virtual notebook.

Oh how bothersome, to be back, to say it’s happening again.

I thought I had left this behind me, the listless nights and frenzied thoughts. I thought it finally behind me, the blank eyes of a stranger in the mirror. I thought I had left this behind me, the wired exhaustion and endless spirals.

I thought I had managed to abandon the zero sum, and yet it haunts my halls like echoes of years’ past. I thought the chapter definitively closed, and yet here sits its husk of faded memories. I thought it all behind me, and yet I’ve stopped speaking; I’ve stopped writing. Music rings out tinny and hollow, muffled by the vast expanse of the nothingness housed in what is meant to be my chest. The pit in my stomach has become bottomless again, ravenous with an insatiable hunger that I don’t know how to satiate anymore than I did before.

I don’t know which is worse: how naive or how desperate? For how naive, to believe I could ever get back this, to believe that there was ever an end to this. No number of hollow thrills and emptier frills could satiate the canyon stowed in my bones. How desperate, to put faith in the same process even when the product remains the same.

It remains a fruitless pursuit, an unresolved chase. I cannot afford to be in the depths again but I am stuck in the dark of it. The lights don’t matter. Escaping the hole doesn’t matter. Clawing my way up its sides, scaling its sharp, steep incline, just to inevitably hit the bottom once again seems a pointless endeavour and yet remains what is expected of me.

It’s happening again and I don’t think I can keep having it around. There is no fixing this. There is no improving this. There is no alternative to this.

It’s happening again and my hands are tied and I can’t do this again.

I won’t.

I refuse.

i had that dream again. the one where everything is slowly falling apart, a domino of a day where things progressively worsen, until i finally get on the last bus and there's You. You vary from instance to instance -- last time You were a boy i had a crush on since junior kindergarten; the time before you were the girl i brick-walled when she got a little too close -- but Your presence is a steady constance like an old oak standing tall in a forest. You always mean comfort and something like home, somewhere to curl up in and feel secure in being small.

this time You were a friend of an old friend, a friend i haven't spoken to since the summer of my twelfth year. playing call of duty in that new, far house too many miles away from home. i think about him sometimes, and his sisters, and his mother, and his father, and his dogs. when he left, You still remained. but without him as the glue holding together our tentative acquaintanceship, our camaraderie melted away until You and i were just two classmates. middle school was a whirlwind -- i was chronically unstable and You were somehow the one built to deal with it, despite being just as young and unsure -- and high school started with me trying to sit next to You in math class and You switching seats to join Your friends. i don't begrudge that, somehow; i think i stopped getting hurt by the things out of my control once i finally resigned myself to it.

in the dream there was no sign of You switching seats. i stepped onto that bus and the way You smiled at me was invitation enough to sit next to you on those too cramped, plasticky seats. You looked older than you did in ninth grade, and i somehow looked like Myself. i don't usually do -- rather, i don't typically recognise the person meant to be me in my dreams as Me -- and i didn't know how to feel about that. You didn't give me the chance to spiral however; You asked me about my day. about my life. about what goes on in a typical day of the school's old resident shut-away and i laughed. i laughed and talked and vented and joked and You laughed too.

i don't know what he is, what You are, up to these days. i haven't seen him in years, not since tenth grade, not since i switched schools and was somewhere new that following september. i never see You anytime recently. it's like the dream knows i need something fully false and fabricated in order to feel less guilty about the stolen comfort. using Once Was as a foundation to garner stability in vague familiarity.

You and i sat together on the bus. You asked which stop was mine, where i was meant to get off. Your stop was the same, though our next respective connection would be where we'd part ways and i'd be back to being alone and spiralling and You'd return to being a passing thought.

i had that dream again. the one where everything is falling apart and i am coming undone. and You were there, that temporary reprieve, a brief light in the darkness like a fellow ship you pass during a night at sea. and then You were gone and i was back to my misery.

i had the dream again. with the long twisted corridors and tiny goblin men. the dream where i always end up half-awake by the middle and there's a little man standing at the foot of my bed with a spear pointed at my face and a hand hovering above my leg. i try my best not to move -- i don't want it touching me -- but also can't move my head or neck to get a better angle to look at him. he just stands there. and hovers. and eventually my leg or his hand moves and touches the other and there's a flinch as he completes the contact and i'm just housing shock in my body.

i had the dream again. yanno, the not-quite hallways and the not-quite people and the not-quite but evidently, completely, sleep paralysis. i had the dream again and i woke up -- actually woke up -- filled with such panic that the fact i didn't call you impressed me.

i had the dream again. and processed the dream again. and processed having to process the dream again.

i had the dream again and, for once, i didn't call you.

(and of course i remembered you after, as what else would this be for, but the fact of the matter is that the remembering happened After, not During; it's still a win in my book.)

i’m sure there’s a joke in here somewhere, about how we’ve got to stop meeting like this.

no prose poetry this time around for once. i’m sure the lot of you -- the lot of who? what are you talking about -- will be surely bummed about that but alas, here we are. no, no prose poetry or any existential think pieces. i think i just wanted to write, get some thoughts somewhere, without thinking all too hard about how it might look. how it might sound.

some simple housekeeping, for anyone -- ???? who are you TALKING to??? -- who cares: today is my younger nephew’s sixth birthday; i am official two months post-op which is equal parts “oh my god, holy shit /pos” as it is “oh? wild,” so take that as you will; it’s been nearly a year since me and Little Man stopped speaking which fucking blows; my brain has basically become sludge; i’ve been smoking so much that even *i’m* concerned about it.

that just about covers the main shit that i can list off the top of my head i suppose?

time is fucking weird, man. like, how am i twenty-one now? how did we get here? do you have ninety minutes? like if -- and here me out here -- but if life, is indeed, a highway and i, a humble passenger, am going to drive it all night long, it seems as though i’ve somehow slipped into cruise control but not in the fun way. does that make sense? who are you asking? grain of salt, because i am someone who has never driven nor plans too, but the vibe i garner from the words “cruise control” stems from like,, going with the flow. wait no i’m mixing my metaphors aren’t i. like i was going to say go with the flow, don’t worry about the journey just focus on getting there, but i feel like it shouldn’t be encouraged to be like,, checked out while driving?

forget the metaphors for a moment, will you? the key points i’m trying to convey is that i’ve been crushingly aimless this last little while. i don’t feel like i’ve had an unburdened positive in a while what’s a while? it’s been three days, relax your melodramatic ass. and it’s kind of kicking my ass? just a little bit? thankfully it hasn’t gotten, like, Bad bad yet, i’m still getting out of bed some days and brushing my teeth more like swishing some mouthwash and little housekeeping things. hell, i even went on a walk today! smoked half a pack of cigarettes, is what you did.

i think i’m at that little bump in the road again where i didn’t exactly plan to get this far? and i haven’t really made any plans since realising that. that feels so fucking cliche every time i say it and yet, here we are. like, of course i’m feeling aimless and listless and unmoored! i haven’t set up anything to look forward or be tethered to. but i don’t know how to fix that. i don’t know how to pursue an enriching yet chronically purposeless existence. like am i just supposed to exist? how do i do that? what’s the point of just sitting around all day and filling the long hours of nothing with meaningless somethings, just little shit to make those long hours somehow seem shorter? like do i just continue on this cycle of wake up do fuck all with significance and fall asleep again? i don’t understand what i’m doing here. not in a like... existential “does life has meaning” shit. been there, done that, that’s *so* seventh grade. but like... if my options are whatever i make them be then why am i doing all of these little bouts of nothing to pass the time when i could just save everyone the headache, save ME the headache, and hop, skip and jump to the ending.

i feel like one of those really long fics on ao3 that’s just about nothing. like, you get maybe a solid first couple chapters but then at some point while reading you realise the author didn’t really have an outline to get them this far and instead of have a goal or something in mind, they’re kind of just writing something plotless, something not even all that engaging. does that make sense? am i making sense?

complete sidebar: for a fandom that i have only engaged with via fanfiction, that one 80s show (name redacted to save me the headache of any of that engagement, dear christ) has me in a fucking chokehold and i would like to be released actually. if someone could get my brain to latch onto and hyperfixate on literally anything else that’d be SWELL.

i think what i’m trying to say is that i’m tired of living a life that just feels like filler. like i don’t even feel like the main character in my own major motion picture? i’m just some background schmuck a viewer sometimes sees at parties or some point of tension that some other main character has to like process and navigate or some shit. like, if were in a book or a movie, i’d be that one asshole you hear about... well, you wouldn’t actually hear about them would you? like, it’d be some newspaper headline or some blurry photo being featured on in the news, the broadcast itself just some set dressing as main character grabs like a single grape from the four course feast their parent made them before they rush off to school.

i love how i said i wasn’t gonna have an existential think piece and yet here we are. i still don’t understand who you’re talking to. are you talking to you? are you talking to them? who are they? why are here? how did they find us? how the fuck did they Find Us-

i think that ‘s enough of this, anyway. it’s one in the morning now. i am tired, i am quite clearly spiraling. i need water and sleep and less caffeine, probably.

part of me is like genuinely wondering who i have in mind when i write these like,, directionless thought to keyboard pages. in my head i’ve got a little man with a camera and i’m monologuing at the lens, if that helps at all with the image. i’m just also convinced that no one will be seeing the footage anymore.

okay, that’s enough now, bye.

m,

Sometimes I have to remind myself:

I had a life before you; I'll have a life after.

While I oft yearn for our time once spent,

I know that I lived without you once.

I'll be able to live without you again.

Until then, I shall try and think of you fondly.

No matter how you haunt me.

No matter how changed songs sound or food tastes or places look.

I've been dead to you a long while.

I hope I'll let you go the same way soon.

Despite it all, I love you. Despite it all, I miss you.

Despite it all, I hope you're doing well.

I don't want you yearning in the same way that I've been.

I couldn't bear it.

It's been almost a year since you left me

and I wish I was able to say I've finally left you too.

Damn you, you silly man. Damn you.

j & j,

it's a battle to not pick up the phone and call you. every single day. i dial, it rings. and rings and rings. depending on which of you i choose, the ringing never stops or it reaches a voicemail with a copout greeting meant to trick those unaware.

"hello? uh-huh? uh-huh [beep]"

i think i prefer the voicemail. it's from seventh grade, apparently, and then you could never figure out how to fix it (something about your voicemail box being so busted that you can't even listen to the messages), but it is still your voice and dear god i sound so fucking desperate, don't i?

i saw you both the saturday before halloween. we haven't spoken since. neither of you are good texters. you often fail to text back at all. when you do, i can never read your tone. so i call, because i know you won't — i go for walks around my neighbourhood and i always pass His house, so i call to fill up the silence and drown out the anxiety — and you never answer. if you do, it's to say you're busy. it's to say you'll call me back. you never do.

you say it's because so much has been going on lately. it's taking everything within me to believe that. because when i saw you in person, it was good. for the most part. i don't get to see people in person as much anymore so it was like trying to relearn how to speak. but as soon as i breached that bump we were on a steady, stable roll. but then i go home and we are stuck with unread texts and unanswered phone calls.

i want to so desperately believe i am being paranoid again. that it isn't true, the things my mind says about you not wanting to be my friend. but it has been months of this. of me calling. of you not answering. of being too anxious to really text because i need the deep talks before i can go into anything light. of you not bothering to text at all. i want to so desperately believe i am being paranoid again but i think anymore dismissals of the facts would be delusion. i know deeply that that is worse.

i wrote before, addressed to one of you, that i think it was time i left the woods. at the time i was upset. caught up in the throes of what i once thought was just paranoia. deeply rooted doubt. now, i think it is time to accept the distance and to pull away. because lingering in this directionless liminal space isn't healthy. i offer to talk about it and determine boundaries and see how we can go forward with this and you give me silence.

by now the silence should be answer enough.

still, i find myself going for short jaunts about the neighbour. pulling up your contacts and deciding to call. even when i know i will be met with nothing. because calling out and receiving no answer is somehow better than the inevitable silence that will stretch if i don't try.

one day i will let our silence rest. decide to call up a different friend.

i hope that day is soon.

josh,

i think i've gotten so good at playing a background character in other people's stories that i forgot how to be the main character in my own.

i told you in bare bones details about the solo dnd campaign i'm trying to run through for myself. zerrakas, the tiefling fighter who's seen so much war that he chooses the road and the mercenary life instead of being at home with his once wife and two children. hexxus, the wood elf ranger raised by wolves in a nondescript forest, living in the shadows and on the edge of the world's periphery. aaliyah, the human cleric abandoned by her church the moment they caught wind of her necromancy. celine, the high elf bards who's weapons of choice are her honeyed or barbed words depending on the evening; who carries a lute and a pan flute and a well of magic that she only taps into when she has to make a retreat.

celine's my favourite. i think about her and think that that's who i want to be. a reserved person who doesn't wear their emotions on their sleeve; who's quick to anger but doesn't let it boil over but rather simmers until it's cool and controlled. someone with the capacity for violence fueled by a past of anguish but refuses to brandish it as the weapon it could be. a little slick and a little sly, someone who meditates on their options before making their choice. someone a little predictable yet hard to read in an endearing way. someone who knows what people want but, more importantly, what people need. someone beautiful and poised; flawed but not in a surface level way.

i crafted celine and poured all of myself into her, into her party — whatever there was to pour anyway. all that i am, all that i have: a storyteller; a musician; someone who dons a different name every few months because that is what's safer. no permanent residence in an identity, or bridging connections that eventually fizzle out. in the end, celine and i always end up alone. collect the fruits of our labour after a long night and go home to an empty feeling house, an indisputably empty bed.

i crafted celine in the hopes that i could give her a better story than my own. to help her shed the things i couldn't; to help her break through the walls i never will. i crafted her a flawed found family that could establish ties that would never break. i crafted her someone who could love and protect her unconditionally. i crafted her with anguish and trauma and flaws that she will never be able to throw away but could build around and alongside of.

i am not good at crafting a main character, however. no matter what i write or the encounters i build, celine and her party remain in the background. the charlatan you see at the gambling tables. the mercenary that sits alone in the corner. the scorned acolyte with no real past. the wanderer who resides in the woods where no one goes. i hoped to write out a life i would never have and not only failed but also damned them away from the foreground.

i think i've gotten so good at playing a background character in other people's stories that i forgot how to be anything else.

i don't think i can be anything else.

i think it is time to close my chapter in the woods. with you. find a different story to exist as flavour text in. if i can take anything from celine, i can take this shedding of an unfruitful past and of painful connections. to instead look forward and never glance back; to cease clinging to the things and people that were never mine to begin with.

i am but a bucket after all. to be filled with things then emptied out again. a bucket is to be damned to the background, no? no matter the story.

i love you. thank you for the best main character i've ever played background to.

this will be rambly and perhaps incoherent at times. today i am writing and not revising and posting before i lose my nerve to write it at all.

i keep thinking about my behaviour. and my perception of self. and how i go through names like coats in a closet, picking out how i want to be seen that day. a name being just another accessory, like choosing if i am wearing laces around my wrist or the beaded bracelet they gave me or the necklace from my aunt.

today i think i was jason. a little mean, a little quick to anger; passionate and uncompromising and a little miffed at the world and its order. traits gleaned vaguely from todd and inserted into the day to day.

yesterday i carried celine. sorta quiet and a bit intimidating; insecure about an inability to do more with my hands and overcompensating with the bite in my words. traits i gleaned certainly from a blank canvas of a PC in a playthrough of skyrim.

sometimes i am bucky. a blank canvas in itself. self-abasing and cruel, hollow and empty. a bucket with a hole at the bottom that cannot be patched no matter how many try. taking rain water to be filled before draining draining draining and becoming but an empty vessel once again.

lately, it's been a lot of steve. and billy. working up to it, at least. studying them and choosing traits that reflect in the others but still remain wholly themselves. insecure is a common through thread. misplaced anger, as well. misguided, maybe. usually though just mean mean mean.

i am not a person. i am a mirror that gathers and reflects. without external input, i output nothing and am nothing. i am but a container that i put other people into and pour back out into the world until there is nothing.

i am in this liminal space where they won't let me kill myself and i won't let them "treat" me. how do you make a bucket better? i am not a person, but a thing, and i don't want to exist like this. i do not know what i want for my future because i don't know who i am. who the bucket is. all i am capable of is taking and holding and tipping over to let it go.

why should a bucket plan to last more than a decade when its purpose is to be a thing in someone's house, left in basements or forgotten corners until they're needed, used and put back away? buckets eventually break and get replaced. i was never meant to be a permanent fixture — i could never be a permanent fixture.

this bucket and its handle broke a decade ago. it has a gaping hole in its bottom and is only useful when resting against a level surface to collect rain water or big, bulky things that eventually are removed and relocated.

i pierced my nose because i was billy that day. i want tattoos because sometimes i am sean and i want to reflect that. but who decorates a bucket? who finds sentiment in a once glorified bin? again: a vessel, a container; something hollow meant to be filled then emptied out.

i am not capable of making myself full. so what is the point of continuing to exist when i cannot do it for myself?

i can't do this shit anymore. i am so empty all of the time. all that fills that void is other people or anger. most times i can't separate the two. i get too invested. sink too deep into the temporary bliss of it all. then it's gone and i'm empty and i get angry for feeling empty. and then i push that shit on other people.

i don't wanna exist just to leech off and get angry. i am insatiable. i am unfixable. i can't live like this anymore. nothing i do changes it. or makes it better. i cannot see an upslope in these attempts at progress. it's a net loss. i am a net loss. i am nothing. i will always be nothing.

i don't wanna live like this anymore.

i don't wanna live anymore.

how do i explain that i go through names like coats in a closet? that i get dressed for the day and pick out the protective layer i’m draping over my skin to face the world? it is not so simple as picking something that fits. they all fit, in their own way. colin. bucky. jason. quirk. dhova, ash. roddy. celine. some are staples, like a long green coat that stops above my knees. some are fleeting, like a too big jean jacket from a man who never loved me.

how do i explain that my name isn’t my skin but the thing i put on top of it? and that, even if it were, that skin flakes and sheds and begins itself anew? just like anything else. i have never been one to know permanency. everything about me, this life, is temporary. i cannot settle into a name because coats are not my skin. they are not me, but rather mine.

how do i make that make sense?

- quirk

i do not have the wherewithal to make this sound pretty. i do not have the energy to conjure up metaphors and similes. i feel trapped in the prison that is my skin and i want to be rid of it.

i want to crumble. fall to my knees and let them crack against the concrete. rest my head on your thigh while your hand rests in my hair and i want you to turn my brain off. not in a sexual way. i want you to take my autonomy for then at least it feels like a choice. not a sudden and visceral loss of control.

i want to smother this feeling into submission. this feeling where i'm not really feeling, where i've become disconnected and floaty but still so heavy and tense in my skin. sometimes i think i'm dissociating but i'm never really sure. the outside world turns itself off. i'm aware but cannot tune back in. it doesn't feel important to tune back in. all of my awareness shift inward and suddenly i am desperate to claw myself out of my skin until i am rid of bumps, blood and breath.

everything i try makes it worse. a temporary reprieve that then makes everything hit so much harder, sharper. worse. i drink. i eat. i smoke up. i take my stupid prescription. i shower. i sleep. i stay up. i read, i write, i walk.

i feel like i did when i ODed. lethargic. heavy. my mind running a mile a minute and unable to latch on to any single thing. sleeping to get rid of the sensation. waking up and not knowing if i'm bothered because the feeling's still there or because i managed to wake up at all.

i don't know what i expect anyone to do about it. like letting someone enable my cycle of self-destructive behaviour by making me submit, by making me sink so low i never resurface again. i don't want to resurface again.

i am so fucking tired.

i cannot do this anymore. everything feels Wrong. everything is Wrong. i am stuck in this liminal space and i cannot escape. do not want to go Forward. cannot go Back. the breath in my chest feels misplaced and foreign. the blood in my veins feels toxic and burning. i am Poison, i am toxic, i am Bad Bad Bad and i cannot displace this feeling.

it has settled in my bones as a truth i cannot separate from myself and i do not know how i would even begin to exorcise it. there is a Fog in my brain i want to smother me. there is a fire under my skin i want to consume me. i want to die. i wish i was dead. i do not care if i "can" live like this, i do not want to. it is not about can or cannot, it is about want or want not and i do not want to do this anymore.

i cannot look forward because there is nothing more than this. a day of something tentatively steady trailed by a week of the spiral. then a week followed by a month. a month followed by a season. it gets worse and worse the further it goes on and i cannot survive another relapse. i cannot survive things getting Okay again and then feeling like This again. the reprieves are as always temporary and sure they continue to grow in length but the give to take ratio is never in favour of living content.

i do not understand why this is my try at a Solution, an answer. why i choose to air out my thoughts like solidifying and making them exist outside myself will help me snuff out this toxin that corrodes my veins and infects my blood. all i gain is external affirmation that i will feel like This again. that i will continue this devolving pattern of temporary reprieve speckled amongst the hell fire.

i am so desperate and yet i do not know how to commit to anything that will make it Better. there is a certainty in my inaction (or worse, my action and prompt failure). i am corroding but worse i am allowing it. i cannot survive another attempt at repair if i come out the other side just as damaged.

regression and relapse are stepping stones on the path to recovery but i cannot survive another lapse. i cannot survive getting better just to get Bad again. because i will get Bad again. because i always get Bad again, because "Bad again" is just par for the course for life.

bad things happen and i am not equipped to deal with them on my own. i cannot bank on external support all of the time. i cannot hope to fall apart and make someone else always pick up the pieces and put them back together again only for them to come apart again. i cannot fix this. there is no patching this. i get lower and lower and i cannot survive another relapse.

i do not want to do this anymore. i cannot bring myself to actually stop.

how do i get myself to stop?

i find myself swinging violently between not thinking about you at all and falling heavily into the memory of you.

some days i wake up and i forget. i forget the pain that made home in my chest, a festering pit that's dwelled there long enough now to settle into something unremarkable and almost familiar. it hurts but in the way that everything hurts and it fails to stand out anymore.

some days i wake up and carry on like my entire world view hasn't been torn out and ripped to pieces and spat on on its new home of the pavement. some days i wake up and carry on like nothing has happened because there are other things to think about, tasks to be done and music to be played.

other days i wake up and i look back at all the letters i wrote you. all the poems i started and left half-finished for you. the song i wrote while thinking about you. i play it sometimes. loop it over and over again as i read over the little entries here that i wrote for you and want to pettily send you and make you hurt the same way i'm hurting so i can at least prove that something was real.

other days i wake up and look at where the coat you gave me (and i soon returned) used to hang. the small bottle of cologne that was in said coat's chest pocket that i would spritz any time i was meant to go and see you. the leather bag i snatched from your godmother's house when they were moving country that i now use as my day to day bag when i'm travelling light. the park that separates your house from mine where you'd walk me through late at night because you always wanted me home safe.

other days i wake up think about how you teared up the first time i plainly said i trusted you. how you hugged me the moment you saw me after i called and said my uncle died instead of simply letting me slip into your car and head over to the apartment. how you shared your writing projects with me and listened to the advice i gave despite me not being as well-versed in the subject matter. how you gave me a carton of cigarettes and insisted it was a christmas gift so i wouldn't have to pay you back.

some days i forget. other days i remember.

it's been a month since i said "it'll be a month in a week," and i find myself falling into the pattern of this too. it feels like something i should add to the calendar of Guaranteed Bad Days. february 14th. march 1st. april 29th. may 15th. june 15th. july 31st. august 7th. september 25th. october 12th. november 6th. those three weeks that cover the build up to christmas and the cool down from new year's. maybe that's self-fulfilling prophecy. maybe i'm just too drained to care.

some days i forget. other days i remember.

i don't want to remember you anymore.

i had the oddest dream about you and i'm unsure of how i want to feel.

we are not talking, that is well known. in fact, i've blocked your accounts and your number and have asked of you the same. i said, "forget we ever met; i'll pretend you never existed, and you should do the same."

and yet i had the oddest dream about you, one i'm unsure of how to digest.

i was at a cafe in downtown with two of my dearest friends. the mug in my hands was small and cool to the touch, coffee long abandoned in the throes of impassioned conversation. i looked and there you were, at a table in the corner, across from a mutual (less dear) friend, and you were writing. your letter-sized, 80-paged notebooks we'd used to bring in for school next to his leather bound journal he bought at indigo on a whim one year. discussing, and writing, discussing, and writing and i sat there stunned.

you looked up and caught me looking. a shock of fear rushed through my body and froze to my seat. the world faded away – gone, both your and my companions, the cafe, the hustle and bustle of anywhere near realistic – and it was simply you and me.

you approached. you sat down next to me. you spoke tentatively.

i sat and felt hollow. desperate for the interaction, for despite everything i miss you. but not like this. not when the abasing pit in my gut says i deserve the inconsistency and the lack of transparency, the carrying on like nothing happened like i am not owed an apology or explanation.

oh but how i miss you. it will be nothing but my undoing, but this ache means you're here and the pit will take anything it will get.

and then you kissed me and i knew i was being delusional again.

sometimes i am doing nothing. sometimes i am doing everything. sometimes i am lost and find myself back there. sometimes i feel like i've never left. no matter the twists and turns my mind takes i always wind up back at thoughts of you.

i wish it was a lot more romantic than that.

it'll be a month in a week and i think that that's something. part of me thought i was being nuts again, it couldn't have been that long. but i checked (i hate that i checked) and there it was. 6pm on june 15, an ordinary wednesday. ruined.

i won't sit here and moan about how "i don't know what i've done." you've made it as clear as it needed to be. i supposed i had hoped two and a half years of friendship, that deep and trusting kind, weren't so easily dashed.

i don't know how i'm supposed to feel about it. how i'm supposed to maintain mutual friends when you can't stand to be in the same room as me. how i'm supposed to reassure myself that we've both objectively done nothing wrong when it hurts this bad.

i think about you and i get so angry. i imagine scenarios where you approach me at a party and i brush you off and curl up in the lap of some hot rando and take a sip from their drink all smug. or i walk away and you follow me and we dont yell at each other, i just tell you fuck off and keep walking away. or i spit at your feet and i spill my heart to you because holy shit you hurt me and i don't know how to recover from this.

because i guess it's that. i'm hurt, more than anything. if i'm not mad i'm just desperate to stop feeling this all consuming sadness that i somehow managed to ruin yet another good thing, that i somehow managed to drive away another good person. i want to drink myself into a stupor and feel nothing if it means i can escape this.

i'm tired of crying over men who don't love me. i'm tired crying over men who clearly never saw me. i'm tired crying over men who see my first sign of visible mental illness (mental illness they damn well knew i had) and running away. i'm tired of being a fucking project that gets worked on for two fucking years and then promptly abandoned. i hate being told i was your friend when really i was nothing more than, "no, but really, i can fix them."

i don't know what to do with myself anymore. how do you rebound from someone who wasn't your boyfriend? who wasn't even your friend, apparently? i can't walk in my own fucking neighbourhood because you live across the street. i can't go and see my friend because she's you're fucking roommate and you looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin the last time i was in your house.

i didn't even do anything wrong. i didn't even do anything different. i was myself as i ever was. a little manic but that's not new. you had seen me like before. i don't fucking get it. did you just never fucking like me? what was the point of it all.

did i even mean anything to you? or was i really just a little fix-it project that the emotional tax just wasn't paying off enough?

i thought you were my fucking friend. i thought i was yours.

the pursuit of bettering myself starts tomorrow. (well, today. technically.)

it's probably not the wisest decision to attempt such a hard and broad reset, to make all of these changes at once and throwing myself into it head first while also having to try to remember to be patient with myself, but alas. i, for once, would like to make a pseudo-plan and stick to it without said plan being in the pursuit of self-destruction.

martin says i'm not taking it — my mental state, my health — seriously, and he's right. (i do sometimes hate when he's right; i never feel more chastised than when he is.) so i suppose this is my attempt at taking it seriously.

it's not about succeeding (though it would be Nice), it's about trying and working for it and being patient but persistent with myself throughout it. it's not going to happen and be better overnight. i have to remember to be patient with that, too.

the pursuit of self-improvement and my general wellness starts tomorrow. i am nervous but ready to try.