a return to things new and familiar

It has been a while. Stuff happened in the in-between. School. Death. Life. Learning. Changing. Too much stuff to cover. But now I'm drowsily chronicling all this newness in my apartment. It feels as if my arms have been unbound and life is radically different. No school for a while. Limited hours at work. But I feel new and unpredictable. Like... the other day I went off with some friends from work and got pretty stoned for the first time because, well... I couldn't think of any reason not to. It was a wonderful experience. Everything became loose and smiles came easily. But not just smiles. Happiness. It wasn't just from being stoned, though. It was from living. Living for the first real time, maybe. It's strange. I haven't forgotten that I hurt and am kind of lonely. It just doesn't seem as important.

That's about all the coherence I can muster for the moment. I hope you all have a pleasant day.

Nothing's really changed, but I feel inexplicably better about things. I'm still painfully single, I still have a metric shit-ton of homework due, and I still have no idea what I'm doing. But it's okay. And I haven't even been drinking.

Trusty little black ache's still lodged firmly in my chest too.

In other news, I now have enough money to get myself all tattooed up. I was thinking inner right forearm, but I don't have any ideas as to what to get.

no thing

What am I doing with my life? My photography's mediocre, my music sucks, my writing sucks... I really don't like the life I have chosen for myself. There's nothing that I love to do. Nothing. Not a single. God. Damn. Thing. And it's SO frustrating because there's not really a reason for me to wake up in the morning.

How do you fix something like that?

4:35 Metra to Kenosha

Well, these days it's been black when I sleep -
Endlessly dark and complete for weeks on end
And for that I am probably grateful
But I am scared
Because I don't want it to fade
How much I loved you, how much I love you
How much it hurt when
You said you didn't
I was so alive then, balanced barefoot on a razor's edge
And yes, I fell - I bled and I cried
Like I didn't think I could
It hurts to this very moment
But I don't regret it and I never will
So those dreams can come if they want
I don't think I'm that scared
Of seeing you again.

8-bit sound

Well, I gots a job now. It's a good job. The people are nice. I am treated and paid well. Still, I feel like I'm betraying what I've come to believe these last few months; namely, anarchism. Is an hour of my life really worth $9? They're not exactly replaceable. Plus, my working helps fund a war that I believe to be criminal. And yet, and yet... I must buy photo supplies. I must repay loans. I must be a consumer, and my money spends (and contributes) the same now as it would if I was ignorant of the misery capitalism perpetuates.

My first day I spent on the edge of tears - no joke. It wasn't solely because of all this... I don't know. Just feeling incredibly lonely and unloved as well... I've more or less been in a tailspin since November. I fear that I am losing the ability to express myself because of it. I've sort of stopped playing music and writing songs because everything I write or play ends up as just a long parade of cliches. My friends... well, we both wish they could do something. I swear to god, days like these make me want to just make up a backpack and start walking to wherever. When I am done with school, I think I'll do that for a while, except I'll have my camera and say I'm "building my portfolio". Or something.

Ah, shit. It's daylights savings today and I have to work in the morning. Fucking Benjamin Franklin... whatever.

Click here.

radical

Finally got a goddamned job - my first day is tomorrow. Worrying about money all the time is very draining. Also not being able to buy groceries often - that's no fun either. But apparently I get a discount on beer and food from the store I'll be working at. That's good, I guess... not too big on drinking, but it's nice to be able to afford to do so.

A friend came in from out of town today - I was really excited to see her again. I've been distant with my friends here at school for a while, so it was really refreshing to be genuinely happy to see someone. I don't know... I could leave for another country tomorrow and the list of people I would be sad not to see again would only be three or four people long. Depressing. I've begun to wonder whether I am capable of normal relationships... or if I have any hope of starting a romantic one... it's all so unapologetically hopeless and I'm pretty sure it's my fault somehow.

so... fun story

The other night I accidentally crashed a party - me and my friend were the only white kids there, everyone else was Asian. It was really weird, but funny. Then, 2 minutes after entering, I proceeded to incur the secret wrath of most of the guys there when the prettiest girl burst into tears when she saw me and was sort of was all over me. A little. Not in the way you're probably thinking, though. She's in my photo classes, so we know each other enough to say hello but I swear to God, I am so incredibly awkward around her - it's like all of jr. high concentrated into a single conversation. She's really cool and all... but I get skiddish at times like this. Anyways, she was really drunk and proceeded to say (after asking what I was doing there several times) that she and her friends loved my work but thought I was really creepy. I told her I wasn't creepy, just awkward... but I don't know how much sank in. This whole time she was crying and hugging me though and mentioned stuff about liking me in the past but not anymore or something.

Anyways. New life experience, I guess. Class tomorrow will be awesome, no doubt.

1001 household uses

Being a third wheel yet still participating in and adding to a conversation between two others is a fucking art form. And I do believe that I have it down. Perhaps I have found my calling?

Anyone want to hire me out to do this yet? I can make self-deprecating jokes for hours on end. Also balloon animals - I do balloon animals.

again?

Christmas and Valentine's Day: usually my two least favorite holidays. Urr.... Valentine's is worse this year, being in a dorm and all, because it seems like everyone is holding hands in the elevator and awkward thumping noises emanate from at least a couple of rooms on each floor. Oh well. My friends and I went out dumpstering. Scored some fresh strawberries (4 boxes!) and a box full of donuts from the Dunkin' dumpster. Yum yum... nothing like overeating to make the lonely monster go away. It was something to do anyways, and it was pretty fun. Whatever. I have to wake up super early tomorrow to finish a roll or two of film. Lame.

take it easy

How can you miss something you never experienced? I don't think I really love anything. Not music, not really photography... what am I doing here? Not at school, I mean here - alive and existing. I've been struggling with this question for years and I'm not any closer to figuring it out then when I started. I was hoping to actually find a concrete answer, not some fortune cookie bullshit like "the purpose of existence is to question existence".

Fuck. I have no idea what to do or say anymore. There's no one to talk to about anything and I don't. Know. What's. Wrong.

so nothing

I hate - I hate - everything I've ever created. Photos, songs, poems... I want to destroy all of them. They're worthless and trite. I can't express anything through them, so what's the point? They are monuments to mediocrity and failure. I don't know how to deal with this... what is the word for this? An all-encompassing sense of alienation and loneliness? Yeah, sure. How do you tell someone that? Hmm... yeah.... I've been so lonely these last few months that I feel as if I'm having a nervous breakdown. There's no frame of reference for anyone to even relate. They'll just get all wide-eyed and flag down the nearest psychiatrist.

I want to set everything on fire.

tiny little islands

Why can't I speak? These unwieldy words are a prison as real as those made of steel and concrete. How I hate to say "I don't want to talk about it" - it's more like "I don't know how to talk about it".

Fuck it. I don't care how this sounds anymore. I am so fucking alone all the goddamn time. And how it hurts! How sharply, how profoundly it aches! I can't even express even a fraction of it to you. What should I do? What should I do? What the fuck is wrong with me?

there is nothing

I don't know how to speak anymore. So I just sit and think and do nothing and can't quite express exactly what I mean.

My friends... just bad things are going on with them and there's nothing I can do about it except offer cliches about "being there" for them. As if that would accomplish anything. I feel so utterly useless.

Back at school now. It's nice to have something to do with my days. This semester I'm doing color film photography. The process for developing film and prints is really complicated with no margin for error (compared to b&w), so we send out film to be developed by companies. Good news - no mistakes, more free time. Bad news - each roll of film from purchase to development costs me over $10. So with about 4 rolls plus prints due each week, that means it's time to get a goddamn job. Actually, Urban Outfitters called me back for an interview. Urban Outfitters - the staple clothing store for hipsters everywhere and one of the most elitist places I have ever been and they want to interview me. Really weird? They asked questions on the app like what magazines I read, what CDs I bought recently... I think what saved my ass was that I crossed out CDs and scribbled "records". I hope they hire me. That would be nice.

Oh. Almost forgot. I went dumpstering with friends for the first time the other day. A police officer stopped us and a lady in her 50s that we made friends with there. Surprisingly, he wasn't a dick.

I've sort of settled down with my meds. Finally. But I went home after being on the road for a while and found that I had lost 2 inches off my waste and about 13 lbs. So now I have a tough time staying warm and my ribs stick out. Oh well. I'm cooking for myself now, so that should work itself out soon.

an observation:

I do believe I've gone off my meds too fast. Oh well. The ups and downs make the days more interesting. I hope everything balances out soon.

A poem! At last!

All is fair as long as you don't tell
Anyone what the rules are
Like how your eyes can change
Like the sea - so fast, so strange, so
Frighteningly beyond what can be known
Through these dim lamps.

Or how with a whisper your voice
Can quiet noonday cities
And shame songbirds into silence
But give back life and hushed lovers' laughter
To nights the moon and stars forsook.

There are no rules for such things
For they are experienced only in moments
That aren't really moments at all
To know them
To know you
Is only to witness the aching beauty
That follows in your wake.

From the road

Greyhound was not too bad this time. Well, it still kind of sucked. 20+ hour bus rides can't be made to be enjoyable. I wrote this on the bus, and it's more or less where I'm at right now. The intensity sort of comes and goes. It's not too bad while I'm with my friends.


Oh my god it hurts. It hurts and hurts and hurts and never ceases. To have someone love me back... could I be so lucky? I actually feel as if I'm laden down with real weights on my shoulders and on my heart - as lame as that sounds. What is this that makes me so deeply unhappy? Is it me? Am I choosing this? It's like I don't know how to breathe anymore.

I'm not even saying anything... these trite words and my stupid, feeble mind! I am tormented by my own ignorance. My every attempt at expression is almost exactly the same as the one before it. I can't live like this. There's so much more I want to say - so much - but the words won't come.

I-L-L-I-N-O-I-S

Only two days until a massively unpleasant bus ride back to Chicago - then to my house. I am not looking forward to seeing my folks again. It's not out of anger, really, I just don't want to talk to them for a while.

I'm going crazy with cabin-fever down here in Texas. I need a break from the friends I'm with and from just... I don't know. Myself? I've been feeling better, I guess, but I'm still pervaded by this very acute sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction. It seems unending. What is wrong with me that I feel like this? That I've felt like this for years? This is really starting to scare me.

shameless product promotion

The last few days have been mostly spent in front of screens (like... now?) - TV, movie, computer, and feeling really depressed and alone and just shitty in general. I feel like I should apologize to someone for it (the screens part, at least). Frantically searching for entertainment - is that how life is to be lived? Hell. I don't know. The anarchists in the book(s) I have been reading are on to something. Life is more than this, I think.

If you get a chance, read this book. It is incredible... it blew the doors off of my concept of the world. It confirms that weird sense of everything being wrong somehow as not just a passing feeling. Everything really is pretty messed up, and it is easy to be blinded by consumerism and passivity. My words don't really do it justice. You'll have to buy it since it probably won't be in your local library and whatever bookseller probably won't have it. Yes, I realize the irony of buying a manual on anarchy, but these folks have to recover printing costs since they aren't doing this as a "job", or for that matter, have a job in the normal sense. Just read it. I promise you won't regret it.

insert anything here

I don't know if it's really late or really early. The 4am hour is kind of fuzzy like that. My sleep schedule is all out of whack and staying up all night helps to reset it- a trick I learned a while ago.

I still feel half-crazed, but it's been better than it has been these last weeks. It's hard to tell if this is because of the meds I'm coming off of or not. Oh well. I should be all done with them in a week. Woot.

Everything feels wrong, like it has for a while. I don't think that will ever change. Maybe I just need to pack up and go somewhere - even though I'm in the midst of doing that very thing right now. I don't know... school... home... It's all so messy. I don't know what I'm trying to say anymore.

anything at all

I can't sit still. There's somewhere... someone... it feels as if... I don't know. "My life doesn't satisfy" is the nearest I can get to saying what I mean. I feel out of place everywhere I go. What is this? Why does nothing feel good?

I tried telling my friend all this the other night and she started to cry, so we talked about other things instead. No one understands.

Is this really all there is? Everything feels so detached from reality, a reality that I never experienced but is in my head all the same. This first-person movie I live... the only thing real about it is the ever-present unhappiness it causes.

I want to get over her so badly. Honestly, who the hell wants to love someone that lives 900 miles away and loves someone else? It's been 2 1/2 months and it hurts just like it did during the first couple of days. We talk still, but I can't tell her how I feel without making it all weird (again) and it is killing me inside. When she mentions this other guy she loves, it's like being thrown into the ocean in the middle of winter - I can't breathe, I can't move, my mind doesn't work. My friends tell me to find someone else just to get my mind off her. It's not in me. When I go to love someone, I love them with everything I have, and if part of me is still hung up on her... I don't know. It doesn't seem right or fair to the other person. But that leaves me here, pining away for someone who will never love me back, writing down every single nuance of my pseudo-self-pity, my heartache in exquisite detail...

Fuck.

what day is everyone saying it is?

Urr... the futility of self-expression. Sometimes I think it would be better if we could just touch each other and exchange memories rather than words. I lack the vocabulary to describe most things like a lot of people, and it is very isolating. "How are you?" "Just fine." I don't think I've ever meant that in my entire life. People ask, but they don't want to hear an answer. I ask it too, out of reflex. My hypocrisy shows.

I realize that a lot of these entries sound self-pitying. I swear that's not how it is - I hate pity and consider it an insult when people pity me. Truthfully, and without some sort of warped elitism, I don't like how I feel most of the time and I don't like how this world, this existence, is. Like there's no place for me, which is why I feel so shitty and alone all the time. I try to explain this to other people, but no one truly understands. My friends offer a sympathetic ear and try their best to help... I don't know. It comes back around to the problem of self-expression. It's so hard to explain. There is one, maybe two people whom I know that come close to getting this, but neither of them I see regularly. That's probably why I'm so crazy about Elliott Smith - he hurts, well he used to hurt, in a way I think I understood. But he killed himself.

I am beginning to not trust myself around girls. There's no problem talking to them (I really never had a problem there), but... I think I'm starting to let loneliness get the best of me. I don't know how to say it. Like girls I just met, that I barely know... I want to touch and be touched and kiss and laugh and be held. It takes a lot to not try and kiss a near-stranger, which is incredible considering how shy I can be. Once, a younger girl gave me her number, and no one had ever shown interest in me before, so I jumped at it, knowing that I had no real feelings for her. It was just physical, and I really hurt her because I selfishly let it go on. It wasn't anything too heavy, I mean I'm still a virgin, but I was, and am, deeply, deeply ashamed of myself for that.

This ache is unending and I don't know why and where... and I keep going on and on and on about it like some attention-starved child with a skinned knee. Suicide is not an answer and doesn't solve anything, but I find it drifting in and out of my mind with more frequency. I made the mistake of telling that to a therapist or psychiatrist once. It's troubling how their eyes change and they lean forward in their chair. Prescriptions and surveillance and questions... maybe I just needed a hug?

Will meeting and loving someone amazing make me feel better? Will me making that person feel loved fill whatever I'm missing inside me? I am losing hope quickly. I think I'm starting to crack from loneliness - like the beginnings of some sort of psychosis. Seriously.

jack kerouac, anyone?

The last entries from my journal:

5-Jan-08

I'm in a Greyhound bus, on my way to Texas to chill with Britt for a while. It's about 730 pm and I should arrive around 1 pm. Traveling like this for a long period of time reduces you to a strange, semi-conscious state. Oh well. I have my snacks and music and sketchbook. The scenery passing by is depressingly uniform. Towns are different only in the variation of chain stores and strip malls they possess. It's even more apparent at night with all their gaudy light-up signs. 21st century Americana, I guess. Some author or poet said that with the construction of freeways, it was possible to see the whole country and not really see anything at all. Sad, really.

I ache and I ache and I ache for something that I can't put into words.


6-Jan-07

7+ hour layover in St. Louis - finally left at 5 am. I can't remember if I slept on the ride to Tulsa, maybe a little, but not enough to make a difference. Oklahoma's a strange place. The weather's nice, but the landscape is absolutely desolate. It's as if someone set off a giant sadness bomb and destroyed everything's will to live.



That's about it for the journal. Greyhound ended up losing my luggage, I just got it back a few hours ago. That meant I was off my meds for about 48 hours. It was really, really scary. I would be really energetic and talkative and have random and brief fits of euphoria, followed by just as brief periods of deep sadness. I got really nauseous and even though I was hungry as hell, I couldn't eat anything. I started to get shaky towards the end, and my entire body felt like it had fallen asleep and was all pins and needles. And even though I was scared, I kept laughing for no reason. I finally got meds back into my system about 3 hours ago, and I'm starting to settle back down. But seriously. Fuck this shit. I am never, ever going to be dependent on anything like this again. I'm taking myself off of these things, and should be completely free in a couple of weeks.

the wheels on the bus...

I'm off to Texas tomorrow to stay with good friend Britt. I linked her blog on the right. Check it out. Only a 19+ hour bus ride stands in my way. Oye.

Despite all these goings-on, I feel just as lonely. And I'm scared because I'm 21 and have never been a serious relationship before and I know that I'm virtually alone in that particular category. I don't know what's wrong. Is there something wrong? Why will no one love me back?