In the car with my dad, he said something mean to me, really it was pretty mild & in most circumstances I would let it wash over me like a breeze, but instead I turned my face to the window & started sobbing. Sobbed my way home & in bed & after crying, I realized it was not a runny nose or tears that I’d felt, but that I had another nosebleed while crumpled up in my bed & so I cleaned the bloodstains out of my bright white comforter & pillowcase with cold water. They’re still wet.

I told him in the car that he doesn’t like me, that the only time we talk is when he complains about having to be with me & he told me he loved me. Those are not the same thing.

Woke up & immediately started crying again today. Took a bath. I feel like everyone’s letting me down.

After waking up in pain for who knows how many days in a row, bitter for weeks, and sick for four or five, I trudged downstairs, laid down on the couch for a moment, (on my back of course, because it hurts), and cried. It wasn’t particularly… anything. It didn’t make me feel better. I just quietly cried on my mother’s couch. It was very short-lived, maybe because I realized how ridiculous it is, maybe because I didn’t want to indulge in behavior so pathetic. Regardless, my crying sounded distinctly like a defeat; I think it’s that gentle sound that white banners make when they’re picked up by the breeze.

This morning as I walked through the park, the word I thought to use for the rain was “baptismal,” but I have not been baptized & so this word has no associated emotions for me; just an observation.

Got rained on later, at this festival thing with little shops. I was there to indulge my mother, because the plan was to take her to her surprise birthday party afterwards. These details are inconsequential… All I care about is that I got rained on for an hour and a half, the last half hour being torrential, thunder so near that we could feel its vibrations. This was the only time that I felt good today. I felt… clean. It was as if I took a bath fully clothed. Maybe that was baptismal, but with the “associated emotions.”

The rest of the day was pretty miserable. Endured time with my stepfamily & instead of recounting any of it to you, I will say this: At some point, each beat of my heart said I hate; I hate; I hate. I hate them. I really do. I mean, my mom I hate-love because she is my mom & I won’t say it’s instinctual, but I’ve been conditioned out of guilt to feel that way. My stepfamily though has no such feelings; I hate-hate them. They’re people without dreams.

Did not sleep well, not at all. Awake-asleep-awake-asleep until 6:00 AM when I gave up. Bloody nose. It started raining & I went for a short walk despite the fact that my body feels like nothing more than a weight that I drag forward. They’ve torn up our childhood playground. I would’ve mentioned this earlier, but it evoked no emotion in me, I suppose because it stopped being my childhood playground a decade ago. They tore up some trees, & I couldn’t help but think of the fact that the Bible forbids the cutting of fruit trees or about the Greek myth when a fool struck a tree that started to bleed- A nymph. Mostly though, I couldn’t help but think of the little dog memorial, the stone dog, that they threw away… They just threw it away. I had a dream about it last night that I remembered during my slow ambling through the park. I’d found it somewhere in dirt & rubble.

My mouth tastes strange… like some sort of sickening & sweet chemical reaction is happening. No matter how many times I brush my teeth, it will not go away. My skin is smattered with bug bites & even when I bathe, it feels damp & heavy. I’m not sweaty, but there’s some sort of film to it, like a stagnant pond.

Thinking about things, all I can say is that it is what it is, (which is acceptance I suppose). Courageously embrace your pain. Refuse to be cut off. The pain & the sufferings of this world are your birthright.

Feeling… something. Something bad… & instead of writing, it made me stare at the little blinking line on this document blankly for a few minutes. I wish I were dead. No I don’t. I don’t know why I wrote that.

I’m visiting my mom. Every time I visit her house, I feel sick. Saw one of her cats drinking out of my cereal bowl of milk & it made me want to throw up. There was a time when I was younger when I was so afraid of her that any meal shared with her would end with me throwing up in the bathroom. “End" implies that this was a conscious action at the end of the meal, when it was an involuntary one in the middle of the meal. “End” alludes to how routine it was, and the fact that it was a predictable sequence of events despite the fact that it involved me repeatedly throwing up against my will.

I’m here because we’re throwing her a surprise party for her birthday. My sister isn’t coming. Forgive your mom or don’t forgive your mom. Stop doing both. Make a radical decision. It’s the cognitive dissonance that’s making you sick. Is it cliche to blame your parents for your problems? You’re an adult. You don’t have to be here. You’re choosing to be here. Out of guilt. And obligation. And because you love your mom while you hate her. You don’t hate her. You’re just scared of her. And then you look at her & you remember that you’re taller than her now & all of that fear leaves your head, but it has no real escape, so it goes to your stomach, because that was the routine a decade ago. You want a routine. That’s why you hate it here. She gave your room to her new family. They’re not here, but you can’t sit up in your own bed anymore. And eating makes you sick. But you still love your mom.

Today I went with her to a coffee shop, a table away while she had a work meeting. I felt childish.

I’m big & she’s small now.

I almost wrote “She’s big & I’m small now.”

Today feels extra special because I am not working. It will do me well to not forget this feeling. I’ve always been troubled with this human tendency to accept things as a new normal: As in 1) Something good eventually fades into normality; nothing special or 2) Something bad eventually fades into normality; acceptance. I think it comes from the human capacity to endure anything, and so I cannot feel blameful or disdainful of it, but I think it’s a good thing to be cognizant of. In general, I think that I could be called a “grateful” person, but it’s not because I just feel grateful, it’s because I have the tendency to remind myself that I am grateful. Grateful and simultaneously dissatisfied. My whole world is simultaneous lately. I’ve always thought dissatisfaction is a good thing. I am grateful to my parents that they gave me a life & a home that I am utterly dissatisfied with. It’s the most important thing they’ve given me.

My throat hurts, my feet hurt, my back hurts, my neck hurts, hurt, hurt, hurts, but today is good. I think my constant pain has become increasingly obvious, because my mom suggested I go to the doctor, get bloodwork done. I’ll have to go before I leave for Japan. That’s so soon. About five weeks? I think my reluctance to visit the doctor comes from my last visit, a couple of years ago, in which I told him that he was a miracle worker who cured me of depression & he told me he didn’t have the capacity to help me anymore, to go see a psychiatrist. I haven’t been seeing a psychiatrist either. They don’t listen to me. I hate psychiatry & I hate psychotherapy. They’ve failed me over & over & over again, but I’m the problem… Less than one hundred years ago, we were giving people lobotomies, that was psychiatry, but now I’m supposed to believe that they have it figured out now? They don’t. It would be one thing if they had the humility to admit they’re a new & wet science, but they don’t. They just bartend & give me different pill cocktails till I resolve to kill myself. And they don’t… everyone thinks this is inconsequential, but they don’t take account of the soul, the human spirit. I don’t think there’s a dividing line between the soul, the mind, personality, nor is there a dividing line between all of these different mental health disorders: They didn’t give me a blood test or an X-ray & tell me that I was bipolar, they just observed, from the outside, my behaviors, the way I described my thoughts & compared them to a checklist, but there’s no objective measure. It’s just very arbitrary. There’s this desire to pathologize things that I reject. Sometimes I can suffer because I’m suffering, it doesn’t need to be fixed. I’m not something that needs to be fixed… I can’t tell anyone this though, because then I’m “treatment resistant.”

This is something that’s been on my mind lately, I suppose because if my manic episode that I suspect ends up truly severe, then I will have to submit myself to this again. I don’t like thinking of it. It all feels like a violation of… me. It makes me feel violated.

I actually feel tired for the first time in days. No time to write: Pack your things & sleep immediately.

Quit my job today. I already put my two weeks in, but after I clocked out today I texted my boss that I wasn’t coming in tomorrow & blocked all of my work contacts. I was just sufficiently angry & so I quit. It was an uneventful last day to end three years of dismalness, average in how bad it was.

A coworker was playing music & California Dreamin’ came on & it made me think of Chungking Express.

“I am writing this to you at work because I am clawing at everyone & thing for attention & right now you are in my clawing path…

“At the moment I feel very self centered, self involved, self important, self self, self self self, & it is hard for me to empathize with you… I am just something full of urges right now.

“I've been very religious lately, but I am trying to avoid that because I get that way whenever I'm manic. It makes it feel somewhat artificial, which is funny, because my feelings are anything but counterfeit. They're the opposite of artificial but simultaneously artificial. Being like this is a lot of simultaneousness. It's like I'm a piano & someone is smashing four or five different keys down at once; nothing is mutually exclusive & it is all fair game. Well, this feels like a very unfair game in which I am the perpetual loser, but by the "grace" of something, I can feel like a winner while still losing. I'm a winner-loser right now. Hard to think I wanted to kill myself a month ago. Back then I was a loser-loser, losing both games, though maybe I was better off then.

I just described my heart as a “taloned thing” & that phrasing has become ironically physical: My chest hurts. It hurts so badly. I cannot articulate to you the pain that my chest is in, was in. Oh God, it just hurt. I don’t have the language to describe it beyond needle-like, needles being shaken around my chest cavity, and oh does it feel cavernous. It felt simultaneously cavernous & as though it was being squeezed, like soemthing needed to esacpe, like I needed to escape. I suppose I was having a panic attack, because I was immediately overcome with the thought that I need to go home, that I need to hide, that I can’t take the bus to school, that I wouldn’t survive it, that I’d throw up on the bus, that I’d collapse, that I’d humiliate myself, that I was dying... I was not dying. And the solution to a panic attack is to just endure it. That’s all I do. And I feel a mounting pain & fear in my chest & then it begins to slowly dissolve & I have won. The sensation of fear is not a defeat, allowing yourself to be defeated is a defeat. As long as I refuse to succumb, I win. It’s that easy. & it’s that painful. But nothing is unendurable. Nothing is unendurable.

Time feels like it’s longer; a minute feels longer than a minute. My heart is a taloned, grasping thing clawing its way out my throat for attention. It’s rather unsightly. Repulsive even. I’m a lint roller for unjustified confidence & insecurities in equal measure.

“The time to Relax is when you don’t have time too, quote in my Doctors exam room!”

Went to the bookstore due to a spark of intuition & found a collection by Rilke: The Rose Window and Other Verse from New Poems; That’s providence baby! Drove with the music up & my windows down, with a drink too big for my cup holder.

Going to bed because I’m finding it increasingly difficult to sleep.

I imagined that my headphones were whistling at me. Well, imagine implies that this was a purposeful action with control: I heard my headphones whistling at me, though this implies that they really were whistling & they were not. We know what I mean; don't make me say it & give it the certainty of a confession.

The coffee shop is playing You Make Me Feel so Young by Frank Sinatra. Funny, because I was just feeling nostalgic.

“I am feeling... very good, as though I know exactly what to do. I would describe this feeling as a "blitz," or that my arms are swords. I feel very awake.”

Realization regarding my (previously thought to be inexorable and intrinsic) self-loathing: I do not actually hate myself. I hate my Untrue Self, the repulsive thing that I atrophy into when I lose the courage to live meaningfully, in accordance with my values, & I think this is justified. I’ve always struggled to understand this idea that I should love myself regardless of what I do. Why should I love myself whilst continuously disappointing myself, failing myself over & over again out of anxiety or indecision? My True Self though, that which can best be described as my soul, or its indomitable quality, the thing in me that can’t be subjugated or quieted despite how many times I fail- That I love. That’s the thing in me that’s doing all of this hating; it’s crying out & it’s baring its teeth & snarling, wailing, & that is my self-loathing, the neglect of my True Self. All of this discomfort, all of this malaise, it’s echoing out of some dingy cage of the soul that I’ve trapped it in, & this is a wonderful thing. I just need to open the cage. Even if what I find inside is repulsive, it is mine, & it is my responsibility. Maybe both of them are repulsive, my True & Untrue Self; I realized I used that word twice in reference to each of them, just a reiteration of the idea that discomfort & pain cannot be escaped, that it is up to us, up to me, to choose the rewarding kind.

Really though, if my True Self is “repulsive” then it is out of neglect. With care it could be something again, something good. I sincerely believe this. It’s indomitable, after all.

I think all of my problems could be solved with discipline; (& any that can’t are not worth worrying about).

I will wake up tomorrow & I will start again; I will be something new.

...

This is all borrowed time, so act like it, even if the realization is awful.

I had a fun day with E in the city. We took the train. I think my time spent with her is the closest to “normal” that I ever feel. Talking with her is being lifted out of the box of mirrors that is my own head; I can just exist not only contentedly, but happily for a few hours without thinking about things- Well, without being introspective.

I can be a very talkative person, probably out of a condition of constant solitude, and have the bad habit of listening for the sake of speaking, rather than listening for the sake of listening. I’ve been correcting this by catching myself in the act, redirecting my attention to my interlocutor, but this is never a problem with E. In fact, it’s the opposite: She has a habit of talking for a while, without either of us realizing, until she mentions that she’s been talking too much & that she would like to hear me speak. I really don’t mind. I think I’d be content to sit on the train & watch her mouth move as she talks about family & her faraway home for hours. She mentioned that her life seems “boring” but she’s really one of the most interesting people that I’ve ever talked to. We talk mostly about mundane things, so maybe that’s why. When I’m by myself, I tend to be not only up in my own head, but even higher than that, waxing spiritual & philosophical. With her, it feels like we’re talking about “real life,” not to say that this is all small talk about the weather or whatever. Really, it’s more as though anything & everything we speak about is given equal gravity & importance, which I like.

I think we talked for about four or five hours or so. The only piece of conversation that I will recount here is that I mentioned my dream last night in which I was a (not sure which denominational) nun & I told her that somehow, I’ve come to believe that monasticism or a cloistered life would be good for me, that I would thrive under such conditions & she agreed, She said she couldn’t explain it, but she agreed. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone, but it’s been a dream, or perhaps a fantasy of mine to live like that for a period of time, not forever, maybe a few months, a year. If I ever had the opportunity for a temporary nun-monkship, I would take it. My only worry would be that I would find contentment & want to spend the rest of my days like that. In a separate conversation with another friend yesterday, I explained that while I believed that I would be very happy with a nuclear life, with a wife & kids, I’m not going to pursue that, because I would rather have novelty & discomfort over a life of contentment. I think happiness can be stifling, though maybe I say that because I have never been truly happy for long. I think to be “truly happy” I would not be myself, and even in all of this self loathing, I love myself enough to reject that sort of change.

I bought E & myself lunch: onigiri & miso soup, well, (spicy tuna) onigiri & miso soup for her, I just had an (egg & mushroom) onigiri. I have never explicitly communicated this to her, but at all opportunities I try to pay for her meals when we go out, because I have more money than her. I have a job & her student visa doesn’t allow her to work, so I don’t mind spending ten, twenty dollars on food for her, because it’s not a lot of money to me: I rarely go out. Normally she doesn’t allow me to, but this time I told her since she’s picking me up at my house that I would buy her lunch.

Lunch was good, though she was unhappy with her custard taiyaki dessert because it didn’t compare to what she gets in Japan. I could tell by her face that she was disappointed. I don’t normally see her like that & it was kind of endearing. Her scowl reminded me of a child’s, but I didn’t say it. After lunch, we stopped at a nice bakery nearby & I bought about twenty dollars worth of assorted pastries & a drink. We stopped at an Asian grocery store & then took the train home. It was a fun outing & it didn’t rain on us despite the forecast’s forebodings.

I played video games in bed for a while, took a nap till sunset, & then went on a walk. In my absentmindedness, I somehow didn’t notice that it was raining on me until I was quite a ways away from the house. Looking at a road, I watched the raindrops fall upon the darker than usual, though near glowing asphalt in waves until it occurred to me: Oh, it’s raining; my shoulders are wet & heavy. I continued on for just a bit until it occurred to me again: Oh, it’s really raining; the legs of my pants are so wet that the weight is making them droop off of my hips; I keep blinking away raindrops. & so I walked, rather slowly, back home. It was refreshing. I think being rained on is a similar mechanism to prayer under a waterfall. Upon getting home, I put on a dry sweater & immediately went back out with an umbrella. The rain was so loud that I could hear it pelt the umbrella through my headphones. It sounded like my grandpa's tin roof that I was telling E about today. By the time I got home the second time, my shoes were so soaked that I had to peel my wet socks off of my feet. I hung my clothes up to dry in the bathroom so they wouldn’t mildew. I was going to take a hot shower, but decided against it & let my cold hair cling to my cold head.

Today was a good day. I feel very... human.

This is embarrassing to admit, not to anyone reading this, but to myself, but my relationships with others feel very up & down. I am always in the process of becoming enamored with them or resenting them, but they are never constant: They are unstable & the instability comes from my throbbing, grasping heart, an overly watchful heart: It perceives all actions as danger unless they are explicitly saccharine.

People often think the word bipolar means “moody” or “up & down” or “capricious” & not “characterized by episodes of depression & mania” & this collective misperception comes from all of the people who have come across me in my neediness & jealousy that I keep in my throat, just below yelling it out. I could throw up all of the blood & fluid in my body & the jealousy still wouldn’t be out of me.

Would it prove my point to mention that all of this came from a conversation about my friend asking me if we were meeting at the train station tomorrow or if she was picking me up at my house? I would say I feel stunted, but really I feel far too big. Mostly I’ve been feeling grandiose & better than everyone & everything around me, but sporadically this perception has been dissolved by who knows what & I still feel grand but not grandiose: I feel like a giant, disgusting child or a fish & then all of the confidence I feel is inverted inward, & everything is superior to me.

I told E that I think I’m going to have a manic episode, that this feels the same as last time.

...

I told my boss that I’m quitting, not as a result of my recent swelling impulsivity that is at the best of times generally distended from me like a goiter, but something that I decided on a few months ago. It was just a matter of when.

My clean work shirt is buried in my closet, by which I mean literally buried, because all of my clothes are off their hangers & on the floor & are piled up to about my thighs. If I were to walk into my closet I would either have to climb the clothes like a hill or wade through them like dark waters in a dream with more than one moon. My room & closet look like they belong to two different people. I feel like I belong to two different people. Neither of the people want me to sleep; I am having a “mood episode.” What episode is it? The TV keeps switching channels & I don’t have a remote. Right now it’s on static. “White noise, what an awful sound…”

In case I forget how to be confident one day:

1. Tell anyone who makes a comment- good or bad- to stop commenting on your body. Be antagonistic.
2. Understand that the idea of a beautiful body is completely made up. An example: In the Roman empire, large breasts on a woman were unattractive. The ideal breast at the time was “the size of an apple.” Another example: Foot-binding.
3. Feel pity for people who are concerned with their appearance.
4. Refuse to wear makeup.
5. Remember that thinness/fatness is not at all related to the idea of virtue.
6. Don’t let them sell to you.

My life is going to change soon. I had a good day today. On a walk, thinking about how one day I would be dead, I felt as though I could cry. Last night I prayed to God to “burn me up.” In this moment I love you.

Have been treating all kindness & accomplishment directed towards the self as things I check off so I can be deserving of love rather than things I do because I love myself. In other words: I have been treating them as a means to an end, the end being “self love,” or at the very least a lack of self loathing when in actuality, these are things that I should be doing for the sake of doing them. There’s not an invisible score telling me that when I drum up enough self-kindness-self-love points that I can finally reach the state of loving or caring for myself; I’m already doing it. These actions are caring for myself. That’s what this is. This isn’t a source of inadequacy or shame when I fail. Cut it out.

Maybe the way to overcome this self loathing is to treat love as an action & not a feeling.

Been awake for about an hour. Did yoga alone in my dim bedroom.

To my sister, today: “Now my soul is untarnished, like a dishrag that I’ve just bleached.”

To myself, on a walk: I felt the breeze & I took my headphones off; the sound of it filled my head like a conch shell. Then it began to rain on me & I could only describe the world as “perfect.”

My friend the Gull, to me: She recounted a dream that she had about me. It was the number four (again. Back in March I had those dreams about the number four, I said they were signs of something bad & foreboding, so was this dream): She was in her childhood backyard, in mud & she was on the phone with an unknown boy who was asking about me. And to answer, she thought she needed to tell him how many stones were in the mud & so she told him “Vashti has four stones.” When she told me this, I could tell that it was not good. It's hard to convey the meaning here, as it is a retelling of a retelling of a dream, but it is foreboding. I could tell just by how my body felt when she told me. I'm trying to accept this as premonitory but not frightening, like Death or the Tower.

New life philosophy: Nothing is insufferable; I can suffer through anything.

I’m sick of myself. I hate being like this; (So don’t be. It’s that easy & it’s also that hard.)

My stomach fucking hurts. It feels like I'm going to start frothing magma.

My stomach hurts, not my-stomach-the-organ, but my-stomach-the-torso. It feels like the inner walls of my torso are being pressed against an electric stove top.

My body has not felt okay in days. The words that keep coming to mind are “rotten” or “spoiled meat.” I think this feeling is coming from a place of mental… something, of something being wrong mentally or that it’s a physical manifestation of a spiritual malaise. Or maybe I’m just sick with nothing.

In February and March I was begging to feel anything in my body, to the point where I almost plunged my hand in a boiling pot of water, so in a way, I am grateful for these physical miseries. At least my body feels like it’s mine. Unfortunately, my mind no longer feels like it’s mine.

I feel so happy & unhappy.

I am unhappy; (So be happy!) All conditions for happiness (should) have been met, but I am unhappy; (So be happy!) I think I’m enjoying this uncomfortable feeling though.

I saw my dad tapping his foot to the beat of the song, the way his calf bulged under his skin & loosened again as he moved the foot up & down, & I felt overly aware of the fact that he is meat & sinew & bone & I am meat & sinew & bone & many of the things I love are just meat & sinew & bone & something about it felt so ridiculous; absurd.

After work we lit a fire in the backyard. Words always come easier in presence of a flame. I wonder why. Right now, in presence of the glow of my computer, they do not.

I’m not feeling good. I feel like I’m being poisoned, & I’m not talking about the malaise & I’m not talking about the headache; I’m talking about something more subtle & more insidious, on a deeper, more spiritual level. Something that gnaws away at the soul. Where is the soul anyways? I asked my dad once if he thought we had souls & he told me “it may just be a subset of your circulatory system or something, but it’s there.” I remember it well because of how odd & how confident his phrasing was. I think the soul is right under the ribs, where your chest meets your stomach, & my soul is bloating like a corpse with no release.

When I was a child, I watched an episode of a TV show about “dangerous animals.” In it, a woman (a real woman, a true story), took in some orphaned snakes. (I’m not even sure if snakes can be “orphaned,” I think it’s in their nature to fend for themselves after birth, but I digress.) One of the snakes bit her & she died & her pet cats ate her body. Maybe under different circumstances I would’ve thought nothing of this, but I have always been consistent in my neuroticism & my fear of everything, & since I could walk, I’ve had a phobia of cats. & I don’t mean this as in, I’m really scared of them, I mean this as in I’m really scared of them & this fear is so entrenched that I consider it to be a piece of my identity or personality or who I am, perhaps even a part of the soul that I’m carrying under my ribs, between my chest & my stomach. & naturally, with my lifelong preoccupation with death that was already manifest & my (perhaps intrinsic) phobia of cats, this episode of television was a perfect Vashti sized trap, a hole in my mind that I continue to periodically fall into years & years later. I don’t remember what my childhood best friend was like, but I remember the way the people in this TV show talked about this woman, like she was stupid, like she was so stupid & I think this bothered me particularly because she was stupid; maybe it was a fragment of childhood precocity, but even I thought she was stupid. I thought she was stupid & innocent in a perfect way. I still do. This dead woman, she’s a part of my worldview now; part of how I see the world is through her dead & clouded corneas, provided the cats didn’t eat them. I hated the way the narrator of the show talked about her, & their little guest experts, the sense of smugness they had. I thought she was stupid & she did the right thing & she died for it, & this was horrible to me. It still is. Maybe I haven’t grown up as much as I thought.

And while I felt a sense of injustice & an angered righteousness to match it, much of what I felt was self-centered, self-concerned, selfish. Is it wrong to call a young child selfish? Maybe, but I have no other word for it. Maybe the selfishness was natural too, because what I was seeing on TV was Vashti’s most horrible-perfect nightmare scenario, all the more horrible-perfect because it was real. As the TV mocked this woman in death, I came to some conclusions: I can die; I can die alone; I can die alone & be forgotten; I can die alone & be forgotten about for so long that cats eat my corpse. I’m not sure if I saw this fateful show pre or post my grandmother’s death, but I will say that this was the first “real death” that I witnessed in that I understood its permanence & its rotting mechanisms & most importantly, that it could happen to me, & more importantly still, that if I went about things “wrong” enough, this nasty death business could be an indicator of a lonely life, a life whose extinguishment by snake venom goes unnoticed, not even a muffle. Yes, the cats ate her body, but more importantly to me, her body was left long enough to be eaten. Even in feeling afraid of the cats, I felt so bad for them that they were hungry.

I think of the dead-by-snake-eaten-by-cat, stupid, innocent, saint-woman a lot. I think more than anyone else in the world, maybe even more than the people in her life who didn’t notice she was dead & getting eaten by cats for days.

I don’t know why I mentioned this. I don’t know why I mention anything. I think that I’m more incoherent than usual. It feels like something is wrong with me. & I say feels because this is a feeling, this isn’t me lining up all of the signs like the buttons I collected as a child or like baby snakes that killed a woman, this is something not small, but… I don’t know. It’s there & I can’t point to it. I think something’s wrong with me though. I think something’s really wrong with me.

I tried to braid my thoughts nice & neatly an hour or so ago & couldn’t do it, so tonight, I offer up a cat’s vomit full of tangled string.

Everything about me feels blunt & clumsy, except for the things that should be, like my anger. I’m annoyed with everyone. I hate everyone. I would say that I look down on them, but I don’t think I’m above them. It’s like curdled milk feeling superior to rotten meat.

I feel… I don’t know. I need someone to put their hand on my forehead & tell me.

Not tired & not particularly alert. I feel the weight of my body & I feel it in my head; I have a headache about the size of someone’s heel pressing down in the space behind my right eye & going into the head like a lobotomy pick. Maybe it’s the coffee, maybe it’s the sugar, but either way, no medicine for me, for fear of getting another ulcer & vomiting up blood again. Maybe it wasn’t even all of that Acetaminophen & Ibuprofen the first time around, maybe it was stress. I took pills every day because I was so stressed that I had been clenching my jaw to the point that it started to lock & I couldn’t chew, then the pills, or maybe the stress, gave me a cheery little ulcer & I started throwing up blood every morning. Now whenever I am in pain, I just lay down & I suffer. I sort of like it, something about it appeals to my religious or philosophical or even poetic sensibilities. Right now I am not sort of liking it, in fact, I am sort of disliking it, because somehow my desk lamp is burning brighter than usual in an attempt to interrogate me.

Today was pretty languid & marked by silence. I often speak of the act of taking the time to notice things, but I am not what others consider to be an observant person. Today in between classes, I got off of the elevator on the wrong floor & sat alone for about an hour and a half. I noticed that the chairs were different, in a different arrangement, that the walls were different, & instead of thinking Hey, I must be in a different place, I thought to myself Hey, they must have rearranged this floor. Rooms & doors were missing & I did not notice. My suspicion is that I did this on a subconscious level, because stepping onto the elevator, I was lamenting the fact that my classmates were going to talk to me for the hour or so leading up to class when all I wanted was to be left alone with my book. I think that’s why my mind readily accepted the fact that an entire floor of my school had been rearranged & strangely, no one from class had walked to me or past me.

My mind has been a bit… I don’t know the word for it. It’s concerning.

During the ride home from school, I noticed how cool the air was, how good it felt. I was tired & it was hard to stay awake, but I continued reading. Glancing out the window, I thought to myself that the sky looked like “a computer screen saver.” Something was strange about it. It looked like the actual sky, the space between the clouds, was a different color all around, like a patchwork blue sky. I opened the window, read my book, took a nap, and fiished my book (Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger). It’s one of those books where you finish it & you’re unsure of what should happen next, like you’re expecting a ceremony where there isn’t one.

I can’t even think of what else I did… I brushed my teeth over & over again today. There’s a bad taste in my mouth that I can’t get rid of, no matter how many times I try. Something smells foul to me, but I don’t know what it is or where it could be coming from; my room is clean, my body is clean, the window open… I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it. My head hurts so badly & I keep hearing bugs.

I have religious insight, but I also have work tomorrow, so I'm going to bed.

I saw a roach & normally I don’t kill them, but tonight I killed one. I sprayed it with bleach till it squirmed around & then instead of putting it out of its misery, I stared at it out of (self) disgust and guilt. Killing it made me feel filthy. It was just so… pathetic, the way it laid on its back & moved its legs to nowhere, never getting up again. I didn’t clean it either. It’s sitting there, at the bottom of the tub, evidence of a crime & proof of my culpability. I think I’m hoping it’ll survive the way roaches are supposed to survive, that tomorrow I’ll move the shower curtain & it will be gone but not disposed of.

I asked my dad to move it outside, but he wouldn’t do it. I asked him to kill it, but he wouldn’t do that either. He said he was tired & I said I was worried about the tarnishment on my soul & asked what if this is the thing that puts me over & secures my place in Hell? He said if I really believed in Hell, that I’d have to do a lot more than killing a roach. I’m not so sure.

I would’ve picked it up myself & put the wretched thing outside, but I have the tendency to feel bugs crawling on my skin. It’s been happening more & more lately. I think mentioning it would’ve caused more problems than the dead roach & my spot in Hell, so instead I said nothing.

I wonder if this is how the Samsa family felt.

Got a hail warning on my phone while on a walk & sprinted home. After that, incredible rains. The muffled sound of the raindrops through glass & through wall sounded like the ocean.

I stepped outside to stand in the rain & it was cold & it was alive. I was alive & that's what I told myself: “I am so happy to be alive.” The rain was so fierce that it soaked my shoulders through my raincoat, dampening my shirt & the skin underneath.

After, I sat in a lawnchair & watched the lightning. When I was a child, my grandma pulled chairs over to my mom's kitchen window & we watched a storm. It's one of my most precious memories. I can't even say it's just out of love for my grandmother, because I don't rememeber her very well, though I do love her, did love her. I think it was because it was something formative in me, the act of sitting & of watching. (I think that) before we sat down, I remember thinking that it would be boring, that I didn't want to sit & to look, but I was captivated by the rain & the mundane setting of it all. I doubt that it was particularly beautiful, looking at our small backyard. It was the act of noticing that made it beautiful, of looking at something on purpose, dedicating yourself to seeing it.

The other memory she gave me was of the virtue of waiting: One Thanksgiving, she had me wipe down the table with a wet washcloth before putting a tablecloth on. I wanted to dry it with another cloth, but she told me that I had to wait for it to dry; She said it would be better that way. I don't know if it softened me up then, but it softens me up now & I don't mind waiting anymore, because sometimes it's better that way.

I feel on top of the world; I feel like I could crush it with my teeth, crush a jawbreaker with my (child's) (shark) teeth!

Told E that I think I'm having an episode & I think she misunderstood me, because she said to “remind [my]self that everything is temporary.” I don't want this to be temporary. I feel unremittingly good. It's like I'm under an eternal sun that no one else can see, with a fluorescent humming that only I can hear.

I did have the thought today that “I'm picking things up like a lint roller.” How does one stop being a lint roller? Do you stop moving? I don't think that's possible.

I saw a total eclipse today. It’s more gradual than you think it is, till it isn’t, & then the sky hurtles itself into darkness. I saw stars in the middle of the day. I took the glasses off, &... I don’t know. I don’t know. Trying to write about it makes my eyes sting with tears. It was so uplifting. I am so happy that I was alive & standing in that field. I really mean it. The way things become bright again, just as quickly as they became dark; it’s so hopeful. I felt a renewal of spirit. I can’t explain it, but thinking about it again is making me cry. I would call it “beautiful,” but beautiful is too simple of a word for something so big, something with so many different parts in synchronicity, surely that goes beyond simple beauty, doesn’t it?

It was supposed to rain during the eclipse. The day was overcast, but during those minutes of absolute darkness, I could see it. There was a clearing in the clouds & I could see that bright white halo ring impossibly far above my head; everything at the right time & everything in its right place. Maybe that’s what I mean when I call it “big;” I’m talking about how everything is big, the way the earth itself is in its right place, so perfectly warm & inviting, the way I am here after a long string of chances. It’s the sort of thing that is so big & so perfect that people call it “fate.”

...

I think “fate” is the term we use when there are so many absolutely perfect chances that our mind can’t hold them all. I try anyways & they overflow into tears, because that’s as long as we’re meant to hold something like that, something so grand that it reminds us that we are stupidly small & stupidly lucky, even in all of our misfortune.

1. Stop vomiting and hemorrhaging money
2. Have a sleep schedule
3. Have any sort of schedule, or routine, or ritual
4. Check your blind spots
5. Find words for things; focus on writing
6. Stop listening to other people’s problems; your mind is too thin to catch them right now, like people plummeting off of a building & through a tarp, like the woman who killed herself on that car & the bastard who took a photo
7. Try to think before you speak... You've been talking a lot & later you may regret sharing so much; be careful with your words; it's better to go in than out; remember what Rilke told you
8. Avoid unnecessary obligations; withdraw yourself

“So why don't you abandon them? / Let yourself be free / This world is bigger than / What we always believe in / So why don't you try to fade out / From your dream of dreams? / Try to take the other risks / Your life should not be like this”

9. Reign in your fantasies & hold them close for a while
10. Allow unfettered activity so long as it does not interfere with: 1) School or 2) Sleep
11. Maybe move towards something, instead of pinching your skin or using your hands the wrong way; Ask yourself: What should we use our hands for?

In the most barren & clinical sense, ask yourself: Is this euthymia or the prodromes of (hypo)mania? You’ve been depressed for so long that you can’t tell. In a more personal sense, does this feel right to you? You feel scared, right? Is that good or bad?

You can't tell.

Mind trampled like hopscotch. I feel good & I think there is something wrong with me.

Drove the car recklessly & wrecklessly; (I did not wreck the car, I only veered into the wrong lane a few times & heard its ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk that reminds me of roadkill). “No point in trying if it’s only gonna kill me / Happy with who I am and trying to not to feel guilty / Turned into someone else / Couldn’t help myself when I’m so reckless.”

It’s hard to listen to people. And to sleep. And to think. And to do a good job. To write. It feels like I’m not doing what I’m supposed to.

I told my family that I thought killing roaches was a sin.

Chest hurts & it feels like someone’s going to Hell.

Didn’t write yesterday ‘cause I was bedresting, felt faint; routine but not frequent enough to be worrying. Had to leave work early on Thursday because my heart was flapping in its chest in a painful way & I felt unable to stand without falling. I took today off & am feeling better, so back to work tomorrow. It’ll be alright, or it won’t be. Somehow, I have no preference.

My dad said that I seemed manic, & then he said that maybe I’m just happy & my happiness has been so out of the ordinary that it’s noticeable & strange. Both possibilities point to something being wrong with my head & both could be true.

Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Brother Vash, Brother Vash
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, ding, dong; Ding, ding, dong!

Frère Vash ne dort pas ; elle ne peut pas dormir, et pour ça, tout le monde la déteste.

I don’t know the word for what I feel right now. I was going to say sad, or bad, but walking into my room, all I could see was that it’s so messy, but so small & nestlike, soft things all over the floor- blankets & clothes, clean & dirty. There was something about the way my bed is on the floor, my bedside table being a small lap tray, something about looking down at this mess, almost like a child's room with a child's small things strewn about. It looked so small & vulnerable. “Small”. I keep saying the word “small”. After standing over this mess, something in me softened & those feelings were replaced with something else. I don’t dislike the person who lives here, but I feel like I could cry.

...

I went running again today. I didn’t want to at first, because I was tired, but went anyways. It ended up feeling good, but smaller than the other times. There was something tired about it; emotionally nothing really rose in me.

...

People have stopped mistaking me for a child. It’s the way that I carry myself, the slouching, the dark circles under my eyes. The lack of something in my eyes.

I wonder what it is that I’m lacking.

I don't like that things can leave me without me saying goodbye, or knowing what’s missing. I recognize its absence though. It’s strange how the absence of something can fill you up. I used to think all glasses were completely full: Half full of liquid & half full of air. I don’t know if I still think that. Maybe that’s what went missing.

Last day at the elementary school. The kids were sad. I was sad. I thanked them for making me want to be a teacher.

I went on a run this evening. Not telling anyone about my running. There is something so naïve & so unbridled about it & so I don’t want it to tarnish it by sharing. I even thought about not writing about it. When I run, I don’t pace myself at all. I don’t jog. I just sprint till I can’t & then I start again. There’s this small trail, well not a trail, just this small area that has a footpath, the way I walk to see the horses, & on that path, there is this patch of light. Along the footpath are trees & thick brush, but in this one spot, a span rather, not a spot, the open sky hangs above & it is brighter than anything around. I walked all the way down to the horses & ran till I stood in the light again. It felt triumphant.

When I’ve been running, I haven’t tried pushing myself in an athletic sense. I’ve just been running to feel emotional sensations. On the way back after running, I ran, but I told myself where to run to, told myself that I had to keep going even when I was tired & I felt this warmth right under my ribs, a subtle burning, less than what you feel in your lungs, like I was a girl running on coal. & I kept running & all I told myself was that I don’t want to be a person who gives up & it had this gravity to it. I told myself that giving up once means I will give up again, & that I have to do what I say I’m going to do. So I ran & ran & once I made it, I felt proud of myself. & then my vision started rattling around in my head.

I am so happy.

Today on the bus I had this thought: “Fuck. Life is so beautiful. I am so happy to be alive.”

I went on a walk later to my tired, suburban childhood park & everything had this renewed beauty, like I was seeing it for the first time.

Wish there was more to say, but it’s that simple. Maybe this was “the first day of my new life.” It took a month, but I'm here.

Instead of riding the bus to school, I got off early & stopped at a coffee shop. I don’t know. Just trying to enjoy myself. Not trying; I am enjoying myself. April is going to be a good month for me. I can tell. A pigeon flew right above my head as I was walking, saw the white underside of its wings.

Not nostalgic, not ruminative (in its more cold & clinical sense), but something a bit softer & a bit more vague. Had a flash of a childhood memory at the park this evening, but I forgot it before I could write it down. Not something I could say that I had “forgotten” either, just something dormant that the sight of bunnies or the little flowers brought forth.

At the park, these people set up a memorial for their dog; at least that’s what I think it is: Two small dog statues, in color, almost real from far away around a tree trunk with children’s painted rocks & then a small, stone statue of a dog with angel’s wings at the base of another trunk. I thought it was a bird from far away & was trying to walk towards it gently to get a good view of it with its wings outstretched. Ended up trying to creep up on a stone, silly. Felt like I had violated some sort of unspoken boundary by looking at the memorial, even though it was in plain view like those crosses they have on the side of highways.

Walked a path I haven’t walked before, even though it’s been there for years, saw so many wildflowers & took an inventory of the day:

1. Lots of cows on the side of the road, some by a railroad track
2. Uncountable wildflowers; I wonder how many thousand?
3. A couple dozen vultures, maybe thirty; I wanted to call them a “committee,” but I’m not sure if that’s right. A group of larks is an “exaltation,” that I know.
4. Bunnies! Bunnies while I was wearing my carrot socks for Easter. One came to the backyard a couple of times, lounging.
5. Pigeons, some sort of heron, and some little house sparrows. (“Even birdwatchers often hold them in little regard…”) Not this birdwatcher. Saw this big white bird with a huge wingspan, following after another. Saw something of a hawk flying low, but I didn’t get a good look.
6. My essay: Four out of twenty pages done. Due: Tuesday. Giving myself some forgiveness though, because these past couple of days I’ve set my heart right a bit, gotten it off of its tilt.

Was thinking about the impressions that people have, the way they can be set. I was telling E a couple of days ago that this old friend of mine had been a lot taller than me when we met in middle school & I thought she was still taller than me till one day when we were both nineteen or twenty I looked at her & realized that I was looking down at her, that I was much taller now. I think my parents have one of those old impressions of me still stuck inside their heart, an old me that is unrecognizable. I don't know what they know about me. I don't think they know what my hopes & dreams are, or the fact that I pray or write, or what I’m afraid of, or that in many ways, I'm still afraid of them. I don't think they know anything about me beyond a children's biography of me.

Getting smacked violently back & forth between misery & exaltation like a tetherball.

Nothing remarkable about Easter, which is a good thing, 'cause holidays with family are normally horrible. The fact that there is nothing to say is a small benediction.

I feel alright.

Happy days. Well, happy day, though their increasing rarity makes it seem even more important than happy days.

After remarking to E over an iced matcha that I haven’t seen any deer in a long time, I saw one on the side of the road grazing in a field of blue wildflowers.

I didn't think about killing myself at all today.

Had a dream last night about the number four, over and over again, repeatedly, across multiple dreams actually. It had a sense of misfortune & foreboding attached. In one dream, I bought a $4 pack of cherry cigarettes & smoked them hidden in the bathroom of a convenience store. I think it is an awful sign of something that I cannot name. Another instance of only being able to see through my peripheral.

Today was bad & I repeated I love my suffering. I love my suffering. I love my suffering. to myself as a matra. It was either that or I want to kill myself. Thought about what it would be like to break my own fingers.

At work I saw a woman with a cardinal tattoo on her chest, but I did not like her & thought to myself that “this asshole is diminishing this bird’s value” by having it displayed on her chest. If I were in a better mood, I would accept it as a sign, maybe.

After work, I went on a walk & this patch of grass that had been covered by construction equipment was uncovered & somehow, it grew much taller than the rest. Sickly looking, but standing proud. I took a bath & was so tired that the only time I lifted my head off the wall was to shampoo my hair.

I am so deeply unhappy, but it is okay, because I love my suffering.

I am in hell & would like to not be in hell, though I’ve said that between death & an eternity in hell, I would pick hell, wholeheartedly, which is why I wake up & do it again, every morning. Gotta stick to my guns, though Vashti’s the most gentle cowboy in the world, so I don’t have guns, just some words of self-consolation. Gotta be wholehearted, because that’s one of the best things you can be. Gotta let the glow of your heart help you navigate through hell, like a compass.

Everyone told me that I seemed like I was in such a good mood today. I’m not. I’m miserable. A customer pulled me aside at work today & said that she “loved [my] energy,” that just talking to me made her day better. What energy? The energy of a car fire. The energy of the inhale before vomiting.

Talked to my mom on the phone for an hour. I try to remind myself that while she is becoming a smaller & smaller part of my life, I am still a significant part of hers. I tell myself the same thing about the dog, when I get annoyed at its barking. We talked about poetry. She said she didn’t “get it.” I said that I don’t get it sometimes either, & that it’s okay, that a poem is not a puzzle & that it is not something to be solved. I told her I just let myself feel it & experience it & that if the poet wanted me to know exactly how they were feeling or what everything meant, they wouldn’t do it in the veiled symbolism of poetry, they’d write it in prose or they’d write it outright, but instead they wrote a poem & so I just experience it. She said that was “a good way to look at it.”

We talked about books in translation & I said that since she doesn’t read books in translation, she may not know what I mean, but reading one translation as opposed to another is a completely different experience, a different book. I told her about how I hated one translation of Crime & Punishment & loved another & that I couldn’t explain it. She asked if it was like the different translations of the Bible. I had no answer.

I told her about Rilke & described him as "spiritual." I told her that I read Letters to a Young Poet & reread it immediately & that now I was reading The Book of Hours. I told her about Tolstoy & she asked me where she’d heard that name before & I told her War & Peace, though I am reading Resurrection. I told her that if they were going to church on Easter that I would not come.

My dad said this was the first time that I’ve been in a good mood in a while, which is just blatantly untrue: Crying fits, the feeling of being drawn & quartered… I don’t remember what feeling happy is like. Or the last time that I felt happy. Saying the word “happy” sounds so childish somehow… Happy. Typing it gives me a frothing sense of resentment.

Two thoughts today:

1. I am a broken-legged horse that’s been whipped too much.
2. I am in a vertical Hell. The circles of Hell are stacked on top of one another, like a cylinder, & I am looking up at a small patch of sky from the very bottom.

“And even if you were in a prison whose walls did not let any of the sounds of the world outside reach your senses –”

Physical & mental exhaustion. It’s hard to think. I want to go home. Nothing feels like it's supposed to. There's not enough time for anything. I see everything through my peripheral vision & can't name it.

Do what you’re supposed to do. Pack your things for work tomorrow. Get clothes. Get it together. No more moldy toothbrush. Do the things you’re supposed to do. Get up. Stop laying around. Get up. Stop laying around. Stop being depressed. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Stop waiting for messages. Stop waiting for signs. Stop listening to the hum of nothing. Listen to me & get up.

The sky suddenly became dark & my toothbrush is growing black mold.

I went for a four mile walk, came home, curled up on my side & rocked back & forth a bit, & cried in bed. I feel a little bit better. Maybe not a little bit better, but a little bit relieved. Time to get up now. (“A bit, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit.”)

I'll do laundry & I'll make my bed. I'll take a shower & open the windows. I'll clean my desk & do my schoolwork. I'll do the things that I can control.

I am in a lot of emotional pain. It took me two hours to get out of bed this morning. The only way to meet this is with self-compassion.

Strange howling outside the window. Animal wailing like a siren, moving up & down the streets. Reminds me of the song "13 Angels Standing Guard 'round the Side of Your Bed."

Excerpts from a letter sent:

“You are right that I am not inadequate. (It makes me uncomfortable to say that, because on some level I do think that I am inadequate, but the only way to overcome shame is to do it on purpose. Shame is just a way of asking for love, so in other words, we have to love ourselves on purpose.)(You know, I always say “some level” in regards to self loathing, but I don’t know which level. I can’t say it’s subconscious anymore, because I’m aware of it & I can’t say I’m doing it “consciously” because that implies some level of purposefulness. Maybe I mean “instinctively,” but that would mean it’s in my nature to treat myself this way & I don’t want to believe that.)

...

“Sometimes, I think that Vashti as a person is suicidal & that when I’m not thinking that way, that I’ve managed to maintain… I don’t know, the illusion maybe, that I enjoy being alive. This is the first time I’ve tried to explain this, so I’ll do it clumsily but sincerely, but I think in general I am just a depressed person. I know that I’m bipolar, but at some point, I think to myself that if I usually feel bad, depressed, whatever, isn’t that who I am? That maybe it’s not illness we’re talking about, but personality, or something that goes deeper than that... I feel like I don’t really have a “normal” self to compare things to, no baseline.

“I guess it’s just sort of how we were talking about feelings, how they are innocent. Sometimes, I really feel okay feeling bad. That sounds contradictory, but sometimes, a lot of the time, I can be miserable, scared, sad & I can be okay. It’s when I try to “fix” things that they become bad, when I try to resist, or to push & pull. I start trying to make myself feel better & those feelings, the sorts of feelings that I normally have, they’re something I need to debride myself of. I look at them as a disease & I feel ashamed of them. This shame is paralyzing. When I look at them with acceptance, not pushing them away or pulling them closer, just accepting them for what they are, then I’m okay. I’ve started to think lately that maybe I should just accept it when I’m feeling depressed, that it’s okay, that I should just accept being suicidal. I don’t say this to anyone, because it sounds like resignation. If you feel good all the time or most of the time, the idea of accepting depression probably seems like defeat, but I really think that it’s the best that I can get. I think self acceptance is accepting this unhappy part of myself, which is the majority of myself.

...

“I might walk to this [coffee shop] by my house tomorrow. It’s a forty five minute walk, a bit outside the neighborhood, but I always treat my neighborhood like it has an invisible electric fence around it, self imposed boundaries. You know, I used to only walk in certain patterns along the sidewalk because I thought that I’d be in horrible danger if I were to take a different route. I genuinely thought I would die if I didn’t walk down the sidewalk correctly in a made up route, superstition to its worst end. I think maybe I still have those tendencies, because I walk around in this little bubble in the neighborhood. Part of it is that & part of it is being in suburban hell.

Another day at the elementary school & bed head all day, even tried giving it an offering of water to no avail. Still hasn’t calmed itself down, though I did take a nap when I got home for a couple of hours. I’m so tired. I don’t think that I’m supposed to be this tired. Strange to think that my hair’s finally long enough to be dishevelled. I feel so different from when I shaved it.

Laying in bed after my nap, I looked at my ceiling fan, really looked at it for the first time, watched it for a few minutes. It looks like a five petaled flower, its blades, a daisy. Around its light bulbs is glass shaped like an angel’s trumpet, the flower or a clarion carried by an angel. It’s beautiful. The yellowed & dirtied glass is beautiful. I’m glad that I took the time to look at it, to see it.

When I went for a walk later, I was so in my head that I don’t even remember it. I walked without thinking, navigating things in the automatic way you walk when you’re reading a book in hand.

I think my lack of writing lately is to blame.

Fuck I’m just… tired. Frustrated.

In the shower, realized that my feelings are not lies, that I do not need to doubt them. Lies warrant guilt & shame; My feelings do not warrant guilt & shame. They are like children lacking in duplicity, they are innocent & do not have the capacity to lie to me. Even my feelings of suicide, of shame, of self disgust, of desolation, even these are not lies; they’re just misguided & it is up to me to guide them or to embrace them, like an uninformed child trying their best to keep me safe. Do not blame the child.

The long grasses were blowing in the wind & I stopped to take a photo, but I never think my photos depict the beauty of what’s around me. Sometimes, I think the grasses rival the beauty of the wildflowers, but everyone stops for pictures of those & no one for the grasses. I mean, I do, so it’s just a solitary appreciation, all for me. Me & maybe the grasses themselves. Both the grasses & the wildflowers grow for no one, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be confident. It’s an admirable thing to exist in an open space, to do it loudly & boldly & for nobody.

I never realized how much the dog cared for me till today, when she was in the backyard after I had come home. She spotted me through the kitchen window doing the dishes & began to whine so loudly that I could hear her through the glass. She normally greets me at the door, but I didn't think she'd go out of her way to see me. I have the tendency to think others only put up with me, the dog included I suppose, even when there's evidence to the contrary that they care for me. It's just difficult at times to reconcile the reality of love with the belief that I do not deserve it.

The warmth of this spring day made me feel that happy days are ahead, makes me feel; I still feel it underneath everything else.

Pink sweater, pastel gingham shorts, sore back, repierced ears (studs shaped like pink, metal bows), baggy socks, dirty pink shoes, sore neck.

Started reading a poetry collection by Ada Limón on the bus to school:

“that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.”

Accidentally typed “03/25/2024 . 2:01 PM” in place of my usual “03/25/2024 / 2:01 PM,” but I’m choosing to keep it. Not all typos need correcting.

I feel like I haven’t had any time for myself & I hate it. I don’t even have time to write anything. I have school tomorrow. I just opened the computer to type this out of spite. Spite for whom? Myself, I suppose, because I’m the one who’s going to be tired tomorrow.

After my exam today, I picked some wildflowers: one of each kind that I could find, so about ten different flowers or so, a rainbow of colros. I set them on my altar. On my walks I see people stop to admire them, or stop to take photos. I've tried to take photos, but there's not enough beauty around here to fill a whole picture with, at least none that I can see right now.

...

Some passing thoughts & observations:

1. I told a friend that I was "lacking bravado" today.
2. I saw a run away kite that looked like a stingray, not the pattern, but its shape.
3. I went to see the horses again & they approached closer this time. Maybe one day I will bring them apples.
4. Skipped every song that I was listening to halfway through during my walk.
5. I stood in the wind & felt (almost) redeeemed.

I feel small & sick & disgusting. My body hurts; I can feel it right below my ribs, in the center of my abdomen. I didn't sleep well, even though I slept ten hours. Studying today. Test tonight. I feel sick.

Another dream about suicide. Going to bed soon. I shouldn’t study when I’m tired.

I suppose it was just a trick of the light, perhaps because I was looking through a tinted car's window after sunset, but on a walk this evening I saw glowing people, children made out of string lights. It was beautiful.

I feel scared. Of everything. That's the thought that came to mind as my hands were hovering over my keyboard.

Excerpts from a letter sent:

“Vashti is very tired today, not well. Instead of feeling low, I feel very high up in the air, like a scarecrow on a pole propped up with its arms out. (One of the only memories that I have from my grandmother is sewing a scarecrow together.) I’m just so… tired. I wish there was a better word for it. I feel worn thin, like fabric that is being pulled so far apart that it is tearing slowly at first, but then with increasing force & speed (like falling), maybe chewed up by a dog. When I haven’t been doing well, I always have the thought that, “stray dogs have been chasing me.” Having trouble writing right now, you know, ‘cause stray dogs have been chasing me.

...

“Studying, studying, studying is all I’m doing tonight. Will see E tomorrow & then study some more after we’re done. Then I will study all of Sunday & take my test that night. It’s very high stakes for me, because I have a few thousand dollars in scholarships (about $6000) that is contingent upon me maintaining my grades this semester before I transfer. I feel so tired. I keep saying that, but it’s all I feel. Oh, & I started crying at the grocery store today, & at home putting the groceries up, & then doing the dishes. It feels like something is open in me that should not be, maybe those tears that I spoke about earlier, or holes in my skin from stray dog teeth. Took a bath & I couldn’t stop thinking about things. It wasn’t relaxing at all, sitting in hot water with a huge thread ball in my throat.

“At least I don’t want to kill myself, not really. At work yesterday, I had that thought again that I wish I were dead, till I told myself “No, no, no!- Stop that!- Cut it out!” the way you would scold a dog for eating something it’s not supposed to, (or for chasing Vashti down the street): more of a plea of desperation really. It’s hard to call something a “scolding” when the one speaking has no power or authority.

Took a bath & watched the puddle in my navel tremble with each heartbeat.

I’m so tired.

The days are getting longer now, but it doesn't feel that way.

At work:

1. discussions about prayer with coworkers, one of whom strangely suggested that “people like us” need to pray aloud. Strange not because he’s wrong, but because I had come to this conclusion just a few days ago & didn’t mention it.
2. wrote in a small notepad that I have started carrying around
3. I spoke about depressive realism & the default mode network & one of my coworkers stared at me almost blankly & remarked, “You sure know a lot of stuff, huh?”

After work:

1. Had many ideas that I wanted to write about & studied for my midterm instead & now they’re just ghosts. I wonder how many ideas have been lost to college work.
2. Took a bath that was too hot & emerged with a pounding in my chest that I could hear & feel in my ears & a headache.
3. Went for a walk & after dark & because of the rain, all of the street lights had a strange glow to them; you could see the patches of light in the air, like a children’s drawing, & you could see the raindrops from far away.
4. Had a clear thought: “Everything has its place.”

Got off of work an hour early & am sitting in at a next-door boba shop. I feel really low. The sky is heavy with rain, my body too.

Addendum: My drink is not particularly good. It tastes like a sunk cost fallacy.

Addendum II: I asked the nice barista for another drink & she gave me one for free.

I had a busy day so I didn’t write this till now, right before bed, but last night, I cried before bed, in bed, but not to sleep. It felt really… good. It was something that I needed. Instead of trying to stop myself, I just felt myself cry, my body, the way my inhales and exhales caught on themselves like a sprinkler; the way my chest was a rubber band; not wiping my tears away, not trying to press my hands to my eyes till I see spots, but paying attention to the path my tears traced down my cheeks & neck; the dampening of my collar; not curling inward like burnt paper & covering my body & my face out of shame, but just laying on my back, open. I spent about an hour like this & during it, I had the distinct & clear thought: “I am happy to be alive.”

When it felt like time for bed, I let my breathing slow & fell asleep. I didn’t pray before bed because it didn’t feel necessary; the process of crying was almost meditative. Whenever my mind wandered, I would bring it back to my body, let it feel the sensation of sobbing, all of its intricate motions for one of humankind's most simple and universal acts.

I woke up with a sense of calm that lasted me all day.

Feels good to not be suicidal.

Everything tastes sweeter with a burnt tongue.

Another Tuesday at the elementary school, bright green floral dress to the shins, colorful sneakers, quilted purse. As I left, the kids asked if I would come back every Tuesday from now on & I was sad to tell them no: Two more Tuesdays & Miss Vashti will be done, but you will run into her every once in a while & we can say hello. They keep asking me if I’ll teach at their school.

I wanted to turn in one of my library books & check out another, but I slept in today instead. I’m beginning to like going to the library before searching for a PDF or buying a book that I want outright, because of the element of chance. It makes it more meaningful when I find a book that I really enjoy, as though it were meant to be, but not really. I don’t believe in fate; I believe in tiny chances all in a row like pearls, & the fact that our precious things are only ours by chance makes them all the more precious.

After (the elementary) school, I laid in bed for a bit, then I took the car to the used bookstore & stopped in a restaurant for pho & Vietnamese iced coffee.

Like a normal person
Not a stunted little girl
Not a big fish

At the bookstore, I found Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis, another thing that was meant to be, but not really. It has one of my favorite poems inside:

“i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself”

I wrote to a friend later, Sabine's Gull, “I'm going to copy it & hang it on my wall, next to Wild Geese. I was tempted to just take the page out of my copy of the book, but I think I will do that when I finally leave the country & cannot take my books with me. I had this fanciful idea to gut them all of their important pages, to make my own book out of them when I leave. I also memorize poems, so I cannot lose them.”

(Sabine's Gull has mentioned kneeling to pray, something that I never do. I only pray in the middle of the night, as though I'm hiding something out of embarrassment. I would rather be caught masturbating than praying & I don't know why. Driving the car by myself, I've begun to do something similar to prayer. I talk to myself out loud, but I don't think about what I'm saying, I just speak. My same friend said that one day, a prayer overcame her, automatically, like a heartbeat or a metronome & this is something similar, only without the steady pace. My voice is frayed & urgent, as though I'm going to be caught in the act. I think speaking to God & speaking to the self are both forms of prayer.)

After the bookstore, I took my book & dined in at a Vietnamese restaurant, near the window. The pho was good & the restaurant somehow beautiful. Maybe it was the warmth of the food & the sounds of people, overlapping voices, but I felt comforted. I can't really explain it. I sat quietly, chopsticks in one hand, book in the other, & I felt alright. The bright yellow of the book & the bright green of my dress & the black of the table were beautiful to me. Its vividity would make for a good still-life, a nature morte. The spoon they gave me had a soft smell, almost like bleach, but not quite: some other sort of cleaner. It smelled so nice that I took a break from eating just to smell it. I thought to myself that my whole life could be small comforts like this, but that I will seek out risk & danger when I am ready, when I am strong enough.

I took a picture of the sky before going home & in the car, speaking to myself, (or praying, whichever you prefer), in a small & shaky voice, still forceful in a strange way, I blurted out: “Heartbeat like a horse, like a rabbit galloping.”

After school I took the car to a coffee shop to go study & I spoke to myself in the car on the drive back. Even alone, I have difficulty speaking out loud to myself. The only time I speak when I am alone is when I fall into writing enough & begin whispering the words to myself as I write them. I told myself that I would be okay, and that I will have the life that I want, soon. I said I love you. On the drive back I saw a horse grazing in a field, just outside of my neighborhood. I see the horse sometimes in passing, but it is far enough out of the way that I do not encounter it on my walks.

Doing the dishes, I kept thinking about the horse & went to go see it. The sky was beginning to fade from sunset into dusk & I let my feet carry me forward, in a hurry, & in hopes that the it would still be out, that I had enough time. Above me, I noticed that the clouds had a painterly quality to them, some of it was the softness of Rothko & some of it was the warmth of old paintings, visible light. This was the first time in a few weeks that I felt the need to take a picture of the sky above.

As I was walking past the wildflower field, (still sparse & new & mostly green), my heart began to flutter, not in a bad way, but like a bird's wings, & I began to sprint. & as I ran, I noticed that I was smiling, really big, so much that I could feel it in my cheeks. It’s taken since February, but this night in March, I felt happy, genuinely happy. Almost leaping between steps, I felt the need to say “I love you,” to someone or something, to yell, it & I thought back to that dream I had, the one where I wrote the poem about horses, that happiness is a filly. I thought that people are not meant to know the future, but that I know my future & that it is an inevitability that one day I will want to die again but right now, running, I was happy & that even though these happy moments are small & are surrounded by sad, cruel, painful ones, outnumbered, supply fading, that they are enough to carry me to the next one, that it is enough for me to carry myself to the next one, happy or not.

The pavement gave way to grass & I began stumbling my way towards the horse, still smiling to myself. There was this patch that was lighter than the rest, a circle of light on the ground from the dimming sky above, huge. I didn’t stop & continued walking to the horse.

When I made it to the fence, I saw that the horse was gone, that I had missed my chance, but I thought that the exultation of running there was enough, & that I was happy. As I stood panting, the horse came out from its barn. It didn’t approach me, but it came out to look at me, & we stared at each other. It sounds like a pastoral scene, but a few feet behind me, cars roared past & the sky was becoming dark. In the darkness, it was hard to see the horse, but it was just enough that we could still look at each other. I don’t know how long I was there, but when I left, I waved goodbye, still smiling, and just above me, an owl made a low arc over my head. Over & over again lately, birds have been flying just above my head, & butterflies & leaves. I wonder if it means something, this nature made halo?

Maybe it's because I've started praying again, but this night was a religious experience.

Back at school. I feel a tightness in the chest, like it’s being bound by ribbons; or that I have some awful cage gripped so closely around my ribs & into the skin & muscle that I can’t inhale fully, shallow breathing; or that my rib cage itself is a cage, or a cell whose warden strikes fear in the heart. It feels electric in a bad way.

(When I was a child, I shocked myself on a power cord so badly that my entire body seized up & I fell to the floor. (For some reason, I couldn't move my hand away.) With it was this intense feeling of lightness, similar to the way that falling feels. I felt fuzzy when I woke up, like TV static. I think if electricity had a texture, it would be fuzzy & sharp, like a cat’s tongue. I was too scared of my parents to mention it to them after it had happened. I just sat down at the dinner table & was scared to plug or unplug things for years.)

It was hard to get out of bed this morning. I was so tired that I let myself sleep in for an extra hour and a half, (still got to school early). Trying to be good to myself. I am being good to myself.

I use that word, "trying," a lot when I say that I'm doing something good, or something right, or something that I should be proud of. If I've deemed what I'm doing is bad*, then I call myself a bad* person. (*Lazy, stuck, small, weak-willed, undeserving.) Using this language, good actions are something I perform but do not reflect me & bad* ones are what make me who I am. That's not fair to myself.

Feel anxious about going back to school tomorrow.

Putting effort into getting dressed again, changing my clothes every day. When I was at my mom’s house this spring break, I retrieved two trash bags worth of clothes & all of my pajamas were in there. Vashti’s back to haunting everywhere in nightgowns instead of the same sweatshirt & pants with a slightly sour smell, corpse’s breath; (They can’t brush their teeth after waking up, so they must have that awful morning breath in their mouth, all the time.)

More girly clothes lately. What is “girly” to me? Gingham, polka dots, the colors red & white, nightgowns, Mary Janes. (A fun fact: Vashti refused to wear any shoes other than Mary Janes until she was about ten or eleven.)

1. Need a sleep schedule again: 2 AM & 9 AM
2. Be honest & candid with E when you see her. Ask for help if you need it (& you do need it). Speak the way you write- Say the truth.
3. Now is the time for moving & working, not questioning.

“You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

4. Look to the skies again. Do it on purpose.

Today something about the overcast skies & the movement of the dark clouds reminded me of the ocean in Oregon.

I sat down because after lying in the bath with my thoughts, I had something to write. Then, sitting at my desk, it began to rain, softly, so that the sound is overtaken by the rattling of my keyboard & clumsy typing. I paused to listen to the rain & forgot what I had to say.

It really is a unique cruelty to do what you enjoy & feel nothing from it, being made to look at it & endure its emptiness. I used to understand Joan of Arc, but now I understand Tantalus.

In listening to Rilke & by extension myself, I’m trying to just experience these emotions without pushing or pulling: Patience. In this patience, I’ve found that even in sadness, not everything feels the same. Everything is dull, but not equally. A realization:

There are things that are meaningful because they make me happy; video games, going out to the movies; When I do them now, because I am incapable of feeling happy, all meaning is lost from them & they make me aware of a sense of hollowness.

There are things that are meaningful because they give a sense of doing what I am supposed to be doing, doing a good job, doing what is right; cleaning, cooking, bathing; these are manifestations of kindness toward myself & they are some of the heaviest work that I can do right now, but they are as important as they are heavy. They are not heavy in the way emptiness is unbearably heavy, they are heavy in the way your feet become sore from walking; they are necessary.

There are things that are meaningful to me outside of happiness; writing, reading, walking outside, existing quietly, noticing; When I do them now, even in unhappiness, they give me a sense of fulfillment in emptiness, a glow in a dark room. I think these are the things that make me who I am.

Tired. I keep waking up in the middle of the night, well, the early morning before the sun rises. I went back to sleep & when I got up at 9:00 AM, it took me half an hour to get out of bed. There’s a Vashti-sized hole in the covers that I want to burrow back into, a little rabbit in its warren.

I feel very sad today. Another difficult day ahead.

My room has a soft & sweet scent from some candles burned last night. In my lethargy, I decided to rearrange my room without thinking, & it is a slow process, but I think it’s good for me: Debridement. I set up a small shrine on a shelf & one of its candles dripped red wax down my wall, like blood splatter.

I’ve spent the past few days thinking, softening myself up. I’ve felt so tight-chested this past month, gritted teeth, clenched jaw, curled up fetal position; small & bitter, bitterness turned inward. I said at the start of this month that I wanted to take time to think, to stop distracting myself, but in my misery & insecurity, my thoughts began to turn themselves inward & instead of thinking of a way out of things, I was focused on myself in the worst possible ways: inadequacy, shame, self-loathing, blame. Instead of walking around in a wide circle, finding perspective, I began (or I’ve begun) walking in an increasingly small one, pacing, confining myself & feeling confined, walking in the same spots over & over again to the point of making a patch of dirt of them. A small dirt circle: that’s been Vashti’s domain. I said I felt like a confined animal a few days ago & there was an incredible truth to that.

Last night, cleaning my room, I began to soften or to loosen: softening fruit, a body in hot water. I say “I began,” but I don’t want this to sound like it was something that happened. This was a state that I’ve tried so hard to reach. I realized that all of this thinking about myself, it was devolving into something hate filled & self-indulgent. I was acting cruel to myself under the guise of self reflection, but self reflection is not what I was doing. The idea of reflection involves looking, seeing, & I was not doing those things. I was assigning, categorizing, poking, blaming, pushing, pulling. I wasn’t looking at myself, I was telling myself what I am: worthless, small, lazy, weak-willed. It wasn’t polishing a stone, it was eroding it into nothingness. I really don’t like myself. I wish there was a more eloquent way to put it, a more psychological way, a more poetic way, a softer way, but the truth is that I don’t like myself. It’s a very simple & yet impossibly heavy truth. I hate myself & I feel fundamentally undeserving. Even when I was feeling better, good even back in January, it came less from a place of self-love & more from a place of pleasure. I was carrying on because it felt good, but now that I’ve stopped feeling good, it’s been hard to take care of myself. It’s hard for me to see myself as someone who deserves clean clothes, or a healthy body, or to look at myself & feel good about what I see. I can’t comfortably say anything good about myself, nor can I comfortably hear it. This became a growing issue some months ago when I understood how uncomfortable I was with praise.

Despite how much I viscerally hate myself on a base level, the emotional one that flinches & bares my teeth at things, I’m trying to accept the possibility that this isn’t true, that in actuality, I deserve comfort & happiness, to live a good life, to care about myself. I don’t fully believe that I am worth anything, but I’m trying to make an effort to act like I am. In many ways, I see myself as a failure, as someone that I can’t depend on. I don’t do what’s best for myself. I don’t trust myself to take care of myself. More than that, I’ve spent a lifetime mistreating myself, neglecting myself, talking down to myself & I’ve fallen back into it again. I think the only way that I can really confront this is to be someone that I can rely on, to do what I think is right, to use my hands to be good.

This undertaking is frightening to me, because I’m afraid that another failure will be detrimental, one discouragement too many, but I can’t keep living this way. I’ve never felt this badly before, never, & every time I think to myself that I’ve finally felt as bad as I can handle, I feel worse. I said that I “fell” into this, but that might be an oversimplification, maybe this can be described as a “descent.” A lot of my troubles right now can be attributed to my own two feet. They’ve given up trying to get out of this hole & instead keep walking into it deeper, without thinking. Now I’m going to accept responsibility & forgiveness to myself & from myself.

What to do now? I think the time for thinking has ended & that it’s time to work quietly. I’m someone who spends most of her time thinking, retreating into some form of contemplation, but it’s not the time for retreat anymore. I’m indecisive, & instead of doing things with my hands, with my body, I think things in my head, spin them around, weigh them, imagine them. I squeeze every thought like I’m comparing pieces of fruit at the grocery store & I never eat them. I need to eat. I’m so hungry.

I’m making a promise to myself: Just until April, I’m going to try. I will decide on the life I want & I will commit to it, even in uncertainty & even at risk of failure.

Hot shower, brushed teeth, went for a walk even though I felt afraid to leave the house. It's best to confront anxieties like this early, when they are small, or not small, but as small as they will ever be.

I keep telling myself that there is no way that I can feel any worse & then I somehow feel worse. I don’t have the words to describe how I feel beyond a sense of utter defeat, so I will just describe what happened.

I had this dream that I already have written in my dream journal, but I can describe it here too: I had this dream that felt deeply optimistic & transformative. I was at the childhood park near my mom’s house, in the middle of the night, the only difference between the dream one & the waking one being that the measly, dead fish filled pond of the waking world had expanded itself into a beautiful lake in the dream world. There were houses from across the lake reflected on its waters. One of the houses had lights on its fence, like Christmas lights, but not colorful; a gentle white like starlight. & looking at this house, I had this sense of resolve to change my life: I was done being overwhelmed by things that are supposed to be simple; I was going to live my life & live it right; I was going to be “the lights on fences for somebody.”

After this newfound sense of meaning & of determination to live in a way that could make me happy, make me proud of myself, I left the park. As I left, I got a phone call, & I picked it up but didn’t answer it. I turned around & began running back towards the park. By the light of my phone, I saw another person, & they started running, seeming panicked at the sight of me running. I slowed my pace down to a walk, but they kept running & began running towards me. The setting then became a nightmare as I felt an indescribable sense of dread.

I normally sleep through my nightmares, but this one woke me up, because it is the worst one that I have ever had. I woke up in a bed that was not my bed, but a bunk bed at my mom’s house with an awful transformation in my chest: fluttering & squeezing. When I woke up, I had been convinced that I was going to be raped.

For the next hour, I laid in bed too scared to move, or to summon the courage to put my feet back on the ground. I couldn’t sleep either, because of the feeling in my chest & of how rapidly I was breathing. It was as though I had been running.

I know it was just a dream, but I feel thoroughly degraded by it & somehow more human: I felt human & small & completely aware of the fact that I can die, that I can be killed. It was this thorough & acute awareness of my own mortality that I don’t think I was meant to have, let alone for an hour.

In fear in bed, I began to cry & I thought pathetic thoughts that I don’t think are worth writing. At first, I didn’t move at all, out of fear, but my crying felt suffocating & made it harder to breathe, so I summoned the courage not to get out of bed, but to turn in bed, to shift. I finally convinced myself that it would be alright to face the wall & that no one was in the room, no one would touch me while my back was turned. Despite that hour being one of the most wretched hours of my life, it passed quickly, & I watched my shadow on the wall as it was illuminated by a lightning storm. The lightning storm gave way to a thunderstorm, & I began feeling panicked again. I laid there in bed, in paralysis, until a particularly loud thundercrack happened just outside the window, or above the roof & the fan in the room was set off by this, faster than it’s ever been or is supposed to be, it made a noise just below a mechanical scream & I was scared that it was a person. & it was not courage, but fear that made me scurry out of bed after this. The room had become the scariest place possible & I ran away from it, down the stairs, to this computer. I turned the lights on & I’m too scared to go back upstairs & sleep.

Writing all of this makes it seem stupid & pathetic, but the fear I felt was religious in severity. It was outside the range of what language can express. I don’t know how to write about how bad I felt. Even my tears in bed did a poor job of expressing it.

Heart is fluttering with anxiety. Dread. The feeling of an inevitable cruelty or pain. Intense fear. It really feels like I'm going to die. I know I'm not, but it still feels that way. I feel scared despite how increasingly routine this is. How can I describe this feeling of death to you? It's smaller than you think.

"In other news, have been noticing lighthouses in everything: License plates, names of schools & churches. When I was in Oregon this past winter break, I saw this church called God’s Lighthouse. I haven’t forgotten it. Also haven’t forgotten your prayer that “God is mer-ci-ful,” since reading it. I haven’t been praying lately. I avoid praying for myself, because I see it as a sign of weakness, though maybe it is okay to be weak & that is what they mean when they say the meek will inherit the Earth, that it’s not such a bad thing. (Not interested in the New Testament, so who knows if I’m getting that right.) Another quote: “I don’t believe in God as a kind father in the sky. I don’t believe that the meek will inherit the earth: The meek get ignored and trampled,” from Sylvia Plath. I think about that one often. I told myself this month, Vashti would enter a lamb & come out like a lion, but I’m still a lamb, just a more atrophied one, like veal. I need to start moving soon, before I forget how: The book today, E on Saturday. I just need to take it slow."

Went for a walk & flinched at a monarch that flew right above my head. I thought it was a dead leaf, a vestige of the long winter. I keep reminding myself that it’s spring now, but it doesn’t feel that way. This is the time of year that I normally feel my best, but right now the season feels like a weird & mocking juxtaposition.

When I feel so bad & so severe, it’s hard to tell myself that the world around me isn’t wrong, that it just is, & I just am.

A spring prayer
to soften with the grass
& open with the flowers
Heartbeat like a rabbit
In like a lamb & out like a lion

Chose to go to the library rather than buy books, because the thought of spending my money makes me feel (unnecessarily) guilty & I cannot hold any more guilt without overflowing.

Books from the library are:

1. The Book of Delights, Ross Gay
2. Bright Dead Things, Ada Limón
3. The Conference of the Birds, Farid Attar, (Chosen because it mentions birds in the title)
4. The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, Rainer Maria Rilke
5. Divine and Human & Other Stories, Leo Tolstoy
6. Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy
7. After the Quake, Haruki Murakami
8. The Hole, Hiroko Oyamada
9. Tell-All, Chuck Palahniuk
10. Asleep, Banana Yoshimoto

If I read even two or three of these, I have accomplished something. I’m hoping to think or feel anything beyond a dull & tired, ("we're not lazy, we're just tired"), suicidal intent.

Maybe the world is not as bad as I am perceiving it to be. I think I’ve been short with people, not in a way that acts out, but a way that goes in; hiding. In the library next to me, a man was playing a video out loud from his computer, a video on fractions, & I was annoyed. Then he turned to me after a few minutes to ask if it was alright & I found that I didn’t mind anymore. It wasn’t the noise that was bothering me, it was what I had perceived to be thoughtlessness. Yesterday, my mom apologized for not telling me about a dinner we’re supposed to go to, after I’d asked what our plans were for a couple of weeks. That’s all it took for me to forgive her. I wish self-forgiveness could come as easily.

On the first day there were ants in my throat,
vestiges of something that has circled back around:
ant mill

On the second day there was the fork in my throat
I left it on the stove
where I left my hand
and used it to scrape the ants out,
like fingernails on teeth

On the third day the lines from the prongs
branded into my throat
gave way to a cough without phlegm
An empty cough for an empty girl,
a scarecrow, a picnic invaded

Felt okay for a minute or so while on a walk outside. Felt the breeze on my skin, night air. Trying to find solace in reading: Letters to a Young Poet.

I feel like a zoo animal at rock bottom: An exhibit in the dark. Rock flooring, rock walls, no toys to play with, just a boulder to push around. My only source of warmth is when I curl in on myself, fetal position… That walk, after that minute, (& I mean a literal minute, sixty seconds or so), of feeling alright for the first time in days, it made me feel like a zoo animal. I felt diminished in some sort of intrinsic way, the way I was tracing my old, tired steps around the neighborhood, asphalt. I hate my life. I want to leave & I don’t want to come back.

Went to Bass Pro Shops & thought about suicide in front of the fish tank. Watched the gars, my favorite fish. Heard a group of kids say That one is me, I'm that fish! & I'm the fish with the long nose! The gars made me think of the trip to Houston with E, the aquarium & the museum.

Bowling for my little brother's birthday, somehow won. Picnic at the park: McDonald's because he's a child & that's the pinnacle of cuisine to him. Melon ramune. Saw ducks. Felt sick to my stomach.

He said we're not lazy, we're just tired.

Trying to write more often despite its seeming pointlessness.

Having to stay at my mom’s for over half of my spring break. I don’t forgive my dad for doing this to me. He sent me here with my sister & I hate him for it.

He told me after I get my degree I can pay him rent & still live with him for the year before I leave the country. I asked if he’d send me away whenever he felt like it if he were getting $600 a month from me, or if that’s enough to care about how I feel.

Still feeling unparalleled misery & turmoil, but I am trying very hard to recognize the fact that something is still worth it, that it’s just hidden to me right now & that it would do me good to accept its presence. Like God, but Vashti has always been bad at believing in God.

When I’m feeling well, I call this life of mine “a catalog of experiences,” & that I exist only to experience things, good or bad, indiscriminately. I’m trying to stand by what I said. I keep using that word, “trying.” Everything is effort. Everything. Sitting still is hard. Moving is hard. Tolerating my heartbeat is hard.

In the spirit of trying, (if I can have any sort of spirit, I want one that tries), I’m trying to continue writing. To continue writing is to continue believing that this is somehow worth it, that my experiences are worth recording.

My days continue to blur together & this is not in a strict chronological order.

1. The feeling of bugs on my skin continues to torment me, an indicator that I am losing it again. I “lose it” so frequently that we have to wonder if I ever “had it” in the first place. My whole life feels like looking for something.
2. Pain in the knee, from sleeping in the back seat of the car one night during the camping trip, curled up like a sick animal.
3. Curled up like a sick animal that first night, no roof on the tent, just mesh & a painfully inadequate sleeping bag, painful in the literal sense: In pain all night from the cold. Aches all over. Acute pain & misery. Misery in being awake. Wishing desperately for sleep. Being so cold that my clothes felt wet, my feet felt wet in their socks. Cold only comparable to a fever. The best I’ve felt, because I was so attached to my body & its pains that I wasn’t able to feel sad.
4. My dad yelled at me to shut up while we assembled the tent & did not apologize. I asked why it was okay for him to speak to me like that.
5. Falling asleep in a lawn chair, listening to music, sunglasses.
6. Brother’s birthday, bought one ramune for each year old that he is.
7. Unparalleled depression.
8. Continuous thoughts of self injury: What it would feel like to be shot at with arrows, to put a steak knife through my hand, to run my hands over small flames. Nothing dire, but it’s as unpleasant as it is routine.
9. Getting over a cold.
10. Skipping through every song I hear partway through. Inability to read books. Attention span like a fraying thread.
11. Took thread & sewed my old purse back together. Musty smell of the recesses of my closet. Felt like digging it up from its grave.
12. Pain in walking.
13. Feeling dirty after bathing.
14. Only glow that is noticeable anymore is the yellow glow of my neglected teeth.
15. Diminishing pleasure in food.
16. Uncomfortable feeling of fullness in eating anything.
17. Flinching at everything, even comfort. Wanting approval & hiding from it.
18. A tired feeling of resignation.
19. Not understanding how much is fair to ask of myself.
20. Wading through cold waters & soft sands underfoot. Sitting in a sand bank, damp sand soaking through my corduroy pants.
21. Made a sand castle heart & made a wall around it. Fortifications around my heart.

Birds are loudly chirping as if the sun were out. I could hear them through my headphones & the rattle of my fingers on my keyboard. I wonder what they're discussing.

The grass continues to get a bit softer every day, though it will never be soft. Gradually more colors are added to it, shards of stained glass. Normally the arrival of the wildflowers are specks of confetti, marking an end to seemingly endless sadness. Not this time. Not yet.

I saw two rabbits today. I haven't seen any in a long time. I want to say that it felt meaningful, but it didn't.

Lack of imagination: I cannot imagine feeling worse than this & I cannot imagine ever feeling happy again.

I’ve stared at this screen, trying to think of which words to arrange in which order, but I cannot think of any that can describe how intensely awful I feel.

It's hard to see a point to any of this. My chest feels like a deep & unfillable cave: Nothing I've done, nothing I do, nothing I try will make me feel whole. I keep taking slow & painful steps & pray that there's not a cave-in, though collapse seems inevitable with each stumble forward.

Even my words are slow. It took me twenty minutes to write this.

That feeling of ants in my throat melted itself into a hot fork being scraped around my esophagus; I could point at where all of its prongs cut me.

I called into work yesterday for absolutely no reason & today I actually woke up sick & had to go into work. Everyone told me how awful I looked today, how wretched, how horrible: The secret? It’s not my throat. I may be a bit sick, but most of the illness they were seeing in me was mental. I was too tired to pretend today, & my sore throat made it impossible to perform my stupid, feminine customer service voice. My dear mother who accuses me of faking any & all symptoms, physical & mental, was concerned when she heard me speak. When was the last time that happened? I told her that I’d had a panic attack a few days ago & she told me it was “just nerves,” jitters. I get a sore throat & now people listen to me, when it hurts to speak. My voice doesn't even belong to me anymore. It's unrecognizable.

I just… I don’t even have the language to write about how I feel right now. I feel so incredibly bad. I feel so bad. I feel miserable. & it just doesn’t stop. & part of me doesn’t even care. It's a constant pounding, the feeling of a throbbing headache. I’m so tired. Normally I can sort my feelings of depression into two different kinds: Apathy, the feeling of being too tired to do anything, of being run down & Anguish, the feeling of burning inside, what I would describe as the depressive equivalent of mania & I am feeling the latter. I feel like I could grit my teeth smiling. & that tiredness everyone had seen today, that was the sore throat, the fact that I didn’t sleep well. The rest of it was the fact that I wish I were dead.

Some passing thoughts:

1. I would feel more calm if I were banging my head against a wall.
2. I should’ve been born in a time where self-flagellation was still in vogue. I bet I’d be good at it. Then everyone would like me.
3. My mind keeps wandering to thoughts of myself rotting dead in pools of water, translucent skin. I’m beginning to genuinely believe that I drowned in a past life, or that someone disposed of my corpse at sea. There is no other explanation for how pervasive these thoughts are. Even when I feel well, I think of myself dead like that daily.
4. Can’t stop thinking of burning my hands on things.

Depending on whether or not I feel better, (or at least not worse upon waking up tomorrow), I’m going camping with my family for the weekend. When they talked about leaving me behind in case I end up too sick, I didn’t care at all. Still don’t. Who cares about any of this? None of this matters.

This feels unendurable.

I give up!

Something, which I thought was the train, made this otherworldly sound, this strange, metallic shriek, but not a shriek. I don’t know how to describe it to you. It was like the ghost of metal on metal. And it just kept building & building, just outside the window. Like it was an animal howling to me with the voicebox of a synthesizer. Awful wailing, incredibly close, as though it were approaching me, & then it just suddenly stopped. & the sound of what I thought was the train was shortly followed by the familiar, distant sound of the actual train, its gentle rattling. I thought I heard footsteps outside my window too. Maybe it was a cat, but Vashti’s afraid of cats. I feel ants crawling in my throat.

Something's wrong with me or something's wrong with everything around me. No dichotomies, maybe both are true. I feel weird. I feel bad.

Today, I thought I felt really happy when it began to rain on me, but I think I just felt a small amount of happiness & the reason it was so overwhelming is that I haven't felt any in a long time.

1. Josephine's Shop by My Little Airport
• "But Josephine / You may think your pals cannot lose you / Probably they need you so much / More than they love you / So why don't you abandon them? / Let yourself be free / This world is bigger than / What we always believe in / So why don't you try to fade out / From your dream of dreams? / Try to take the other risks / Your life should not be like this"
2. Into Eternity by Jens Lekman
• "I have a love / I have a love for this world / A kind of love that will break my heart / A kind of love that reconstructs and remodels the past / That adds a dryness to the dry August grass / That adds the sunshine to the magnifying glass / And makes me fight for something that just can't last"
3. Mass Anesthesia by Mediavolo
• "So many cars, queuing in lines / Such a sight just fills my heart with awe / Silent sadness fills my heart / In vapors of gas / Hours slowly pass / Yet, people don’t seem to care at all / Such a sight just fills my heart with awe / They just heed the highway call"
4. とある一家の御茶会議 by Kururingo
5. 浮躁 by Faye Wong
6. Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths
• Last month I described myself as feeling like Joan of Arc if she were guilty & should've been burned at the stake & I think it brought this song to mind.

1. Lizard by Banana Yoshimoto, paperback, $4.89
2. N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto, hardcover, $3.99
3. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, paperback, $6.99
4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, paperback, $5.99

& possibly

5. The Fall by Albert Camus, paperback, $4.59 (I could pretty easily find a PDF though...)
6. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, paperback, $4.99

Skipping work today. Skipped school yesterday. Maybe something will give this sluggish heart a jumpstart.

Don't want to go to sleep, don't want to be awake.

Hangers fell from the chair onto the floor while I was doing laundry & I almost gave up entirely & crumpled in on myself. Then, hanging my clothes, reached the point of crying but of not being able to make tears.

I think I'm still depressed & not as over it as I had thought. I went to the movies today for the first time in months, one of my favorite things to do, & I almost walked out of the theatre. It was a bad movie, but I like watching bad movies. This time, all I could do was wonder what the point was.

I have laundry & schoolwork to do. I have work tomorrow & the day after. I have more than a week off from school & work the day after that for spring break. All of these things are equally unexciting to me.

I haven’t written as much as I think I should have this past week or so. I try to use the word “should” with myself sparingly, but in this case, I think it’s justified. Rather than seeing its usual mundane beauty, I’ve begun to view everything as trivial.

I think I’m still unhappy, but at the same time, I’ve felt something different every day. Normally I feel happy or sad for weeks at a time, so maybe this is just how normal people feel, how you should feel. (There’s that word “should” again; Once I have a thought like that, it’s hard to stop. I had this thought in February that I wished I were dead & I couldn’t get rid of it for weeks.) They’re not strong emotions either, not even strong in their dullness. Everything feels unremarkable in its literal sense: I’ve had no remarks about anything.

As a habit born from a lifetime of loneliness, I will sometimes speak to myself as if I’m explaining myself to someone else, my thoughts, my feelings, my circumstances: Not as though I’m speaking to a friend, but someone who is barely an acquaintance, someone who knows little about me, & I will explain myself from the beginning, imaginary self disclosure. I find perspective in this. I will talk to myself, but I will pretend that it is not myself that I am speaking to. My need to write was born from this too. I’ve noticed that I keep falling into this self-speaking habit & it’s made me realize that I’ve been neglecting my diary. I think part of the reason why is that I’ve discovered a new type of unhappiness that I had not sought out the language for until now. Last month, reading my past entries, I described myself over and over again as someone who was burning or someone who was boiling on the inside. I read The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams a couple of days ago & there’s this character named Tom, a poet who hates his life & he says,

“I’m starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but inside- well, I’m boiling! Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing!”

The self recognition felt in reading this was uncomfortable for me. I no longer feel like I’m boiling, but I’ve been feeling this constant simmering, sometimes imperceptible beneath my attempts to distract myself, this subtle unhappiness that permeates everything. I don’t have the word for how I feel, but it’s a close companion to angst. I know at least part of what I’m feeling is an existential angst that I’ve been trying to avoid looking in the eyes. I went on a walk earlier, no music, no headphones, just the lonely sound of my feet, & I think I’ve forgotten how to be happy. While I was on that walk, I had a few flickers of sight, little flashes in the dark, & I thought to myself that I’ve been searching for meaning, but really, I don’t think there’s any meaning to be found. I never have. I’ve viewed meaning as something that I need to create for myself. I used to find this empowering, but the responsibility of it now scares me. Everything has this weight to it. I described everything as trivial, but it’s also impossibly heavy.

I don’t really know what to do, or how to get out. I feel like I’m trapped somewhere.

One of the thoughts I had while walking in the same tired & lonely asphalt circles was that I need to do challenging things. I need to do something that takes a long time. My days are so easy & so repetitive that I walk through them half asleep.

My eyes hurt too badly to write tonight.

This evening on a walk
that was not a walk
but somewhere just below running in the dark
I felt the breeze & felt
really alive,
just for a few moments.
And then everything became strangely stagnant
as I was almost running down the sidewalk
and lightning flashed in the
still air but there was no sound
except for my heavy breathing.

I could’ve called myself happy then
just for those few moments
unenduring and distant like the
lightning flashes.

In my bed at night
it feels like my stomach is being bound by ribbons.
If there is still lightning
outside the broken window
I cannot hear it.

I can only hear howling
from the train
and the howling of something
just outside
almost like a bird's cry.

I flinch at the sound of papers
and the fan.

I don't feel good. I woke up with the feeling of something crushing my chest, like something tightly wrapped around it. I can feel it under my ribs too, in my stomach, like someone punched me & I can't catch my breath. This was an hour ago & I still can't.

I can tell this is psychosomatic, because I walked to the bus stop a mile away & was fine. I just walked a bit slower than usual.

I don't know the word for what I'm feeling right now. I think it's a bad feeling, but I can't tell. How to describe it to you? The nearby howling of the hourly train made me aware of the fact that I was alone, but I do not feel lonely. I don't know what I feel.

With no one else to do it:

Coffee to warm the stomach
Head in my arms & then,
head in my hands
Unlit candles, but palms up in supplication
Not an empty feeling,
but the awful feeling of being full
of something unrecognizable
to me, but also
to the person that isn't here

I feel like shit on this beautiful Sunday morning. The world is so open to me & I want to turn my back to it.

Home from work & I am tired & my feet sore, but I don’t mind small pains like this because they make me feel human.

Took a shower after getting home from work & putting away some groceries. Underneath a hot water halo, I had the thought that this March, Vashti comes in like a lamb and out like a lion. I don’t want to be something small & sacrificial anymore. I want to feel happy again.

In the car today, my dad pointed at a vulture in flight & exclaimed that it wasn’t flapping its wings, but that it was still flying, that this feat was amazing. Because of all of the time I spend looking at birds, this fact was obvious to me. It’s strange how my love of something comes at the expense of sudden amazement like that. I wonder if I can ever go back to that feeling. I think it’s the same as innocence in that once it’s gone, it doesn’t come back. Innocence may be good, but it doesn’t mean that I’d want to live my life that way. Maybe I should be grateful for the steady & tempered love that I feel. A gentle love with open eyes. Sometimes I forget that not all happiness needs to be exultation. Instead of something I scream about, it can be something I write about. Happiness can be quiet.

A new diary (page), another way of trying to change. When I kept physical journals, rather than filling them to completion, oftentimes, (probably most of the time), I would begin a new one when I felt that I had reached a transitional period, or when ending (as in trying to end) a depressive episode. It's only natural that this website should be the same. In my head, I keep calling today "the first day of my new life." I don't know where that thought came from, but I like it. Nothing has changed, other than that I am sick of licking my wounds. I've realized that I've been licking them raw. It's time to get up & to do what's right.