ambers to ashes

We walked back to iDeath, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after theyhave travelled back from making love.

Ganze Tage vergingen, an denen es nichts zu erinnern gab außer der vertrauen Delle in den Sofakissen oder dem Schmutzrand im Waschbecken, an dem die Seifenblasen beim Gesichtwaschen oder Zähneputzen platzten und mich an eine Mondlanschaft denken ließen. Mehr passierte nicht. Und den Schmutzrand träumte ich vielleicht auch nur. Nichts schien mehr real. Schlafen, aufwachen, alles floss ineinander wie bei einem grauen, monotonen Flug durch die Wolkendecke. Ich führte keine Selbstgespräche. Es gab nicht viel zu sagen. So wusste ich, dass der Schlaf Wirkung zeigte: Ich hing immer weniger am Leben. Wenn ich so  weitermachte, dachte ich, würde ich völlig verschwinden und in neuer Form wiedderauftauchen. Das war meine Hoffnung. Das war mein Traum.

It's a sadness you've been carrying around for many years. You know,Theo, one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren't loved when we needed it most. It's a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.

And when the abyss looks into you - and it will - may you look back unflinching.

Sometimes, there are moments when we objectively face the never, and it overwhelms us. I tried to defy the overwhelming never once, when I realized there are songs in my own music library that I will probably never hear again. I went to my computer and created a playlist with every single song. There were 3,628 songs that would take 223.6 hours to play. I kept at it for a few days before my interest waned. And so now I mourn. I mourn for the songs that will never reach my ears again. For the words and stories that lie on eternally unopened pages. And I mourn my fifteenth year. And how I will never, from now until the end of time, be able to complete it the way it should have been. Rewinding, and living it again, this time without the captain and the parrot and the pills and the shoelace-free bowels of the White Plastic Kitchen. The stars will go dark and the universe will end before I get this year back. That is the weight chained to my ankle, and it is far heavier than any anchor. That is the overwhelming never that I must face. And I still don't know if I'll disappear into it, or find a way to push beyond.

I lie on my bed and wait for the world to end. It must end eventually, because I can't imagine it going on like this.

The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when "should be" gets crushed by what is. Sometimes I think it would be easier to die than to face that, because "what could have been" is much more highly regarded than "what should have been". Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.

You can't remember the last time you slept. Insomnia doesn't cover this. It's anti-somnia. A viral wakefulness that's so contagious, it would wake the dead if you got close enough. You truly believe this. You fear it. Every thought that comes into your head becomes a truth to fear.

There's this thing in my head that I have to purge onto the page before it changes the shape of my brain.

I conclude it would be a good place to be alone with my thoughts, but I should already know that my thoughts are never alone.

All a writer can do is provide a match, and hopefully a dry one. The reader has to strike the flame into being.

Like - okay, I dated this girl who was an artist, right? And she'd do figure drawing, where she'd draw the negative space around a person first, and then fill in the person. And that's how I'm trying to look at it. Maybe I don't know what fills it in yet, but I can look at the space around where I sit in the world, what creates that shape, and I can care about what it's made of, if it's good, if it hurts anyone, it makes people happy, if it makes me happy. And that can be enough for now.

He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won't find it out that way. He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that others have done to you.

But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It's like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord. And inside the peach there's a stone.

I never do such things, however. I only consider them. If I did them, they would be sure I had go ne mad again. Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a seperate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

I'm no longer waking up on the wrong side of my life.