Another thing--I think the reason why I've been feeling so shitty for most of this month is out of this primal fear of being left behind. I understand myself enough to know where that comes from. I sometimes look back on previous friendships where I was not a good friend, and I think the reason why I was so bad at being that person's friend was because I seemingly could not accept that they loved me or cared about me, because for a while, I think I could only ever believe that if somebody cared about me, it was because they instinctually had to. I think I have a hard time believing that still.
Because in some ways, I think my first real heartbreak wasn't necessarily being told by someone that she did not romantically feel the same way about me. I think it was Жа and Бл. I imagined them being there for every milestone of my life. I really did love them, and never really in a romantic way--Жа because he's a guy and Бл because by the time when we really were in each other's lives, we just never saw each other that way. We used to talk about how we'd move to San Francisco together (this was before the tech startup people came in and ruined it, of course), of living together. It's a very you can never return to this place sort of thing--they don't speak to each other anymore, and I'm really not that close to either of them anymore.
I don't think it was a situation of them not feeling the same way about me as I did about them when we were teenagers. I think the three of us really did love each other, I think we all genuinely believed we would be in each other's lives. But I think I held on for much longer--ironic, because of the three of us, I think I was the most open about wanting to completely begin anew once we graduated from high school.
But when I left home for the first time, I didn't really let anyone in because I thought they'd never measure up to them. And then, once I did, I think I accepted or assumed that the same thing would happen if I really let them in: I'd hold on for much longer. And I'm still scared to hold on, but I think I've begun to accept that platonic love a little bit more. I don't know.
12:12am; current listening: DANCING AND BLOOD by LOW
I fear I'm losing a little zest and a little love--I find myself getting more easily frustrated with the people around me, which is not fair to them at all. But also, I am so thankful for the connections I have in my life. I am thankful to be able to sit on a couch with a friend and watch episodes of Daria with them and workshop Hinge chats; I am thankful to sit with a friend and watch her craft and sew and listen to her talk about boys; I am thankful to eat fast food in a parking lot and throw around jokes and movie ideas. In that sense, I am lucky. I will miss this moment when it is gone. I need to keep remembering that. Desperately so.
//11:52pm; current listening: MY BODY IS A CAGE by PETER GABRIEL
I did something I haven't done in a while today; I spent most of the day working on a song. In some ways, I think that unfortunately, I am only really capable of making music when I am suffering. Which, I guess is great news! I haven't really suffered in a long time. Not since this summer, at least. It makes me think about how during senior year of high school, I'd wake up feeling numb most of the time. It was a sad numbness that punctuated everything, so much so that one spring night, when I was struck with the realization that I loved a girl and she probably did not love me back, it that sadness felt so good. Like warm water melting ice.
This doesn't really feel like that, of course. If anything, it's sort of the opposite. I feel like I am freezing again. But I think there's something nice about that, about knowing that for such a long time, I was warm.
The song is kind of a Deftones ripoff. It's not really about anything yet, but it sounds like the sort of thing that would play in a mid 2000s horror movie before anything got scary. Just in a character's car or something. I realized that, and then I started thinking about House of Wax, which started making me think about how when I was a kid, I used to go to the horror section of Blockbuster and read the backs of DVDs I'd rent when I was old enough to rent PG-13/R-rated movies. I watched Catwoman with ин tonight and that got me thinking about how I'd only seen it once before, at the old movie theater in the basement of Union Station. The inside looked like a cave, it was kind of a ratty, gross theater, but I have so many fond memories of it. It's now a Walgreens, so I can never go back there.
I find myself craving one more 6pm showing at that theater, rats and all. I find myself craving an order of seaweed and tofu soup at a Saturday dinner with my parents and brother on a spring evening, and then a perusal of the horror aisle at Blockbuster. I crave one more glimpse at the gory Halloween decorations in the window of the antique shop by the first house I lived in, one more afternoon in ва's backyard. I can never go back to any of these places, because they do not exist anymore. And if they do still exist, the thing that makes me want to go back, want it so badly, is gone. And I bring this up because that is about to happen to everything in my life. I think that's a big part of what's really going on with me. When I leave this place, I will never be able to come back. It will never be the same.
And I fear that is just existing. Passing through, getting attached to people and places, and then their ephemeral nature is revealed, and then you go on to the next place. It kills me. It just kills me.
//6:21am; current listening: MINERVA by DEFTONES
I still feel like shit (lol) but I thought I would try to break it up by posting about something nice. Which is that I picture locked my thesis last night. It isn't perfect, but I think that with what we had (which is a lot--the DP did a great job and the director did a great job) we have done everything we could. I'm still pretty stressed about finding a sound mixer finishing the score and dealing with the coloring, but that is a problem for tomorrow. Today, I have been bedrotting (in part because I still feel like shit), but I am going to leave my house in like an hour and a half to watch the new Yellowjackets episode with лo and фи tonight, and I have decided that as a little treat, I will order myself some sushi instead of getting it from the grocery store.
But anyways. I bring this up because I feel like I spend so much time wondering how my younger self would feel about me--particular the iterations of myself that had aspirations of being a rock star and touring the world and all of that dumb stuff. But I never really give myself credit for the things she would be proud of. The version of myself that existed my senior year of college would lose her fucking mind if she saw this, if she knew what we pulled off. She was afraid of talking to people, afraid of asserting herself, was ready to resign herself to a life of law school and being with someone who maybe loved her but didn't like her very much. She wouldn't be able to do this. I don't mean that in a bad way--she just wouldn't be able to do it. But she was the one that got me to this point, because she made it through that rough patch. I wouldn't have been able to do this without her.
I didn't ever feel proud of graduating college because it felt like a given--I think that's my privilege showing--and it was never really something I wanted. But this...I feel proud of this. It doesn't matter that I'm sad about my love life, it doesn't matter that I feel disconnected from my friends from high school, it doesn't matter that лo sent me a bunch of photos (that I will probably post later) where I feel like I look terrible. What matters is that I did this, and it is going to do something for me, maybe.
I can't take all of the credit for the story itself. That came about during my senior year of college, in a lot of ways. I came up with two ideas around that whol situation. The first was the story about the secret society and the boarding school. The second was this story that I'm telling in my thesis. As a side note, it's pretty interesting to me that the first story has no supernatural elements but is thematically centered around this idea of having no control over a situation, the universe is just slotting these puzzle pieces in place and you end up where you are. But this story is a lot more thematically centered around people making bad choices, and those bad choices having bad consequences. In the first story, it's a very "it is not really anybody's fault, you were all set up to fail," and in this story, it is a very "everybody here sucks, this is your fault," and I think all of the characters have this secret desire to want to be punished. This was definitely an irrelevant tangent, but it's worth thinking about, at least to me.
But anyways. The way my thesis came about, years and years ago, was at a party in 2018, back at the house I shared with Эл. ди was there, and they brought a flash drive with them. We were talking, mostly about stuff going on with both of us, and they took out the flash drive. I asked them why they had it, and they said it was because they had recently exorcised a demon from their friend's apartment. In order to get rid of the demon, they had to trap it on an empty vessel, and the only thing they had on hand was a flash drive. I was mad at them for bringing it into my house, even though I don't really believe in that kind of thing. There were talks of giving the flash drive to чин, which I shut down at the time, even though we weren't speaking. But the whole thing always stuck with me. And now, in a way, this is me letting go, or trying to. Letting it become something else.
It's strange, how much suffering had to happen for this to get off the ground, to exist. I want that to mean it will all pay off in the end, open doors for me. Maybe it won't. But even still, even if this experiment ends with me going back to DC and becoming an English teacher or something, I made this thing and I'm proud of it. I deserve to be proud of it. It's the first time in years I've ever felt that way about anything I've done. It should outweigh everything that is hurting me right now.
//7:45pm; current listening: THE CITY IS A JUNGLE by OAKTREE
For now, the last thing I will say--I am trying to not be selfish. I am trying to not give advice that will serve my own interests. I am trying to be a good friend. And this all feels so high school in so many ways, but it's just so fucking painful. It hurts worse than anything найаР ever did to me. And to me, that's so fucking embarassing.
//1:29am; current listening: WEEKEND by THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE
Per what I was talking about last night, on the one hand it is thrilling to be deeply upset over something so trivial, to remember that still I have the capacity for it. On the other hand, this is so trivial and stupid. And what's worse--I know better.
If I was 23, I'd throw myself into something else, someone else. The opportunity is right there. I've already tried to take it, but I can't. I don't want it, and I know myself well enough to know that it will probably just make me feel worse. Which means that all I can really do is sit and wait this out.
When I first felt this creep up on me, I panicked because I knew what was coming. I knew and I still let it in. I let it grow. I knew there would be consequences. And yet...
//8:48pm; current listening: FALLING DOWN by THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE
I break my own heart before anyone else can. Nothing is set in stone, but it already hurts. It hurts so fucking much. I hate it.
//4:26am; current listening: AN OLD THERAPY SESSION
Fascinated.
//11:41pm; current listening: BEFORE THE FEVER by GRIMES
A series of dreams I have had about найаР, ranked in order of ominousness:
1. Right after I found out who he was, I dreamt I was in a bathroom with his ex wife. I told her that she needed to run, that he was a bad man. She told me that she knew. I left her alone, but I was still there with her. She immediately called him and told him that he needed to disappear, that I was looking for him. My ex-therapist told me later that maybe this was a sign that I should reach out to him, but I thought this was not at all the point of the dream at all It was that I shouldn't trust anyone.
2. I dreamt I was with мьд, at one of those cute little thrift store/coffee shop situations, probably in Silverlake. The menus had his and his brother's face on it. I commented on how odd that was. The guys sitting beside us told us it was such a shame that things turned out the way they did with him. One of them went on to explain that he had been apprehended by the FBI, that he had done what he did to me to a hundred girls.
3. I had another dream a few months later about him. I don't remember all of the details. Just that at one moment, he was somebody else, and I was in his house. And then, in fantasy villain fashion, his featured warped, and suddenly, it was him. He told me that he knew exactly what I was. I screamed as he disappeared.
4. I had a dream he and I were stuck in a room together. I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. I was shaking him, screaming in his face, asking him why why why why?! And what was so infuriating is that he wouldn't react, wouldn't even flinch. Instead, he just smiled, this stupid, shit-eating grin. And he said because I could.
//11:38pm; current listening: OMG by MXMS and SIDEWALKS & SKELETONS
I prayed for the first time in years this last Sunday. I also smoked a pack of cigarettes, starting at the beginning of that prayer and ending twelve hours ago. Cigarettes are usually a party treat, one I need to stop indulging, but I convinced myself on Sunday that there was a very specific set of circumstances I needed to recreate. I know what you're thinking: that's magical thinking, generally not a good thing. I'm inclined to agree. A few months ago, I was telling a friend about my anxiety. The context was that I was explaining to her that on the drive to Joshua Tree with my parents, I was worried I might die.
"I want to ask you something." She said. "But it might seem rude. I don't want you to take it the wrong way."
"It's okay." I replied. "Ask me."
She asked me if I felt the need to perform certain rituals. I told her that I didn't. Generally I don't. I try to find patterns in things sometimes, but I wouldn't say I have rituals. But there are exceptions. Ocassionally, I'll do something like I did the other day: attempt to recreate circumstances. Sometimes, it's out of reverence for something else. But other times, it's an attempt to bring something back, determine a certain outcome. It isn't magic. Just magical thinking.
I can't get too into detail. This is still the internet, and it's not my thing to discuss on the internet. Did it work? Will it work? Does it matter? We shall see.
//2:08am; current listening: SCENE FIVE - WITH EARS TO SEE AND EYES TO HEAR by SLEEPING WITH SIRENS
Time moves too quickly. I am fearful for the world and hopeful for myself.
//4:42am; current listening: nothing
Above all else, I fear powerlessness the most.
//3:36am; current listening: nothing
My family's dog died last night. I never thought I'd say this about a dog, but she was complicated. I don't think I have ever seen a living creature love anything as much as she loved my father. She loved him so much it stressed her out. She thought it was her duty to protect him, to a point that bringing anybody new into the house was a whole thing. Several of my friends were afraid of her because of how fiercely she protected our house. She also had a high prey drive, which meant that she had two pretty bad run-ins with our cat (who was there first), and she killed my mother's bird. She bit several people over the course of her life. And, as bad as it sounds, she didn't really have much of an excuse for any of that. Since she was a pitbull, people assumed that she was a rescue, that she had been abused by her previous owners and we were kind enough to take her in and try to smooth out her rough edges, but such was not the case. We got her when she was a puppy. She never starved, or was left outside, or was expected to fight. She was born with the belief that it was her duty to protect.
And she was also a goofy, ridiculous dog. She would try to attack the hose every time my father turned it on. She had to be tucked into her pile of blankets under her bed just right. On hot days, if you took her on a walk, she would simply flop down on the ground and refuse to move. She was kind of a drama queen, if I'm being honest, but in the best way. She wasn't super lovey-dovey, but I loved scratching under her chin before she went to sleep. She was a scene stealer in the documentary about my father, she was briefly internet famous, and one time, I tried recording scream vocals and she started barking along with it. That was the kind of dog she was. She wasn't my dog, not really, but she was a huge part of the family. Of course she was.
About two years into us having her, my mother said something fascinating to me: "I think we were supposed to have her. I don't think anyone else would be able to handle her." And I think she's right. Because we trained her. We muzzled her when we had to. There were many things she did, from biting people to killing my mother's bird, that would be the last straw for many people. But my father kept her. We sort of just lived with it. In some ways, that completely breaks my heart. Because everything I've described, the good and the bad, was simply this dog's nature. We were meant to have her and we were meant to lose her. I think we gave her the best life she could have possibly had--she spent most of her days sleeping in my dad's chair in his office, or hanging out with him on the roof. She got a great big walk in the morning, and on the weekends, my dad would take her into the woods. Almost every night, she got a big soup bone that she'd chew the marrow out of, and at any given time, there were at least two people in the house who loved her very much, who tried to understand her and tried to forgive her. Maybe it doesn't sound that deep, but I'm writing about this right now and I'm just so fucking sad about it.
I was certainly not her favorite family member. Dogs are a lot of work, and she was not my dog. But I keep thinking back to how when I first moved home from college, I was afraid of a lot of things. Some of my paranoia was unfounded, but it came from a very real place. I spent months worried that there was a chance a particular person was going to break into the house and try to hurt me. But I knew that as long as this dog was there, I was safe. She would protect me. She wouldn't even question it. She would just do that. That isn't something most people have with anyone. That isn't something I'd ask of anyone. But I had it with her. And it made those months so much more bearable. She never knew that, and she never can know that. But it means the world to me.
My family doesn't do pet ethuanasia. Pretty much every pet we've ever had died in our living room, in a comfy bed, with at least one person by their side. My mother, bless her, sat vigil beside this dog's predecessor, despite the fact that she had no particular connection with him. It's for several reasons. The first is that my father is traumatized by the way his father used to handle dying pets: taking them out back and putting them out of their misery, though I doubt he'd ever admit that. The second is that pets hate the vet, and spend most of their lives afraid of it. How awful would it be to be taken there to die? I don't know. It just seems strange.
But she died at the vet. You must understand, she wasn't very old. Certainly more than halfway through her projected lifespan, but only by a year or two. So, yesterday, she was clearly very sick, and at my mother's insistence, my father took her to the vet. The vet ran some tests, and said it would probably be best to leave her overnight for observation. We all thought that something a little weird was going on, but that ultimately, she'd be fine. That was the last update I got from my dad. My mother was worried that she might have heart failure because of how sudden her decline was, but my dad told us that her vitals had stabilized and her blood pressure had gone back to normal-ish. She died a few hours after my dad left her there. He didn't know that was going to be the last time he saw her. Of course he didn't. If he had, he would have asked for some painkillers from the vet and brought her home.
Side note, I hate vets, but that's a rant for another day.
I hope she knew how much my dad loved her. I hope she knew that if he had known that was her last night, he would have brought her home and stayed with her until she passed on. I hope she knew how much we all loved her.
I've spent my whole life terrified of what happens when you die, mostly because I'm scared that God or the universe or whatever is out there thinks I'm a bad person. If she had the capacity for that, she never had to worry about that. If we go anywhere, I know she's going to a good place.
All of that is to say, rest easy girl. You've earned it.
//12:17am; current listening: TO LONDON OR THE LAKE by NIGHT SINS
Sometimes I feel deeply disconnected from the people I care about. Not because I feel like I don't have anything in common with them, but because I think there's a part of me that cannot accept that they care about me too, even if there is evidence to the contrary.
//1:21am; current listening: NYMPHS FINDING THE HEAD OF ORPHEUS by NICOLE DOLLANGANGER
I think everyone has at least heard of the idea of "revenge bedtime procrastination"--basically the idea that people willfully stay up super late despite the fact they have things to do in the morning. It is supposed to be one of those things borne from late stage capitalism. I used to do it all the time when I worked at my old job. I'd have an 8am shift and go to bed at 3am, knowing full well I'd feel like absolute dogshit in the morning. Doing that kind of made sense to me at the time, because I was so fucking busy all the time. If I wasn't in class, I was at work. If I wasn't at work, I was in class. You know the drill.
I was desperate for just a few hours where I was doing something simply because I wanted to. I don't really have that issue anymore. Plenty of time for myself and all of that. And yet...it is 1:38am and I should have started getting ready for bed three hours ago, because I have class in the morning. And I did plenty """"""""for myself""""""" today. I went for a walk last night because one of my friends called me and I kind of embarassed myself while I was on the phone with them because I got startled by a ten foot skeleton decoration that someone put up in the neighborhood. They already know I scare pretty easily (ironically enough), but still, not a great look. Anyways, I love it when houses go all out for Halloween, because it just makes me feel so nostalgic--I grew up in a neighborhood full of that. So, tonight I decided to go for a walk around 8pm tonight to get some photos of the skeleton thing.
I'm kind of obsessive about getting my 10k steps in every day, but I do genuinely enjoy walking around any neighborhood at night. Most of the places I've lived had somewhere nice to walk, a lot of those two story houses that look like something out of that one house from the American Football album, a lot of big open streets. This is by no means a unique observation, but sometimes there's something really soothing about feeling like you're the only person in a place. I don't know why. It just is. All of that is to say that I ended up walking around my neighborhood and listening to music tonight. It was nice. It was also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a thing I was doing for myself.
There are people in my life tht tell me I need to take a break, take time for myself, do some "self care" or whatever. I hear them. I really do. But a lot of the time, I fear that I don't actually need to, because I am not actually exerting that much energy by socializing or going to school or anything like that. I don't actually do that much for my friends. I just hang out with them. I don't work that hard in school. I just turn in my assignments and hope for the best. There really isn't much for me to recharge. I am not that depleated--or, at least, I shouldn't be. When I look back on when I graduated from college, or my first year of grad school, I get why I was stressed out and exhausted all the time. And I'm not really exhausted now, not for long stretches of time like I used to be. So why am I still acting like I am?
I say all of this to say that it is now 1:47am and I am supposed to be awake in a little more than six hours. But I can't bring myself to get up and go over to my bathroom and brush my teeth and get into bed. Going to bed feels like a truly herculean task.
//1:53am; current listening: WE SLEEP IN HELL by AIDEN
I've been considering trying to have a proper ""blog"" of some kind for a bit. Not because I think anybody is particularly interested in what I have to say, but because of the space of it all. Journals take up too much room--I should know, I have a whole box of them dating back to 2008 in my closet back home. And there are other sites where you could theoretically post about the happenings of your life, but usually the point of it all is that you are being percieved to some degree. I don't really see that being the point here. You simply exist. It is a room, not a town square. Some people may enter. Some people may even stay. But you will never know. And they never will know if they are alone or not. I like the idea of a space like that, at least in the metaphorical sense.
So, here I am, I guess. I'm not listing this page on the website's index because I don't necessarily want people to read this. But some people will find a way. I had an old geocities site where I linked all of my unlisted YouTube videos--video diaries, mostly. That page wasn't on theindex either. People still found it. I didn't mind. I just thought it was a bit odd. It was strange--some of my most private thoughts, things I would quite literally die about if anyone I actually knew found it. But a bunch of strangers? It didn't matter to me really.
I've always liked posting too much on the internet, which I think is one of those things you're not really allowed to tell people, because it's extremely embarassing to admit to. I used to not really understand what the point of it really was--I mean, not in a nihilistic way. I mean I super missed the point. I'd be vulnerable. Too vulnerable. But isn't the whole idea that you're supposed to curate how you're seen, that it's the one place where you can mostly control the narrative? Why didn't I want that when I was younger? Why didn't I think of that? It's not like I had much control over my own narrative in my own life.
And I think there is a part of me that might like the idea of someone stumbling across this site through whatever algorithim neocities has in place, scrolls through the People section of this site, somehow finding this page, and wondering which face is mine. Maybe trying to make a game out of it, looking for tells for who is actually the person usually holding the camera. Would they be disappointed if they found out who it was? That I'm not how they pictured me? Probably not. But maybe they would. And that's interesting to me for some reason.
// 11:21pm; current listening: WINTER FALLS by BOW CHURCH