A Calendar of Days - 2020

Day off. From Erich Fromm: Escape From Freedom:

"The sadist needs the person over whom he rules, he needs him very badly, since his own feeling of strength is rooted in the fact that he is the master over someone. This dependence may be entirely unconscious… In [some] cases the sadistic person quite manifestly “loves” those over whom he feels power. Whether it is his wife, his child, an assistant, a waiter, or a beggar on the street, there is a feeling of “love” and even gratitude for those objects of his domination. He may think that he wishes to dominate their lives because he loves them so much. He actually “loves" them because he dominates them. He bribes them with material things, with praise, assurances of love, the display of wit and brilliance, or by showing concern. He may give them everything-everything except one thing: the right to be free and independent. This constellation is often to be found particularly in the relationship of parents and children. There, the attitude of domination--and ownership--is often covered by what seems to be the natural concern or feeling of protectiveness for a child. The child is put into a golden cage, it can have everything provided it does not want to leave the cage. The result of this is often a profound fear of love on the part of the child when he grows up, as “love” to him implies being caught and blocked in his own quest for freedom."

Feeling master of my own destiny, understanding the pain and loneliness that causes, embracing possibility of positive change, of self-directedness and the risk implied.
Yesterday, reading The Hours, twice felt a familiar but long-forgotten feeling, currently ineffable but akin to curiosity, akin to hope, akin to self-recognition.

Depressed today, finished Escape From Freedom, two days off meds, stuck in bed, nightmares every night. Three weeks sober. Coworker Lacey cancelled our plans. Working tonight.

-

New House. Roommates. And here my life is starting once again. This time I will be more careful. There will be four thoughts behind every sentence. Beginnings are my strength. Because I am eager, I want to lay everything out right at the beginning, and trust the future. But I am no longer young; my imagination has shrunk. Sometimes I notice myself shrinking too, as if condensing into a safer and more balanced thing. A located thing, hardened, made up of the same stuff as my previous and more diaphanous and grand self, which I had hoped and expected to gain solidity in its original dimension. That was also the optimism of a beginning.

Lately when I read a story, I am looking for a feeling, which I will take as a lesson and as a prize to admire later in secret while I live my other life- serving and bartending and smiling. I will remember the feeling of the story or of a piece of dialogue, and remember the private self that reads and feels. This secret self is holy to me. It is more important than the cheery and easygoing self that I inhabit for strangers. It is a self that does not need to strive because its sensitivities are its perfect strength.

Today my life begins again, another new start, full of promise. Last night Max, cynical, said the reason the stories I read seem to have four thoughts behind every sentence is because of heavy editing-they do.

When I read Murakami I’m not sure why the story was written at all. A mundane, inconclusive story in which all emotion is in the past and all the action is afterimage, or else the characters are impotent and the only drama is intimation, premonition. Hope and humor are present but feeble. A dreamlike, dynamic stasis, where action is all but stripped of consequence, prevails.
Like,
“The moon was a cold rock, its skin eaten away by the violence of the years.”
-Man-eating cats

Despite the threat of oblivion, I will continue to believe in truth. In the wake of Yiyun Li, as a seeker, I will attempt conversation with writing that I encounter. Even if it is the following:
“Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally-the way that driver beat his old horse until it died upon the road… few of us even realize that we are being beaten”
-The poor aunt

Uh yeah, I realize it. Strenuously native here in this carefully chosen cafe, drinking IPA’s since 5:30 though I don’t particularly like the taste of them. I dwell on the idea of an old woman living in a vinegar bottle.

In a perverse coincidence, I ran into Diego last night after all these months, immediately after drinking two strong gimlets, and immediately before leaving town.

I was flooded with sexual feeling stronger than I've felt since he went away. I forgot everything and became playful and coquettish, wanting only to be as near to him as possible. Only now do I feel a sharp and terrible pain that he is in the world. Like an addict I believe against knowledge that the solution to this pain is to possess him again as soon as possible. I feel helpless against this desire, it resists logic and my instinct for self preservation, so I hope he stays away from me. Even this hurts terribly.

Despite my guilt, I insist on sleeping. My dreams are important to me. I have recurring dreams of bathhouses, which remind me that I belong to the life of the community. I also dream of being trapped in church, opening door after door in a circular hallway and finding people for whom I feel no affinity. I hope and imagine that in my dreams I will someday escape those places. I also understand that I may feel this way forever until I die.

I wander about through time, exploring, my objective only to repeatedly get my bearings, and when I encounter others to encourage or give directions if I have them.

Hannah's step-dad, after two or three decades of being enabled by those who love him to take a path of least resistance in life, finally became too crazy to live and had to be hospitalized. As I wonder how to greet him, acknowledging that I know his failure to cope, I imagine the geared wheel of life, and the choice of engaging one’s strength against it. However weak one is, that is the only sensible choice, whether or not it will prevent one from being overturned and crushed. You must play.

In Yiyun Li I read about inappropriate familiarities, the effrontery of unwanted intimacy. I recognize importunity in myself. It is another reminder that I lack a sense of appropriate social boundaries. Fatalistically I suspect that not even by foregoing motherhood can I avoid becoming my mother. Even without my hair I see her face in my face. I mark time in my life by counting her children. At 30, she had her sixth daughter. Maybe by the time I'm 38, the age she was when I was born, I will finally settle in myself. I hold this hope without believing in it, like the hope to escape her identity by estranging myself from her.

I am still looking for my voice, and it seems ever more urgent a search, as if cataracts are slowly forming over my mind’s eye.

Li writes,
“To write is to find a new way to see the world.”
My feeling is that I have always seen the world as a writer, but that selfishness or fear has kept me from becoming one.

As usual, I've shared my precious stories from yesterday already- with Christine, with Liza, and especially with XT, my cherished friend.

I was surprised when I visited XT's apartment yesterday. The neighborhood was obviously dangerous. I felt afraid walking two blocks from my rental car to their building. I’m accustomed to being surprised and impressed by the way XT transforms spaces to make them clean and beautiful, and there were many lovely plants outside the door, which accessed onto a sort of drainage ditch. Inside though, it was dark and smelly. Laundry was everywhere, and the place was barely decorated and very cluttered. XT's partner stood nervously in the kitchen and babbled in a surprisingly high-pitched and childlike voice. The bedroom had a poster for the Avengers movie and a messy mattress on the floor. I felt embarrassed to be in a clean shirt. For a long time after I picked them up, XT kept their shoulders up and their arms tightly crossed. After an hour or two of talking we made it back into each other's confidence. We had dinner with Paul and Chase in Korea town.

After dinner last night I began to think that my cherished theory that life’s texture remains approximately consistent is too dismal, and that joy and progress are possible after all, even for me.
Listening to Smog at LACMA, I feel these pieces moving once again, the interior puzzle I'm always working on, that’s been stuck for so long, whose completion is forgiveness. I want to trust myself with my stories. The desire itself is a small fulfilment.
My blank sketchbook at home, instead of a reproach, again a site of opportunity.
Among strangers and the sacred familiarity of art my joy radiates effortlessly. I am grateful.

I slid down all the bannisters at LACMA and ran along a wall until a security guard motioned for me to stop running.

Exhibit: Julie Mehretu.
Small cryptic maps, overlays, illustrations of wind.

RABAB- a one stringed instrument

Hannah's stepdad's name has become a shorthand among us for giving up.

“We’re not made to live an easy life. Man needs something to struggle against, “He’s got a big boulder to push up a hill.” We were all together, much later than usual, and James was talking.

“Even if he pushes it forever it won’t ever get to where he wants it to be” I said.
“Because his goal shouldn’t be to follow his dreams! His goal should be to fucking function.”

Last night after seeing Chase the emotional pain in my chest persisted until I fell asleep. I had a nightmare of madness- XT and James shepherded me through a day or days of blackouts, misdeeds, confusion, lack of control. They tried to save me from myself while I tried to spend money, have casual sex, and hurt children. In the morning the pain persisted- my heart felt scored like wet clay. I lay on the couch in a cold sweat and wanted to stay. Instead I imagined pushing a boulder up a hill. I got up and walked outside.

Outside, a middle-aged man in sweatpants and baseball cap walks slowly with a tennis ball walker, carefully kicking a rock a few steps ahead of him.

--

On the plane ride home from California, exhausted with explaining, with pushing the boulder up the hill, I feel an overwhelming sense that I am okay. All my greatest fears came to pass directly, bluntly. I forgot my childhood. My mind was a playground for demons. I brought them with me and terrorized the other people, whom I could not see. My eyes grew wild and my fingernails became ragged. I laughed glass. But I have seen the shape of the thing that glimpses joy or hope, or the fulness of the boulder rolling up.

--

from the back cover of the Midori A6 slim notebook

O, as I roam in cyclic existence driven by deep-seated desire
May the transcendent lord amitāba draw me forward, leading me on the path of radiant light
Which is the pristine cognition of discernment
May the supreme consort
Pāndarāsinī support me from behind.
And thus encircled may I be resolved from the fearsome passageway of the intermediate state, and be escorted to the level
Of an utterly perfect buddha

…it remains to be seen how this day of conversations will settle with me, and I feel that the way I learn to live with my new reality will affect theirs too: Chase, and Carson, and Paul.

Paul told me, time is more powerful than I think. Half a young lifetime has passed again.

Chase’s voice is different now. Deeper and more resonant, and his high, giddy laugh replaced sometimes by a somber ‘Ha. Ha. Ha.’

I can accept this ambiguity. What’s in my chest and shoulders feels nothing like redemption or relief. The space that has opened is the one these men used to occupy for me. They are gone from it, and some of the clogging sorrow is gone, too, but the emptiness is gasping. Through a new gap I see myself: handsome, happy, dim.

My loves all turned to ghosts. Nothing for me to do but finish my novel and grow out my hair. Go easy on yourself.

I see in this filmy space what looks from here like new love, cautious and patient.

‘Funny, thoughtful, very considerate of others’ feelings, and a little shy’

I described Chase to himself. He said,

‘That’s good to hear.’

I remember too the English class where we’d argue each day at the same time, and the indulgent teacher who let us kiss in the back when we made up before the bell.

The scavenger hunt he organized for my birthday, and the unending delight it brought me. And the day

when he burned me a CD of songs I’d never heard before, and we lay together on his blue comforter in his bedroom and watched the fishtank and listened, and I knew no greater contentment could await me in this life.

And another, sadder afternoon in the same room when he sat on his bed next to a triangle of light, picking his guitar, and I sat on the carpet and marveled that I could not feel what should have been happiness. I tucked the memory away anyway.

I pretended his home was mine, with dinner at night and TV in the living room: but where is the part of me that sat down to dinner and ate and made conversation, none of which I can remember now?

Even writing the words sends me away somewhere into questions
Or distractions
Into conflict
With the self that is aware of reality. The open eye flinches.

How I've missed those old friends! Their easy understanding and quick jokes. Interesting, funny, intelligent people who I enjoy talking to. They made me who I am to my new friends, who know me differently, as Taylor, who is funny and cool, tremendously sincere and heartfelt, and, until now, a little sad. And now? Half again a young lifetime past. A sweet refrain from an old song burbles up now and then,

'I will remember you, if you remember me, as I am now’

Right now I feel like a big net closing over nothing.

How to Dream

-

Be careful with yourself.
You have a responsibility, now.
Every time you, they, told them, you,
not to worry about it anymore
until

Now it is time to dream, don’t fight it. This is where you meet yourself.
Hello, you say without words, come along.
And though you don’t want to,
This is one more place without control.

Mechanical and Greek.

Where were those places you had been? And where are you now?
This is no land of almosts, no land of one chance, no tale or fantasy.

Come out of your beach tent, the waves are waiting.
They won’t forget about you just because you are late.

This is no land at all, but a raft.
When you leave it, it will sink.

--

And what’s more, and what’s more, and what’s more. Each of these gifts we take and store in our cheeks, plotting the spit take.

Blow, all the air you stole and give it back.

Who told you to be here.
Who told you to do that.
Who told you it was alright.

They are dying for you, every day, and you are reading the newspaper on the toilet.
They are scared and suffering, and they don’t want to hold you up any more.
They blame you, and can you blame them?

In the last spit take, spit out your lunch and your lungs and your emboweled heart, what you do is not alright.

I have finally written a story and shown it to my friends. Paul refuses to respond. Liza says gently that nothing is going on. Becca loves it. Across the board they come to the incorrect conclusion that the first person narrator is me. I am chagrined. However, this time there is no turning back. I do not have endless lives.

Around 2014 I lost dozens of full notebooks- poems, stories, journals, and the better part of the mirrored sphere, a novel about coming of age. The devastation of this loss was entirely private-as is my belief that my mother destroyed these notebooks on purpose.

There is no more reason for me to write except a vestigial self-preservation- my belief in the importance of my words did not survive my disastrous youth, and by now I have lost all the advantage of naivete.
But the future is not yet determined. All my life and will tells me that this moment is crucial.

Today's prayer: “That I may accept without understanding, understand without explaining, and work without asking why”

Home from LA for one week. I must believe that things can get better. Listening to the power of habit audiobook. very difficult day, the boulder slipped a little.

Visited UT today. Excited to go back to school

I read about Vavarais, the ‘plateau of hospitality’ in France. There, French jews sheltered en masse from Vichy collaborators, and Spaniards fled Franco.
The free, dreaming part of me imagines fleeing there too.

Researching scholarship funding. UT bootcamp tuition is 11k for six months, so that’s pretty much out. No finaid there.

Last night Chip came over and got drunk ( I guess? ) we had some slight awkwardness when Julia knocked on the door to ask us to be quiet, and then I had some heart-fear over everything I said being audible, having forgotten that it was.

Chip told me her story, a story that seems to be pretty available to her. Chip-legend, maybe.

First of all, she got the chip on her tooth riding a Buddy-125 scooter drunk late one night, didn’t remember the accident or, apparently, the sex she had with her boyfriend after the crash. When she went to the emergency room, her whole face was all fucked up.

Secondly, the real story is that her parents were both drug addicts, heroin, it sounded like. Her mom would get high and check out, and her step dad would beat the shit out of both of them. Chip hid in a closet. Then, within a couple months of each other, they both OD’ed. Chip found her stepdad dead. It’s been twelve years, she said, but it’s coming up now, and she’s started thinking about it a lot.

For me, Paul’s advice finally sinking in, as I reach new sublime depths of humility and oppennes. If you can’t change it, don’t think about it. Think about something else. What a pal.

After drinking last night, waking up this morning to the task at hand, finding college scholarships, it occurs to me that I can’t afford to drink. I can’t afford the lost time, the lost focus, the lost few dollars. Meanwhile, instituting a two drink limit on all nights. Took a modaf today despite the late hour, contrary to custom, and will have to work extra hard to sleep tonight.

Composing a prayer:

I pray for rest and its cleanse. I pray for single-mindedness, for focus, and for grit. I pray for compassion and for humor. I pray for the bravery to abandon any and all excuses. I pray for the understanding that I am mighty. I pray for patience and for diligence.

A mantra : NOTHING IS GOING TO GET IN MY WAY (and if it does, I’ll get right on past it.)

Finally reading the Optimist’s Telescope.
Advice: creatively anticipate future events, including dangers and opportunities. See yourself as able to solve the problems that arise.
Generate detailed scenes of future events - this reduces impulsive behavior.
eg . imagine graduation day to motivate studying.

Advising this morning went well. 25 credits remaining to graduate. Next steps are reaching out to several people in the Statistics and Data Science department, career center, finaid and admissions.

Ran this morning and did buns of steel, checked out my flabby thighs and butt and can easily visualize what I want them to look like. Ordered new running shoes. Had a fairly depressing coffee with Stephen, but he *might* be embarking on a short 16mm film project, which hopefully won’t turn out the as badly as Rowdy’s did.

Stephen lacks motivation. He told me a little about being in Electroshock therapy. He said he would go to the ECT building and everyone would recognize him, but he never had any memory of any of them. They put him under for the therapy, and then wheeled him out to his mom's car. He would “wake up” the next day with no memory of anything that had happened. Missing months. Missing memories. No recollection.

Good day so far, closing at Home Slice the next two nights in a row and then first manager shift next week. Bullet journal intact, unripped.

Had a great shift last night but then drank a bunch of rose and stayed up on Hinge until almost five am, woke to too much sunlight and too much awakeness, forced myself back to sleep, stayed in bed instagramming until two thirty, when I finally got up, meditated, did some reading, now about to do buns of steel before my Saturday night bar closer shift. Each time I drink lately I wish I hadn't.

Sad day. Fear. Strange dreams of Diego. Feel muddled. Two very difficult nights at work.

Nightmares persist. Morning coffee with Angelica on her porch.

Angelica’s parents divorced when she was three. She was put in the care of her ten year old brother, who left her alone while her mother worked. Angelica wandered the streets alone in dirty pyjamas, playing by herself on a nearby playground, occasionally taken in by a neighbor. Later, her mom began to date a man who beat her and sexually abused Angelica. She was left with a babysitter, an alcoholic, whose daughter also sexually abused Angelica.. The babysitter committed suicide by running her car in a closed garage.

My story is different. I question the utility of telling it. I prefer this now: After several adventurous years of instability and experimentation, I have found a place to live and a good steady job. I don’t have much; I live a simple, frugal life. I am slowly, steadily improving my situation and beginning to think about the future with hope. I am making plans and doing difficult personal work. I am developing habits of self care and healthy routines. I am facing fear in a new way and conquering loneliness by reinforcing self-sufficiency. As this happens, my susceptibility to the opinions of others is decreasing. I am taking responsibility for myself and stretching the limits of my comfort zone. I am embracing being single and being totally in control of my life, my money, my space, and my time.

How do you do it?
I don’t have to.
I look and my mind goes.
In the leaves. Sound of Running water, of birds. The leaves cacophony.
In leaves, I am sunlight.
The flapping sound’s a rushing river
The fountain’s laughter
I stare without eyes.
Sway with the wind, swing on tied rope I repeat, creak amid angular chatter chirps above and below the din of ceaseless shish sish shis

Growing every day. Got an Apple watch, and a computer, and have run for the last two days. Took a cold shower, made a fruit smoothie, listening to ambient music instead of podcasts.

Had sex last night, and it was okay, I felt more in control and less dissociated than in the past, even if it wasn’t exactly what I like.

Stephen is kind of a mess, claims he is a sex addict. He definitely goes blank and weird when he’s doing it, and kept repeating "you're so hot" mindlessly. I preferred talking to him beforehand and lying with him afterward. I guess you don’t get the one without the other, with Stephen. Anyway, I’m making a goal not to drink any alcohol today, and to come home right after I finish my shift, which will be late; I’m the closing outside bartender. Feeling hopeful, determined. The cold shower helps. The run helps. Feeling anxious, afraid, these are feelings I must become comfortable with.

Listening to the Youth soundtrack, Mark kozelek. Feeling again. I had control over the throbbing, heart-moving emotion for a while. Was running cool with just anxiety and excitement, those diluted emotions, and some fear. Now that sweet anguish that is the source of art bubbles up in me. Cried earlier, about Coronavirus and feeling unwelcome in my house, Julia guarding the door with her questions. Through the door, I could hear Bella and Julia discussing the injustice of restaurant workers’ lives, the way one might discuss the poor health conditions in India’s slums or the misogynistic laws in Iran. They have no idea how smug they sound.

I recognize some things about myself that I want to change and can:

- That I tend to back down in conflict and not stand up for myself.
- That I emphasize whatever part of my personality is useful to me to fit in with whoever I’m around instead of the parts that are most useful to me to get where I want to go in life.

I feel upset, which is useful. I need to feel upset. In fact, I need to feel angry, because that is the feeling that I want to take into therapy on Tuesday. I need to feel angry and be allowed to yell and fight back. I want to use my anger to make a change. I notice that on these strong feelings days I tend to freeze. I don’t want to freeze, I want to keep moving, like a shark.

Craving a long conversation, craving someone to talk to about things that I don’t know how to bring up. Want to meet a stranger and not talk about the boring regular things. Chase is the person I want to talk to. About how I like Mark Kozelek now, that's all I'm listening to.

I want to talk to Carson, I want to know that he’s okay and I want him to know that I know I’m bad. I want to talk to my Dad, I want to tell him that I love him and forgive him and to leave me the hell alone.

This is how I imagine Carson and Chase feel about me, that I better just leave them the hell alone, and it probably makes them sad as hell, but that doesn’t mean they want me anywhere near them.

Holy shit it hurts, what pain is this?

Sadness, with mourning, with nostalgia, with desire
Anger, with rage, with pique, with irritation
Guilt, with remorse, with hatred
Shame, with fear, with wanting to be invisible, with dismay,
Excitement, with riskiness,
Joy

People with symptoms of Covid are not able to get tests.

This whole shutdown is really bringing out my roommates’ deep-seated classism as they try to cheer me up and reassure each other how aware they are of the little people.

Keeping a low key buzz on during this pandemic
And feeling more connected to people than ever! Not mad, not mad at all. Having a grand time, really.
Sippin whiskey soda, mmhmm

Went grocery shopping with amanda from work. Many of the shelves were empty. Tiffany was going to go with us but decided she couldn’t afford to, said she’d just eat Ian’s groceries. My bank account has dwindled, and I no longer have enough for rent. I’ll have to work a lot of these stupid lunch shifts to be able to afford it. Southby is normally the busiest week of the year, when we all make more money than ever. But it's dead here. I think a lot of people can’t quite believe it. I can’t quite believe it. I might lose my room, where would I go?

Roald Dahl: The most important and difficult thing about fiction writing is to find the plot. Good original plots are very hard to come by. You never know when a lovely idea is going to flit suddenly into your mind, but by golly, when it does come along, you grab it with both hands and hang on to it tight. The trick is to write it down at once, otherwise you'll forget it. A good plot is like a dream. If you don’t write down your dream on paper the moment you wake up, the chances are you’ll forget it, and it’ll be gone forever.

Played volleyball today at Ari’s and had the same feeling as the snow day in eighth grade. That snow day was one of the best days of my life. There were no hills, but we went sledding. There was barely any snow, but we had a snowball fight. We were on the verge of adolescence, and no one was monitoring us. We could have all the fun we wanted, and for as long.

In Ari's yard, I run around in circles on the grass while everybody lounges with beers. We play catch, and laugh and yell. As always, we talk about work.

Dreamed strange long road trips with Carson, with Chase, with their parents. Dreamed castles. Dreamed there were nineteen kids in my family.

Another great day, went to the green belt with coworkers Garrison and Lucy O, trekked and Garrison was sad because there wasn’t any water, but we had a nice time anyway. Took some mushrooms, ate sandwiches with homemade bread, snacked on cuties, arranged our hammocks in a friendly triangle. Giggled the whole walk home and felt great in perfect weather. My fitness level is good. In pictures my legs looked skinny. Met Garrison’s sweet dog Carolina and loved having her around. Lucy O is such a generous and sensitive person, I was almost embarrassed by myself. Love knowing these people.

Came home and showered, then hopped on a video chat with Lucy, Carmen, Hannah, David, Laura, and Taylor Thompson. It was great. Then had curry and rice for dinner and watched I, Claudius on the phone with Diego. He was eager to get off the phone at the end, which made me sorry. Tired and Tuckered out now, it’s just after midnight. Ready to sleep and tomorrow to do things again. Love you, Taylor.

And who are you going to drunk dial when the phone is dead?

I hoped to meet some miracle man in future, since I hoped to be some miracle self in future. But it's no problem, no problem, zoom it all out. I don’t know how, I don’t want to play the game. Don’t want to be coy. Have seen death, have seen real hardship, the witch’s wife in the desert who could barely move for pain and lying in blankets wet with the previous night’s rain begged for marijuana to ease discomfort, begged for late night power. I, finding myself witch of the night, held heavy metal pipe, blessed the space with real investiture, and called a prayer of protection, which power had only just descended on me, and gave the marijuana which I had.

I loved them there, the trans-wifed, the suffering, cold, gave them too the blanket I used as shawl, not needing it then, felt the power I did not know I had, and gave it too, because that was the only thing to do.

Finally, sorrowful but strong, take I to telling tale, ready to say what was true and what only I knew, about Julie the naked child, and Willem robbed and fat. In the stacked cages of the cat man to whom I went for help, bodies stiff and dead beside the living.

"The Oasis", Scott and Victoria, Princess the piebald pitt. Behind Trump-Wall, across skate-pool, through heat-wavered air to acid-night drummer.

Thump of night-trains to heat the shallow brushy dunes. Here and there finding quick home-place, here and there finding quick friend. Here and there grasping rock and staying fiercely to own it. And a journey to the goat farm, and a journey to the hot springs, where death burbled, where meth whined. Shanty and cardboard shack, drug-paid mobile home. mexican-emerald tooth and dog-keeper protective.

Each slab a territory. Each human an island. I, seeker without objective, traded string for stone and cord for cereal, wishing each day for the drug settle. Nowise asking affirmation but from the bastard moon, which laughed cheesily at my despair. Where were the drummers? We heard them and trekked into darkness to find nothing but silence and anger, then again on the air the thump of invisible slam, slam, thump. Find me drummers, show me the the giant water-drum where in the center I would dance, naked-toed. Sniff high on the wind the heat of train-cars and wish for drummers who must be somewhere, who might be under or above the sand but were not at the water-drum where we sought them.

Okay, another pretty good day, except that I didn’t do any linear algebra. Exercised plenty, went on a bike ride and had that great, free, fun feeling again. Like a snow day, like kids playing. Biked to Amanda’s then we biked to Tiffany’s then all three of us biked to WIll’s and he got his longboard and we went to Cat’s and then cat came out with Gibson and we walked to Merry’s, and then all of us back to Amanda’s and had a shot and then called it quits and came home.

Stressed about roommate dynamics. Dismayed to find myself more passive aggressive than direct, not sure what my problem is. Starting the habit tracker today, which is what got me on here to journal despite not having anything spectacular to record. The only habit I missed today was studying. Tomorrow.

Another day down, making three weeks of quarantine, and roommate relations continue strained but not impossible. Did a good amount of linear algebra, made a doctor’s appointment, spent one twenty on groceries, watched I Claudius, talked to Max for a long while, and did the family zoom call twice. now going to bed just before midnight, and will try to wake early again, though yesterday I pressed snooze seven times. Love you, Taylor, sleep well.

Hey again, been a while, hi. How are you feeling, all the feeling. Thinking of Chase again, though I could have sworn I was done with that line, but here we are. And I’m listening to Dave Ramsey and not really sure what’s up but his confidence is reassuring. Tomorrow I’d like to do several things. Run, make focaccia, finish my three programs and actually get them to run in Pycharm, and work on linear algebra.

I ordered groceries. Everything came except chocolate. Requested my unemployment payment. Did the evening family call. Thinking and thinking and thinking on whether to ask dad for money, and at first it seemed so possible it was downright likely, and now it seems so impossible that it’s not even worth asking. And the rejection might not be alright with me, so by Christine's advice I need to fix that first. Anyway gotta learn to manage money, so maybe it doesn’t matter whether I get help with school or not. Maybe I can bootstrap out of needing therapy, hey? It’s a joke. But I’m listening to Sun Kil Moon, and things are clean in here, and life is pretty good after all. It’s okay, anyway. I’m not mad at it, as we say.

Been thinking a lot this year about my use of dialects. When Hannah sends me a script it’s easy for me to edit it and find all the idioms and read them as class markers. I’m scared to go back to work where I talk poor and act like I need everybody to love me, and where they do, and it’s lonely. I miss Paul a lot, but feel sad when I talk to him, feel … insecure. Feel like I’m not worth his friendship.

Okay, anyway, things are getting better, I can see that, at least. Things are turning around, at last. And it’s okay if I’m here in Austin, older than my roommate who tosses off grad school plans with the confidence I have squishing a cockroach.

Belly aches, and I wonder if my people are okay, but really I wonder if I am supporting them properly, and where to land between giving myself to them and taking them for myself.

Still angry at Diego, and hoping it subsides into neutral feeling, or apathy, or something less painful. For now at least it’s easy not to think of him. I did the right thing to move on, and he did the wrong thing to move on-- but that can’t be right, and anyway, everything brought me to where I am now, at least writing.

I missed a big chunk of journaling in there somewhere in 2017 - 2018, somewhere between moving into the Moon Mansion annex, going to Chicago, visiting Virginia, and looking at the stars in White Sands, running out of weed before we made it to Colorado, saying goodbye to XT and running away from Thanksgiving in Dallas so I could freeze in Detroit with Schmo and bedbugs. Learning to love my fellows and trying to erase the difference between me and what was around me. Promising big and failing a few times, and then landing hard and woozy and grieving. Not sure what I was promising, or who I disappointed if it wasn’t me, or who I was trying to show if it wasn’t me, or what I gained though I know I did.

Four years ago I had that big fight with Dad, which wasn’t a fight at all, four years ago Dad screamed at me, and screamed at me, and screamed at me some more, and I was already broken down and so sad, and he insulted and belittled me until I had to leave, and then he tried not to let me leave. And then I didn’t have a Civic anymore, and I wasn’t in college anymore, and I wasn’t talking to them anymore. Which was a blessing, and I felt so much more safe. Even now, I feel the creeping fear of having been anywhere near Mom as an aftereffect of the family zoom call.

Feeling scattered, since it’s two am, but the best thing I can do is brush my teeth and pee, even though I’m scared that Julia will mention it to me tomorrow, the way she made fun of Michael for having pancakes for dinner last night.

I love you Taylor, keep trying, and it’s okay to be a little into yourself, as long as you stay present. I love you so, you are very important to me and I want you to have so much happiness and success in your life. You’re young, and wonderful things lie ahead for you. I love you.

Journaling before bed last night was helpful; instead of nightmares I had a sweet wish-fulfillment dream, maybe my first good dream since I can remember. I was in high school. Chase came home. He had gone away for a year, moved with his family to the north, Minnesota or Wisconsin or Wyoming maybe. They came home, and that was why we had been apart. Not because I did something terrible. They came home, and I was waiting, and relieved, and he loved me still, and we got to be together. I was with him and his sister and her boyfriend, and we were all like siblings, just togetherness. But I still had to deal with his mom. And then, I went home to a nice house with a courtyard and no parents in it. Two girls, they weren’t basic girls like me, they wanted to talk to me and they were impressed that I could speak French so well. They wanted to be friends.

Tonight XT called me, very sad. They finally told their lover some of what they feel. Their lover was sorry, and XT feels responsible for his feelings, but I told them that I want them not to fear loss, and to know that the future is wide and full of new experiences and more people who will love them. XT is so smart and good. They have a huge heart. I want them to find strength and peace. I don’t want them to have top surgery :( but that is selfish. I would never tell them that.

As for me, talking to them helped me reinforce my conclusion, come to with the help of Max, that I cannot solve my sorrow of Diego by talking to Diego. Because when you break up with someone, one of the sacrifices you make is the right to process your feelings with them and to make them process their feelings with you, you don’t get to have the long talk down from pain with them, you have to do it alone.

I sent an apology text to Elaine today, then deleted it. She sent me something back, not quite an apology, but a thank you, and I deleted that too. It isn’t a weight off really, but maybe it will feel like one later. I don’t plan to renew the friendship, the same way I didn’t renew the friendship with Sarah M. Even if we aren’t technically on bad terms anymore, the friendship has already lapsed. That’s okay. These are two women that if I were free and bold I would seek romantic relationships with. I am cautious and fearful.

In the bathroom, I hear the cats knocking things out of the cabinets.

I spoke up to Julia today, twice, called her out on being judgmental about people who drink Natty Lite and more importantly about her criticising people for not wearing masks. She watched as me and Michael cleaned up after dinner. I want to like her so much, it really is a learning opportunity for me to be so ceaselessly irritated by her.

Wish Schmo was here, she was the best cat. By now she might have died of old age. Maybe she crawled off to die anyway, on purpose. Maybe she could have stayed alive if she wanted. I know where she’d be, curled up between my crooked left arm with paws on my chest, looking into my face and protesting. What a good friend.

Sleepless. Late night. Nightmares persist, but I am stronger every day. Spent too much time on Instagram today, and I’m behind in my classes.

Tomorrow I have made more commitments than i can keep track of. To ride bikes with Tiffany, do Pilates with Lucy, to run, to finish my budget and go over it with Diane. To work on the stanford coding class, and to read many pages in the Decameron. To watch another of Dave Ramsey’s videos. To make a new bullet journal. It isn’t impossible to do these things, but it is inconsistent with my current level of productivity.

Mourned today. For Angelica, for Chase, and for myself.

Angelica is in the hospital. Chase is out of reach, and I am full of fear.

The next move I need to make for reparations is the letter to Carson, it’s time to finally finish it.

Just watched Blackkklansman. Super good. Damn. Hit hard, and the almost happy ending immediately followed by the grimmest cross-burning tiki-torching realities made me cry hard. Felt real, like feelings that I’ve been ashamed and embarrassed to feel: moved, passionate, idealist.

My parents are soft white-supremacists. I don’t know exactly the right way to be in the world, settling here into myself as far as I can. Victories every day; a four-mile run is no problem, I cook myself a delicious dinner, I record my expenses in a budgeting spreadsheet. As an aware person in this world, what role can I play while also pursuing my own dreams of success, wealth, power? How can I reconcile my identity with my values, if both are unclear to me? And hadn’t I finished with questions?

What a wonderful day. No anxieties to report, just really a lovely day. I cooked myself three meals and had healthy snacks, ran six miles, did yoga and pilates, took an aromatherapy bath, talked to my dear friend Paul on the phone, kept everything tidy and clean, did laundry, sewed a doll skirt for Liza, read a book, talked about movies, and felt great. Even had a successful 25 minute power nap. I’m listening to the happiness lab podcast.

I love life right now, i’m really just doing great. I’m proud of myself.

I was admitted to UT for the summer semester. I’m going back to school in two weeks!! BRING IT ON

Here’s a transcription of something I found typewritten on folded butcher paper, stories Becca told me.

I remember when I was being forced to go there. I got a blessing, you know, one of those back-to-school blessings. I was angry because Dad said during the blessing that BYU was the best place for me and that I would be very happy there. I couldn’t believe it! That was supposed to be a blessing from God, but I knew that Heavenly Father knew my heart. I knew that he knew what was right for me, and that I knew it too. I didn’t used to have the best relationship with Dad. Actually our relationship was like the worst you could ever imagine. It even got physical, you know what I mean. And anyway how dare he push his agenda on me? But then when I got to New York a miracle happened. It was in another blessing I think it was a confirmation blessing for my new calling in a new ward, and the bishop giving the blessing stopped in the middle of it and said in this really big voice, "Becca, this is the lord speaking. I am using this man to communicate my words to you". And I knew it really was Heavenly Father talking to me. "Everything you have endured, the worst experiences with your father, I remove them from your mind. You will remember them only as if in a dream." And from then on I can’t even remember what happened. I know something happened but I don’t have any memories of any of those bad times.

I miss the dogs. I see a lot of dogs in New York. I notice the black ones especially if they’re shaggy and not too big. I love a white muzzle and milky blue eyes.

Every time I do drugs lately I get excited about how attractive I am. I look in the mirror and admire my curves, my smile, my hair…

Grateful that i’m not addicted to marijuana anymore.
Grateful for my comfortable, easy wardrobe, and that I don’t waste a lot of time and energy deciding what to wear
Grateful for my sisters
Grateful for UT’s summer tuition discount
Grateful for Paul
Grateful for unexpected love from unexpected friends
Grateful for Carmen
Grateful for passionflower extract
Grateful for chickpeas

Some scraps that I gathered:

The smell of my own body
Reminds me of you.
Visceral, Baby-skin, Love.
Love which barely means
Anymore.
Things here are more and more perfect.
The baby-fresh smooth-flesh memory of you
Is the sour to make the sweetness matter.

And also:

The dim night:
How I feel about you now. Love makes the heart a beating sun, but mine is a tight knife, zip-tied. My feelings for you I do not understand. I know: I want you to be well, I want you to feel happy. I want to know your feelings, but I respect that you may not, must not, trust me. I want to be safe, to be sane, to be careful. Dead serious, is how I feel. I have scraped my heart out like a melon and fed it to stray dogs. Experiencing love in the sight of their grateful eyes.

Rest is so important

I’m so grateful for the pain that gives me patience and the presence to be everybody’s emotional support leftist right now

Bukowski, my friends don’t like you but you are all I can take right now,

Nostalgic for filth since flooded with sunlight, houseplants, gentle colors and prayer.

Today’s Tarot Card is the Queen of Swords: reliable, to the the point, no-bullshit.

This morning I read about “psychological distance,” for example, speaking about yourself in the third person to gain perspective on your problems.

Taylor is worried about working on their story. Taylor has built it up in their mind and no longer wants to look at it. Taylor feels guilty and insecure. Taylor had a lot of negative thoughts this morning after a disruptive nightmare, but they were able to rewrite the nightmare to reduce its effect on their mood. Taylor has been sharing a lot of writing lately and that is uncomfortable for them. They are growing in lots of ways at once and it is difficult and uncomfortable. This is life. Taylor has been having trouble feeling okay lately on the family zoom calls.

I’m registered for Fall: three classes in the bag and three more hanging out on waitlists.. I’m registered for Ballet, Genomics, and Biostats. Waitlisted for two different probability courses, and Computational Biology

Taylor has been having a higher than normal level of suicidal self-talk today. Taylor is drinking tea.

Woke up late from ambiguous dreams of the pride festival, customized ballpoint pens that said “I’m Gay!” and others… Scared to death of my story. Last night we set up the projector in our living room and watched an episode of South Park. I remembered why I don’t watch South Park.

Drank three beers yesterday and had a night run, drew a series of quick self-portraits before going to bed. The house and kitchen have been a mess lately.

Scheduled to go back to work.

4:00 intense craving for chocolate/candy

6:15 ate an apple with hummus

Had a great tubing adventure yesterday. Determined that it’s probably better for my life and well being to do college without any help. Then spent this morning researching student loans on reddit and nerdwallet and am already drafting letters of appeal to Dad. Student loans are a terrible racket.

Did a short interval run this morning. It was difficult, but not more difficult than my long runs. Missed pilates yesterday so I’ll be sure to get to it today.

Breakfasted on a delicious quiche with kale, turkey, zucchini, and mozzarella. Cottage cheese on the side, feeling very full. For dinner tonight we’re having a roommate feast of barbecue. I have risotto in the fridge that I made yesterday. I may have that for lunch or I may have an egg sandwich. My task for this week is to prepare a business plan for school. It’s wednesday already. I hope I’ll also finish the Decameron.

Love you, Taylor. Great work getting where you are today, and by the way, you look beautiful.

Just had my blood drawn for a covid antibody test. My lyft driver Randy gave me a card for his CBD business when he dropped me off.

The phlebotomist was gruff and the carpet was stained with blood at the doorway. I wore heels. When I walked out the door Julia said, “heading out?” In her way. Clearly expecting an accounting. I didn’t turn around just said “later.” And walked out quickly. Late morning today, I’ll adjust my schedule accordingly.

Woke early despite getting to sleep late and ran a tough three miles in the morning. Breakfast was cereal with yogurt and blackberries. I prepped overnight oats for tomorrow and a smoothie for this afternoon, and now I’m on schedule planning my day and journaling until ten. I’m not going to get on the family call, even though I want to, because it’s been too upsetting the last few times to see mom and dad. I don’t want to start having nightmares again. I have a call with a financial advisor today. Anxiety is acting up a little, but you can’t feel good all the time i guess. There’s a protest at the capitol today.

Today I’m going to work on my five year plan.

Good morning, woke easily at six thirty and had a good short interval run, home by eight thirty and breakfast was cereal and almond milk plus a banana, while reading the Decameron. Sixty five pages left in that interminable book. Today I have laundry to fold, spackle to put into the holes in my walls, and many pages of notes and letters to type. I will construct a schedule of interest rates on federal student loans. Couldn’t get ahold of the IRS the morning, instead got an automated message saying, “we can’t take your call right now, call again another time” and then it hung up on me. The house is okay, a little messy. Julia has left a notebook and some papers on the table for almost a week now. I keep passive aggressively scooting and collecting them for her, to no avail.

Hannah is looking at houses in the neighborhood, and I am thrilled that she might move back here, with her convertible and her long hair and her regrets and confusion. I hope we can hang out all the time. I ordered a free pride flag to put on our house during pride week. Today’s tarot card is the hanged man: sacrifice, crucial decision, stasis, etc. Been drawing many major arcana lately. A couple days ago was Death, before that the High Priest. Also the Queen of Swords.

I’m especially broke this week after paying rent and bills and trying to replenish my emptied emergency fund (when did that happen?) Yesterday something seemed eventful and important but I’ve forgotten it now. Another father’s day slipped by without groveling. It’s good to be free.

Later: this might be too radioactive for dailies, but not sure where else to put it

Dear C,

I think the saddest thing is all the feelings and thoughts that escaped and slipped away forever. That is why I choose to believe - believing is always a choice -that everything we’ve ever felt has left an indelible mark.

Of course, that includes the base as well as the lofty. I could not give account of my years; where I’ve been, what I’ve done, it’s too much ever to tell. There isn’t enough space in the universe to tell the universe to the universe, (Danielewski)

And how crunchy, how salty and filling to know that what I want isn't what I want either, but that wanting it keeps me alive. Truly, the thought of you is the sweetest tonic, driving me to exhaust my strength in climbing out of the well i’ve found myself in. Then talking to you and seeing you is bitterest pain. Not a mirage but a poisoned oasis where I am in the midst of enemies.

Dear C,

And my revelation would miss the last step and be no revelation at all. You know already and can tell without being told that at a word I would fall down in front of you. Perhaps our sorrow is the same, we do not know who we have become. I have committed such strange sins and chosen such strange paths. I have destroyed my own memory in order to stay alive.

Hello Darling!

How are you? Any bad nightmares lately? How about that one where you found your gay cousins, and then screamed at your parents? Can we think of a happy ending for that one? Think about it.

The past couple days I’ve been procrastinating. I forgive myself, and today will be different. It’s been six months since I quit smoking. Since then, I’ve entered a short story contest, I’ve decorated my room beautifully, I’ve become a stronger runner, I’ve gotten much better at cooking, and my self esteem has improved. I’m going tback to school.. A lot of changes. 30 is a good year for me. This morning after my run I noticed the whites of my eyes look grey.

Probably the result of yesterday’s 3 IPA’s Another habit to target. Diana S. said that after doing Whole 30 she hadn’t felt so good since she was a teenager. It’s something to consider.

Today’s tarot card is five of swords reversed. Five of swords is the defeat card, reversed indicates a no-win situation.

Big heavy feelings today. Lots of fear and anxiety in the morning, and feeling pent up. Talked to Diane about it and rooted it to the fear of being stuck in survival-mindset for several more years, and of having to suffer through school without the tools to take care of myself: a car, therapy, free time. Have grown attached to the prospect of having a low interest LOC, I now realize that the chances of my getting it are not good.

Two difficult tarot draws today. The nine of coins reversed, and then the moon.

Nine of coins reversed:

excess spending, being co-dependent on your financials or on others, to feel lonely in your personal pursuits, to feel inadequate financially, to have everything money can buy but yet still feeling impoverished emotionally and spiritually.

Dissatisfied, I drew another a little later in the day, the Moon:

of illusion and deception, and therefore often suggests a time when something is not as it appears to be. Perhaps a misunderstanding on your part, or a truth you cannot admit to yourself.

Diane asked me to sit with my discomfort, examine and pore over my feelings. Carmen challenged my poverty mindset by validating the desire to take out as many loans as I need, including to buy a car, including to pay for therapy, including to make space to have free time and personal time while in school. Hearing her talk about it made me feel like this is doable. Diane also said that a six hundred dollar a month loan repayment out of college is reasonable and doable. With these empowering thoughts in mind I can finish my budget.

Dad is in the hospital; he fell again. Hip fracture, multiple contusion, brain bleed, amnesia. No one can visit because of Covid. ICU for a few days. Doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know what happened.

Watched Pull My Daisy, Robert Frank.

Thought, while watching, that I am already growing old. My dreams are not going to come true. I might won’t ever be in that holy group of sorrowful friendships that make art without worrying whether it’s wrong. Which is to say, I’ve already taken my trip. I’m not willing to die how they died. Don’t have the coldness to do it safely.

Strange how now we’re all depressed, locked into our glowing accessories, trapped in our homes, our groups, our identities. Watching, and feeling that strained feeling of seeing women shoved aside in the world, of seeing the world all white, all male, all moneyed, and everyone else not shown.

Friendship’s the thing for me. It’s my special genius. My friends, my handwriting, my smile, my sorrow, my hair. These are my strengths. Talked to Lucy on the phone today. Still worried for her, sleeping too much. Me too, sleeping too much. Waiting.

Reading Again-

The New Yorker, The Believer, The Atlantic. BOMB magazine.

All my dreams did not come true. I hid them too deeply and now they are feeble and cannot compete. My idealist’s heart says , “It isn’t a competition,” but that, too, is protected so well that there’s little danger of the voice winning out.

I have been buffeted by life. As we all are. Going to bed lonely. I had a love hid in my toe, but it is all out now. What’s left is an emptiness that I purposely misidentify as desire.

The limpid, chuckling prose I read today (excerpt from Hex) gives me hope that I can love a book as well as I did when they were my greatest joy. It reminds me of how clunky and obtuse my sentences are in Saturn Devouring His Son. Maybe Fox and Girl can find some air someplace, in a children’s magazine for example. Maybe a poem.

After all… nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Dearest Dear, it’s been a day and a half. Talked to XT, to Diane, to Max, sent Pearl cookies for her birthday today. Watched The Last Picture Show and drank three tripels, texted Diego who responded in about ten seconds and arranged for a walk next week. Talked… to Dad.

I talked to Dad, and he said,

I’m so proud of you, so proud, so proud of you, I’m so proud, I’m so proud of you; you’re doing everything right, he said. Keep being you, he said, your sweet self. You are so sweet, he said; I love you.

I said I love you too, Daddo, don’t die yet.

Talked to Liza, to Christine, to Max.

Did pilates with Lucy and Carmen. Strengthened the obliques. Walked 3 miles. Listened to the Dutch House. Talked to Paul. Dear Paul. Kept the faith today.

Love you, Caroline, Taylor, whoever you are. I love you. Good night.

I’m up late. Watched the end of the new Spike Jonze, watched Queer Eye, watched Gilmore Girls, wrote honest and wrenching letters to Chase, is it tru, it’s tru. I am what I am, and that’s queer, and that’s flawed and cursed and passionate.

I love him still, for whatever folly it is. Seeing double for drunk. texted Paul to call me in the morning, and not sure what I'll say. Texted Paul. My dearest Paul. Me, I can’t keep much under my hat. My dad, dying maybe, always dying maybe, and we all wish it would be mom, swift and merciful, a sneezing fit that’d end in the dirt, and no more malice. She’s a wicked woman and I fear what she’d do to me if I let her.

What else. Talked to Carmen, to Hannah, to Becca, to Liza. Talked to the whole damn family. Ate hella cookies, and wrote a dire love letter to Chase, why bother, but I did, and let it take all the last pages of my last moleskine.

I’m in love, with something, even if not with myself. With Chase, it seems, or his memory. With help, and solidity, and love, and reasonableness itself. I love him, his face, his eyes, his cheeks, his discolored flanks, his shyness and his arguments. I love him, and he’ll have to prove me wrong.

Texted Paul to call me in the morning and have no idea what to say to him. I’m not one for subtlety, though I try to learn, though I try to change. To what degree is one’s personality a consequence of malicious social conditioning, and to what degree can it be mortified if so?

Otherwise, does self-love mean loving my impulses, and how to parse an impulse that lasts years and spans tragedies. Am I able to be alone? I hope so. How much did I explain to Julia? I don’t remember, too many beers.

I love you Taylor. Good luck with your possibly dying dad, with your strategies and your desperation, with your dispersed loves and desires. Good luck with all of that. With the passive object of your desire.

7.3.20

I am writing by hand, more work, but it’s such a pleasure.

Running was difficult this morning, either for insufficient sleep, the Tripel hangover, or Tom Hanks’s slow voice narrating the Dutch House, but I made three miles and put the appropriate stickers in my planner and on my calendar.

I’m going to Las Vegas on Sunday, which leaves me with a few things to sort before I go.

Paul dropped by with mods and I gave him a puzzle book from a little free library.It was Insanely good to see him. I want to hug him and hold on.

Got a sweet letter from Pearl that I will reproduce here before trashing, because it is too lovely to let go.

Hey Beanzo,

I hope this note finds you well. As you can see, a major campaign in my life at the moment includes submitting to twee/preppy tendencies. Today I evaded work (made possible by a rare dearth of meetings), ate a too-salty soy sauce egg, read a long, stunning personal essay by Hilton Als about summers of discord and suffering silence, and told an old friend to slide out of my DMs with his thirsty messages. I finally broke down and ordered an AC unit for my apartment, and I eagerly await its arrival. I’m thinking of applying for a parade permit for the occasion. What have you been listening to lately? I’ve been going limp in the face of slow summer stasis and playing a list of nineties slow-core bands (Duster, Bedhead, Aceton) punctuated by peppy bursts of kitchen karaoke to Fleetwood Mac tunes. It’s my friend’s birthday tomorrow, and I’m so happy to be able to plan a social engagement, even just a picnic in the park, that I truly feel like a kid before Christmas. Even with no other witnesses, this level of enthusiasm is, frankly, a bit embarrassing! I hope Costar gives you some good news soon!

Love Always,

Pearl

She also wrote out a beautiful poem, This is the Day by Noelle Kocot, which I hope to transcribe in calligraphy for Liza.

Morning kicks me awake, the

Razorburn of sun, the fading

Scar of moon. I am not lost.

I settle like the room settles,

Slowly, slowly. There is art to

Be had, and song, and a

Diadem of leaves crowned with

A future snow. I am not lost.

The brief illegibility of smoke

In the sky is its own reward.

Stellar is the word I would use

To describe my own life, with

Its kinks and bumps and waiting.

Oh the waiting. For now, all is

As it should be. Love on the other

Sides of the walls, the grapefruit, the

Wandering back and forth.

Visions, and details

Of the smallest things crowd my head,

And this life, this refuge, is

The only one who calls me anymore.

Having a day. Stayed up late writing raving words to Chase, woke with a screaming hangover.

Struggled to go back to sleep and had several long lucid dreams that I can't remember now. Had a burger. Feeling sorrowful.

7.4.20

Questions. Full of questions. My unsettled heart. Lately I'm loneliest when falling asleep. I don’t want to be alone forever. My sacrifice seems too dire. Everything is dire, lately. I am so proud of my handwriting. It is a proxy for all the words I have written and destroyed. A vestige.

7.4.20

Why am I so quick to identify my enemies? I would like to let go of that.

Meanwhile, an encounter slightly easier to arrange: Diego and I will go for a walk. I don’t know what I have to say to him. Knowing him has brought me so much pain, it seems that isn’t over. There’s real friendship underneath it though, which is what I should draw on when I decide what I want to say.

What is the need I am aching to satisfy? Why did I demand that he see me?

It feels like a dream, or like a story I read. I picture myself in all black, him with his long curls, chasing each other around the rooms and screaming with laughter, always knocking to be let in with extravagant welcome instead of using the key. Always trying to persuade each other of this or that.

We moved to the horrible apartment in June. In July, he left, a few days before our anniversary. Was he unhappy before he left? Was he dissatisfied with our life? He probably didn’t like having to work as a substitute after having his own class of kids in Odessa. Was he suffocated feeling like he was taking care of me? That I was always quitting smoking and relapsing, and immersed in petty drama at my silly job-and it was supposed to be temporary, but I wasn't looking for anything else?

He procrastinated and didn’t finish storing his things before he left, drove off while I stood crying in the parking lot of the dark and lonely apartment, with his guitars and his car and no plans.

For a little while we kept up. I knew where he was, what his life was like. He told me his things, as we used to say, “tell me your things.” Then slowly, or all of a sudden, I was the only one calling, and then he stopped answering. I asked him for a letter, he never wrote one.

Fearing, sensing his fear, I wrote him a long letter. I’m here, I said, I'll be here when you get back. He didn’t write back. I found a new house and I moved out of the horrible apartment. I had my 30th birthday at my new job with new acquaintances, at a small table. Forest and Paul were there, two exes. They were the only people at the party that I had known for more than a couple months.

Before he went, Diego had said he would visit, said I could visit him, talked about bringing me up to New Hampshire, but he didn’t mention any of that after he left. His parents flew up to visit him. He didn’t invite me.

I don’t remember what I wanted to tell him, what I wanted to hear from him, but I wanted him to be oriented in my direction. He was growing and I felt I was shrinking. I broke up with him, hoping he wouldn’t let me, but he did. I must have been getting high a lot. I told myself it was a relief. I no longer had a partner who treated me badly. Instead I was single. We talked a few more times, but that tapered off, too. The particular humiliation of always calling someone who never calls you is a familiar, bitter taste.

What happened next is a jumble. Sometimes we were in contact, sometimes we weren't. His job ended. He came back to town, but didn’t tell me about it. Whenever I texted he said he had just left Austin or else he planned to come soon. Let’s get lunch, I said, but he made excuses. He never tried to see me. I stopped thinking about him. I was popular at my new job. I was depressed. I smoked a lot. I don’t know exactly when or in what order things happened.

In January I was walking home from work. A bartender friend of mine had over-served me and I was sailing home stone drunk on gin and stopped in to use the bathroom at Epoch, four blocks from my job, four blocks from my home.

The coffeeshop where Diego and I used to meet in the mornings and make out when we were 23. He was 28 now, and I was newly 30. I didn’t see him there, sitting in the corner facing the room, but he saw me. When I got home he called me and told me so. I went insane. I didn’t think of anything but his nearness. I was back there in five minutes.

It was electrifying. I wanted to take him home right away, lie with him on the floor of my bedless bedroom and forget all speech. We had always communicated better through touches and looks.

I recriminated, scolded, insulted him but I was so happy that I couldn’t put any malice behind it. He was stiff, wooden, nonresponsive. It’s okay, Diego, I told him, smiling. I thought it was. But he couldn’t go lie on my floor, didn’t want to go walking, wouldn’t tell me anything, barely spoke.

He was seeing someone else. He had a loyalty to keep.

I was reminded of a fight a few years ago. He had been living in an old brick apartment next to a high school in a family neighborhood and I had been living in a huge shared house near the college, before I stopped talking to my parents and dropped out of school. I spent a lot of time at his place, kept a desk and did homework there, slept over and ran on the high school track.

Whatever it was over, the fight was severe. I told him we couldn’t be together anymore. But the next night I was repentant. I went to his apartment and knocked on the door with an apology, but he didn't answer, though I knew he was home. I went back to my car and called him until he picked up.

He told me it wasn’t a good time. I couldn’t come in. There was another woman in his bed.

At Epoch, I was stunned again. Suddenly the other woman was me.

So much hiding was disgusting to me. Still, I thought I needed his love. When someone is your first line of confidence for so many years there’s an instinctive trust that is hard to break. Imagining he would remember himself, I tried to strike up a friendship, only to be forced to realize that he was walking a tightrope of promises, balancing everyone around him to gain the most love while being the least accountable.

But that is a horrible thing to believe about someone you love and have loved so much that they are inextricable from your identity. I don’t want this to be a story of heartbreak. I want my fond memories to remain fond. His unusual phrases, his enthusiasm. His charm when it was unselfish, his singing and dancing and his strange justifications. I want to touch the memories without being stung.

I want to return to myself without malice or misunderstanding. I want honesty, truth, openness, reconciliation, distance from my anger. It was never possible to extricate this affair from pain. We put so much of ourselves into each other. I want to carry forward my fondness with care, in peace, without things unsaid.

It has long been my impression that I give this more examination and thought than I should and certainly more than he does. Maybe my tolerance for this exquisite pain is higher. Maybe I’m a masochist. Maybe I'm pathologically recreating my traumatic past. Maybe it’s my socialization to overvalue romantic partnership at the expense of my career, a condition apparently opposite to his.

This labor of mine, then, is a gift. As a gift, it is not an exchange. With my whole soul I desire a similar explanation in return, but I finally know better than to ask for it.

I’m on a plane to Vegas! Having a great day, so happy to be flying. I’m wearing my best clothes, and makeup . Shaved my legs and put perfume in my bath. Packed carefully into a single bag. Brought a sliced apple and babybel cheese. Before I left I washed every shred of laundry, cleaned my room to perfection, and saged it heavily.

Julia offered to drive me to the airport, but I preferred to pay for a car. I’ve been in a great mood all day. TSA pulled my bag as usual but they just unzipped it and gave it right back. On the plane I got a window seat in an empty row. Honestly I’m just delighted. Been smiling and joking with everyone. In my bag I tucked a few sheets of cursed notebook paper: I had been writing a letter to XT, as I got drunker it turned into a letter to myself and then into a letter to Chase. After writing it I can see a little more clearly (only a little) that he will never feel about me the way I hoped and imagined. I hope my heart turns, calms, and finds my family.

I want to love Paul, I want to trust him with my heart, to trust myself with his, but when I imagine it I feel constricted, feel like a phony.

All these castles in the air.

While my father lays dying and afraid, and Barbara, confused vain child, holds it against all of us. Security feels so tantalizingly close.

The last time I flew was coming back from LA with Paul. I felt manic then, rolled with epiphanies, a cramp in my chest for the near encounter with bliss. On that flight home I looked to my right at Paul’s peaceful face and was so happy, I could have gazed at him for an hour. But he was weirded out.

We watched a movie and he fell asleep. Some moments last forever. I’m listening to a mix of Sufjan Stevens songs that Chase burned onto a CD for me when we were 16. We listened to it for the first time in his bedroom, lying on the blue bedspread on a quiet sunny afternoon after school. The time blurs, but still sharp in memory is a fish tank with a few tetras, the blue bedspread, the sunlight, lying side by side in silence, not even making out, just listening to songs that I will love forever.

I wish I could talk to him still.

Come home, my heart says, hoping that I’m it.

7.5.20

Dear Taylor,

Hey little one,

Remember Elinore? Why were you ashamed the last time you saw her? You loved her songwriting and her acoustic bass guitar, but you were a tourist in her world.

Remember? You have seen what no one else has seen. You have fit in where you decided to, in the piss alleys and in the box seats. You have something that belongs in all those places and you have it in droves. It is a painful and ecstatic gift, and you have taken it on your shoulders bravely.

Had a really good day yesterday here in Vegas. Christine and I talked over pool and cocktails at a dive bar. Niece P said she wanted to go to therapy. Niece C is shy.

I think part of loving someone is choosing to believe they are even better than they show you. Talked to Christine about Diego, and Chase, and Paul. About my nervousness about being 30, whether I’ll ever have a child. Writing my wild love letters to Chase, It's clear that the time is wrong. This waiting is difficult, it feels so frustrating, but there is an order of operations. I must get back into school. I must apologize to Carson. I must reconcile with Diego and conquer my passion for him. I must get into graduate school. I must graduate. I must get a car. I must become more disciplined, more patient, more capable, more brave. I am moving forward.

Meanwhile, Dad is dying, or if not dying, is near death.

At Christine's, Another excruciating family call with Mom and Dad this morning.

But a fun personal development!

I got a call from Gabe Whitaker last night, remember Gabe? Infrequently and without any special importance? Me too! Anyway, apparently Gabe Whitaker has been harboring a Me-towards-Chase style longstanding delusional love obsession! How curious, how bizarre!

And yes, of course it’s interesting and fun to talk to someone who is in love with you and isn’t a total moron or creep, but the fact that he’s in love with me makes me thinks he is a slight moron or creep. Haha. Now, when I think of Chase, I can just remember Gabe and how totally hopeless and silly he is and how much better off he would be to exist in his own reality and not fixate on an alternative one. ha-HA!

Haha. Hahahaha. It’s amusing. I pity him, but only slightly. I was perfectly straightforward about how I never think of him at all and will never date him again. He was like, that’s fine, I just would love to reconnect, I love spending time with you.

Apparently just the idea of me gives him pleasure. It’s a seductive and funny feeling. I won’t encourage it. He so much wants to video chat. He seems to love to be corrected and scolded by me. It’s like Diego but worse. Entering briefly into his fantasy, it’s easy to see how I could torment and push him, criticize and be irritated by him, while he struggles to please me, while he gains a gradual sense that something is wrong, fooling himself into thinking he is in the situation that he wanted to be in. But he would be selling himself short.

Because he could never and will never be the person that I want to be with. Like I am not the person Chase wants to be with. if I were, I would be with him already, it’s pretty clear. I know how to tell when someone has a crush, I can tell with Paul. So why can’t I tell that Chase isn’t interested? Get real. You could figure it out. He’s not interested. And why am I interested? It’s like Gabe thinking he understands my soul because he thinks it completes some part of him that he lacks. His dead father. Who knows.

How delightful to get his gift of perspective, and at such a good time. Last night, charmed, seduced by the attention, I was considering engaging with this foolhardy dreamer, but this morning it’s much easier to live in the real world.

I’m no Laura, and I won’t be.

Starting work on physics today, what a delight.

Took a morning swim,

Slept in dreaming of Leigh and other things, laid enjoying the pleasant feeling of tiredness and soreness in my body.

Physics starting tomorrow and starting fast. I’ll decompress with a film series: The Conversation, The Bicycle Thieves, 13, Daisies. Christine gave me Dr. A’s book, which I wanted even before she offered it. Bidding for printers on craigslist and trying to convince myself not to worry about money. France against the Robots, Jenny Perlins bunker series. The documentary, “what is capitalism”

Surprising but real, having some PTSD about high school graduation and how sad it was and how terrible I felt.

Slept all day and dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. Missed class.

Read the news this morning and it’s got me all wrapped up.

Dad’s ill and Mom has decided to block Bethany from speaking to him.

Meanwhile, she sent me 500 unsolicited dollars yesterday for no reason.

I need to get a loan for school soon or else I’m going to have to go back to working full time while taking a full course load, and based on the time commitment of this physics class that would be quite literally impossible. I’m not willing to compromise my sleep, I know it wouldn’t be wise.

Later: drunk and ready to drunk text. Saw Paul who says, (wise, always) that I have to just do my run tomorrow anyway, and take a nap afterwards. I grabbed his hand afterwards and held it for a moment to tell him how glad I was to see him after all this isolation, truly glad to see him.

Do I love him? I love him. Do I want to marry him? I think I am waiting still to find the one that is for me. Maybe none is for me. Maybe he is for me. But first I must be for me. Last night in my nightly visualization, my shadow-self was wild, was un-tameable, scared me. I tried to calm them, found them too troublesome. Finally put them to bed with kisses, but found it so repulsive,to kiss my self, to love my self. Will try again, I know now that it is not wrong. Know but have not learned.

I gasp for breath, my crushed lungs, my crawling shoulder blades, my thickened chest. I gasp and clutch for air, wish for free breathing, for a full inhale.

Almost out of unemployment benefits. Need loans soon.

Overcome with fatigue (why? I slept in today?) I had a long and strange sex dream about Paul. In the dream, I loved to whisper in his ear and kiss his jaw, but he kept trying to make me come with sex and I kept getting close and not being able to finish, and he would stop, triumphantly saying I had, and then we start to do the whole thing again.

The cats glide like fish at my feet.

A good year for me. Cooked stir fry today, walked to the post office, had Biscuits and Groovy for breakfast. Body looks good, feels good. Hair getting longer, and I won’t be washing it anymore. Tired but happy. A difficult road ahead but at least I can see it. XT too is coming around to healing.

Yesterday I sent my letter to Carson. I re-wrote it by hand seven or eight times, until I focused on every word I was putting down, and felt the meaning of it, and hurt with it, and then I put it in the mailbox and now it is gone and I can’t undo it. It’s still not good enough, but this time it’s better than nothing. I took the step. Thinking about Diego a little today, and missing him. Wonder if he misses me at all. Wonder what he thinks about when he thinks about me, if he thinks I’m a loser. If I think he’s a loser. We grew so much together, and then we grew apart. I miss him, and I’m glad I’m single. I’m moving faster now, and learning to love myself.

Lucy’s mom read her diary, too. Love is not a boundary-less state, we agree.

I asked Paul to co-sign for me for student loans, but he said he’d rather just lend me the money, so I asked Liza (who will ask her husband).

Journal! Help! I’m having big feelings! So much to do, so little energy. Where is my ease and energy? Need those five minute HIITs, chocolate, need early to bed and early to rise. I need to feel settled. Now, my body aches, my mind ping-pongs, I feel sorrow.

Now, the buckling down. Study sessions, planking, pilates postural exercises, lab reports … maybe a little gin. Wish I had a manicure. Wish my shorts were bigger. Maybe I have a herniated disk at the base of my spine.

Listening to Wilco, sad. Mourning. No I guess I’m not in love with Chase anymore. Chase was just the idea of returning to before, of being forgiven and regaining what I lost of hope and future. So sad. Brain tired. Homework due, but tonight I want to skip it. I won’t skip. I’ll shower. I’ll listen to Wilco. I’ll take the work to bed with me. This isn’t quite self-pity. To some degree I’m reveling in being in this place I haven’t been in a while.

Working on my lab, ever so slowly. Having a hard couple of days. Overscheduling slows me down. I Wish I could go to therapy. Wondering if I can’t just go.

Lauren at work went to her first concert to see Brittany Spears at Madison Square Garden when she was 14. Her older cousins took her, and got her so drunk that she started a fight while they were waiting in line. She yelled at some other teenagers who were wearing schoolgirl outfits, that they probably went to Mount Saint Suck-a-Dick. Her cousins broke it up and moved her to another line.

From My dinner with Andre, when Wallace Shawn says something like, I grew up on the upper east side, and I rode around in Taxis all the time, I was an aristocrat. All I thought about was art and theater and life. Now I’m thirty six, I’m an artist, and all I think about is money.

Flying to Atlanta to go to nephew Will’s wedding. That annoying little boy who loved chess and model kits. Was thinking last night about my relationship with Maggie's kids. I don’t want to be answering a lot of questions about my life, but I also don’t want to deflect by asking them a lot of small-talky questions either.

The things I want to know about them can’t be asked casually at a wedding:

“How are you coping with having a mentally ill mother?”
“Are you suffocated by your religion?”
“Do you know the importance of consent in sex?”
“Do you have a plan for supporting yourself?”
“Are you okay in there?”

The sunrise glows in a full, intense spectrum along the entire horizon, and I am very tired.

I borrowed Paul's suitcase and brought much more than I need. On the way through first class I studied the woman in a blazer working on her laptop: translucent pink manicure, gold rings.

One day I will be like that, I think: workwear, jewelry, manicure, laptop, corporate flight. I wonder how it will feel. Maybe like this notebook feels. Like using Paul’s suitcase, like my leather pencil case. Luxury- what does it mean to me?

Last night on my run I accessed another buried memory.

I regarded the 18 year old Caroline whose dream was to become an academic. I witnessed her at high school graduation, despairing so utterly, numb to the ongoing violence of being forced again and again, instinctively grasping the horrible turning point she was approaching.

I saw this from my run, from my striving and difficult adulthood, so different from the one she dreamed of.

The question crosses my mind, am I getting ready for another disappointment in ten years? Will I find myself alone, working class, shaking my head at how naive I was when I was 30?

I don’t think so. This time, I am free. I will not make myself miserable to protect myself from conflict. I am healing, I feel in control. I am making choices and plans and working towards my goals. I may be an academic yet, if I choose, but that is no longer my dream. I never wanted to be dreary or second-rate.

The sun is up now and we’re almost to Dallas. Most of the airport shops are closed to prevent people from getting too near to each other. I still have barely cracked Testo-junkie.

--

I took a two mile walk on my layover in DFW, in the A and C terminals.

Excited for this wedding. I don’t really know what a family wedding will be like; because they’ve all been in the temple, the only one I've ever attended was Bethany's. Will there be alcohol? I hope so.

Leaving for Atlanta now. I’ve never been there before. My impressions of the deep south are from my hilarious/hideous greyhound trip to Virginia a few years ago: sun on red brick. Scorch marks. Sunflowers. Dirt.

---

Hawkesdene wedding Venue, South Carolina

Because so many people cancelled for Covid, I have a three-bedroom house to myself. I invited the nibs: Long talk with niece Em and nephew Jack. Em drunk, Jack high, and that’s okay.

Worried a little that I didn’t seem interested enough in them. That slight insecurity when I answer a question about myself and realize I never asked one in return. I love them, these familiar strangers.

Atlanta airport
Phew! What a wedding! Very sweet, though I was uncomfortable in the very white, very Jesus-y space. A big relief to get out of there.

The worst part was when Will implied he had expected me to be too poor to attend.

The best part was when Emma and Jack came over late at night and let me wisdom-dump on them.

On the plane

I love you Lucy-dog. I love you whiskey. I love you pulled pork, I love you air travel. I love you Molly Moore, and Grace from the radio who lived in a squat.
I love you challenge, I love you difference, I love you nephew Sam. I love you Black woman intellectual, I love you deep-difficult. I love you Cody, I love you Diego, I love you woman in the row behind me.
Cody asleep, woman in the row behind me asleep, Lucy asleep.
Whiskey awake, Leather jacket awake, love awake.
Me, awake.

Back from the wedding. It was nice. I am happy with my choices, glad I've got the life I have. My family is fucked up. Really glad my parents weren’t there. Had friction with Scott, with Will, with Stacy's husband. Patriarchy is strong with those ones.

Back home again, and what a relief. I love and am grateful for my life, for my active and daring mind, for my true goodness. If I were me, I’d love me hard. I wouldn’t be ashamed or angry or have pity. I’m real, motherfucker!

What do you want to know? Maggie came over alone to see me when I was at Hawkesdene. Softly, without seeming to hear the answers, she asked questions. What did you bring? (lots of clothes) What do you eat? (mostly pizza) Are you happy? (more or less) Who do you live with? (four kids with better jobs than I have) Where do you sleep? (on the floor) Do you have a car? (no)

At the airport, A lot of fishing gear and country-club young adults. A lot of adults playing video games. I haven’t used shampoo in ten days, and my hair is soft and curly.

Again grateful- for my cosmopolitan style, my education, my limited awareness. Grateful for New York and Patti Smith and the Velvets. Grateful for 3 feet high and rising, for Pilates, for liberalism and then leftism, for my job and for Paul.

Grateful for my thick hair and my thick thighs and grateful I don’t have kids.

Grateful for my leather jacket, for my black jeans, for my strong body and my gnarly stink-eye, grateful for Max, and for starlit whiskey nights among the poetry of desperation, Grateful for nothing to lose. For teenage me. For early twenties me. For late twenties me. For me earlier this year. For me yesterday and me this morning. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

More on the wedding:

After the ceremony the photographer corralled everyone for pictures. My handsome nephews and beautiful nieces. Gnats buzzed around my face. I never expected Will's new wife Marcelle to make time for me, and indeed she never did. There in her perfect dress she posed and posed, like a crystal horse statue.

When all the bridesmaids posed, nephew Sam knelt to take his own picture of them. As he squatted down to get a better angle, a dime-store spiral notebook fell out of the waistband of his tuxedo pants.

I was pained whenever I heard people asking the young ones their plans. Don’t make them explain, I thought, they don’t know.

At my dinner table were Scott's sister Stacey, Stacey's transphobic macho husband whatsisname, cousin Ruth, Grandma Sue. Sam’s a good boy, said Grandma Sue, we need to find him a girl to marry. Cousin Ruth, bless her, fought back against that. I became increasingly uncomfortable and bored. The trip went sour. I went home early. I didn’t want to be friends with the officers or the blondes of the wedding party. Not my scene.

Feeling depressed today, I haven't managed to do very much. Unpacked. Made lunch. Drank water. Paid bills.

Early morning. Listening again to The Body Keeps the Score. Disrupted. Been disrupted since I got back from NC. I remember the first time I tried to hurt myself. I don’t know what I was upset about, but I was in the sunlight on the couch in the afternoon. I scraped my wrist until I made a big patch of raw, broken skin. It didn’t bleed right away, but it scabbed over after a day or two. I hoped it would make me feel better. I was in 9th or 10th grade. I was disappointed that it didn’t make me feel better.

Once, Diane gave me a tin of coal in my stocking as a joke. It was the first Christmas in the new house; I was 15. I thought the coal was from my parents, and I started to cry. Despite my good grades, kindness and intellectualism, despite how much my teachers and peers liked me and encouraged me, despite how kind my friends’ parents were to me, I felt that Mom and Dad were fundamentally disappointed in me and didn’t like me. In fact, I felt like they hated me and were ashamed.

Mom used to tell me a lot that she was ashamed of me. Thinking about it now makes me cry, too. Getting that coal made me feel like I wasn’t a good person even though I was trying so hard.

Or the time I went to the college fair, eleventh grade. The sense of doom and sorrow that hung over me as I wandered from table to table in the gym, with a sliver of desperate need and determination that was killed off in the following year. The loneliness of feeling so sorrowful and alone while my friends were excited to go to college. The frustration, finally, when I was offered so many scholarships that I couldn’t take, that I didn't know how to take.

They tried to change me into something I was not, and when they couldn’t, they tried to destroy who I was. I was screamed at, I was stalked, I was robbed of privacy. I was told lies. I was manipulated. I was undermined. I was blamed, shamed, and gaslit. They tried to make me believe that I was crazy. They tried to make everyone believe that I was crazy. I wasn’t crazy. They tried to drive me crazy.

Next day. Woke at 5pm, took a bath with a beer and Testo Junkie. Thought about masculinity. About journaling without sensitivity. About my nephew Sam and whether he will ever write his novel.

Almost noon, just got through my morning routine for the first time in a week, with the run cut short. Things are looking up. From The Body Keeps the Score, my favorite takeaways so far are the importance of having an imagination for good things happening in the future, and the importance of feeling like I have power to control my own life.

Did the crossword for an hour or so. Called Christine, Liza, Becca. Christine didn’t want to talk, Liza was uncomfortable with my telling her about my PTSD symptoms, Becca just finished some drawings of Joseph Smith's first vision and I had to bite my tongue again.

I used to say to people, "oh yes, after you’re a teenager, you lose all sense of what you believed." Actually, apparently that’s a symptom of complex trauma.

I used to say, "oh yes, I used to love to read novels, but I don’t read much anymore." Also apparently a symptom of complex trauma.

I’m having a lot of trouble focusing. I keep thinking about how I need therapy, how I need a car, how I need stability.

I remember a couple years ago when I moved in with Diego, in what was and may always be the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen. Every wall, all windows. We could run around in circles through the living-bed-bath-bed-dining rooms chasing each other. The bedrooms had wooden walls, shiplap, Liza informed me. Flooded with leaf-inflected sunlight everywhere. The kitchen was a sunny yellow with black and white checkerboard floor tiles, and the dining room a medium-blue. The front room had an orange wall, and Diego told me, “I’ve always wanted to live in a house with rooms painted in primary colors, red yellow and blue.”

“Let’s make it happen!” I bought the paint chips that week and put them on the wall to see which color looked good in the light. I picked a color and bought the rollers and paper to lay underneath. We painted it together and after we pulled the tape down from the corners I painted in the bald spots with a little brush. It looks great.

A little later, on one of our mini-walks around the neighborhood, we found a lady struggling to get a curb-couch into her van. We stopped to help her, but it was never going to fit. We needed a couch, and the curb one was nice, and the lady ended up helping us drag it three blocks and up our own stairs, and I made tea for us all and we sat around talking for a little while together in our living room. It was always nice to have guests in that place, for everyone to see that we lived in the most beautiful house I’d ever seen.

I bought three succulents and a bright red pot at the The Great Outdoors on South Congress. I planted them on the back porch, which was really just the landing at the top of our spiral fire escape. I still have the planter, though one of the succulents died, the other two are doing very well. They love the summer sun on my new porch at Zennia, and they love to drink lots of water.

A couple days ago I sent Diego a text, following up on a brief text conversation we had a month or so ago about getting together to take a walk and have a closure-type conversation. He didn’t respond. I don’t know how he feels or what he thinks, though it’s hard not to make conjectures, since I believe there are few people I know better than I know him, and few people who know him better than I do. But that’s less true every day.

I know what I feel, which is that it would be very hard to see him again. I would want to touch and kiss him, to hug him and hold his hand, to run my fingers through his hair and look into his eyes. Every moment of not doing that would be painful. So it probably isn’t time.

Besides, if there’s any pattern in that relationship that sticks out the most, it is disappointment, being let down.

Meanwhile, President T***p just made a statement that he is purposefully defunding the post office in order to reduce the ability of people to vote by mail. I've broken off my notes about politics into a new document.

Crunch time. I don’t know if I really do have magic intuition or not, but today I feel like Carson read my letter. I feel sorrow and ache, and regret and mourning. I feel loss and pain.

2:30
One hour into the physics final, just ate a pathological amount of rice and curry. Focus is difficult. All I want to do is sleep.

Feeling all the things that are not allowed, for me. Not allowed to break, to need things, to spend money, to feel sorry for myself. Not allowed to be angry, to make a mess, to get fat, to lay around. Not allowed to talk to Andrea, to be near Poppy. Not allowed to say what I feel and think and mean.

Not allowed to relax, not allowed to let anyone see what i’m writing. Not allowed to contact Diego. Not allowed to complain.

Not allowed to break, to crack.

Done with physics! I’m about to purchase a book of Bukowski poems to celebrate finishing the end of the class. Thoughts most recent: I’m moving into a new phase of my life that’s less concerned with friends and approval. I’m getting fucking serious.

I’m not a glamorous or very beautiful person. I’ve accepted that for a while. But as I get older, society would prefer that I disappear. People in my family treat me as though my decision-making days are over. Fuck that! I’m not about it. I’m just getting started, assholes.

It’s okay, it’s alright. Listening to the Body Keeps the Score again. Reminded of the comfort of my weed smoking habit, how I loved to have that routine, to perform certain actions to get a certain result, how when I smoked weed I would find somewhere safe, private, anonymous, away from people, and do something that made me feel good.

I wish I liked masturbating, but I don’t. Napped all day again.

Walking home from grabbing a sandwich, the sun setting and the heat dwindling a little, a slow, picking tune on a mandolin wafted along, played like a lullaby to the greying streets near Epoch, I got closer and there he was, the same tall 'nam vet I saw earlier, with a long grey beard braided at the bottom and one of those green baseball hats, bill forward, with all the pins and flags on it.

He was leaning against the wall, tall and straight, holding his gleaming instrument gently and plucking a tune so beautiful it hurt. Saw me watching him and nodded, and I kept watching and looking, and he kept nodding slowly, bending his body a little until he was giving a whole japanese bow, slowed his playing but didn’t stop it, and said to me as I passed, in a gentle voice, be safe out there, and I said, thanks.

I walked on, and half a block later was seized with the urge to go back and give him my sandwich. But I don’t have much food myself. I was pained to realize that I need the sandwich and I’d better keep it, though it felt wrong. Felt like a parable or a morality tale, about giving when you haven’t got. That haunting song, I can still hear.

Late late, slowly returning to baseline. Floor’s clean today. Power-dusted the corners and the windowsills, emptied the stationery organizer and put everything back in again, folded and arranged all the clean clothes, packed three packages and made a bag to donate. Ate a lot and I’m still gaining weight. 20 pounds in five months. Katie and Alex got married Friday. They didn’t even tell anyone.

Getting a haircut tomorrow morning at eleven, then walking with Katie at six, or five really, because it takes me a while to get over there. Slowly getting back to baseline, it’s been nine days and I’m aware of my triggers: Crossword clue- seven sisters school. Even typing it makes my heart beat faster. The memory just below the surface but too horrible to bring up. It’s right there though. It’s right there.

Watching David Makes Man, about a traumatized kid from the projects trying to navigate two hostile worlds while also dealing with heavy psychological shit. When I bring up trauma people go quiet, get uncomfortable.

Grateful for Max who always calls me on my shit. Today I was complaining to her about people claiming to read books when they’re only listening to them on tape, and she gently but firmly told me that I was gatekeeping.

I’ve created a hostile place in my instagram feed, especially Catrice Paul, Danethadoe, and even Ericka Hart.

Where do I come from? A trickier question.

I love you, Caroline Taylor Benac. I love you, I love you, I love you.

I hate you too, still, a little, I’m working on it. I know that I shouldn't. I still wish you were who I thought you were going to be. I’m still disappointed in you, too, like everyone is. I still think that you failed, and that it’s your fault, and that even if it wasn’t your fault, you should have overcome it all, should have transcended it, why couldn’t you?

Not a good day.

Strange dreams. Panic attacks in the afternoon.

Just numbed away two plus hours with the nyt crossword etc, dinner was homemade tapenade over pasta. Body feels bad. Procrastinated buying groceries again, ignoring how i cant afford it. Overwhelmed, felt very hopeless today.

Brittany pointed out that at least I don’t feel like I have to burn it all down.

Hand hurts. Head. Belly, breasts. To my great displeasure, I find that I owe the government hundreds of dollars for my health insurance policy. Feel a tightness in my chest, a panicky restlessness. I’m out of money. My bank account is drained. My credit card is maxed.

Been on hold with Sallie Mae so long I don’t remember why i’m calling. I’m broke, bitch.

A rough few days, finally put out a call on instagram for a friend to come over and help me clean my damn room. Amanda came, and invited me to Lucy’s for a movie tonight, when I started off, Grant's Subaru which I'm test driving wouldn’t start, dead battery maybe, so I couldn't go.

Got a few more papers to chug through, transferring my Diaries for the year so I can throw out notebooks, make some room. Too much to do.

Why do I still look at Chase's insta?! It makes me feel so bad.

He got a puppy, which made me really happy, like, awh, i’m so glad he has a puppy and that will make him happy, but then, read the comments and saw all the other people who love him and I felt pain/sad/scared.

Another difficult day. Trying to sleep and suddenly wrenched by bodily distress- like being electrocuted or tickled, all my muscles contracting. Flogging around. Not enough money, not enough focus, not enough time. Fucking horrible day, honestly. The school stuff, I want to do it, but I feel so stressed, feel like there’s no room for me to succeed, like the odds are too hard, like I’d rather quietly, easily, quickly die.

God, fuck, shit, fuck. Fucking fucking fucking fuck. Fuck this, fuck it. Fuck fuck fuck.

Oh yeah,
Julia married Braxton at some point. She didn’t even tell XT. Hurts a little.

Today is a great day! I’m listening to Phish, Grant got his car back, Becca had her drawing club over zoom, and I moved my clothes into the new boxes that I got at IKEA yesterday. It was so fun, I had a really nice time with Paul. Afterwards drove him and Evan to HopDoddy and had dinner with Mark.

Here’s a letter from XT that I’m letting go of today, It has lots of sushi stickers on it and is written in blue gel pen on cute stationery.

:

Dear Taylor,
I was supposed to go to the dentist today but I rescheduled my appointment so that I could stay home and write letters and do a charcoal face mask.
Summertime is hot and it makes me sleepy.
I finally set up my bed frame today! It arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. Now I can get in and out of bed with ease! Next up: a desk so I can write letters and stories without being in a weird position and hurting my back.
I feel happy in my room.
It is strange and difficult to be settling in to my room while also wanting to move closer to you in the back of my mind (and front and sides).
I miss our afternoon walks but I know we will have them again.
I went swimming in the ocean yesterday and the water is very cold. My skin tingled when I got out.
Sending you a big hug!!
You are a dear friend to me.
Love, XT

9.2.20 (more or less)

Watchin’ Motherless Brooklyn, thinkin’ about-

Some people how they start drowning and see it happening- see themselves drowning. Know it’s happening and don’t want it to, but they drown anyway. How they do it alone but it happens to a million people at once.

About city life and human density. Brooklyn bridge. Jazz. Beauty that doesn’t belong to me.

I can get out in the river under the sun. I can look up at the sundering leaves and see God.

I see God in anger, too.
In filth, also.

Things that I love:
Fine table-settings. Jazz. Mosh-pit.

I love,
Big laughter. A clever turn of phrase.
The wet air of a greenhouse.

I love,
Striding long in a good coat and good, clicking shoes on a cool day anonymous.
I love my birthday.
Dusting my baseboards, changing my sheets, choosing colors.
I love my sisters, love my nieces, one or two cousins, and the friends who stood by me when they maybe shouldn’t have.

I love,
Grass. Coolness.
a hand to my temple.
A tone. I love, a free day, adventure found, just the right amount of fear.
I love,
Border Collies.
Russian Blues.

Cotton. Silk. Jute. Bamboo forests. Fountains. Flying.

I love,
A library. ¼” of the sleeve of a white dress shirt emerging below the sleeve of a suit jacket.
Receiving words form a stranger, meant exactly for me.
I love,
A good photograph of myself.
A solemn horn, no mystery.
Melancholy in your arms.

Some things to catch up on, here. First I came here to say that the last couple of times I’ve tried to use this vibrator It’s been followed by sweat-soaked nightmares. Most recently one where I am attending Chase’s wedding, all my shirts are wrinkled, I can’t find the way out of the hotel, and I’m pregnant.

Then a dream that I’m watching TV in the main bedroom at the Crescent house, very quietly so I don’t wake up Mom, then I hear Dad come home and I’m sneaking around up and down the stairs very quietly, trying to get all of my clean and dirty laundry into a single bedroom. Last a dream of tiptoeing around my Mom’s foul mood, being afraid of her, being afraid to tell her where I’d been, living a kind of secret life.

I won’t go into more detail. Paul suggests that I don't record my nightmares.

I had been wanting to write about my 31st birthday, because it was so good.

Went to brunch at South Congress Cafe with Paul and sat at the bar hawking for a table for a while. We got a bottle of champagne, which was served in a beautiful and very heavy marble chiller. Hannah arrived and gave me the aforementioned vibrator.

Then we got a table and Forest came, and Louis came, each of them waltzing in a vision of perfection and cool. We had calamari, warm goat cheese salad, queso flameado, steak and eggs, crab cake benedict, and Louis poured tea for everyone, which he had brought hot in a special thermos. He gave me a carved wooden box. I gave everyone party favors with Tom Ford perfume samples and a fine point gel pen.

Then me and Hannah and Paul went to Austin Motel and had cute cocktails at Joann’s fine foods, and Paul went to Doug’s ‘bachelor party’ which was just him and and Alex and Doug drinking at a brewery, and Hannah and I went swimming at the pool and talked about sex and friendship.

We stopped by a motorcycle shop on the way home, nephew Will called to give me a birthday compliment, and then I came back to Zennia and watched When Marnie was There with XT and Max on plex, which was strange because it was apparently an overtly lesbian story about a girl falling in love with a ghost, but then the ghost turned out to be her grandma, so it was kind of an erasure/gaslighting moment.

During the movie Lucy O came by and gave me a big present in a big blue bag : chalk, google eyes multipack, and a handmade birthday card signed by everybody at Home Slice, plus a cutie succulent in a beautiful little planter.

After the movie I ate ice cream with Julia and we talked about ‘cancel culture’ and I talked over her a lot because I didn’t want to let her opinions slip through too much.

Then Garrison hit me up and I went to meet him and Nikiah at the park, and he gave me such a fancy and expensive gift - a brand new hiking backpack - that I was embarrassed.

The birthday love kept rolling in for the next couple days. Cupcakes from Bex and a fun sushi dinner, a digital gift card to Sa Ten from Pearl, and well wishes from everybody.

I had planned on yesterday being a catchup day but instead I woke late, read a novel, ate well, drank gin, and then fell asleep at about 5:30. So it was a catchup day, just not for schoolwork. Now I’m going to go on a good run.

I love you, Taylor!

Stewing and steaming and stewing and just need to process a little. I’ve been bitching about Eric behind his back since our date at Chili’s and finally called him and told him so. Said that he’s the third man to offer me his noncommittal sexual services this year and that its corny and reads as fear of commitment and a bad offer. He was cool about it, of course. Good guy. Kind of sad-seeming though.

I had an exceedingly refined glass of wine at Paul’s this afternoon after therapy. I don’t know why he bothers flirting with me, except out of some kind of instinct lately.

I ruined the mood by guffawing at B______'s having a baby. Really ruined it. Had to do damage control. I was late to dinner at Kura, where Amanda was in a bad mood, I got drunk and sent Amanda and Ari and Lucy a truly unflattering picture of my ass. Yeesh.

I need to go to sleep now, my Biostatistics homework is going to be late tomorrow.

Love you, Taylor, hope you can get back on track this weekend. I know you’re tired, but next week there will be more time and you can breathe a little more. Don’t forget that hard work is self care and self care is hard work.

P.s. too bad about Eric because I really do think he is super hot, I just have too much self respect for that.

Doing okay. Saying no to more things, which feels good.

Annoyed most of the day today. Sometimes Pissed. Irritable, at any rate.

Got my sallie Mae loan today. Same day, got a bill for 60 dollars in interest. Nice. Gin in my ice water. Late late night. Found seventy photos from seven years ago. Parties, old friends, KVRX days. Back when we were beautiful. I’m still beautiful. Gin in my thermos. Stale Pizza in the kitchen. I write, still.

I think I will probably always be lonely. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t lonely, unless it was that year with Diego. Some of the photos are of him too: the dark, obscure ones. He’s sneering. Or maybe it’s my memory that sneers at him. I think, I should call him, and then I think, what would I say? It’s too late.

A new variety of nightmare last night: that I was stuck in bed, ill, whining, (in reality my neck was pushed uncomfortably sideways), and wanting so much to get up and move, and Diego was there, and he packed up, got dressed, and walked out. Where are you going? I asked him. Out, he said, and left, and I wanted to go with him and I dragged myself up and tried to follow but I was too weak and slow and he was already gone.

Feeling angry again, sort of. Therapy with Carolyn on Friday to EMDR out my memories of graduating from high school.

Here's a letter from Pearl that I’m about to throw out. (talked to her on the phone this morning, she was happy.)

At the Swarts’s, Paul making me even more tea, cinnamon rolls too.

Been very pleasant here. Earlier we were out sitting in the yard and I complained about my muscle soreness and Jack offered to give me a back massage, so I know something’s up. I don’t think he’s really serious about it though, I don’t think he’s thought it through the way I have. I’ve thought it through. Either the thing isn’t right or the time isn’t right.

I can’t imagine being so self contained and controlled as I always am around him, all the time. I don’t want to sacrifice the free, loud, strange, impromptu part of me, however much security and ease I might gain. My passionate side. I think maybe he will come around to being able to handle it, but if so, not yet. I remember the efforts he made to do so before, and how it was a strain, as it was a strain for me to be patient with his finickyness.

Not wanting to have nightmares again, I did the thing last night where I imagine my own blame self knocking at the door, peeking in, and then coming to sit at the edge of the bed to stroke my hear, say soothing things, relax my corporeal self. I remember Diane doing that for me when I was little. It worked. I dreamed of writing the most beautiful song, carefully adjusting the lyrics to melody and shifting from verse to verse.

Just spoke to Lucy O. about Rosh Hoshannah (sp?) and the Tashlikh (sp?) ceremony she invited me to but I couldn’t attend.

To do it, you go to a place with running water, preferably around animals. Drop little pieces of bread into the water and with each cast away a “sin”.

Think about what to leave behind from the previous year. Set an intention for the year to come.

What word would you choose to create direction for the next year? She asks me.

For me the words that came to mind were: Discipline, Routine, Work. Drive, momentum,

But all of these feel like they’re circling around it.

Sacrifice. Momentum. Change. Movement. Momentum. Money. Hits. Goals, Accomplishment. Power. Control.

Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Focus. Progress. Endurance.

Stricture. Confidence, Strength. Goals. Definition. Possibility. Bravery. Action. Drive. Initiative.

Shitloads to do. Five minutes at a time. I’m annoyed with enough of my friends that I think it’s more about me than them.

What the fuck? Am I falling for Paul right now? Kind of maybe feel slike it. Excited by thought of reaching out for his hand. Longer bouts of eye-contact.

I am here on the patio of Uncle Nicky's where we planned to meet, and I can see Diego across the street pacing back and forth on the phone, as he becomes later and later for our appointment. How incredibly irritating. I cannot believe how rude this man is. How will I make it through without murdering him?

--

Watching Cub. Saw Diego and talked to him. It happened. It hurt. I made him face what he did. Glad it’s over. I spoke my peace, he apologized, afterwards I sat on the curb and wept. Didn’t get that much more done today, took a while to come down from the intensity of it. Had a nice zoom call later with Liza and Becca.

Today I need to do two things: biostatistics project proposal and probability catch up. Still feeling some aftershocks from seeing Diego yesterday. Sadness. Anger. Loss. Grief. Feeling tired. Trying to stay mellow, recognize that I feel cranky, not be unpleasant. Feeling physically desirous. Lonely somehow.

--

Finished the proposal, got stuffed on indian food.

What did we say?

I’ll never remember it all. I read Paul some of my journal and he admitted no, he hasn’t thought it through. Finds it confusing.

Either the thing isn’t right, or the time isn’t right.

Okay! It’s great to get to sleep. Reset. I’ve got a lot to do! It’s a gift. Tomorrow I have lab at 9 and I’d better be working on it by 8. Tomorrow’s Wednesday already. That’s okay. Stay the course, be strong. Snap out of it.

I love you so much, Taylor. I’m happy for you. You may finally be able to leave the past alone and grow and look to the future.

Hello sweet angel,

Texting with Tosca, who used to be in my ward in DFW and is several years younger than me, and who my dad managed to financially abuse in pretty much the same way he did me (promised to pay her tuition, then pulled out telling her she wasn't good enough). She told me a truly delightful anecdote. Simply this: that Tiffany H and Jamie O took a private jet to New York City, broke into Tiffany’s ex-boyfriend’s house in the middle of the night, and destroyed files on his computer containing naked pictures and videos of Tiffany.

Love Jamie, never liked Tiffany, but also totally adore the idea of that secret mission. What a lark. Did they have a key? I like to imagine they hired a corrupt locksmith or at least tricked the doorperson.

--

4p

Leaving Flightpath after getting vanishingly little work done, but in a suspiciously good mood. And some twins just sat down, maybe even triplet, one is facing away from me. Why do I feel so happy?

--

Okay! Calm down! Got a little carried away there! Finally, I asked Paul what I can do to make him feel confident, safe and happy.

Be honest, he said. Fully. If you decide to do something then do it and don’t change your mind. He says, I believe you that you want to finish your degree and get a job so don’t decide not to. And I believe you when you say that Louis smells and you don’t want to have sex with him, so don’t have sex with him. Integrity, I say, and he says yeah I guess.

This fills me with determination. What were we even arguing about, or sad about, or whatever, for so long?

I promise to try harder to sublimate my excitement into self control. Paul sighs, and says, you don’t have to promise anything, clearly regretting that I’m not a better person.

The unspoken component is the intention to stay away from Paul as much as I can. The hard thing I have to do is not answer his calls, not text him immediately when something good happens, not write about him endlessly.

This is a good feeling. I feel the way he said he felt when he decided not to pursue Selah, like a bubble has been popped. Maybe I’ve stopped adding to reality.

I promise to do my best AND get better.

I want to be what Paul thinks I am because I want to be what anyone thinks I am: a single thing, definable, continuous. It’s not that easy, it’s never that easy. Paul is a healthy, reasonable person with good boundaries. And it’s not that I’m traditional per se, or that I’ve decided to be traditional, so much as that I want so much to settle on something, to know where I am, where I stand.

And I made him cry yesterday, and I didn’t know why, but it must have been that I was being weak, and wishy washy, and blind, and self indulgent, and refusing to see what was right in front of me.

I don’t want to be like Diego, and have to have a come-to-Jesus moment every time I’m being a shithead before I decide to do something right. I don’t want to be like Diego, and have all the right things to say and not worry about meaning them.

Still, how cool to know that I am loved. Really, concretely. Someone is really taking the risk on me. It’s a responsibility to be loved. And to love? I think I get love confused with some other things. I don’t think I know what it is anymore.

What is it? Paul doesn’t annoy me anymore, right now.

Today I was thinking a little bit about the ways we’ve been physically intimate in the past, and how I often felt uncomfortable, like I was fending him off. Actually I’ve felt like I fend him off in our friendship too, sometimes. But today he said something kind and instead of instinctively brushing it off or trying to change the subject, I was flooded with a feeling of presence, of warmth. I’m not a fool, I know he’s been there all along. But I haven’t trusted him this way before. To see me accurately.

I need to build more trust with myself so that I can be trustworthy to others. I need to examine and search out my doubts myself, instead of putting them to the test when it matters.

Is it romance?

The question is actually not pressing. In fact, the longer I don’t examine it, the more clear it will be when I do.

Just had a nice dinner with Paul. We developed a system of physical communication about consent: two firm taps with one finger for ‘I do not enjoy this’ and a gentle drumming of all four fingers for ‘I enjoy this’

And now that I no longer feel like I need to prove I love him by going insane, things feel much more calm. I think of him as a business partner with whom to create and manage a family. I feel rooted in him. Relieved. I told him being with him feels something like the opposite of running away. It’s funny, sometimes he seems inscrutable or even unhappy and I wonder why he isn’t more demonstrative, but then I remember that he told me that the letter I sent him this morning made him cry.

And he makes a serious effort to tell me with words how much he appreciates the things I do. I can learn to listen to his words and believe him. He has never given me any reason not to believe him. My heart beats a little bit stronger, it feels warm in my chest, and rearranges itself like a bird fitting into a snug nest.

He says, about tonight, thanks for being willing to talk to me. He tries to be open minded. Not sure how to communicate that I would never ask or expect him to change for me, that I don’t want it and I know it wouldn’t work. I want him to know I’m not going to conform to his expectations either. I try to introduce it slowly. When my leg hair grows back, you aren’t going to tell me that you prefer it shaved, are you?

Well, he says, I know you wouldn’t like that, even though I do probably prefer it.
I know you do, I say. There is a long, difficult road ahead for us. I think of it during the calm and happy moments. I wonder how much of it can just be skipped! Paul talks about home prices in Italy being low. I dream of fine clothes.

Max was so resistant to all of this today, said something that hurt my feelings - that there are so many better things for me to do in life than "be a rich man’s broodmare."

I’m …

Maybe I’m falling in love. I don’t know yet. I mean, I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling, it’s surrounded by so many things. I would need to sit and look at it for a long time in a far away place and I don’t have that time or that place right now. I have tasks and obligations. But something in me is feeling.

Full body chills, here with Paul, and remembering the other night when we stood close together and swayed or danced to Bill Evans.

Later, I stand next to him as he makes coffee. Slowly, gently, he puts one hand on my back. It’s perfect. He lets it stay there and caresses gently with his fingers for fifteen seconds or so. And then it’s back to business. I wish things could be like this always.

Sitting on the couch, I text him, four feet away. I tell him, ‘I’m happy.’ He texts me back, ‘me too.’ Things between us are perfect right now. Nothing to worry about. No need to worry.

Later:

Fell into old habits. I felt afraid, he held me tight and said no no no, don’t run away, whispered my first name two times, and I heard the worry in his voice.

I remembered in high school when Chase broke up with me for smoking weed in my parents carport, then said he would date again but only as long as I didn’t tell anyone. I fell away from my body, lost affect, lost awareness, froze, dropped out, my eyes fluttered, my face went slack, Paul asked me what was going on and I said, ‘I don’t know.’ in a flat voice. I stared. I was dissociating. Why?

Why?
Why did I dissociate? I was afraid that I would be Paul's dirty secret, that he would be ashamed to love me. That he would use me for pleasure and then discard me for unworthy.

It took me two hours to fall asleep last night and I had nightmares of criticism, rejection, and ostracism. This morning I want to call Paul, but it isn’t the right thing to do. I lie in bed with period cramps, have to pee, sore neck. Sad.

Highly ominous tarot reading as I wait for Paul to pick me up. Eight of cups inverted, The Tower.

-

In the afternoon at his apartment, I am eating Kara-age with chopsticks and Paul is on a call. He steps over and picks some dead leaves off my sweater, without feeling shy or apologizing. It feels as intimate and as pleasant as a kiss.

Paul and I went to Laguna Gloria and had hours of intoxicating eye contact. I was scared to come home but it ended up being okay.

Another Kome lunch. Paul was upset, and I said Paul, hey Paul, please feel better. And he said, I will, just give me some time, and I said okay, so I guess that’s just what I have to do.

10.19.20

I’m not good enough for this. I’m not strong enough. I don’t have the skills. Today I want to create a crisis. I want to throw a tantrum, have a fit, become incapacitated, needy, in order to get something from him. I want to cry and scream and create a problem. To make him worry and feel like he has to say kind, soothing things, over and over. To make him feel like he has to drop everything and help me. This isn’t how I want to be. I want to be able to soothe myself, to not need soothing at all. I want the object permanence of being able to remember that he loves me, and not needing him to say it every moment of every day. Or not needing him to love me at all, to be content. To be self-sufficient, to be calm. I want to be calm.

I’ve called Max twice about all the things I’m noticing in myself when it comes to loving and being loved. She says, yes, yes, we all need therapy. She says, it’s so good that you’re recognizing this. She says, you’re growing so much.

Things are coming up that don’t have to do with Paul. Things that I imagine he would find completely bewildering and bad. Things that I find bewildering and bad. So I say, I don’t want to try to date, have sex, whatever, until I’m in therapy. But I don't have the money to go to therapy. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. Am I okay? I’m not. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it except me. I have to push this boulder. Here's what I imagine would be comforting: to lie completely still, with my eyes closed, while he sits beside me strokes my hair, holds my hand. Kisses my eyelids. Squeezes my shoulder. Doting, while I retreat into myself and condense into a tiny tiny ball. Is this good for me? Probably not. I need to be awake and active in my life. And it’s definitely not good for him

What can I do instead? Run. Work. Cook. Talk on the phone to someone else. I’m listening to Glassworks, and that helps. I’m writing, and that helps. This is not romance. This is illness. Have I ever been in a healthy relationship? Once. With Forest. Other than that, I think I haven’t. I’ve been in some very unhealthy relationships, though. Tumultuous, deceptive, abusive, unstable, unequal, apathetic, or overinvolved.

Here’s Paul, this very kind and good man. This almost absurdly stable man. And he doesn’t trust me and I know why and I agree. I don’t trust me with him either. It makes me so sad. What if I were able to be normal. What if I could relax.

How many times has Paul called me over the years, with nothing in particular to talk about. How many times have we talked about nothing for half an hour, an hour, while I sit in the yard and look at the moon, or sit in my room and pick at my blanket, and sometimes we hang up when there’s nothing left to say, and sometimes we keep talking for a while, saying nothing. How many times have we gone out to lunch or for a beer, and then gone home content and relaxed
. What is different now? I’m trying to attach too much to him. Too much importance, too much meaning, too much hope. Why?

Is it because I’ve decided that this is my last chance? Is it because I’ve decided that no one else can ever love me as well? Is it because I want to prove to myself that I’m not fickle, that once I decide I can be with someone I can sacrifice and devote and persevere forever? That’s no way to grow, Kemuchi. My right shoulder aches from my strenuous efforts at self-satisfaction last night. In my mind was the sunlight, the grass, his face, the word ‘safe’.

N.b. Although my little spanish tarot book may interpret the five of swords as someone who has come gracefully through a conflict, online sources have a different interpretation: An ongoing battle or incipient conflict, danger, and defeat.

Ace of cups, however, is always overflowing with love. Reversed ace of cups is self love.

Late:
Had a brief conversation with Paul and told him a little bit of what I was dealing with earlier. He didn’t really respond, said he wasn’t worried. That’s so helpful for me. When he doesn’t rise to my anxiety, it’s just really nice. Feeling more grounded and ready to go to sleep and see him tomorrow and feel normal. Feeling way better. Probably had too much caffeine today.

11.20.20

Watching Rushmore, stricken. This movie captures the enthusiasm for life that makes things possible. The sorrow that strengthens joy.

Today, Dandruff. Grease. Feeling strange. So strange today. I keep wanting to leave the world, to go away. But it isn’t true.

Bacon morning. Good morning. Paul deserves to be with someone he can trust completely. I deserve to be with someone who I can be my whole self with and not feel judged. Maybe we can be that for each other, maybe we can’t. Do people get what they deserve? I think Paul would say yes, but I also think that II know better. Maybe that’s another problem, that I’m so constantly frustrated by his solipsism. Or even that I think I know what he thinks. The challenge of being so much together has made us reinforce ourselves, stubbornly, out of instinct.

Of course I’d like to fit into his tidy life, but I don’t know how much he’d like to make room for me.

Besides, what’s so bad about dying alone? Paul can find his pert and sweet girl. she won’t understand things that he’d rather not understand. She’ll be kind and well-adjusted and careful about how beautiful she must be.

She won’t mind that the entire cultural mythology about love is engineered to destroy us. She won’t think about it. She won’t mind. She’ll get what she wants, and so will he. A partner whose pronoun he isn’t worried about.

Me? I don’t know what will happen to me, but like I say always: I’m used to it. Besides, underneath all of this, wasn’t there some bargain of authenticity for security? Hadn’t I made a deal with the devil? It wasn’t the money. It was being loved.

There’s no life for me anywhere.

I haven’t taken my pill in a long time. It’s been intense. I don’t want to start taking it again. Hannah is all up in my business all the time, and I fucking hate it.

Later, calmer, I got loving texts tonight from Em, from Grace, from Becca, from Lucy.

The scratching of the leaves on the windows sounds like someone whispering.

Watching Faces Places, and I know again and feel so deeply that the meritocracy is not available to most. So many get ground under the wheels of the machine. How are we to create a society that does not discard the poor as so much chaff?

Paul tells me he doesn’t believe that greater joy and greater pain come together as an inextricable package. He will, I think, or else he will simply live his pleasant and placid life. At its end he will review it and be pleased and give himself a positive review. The pain of regret at never having leapt into the unknown is, probably, less deep than the tragedy of a life lived without reservation.

Tonight I picked one of his eyes to look at, because the saccades of my looking between his eyes remind him of when I dissociate. I know I’m confusing and intense, I said, looking into only his right eye.

Confusing and intense, he repeated, sounding dark. He is afraid. I know he’s afraid. Am I afraid? It doesn’t matter, because I am brave. My fear makes me bold. Regarding my pronouns, I told him, I can tell you why it matters, though I’m not sure you’ll believe me.
Why? He asked.
Because when you say it, you will change.

I’ve thought of that, he said quietly.

He hugged me and it felt new that he buried his face in my neck. I don’t remember him doing that. When I left he said, sometimes it seems like you are much taller than I am. That made me laugh, I'm 5 inches taller than him.

Maybe I like to be around shy people because around them it is easy to feel brave, to be bold. To be loud, and laugh, and joke. Like being among my nieces. But the people who I admire from afar and wish to be, they make me shy and quiet as Rebecca or Paul. I don’t approach. I leave early. That’s what it was like to be among my older siblings. Watching and wondering.

I think I’ll have to explain to (roommate) Kyle somehow why my sleep schedule is so severe. It isn’t good, and I'm ashamed.

The branch outside the window sounds like someone climbing through the tree to look inside.

11.22.20

Listening to Harry Dodge's book and hungry for communion with Lucy. He mentions Dawn Powell and it rings a bell, I look it up and I know I have read two of these books, but I don’t remember them. Turn, Magic Wheel and The Wicked Pavilion.

I remember being excited by them, that memory is triggered by the image of the cover. But what is the use of my having read them? There’s a balance to be found with self-awareness. Too much and it becomes an excuse or a hall of mirrors. Too little and one is both pitiable and harmful.

Harry Dodge says, he learned from The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that it’s more important for young artists to pay attention to each other than to older artists.

More scraps:
Zora Neal Hurston: “If you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

What makes me cry isn’t the cruelty of the moment. It’s the memories of happy scenes. The battle I never thought to fight, a life I never dreamed of wanting. A fool.

And some half baked late night drunk pseudopoem:

When we decided to realize
That we may never meet or match,
That I am a gypsy and you are a gentleman,
Did we realize, or did we decide

What we are or must be?
Why did I tell you that you are a fish,
And when you frowned, did I decide to turn away?

Or was realizing the turning

My room grows hot during the day, and you are always cool.
Why did I tell you that you are a bird railing against your freedom?

I am tied to this tree.
You attend to your scales.

When you asked what does it mean,
Was I the scoff, or the swallowed tears that learned to talk?

Could I push you back into buoyant ease
While, unbound, I fly to bring you back a princess

Or better, a match
Was I the bird, or the flight?

Hooks in my rivers
Fire in my sky

I could meet you
In the arid riverbed
on the freezing wind

But you are sleeping soft, with ease

Did I realize, or did I decide, I cannot breathe in the shelter of the hollow tree

My people gasp in the dry lake
The fiery sky lights up my face

—

Ripping up my notebooks, throwing away the scraps, is the most sanemaking thing I know how to do. I remember when I kept them all, thinking them precious. Now there are none to trail behind me

11.24.20

Paul was pretty rude to me today, so I won’t call him tomorrow. He said I was calling him too much, which is rich, for him. We don’t know where we stand, and I long for that first night when he wouldn’t let me go. It seems we’re not a match after all, and I won’t bother wooing.

What was it that I had decided earlier? Decisions and realizations intermingle in me lately. That since that first the heady rush of ideal, romantic, perfect love passed me by long ago, that I would choose a softer and quieter type of love. A type of love grows sublime on the back end.

But for him? He’s a brute, sometimes. Seems childish. And I’m too wild and opinionated, he

11.26.20
Thanksgiving day 2020

Bad pad thai with kyle and 3 beers. Room finally settling. Paul gumpy and distant all day. What I thought was helping was making things worse. Tomorrow I’ll be up on time.

11.29.20

An uneventful Thanksgiving, then a great party in our yard, then a real baffling hookup with Paul that makes me question the madness of the last couple months. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t caring. It was mechanical and frenetic and I barely remember it.

He said, I know you don’t like how it’s just in and out, but I think that’s just how sex is. I know that's not just how sex is because I’ve had real sex that was a connection and not a bypass.

Today’s a good one. Beautiful cold weather.

12.1.20

The confusion of the unfulfilled promise is persistent. Too persistent. I am still surprised by it.

It’s an ongoing surprise because I still harbor hopes above my station. I, too, could cruise the lesbian scene in berkeley— but no— I remember.

Were all my dreams so contingent on wealth then? I hadn’t thought so. But it was my habitat. Where are my fantasies of help and responsibility?

Listening to In the Dream House

Here are some scraps I am throwing away:

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”
“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you’re tired of all the hard work you’ve already done.”
“It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.”
“Seek the company of those who seek the truth. Run from those who have found it.”
“Instead of running away from what feels uncomfortable, can you embrace it and enjoy it?”

A letter from Annie, 9/28/20
It’s before 8 am and the first thing I wanted to do today as write you a letter! I’ve found out that my life and routine are more in balance if instead of watching youtube videos before bed, I just listen to soothing music, like the children’s songs on the church website. I am begging my editor to let me illustrate the new songbook that’s coming out. Another good thing for my routine has been reinstating my daily walks. Now I just go down to the river. It is so important that we cultivate a routine and peace in my our lives, isn’t it? After 42 years I am still struggling to do that. I love that it is one of your strengths. I look to your example for proof of how it can be done- you are freaking amazing!!!
Xoxoxo
Annie Poonie

And another letter, undated:
Dear Taylor,
Remember when you asked me in church why and how I lost my sense of draw? Trying to find it every day but this is how I used to do it decades ago! Just a little housewarming picture for you, I’m very happy you are in a more comfortable living situation. I’m glad the house is spacious and beautiful and that you are among friends. Here the seasons come and go, I’m really hoping it will snow. Trying only to think of good things and to flourish in our new normal. Love, Annie.

A third letter from annie, 8/24/20
Dear Taylor,
I just wanted to send you a belated note to CONGRATULATE you on getting a 97 on your physics class! I was stunned by the amount of work you did all while working full time at Home Slice. You pushed right through when times got tough, you are an example to me :)
This morning I woke up at 5:30 am after having a shrimp omelette made by Kah Leong for dinner. For our date last night we went to Whole Foods and filled our bags with goodies~ okay nothing too special but we are trying out Tsiziki (sic) dip, some different chocolate flavors, seaweed snacks, and the 365 mint chocolate chip ice cream. It is the BEST but usually tries to melt before we get home.
Tonight I am going to see a giant gorilla statue in Hudson Yards with my friend Brooke who is in my drawing group. Hopefully you will be able to join us!
Sending much love,
Sis.

3rd or 4th night in a row dreaming about Mom and Dad. This time it was in glitzy downtown restaurants, destroyed or recreated, and empty condemned apartments. Dreamed watching a play with few audience members and a new violent pope intimidating everyone. Then a nightmare of being white trash and ill, raping somebody by sneaking up under them and sucking them off and another nightmare of math class, being the star student but the other star student is a milady man.

Nightmares: about failing to keep my niece P safe. About rejection from Chase and his dad. About trying to pull my friend from the freezing water of Crescent's pool… several nightmares. Maybe my best day at Paul's so far, he was affectionate yesterday, we didn’t go too far physically, went to bed early and I read while Paul fell asleep.

At Epoch to work, a couple of the old timers are talking music production, musicians and sound, records and bands. Willie used to have a blues label.

Paul said something kind of odd last night, about how Forest is the type of person that he could imagine me being with, someone ‘more vibrant and adventurous than me’. It made me think about why I like Paul, how it isn’t really about the particulars of what he likes or what he does. Need to think it out more.

Feeling happy today. Tired and happy. Thinking of the projects I will do once my semester is over. Cleaning out the computer. Buying stamps. Hard to think this afternoon. I wish I’d never read that thing about the ways sleep deprivation reduces cognitive function.

3:11a chugging along on this project, at the big step of running the anova and analyzing it. I have everything I need, including time.

Today I remembered what we talked about in the car when My parents drove me from the Salt Lake Airport to Provo. I remembered that my Dad and my Mom were arguing about whether the shirt I was wearing was too low-cut.

I remembered today because I just bought the same shirt. ‘I can’t believe I thought this was low-cut’, I think.

My mom said the shirt was fine and to leave me alone. Sometimes she seemed like my ally. When I think about it now I realize that she must have known a little bit more about how completely disdainful I felt about my Dad’s attempts to control what I wore.

She had seen the clothes that I really wore. The teddies, the push-up-bras, the very short shorts. It was a cat and mouse game trying to hide them. People saw me around town and reported to her how I was dressed.

She probably hadn’t told him about much of this. He wouldnt' have asked, and if she told him it would have seemed like she was managing poorly, which she was.

What did they think was in the six heavy duffel bags I brought along? Prairie dresses? I brought all the clothes I thought I might like to wear in college, which was everything that I thought was fit to be seen in.

I was excited to get away from them, sort of. But I spent that whole long car ride crying and thinking how ugly the landscape was.

I don’t remember if they knew I was crying. It was the sort of thing I might have hid from them, or they might have pretended not to notice. It was the sort of thing that would exasperate them.

There was no help for it anyway; It was too late to go back. The crying was pointless and embarassing. They were glad to drop me off, and I was angry, but relieved, not to have to cry anymore. I had thought I might stop crying, which I eventually did, but not in Provo.

Nobody minded the shirt, which wasn’t as far out of dress code as the skirts that I wore through the dining hall on an adrenaline rush, daring someone to confront me or alert the honor council.

It never happened to me, but I heard that enforcement for honor code violations come third-hand. You don’t know who informed, but one day someone you’ve never met comes to pay you a visit, an officer of some moral bureaucracy. Or you may get a letter delivered to your dorm room. An official warning. Maybe I didn’t get close enough to anyone for them to report me. I certainly offended a lot of people who didn’t know my name. I loved their accusatory looks. I loved to see them recoiling. Yes, I wanted them to know, I reject and mock everything you hold dear.

When I was in class I couldn’t help but be interested in the material and eager to impress the teachers, but when I stepped out I felt so doleful, and soon I felt that way in class too, and stopped going. I didn’t do my homework, I didn’t make friends with classmates. I tried to have a good time and enjoy myself, seeking out opportunities to leave campus with the two friends I had found at orientation.

I didn’t stop getting dressed, and it became the main reason I would leave the house. I would dress for class so attentively that my clothes became the most important thing to think about during the day. Sometimes I would dress and leave for class but instead I would wander all around the campus. Seeing and being seen, or exploring the dozens of campus buildings.

Are these the right shoes for this top, does the fit of these jeans complement this silhouette, are my layers peeking out attractively, and do I have just the right piece of jewelry? How is my hair, and my makeup, and how can I act like I’m not aware of any of it, and be gracious when other people can’t help but notice me being beautiful here. Is this outfit comfortable? But does it look comfortable? Is there anyone here as interesting as I am?

The shirt wasn’t that low cut, but the push-up bra I was wearing with it made a nuclear combination with my late-teen breasts, already inflated with hormones.

I had no desire to go there, and by the time I left, I had very little desire left at all. Or else I was exploding with it. I can tell either story, and they aren’t the only true ones.

12.14.20

Besides three parties in three nights, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and an emotional Saturday, I’ve talked to Ivey and Diane, Liza, Lucy, Carmen, and Ian on the phone. Plus spent time with Bryan, Conrad, and Ivey in person. Had brief conversations with Jordan, Katie, and Bryan’s roommate. I talked to XT on the phone for a long time, and to Paul for hours.

My favorite part of the day today was the matcha latte I bought at Epoch. It was way too expensive, and I think that might have made it taste even better.

The thing that makes me relax is that I think Paul and I have the same goal. We’ve established that. Sometimes when I talk about Paul I get frustrated, but then it always comes around until I feel grateful and like I have a lot to appreciate.

Like his being patient. Like his listening to me and valuing what I say (Even if that is scary to me sometimes because I am not used to it), the way he questions himself and me.

I need Paul to have a therapist. A therapist is another backstop of reality for me as well. If you’re in a relationship with me, you’re going to need a therapist. It’s not really negotiable. Otherwise I’m going to feel too much responsibility for the relationship dynamic. Imagine it like a team of lawyers, except instead of making decisions about assets we’re making decisions about our relationship, and we’re both kind of on the same team and kind of not: we think we have the same goal, but we need to hammer out what type of goal it should be.

I feel so sane when I write about all this. But it takes so much work. It’s not easy for me, and I have no way of knowing if my solutions are the good and correct ones, I only know that they’re the ones I’ve thought of.

If he trusts me just because I’ve done more thinking about it than him, that puts a lot of burden on the dynamic that I ask for. What if it isn’t good? If I ask to change it will he say that I’m inconsistent? What if it hurts us and neither of us realize it?

Good news is that we already have a relationship that is far more communicative than most of my friends who have relationships with men.

Does this mean I can stop asking for more? Maybe, maybe not. Probably a matter of perspective. I won’t stop pulling him along towards me, perhaps. But I also need to learn greater stillness.

I have been browbeating him more than necessary, that the way I do it is kind of like a trap because it’s like i’m picking at something that doesn’t need to be picked at, and then I get upset and need comforting for a fight that I didn’t need to start, but I was stuck in the past.

This is all so blessed complicated

I don’t want to be in a sexless romantic relationship, but I’d rather do that than be in a romantic relationship with bad sex. This is the familiar conversation that I’m having mostly with myself, with the echoing chambers of oncoming hallway.

The truth is, I kind of like it in the closet. It’s dark, and warm, and filled with great clothes. I could come out if I wanted to, but It’s more comfortable in here. For now, I’ll only tickle them with how incredibly gay I am. How can you be gay if you’re having this sex? Watch me, stud.

Besides, there’s no rush

I accept my stupid feeling. I whisper, "some things are not important."

Why do I try to steer a ship that’s in friendly winds already?

Paul made the friendly winds. I love you. More than that, I want to love you. I want to love you more than I love you. Not because I think I don’t love you enough, I am what I am and I give what I can give. I am not superhuman.

I know I can love you so much more. I see so much beauty in you. I am foraging for the ingredients of the love that you deserve. Building a way to love you as I go along, like you are doing.

It’s like we’re building two sides of a building but from across a firewall.

Compiling journals at Paul’s, and a lot of them are really melodramatic - which is to say, emotionally ineffectual. The challenge is to make that pain gentle, to make it wise.

UT loan was denied, and I have twelve dollars in my bank account. That’s a problem. For sure. Paul's going to lend me another five hundred in a week and once I finish Forest's manuscript that’ll be 3 hundo, but that’s all she wrote for a long while.
Problems to solve, and I’m here for it. I’m HERE FOR IT.

Cleaning, sweeping, laundry, etc etc. Tried to make a cute outfit this morning and found for the millionth time that I have exactly one pair of pants that fits me. Tired of being heavy. Going to try to fast today until dinner.

—

Dreamed last night a couple things: finding out that for the last ten years I’d been confined in a mental institution and having my memory systematically erased by a kindly but evil Jessica Gardner. And also, being with Paul and brad Pitt or somebody on the roof of a skyscraper when we all got ripped to shreds in slow motion to fireworks and tiny shrapnel, watching the pieces of people fly away slowly and patches of blood and gore replace their flesh bit by bit.

“The yard sale went okay,” says this guy waiting in line at Epoch in skinny black jeans, glasses, carefully sloppy haircut. “I sold a banksy print.”

When couple guys pull into the sunny front spot in a gorgeous brown breadbox wolkswagen I can’t help but admire it, ‘what year?’ I ask, and Marco introduces himself to me and valiantly tries to converse. Back from Big Bend. He has wild reddish hair and a palestinian scarf over his mouth. There’s a bike in the back and a friend of his who stays in the bus. Well, I hope I see you around, says Marco, pulling off and driving away west.

New laptop! Very exciting.

--

Paul’s stormed off, angry that I’m going back to work. Wants to lend me more money so I can wait until I’m vaccinated. It’s beside the point. What he’s really angry about is hard to tell. A class difference, maybe. It’s made me feel far away from him.

--

Talked to him about it, we’re both sad. We’ll have to see each other less. Of course I’d rather not have to work. But I have to work.

I had a hard day today. I slept in, then I slept the afternoon away. Reading, dreaming, sweating, barely moving. Got up and played Paul’s game, Disco Elysium, for a while, but it was kind of boring and slow, I didn’t want to have to read that much. Now it’s time for bed again, and I feel a little confused.

How to make old friends

You should be so lucky! Lift fingerthumbed and tiny
Lift without supplement.
Satisfy gum-chew heart
To aftertaste. Learn to prefer aftertaste.

No memory. No bukowski on bug-ridden angel’s couch high.

Where do you find a dog with no legs?
Wherever you left it.

regrets

I regret my own broken heart. Its shatters indispensible.
Raw and peeled, escapadist
Regret this hideous self
What is right, and what is safe?
query forever what
lot is this? Another greater re-run, feasting and fasting for meaningless forever
Everyloving, my bloodied core to dwell between us til death

As a monster, doomed to the fate of my ancestors, I apologize for what I have done.