For the great day of wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? (Rev. 6:17)

I am shaking. The thermostat in my room reads eighty degrees, but I am shaking. The Rockstar in my hand isn't helping, but I can't put it down. I want to sleep, though I know nothing good can come of tonight's dreams, or of the night itself. I am hallucinating, I am tired, but I cannot sleep. One more sip, one more plan, one more list to make to complete today. . . I have to feel productive. I have to produce. I have to make today count before it is over and wasted. I can't, I won't let it be wasted.

Too much is outside of my control right now. Too much depends on others; but I am going to start standing up for myself now. I am still shaking. My ribs ache from the concert Wednesday. My legs ache, my heart throbs. I am such a sap for the helpless, such a bleeding heart for the abandoned, it makes me sick.

I see in this little cat something I hate most dearly about myself. He needs others, though he has tried to survive on his own. He needs us because without support he would most assuredly die alone and unloved. I can't let a stray go by because I feel an obligation to the kindred, abandoned soul.

This empathy is overwhelming, I want to break down and forget myself. I want to die; and leave this paradoxical existence behind. Why should someone so helplessly logical be tethered to such strong emotions as empathy and love?

It's a cruel life, and I hate it. But more than that I hate those who take advantage of it.

I hate those petty bitches I call housemates. I hate the thin veneer of friendship they hide behind. I hate their saccharine smiles and fake affection. They make me sick to my stomach. I wish upon them a vacant existence walled in by their insecurities and shallow views of life. It's not my fault if you can't love yourself; it's not the cat's fault if you can't love anyone else either. Stop externalizing your problems.

No, Helena, joking about my job will not make your sad little data entry position seem any cooler. I may be serving food, and I may not be as well off monetarily as you- but at least I manage to live my life with a modicum of dignity. What was that line? I think it said something about people-- miserable little people like you, didn't it? People like you who are 'unhappy with the riches 'cause you're piss poor morally'. I think that's right.

Sorry, Jaime, but no amount of putting me down will reduce the number on the jeans covering that lardy ass of yours. I'm not in the practice of self-elevation, but if I may, I will say that jealousy isn't pretty on a lady- and you- though you are abso-fucking-lutely no lady, should at least fake it, for your sake. Get the fuck over your attitude, take yourself to a fucking gym and stop feeding your ego by tearing everyone else down. Or don't. I can't wait until someone finally decides they're over you and takes you down a peg, by force. I hope I'm there to see it.

And no, Danny, making jokes about Jake's new hobbies will not make your pathetic excuse for a penis seem any bigger, not even to that prude bitch you call a girlfriend.

I hate it too- because they all disgust me and there is really nothing I have been able to do about it. I bound myself from my true desires, held myself back for the flogging because I was so concerned with Jake, and his feelings.

Now that I have his permission to be free of these shackles I don't care who hears or reads, I want the world to know I am no longer granting them my consent to push me around. I will not give approval for my own destruction. I am no longer allowing myself to be bound by these ridiculous rules and insane social customs that I neither agree with, nor find tolerable.

c'era una volta il west

Not-so-long ago, when I struck out on a trip up to San Fransisco, I made a discovery. I departed from the womb of my sleepy hometown by the sea looking for life and excitement, and headed north. While there, I mused that I'd never seen a city more alive in my life. The sun rose with vehemence there, and I felt at home. The gutters sighed the first steamy breaths of morning, the factories and businesses pulsed life, people surged from place to place, as the cars and transit below pulsed through the city both in anticipation and hurried urgency. There was no dread in the destination, only zest in the journey and hopeful anticipation of the places to come. This alternately thrilled and inspired me in equal measures. I yearned to be there longer, so much so that it pains me now to be apart form it. The vibrant aura and energy of such a place calls to me still.

I feel no such pull from the place I now call "home".

Here, the sun rises, almost begrudgingly (or hardly at all during the winter months). The people trudge from their homes in frozen, melancholic movements. They break forward from their places of residences like dislodged clumps of ice leaving trails of sludgy discontent behind them, or, conversely, during the heated months- they perspire their way on (and so coating those months in a salt-slime that naught but cooler days can expunge).

The city (if it can be called that) feels rain, or it does not. The only difference here is the amount of weed-vegetation that is allowed to grow. It festers within the cracks of sidewalks and in the vacant lots that no one saw fit to fill. The rain is also in the rivers that gush forth in merciless brown ice, or drizzle listlessly under the bridge in dry months. There is no beauty in this place, to speak of- none for those of us accustomed to a life less abrasive than is offered here.

Here is a place of hard unforgiving stone, pitiless heat and unfeeling cold. In such a place where only the most relentless can survive I feel myself wilting. I know I have no choice but to sink, sink deeper and pray I weather this lull, and the slow-setting in of sedentary existence (here I avoid the word 'life' for, of that there is very little, if any). And while I feel this is the easiest- and in fact most eventual path, I am also compelled to fight. I can't understand why this is, or what part of me stubbornly clings to this life I've made. I can't understand this desire- this drive- this impulse for a path I have long ago lost faith in. Maybe the presence of resistance alone is validity enough for the existence of that resistance.

Some innermost voice begs me, 'continue on, most solemnly though with unshakable resolution; there's no need to cry'. So, knowing that, I will do just the same. I may not know why- but at this moment, I feel there is a purpose, and so I will.

Someday, I think, this will make a very interesting tale. I hope it is one worth the retelling- one of tragedy, passion, and revenge. I think I'll begin it something like this: "c'era una volta il west..."

rattling: my roomates left this for me to find, instead of talking it over with me.

Navaldai (5:52:28 PM): and I quote "House meeting Sunday 8pm. Failure to show up means NO say in house rules"
Navaldai (5:52:33 PM): fuck me hard

The girl with the broken smile.

"When will you consider yourself a woman", he asked, peering thoughtfully at me. When will I consider myself..wasn't I? The question as I see it is a matter of my biggest and most ingrained problems: that for as long as I can remember I have heard, yet failed to heed the call "Nosce te ipsum"- "know thyself".

As I understand it is a profound crisis of self. Years and years have passed since I first awakened to my position in life, and my person but for some reason I find myself facing the same questions I did as an adolescent. Though I have been granted the gifts of time and experience, I do not feel empowered or reassured in myself as I thought I most assuredly would. I ask myself, were to now?A And more to the point:who is the me that awaits the end of this seemingly infinite journey? I replay these questions again and again- aud-nausium they remind me that I am no closer to self- actualization than when I began.

These are first-world problems, I realize.

And yet when he asks me this, I smile, that sad slow smile I have grown to hate. It seems to make sense that the person I am is ever left smiling--ever with a touch of irony. It makes sense that this smirk be reflected self-parody and wit. If hell is a bitter black think, I feel that even now some of it must be in my smirk.

Learn to Fly:

I'm stuck in the transition somewhere between scared shitless and "what the fuck". I don't want to take any unnecessary risks; I don't want to be overly cautious. I don't know what the future holds for me, and quite frankly I don't like that.


It's a rarity that I will admit to having to "wing it". I don't know how to cope with the uncertainty.

I feel like I'm perched on the edge of something very tall- a hairs breath away from my end, and feeling the weight of possibility rush up from the ground to meet me. The world spins on a pin's head at my feet- this vertigo is ever present. And again as always I am reminded of my future, and current circumstance- all I pretend to have, and all I stand to loose. It is such a fragile thing; the balance is so delicate. I have no room for error, and choices to make all the while. I feel like I'm suffocating, but I have to keep going. I have no time to slow down- and no chance to regret the decisions I make. Over and over I repeat to myself "I will live"- this beating in my heart may be the only validation of my struggle's noble cause; and though feeble it is validation nonetheless.

I am so afraid, that at any second, with any breath- it could all fall apart. God help me, I don't know if I can continue lying to them all.

They all believe in me- well, not all of them. There is always that nasty issue of my grandparents. I want so badly to be rid of them. I know they're waiting to see me fail- I can feel it, I could on the day they kicked me out, for the second time. That's another matter. I won't think of that now.

For those who believe in me, I feel like a failure, and a fraud. I am not the witty charismatic leader they think I am. I am neither brilliant, nor self- assured. I am not lucky, I am intuitive. The only reason I've kept up this long is because something- I don;t know what- has possessed me, and insists I go forward. I'm a lie, and a smiling one at that.

Two predictions for the future, will I fly? Or will I fall? At this point, I can't tell. If my feet have left the ground- I still can't tell which way is up, maybe I won't know till it's happened and I lie crumpled on the pavement- or conversely I am free.

I can't breathe, but for now I am alive.

Uselessness

Somewhere in the distance, I feel my time rushing at me, like the inevitable arrival I've dreaded since cognition of its destination. It's the expected and unstoppable. It's water running from the tap through my hands, to the waiting drain below. It's the cars speeding past me on the freeway- with me helpless in the passenger seat.

Re-Education (through self-control)

This is the first time I've been awake to see the dawn since last semester. I shouldn't be up so early, but I am. I think I clocked in around 3 hours of sleep, max. I don't know how to feel about this; I'm unable to sleep when I know I should be. Something in the back of my mind is keeping me up- I'll just have to trust it.

The week that is to come will be in all senses devoted to a little 'spring cleaning'. I have to scour down to the core and wash out everything impure and vile; I have to rid myself of last semester's poison and all that carries its taint. I have to surround myself with things that are positive and helpful to myself and my goals.

I don't feel resentful of the self that took me down this path- I feel pity for her, the poor thing struggling on as she did. I'm not looking for an out, or a reason to excuse her. Things are what they are, that's all.

I haven't seen Eric since we got together at the mall; we haven't spoken since the new year (not through a lack of trying on my part) which is so typical of him- of most guys really. Is it any wonder with guys like this in my life, that I'm still searching for a "man"? I understand that this is entirely unfair to Jake, who has been a real gentleman lately. But to that my stupid heart whispers obscene cynicism to me: how long will that last? It asks too much of me, and I have nothing with which to answer that question. I can't say.

I think a fast is in order here. I want to be completely clean by the time I have to leave this place- wash every trace of it from my body before I submerge in my college life once more.

I was lost, and now I have to rebuild myself as someone who can be- someone who won't crumble like the last time. I'm going to do that, start all over again from where I left off. And while I sit adrift in this sea of thought, all I can hear are the echoes of another life, a song I love so dearly, calling to me:

"It is ok to get lost, but begin to walk...Once more...once more."