I'm sorry this blog seems to get all my bad stuff. It's just because the DeviantArt one is more public, and when I go crazy I want it to happen here, where just the people I love the most are going to see it.

This is going to be depressing and probably scary for people I love. It's going to be self-indulgent and explicit, and it's going to talk about feminine problems. I hereby apologize and point you to the door. You will not enjoy this, but I need to get it out of my system, so feel free to vacate now. I won't hold it against you. If you go on reading, don't call me later and tell me all that I should be doing differently. I know, and I've probably already done it. I just need to get some of this shit in my head out of my head. If I tell anyone I trust enough to tell, they'll tell me everything's going to be fine, but I should be doing this and that and whatever else, which I know and I've heard. Or they'll be scared on my behalf, which doesn't make me feel any better.
So in this garden that belongs to me and where I reign, such as it is, we are doing this. There will be none of the aforementioned here. Don't tell me everything's going to be fine unless you have a reason, honest scientific evidence for everything being fine. And don't tell me I should have done something about it before, because I know. I didn't. I'm paying for it and I don't need to be told. Tell me what I can do if it's not obvious, if it's something I might not know. Tell me you love me.

I'm scared. I haven't had a period in almost four months now. I'm not pregnant unless it's the most amazing stealth pregnancy ever, which produces no morning sickness, no symptoms, and defies multiple pregnancy tests. Which means... I don't know. I should have gone to the doctor a long time ago, as soon as I started being sexually active. You know... three years ago.

I haven't been to Planned Parenthood or any girly doctor since my abortion a year and a half ago, and understandably they were focussed on other things at the time and there wasn't a comprehensive checkup. So I am very remiss in my duty in this area.

I've never missed a period before. Mine are not especially regular, frequently late, occasionally two weeks early. But they are always, always present.

As several people have told me, there are any number of things it could be, anywhere from dire to inconsequential. Naturally, my mind is fixing on the dire. The kinds of possibilities Brendon doesn't even want me to mention in his presence. So they just racket around in my head without anyone to help me deal, and now they're coming out here. Here's another chance to leave before the bad stuff.

...

Everybody gone?

Okay, good. I love you guys. I'll catch up later when I'm feeling better.

What if it's something terrible? What if there's something horrible and uncurable inside me? What if something's gone wrong inside, what if it can't be fixed, what if the child I chose not to have a year and a half ago was the only child I'll ever be able to have? What if it's worse than that? What if I've waited too long and it's already too late to cure whatever it is? I'm still not even able to say the word that's in my head, but by god I'm screaming it in here. What if I've been so lucky with finding the people I love and need most so early in my life because I'm not going to have very long? What if I never get the time to finish my book and I've wasted the time I've had? What if I'm never going to get the time to correct my bad habits, be the strong and capable and beautiful person I want to be? What if how I am is how I'm going to be remembered forever? What if I never get a chance to go anywhere off this continent, what if I never get to see Ireland or Scotland or China or any of the wonderful places I want to go? What if I never get to meet Brock or Kelsey in person, what if I never get to meet Brendon's family, what if I never get to marry him?

Look away. I'm going to say it so maybe I'll stop thinking it.

What if I have cancer and I'm going to die?

I've got to stop. I don't think this helped.

Labels: Doctor, dread, Stress

...do you get up the courage to call and ask if someone is still alive when you're honestly not sure what the answer is going to be?

Two weeks since I've heard from him. It's destroying me. I can't think about anything else. I look for him everywhere. I go to my door and open it and stand on the porch, hoping that'll make it somehow more likely that he'll walk up the driveway.

I just... can't stop hearing the voice of some useless Army functionary telling me the unthinkable. And I keep wondering what I would do when I hung up the phone. What would I do? What could I do?

I can't call. I can't do it.

I have to know.

I can't.

Labels: dread, Jeremy

Paradigm shift after paradigm shift. I've learned to understand them, if not to predict--of course, not to predict the unpredictable.
Oh well.
Here we go again...
See you on the other side.

You see, there's this catburglar who can't see in the dark
He lays his bets on eight more lives, walks into a bar
Slips on the eight ball, falls on his knife,
Say, "I don't know what I've done, but it doesn't feel right..."

Some things don't hold up over the course of a lifetime
Oh...
When's the first time you heard that one, 1954?
Get to the punch line, fall to the floor

Give me a minute and I'll tell you the setup
For the worst joke ever
I never
I'll tell you my version of the greatest life story
Don't bore me....

Now I am floating
I feel released.
The moorings have been dropped,
The weights unleashed.
Everything is crystalline, simple and free.

The crime of good men who can't wrestle with change
Or are too afraid to face this life's misjudged unknowns
You're not hurting anybody else's chances
But you're disfiguring your own.

Give me a minute and I'll tell you the setup
For the worst joke ever
I never
I'll tell you my version of the greatest life story
Don't bore me....
I never.

Give me a minute and I'll tell you the setup....
You see, there's this feeling that I've heard this one before.

Labels: Doctor, dread, Julia

I think I maybe walked away from a murder today.

I... I don't know. Sympathetic magic, need to align some things again. What do you do?

The car shook and the horn blared and she screamed with that note in her voice that people don't do voluntarily. Nobody makes that sound voluntarily. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe they were playing around. Or maybe she died in that car and somebody else drove it out of the parking lot.

I was thinking about something today. What would happen if someone I love was dying? How would I be? What would I say? You see people's loved ones dying in movies, and they've always got a few seconds where there's time to talk, and the person's always, "I'm dying," and their lover says, "No, you're going to be fine." And I hate that. If somebody's obviously dying, the last thing I would think would be appropriate is to deny it, waste those last moments by trying to wish them away. But... at the same time I know I have this habit of never accepting that something bad could really happen until it does. So what if someone was dying? Would I deny it like that? Would I deny it to the very end and then when it really did happen be left there gasping for words and sputtering, "But... but I didn't get to--!"

Procell is a lot like me sometimes. Craven, cowardly. They use those words. I don't, necessarily. I don't think I'm a coward. But I don't think I'm courageous. I think it's about priorities. To me what's important is that I and the people I love survive. Everything else--everything else--can be sorted out later. To me so long as I'm alive I have a reason to be happy, so I'm never completely devastated. If I'm alive I have hope, and so I can never despair. I can never give up.

But by clinging to that life above all else am I letting things go? Letting people die who... maybe... might not have? Walking away when anything could have happened because my own life is more important than any other concern when it comes to a stranger?

And by never giving up, am I wasting time that I could use to say what I really mean, wasting it on refusing to accept that something really is coming?

By the pricking of my thumbs... something wicked this way comes.

Labels: dread, Introspection

God, such a weird mood today... I hate it when I'm cruel. Because I'm never cruel except to people I care about. Other people don't even register with me, so I'm never so horrible to anyone as I am to my friends.

I'm sorry to the people I lashed out at today. I don't know what's going on in my head, but it'll be better once I've gone to Mexico and come back. Then I'll be able to treat you the way you deserve.

This last month before I leave is going to be hard for all of you. I don't say it'll be hard for me, because it really won't... I'm going to work as much as I can, make as much money as I can to make up for my absence, and then go. But all I can tell you is I really hope I don't hurt any of you before I get this unpredictable, capricious creature in my head under control. If I do, if I have, god am I sorry. I will make it up to you.

No one, least of all you, my friends, my dear ones, deserves to be treated the way I can treat people when I lose control. I'm very sorry.

I had such an awful nightmare last night... my dreams are getting worse and worse.

I was floating, in dark water, no stars, no land, just floating in the water that was warm, and I was alone. I was so stressed--the way I have been--about money, trying to figure out how not to crash and burn, how not to fuck this up like everything else, how I'm going to pay the next two months' rent, how I'm going to buy food, how I'm going to pay bills, how I'm going to fix the window that broke yesterday... all the grown-up things on my head and trying to be grown-up about it. I was floating in the water on my back, thinking about these things, and I started to cry, not sobbing, just quietly, angrily, and when I did, I began to sink, sinking feet-first into the water. There was light below me, and when I stopped falling I was in the street outside my apartment, and I was looking in my wallet at the ten bucks I got at work last night. And people I knew, people from school who I just barely know, came up and asked for money, and I gave it to them, smiling, "Of course, of course, I don't care, don't worry about it, you can have it."
Then I looked down in my wallet that was empty, and I put it away and I was going to go inside and go to bed, but then the sun started to rise, and I realized I'd fucked up, I'd been up all night.
I looked up at the sun and it was warm, on my face, too bright to look at, and I closed my eyes and let it shine red through my eyelids, and I almost felt relaxed, I could feel every muscle of my body, standing there. You never notice how many muscles it takes just to stand still until you really try... and I could feel each and every one, and some of them ached, and I was glad of the pain because it meant I was still in there, still attached to my body, as crazy as my mind felt right then. I could feel the wind on my ankles and between my fingers, and I could smell that cold smell that mornings have, like snow. And then I tasted blood.

I looked down at my hands as the sun came up and covered me in light, and I touched my lip and there was blood on my fingers. So red—nothing’s redder than blood in the morning sun. And I could feel a pain in my mouth, and I searched around with my tongue for the source of the blood, and then there was a sharp pain, and one of my back teeth fell out into my hand. It was so small, like a child’s tooth, and I was so scared, because I knew I’d fucked up again by not going to the dentist in two years, and now I was losing the only teeth I’d ever have. I looked at the tooth in the light and it was translucent and pink with the blood, like a lump of glass. I spit out the blood and tried to keep the tooth in my hand as I climbed the stairs, but I lost it. When I got to the top it was gone, and that squishy place in your mouth when you lose a tooth was just there, and the taste of blood.

Nothing chases me in dreams anymore. There's hardly any people at all in my dreams. Just me... falling short. Not coming through. Not having what it takes. I guess that's how you know you've grown up, huh. When your nightmares aren't about monsters anymore, just about failure.

Shit, I'm sorry to burden you all with this mess. This is why I hate these things. Angsty bullshit I'll get over tomorrow, and you have to hear it. And yet... I'm still gonna push that "publish" button. Someday I'll learn.

Labels: dread, Dreams, Stress