9:12 p.m. - November 13, 2004
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I am scared to write in my own journal these thoughts that meander between two states, like emulsions, fog, smoke. If I were to tell Brad he'd file a 5150 and were that to happen, would someone watch me shower? I am too self-conscious about these things.
Today I cleaned house, microwave, bathroom, refrigerator, swept floors, dusted bookshelves, ran vinegar through the washing machine, more. Between or amidst tasks, either one, I lay on the floor listening to the house creak, wondered about the origin of particular sounds. Thought about nothing, not a single thought until inspired to clean something else like the hall closet earthquake supply boxes or organizing pens by color on my desk. A stream of mindless activities interrupted by the ringing phone which I didn't answer. There is a disconnect in that I can be close to people whom are far away but that intimacy diminishes when proximity decreases.
So suicide, there, to kill myself, a fantasy or two or three like a song played on repeat one time too many and the lyrics become odious. It's important in some small way to write about this if just to be able to look into my mirror and say this is who I am right now and disturb the silence, remind myself that words are brittle but comforting to the ears. I am chicken shit to do anything other than lay down and wish for something to happen, anything. Instead I would be on the hill just above my secret spot, where the wind whips the grass and my face and it is silent aside from a distant plane or the scree of chipmunks, and there's a blank spot there in this fantasy of mine. Lay down on the grass and fold myself into the dirt and be done.
I wonder about the origin - what set it off, what was the thought or feeling or sight? Is it honesty, in that I recognize I smile and pull off this great deception with diminishing skill, and that underneath it all there's only a murky shallow like mangrove basins with fetid smell and decay? I laugh with people when I'm supposed to but you know what I love most of all? It is a recent love but one I cherish with equal measures of longing and pleasure: Every Tuesday and Wendesday, when I'm in Berkeley, I say good morning to all the homeless people I pass by. There's two women in particular that I would like to stop and chat with, one being the wheelchair-bound woman with dreadlocks and the other the woman who stands next to the circular planter and doesn't have teeth so that her mouth and lips look caved in. She in particular lights up when I say good morning in a way that warms me up from top to bottom and I tell myself I will soon buy two cups of coffee and give one to each, something I've never done before. But later that day or night thinking about these women makes me sad because I realize nobody really says good morning to me like that. Of course people greet me but there is never that feeling of being bound, or connected to someone and knowing that while today I am a jerk and am always foolish and dumb, that this connection won't terminate but instead continues on, strengthened maybe because the more one reveals vulnerabilities, the more two people realize how much they share.
I can talk with A[deleted]a for hours and even with her sometimes I don't feel like I can be honest and open. I would like her feedback, her insight, into (onto?) these failed experiences I have with men, but we avoid the subject. And she's my best friend but I can't tell her everything, can't tell her how I hooked up with a guy from gay.com who had the smallest dick I've ever seen, can't laugh or giggle in shame like co-conspirators. I can't tell her that I'm afraid I'm going to do something really stupid and to call me every day just in case. Some might say then she's not a very good friend and to find another, but when I count my friends I only need a finger or two and I'm not about to reduce that number by fifty percent.
I don't think it's bitterness. I know I'm not one of those who are surrounded by a constant influx of people like a whirlwind of bodies or sure and steady like the tortoise find a frog and prince, but I would like to know just what it is about me that makes me the way I am. Know what it is and then excise it, rip into my guts and pull it out, this hard cold thing that it must be, pull and rip until it's all gone and I can breathe again.
It just struck me: I am reading all the books I never had time for before, these classics everybody must read before they die. That is an odd thought, a scary one.
Nothing makes sense but this is my journal, my thoughts.
