notes from another side

my head's a gun (from "kitchen fork")

20260609: what i meant to say: "i'm just so tired of being myself. it's the perpetual identity crisis, the perpetual nervous breakdown...i'm so exhausted and i don't know what else to do. it's like i don't know how to not have a nervous breakdown, and i don't know how to stop having an identity crisis, and i don't know how to have an identity. i feel like i'm reaching my actual limit, though, like a breaking point for all of this. but that means i break, and i don't know what that means.; "i mean, how do i break? i don't know what i mean, well i do...the words fit, but i can't hold on. but that's enough about me...what's your diagnosis, doc? does "you need therapy" sound about right?"; the other one: "i'm getting worse, but maybe that's what i want? i'm tired of being myself, so if i keep making myself worse, i'll eventually break myself, and that could be enough to fix the problem. 'the only way out is through.'"; i don't know what's left to say. can i say anything anymore? what's left to say, to think, to do? i can't do this anymore. my head has frayed. i will lay here. my eyes are closed, my fingers move.; to say, to say---- my head's astray,
thoughts left to fray,
beyond the state for which i settle---
nay, nay, nay!; i'll let this self go. i'd write the day but can't; so much and nothing at all. i should feel happy. i should be celebrating, with friends.. thinking about --- had so many people taking him out for his birthday. there is nobody who i could take out for their birthday, much less anybody who'd think to take me out for mine. i wish i was of value. i wish i weren't so sad and alone.; i am depressing. i have always been alone (speak the fact into existence). there is a poison in my veins---one which others can detect, even though i fail to. why was i poisoned? how am i?; i jokingly say: "no, don't leave. everyone abandons me." it's a joke, but there is a ring of truth to it. i don't feel abandoned by --- living his life, but there is a sensation---the only coworker who puts up with me, the only person i speak to, has left. i can feel it. i hate how i put so much value on a person who doesn't quite think twice about me---someone who is friendly and decent to everyone, including me; which is to say i'm just another person and i know this and i'm tired of projecting onto strangers.; i feel so very alone. i am not fit to speak to another right now, because i have nothing to offer. all i need is to sap energy from somewhere, someone else and contort it into something that can make my strings dance for a second, even though we both know damn well i need more than a second. i need a lifetime, a year. no. i need to know that you won't leave me. i need to know you won't come up with excuses to not talk to me. i neeed to know that you won't be mad at me for living. i need, i need, i need!; what do you need? not me, surely; the perpetual crisis. aaaaaaaaaaaaaa kkkkkkkkkee l d w a w e d j k l kkkkkk lllllll ooooooo pppp nnnn a sanklasd klsaf kkkkkkddddddd lllllllffff qqq z jasklf
20260610: i just feel so alone and so shitty and so perpetually half-miserable; not full-miserable just a half-hearted sort of existence, of noncommitment; after all, sometimes everything feels all fine and dandy and all of my so-called problems disappear for a moment. and then i feel something and the world comes crashing down again.; you're weird. you're over-reacting. you're being overdramatic.; it's a yes to all three. i'm caught in the perpetual spiral; a death-cycle of my own being. i feel like death, sometimes, and when that hits no words can capture how truly terrible i feel. that one is physical and mental; i'm weighed down while being torn apart; i'm caged in while my very being is at stake.; i've never intentionally cut my self, but the underlying urge still inhabits my head. i can't shake it off. i need to express something, and i need to get it out of me. i need a release.; maybe i need to exercise. honestly, those hiit workouts do *something* for my tumultuous emotions.; huh. that's a thought i've had. that's a thought i'm choosing to act on. that's new.; i need to burn down the house. i need to get rid of everything. every part of me must go. i want to start walking and never come back. could i? i keep forgetting who i am and have been and want to be. life goes in one ear and right out the other. work keeps me stable, half-stable, a broken stable, a vacant stable, a desolate stable, a lost stable, a forgotten stable; a stable that has been but will not be again.; if i were to walk, how far would i go? would i forget everything i've known? would i leave it all behind? would i build a new life, or would i have begun a new cycle of learning and forgetting; half-lived lives and emptiness? life is not so easy. i could not just "find a new job" and "find a new place to rent." i'd be effectively homeless, and i'm not ready to live like that unnecessarily.; though maybe forgetting is what i need. i can't stay in one place. i'm getting restless. i've lived in this house for almost a year. i've lived in this city for a little over two years. i don't want to retain anything. i just want to walk and walk and walk until i'm alright.; i suppose the fantasy of "if i just write enough, i'll figure it out and i'll be okay" has turned into "if i just wander enough, i'll figure it out and i'll be fine." but what is it?; i feel like i have too much stuff. i start to clean, but that's not the answer. this is not about my stuff. this is not about my things. this is not a physical problem. except i want to be free, and i hate what having belongings does to me. i stare at my bookshelf. the lights are off; i am not wearing glasses. i know what is on it. my filled notebooks occupy most of a shelf; the half-filled ones lay beside them. there's alcohol. there's q-tips and clippers and other hygiene what-have-you-nots. there's my backup writing utensils. wow, so much stuff. clearly this is the source of my distress.; i write all of this with sarcasm, but i am thinking about pulling out everything i own tomorrow and going through it. unfortunately, my goal would be to cut the volume in half, which is a problem because i just don't have that much excess stuff. i know what i have. i know stuff is not the problem. i wish it was.; when i was younger, i had some hoarding tendencies. i collected granola bar wrappers and cards and other crap. legitimate trash. i was scared of the school trash cans in elementary school, for anxiety-related reasons about the ritual of throwing stuff away at the end of lunch. i can't quite explain it and the memory is too vague. my parents got a copy of "the life-changing magic of tidying up" when it was all the craze. i liked the cover, so i read it and experienced the life-changing magic of not having drawers full of garbage.; back then, getting rid of crap genuinely made a difference. i never realized i could just *not* have the garbage; i'd been so fixated on organizing it that i forgot i had other choices. i think this is part of way i still get fixated on getting rid of things. back then, there was that 'high' from decluttering and suddenly being free of all the garbage i'd managed to accumulate. i want that high again! i want there to be a difference! but that was a decade ago. that was enough for me to break the habit of accumulating garbage. hell, reading that when i did probably played a role in why i never spent all that much money on buying things---why spend my meagre allowance on things that i'll probably end up throwing away? even now, i don't spend much money on physical (inedible) goods.; but maybe this has nothing to do with decluttering and chasing a high and past experiences. maybe this is because of the destruction of getting rid of things, or the purification from the same process. i don't know. i feel so overwhelmed. by what, from what---devil, i write in circles!; i wish i could pinpoint what it is. i wish i could describe this feeling in exact detail; to exorcise this emotion from my skin, my soul, my being. being is too much right now. or shall i say these doings are too much? if my doings create my existence, how can i cease my doings, if only for an instant? i must exit this form and find shape in another. i must vanquish myself---what self? there is no self. there are the components of this doing, the doing which creates being, but there is nothing to exorcise. hold on.; shadis holds the nervous breakdown. shadis holds the identity crisis. these are his outburts---the body is not maintained, he cries, even as the academics ignore him. he is too physical for them. unlike them, he cares about the physical form. he wants this body to remain in good shape. he does not appreciate the bruise which the hearth gave it; he does not appreciate the pain which the archivist's carelessness bequeathed it. he tells the vessel to eat, to drink, to stop moving its neck so much; that the legs are numb and the feet are numb and the soul is static. there is no soul. its head is static. all of it is here, and all of it is gone.; it wants a bed. it wants a home. it wants to be alone.; a vision---a hand on my hip, gripping tight, another arm wrapped around my chest; i struggle but they cease my movement. he holds me in place from behind, and his displeasure grows as i squirm. "let me---" but his hand covers my open mouth, his fingers taking the opportunity to press inside, me accidentally licking him as i try to work around this intrusion. his hold tightens, forcing my squirming to an end. (the rest is up to the reader's imagination, or lack thereof).
20260611: got the farm share and my first thought was wow this is disappointing. a head of kale, a head of lettuce, some onions, and strawberries. i could've bought this for $12 at the grocery store...maybe even $10. best strawberries i've ever had though. welp, gotta sit down and plan some meals around this. will go grocery shopping for veggies with substance to them.; i'm kinda sad that i can't test out my farmers' market vs. grocery store plan. it's on me for not checking that the farmers' market was the same as it was two years ago, though. this is fine. i'll be fine with this. i do want to keep up a "tracking what i spend vs. what i made vs. what i wasted" thing again. my eating has been garbage.; where does it go...; convinced google gemini to put together a plan for how i could hypothetically buy a house in five years while paying off my debt. it tells me it's technically possible for me to have the money for a down payment and whatnot, but...well, my income itself could be a problem. whatever. having the numbers laid out---all those hypotheticals---offers a little reassurance. i feel like home ownership is the answer to all of my housing concerns, even if it is a tad bit unrealistic ('in this economy?!').; my brain is full of fog.; i can't think. i can't focus. i can't breathe.; i need to get out of this.; i'm pleased that i exercised this morning. i failed to complete day three yesterday, but i tried again and succeeded today. this is an improvement. as long as i do day four tomorrow, saturday will be a rest day. yay. i definitely over-exerted something yesterday---either from carrying the mirror (which has left a lovely bruise on my hip + some scratches on my arm), or from disassembling the stove at work. not proper disassembly, just taking off the burners---the weight is bad enough, and the awkward angle i have to reach from to get them out definitely uses some under-used muscle. but...i did it! yay! and now i'm suffering for it.; my head is so blank it's depressing. let's see...
20260611: the last tea shop

20260612

downloaded undertale, which has immediately run into problems opening. so much for a short gaming session before sleeping...i'm going to bed now. maybe it'll work tomorrow night.

oh cool, i can't even close the window. gotta force quit everything. this is disappointing.

20260613

greater success: i hit the button to "validate game files" or something...and voila, it worked! toriel annoyed me, so i began by systematically killing everything on sight. after slicing through whimsuns and froggits for a good fifteen minutes (or something), nobody came. perfect. lovely. i should've waited to kill everyone, since napstablook disappeared as i entered the room. i would've enjoyed getting to slay a ghost (if i could...?). he's got a pretty good theme song too. i stopped by and bought some candy from the spiders---it's always good to support your local small business. maybe. i wonder if most of the underground technically is comprised of small businesses...?

i did not appreciate the way toriel wanted my character to be held captive for my own good. i forgot that you can kill her as soon as you enter battle---the line about her realizing she was keeping me back for the good of the monsters / the rest of the underground and not for my safety was a nice touch. there was a sense of betrayal which i appreciated.

anywho, flowey wanted me to keep on killing monsters. i did appreciate the grotesque and varied expressions his sprite was making in the text boxes. some of them were kinda cute. however, i do not like being told what to do, and the only reason i was killing everybody in the ruins was because i wanted to aggravate toriel. oh dear mother, she who thinks the best of me; i will let you down. i am not for you. anywho, onto snowdin town!

sans went ahead and asked me to keep pretending to be a human. perfect. i'll do him one better---i'll turn myself into one! i have mixed feelings on papyrus. he is cute. he is written as a cute guy---a bit clueless, "finding difficulty in unique places" (to paraphrase / bastardize one of sans' lines), and whole-heartedly lovable. he is a sweet guy. the cluelessness got on my nerves a bit---he started to remind me of a sort of "sweet special needs kid" trope that i'm not fond of. that being said, he has a sense of agency (probably best exhibited in the dating segment, where he talks about, roughly, leading the player on and realizing he does not want to date them). his "clueless, work-focused" vibe contrasts sans' "knowledgable, lazy" vibe. hmm, i should write more about this in the morning, when i can focus. i've been wanting to play more games lately---well, i did play a lot of slay the princess---and turning my brain to analyzing them would be a useful change of pace.

oh i did kill the married dogs. they were pissing me off too.

other notes from the day---work was fine. i really put off getting out of bed this morning; no exercise today! oh well, that can be tomorrow's problem. i could not convince myself to get up until the last possible moment. i felt bone-tired and was fixated on pleasant daydreams. sometimes i think about trying out a dating app (or something of the less-commital sort) and trying to arrange some sort of one-night stand / no strings attached / seriously this is not a relationship kinda thing just to get whatever this is out of my system. but i am also terrified of people and can see that that is not a great idea for me or someone else, and i highly doubt i'd actually go through and do that.

20260613

dream---i was at a bookstore. i was carrying my dictionary and boba plushie with me, and was worried about actually buying books because i thought the cashier would charge me for the dictionary. i kept thinking about how i'd say it was from another bookstore, see here's what it said inside, and why did i have my dictionary with me anyhow? i considered buying a book on magic traditions. i walked over to another bookshelf; something by anais nin was displayed on the top shelf (the title had something to do with the human experience/condition). i reached for it, but i grabbed something off the wrong bookshelf; i tried again, stepping to my right, but i'd gone too far and found zines instead. third time was the charm: i reached up, got my fingers around the ledge, and stretched for the book---and the bookshelf began to fall down. curiously enough, none of the books fell off. before i woke up, i was holding up the bookshelf, about to be crushed under its weight.

i let myself go...

further reading: one; two.

attempted to summon buer. succeeded in having a conversation with him---or something, maybe only myself; doubt clouds me three days later, or maybe it's an attempt at palatability, a way to disguise my idiocy and recklessness and oncoming who-knows-what---and realizing there was no way to compromise our goals---rather, i could not fulfill my end of the bargain within my desired timeframe. he left me with "a hint of himself" and said i was a curious one. he flickered before me as a morphous black snake. he did advise i summon all 71 of his other brethren. per him, i know little of magic and have much to learn. he also emphasized a study of logic and morals; something about how philosophy has been distracted by communism, and we must draw more attention to the past for the general public to be re-routed along a better path. i have much to learn.

do i want to work through the rest of the lesser key of solomon? this is the first true guidance i've received. also, why did he suggest summoning the rest---to further invoke fear? to show how much of an idiot i'm acting like? is that for my benefit, or their's?

how little i know.

i am left with the impression i've spread myself thin.

i haven't focused on anything.

i think i've forgotten how to.

should i listen to his advice?--the enchanter (r) and the runaway (upright). truth revealed and admitting what you're running from. is summoning a distraction, or is it irrelevant?

what would i get out of summoning?---the patron (r). being taken advantage of. how fitting. but maybe i want to be taken advantage of. i'd learn something, after all.

do i study enochian, or do i search for something else? the twins (r). being out of balance and struggling to make decisions. uh. i suppose enochian is that 'something else.' the book of abramelin is where i am now. i suppose the actual answer is to continue down the path i've started to forge and continue to see where it takes me.

back to undertale...talking to sans at grillby's and he says that sometimes a talking flower appears to papyrus when he's alone. holy shit did that creep me out. reminded me of that long fanfic where flowey abuses papyrus. good stuff. i wonder if sans knows about flowey and just said an echo flower? i can't remember how much he knows.

20260614

i think "the book of abramelin" did provide me with some context for crowley / thelema. the grimoire provided me with a bit of insight into the idea of the holy guardian angel and why it was so important to crowley. the way i see it, the hga is a connection to the underlying nature of the universe. i'm starting to formulate an idea about divinity and 'the aether,' but i need more time to read and explore what i mean.

i struggle with the fundamentally christian / jewish / monotheistic capital-G perspective of these texts. i'm working on taking a step back and finding an abstract conception of these concepts which i can work with. (or rather, i want to identify the underlying concepts which i can work with). i can't deal with "god." what i can understand is other beings which exist alongside our universe---rather, underlying forces at play? i have to re-learn what i mean by "being." constraining myself to some creature in the way i think of it is not conducive to my understanding. rather, i must refer to the doings---this 'force' does 'x.' yes, that is a start. and these 'forces' exist alongside us; 'where' is not a 'where' in the sense i understand it, so i will think of it as the aether. this is so i do not hurt my brain too much...now, when i begin to think of angels / angelic magic / the upcoming john dee stuff, i can understand angels not from a biblical / christian perspective, but from the idea that they are forces alongside the universe.

yeah, it's going to take a second to reroute my head to this perspective.

sitting in public, contemplating trying a coffee cocktail, knowing it's not a good idea. i cannot handle that "tired and wired" bit right now.

spent a good .5hr cutting scallions yesterday...that would've been an entire third pan of scallions. OOF. i do not usually cut that many at once. what's funny is that i cut about 1/2 of a six-pan of scallions at home today in less than five minutes because i wasn't remotely worried about how they'd come out. i was not overthinking them. yet they look pretty good? they were consistent, even, cut all the way through, no visible problems, honestly looked better than what i cut at work. interesting. not sure if i'm making scallion pancakes with them, scallion oil, and/or aggressively adding them to eggs all week. also, eggs were .99/dozen this week?!!! that was a nice surprise.

mango tiramisu was pretty good. i am able to whip cream in about 10min. yayyyy. feedback---people do not like cardamom with mango. i think adding freeze-dried strawberry powder on top of it would've been a good idea. i definitely want to play with adding powdered fruit; i know i saw it in a few recipes in that milk bar cookbook, and i think there's a lot of potential if i can convince myself to spend the money on it. freeze-dried fruit just feels like such a waste of money. i wonder how difficult it'd be to diy it?

very annoyed that --- made that mistake on saturday. it's not the first time he's done that. he also will not fix it. i can't keep correcting him on it because he is twice my age. he's also foh, so he shouldn't even be doing that in the first place. i'm very tired of the way he does not trust me to do my job...i don't even know where to begin with that. but i heard someone say he might be working less in a few months, so i'm honestly praying i heard that correctly. i'm just tired of the way he nags and micromanages---he's worse than my boss, which shouldn't be the case. i understand that he's been here longer than i have, but. uhh. i'm getting sick of this. i don't know how to bring this up with him either; telling him that i know what i'm doing and don't need him to shadow me doesn't get the point across. i wish he would just let me do my job and stay out of my way. unfortunately, this comes across as childish. i just want him to leave me alone and pretend he trusts me to get rice and cook food. the bigger problem is that other foh members---mostly the new ones---see what he does and copy him, and then i have to tell off someone who's been here for five months and shouldn't be touching that shit in the first place. sometimes he even tells them to do that stuff, which puts me in an awkward situation. i hate telling off the new foh girls for doing boh work. telling off isn't a good way of putting it---it's more like "hey, can you just leave that to the cooks?" and needing to elaborate with something along the lines of "you're inefficient, doing it wrong, creating new problems, and shouldn't be doing that at all." then it's "well, older coworker told me to" at which point i can only say he's wrong if he isn't there. if he is there he'll tell them to just do it anyways. i really can't stand it when senior guys keep doing something wrong---you can't tell them they're wrong, you just need to fix it behind their backs and pray the problem goes away. the funny part is that the rest of the senior foh do not do this stuff, some of who've been here even longer than he has.

idk maybe i do bring it up with the boss. i accidentally brought up some other problems about the same guy before, and was listened to; there was no "he's been here longer than you so it's fine." it was "yeah, he's been slacking off and we need to have a talk with him." on the other hand, it is busy season, and i feel bad adding "problems with this guy" to his plate. on the other hand, --- is not listening to me, so maybe it's time to say "hey i've tried, let's bring this to our boss and see what happens." but why do i have to feel like the asshole for this??? ffs.

okay. sitting at the coffeeshop has been nice, but i think it's time for me to go home. i'll try to grab a mochi donut. i will not stop at the bookstore, because i do not need to buy books. i'm back to reading on my computer for the foreseeable future---i have a path, a brief plan, and i will do what i can to follow it.

an offering---shadis wants to continue the workout and to get drunk. the hearth asks about the embroidery and eating enough food this week. the archivist demands the angel books and further inquiry into abramelin, then reaches for the french and hebrew and is cut off in his incessant desire for having it all. a morning for satisfaction---the time to exercise, the time to eat, the time to read; to choose to cover the bases, and then to spend the later time however.

opened up the bottle of cinnamon mead. i love the way it warms my throat and chest, but the cinnamon itself is too strong. i can't drink it the way i want to. i can't pinpoint where the urge to be drunk and just forget comes from right now---just one break, please, that's all i ask. maybe it's because i was reminded of work and wrote too much about it. the bad things that happened ran through me, so now i must flee them. or something. i want a break from being me, for a moment, and the occasional drunk is an adequate method for accomplishing it. yet with this bottle, the cinnamon overwhelms my palate. that being said, i did notice a meadery i'd be able to visit---i'd love a bottle of something with berries in it.

oh, did i mention i'd started a joke batch of mead? by joke, i mean it's just honey and tea, didn't even add yeast, so whether or not it ferments is a "we'll see." i used a small wine bottle, filled it to the neck, then covered it with a kleenex held by a rubber band. i don't know what it'll become, if anything. i remember reading of this kind of process in a book on mead. i almost wish i had the stuff i tossed, but. hmm. i need simple, small scale brews.

thinking about how every roommate i've had has had a boyfriend / romantic partner. is my singleness that strange? i don't think i'd've'd this thought if i lived alone. yet here it is, so prominent, so aggravating. girl1 was on the phone for hours, boy2girl2(+boy3?) would talk and laugh and have loud sex (presumably, it's not like i'm in the room to verify their activities). boy4girl3 were on the phone all the time until they moved in together, then it was all whatever the hell druggie activities they were getting up to. girl4 and boy5 were loud, and boy6 was quieter but still noisy. girl5boy7; girl5 had such a loud laugh, and they had their fair share of noisy sex and bathroom-hogging. girl6boy8 was another standard noisy couple. (do i say all couples are noisy? am i just adverse to people having fun and enjoying each others' company? how much sex noise is actually tolerable, vs. my thinking all of it is intolerable? i do not need to hear you moan. i do not want to hear it. you are not the only person in the house right now, and i am begging you to remember that. *loudly closes door*). i dunno, maybe i need to communicate better...by the way, the walls are not sound-proof and i can hear your noises through my headphones. i think there's two more couples i didn't include in the list. what-fucking-ever.

hah, loneliness---these people have their boyfriends over, but they rarely have friends over. oh, how strange. one of the new girls does have friends over on a regular basis, though, which is kind of nice to hear. or i tolerate average-noise-level-relationships more than i tolerate too-loud ones.

i fucking love olives. adding kalamata olives to the salad was the right move. kale? whatever. corn and beans? whatever. wonton strips? nice crunch; don't care. kalamata olives? the best thing in my mouth. all i want. heaven on earth. i wish i could live off of those brine-y bitches.

i find myself forming a shape and seeing the time it will take. if i constrain myself without punishing transgressions, i may take a new form. i tell myself to acknowledge the three each day, and even when fail to check in with them each week; to tie myself to some goals, whose result i know not of 'til i reach it. or the process is the result---i hate that, but it's true: if i repeat the process enough and let it became my daily life, it will be the result.

time goes so quickly. i don't care to calculate its best use. rather, i woke and daydreamed---my day off, let me enjoy!---then ate and cleaned and read and exercised and cleaned some more and made some salads and read some more and wrote some and chose next steps too. i went to the coffeeshop to enjoy AC and try a new latte; i contemplated what i meant and the concepts i needed and the framework i am developing. i wrote some more and people-watched a bit too. i had a honeydew mochi donut and walked home; as i passed the grocery store, i thought about how i needed to go grocery shopping in a few days and it'd be so much more efficient if i went now, and then i realized waiting until i need it more and am prepared is the sensible choice. i passed boys with fishing rods and men fixing cars; dogs barked and their owners' told them off. a bird left a bush, startling me. i got home and ate and played slay the princess; i injured a divine being and cast her aside. i read some discussion pages on steam, thought about writing about some ragebait post, and got distracted by trying to play the french translation of some short visual novel. i made flashcards and studied them and wondered if i'll do it again tomorrow. i thought about how my french grammar is pretty rusty and my vague recognitions will get me nowhere; i need to review the book on my bedside table so the cobwebs clear. the vocabulary is not the issue. i watched some youtube videos on health, ate, exercised again, stretched a bit, cleaned a bit, or was that this morning, can't recall, and what else? does it matter what else? i lay here and sip on mead, thinking about how i want to jerk off, wondering if i will, recognizing my alertness and whatnot. my leg taps against the wall while my fingers tap against the keyboard. i break firefox while i try to fix something, then spend a half hour troubleshooting until i've undone my mistakes and all is forgiven, i'm back to square one.

i wonder how i've gotten here.

i think it is best we don't ask.

i stare ahead and need to know what's next, what comes out of all of this, what will i become? i look for reasons to text ---, knowing i wouldn't even if i saw sense to. i realize this is because i feel alone. i realize this is a lie. i need an outburst; no, i need a digression from routine and a novel input, and trying to speak to someone would be such a thing. or is it that i want to be around a person?

i am thoroughly puzzled by my ramblings about loneliness. do i want to be this way, or do i want something to change? i sit in the void of my indecision; my longing and lack thereof an excuse to not make a choice. either i accept i am lonely and i will be content with that, or i give in to my discontent and reach out. the internet is fake, i cry, but apps for meeting friends are a real thing. there are solutions. do i want solutions?

i sit with the problem. for what end. what am i actually craving. warmth, physical contact. i wonder what it's like to have a conversation with someone---a real conversation, and not just bickering at work. i wonder what it'd be like to hang out with someone, and what i'd do, and what that even means for me. i think of how i have nothing to offer people. i'm but a whirlwind of problems, best kept behind the screen and experienced from a safe distance. my irl self is an unpalatable, over-filtered and under-filtered mess; an ill-thought-out impulse; a whim masquerading as human. i bring no good. all i do is take. what value do i have? inherently nothing. i go through motions as a shell. i need---what do i need? how would i become? becoming is a process.

i am educating myself on nonsense. why learn about academic magic. most see it as bullshit. to open my mouth is to be a rambling lunatic. who would suspend their disbelief for my own ignorance? who would care?

i cast aside these pitiful thoughts. lettuce breathe. before me is a bookshelf. on top of it is remnants of creativity---a box of index cards with drawings and words, some virgin sticky-notes, a disused bookmark. the top shelf contains books, a pencil case, and a wallet. there is a kindle and an nintendo switch and some video games. the pencil case contains index cards, an exacto knife, colored pencils, and some writing utensils. there is a bag with mascara and eyeshadow and q-tips and usb drives (they're in the other pocket). the second shelf contains a small container with bandaids, tweezers, nail clippers, other cables, a hard drive, and hair ties. watercolor supplies---watercolors and some paintbrushes---are beside this. there's another pencil case which contains scissors and other hair-cutting tools. there are more miscellaneous objects on this shelf, but in this darkness they escape my vision.

i contemplate going to sleep. my eyes are weary. still, there is something within me which yearns to break it, which will rewrite this essence. the pages are obscured---i am not i am undone and unprepared for the ritual, the red-dressed cardinals break in as i've already broken out, salad, an exit which will bring me to this other realm.

good night, sweet prince, and may flights of angels bring thee to thy rest.

arbitrary new diary 202606

my head's a gun (from "kitchen fork")