I mortar together thoughts & actions that don’t make sense, flimsy thoughts that a wolf could huff & puff & blow down in a breath, but how was I supposed to know to make a brick house?

I almost got into a car accident, driver’s side. Someone swerved into my lane. I thought I was going to die. After the almost-accident, everyone stared at me when the other car drove off. My mouth was open & I couldn’t breathe. I parked the car & cried in a parking lot for half an hour. My chest still hurts.

This is hard to put into writing, but I normally drive the exact same route to a small list of locations near my house. When I am not on one of these predetermined & safe routes, I can’t make left turns, or something bad will happen. I was at a coffee shop & the place I was driving was five minutes away, but the five minutes involved a left turn, so instead I had to drive mostly home in the opposite direction. When it was time to make a left turn near my neighborhood, I got too scared, so I turned right into my neighborhood & made a giant circle. Then I left the neighborhood in a straight line, no left turns, and that’s when it happened. If I drove straight there instead of making it a twenty-five minute trip, then I would’ve been okay.

But something is horribly wrong with me & I can’t drive or go places like a normal person.

After the parking lot crying, etc. I had to make three loops around the neighborhood before I went home, even though making loops is what almost caused the accident, because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when I make the loops, I feel like I’m stopping something bad from happening. It’s stupid & it doesn’t make sense.

I hate myself.

Every time I write I have nothing to say. Sorry. Yesterday after school I laid in bed with a very neutral, suicidal feeling. Maybe it was the day before. I’ve been having trouble telling the days apart. Time drags me forward & I am an unwilling passenger within my own life. Horrified spectator. I say it was a neutral feeling because it was very matter of fact; I wanted to kill myself, but it didn’t matter all that much. It’s been so persistent that it’s not even something to blame myself over. It is simply the reality of being me. I’ve been having the recurring thought that I shouldn’t feel this suicidal, which implies some sort of baseline suicidality that I think I deserve, maybe, but that baseline or my tolerance has been raised to the point where I now see myself as appropriately suicidal. Or maybe I just don’t care all that much. I feel detached, somewhat. This is all sounding too clinical, but it’s not. I don’t know if what I’m saying is good or bad; maybe it just is, & that’s the point. Maybe there is no point.

To be less clinical, less “the doctor is in,” as you said yesterday, I feel like I am walking on a spiral staircase. I don’t know if I am ascending or descending, but if I do something wrong, though I cannot define “wrong,” then I will have to restart. I can’t take the elevator this time. As a child I would count the steps in my house. When I go to the public library, I can’t take the stairs because I think I will break my neck. Normally I can think things like this, like the fact I am scared to turn left while driving, are dumb. I can tell myself they are dumb and maybe I can even laugh at them. I can’t do that now. They’ve taken on more of a weight, the weight of a real thing & not something that I have made up. I know these things aren’t true though: I can probably walk up a staircase without breaking my neck & I can turn left while driving. I am realizing I said “probably.” These fears really do seem more real. They’re more physical. I feel more physically afraid. In spite of how high or low my mood is, I am constantly anxious & afraid. I can’t sleep. I wake up sick & I can feel my heartbeat. Some mornings I can’t brush my teeth because it will make me throw up. I throw up a lot & it makes my mouth taste bad & I eat mints all day. I lost weight. I am more concerned with bad luck. I am easily brought to tears. I become afraid of eating. I become afraid of becoming afraid. The only thing I have cooked in weeks is an egg sandwich, & I buy already hard boiled eggs from the grocery store. I mash the eggs with a fork & add Kewpie mayo. I am running out of Kewpie mayo, but I am scared to go buy more.

Have you ever played Nintendogs? There’s this mini-game where you take your dog on a walk, but you can’t walk your dog everywhere across the map, you can only walk so far. The goal is to make the best walking route to pick up prizes & meet other digital dogs. I feel like that, like I am walking along an increasingly restricted path. The only person doing the restricting is me. I could walk anywhere, I could drive anywhere, but I’m scared. And the more I avoid these things, the more frightening they become. It’s why I haven’t skipped school once while feeling sick, I know myself; I’ll skip school once & it will feel impossible to go back.

Normally I can suffer & it’ll be okay because there’s some sort of purpose, but there isn’t any meaning here, is there? My stair fears make me think of this:

“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”

Maybe I am suffering the wrong way, but every morning I take that bus & I feel horribly afraid. I tell myself that it will get better soon, that I am acclimating myself to my fears, or desensitizing myself to them. But it’s been more than a month. And every day I feel worse.

Maybe there’s a dignity in it, in refusing to hide from the bus. But I’m hiding from staircases now, and left turns. And the post office. Brushing my teeth in the morning. I can’t imagine myself walking up a staircase. And it is just a staircase.

I truly and authentically used to believe that suffering was the only way forward. I made it an ideal. I see it as the thing that fixed me, the thing that made me a half-shut-in who was scared to walk down the sidewalk incorrectly into me, now, but this is not much better. When I was a child, I threw up every morning before school until it just ended one day. This is not ending. And I don’t know what to do.

This all sounds so dire, but I was being serious when I said I can’t find it in me to care all that much. It’s a neutral feeling. And it is also one of the worst feelings in the world. Life goes on. My life goes on. I don’t think there’s anything to do about it. And that’s the problem. That’s a problem. I have a lot right now.

I can write again. That’s something that I can do.

My nightlight was cloth, a canvas one, thick and held by wires. The wires would hold it in front of the little LED bulb which would illuminate it with a yellow glow. The yellow glow made it seem old. The wires that hold the canvas in front of the bulb have bent themselves out of place and so the cloth doesn’t stay. But it still says “I love you to the moon & back.” & the little rabbits are still there. But moons do not make their own light, and so they have been without light for a long time now. My fault.

forgot to write last night. was too tired & sick. had a burning feeling in stomach. In the car, started crying on way to buy pads. room is full of packaged crackers & cookies. too tired to cook anything. got home from class & changed into a shirt that smells bad; sweat. keep wearing the same green pants over & over again. need to go grocery shopping. need to do laundry.

feel like a pile of diary laundry.

Two nights of missed sleep, upset stomach, my period, my hour and a half commute, & I was ready to write that this is the most depressed that I’ve ever felt in my life.

I felt good a few days ago & I’ll feel good again. Just continue.

The kids were talking about steak knives today.

Each night when the sun sets, I feel it in my stomach, a sinking & distinct melancholy. Even in my better mood(s), it gives me the feeling of borrowed time. That this is all temporary.

Was speaking to some classmates on the phone & it interrupted my writing. The weather was too good today to do any meaningful amount of schoolwork. It really felt like autumn, and not just when I woke up in my air-conditioned bedroom, but when I stepped outside too. Especially in the shade, with the breeze. It was a windy day. When the days are like this, when the temperature is just right, I feel like I’m on the precipice of remembering something. Not deja vu, but a more authentic feeling. My words always grasp at but are never able to really describe feelings of genuine contentment.

I had a dream last night that I was telling a child that I should really kill myself, that there’s no reason for me to live. I wanted the child to argue with me, to talk me out of my impulses, (though the feeling of dejection was True and Absolute), but instead the child produced a steak knife & told me I may as well just slit my wrists. I became sheepish about the whole thing, even if the feelings were true, and was able to come up with lots of reasons why I really shouldn’t kill myself. It reminded me of both “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and a zen koan that I’m fond of where a master tells his pupil who cannot obtain enlightenment: “‘Meditate for three days longer, then if you fail to attain enlightenment, you had better kill yourself.’On the second day the pupil was enlightened.”

It was an encouraging dream.

My lilies are opening their eyes to the world & are breathing a heavy scent, along with my rambutan rinds piled in a bowl. The smell is so distracting that I may move them while I write, but I think they like the window. They look like they’re dancing & they’re grasping. They look so lively for dead things.

It always feels like the best time to write you when we’re already talking on the phone. As we were talking last night, all I could think of were things I wanted to say in writing, but when the call ended they were gone. I was thinking of asking you for sometime whether we could abstain from phonecalling so I could write you a long & decent letter again, the way I used to, but I like calling you too much & think the desire to write long & decent letters again, the way I used to, is more of a self-centered desire to write rather than born out of intentions to better communicate with you. Though maybe there is something lost when we choose phonecalling over letterwriting, & vice versa.

...

It’s so cold this morning that I thought about writing you from my bed, but writing in bed lacks a certain sense of seriousness (dedication) & so I am writing at my desk cold, with a jacket on.

...

This painting (Breakfast of the Birds, Gabriele Münter, 1934) makes me think of you. And it makes me think of me. It’s our painting.

I went to the grocery store and bought lilies in a vase on my desk. They haven’t bloomed yet. They bloom later. Perhaps this is why they were cheaper. I would rather wait for them to bloom though, even if it were the same price, wouldn’t you? I also bought milk for matcha & a small “sugar [...]” plum; it’s green. Maybe being an adult is impulse buying fruit. Or maybe it’s the opposite because I make time to buy chocolate bars & cookies several times a week (planned purchases) & the enticement of the plum was its “sugar [...]”- ness… Sugar Plum Fairy. I looked for those tiny-white bouquet flowers. You know the ones I’m talking about, even if I can’t name them. They might be my favorite (cultivated) flowers; I like wildflowers best.

There is this excerpt that reads: “He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance... After all it is no spring flower, only a postscript to hope.” It’s in reference to tiny, white wildflowers. This isn’t why I like the tiny-white bouquet flowers though. They remind me of stars, maybe. I know they remind me of stars, but I don’t know if that’s why I like them.

I do feel older lately. More adult. In some ways it’s very surface level: I go grocery shopping & eat dark chocolate & put flowers in vases for myself. I don’t procrastinate my schoolwork. I don’t feign humility anymore; when things are easy, I say that they’re easy. When things aren’t easy, I feel capable of doing them regardless. Mostly though, I realize that I know myself. Sometimes it feels like everyone around me is confused, is that bad to say? The people around me move so frenetically that it makes my eyes spiral. They take everything too seriously and not seriously enough, simultaneously. It sounds childish to think that everyone around you is wrong, but I don’t feel that way. Right now I feel like I know (or see) the truth.

You said to me that you see how others misunderstand me, on a very literal & habitual level. It used to be a source of (self-)torment, but I don’t care anymore. I saw it as some sort of personal failing, maybe, that I wasn’t doing a good enough job at being myself for others to understand my self. I don’t think that way anymore. I don’t know how to explain it, but I think it’s because I’m me. I’m completely me. And that’s hard for others to understand. And I don’t care at all; I don’t care at all beyond an occasional sense of antagonism… The topic of my hair came up again, and I plainly said it was an exercise in non-attachment. Their response was to tell me I should dye my hair again, in a tenuous, laughing way. I hate when people are half joking because they don’t understand something.

I think as a teenager I had a sense of superiority about things, even though it was also painful & isolating. I don’t feel a sense of superiority anymore, because I am not above anybody, but sometimes I feel a twinge of pity. It’s not self-serving though. I mean that. The pity or the sadness I feel is totally & completely divorced from any sense of self. It’s love or a sense of understanding that I can’t share with the other person, and so it has nowhere to go.

I’m glad you’re my best friend. I don’t think I could feel this way if you weren’t. I need at least one person to understand; I think everyone does, even monks. (That’s why they talk to God.)

Everything is easier now.

1. This is just a man doing his job. Be kind to your fellow man.
2. Why should I not be able to escape the constant selling, selling, selling when I am at home of all fucking places?
3. In Vermont they banned billboards; move there.
4. Isn’t it rude to shut the door mid-conversation? Isn’t it rude for him to keep talking while you have cooking utensils in your hand?
5. Why are we doing this?
6. How did we get here?

Too tired.

Invigoration: Took an earl(ier) bus home than normal. I thought I had (online) class tonight, (but didn’t), so I got ramen to take home. Almost choked to death at the dinner table. Almost threw up. Stood up & grabbed my throat. Instinctual panting. Reminders of my childhood. Something between coughing and heaving and I somehow swallowed my food, several steps away from the table, hands still on my throat. I paused for half a minute or so & kept eating; it was good ramen!

It started raining gently in a way that looked like light. The breeze was good.

I’ve been so tired that I feel unafraid but more dangerous driving. I’ve had a lot of close calls & thought nothing of it.

My professor makes me feel like I’m in a Kafka novel, like I have an omnipresent, opaque bureaucracy that exists solely to persecute me. I hate him so much that I wish him unconditional benediction & well being during my loving kindness meditations.

I spent the entire (long) weekend with people. Saturday, E: Came home from Japan. First time seeing her since my departure at Haneda Airport. She brought me birthday gifts: A handmade keychain with my name, Meiji macadamia chocolates that I’ve already eaten, an art book in which I saw recognition of myself in her eyes, various cute knickknacks to my taste… I used to be the sort of person who would save gifted chocolate till it expired, but now I eat the whole box the day after. Improvement. I told E that we reached a point in lack of speaking & myself worrying about her while she was gone that I almost called her mom & sister. She was bashful.

Sunday, my little brother: I originally planned to spend a few hours with him but I spent the night. Starbucks, they gave him a free Frappuccino after we sat around for a while. Library, I got Lolita, The Woman in the Dunes, Bliss Montage. He got books that he was excited for but that in all likelihood he will not read. It doesn’t matter, it just means that he and I are the same. The difference is that he is innocent & empty of all shame, so he can enjoy the feeling of picking out a book & not reading it. I can’t. Books are weights. Ramen from the good ramen shop, we both got the same bowl. He tried gyoza for the first time. I brought him hand-me-down Build-A-Bear clothes from my frog to his frog. Our frogs sat together at the coffee shop, then again on his bed while we played Stardew Valley for hours. He is impressed by my newfound ability to drive at the age of twenty-two. He is impressed that I can afford bowls of ramen. He begged me to stay before I went to bed, the same way he always does.

Monday, Angeline from school. I told her I was tired and wouldn’t stay long, but I stayed three hours. I drove somewhere completely new. I ate dinner at her house. Her parents liked me. Parents always really like me.

Before I left for Angeline’s, I realized that I’ve been filling that familiar, bottomless (?) lonely pit in my stomach with the company of other people to the point of sickness. Overindulgence. I don’t want to talk to anyone anymore. I am that hungry feeling and I am not that overly full feeling.

I had a dream about tearing apart dead fish with my hands, piles of dead fish, crustaceans. They had hearts like chickens.