too much philosophy

A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again and look with terror at the wall, until one day he begins afresh to beat his head against it; and once again he will faint. And so on endlessly and without hope.

One day he will wake up on the other side of the wall.
- Simone Weil

I am lost. I talked to Shea for two hours today about everything that has been confusing me for months, and it helped a lot. I do believe that someday I will find a feasible philosophy for me. Maybe not today. Our discussion did give me lots of new material to obsess over. I will reach a conclusion. I guess it's too late for ignorance. Dang my debate coach.

Today was an okay day full of chromosome-spreadsheets, scooter-riding (with gas at $3.09/gallon there's definitely going to be more of that and bike-riding, despite the fact that I live on a hill), and crying (over Josh of course) until I found this. Dumbledore cannot be dead! He was supposed to have horcruxes somehow! This is horrible! I love Dumbledore!

It is odd, to spend a day doing science, crying over love, doubting the existence of... anything and everything... and then caring so much about fictional characters in a book. Pulled in all directions, like taffee or something. That's my life as (as my mom continually reminds me) a dilletante.

I talked to Ariel. She might go around Josh's parents to child protective service or something to try to get him away from his brother and in a safe place.

If nothing is real, why do so many things hurt so much?

no fireworks at this finale

Anger. It is still not something I am used to feeling attached to a person (other than my mother). It feels so heavy but invisible in my veins. The nueron charges aren't used to charging. The paths almost become a memory.

Ariel called today. She said that Josh has been touching her friend Jen (with clothes on both) between the legs with his hands and his knees. Ariel said that Jen is the most innocent person ever. She doesn't want this. She doesn't like Josh that way. And I bet Josh doesn't like her that way either.

It seems like unobtrusive enough news in the maelstrom of bad news I've been getting from him or about him lately. Probably better than his attempts to get illegal drugs, or drink. But still, you can push me and push me and push me and I will break suddenly. I will stretch with the stress for so long that you will forget my original shape, but eventually, someday, I will break without prelude.

I love that boy. I love him fiercely. When I become attached to people, I don't let go easily. In fact, I have never let go of someone really. Even those that have pushed me away and hurt me, I still hold on to them. I'm not letting go of Josh ever. I know that I won't. If he were to ever come back to me, happy and healthy and clean, I would forgive him of everything he's ever done to me or anyone.

But now... I am so angry with him now. He says with his words that he loves me. He shows me with these actions that his words are just lies. I won't make excuses for him anymore. I won't defend him. He's messed up, and I have been hurt because of him. I would say he hurt me, but my mom told me a long time ago that people don't have the power of hurting you or making you mad- you let them. I guess I just let people hurt me a lot. Anyway, he is hurting me more now than he ever has before just by destroying himself. He's proving he doesn't care about himself, and our church, and through everything me. He's proving he doesn't care about me.

He's hurt me. He's messed up. I think he belongs in a hospital right now. I prayed last night about whether or not to try to date other guys in the next year and this could be my answer. I will never let go of Josh. I don't do that. I put up with things. I have put up with so much from him. I have stood with him through everything. But I can't stand with him through this, because it defies me. I can't stand in this storm, because this storm could rip me apart forever.

I love him, always, always. But I will not go down with him in flames. I will not fall with him when he's not acting like he even cares about me.

Love, anyway, for me, has always been about more than romance.

It doesn't end with flames, really, or fireworks, or smoke, or anything but this tiny tug on the tension I have become. I break cleanly, smoothly. Later I will read over this and wonder if I really mean it. Right now I'm telling this future self- I do. It's time. It's done.

falling in like

Today I ran into a glass door. I didn't think that it was really possible to do that. You see it in the movies a lot. I guess it is an achievable feat. I was running down the stairs, and I reached out for the door handle, and I just smashed my face into the door. I even left a make-up smudge. While on the topic, I also tried to jump the last seven stairs today. I did that all the time when I was younger. Well I guess I'm taller now, or had more lift or something, because I smashed my head against this edge where the ceiling surfaces meet at a 90-degree angle (the edge is the width of my stairs and is above them). I'm really surprised it didn't knock me out. However, it just smashed me to the bottom of the stairs where I landed flat and got the wind knocked out of me. I also have a nice little wound on the top of my head now.

Anyway, same story with my mental state, I'm not okay when I'm alone, I'm okay when I'm with friends or family or people I can connect to.

Tonight I spent the evening with Siobhan, JoAnna, and their (our) newly acquired (like by one week) friend Pat, who debates at the rival school and is an amazing policy debater. He went to nationals this year. I watched his final round at state and was... awed. Anyway, I've known him for two years but only through debate. Tonight I got to know him as a person. He's really, really nice.

We tried to go roast marshmallows at this garden place but I guess there is a prohibition of fire due to the current fire-prone condition here, so we came to my house and roasted marshmallows on my barbeque. It was really fun. Then we went to that Will Farrell racing movie (I won't try to spell the title), which I thought was good except for some of the discriminatory characteristics it attached to America.

I really enjoyed meeting Pat. By the movie, I realized that I was rather attracted to him. He is single, but there are several reasons it would probably not work out: 1) He has a lot of friends, so I am really nothing to him 2) When he met me tonight I was wearing a band-aid on my nose to keep myself from peeling it (OCD-driven peeling), and my cheeks look like tectonic plates, so I'm not that attractive at the moment, and even at my best I can't touch the attractiveness of many of his friends. I can only hope to have some other endearing quality 3) He goes to the other school, so I don't see him a lot, although I will see him more now that he has invaded my friend group 4) Kyrstin likes him. I have run into this problem before. Kyrstin liked Matt at the same time I did, before I went out with him when I was still trying to attract him somehow.

Anyway, also I don't have his email or anything, so I'd have to call him, and I'm not so good on phones. I guess that I might call him and ask him to coffee sometime to just get to be his friend when my face finally heals.

I have horrible object inconsistency. I know I promised Josh not to kiss anyone for three months, and it seemed very real when I promised him, but now I can't really imagine him. I don't know if he loves me. Some part of me wants to run away from him before he could hurt me by leaving me. I still love him though, immensely. The whole situation is just so difficult right now, and he's just so messed up. I will never leave him, but I feel like I need some sort of healthy dating relationship here to distract me from this mess. But my whole dating mentality is so messed up...

I don't know. I love Josh. I probably don't stand a chance with Pat. But I really like him, in a way I have not liked anyone in quite a while. I guess we'll just wait until my face heals or I regain some sort of rationality concerning these matters.

the past week

I'm back. I am going to try to condense everything that happened both internally and externally in the past week into some sort of coherent non-boring entry.
First, the whole Maui-thing... It was really fun. We went snorkelling a lot (I finally, on my third visit to Hawaii, saw the state fish- the humuhumunukunukuapua'a), boogie-boarding in 8-10 foot waves (not very safe and definitely painful), horseback-riding into the crater (or rather erroded caldera-thing), parasailing, luau-ing, and driving around many one-lane two-way roads that had sheer drops (like 200 feet) off into the sea (during which I cursed my father for only driving with one hand and glancing at my mother regularly as they talked about the rental-car payment).

It was very fun and beautiful. It wasn't too hot, but the humidity made it feel hotter. I enjoyed the time with Siobhan, who I haven't done much with lately.

At the same time that all of this was happening, though, I was ceaselessly reading my science magazines (Discover), trying to catch up on all the issues I didn't have time to read during the school year; reading the philosophy book Morgan so generously gave me full of Camus' essays; reading Batman and Daredevil comic books (they are my favorites because they have no fancy super-powers or unexplainable gadgets (excepting Daredevil's four heightened senses)- they just care about society); playing Final Fantasy IV (yes, it's good, but I am stuck because I can't beat these sludge things without magic and my only magic-capable character runs out of MP points quickly and I'm stuck in a cave far away from ethers); reading a book about the history of partical physics; and thinking- thinking thinking thinking.

There was this incredibly dichotomy building between the physical motions of snorkeling and such that my body was going through and the rigors my mind was going through. In fact I didn't pay a lot of attention to what we were physically doing, which I'm sure I will eventually regret. I was just thinking. I was thinking about philosophy, and what happens when you take logic so far that it collapses in on itself and cannot sustain. I thought about the deserts that Camus talked about. It seemed like a choice between two things- living in actual or simulated ignorance of the lack of real meaning or purpose, and actually creating that purpose through sheer will or ignorance, or relentlessly pursuing truth in the Camus-like fashion, even if it means that there is no meaning, even if it means you will never really have hope or be happy and the only thing you live for is to be in constant defiance of your own futility, facing reality even if it holds no reason to ever be sane. That's a hard choice. What I got the most from reading Camus was that I wasn't alone. The things he was saying that I can't articulate to people are the things that I am feeling. Doestoevsky (I know I spelled that wrong) also seemed like he was down this path... It's a scary place. I kept going from Camus to science as a sort of change in faith. When I read Camus I doubted the validity of everything; I hung out in that desert of thought where one can really go insane. When I read the science, I was showing a faith in this world, a faith in the fact that things mattered, that even if there was no objective meaning we could still create it as a social phenomenon (which, if the meanings humanity presently accepts are not really true, has already happened). What is more important- knowing and living the truth, or being happy?

It seemed more noble to me to choose truth, more fatalistic, more dramatic and raw. I have always been pursuing truth even as I spun lies. Now I have the option of chasing it. But if it runs into insanity... if it runs into a complete loss of hope or the knife-blade existence that Camus describes... I don't know. Maybe I would rather retreat from the philosophy and go back to living what may be a lie. Maybe it's worth it, if it makes me happy. Even if it's not real, it can give me a peace that this truth may never yield.

Of course, the existence of God fixes everything. But I have become less capable of faith.

All of this was going on in my mind. It seemed to be my primary existence. The snorkelling and sight-seeing and everything were just annoying things tugging at my attention. Finally I got severely sunburned because I wasn't really paying attention. My face got 2nd degree burns and blistered all over. Every time I touched it something would pop and clear lymph fluid would leak out. Today it is all hard like scar tissue, preparing to peel like mad I fear. This sort of woke me up from my reverie (but which world is real?). Also I quit eating meat, but I still ate fish. Siobhan told me that I can't label myself as a vegetarian if I eat fish, so I guess I wasn't a vegetarian in Hawaii, but I am now, because I never eat fish at home. I guess protein will become an issue. Also we kept eating so much... I'm used to just eating breakfast. I fear I gained two pounds. I'm exhausted right now, as we flew all night (miracle of miracles- I actually got six hours of sleep on airplanes!), but I am going to go run four miles. I think it will make me feel a lot better.

The problem of the parallel existences of my mind and body became really apparent. I guess I just don't feel connected sometimes. I pay attention to my body only to cut it and starve it and neglect to sunscreen it. I obsess constantly over my thoughts, no matter what I am doing physically. I need both of these worlds to interact, and I need them to be equally real to me.

Anyway, my career choice is I suppose a bizarre mix of these two uncertainties. It is a science, which makes me put faith in the reality and meaning of everything, but it is also in some cases being reduced to philosophy, which breeds skepticism and wild hypothesis through only dialectic reasoning, not evidence.

Currently, I feel completely shut off from Ariel or Josh or even people here like Morgan etc. which makes me irrationally angry. It's funny, all this rational thinking, all of this thought breeding on thought, and I still feel these irrational emotions. Like I said, though, there is a time when logic fails...

Amidst all this I am also obsessing over politics, and how angry I am with the American government right now and it's foreign policies and its ignorance of science and new fuel opportunities that could get us off oil. We are completely ignoring the very real (I've done a lot of reading) threat of globing warming and the overconsumption of oil. I think that the first real step would be to start making some serious moves away from oil. I think it would eventually help foreign policies (less pressure on the Middle East), the American economy, and most long-term importantly, the environment.

Well at the end of this rambling inchorent post that failed my objective... Maui was nice. The fish were pretty. There is sand everywhere in my suitcase.

Maui

I'm off for Maui. Please leave me lots of happy comments to read when I get back that distract me from the current destruction of my life (ha melodramatic... it's not quite that bad) and the real political and militaristic destruction of the world (not melodramatic at all).

I can use the distraction. :-)

I can't pack though. It's 6:21, we leave at 7 am, and I haven't even started. I have some sort of genetic mutation, some sort of congenital aversion to packing. I can only pack at the very last minute, and only when I force myself... I'm amazed I end up with a suitcase at all with my track record.

Right now I'm talking to Brittany on IM, writing this, and waiting for my mom (who is upstairs on the phone) or my dad (who is doing something brutal to the local vegetation involving a blade) to come down and ask me if I'm packed and then force me to pack while they stand at the door.

I'll miss you all.

this is how the world REALLY goes down...

Stupid news people. Some part of them must get excited when crap like this happens. It's not their fault of course... It's just so parasitic.
It would make sense for the world to start at a point, at every individual's point (in the subjective reality, not the objective one I'm obsessing over), and radiate outward. That's how this poet looked at time... I can't remember his name. But time until Christ spiraled in, getting more compact and full of compassion, and time after Christ spiraled out, losing His qualities, losing consistancy, repeating itself in so many ellipses.
We must be getting to one of the further spirals. Maybe we're spiralling down into the catacombs of Dante's hell.
It would make sense that everything, as those individual spirals of life (not time now) got larger, they would be less focused, less clear, less important. I guess that's how individual life works. I sit here complaining about the boy I love and the horrible situation that we're in while people so far away die, and this love crisis is more real to me. But that must prove an objective world... a place where nothing is spiralled, a globe where what is important is what is on everyone's mind...
I don't know. I'm so disappointed in the world. And in myself, for caring so much about something so small, when something so huge and so far away is marking the destruction of everything.

Do you know what war is? War is selfish, religiously-corrupted iconic idols (Voldemort was a great man... evil, yes, but great... Hitler was a great man...) moving about pawns without covering their back... Their citizens are just pawns in the chess game. They don't really matter, in the end, no matter how stacked up they are. All that matters is whose king is dead.

watch the pretty world fly by as it journeys to hell

Well I'm in a load of crap. My mom is actually gone right now. She ran away. That hasn't happened in several years. Probably because I lost my patience when they were saying I should talk to them instead of my therapist and yelled that they (my parents) were the reason I'd erected the walls in the first place. Then she got upset and said I never listen to her or honor her, which was stupid considering the situation. Anyway, these are the emails they read while I was not there that lead to this dramatic conclusion:

[TO JOSH from ME]
Hi. I doubt you are reading your email right now, so I will probably have to call you and tell you to read this, or I will have to call you and read it to you. I told you I can't verbally articulate. I require the writing medium.That's why I'm writing this to you instead of saying it. It's not cowardice, it's just lack of inflection acuity.
I am very angry with you. Rylee told me that you kissed her and that she kissed you back. I am of course a bit upset with her, but in this letter I want to address you.
The thing is is that kissing for you and kissing for me mean two very different things. I know that I kissed Charlie this year, but it wasn't because of an emotional attachment to Charlie. If anything, I was using him, and he was using me. I enjoyed being with him, but mostly I was experimenting, trying to work towards a healthy perception of kissing. But for you kissing means you care. It means a romantic relationship. You get involved in kissing. I still don't. For you, kissing is intimate. I'm working on that.
The point is I think there is a very big difference between you kissing Rylee and me kissing Charlie (whom I haven't kissed since May I'll have you know). I have no connection with Charlie, and you have a connection with Rylee. This also happened with Emily.
You can't have more than one intense emotional romantic relationship. The reason our church says to date mroe than one person is to avoid precisely that kind of intensity. We broke that rule, okay, I'll admit it. But what you're doing to me, and to Rylee, and to Emily especially, isn't fair. When you do things like that it's either because you don't emotionally care enough about one person to just focus on them romantically, or it's because you're a player. I know you care about Rylee, and I know you care about Emily. I know that the situation with both of them is different. But I also want you to know that I feel like this isn't fair. I can't even imagine kissing someoen else with the kind of commitment that I kiss you with. I can't fathom having enough emotional space for another romantic relationship involving the intensity of ours, or yours and Rylee's, does.
So what I'm saying is is I can't be in an intense romantic relationship with you if it doesn't even mean enough for me to be the only one. You have no commitment to me physically. I don't care if you go out on dates, kiss people, whatever, if you do it the way I am doing it. But when you do it with emotion like you did with Ryle...
My gosh Josh, don't you think that hurts?
I won't put up with it. If you can do that, then I don't want to be in this relationship with you right now.
-Lindsay (written while I was very angry and not very logical)

[TO ME from JOSH]
Irrationality is a funny thing...
I'm totally screwed up right now. I'm angry at you, I'm in love, I hate you, I want to be with you forever, all at the same time.
I got wasted last night. And the night before that. My grandparents have a lot of alcohol at their house... whisky is really, really nasty, and burgundy is alright... still nasty.
I have a friend who's hooking me up with some shrooms. I plan to trip before my parents get back. Trip to the fourth level.
I went to buy an ouije board three days ago. I was going to destroy myself spiritually, condemn myself. Communicate with Lucifer. I didn't have enough money to afford it.
I've relapsed into porn, masturbation, and 'abuse' all at least once this past week and a half or so.
Oh, and I've been planning my own suicide off and on for about two weeks now.
I don't care anymore. I don't know what I feel. I don't know what I think. I don't know what I am. I don't know what I want. It all changes every day. Rollercoaster.
Do you want to know honestly the reason why I kissed her? The thought process in my mind? I was SO angry at you... more angry than I've been in a long time. You weren't telling me anything at all about your life, not even the most trivial things. I felt like you didn't want me to be part of your life. I was very, very emotionally unstable then (and now). So, I decided to myself that if you didn't want me to be a part of your life, then I didn't want you to be a part of mine.
That's just the deciding factor, though.
I've been meaning to talk to you about the physical part of our relationship... ever since I've come to love you I've been feeling this way, never mentioning it for fear of the psychological consequences you could have.
Lindsay, you don't make me feel loved.
I *know* that you love me. Logically, in my logical consciousness, I understand that. But emotionally... I don't feel it, Lindsay. I don't feel your love. I've been waiting... wanting you to get healthy, to be able to share something emotional/physical with you... It's really hard for me. I get lonely. I feel abandoned... Rylee was my escape, last winter. She was my escape last week. She makes me feel loved, she hasnt' been abused like you have. She can feel physical things.
You can't.
When I kiss you... when we make out... it's so automatic. I know that you are doing it not because of any fraction of love, but because you need to do it to accept yourself. There is no feeling in it at all, aside from physical response to the stimuli... I was hoping that you can still overcome that. Also, according to Ariel, you don't like making out at all. Why didn't you tell me? How am I supposed to... to do anything when I have no information? All I can do is guess and hope things turn out ok.
Friday night, when I went down to prom, that is the only truly emotional/physical feeling that we've shared. When you felt like you were a part of me. That's what it's all about...
I need that, Lindsay. I need that to feel loved. I need to be touched, caressed, wanted. I need to be held closely. Part of me dies when it doesn't happen...
There. I told you. Now, it will most likely worsen the way you feel about yourself when it comes to kissing and romantic relationships: hence, why I never told you the real reasons. How can I expect you to get better if you start dwelling on this, and stop accepting yourself even more?
And when you say that I have no physical commitment to you... a lot of it is true. But you know, you have no physical commitment to me either. The only physical commitment you have is yourself, because you do these things for yourself, not out of love.
I guess it doesn't matter though. If I were you I'd have been through with me a long time ago... You're deserving of more. I know you are.
I love you. I've always loved you.
Please... let me go. I've been so selfish, hurt you so much. Please don't forgive me. Let me go... let me stop existing. I"m not strong enough to be a man you can love. I'm not strong enough to endure...
"There is a time when all logic fails..." [my words from several months ago]

[MY partial reply to JOSH before he called me]
I guess I didn't explain to Ariel the one that was different...
I like making out with you because it felt like love.
I hated making out with Charlie, and I hated making out with Matt, and I hated some of the sexual-psychological aspects of making out with you, but it felt real.
You know I've been abused. You know I can't touch. I want to be able to. I'm trapped in a box. You know all of that. I thought you could let me go. You did. You have the key. You did on the ocuch that night and you do every time you touch me because I feel alive...
Something I told my counselor Friday:
"I don't know how I could go from being someone that never wanted to touch people or be with people to someone that wants to touch people and be with people all the time all in a year."
What a lie. I do know how.
I guess you can't get in my head. I guess no one can get in my head. I guess no one can see me, nobody can understand me becuase I have so many f-ing walls. But Josh I want you to. I want you in my head all the time. I want you in my body. I want you in me [This is all meant emotionally by the way, not literally in my body]. I want you in my life.
Every stupid damnable drink of whiskey you take is destroying a part of me too, because we were one that night, because we became each other...
It's in me Josh. It's in me to give to you. I just don't know how. I don't know how honestly but I want to. I want to feel the way everyone else does. I want to feel some sort of sexual stimulation from some sort of touch [by this I don't mean anything past kissing]. I want to have an idea of what an orgasm is.

And then he called, and I talked to him, and read this to him, and we cried to each other for an hour, and we decided we would help each other. Help me to feel safe, to stop acting so steel all the time, to come out from behind these stupid walls, to just *trust* someone... and him to stop being a failure because he's afraid if he stops running and confronts himself he actually *will* be a failure.
It was our first fight but we got through it just fine. He talked about driving down to see me tomorrow, but we decided not to break the rules. And then I went inside and my parents had read all of those emails and thought he was a drug-addict and I was some kind of sex-pervert (ha, although I can see how my email can be misconstrued... I really didn't mean it like that). So they told me to call him and tell him I can't email him or call him for three months and then they'd reassess. They're worried I'll start doing drugs and drinking or something because of him (no, been there, done that, NOT going back). Josh only started drinking a few weeks ago and he has done no drugs yet that I am aware of... and he promised me today that he'd quit both so we could have the possibility of a temple marriage (I'm not getting married anywhere else). I told them I would call him because I didn't have a choice. My mom said I had a choice. I said I always obeyed them so I really didn't have a choice. Then she mentioned the thing about my counselor and I yelled at her and she started getting really upset and yelling at me. Then I called Josh and she left. I told Josh we could communicate through other people, but that I had to obey my parents, no matter how badly I didn't want to (it is a commandment after all, and a respect issue, and I respect them). We talked about the future and decided that three months in the face of eternity isn't long, and that we could do it, and swore our lips to celibacy until we saw each other again.
I really believe he can do it... I really believe that with drugs and therapy he can get better. I will never let go of him. We promised each other today that we wouldn't let each other hurt me. And it's true. He can't hurt me enough by destroying himself now to make me destroy myself. I'm not willing to follow that path. But I love him. I really, really love him. We decided today that it was real love. Josh's dad even thinks so.

But what drama. What a screwed up place we have both ended up in.
Here's the thing though: our church believes that marriages continue after death if conducted in the temple. I've been so scared of heaven, of eternity. But I'm scared if I'm with Josh.

Not that I will definitely marry him. I know things could change. I'm trying to be realistic here. But if I had the option of marrying him right now...
well I wouldn't I guess, because he's so messed up. But I would the moment he was clean.

Is this what I do? I sit here with my genetics powerpoint done reading Camus with my stack of Batman comics to take to Hawaii and my new Final Fantasy gameboy advance game and my book I'm reading on particle physics and my determination to make a difference in the future but now... now I sit here with everything I could want (even cherries!) and I have to watch the world fall apart, and there's really not much I can think to do to prevent it.

They're so stupid, there in the Middle East. I'm saying that with a western culture bias, but honestly... is religion worth blowing up the world for? Whatever god they believe in (allah?)... I hope he's not real, if this is what he wants.

committment

I've been thinking about it a lot for the past few months and doing a lot of research, and I am ready to make the committment:
Sometime after I complete graduate school (preferrably right after), I WILL join the peace corps and serve for 27 months.

There. I've thought about it. It's in writing. As variable as everything in my future is, I know I can still make committments and if they matter to me I will fulfill them. This committment matters to me. I will do it. Probably in about eight or nine years.

It's in the postal system right now, my first query letter to my first publisher! I am 99.9% sure it will be turned down, especially since the three sample chapters I sent were definitely not the best chapters of my book, but maybe I can learn something from the rejection to improve my query or something that indicates which part of my manuscript I should send. I'm excited! They said they usually respond within a month.

I spent today doing a lot of the same thing as Monday. I'm trying to do a powerpoint too at the moment on BWS and SRS to show some group of directors or something. I have to turn in my resume, which my father is insisting I can allow to be more than one page, but my money management teacher always taught me one page, max. I know it probably doesn't sound fun to search for tubes of DNA from plastic boxes all day, but I really like it. I know where the project is going and it interests me a lot. It makes me ask questions. I also like watching what people are doing in the lab, whether they're running blots or gels or sprinting to the centrifuge when the timer goes off.

I read this book called Real Girl Stories and I really enjoyed it because it talked about girls from all over the world, and I got to try to understand other cultures. I have decided for sure after a lot of thought that after grad school I want to do the peace corps thing for 27 months. I hope that I am married by then and can drag my husband along with me. I've decided to idolize those that give of themselves. I'm going to start giving most of my money to charities and such. What do I need it for? I just buy books and video games and such with it, and there are people out there that don't even have a house. I think they're more deserving than that new Final Fantasy game. I'm not giving all of my money away, and I'm still paying tithing and saving 20% (my parents invested my money in a mutual fund for me), but I definitely want to start contributing more. When I get a job and a source of income that will be more than it is now. I also want to start volunteering more. Right now I pretty much have time for the Humane Society, but I want to expand eventually. Politically I think this whole concept of country boundaries is stupid. I think that if immigrants come into our country we should try to help them. Even if they do suck money out of the healthcare system. Even if they do illegally hold jobs. They are people searching for something better, and I can afford to give them money if it means it will help them when they are sick. My tax dollars will go towards sustaining the rapists in prison... how are immigrants any worse? We are all people. I've also decided to be more environmentally aware. I want to ride my bike more and buy a hybrid car. I want to just live in a small, inexpensive house or apartment for my life and just give. Giving, I have decided, is a really good reason for living. I want to somehow help the world, not just benefit from my relative wealth.

Today after my appointment with my therapist I wrote this that I will post. See, I believe in God with all my heart, but I can't even get my head to believe in absolute truth, and I trust my head over my heart. Maybe I shouldn't, but it's kept me alive. Anyway, I wrote this:

The reality of people and their perceptions is a societal phenomenon. We can only label the construct of a building as 'building' because we have similar ideas about the object. Relationships only work if the people involved have similar perceptions of themselves and each other. This social reality is fine, and I can exist within it and the emotions that bind it (ie love). But I don't want to just live there. I want another reality.
When I am alone, I lose contact with the social reality. Object or emotion consistency is not present in my mind. When I find myself outside of teh social reality when I am alone (and unable to reconstruct the emotions inherent in that reality) I want to observe an objective reality, one that cannot be changed or constructed simply from perception.
I can trust conclusions that I reach through logic, but I believe that conclusions that I reach through emotion may be subjective and flawed. They may not be able to retain integrity outside of my mind or my perception of the social world. In the same way I want an objective world, I want an objective belief, reached through logic, in that world.
Nietzsche describes only the individual's reality, not even a social reality. I want not just Nietzsche's reality, not just the social collection of subjective realities, but something more, something completely self reliant, no perception involved. I don't want to believe in Nietzsche. I want to believe in an absolute reality. I want to believe in God.
The problem, though, is that I can't find a logical path that results in God as a conclusion; I only have emotional pathst aht lead me to God, and I believe emotional conclusions may be subjective and flawed.

love in a vacuum

I spent the day today sifting around a refrigerator trying to find old DNA samples for the Beckwith-Weideman/Russel-Silver syndrome testing I'm trying to set up. You'd think a genetics hospital would be more organized, but I couldn't find anything. It was kinda relaxing though, as the devil-geneticist wasn't there, and it was just me and the fridge and the DNA. It's so odd how a microcosm can exist like that... how somewhere, far away, Lebanon and Israeli are evacuating children and mowing each other down with tanks and here I am sorting DNA and finding comfort in it when I can only find panic in being alone. It's hard to imagine that it's all the same world. The humans that rape and kill and are killed in prison, the humans that shoot each other with machine guns because they can't religiously reconcile, the humans that go to work everyday and come home to their children every afternoon... they're all the same species. We are. And it's all the same world.

There's one God, too. You know why? Because when I asked people for reasons to believe life was real, nearly all of them said love. Because I felt afraid and read a blog entry that had a scripture that said the opposite of fear was love. Because I went to class that day and a man read something he'd written about how the answer to life was love. So many things lately have been screaming 'love.' It can't just be a coincidiance. It must mean it's true. And in my mind, absolute truths lead me to God.

Also, when I just called the Humane Society, the song they played when I was put on hold was "Landslide."

"Looks like I've lost my will to carry on, my friend," she said,
"And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love." (Live)

Whoever wrote that song is confused. It should read:
Looks like I've just found my will to carry on, my friend," she said,
"And you can hear it in my whispered cries for love."

please read if you read my blog, if you care about me at all

There was a comment made that I am doing these things to get attention. I have made myself wait all day to post on it to try to sift through my feelings. But if you are reading this blog, it affects you I suppose, so I believe it's something I need to address.
I don't get angry very easily, and this comment made me very, very angry. It struck a nerve. I think it struck a nerve because that's what my mom always used to say, when I was in eighth grade. She said that I'm just doing things to get attention. Well the first thing I'd like to point out is that if someone is doing things to get attention, it is because they are very desperate for it, which probably means they need it. I mean if someone is cutting or something to manipulate, that's not okay, but if someone cuts in a visible place so people see that something is wrong... I think that there is a source of concern there to make sure that individual is okay, if they feel so ignored that they cannot even tell people how they feel, they have to show them. I have felt like that, like I needed to cut in order to feel like my feelings were valid. However, as I will now proceed to explain, the only person's validation I was trying to get was me.

I DO NOT SELF INJURE, TALK ABOUT SUICIDE, OR STRUGGLE WITH BULIMIA BECAUSE I WANT ATTENTION. I thought a lot today about whether the reason this comment made me so incredibly angry was because it was true. Sometimes we react to the truth with rage. But I have thought about it a lot, and it's not true.

I'm sure a lot of what I'm going to say here now won't make as much sense if you've never been extremely depressed or never been abused. But this is the truth:
The first time I ever cut, I cut my wrist. It was in seventh or eigth grade. It was mostly to get attention. I was somewhat suicidal (you have to be to cut your wrist, especially the first time, when you don't know how deep you can go before you'll die), but mostly I was reaching out. The next day I told two people, and they told my parents, and I started getting help. That was a somewhat isolated incident.
A few months later my real problems began. I felt so angry with myself all the time, and so depressed and miserable. I don't know how to explain a depression like that unless you've really suffered with depression. I don't think most of my friends understand the magnamity (I think I spelled that wrong) of these depressions. They're horrible. Anyway, I was so used to my mother hitting me all the time. I was used to being screamed at. I hated myself, and getting hit and screamed at was what I felt like I deserved. When my mom quit doing that, I was lost. I didn't know what to do when I felt that intense anger. And when my mom quit screaming at me and everything was when I started feeling so much anger at her that I couldn't handle it. I was more angry at her for not hitting me than I ever was at her for hitting me. So I remembered how wonderful it felt when I cut my wrist (I really do love pain. I dissociate almost immediately, but I can still live in the thrill of hurting myself). I started cutting because I couldn't handle it anymore. I didn't cut anywhere where people would see. I told no one. I wasn't doing it to get people to notice my pain. I was doing it because I didn't know how to live without being hurt.

Journal entries about the descent into cutting (*TRIGGERS* to SI-ers): 05-03-03, Anger, something I am not used to feeling. But lately it has slithered unnoticed into my life like a snake through tall grass. 05-04-03, It is my body bleeding numble on the floor and into the sink. Why does it not hurt me? How can I be immune to that intense of pain? 07-19-03, I haven't taken my medication in 11 days. I hate the way I feel off of it, but something inside of me that I don't understand keeps me from taking it. I can't go to sleep. The nightmares are waiting. I have trained myself to wake up at night so I don't slip into unwanted terror. 07-30-03, I HATE fighting with my mother. In those few blood-red instants of bitter argument, an oppressive hatred bubbles up from deep within me, a rage I have been trying so long to deny. I feel control slipping away and dissociation slipping in and then, if the argument reaches fever-pitch, my memory fails me. And later, looking back, once the rage and sickening hatred and cursed amnesia have slipped away and I am once more in control, I feel so... empty. So hollow and bent and finally broken. 08-02-03, "What was I like," I say, "when I was little?" Terry's eyes stare into mine. ..."You were also very, very guarded. You did not show much emotion besides anger. But you feared anger so greatly. When I aske dyou if you were mad, you would forcefully say 'NO!'. 08-26-03, I'm wondering if I'm screwed up because sometimes I want to die and sometimes I try to and sometimes I cut. Does that make me messed up crazy? I feel messed up. I wonder if all the world sees the pain in me. They must, because sometimes it's like pain's all I am. Pain and sarcasm and laughter tears. I'm having a hard time living without abuse. Abuse is all I've ever known, and it's so weird now that it's gone. Life doesn't make sense anymore. 08-28-03, Man I hurt, like glass going through my system. I want to go into the kitchen and stab myself deep in the heart with the butcher knife so my parents can see me die. When I'm in a lifeless heap on the floor, maybe Dad will start talking about money again and Mom will go back to making pasta salad. F them. I'll do that or take drugs, die slow. But Siobhan would kill me if I killed myself. It would kill Shauna. I think I'll just cut instead. I think I'll start cutting again. It's the only way to keep from killing myself. 09-04-06, People think lives fall apart in one tragic crash, one giant meltdown. But it's the little things, really. One resurfaced memory, one small mesh of cuts on your wrist, one week wtihout eating. It all adds up and before you know it everything is shattering. It deserved stitches and I sat there calmly and pressed 1/4 inch of my X-acto knife into it. It sahould have hurt like heck but I felt no pain as I jammed the knife into my leg, as I soaked up papertowel after papertowel of bright red blood. Six cuts on me right now. That's how life falls apart. Not in one huge, mindnumbing crash, but int he cuts that get deeper and deeper. ...And cutting... I guess it's to feel. I feel so, so numb all the time that I need to let it out. The cutting doesn't hurt my outsides but it hurts my insides, which is really more satisfying anyway. I'm just having such a hard time feeling. 09-12-03, Nothing was fair and I was worrie dinto a constant stomach and head-ache about everyone, all the people that make up my world, and I wanted so badly to shatter something but there was nothing but my heart and I wished someone could understand. 09-14-03, I think that I am committing emotional suicide. And I like it. I'm that much of a monster. I want to destroy myself so I am so physically and emotionally numb that I feel absolutely nothing, so there is no way anyone or anything can ever hurt me. Lately I have been hurting myself emotionally and physically every chance I get. Since I cannot kill myself, this is as close as I can get. Dear God, let me go. 09-21-03, Thursday night I took nine lithium. There are razorblade bites all over my legs. I was scared. My head hurt. I'd gained six pounds in two days. I woke up in another world... I went to the bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left in me. All of me ached and hurt. All of me twanged with fear. 09-30-03, I've been cutting every night in the shower. My upper legs are a solid mass of razor cuts... changing for gym is hard. I face the wall and pull my sweats up, holding my breath through the whole thing. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before somebody sees. 10-02-03, All the time I feel so distant, so far away. Day after day, week after week. I live above the world, disconnected.... I wonder what it would be like to stop fighting and let myself fall. I could be safe forever in a hospital. But my life. My life. 10-05-03, Will my life always be like this? I've been hurting myself routinely fore alwost a year. I told no one. By now I'm heavily addicted, I don't think I can ever stop. I can't remember the last time I was happy. I don't think I've ever really been happy. 10-07-03 Sleeping, eating, breathing, laughing... none of it seems to matter anymore. What's the point? All that's real in my life is pain and fear. I think that now I hate myself more than I ever have before in my whole life. ...I think that part of the reason I cut (besides that I hate myself and deserve to hurt) is that now that the abuse is over I just didn't know how to live without daily pain. So I replaced it with my own abuse.

That's how the cutting got bad. It was never about attention, not the daily cutting. It was about hating myself, needing to escape. That's still what it's about. I never learned how to deal with anger. I never learned how to live without abuse. Now, I cut because it lets me escape from extreme emotion. My first reaction to being told today that I do this for attention was to want to cut, because I was so angry and I never know how to handle anger.
I DO NOT CUT FOR ATTENTION. I CUT BECAUSE I LIKE THE FEELING OF HURTING MYSELF, BECAUSE I LIKE THE HIGH, I LIKE TO SEE THAT I AM HUMAN, I LIKE PUNISHING MYSELF, AND IT'S AN ALTERNATIVE TO KILLING MYSELF. I CUT BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER, WHETHER I TELL YOU OR NOT. EVEN IF I STOPPED WRITING IN THIS BLOG, THAT'S STILL WHAT CUTTING WOULD BE ABOUT.

Journal entries about the eating disorder *ED*: 06-30-04, I can't eat anymore. It's partially that my stomach is shrunken. But mostly that I just can't. My brain won't let me. It purges me of dirty food. Emptiness is pure, clean. My brain screams for jogging miles on an empty stomach. 'Purity,' it tells me. The drab comfort of the eating disorder keeps me up. The numbers on teh scale go down and down. My muscle bulks from all the running; the remaining calories burn into ashes. I weigh my goal weight. Why am I not happy? Why am I not complete? 07-02-04, Mom says I look thinner. Craig says I look thinner. I am a monster in the mirror. I look fat to me. I always have. I always will. Until I am a stick figure, a bundle of skeleton-marrow, my hatred will crack the glass. 07-04-04, Sitting on the hard church pew, suicidal thoughts surging like siezures through my small body, I make a decision to tell Terry I can't take my meds. I am trapped in a wooden box. I know she may put me in the hospital for Friday and Saturday, but I don't care anymore. I almost want to be there. I need to. I am not safe out here. I need to stabilize. How unfathomably good it would feel to, just once, let the glue holding my insides tightly together melt a bit and scream at the trees. I HATE BIPOLAR! AND OCD! AND DISSOCIATION AND EATING DISORDERS AND THE ADDICTION OF SELF-INJURY!!! And sometimes the largest scream of all, I HATE BEING ME!!! If I don't do something soon bad things will happen. Cement will crumble. 07-08-04, I'm sitting there on TErry's couch when the quiet fibers of the universe start to bend. I can feel the elements crumbling, the sky collapsing. I want to tell her I'm suicidal but it just on't come out. ..."You know, I really want to hit you," Mom says, "it's amazing that I haven't." I splinter inside. "Go ahead!" I sob, "hit me! I don't care!" but she stays still. 'Take me to the hospital,' I'm screaming in my head. It won't come out. I am exhausted of living, exhausted of bipolar. I feel so hollow. 07-22-04, I've quit eating again. Nobody really notices. My head feels clearer, more complete without the octopus-ink of food in my stomach. I'm never hungry. Sticky candy gets caught in my throat and gags back up... And people say they love me, but do they really? And people say they care, but do they ever think of me? 07-24-04, Healing is such a fickle action, moving on is so much easier said that done. 07-25-06 I look in the mirror before getting in the shower. My upper body is very thin, my ribs defined, my muscles firm. Almost skeletal, for a moment. But my lower body is all fat. I believe all 110 pounds of me is riding in my butt. I look grotesque, a vivisection of a fat and thin lady gone wrong. I am mad at everything and nearly everyone right now. I feel sick with pungent anger; I hate the nausea. It saps me of energy, makes me exhausted, always in need of more sleep. I don't want to go through this cycle again. I'm sick of being alone. There is more to life than this. Part of why I"m so miserable is that long ago I fell comfortably into the role of the abused, thought it was my job. Now, still desperate for abuse, I don't fight it. 08-02-04, I feel so fat. All I ate today was a taco and a bite of brownie, but the brownie was a slip, a sign of weak character. I'm 109 pounds now and I am a bohemoth when I look in the mirror. ...But I can't live like this. Nobody understands me. I have no one to talk to. I am so alone, burying land mines in my heart like I don't know they'll explode someday and kill me. 08-03-04, I don't take them all at once this time, but in groups of four. They slide down easily with Diet Sprite. Half a brownie is in my stomach, and it's coming out. Shoving a finger down doesn't work, and there is no Ipecac syrup. But this always works. Always. The afternoon is terrible. I always forget the horror of lithium overdoses. On the internet desperate posts are met with scolding: you need help. I know it. I know I'm bulimic. But knowing it changes nothing. I don't know what to do. There is no one to talk to. Ghosts of the past have faded. Three hours after eating the brownie, I hang over the toilet and puke it back up. Vomting is spectacularly asphyxiating. Half-digested food swims int eh toilet. Tears are hot on my cheeks. ...There is purity in the purge that balances the dirty feeling of the binge. I feel miserable but there's no one listening to me crying. All I want is somebody to understand, to care. I'm sick of being alone. I'm sick of hurting myself. I am glad to have the food out of me, I feel cleaner. But I hate myself for needing this. In the end, my tears are nothing, uncared for and unnoticed, only two small splashes in a toilet bowl. Most of the tears won't come. They are bottled up inside of me, sloshing around when I walk, forever unreachable. 08-04-04, I've been on-off bulimic for a few years now. I don't like it. The relationship is heavily abusive. ...To my friends, my face is blurred into the wallpaper. They still believe that I am a rock. They odn't know that when you smash me open I'm just another geode lined with shattered crystal. 08-05-04, Olivia buys me a decaf coffee smoothy. I want to slip it in the trash, but Olivia would notice, so I slurp the whole thing down. Later, at home as I pop fiber laxatives, I decide to take care of myself. I will be brave. I will tell Kristin. I will, I will. 08-08-04, Dad mentions suicide again and my mind closes. I go into the bathroom and make myself throw up my dinner of salad and a chunk of bread. My face is pale and pallid as it struggles to shatter the cold prison of the mirror. 08-09-04, Finally breaking the barrier between embarrassment and necessity I try not to blush as the laxatives are rung up in Safeway. This morning inordinate amounts of lithium purged my nauseated system. Later, running painfully on an empty stomach and a twisted knee, I realize I'm going ot start school shattered again, lost, no better than last year, no progress made. Again and again I'm losing it. 08-11-04, The box says dependable, says overnight, says gentle. I agree with the first two. But at 5:00 a.m. when I wake up with my bowels roiling and on fire, I don't agree with the last one. I sit stiffly on the toilet, a statue of pain, nausea coursing through me. I'm goign to throw up all over myself, I really am. 08-14-04, WHen I think I"ll never wear just a swimmingsuit again, I hate myself for what I've done, what I'm doing. But there is an instant when time stops, when the sun hangs in the air like a pale frisbee, when the clocks turn to mud, and you feel hollow, so horribly empty... you feel nothing. And life becomes a nightmare, as you wonder through the numbness or the anger whether you will ever feel again. That is when the steel comes. It is a desperation, and the pain is a comfort, a reassurance that you are not as numb as you feel. The eating disorder is a battle for control. The cutting is a double-edged sword- one side against the numbness, one side against my throat. So I hate it. But I need it.

There's more, oh so much more, agony in my journals relating to mental illness, self injury, and bulimia. I think, though, that hopefully those entries will show you that my main problem all along is that I never did anything for attention, I never asked for it when I needed it, when I could, I never let people know I was cutting, never told anyone I was throwing up until I told Amanda my sophomore year. For years before that I was so alone in the isolation. My reasons for both the bulimia and the cutting are I think explained pretty well in those passages.

This blog began as a way to reaffirm myself, to psychoanalyze, and it has become exactly what I have been accused of self-injuring for- a way to get attention. I am incapable, for some reason, of acting how I feel in real life. My friends never know I'm depressed. I can't act depressed. Sometimes I am able to say things to try to express my depression, but mostly everyone thinks I'm just great. I can't really talk to my friends that I see on a daily basis. I have self-injured and binged and purged to cope. I can't explain how horrible mental illness is if you haven't experienced it. It, not attention, led me to my problems. It and the abuse in my past. Now, I still don't cut for attention. I swear to you with all my heart that every time I cut it is because I feel like I can't experience another moment of life with the emotions (or lack of) I am experiencing. It is rarely, rarely for attention. Every time I overdose on drugs it is because I feel like I can't stand this world anymore. It is not for attention. Every time I throw up or take laxatives it is because I need control and believe I am fat. It is not for attention. I have always been so bad about getting attention. I've always been so guarded.

This blog, though, is a plea for help. I has been ever since the first person posted in it (who hasn't posted in it for a very long time). It has been ever since I realized that I have finally found a place where I can express myself. I want to promise all of you that my self-injurious actions are not to get your attention. I know that I already have your attention. Posting about how I feel and what I do on this blog is to get your attention. This is all that I have. You that read this... you are the only people that know me, the real me. Your love is the reason I get up every day and yank myself through these unbearable hours. Your support is the reason I keep posting endlessly about things that probably bore you to death. Yes, I am seeking attention, but not through my actions... through my words. That is the only way I believe I can seek attention. Something inside of me won't let other people know about the cutting or the eating disorder or anything. Very few people know that about me. To nearly everyone, I am the kid who's good at math and plays a bajillion orchestra instruments. They would be very surprized to know the things that I write on here. You are my support. You are my attention.

I have been misunderstood, which is understandable :-) I know in my heart that the reason I do these things is still the same reason it has always been: addiction, depression, loss of abuse. It has not turned into attention seeking actions. I have never let people see my cuts (only scars) or notice my eating disorder. I have so many lies and excuses to cover me up. But this blog, this is the truth. So I'm sorry, but you're wrong. It's not so simple as just deciding to get better. I can't do that. I keep doing it over and over again and I keep being thwarted by the messed up channels of seratonin in my mind. I won't use that as an excuse. I know I have to keep fighting. But people... I am fighting. I am giving this all that I've got. I have never been one to give up. I have never been one to use half-hearted efforts. This is me trying. You are my reasons for temporarily getting up every morning. But I have always had reasons in my heart for living. They have been what kept me from suicide for all those years before I could explain to anyone the horrors in my head.

I love you. In a way I am using you. But please never view my actions as attempts to get attention. I have a way with words. I can write well... artculately, eloquently. I don't need actions to get your attention when I have my words.

Love is real, even if everything else in this world can't hold. Love can hold.

(and to the person that left that comment- I know everything else that you said was true, and I know that you are right about many things, and I know that you love me, and I love you too)

I don't want to be alive anymore, but I'm just as afraid of death. I just want to cease existing... I can't do this.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too

Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down

If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well maybe the landslide will bring it down

Okay, I'll admit it, I'll drop the politics. I'm terrified right now. I'm scared. I'm panicked. I'm angry. I'm lost. I don't have a word bad enough to describe my current emotional state. It's off the spectrum. There is no spectrum.
I'm fighting. You know I'm fighting.
I can't believe in people when they're away. My friends, my family... I can't remember that they are real if they are not talking to me. This is proving to be a problem. I feel so alone, because nobody seems real. I need to be told constantly that I am still loved or I won't believe it. I need to be spending time constantly with people or I can't believe in them.

This is the devastation. It has to be. I must be at the bottom of the abyss. There must be no worse place. I can't imagine much worse than this.

politics

I am still not okay so I will talk about things that matter more than me.

I don't know what's up with Israel and Lebanon. I know Israel won't talk to Lebanon because the Hezbollah are basically in charge, but how is bombing each other repeatedly going to help? How does that make the Israeli government any better than terrorists, if the terroristic Hezbollah are essentially their own government?

We can't stay in Iraq because if we do, we'll be there forever. Handing off one Iraqi province (and having multiple deaths occur because of that or just simultaneously) is such a small part of what we need to do before we can leave. The Iraqi people, many of them at least, believe that another dictatorship is inevitable. They're not working with this democracy framework we're trying to force. They're just sitting there, waiting to blown up by another tyrant. However, we can't leave Iraq because if we do they may just end up like Lebanon, ruled by terrorists, and we may just end up like Israel, trying to solve problems by bombing and bombing. And maybe this whole thing is like Vietnam, and all the bombing won't do much because the terroristic operations are so spread out and diverse. It never helped to bomb Hanoi. It's too unstable to leave. We can't stay. What the heck are we supposed to do?!

I don't know what to do to myself. I don't want to kill myself, because I'm more afraid of death than I am of life. I don't want to cut, because I've done that so much I'm bored with it, five years of it and it seems a bit anticlimatic; I need something newer and more severe. I don't want to overdose, because that would just make me sick and throw up all day tomorrow which wouldn't help me feel better in any way except that I'd lose weight. I don't want to use inhalents, because I really don't want to get addicted or go to Hell. I don't want to go drink alcohol, for those same reasons (I really am afraid of God). I don't want to burn myself, because I never could figure out how to do that properly. I guess I could go jump off the porch or the roof. I haven't done that since eigth grade. But that's not really new either.

It seems like I've done everything you can do to hurt yourself. I've punched walls, cut myself, burned myself, overdosed, drank, tried drugs... and I'm still miserable. All these things have just kept me alive. But they're probably condemning me at the same time.

There's got to be something left to do, something that will make me feel better... I can't have done everything...

Oh right. I know how to make myself feel totally miserable. This is the Josh cue. This is what Josh did before he overdosed. He said, I can't do all those things, so I'm going to overdose on drugs so I can feel like Lindsay did. So maybe now I'm supposed to say, I'll go look at porn so I can feel like Josh did. But I think that that would make me throw up far faster than the pills or the ipecac syrup I have been daydreaming of lately.

I....... don't........ know..........

I've just finished reading Brave New World, and despite the lunacy of all of the characters, despite my lack of understanding of the ending, and despite all the drugs Aldous Huxley was on when he wrote it, I liked it a lot.

Some random parts from it:
"What fun it would be... if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
"One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies."

People Huxley quoted:
"They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and destractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false- a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth." -Maine de Biran (I think)

"[Philosophy is] the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct." -Bradley

Anyway, the book made me think.

I don't want to write more at the moment as I have lost control of my emotions in general, which frightens me.

It is an odd sensation, to stand on the crumbling edge of an abyss, unable to look back and remember what it was that made you stay so far away. I feel as if the land underneath me is giving way, and I can't stop it, and once I fall in there will never be hope again.

Please remind me of why my diaphragm continues to contract, why I do not cut, why I don't overdose, why I am not running upstairs to drink all the alcohol my mom keeps for cooking... because I'm forgetting right now. I'm forgetting everything. The only place I can look is down.

I'm worried about myself. That doesn't happen very often.

Ha Ha , I love major ad-hominen attacks thrown about by major world-figures like pathetic attempts at humor.
No really, this did make me smile.
The whole world just just get along. I never did like Putin. I don't know a lot about Cheney, except that his hunting mistakes have become the stuff of international politics. I wonder what would happen now if the United States were to annoy Russia enough to push it into another cold war. I think we need some better global standards of who does and who doesn't get what kind of weapons, as long as I'm on that line. When do justice and fairness bow down to "why the heck give an unstable, third-world country access to weaponry that could blow us to Pluto?"

I hate politics. People are so stupid. I know when they allowed women to vote they thought it would push the United States more towards peace. Failure. But the world has got to move towards peace somehow or we'll destroy ourselves.

But perhaps global warming will fry us before we even get the chance.

Olivia: Kyle kissed me.
Me: How was that?
Olivia: I don't know. It feels weird to have someone else's tongue in your mouth.

Understatement of the year. I agree. It does feel weird. I've been talking to a lot of people, and most of them said that making out with someone stimulated them in some way. It at least released a few hormones. It has never does this for me. It has never felt sexual at all. This is, I suppose, a good thing for me, and a good thing because of my age. But I just want to feel what they feel, just once. I know I have hormones in me somewhere.

I'm seeing Charlie again tomorrow. All I am doing with Charlie is using him. I guess he may be just using me too, so it doesn't matter. Or maybe that's just my excuse. Charlie is my experiment though. I do like him. He's a great guy. But I don't really care about him anywhere near the way I care about Josh. He doesn't even know me. I enjoy kissing him. That's all I am using him for. I am using him to figure out how to do it so I enjoy it. And I'm getting somewhere. This probably makes me a horrible person. I don't know. I just enjoy how uncomplicated my relationship with Charlie is.

There is a postcard on postsecret this week that says this (I am entering the word pertinent to me): "Sometimes I [kiss] men that I don't like so I can almost feel like someone really wants me, and to almost prove to myself that I'm not damaged goods." This is also exactly how I feel when it comes to Charlie.

I don't know.

I'm having anxiety attack after anxiety attack at the moment, and I am fighting off the nihilism, and I feel like crap.