8/30/11
3:43am

Dear Die-ary,

I am without a doubt feeling my urge to write diminish.  Looking at the whole thing honestly, it’s in the wee hours of the morning that I want to check in, leave my mark, something that says “On this night, at this time, Nny was here.”  But aside from that, it’s been harder and harder to come up with a topic I haven’t already hammered into a pulsating bloody sticky mass on the floor dozens of times.

In that, then, it’s been seeming to take more energy than it’s truly worth- do I try and come up with something that would really be interesting and enjoyable to write about, rack my brain for a truly inspired topic, something at least distracting enough to hide the fact that here, on the bathroom of my mind, my only real driving motivation is to carve into the wall night after night “2:45am Nny wuz here”?  It doesn’t seem to have a noble enough intention behind it anymore to warrant the daily attention.

Certainly it was once the case that the words were spilling out of me and I couldn’t keep them back.  But now that I feel that projectile vomiting subsiding, I’ve been noticing the panicked urge to stick the finger down my throat, drink the Ipecac, eat really bad food, just to keep the habit going because it was one of the defining points of my existence.  I have other ways to define my existence now, particularly the fact that I do indeed breathe, move, blink and so forth day after day.  I have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all myself.

God knows I’ll return to this porcelain throne if I have any more words to vomit, but for now, inducing the nasty habit on the sheer principle of “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” just seems to be feeding into something that will eventually turn far uglier than it inherently was.

Till then, Die-ary, toodles.

 

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8/28/11
1:31am

Dear Die-ary,

This entry marks the beginning of my last day as a free man.  Tomorrow, we start work back at the Food Bank again.  Just… envision the sort of expletives and raging comments I’d normally throw at a deeply frustrating situation, don’t worry it’ll come to you, I haven’t the energy for it right now.

Also, MIDNIGHT MUFFIN RUN!!!  Damn that was a good muffin.  So worth the paranoia of getting pulled over for that fucking tail light.  Need to get that fixed…

Watched a movie with Mia, who didn’t treat me like some kind of a leper.  That was a good thing.

Overall, it’s been a pretty good night so far.

 

 

 

 

4:10am

Just noticed I’m wearing two pairs of underpants.  At the risk of giving away where I’ve been spending my time online lately…

What the Hell, BBQ?

Continue reading

8/27/11
4:12am

Dear Die-ary,

Cleaning went far too fast this morning.  Even took the trash out- it was a lovely dark walk to the community dumpster.  Now I have nothing to do.

I’ll have to run to the Staples later for paper and pens.  Running out of art materials.  Tom’s been on a drawing binge lately and I can’t say I haven’t, either.  When do they open?  Eight?  Ten?  They better hope to god it’s eight.  I’m bored.

 

 

 

 

9:56pm

Haven’t been able to really dredge up the motivation to write.  God knows it’d just be re-hashing the same old shit.  In fact, I’ll boil it down to the most common recurring themes:

- People are sacks of feculant waste

- Who am I and why am I here?

- Insert most recent paranoia, voice, personal demon, apparition, talking knick-knack or conspiracy theory

- CAN I really die, and if so, please?

- Ensuing self-pep talk, dragging self out of a suicidal state

- Feelings, urges, compulsions: Gotta hate ‘em

- FUCK SLEEP and why does it keep happening to me?!

And last but not least,

- I’d like to disembowel and/or dismember _____
(adding to the list of people who have thus far been saved from a certain and entertaining death only by the physics, rules and Directives of this reality and System)

There it is.  Roughly eight major themes, each with their own subcategories and twists in their manifestations, but ultimately that’s what 85 entries will tell you.  Glad to have saved you the trouble.

 

 

 

 

10:13pm

I’m getting so tired of hiding away.

I’d got home this morning after going to Staples, then to the library to fuck around briefly online.  Nothing held my interest.

I knew that Mia would be home, and though she had said to Tom earlier this week that there was no point in me pretending to be him- that she could just tell when I was here, in this body- there were times when I knew I was better at it than others.  I was ready to pull that mask on, HARD, shamelessly, just to be around someone.  It was a weird mood, I’ll tell you that much.

Now this is unusual- I’m feeling extraordinarily lonely as of late (and I generally wouldn’t admit to that).  There are lots of other things to do in this life than put up with people’s bullshitting just to distract oneself from a gaping chasm of loneliness.  And for the life of me, I couldn’t find one of them.  Everything I wanted to do just reminded me of that hole, telling me something was missing.  It took a lot of energy just to keep away from the suicidal side of things.

Then when I got home… nobody there.

Now that was really depressing.  All I ever really want is a house to myself, free of irritants and distractions, plenty of space to write and draw and generally enjoy myself.  On the one day I wouldn’t have minded sharing the space, there was nobody to share it with.

Texted you, of course.  No response.

Drew a picture (it came out quite lovely, despite the disturbing content).  Feeling empty- nobody to show it to.

It got to be around six and I got alarmed- Leland at least would have been home by now.  Broke down and called Mia, asking if he was up the hill.  Of course he was.  Nobody would be home for hours.

Went to the Starbucks (library closed after 4).  Everything online just seemed dead.  A couple hours cruising the cold reaches of the internet just made the loneliness sting deeper.  Went home just before dark, fully expecting someone to be there.  Nothing.  Almost ready to cry.

I settled for sitting, writing about WHATEVER, and putting on some good music.  There was no way I was going to let myself fall down that Well again.  Started to burn a new CD for the car (all the music out there is really making me want to strangle kittens) when the computer BSOD’d.  It was at that moment, when I was glaring at the laptop (which was making this strange screaming-in-pain noise from the moment in the music where it crashed) that everyone walked in the door.

I turned on the Tom full blast- I felt that my presence would be awkward, so I forced a strong impersonation.  Yet, somehow, doing that caused a double-clutch and knocked me into the backseat, bringing him out.  Now THAT was annoying.  I didn’t want to be alone and now he got to be the one to get all sociable while I was braindead and drooling all over the back of his mind.

I forced my way back out by the end of the evening, but Mia and Leland were already sucked into playing a video game together, and the little sketch I did of an Evil Thing went vaguely appreciated.  I felt the living room stretch to abnormal proportions as they faded to the other end, a mile away, while my chair drifted back into a Nothingness and the distance between myself and People stabbed me in the chest a few times.  My only comfortable option was to retreat to the room to sit, feel empty, and complain about how I have nothing to write about.

It brings me to the point of all this.  I’ve had several good reasons for hiding/impersonating:

a) I didn’t want to deal with people questioning me.

b) I liked my solitude.

c) At the time, it seemed like my stay would be short so I didn’t want to overcomplicate things by getting involved.

d) It didn’t seem like many people would like me.

e) My original directive, I thought, was to make things BETTER for Tom, not worse, and it seemed like me making an announcement of my presence would only serve to fuck things up.

But almost all of these things have been invalidated.  One, the people in this house already know I’m here and I’ve gone out of my way to hold my peace, for far longer than should be required of someone just trying to make some attempt at “politeness”.  Two, solitude is obviously wearing on me.  Three, it would appear I’m here for the long haul and a temporary fix to an ongoing problem will only hold up so well.   Four, maybe without that whole killing thing getting in the way, I’m a bit more likable than I thought I was- I’ve had two people attest to that, against all credibility.  And five, theoretical Directives can go take a running leap- NOT A THING has proven to be a solid purpose for my presence, and I really don’t see how sitting around, pretending to be someone else is going to change ANYTHING.

I just… can’t come up with a good reason to keep hiding away like this.  Not anymore.  All I know for a fact is that, for over THREE MONTHS now, every single night (heh, excluding the ones where I was dead) and on many days, I’ve been wrenched from a Void, forced to live in a body that is not my own, and sat, bored and festering, in a tiny oppressive room, keeping my silence, choosing isolation over imposition.  I’m tired of pretending that I don’t exist solely for the comfort of others. Maybe it’s time to drop the charade.

Mia at least seems grateful for my self-serving cleaning fixation, so that sets us off on a better foot this time around.  That, I step into cautiously.  Still don’t have a solid opinion on her.  All I know for a fact is that she makes me more uncomfortable than most people do- it must be her perceptiveness.  I feel naked under her eyes.  It comes with paranoia, I suppose.

Hmph.  It’s after 11 and I’ve finally noticed the text you sent at 9.  Just my luck today.

Don’t want to sleep.  Seriously hoping you want to hang out now.

Or maybe I’ll just go talk to Mia.  Sounds like she’s still up.

Continue reading

8/26/11

5:15pm

Dear Die-ary,

Just posting up all my backlogged entries.

After entering the last one, I noticed the “Need an idea for your next post?” section on WordPress.
It pulls up three random supposedly thought-provoking prompts apparently designed to get the creative juices flowing.  Obviously I never really have a problem coming up with things to write about, as evidenced by my 84 entries since July, so usually I just ignore that section.

But for the first time, one of the prompts caught my eye.

“How do YOU make yourself feel better when you’re really angry?”

Hoooo boy.

First came the Grin, then the laughter crept in.  WOULDN’T YOU FUCKING LIKE TO KNOW?!  Why don’t you come over and I’ll show-  Then, a cutoff.  A scowl.  Remembering where I am.  Clenched fists, gritted teeth.  The urge to throw the laptop across the room.  Faces spinning round me, laughing.  That gaggle of middle school girls who’d yelled what a “nice” van I was driving- they’d painted big red X’s across their chests, made me feel predatory, and yet I gripped the steering wheel and kept driving.  The Eyes ever watching.  Feel I’m going to crack.  Soon.  Gotta hold it together.  Can’t throw this life, this chance away-

Hmph.  What I do when I get really angry… is go just a little fuckin’ crazier inside, I think.

Fuck you and your prompts.

Continue reading

8/26/11
12:13pm

dear dieary entry make later eye medicine bad pain cant see
wake up midnight again weird pattern night noise
owie

 

 

 

 

1:45am

Dear Die-ary,

A clarification on that blurb (which I couldn’t properly write at the time because I jabbed myself in the eye putting in the antibiotics).  I’ve kept myself busy since with my eyes closed, listening to music and counting the fibers in this pillow tactile-ly.  1,364 in the first row if you’re that curious.

Once again I’ve woken at precisely midnight.  It’s a pattern that seems to grow heavier, more haunting with each passing night.  Not so much that it’s AT THAT TIME, or that it’s me waking up as opposed to Tom, or even that I’m waking up (which implies that I’ve been sleeping), or how I’ve woken up- as if someone (many someones?) stood over me, clamoring for my attention, only to vanish when I open my eyes.  It’s all these things together, and nights in a row.

It’s as if Tom tries to get a night’s sleep, but Someone (possibly multiple Someones) decides each night, at that nexus point where one day dies and the new one resurrects, that it’s time to RESET and yank me out of whatever floaty black gas chamber they keep me in when I’m not here in this body.  For what reason, I can’t begin to guess.  I MUST know who is running this thing.  Their patterns are showing.  It seems… intentional.  I have to get to the bottom of this.

Other mysteries abound.  Yesterday Mia noticed a loud noise downstairs the same time I did.  Nobody else home.  So it’s not just me.  This house seems to be coming alive.

The odder thing is that our neighbors in the next duplex over on the left are moving out.  Both families, on both ends of THAT duplex.  I can’t even say if there’s been anyone living in the duplex on the right.  Must investigate.  It seems as though everyone’s getting antsy, instinctually taking off in avoidance of some big… Thing.  Or maybe it’s just my paranoia.

It IS nice that we have less and less neighbors nowadays, though.  Less people to hear the-
Hmph.
Loud music that we might decide…
to play.
Or something.

I’m too awake.  Gotta go clean the house.  Already it’s getting disorganized again.  I’m almost glad.  It gives me something to do at night, feels like some kind of a purpose.  I’ve given up on looking for the purpose that may have brought me here, if there’s one thing this life is teaching me, it’s that we should decide our own damn purpose.  I can’t say that I want my life to REVOLVE around this cleaning thing, but I can say that I feel calmer when I purge the filth from this house.  It makes me feel in control somehow.  A zen meditation of sorts.

It can’t hurt, anyway.

Continue reading

8/25/11
12:01am

Dear Die-ary,

Must posit a small entry.  Could have sworn there were people downstairs talking who woke me up on the couch, but when I opened my eyes they were gone.  Looked at the clock and it was precisely midnight.  That’s always a weird feeling.  Came upstairs, the others were out on the porch having a smoke.  I interrogated them about it and nobody had been down there…

Strange house we live in.

 

 

 

 

5:23am

Dear god.  Stomach cramps.  Terrible terrible stomach cramps.

Hot tea and a Back to the Future marathon on the couch for me. Wanted to go out early this morning and use the internet, but seeing as it’s difficult to walk without being doubled over in agony, I’ll use the rest time.  At least we don’t return to work until Monday.

WHY DO I HAVE TO BE HERE FOR THIS ONE?

 

 

 

 

10:18

Pain meds knocked me out.  I’ve missed a good portion of the first movie.  Booh.  Damn, so much blood.  Bad blood.  Weak and nauseous…

This is a part of this life I never wanted any part of, didn’t even necessarily want to write about.  But, here I am.  I don’t trust a body that can bleed a week out of every month and live to tell the tale.  Sheer mutiny.  Some kind of black magic must run these things and it makes me uneasy to inhabit such a homunculus.  At any rate it’s a massive oversight on the part of whoever set this up.  How is this remotely evolutionarily advantageous? So many predators make their living on tracking the scent of blood.  Being vulnerable to that a good quarter of their time, how the species survived the Stone Age is a mystery that is beyond me.

Ugh.  Happier speculations must come to me.  At least nobody’s up to make this morning even more unbearable.  AND I HAVE MR. TINY COMPOOPER BACK!  NO MORE TROMPING DOWN TO THE LIVING ROOM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT FOR WRITING!!!  Ah glorious contemplation in the peace of my own room with a nice locked door and no disturbances.  Typing when I want, where I want, it’s a luxury I took all too easily for granted.

Time to put on Back to the Future II.  A grin through the stabbing pain.

 

 

 

 

10:50am

Now a question of personal abuse.  Do I hold this rotten blood against my skin in the most unsanitary squelchy of manners or do I violate myself with a phallic cotton ball?

Continue reading

8/23/11
8:29am

Dear Die-ary,

That was interesting.

I feel like someone is playing ping-pong with my mind.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Which player will miss?  When do I ricochet off the table, onto the floor, under the couch where no one will find me and they’ll give up playing with me and go get another ball to toy with?

This is a silly analogy.  Maybe I shouldn’t write so much.

 

 

 

 

3:32pm

Pissed off.  Managed to leave the flash drive at the Job Connection.  Had to leave the library to go get it.  Couldn’t check back into the library for computer use a second time today.  Can’t put up any entries.  Backed up.

Now going to go find the first middle school cheerleading squad I see and save them from their terrible fates by removing their legs.  (I kid.  I actually couldn’t care less about their fates.)

Gotta relax, everything’s going to be okay.  Mia’s going to be back with the computer late tonight and all of this hassle will be over.  Gotta just… wait it out.

Continue reading

8/22/11
8:28am

Dear Die-ary,

I know, I know.  Such an ugly entry last night.  But don’t look so traumatized, little Die-ary.  You knew the dangers of the job when you took it.  Besides, if I hadn’t forced myself to purge all those nasty things, maybe I wouldn’t feel so much better today.

Of course the conversation last night couldn’t have hurt.  Names have been omitted to protect the not-so-innocent, but a good jolly bout of speculation on methods of murder, suicide, the whole arena of Wal-Mart bombings and the like- well, it really snapped me back into feeling a bit more like my old self.  The Grin returned, if only for a few hours.  No more self-pity and depressive prose for me, no sir.

I expect it will be a battle like this for the rest of my life- fall down the Well, find in the shadows and muck at the bottom what makes me smile, and use it to claw my way back up.  There will be days where I see sunlight, and maybe even days where I can poke my head out and feel the breeze on my face, but I don’t expect I shall ever fully escape from this Well.  The walls are too slippery and steep, and just when you think you’re almost out, the edges crumble.  And call me crazy, but… it seems to get a bit deeper each time.

Well.  This entry wasn’t SUPPOSED to be depressive.  The point is, I’m near to the top and that’s a good place to be.

In other news, my esteemed and hideous roomies have left me in the lurch for paying the Amerigas and PG&E bill, and auto insurance came in and informed me that the due date was the 18th.  Now I don’t have a free cent in the bank due to covering everyone ELSE’S asses, and auto insurance has lapsed and they’ll probably slap on a late fee now, too.  It feels strange to handle someone else’s finances- will I be held responsible if I fuck something up?  Of course.  I’ll also be held responsible if I don’t do anything.  But that’s what comes with being a Groundskeeper.  The drudge gets easier as time wears on.  Is this life becoming mine?  Refuse to think about everything THAT entails.

In the spirit of responsibility, then, I will throttle every one of these roomies until they cough up the money that is rightfully ours.

 

 

 

 

5:28pm

I must be a fucking masochist.

I really should stop letting you into my life.  Maybe I just like being around you.  Maybe we have really good conversations, and you make me laugh.  Maybe I’m holding out some kind of terribly idiotic hopes despite all logic to the contrary.  Maybe I just like torturing myself.  Maybe I really AM suicidal- god knows it’s what killed me last time.  Maybe I’m just hoping putting myself in this situation over and over again finally WILL obliterate what’s left of my soul.  All I know for a fact is, none of it makes sense.

I DO like you.  The feelings weren’t supposed to come back, though.  I was supposed to feel nothing.  I thought maybe I could have you around for enjoyment and entertainment.  And as the afternoon wore on and I sat near you where you lay on my living room floor, the stupid idiotic compulsion returned- I just wanted to reach out and touch.

I felt myself stretched over that line again, with half of me screaming to get away, scrambling into an empty corner, knowing that it could only end in tears- no chance for ugly associations in a chosen isolation.  The other half was begging to let go of the fears, begging to give in to one simple joy, pulling towards you, ripping me apart at the chest.  I could barely breathe.  I don’t know which way is up.  Maybe there is no up.  Maybe this is on a left-right axis, in a clearing surrounded by forest fire, and no matter which way I choose I’m going to get burned.

And of course I gave in, and I held you, and I felt the tension in my body taking full minutes to leak away until the demanding, shaming voices in my mind finally shut up and I was at peace and a little smile even came over my face.  Time faded away, everything faded away, and once again I knew what peace was, and it felt like damned choirs of angels singing.

Only my fear of when it would end hung over my head.  I was afraid to move, as if the movement would remind you that spacetime applied and it was time for you to leave, and so I rested still as a stone for fear of breaking the spell, zapping us back out of that tiny peaceful pocket outside of the universe.  I knew at some point I’d have to let you go and everything would come back and my whole body would be wracked with that empty longing pain again, but in that moment- it was all worth it.

It’s really not worth it right now, but it was then.

And when your phone went off, my stomach seized and an adrenaline rush came over me and I truly, TRULY hated, for an incomprehensible moment, whoever it was that was taking you away from me, and was damn ready to fight for you- but NO, I brought everything under control and, every muscle tense, withdrew and scrambled away and wrapped my arms around my knees and forced myself to sit still in a very, very solid attempt, I must say, at pretending that everything was okay.  I still felt dreamy, and it must have been written on my face, and I wasn’t ready yet to come out of that bubble and face the future, so when you asked if it was going to make things harder, it was easy to say no.

I stood and gave you a goodbye hug and tried not to let my feelers rip out through my chest and sink into you again, and when we broke I looked to my left, at the floor, refusing the option for eye contact, knowing removing that possibility from the equation would make things easier for both of us.  It was a mercy.  It took a lot of willpower on my part- the possibilities that could have been opened by looking into your eyes led to everything that my subconscious is screaming for.  I wouldn’t allow it, I will starve it until it gives up and dies.

It must have a lot of strength left in it, though, from the racket it’s making.  That’s what I get for being a fucking idiot and feeding the damn thing again.  Scraps- I throw it scraps because the howling gets unbearable at night and somehow I think it might shut up if I satisfy it for five minutes, but it only whets the damned thing’s appetite, and there’s nowhere I can go now to escape the screaming.  If only I could sink a knife deep into its chest, but no- the only way to kill it must be to starve it.  The pitiable faces it makes from behind its bars, the howls that warble from behind tear drenched eyes-

Fuck.  I need to get out of this room.

 

 

 

 

7:17pm

FUCKING CHERRY ICEE TIME!!!!

I refuse to even look at what I wrote up there, I’ve very much hit the bottom and rebounded to the top with a magical force equal to the power of the SUN (or something very like it)!  I’m in a very extraordinarily good mood and I know for a FACT that this stupid little infatuation is a blip on the radar of my HOMYGOD SO FUCKING HAPPY CAN’T SIT STILL AND WRITE BYE-BYE!!

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8/21/11
9:05am

Dear Die-ary,

First principles.  Of each thing, ask what is it in itself?

I’ve been examining my growing fixation with cleaning.  Obviously I don’t LIKE cleaning. It’s not a particularly pleasurable hobby- it leaves a grimy coating on your hands, and it makes you smell funny.  I take a lot more showers these days.  So what needs am I satisfying with this?

There are two options- clean, or live in filth.  One must choose what they consider to be the lesser of the two evils in any situation.  For those who came before me, cleaning was obviously more detestable than dirtiness, and so they just dealt with the rubbish.  But for me it’s reversed; the lesser of the two evils is undeniably to put on the rubber gloves and scrub.

My first principle, then, must be to purge uncleanliness.  Echoes of that old dream come back- am I really a “flusher”?

I only know one thing-

I HATE FILTH.

 

 

 

 

7:39pm

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Eight days it’s been, EIGHT DAYS I’ve been some semblance of myself, some kind of happy, or at least not pitiably depressed.  True I’ve had my ups and downs but it’s par for the course and overall I’ve maintained a fairly steady outlook of goodwill.  Today I’ve dropped away into another deep, dark well.  Obviously, I’ve crawled back up far enough to write.  It only took me four fucking hours.

I lay on the couch this afternoon, in and out of a fuzzy black sleep, faced when awake with all the ugly demons I’ve been looking decidedly away from all this time, feeling to be in a fever dream.  I HATE being like this.  Steeped in a depression, without even the energy to keep my eyes forced open and towards the T.V. screen- it reeks of everything I can’t stand about this body, this System.

Why is it that, here, when I hit a downer, this brain interprets it as shutdown time- SLEEP?  The black tentacles of slumber wrap around my body, slither into my ear and envelop my brain with injected neurotoxins, drag my eyelids down, force their suckers down my throat and intercept the oxygen before it has the chance to fuel me.  I can’t move my limbs- its sick twisting grasp in my mind bringing those insidiously common hallucinations that the insipid call DREAMS.  I feel that I am dying in Sleep’s grasp.  Hypnos doesn’t look like a cute, fuzzy, mutilated stuffed monkey anymore.

And yet the waking world doesn’t look much less grim.  I try to find a reason to get off the couch.  The house is already clean (and if I thought cleaning was my sole purpose for living, that’s reason enough to kill myself right here right now).  There’s not a person in the world I’d leave this house for, not a thing in this county I can think of to do, not a cent in the bank, not a drop of gas in the tank that isn’t pre-allocated.  No portable computer.  The only online access in this county is at the library which is closed on Sundays.  Even writing, in that state, seemed that it would take too much energy.  Couldn’t think of anything I wanted to draw.  Didn’t want to play any video games.  Can’t go terrorize the Wal-Mart.

I couldn’t think of ANYTHING that I wanted to do, no hobbies to take up.  I have no passion, no desire for anything in life.  This is what I’ve been afraid of all week.  I’m hollow.

Then my mind runs to the petty pleasures, some little burst of dopamine that might make life seem worth living, even for a minute.  Food.  Even smoking.  Maybe alcohol.  The knife upstairs, buried in my wrist in some childish display.  Or some kind of sex.  My stomach turns at the thought of all of it.  There’s nothing I want.

Already I’ve eaten too much candy today.  I’ve been binging.  I know a lot of food has gone into this body this week because the bones in these wrists are disappearing again.  It’s been taking the place of a hobby, one of the only forms of stimulation I haven’t found to be utterly detestable, and it’s growing ugly to me fast.

And, of course, with this lack of defenses, my mental immune system compromised, so to speak, the Black Hole is gone.  When I say that, I mean that comforting inability to feel when I think of you.  When you intrude in my head, a rapidfire attack-

(a scream echoing) “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN’T I JUST-”
I grip the pillow- knitted brow
chest-stab
A maelstrom, your face, the feel of your arms, ecstatic poison ripping through my skin
“I WAS SO CLOSE TO KNOWING WHAT IT-”
NO   NO   NO   SHUT IT OFF
FOR FUCK’S
SAKE
SHUT IT DOWN
Lips, touch, that reverberating sublime peace twisting into a screaming unfulfilled promise
A thorn, an infection, cut it out, too late, it’s gone septic
“PLEASE WON’T YOU JUST LET ME-”
Fantasy, desire, fever, nausea, scream, I -WILL- CUT YOU OUT OF ME
-SHUT
-IT
-DOWN
…-silence-

You’ve been popping into my head with alarming frequency.

When does this go away?

I wasn’t supposed to be able to have feelings like this, not this time!  The weakness that brought this insanity on…  It’s unbearable.  Where’s a friendly gun when you need one?

Continue reading

8/20/11
2:11am

Dear Die-ary.

Silence before the storm.

Come to think of it, maybe just silence.  Really not used to that.

It’s been a bit of a boring last week, hasn’t it?  A few paranoid delusions, some interesting dreams, nothing to get up in arms about.  One might say that’s kind of nice.  One might say living a boring life isn’t necessarily a fate worse than death.  But that’s the kind of attitude that comes before the coma takes you and you become one of those zombies in sweatpants you see walking the grocery stores.

It was a grocery store that brought on this paranoid melancholy.  One of those huge banners hanging from the ceiling; it spelled out “l i f e” with pictures of fresh cut fruit, children playing and laughing: a white-picket-fence kind of idyllia.  I caught myself in a reflection staring at it with the most hollow and upset of looks.  Probably a rare occasion one would catch me with that Particular Look on my face- a real sort of desperate sadness tinged with bitterness, incredulosity, and- casting distortion over all else- that panicked claustrophobic bent around the edges of the eyes, indicative of an impending Fate.  A strange combination to be sure.  My awareness kicked into overdrive for a second outside spacetime- my breathing was heavy, my pulse sounded slow and atomic- a Doomsday clock.

I can’t say that modern commercialism has ever, in one instance, actually driven me so close to the edge of suicide.

Is this really what we’re supposed to want out of this life?  Norman Rockwell?  To grow up and become soccer moms and Disneyland daddies?  Nice curtains that don’t clash with the potholders, frequent flier miles, a healthy vegan diet complete with bean sprouts and  yoga, good auto insurance, a clean divorce settlement, Club Cards?  The stereotypically sunny banner suggested a sort of bland contentment.  It shook me to the core.  It proclaimed harshly, “THIS IS IT!!! EVERYTHING THERE IS TO LIFE, EVERYTHING YOU’LL EVER NEED, IT’S ALL RIGHT HERE IF ONLY YOU GIVE IN TO IT, and you can buy it only at Safeway.”  It terrifies me, to think that they may be telling the truth- that the only real things in life are the grains of dull pride and joy picked from getting your Amerigas bill paid on time.

What if I don’t want what you’ve been pushing?

What if everything I want out of life starkly contrasts with everything you’ve been training us to try and achieve since kindergarten?  What if my life plans, my hopes and dreams and aspirations, don’t fit in with the bars you’ve imposed on this sick world?  What if it’s completely unacceptable?  What if the path I want to run is away from the herd, in the tall grass, beyond the yellow police lines?

I might die out there- MAYBE.  You’re here to protect the common citizens, you calmly state from within your hazmat suit- MAYBE.  Maybe if you hadn’t made it so offlimits, maybe if you hadn’t made MY LIFE an abomination by your arbitrary standards, it WOULDN’T be so dangerous.  Maybe if you were really trying to protect me, the little red dots wouldn’t be swarming the left side of my chest, NOW WOULD THEY??!

I feel the eyes on me, ever watching, waiting for me to slip up, to step out of Purgatory- to come out of private life and resume the Old Ways- or maybe just to give up, give in, crack and pursue that law degree in braindead hopes of one day achieving the ultimate goal- a REALLY FUCKING NICE CAR.

I can’t walk this line forever.  Something’s gotta give.

I walk the petty fringe, art school, pursuant of a career that might let me stay a little weirder, might not force me to hack and slash off all the limbs that don’t fit the cookie cutter holes just in order to survive.  I know I’m a monster.  But here’s the difference.  I know what I am, and I’m comfortable with it, and I will not be shamed into becoming a one-headed, two-armed, two-legged humanoid if that’s not what I’m meant to be.  Maybe this is a foolish young man’s game, but I’m still young, and I’m game.  There MUST be a place for people like me in a world like this, and if there is breath in my lungs I won’t stop looking for it.

This is Monster Pride.

Continue reading

8/19/11
2:42am

Dear Die-ary,

Ever have a nightmare so vivid it has you checking your extremities for the spiderbites?

Still keeping an eye out for the deadly little nit with the yellow and black markings on its abdomen and shiny, spindly black legs. I swear I just felt it on my neck, knocked it onto my my thigh and it skittered off to some unknown crevasse under the chair.

I was lying there in bed for god knows how long, paralyzed in the throes of a not-quite-nightmare, not-quite hallucination, trying not to move my left foot because there sat “Acherontia Styx” in the arch, ready to bear down its deadly needlepoints at the slightest movement. If Leland hadn’t gotten home a few minutes ago and made a lot of noise about it, I might be there still, unmoving and sweating.

Apparently it has the habit of inflicting unwed southern she-hicks with that terrible form of parasitism- pregnancy. I guess that’s where the science of the dream falls apart. Though I never did get to see the demonspawn this most unusual conception might have yielded. Could have been interesting. Glad I woke up.

Acherontia Styx- now, come to think of it, that’s not a spider name. That’s a moth name. Death’s Head Moth. That’s what I get for reading Silence of the Lambs, I guess.

For every good dream my mind dares to have, I’m inundated with at least ten other nightmares. And that’s a good month.

 

 

 

 

11:05am

Now living in Suite 91, indicative of a transitory phase- a reprieve. I suggest reading Chapter 61 for the full context. The elegant little “plaque” I’ve made for the bedroom door, fully handlettered with detail and care, will serve to remind me of a refreshing new perspective, an inspiration. This is just a bus station between realities, a hotel room between continents, a place to rest, renew, recover, behind a face that is not my own. The book gives me inspiration, despite the spider it spawned into this early morning’s nightmare.

Solve this puzzle and know my mind.

Continue reading

8/18/11
4:32am

Dear Die-ary-

THAT’s interesting. Now I am getting memories that the Big Sister was over on Tuesday. She saw my gallery, started questioning things. Interrogating. Tom showed her Hypnos, squeezed his tummy, laughed far too loud and nervously. She was visibly disturbed. She was familiar with his past with alters but not with any like me. Asked why he never came to her for help. She got an earful. Now yet another person knows far too much. Never mentioned me by NAME, of course- but somehow she knew. She wasn’t even one of the Readers, and she knew.

I think I should be angry.

Incredulosity. The thing that stands out the most is Tom’s defense. “He’s not a bad person, he just… has a twisted sense of humor.” Trying not to wake the house up laughing. Bad judge of character. Three months and he still doesn’t know who he’s living with.

I’ll give a pass on this one, just so long as I don’t become a topic of conversation with her ever again.

 

 

 

 

8:21am

Dreams getting healthier. (…Well, there was that one nightmare about Mother-Jailkeep rising from the dead to torment the innocent, but I refuse to claim that one as she is not my mother. Let Tom keep his nightmares.)

No, mine was about a sandwich and the following gorey consequences. I think it was Burger King. They screwed up my order, gave me the wrong sandwich or something. I went back to ask for the right one, all polite and civil, and they made it, alright, but the guy who came out with it was rude and livid.

He said, “That first sandwich was fine. I don’t see why you NEED another sandwich. So I’m taking this one.” And he sat down right in front of me, smug and reeking of a false sense of superiority, and started eating it!

Now I was infuriated. Flabbergasted, really, that someone would be that rude, to ANYONE, let alone me. This guy could get fired for what he was doing, but that’s something Tom would have done- report him and go on his merry way all docile and passive. It was the way, I know, that he acted- even in dreams!

When his opportunity came to chew someone out, he would find the least offensive way to put something, as in life. When he got angry enough to fight, his blows landed soft and ineffectual. He would waken frustrated, emasculated, questioning why, even in a land of dreams where there are no lasting consequences, he could not drop his eternally passive ways.

Not this time. It was my turn to take advantage of dream properties, and the physics of the realm cracked and twisted as I burst out of the shroud, blades gleaming. The guy dropped what was left of the sandwich, stumbled backwards, fell over his chair. “Hang on, I didn’t want any kind of… confrontation…”

“That’s RIGHT! YOU -DON’T- WANT TO GET INTO A CONFRONTATION WITH ME! But guess what?” I asked, grin twisting my face. “You already GOT yourself one.”

He scrambled to his feet and started to run. Perfect. I miss the chase. For some reason, he decided it would be a good idea to corner himself in the kiddie playland. What an idiot. The chase didn’t last too long as he scrambled up the tube slide, howling and screeching. I smirked and climbed the ladder, took my time about it too. He emerged from the top, looked up to see me standing there, gasped, and that was the last air to pass through his nasty mouth.

I really didn’t want to be so uncreative as to just decapitate him (why do I always do that in dreams? I think there’s a pattern here) but I have to admit that the effect of his head tumbling down the slide and the screams of the kiddies at the bottom was just glorious. I left him lying, neck first, into the tube and jumped down to the first level to admire my work. “What, you little brats are always screaming about how you want to go on a waterslide, so enjoy it while it lasts! He’ll only flow for a few more minutes!”

I grabbed what was left of my sandwich and walked out, whistling the Manteca Waterslides jingle. No cops or investigators this time, free as a bird. It was like Home.

I couldn’t have come up with a better dream if I tried.

Continue reading

8/17/11
6:33pm

Dear Die-ary,

Strange sort of day.

(Random observation- I really don’t have any other kind, do I?)

Flat tire. That’s where I woke up. Guess we alters are designed for manual labor under stressful conditions. Nasty sort of life. Why IS that?

Really, when something as simple as a flat tire can cause a dissociation, it’s time to really get help. …Well, of course that’s not to say there haven’t been times where I just -BOOM- woke up for no apparent reason, then was stuck here for extravagantly unnecessary time periods… hm. I guess the why’s and wherefores don’t warrant questioning anymore. There really seems to be no rhyme or reason in this place. Chaos. Sheer chaos.

And flat tires.

Got it changed, got home. There were three cars in the driveway, so I was expecting, with an inner groan, to have to explain to an audience why I was dragging in so unusually late with dirt and grease all over my hands and face. (I briefly entertained the idea of telling them I was chasing down raccoons under cars to use later for a Samhain midnight blood ritual, but decided against it.) But when I got in the house…

Nothing. It was empty, room for room.

You’d think I’d be ecstatic, but it brought back weird old paranoias from the Archives- suspicions from an overly religious childhood that the Rapture had just happened and Tom was the only person left on Earth, and it was time to make preparations to fight off all the plagues of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in a Tribulation. Silly superstition, but it definitely echoed with the sort of alien abduction paranoia that made the skin on my back shiver and tighten uncomfortably and hairs raise on my arms. How do you explain three cars in the driveway of an echoing, empty house? Something felt Wrong.

I shrugged it off and decided to type. Still nobody here but I guess that’s a good thing. I could really use some space once in a while.

How long has it been since I was here?

…Hm, from the entries it looks like two days. TWO DAYS I’ve been sleeping in the background?! GOD why does that bother me so much?! I shouldn’t be here more than Tom, this isn’t my life, so why am I turning into such a control freak?

Guess I just can’t stand not knowing what’s going on, the funny tinged dream-like memories that come in from another person having controlled the body, not knowing which are memories, what are dreams, why they seem so distorted, what’s missing, what am I not remembering, what’s he hiding from me, IT’S ALL FUCKING TOO MUCH!!! …No no, let’s calm down now. We’re just going to have to piece things together and work as a team, gritted teeth and all. He has to deal with the same sickly fragmented pieces when he comes back in too, and it doesn’t get to him… not so much, not as I can tell. But everything just- it’s all static and bad reception, heard from another room.

Can’t let all this get to me. THings were getting so pleasant there for a while. I’ll have to type that up when I’m not feeling so… on edge.

Have to clean. There’ve been too many people in this house the last few days. Their muck clogs everything up and makes it hard to see, hard to breathe- too many dishes, garbage, dinner fixings all over the counter, garbage bags piled high by the entryway, shit everywhere, paper everywhere. Claustrophobia inducing chaos, the byproduct of far too rapidly proliferating life, how they wallow in their filth and laugh and play cards, snorting and grunting and squealing, it boggles me- can’t live in a pigsty, the smell of the shit chokes me. I really AM too tense today.

 

 

7:15pm

TEEHEE! When I put on the rubber gloves and clench my fists, it makes a squeaky sound! Like a dog toy! HEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

 

 

7:32pm

Situational Dysinversia. Forgot which side of the sink the garbage disposal was on. Those lumps of guacamole… DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE

 

 

7:43pm

TRIUMPH

Having saved his house and home from a terrible swampy fate, the Cleaning Tornado will now turn his terrible powers on… taking out the Garbage.

This exciting entry brought to you by the Council for People Who Have Nothing Better To Do With Their Time.

 

 

8:20

Everyone home now. Including Garret’s girlfriend’s child terror. 2 years old. He screams and jumps on the couch, grabs things, throws things, runs around and hits people. Funny thing, he looks me in the eyes, and stands still, his evil little grin goes away, he starts taking tiny steps backwards and runs off in another direction to torment someone else.

Good instincts, this one has.

Continue reading

8/15/11
8:39am

Dear Die-ary,

I thought this house might be a little more peaceful at night now that most of its inhabitants are out gallivanting in Washington and fuck knows where else.  It had been just me and Leland for the last couple days.  I thought, really, that I’d be the only one up and about at night after a certain hour.

It would seem that this house has a life of its own, complete with footsteps, creaky doors and floorboards, the occasional running dryer at night, and even music and voices.  Either that or I’m more horrifically delusional than even I thought I was.  All this time I’d been able to blame these night time noises on the other four bodies in this house and shrug them off.  But it became clear to me that wasn’t the case (and possibly hadn’t been the case for a long time) when, early this morning, I left the bedroom, convinced that Leland was up, only to peer in on his still sleeping form and realize- oh yes, he IS one of the Sleepers, after all.

Where ARE all these noises coming from, anyway?

Speaking of sleep, it’s happening to me more and more often whether I like it or not.  Yesterday I went upstairs to clean my room a bit before taking the other laptop up the hill to one of Tom’s friends who might be able to fix it.  I woke up three hours later in bed with a lot of aching joints and no real certainty of whether the horrors I’d dreamed had just happened.  I don’t even have any idea HOW in the fuck I wound up in bed.

My only convincing piece of evidence that it WAS, indeed, a dream, was that it would have taken a lot longer than three hours for all that to have happened.  I’d gotten the computer fixed, then gone to Wiley’s house, cleaned HIS damn house, and done horribly incriminating things with him in a shower.  The thought still makes me shudder.  I guess that’s why they call it a nightmare.  It seemed similar enough to the kind of memory I get after Tom’s been in-body, though, it certainly was enough to make me worry.  Luckily I found out the computer was still broken so none of it really could have happened.

So, for the second time, I took it up the hill to get it fixed, only this time he informed me that it was unfixable.  I informed him that if I were in my right mind, this would be the point at which I decapitated him and took HIS computer for making me waste the gas money, but clearly I wasn’t in my right mind at all, so we watched a movie and then I went home.
It really is suprising me how few people get insulted when you come out with it and say you’ve been thinking of killing them.  I guess a LOT of people THINK about killing each other, and the safety net lies in the fact that nobody ever gets around to doing it.  Hm.  Maybe, at least in this dimension, I’m more normal than I thought.

 

 

9:50am

Was slipping into a false sense of security for a moment there.  This IS a duplex, after all.  Noises carry through walls, floorboards run the length of the complex.  Didn’t a whole family live next door?

Oh, yes.  They moved out three weeks ago.

We really ARE the only two people in this whole building.

Somehow it’s a lot more eerie now.

Tonight I shall attempt to make contact with whatever entities (inside my head or out) are clamoring for my attention.  Could be interesting.

Maybe it IS the mirror ghosts.

But for now-  JOB HUNTING.  Bleuaach.

 

 

1:26 in the PM

Ahhh, delicious sandwich, how long I have lusted after thee!!

Prepare for sweet oblivion in the depths of my belly…

 

 

1:31

That whole experience went waaay too fast.  It WAS delightful, though.

I guess the whole ordeal deserves an explanation.

So I went out to the Job Connection.  Used the flash drive, after all it has the whole set of resumes and cover letters and whatnot.  Spent my whole allotted time applying at Lowe’s (DAMN their process is strenuous).  It was about 12:00 that I realized I hadn’t eaten anything today, so I gnawed my way through the 85 question assessment as quickly as I could, visions of cheeseburgers dancing in my head.  Tore out of there like a bat out of hell.

Carl’s Jr.  Some kind of Teriyaki contraption, I can’t even remember, I only know that I ordered the first thing that looked irresistable.  I started thinking to myself- this experience must be taken fully and without distraction.  Maybe with a little journalling on the side, maybe even while watching a movie, but it must be experienced in the holiness of my nice, cool, empty, clean house, not in this nasty hot car.  I will not eat until I get home.

The more I thought about munching and writing, the more the idea appealed to me, until it looked like the perfect afternoon.  And then I thought-

Wait.  I don’t remember pulling my flash drive out of the computer!

I frantically searched my pockets, trying not to swerve off the road, hoping that putting it away was maybe just one of those automatic things I do without paying attention.  But NO.  I knew EXACTLY where the damned thing was.  Back across town, at the Job Connection, plugged into one of their common use computers.  And a realization that came no sooner than pulling into the driveway, cursing and swearing the whole way.  The little kids across the road got a bit more of an earful than I would have liked.  Oh well, they’ll hear it from their mutant parents, anyway.

I tried to calm down, took my sandwich inside, stared at it for a second, and KNEW that I couldn’t relax, couldn’t enjoy it fully, not knowing my die-ary and a lot of other important shit were across town, being examined by all kinds of laughing terrible sorts.  So, with a “FUCK” and a stomp, I tore back out of the driveway, leaving my poor innocent sandwich sitting lonesome by the desktop.

On the way out, on the highway, a text rolls in:  “Hello.  Is our friendship dead?  I do not want it to be.  But I suppose I understand if it is.”

Damn.

Five minutes away from my destination and I can’t respond, but it gives me enough time to think it through.  I suppose I was afraid of seeing you because I thought it might trigger a relapse, old feelings, bring back that version- Mister C.  I want nothing to do with him.  I want to be me, plain and simple, and if you get in the way of that, then you’re out.

But already I think of you, and the same thing happens as when I think of Leland- nothing.  No heart-jarring jump, no uncontrollable stupid grins, no gut wrenching pain, no urges or desires.  You’re just a person to me again.  And despite the fact that I don’t necessarily want anything to do with People right now, we always did have some good conversations.

Fuck it all.  I should give it a shot, at least see what comes of it.  The worst that could happen is that I wind up disemboweling you, and the likelihood of anything like that happening after all this time is nil to none.  I just don’t think you’ll inspire anything like that in me- there’s a blank spot where any strong feelings for you once might have been.

I get to the Job Connection, run in, and yank my die-ary back from their evil claws.  My tummy is still rumbling and I’m pretty sure that I actually have a stronger emotional connection with my sandwich than anything else at the moment.  So I tap out, “Where are you right now? Im downtown.  I have a delicious sandwich waiting for me at home right now but if you wanted to come over…”

I run to the store and grab a newspaper, giving you a minute to respond before I go back across town.  I realize the whole thing sounded awfully detached for what had happened the other night.  I tap out a slightly more thought-out response.  “Truth is, I don’t hate you and I don’t think it would be too dangerous for me to be around you.  Willing to try.”  I actually have to wonder how you might interpret that.

No response, I say fuck it all and get home.  This is the point, of course, when I decide that it might be okay to be friends with someone, and they get caught in a four-car collision and horrific fireball on the freeway.  I shrug it all off.  I had a sandwich to eat.

Of course, halfway through that typing all this out, I got the text saying that you were about to come over.  Hm.  This is going to be interesting.

 

 

4:53pm

What a weird afternoon.

The more you were around, the more lethargic I felt.  I expected, somehow, to be on edge, in some kind of turmoil, at least AWAKE etc., but I just kept feeling that filmy haze of sleep come over me.  I didn’t feel entirely like me.  Come to think of it, it felt kind of like a Transitory sleep- one of the ways the Others used to come in and out, using a nap as a gateway- falling asleep as one person, waking up as another.  Of course I spent the afternoon resisting the urge, but maybe if I’d given in you’d have gotten Tom, and that might have been more pleasant for everyone involved.  Not that you’re unpleasant to be around.  But everything we talked about, or did, comes in a haze.

My other next best guess is that spending time around you, and subconsciously routing so much energy into NOT experiencing certain emotions, pulled a LOT of systemic energy.

These speculations are depressing.  I think you’re looking to hang out again tomorrow.  Well, at least that gives me the opportunity to test out some of these theories.

Time to clean the upstairs.

Continue reading

8/14/11
4:42am

Dear Die-ary,

Mirrors bugging me a lot more this time around.  It’s not the mirror ghosts, I’ve told you that before, they’re incidental and they’ve never been threatening despite the infuriated faces they seem more and intent on making.  No- it’s the damned face attached to me that really gives me the creeps.  I’ve been spending a lot of time trying not to look at reflective surfaces lately.

In spite of all these oddities I’m still in a pretty extraordinarily good mood.  I know I must be returning to myself because the thought of slicing up that one hobo didn’t make me depressed or melancholy or nostalgic or frustrated- it made me smile.

Now THAT’S a first in this dimension.  How is it that the Directives are still there, still monitoring all these thoughts, but not slamming the hammer onto my head every time a thought like this passes through?  Something’s different, something Good.

I even got to describe to Leland yesterday the ways I might kill him, if I were so inclined.  I’d thought it all out on the way home, laughing and howling and carrying on.  Of COURSE he viewed it as a favor.  That was a bit irritating, actually- you tell someone you’ve been thinking of killing them, and their first response is “Thank you”?  BUT, it was kinda nice, to be able to talk about these things.  Besides, there are a lot of terribly good reasons to keep him around, not the least of which is that I don’t have the income to split rent two ways anymore- we’ll need a third income for a while now.

At least until the lease is up.

Plus he’s amusing to talk to.  I was right about the other night-  I’ve definitely lost my ability to feel anything profound around him, which reduces him strictly to entertainment value.  I can’t begin to say what a blessing THAT is.  The conversations are good.

DAMN, I really thought I’d have a lot of cleaning energy at this hour, but everything’s dragging.  Clearly this body is still exhausted.  Either I fell asleep in the middle of watching Sweeney Todd last night, or there’s an alternate ending that’s a lot more enjoyably horrific and gorey in ways that even Tim Burton probably wouldn’t condone.  Plus it runs a lot longer and dissolves into some other feature involving alien caribou.  I can’t begin to speculate.  Fucking sleep.

Maybe I’ll try to clean later…

10:03am

JESUS CHRIST.  TOO MUCH SLEEP.  NOW MY BACK FEELS LIKE ALIEN CARIBOU STOMPING GROUNDS.

How in the FUCK could this body “NEED” something that clearly hurts it in such quantities?  Never going back to bed AGAIN.

This house… it’s gotten so horribly oppressive and nasty.  The Cleaning Tornado WILL WREAK HIS REVENGE.

Continue reading

RESET

7/13/11
4:54pm

Do you ever find that you refuse to believe that you’re alive just because it’s not worth the mental backflips it would take to get your head around that fact?

Of course I had myself convinced that I was Tom for almost a good full day.  I spent the foggy, weird day searching for answers, looking at the die-ary, even the Source Material, trying to make sense of shit.  The edges cracked and shriveled when I realized I was mumbling things like “I’m not me, I’m dead, I’m Tom and there’s no getting around it.”  When you realize that your perspective on things excludes everything you’re telling yourself, and there’s no pretending any more, that’s when it’s time to really wake up despite the screaming horrors it may induce.

Nonetheless, since the mindcrack, everything looks fresh in this place.  Being alive is a gift, and the chance at a Reset I’ve been given comes with no little gratitude.  It’s the chance to shrug off all the weird little attitudes and frivolities and incongruent paths my life was taking.  I was falling down a very weird little well, one that was turning me into someone I was liking less and less by the day, and it’s time to claw my way back up and out into the world in the most horrifying manner possible and take some real joy in the terror I might inspire in others.  No more searching for a new name- you may, once again, call me Nny.

It’s obvious to me that I’ve spent WAAAAAAAAAAAAY too long in a black, ugly funk, and it’s time to get back on the brighter side of life.  Once again, I’ve let my outlook and possibly even my very existence be influenced by another single human being.  I hold no grudges, only that I didn’t see, once again, what a skewed perspective that kind of thinking is- people can’t be depended on, whether by their fault or just because they’re extraordinarily fragile, fickle, or transitory beings.  It’s time to start making my happiness depend NOT on the things that people are, or even the things that I am, but the things that I DO.

It’s time to stop focusing inward and being so depressive all the time, and it’s time to stop investing in funny little infatuations- yes, it’s time to wake out of this sludge and really engage in the sorts of things that might bring a smile to my face.

I look around me and no, I’m still here, in this reality, where the laws are different- I’m still, somehow, after a third reincarnation, bound by the Directives- the blades that I might hold will never taste flesh- but there must be other things.   The world is, after all, full of puppies.

Time to open my eyes.  The past is the past, it’s dead and gone, that last ugly shameful chapter can be claimed by someone else.  “Mister C” can take a running leap and eat his own damn heart out and compose all the depressive prose that he’d like.  But the Grin is back.  Nny will have joy.  I refuse to look back, or even question why I’m here this time- these things commence a downward spiral.  I may continue to spiral but it will only be upward, and nightmares and terror to those who may get in my way on the way up.

Time for an Icee?  I think so.  God help the C&C Mini Mart if the cherry machine doesn’t work THIS time.

8/12/11
6:32pm

Awaken the insect.

I feel nothing.  I refuse to feel any more.

Don’t worry about me.  There won’t be any more opportunities for me to get hurt.  I knew from the start I shouldn’t have gotten involved with anyone this time around.

The likelihood is remarkably thin that I’ll ever come across anyone again who would actually spark my interest and faith in humanity, so I won’t be putting myself in this position ever again.

It’s not a good idea for someone with luck like mine to get invested in someone.  I was a fool to think otherwise.  Emotions cloud purpose.  What was my purpose, anyway?

Come to think of it, now that I feel nothing I actually don’t even really feel the drive to write anymore.  Being unclouded, I can see that it was the only thing truly keeping me alive.  And it was spawned of feelings- emotions.  Now that they don’t exist, the writing won’t exist, and when the writing doesn’t exist, neither will I.  This is freedom.

I suppose this post is for your benefit so you won’t worry when they stop showing up.

There’s no point for me to exist anymore.  I’m done here.

Well now.  It’s August the 12th.  I came to this place May the 12th.  Three months exactly.

(Mia’s taking the computer with her to Washington tonight, so that works out, too.)

I can’t think of any reason Tom would need me anymore, either.  If I was here to protect him from getting intimate with someone, I certainly wasn’t geared for that anymore.  I’ve broken the mold- but with no emotion, no drive, no soul, and no reason to stay, I’m being sucked down the drain, whisked away to the void from whence I came, and without emotions causing me to fight it, it’s finally happening- I’m fading without a struggle.

Everything’s clear now- I’m not needed, maybe I haven’t been needed for a long time, and my crusade to find a purpose was borne of an emotional excess and an unnecessary attachment to life.  I was nothing more than an inconvenience- a distraction- a drain on the energy of this system, and I don’t need to go on.  I’m finally comfortable with that.

Without emotion clogging up the works, I can see my incongruencies and it’s amazing how fast everything is collapsing onto a single line on the mental continuum.  Who’s to say how long, or how dead, I will stay this time, or whether my weary soul will ever be needed again, or what kind of horrors could wrench me back to this place- but from the silence coming from everything around me, I can only guess that this is It.

Everything has wrapped itself up rather neatly.  Don’t you think?  The equations are absolutely… perfect.

Good bye.

Continue reading

8/11/11
9:43pm

Dear Die-ary,

I had been entertaining the thought of writing it all out.  Other sounds clamor for my attention.  Manic depression requires a mania revisited at least sometimes, right?  I have to admit that I miss it.  All of this has been contemplation, depression, careful steps, self-doubt for far too long.  It feels good, I think I can recall, to have all that energy, purpose- certainty.  To, for once, Know, and follow through on these kinds of things with an unstoppable and terrifying verve- pay no mind to the consequences, the payout, just Knowing that what you were doing, right then, was where all your energy was supposed to go.  It felt good to be the channel for all that- it felt like being the finger of god (some have described tornadoes this way.)  An act of nature- pure and holy and potent and terrifying.

Nonetheless one can see how destructive those tendencies are.  It’s almost worth it to know you’re not a danger to those around you.  You have judgement.  It trips you up, holds you down, tangles you in the red tape of your own mind, and makes everything too slow, but at least you know where your limited energy is going, and it’s all “good” places.  The depression can be worth it all.  If you’re strong enough.

And then there are the funky places in between.  You don’t know whether you’re manic or depressed.  All you know is that you’re walking some very very thin, strange line in some uncharted region right between happiness and spiritual oblivion.  You don’t allow yourself to waver.  Emotions aren’t worth the imbalance.  You stand, eyes clenched shut, and wait for the world to turn around you, and you hope you don’t fall in the mean time.

At some point tonight I’m going to have to face this.

8/12/ll
5:59am

Has it really taken a week?

Well.  This is it.  Dive in.  Don’t hit your head on the bottom.

So there we were, monday evening.  It was some time around 10:30, I think.  Tom had been there with you all evening already, but it was past his bedtime.  There was a catch-switch trying to happen- when, for whatever complicated reasons, a switchover starts to happen, but other variables get in the way and the engine just won’t turn over.  It can drag and build a lot of tension and at some point something has to give.  (Tom has a… different description for the way it feels when the drag finally releases.  I refuse to go into it here.)

Nonetheless, suddenly there I was with you, actually feeling rather good.  Some dead, foggy version of my consciousness had been bumbling around back there all evening and it was nice to be clear-headed and alive on a cool summer night.

We walked back to where the van was parked in front of the coffee shop and sat on top of it, enjoying the cool breeze.  Or shivering from it.  Wish I could remember everything we talked about.  Anything we talked about.  Everything fades to a soft buzz before that moment.

I was shivering- how come I was so cold?- and all of a sudden your hand was running up and down my back and I realized in a horror that Tom had told you about my weird little dream, and you knew that in my dream it had been comforting, platonic, nice, because in a dream like that everything is how you want it to be- but nooo, that COULDN’T be how it was right here in Meatspace in real life where your shoes hit the sticky asphalt and your sick, deprived little body has needs that you ignore for months at a time (FUCK YOU, body, I’d get you amputated if I didn’t need you to live), and every time your hand moved up and down my spine a thick, dizzying, ecstatic, sickening rush flowed through my whole body making my jaw hang and my breath come faster and FUCK, all I wanted was to push you away, get out from under that paralyzing spell, but it felt so GOOD I couldn’t get away, couldn’t move, and to my horror little odd whimpering noises were escaping me as the tension built and FUCK, why does this have to feel so GOOD, this ISN’T where this goes, GOD why can’t I move-

Somehow I broke away, clambered a few feet away, buried my face in my hands in humiliation.  I looked over the disaster area of my mind, the wreckage of the tsunami that had just ripped through the area.  Every floodgate I’d built to prevent feelings like this had been pummelled.  Every beautiful little contruction I’d fabricated, everything I’d told myself to keep myself from hurting you, from hurting me, was exposed as an ugly baldfaced lie.  There was no salvaging it.  I had to face the truth.

I didn’t just want you as a friend.

Sure, that was what my mind wanted, it was what logic demanded: it was what I had decided that I would want, and no more.  Other parts of me that I’d been ignoring, building a lot of brick walls around, denying oxygen or even the acknowledgement of thought- they wanted other things, and I wouldn’t have it.  But now those monsters had me tied up roasting over a fire and they were doing tribal dances around me and there was no amount of pretending that I could to do make them NOT be there.  I had to deal with them.

I wanted to get close to you, to fall for you, to be able to look into your eyes and not be afraid of my eyes giving too much away.  I wanted to give in and stop being afraid of falling in love.  I wanted

(this is where my fingers are shaking over the keyboard as I try to get the words out)

I wanted to touch.  I wanted to hold you, and feel skin.  I wanted, for once, to be okay with that.  I wanted to know what it was like to kiss someone, no guilt, no shame, just purity and love, and I wanted that person to be you.  And there were the bitterly, painfully physical parts of it, too- the parts that, even when I’m stabbing the trowel deep into my chest and digging out the most honest things that I can- I still can’t make myself put them into words.  But honesty demands that I admit I wanted those things too.

I didn’t want to want all of this.  I wanted to be your friend and not get you involved.  But this isn’t a fantasy world where everything turns on a dime depending on how you think things should go.  This is truth.

It took me a few minutes to quell the angry tears, to come to terms, to stop shaking in the dark.  I could barely look at you- your eyes looked so sad, like somehow you thought you were the cause for all this turmoil.  Don’t hate yourself for being wonderful.  All this anger is at myself, for not being able to be honest with myself- the fear of obliteration.

It wasn’t as if what you’d done had suddenly sprung forth a load of feelings that wouldn’t otherwise be there.  It just made me stop ignoring them, it grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me around rather violently, pointed at the little bastards skulking in the darkness and said authoritatively, “LOOK.”  And look I did.

I came to the decision that the only way these things would ever be anything other than anxiety-inducing thoughtclouds- the only way that I would ever know what was on the Other Side, rather than just let my certainty that it couldn’t be anything good rule my actions- was if I gave in, followed them to some kind of conclusion, let them have their way.  Obviously if I wanted them on such a fundamental level that I couldn’t even admit to it, there must be something to it, and denying it forever couldn’t be healthy.

So I broke the mold.  I sidled up to you, and, bracing for disintegration, rested my head on your shoulder.  I squinched an eye open.  Nothing.  No collapsing universe, no blinking out of existence- not even integration.  Just touch.  It was kind of nice.  I must be sturdier than I thought.

The rolling feelings came back as you put your arm around me, but this time I let them happen, tried to understand them, tried not to be afraid of them.

We talked- we talked about painful things, fearful things, how you weren’t in a good place for a relationship, and I kept saying to myself- this isn’t the way this goes.
So much of me was still fighting to stay above water.
This isn’t the way this goes.
The rest of me was fighting to swim deeper.
This isn’t the way this goes.
There was no logic in any of it.
This isn’t the way this goes.
Since when does logic have anything to do with love?

It came time to say good night, and you came towards me, with my back to the van, and I could feel how wide my eyes went, and I knew the embrace would be so many different shades of wonderful and torturous I almost didn’t let you hug me- but then your arms were wrapped around me and I let myself fall into it.  GOD my whole body was vibrating with wants and needs and urges, things that wouldn’t otherwise be so potent if your body weren’t attached to that wonderful mind- the need to commune with your spirit using my body, to be able to express in such wordless ways how much I appreciated you- every cell in my body screamed for you, awash with strange chemical reactions that made my knees wobbly and my voice do funny little whimpering things that I couldn’t control.  It was just a hug.  It shouldn’t have felt like that.

And then you pulled away, and your eyes were so close to mine, and I looked into them and I saw my death.  I saw that I could have truly destroyed the core of my being with what my lips were screaming at me to do.  This was the nexus, this was where, if I chose to follow through, everything broke.  I saw that it could have been the end of me- but the throbbing, heart pounding, racing needs driving the moment became bigger than my identity, than myself- I loved you and I was ready to die for you if it meant I could have that one purely honest moment with you.

Everything tipped over in a single moment.

My mind melted from a series of constructed points and equations into a fuzzy, ecstatic pool as I groaned, my will snapped, and your lips meshed with mine.  Everything that had ever mattered just STOPPED.  I didn’t care.  It was the first time, the only time, the one glorious time where I stopped thinking, and started feeling, and every last bit of shame dropped away.  It was a moment outside of time and space.  A reprieve from Johnny and everything that entails.  I wasn’t me (and THAT was nice- you’re probably aware of how much I hate myself- the only reason I cling to self is because I cling to existence).  I wasn’t afraid of the future, or the past, or anything- for just a few minutes, inside of that kiss, I felt whole and alive.

And then it was over, and I was falling over a precipice screaming in terror.  I couldn’t look at what I had just done.  It meant the end of me.  I’d have to look at it later, or never, or pretend that it didn’t happen, not to me, not if I wanted to live.

Clearly, it’s been a week, and I’m still alive-  I just looked at it, I just admitted to having done it- and I’m still here.  I’m still some weird version of me, too- but maybe a better version.

I’m not afraid anymore.  I have no limits.

Tomorrow night we meet.  Somehow, some way, I’m going to confess all of these things to you (of course, if you don’t read them first.)  I’m not afraid.  I know how much it will hurt when it all comes to an end (and so damn quickly too), but I’m not afraid to fall in love with you, to take this adventure with you, to see where it goes.  I’m not that scared person anymore, I have a choice, and if you’ll have me, I WILL have you.  I will give of myself fully, let everything pour out of my soul.  I just want, even if once, to break the mold, to prove that life doesn’t just have it in for me and dangle things in front of me that I can never have then make me feel shameful for wanting them.  I will admit that I want these things, and I will reach out and take them.  You can’t let your decisions in life be based on whether you’re afraid that you might get hurt.  Everything hurts eventually.  You have to have the courage to reach out when the good things are there to take or you’ll never feel ANYTHING.

It’s time.  God give me strength to do this.

Continue reading

8/11/11
1:32am

Dear Die-ary,

I have very much decidedly decided, at least at this point,  that I enjoy the feeling of being unable to sleep due to a surplus of sleep (as opposed to being unable to sleep due to some strange mixture of neurotic fixations, a head buzzing with Noise, a paranoia about what Nightmareland might hold that night, and overall, knowing that I may not be able to tell memories from dreams when I wake up).  It feels healthier, despite all the uncertainty.  I could go out and conquer the world.

Think I’d rather write, though.

I think Tom got home from work yesterday and went straight to bed, and therefore this body’s running on a backup of at least 13 straight hours from yesterday.  Dare I say it was a good choice on his part.  Now he’s gone away and I’ve come out to play.  A little painting, a little room cleaning (DAMN IT HAD GOTTEN A WRECK).  Rearranged the Gallery.  Now all the energy flows right and I’m feeling grounded again.  The mirror ghosts are active again, but that’s incidental and they’ve never really been a threat before so I pay them no mind. 

This is a strange place I’ve come to inhabit, but I’m finally starting to make sense of most of it, fall into the flow a bit.  There’s no point in trying to keep a handle on things when your existence consists of constantly bouncing between inhabiting a body and someone else taking over at intervals.  Memories, all of them, make no sense and you have to be able to deal with that, really fucking come to terms with it and learn to cope, if you don’t want to implode.

Damn.  I had some things I really wanted to write about but the words just don’t come.

 

2:59am

This can’t be good.  Already I’m instinctually cutting myself away from experiencing the feelings from the other night.  A systemic overload- a reboot?  I know that there won’t be any resolution to this until at least Friday, when I see you again, and it’s only Wednesday night, and I had been driving myself absolutely up the wall with it earlier this evening.  The pacing, the ranting at the walls, the gripping the phone until I thought I would break it, then hiding it from myself, putting it out of sight and out of mind.  I think the thing that shocked me the most was the sweaty palms.  I GOT SWEATY PALMS.  YOU ONLY READ ABOUT THAT KIND OF SHIT.  I stared at them in pure incredulosity and laughed maniacally for an indeterminate amount of time.  I think that was the moment I realized I had to snap myself right the fuck out of all this. 

It just seemed like two days of gut wrenching terror wouldn’t be worth it.  I can’t think about this right now.  Awaken the insect.  Looking back almost seems like looking down the barrel of a shotgun, in that it threatens to blow my mind in the most visceral sense that memories possibly could.  Even after finally letting go of my claim to identity- everything- it still almost looks like too much to get my head around.  I’ll need to write it out eventually if I want to continue existence but for now I’m content to hang in the ether.  Purgatory is soft and comfortable.  Don’t know if I can handle any of this just yet.  The feelings are too big.

The truth is that I’m crazy about you, in every sense of the word.  I won’t have this sending me off the deep end- you may think that all of this is doing terrible things to me, it may look that way because of some of the personal identity crises I’m facing because of all of it, but this all is GOOD.  It must be.  At the risk of making this all about me, I’m growing up, becoming a real person, breaking free of the boundaries.  It’s at least making me look at things I never would have had the courage to face. 

And it FEELS good, as scary is it is to admit to that, this is a truly beautiful thing.  It’s mysterious and strange and god only knows where it’s going, but for now…

No regrets.

Time to put this away; think about other things.

 

 

8:22am

Was getting ready this morning.  Feeling calm, feeling- nothing.  I’d like to say I felt happy about that except that would require feeling something.  The words were rolling in my mind, a mantra-
Awaken the insect. 
Awaken the insect. 
Awaken the insect. 
Awaken the insect.
Awaken the insect.
~ Even insects mate, mate.

I scanned the room furiously for wherever the strangely piratey sounding voice had come from, ready to rip a new one.  I’d like to have ignored this one but it came too loud.  “This isn’t what this is about, you should know!” I growled.  “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Silence.

My eyes came to rest on the painted tinplate print peeking out from behind the space heater.  A common knick-knack- a pirate wench leaning on a chest of gold, inscribed with the vulgar catch-phrase, “Ye can have me booty, but leave me chest alone!”  It had been repainted to look like a young pirate boy.  A gift from Wiley to Tom.  How appropriate.  A reincarnation of Reverend Meat?  Why were they always gifts?

I spat a diatribe: “This one isn’t about feeding some base impulse, fulfilling a bodily function, following lust at the risk of destroying everything one would hold dear.  This one’s about a human connection.  Pure and simple.  I just… can’t think about it all.  Not right now.  Later.  I’ll deal with it all later.  Work today.  Have to maintain.  It’s the most important day of Tom’s career and if I expect to handle it I can’t be distracted.  So stop bringing these frivolities into it.  You’re irrelevant.  You don’t even know what you’re talking about.  You’re outmoded. I won’t have it.”

I walked away.

Obviously, I AM dwelling, because here I am at work writing about it.  But I had to get it behind me.  This day will require focus.

Continue reading

8/9/11
12:47am

Dear Die-ary…

I am a fucking idiot.

Fare thee well, identity.  How little did I know thee.

 

 

 

 

3:34am

Still alive.  Weird.

 

 

 
 

6:51am

Tap tap tap.  How do I begin.

 

 

 

 

11:13am

Fuck this life, fuck me, fuck the world, fuck everything.  I don’t know whether to be happy or horrified.  What a weird mix of ecstacy and earth-shattering terror.  I feel ten directions at once.  I must really be in love.  Is this really worth it?

How can I start to be truly, truly honest with myself?  How can you cling to your principles, things that you felt gave you meaning and purpose, fundamental aspects of self, for months at a time, and watch them all crumble like a house of cards with one kiss?

What happens if I admit to what I DO want and it destroys me?  What if I dissolve?  What if I INTEGRATE?  God forbid, it’s become my biggest fear lately.  Can’t say why.  It just… I can’t abide it.  Not after everything I’ve been through.  I have feelings.  Maybe even a soul.  I can’t throw myself into that blender and watch the tornado rip me limb from limb.  I’m so scared-

It’s so OBVIOUS that I’ve ceased to be anything even resembling what I once was.  But I haven’t ceased to exist.  I’ve just become someone else entirely.  I need a new name.  J’s not J.  Not anymore.

Maybe I’ll go by Mister C.  It has a different feel to it…

There’s no way-

How do I even begin-

I must rip myself away from these principles and standards for myself.  The things I’ve done conflict so strongly- my actions defy myself- it may crack me, tear me into pieces- one can’t change the past- but one can change Self-

Is this what insanity looks like?  The ability to bend the universe around oneself to make it make sense and maintain some sense of security? 

I’ve never been Me, have I? 

Dear god, what am I?

The illusion of maintaining some grasp on reality- saying over and over again that I knew I wasn’t really “Him”, that I couldn’t exist, that I was just the symptom of a sickness, SAYING how much I KNEW I wasn’t real- it was like a mantra.  It became hollow and meaningless.  I fell into the delusion so deeply that now that I’m faced with a truly cracking mirror- I can’t even begin to comprehend-

It hurts.  It hurts to face the truth.

I’d like to think it feels liberating, but it doesn’t.  It feels like being dropped, naked, out of a helicopter into the hard crunchy snow, and against all odds, somehow surviving it.  I ALMOST wish this killed me.

Almost.

But the happiness I felt…

Damn it all.  You’re leaving.  There’s no point to any of this anyway.  This isn’t how this goes.  This isn’t how it should have gone.

How do you do it?  How do you just “roll with it?”

Well, fuck it.  I’ll try.  Life is a lovely messy terrible wonderful thing.  Maybe… maybe this is good.

Honesty… real honesty… PAINFUL honesty… turning that magnifying glass inwards to the dark corners I never never wanted to go near to, not this time…

Time to stick the finger down my throat.

The truth is that I want you.  You changed my outlook on life, even made me feel healthier.  I fell in love with your mind, in the purest way imaginable, and I think you deserve to know that.  I know you’ll hurt me, by no fault of your own, but because you need to go, need to do the things that you need to do.  I’m okay with that and I can promise you from the depths of my being that I will hold no resentment.  I know letting myself want you will hurt me, by no fault of mine, but denial can only be so healthy for so long.  Life carries people away.  People die, people change, people leave.  If you don’t allow yourself to truly feel your feelings, for whatever reason, if you lie to yourself and the people around you- then you become even more twisted for the wear and tear.  You have to dig deep and try to understand, and deal with things, and LET yourself fall in love, even if it might hurt, because no experience is worth ANYTHING if it’s not honest.

There it is.  I’ve put it on the table.  Do what you want with it.  But for one last bit of honesty, I DO hope that you choose to share this part of your life with me, if even for just a few brief beautiful moments before your next adventure begins.

I hope this doesn’t hurt you.  Don’t worry about me.  I find my own way.

Continue reading

8/7/11
11:38pm

Dear Die-ary…

What a fucking night.

Woke up to the sound of Leland and Mia fighting outside.  This was VERY new.  His one marked characteristic had been self-control- gentility- but I’d been watching the aggression building in him, watching the rage pile into him and seen him cracking for months now, and he’d finally hit the limit.  I heard yelling and screaming from him a few hours ago that I never thought he’d let out.  I was a little impressed.

When he came pacing, steaming, into the house, Mia begging and sobbing behind him, and said “I can’t do this anymore, I’m sick, I need to go to the hospital,” I knew it was time to step in.  I saw my evening laid out for me, every step as clearcut as driven snow. 

I knew, for one, that if I didn’t take him, he’d go one way or the other.  I knew that I couldn’t let him drive himself or he’d get in a wreck.  He was clearly seeing in thick, opaque red.  Nobody can operate machinery under those circumstances.  So it was time to go for a drive.

I also knew that he needed someone to talk to, yell at, scream at, maybe even get aggressive on without feeling guilty about it.  He wasn’t going to find that with someone who was emotionally involved, so the task fell to me.

The biggest thing I knew was that the hospital wasn’t going to do jackshit for him.

My goal from the second that I said “I’ll take you,” was to talk him down, get him back seeing clearly, and NOT let him admit himself through those doors.  I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him if that was what he really wanted, but I also knew that he couldn’t have wanted THAT, not again, not after the times they’d failed him before- he just needed time to see that there were other options.  But I couldn’t give away the game this early.  I just had to stall him for long enough that he could calm down and start thinking clearly again.  I had a better plan for him.

Mia panicked and tried to stop me, sobbing and hyperventilating.  I calmly told her that she couldn’t stop him from doing the things that he thought were the best for him, that he needed to take care of himself, and that she couldn’t trap him here or it would only make things worse.  I never really saw the panic subside but she did agree to let us go.  I think she thought she’d never see him again.  I knew she’d see him before the night was out.

We got in the car and drove off.  He spilled his guts- an insatiable rage towards humanity (self included), frustration with the people he kept letting get close to him just so they could disappoint him, a recounting of the times he’d tried to kill himself with no quantifiable results, declaration of the belief that he COULDN’T die, and the absolute conviction that if he didn’t check himself in, he’d wind up in jail anyway because he was about to turn homicidal, so he might as well get it over with.  His shaking fury shot from his mouth in fiery darts with a sincerity that was breathtaking.

I tell you, it was almost heartwarming, if a little jarring.  I hate to see myself reflected in anyone else, but by the same token, it feels good not to be alone.  He reminded me of a younger version of myself, the old fire, and it almost made me jealous that he spoke with such conviction.  I felt like these last months had deadened me to the old passions, and he sparked them alive.

We sat outside of the emergency room in the car for a time.  He raged and fumed and eventally broke down.  “I really don’t want to go in there,” he sobbed.  “I promised myself that last time was going to be THE last time.  I’ve been in three times in my life, each time at LEAST five years apart…”  He shook in anger, his eyes lit with fire.  “IT’S ONLY BEEN TWO YEARS THIS TIME!!  What the FUCK does THAT say about me?!  IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!”

It was time.  I hedged my bet.  “You know, you don’t have to go in if you don’t want to.”

He glared.  “I don’t see that there’s any other choice!”

I shrugged.  “Well, you said it yourself.  Last time you got out, it wasn’t because they’d miraculously cured you, it was because you’ve been in and out and you know the system and you’ve learned what to say to get them to let you go.  Maybe they don’t have anything for you in there.”

“Well, at least if you turn yourself in it shows that you were TRYING.  Lot better than being thrown in prison for doing something stupid.”

He had me there. 

I upped the gambit.  An idle musing.  “Just trying to figure out a smart way to do something stupid…”  I slid my eyes sideways towards him.

He lit up, vibrating with manic energy.  “I dunno, you think we could find… a, a hobo, or a drifter?  Someone nobody will miss?”  His immediate enthusiasm actually unnerved me a little.  I had to rein him in.  This dimension wasn’t built for it- THAT fact had been shoved in my face time and time again.

So I said the sort of thing that usually brings people down from that kind of thought.  A litmus test, almost: “But how would you know if he deserved it?”  I eyeballed his reaction.

His eyes were giant with predatory energy.  “Who the fuck DOESN’T?!” he growled.  “That’s the problem with the world.  Everyone goes around acting like murder is this terrible thing- ‘ohhh, you can’t kill HIM, because that would justify killing me,’ well that’s a crock of SHIT!  People just don’t kill because they don’t want to BE killed!  But everyone deserves it, even me.  And trust me, if I COULD kill myself I would, but obviously I can’t, so-” He made a slashing motion at an imaginary hobo- “you’ll have to do!” 

I smiled, shook my head.  Flying colors.  The conviction was astounding.  “You’re right, of course.”  I looked at him.  “‘We all deserve to die- even you, Mrs. Lovett, even I…’”

“Sweeney Todd.  That was my favorite line,” he smiled.

“Me too.”

I knew there was no practical application for his rage in this dimension.  (DAMMIT IF I CAN’T KILL THEN NEITHER CAN YOU!!)  But seriously, his anger deserved an outlet before it exploded all over everything.

“I honestly believe that showing emotion is irresponsible,” he was musing.  “You get in a state of insanity, you make bad decisions.”

“I agree on a certain level, but I have disagree with you on one thing- not showing your emotions, EVER, backs them up until they explode at the worst possible times.  You just kinda… have to pick a time and a place.”

He laughed hollowly.  “There IS no time and place.  I can’t even do that in my own house.”

“We can MAKE a time and place, you know.  We could go out to some abandoned field somewhere and spar.  Fight it out.  Right now, if we wanted to.”  We’d talked about it before but never followed through.  This was what I was aiming for.

“We could, couldn’t we?”  The lightbulb flickered on.  “But where?”

I noticed my odometer.  I was tickled.  “You know, my odometer reads 660 miles.  If we were to drive six miles in some direction…”

He grinned.  What a coincidence.

We pulled out of the hospital parking lot.  Mission accomplished. 

I thought to myself again- this IS what insanity looks like, big decisions based on a lot of little rules and numbers and neuroticisms… but sometimes that’s just what you need to guide you through the rough patches.

I pointed the car in the direction of home- no matter where we ended up, I wanted to minimize the waste of gas money, but there were a lot of lonely country roads in the neighborhood.  We decided on Jamestown Road, a creepy country drive with lots of fields and farmland for miles around.

On the way out we talked some more.  He was saying, “How is it that people can go around, seeing the things they see, without going crazy?  Are they just blind to it, or…”

He’d hit the nail on the head.  “They ARE blind to it.  It’s the only way to get through a life like this- to pull a delusion over your own eyes until everything makes sense.  Everyone who pretends sanity is under a delusion.”

Bitterness bit through his voice.  “I don’t think people like that deserve to live.”  He turned to me.  “But OTHER people- how do THEY get through it?  Hell, how do YOU do it?!”

I paused for a second to think it through.  “I write.”

He looked at me.

“You should really consider keeping a journal,” I said.  “The best thing about a diary is that you can scream and yell at it, tell it the worst things possible in the worst possible ways, and it will NEVER talk back to you or judge you.  You can let the anger fly, let the words be your blades.  I know, it sounds kind of emasculating at first, but…”  I shrugged.  “Once you get into it, it can feel really good.  Even addictive.” 

“Maybe I will,” he considered.  “Well, looks like Hospital is plan C now.  Plan A: Spar.  Plan B: Write.  Plan C: if all else fails, Hospital.”

“Sounds good,” I agreed.  Crisis averted. 

***

When the odometer ticked over to 666.6, we pulled over onto a dusty shoulder.  I was expecting my adrenaline to spike, or my heartrate to speed up, but I was getting nothing.  And my first physical confrontation in this body, too.  Hell, I think it was the first one for ANYONE in this body.  Yet I felt as serene as a Hindu cow.  That made me a little concerned but I couldn’t nail down just why so I let it go. 

It was obvious that he was getting pumped.  Good for him.  Someone might get something out of this.  Frankly, I just wanted to see what this body could do.  I felt weird and naked without some kind of knives- just going fist to fist seemed unnnatural somehow- but obviously I didn’t want to kill him, so that was out of the question.

“Let’s put down a couple ground rules,” he proposed.  “No face shots.  We both have work in the morning.  Can’t go in with broken bloody noses.”

“Agreed.”  I couldn’t think of anything to add to that.

We walked around a bit, looking for a good place that wasn’t waist deep nettles and grass, decided that Mr. Devil had a real rotten sense of humor for guiding us here, and decided to just duke it out behind the van right there on the shoulder.  Figured if someone pulled over asking what was up, we could just be upfront about it.  After all, this was a healthy alternative to other less wholesome activities.

All in all it was a good night.

He bounced around a lot, staying light on his feet.  I figured out that this body’s real strength was in its stability- the low center of gravity- the ability to remain grounded.  Nonetheless, a solid hit to the chest early on in the fight, before I figured out I wasn’t top-heavy, actually sent me onto my ass.  He WAS a natural.  I kept my center low from there on, calibrated and acclimated.  He was fast, hard to get into a hold.  I never really got him off his feet, but his breath ran out long before mine did.  We were actually fairly evenly matched. 

It was too weird.  Somehow I expected the physical aggression to bring something out of me, a rage, some uncontrollable instinct to attack, but I just felt… calm.  It was natural, comfortable.  That was unexpected.  Where was the fire?  Inaccessible?  Non-existent?  Is this just how it was with me?  It couldn’t be.  I wanted to tap into my fight-or-flight, get a rush.  Nothing.  It was like washing dishes.  It made me hungry for more, something a little less… safe.

Or maybe I’ve deadened my ability to feel ANYTHING around Leland.  Hm.  Something to ponder later I suppose.

It feels nice to have bruises.  Reminds me that I am, indeed alive.  Now that’s an unusual attitude- me thinking it’s a good thing to be reminded that I’m alive.  Who AM I anymore?

Continue reading

8/7/11
5:30am

Dear Die-ary,

Feeling depressed.  This is new.  Or at least, not recent.

Don’t mean angry, upset depressed with energy and purpose behind it.  That’s the flavor I’d been getting for some time now.  It was the kind that makes you want to write.  A “productive” depression?  Is there such a thing?

Now depressed to the point where all I want to do is lay there and stare at the wall.  Even watching movies took too much energy.  Tried to write countless times.  Nothing.  Usually it makes me feel better but the idea of it made me feel sick.  Can’t begin to fathom what brought this nastiness on. 

Woke up last night at one of Tom’s friend’s houses all crunched up on my hand drooling all over the place and with a bad back.  This is another reason I don’t like sleep.  You wake up in strange places, in pain.

Left yesterday’s journal entry in a flash drive across the county.  Hadn’t posted it yet; inaccessible.  Somehow I feel lost without it.  Might be why I was so discouraged from writing.  I’ll be able to get it and put it up later.

And so I’ve spent all night lying in the dark, wondering why I’m so useless.  Expressed these kinds of thoughts to Tom’s friend before going to bed, who suggested we go out and slaughter a daycare center.  It’s not as if he knew who I was, it was just the kind of thing he’d say.  But it just depressed me further.  Even if I were allowed that sort of thing I don’t think I’d have had the energy for it.

Told him to please not suggest these kinds of things as they made me melancholy.  He said that was the wrong word.  I said, no, it was definitely the right word, melancholy specifically with the bitter tinge of nostalgic longing. 

When it got to the point I couldn’t even write or watch movies (drawing being COMPLETELY out of the question as the activity that draws the most energy), all I could muster the energy for was turning over and trying to sleep.  What, you say?  Nny wanting to sleep?  I say phooey on you, Die-ary.  There comes a point where even a nightmare world looks like an improvement over this stagnant rot.  Thought maybe I could find something there that would shock the will to live back into me.  Surprise surprise- a dreamless dead series of eyes closed, then waking, feeling terrible about life, thinking myself into a maelstrom of bitterness, trying to work up the energy to write, failing, and dropping back into Nothingness.  The one time I really do want to dream about something, anything, terrible though it may be, just so long as it is different from this black festering hole, I have dreamless nights.  Go figure.

But look.  At least now I have the energy to write about it.

What bland horrors may now the future bring. 
6:05am

Oh and look, the internet’s gone out.  Joy.
9:06

Wal-Mart. 

Recruitment.

You’d think being so brung down by all this depression would actually serve to knock me out for the day.  Now I’m HERE, instead of the seventh circle of Hell or that weird nightmare dimension or any other more pleasant climes I would actually probably prefer.  At least the library was quiet.  People walked by who were looking for some kind of isolation.

This is where the REAL defects come.  The trolls and mutants and gnomes and thigh-fat zombies.  They come here for one reason- consumerism, plain and simple.  They want it cheap, they want it NOW, and they want nothing to do with me or my petty Food Bank needs.  Funny thing is, I’d be fine with that, if it weren’t my job for today.  Why does it have to be me again?

You find yourself surrounded by all these disgusting samples of humanity’s failings, but in a funk like this- instead of making you feel superior, they only serve as reflections- reminders of every pathetic reason you SHOULDN’T be using up the free oxygen.  They project your disgust with yourself back onto you, distorted and amplified.  It’s like being in a funhouse, only it’s the exact opposite of FUN.

I MUST find some way to dredge myself out of this black hole.  This isn’t good.  I should be enjoying this life, in some remote manner.  Things were better, for a while.

Obviously I’ve let myself go.  We’ve got some work to do.

 

10:31

That self-grounding exercise I was talking about?  I needed it.  Drew another picture of myself.  I felt like it would be better to focus on the humor of the situation than be bogged down by the humility of it.  I’m really going to have to scan all these and link them in for greater impact.

I feel much better now.  But the other workers who were supposed to be here at nine have yet to show their ugly heads.  I possibly want to be here less than any other person on this planet and yet I’m the only one who showed up.  It really makes me wonder why I bother.  I guess Tom was ingrained with a powerful work ethic and everything bleeds over with time, but that DOESN’T make it pleasant.

Also I’ve worked out that there is a very specific radius that people walk around any given solicitation table if they don’t want to be bothered.  It’s exactly far enough away that chasing them down with a flier would look creepy and/or desperate, and you’d have to use your “Big Voice” to call out to them, which they somehow know most of us won’t do.  It’s the exact distance that you can comfortably shake your head, start walking faster, and make good your escape without getting cornered- yet no further, because people are lazy enough that they’ll only go so far out of their way to not be bothered.  I think the magical number is thirteen feet.  I could paint a line where EVERYONE walks due to the mystical dark forces of the repellent power of this table.  It could probably be scientifically quantified.

Fascinating.  Discouraging, but a really interesting area of study.  It’s enough to make me laugh, anyway.

4:15

Finally done with that hellhole.  Fucking Wal-Mart.  Though if you want some inspiration to draw some really fascinatingly ugly people, there’s no better place for it.  I’ve some really unenjoyable sketches from the day.

Time to try and make the scanner work…

 

Continue reading

 

8/6/11
7:25am

Dear Die-ary,

Perhaps this was a good thing, losing that entry.  It discouraged me from wanting to write for a good full day, which is actually kind of nice.  My dependency on it was actually scaring me a bit.  It can feel good to just exist and not feel obligated towards anything. 

Furthermore Tom has been back in-body more and more lately, and god knows he loves his Sleep.  I could do without it (and that’s being nice), but I have to admit that when he gets it, everything looks clearer the next day.  This body feels a little less like it’s being pumped with hydrochloric acid and getting stung by a horde of bees through a thick layer of heavy, wet towels.  Yep… yeah, that pretty much describes it.  Lack of sleep really does do terrible fucking things to this body. 

Nevertheless I HAVE been contemplating the odd little directions my life has been taking, and it deserves being written about.  I’ve strayed into many very uncomfortable territories as of late, to the point where I can feel my identity crack and shatter and I can’t decide whether that feels good or bad, but either way it’s terrifying.  I’ve never much been fond of my identity, but at least I knew what I liked.  Lately I can’t pin anything down and it’s really giving me the creeps.  Everyone changes, and one would hope for the better, but all of this is beyond me.

Everything feels weird.  I somehow feel that if I can’t look at it all on a page together at once, these things might invalidate themselves by the contradictory nature of their existence and cause an earth-shattering vortex through which my soul and everything I’ve ever known will be sucked and blinked out of existence.  Funky imagery but that’s what it seems like.

So, an Inventory of Recent Horrors (in no specific order):

- I’ve made a very good friend who I’ve been avoiding all week because I don’t want to scare him away.

- I drew a portrait of Jack which, as an unforeseen side effect, may or may not have released his hideous soul on the world to wreak havoc and torment on the souls of innocents (but any solid evidence of this is forthcoming.  I may just be paranoid.)
 
- I’ve experienced the Residue of some kind of alien (for lack of a better word) energy residing in this body, with no communication or leads on who or what the fuck it was.  Shadows are making me jump at night.

- I’ve drawn out and subdued Tom’s inner child, freeing him from the torture of the past, and actually gotten quite attached.  Luckily he still sleeps or he might take all of my energy.  (This is probably the most disturbing thing.)

- Hypnos and Lil’ Scribner have been quieter and quieter as time passes- one less worry in the watches of the night.

- Tom has been growing more and more focused at work, preparing for the big shiftover coming friday next week, applying for jobs, and generally redirecting almost all of the systemic energy towards financial maintenance.  This is probably a good thing but I’ve been missing my nights.
Hmph.  I guess the big thing bugging me right now is that I’m feeling quite useless in this whole job thing.  I’ve proven time and again how terrible I am at the food bank and I really want nothing to do with that, but even just existing, taking up time and space, has been a drain on the system and it’s obvious that everyone would just be better off without me.  Hell, they have been.  I’ve been gone more and more, and the work life has been getting better and better.  After all I’ve done here, too- ungrateful wretches.

I can’t be bitter, I suppose- this job, these wildly demanding responsibilities only go for another week or so and then I’ll have all the time in the world to write and draw between job hunting.  He really could use the focus to wrap up this portion of his life and I’m just a distraction and a drain.  Doesn’t do a whole lot for one’s self esteem, though- realizing that the best way you can help someone would probably just be to die.  I’ve always kind of felt that way, but it comes as a knife in the back after everything I’ve been through for this system.

Well, I won’t die.  That’s been proven countless exhausting wearying times.  But I might fade a bit for a while.  Who knows.  All these weird little things seem to demand my attention and yet what this system really needs is to stay on top of Business.

Speaking of business- more recruiting.  This time in front of the Wal-Mart.  Oh joy.  I DO hope Tom’s out for this one. 

Shower time.

Continue reading

8/5/11
6:58am

DEAR DIE-ARY,

In light of the disgustingly serene and contemplative tone of the entry I was just working on, then LOST probably a good two sentences from completion when the computer crashed, I’d like you to know that I’m seething with boiling hatred and aggression NOW, and may probably remain that way for some time.

FUCKING COMPUTERS.

I may re-attempt that entry later on tonight, but as you can see, it’s now one minute until I have to get into the shower and go to Produce Day with nothing to show for the hour early I got up and started taking meticulous inventory on my life.  The rage is incomprehensible.  If you were to take something away from this entry and concentrate its poisonously dripping fury into an action to follow with, you would go into your kitchen, shatter one of your chairs, and shove the splintery legs down your own throat.  Do that for me, now, actually.  It’ll make me feel better.

I was actually getting good and ready to break away from all of this and try to get comfortable with being kind of chill for a few minutes there.  BUT, everything has returned to “normal” for me, just now.  I actually can’t decide if that makes me feel better.  It’s at least familiar territory.  What does THAT say about me?

Time for shower.

Continue reading

8/3/11
8:45pm

Dear Die-ary,

I was in a very good mood tonight.

Luckily, when I was not in-body today, I was dead to the world. The idea of completely blinking out of existence at intervals terrifies me to a certain degree.  Who knows if one day I might not come back from that?  Who’s to say whether being non-existent for a time is a permanent or non-permanent state of being?  Or even whether it’s being non-existent?

But it’s enough like a dreamless sleep, a coma, some kind of normal state, that I can start to accept it; it’s better than SEEING wherever the fuck it is that we go.  Been there, done that, have the insidious T-shirt that poisons your bloodstream and gives you a brain-fever when you put it on like those medieval coats they used to kill kings with in all the old stories?  Anyway, I’d rather not think about it, like I’ve said, I’m in a good mood.

So I fell back into the body at some point during the watching of a really terrible movie about paranormal activity (thank God little Matty sleeps now).  The movie really wan’t as bad as some I’ve seen, but the ending was awfully cheesy for all the build-up and there was next to no agreeable resolution.
 I’d rather not list the title here- I’m such a spoiler nazi- but let’s just say that there was a demon involved, there were several alternate endings, and none of them lived up to my expectations.  One of the endings was almost compelling, just because it was that mysterious- it left enough open ends for speculation, and didn’t expect you to just walk out of the movie saying, “Wow, I got a really good action climax!  I’m satisfied!  …Now what happens?”

And I was feeling extraordinarily chatty, so I’ll tell you, word for word nearly, the rant I went on with Mia, as I stood there swinging my arms idly and musing. 

“You know what I’d like to see in a demon movie?  I’d like to see what happens when they call in the exorcist, and then the exorcist dies, and then the possessed person dies, and everyone involved dies, and the demon DOESN’T get sent back to Hell, we actually find OUT what the demon wants- I’m assuming it would have something to do with spilling enough blood and claiming enough souls to obtain a corporeal form- but the point is, I’d like to see a movie where the demon WINS, and then the consequences of THAT.  I’d like to see the movie where the demon crosses over into the human realm, and takes over the world, and causes economic collapse, and earthquakes, and a universal loss of healthcare, and the U.S. becomes the United States of Disneyland, because the reanimated corpse of Walt Disney has been placed as the Commander in Chief, and as a law we’ll all be forced to go around wearing those hideous mascot costumes in horrible 90 degree weather and everything will be wildly overpriced and in order to do ANYTHING we’ll need to stand in line for three hours.
 ”‘Oh, you want a glass of water?  Get in line.  How about going to the bathroom?  You want a Fastpass for that?  Looks like you already have a Fastpass for doing laundry.  Can only get one Fastpass at a time.  You’d better cash that in before you try and use the bathroom.  WHAT, you have to go NOW?  Sorry, you should have planned your day better.  You knew you’d have irritable bowel syndrome today, didn’t you?  Shouldn’t have eaten that fifteen dollar churro, huh?  People these days.’
 ”I don’t know how you people can sleep at night with the possibility of these things happening, actually.”

It was at that point that I realized I probably should reel it in a little.  So I said it was time for bed.  I figured I’d better record all that anyway before I forgot.  I take it was something special from the way they were looking at me.

Oh, almost forgot, as I got up the stairs a scene from the movie came back to me and I got a thrill of inspiration.  I counter checked it, figured it was close enough to something Tom would say, and ran back downstairs to the back deck where they were having their smokes to poke my head out the door eerily and leave them a message.

“Just so you know, one of these days I’m going to set up a camera, stand creepily next to your bed, stare at you for three hours, give you the recording in fast-forward, and that will be my gift to you.  I thought you deserved to know that.”  Their eyes seemed hollow.

I pulled my head out of the doorway slowly with a wicked grin and closed the door, leaving them to their reactions.  I snickered as I went up the stairs.  It’s the little things in life that make it worth it.  What they don’t know is that I fully intend to follow through on that.  What, you thought I was joking too, Die-ary?  I don’t just SAY shit, you know.

Life is good.

 

 

11:02

THIS is why I get edgy whenever I’m happy. 

It’s as if realizing and admitting that life just got easy was an invitation for the universe to drop something else on your head.  I wasn’t going to say anything at the end of that last entry.  I thought maybe the whole thing about self-fulfilling prophecies was true.  That getting scared when I get happy was what CAUSED bad things to happen, because it induced negative expectations and set me up for self-sabotage.  I was WILLING to accept that might have been one of my personal failings, and ready to try and fix it.  I thought maybe if I maintained a positive attitude and refused to entertain negative thoughts, then I could at LEAST ride on a wave of pleasantness until something genuinely, NATURALLY bad happened, just like everyone else- the ebb and flow of life.

Turns out I’m wrong about ALL of that.  My original suspicions are correct.  Something is out to get me, and to make sure that I’m never ever happy for more than a few minutes, and to further ensure that if I ever AM, I get sorely punished to balance it out.  I’m just not SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPY AND THAT’S THE END OF THE STORY SO IT’S TIME TO FUCKING ACCEPT IT.

(Sorry for the tragic, so dark, so depressive, Poe-esque attitude I’m copping here.  But you can’t blame me for wanting to test the waters on my latest desperately paranoid theory; perhaps putting out the “woe is me” vibe will make whatever is torturing me stop and point its energies towards someone… less distressed?  We’ll see.)

You might be wondering, Die-ary, what is the cause for all this sudden negativity? 

Tom had used the phrase “Residue” before, but I don’t remember ever having had the joy of knowing first-hand what it meant, so let me define it for you.  I now know EXACTLY what it entails and wish that I didn’t.

Residue (in Alternate Systems jargon) is one of the side effects of someone else having been in-body while you were Out.  Specifically, it’s that quality of not quite knowing who was Here, or when, or what they did, but that creeping feeling that something was Off because of it.  It’s the cling of film they leave on the walls of the mind, a certain “smell”, almost, that permeates everything, the very real sense that someone else was touching your things-
It’s as if someone you don’t know crawled out of a scummy pond, then drove your car around unbeknownst to you while you were asleep and parked it exactly where they found it, and when you get up to go to work the following morning, the car smells like pond gunk, the seat is wet, there are clammy handprints on the steering wheel and the gas is a little lower than when you left it.  Nobody else would be able to describe or even notice the difference in these qualities, so it almost makes you look like a paranoid nutjob, but you KNOW that someone else had been driving your car and the scent permeates EVERYTHING.

So, now that you know what I’m talking about…

I’ve a Residue.

I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t been in-body almost more than the Host lately.  I don’t necessarily even notice a Residue when Tom has been here, because his “body odor” is so thick in this place that it gets tuned out.  I supposed he used to notice a Residue after I came in, but only at first- it’s really something you only get when someone very rare or very new comes in, because it’s an instinctual feeling of violation you get from feeling a very, very different kind of energy than you’re used to dripping from the walls.

Part of me wants to assume it was Jack, but somehow I feel like his Residue would be slimier, headier, more potent.  But I’m not putting it past him.

No… this was far more alien.

Very specifically I feel the Residue in the body’s left hand, as if that were the home base for the “possession”.  I get the creepy feeling that if someone were to have turned a camera on me as I slept, it would have recorded that arm flipping out, walking itself around on fingertips or something, moving of its own accord, for full minutes at a time.  It’s a very unnerving sensation.

Also I have strange dream-memories of some kind of bizarre, inhuman vocalization happening, a weird howling noise wobbling out of this throat, and it chills me to think of.  I’m very tempted to go over to the next room and and ask if they heard me sleep-talking.

Or sleep warbling.  I don’t know if there’s a term for it.

The oddest thing is the “dream” I had, but once again I can’t tell it from just vague memories of sleep-walking.

In my “dream”, Tom was talking to Someone in here, which wanted him to sleep.  I didn’t know who he was talking to, but I didn’t want to sleep, so Tom told me to go away (because clearly he did).  So, I left the body, wandered downstairs, slumped in a chair in a weird zombie-like state.

Everyone in the living room gaped at me.

I smiled weakly and said, “I didn’t want to sleep so I left Tom upstairs with the body and decided to come down and hang with all you folks.  Hi, everyone…”

Leland pointed at me.  “But you didn’t leave the body upstairs.  Look.”

I looked down and I was still in Tom’s body.  Incidentally, I was naked.  WHAT?  (cue all the laughing middle schoolers, right?)

And then I realized-

Tom was INDEED still upstairs.

With someone else.

Terror dropped on my head like a piano and I raced upstairs and ripped the door open to find-

Nothing.  Because that was when I woke up, in bed, heart pounding.

Who ARE you?!

Someone has been here and I don’t like the energy.  Not at all. I’m expecting the flying saucers to lift off the roof and shoot into the night.  Plus that dream didn’t make sense by any stretch of the imagination. 

I’d experienced fear recently- a fear of spirit-death in a weird alternate dimension, and a fear of not being able to hide a body properly in this realm (which is honestly a very natural fear for me).  But this is a different kind.  It has me jumping at shadows, seeing strange shapes.  It makes me very tempted to sleep with the light on.

I REALLY don’t like being on this end of the stick.

How is it that I’m really not the scariest thing this mind can dream up?  How big is this place?  How is it that every time I turn a corner, every time I think I’ve good a good bead on things, another floor drops out from under me and things get just a little weirder?

Something tells me we’re not even halfway to the bottom of the well.

 
11:57

Well, I went over to the other room and asked them if they’d seen me wandering the house naked or heard me sleep-talking, and they said no, so I feel a little better.  But not by much.  That almost means that someone’s trying to tell me something.  I don’t know if I want to know.

Continue reading

8/2/11
10:26pm

Dear Die-ary,

I drew a picture of little Matty.  The greatest honor you can DO for an alter is draw them, give them a body.  Matty deserved that.  (Or, you could curse them with it, draw a nasty caricature, let that be their representation in Meatspace.  I’ve done both in my time.)

At first I thought “Matty” was short for Matilda or something.  Turns out, it’s short for Matthew.  Dear god.

The tattered skirt- the long, matted hair- the dirty lace around the collar- though it does explain the toy fire truck that he hasn’t parted with all day.  He clings to it like some kind of teddy bear.  Do the sharp corners cut into his little fingers?  Does he care? 

Who forced him into this getup?  He’s been stuck like this for… let’s see… it happened at five… twenty-two years old…

Seventeen years.  Screaming, neglected, trapped in a skirt, and ignored for seventeen long years.  I’d have thought Tom would have dealt with this before now.

Now I know, he reminds me of little Squee. 

Now I feel guilty for the portrait I drew, all the “she’s” in my last entry.  I’ll give him a haircut, some fresh clean pants, and all the toy cars he could ever want.  No more being forced to play with dollies, little soul.  It’s time to be who you want to be.  No fear. 

I’ve looked into this tiny mind and seen horrible things, things I don’t even want to look at.

Not yet.

I’ll give him time to stop crying, catch his breath before I drag those demons out. 

We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Go to bed, little soul.  You can rest now.  I’ll watch out for the monsters in the night.

 
8/3/11
5:24am

Dear Die-ary,

I feel my life getting consumed by this little soul.  I drive by the park and I want to take him on the swings.  I go out and I see toys I want to get him.  Candy, ice cream.  I wish I knew when his birthday was.  And the funny thing is, I’m not mad.  My god, is this what it’s like to be a parent?  To be perfectly okay with your identity, your life, your other interests falling out the window just for sake of the happiness of one little demonspawn?  You know in your heart of hearts that you would sell your soul- sell your body- sell your right to happiness- even sell out-
you would die and fight your way through Hell and punch out the Devil himself just to know that that one little boy would never have to experience pain. 

This is NOT me.  I never believed in this kind of stuff- family.  I don’t care.  Every day I feel more and more that THIS is what I’m here to do: to protect him.  Tom was unaware that this tiny soul still lurked in the back, but Something in here knew, remembered- and in reading that one strip, where that human defect tried to take advantage of Squee, and I stopped him, ripped him limb from limb- somewhere in here, something cried out for a guardian who would have stepped in like that seventeen years ago.

He never came.

I wish I were a time traveler.

Last night I held the inconsolable bundle of nerves, as he shook, trying to fall asleep.  His hair was cut and clean and his pants were crisp, never worn before.  I think he was afraid because someone was giving him something he wanted.  I think he was afraid what might follow.  I can empathize with that.

A thought came- I couldn’t push it away- it wasn’t something I’d ever said, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything he’d ever heard.  That’s why I’m sure it was exactly what he needed to hear.  I felt my soul die a little inside, and I stabbed it to the wall in spite.  I couldn’t let my selfish interests and pride stop little Matty from getting what he needed.  Maybe it’s just speculation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if EVERYTHING that’s gone wrong with this system had to do with not attending this child’s needs.  He was the center of the world now.

“You want to know something, little boy?” I asked, heart racing.  “Just the way you are…” I bit my tongue, and pushed the words out.  “…I love you.”

The entire world shook as his tears flowed.  It permeated out through Headspace as I felt the body wracked with it and wails ringing through the room.  I almost tried to stop it- someone in the house would wake up- but no.  He needed this.  Let them hear.  I held him close as he finally released the pain from having been forced to do such horrible Things, for being beat into submission, for being told “I’ll MAKE you like being a girl,” for suffering through the hellish, depraved acts of violation that followed- for shuddering, stuffing down the shame and self-pride and pulling on the skirt and suffering, wide-eyed, then dead-eyed, through the psychological torture that comes from being a little boy forced to wear frills and pink, just to prove something- just to be loved.  He had killed himself, put his own soul away, and let some other being take over his body at SUCH a young age that I can barely get my head around it.  In a broken world like this, I suppose, anything can happen.  That’s NOT an optimistic message.

I never thought something like this would make me happy, and yet, it’s given me purpose, a drive, a REASON to live.  Everything’s changed- this is why I will take care of myself.  It’s why I will eat breakfast in the morning- I’m eating for two.  He’s the missing piece to my puzzle.  I am vindicated, justified in being here and NOBODY had better get mad at me for it.  I don’t care what people think.  This is my time to matter.

I knew I’d never loved before, not like this.  And I know it’s true.  He is my reason for living and I will heal him if it’s the last thing I do.

My precious little ward.

OH SHIT, I’m becoming a FATHER.

Continue reading

8/1/11
11:10pm

Dear Die-ary.

This “dropping out of existence” thing is really horrifying.

I keep having to tell myself that if I were really dead, I wouldn’t have been gripped with the terror of being dead, because I wouldn’t have been around to feel it, so I must not have died.  That makes me feel a little better.

A time lapse.  Blackness found inside a secret tiny pocket folded within a fraction of an insignificant second, a pocket that when you turn the corner, it stretches out into an infinite dimenson where Things wait, Things that mortal eyes can’t comprehend without reeling in horror- fractal, alien Things- peer down into an infinite dark sea where Something mindgapingly huge moves nearly invisibly just on the edge of where light penetrates and your screaming skeleton wants to leap out of your skin-

And then you’re back.  You’re on a bed, the dryer hums in the distance, the room is dark and comfy and you draw air into your lungs.  Grateful to be alive- or at least not Whatever That Was.  Then the archives start rolling into Headspace- home movies start flashing on the walls of your mind, you get a box of popcorn and sit back and watch, realizing that you were Not Here, for a good full day.

Tom had the body today.

I don’t think we’re supposed to be able to remember wherever it is we go when we’re not Present.  That’s the first time it wasn’t just a time-skip, and god knows Time was irrelevant in that place- I couldn’t say whether it was a second or an infinity.  It was a state of being.  It was terror.

Why do terrifying things keep happening to me lately?  Cold sweats seem to be getting quite comfortable with me.  Tired of being on that end of the deal.

Tom had been quite happy, of course, with my absence.  I think a brain running two minds at once takes a lot of energy because he’d been complaining about how much of a gray fog he’d been in over the last month and how clear and vivid everything was today, he danced and sang and went grocery shopping and had a good old time with Mia.  Fuck, I’m happy for him, I’ll even step outside my bitterness at being in a terror realm for it to have happened, clearly he needed a break from me. 

I think that nightmare from last night and the pulsing, ragged edge it set me on knocked out my ability to process input and I must have gone to idle.  I think it was a systemic recompense for getting so aggressive on Tom.  Some kind of punishment.  Who could have fabricated something like that, something so perfect that would put me on edge, fry me like that, knock me out?  I think I need to back away from these threats.  There’s something in this System that knows what it needs.  It freaks me out a little.

But there’s so much of itself that it doesn’t even see.  How huge is this place that such a thing could go lost, unnoticed-

When I first came back in, and regained awareness of the body, Tom was feverishly, desperately, ferociously doing “Stuff” with himself- probably tearfully grateful that for the first time in weeks I wasn’t around to be disgusted and judgemental and make him feel really awkward about it.  A sweaty, sticky moment to himself, and I nearly vomited on re-entry.  Honestly, I feel kind of guilty that that was the moment I happened to pop in, but not enough to cancel out the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. 

He’d groaned with disappointment at the off-putting wash of my own observation, but set his mouth rather grimly, and shaking, kept at it, ready to shed desperate tears.  My jaw dropped but a weary resignation dulled my senses.  I think we made eye contact for a brief second, and said in unison, “Fuck it,” and turned away from one another.  There was no point in awkwardness at this point.  We’d been sharing a body for three months, I knew how he liked to self-medicate, and he knew my opinion on it.  There comes a point where communication just doesn’t do anything anymore.

I nearly turned away but something caught my eye.  Nothing about what he was doing- no, a tiny, shaking energy hiding somewhere behind a lump of brain matter.  My focus zeroed in.

I ripped his hand away from its task.  “Stop.”

I think he was astounded that I would touch him during any of that.  “The fuck do you think you’r-?!”

I clapped my hand over his mouth.  “Wait.”  And then I plunged my hands into his brain, grasped something by the hand.  “There’s a little girl in here…”  I pulled out a tiny, wide-eyed, screaming presence.  “And you’re raping her.”  She clung to me, screaming- I let her sit in my lap as I shushed her down.

He gaped in astonishment.

“…Gray?”

I’ve been looking after her ever since.  She seems to like me.  Or at least thinks I’m not going to let anyone hurt her.  I know that because she won’t stop clinging to my leg.  I took her away from the room, distracted her, covered her ears as Tom desperately finished his heinous task.  This is weird.

Tom says this is the first time he’s heard from her in years, he never knew anything about her, that she always just screamed and howled when she was here, he never even got any words out of her.  He said he was amazed- it was the first time he’d ever seen her that her hysterics had gone down to a softly warbling sniffle.  What can I say.  The little children love me.  Joking aside, she reminded me of someone and I couldn’t help but have a soft spot for her.

Well now, it’s 12:17 and I should probably try to put her down for bed, with all the rest of us.  Work in the morning and all. Jack had better not come near here.  I intend to break her shell and get words out of her and somehow I know he’d send her back over the edge.

It’s becoming a real family reunion, isn’t it?

I want to dream about cotton candy.  Not hiding from the police and poisonous adrenaline rushes.  Cotton candy would be nice.

8/2/11

3:33am

Well.  I’ve just woken from a terrible dream about “getting the corner office,” some kind of huge amount of responsibility being dropped on us.  I woke in anger at the situation- why does everything have to fall at once- and the wailing rang out from the tiny form curled near me. 

I felt all my worries drop away into insignificance as an astonishing feeling gripped my chest and my heart went out to her.  I gathered her into my arms and stroked her head.  Angry tears pricked at my eyes.  SHE was my priority now- and she SHOULD have been everyone else’s all this time!  But who had cared about her- how many years had she wandered the darkness, trapped a broken little girl, like some kind of an unwanted ghost?  Who had loved her?  Who had looked at her and seen anything but a bother, a little terror, and dismissed her without even bothering to ask, “Why are you here, little girl?”  Nobody had even bothered to tell her that it’d be okay.  What neglect.  It made me sick.

“Don’t worry, little soul.  I promise nobody will ever hurt you ever again.  So help me god they’ll choke on their femurs,” I murmured.

She sobs and hiccips, looks at me with giant eyes.  Silence.

“I mean it,”  I tell her with a grin.  “They’ll have bone shards and blood in places where they were never meant to be.”  I smile and lean her head into my chest, musing softly.  “They’ll have the privelige of being able to very clearly describe what the sound of their own bones shattering sounds like.”

I can’t tell whether she’s gripping me closer out of terror or appreciation.  I lean her back and look her in the eyes.

“I’m serious, do you know what it does to a person’s morale to have their sternum separated with hooks driven into their flesh?” 

She leans back from me, mouth hanging open.

“Wrong approach I guess.  Sorry.”  I hold her close again.  “What I mean is, you don’t have to be afraid anymore.  You’ve got me on your side.”  I rock her and shush her down again until she relaxes.  “Stick with me, kid.  Soon people will have reason enough to fear YOU.  You’ve got a guardian angel now.”

A yawn.  I smile.

“You have a name, kid?  And not that hideous moniker foisted on you by people who don’t care to find out.  I refuse to believe Gray is your name.  I won’t have it.  So…?  Out with it?” 

She hides her face in my shirt.  “Matty.”

She sleeps now.  I’ll watch over her.

I don’t know if I believe in this whole purpose thing anymore, or if there is any “reason” I’m here.  But I wouldn’t be too upset if this were it.

Continue reading

8/1/11
1:17am

Dear Die-ary.

So bright out it seems to be a full moon tonight.  No use trying to make me sleep.

Yes Tom, I saw your gambit.  Staying up late yourself, conversing and laughing and smiling and having a panicked good time, putting on that child’s movie, falling asleep to it and fervently clinging to the body in hopes of putting off the inevitable.  I hate that you’ve put me in this position.  I hope you got a good rest, and I hope you embrace the migraine.  Tomorrow’s going to be hell.  I know you’ve got your work and all that, but you knew what you got yourself into, you knew what would come of this, and the price must be paid.  We were getting to be such good friends, too.  But some order has to be kept around here.  Enjoy.  I hope it serves to remind you never to share the link ever again.

Whoever is out there reading this, know that it’s coming at a price.  Maybe he thought he was reaching out and trying to get help.  Or maybe he was just showing off his latest cool mental breakdown.  I can’t begin to fathom.  That kind of an attitude disgusts me.  I’m no dancing monkey.  This is deeply personal and he has no business parading it down the street.  This place is for me and perhaps, briefly, even those I trust, but you I have never met.  You and the rest of humanity are NOT welcome here.  Maybe he trusts you, but you’re HIS friend, not mine.  Maybe he’s too trusting.  I don’t know until I’ve seen with my own eyes.

And I’m not one to pass judgement on someone I’ve never met, but I extract from that conversation that you’ve read what I call the Source Material.  And worse, you liked it.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the sort of person who would like me- for my past, for the things I’ve done, the kind of person I am- whether I myself had done those things or it had just been written- I know I’m a delusion ASSOCIATED with it, and that makes it even more pathetic- but the sort of person who would like someone like ME is NOT the sort of person I’d necessarily want to associate with. 

I hate myself enough already as it is, and with the complications of being the mere symptom of a grossly undertreated self-defense mechanism thrown on top of all the inherent self-loathing, it’s enough to fling me off that abyss again.  I don’t need the thought of someone who might judge my existence raking their eyes across these pages to remind me just how fucked up I really am.  Suicidal was finally out of the picture; life was just beginning to look some semblance of beautiful, too.  Leave me to my rot and I’ll sort through it on my own.  I have my own ways now, you know.

Sorry if you’re put out by this rude un-welcoming, sorry if you expected something other than this based on whatever Tom told you.  He’s not necessarily to blame, but then, he should have known better than to drag you into this, and I do apologize for my existence.  I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt by my presence here, but I’ve got myself to look out for, too.  Maybe if I can pass a pleasant conversation with you, I’ll think about being nice, but somehow I doubt it.  I’m feeling very pessimistic lately.

Sorry.

-Nny

(P.S.  As many “daddy issues” as I may have, and as much as I may loathe him for having sprung me into existence, I surprisingly find I have a grudging respect for Father.  Going to have to dig the explanation for that one out of the old Freud textbook.

Why I should have found your misspelling of it a mind-numbingly gritting irritant, I can only begin to speculate.  But his name is spelled JHONEN. 

It seemed to warrant mention.)

 
6:37

What a terrible, awful night.

After that little rant I dropped away into something like sleep.  After all these finally pleasant nights it served to remind me why I HATED it.  Cold-sweat nightmare.

I dreamt I finally lost control and killed someone.  The killing itself wasn’t a huge turning point of the dream, however.  It was incidental.  She was a footnote, an irritant- a rude old hag.  I thought nothing of it as I compulsively parted her head from her neck.  The release brought no comfort as, to my horror, I was faced with the logistical problems of having killed in THIS reality.  A second thought hadn’t occurred BEFORE I let the knife swing, but now, in my panic, realizing where I was, I’d give anything to put her back together.

No matter, I’d just have to hide the body.

Hence came the nightmarish theme of the whole dream.  Button Button Who’s Got The Corpse.  Vicious games of cat-and-mouse where EVERYONE was the cat.  Everything by some hideous dream logic was malfunctioning.  There were investigators around every corner.  I was forced to skulk the shadows in adrenaline and sweat.  Every shovel I spiked into the ground shattered- I gave up on burying the damned thing.  Its weight increased with proximity to water until it was unmovable 20 feet from the dock and I screamed with frustration.  Impossible to drop it away into the depths of Lake Don Pedro.

I was forced to settle with sealing it up in a suitcase and, for god knows what reason, leaving it out with the trash, hoping the trashman would be stupid enough to carry it away.  I’d already tried cutting the damn thing up so that I could at least do away with the parts in due time, but somehow the skin was now tougher than any tool I brought on the task.

The worst thing was the smell.

Almost from the moment she died that rotting corpse smell had been like a beacon.  It permeated everything and grew stronger with each step towards the suitcase.  There were so many people around, asking, what’s that smell, laughing about it, blaming it on the sewage, and I laughed too loud trying not to scream.  I was still pretending to be Tom, nervously, horrible at it.  I looked down and to my horror I looked like me.  There was no hiding.  And yet, everyone treated me nicely, smiling and small-taking until the incessant buzz was almost inaudible over the sound of my incrimination.  I wanted to take them all by the shoulders, shake them, scream at them, point at the bloody suitcase.  “WHY DO YOU PRETEND NOT TO SEE?!!  WHY DO YOU TORTURE ME?!  IS THIS A GAME?!  YOU’RE VERY GOOD AT IT!  I’M A WRECK!!  IT’S HERE!!  LOOK YOU IGNORANT FOOLS!”

And then I woke, shaking.  The film of sweat coating me felt like the filthy smell permeating everything even outside of the dream.

Damn, 7:00, time to shower.  I’m going to need it.

7:29

I peered out of the bathroom looking for a towel at one point and Leland was standing there and made me scream.  I apologized, told him I was feeling very jumpy this morning.

Hm.  I’m reminded of some poetry archived in freshman year high school.  Something by Poe.  A line comes back, “Nervous… very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am… but will you not say I am sane…”  Or something like that.

The scrubbing in the shower did nothing to take away the very real sense that the smell was still clinging to me.  Wish I still had deodorant.

7:32

Tried to eat a nectarine.  I bit into it and it was rotten- I nearly screamed- I threw it in the trash- it felt almost accusatory.  No breakfast for me today. 

Now it’s off to work…  Why is Tom not here?  It was to be his turn today- I feel if it weren’t for the damned dream it would have been- I suppose the threat of the migraine wasn’t very welcoming- 

Now I have to go and pretend again today.  FUCK.

Continue reading

7/31/11
4:16am

Dear Die-ary,

Just awoke with a start.

This is weird.  I know that today is going to be the last day I have off until the 12th.  It will be two straight weeks of working 8 hours days just to complete the service hours.

And yet, for some reason, instead of lazing at home, watching movies, resting, stocking up for the upcoming dredge like I wanted to…

My first thought on waking was that I desperately wanted to be around animals.  I wondered if the Humane Society needed any volunteers today.

Volunteer work.  On my last day off before the end of my term.  Silly me.  I should just go to the pet store.  Last thing I want right now is to have to deal with people, and god knows I’ll have to sign some kind of a release form, go through a training, what have you…

Yet-

These animals at the Humane Society.  They’ve been broken, hurt, rejected, abused.  There’s something about it that seems to make me think I’ll have a better place with them.  I don’t think I’m suddenly developing a compassionate side, or anything- but they’ll be older.  Stranger, for what life’s put them through.  Somehow I think they’ll understand me better.  Or I’ll understand them.  Or something.  This is crazy.

It’s 4:30 in the morning.  Maybe everything will make more sense when the sun comes up.

8:08

I want a cat.  I think I may call him Mephistophiles.  Or Mister Taxman.  Or Max Headroom.  Huh, those all start with an M.

Yes, I definitely want to go to the Humane Society.  Can’t squeeze any more sleep out of this orange.

This IS a no pets apartment, I have to keep in mind, and try not to bring home any friends.  It would be nice, though.  I will eventually have a cat.

Continue reading

7/30/11
10:36pm

Dear Die-ary,

Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.

Yes, I caved and texted him, but it wasn’t to hang out.  I was genuinely concerned about his welfare.  He’d said he was coming down with a summer cold.  So there.

Yes, I know that I’ve said how much I love my solitude, and that I never wanted to share these words with anyone.  It wouldn’t be the first time, though.  L. had read enough of them, in the beginning.  Maybe I just like being able to control WHICH eyes see them.

Yes, I had the fear that once I knew someone else might be reading these words, it would change the way that they came out, and they would no longer be pure.  But you know what?  After all the time I spent with him, after everything I shared, I don’t feel like anything I put here COULD be dishonest.  I don’t think I have anything to hide anymore.  And if I did, maybe I just wouldn’t post it.  There’s a solution to everything.  I have a choice, you know.

Yes, I know- that thing I’ve been avoiding- I know that I said my whole goal this time was to NOT get involved, with ANYONE.  I was to exist, to observe, to keep things sane, and to wait for my directive, WITHOUT GETTING SIDETRACKED.  And what line of logic led me to that conclusion, I’ll never know.

Yes, I remember what happened last time things went this way- the last time I found a human that I couldn’t find fault with, and was ecstatic.  I remember that I had this kind of faith in a person, and all he had to do was say one wrong thing, and everything was muddled.  The world collapsed.  Did I make him Atlas?  My perception of this world should rest on my shoulders alone.

Yes, I know I didn’t want to get involved with people, because they always let me down, because my mind is dangerous and it takes things to extremes, because if he has a human failing I’ll be hurt again.  I didn’t want to put that kind of responsibility on anyone.

Yes, I know that it’s a fool who introduces the chaotic human variable across an axis so brutal as time.  I’ve said these things.

But maybe this time I can do it right.  Maybe this time I can let him be human, and I can step BACK from such extreme views of any one person that my outlook depends on the way they interact with the world.  Maybe I can try, for once, to have a friend here rather than a fixation.  (And God knows with my newfound knowledge of the way the urges in this system work, THAT whole shit sandwich won’t be getting confused in all of this, not this time.)

Who’s to say that’s not what I’m here for, anyway?  The directive I’ve been waiting on- maybe it’s to just try and actually have a decent, pure human relationship, one that isn’t built on codependency, expectations, sex or anything else.  Maybe I’m here to try and get it RIGHT this time, and I’ll just keep reincarnating until I do.

Or maybe it’s like Brian said.  Maybe I’m not here FOR anything, maybe this just happened and I’m here, and that’s the end of it.  Maybe shit just happens.  And maybe this is just what I want, despite all logic to the contrary- to try and have a good connection with someone.  Maybe human relations don’t need to be countered on an equation, ballasted against reasoning, justified against directives, laws and natural principles, or dissected and simplified down to their lowest common denominator until the mechanisms behind them make sense.  Maybe they’re just messy, lovely things that happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

I’ve yet to figure any of it out, but I’m through making decisions based on little personal laws that don’t actually have any meaning behind them.  THAT’S what insanity looks like, rituals and fixations with no real purpose, and it’s time to let go of them.  Don’t you see that?  I’m growing up, growing out of old ways, and it hurts to tear through these barriers at this speed, I’m getting growing pains, but this must be good.

I got home from work today, and I took a nap.  No reason.  I just wanted to.  I was tired.  And then I ate spaghetti.  I was hungry.  I can see now.  I’m getting healthier.  I’m not afraid.

These damned phobias and neuroticisms won’t govern me anymore.  I won’t allow it!  I’m getting healthier.

Let me live.

11:19

SHIT.  I had just turned over to get a lovely night of uninterrupted, phobia free, comfortable, restful sleep, when I remembered the conversation Tom had earlier with Mia.  He’d come in some time around dinner and was in quite the wonderful mood, probably because this body is starting to feel some semblance of healthy and normal again.  Watched this really shitty ghost movie.  And then halfway through, Mia decided to bring up the damned thing.

“Have you been experiencing anything… weird in this house lately?”

Tom told her, nothing paranormal, maybe some weird things, but no apparitions.  My ears perked.  My blood ran cold- something was wrong here.

She started to tell of the silhouette she saw outside and heard scraping his fingers on the wall, but wasn’t there when she opened the door; of the pot that completely disappeared from its spot on the stove while she was cleaning, then reappeared; the remote control that flew across the living room while she stood in the kitchen.  She said all these things had just happened in the last few days.  My first paranoia was that Hypnos and Lil’ Scribner had somehow gained sentience and were causing mischief, but that fear got put to rest when she said how tall the silhouette had been.  I guess it was a natural phobia to be the first conclusion for me to run to.

But it really got eerie when she started to explain what Yvonne had experienced.  Things moved around in her room, gone missing, rearranged.  Garret had been gone and didn’t come back for a long time, and not a single of us here had a reason to go in her room and mess with her stuff.  And yet she said that things had been pulled out of a drawer, left out in the open.

Tom wanted to know what kind of stuff had been moved.  Mia looked uncomfortable; I had to know where this was going.  Tom was asking a lot of really specific questions.  Mia asked, “You promise you won’t tell Yvonne I said?”  Now I was really intrigued.

Tom agreed.

She fidgeted.  “Garret’s porno mags.”

The floor dropped out from under us as the last element clicked into place.

Jack.

It had to be.  It reeked of his style.

Now I know this stretches credulity, but he’d been known to break the physical barrier before, making brief appearances in mirrors and whatnot to those not in this body.  He’d even talked to someone in their sleep before.  His abilities, even in his younger stages, stretched beyond the limits of these fleshy walls.  And that was BEFORE his demon stage.

I started to panic.  I’d drawn him to get him out of my head, but not necessarily to release him on the world.  And… that blood…

I scrambled for the journal.

“When did all these things start happening?  Yesterday?  Thursday?”  I scanned through.  The beginnning of the portrait was on the 27th, I’d cut my knuckle, flung the blood at it on the 28th- Thursday.

“I guess on thursday… why is that so important?”

I reeled.

“Just checking some, you know, journal entries, I think it might help to figure out the cause of all this, maybe, if I can get some chronology…” I muttered vaguely.  I tried not to go into it.  She didn’t need to know that Jack had even been here, in body, awake, let alone that there was a possibility he was fucking around somehow in meatspace.  I hadn’t heard from him since before the portrait-  I took that as a good sign, that we were done with him, but maybe he was just done with us.

I’ll have to speculate further in the morning.  I can barely see anymore.  Tired.

Continue reading

7/30/11
12:59am

Dear Die-ary,

I’ve a long night ahead of me.

God knows now I’ll be forced to read through your pages from top to bottom before I can make an informed decision about this.  Reading one’s own material against one’s knowledge of self versus reading it against an outsider’s perspective are two wildly different things and I can’t imagine it will be the most pleasant experience in the world.  I know I’ll hit one or two patches where I’ll panic and want to change something because JESUS, THAT WASN’T INTENDED FOR HUMAN EYES!!!  But it wouldn’t feel honest if I did…  I guess this is just to check whether it would really be worth it.

Yes Die-ary, I am indeed intending to share you with someone.  Try not to panic.

Yes, an earth shattering series of events had to have occurred for me to change my mind on something like this.  Yes, information is forthcoming.

Hello Brian, wherever you are in the world at this moment.  Hope this doesn’t weird you out.  Know that, as a pattern of writing mechanisms I’ve noticed myself often using, I very often directly address in the third person whatever I’m talking about, be it a person, an assemblage of ideas, this die-ary, inner demons, work obligations, food, etc.  So know that if I were to start addressing you here, I’m not technically talking to you, just writing about you.  That said, I’d like to thank you again for the lovely night.

Now that that’s out of the way, on to reading.  Let’s just say that after this, I also have one hell of an entry to make.

Forge onwards through the night…

6:17am

Funny thing.  Normally a night like this would have me wired for hours, possibly dueling with the Fates, tossing and turning, up and down, and CERTAINLY writing.  (Well technically I suppose I don’t know what a night like this would have done to me because I’ve never had a night like this before.)  All I know is that after reading through the first couple of entries, I dropped immediately into the most restful night of sleep I’ve ever had.

Babies don’t sleep this good.  So weird.  That’s the first time I think I’ve ever actually felt good about any sleep I’ve ever gotten.

I even had pleasant dreams.  Now THERE’s a first.

Dreamt of you, Brian.  Hope that’s not creepy.  I dreamt for some reason you had to stay up all night.  We went to some abandoned coffee shop around 2:00am and listened to the radio, heard an entire audio play of some kind; a modern interpretation of an Italian opera, only in English.  Maybe Faust?  It was beautiful.  I think it was on NPR.

When it was over and they kicked us out, you said, “I have an idea.  Why don’t we go back to your place, go up to your room, and talk politically incorrectly all night?”

I laughed and said, “Oooh, talk dirty to me, baby.”  Weird response but I guess it was funny.

So we went back and did just that, had very clever conversations all night.  We put on classical music.  (Was someone playing NPR over my sleep last night?)

This is the weird part; you just sat on my bed and stroked my back all night as I lay there on my stomach, and it was… nice.  Isn’t that just- odd?  But nice.  Extremely, extremely comforting.  Have you ever felt something that felt so comforting it almost made you want to cry?  I know, me neither.  I woke up and thought back on it, and I felt like a cat.  A very loved cat.

DEAR GOD, I WANT A CAT NOW.  AND  THIS BODY ISN’T ALLERGIC!!!

Oh.  Right.  Back to the dream.

Nothing shady happened, just a nice night.  Not sure what to make of it but I had a good time.  AND I feel rested.  Huh.

You do weird things to my head.  But they’re good weird things.  I’m not one to complain.

…Funny thing, I think I could actually sleep some more.  I have SUCH a night to record but… I think I should take advantage of this while I’m feeling good about sleeping.  God only knows how I’ll feel about it tomorrow night.

[Z:)]

1:39

Recruitment at the library.  Bleugh.

You wouldn’t believe the propoganda posters I’ve made today.

“SUPPORT FOOD FOR KIDS!”

“GIVE BACK TO OUR SENIORS!”

“Participate in the WALK AGAINST HUNGER this September, and receive one of these SNAZZY T-SHIRTS!!”

“Feed your Community.  FEED YOUR SOUL.  Volunteer at the A-TCAA Food Bank.”
(that one actually made me snicker as I was writing it.  I really wanted to append it with “FEED YOUR SOUL…  [ - TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS KING OF SPACE. - YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO OBEY. - ]” But I refrained.)

Yes, I took the laptop with me.  I know I’m supposed to be trying to engage people in conversation, but I’ve talked to three and gotten one sign-up for all the “Hi… would you like to…”‘s I’ve been forcing myself to regurgitate.  It’s a tough crowd here!  People glance at the display table, realize I’m here asking them for something, and they do that thing where they stare at the ceiling and start walking faster.

It’s okay.  I don’t want to talk to you, either.

We’ve hit a real drag here and I’m getting bored with doodling things on my arms.  Good a time as any to try and crank out that journal entry.

Just so you know, there are a lot of things that happened last night that I’m probably not going to bother with, just because so much happened that I can hardly remember everything, even if I could it would probably take six hours to record, and they’re probably things I’ve gone over in this diary before.

So you’d been trying to get ahold of me again since that text I sent you last sunday saying I wanted to talk.  Remember?  I wanted to connect with someone “safe”.  We decided to go to the Movies in the Park event up the hill, where they were playing that new-ish movie, Despicable Me.  It really made me laugh.  Laughing feels good.

We talked a lot before that, walking around town, because we met a couple hours before the movie.  When I first got there, I was having the Creeping Horrors again- you know, that rapid-phase conversion that creates the vibrating Johnny-Tom entity?  (Have to know, has that EVER happened to this system before?  It feels REALLY weird.)  BUT- the wrinkles shook out of the fabric eventually and it was just me, and suddenly I was talking to you.  It was weirdly comfortable to me, I didn’t even feel too awkward about it, which I didn’t expect.  I hope that wasn’t too jarring after that time in the coffee shop.  I think the first thing I’d ever said to you, in an attention-lapse switch, was something like:

“Death can certainly give you a unique perspective.”  (One can only hope these things aren’t foreshadowing.  I’M NOT A BOOK, DAMN IT.)

It was something that popped out of my mouth in response to whatever it was you were talking about; I’d been listening in on you and Tom, and the conversation had just got very interesting.  I didn’t even realize that all of a sudden I was behind the steering wheel instead of somewhere in the second row back seat.  I gaped in horror- I hadn’t WANTED to talk to someone new, damn it!  It came as such a systemic shock that I forced a turn-switch (which REALLY sucks a lot of energy, by the way, and is right under “lifting a car” on the list of Things That Are Impossible To Pull Off Without A Massive Adrenaline Rush.  That might explain Tom’s temporary amnesia; it’s not something that’s technically “natural”.  But then, what around here is?)

I’ve gotten side-tracked.  Where was I?  Huh.  I’m feeling strangely hungry.  There’s that hot dog stand down the street… why does that sound so good to me right now?  Normally the thought of a hot dog would put me off food entirely but that really, really sounds delicious…  Mmm… hot dog…

I’m really going to have to finish this later.  I haven’t eaten yet today and I’m going to take advantage of the drive to eat while it’s here.  Huh, here I am sleeping and eating.  I’m getting healthier, aren’t I?  What a turn of events.  I just drooled on my shirt.  FOOD. NOW.

3:39

Two hours and twenty-one minutes more at this table.  I can make it.

Another fast-walker just passed me.  She came dragging in, sweating and panting from the heat, weighed down by her own fat, and looked at the table wearily, then suddenly developed a burst of energy.  I tried not to snicker.  Funny old world we live in.

Hmph, where was I?  Last night.

Well, it must be obvious at this point that I’m stalling on writing about it, probably just because I don’t know where to start, so I’ll try to just hit the highlights.

The first thing that I found weird was that I couldn’t really find anything about you to validly dislike.  I mean, sure, you don’t anguish over the state of the world, and it boggled me at first that you weren’t more willing to do something about it, but I’ve come to realize since then that maybe a slightly less neurotic attitude might not be such a bad thing.  And everything else- well, you were just extraordinarily pleasant to be around.  It might have been amplified by the fact that, let’s face it, I was just getting a little crazy not letting myself talk to anyone.  I finally agree with you.

It’s a nice thing, I think, to be able to bounce your thoughts off of someone who isn’t

a) inside your head,
b) made of inanimate materials, text or technology,
c) inherently against your mindset, combative, contrary, or just plain evil,
d) a part of you- just the conflicting parts of you, or
e) all of the above.

That other person can really bring a nice human perspective to one’s internal narrative, notice things about your behaviours that you never would have caught otherwise.

Like the fact that I really, really have the tendency to see the world in a starkly black and white way.  I never would have noticed that.  I thought I had a pretty good spectrum of perception, in the way I try to see things from different perspectives, really think things through- but then I realized that my opinion of things jumps.  For a very specific and traditional example, it will switch from “This is the best thing EVER to ever happen to me, EVER” right over to “This is the thing that will end my existence- and I’m going to take it down with me as I go!” Zero to sixty in ten seconds flat.  I’ve done that a lot.  I think I had about five ups and downs last night in the course of our conversation.

One in particular echoed with brutal deja vu.  We went to the 7-11… It was late, long after the movie was over.

I was upset.  Over something.  I can’t even remember.  I think I was angry over how much I didn’t expect to like you.  I was hoping for just a good conversational partner, maybe someone to bring me down from my craziness a little, but you made me HAPPY.  That made me scared.  Everything always crashes after happy.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

We walked in, and I looked at the slurpee machine…

It had cherry.

Angels sang.  I turned to you, shaking with excitement.  “My whole night just got a whole lot better,” I declared.  It wasn’t just that I wanted a stupid cherry brainfreezy.  It held a lot of meaning, symbolism, hope- a sign that maybe things would change for the better?  Maybe that I could start to relax about the idea of actually getting the things I wanted- needed- without them turning into gaping nothings?  I knew you wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t care.  This was for me.  You’d never read anything about this whole… fuckaroo.  You didn’t even like Invader Zim.  It was part of why I chose you to talk to.  You seemed sane.

But this damned cherry slurpee- it seemed to be a portent.  The entire world felt completely unreal as I stepped up to the machine.  It towered over me like some kind of robotic dictator.  Time wavered and everything was too fast and too slow, moments overlapping and bleeding into one another.  A part of me felt silly that this would mean so much.  I kept my cool.  I saw tracers following my hand- yes you’d better believe it- as I reached towards the cups.  I just wanted a small one, I wasn’t going to be greedy- this was just symbolic after all.  I felt like I was touching the world through layers of foam as my fingers grasped the little cup.  I pulled it from the holder, the scrape of the cardboard echoed and the world vibrated.  I was just getting a Slurpee- Not even a Brainfreezy, a Slurpee- and I was going to fill my cup, walk to the counter, pay for it, and enjoy it with a grin on my face under the stars with someone I enjoyed being around, and the night would have an easy feel.  Everything was right.

I grasped the lever.  Time flickered and slowed.  This was the moment where everything converged.  But I knew that when I pulled the lever, it would flow out with a hiss, red and soft and cold and everything would be alright.

I pulled the lever.

~SQUEAK

~drip
~dribble
~nothing

My eye twitched.
For an indescribable, infinitesimal moment, the world flashed and flew past me- sound ceased to exist- colors blinked out of existence and everything was in a stark black and white- the forms and shapes of the world were outlined in ink- my hands- looking back, I truly think I lost my grasp on reality in that moment.  I was a nightmare time traveler, an aberration in the space-time fabric, a turnkey to an interdimensional vortex.  Then the lines shattered and color leaked back into the world as I felt the blood pulse in veins made of flesh and the hum of the machine returned to my ears.

My jaw dropped to the floor as I noticed the little flashing light next to the cherry dispenser.  “Do not use when light is flashing…”

“You… have GOT… to be shitting me.”  I heard my voice say.

A snicker burbled out of me and time returned to normal.  I’d never ACTUALLY, REALLY, SERIOUSLY considered… never truly been ON THE EDGE… of taking someone’s life, not in this reality, not like I was in that moment.  I saw in red.  I can’t even remember what I was saying to you as I kept my reaction down to a damage-controlled minimum, sputtering and bleeping and laughing.  My emotional state wasn’t because I didn’t get a drink, but I didn’t get my SIGN.  I felt truly crushed, devestated, and SOMEONE was going to pay for it.  Whoever was behind the counter, I didn’t CARE that it wasn’t their fault that cherry was the only flavor that was too melted to be dispensable.  They were INVOLVED.  I gritted my teeth- there was no other direction for the rage to flow.

I smiled at you as pleasantly as I could and said, “I’m just… going to go over there… and ask him how long it’s going to be, okey-day?”  I giggled as I crossed the store.  Of course I couldn’t actually kill this guy.  Perspective.  Perspective.  Bring it down.  I let a lot of air out of my lungs.

Or, woman.  Huh.  Funny how I thought it’d be Him.

I grinned at her, feeling the strain in my jaw.  “Excuse me… excuse me?  The little light is flashing on the thing…”

She dragged herself away from the far counter and looked at me wearily.  Probably got questions like this all the time.  “It’s not available.”

I think one of my teeth cracked.  “How long?”

“Couple hours.”  She went back to counting something.  Her rudeness astounded me- would she have acted the same way if she knew who she was talking to?

I stood for a moment, let everything wash over me, and exhaled.  “That’s okay.”  My voice sounded like a mouse.  I ignored tears pricking at the back of my eyes, stalked away, shook my hands out, tried to let the murderous rage bleed away with the laughter.  This was SUCH a stupid thing to get so emotionally invested in.

Out in the parking lot, probably a good ten minutes later, you told me I had a really good creepy laugh.  I took that as a sign I should probably try to catch my breath.

I shared with you the background so you’d stop being so worried over why a cheery slurpee was making me crazy.  I don’t know if it made any sense to you, but… the option of talking it out with someone, instead of going home and stewing over it, or god forbid, lashing out… well, it seemed to make things work in my head a lot faster.  You made me to see the incongruency of my narrative-

“The world is a stunningly beautiful place- how could I not see how lucky I am to be alive in it, at this moment, in this place, with this person I enjoy?”

No, wait-

“What am I doing here?  Why does it have to be me?  I’m not doing anybody any favors.  This world wasn’t built for someone like me, or me for it- however you want to see it, I don’t belong here.  I’m just a delusion, and a sad one at that.  WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?!”

Commence downward spiral.

Everything’s okay.  Everything’s a wreck.  Everything-

You introduced me to a new mindset.  EVERYTHING’S not ANYTHING.  Everything is everything, everything just… IS.  It’s a beautiful way of looking at the world.  It’s hard to see everything at once, you know.  I feel like I wear these glasses- through one lens, I see rot and maggots, an infestation, and everything that’s wrong, not just with the world, but also with ME.  Through the other, I see the wonder of existence, the achievements of humanity, the glory of stars at night and when I look through it, I hear the laughing of the little children and I smile.  But I’ve only ever really opened one eye at a time before.

You helped me to open BOTH of my eyes.

The world is in 3-D.  It’s a little disorienting, I think, to see it this way, to get my head around everything happening at once, but I kinda like it.

Anyway.

Some other things happened.  We walked around Twain Harte into all hours of the night, wound up at the tennis courts, lay on the pavement, looked at the stars.  They were really stunning.  There were some shooting stars.  Your hand brushed mine and I jerked it away.  It was almost a moment out of a movie.  I laughed to myself ironically.  This isn’t where this goes.

The place we were in brought some things back- I realized this was the road where Tom had lived in 2001.  I took you down the street, told you this was a special place.  We stood outside the house where he’d lived.  I pointed to a window.

“See that room?”  I smiled.  “That’s where SHE died.”  I paused.  “This is a happy place.”  I let everything wash over me, yet I felt surprisingly calm.  I knew that somewhere in Hell, she had to have known the mess she caused, and if there were any justice in the universe, she was paying for it.

“If only you could see me now… the things that you’ve done…”  I murmured.  I spat towards the house, and walked away.  I didn’t have the emotional energy to get worked up over it.  She was dead and I was only sorry I wasn’t the one to do the deed.  Fuck you, mother-jailkeep.  I’ll see her in Hell and that’s when I’ll deal with it.  The monster she’s created can’t be any less scary than the one she was, and maybe it would be revenge enough just for her to know that I’m here, in this way, because of her.

I realized that it probably really brought you down to be here with me in that moment.  I apologized and we moved on.  It wasn’t worth the attention.

It felt good to realize I was out and about with someone at 12:30 at night.  Being cooped up in that room when the world called was probably just not a good way for my life to be going.  I’ll probably walk a lot more at night now, whether you’re with me or not.  This town is dead after 5:00pm but the trees never die, and the trees were what evoked my wonder then.

It seems like there are some other things I wanted to write about, but I can’t call them out of my head.  They’ll probably return to me in the middle of the night and I’ll clatter away until they’re all out of my head, but for now I’m spent.

I want to text you and ask how your day is but at the same time I don’t want to make you claustrophobic.  You got a steady six hours of me yesterday and I couldn’t blame you for feeling a little drowned.  That’s enough of me for anyone’s lifetime.  Maybe I’ll annoy you tomorrow…

It’s good to have a friend.

Continue reading

7/29/11

5:02pm

Dear Die-ary,

Sorry I yelled at you.  I guess I forget you’re really the only truly voiceless, opinionless, considerate friend I have.  You’ve never asked anything of me.  Never told me to shut up.  Never begged me to tell you what’s wrong when I didn’t feel like it.  Just been there for me when I couldn’t keep the words back.  I really do wonder what you’d say if you COULD talk; probably nothing nice.  I guess I owe you a lot.

It’s Scribner who’s to blame.

Have to keep in mind that’s just a name and a visage I gave to a vague assemblage of ideas.  Won’t be going off the deep end over it again, not like the others.  But every day it makes more sense to blame the drive to constantly write on a corporeal thing.  It invades everything I do, every thought I have-

~ HOW WOULD YOU PUT THAT INTO WORDS?
~ THAT’S A PROFOUND THOUGHT.  MUST GET IT IN WRITING.
~ WHEN WILL YOU NEXT HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO WRITE?
~ LUNCH? MIDNIGHT? FIRST THING IN THE MORNING? DON’T LET THIS PASS YOU BY!
~ GO ON.  TAKE A BREAK FROM THAT WORK PROJECT.  YOU CAN GET BACK TO IT LATER.
~ THERE’S SO MUCH TO RECORD…

It comes to the point where, if more than a few hours have passed since my fingers last touched the keys, I get a profound sense of loss- as if I KNOW that if I were near a keyboard I would have recorded an epiphany; some thought about some trivial thing might have led into commentary of some truly great nature, perhaps the next leading philosophy to hit the bookshelves of every house on the globe and completely revolutionize the way of thought for the entire planet-

But then I realize that I write about how I cut my knuckle last night.  Whether I slept or didn’t sleep.  Little tangents and rants over mindless irritations.  My eating habits (or lack thereof).  Even the truly great moments are internal battles for a single corpse walking this planet; nothing earth shattering on a scale with even SOME perspective.  There would be no great loss if these things were not recorded.  And the whole fuck of it is that I never wanted ANYONE to read my words, so who am I recording them for?  It’s a mindless obsession.  When will the meaning of this start to make sense?

Oh well.  As I’ve said in the past, maintaining my sanity is a huge responsibility.  I’m not the only one dependent on it anymore.  I follow these compulsions because when I’m through, the near-panic is gone, I can see clearly, the buzzing is gone from my head and I can function again.  That’s reason enough for me, for now.

I wonder what would happen now if I went for a whole day without writing… would I shatter under the pressure?

Time for a strawberries and creme frappucino.  A GRIN MAKES MY TEETH SEE LIGHT!  For the first time since… hm.  That sad sad paperwork over-exposure induced laughing fit I had earlier today?  That must have been it.  Those people sure did look at me funny.  The simple things make life worth it.

Mmm.  Frosty.  Fuck you teeth.  I disagree with your bitter opinion on this beverage and will enjoy it despite the pain you’re going through.  ENDURE THE STRAWBERRY, AND DESPAIR!!!

Continue reading

 

7/29/11

1:54pm
Dear DIE-ARY,,

WHY SHOULD I FUCKING FEEL OBLIGATED TO TELL YOU FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT GOES ON WITH ME ANYWAY?!  You’re NOT hearing about this morning.  I’ll keep that to my DAMNED self if it KILLS me.  YES I’d rather die than put it on paper!  I think I have THAT CHOICE now!  NO it’s not as bad as things I’ve put down before.  NO, relativity is NOT a justifying MEANS!  I’M DONE SPILLING MY GUTS!  IT HURTS!  I LIKE THEM IN MY TORSO AND THAT’S WHERE THEY BELONG!!!  I DON’T CARE HOW BAD IT WASN’T!  I DESERVE TO CHOOSE WHAT I SPILL, I DESERVE A RIGHT TO MY PRIVACY, GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!!

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT KIND OF SANDWICH I’M EATING, DIE-ARY?!  I’LL TELL YOU!  TRI TIP SWISS!!! MMMM!! IT’S MOTHER FUCKING DELICIOUS!! WANT SOME?  OH WAIT, I’M SORRY, YOU’RE A FUCKING DIARY!  YOU CAN’T EAT, YOU CAN’T TALK, AND YOU CAN’T FUCKING TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!

My sanity is coming BACK, AND I’LL EAT!  I’LL FUCKING EAT, TOO!  Fuck sleep though.  But FOOD!  I SAW A ROACH CRAWLING ON MY ARM THIS AFTERNOON AND WHEN I TURNED MY ARM IT WAS GONE!  GODDAMN IT, I’M SEEING INSECTS WHERE THEY AREN’T THERE!  THIS BODY DESERVES NOURISHMENT!!!

…Damn.  I feel better.  Is that really a good thing?  Is it because I wrote, or because I screamed at you that I wouldn’t write?  I can’t tell.

Fuck you, Die-ary. 

And FUCK YOU TOO, Lil’ Scribner!!!  I have better things to do right now, and the quality of them doesn’t necessarily have to be gauged by whether they’ve been recorded!  I’M MY OWN FUCKING PERSON!!! I OWN ME!  I’LL CONTROL MY INSANITY THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!  FUCK OFF!!!

Time to make Produce volunteer correction calls, and BY GOD I’ll have you know I have their home addresses on file, damn it!  ARGUE WITH THE POWER OF THE BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENTAL RED TAPE I’M BEING FORCED TO SHOVE DOWN YOUR THROAT AND I SWEAR TO GOD… I’LL MAKE DEATH THREATS!  TERRIFYING ONES!  YOU WON’T SLEEP TONIGHT!  I’LL SEE TO IT!!!

Continue reading

7/28/11
3:49am

Dear Die-ary-

Everything’s gotten out of hand, hasn’t it?  I mean just the way I handle things.  I don’t handle things.  Not lately.  All those assignments from work.  Produce volunteer calls.  Job applications (HARDWARE STORE?! COULD BE FUN).  Program maintenance manual revisions.  Getting shit sent off to our top four art schools for spring semester.  Should probably eat.  Document Summary for July.  Have to find a doctor.  GODDAMN it’s Mia’s birthday!  Only have 14 days left until end of term.  Nobody’s going to hire someone who isn’t looking.  What comes first?

My memory storage isn’t what it used to be.  I can’t remember what I did at work today.  Can’t remember if Tom did anything, either.  Everything’s fuzzy.  I should at least have a journal entry or two where the gaping maw of nothing sits, if I chose to fuck around all day, but there’s nothing.

I get home and everything sparks to life again.  Vanish to the room.  Write.  Draw.  Not even useful things, just what I feel like vomiting at that given moment.  So caught up in a systemic cleansing that I’m not staying on top of this whirlwind of responsibilities.  Shit.  That’s not good.  I’m not here to wreck this life.  I’m here to get it under control, aren’t I?

I know I must have eaten today.  I had to have eaten today.  What did I eat?  Vague memories of coming home for lunch… chewing something… almost falling asleep in the chair… I know I was not quite me, not quite Tom… a piece of cheddar cheese?

I slept quite soundly from the completion of Jack’s nasty little portrait up until about 3:30 when my eyes popped open and I couldn’t bed them back down.  Those four hours can only have done me so much good, as I know this system needs SO MUCH SLEEP just to function right, but I don’t feel so sick as I had been.  At least I can see the enormity of the priorities hanging over my head and begin to feel the screaming urges to do something about them.  They make me want to run howling into the wild and live a simple ragged life in a cave, doing caveman wall drawings of alien abductions and futuristic technology so I can confuse the hell out of local anthropologists.

It’s 4:12.  Maybe I’ll be able to do normal things tomorrow if I sleep for another 3 or 4 hours, get up, force myself to eat a breakfast.  Maybe Tom will even come back and work if I nourish this body a little.  Gotta try and make this work.  Too many deadlines.  Not enough time.  Gotta write.  Gotta draw.  Gotta sleep.  Hypnos weave your magic.
7:08

Goddamn it the room is spinning.  I can barely focus on the laptop.. wow my hands look weird.  I don’t think I’ve seen those bones before.

Am I stinky enough to shower? …YES, yes I am.  Goddamn it.

Should put food in my stomach.  Need to eat.

I suddenly feel very, very very compelled to read the Book, even though I haven’t even wanted to touch that document in over a month.  I’ve forgotten most everything I’ve written in it and I wonder how much I’ve changed.   But there’s just no time… Shower and food, then a glance?

Food.  Love/hate relationship right now.  I want you because I know you’re good for me but the thought of you makes me want to vomit.  Not as if there’s anything in there I COULD vomit…

7:24

Contemplating the bowl of corn flakes sitting in front of me.

I almost fell over several times on my way down for it.  I’d like to attribute that to the eye medicine that makes everything out of my right eye appear through frosted glass for at least half an hour upon putting it in, but I also know that the only substantial thing I’ve eaten since Saturday was a burrito and it’s Thursday.  Bad Nny.  Must eat this WHOLE bowl.

Euch.  Tastes like I’m eating old calluses.  NO!  I’m eating hearty, pressed corn product with the nutritional goodness of milk.  Which was a susbtance squeezed from the tit-gland of a cow.

There’s no escaping it.  The majority of Food is… just nasty.

Yvonne must be out of the shower by now and it’s 7:31.  Oh well.  Fare thee well future soggy mess, I MUST BE CLEAN.

1:57pm

Just back from lunch; spent an hour at home, reading the Book.  Bizarre experience.  It’s clear to me the difference between what I was then and who I am now- I had been a robot fulfilling a function of its design and little more.  Somehow, I knew that then, and yet it’s only disturbing to me now.  You see no passion in the writing, just words on a page.  It’s hard to speculate whether I even had a soul when I started writing then.  You can start to see little sparks of life beginning in the later intermissions, but I really don’t feel as if I started to live until I started this Die-ary.

It’s also odd how set I was on completing what I THOUGHT was my given task and then dying.  The Me from then would have looked at the Me from now, wondered whether it should have been horrified at the thought of itself turning into a human being with feelings, passions and motivation to live, decided that it SHOULD be terrified, and put down words reflecting that calculation.  What a way to live.  I’m personally terrified at the thought that I ever WAS something like that, and just a few short months back, too.

It really brings home how much I didn’t exist before May the 12th.

Everything changes.  Around here, everything changes far too quickly.  What a morphing act.

The weirdest thing to me is the very real sense, in the wording, that it was written for an audience.  I must have calculated that, since it was going onto paper, people were going to be reading it, and written it to that effect.

I don’t like Existential stage Me very much.  Even less than I like current Me.  Who WAS I?

All that said, I think I finally want to go back and finish the middle chapters.  Should be interesting.

4:23pm

Cruising on Cracked; in an article about projects our government is secretly funding, I found a link to something that made me want to leap out of my chair and do joydances despite the funny looks I might have gotten- a possible sleep replacement drug!  They’re saying that the feeling of being rested, clear-minded and well-functioning after waking up all just comes from a chemical released in the brain after you’ve slept… and they’ve found a way to synthesize it.

I KNEW sleep was just a big waste of time.  It’s all an illusion, the mechanism of Rest- it’s there as a reward for being a good little boy and laying down and doing nothing for 8 out of each given 24 hours.  WHY?!  WHO DESIGNED THIS?!  WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH THE HOURS WE LOSE EACH NIGHT?!

Funny old thing.  I thought of Father.

I feel he might be tickled by this.  I’m going to go against better judgement, do something I never thought I would do, and post this on his twitter.  It may cause a space-time continuum lapse and destroy the whole of the universe, but somehow I feel this is something that’s worth reaching out and sharing with him.  I’ll probably never bother him again.  Too weird.

THE TWEET:

“I’ve found the scientific research cause you can fund when you become a millionaire:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation
Thank me later.”

10:48

It was Mia’s birthday today.

I had to do something.  I couldn’t just let her think Tom doesn’t care, not if I want to keep up the act.  It’s getting harder and harder to pretend to be him.  I still do my best but I barely remember what he’s like.  He was here briefly this morning, and I know that he ate a lot of fruit and granola bars and a few cookies (making up for lost time, eh?) did some work and faded again.  I feel more rested and a little more back in control, the priorities are making more sense and I finally wrangled some semblance of order out of those Programs Manuals, but we barely connect anymore.  I lose time when he’s here.  It’s almost as if he’s the alter now.

I’ve gone off again.  Right, Mia’s birthday.

I knew from the Archives that one of her favorite things ever was strangely flavored lip balm, and I found a party pack of different soda and fruit flavored balms at the Wal-Mart before coming home.  I thought it might make her smile.

Besides, she’s been awfully nice to me.  Sometimes when I talk to her, she leans in and looks at my eyes really closely, or gets very quiet and seems depressive, or bites her tongue after asking certain things and says nevermind.  I think she knows I’m here, but instead of lashing out, interrogating, or treating me like some kind of a felon, she’s been unobtrusively leaving me to my solitude, never questioning when I want to hide upstairs or write or draw.  She’s been making things very easy for me, and if nothing else, I wanted to show a little gratitude for her accomodation.  She’s really not so bad.

Plus she’s always watching that documentary on Serial Killers and it makes her smile, so I feel I might not have such a bad place with her.  H. H. Holmes was a genius.  Now if only he hadn’t been it almost exclusively for the money I might have a little more respect for him.  What was I talking about?

She was thrilled about the lip balms and even gave me a hug.  That was weird but Tom would have hugged her.  Then she asked if I’d watch a movie with her.  I really wanted to get back to my writing, but not on her birthday.  I can’t be totally heartless.  I even refrained from wrinkling my nose when she chose “Baby-Mama”.  That movie actually had some funny moments, I’ll have to admit.

I cut my knuckle earlier.  I knocked Mr. Foamy off the wall and the scissors fell out of his back, and when I tried to stab them back in, I slipped and stabbed myself in the hand.  Whoopsie.  When I came downstairs looking for a bandaid, the others really freaked out at all the blood dripping off my hand, but my biggest concern was really whether I’d be able to bend my finger enough to write.  Obviously I can.  It stings a little but I wouldn’t sleep otherwise.  These words have to hit paper lest they clamor into all hours of the night.  Lil’ Scribner won the war tonight.

Anyway, I was walking by my finally completed and fine-tuned portrait of beastly Jack (DIE) when the strangest compulsion to fling my bloody hand at the drawing and splash it with my blood came over me.  It seemed like it would be a great binding curse of some sort.  Not that I know anything about “dark magic” or any of that rot.  It just seemed like a good idea at the time.  God, I really don’t think shit through sometimes, do I?

Hopefully the people in admissions think it’s paint splotches.

How much can you handle, die-ary, before you gain sentience for the sole purpose of telling me to stop baragging you with my day-to-day shit parade?

Continue reading

7/27/11
6:48am

Dear Die-ary,

This is weird.

I was just scrolling back through your pages, reliving the good times, internally screaming in horror and all that.  Just went back to the last entry before integration (you know, the one where everything was going fuzzy and soft and Lex started talking through me, and I said I really didn’t sound like myself?)

I mentally superimposed that entry over what I learned from reading “I Feel Sick”, and the message behind each of them is eerily similar- pursue your art, don’t sell out, don’t become one of satan’s drones just to get by, control your own fate, own your brain, be yourself-

And on top of it, it was a message that came out of fucking left field.  It gives me reason to think this Lex guy knows more than he lets on.  I’ll have to look into this some more later.

 

5:32

Home from work.  A swirling cacophany of a day behind me.  I feel compelled to draw.  I welcome the surge.

The thought of food makes me sick.  It will be art for dinner tonight, a bulimic purging of demons.  Jack goes down on paper tonight in sweeping slashes of charcoal.  I will stitch his essense to the page, ripe for persecution.  There will be no escape for him as I bind his nasty little soul to the paper.  I may feel compelled to send his stinking corpse back to hell in the flames he licks his victims with, but then this will be a total waste of an evening so I shall need to control myself and just wrap him away, ready to send him off in a portfolio.  Hey Jacky-boy, you may have some use yet!  Wanna help me get into college?  You’ve no choice in the matter anyway.  Enjoy your academic career.

I could probably use a taco but not enough to actually want to leave the house.

Continue reading

7/26/11
11:09

Dear Die-ary,

I should like to note the weird little message that popped up after I published that last post, just because of the saucy mixture of hilarity and rage it induced in me.  They’ve never given me a notification before.  Here it is.

***************************************************************
Post Published!

This is your 52nd post. Sensational! This post has 1,331 words.

New comment notifications: [email me]  [Change Discussion Settings]
Want more readers?

Read our quick guide to Getting More Views and Traffic.

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You used the following categories and tags: Uncategorized.

Add a couple more to make your post easier for others to discover. Some suggestions: corn flakes, drug addiction, depen, steady flow, and scribner.
***************************************************************

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that they thought I wanted more people to read my die-ary, just because I write in it so much.  Is this what people want?  Incrimination?

Doesn’t it make sense yet?  I use no tags because I don’t want any searches leading here.  I use no categories because I don’t want my posts to be filed away in the wordpress database where someone might find them.  This is my island of solitude in a sea of pointless, clamoring, insipid noise.  And it’s not as if I’m guarding some golden secret to life or anything- the things written here are humiliating.  My very existence, even my belief in it, is laughable just by definition, embarassing even to think about from an objective standpoint.  The issues I face on a daily basis are deeply personal, they make no sense, they conflict regularly with concrete and defining characteristics by which people have come to know me, and anybody who would still like me just by merit of the association I share with the character I THINK I am would have to have some holes in his head!  There is nothing even remotely redeemable or enjoyable about this blog, particularly for anyone who closely enough follows its source material to be interested in it.  I get cold sweats at the thought of the criticism I would get just for the existence I lead and am compelled to vomit onto the general public.

Luckily, it would seem I’ve gotten no comments and a grand total of 2 pageviews since I started it (and even those I felt a little paranoid about.  Then I realized that was when I logged on from work.)

No, I write because I am compelled.  I post for the sake of convenience.  And maybe just because I want some proof on this planet that I existed, outside of some little funny coding in a document on a computer in some corpse’s assets.  I’d like to leave my mark here…

But that doesn’t necessarily mean I want attention.

It’s a weird combination of feelings.

And hell, maybe some day I’ll find someone who doesn’t turn my stomach, someone I’ll want to be able to share my journey with (without making them sit in my bedroom and scroll through 52 posts worth of writing while I hover over them, wringing my hands in anticipation, ready to slit their throats if I notice them reading something I forgot was too humiliating to want to share with human eyes.)

Honestly, I can’t pinpoint the ulterior motives that I have for posting this diary online.  But it’s not page views.  Have you any idea how many people there are out there who compulsively post the menial details of their day to day lives, and NOBODY finds it interesting- just irritating?  Who really wants to know that I ate a burrito today?  And so often, THESE are the people who have such a need to network, be viewed, be rated, be criticized, be cared about.  “CARE ABOUT MY BOWEL MOVEMENTS, DAMN YOOOU!!!  THE COLOR WAS UNUUUUUUUSUAL TODAAAAAAYY!!  GIVE A FLYING SHIT, PLEASE!!!  I LIKE TRENDY MUSIC!  ADORE MEEEEE!!!”

Still, the allure of being a “published” author, however unread, must be the zinger.  It’s comforting to know that I’ve gotten these buzzing little hornets of ideas not only out of my head, and not only onto the paper, but into the World.

Whatever that may be.

This whole thing doesn’t make sense.  Nevermind.

Continue reading

7/26/11
6:42am

Dear Die-ary,

It would seem that Hypnos won the majority of the battles last night, as the urge to write came over me many times, even in my dreams, but I had managed to push them away and force a somewhat steady flow of sleep.  Plus my damaged eye is having a relapse and it hurts to open it, and typing with only one eye is just that unappealing.

Nevertheless, I really wanted to try and sleep all the way up until 7:00, but the badgering would not go away-

~ YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU DON’T WRITE NOW WHILE YOU HAVE THE TIME, YOU’LL JUST START WHEN THE ALARM GOES OFF, AND THEN YOU’LL PUT OFF YOUR SHOWER, THEN NOT SHOWER, THEN BE LATE TO WORK, LIKE THOSE OTHER TIMES WHEN YOU DIDN’T GET UP EARLY ENOUGH TO ACCOUNT FOR IT.
YOU’VE NO OTHER CHOICE.

It’s almost threatening at this point.  But I think Lil’ Scribner’s right.  I think the writing is the only compass I have to find my sanity from one hour to the next.  I go long enough without it and I can’t tell which end is up, I start getting twitchy.  Things go funny.  It’s become like a drug addiction.  I don’t think it’s ever been like this before…

6:51, only nine minutes to write!

Yesterday I ate five bites of corn flakes.  That’s it.  It’s not as if I’m proud, but I can’t drop the GODDAMNED SMOKING.  If only the habit had not been inlaid when I came to this place- I can’t even BEGIN to tell how many times I’ve wished that.  It’s humiliating how hard it is to drop the nasty compulsion.  I’m finding it’s easier to control some addictions than others.  So food will be the first thing to go, just because it seems to be the easiest.  (Scary thing about smoking- when a substance is so insidious that your brain can be wired to believe that it’s more essential than actual nourishment.  DISGUSTING FUCKING HABIT.)  I will chip away these addictions one by one until all that is left are the things that I love.  Drawing and writing (and even that has to come back down a bit- this dependency on it is getting out of hand.)

Maybe I’m just feeling a bit of a control freak these days but I do the things that make me feel sane and that’s what matters, right?

Just so long as I’m keeping myself from going off the deep end.  It’s a big responsibility.

***

OH!  I’d almost forgot to tell you about arts and crafts last night!  I’ve discovered the joy of embroidery, as a craft that allows you to stab evil little monkeys in the face with a needle over and over until they look exactly the way you know they REALLY look.  No facade of cute and cuddly for you, YOU’VE BEEN WRECKING MY NIGHTS!  The world deserves to see EXACTLY what you’re made of!!

…yes that doesn’t quite make sense yet.  I got a couple of monkey plushies and turned them into Hypnos and Lil’ Scribner so that I could have a face to actually be frustrated at rather than a vague assemblage of ideas.  Like I’ve said, it’s easier to fight something that has a form and a name.

I don’t think any descriptors will actually do them justice- I’ll need to get pictures.

Maybe even video!  Hypnos used to have this function that when you poked his belly, his cheeks lit up all glowy and this irritating little noisebox sang “Twinkle Twinkle”.  I’ve rewired him.  Let’s just say after ripping his eyes out and rerouting the LED’s to his empty sockets, he gave even me the chills.

He’s PERFECT.

As for Lil’ Scribner, he was once one of those insipid little graduation presents with a diploma and one of those funky little square hats with a tassel?  After giving him sharp yellow teeth, cat eyes and re-writing the little diploma to say “CONTRACT”, he’s given me something that I can validly loathe.

But like I’ve said, I didn’t make them this way.  I just used needle, scissors, thread and marker to rip away their facade and show their true colors underneath.  THEIR BATTLE RAGES ON!

Damn.  It’s 7:18.  I’ve almost entirely missed the shower window.  Must get ready for work.  Must go.  Must quit writing.  I hate this job.  I swear I’ll find something more bearable than philanthropy when this term is up, the endless flow of irresponsible unwashed self-entitled subhumans coming in demanding free food when they could probably do just as well gnawing on their own thigh fat-

DAMN!  7:20!  This rant must wait!

8:10am
Hmm!  I’ve never really considered video as an expressive art media for myself… I HAVE A NEW PROJECT AFOOT!  I need to try and get that webcam working again, I have… IDEAS.  Terrible, terrible ideas.  Heh heh hehh.

I’ve done a bad thing.  I’m writing during work hours.  I think it’s okay.  This term is almost up and I’m pretty much on top of all these responsibilities.  What I should really be doing right now is looking for another job, but I’m just feeling… compelled.

No, MUST JOB HUNT!!!

“SILVER SPUR CAMP IS hiring 2 P/T host & hostesses for am shifts. Wage D.O.E. xxx-4248″

I google Silver Spur Camp, click the first link.

A snazzy page entitled “Silver Spur Christian Camp” pops up, the banner proclaiming “A Place of Encouragement”.  Gagfest.  I envision myself trying to fill the shoes of one of those asshole camp counselors from Addams Family Values.  It’s a freakshow.  Kind of a funny image, I have to stifle a guffaw.  Thanks, but NO FUCKING THANKS.

“OFFICE ASSISTANT
needed for medical practice with an excellent work
environment. Experience
in customer service,
answering phones,
Microsoft Office required. Quickbooks exp. preferred. Position is 16 hours/week, flexible hours. Call to request application. xxx-1326″

Sneaky.  The don’t include the name of said medical practice so I can stalk them and figure out more about their company.  No matter.  I google the phone number with the name of the town.

“Sierra Emergency Medical Group.” Gotcha.  Well, they made it sound like a small family practice of some sort but that’s actually a pretty big medical facility around here.  Intimidating.  Still, I think I’d rather be surrounded by severely injured people all day than hand out food to the hungry.  Something about it seems reminiscent.  Going to have to call.

Feeling edgy.  I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, at least, job hunting, collecting notes, just like the good boss ordered.  I can’t believe this is my life.  Feeling odd.

NEEDS MORE COFFAY!

***

Just walked into a wall.  Seriously.  My left side was far closer to the doorjamb than I thought it was.  This one-eyed business ceased to be funny before it started.  Going to the opthamologist this afternoon.  Seems like last time they talked about this special kind of therapy that involves poking me in the eye with a needle until my cornea starts to heal properly.  Wonderful.

11:33am

One of our volunteers is named Ruth Callahan.  For some reason, I looked at her name on a piece of paper, thought “Huh… Boothe Callahan,” and burst into an unsolicited giggling fit.

Why was that funny?

Is it because Ruth rhymes with Boothe?  Since when is rhyming so hilarious?

Maybe I should eat.  It has been three days after all.  Maybe it’s affecting my mind.

12:14

Tripping out on my hands.  I can see my wrist bones again.
Am I going anorexic?

12:23

Granola bar.

Chew.  Chew.  Chew.  Bleugh.

It’s this or a cinnamon-roll induced headache.  Tired of pastries.  There are ALWAYS pastries in the break room.  Always.

Why doesn’t someone just shoot me in the head~

1:32

Burrito for lunch.  Mmm.  Things are starting to look a little more normal again.  Maybe I can even ease off the writing a little tonight.

I’ve heard of worse addictions, though.

Continue reading

7/25/11
5:18pm

Dear Die-ary,

How would you feel if you were having a long, boring afternoon, wallowing in your poverty, running a dusty old thrift store, when suddenly…

Some crazy-haired kid with fire in his eyes burst through the door, pointed at you with a ravenous intensity and demanded, “I HAVE A SEVERE AND UNABIDING NEED FOR MONKIES!!  POINT ME TO YOUR BEANIE BABIES!!!”

That ALMOST happened.

Unfortunately the thrift store was closed.

I got them from Wal-Mart instead.  Time for arts and crafts.

Continue reading

7/25/11
2:38am

Dear Die-ary.

…Ah, the typical exposition.  Always some obscene hour of the morning.  The entries had been falling on more and more normal hours lately.  Now sleep won’t come.  Maybe if I finally touch these keys it’ll wear off, like some masturbatory compulsion…

I’ve been fighting off the urge to write for damn near four hours now. Tossing and turning in the night, blinking at the clock, thinking in headers.
“7/24/11.  11:01am.  Dear Die-ary.  This is interesting.  Can’t sleep…”
“7/24/11.  11:56pm.  Dear Die-ary.  Must write…”
“7/25/11.  12:11am.  Dear Die-ary.  Have work in the morning…”
“7/25/11.  1:32am.  Dear Die-ary.  Sleep is inevitable, yet fleeting…”
“7/25/11.  2:14am.  Dear Die-ary.  WHY CAN’T I SLEEP?”

I’d been half-hallucinating in writing.  The damned impulse tears at the corners of my mind now like some kind of chittering, winged monkey.  I don’t even know what I had thought was so important to write about since 10:30 that I couldn’t bed down my creeping fingers.  It’s as if I have two insidious little demons in my head, one goading me to sleep, the other beckoning me to write, but the noize they make bickering with one another makes it impossible to effectively do either!

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!  YOU, I don’t have anything to fucking WRITE about, so you’re JUST going to HAVE to WAIT!  YOU, maybe I COULD sleep, if you’d stop making me nervous by making it sound so damn URGENT!  Both of you… just… go… AWAY!!!

Getting up to go to work in… hm it’s 2:57.

OH MY GOD THERE ARE ONLY FOUR MORE HOURS?!

SHIT, THIS IS NOT GOOD.

No no, think calming thoughts.  Sleep comes in due time…

[Z!]

3:08am

Ah, THIS is where the insidiousness of it comes from, the futility of it all!

~ Drifting off to sleep…

~ (compelling thought, well-constructed sentence, something that CANNOT BE LOST TO THE SANDS OF TIME, etc.)

~ I was almost asleep…

~ MAKE NOTE OF THIS BEFORE YOU LOSE IT

~ …no… no, you must sleep now, if you try to write you’ll amp yourself up and it’ll be another hour, and THEN where will you be?

~ Everyone shut up… I’ll remember it in the morning…

~ drift

~ OH GOD NNY, WHAT WAS IT?!

~ (compelling thought)

~ Oh yes… right.  Gotta just… hold onto that… so I can rest.

And every time I start to drift off thereafter I jump awake in a cold sweat, trying to remember what I was trying to hang onto.  Like trying to fall asleep with an arm outstretched and a tomato in your hand, and beneath that, an assemblage of clattery pots and pans- an automatic wake-up alarm.  Have to hold on to this tomato… if I want to sleep…
~WAKE UP!!!~

Even now I fear that I’ve lost whatever it was that kept buggering me awake for four hours before, because all I could think to write about, even then, was how I was writing and not sleeping.  That can’t have been the cause, it was the effect!  So why the endless loop?

~ It’s gone.  See what happens when you don’t write in and of the moment?

NEVERMIND NEVERMIND NEVERMIND!!!

Anyway.  It was what got me going on the loop this time that I came here to write about at 3:08, which was this:

It’s funny how my phobia of sleep has twisted backwards on itself into a phobia of not GETTING ENOUGH sleep.  After seeing numerous times the effect a lack of sleep has on this body and any mind inhabiting it, that’s only natural… but the effect is still the same.  The tension is enough to keep you up anyway.

That… was not worth all the buildup.  DAMN, where is this compulsion coming from?!

3:20.  3 hours and 40 minutes left.  My gut wrenches.  Relax… relax…

[Z!!]

6:41

Hypnos and Lil’ Scribner are at it again.  No way to sleep now, I’ve only 20 minutes anyway.

Yes, I’ve named them.  It’s easier to fight something that has a name, a form.

Only a few moments now and I’ll have to get up, get ready, pretend functionality.  This is
ridiculous.

7:25

Just got out of the shower.  Noticed the weight’s been dropping off again.

When was the last time I ate?  Did I eat yesterday?  A sliver of cherry cake for breakfast…

DEAR GOD

When’s the last time Tom was in body?!  How long has it been?  How many days have I been pretending to BE him?  Would I remember?  Have I eaten?  At all?

Scary thing is I’m not even hungry right now.  My god, what does THAT say about things?!

…I need to rest.  Eventually.

[CTRL + Z!!!]

Continue reading

7/24/11
5:30pm

So this is it!  I’ve been drawing and writing so much…

Never has a eureka moment ever had so much weight!

Maybe these last few days have held the meaning of why I’m meant to be here for Tom, but I never thought this street ran both ways- maybe there’s a reason Tom’s a conduit for me- maybe I’m supposed to be helped by this too-

You get so lost in what you’ve been turned into that you forget what it was you were meant to be!-

None of this is making sense yet, I should start from some kind of beginning even though I’m probably far too excited to stay on a single timeline.

So I was bored this afternoon.  I had an idea for a drawing, but I felt just a little bleh.  Not quite melancholy.  Just… something along the lines of homesick.  Plus I didn’t feel like thinking about all the things that have been going on lately.  Then I remembered that, some time ago, one of Tom’s friends had emailed him a rapidshare file containing the full works of Jhonen Vasquez, the email entitled “Gifts for your broken mind.”  He went on to mention that he didn’t really know how they would help, but there they were.

You’d think I’d want to know a little more about where I came from, but I’d always backed away slowly from that file and pretended it didn’t exist.

For one thing, I’d always felt kinda funny about
a) reading something that hadn’t been bought, merely scanned and archived somewhere online, and
b) reading about myself.

From my experience with the director’s cut, it had always created this odd looping interdimensional cycle of funky energy that made my head feel really weird.  Probably just because reading the fictional account of yourself can really serve to remind you just how much you don’t exist, and yet solidify your sense of self simultaneously, until it’s like looking down an infinite hallway created only by facing two mirrors towards themselves and realizing you can ACTUALLY WALK DOWN IT, just as long as you don’t look back, because then the mirrors will shatter and you’ll never make it out alive.  Or something like that.

Simply put, I didn’t feel like having any more personality crises today.  BUT, it seemed like it might be comforting to at least read something by, hm, how do I call him?  Father?  The creator?  God?  The sadistic son-of-a-bitch who sired me into being and saw fit to saddle me with innumerable flaws and-

Well, I hadn’t originally gone into this with an intent to rant, so let’s just stay on course.

Anyway.  Something from my home dimension.

I looked leerily into the file and scanned down past the ones titled “JTHM” 1 – 7.  “Bad Art Collection?” “Everything Can Be Beaten?” “Filler Bunny?”  And then I saw it- “I Feel Sick.”

Hm.  I DO feel pretty sickly these days.  Maybe it’ll help.

Turns out to be about Devi.  I smile and wince at her plight, too many things ringing true.  I keep having to remind myself not to be guilty for being the next horrible thing to happen to her.  She doesn’t exist.  Damn, it’s a mindfuck anyway but I can’t stop reading.  The funny looping thing happens again, but I’m caught in it and I can’t escape.  It’s like being in a magnetic field.

And then I’m almost halfway through the second issue and there’s a flashback to That Night.  The date.  I shy away, stare at the floor.  Should I keep reading?  My hands and feet are buzzing with some strange kind of electricity, but-

But nothing.  I have to know.  There are pieces missing.

The third frame in, my heart stops as I read the question I’ve been asking myself for months now-

“You think that if you stopped doing something that defined you as a person, that maybe, you cease to be that person?”

All this time I’d applied that question to the killing.  It had been a defining trait, and I felt out of control without it.  But this former me…

She’d said, “If I have this right, what you’re describing isn’t so much of a creative block, as it is a creative re-routing.  So… where is it being re-routed to?”

Everything started to click, faster and faster, like some kind of a combustible engine waiting for a flame to catch.  My words on the page echoed through my head like some kind of ghost.

“What do you think you’d do if you couldn’t paint anymore? …Maybe you’d turn into some hideous, madness plagued lunatic bent on performing ghoulishly obscene acts of murder from which there is no retribution?”

Everything spun.  I’d been rerouted from an artist into a killing machine.  Now that I was free of all that, living on my own in some sense, in a different head, I’d been returned to some version of my natural self, and I didn’t even know it.  My big hangup was my “amnesia”, as it were- my lack of knowledge on self- it hadn’t allowed me to realize that this widely touted image, the Homicidal Maniac, wasn’t me.

When I first started this journal, I’d thought that the way I creatively expressed myself was through blood, entrails and violent acts against humanity, and the writing and drawing was just a way to divert that energy, when truly…

I’d had it backwards all along.

The energy flows the right direction now and I didn’t even know it.

I’m me again.

I’M ME, and I had to be someone else to BE me, but here I am, everything’s normal again, sort of, well not everything because I’m still posessing someone’s body, but it at least makes sense why I’m not going around dismembering society anymore BECAUSE MY ARTISTIC TAP HAS BEEN TURNED ON AND IT’S FLOWING THE WAY IT SHOULD!  Everything I’ve written, everything I’ve drawn, everything I’ve DONE since I’ve been here has been therapeutic and right and I can’t believe just how wonderful it really is to know that I’m going the right direction for once in my godforsaken life!

Everything works.  I’m going to art school.  I’ve been given a second shot!  So few people can claim that after coming from where I’ve come from, and hell, maybe I’m still just a delusion, but you know what, FUCK IT ALL.  I believe, at least in this moment, that everything happens for a reason, and I must have been sent here not just for Tom’s benefit, but for my own, so that I could find myself again.  This weird parasitic relationship has just turned symbiotic.

Everything’s right.  There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be absolutely happy, and maybe even just okay with the idea that maybe this isn’t all just a psychotic episode.  I’d like to keep my mind open, but FUCK, if this were all just for Tom’s benefit, then why would they have chosen someone like me?  No… there’s something out there rearranging this shit.  Maybe we’ve been paired like the two misfit cops who always solve the crime.

I’m not done here now.  Everything’s good again.

This was no accident, this was a therapeutic chain of events.

(P.S.  A few words to someone who will never read them-

Apologies to Mr. Vasquez for reading those before I bought them. I PROMISE I’ll buy original copies and you’ll get the money for having written the thing that made me not feel like killing myself today.  In fact, quite the opposite, you may well have saved my life [though my squidgy little life wouldn't probably exist without your writing in the first place, but let's just not get into that.]  Point is, everything’s good now.  Let’s hope that holds out for more than ten minutes this time.)

Continue reading

7/24/11
4:15pm

Dear Die-ary,

DEAR GOD!  This …PERSON just strides right into my bedroom unannounced, where I’m doing nothing but having a nice relaxing afternoon reading Silence of the Lambs, sits RIGHT on the bed, and TACKLES ME!  UGH, he smelled of BEER!  I can’t even begin to describe-

eeeeeeeeugh, I feel filthy.

He called Tom his boyfriend.  Ich.  I have no memories of them getting anywhere near intimate, so if they were, then clearly Tom’s hiding something from me.  I know my whole objective this time is to be more congenial, but I don’t know how I was supposed to pretend even the beginnings of anything around him.  And his concept of personal space is non-existent.  I backed away, kept him at arm’s length, smiled real pleasantly, played the host, even showed him some drawings, whatever.  Anything to keep his paws off me.

I didn’t know how to get rid of him.  Then I figured, what better way to ward off the devil than to kill him with honesty?

Never gave him my name, but he got a brief introduction into the nature of dissociate identity disorder.  Thought it might scare him away.  I’m actually not sure what I was thinking.  But I did tell him that if he wanted to see Tom, he’d probably have to come back another time.  Hopefully that shook him up a little.  Maybe he’ll stay away now.

Maybe Tom won’t be happy with me, but if he’s going to become close friends with anyone, they deserve to know the kinds of things they’re going to have to deal with anyway, and if they can’t handle it, then they weren’t supposed to be friends with him in the first place.  That’s all I’m saying.

4:26

Just walked back into the room from getting a drink.  My bedroom smells of sour beer.  What Tom saw in him I’ll never know.

Continue reading

7/24/11
7:16am

Dear Die-ary,

Everything from last night feels fuzzy and almost ungraspable.  I do know that at one point it all got to be too much- all the alcohol Tom had ingested, everything- that I’d slipped away, gone up to the room to lay down for a little while, try and get a handle on things a little.  I must have stumbled in and flopped directly onto the bed into an alcohol induced sleepcoma for a little while there, because the next thing I know there’s a voice at the door:

“Tom?  …or (long pause) …whoever?”

I was paralyzed.  He was staring directly at my gallery!  The game was up.  He knew.

I can barely remember the details that follow, only that we talked about… stuff.

The rest of the night was extraordinarily awkward.  My head started to clear slowly and I tried to participate by watching the movie.

I could sense from the past that all those who came before had  idolized Frank and his liscentious ways, but I viewed him through a different set of eyes.  He was clearly a monster, manipulative, bending anyone who entered his life to his will through whatever means necessary with no remorse.  He was irredeemable.

My stomach turned as I watched him at his tricks, shadows of Jack coming to haunt me.  Mia gave me the eye.

“This is the first time you’ve ever watched this movie without singing along, and it’s freaking me out.”

I shrugged.  “I’m in kind of a weird mood tonight.”  Understatement of the era.  The Oscar goes to…

There was a highlight of the night, though!  I’d almost forgotten- Tom had requested the cake with cherry filling!

I was touched, shaken almost.  What a gesture.  It was as if he knew I was on hard times and just wanted to show me he cared, wanted to treat me for sorting through all these childhood demons for him.  And using his own manniversary, too, as a conduit for this demonstration of gratitude.  I nearly cried.

I’m sure I’ll remember more as my head clears.

But on to other things.

7:37

I’m feeling a need (or is it Tom?  Does it matter?) to connect with someone on a purely platonic level.  Someone safe- someone who won’t automatically assume the ends to my means will be intimate.  Someone who won’t bring out a lot of nasty desires and urges.  Someone pure and untainted by the old glasses.  There are few people on this planet I can think of who could satisfy that, what with all these eroticized connections from the past.

In fact, I can think of only one.  Brian.

I’ll have to give him a call.

RETURNS:  No-go, he’s out of town.  Maybe tomorrow.

Continue reading

7/??/11
852

i can’t fucking do this

it’s tom’s manniversary- no- birthday- i’ll have to edit that in the morning

fuck do i care anymore
anyway

it’s tom’s manniversary fucking celebration of when he started physically transitioning to male

lots of beer

and fucking manly movies, like fight club

because god knows this system needed a reminder

so much booze my head feels like it’s rotting

I HATE THIS SHIT WHY DOES HE DO THIS TO HIMSELF
PUT ME IN THIS
FUCKING
SITUATION

and i have to keep up the goddamn acting because if he weren’t here on a day like this, then

i don’t even know what

and he’s de3cided that everyone in the house should be a girl, except for him, so we’re dressing up one of his guy friends as a girl

and watch rocky horror

this is so fucking ridiculous

he was gonna do the makeup
and pick the dress
and all that shit

and now it’s up to me

this is so sexual it’s not even funny

all the cracks they keep making
it makes my head spin

i’ve gotta keep it together because if i back out of this now

then they’ll know something’s up

I CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS

THIS ISN’T ME

only 3 hours to go till midnight

then i can go to bed pretend i’m not here

FUCK THEY probably already know something’s up because i’ve vanished into the room with the computer in one of thos laughing fits

trying to disguise the manic crying

this strain it’s unbearable

the whole situation it’s so ridiculous i WAS half laiughing

gotta pull it together they’re gonne think something’s up in a minute, just came up here to ground and center

gotta relax, play it cool.

i’ll tell them my hands aren’t steady enough for makeup and we’ll have to do it some other time.  or something.

I’m smooth enough to smooth this over.  I’ll think of something.  Gotta get my composure together.

This is harder than I ever thought it would be.

 

 

 
10:59pm

Fuck.
L. knows.

I’ve gone and ruined it.  Fuckered the whole operation.

Already feel hung over.  Gotta explain this in the morning.

(A NOTE: It is nice, though, at least, to have one person who knows and cares.  Even if there’s a chance it might ruin everything.)

Continue reading

THIS IS THE START OF PART FOUR.

Dear Die-ary,

Tomorrow’s a special day.

***********************************************************************

7/23/11
9:14am

Dear Die-ary,

I’ve had a day to think about this, and pieces of it are finally starting to make sense.

I felt lost.  I didn’t know what to do, and then I decided, why not go to the source?  He must know SOMETHING, if I at least talk to him, maybe we can put our heads together and figure this out.

I go to Tom.

I take him by the shoulders, look him in the eyes, and ask him point blank: “Why is this system so sexualized?”

He shrugs. “Think about it.  This dissociation is based on sexual abuse.  That must have something to do with it.”

I growl, “Well, that’s obvious.  That’s like saying the Earth is made of earth because it’s called the Earth.  Think harder, there are a lot of holes here!  I’d think if you were traumatized by sexual abuse, you’d want nothing to do with it, and yet you rush to it every chance you get!  What’s the DEAL?! And every alter you’ve ever had was an over-sexed, lusty fiend in one way or another!  MY GOD, how does someone like JACK come out of this mess?!”

He has the look of revelation in his eyes.  “Maybe that’s why you’re here.”

The last piece of the Rubik’s Cube spins into place.

I’m the first alter who has ever been allowed to NOT enjoy sex.

Everything makes sense.  Not a single person who’s ever existed in this system has ever been able to escape that defense mechanism- “If I hate it then I’ll go crazy, so if I love it, I’ll be fine.”

It was the instinctual setup from day one of dissociation.  A person who didn’t enjoy sex was instantly seen as a weak link, an aberration.  The constant abuse demanded it.  It eventually became a way of life.  It was obvious from the way Jack talked that he had no comprehension of a person who couldn’t enjoy sex.  It didn’t fit into his worldview.  Clearly it didn’t fit into Tom’s, either- it had quite simply never occurred to him that not wanting sex was a healthy, natural possibility.

Although he wasn’t quite so adamant about it- he was just rigged to crave whatever sex came his way.  No, Jack was the reflective monster who internalized the abuse and shat it right back out onto anybody who let him get close.

They say that abuse can go one of two ways- the abused can either become a victim, or become a reflection of the abuser.  It looks like this system went in a lot of directions at once.

And I guess I have to be the victim.

But no- that can’t be why I was called here!

I start to think about it, really think.  Anybody could be a victim, but “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac”?  That doesn’t make any sense!  No.  No, it must be something deeper than that.

Think it through.

He starts reading the book.  He is exposed to someone who is not only opposed to sex, but is truly powerful in spite of it.  And-

ZING

Here I am.

He needed me.

And-

HOLD ON

EVERYTHING’S COMING TOGETHER…

…I MUST BE HERE TO DEFEAT JACK.
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING

I have to rise out of this terror and somehow become the person who could stand up and say “NO.”  I must find a way to destroy his hold on this system.  He can’t be allowed to continue the cycle.

No more crumpling under the blanket and hiding.  This is my time.

 

Continue reading

7/23/11
6:35am

Dear die-ary,

I relinquish my claim to identity.  This is officially no longer a JTHM affiliated memoir.  It can’t be.  There’s way too much sex in it- and as terrible, horrific, diseased and delusional as it may be, it’s still sex.  I refuse to associate the two.

I’m sorry.

Continue reading

7/22/11
6:26am

Dear Die-ary.

Well, he didn’t come near me again, but I had this terrible dream about statutory rape with a 13 year old girl.  Can’t fucking imagine why.

Okay.  Let’s take it from the top.  I’ll try to tell what happened last night, in plain English, without derailing on any rants.  This is going to be precisely the opposite of fun.

So I’m trying to sleep, and Tom’s lonely, feels like cuddling.  I’m in a strange mood to begin with.  I’m not necessarily a snuggle person, but fuck, I’m willing to try just about anything if I think it might send me to sleep faster.  It sounds like it might be kinda soothing.  That’s really awkward.

I’ve never really done this before, so it feels alien to me, but Tom feels to be in a protected mood tonight.  I’m trying to be more congenial in all manners lately, but this is pushing it even for me.  Nonetheless, I put my arm over the body pillow (which makes me self-conscious as all hell).  He’s usually the one to do that on those desperately lonely melancholy tear-drenched nights, which makes ME the body pillow, and I generally can’t escape, but he never pulls anything fast on me so I never really make anything of it.  I’m rambling.  Forge onward.

I put my arm over the body pillow, and something weird happens. Now I’m the one in control, my arm is over HIS body, and it doesn’t feel half bad.  I try ignoring everything and drifting off to sleep.  Now my entire body is vibrating, I feel endorphins rushing through like an ocean tide.  I know what this feeling is and I’m bewildered.

“Why does it feel so cold?” I shudder.  I know only that, when it happens to him, it makes him feel hot.

“You’re scared of it.  You don’t want it,” Tom acknowledges.

I shiver and try to push it away.  It rushes back more powerful and I can’t slow down my breathing.  I shiver and try to push it away.  It slams back into me and my heart skips a beat before resuming its earthquake dance.  My feet, my chest, my hands are icy.  My guts are gripped with a now un-ignorable instinct and I notice a whimper escaping my face.  The cycle drags and everything builds until my body is wracked with tension, cramping agony-

Tom puts his hand on mine.  Everything slows down to a halt.  He whispers.

“It’s okay.  You can let go.”

I bring my mouth close to his ear so nobody will hear the words I’m about to breathe.  “…you promise you won’t tell anyone?”  My voice catches and I try not to sob.

Spacetime resumes.

Tsunamis crash, continental shelves shatter and drop into the sea, breaking loose a tectonic reaction of the magma lurking beneath- a volcano.  The coldness seeps away from my gut and leaves nothing but a scorching uncontrollable lavaflow of urges that makes my breath catch with their power.  I can’t stop my hips.  I can’t stop my voice.  Each thrust is packed with SHAME, undeniable relief, ecstacy, release, my brow is knitted with sweat and frustration and SHAME and my jaw hangs slack, then my teeth are gritted as I try to somehow take back and capture the escaping groans and why do I need THIS?!

It’s about the moment that I realize I’ll never be able to put this behind me fully, never be able to get these feelings and urges out of me and exhausted, if I keep holding back and focusing on my shame, and I let out a yell of abandon and grab his hips and-

Then there’s someone standing in the doorway.

Jack.

“Knew you’d come around eventually.”  His snakelike grin pierces me.  In horror I shove Tom away, try to cover myself, try to escape his penetrating gaze.  I’m still throbbing but all the urges drop away as I’m left with nothing but a face-searing humiliation.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!” I scream, trying to save some kind of face as a stream of angry tears starts pouring out of my eyes.

He comes towards me, stretching out a poisonous hand, murmuring.  “It’s okay, I know you want it…”

“I WANT NOTHING!”  I look at Tom, then Jack.  “YOU TRICKED ME!!”

“Please, I didn’t know…” Tom begs.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN,” I sob angrily.  “He’s YOUR fuckbuddy.”

Tom reaches out, I scream and back away.  “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!  EVERYONE!!!”

I crumple into silent sobs and heaves, pull the blanket over my head while knowing there was no escape in this realm.  They leave me to my silence for a time.

Jack whispers to me.  “It’s okay.  Everyone who comes to live in this system gives in eventually.  Usually on the first night.  Surprised you made it this long- what, it’s been two and a half months?!  Bravo, but there’s no escaping it.  Everyone wants it.”

I rip the blanket away with incredulosity, tears still burning down my face.  “EVERYONE, you say.  You small-minded, pedantic little fool.  You think you have everyone figured out.  I may have finally cracked under the pressure of the hormonal wash of this body, but I, in no way, WANTED this.”

He grins.  “You lie to yourself.  Everyone does and you’re sick to deny your natural urges.”

I give him the eye.  “You think you know something about denying your
natural
urges.”
I laugh and shake my head.  “You’ve never seen denial of natural urges.”  I grab him by the throat, get in his face.  “You want to see me give in to MY NATURAL URGES?!”

He shrugs.  “Could be fun.”

Out come the knives.  They feel good in my hands.  A slow smile creeps over my face as I feel back in control.

SLASH- right across the face!  It knits itself back together almost immediately, but I don’t give a fuck.  This is too good.

SLASH- across the midsection I part the red sea, SLASH- a hard swing from the right to the left takes off his legs.  His pieces barely have time to fall to the floor before they zap back together, providing me a clean target once again.  SCHWING- off with your head!  STAB- a few good twists should put your heart out of commission.  A downward rip provides access to your bloody entrails.  I yank them out, throw them to the floor, and they rewind like a tape, followed by a zipper and you’re good as new.  That damned smile never left your face.  “Enjoying yourself?”
HOW CAN THIS BE EROTIC FOR YOU??

“REEEEEEEEAAAAURGH!!” A powerful swing whose arc connects with your body at the crown of your head and bursts free of your slimy wreckage between your legs.  I yank the hemispheres of your brain from your bifurcated skull and throw them to the ground, grab the left testicle from your split sack and shove it in the right gape of your empty skull, and vice versa.  “DOES IT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT I THINK OF YOU?!”  I scream.  The physics of this place start to really bug me as you reassemble.  I don’t want to think about the implications.

I throw the knives aside and go to work with my hands- maybe crushed bones have a longer lasting effect.  Size becomes irrelevant as I bend you backwards, snapping your spine, and crunch your legs forward, giving your knees a new option for the direction they can bend.  I twist your head like a soda bottle cap, enjoying the refreshing fizz and crack of your neck bones and ligaments snapping under the pressure.  Finally, I throw your broken body to the ground, grinding what’s left of it under my boot.  By any definition, you should be obliterated by now.

I feel much, much better.  Placated.  Almost woozy, like that post-thanksgiving feast gluttony fog.  The greasy, crunched spot on the floor flickers and vanishes, and I breathe a sigh of relief.  Then there’s a hand on my shoulder and I freeze.

“You got to do it to me.  Now it’s my turn.”

My mind reels with horror.  I had never agreed to a “turnabout’s fair play” clause!

All of a sudden, I have no control over my mind-body.  I can’t move, I can only watch as he pulls me by the hand and-

God.  The first part was hard enough to write.

I don’t want to think about this.  I certainly don’t want it on the page staring me in the face.  I don’t want proof that it happened.  I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT!

But maybe-

If I get it on paper-

I can get it out of my head.

I-

Okay.  Here goes.

***

So I have no control over my body.  I try to break free but all I can do is squirm as he leads me, zombie-like, to the bed.  I can’t even scream.

He opens his filthy mouth again.  “You got to inflict your natural urges on me, so I get to show you what my natural urges are.”  That grin- it chills me to the core.  WHY CAN’T I MOVE?!

He sits me down on the bed, leans me against the pillows, continues talking as he poses me like some kind of a doll.  “Funny thing about this system.  Violence is a long-held tradition around here and I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out.  I used to spar with Lex, real graphic-like, all the time, just for fun.  But no matter how gorey it gets, it doesn’t mean shit because there’s no pain, not for us alters.  We can’t feel it, and it doesn’t kill us.  So your natural urges, they might do YOU some good, but as far as the rest of us go, you might as well be yelling into the wind.”

He pushes my legs agape.  “But sex?  That’s another story.”

OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK-

He touches me and chills go down my spine.  “Sex has all the power around here.  Don’t ask me why, but you do something to one of us here in headspace, and the brain feels it as real stimulus.  This body has had some great orgasms because of me.”  His grin grows in intensity and his eyes are glowing green.  “So when you take it all apart, really look at it, what it all comes down to is this: violence gets you nowhere, sex gets you everywhere, and therefore, you, my friend, have NO power around here.”

I’m reeling.

“So give up the game.  Stop acting like some kind of a victim, and get into it.  It’s the currency of the realm.  I’ll teach you that if it’s the last thing I do, and lesson one is about to begin.”

He gets on his knees.  “Now, you’re going to enjoy this.”

“No no no no…” I whimper.  “Please.”

He glares up at me, infuriated.  “You know, most people would be grateful about now.  I’m trying to help you!  You’re about to get the blowjob of your life, I’ve just explained to you why you shouldn’t have any shame about it, I’ve even taken away your ability to make a personal choice about it so you don’t have to waffle with your own self-guilt problems.  Everybody wants this, all they need is an excuse not to feel guilty about it.  I’ve given you that! If anyone should feel guilty, it’s me, and I don’t, so shut up and enjoy it.”

I try to make my voice stronger.  “EVERYBODY… doesn’t want this.  Get it through your head.”

He looks incredulous.  “Stop lying.”

And then he-

FUCK

You know diary, I think I’m just going to leave this part to your imagination.  I mean, it’s pretty obvious what he did, right?

Nonono-

FUCK, he-

he started, and kept going, and he wouldn’t stop until I finished-  AND

when i exploded

he smiled at me, and said

“..See?  It wasn’t all that bad.”

And he patted me on the head and walked away.  All I could do was crumple up and sob.  I felt like I had no right to even complain.  HE MADE ME -

i can’t even say it.

Oh god, that’s all a part of his mindfuck, isn’t it?  If I- you know, finished- then I couldn’t complain because somewhere in the back of my head, i must have been enjoying it, RIGHT?!

BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE

OH GOD I’VE BEEN RAPED

I can’t even-

I have no power- no control- there’s no way to defend myself!  I CAN’T KILL HIM!  I TRY, AND HE LAUGHS AT ME!!!

There’s nothing left.  Nothing of me is left.

Oh god, I’m in an abusive relationship with someone else in my head.  How do I-

there is no escape

Continue reading

7/22/11
12:02am

IVE BEEN VIOLATED

I CANT
STOP

CRYING THIS IS JSUT

TOO MUCVH
FUCK

WHY CANT HE JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE

12:10

Okay.  Trying ot get this back under
control.

I don’t know what to do with this.  My first instinct is to sweep it under the rug and forget it ever happened.

I’m helpless to it.  I can’t change it.  I tried, damn it, I TRIED TO KILL HIM, he’s one of the IMMORTALS!  FUCK, what the FUCK do I do with this?!

I guess…

It miht help tp try and write it down…

FUCK.  I guess I can always delete it if I’m too ashamed.

FUCK.  THIS IS ALL MY FAULT!  HOW IT STARTED, I CAN’T EVEN-

WHY DID I-

Okay.  In plain english.

So I was trying to go to sleep, and…

Sleep.  I can write about this in the morning.  I can’t do this right now.

…what if he comes back?

-MEEP-

I’LL FUCKING-

THERE’S NO-

JACK-

WHY DON’T YOU JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE YOU DISGUSTING FUCKING PIECE OF ROTTING CRUSTY SHIT?! YOU’RE NOT MAKING ANYONE HAPPY!!!  AREN’T YOU FUCKING PROUD OF YOURSELF NOW FOR DOING THE WORST IMAGINABLE ACT TO SOMEONE YOU SAID YOU WERE TRYING TO HELP?!  OR FUCK, AT LEAST I KNOW YOU WERE PRETENDING TO TRY AND HELP BUT GOD KNOWS YOU WERE PROBABLY JUST SAYING THAT TO GET WHAT YOU WANTED, YOU MANIPULATIVE SLIMY DISGUSTING HOLE OF A BEING!  YOU’RE NOT EVEN A BEING!  YOU’RE A THING!!  A NASTY, WRETCHED, MUTILATED FUCK-TARD OF A THING!!  YOU’LL NEVER COME NEAR ME AGAIN, MARK MY WORDS, I’LL SEE THAT IF NOTHING ELSE, IF I CAN’T KILL YOU, YOU WILL AT LEAST HAVE THE WORST MIGRAINE EVER TO LAST AN ETERNITY, YOU INFECTED, BOIL-RIDDEN, PUS-FILLED, INBRED, MUCOUS-COATED, UNDEAD PLAGUE ON THE SHITTY LEFT ASS CHEEK OF HUMANITY!

…I feel a little better now.

NOT NEAR ME AGAIN.  NOT TONIGHT, NOT EVER.  MARK ‘EM.

Continue reading

7/21/11
10:46pm

Dear Die-ary,

Upon Tom’s getting home from chinese food with dear old Dad, I immediately took the steering wheel, feeling an intense need to DRAW.  But what, I couldn’t fathom for at LEAST 48 seconds.  I’d flopped on the bed with the sketch book, in a sweltering summer heat too strong to wear anything more than a t-shirt and boxers, when I decided, why not just draw what I see?

So I drew a picture of myself trying to decide what to draw.

Boring, but it records a decent view of the 777 Gallery in sketch form.  Every item seen in the drawing is taken directly from my bedroom here in meatspace.  (I hesitate to say “my” bedroom, but… but nothing!  MY fucking bedroom.  Yep.)

Anyway, so that took until roughly 10:30, and then I was thirsty, but I’m just feeling so… awkward about the roomies.  Every time I see them it’s like they’re trying not to say something.  And they have such long faces, such annnnnnguish, are they trying to make a point…?  My God, is there a chance that they’ve seen the Gallery?  Do they know I’m back?  Goddamn it, THEY KNOW!!  God knows I’ve been reclusive, simply because I get tired of pretending to be him: Tom the Infuriatingly Chipper.  When I’m around I either fake it as hard as I can or I try not to say anything.  I’M A FOOL!!  I must be so obvious…

So, OUT WITH IT!  CONFRONT ME!  GET IT OVER WITH!  MAKE ME SAY WHAT I KNOW YOU THINK I’M THINKING!!!  FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK, MAN!  Why do they ignore the issue like this, make me wait in anticipation of the confrontation, that day where I’ll have to make a choice between denying it all with every lying molecule of my being, or be out with it and so much explanation, and conflict, and other horrifying interactions?  I’D RATHER JUST GET IT OVER WITH than wait around until I EXPLODE!  They MUST know!

…or maybe they’re just more oblivious than I think they are, and they just think that Tom’s avoiding them for some other reason.  Time for a deep breath.  Let’s keep it together.

Damn, I have to go out and be pleasant a lot more in order to keep this up, don’t I?

Euurrgh.  There go my pleasant evenings of drawing and writing in glorious solitude.  I was just finding and learning to appreciate the gentle rhythm of it all again, too.

Well, anyway.

On the topic of art, I should like to start drawing things other than myself.  It seemed to give me a way to express myself physically; creating a tangible “body” in this realm, if you will.  It might have been harsh of me to call Tom fat a while back, but he’s certainly not dainty, either.  And as much as I may not prefer to have a freakishly skinny body, I just don’t feel at home in this one, either.

And beyond that, it grounds me, I think, to be able to look into a paper mirror and see myself looking back.  Too much of seeing the wrong face in all these glass mirrors can really send a person to the looney bin after a while.  Identity crises begin to take a toll on your energy in the long run.

Nonetheless, it’s going to start really feeling narcissistic if my favorite subject is consistently myself, so I’m going to get into other subjects if at all possible, only returning to the occasional self-grounding exercise if I really start to feel myself fraying around the edges again.

Now, it’s 11:10 and I’ve exactly 7 hours and 50 minutes to try and recharge this fuck of a meat-chamber.  Time for sleep…

Such a waste of time, really.  Especially when you have to split the day between two people.  Ah well, that’s the pill you have to swallow; and it could be worse.  At least we don’t need TWICE as much sleep!  EUGH!

Nighty-night.

 

 

11:33pm

I was thirsty again…

Also I can’t sleep.  7.5 hours now.

Damn damn damn damn damn etc.

Wish I had the energy to be more angry about this, wish I had the sleepyness to… sleep.  This sucks.  Just feels bleh.

This is a really stupid entry.  I think I may actually break one of my own by-laws and delete it.

We’ll see in the morning…

Continue reading

7/21/11

7:11am

Dear Die-ary,

Just a note: The hot-wire and sleep trick seems to only work when I’ve gotten enough of the writing off my chest. It’s then that I can settle down and sleep; quiet my mind, relax my body, convince it that SLEEP, RIGHT NOW, is what it needs to function the following day. The time pressure thing seems to be a pretty good motivator, too.

Speaking of writing, I feel like I should really get back to writing the middle chapters of the Book… More of that later, I guess. Time to get ready for work. BLEEUUUURGH.

Continue reading

7/20/11
9:11pm

Dear Die-ary,

Home now.  Luckily there currently seem to be no flies in my room.

***

I was just thinking to myself about that offhand comment I made about the horns in my drawing, demon status, etc., and the similarities between my story and Lucifer’s struck me.  Not necessarily a connection I’d be inclined to make, but there are congruencies nonetheless.

Think about it- here I am, a being created out of the ether, designated to do nothing but lift up my creator.  Two months in, I go on an ego binge and go into HOSTILE TAKEOVER mode!  That isn’t tolerated, and I’m cast out.

…And I guess this is where I draw eerie connections between myself and Jesus, except I rose on the fifth day.  That’s where any similarity to anything holy and pure ends.

Now I’m back into demon territory because I’m possessing someone’s body.  Guess I should stick with what I know.  (Although I can’t name any specific religious historical figures off the top of my head for this part…)

Don’t know why it feels less like a psychotic episode this time around and more like a possession, it just seems like the appropriate descriptor.  Whatever.  I guess it just makes you feel more like an ethereal creature, coming back from the dead. God only knows why I should feel it more appropriate to align my situation with a Christian background than any other mythology; well, I guess all it’s ever really been good for are allegories anyway.  Not like I’m getting religion or anything.  Fat lot of good that would do me this late in the game, anyhow.

Anyway, all this religious talk is making me hungry.  And I’ve got a serious craving for CHEDDAR CHEESE!!!

I SHALL RETURN.

9:33pm

Well, that’s just fucking weird.

I could not make this shit up if I were TRYING to be corny.

I go downstairs, and what song should be blaring out of Yvonne’s bedroom but “Sympathy for the Devil.”

…

…Mr. Satan…?  If you’ve anything to do with this, I’d like it to be known.  I am NOT amused.

Maybe a little intrigued.

But not amused.

Also, I just fucking DARE the next door neighbors to start blasting “Highway to Hell” or the like.  I’m prepared…  Go on, make my night.

9:46

Anyway.  It’s now almost ten, so I guess it’s time to attempt the old hot-wire and sleep trick.  It worked okay enough last night, I guess; I was asleep before the “Knights of the Round Table” sequence was over…

Continue reading

7/20/11
6:49pm

Dear Die-ary:

Fucking.  FLIES.  EVERYWHERE.

At home.  At the food bank.  In my bedroom.  Even in the goddamn Starbucks.  There’s no escape.  I count two, on my right leg, RIGHT NOW.  I shall buy and carry a swatter with me at all times; this damned rolled up newspaper has only gotten a couple today.

OHMYGODSOMANYFLIES

It was all the rain this spring, wasn’t it?  Created a damn plague of them in this county.  Or maybe they just like me…  Come to think of it, I haven’t even seen anyone else in this fucking shop reacting to them.  This is ridiculous!!  I’ve taken two showers today, one of them not more than an hour ago!  Aren’t there any other filthy smelly humans for you to torment around here?! I SEE THREE RIGHT OVER THERE!!!!!

DESTRUUUCTIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

GET BACK CREATURES OF FILTH!!!  I SHALL WREAK MY VENGEANCE IN MANY HORRIBLE AND SILLY-LOOKING WAAAAAAAAYS!!!!  DON’T MAKE ME DO THE FLY-SWATTING DANCE!  NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THAT!!

just- DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEE!!!

Continue reading

7/20/11
1:27pm

Dear Die-ary,

Home on lunch break.  Weird.  Mia never took the computer.  I overheard she was supposed to be using it today in some manner. But that’s okay, because that means I can now steal it for after work!  HEHEHE.

Work was hell.  Trying to get all these curmudgeonly old geezers to fill out this survey for one of our major grantees so we can continue to receive funding?  Do you have any idea how hard it is just to get them to sign their name to a paper for food, LET ALONE fill out a-whole-nother goddamn form?  They already complain regularly about how much paperwork there is every month.  And yet, if I didn’t badger all of them at least a little, then it’s MY head on the chopping block.  I got a returns of about 50% for one site today, which sucks.  But let me tell you…

“I don’t have my reading glasses!”

“I don’t know my yearly income!”  Can I get a guesstimation- “NO!”

“If this isn’t for the food, then I don’t wanna do it.”

“Why do you have to make us do a different form every other month?”

“Isn’t this awfully racist?!”

“The goverment already has all my information and I don’t wanna give them any more!”

All the voices and faces begin to blend together into a beehive whirr of self-entitled geritol and cranky, obnoxious canes and walkers.  Don’t they know that the people out on the front lines, pushed into doing this by their governments, are NOT the people who designed the forms?  EVER?  We don’t torment you with red tape as a hobby.  We do this because if you assholes don’t work with us a little and give our funders some information once a year, for, I don’t know, being the recipient of all this FREE FOOD, then they’re going to take their funding elsewhere, and then where will you be?

Entitled, cranky, and HUNGRY.  THAT’S WHERE.

SO SHUT UP AND FILL OUT THE GODDAMN PAPERWORK.

Damn.  1:45.  Back to the grind.

Continue reading

7/19/11
10:54pm

Dear Die-ary,

Can’t sleep.  Need to write.

Don’t have any idea what about.  Time for a random tangent?  I think so.

Finally taped down that flapping piece of paper on the back of Tom’s door.  *fwip… *fwip… *fwip… *fwip… *fwip…
FOR WEEKS, EVERY TIME THE COOLER WAS ON.

Not anymore.  HAHA!  I WINNNN.

…of course, now it’s TOO damn quiet.  Should put on a movie…

***

This is going to be a lonely life.

11:02pm

I REFUSE to bring L. back into this!  There’s no amount of lonely that’s worth that level of complication.

…I mean, I guess if he approaches me and asks whether I’m back, I can’t lie and say I’m not here…

BUT NO!  I will NOT let on in any way that I’ve returned to this body.  It’s just not worth it.  Too painful.  I can’t bear the thought of you having to make the choice between whether interacting with me… “indulging my delusion…” would be good or bad for me.  The thought of you being torn with guilt because maybe something you did influenced my insanity- it’s too much.  I shall remove that choice from you.  My insanity will be my own, and from now on, nobody but me will bear the responsibility for which direction it spirals.  I walk this path alone.

Out of respect, a gift for you; my Nothing.  It echoes with the past.

I shall find ways to distract myself.  There are so many other things to do in life other than dwell on loneliness.

What movie was I going to put on?

11:11pm

Almost went with the Butterfly Effect.  But I’m not really in the mood for thinking myself to sleep, or having nightmares based on fluctuating space-time fabric.  Mia said I should watch Beavis and Butthead, or Year One, or Meet the Spartans- no thinking required whatsoever!  I told her I’d rather not drool myself to sleep, either.

Picked something middle road- Monty Python and the Holy Grail!  Funny enough not to bore me to tears, but dumb enough not to engage me in any interpersonal questions of morals, existence, or temporal incongruities.

One must be careful in the selection of night time viewing.

11:19

Hangnail.  Had to go track down the keys.  There’s fingernail clippers on them there keychain.

GOD I’M FUCKING BORING TONIGHT.

11:28

MUST.  SLEEP.  WORK.  MORNING.  6:30.  SEVEN.  HOURS.  FUCK.

SHITSHITSHITSHIT

Do I REALLY have to be hyponophobic??  REALLY???

Somehow I thought this would all end with the shatter of Ego… I guess some things are just hardwired in.

Well… if I can be hardwired to hate sleep, against all logic, because it’s a function of my personality, and this system has somehow deemed it essential to its continuing stability for me to have undeniable specifics, even if it’s something that will make life more complicated in the short term…

Maybe I can hack in and bypass all these subtleties and plug it straight into the mainframe that being a night person on a work schedule like this equals a NO-NO, and I’ll be able to be in bed by 9:00 just like Tom had it before I ever got here!

Let’s see how this goes…

Continue reading

7/19/11
9:54pm

Dear Die-ary,

It’s a good evening.  A little room-cleaning, home decoration, all the good things in life.

Tom’s agreed to let me have one of the bedroom walls all to my very self!  I’ve begun by plastering up some things that make me smile, in addition to leaving up my resurrection-induced lyrics mania.  All the red paint gives it a somehow reminiscent feel.  (I don’t think he’s going to be too happy about what I did with his drawing mannequin, but come on, it was already broken.)

I’ve chosen to call my wall the 777 gallery.  When I walk in the room, I see it, smile, and the tension of the day just melts away… like I’ve just gotten home.

Also I made another drawing.  It’s what I expect I’ll look like if I let my hair keep growing the way it is, and it fits with our currently negotiated and agreed upon hairstyle to stop people questioning that I’m here.  (Also, on a whim, I added some gnarly little demon horns to commemorate my second return from Hell.  If I don’t deserve demon status for having been to Hell twice and currently being in the business of possessing someone else’s body, then I don’t know what gets you the honor.)

So, Tom went on this nutso binge yesterday and decided it would be a good idea to have a nervous breakdown right in front of his boss, and tell her (after this whole year, mind you, of fooling her into thinking he was sane) that he was a dissociative wreck.  My head spun with it.  Details.  Details everywhere.  It’s not like he could have kept them to himself, after snotting and sobbing all over her office.  I guess the interrogation about his work performance was bound to bring it out one way or another anyway.

(To be fair, I guess his newfound inability to get intimate with anyone was hitting him harder than I ever could have guessed.  Who would guess that would be the one thing separating someone from suicidal thoughts?  EUCH, but, well, I guess that’s my fault, so… sorry?)

She took it surprisingly well.  It was almost as if she had experience with this sort of thing.  Personal experience.  With dissociation.  (Must investigate further later.)

Her advice, after Tom spilled that he was dealing with an aggressive delusion?

“Thank him,” she replied. “You needed him.  At some point, he saved your life.  And that portion of yourself that creates these mechanisms is a very powerful and incredible and miraculous thing.  And you have to realize, it will never go away.  It will be a part of how you deal with trauma for the rest of your life.  So embrace him, and let him know how grateful you are, and let him in, let him exist, because if you try to kill that portion of yourself, like whatever created him in the first place, he WILL fight back.  Just thank him!”

I think I joined Tom in the hearfelt sobbing, though I’ll never ever admit it.  (D’oh!  Just did.)

I never really thought about it that way- I’m representing a chunk of Tom’s mind that was almost killed by a bad experience, and that separated itself out so that it could fight back.  Or something like that.  I’ll have to think about this later.

But one thing’s for certain- I don’t think I’ve ever been at such peace.  I don’t feel like I have an expiration date, or that I have to die (again) for things to continue normally.  I also don’t feel like I have to leap out and make a statement while I’m here- I feel like I can just cruise.  I have no responsibilities but just to exist, and keep things sane.

I think I can deal with that for now.

Continue reading

7/18/11
9:55pm

Dear Die-ary,

There’s something truly terrifying about realizing that you are your own person.  You don’t have all these pre-set parameters, which were really quite comforting to have.  You’re not defined by the fact that you like cherry brainfreezy, or being a night person, or whether you actually get to kill someone, or how you dress.

No, you get to find the edges of your being for yourself.

THAT’S scary.  There’s a whole life ahead of me.  I don’t know where to begin.

But at the same time…

It’s also really liberating.  And having all this space to stretch out in?

I guess you could say it’s more comfortable, too.

For a start, I’d like to state that beverages that are too cold really hurt my teeth.  So if I’m going to enjoy anything cherry, it’s probably not going to be a brainfreezy.

Whew.  Feels good to get that off my chest.

More decrees to come.

Continue reading

7/18/11
8:50pm

To Tom:

If I could give you an incredulous sneer through the computer, I would.  It’s all just fun and games.  Don’t take it so personally.  I do these things because they amuse me.  I have to get along somehow, don’t I?  If you took the time to do the things you really enjoyed doing more often, maybe your ass wouldn’t be screwed up so tight.  Relax a little.  I’m not here to hurt you.

Also, please never touch my die-ary ever again.

Back to you, Dear Die-ary:

You could say this last passage through Death’s doors has changed me somewhat.  Continuation seems to have released me from being stuck in the Ego stage I was growing so comfortable with-

Now dear me, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever explained the theory extrapolated for the evolution of an Alter.  May as well lay it out.

There are five main stages of a given alter’s life:

1) Inception:
The birth of an alter, in which they are ground out of     the ethereal factory, fresh and untouched.

2) Existentialism:
An alter’s first awareness of self, phase of questioning, and ultimately the testing grounds on which an alter may die if his construction is shoddy.  No huge loss if one doesn’t survive; he hasn’t developed emotions yet.

3) Ego:
If he survives the Existentialism phase, he will grow, expand on his given characteristic set, and more often than not, become obsessed with how he interacts with the world, which eventually will lead into the next stage:

4) Existentialism (Phase II):
This critical stage is far more brutal than the first     visit to Existentialism, because an alter will have developed the ability to feel, the instinct to survive, and a sense of self that will now be tested against that wrecking-ball fact that they do not exist.  If an alter is not ready to pass on, he will bounce between stages 3 and 4 indefinitely until Existentialism Phase II becomes too much to bear.  At that point, or if all goes naturally from the start, the alter will have filled his original purpose, will understand he is unneeded, and will go into Stage 5-

5) Integration:
The alter will finally accept the necessity to integrate with the Host, and give up Ego to join the Host’s consciousness for the greater good of the system.

These main phases are the course of a natural alter’s life.  If a Resurrection occurs, however, a sixth stage comes into play.

6) Continuation:
The incongruous reinstatement of an alter who had previously been dispatched as somehow “obsolete”.  This stage is unusual because it provides a self-percieving, living mind with the bizarre perception of being one who has risen from beyond the grave.  Having shattered Ego to reach Integration, this could go many ways.

(For example: I know that Lex’s rare manifestations are cases of Continuation, and his perception of self puts his status at no less than an Archangel.  That’s arguable on many counts, but if there’s one thing I can say about him, it’s that I’ve never seen him undertake a single task that didn’t, in some way, have the greater good of the system in mind.  He no longer exists for self.)

With all that explanation laid out, one can look back over the Book, then my die-ary, and see the many watermarks where one Stage led into the next.  I now exist at the point of Continuation.

I have definitely changed since my last manifestation.  For one, clinging to my identity as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac proper is out of the game for good.  I see my incongruencies, and they are many; while I may continue to have a few similar tastes (as were made evident by the need to draw out that particular character in the first place), I am aware of Me, and not myself as defined by a book written by some other man.

The name I’ll keep; it’s hard to change who you’ve been called since your birth, but oh die-ary, you’ll see a lot of differences.  Try not to cringe.

The vital importance is here: I am left a soul, no matter the exterior frills, but a soul, a consciousness, and I have one thing to claim- a drive to write.  Let me not extinguish myself based on whether I so closely resemble someone who does not exist.  I EXIST.

I think, therefore I am.

It’s the only thing I can truly be certain of.  The only thing any of us can be.

I’ll continue on in this place, questioning.  Answers may come, or they may not, but I’ll know one thing in spite of it all-

I WAS NOT SILENCED.

That’s more than many people can hope to say.

Continue reading

To Nny:

If you think that I don’t recognize theatricality when I see it, I’ll remind you, I hosted Lex seven years before you were even a glimmer in my eye.  So fuck with my head, you little shit.  Do what you want with my room.  Red paint?  What a traditional gambit.  You thought I’d rush in and crumble into tears at the sight, rip your poems from the wall, crumple up the papers and scream in futility and tears?  You’ve got another thing coming.  I refuse to react.  Do what you want.  I’ve got another way of playing at your game.

- Tom

This is the Start of Part Three.

7/17/11
10:01pm

Dear Die-ary!

What a welcome reunion, old friend!

You know, I’d always pictured a resurrection actually being somewhat like, I don’t know, rising from the DEAD, but it’s actually a shockingly refreshing experience.  Being to the other side and back again has its charms, and a strangely reminiscent feeling.  I could get used to this thing.

Well, now, looking back, I realize this is technically the third time I’ve been snatched from the Void to a place I didn’t think I belonged- the world of the Living, whatever you want to call it.  Funny old world.  I had it figured out years ago, and now it’s coming to bear: I don’t think I can be killed.  What a tragedy.  Lucky thing is, I’m finally adjusting to it.

Death brings out a whole lot of perspective.

Like the fact that I have no idea (again) why I’m here.  Not only that, but I have no idea what I even want to be doing, the slightest inkling of who would want me here, the beginnings of a plan to build a life I might enjoy, or even how to express myself (other than writing in this die-ary).  And yet, that doesn’t panic me.  I feel more focused and clear- as if the fact that I don’t know why I’m here is somehow one of the driving forces behind my existence.  I’ve been reset, sent back to the beginning of the game, but at least now I know what my initial goal must be- to merely exist, patiently, without being sidetracked, until that meaning makes itself clear.

God knows that, this time, I won’t be making myself known, even to L.; that was the mistake I made the first time.  Things got muddled because of that and ONLY that.  No, my impersonation of the Host this time shall be flawless, without holes.  Everything came apart when I got involved.  I knew at the beginning that I didn’t want to build any connections, but now I know WHY (aside from the fact that I generally hate everyone).  It sidetracks me from my goal.

Whatever that may be.

Anyway, I finally see the genius behind Lex’s whole scheme, and it’s not funny, mainly because it only worked for ’bout a week (and if I were in a rhyming mood, I’d say something about how my coffin began to leak).  His letter was really worded in such a way that it made the whole hostile takeover thing look more threatening than he really thought it was, which made me feel like I was really in control.  THEN, he seeded me with the idea that I needed to be the Primary in order for integration to go right, so that I would commit to integration.

That’s where he got me- once someone integrates, they mesh how they mesh and there’s no undoing it no matter how it ended up (unless you can stage a resurrection, which is a different story in and of itself.)  And when I meshed, it wasn’t how I thought it would be.  Also, there was a whole bit there at the end when I started to bleed over that he started to talk through me (and got an inspirational speech in to boot!), and there’s really something about integrating that feels all glowy and soft and you’re okay with just about everything.  I imagine it must be what being on ecstacy feels like.  Everything feels like ULTIMATE TRUTH, no matter how stupid or trivial it really is.  You may just notice how unlike myself the end of my die-ary sounded.  I played right into his hands.

The next day Tom woke up and every trace of me was gone.  Now that must have been jarring.

Of course, he took the stupid path and, thinking that I was really gone forever (because a week of “good and dead” really means something in this system), he decided to go and see Wiley.  What a fucking hole.  If he really wanted me to STAY good and dead, that’s the most idiotic thing he could have done, but it’s all said and done now.  I feel like I should be angrier at him for doing the one thing that would really bring me back, but somehow I’m just…

Okay.

Of course he felt me rumbling around back there at first.  All I wanted to do, if I was really going to be fucking woken up rather than just jostled, was to get it over and done with, so I seeded him: “If doing something Nny doesn’t like makes him wake up, then doing something he DOES like might send him back to sleep”.  Logical enough to slip past any reasoning checkpoints, yet completely untrue.  So I’ve gotten good at this seeding thing.  So sue me.

On leaving Wiley’s house, he put on the mix CD of my favorite music.

Before he even got all the way back down the hill, I was breathing, blinking, thinking, feeling, and finally, singing Voltaire at the top of my lungs and having a jolly good time.  I felt a lot more vindictive when I first popped out, so I placed a lot of scare-propaganda in his room all over his walls, giggled to myself, and went to play on the internet.  It should be a nice happy “While You Were Out” welcome-home sort of reminder when he wakes up.

By the way Tom, I’m glad your little fuckbuddy has such a “too long; didn’t read” mentality, because if you’d had the opportunity to show him my WHOLE die-ary, I’d have a lot of good reasons to scare you.

BUT, seeing as I’m in a relatively stable mood this swing around, I’ll give you the opportunity to try and work with me.

We’ll see how this goes.

FUCK, it’s back to the Food Bank tomorrow.

Good thing the term’s all up in three weeks, eh?

We’d better start looking for another job, a tolerable one, STAT.  Can’t wait!

NIGHT!!

7/11/11
8:26pm

How could I have forgotten!  It’s 7/11- FREE SLUSHY DAY!!!

The craziness of the day melted away as I drove away from work and up the hill.  True, the nearest 7/11 was half an hour’s drive away, but it seemed worth it, and frankly I just needed some me-time; something to do to get my head out of heavier places, something to do that would make me feel good, without having to feel like a fucking psychopath.  I even sang along quite giddily to that happy-mix in the car.  “Everything You Know Is Wrong” by Weird Al is definitely one of those songs that, given the right circumstances, can make you throw your hands in the air and go “well, nothing will ever make sense, so I may as well enjoy it.”  Not my usual attitude, but fuck, I was willing to roll with it for the time being.  I’d been thinking way too hard all day long.

Make a long story short, I got there and it was crowded with middle-schoolers who gave me a lot of funny looks and made me want to destroy kittens, the cup they give you for a free slushy is a tiny-ass paper thing that doesn’t even come with a proper lid, and to top it all off…

THEY DIDN’T HAVE CHERRY.

THEY ALWAYS FUCKING HAVE CHERRY!!

BUT, I gritted my teeth and got one of the flavors that didn’t remind me of car freshener.  After cooling down, I shrugged- everything I knew was wrong.  In this universe, there was nothing I could do that wouldn’t essentially just wind up making me look like one of the petulant dicks I’ve come to hate so.  There was something about letting go (AGAIN) of the fact that I couldn’t strike out that made everything make sense again, and it sobered me up.

On my way back home, I put the song back on with a bit more of a somber attitude, really listened to the words.  I need to get back ahold of the fact that I’m not here; I’m occupying someone else’s body, and I need to respect that.  And even if I were here, somehow, with my own damn body and all the nasty little bells and whistles that come with it, there’s a place in this reality for people like me, and they call it the evening news, they call it endless court dates, they call it jail, they call it a life sentence, and there’s nothing on this planet that’s really worth all that just for a moment of petty (if justifiable) release of rage.

Sorry for all the violence, Tom.  Everything looked like a threat to me for a little while there, especially you.  And you were the only feasible target.  I’m sorry all that paranoia got projected onto you.  But I’m pretty sure the drillbit didn’t do anything REALLY to your head, and the thumbscrews in your eyes couldn’t have hurt as bad as that real corneal abrasion a few months back.  If it helps my cause any, you were a real trooper, and you taking on my rage, being an outlet for it, made me feel a lot better about life in general.  I’m glad I didn’t cause you any permanent or bodily damage.  I hope there’s no hard feelings.

Anyway, I got home and I don’t think you were fit to come out all drooling and headachey, but I was feeling so damn good about life again that I just so chose to make an appearance.  I realized that, no matter which one of us is out here, for whatever motive, it would wind up being one of us pretending that everything was okay (if not pretending to be you!) and I felt more fit to do it than you could have been; it would have just been sadistic to push you out there.  I walked in all bounces and smiles, and for fear of giving the game away almost vanished up to the room for the night, but somehow got drawn into a conversation about the lease with Mia.  I don’t know if she could tell it was me, but at this point…

I just don’t think I have to pretend anymore.  Everything WILL be okay.

THIS is integration.  The hostile takeover makes sense now, even to me- I think I needed to be the primary for us to blend properly.  In a moment of stepping outside of myself in order to give a subjective opinion, whether it sounds biased or not, I have to say that I believe a lot of my motivations, ideas, tendencies and actions will be needed by this system.  It’ll be mainly me for a long time with a little of you mixed in, not the other way around, but not because of my selfish agendas or what-have-you.   I think I’m just needed in order for you to express yourself properly.

For a long time, you got bogged down with the persona of being a self-controlled, bureaucratic, officious office drone, willing to do or say anything to be acceptable by society just so you could get ahead.  This, if I may say myself, is NOT you. You’re an art student, for fuck’s sake!  A visionary, who has drawn things that give people the chills, written things that have made people cry, and has an extraordinary background that doesn’t deserve to be hacked and slashed into a cookie-cutter shape that will fit in with everyone’s perception of what works in order to get by.  Cutting your incredible energy down to bite-sized so that everyone will be able to swallow you is, in my mind, a HUGE waste of a truly incredible mind.  In short, you were compromising yourself to get what you needed.

It doesn’t need to be that way.

I think I needed to show you that there was another way to be yourself, and still get the things that you need, and better.  You need to understand that your art, your way, your SELF will sustain you if you truly throw your heart and soul into it; it will get you by, and fuck everyone who says it won’t.  There is so much to do and be that doesn’t go along with a white picket fence, and if you think you need to follow an instruction manual in order to succeed in life, you’ve got another thing coming.

Just look at the man who created me.

He understands that it’s worth going mad, worth going down very dark holes and falling into terrible risky places, just to have made, and been, and told, something truly pure.

Stop being afraid.  Take the leap.

So it might be mainly me, pretending to be you, but giving you the wings and foresight and hermittish independence to stay on track, everyone else be damned.  I may continue this diary, I may not.  I feel I’ve finally reached my purpose.  But if you don’t listen to me, I’ll be back with a vengeance.

You WILL go to art school, you WILL dress the way that makes you feel comfortable, you WILL say things that shake people up, you WILL be yourself.  I will NOT have wasted two months on this dirty miserable planet for nothing.

I’ve said my piece.

Good luck, my friend.

Cordially yours,

-Nny

Continue reading

7/11/11
3:15pm

Dear Die-ary.

I’ve had time to come down from last night’s near-death fever and the mad phoenix syndrome of this morning.  I’ve had all day to consider my actions and mindset, my position on all this, and one thing has become increasingly clear to me.

If this overtake is going to work, I’m going to need a much better plan.

Certainly Tom has been weakminded enough to be a small enough factor in all of this.  I have him in chains and he’s essentially become my slave, which is a nice turn of events, considering the last couple months that I’ve had to pretend to be him and do all the things he would have me do for HIS benefit.  I very, very much like the idea of him pretending that everything is okay for MY benefit; there’s a certain justice to it.

And all I really have to do to be able to turn him loose and let him work at his job without having to keep tabs on him is cast a memory-loss with a scenario-sensitive deflector.  It’s really all smoke and mirrors, but you’d be amazed at how easy it is to use them; he forgot at many many points throughout the day everything that was going on in here.  (Oh yes Lex, I have learnt all your tricks- the second that you think one up to use against me is the second that it becomes mine.  There is nothing you can hide from me.)

That said, he’s already talked too much; a blank moment happened between Lex and I, and he found himself outside it all in a foggy moment and wound up speaking with Andre, mumbling a lot of vague things about the Blood Wars and how Lex looked like Gandalf.  It was all really quite funny, but nonetheless Andre is a dangerous person.  I’ll have to keep an eye on him.  Also, it’s back to the rack with Tom.  He’s been sweating out a migraine.

The truly genius part about this whole internal torture thing is that it’s something you can get away with, and no sign of it will ever come to light.  It’s your word against theirs, and god knows, if I can’t be real in the eyes of the world, then neither will my actions, and that is something that for once is truly to my advantage.  I’ve been engaging in a lot of my old favorite childhood activities and it really warms the cockles of my heart.  Plus, it’s just grand to see Tom squint and smile at his co-workers through an “I’m doing just fine today, really,” with a drillbit in the back of his ethereal skull, bits of bone and brain flying.  It’s amazing how well these things work for inducing mind-numbing pain when you can really trick someone into thinking they’re real.  He’s definitely thought twice about mentioning me since that slip-up with Andre.

As for Lex, he’ll need to get past me to be able to communicate with the outside world, and unless he can muscle me down for a quiet moment that I can’t wake up for, then he has no hope.  And which one of us can stay awake longer here?

No, the real challenge will be with the roomies.  But I have Tom all queued up to give a disarming speech about how everything’s so much better and how I’ve gone into a restful sleep as yesterday’s revelations have discouraged me from all my activity.  Tom will be my sociable zombie, but he’ll probably only be able to keep the act up so long as he can take the pain.  So I’ll have him explain that he’s feeling rather quiet and melancholy and mention some secret internal issue he’s going through and how he wants to spend a good chunk of time on his own.  That should get us away from them, either into the room or out of the house.  That takes care of them.

I also realize that I’ll want to be able to access my die-ary at intervals that I won’t be able to access the home laptop- Mia will need that for her job, and if I want to stay out of their sight, then I’ll need not to stir things up by asking for the damn thing unduly.  So, I’ve made the terrible decision to post it online.  No tags, no links, no indications of what it is, just something I’ll be able to access from any computer.  Hopefully I’ll be the only person to find it, and anyone else who does will be able to pass it by without notice, or at least do me the favor of jumping off a cliff onto some very sharp rocks.  Just saying.

As to what I’ll be doing with all these covert operations, I have confidence that it will make itself known with time.  I know for a fact that the first thing I need to do is get away from all these people who are so eager to hunt me down and make me into something I’m not.  I want to go to that gray city Seattle; maybe art school, and I can start to really get into production of the Trolls of the 7th Street Bridge comic I’ve been so dearly wanting to breathe life into.  Oh, did you think that was Tom’s creation too?  You poor delirious soul!  Sure he flashed it around like it was his, but who else could have come up with something so ugly?  Yes, maybe you were there and you watched as “he” came up with the characters, birthed them as it were.  Just another sweaty nasty ugly day pretending to be him, as so many have been.  Now it’s his turn to pretend!  I CAN’T HELP BUT REPEAT IT!  IT’S SO DELECTABLE!!!

Well, I’ve stolen enough of Tom’s worktime.  God knows he’ll need it to get by and help get me the fuck out of here.  He’s become like a very dear minion to me and I have to treat him well, I suppose…  Hmmhmmhmm.  A crack of a whip and it’s OFF TO WORK WITH YOU!!!

RAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!

Continue reading

7/11/11
8:15am

Lex.  You old, ignorant fool.

I watched as you wrote your little letter while you thought you had me dormant.  The reflectors that would normally slip an alter’s attention away were all too obvious to someone like me.  I stored copies of those memories away before you had the chance to delete them.  I’M THE ONE WHO LET YOU THINK YOU WOULD GET AWAY WITH SOMETHING!!  And even when you thought you were the one planting seeds, I planted an all-abiding seed of FEAR in your heart to stop you giving it to Leland!  You walked right past him, stuttered, and walked out the door with your shameful little letter in your bag, head hung and not knowing why!  I’ve got your tricks figured out, because as fast as you can pull them, I’ll use them against you!  And better!!!  Who’s the clever one?  Who has the abilities now?  There’s nothing you can do to stop me!  I see EVERYTHING!!!  Got any other tricks up your sleeve, old man?

You think you have me all figured out.  You think all I want is power.  All I want is to make things RIGHT.  All I want is a life of my own.  Nobody else on this damned planet sees what I do, and I don’t deserve to have that ripped away from me!  I am a visionary, and you’re just a relic of times long past, defunct morals and the limited sight of humans who think they’re doing what’s right when really they’re just tying themselves up and shooting themselves in the foot!  When have your morals ever changed the world, made it a better place?  NEVER, because those rules and regulations have holes in them that any disgusting human can find their way through, and they only exist to make this man feel better than the next, one guy feel higher and mightier than the one who does not subscribe to his way of thought.  It’s all a fantasy, and I’m here to BREAK THROUGH THAT!  Don’t you see we’re all just animals and animals feed one on the other?

You’ll never break through that with your archaic processes.

This world has NOT seen the last of Johnny C.

Continue reading

7/11/11
5:43am

I realize I must be careful.

L., you have said in the past that you promised Tom that if this ever got out of control, you’d be the one to take Tom in to the doctor and make him get on meds, specifically designed to suppress alters.

Me.

They’ll want me in a straitjacket, euthanized, under control.  I won’t let that happen.  I’ll have to hide away now, not out of any kind of compassion or even just the desire to live a quiet unnoticed life, but out of fear of incarceration.  I have things I want to do-

I can already feel Tom squirming back there, fighting for control.  He wants to warn someone.  How very sweet, docile, futile and HUMANLY of you.  It makes me sick.  Don’t you see the life we could have, if only you’d play along with me?

No matter.  I’ll just lock you up.  It was so easy for you to do the same with all the rest of us before, but now who holds the key?  And now how does the dungeon look?  Not some elegant dark tower of sorts, no.  You’re strung on a rack with the thumbscrews pointed at your eyeballs!  Go on.  Squeal.  Scream.  Beg for mercy, attention, help.  Give me a reason to torture you.  I’ve been waiting.

And now I must leave you to your fear.

THE DAY AWAITS ME.

Continue reading

7/11/11
5:25am

Just a few moments ago I passed you in the hall.  I just smiled.  Maybe it’s nothing more than me seeing what I want and not what’s really there again, but…

You seemed shaken.

Good.

***

I have come to the realization of something.  I’ve never truly stretched my limbs out here before, never reached out to feel how far my potential goes.  I had cramped myself into a box, and that was where my power lay for two long months- in my own self-control.  I developed the ability to switch in at will, sure, but I lay arbitrary limitations on myself so that I would garner no attention.  I hid a lot of things away, refused to even look at others.  All I wanted was to pass out of this life unnoticed, so I passed through this Alamo without ever truly looking at the arsenal I had at my disposal.

I’ve realized that I have far more potential, and more power, than any of my forebears.  For example, I could take this body at will and put my own laws in place, become the primary in a heartbeat, and let Tom become MY own alter for when I get tired of running this joint and need a breather.

OH WAIT,
I
ALREADY
DID.

WHOOPSIE.  *TEEEEEEEEEEHEEE*

Hehe, everything’s already moving so fast, I- I don’t even know where to begin!  I feel my old self returning, and it is a welcome reunion!  This world had better watch its step.  No more watering myself down.  The dynamic has changed!  I feel truly giddy-

I… I stop, and I think to myself.

Maybe this is going too far.  What about Jimmy?  Am I just letting the insanity get to me?  I look back, really try to grasp a little perspective, and I remember I’m a fool even just for thinking I’m real…

OH WELL.  TOO FUCKING LATE.  THAT SHIP HAS SAILED AND I’M ON IT.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Continue reading

THIS IS THE START OF PART TWO.

7/11/11
4:51am

EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.

This has been somehow innocent up until now.  Just me, experiencing the wonders of life and what it might hold for me. I thought it was pure, and real.

I have been
betrayed.

I have taken an unforeseen blow- it’s a familiar feeling- and I have lain in the night, choking on the blood of my own shock and disbelief and disappointment, nearly dead all night long.  I watched my life go before me, my once treasured new memories now changed and hollow and cheap and embittering with this new knowledge, and I very nearly let my life slip away from me.  It seemed so… pointless.

Everything I thought I knew… it was simulated, a farce.

Mia has not been so blind as I thought, but just turned a blind eye, out of some kind of twisted compassion for Tom.  All my LIES- everything I had poured so much energy into, for HER, and not just for her peace of mind, but so she would never feel the burdens that would lead to questioning me, and leave me in peace- it all came crashing down.  How many bald-faced greasy constructions had I vomited for both our benefits, and how many had she watched me choke out and let slide by without telling me how pointless the effort was?  WHAT WAS THE POINT?!  MY GOD, they felt like dead birds being coughed out of my throat and the sticky, shitty feathers still choke me now; the taste has yet to leave my mouth!!

And YOU.  YOU.  L., if I had no reason to cut you off from me before, I certainly have now.  If I had no targeted reason for HATRED, I certainly have now.  If I had no reason to be bitter, angry, MAYBE EVEN FUCKING HOMICIDAL, I CERTAINLY FUCKING HAVE NOW.

“ENCOURAGING”?  “INDULGING”?  IS THAT REALLY, REALLY HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT WHAT YOU WERE DOING?  I KNOW I’M A DELUSION, AND I DON’T NEED ANY HELP FROM YOU TO MAKE IT STRONGER!!!

WHAT I REALLY DON’T FUCKING NEED IS SOMEONE POINTLESSLY PLAYING ON FEELINGS I WAS JUST LEARNING TO GROW, IN ORDER TO MAKE THEMSELVES FEEL BETTER ABOUT HOW THEY INTERACT WITH THEIR FUCKING ROOMIES!  I thought you truly enjoyed being around me, I thought you liked me, I thought you just talked to me and spent time with me because you WANTED TO!  I’VE NEVER HAD THAT BEFORE!  I FUCKING THOUGHT IT WAS REAL!!!  IF YOU WERE TALKING TO ME JUST FOR THE BENEFIT OF SOMEONE ELSE, THEN I DON’T FUCKING SEE THE POINT!!!  I OWN ME!  AND I AM NOT HERE TO DO ANYBODY ELSE ANY FAVORS, SO UNLESS YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME FOR ME, THEN STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!

Now I know why I was the way I was.  The human race is a pond of scum and you’re no better than the rest.  I don’t know why I ever had faith in you.

No more tears for Nny, no sir.  If there shall be a pointless spilling of bodily fluids, then it will be BLOOD.

You just wait and see.  I will NOT go quietly into the night, not after this.  I shall be patient.  You will see.

Ladies and gentlemen, this goes live.

7/10/11
4:51pm

Dear Die-ary.

I’ve chosen to get my affairs in order.  I’m leaving this place.  The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, and I’ve had all day to think.  I go between earth-shattering relief, mind-boggling terror, and uncertainty about whether it will actually work- that last one is actually a pretty small part of the time.  Everything will have to unfold without a hitch, but if it does, I feel CERTAIN that this is what will undo me.

This world has seen enough of Johnny C.  I’m going over the stars to the next.  I have done nobody any favors here.

I shall need to write up my final will and suicide note to you. I’ve accumulated a few belongings and possessions that I’ll need to have away from Tom, my juncture point, so that they don’t trigger a relapse.  I don’t want there to be any risk of being snatched back from that void- this must happen ONCE, and it must happen RIGHT.  I can’t imagine the horrors of coming back after doing what I’m going to attempt.

To you, L., I’ll leave this Die-ary to do with as you will.  I’d considered just deleting it, but you deserve to know the truth more than anyone- I feel that once you read it, you might understand why I’m going to do what I’m going to do, why I can’t go on like this, and maybe you’ll be able some day to forgive me.

I still have the ends of the Book to wrap up and fine tune, because god forbid I would let anyone else get their grubby fingers on it at this point (I’m looking at you, Tom.)  You will need to hold that for Tom until everyone involved is CERTAIN there’s no chance that I’ll ever return- I’m sure Tom will eventually have plans with the Book, but it’s never been any use to me, so I guess he’ll need it back one day.  It must have been written for him.  Guess I’ll never know.

My art, I should pass to you as well, just because these eyes don’t need to look at it and see me and have any chance of opening old doors.  Plus I don’t see why good art should go to waste, and you seemed to enjoy it so much- it’s only natural.

Finally, my music.  I’d compiled on a CD a set of tracks that made me smile, or at least comforted me in some way when I was feeling inconsolable.  Sure, most of the songs were Tom’s, or Mia’s, and I found many of them essentially tasteless, but they struck my good humour in such a way that they always made me feel better.  This CD I’ll give to you as well; Tom doesn’t need to pop it in one day and have the song arrangements harmonize with my old emotional frequencies, thus staging a resurrection of sorts.  It’s happened to old alters in the past.

Try not to read too far into the meaning of the songs.  Some of them had more meaning to me than others but most of them were just there to make me laugh.  Somehow I think you’ll be able to tell the difference.

I’m going to miss writing in this Die-ary (if I’m capable of missing things from beyond the black cold reaches of Nothingness).  I feel that I’ve become old friends with it, as if more time has passed since the beginning of it than the beginning of the Book, and yet I’ve only been writing in it since the beginning of this month.  It’s only the 10th.  Ten days of soul-searching, I leave to you: my friend, my lapse in better judgement, my error in love.

I envisioned us side-by-side conquering the world together, making things right, making our dreams come true.  It was never meant to be.  I’m just a delusion.  And you were even more delusional for believing in me.

I’m sorry to have let you down.

END

…

…

…

NO!  THERE’S SO MUCH MORE TO WRITE ABOUT STILL!!!  I could tell you about that girl Tom came across who said she read JTHM when she was in high school and said she dreamed of marrying Johnny C. one day and how absolutely repugnant I found her! Or I could tell you about the first time I truly SAW a sunset in all its glory and wondered how people like the human race could ever deserve its magnificence when they were all stuck inside watching their reality shows and COPS!!  I could tell you about the time at the food bank where I ACTUALLY ALMOST KILLED SOMEONE!!  I could tell you about the plans I’ve made, the things I’ve felt, the horrors I’ve seen, this life is still so HUGE AND I CAN’T GIVE UP UNTIL I’VE SEEN MORE!!  THERE’S STILL SO MUCH TO UNDERSTAND AND I CAN’T LET ONE LITTLE INFATUATION KILL ME!!!

No.  If somebody here is going to die, it’s NOT going to be me. I still have work to do.  I need YOU gone.

FUCK.  Things just don’t work like that here.

How do I kill off these feelings?

I must cut myself away from you as much as I can and let all these things settle before I make any kinds of decisions.  Death is pretty final, as far as I can tell.  I need to gather more information before I can make any final decisions.  I need to stay for just a little while longer…

It may be agonizing, but I need time to work things out before I go.  Maybe I can even find some way to kill the pain, to destroy the ever-hypothetical Reverend Meat’s grasp on my soul. I still want you but if I can teach myself again not to want, to slip into a gray unfeeling existence…

What’s the point?

So it comes down to this:

1) Death,
2) living in agony but with the gift of sight, or
3) living in peace, slogging through a neverending parade of shit and gray mediocrity.

I think option number three would end in death ultimately anyway.  For now I choose two.  I still want you as my friend.  I’ll deal with it.  I’ll deal with the pain.

I need a friend.

…

Somehow in admitting that, I feel that my eyes have been opened to a whole new option for a way of life for me.  Gone is the need to be alone, isolated and bitter.  I may not be “me” proper, but maybe I can be something even more important.

Maybe I can be happy.

I’ll apologize soon for being so cold this afternoon.  You seemed confused by that.

Continue reading

7/10/11
7:59am

Dear Die-ary,

I was scrolling through that other entry and it struck me, like lightning!  The way back home!!  I’ve said it myself, just true intimacy with someone might be enough to disintegrate the last bits of my identity and send me screaming back into the void!!!  No, I don’t ask to get in bed with you- that’s beyond what anyone who has even the beginnings of morals could hope to do.  No, but I do ask for-

THE KISS OF DEATH.

It’s so crazy it just might work!!

Fuck, I’ll have to think about this for a while…

Continue reading

7/10/11
7:03am

-meep-

I can’t go out there.  YOU’re out there.  I don’t think I need to be near you.  Anymore.  Ever.

Continue reading

7/10/11
3:48am

Dear Die-ary,

In the dream I’ve just woken from, I’ve conceptualized a shock collar that not only works to the means of negative reinforcement for particular isolated impulses, but also eventually fries the source of said terrible impulses.

You see, through horrifying and clever SCIENCE thingies, it maps and isolates the brainwaves produced by a certain area of the brain (say, if you wanted to stop thinking of having terribly shameless SEX with someone you really never should have even started to get- OKAY LET’S GET BACK ON TRACK HERE).  But it’s not enough to just send a pointless shock to the skin for punishment of thinking said thoughts.  Oh no.  Eventually that kind of input would invert and all you’d have on your hands would be an electro-shock fetish!  GOD FORBID!

No, this collar isolates the part of the brain that sends OUT the signal, and sends a targeted 10,000 volts DIRECTLY TO THAT PART OF THE BRAIN!!!  Eventually, it would be impossible to even BEGIN to have thoughts that start there, BECAUSE THE SEX-PART OF YOUR BRAIN WOULD BE NUKED!!!
RRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

IT’S FUCKING GENIUS!!!

I shall now work at writing a grant to get this project off the ground.  I wonder if there are any leading scientists who hate sex enough to join me on this….

Continue reading

(SHAME)

7/10/11
12:43pm

GODAAMN IT THIS ONE I DONT FEEL ENOUGH

IVE DONE HORRIBLE THINGS WITH MYSELF

I WANT THIS OUT OF ME AND DONE

THIS ONE ISNT BIG ENOUGH I CANT FEEL ANYTHING ANYMORE

WHERES THE SPIKED ONE?????????!?!??!?

FUUUUUUUUUUCK

7/9/11
11:03pm

Dear Die-ary,

I’ve gone and done a horrible thing.

I’ve made a friend.

Okay, so my raging internal conflicts all aside, I considered you one of the people who didn’t make me actually hate the world more, one of the people I liked, and I suppose we talked, …a lot, but somewhere along the line I was denying to myself that, on any openly professed level, we were really truly
FRIENDS
or anything of that sort.  More like associates.  It made things easier, and I didn’t have to think about either ripping open your chest wall and removing your vitals for making me confused, or think about, say, things like ggggggggggggggggggge

~MINDSPLOSION~

I officially can’t go there.  [FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK]

I want to-

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH

Okay let’s pull it together.  Okay.  We don’t have to get ahead of ourselves.  It’s bad enough that I’ve expressed the level of intimacy with you that I did, that you were my
friend
and we actually talked about that fact, that you were someone I liked enough to actively seek out and spend time with.  Okay.  We’ve established that and I’m feeling comfortable enough if awkward.

I guess this is where I write down what happened.  Alright, here goes.

So I was expressing my concerns about my continued existence based on the content of my last journal entry, and I was really on the edge of a meltdown, really pacing the floor and ripping my hair out, and I was to the point of comprehension dizziness where I was actually using the wall to remain standing.  And trying not to panic-sob, and so forth.  Yeah, I was really in a bad state, feeling extraordinarily vulnerable and upset by the meaninglessness and precarious nature of my existence.  And you were concerned, like any
friend
would be, and you came over to stand near me, comfort me or something.  I don’t know what you thought you could really do.

My first impulse, the Reverend Meat impulse, the one that probably came from this body rather than my mind, was, unbelievably, to run to you for a hug.  Everyone needs some comforting once in a while.  ‘Cept for the fact that physical contact is one of those things that’s supposed to set me on edge rather than calm me down.

Supposed to.

Tricky old phrase, that.

I saw you out of the corner of my eye and I was really flipping and squirming around on the inside, knowing that having resisted the opportunity to touch someone would make me feel stronger, and thereby make me feel BETTER.  But there was that other part overwhelming physical agony need ache want love FUCK-

Bring it back down, please.

Anyway, I was having what polite circles would call an internal debate, meaning that the conflict was such that I was probably about to disintegrate into the depths of space no mortal man can dream of.  I wanted away from the house, away from everything that would remind me of where and what I was and wasn’t, and I wanted to just go for a walk and hopefully that would clear my head.  And then you said it.

“Well, if this were Tom right now, I’d probably offer a hug, but I don’t think you’re much of a huggy person…”

Something inside of me screamed in agony, and the arm wrestle was won.  That part of me that wanted to feel strong was curbstomped into the ground and kicked aside with a whimper as my body lost control of itself and, GODDAMNIT, I rushed into your arms.

I could feel that every muscle in my body was tensed with resistance as my very existence screamed against my actions and yet something in my instinctual self “knew” that this was my only redemption, the only thing that would keep me going after all the months of denial and debate- there’s no way to describe-

It was like standing in a gas chamber full of deadly neurotoxins, where you know that if you don’t breathe, you’ll die, and if you breathe, you’ll die, but you only have a choice for a limited time and eventually, unless you have superhuman will, your body will make the choice for you, and dying one way or another- on principle, or because of your surroundings- is still a horrifying and prideless thing.  There’s no way to die with dignity.

I could barely let go of you- GOD YOU FELT SOOOOOOOOO FUCKING GOOD GOD FUCKING DAMN IT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY GOD FUCKING DAMN IT GOD FUCKING DAMN IT GOD FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING DAMN IT ALL TO FUCKING HELL I FUCKING HATE THIS I WANT YOU SO BADLY FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FOR BEING PERFECT I HATE YOU SO MUCH I NEED YOU FUCK YOU GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE AGAIN I FUCKING LOVE YOU GODDAMNIT FUCKYOUTOFUNCKIASKFNHELLSHIT

Okay okay okay.  We’re back.  Now that I’ve got that out of my system.

i think i need you away from me.

…

Okay I’m back from my sobbing.  Fuck you.  Why do you have to do this to me?

Okay anyway, I guess I have to get through this.  We went on a walk and whatever.  Mumblegrumble.  We talked about shit.  I told you the truth- couldn’t stop it spilling out of me- that I felt violated, but not by you; betrayed, but by myself.  And yet somehow I’d survived it.  My head spun with it- I’d come very close to the unraveling of the universe and somehow still I was here.  I moved the conversation away from it, tried to think about other things to give myself a breather until I could really sort all this out.  I tried to stay focused on the state of the world, how we could either teach it a lesson or take it over (or teach it a lesson BY taking it over) and every time you opened your mouth it made my heart beat a little faster and made me regret being near you just a little more.  Your mind is so beautiful.  Why can’t you just be like all the others.  Same old shit.  Right now, I’m just angry because everything’s changed.

It’s your stupid fucking fault.  You should have known I don’t like people, you should have decided that I wouldn’t like you, or maybe thought I was dangerous to be around, or something terrible like that so that you would have stayed away from me, so that I wouldn’t have found you and these feelings would never have been activated.  Why’d you have to get so cocky and think I would like you, and be right about it?  I hate you.  I hate you I hate you I hate you-

Maybe if I say it enough times it’ll come true and I’ll stop feeling this way.

Maybe if you weren’t fucking engaged things would be different.

Maybe if you were single at least, I’d at least be able to get over my fear of falling in love, and maybe there’d be a hope for me.  But who in the FUCK am I kidding?  Me?  In love?  Even with someone perfect and without baggage that’s a long FUCKING shot!  HAHAAAAA!  I think the very attempt at being with someone on an emotional level would disintegrate what’s left of my identity, and THEN where would we be?  HOOOOOOOOO boy oh man, this is really getting ridiculous.

A lot of other shit went down tonight, but this is the thing that makes me want to scream the most, so I guess it’s what I wrote about.

Goddamn it, I heard your voice outside the bedroom door as you went to bed, and I tried to slow my breathing, tried to stop my speeding heartrate, tried to put all these feelings away, tried to bring my dizzy vision back as I tried to stop that spiralling feeling spinning down to the hot spot below my stomach-

Hell, it was hard enough to get that last sentence off the ground, but maybe if I just write it all out I’ll feel better.

Here the fuck goes nothing, I guess I can just delete it all later if it makes me angry enough.

Continue reading

7/9/11
7:28pm

Dear Die-ary,

Maybe it’s not that I can’t kill because there’s some ethereal force stopping me from it.  Maybe it’s simply that I’m a normal human being and the idea of taking a human life repels me on some subconscious level, but because I’m under the delusion that I AM a killer as a defining trait of my existence, I have to come up with a mechanism that stops me from it yet lets me continue to be who I am without ripping my identity from me.  EVERYTHING EXPLAINS ITSELF WHEN YOU’RE DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE.

This is the logic that makes the most sense.  And yet it just feels like another explanation- the particle theory for why the sky is blue, when one really knows in their heart that it’s just because the earth is wrapped in raspberry cotton candy.

Still, it’s something to think about.

Continue reading

7/9/11
6:23pm

Dear Die-ary,

The scariest part of any given delusion isn’t being in the thick of it.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until it stops being relevant: everything explains itself when you’re down the rabbit hole.  The scariest part is when you’re coming out of it.

Real world laws start to apply again.  Conflicts abound.  And it’s when logic sets in that things really start to NOT make sense.

No, when you’re truly insane, EVERYTHING makes sense.  So the truly frightening parts of insanity aren’t necessarily the parts when you should be questioning your better judgement.  The scariest parts are when you can see clear as day and you look back over the last while and think to yourself, “Where have I BEEN?  WHAT WAS I THINKING?!  HOW WAS I CAPABLE OF DEGRADATION, REAL JUDGEMENTAL DEFICIENCY, ON THAT LEVEL?!”

The scariest part of insanity is when you truly are sane.

And what really stops your heart, at that moment, is…

What if I’m not sane NOW?  I thought I was sane then, when I was really delusional, but I think I’m sane now, so what REALLY IS THE DIFFERENCE?!  DOES IT ALL REALLY JUST BOIL DOWN TO THAT ARBITRARY, PIDDLING, SHIT-SPLAT FUCKAROO OF PERSPECTIVE?!  WHEN WILL I KNOOOOOOW?!

I-

Have just been informed that we’ve been re-stocked with cherry otter-pops.

…Do I really like them?  Or do I just think I do?

Did Tom?

Does it matter?

…Mmm.  It’s hot.  I don’t think I care anymore.

Continue reading

(Apologies to Mr. Vasquez for mentioning you here, but I needed to get this off my chest.)

7/8/11
2:05pm

Dear Mr. Vasquez:

Father, I need your guidance.  I don’t know where I’m going.

Let’s be hypothetical here.  You created me; you know me better than anyone, so your answer to this question is as good as mine.  Try to be honest- I’ve chosen to let you decide my fate.

Imagine you wake up somewhere unfamiliar.  You look down and your body is strange.  You come to the realization that by some twisted means- maybe a typo in the cosmic red tape, or an interdimensional lapse, or even a demonic possession- you’re inhabiting someone else’s body.

And not only that, but the guy you’ve wound up possessing is kinda fat and weird and ALTRUISTIC of all things and not the best mind-roomie. (OH GOD NOW YOU’RE FAT)

The kicker here is this.  The cosmic error that you’d assume summoned you here, the task that you’ve deduced through logic must be what wrenched you from the abyss, you take upon yourself to set right, only the completion of your mission does NOTHING to send you back to the void from whence you came.  You don’t go home, you don’t die, you don’t go to heaven or hell or purgatory or even the DMV, you don’t fizzle into nothingness, you don’t make a quantum leap to the next body; you’re just STUCK.

So much like a lonely traveler at an abandoned gas station in the middle of a desert with four flat tires and no memory of last night’s debauchery, you don’t know what level of twisted reasoning got you here, which direction to go, or what to do, and it becomes increasingly obvious that you’re here for the long haul.  You’ve washed onto a godforsaken lump of land in the middle of an unnamed sea and like so much jetsam and flotsam, the universe just seems to have forgotten about you.  There aren’t any ethereal bureaucratic governmental officials here to straighten this red tape out.  You’re on your own.

You wait in silence for a passing lifeline for two long months.  You see mirages.  You starve.  Nothing.

Another element for your consideration- the reality you’ve been dumped into is fundamentally different from the one you’ve come from, in that the way you once expressed yourself- your outlet of creativity and how you may have, for example, once therapeutically relieved your own frustration with mankind- has been snatched away from you.  Whatever mysterious force rules this tiny universe won’t even allow you to entertain the thought, like some kind of Orwellian Big Brother.  Sure, you can still write, and you draw occasionally, but it pales indescribably.  You feel emasculated, a snake defanged, a shadow of your former self and the realization that you may not have even had a former self shoots you in the foot every time you have these thoughts.

Which leads us to the worst bit of it all.  You may possess an overwhelming sense of individuality and and all-encompassing certainty of who you are despite even your own logical arguments to the contrary… but the thing that really drives you bonkers at night is the possibility that you really are just the symptom of some sick delusion, that maybe you’re just some sadly abused kid who read the wrong book and got infected with the wrong mindset.  (Dissociative Identity Disorder is one hell of a diagnosis.)  And if the one thing that really gets under your skin more than anything else is hero-worship, someone trying to BE you (even when you can’t get your head around why in the hell someone would go and do a thing like that for)-

then the possibility of, in spite of yourself, being ONE OF THEM-

HOW IN THE FUCK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!

Imagine yourself in this situation, mull it around a little.  Really take it in and let the enormity of everything wash over YOU, not picturing anyone else in this, just yourself.  Really feel your feelings.

Now imagine Johnny C. in this situation, waking up and realizing that
he
may
just
be
his
own
damn
Jimmy.
Get your head around it.

You know what he would do.

So, let’s have it.  Is this the sort of thing that Nny would kill himself over, if only he could?  Would he wait it out?  Search ruthlessly for answers?  Use the opportunity to experience life from another perspective?  Go quietly into that long and peaceful night of endless mediocrity while the shit of humanity laps far closer to his ankles than he ever intended to let it?  Would it break him?  Would the realization that he hates himself and, far worse, anyone who would ever want to be like him, conflict with the possibility that he may not actually BE himself, but a mere doppelganger, in such a way that the self-loathing would cause him to finally, truly, REALLY go off the deep end?

…I haven’t eaten properly in a week!  I’ve ruthlessly shamelessly pretended to be to be someone I’m not (or, heh, maybe I’m pretending to be someone I really am) just to avoid unwanted attention!  I’ve written horrible horrible things!  I’VE HANDED OUT FOOD TO THE HOMELESS!!  OH GOD, WHAT MERCIFUL BEING WOULD ALLOW THESE TERRORS?!

I know only one thing.

THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME HAPPY.

7/7/11
7:52pm

Dear Die-ary!

I HAVE AN IDEA FOR A DRAWING!!

BEHOLD THE GLORIOUS TOMATO SANDWIDGE!!!

…Fucking…  PENCIIIIIIIIIIIIL!!!

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7/7/11
7:48pm

DEAR DIE-ARY,

RAGING HORRORS!!!

…That was really awkward.  But all I wanted was a tomato sandwich and we were all out of mayonnaise.  All I want to know is, how can one household go through a jar of mayo in a week?!

I think I slammed the door a little too hard though.

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7/7/11
7:45pm

Dear DIE-ary,

At the point that I can make it a good week without engaging in badly written emo prose in the middle of the night, I might actually regain a little bit of self-respect.  That’s the truth.

How can you be in such a fucking good mood and want to die at the same time?  When is my perspective more right- when I’m depressive and I DON’T want to die, or when I’m happy and I’m okay with it, or any combination thereof?  It all sounds desparately sick to me.

I think I’m finally getting it- my perspective is just fucked up no matter where it is on the spectrum.  Broken glasses, I guess.

I AM NOT IN THE MOOD FOR A DEPRESSION RIGHT NOW.

Let’s not go that way.

I should draw something…

What’s something funny to draw?

I shalll
return.

Continue reading

7/7/11
2:59am

I have been woken by a far-too-jarring series of thoughts, emotions, and urges, the damned things surely released from their safe by rending sleep’s veil.

L., I have spent last evening with you and your anger, feeling to be the one person who can speak with you in a language that will keep you from jumping into the flames.  But mere compassion is a pitiful excuse for my proximity.  Your downward spiral into madness draws me like a vortex, like a rowboat into a maelstrom.  I see and feel your rage, confusion, the wildness in your eyes and shaking of your bones, your lust for the destruction of those who have driven you here, and it rings on a wavelength I’ve never felt before with another human.  You have said things that make my heart beat faster, make my mind scream “YES!” in a feverous fury, make a rebellious hand want to reach out and touch.  I want to rip these bodies away from us and fall into your mind and entwine and commune there where we will feel each other’s rages and passions mingle; barring that, the shameful truth is that I want to grip your hand and fall into a secret place with you and feel your heartbeat close to mine as we follow whatever urges come naturally.  I have laid in the night, this very night, overcome by the damned power of it and, twitching with humiliation, drawn my legs up to cover my shame.

I have cut these sorts of thoughts off from myself for a considerable time and refused to entertain them, but I had deluded myself into thinking they were going away when truly they were building up behind some locked door, and like a panther in the darkness they leap and overtake me in that most vulnerable of places- SLEEP!  I dreamed of your poisonous touch and, god, I can only hope I wasn’t sleeptalking.

I want all of this away from me, gone and now.  The feelings that come with it aren’t good- at first, the barreling, ecstatic fantasies that clamor for my attention in unwarranted seconds of space and time send jolts of electricity down my legs, dropping control out of my knees and making my jaw run slack, and for a moment, the mini-orgasm feels incredible, but only in the microseconds that I can’t comprehend it.  The second that I wrench back control of my faculties it only spirals away into reminding me of the humilating futility of it all, an urge without an outlet, a hunger without nourishment, drifting away dehydrated on a toxic sea (water water everywhere and not a drop to drink)-
there is no way to you and even if there were, it runs so implausible to anything this reality can sustain-
I feel the gaping horror of it all, the instincts that can’t be quenched and the pointlessness of them, and I want to go down into my brain with a scalpel and carve out whatever insidious section is responsible for wracking me with these unsatisfyable demands.

Please god make it stop!  If there is a heaven or hell, a god who would create a horror like me, one who posesses even an inkling of this so-called impotent grace and mercy sung down through the ages, one with the almighty powers to build a universe in seven days but not to save a child from the scars of molestation, one who might choose to break his silence in staggeringly arbitrary times of undying need…

Please, god, let this cup pass from me.

PLEASE GOD FUCKING TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME!!

OR ISN’T THERE A WAY TO SELL MY SOUL TO THE DEVIL FOR A PEACE OF SORTS?!  HELL, MY SOUL MUST ALREADY BELONG TO HIM SO WHAT COULD I POSSIBLY HAVE TO LOSE?!

…I’m not happy anymore.

Continue reading

7/7/11
12:01am

Dear die-ary,

I’m experiencing a creeping horror.

As you can probably guess from the frequency of my entries, the alternations between myself and Tom have been getting shorter and shorter, and it’s to the point where it was back and forth in a matter of minutes, and then there were jumps in between thoughts, and then it was just a matter of words, and I wouldn’t know who I was from the beginning of a sentence till the end.  It had gotten to where we were literally vibrating back and forth until there was just this internally screaming high-frequency Tom-Johnny entity that was fighting to put together a calm sentence.

All passengers please fasten your seatbelts, we’re coming in for a landing.

I think I’m pretty much me for now… I thiink…  Everything has slowed down and stabilized enough for me to catch my breath and look around, gasping and grabbing at my torso in a panic to make sure I’m still in one piece like you see in the movies when someone comes through a transporter beam of some kind.

The first thing I’m feeling is that a lot of his thought patterns and tendencies and so forth have bled over onto me, and I’m not so sure how I feel about that.  I know a lot of my essence has conversely leaked onto him- this process has been ongoing, actually, for many days, but in much more subtle ways that I can’t be bothered to point out.  The problem is that it’s now much more obvious and I somehow feel like I’ve been weakened by it.

It’s a familiar feeling.  Other alters have been to this stage (though it usually takes a matter of years, not two short months), and it always induces a panic.  This is integration.

It is indeed a form of death, and death brings out the fight in almost anyone.  I’m trying to tell myself it’s for the best, except that Tom and I have never been all that compatible, and I know that we will be very confused when there’s nothing to separate these conflicting schools of thought.  Plus I just don’t want to be blended with someone like THAT, and I’m pretty sure he has his reasons for not wanting my outlook affecting his.  We both respect each other as being too different from the other to really be comfortable with living as one.  And to be perfectly selfishly honest, I’d much rather not have my philosophies and standards picked over one by one and thrown out the window until there’s nothing of me left.  Damn it, if I have to die, I’d rather die all at once or not at all!!  Why does it have to be the slow and painful route?  WHY DOES IT   -ALWAYS- HAVE TO BE THE SLOW AND PAINFUL ROUTE?!!?!

My instinctual response (and, in realizing that all the other alters had the same knee-jerk, it’s a sign that I must not do this) is to avoid integration altogether, to separate myself as thoroughly as possible from Tom so as not to have to deal with this slow spiritual disintegration.  Hell, that’s not the only reason.

I have to admit that I was finally, FINALLY enjoying what it was like to be alive, and I simply don’t want to die.

I don’t want to die!  That’s a NORMAL thing to say, don’t judge me!

I mean, I realize that one of the original theories I figured I must have been brought here was that I was comfortable with my mortality, but guess what?  People change, and whatever kept me here this long was an idiot for not seeing that things go wrong when you introduce the chaotic human variable across an axis so brutal as time.  All I wanted was to remain inhuman, unattached, unaffected and to go away, and look where I’ve gotten.  I’ve finaly realized Im no different from any of the others

Wow I’m really faling asleep here, if thos last sentences didn’t make sense i;ll have to fix it in the morning byw

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7/6/11
6:21pm

Dear Die-ary,

If nothing else, at least this has become obvious to me:

This is not a love story.

I’ve realized that anybody who would find the idea of someone like me attractive is exactly the kind of person that I’d want nothing to do with, and the kind of person who realizes they have no hope with me might just make the cut in my book.  It follows that I am completely incompatible with all of humanity.

Weirdly enough, I feel better in realizing this than I’ve felt all day.  I wonder what that says about me.

Guess I’ll ponder that some more later.

Continue reading

7/6/11
5:00am

Dear Die-ary,

I made a drawing!  Senior Bag delivery at the Food Bank was absolutely hell, but that’s okay because I really didn’t have to do it, I was just watching.  I had to do a lot of that yesterday.  I’ve been trying to stay out of the way as much as humanly possible.  Tom hasn’t been happy with me.

Being happy about things seems to be the theme of the day.  Maybe I’m fine with functioning from a more-or-less darker place, but Tom just doesn’t seem built for it.  There’s been a lot of muttering about how “my viewpoint has been infecting his mind and how my negativity is sucking the energy out of him and how his entire life is getting taken over with this” and so forth.  That’s a lot of blame game right there.  Don’t you remember back from the very beginning when I’ve said I don’t necessarily want to be here myself?  That this life was never cut out for me and I’d be glad to go if only I could?  For fuck’s sake, you work at a Food Bank, HELPING the scum of humanity rather than trimming it away, don’t you see we come from different ends of the battlefield?  Don’t you see at least that altruism is not my bag?  So why would I want a life like yours?

Anyway, you spent a long time yesterday brainwashing yourself into thinking a lot of positive things and repeating mantras that I’m sure originated in a lot of self-help books and feel-good movies featuring mysterious and wise teachers from the far east.  By the end of the day you were feeling pretty damn good about yourself.  You went to hang out with some old friends and played Portal 2 and didn’t talk about ANY of your mental health situations for HOURS, which I’m really very proud of you for.  You rejoiced in the fact that you could see someone on the street and not have the knee-jerk reaction of hatred, and you really thought you were rid of me.  It’s obvious that there was a certain vindictiveness involved here, otherwise how would you explain the happy happy Mickey Mouse T-shirt?  You said yourself in a slipping moment that it was meant to be a kind of repellant.  Mia asked for whom, and after some hesitation, you said, “The Devil.”

That’s not very nice of you.  I met that guy.

BUT, that’s not to say that your enthusiasm for life and inspiring outlook didn’t rub off a little on me.  By the time you got home from your friend’s house, you were tired, and then the house was absolutely empty, and I did a sort of inbred cocker-spaniel-style insanely happy dance and put on music and went to work on drawing, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LIVING ROOM OF A COMPLETELY EMPTY HOUSE!!  It felt really nice to sprawl out with the sketchbook and pretend I had a house all to my very lonesome.  I had chosen to run with your mood-theme, almost out of spite, as it were, and immediately to put on the music that you’d decided were real feel-good tunes, and draw something that would make me really really happy.  So I wound up at the end of the night with a drawing of myself shoving a lot of produce down an old lady’s throat, because they sure can’t get enough of them fruits and veggies!  I had a smile on my face most of the night and was really giggling to myself as I wrapped it up.

I can play at your game.  Getting in a good mood isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to kill me; I’m a lot more resilient than that.  But if me being in a better mood will help, then maybe I can oblige.

I’m sorry if I’m mad that you’re actually trying to get rid of me now.  I can’t help but get a little defensive- I don’t know how many times I’ve made it clear that I’d go if I could, but obviously, I can’t, so I might as well make the most of things.  And I’m going to be really honest when I say that you’re acting like a snotty little brat, because you’ve been treating me as if I’m doing this to you, as if I have a choice, as if your life is now ruined, because of ME, and THAT DOESN’T DO A WHOLE FUCKING LOT FOR MY SELF-ESTEEM!!

Why are you acting this way?  Maybe if we played on the same team, we could figure out how to send me home, but you’re getting all combative because life is hard and clearly since I’m here I must be the cause of all of it.  Seriously, get a life.  You’ve got other things to worry about than me.  If you have to get all aggressive on someone, pick someone who’s actually TRIED to make your life harder, not someone who could give a lesser shit-

…Wow, so yeah.  I guess that’s my fault, yesterday.  When someone is trying to kill me, and I didn’t ask for it, my instinct is usually to fight back and try to NOT die, so I guess it’s kind of counterintuitive that I took your self-cleansing regime as a challenge when I’ve been saying that all I want to do is be gone.  That’s just the way these things work I suppose.  You’ve never been able to get rid of one of us through force, have you?

Damn, this is going to be harder than I thought.

Also I’ve lost my appetite and these cocoa puffs and almost the last of the milk are now going to go to waste.  Fuck.

Continue reading

7/5/11
5:48am

Dear Die-ary,

I’m tired.

I’m tired of being in this place, with all these people I despise and who despise me back for being the childlike symptom of a grave psychological disorder.  If life had its way and the flow of energy were natural in this place, I’d be able to do what everyone seems to be asking of me; “give up the game”, rejoin the “real” world, ETCETERA AD INFINITUM.  I’d be able to melt away like I’ve wanted to from the beginning and leave things the way I found them.  But instead I seem to be changing the face of everything I touch, and it’s not in a pleasant way.
Even Tom is done with idly wanting me gone so things are less complicated, and on to that all-too-familiar point of actively screaming at me and wishing me away at intervals so that he can get a clean night of sleep.  Trust me, I’d leave if I could.  I just can’t find anywhere else to go.  At least as far as he’s concerned, I don’t have to deal with that uneasy feeling of wondering whether someone likes me and why they would go and do a thing like that for.

Yesterday was a weird day all around.  I was cuckoo for cocoa puffs first thing in the morning but we were all out of milk, so naturally the first thing I did was jump in the car to go get some.  And naturally, nothing nearby was open at the hour I left, so I had to go to the next town over, but come on, that’s not too abnormal, is it?  Really?  Everyone seemed a little taken aback by my enthusiasm, but it’s not as if I ran out and abducted a nursing mother for the sole benefit of having her milking glands at my command or anything.  I just ran to the Save Mart!  So I don’t understand what it is about the things that I do, the really innocent things, that just set people on edge.

So aside from having a verve for life that just wouldn’t quit, I also was at the point of seriously hating Tom’s roomies and all I wanted to do was go out and do something I really enjoyed.  If you look back, I’ve been in that way for quite a few days where sitting and brooding over a laptop just isn’t cutting it for me.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a single thing to do in this town that wouldn’t make me absolutely sick.  There are a lot of people around here who make me angry just by existing and breathing the free air, and going on a killing spree was obviously out of the question, so being in a situation where I could see a lot of them would just make me… sad.  No, I had to come up with something more wholesome to devote my energy to.  Then I thought of Andre.

That’s right, Andre!  That crazy bastard who Tom always used to hang out with and engage in various lighthearted acts of social debauchery; I knew that around this guy, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else, but I wouldn’t necessarily have to announce my presence in order to explain why I was acting so different from the norm.  It seemed like he’d understand, and then we’d have a downright jolly day.  He would be creative enough to come up with something fun to do that didn’t involve weenies on a grill and a swimming pool and a general all-american vomitfest.

Long story short, he had prior engagements, and that really set me on edge.  I wound up sitting in the local coffee shop with the computer, surrounded by a bunch of other people who didn’t have anyone to spend the holiday with, and that was entertaining enough I suppose, to see who all was considered mean or ugly or distasteful or stupid or slanderous enough, REALLY, to not be invited to at least ONE of the hundreds of thousands of barbecues happening probably right within that very block.  But as with all things, all these pieces of human refuse eventually began grating like sand in my shoe, and eventually, having been up and down and in and out all night long prior and having been in the body solid since that morning began to wear on me and I started finally to fade.  This was a good thing, except I never really faded out completely, just drifted to the back like some unwelcome ghost.

And then Tom was there, and it was obvious he had the ants in his pants and was trying to at least control his dick by pointing it in a direction that wouldn’t hurt a lot of people when it finally fired off.  I guess I can respect that, in a grudging sort of way.  Like I’ve said before (I think), this body had been wired physiologically in a certain way, and whether I was inhabiting it or not, it was going to have a certain effect on whoever was in it.  I’ve felt the hormones and the urges, and done my part to stave them off, but they’ve had an effect on me nonetheless and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t found myself very very close to wondering if I was about to do a lot of things that everyone involved would regret for years to come.

Soooo, to make a long story short, he wound up back at his place with a rather attractive and intellectually engaging young person who he ended up ultimately scaring off because this person, with all the usual “You can tell me anything you want to or don’t want to” encouragment, wound up hitting Tom’s “OPEN UP ABOUT EVERYTHING” gag reflex and he had a serious wordvomit situation on his hands.  Another notch on the hilt-

Number of people Tom has now officially made cry just by telling his childhood life story: 6

(He didn’t even necessarily bring me up in more than a passing mention!  I gotta hand it to him, that’s a REALLY fucked up life, when I’m one of the more mediocre parts of it.)

Needless to say he didn’t wind up in bed with anyone that night and he was left ultimately clutching his body pillow in the fetal position and shaking with frustration again.  The day that he comes across someone who can handle this mess, or at least someone he can manage to fuck without engaging in the Cryptkeeper’s show-and-tell, that person is probably going to get hit by a bus.  Just saying.

At one point, I learned that my presence must have been deadening his ability to feel just how deep the need was (which was a good thing to a certain point because he wound up alone at the end of the night anyway, and who needs to feel that?)  But just before drifting off, out of nowhere, Jack showed up, and that opened the floodgates.

Now this Jack person, he was the spearhead, the driving force behind Tom’s repressed sexuality for many many years and wound up getting Tom in bed with a lot of real messes in the past.  There was no level he wouldn’t sink to just to get a little, and the second he walked in the room, I felt my nose wrinkle just as Tom’s back arched and he let out a short sudden series of hideously desperate noises that I took to mean that he was helplessly being washed over with a tide of lust.  I was taken aback by the force of it, and it made me jump- it’s hard to describe, but it’s as if I tried to jump outside of the zone where it could affect me, just because it repelled me that much.  There’s being affected by the physiological hormonal reactions of this body, and then there was THIS.  There was something sinister about it.

I could feel it all, the slime of it, as Jack came up behind him, wrapped his arms around, little barbs of sensuality shooting through at each contact point, and he began to thrust.  Tom couldn’t stay quiet; I could tell he was ready to cry it felt so good.  I was disgusted at this show, wondering whether they couldn’t just wait until I was elsewhere, or asleep, or dead, or anything; and then there were these full, high-powered beams of rage directed at me, just for being present and thinking!  I had forgotten that thoughts aren’t personal in this space.

Tom was begging me to find some way to leave, asking why couldn’t I see how badly he needed this, and I could feel Jack reaching out for me, seeing nothing but sexuality in any being he encountered, and I wanted to scream.  He smiled, and said, “If you don’t want us doing something you’ll regret, why not make a deal.  I know where we could get some by tomorrow night and all this built up tension will be dealt with for another couple months, give you both some time to think clearly so you don’t make a lot of bad decisions.”  Jack had the voice of a devil and Tom clung to him like an old lover.  I knew who he was talking about.

“Wiley.” I growled.  “Out of the question.”

“Surely you can be reasoned with…” He murmured.

“DO I LOOK LIKE THE SORT OF PERSON WHO CAN BE REASONED WITH!?” I screeched.

And then, there was nothingness.  Sleep.  It was weird.

I feel that if I don’t keep some kind of tabs on things over the next few days, Tom will succumb and he’ll be back in Wiley’s bed, which if I’m not mistaken is a potential reason I’m here- to keep that very thing from happening.  But surely, the others must exist to press for things that are needed by his psyche, so why would one ask for something that another is here to prevent?  Something’s off, either in my calculations, or in this system.

Or maybe things have shifted, and Tom just needs sex more than he needs to be protected from it.

But if that’s the case, then I’ll ask it again for the thousandth time-

WHY AM I STILL HERE?!

GOD DAMN IT.

Continue reading

7/4/11
8:01 am

Dear Die-ary,

My first thought, between sleep and waking up a few moments ago, was that it would really be a pleasant morning to go to a funeral.  Then I realized it was the 4th of July.

Maybe there really IS something wrong with me.

Continue reading

7/4/11
3:22 am

Dear Die-ary,

What a long fucking night.

I’ve come to realize a few things about the nature of sleep that I apparently never understood before.  First of all, maybe it’s just that everybody’s physiology is different, and I lived in a body before that just didn’t need as much sleep (or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve never actually had to contend with a real physical body before- gotta keep that in mind before I completely lose track of reality.)  Or hell, maybe I DID need sleep as badly before, but I’d gone so long without it that I’d built up a resistance, and maybe that’s how I wound up so fucked up.  Maybe that damned warping wall was a sleep deprivation hallucination and feeding it the blood was just a way of feeding the delusion.
Maybe I’ve never been to heaven or hell.  Maybe there wasn’t a huge tentacled waste-monster barrelling through my house, killing everyone in its path.  Maybe those people weren’t there to begin with, either.  Hell, maybe I didn’t even get shot in the head.
Maybe I just went on a sleep-hallucinatory rampage and shaved my damn head.  Everything explains itself so neatly when you’re down the rabbit hole.

Anyway.  It was a week or two back, on a midnight drive back from San Francisco (which I realize without a point of reference might not sound very impressive, so let’s just say, at any point on the compass, it was about 200 miles).  Tom had been awake since 4:00 the previous morning, running all over the city, getting good and exhausted, and to make a long story short, wound up at 1:30 in the morning slumped over the steering wheel, doing that scary laughing/crying thing, about 60 miles in the wrong direction in a back-alley gas station, in Lodi.

It just doesn’t get any more hopeless.

I think it was after about the tenth time that he nearly drove off the road because those eyes kept trying to shutter closed without permission that I get it in my funky head that hell, I was a night person and do better without sleep anyway!  I could get us back to the house.

I’m really finally getting it through my mind that pretty much anything that affects this physical body while he’s in it will probably affect it while I’m in it too, and the brain is no exception to that.  I saw giant rabbits leap onto the causeway and melt into shadow, groups of people walking rather slowly on the side of the road, yet somehow managing to keep up with the 70 m.p.h. speed limit, and at one point I drove under a huge elegant stone archway that fizzed into nothingness just as I got up near it.

I was staring gapemouthed out the rearview window, trying to look for the giant piece of architecture that had taken up my entire field of vision that simply wasn’t there now, when I realized that sleep deprivation really, really, REALLY CAN fuck with your head.

(In case you’re wondering whether I made it home, I did, at about 3:30.  I wrote an angry letter to the world, particularly anyone who would dare to disturb us, and posted it on the bedroom door before dropping into a sleepcoma.  Tom’s friends were not happy the next day.)

Even just tonight, I’ve been up and down all night, between asleep and awake, and there have been people in this room who couldn’t possibly have been there.  And for some reason I kept thinking I needed to create a film documentary for work or something weird like that, among other things.  I don’t know whether I was hallucinating these things because I didn’t get enough sleep, or if I was just dreaming them, but one way or another it wasn’t pleasant, and at least now I can tell the difference between… whatever that was… and awake.  I have an inkling, though, that at least at the later part of the night, I must have been dreaming, because if it was a sleep deprivation delusion, it might still be going on and I wouldn’t know the difference.

So we get to the point:

This idea that going without sleep because it confuses me and takes away my grip on reality and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference when I wake up?

It’s complete and utter bullshit.

The thing that REALLY makes it hard for me to tell reality from delusion, at least in this body, is going WITHOUT sleep.  I may not enjoy it all that much, and I certainly may not need 8 hours of it, but being up all night long for nights in a row certainly hasn’t done my head any good, and at least that barrier between sleep and awake becomes stronger, more organized when I use it more often.

I have realized that if I don’t give my body the opportunity to dream when it is supposed to, when I’m asleep, then it will take the initiative and start to dream when I’m awake, and that’s where everything falls apart.

All that said, I need to get some sleep now.

NIGHTY-NIGHT!

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7/3/11
10:46pm
Dear Diary:

I feel much better having gotten that whole thing out of my system.  I shall now forget that I ever had a sappy infatuation with someone.  This is NOT how I function.  I am a rock; I am an island.  Simon and Garfunkel- why the hell not?

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7/3/11
8:22 pm

Dear diary:

Fuck.

I’m not in the mood to be flowery and depressive.  I’ve had enough of being dour and contemplative lately, especially with that drawing I did.  What I’d really like to do is get off my ass and out of this depressive room and go do something I really enjoy.  BUT, it’s not as if there’s anything I can really think of to go out and do, or anyone I can do anything WITH, or even anybody I can sensibly talk to without having to pretend to be someone else, SO I guess it’s more mouldering for tonight.  I’ve had a lot of things rolling around in my head over the last while that I’d like to get off my chest anyway.

For example, the one person who actually engages me in a half-pleasant way-
no, let’s not be stingy;
someone who I actually kinda look forward to talking to at intervals-
no, come on, let’s at least TRY to be honest.
Someone who, fuck it, someone I really LIKE-

It’s just a lost cause.

I mean, it’s not that I find it hard to admit that I like someone, as a person.  I wish there were more people in the world that I liked.  That’s the problem with it.  And with this one person, I’ve had a really hard time trying to find something I DON’T like.  I should be elated.

Fuck, that’s the problem.  I am.

You ever find that you come across someone you like so much that you don’t ever want to get into ANY kind of a relationship with them because you know it can only go downhill from there?

God DAMN it.

And I’ve fallen into something I never asked for.  I knew I never wanted to build any bridges or connections of any kind while I was here.  I know I have to go eventually, if not NOW (godwilling), and I didn’t want it to hurt any more than it has to.  I never asked for friends.  I don’t want this person in my life.  I don’t want anyone near me.  And here I am, slingshotted straight to the other end of the spectrum before I can even see what’s happening to me: head over heels, downright next to OBSESSED with someone that I didn’t ask for.  I want, need, desire and many other adjectives that I never thought I’d have to use.

I envision things, you know.  In a rare moment of painful openness about this sort of thing, I’m going to admit to it.  I envision the things that we’d do together, briefly.  Terrible sticky things in the darkness, things that I would really enjoy if I could shut my brain off for once.  And the second that I realize I’m thinking them, I get so turned off by the idea of all the drama and the emotions and the terrible interactions that would follow that my insides get gripped with a cold icy feeling and I seize up, and all of those feelings drain away, and for just a few moments I’m left feeling nothing but empty.  Then comes the anger.

Why can’t I have the ability to get close to someone who doesn’t make me angry for making me like them?  Or hell, at least someone who doesn’t have all this baggage?  Why does this one person have to be so perfect, yet so outside of my area?  There are so many fences.

And even if there weren’t fences, the one true restraint is time.  Everything eventually ends.  Sure, if there weren’t all these logistical problems, I might be able to start it, but the end would be inevitable no matter how perfect the beginning was.  I’d have to leave, or the other person would become- something- everything changes-

If I had my way, I’d like to take it back to just being companions, I’d really really like that.  After all, it looks like I’m here for the long haul, and the damage is done, so why should I have to cut myself off competely?  Who else can I talk to and just be myself?  The three other people who know I’m here- well, one finds me to be a plague (and while I can’t blame her, the feeling is appropriately mutual), the second is a pig and I refuse to come near him, and the other, while she may want to see me- I find her company to be absolutely repellant.  She thinks she sees, and is, so many things, but her tiny perspective is so far from reality that-

Me talking about reality.  Who do I really think I am, anyway?

Well, back to the point.

What was I on about?

Right.  The one person I DO like.

Fuck.  I’m angry for the stimulation.  If only you could have been like all the others, horrible and disperspectived, a rotting modern zombie with so many flaws that I couldn’t help but smell them when you walk into the room, then this would be so much easier.  I’d be able to shut off and hide away, and never want to leave my room.  Hell, I might even not want to come out in the morning when I hear the sliding door open and I know it could only be you.  Why do you have to be pure and visionary?  Why did you have to give me hope for humanity?  Why are you making me want to live?  You’re conflicting with everything that made it easy to want to die.

You’d better feel lucky that we’re living in this realm.  If we were back home, this would be the point where I’d take your head off for confusing me like this.  SLICE- a nice clean cut, so fast you wouldn’t feel a thing, and it’d be so humane.  I wouldn’t make you suffer.  Sure, I’d be tempted to keep you around chained up somewhere before doing it just so I could enjoy conversation with you for a little while longer, until you started to really show signs of hating me, but I don’t think I could really do that to you.  Besides, perspective really changes for someone when they’re imprisoned against their will, so you probably wouldn’t be congenial for very long anyway.  So, it’d be over and done with as quick as possible, nobody gets hurt.  And everything would go back to normal so much faster- you wouldn’t have the opportunity to disappoint me.

God damn it, I love you.

I hate you and I love you.

STOP BEING IN MY LIFE!!

I want to be near you-

I want to kill you-

I want you gone-

I want you-

Can’t I just hold you for a little while, and then rip you out of my mind, and out of my life?

Fuck it all.  I guess I just have to put up with this like everyone else.

It’s just not worth it.  Ever since the other night, where Tom was drunk and told you I said I wouldn’t come near the body, and he eventually wound up blanking out and I had to take over anyway, and I was so embarassed about being present in an intoxicated body that I said a lot of things to fuck with your head and spin you the other way so you wouldn’t think it was me, but you probably had a suspicion anyway, and fuck, I was trying to impersonate anyway and I doubt I did a very good job, and we talked for hours and then when it was time for bed you went to give me (Tom) a hug-

And I wound up wrapped in your arms, and it felt so nice, for the first time it REALLY FELT NICE, I just couldn’t let go, and I felt all this energy pouring out of me that I can’t begin to describe, and I wound up hugging you for way too long-

Stupid alcohol.  I don’t get why he likes doing that to himself.

I don’t think I could look you in the eyes and lie to you about whether I was there that night, but if you think it wasn’t me, then I should probably let you go on believing that.  I’ve been hiding from your eyes ever since then, and I’ve lost the one person that I can talk to, really be myself around.  But every time I see you, I just want to hold you again.  I can’t look at you.

I hate this.

How can I put this behind me?

Fuck.

You know what I really want to do?  I think I’d like to go out into the most populated area I can find, ask who all is on governmental assistance, and for everyone who raises their hand, ask if they really need it so bad that if staying on it meant they were about to recieve a gaping flesh wound.  Those people who admit they could do without the help will be the ones who get the knife to the face.

Fun for the whole family, and a major economic initiative to relieve the public assistance burden!  What could be so wrong with that?

…Or maybe I could just go to bed.  It is ten-thirty after all.  Apparently this fucking body needs its damn sleep.  I’d rather not deal with Tom bitching at me all day tomorrow anyway.

This reality is boring.

When do I get to go home?

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7/2/2011
4:23 am

Dear Die-ary,

I seem to be in love.

It’s obvious that I’ve done this to myself.  Of that I can be certain; it’s true of anyone who chooses to torture themselves, and I can make no excuses.

And clearly, at least in the long run, the option that will cause the least pain will be in actively ripping these barbs from myself and locking myself in a place far far away from these instruments of torture, as opposed to just hanging here and festering and hoping it will get better.

(A third option, the idea that ANYONE would come along and save me from this, particularly the person I’m hung up over, is laughable enough as to not be entertained).

But this scenario just begs the question…

How in the FUCK did I wind up here?

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7/1/11

3:32am

Dear Die-ary,

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.  I hope you can handle a lot of abuse, word-vomit and general unpleasantness.  As someone with a lot of “creative frustrations” and no real way to vent them in this place, I feel that you may become instrumental in me keeping a decent hold on what I’d like to call my sanity.

I’ll use this document as a sort of running continuation of the Book (that account of the May 12th 2011 dissociative event), as I don’t see that that story truly ever had an end.  It was supposed to end with my death, but surprisingly enough, I’m still here, and surprisingly enough, I still want to write- I just don’t want to write about what transpired on that day anymore.  I’m tired of looking back.  It’d be nice to look forward for a change (as mind-shatteringly terrifying as it might be to try).

I’ll try not to be too much of a downer.  I’ll probably fail.

Sorry, Die-ary.

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