The potential you see in others isn't real, just a projection of what you would do in their place

 

Our goal as humans is to give ourselves away 

 

Let go or be dragged

 

Maybe it's enough for that love to exist in the past

 

Desperately trying to have a good time

 

"The love you put into the world will always find it's way back to you"

 

I dream of drag queens

 

No one is coming to rescue you from your life

 

You can feel the pain but you don't need to suffer from it

 

I lose myself inside her pain, I embody it, I become it

 

I will leave such an imprint on your heart that anyone you entertain after me will have to know me in order to understand you

 

Occasionally, I will be struck by a longing for you. I remember you in scenes, in hot air. By a lake, watching the water ripple. Bridges. The smell of your house. How quiet and dark. On your porch. On your bed. Waking up. On the floor of your studio. Lemon tea. The feeling of the AC. And I want to tell you I love you but it's too late, and I know the feeling will pass, but for a moment it's so real and I need you to know that sometimes I dream of you and I don't want to wake up. I remember you in places you never went with me. The mesa, Santa Barbara. The cliffs of Howth. 19th street on a violet sky night. Places you would have loved, but I couldn't imagine a timeline where we stayed together, where you somehow made it there with me. But I paint you in, and you don't realize the world you get to live in, in my head, where you look so beautiful. 

 

And then the feeling passes, and I don't think of you again for a very long time

 

We’re falling forward, knee deep in the golden grass. Pretending to know the way to an undiscovered land. Theres white mist in a blue sky, moving fast in the wind

 

I accept my life for what it is

I accept the things I cannot change

I am hopeful for my future

I can make it work once I get out of this town

I do not judge myself

I find joy in the small things

I have a great future ahead of me

Good things are coming my way

Everything that has happened to me was all according to plan

I am not the only one who struggles

I am not the only one trying to make sense of life

I am not the only one who is lonely

There is always a way to start over again

I am becoming wiser every day

I am proud of myself

I will not always be like this

I can change

I just wish my life were simple

 

They say love is a mysterious thing

I know it all too well

Spoonfuls of honey

A flicker of light

Then out

 

I don't feel her absence. I feel like there's a parallel timeline, right beside mine, where she survived. She is alive and healthy, the way she used to be. 

 

I'm planning my escape with every word they say. I dont trust them and they'll never know me. I'm glazed over thinking of the sunset pond. Beyond the boundaries of town where there is nothing to be seen that nature herself didn't create. I'm thinking of the mountaintops where I can look down, alone.

 

I don't need to think about it all the fucking time. 

 

When I was younger I had a hard time with my sense of identity because I couldn't see a lot of myself reflected in the people around me, my peers. And there was all this disconnect because I felt so different from everyone around me, and I could sense that they knew I was different too (that's a massive understatement). And I felt rejected and outcast. And I felt like everywhere I stood out. And I was constantly just searching for people I could relate to. And when I did find people I could relate to, I'd feel even more shy and inadequate. Or I would get to know them and find out their flaws and judge them harshly. It's very sad looking back on it all. A lot of my problems were caused by my fear of judgment projected onto others. Looking back on it now I realize that so much of it was self inflicted separation, but I'll never know exactly how much.

 

People problems

How could anyone learn to love in a land like this

I am so afraid of life

I only want to be a gentle observer

Indifferent to the weight

 

"it's heartbreaking that you don't know that I adore you" 

 

My mother lying on the couch, my mother at the computer, covered in dust. 

My mother napping in the afternoon, my father's not home from work.

 

Her bedroom was bright and airy with windows on both sides, looking out to the front yard and the back. We had so many lovely trees: big, old, tall trees. She adored them. The best was the ancient oak, thick and two stories tall. They were always full of movement and sound, they could be quite loud.

Even lying down, you could see the horses in the field. Copper, black and white, gray. It was her dream. 25 acres of rolling hills, the huge grassy front and back yards, and the forest. And better yet was the house in the middle of it all. Yellow with red shutters, I picked the colors. I can still remember every detail of it, the feel of it. My favorite memory there is just a feeling, a sweltering summer night with the air conditioner humming, my windows open to the humid air and the insects buzzing. Heavy breezes would push in and fill my heart with a sense of changing tides, something great coming.

Growing up it was all so normal, but I've never seen a house anything like that ever again in my life. 

 

My mother was the type of person you could never really know, because she didn't really know herself. I would ask her questions, about her life, her opinions, and she'd say she didn't know, and I could tell she really didn't. And in a different way, I know she never really knew me. You can only know others as well as you know yourself.

I used to ask her what she thought about all day. She said she'd turn over terrible memories in her head. She'd had a tragic life, a relentless life with an even crueler end. She said that I was her one saving grace, which only made me uneasy. I was the daughter who'd survived, the third born. Just for staying alive I had fufiled her dreams. 

It's hard for me to look back on her life as I continue to face my own. It's hard to think of the countless burdens placed on such a good, honorable women who, as far as I had studied, had never done anything with ill intention in all of her life. 

We'd have conversations where I would try and summize if after all the suffering, she believed life was worth living. These conversations were inconclusive. So too remains my opinion on the subject. 

 

Dissonance

Little glee when I ignore my mother calling my name

I play missing, innocently, only for a day

Stacks of birthday cards and shoe boxes of old art supplies

The pastels spilled and smearing

pencils, pens, buttons, threads

The rarely touched

Sunshine off sweat

Crawling in the dust

At the bottom of the closet

Boxes and boxes

Old books and toys reserved for these kinds of days

When I've exhausted the beauty of nature

The energy of the family quarrels and laughter

And the AC has us frozen indoors

Sheltered from the sweltering and humid heavy heat 

Only a door away

 

Just a normal person living a normal life except that I experience every waking moment with a catastrophic depth of perception

 

 I wonder what my true feelings are. Maybe there is no truth. Is my admiration for you just a cover for boredom and loneliness? Is my disgust just a way to bury my pain? I think there is no denying that there was a seed of something great between us. Maybe it wasn't all great, but there was a core of truth, something profound, something I didn't realize the weight of. 

 

She's emotionally volatile, mentally unstable, not well. She's living art. You can't look away from her, she's fascinating. She loves me with every cell in her body and it's completely irresistible, addicting. 

She is a cold fever, a wild motion frozen, she is a void of fear. I sit with her instead, we watch the world go by

 

She loves me back with greedy teeth that can never get their grip

And she never told me why she loved me

 

"yeah, night" I said, doing my best to act unphased. The second I closed the door, escaped her wretched face, my head started to buzz. Trying to hold on to the words she had said. What it all meant. All I had learned. I was exhausted, my nerves were on fire. In a daze I managed to strip off my clothes and climb into the shower. What was I feeling? Too many things.

I watched as the water rolled off the wrist he had held earlier. I wondered what he was thinking of now. I trapped the heat against me with soft pajamas and a robe. Out the windows, the dark mass of trees swirled together in the wind, illuminated by the half moon above, creeping up to zenith. I collapsed onto the bed, watching the dancing trees, fiddling the necklace. It could not end like this. My skin burned with that old repressed fire. How his lips had felt on me neck. I should have know this would happen. I would think of an excuse to go knock on his door. Was there any elegant way of doing this? Would I tell him the truth? 

And then there was a knock. A black silhouette in the hall. "You awake?" he said in a low tone. He was leaning against the door frame, looking down. "Yeah, what's up?" my heart was pounding, I refused to show any emotion. "I'm going to run down to the beach....I should have told you sooner, I figured you wouldn't be asleep anyway" he said, a slight tilt in his voice, an emotion I couldn't quite place. "You know me as well as anyone then" I said stretching up. He smiled from the shadowy hall. "I know that much" he responded. I pulled on my sneakers, dirty from the hike, and tied the laces while he watched. "You're still wearing the necklace" he said when I finally stood. I nodded, "I said I would". "Sure, but that doesn't seem to mean much these days.” 

 

A blue sky mask concealing a black foreverness

 

A family of strangers

 

Exploring all the different ways to have a good time

 

Shitty small towns seem pretty from a distance, blurry from the window blink and you'll miss it

Everythings more beautiful after it's gone away

Feel a little bigger just for having seen it

Loved you for a second, didnt really have to mean it

Bonds without a promise a transient agreement

You never looked more beautiful than when I saw you for the last time

 

Tell me how I fit in your story

 

Life, the great surprise

We never saw it coming

 

I want to breathe in the ancient and unexplainable

 

Chasing fun is all you've done but life is not a game

Not a single person that you've loved you've ever left the same

 

_____________

 

We would have fallen in love in any situation. But I'm glad it was here

 

Luke was unfairly, stupidly handsome. Handsome in a way that irritated me, made me wince, a personal afront. The kind of handsome that immediately made me want to hold my ground, defiantly unattracted, unphased. And this might have been possible, had he been someone entirely different.

The only thought in my head following our first conversation was that there was a 0% chance that we would not be hooking up. No, this was a sure thing. He was too fucking smart. He was funny. An irresistible mix of confident and humble, self aware and careless. A philosopher. A responsible yet casual drug user. Consumed by politics and literature. Passionate about a great and diverse number of things. An eloquent speaker with a deep, uncommonly engaging voice. 

Too fucking smart. When he talked people listened. And he was easy to tease, somehow, he was easy to rile up, which made it almost impossible not to at times, just to see the emotions cross his face. I liked to surprise him with what id say, sometimes utter nonsense, and he never asked if I was joking or not.

Most irresistible of all, he listened to me, he noticed me in a way I'm not accustomed to. Being noticed is not a daily treat for me, typically, not something to get used to. He understood me, he laughed at my peculiar jokes, he didn't laugh at my dancing and bouts of manic euphoria. He liked me, a lot, he adored me.

That was all before I knew of his purity, a demi-sexual, how utterly damning. Hes only dated a few women, no hook ups, no flings. God if I'd known that first I wouldn't let on so much about my careless past. We do have a few differences, him and I. To him my feelings would be inconsequential, a non issue. He doesn't realize how wrought I am for him, what an illness a crush can be. He says he's only had a few in his whole life. Ha. He makes me feel like a recovering addict. Its not cool to be out of control.

I see him as my final destination, the ultimate temptation. I feel like if I could overcome my consuming unrequited attraction to him, I would have conquered lust once and for all and the hope of romantic love would no longer be such a driving force in my life. Maybe after this test, I would be free.

 

If I can't kiss you I'm going to go crazy. My heart is fighting out of its cage to beat against you. I want to press against you, face in neck. Please want me. Oh god tonight it's a fever.

 

Separated from reality, while also being incredibly grounded and in tune with it. Above it all and deeply within it.

 

Billowing white steam from towers

Silver staircases circle silver cylinders

In the distance are tall buildings that I know are empty

 

I wanted something to be moored to

 

We spend our days out in the sun, it reminds me of you, it reminds me of you

 

I dont know how much he knows.

 

You might see me from a distance, seemingly distracted, talking, working, reading, laughing, but no. I'm still just thinking about you. Kissing you, my arms around you. Yeah. That's about it. 

 

After a long day of being with you and thinking of you, I curl up in bed alone and think of you some more

I listen to the music you love, I read the books you love, that's most of what I do these days, try and get in your head, the way I want to be a part of you, lost. Barely pretending that I'm not. 

Not sure what I'd be doing without you here

Not sure what

Youre almost making me believe in something, and you know what a compliment that is. The fact that you're here with me is a miracle, this is magic we've made sense of. This is godly, this is life, this is everything. 

Yeah I know you're obsessed with me too, I'm starting to catch on, but you're a goddamn flame, I touch you and I flinch, fucking marked, burned, a reflexive action. And all I want to do is touch you. So badly.

Press into me, into the roots, we can make our own. Maybe this is it. Maybe there's no more searching. Maybe this is it. So suddenly, so easily, handed to us really. Let's grow up together. Lets write for each other. Let's go places. Let's find a way to be happier and better every day. Let's find a way to be sad together and get over it again and again.

 

What do you think is other people's perception of you?

 I would love to be described. I'd love for you to describe me. 

 

The air is humid, and windy, and dense. Maybe it always has been, you're the only one who could know for sure. The clouds are dizzying around a low, hazy sun, the sky a million colors, the world washed in a pink glowing.

 

You hear something, everything at once. There's a familiar voice, oh god it's so close, but you can't remember. It wants something from you, needs, it's begging you. You try so hard to hear, but the words are carried off. Drowned out by new voices, ones you don't know. Maybe you didnt really know that first one. Probably not. It doesn't matter anyway, what's gone is gone. I love you, I loved you, please don't forget.

 

I miss you horribly, your beauty burned me, ruined me. I don't want to live I just want to be mesmerized by it. I don't want to live I just want to be lost in it. I'd give everything, everything, nothing means anything but you, I'm ill with longing.

 

Swarms of mad birds explode in bursts from wind whipping trees. They screech and swirl in hysterics through the air. Some crash, some dance together, some are lost in the magic of their own patterns. It's beautiful and sickening, you can't watch for long. Some hurl themselves in terror down to the earth, making dark sinking tunnels where they crash, so deep they never end, voids of pure black. The image sticks in your head. Pure black.

 

Theres an ocean of trees, every kind. They're growing rapidly from sprouts, dying and rotting, then growing again in minutes. You can tell they're trying to say something, something so obvious, they're trying to help. But they're dying so quickly again. Help, help, help. 

 

I gave up on you, I gave up on you and it was such a fucking relief. Don't ask me for shit, I can't help you, can't you see I have my own problems? Don't be such a fucking bore.

 

The world is spinning quickly too. The sun sinks to a glowing red before melting down to nothing. As the sky goes dark, the colors on earth fade to blue silhouettes, and everything is frozen, holding breath. In the sky are giants, blazing stars. Are they coming closer? Watercolor galaxies, pooling and oozing. It's alive, it's all as alive as you. You reach out your hands and it rushes to be held by you, warm like a heartbeat, warm like a home. Another planet too, so very close. You can even see what might be city lights, what might be satellites. 

 

You don't have cities. No towns, no civilization to be found. Only the occasional visitor, alien tourists who drink it all in with desperate fascination. No one is ever patient, theres too much to see, all the growing and dying and spinning. Some wanted to stay forever, but no one can ever stay as long as they hoped. The beauty isn't for them, it isn't for anyone. It's only for you. Secret it away, bury if you have to, doesnt that make it so much better? This is what you really want, this is the way it has to be, only you, only us, no one could love you like me.

 

The worlds still spinning, the universe is disappearing, it's fading to nothing. It's all gone. You're gone. It's all nothing. Your ears ring, one constant pitch. You're sorry you ever complained, you're sorry you ever looked away. The daytime, the night, you'll take anything but this. You're scared. You're alone. You can't even feel your own body, and all your memories of life before are fading but one -

 

There's a girl, a young woman, sitting on the edge of a lake. Her notebook is well loved, she's writing, quick and sloppy, with thick wet ink. She loves it. In school she was always writing or drawing, in her notebook or up her arms. She hated being told what to pay attention to, she was bad at it. She liked art, the freedom to create any world you want. Freedom is what she wanted, more than anything. She didn't want a body, she was a spirit confined, she was song and dance and color, she was everything. She would give up every bit of familiarity for a taste of something new. She would do it again and again. And I don't know if she would ever stop. Emotions fade across her face as she tries to put into words what she's been feeling lately. She thinks it shouldn't be this hard to say. She pauses her music and remembers where she is. She listens to the small sounds around her, birds and bugs and trees. Her eyes widen at the sunlight reflecting off the water, heart aching as if she'd never seen anything quite as beautiful.

 

My mom, died twice. She was in the hospital in May 2023 when she first touched death. Her illness then was violent, it took her mind as well. We said our goodbyes to each other. I had a minor, quiet mental breakdown. After she was out of the hospital and back on her feet, there was no real medical suggestion that she'd be dying so soon after. But I knew. I looked at her and I saw a reanimated corpse.

 

The summer and fall after that, I was numb. I'd never felt more emotionally stable in my life. Gone was the aimless anxiety, my typical fucking cacophony of thought, my crippling fear of the future. Nothing could phase me anymore. I had trouble holding a conversation. Sometimes I'd just blankly stare into space, then jolt back to reality without a clue as to how much time had passed.

 

On December 19, she was admitted back into the hospital. She needed a new liver. It took a month for them to run all the agonizing tests for her to qualify for the transplant. On January 21, she was confirmed eligible for the surgery and they could perform it if her condition stabilized. She'd been on life support for 2 weeks at that point, under sedation. On January 22, they said they'd done all they could. On January 23, they gave her morphine until she died. It took about 10 minutes. I held her in my arms while she, unconcious, gasped out her final breaths. I held her dead body and kissed her dead hands. I didn't want to leave her. I bawled in hysterics on my way to the car to drive Fred and I back home, shaking and wailing and stumbling, barely able to stay upright, gasping for air and clutching my stomach. Then I got in the car and I haven't cried much since. 

 

The $500 therapist said this was normal, to be numb like this. For a year though? It's starting to feel kind of fucked. It's starting to feel kind of like my past self died and someone entirely new has taken her place. I feel a sense of being grounded, now, a sort of weight, a density. Whereas before I was all air, a sort of morphing smoke. 

 

We're all just victims to the chemicals our brain chooses to release. Isn't it strange how our brain is entirely seperate to our "self" and does all this insane shit and makes so much happen, yet locks our conciousness out? It's behind closed doors regulating our dopamine production, watching our every thought, fighting illness, while somehow causing your eyes to move and blink and process as you read these words. Why is it all so secret? 

 

Anyway, what I was getting at is I am a slave to the chemicals. Every morning I wake up with whatever new fucked up combination of emotions my brain concocts to puppeteer me for the day. So yeah. Sometimes I'm happy sometimes I'm sad. Sometimes I want to talk sometimes I don't. But it's almost always in extremes. Yeah, everything about me is always in extremes. Life is either the most beautiful incredible perfect miracle and we should be grateful for every moment, even those spent suffering, or a meaningless disgusting illusion that I would be much smarter for ending sooner rather than later. I'm every possibility, the essence of life and every contradicting emotion. I'm flickering. I'm not really here.

 

For what higher purpose than human connection. I guess this is what we were made for. Northing else makes any sense. Your watch was beating like a hummingbird heart. I held it, and even that made me ache. I put my lips to it, where it had pressed into your wrist. You came in my hand. I wanted to do it again and again

 

Goddamn am I annoyed. I hate the way this is eating away at me, in the same way that I said it wouldn't. Bullsh. It goes against everything I stand for. It's everything I don't want to be. It's entirely out of my control. And worst of all, WORST of all, it's illogical. I know that you want to be with me. I don't need to stress about that. I know I'll see you again, I don't need to stress about that. Maybe it'll even all work out and we can have some sort of life together. Sure, why not, it's what YOU want. So why stress about that? If in the future I have everything I want. 

 

I NEED TO HAVE MY WHOLE LIFE FIGURED OUT RIGHT NOW. RIGHT NOW. RIGHT FUCKING NOW. IT'S NOT FIGURED OUT YET?? YOU STUPID WORTHLESS IDIOT YOUR LIFE IS NOTHING.

 

This man across from me on the L is sleeping across the seats barefoot using his shoes as a pillow.

 

Maybe you just loved me for a second, for a second, for a second. Maybe I can be fine with that. Just give it some time 

 

The two most disturbingly disillusioning states that the modern man can inhabit: employment, unemployment

 

Losing my mom was so incredibly horrible that I'm not even able to think about it. And I'm able to consciously acknowledge the fact that I can't think about it, while being unable to think about it. It sucks so much. And this is my life forever. There's no cure for a dead mother. 

 

You don't need to 'be' anything for me to love you. And you shouldn't need to be anything to love yourself

 

Last night I was struck by a horrid disgust for my ex girlfriend, who I can't even call by name. I went through my phone, squinting in the 2am dark, and started to massively delete a year and a half's worth of photos. Some of them I glanced at briefly, recalling a memory, and my stomach would turn. Not out of longing or sadness, but out of disgust. The purge was similar to the post nut clarity mass exodus clearing of browser tabs. Now that she's really gone, now that she's gone so far as to make even a casual acquaintance with her abhorrent and impossible, I am seeing the ugly truths of our relationships that I ignored for so long. She called me deceitful and manipulative, a liar. And it was infuriating, not because these accusations are entirely untrue, but for the fact that they were certainly untrue within the context of her attack. I could grapple with being called manipulative by someone that knew me, someone that understood me, but the big hollow hole in our love affair was the fact that she never really did know me, she wouldn't even know where to begin knowing me. Go ahead and call me a liar, if you know the shit I'm really lying about, the lies that make a difference. I hate that she has done this, and I hate the fact that she's made it impossible for me to care that shes gone. I hate that she's made me feel heartless and cold. I do have a heart, it's just logical, and it's seen too much shit.

Of course this post breakup feeling makes me think of Eric, and the thought of Eric still does disgust me, unfortunately. I guess that's why I invited him to visit. I want to forgive him. He is easily one of the best people I've ever met. Meeting him was like seeing a new color. He was the best friend I'd ever had. I’d never been listened to or seen before on that level, what an incredible gift. He had been nothing but good to me, he worshipped me. He treated me better than anyone else ever has, and that's part of the source of the disdain. And there's something so broken in me to feel this way, even after the 4 years since our separation,whenI've been supposedly growing up and maturing. I think the fact that I can't love him proves something dark and awful within myself.

It's odd that the two people who I've felt were the most similar to me are so completely different. I can't imagine Eric and Luke in a conversation. But then again I can't imagine Luke having an honest, open conversation with anyone but me.

 

Overrated, immature

I need to make some plans

I can't find the strength to stand

And I don't want to lean on you too hard

I don't want to do this without you

Don't want to need you so badly

Don't need this lust in my body

Your aching hands only drag me

I'm losing touch with my history

Maybe my mom will come get me

Kicked out of class for my whispering

You want to go back to college

Maybe this time will be different

I want to relieve my memories

Getting the fuck out the country

Getting the fuck out my body

You can't just stay high forever

No one to judge no one knows me

Nobody cares about my history

Who wants to go back to past love

I won't text back won't be called out

Maybe the suffering completes me

Maybe we wake up together

Maybe we lay in the meadow

Your voice so low warm and soothing

Wanting it all since forever

Sex is the thing that'll save me

 

Running around like crazy

You said you'd take care of me

You said you'd take care of me

 

For what higher purpose

I feel like a fucking imbecile

If everything is pointless you can never make incorrect choices

Happiness is a light at the end of a tunnel that goes on forever

Happiness is a life free from judgment

To be seen is to be judged

To be understood is to be free

I would never judge anyone the way I judge me

I've been going through a rough time, I always have been, it will never end, suffering never really ends, it's lifes foundation

 

I imagine the L derailing with great clarity of imagination. Yes yes yes, I think, on my way crashing down backwards to my death, it's about time. Lately when I think of my mother, I feel a nasty little envy. 

 

The future is fucking terrifying. Because no matter the choices I make, I have to be alive for so incredibly long. I just don't want to be alive for that long, no matter what I'm doing, no matter what I'm doing, even if I'm living some dream. If I think about the distance I have yet to go I just want to collapse. 

 

Running around like crazy

You said you'd take care of me

You said you'd take care of me

 

I don't know if art validates my life

I don't think art validates my life

There's nowhere I can hide from me, I will always find me

My past and future lives surround me, they're shouting, I'm whining

Post grad dementia

Post grad schizophrenia

Post grad manic depression

Post grad fuck up

Post grad fuck up

Go back to school go back to school

Find somewhere that someone loves you

Everywhere is empty, there's only you

 

And I, being so entrenched in the story of it, don't know how to describe it from the outside. So fully present and aware - - except, except. Separated from reality, while also being incredibly grounded and in tune with it. Above it all and deeply within it. Each moment existing on countless, actually infinite, dimensional and perspectival planes we could not see but could perhaps experience or embody or sense if we were to stretch the bounds of our consciousness to some undefined maximum without crossing the line into insanity. 

 

People with 'people problems' that we continuously tried to overcome in various ways including apathy, overcompensation, acceptance, false confidence, and genuineness. I was always throwing possible interpretations of myself at the 'wall' of incoming stimuli. Perhaps today I'll be arrogant, there is a certain part of me that's arrogant. Or in this moment I'll be inconsolably misanthropic, maybe that's what I truly am under all the bravado. Or maybe there is no base, maybe there is no end to me, it just keeps going on and on. 

 

"You cannot go on 'seeing through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”

 

Writing songs for a life unlived

 

Continuously awed and humbled by the magnitude of my love

 

Her voice floats lighter than air, breath against a cold window. She's a winter morning just before dawn, weeping snow, monochrome. Silhouettes of trees, branches without leaves. 

 

I'm reflecting on the concept of self awareness. It's probably my defining quality, at least from my perspective. A study showed that only around 15% of people were truly self aware. The percentage of people that are as self aware as me is no doubt even smaller. Self awareness to the point where you question if it's a mental illness. Similar to other "neuro-divergencies" (a term so cloyingly politically correct that it makes me uncomfortable but is nonetheless at times more accurate than entirely derogatory terms like "mentally ill" or "crazy") self awareness is one of those dark spirits that can be so fucking sexy and punk, and so goddamn gross and pathetic. It can lend a delusional sense of superiority, and just as easily strip it away. The source of my hyper self-awareness came from childhood when I started asking questions like "why do I feel like I'm not like the other kids" and "why don't I have more friends". I became self-obsessed, picking away at myself to try and understand what I was doing wrong, analyzing my every interaction, because if I didn't figure out what was wrong with me, I was doomed to be a social outcast for the rest of my life. I was trying to solve a mystery, some unidentifiable problem within me, if I just knew what the flaw was I could iron it out. I never have found out what is so wrong with me. I wish someone would tell me. I certainly stand out. But I just can't pinpoint exactly what behaviors people find so odd (or conversely so enchanting, I can't pretend that men don't throw themselves at my feet) because I feel like I never say anything that isn't the truth. If I think of someone crazy or weird, I think of people with whack opinions or beliefs or interests. I feel like I only ever speak the truth, and my opinions are all based on moral ruling and rational judgment. I guess the benefit to this is that, in searching for the out casting flaw, I actually have improved myself, I've actually improved myself a lot. With growth processes that could be described as self mutilation. The only description people have for me is to tell me how smart I am, but in the same way it's always been unknown to me what makes me appear so apparently smart. It's one of those blind spot traits, because even people I've barely met will say this after I voice what to me seem to be the most basic observations. I think that my perceived intelligence is merely a product of my self awareness. I don't feel perceptive, I'm too self absorbed to be perceptive, I feel like I don't know shit about anything.

 

“The reason people find it difficult to stop ruminating is that they fear letting go of the need to try and fix themselves. They have to keep on top of everything and keep trying to figure a way out, and if they don’t, then they will lose themselves forever. Not realising that it is the very act of ruminating that is causing so many of their problems.”

 

My memories are eating me alive

 

I was drunk as hell and took shrooms fucking 10 minutes after arriving to this function full of strangers, no judgment considered. In the Uber to the concert after I was trying so hard not to puke. I'm like peaking and this fucking song comes on https://open.spotify.com/track/1soxUgYIZb1qx1c7o1Lc7z?si=CBoVkdkkR92YNjTiWmrwzA and it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. And I'm dying cracking up in the front seat while the Uber driver and Laurie are dead silent. Lmao.

 

I am addicted to gratification. Most horrifically im addicted to fueling my ego. It could spiral out of control, because I don't seem to give a shit if it spirals out of control or not. Ok then. Consider me writing this out as my official first foray into giving a shit. I don't want to do anything that is hard, I don't want to do anything that requires any effort from me, that has been true for my entire life and seems to be only getting worse. But this is one thing where I'm going to have to put my foot down, for fucking once in my life, and say you need to change. Sydney, you need to change. And you are not powerless, you can't use that as an excuse. You're not powerless, you're just weak. Sorry. Tough love. You're weak and you have to get stronger. It feels so fucking good, the validation, but you can't chase it. And your only comeback to that is "well I can always just die instead" which is so brilliantly impossible to refute. Except for the fact that you're not dying, you are in fact living, if you can call it a life, and you promised me that until you were dead you would make the most of your time. Growing up is part of being human, it's part of making the most. And clinging to your ego is so fucking childish and it's making you sick, sick beyond the immediate rush of gratification you get. Of course you don't want to quit. And that's the exact reason why you need to

 

Dude I'd be so down to sit next to you on a porch reading in a warm silence interrupted occasionally by hyper-conscious repartee rn (iykyk) 

(I miss you I miss you put my head on a fucking stake and light it on fire I miss you)