i do not think it matters

You discover that the source of a strange odor people have been noticing in your room—but as of yet have not identified—cigarettes? coffee? rotting fruit?—is actually cigarettes, coffee, and spoiled milk. You notice that the person whom you’ve been staring at, is staring at you. While you’re reading Bruno Schulz, a small black kid in an enormous coat—yes, black, is it wrong that the first thing you notice about a black kid at LC is that he’s black?—walks past you singing, under his breath, “I’m a Barbie girl”—you look up—he stares at you, deadpan, keeps singing, until he cracks a smile out of you, then walks away. (And it’s been a bad day, so you know he has talent.) You check your e-mail. Your friend M. tells you about a detailed and surreal dream he had about your clitoris. You wonder, in the middle of a class, if any of this is real or if everyone around you is just a robot, or a dream—and are hit, out of nowhere, with a painfully nostalgic memory of the one person with whom you could discuss these theories with any degree of seriousness. You remember lying on a sidewalk in Cambridge, dropping pennies down a grate to see how deep it was. (It was deep.) You take two small white pills—so small, it’s hard to take them seriously—that allow you to tell yourself, Today will be fine. (Repressing the cynicism is half the battle.) You walk outside at 7 a.m. in a tee shirt, just to wake yourself up when the cold knocks the wind out of your lungs, and wonder if anyone else notices that the snow in the morning is yellow and blue. Your arm gets sore from erasing blackboards. You wonder if you should exercise more. Hendo asks, “So if you throw back a bottle of Jack Daniels, go speeding down the highway, and manage not to kill anyone—then you’ve done nothing wrong?” You say, “Well, yeah!” You check your e-mail—again. You throw open the door across the hallway from yours and demand that your friend J. explain to you just what it is about milk that makes it smell so bad, and shouldn’t it evaporate, eventually, and will it act as fertilizer for the houseplant you’ve been pouring it into? She gives you a weird look. (Science is so confusing.) You put your hair up, you take your hair down, you get to class three minutes late. You drink your fifth cup of black coffee. You feel your hands shake. You walk with awkward, miniature steps across an icy part of the pavement. You wonder if people are looking at you strangely. You fall asleep during physics. Shit. You worry about your future happiness. You contemplate your Psychology teacher’s theory that a prep school’s emphasis on sports is an attempt to rechannel repressed teenage sexual energy. You sit at a table and listen to people talk—about—absolutely—nothing—for hours. (You worry about your future happiness.) You rearrange the piles of books that are gradually taking over your living space. You write to-do lists on neon post-it notes, and learn to ignore them. You blow your last dollar bill on—Pop Tarts? You give your bed a wistful look, then pop another big yellow caffeine pill. You take pictures of yourself on your digital camera, from various angles, then delete them. You have a lot of work to do. You stay awake until 2 a.m. writing a short story before starting your English paper. Your computer eats it alive, and you spend two more hours re-typing everything, trying not to let despair overwhelm you. You eat an entire bag of Swedish fish and two cans of soda within an hour. You go downstairs and buy another Sprite. You spend more time washing your hands than could really be called necessary, and realize you haven’t had time to think in a while. You look in the mirror and realize that for the rest of your life, you’re trapped in that same body. Twinge of boredom. You’d like—you’d love—a cigarette, or two, or fifteen. You think about death, and feel kind of embarassed for the rest of the day. You call your mom and listen to her talk—about—absolutely—nothing—for hours. You try to remember how your room at home smells. You try to remember how you could possibly have been the same human being before you had your left eyebrow pierced. You try not to take yourself seriously. You repress the urge to scream at someone, to physically attack someone, to confide everything in someone, to be completely fucking honest with someone, to hug someone who might be a little disturbed by the gesture, to pin someone against a wall and bite his face, to kick someone in the shin. You watch the squirrels in the tree outside your window, for a long time. You avoid making eye contact with someone, then stare at him when you’re pretty sure he isn’t looking. You think of the title of a movie you’ve been wanting to see for three years, then forget it again. You stand outside your neighbor’s door and listen to her speak Bulgarian on the phone. You smile, in passing on your way down the stairs, at someone whom you really dislike but pretend to like. You sit in a chair between someone’s office and some lockers, and try to read Invisible Man, but listen to two girls talking instead. You talk about how tired you are, or how high you are, or how excited you are at the prospect of something that will happen in the near future. You wait for something to be over so that you can wait for something else to be over.

I wish I had a thermometer.

For the life of me I have no freaking clue if I'm actually sick or if I'm imagining it. Or making myself sick.

Creepy.

________

Trainspotting is an awesome movie which I recommend to tous et toutes. It seems that the one rule of movies—the one thing you just don't put in a movie—is a dead baby. You see every other gruesome thing imaginable—but the dead baby rule is a line you just don't cross. That's just sick. I have a huge amount of respect for Trainspotting's total rejection of the Dead Baby Rule. That's just badass. The baby dies, and do they tip toe around it and bow down to the rule about dead babies? Fuck no. They show you that dead baby. They give you a close-up on the dead baby for a good four or five seconds. And overall, it is a damn good movie. Ewan McGregor + lots of Scottish accents + violence and heroin ... damn good movie.

________

Going home next weekend to look into getting hooked up with some prescriptions. How exciting, it's like Christmas. The headache is still going on—except it's moved to my whole body—and my motivation to do anything worthwhile with my time has shriveled up and died. I'm going to go lie down now.

All I really want is to sit in a warm car for two hours, go home, sleep, eat, and get so high I will not even be thinking about anything except how fucking cool the sky looks. However ... I'm staying on campus for another fucking weekend because if I don't go to the city on Sunday ... well then I will have gone way way way too long on that weird muted volume where I'm doing nothing but bracing myself and waiting for things to be over. Good grief I miss the city. I miss people and noise and walking and exploring and ... how everything is open to you, this whole network. So I guess what I'm saying is that a day of that is not only worth having to stay on the island, it's necessary, I don't do things because I enjoy them anymore, I do things to survive, my resources are getting low, this is necessary.

I've had a headache for forty-eight hours.

________

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

Here's a good question that no one in human existence has answered yet: Why do the people you depend on suck so much?

________

On the big sin curve of illusion and disillusionment that you spend your whole life going up and down on — I am so sooo deep in disillusionment. Or is it illusion? Maybe being disillusioned is when you're really happy—when you don't need your illusions, you know that you're happy and that things are good. And I am thinking about chemicals, still.

I miss being hugged.

Have I mentioned that headache? It doesn't go away. It slides around. One minute it's my entire skull, the next it's a random dime-sized spot just over my left eye. When I touch my head, that also hurts. Pretty fucking weird, right?

________

I'm being easier on myself than usual by writing a really angsty livejournal entry. Mother fucker.

I WANT TO TELL EVERYONE THAT I MISS ALL OF YOU. DO YOU GET IT??

________

Mr. Kosanovich wears argyle socks every day, and they always match his outfit.

I remember that this is one of the first things he told my Acting I class way back in sophomore year.

(Sophomore year—happened. Good. grief. Good: grief! Good, some grief. haha. Weird.)

________

If I had access to it, I might like to take Adderall all the time. This would be what we call a BAD IDEA, such as licking a frozen flagpole. Or frying yourself out on speed.

I liked my drugged-up personality. But it couldn't only have been the drugs. Life was too fucking sweet. I need to be back in college. I need substance abuse and intelligent people, long walks to go on at 3 am and being treated like a grown-up and making decisions and being held accountable. I miss going places. I miss MAKING THINGS and DOING THINGS. I miss that constant, unspoken push to be slightly more open-minded, instead of the brainwashing oppression of CONFORMITY you see here.

AFTER ALL NONE OF THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING. Yes it is.

Did I mention that headache.