Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well. My apologies for the radio silence, I have been really busy with school, but overall doing alright.
This one will be somewhat short for no particular reason. Content warning for violence, depictions of suicide, etc. The usual shit.
I am currently sitting in a cafe and a woman is trying to convince her mother she is not insane and doesn’t have psychosis, she’s just been called by God to marry this man who she just met. Her mother is telling her she’s psychotic and the daughter is saying she’s not because the antipsychotics her doctor gave her don’t do anything so she must not be psychotic. The mother is begging her daughter to see clearly, but the daughter is insisting she has fallen in love with this man and they are getting married. The mother tries to leave, but something pulls her back to her seat every time. The mother says, “Can we please keep our voices down?” and the daughter asks, “Why?” and the mother says, “Out of respect for the other people here,” and the daughter insists, “I am telling the truth, Mom.”
I think you should be able to roll down the window on flights. I think the center of all things is just as likely evil as it is good. I think I fall in love too easily. I think I fall out of love even easier.
I love this season, the holidays. It’s the only magical thing left in my world. I am disappointed by our world of cause and effect.
We cannot know the truth of things, we can only know their forms. The world is separate(d). What we know are the projections of things. It’s a trick of the light. I want to know the essence of things. I want to know the center of you. I think the center of all things is just as likely evil as it is good.
I’m writing a play. Right now it’s called Beauty. It’s an expressionist play in that the point of it is to find beauty in something horrible. That is all we can do I guess.
I got a new therapist in Montreal. Her name is Marlena and she’s probably only a few years older than me. I meet with her on Wednesdays and I talk and don’t stop. I talk as if it’s all leading me somewhere. I talk downwards, digging. She asks questions, but I don’t hear them. I told her my theory of everything. I told her that I think the center of all things is evil, or at least could be evil. Goodness is the exception. She told me I have good reason to believe that. I’m not crazy, I promise. Look at me. I look great. If I am crazy, you are too. Marlena tells me I have reason to be the way I am. She says a lot of bad things have happened recently. I tell her about the horrible shit I see online. I tell her about the beheadings I watched as a kid, the videos of men painting whole rooms red with their arterial spray after blowing their heads off with shotguns. The video of the Filipino woman hanging herself and her children screaming “MAMA! MAMA!” I tell her about the deaths. I tell her how I’ve heard my parents say “I love you” thinking it would be the last time. All the death in my life. All the assaults and the threats and the violence. All the friends who want to die. All the friends who are dead. I tell her about all these things and she tells me that it makes sense that I am who I am. In our last appointment, she asked me what I was excited for in the near future. I told her I was having lunch with my friend after our meeting and I was excited to hug them and eat food and drink coffee. Marlena smiled. I am human, afterall.
I find beauty in it all. Take a deep breath next time you feel like you’re dying. You won’t always feel better, but you will surely feel the depth of it all. I want to see how far it goes.
I’ve been talking to a pastor recently. He was in a few of my classes this semester and we got along fine. He’s from the rural south and speaks in a molasses drawl. It’s great, really. I told him he should narrate audiobooks. I think I scared him when I told him if god exists he could be evil instead of goodness. He said, “Then what’s the point? I cannot believe that all my work is for evil.” I told him that it doesn’t matter because we will never know, but he said he knows and I believe him. If any one person believes in something it must be true.
I met a guy and we went on a date. He was nice and we had chemistry and we had decent sex. He slept over and a few days later I asked him if he just wants to be friends. If I held everything I have ever wanted in the palm of my hand, I would want more. If I held everything ever in the palm of my hand, I would want more. A equals A, so A cannot not equal A, and A cannot equal B because B equals B, so nothing ever changes and there is only one of everything and it’s not enough for me.
My friend told me that if I want to find a partner I need to be “less intense”. I know he’s right, but when am I supposed to tell someone I’m dating that I believe there is an absence at the center of me? When do I tell them about my endless masochistic cycles of longing? When is the right time to bring up my absence of belief in anything at all? Do we get coffee? Do I sit them down and tell them I’m insane? I am always looking for someone new so I can be someone new. I lie by default just to catch a break.
I told Marlena that behind every action is a child, cold and scared. I imagine the child alone in an endless and drafty basement, naked, freezing. This is who makes decisions. The kid screaming and crying and slamming his fists against the door. LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! That’s the closest I can get to truth.
I lost you somewhere. I lost you in my dreams. I lost you in the little things, the neck twitches, the days without a word said, the kiss with nothing to follow. Remember, everything is better after. You don’t want me, you want to miss me. It’s stupid, I know, but it’s true. We kissed, and for that I’m sorry. Put on your headphones and listen to silence. Scare everyone you love until they’re too tired to care. It’s not my fault, it's the disease. I’m falling in love in the locker room. I can’t even look at you because I don’t know you. I loved you when I saw you because you smiled. It’s really that easy. Turn the lights off and a curtain is suddenly a ghost. Do you know what it feels like? To never rest? Look up and see nothing forever. Close your eyes and put your face in a pillow. That’s the same darkness as the darkness of being buried under six feet of dirt. That’s the same darkness as the darkness of your childhood home when the power went out. That home is still there. Find a corner at night where nothing is lit by anything. Run into the darkness. What do you see?