2001-02-27 - 01:18:10

So, Ceasing to exist is a very strong option right now.

Am I okay tonight? No.

Will I be okay? Dunno.

I'm at Quivas' house. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be anywhere. I am here because it seemed the least evil.

Driving over here...ahh whoever thought it would be bright for me to drive anywhere tonight was a few grapes short of a bunch. I left crying. Throwing caution to the wind - I did not wear a seatbelt.

I picked up my cell phone with one hand and lit a cig with the other. Lets increase the odds. So through my tears I pulled out of the driveway.

"I hope you Die" by the Bloodhound gang screams away at top volume. I drive too fast. I almost missed that curve...damn better go faster next time. It would be so easy to drive the wrong way into traffic. That's where it starts. I get off onto 133, I know just down the road is a lake. It wouldn't take much to drive my car off into the water. Car's new...seems a waste of a good vehicle just to drown oneself. I could get out and jump...errr prolly will just bounce off the ice. So I journey on. No red lights to run...figures that's when you'd hit 'em all at green. The car is almost out of gas. I stop...hmmm drink gasoline. I'm not sure I'd be able to swallow enough before puking to ensure my destruction. Hmmm..match in the gas tank. That would be a memorable way to go. Kaboom...too many others would go with me. Unnecessary. I could drive to the office...pick up some rope on the way. I could hang myself in the break room. Statement. Nah...makes me look pretty stupid that I'd hang myself over a raise. Drug store to my left...hmm pills? Nah I'm always a pussy, take the sleeping pills first, fall asleep before deed is done. Shit. No more options...I'm at the house.

Its not today's specific issue that hurts so much. Granted it sucks ass...I'm mad, pissed, hurt. I'm not so silly though to kill myself over it. But its the straw that's breaking the camel's back. I'm tired...too many times in the past 4 years I've been screwed. I pour my heart and my soul into something. Then I watch it fall apart before my eyes. My relationships...my work...my life. It hurts...every disappointment every crashing world. Rebuilding takes more energy than i have. I cry more tears than should be possible. I'm tired. I don't know that I can do it again. I don't have the energy left...the world has taken it. I don't have the will...the world has crushed it.

There's nothing left. There was a beautiful soul here. An incredibly smart and talented girl. A huge heart....rare and precious among an all too uncaring world. But its gone now. The fire burned out...there was no one who cared enough to stoke it....to care for it over time...to keep that flame shining brilliantly. Sure every now and then someone threw on a log or stirred it up. But they warmed by the heat of my flame and then satisfied waslked away.

I'm tired. I want to sleep. I want to never hurt again.

2001-02-21 - 21:39:31

Ahhh the theatre....

Put me in the audience, dim the lights, start the music...nothing else exists.

There's no one else there. There's no pain, there's no bad thought, all the people and things that have hurt me in life evaporate into non-existence. There's only me, the stage, the orchestra and an experience.

At the theatre I'm truly transfixed. I'm truly home and I'm truly happy.

I'll always spite god for giving me the heart of a true thespian but neither the voice nor the talent to do anything about it. Not that I'm totally lacking talent in that area...I can sing reasonably well and I've got musical talent oozing out my ears. I can act as well as any aspiring high school kiddo on the stage...but I don't have what it takes to make it professionally.

So last night...when I thought my life was crashing down. I've spent the last weeks muddling through a deep depression..grumping about the things going wrong. Last night...the Phantom transfixed me in his music and for several hours I escaped every bit of that.

I know every word, every note of that show. I know it in my head, in my heart and my soul. To lose myself in it was an utter delight. Its better than sex, its better than a warm summer day at the cabin...its better than most anything I know. In that audience my heart sours to amazing heights with the music, my tears flow and I live another life.

So mom just called. She's happy that I'm in a good mood. She sounds rather rejuvinated herself. I tell her I'm writing in my journal about the theatre. Shit...wrong topic of conversation. Gripe 1.) she doesn't understand this online journaling thing...how can you share your thoughts and feelings and deepest secrets with a potential audience of millions. Perhaps its like Shakespeare says...I'm a closet exhibitionist. I don't know. Somewhere in me I like the idea and I'm loving writing here. Gripe 2.) You had the talent. You HAVE the talent. You choose not to employ it.

So that brings me to a whole new world. If I so love the theatre...if it makes my heart soar and can destroy even the worst of moods...why don't I train and work and make it my life?

I'm chicken shit.

I'm scared that something I love so much could be taken away by making it the every day monotony. I'm scared that I'd fail. I'm scared of really confirming that I might never have had what it took to make it. I'm scared of making music my captor and my jail instead of my joy.

Way back in the days of high school music was my life. The piano was my first instrument. I trained since I was 7. My father brought home this beautiful upright. She was gorgeous. She is gorgeous and she still graces that same corner of my parents living room. I love her...I visited her last weekend. I loved the piano. I loved music.

4th grade..I couldn't wait until they let us into band. I took up the clarinet in the great tradition of my family. I loved it. I sang in the chorus, played in the band and excelled in my music classes. I'd found my place.

Middle school..piano and clarinet = life. I was in every chorus, every band possible. It became my identity. Music became the triumph of the pathetic fat kid. I couldn't be the smartest, I couldn't be the prettiest or the most athletic...so I was the most musical.

High school...the competitive edge..the urge..the need to define myself as the best at something compelled me forward in music. I expanded my repetoire...the flute, the saxaphone. Fourth in the state on clarinet. The jazz band..the bit band the youth symphony. Every night every day an endless run of lessons and rehersals.

I was tired. As high school days ended and my last performances drew to a close I left it all behind. In my urge to make my place, to prove myself, to be the best. Music lost everything. It lost the joy it had in my youngest days. It lost the fun. It was a chore...a bore.

So I left it all behind. Pre-med, computer science. Anything but music. Now its a love...a complement to my life.

2001-02-20 - 21:20:16

I fucking love run on sentances.

I hate commas and proper grammar.

I'm opposed to writing in such a way that I tend to make too much sense.

If you read my prior entry you understand this.

Goodnight.

2001-02-18 - 19:41:27

I shouldn’t have come here. I should have known that. After two months it was bound to be difficult. Perhaps deep down I did know and that’s why it took 3 attempts to actually make it back to this place. So I’m here now. I’ve made it all the way to 8:30pm on the first day and my feet long to run me so far away that I might never be able to return. Its not the people, God knows I love Mom and Dad dearly. They’ve been nothing but hospitable and loving and I know they want me here. But the place is haunted. Every detail of coming here is haunted with memories from the past. In this conflicted and hurting time for me, the closeness of these memories threatens to drive me over the edge. I push back the tears. They cannot see, they have enough to worry about. If I truly explained all of it they would feel burdened to fix my life and that is not what it is about. As it is mom keeps saying she hates to see me so depressed. She keeps offering to listen and give advice. I’ve told her what I can, more than I should already. She has enough to worry about. She has too much to worry about. She needs to think that everything is fine and wonderful in her daughter’s life, she needs to conserve her energy to heal herself.

Mom suffers, every day she suffers. Some odd medical anomaly where the nerves in her face let off random electronic pulses which torture her muscles. No one seems to know an answer and the pain taunts her daily. She won’t admit it, she won’t slow down or stop for even a moment’s rest. She has to save everyone.

Dad suffers too. Long years of hard work have taken their toll on his body. The scoliosis has him sleeping in a chair in the living room. The arthritis torments him. Yet every day he faces the cold and spends 12 hours working away.

So you see, they have their own burdens. Their physical ailments are only the beginning. If that weren’t enough, they both know that they have my grandparents to take care of. The alzheimers, the cancer, the pain. Its all there at the end of their days for them to face. The long term prospects are hard to deal with. They take care of everyone, including myself.

So I’m here. The realities of my thoughts I cannot fully reveal and the memories around me I cannot admit to the way they hurt. Quivas is far away. Worshipping and paying homage to his “square headed mistress” and Shakespeare…he’s off with the one he’ll always love. I can’t compete. In aloneness I sit. I wallow.

I tried to wish Shakespeare a good night. I couldn’t find the words. I hate that she gets his love, his time, his sweet embrace. She was the one that threw it away. She owns him. I hate it. Funny I don’t really hate it. I only long for it. I could never take it from her and yet I long to. I can’t even hate her though the deepest depths of my soul tell me I should. She has the child….mine were ripped from my arms two years ago. She has the love….the love I have never and will never possess. She has the spirit and the heart….those I too possess but from this moment on... I swear with everything that I am I will let that fire burn out. I will squash it until it burns at barely a flicker…until it is unrecognizable, until there is too little left for it to burn again. I swear.

The fire has burned bright for 22 years. IT has served only to burn me. To burn me until I cannot recognize what is has left me with. The pain burns on and on and I won't let it anymore. Letting it burn out means losing who I am but I think i've already lost that. I don't know anymore. I've lost the urge to figure it out.

Sleep has been my refuge for 2 days now. Let it be forever my refuge. Let monotony and boredom set in and be my constant companions. They cannot hurt me. Only in them will the fire burn out and the pain cease. Contentment is over rated and happiness eludes me.

Goodbye sweet flame.

2001-02-11 - 06:21:51

"If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that."

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I've been reading these words over and over again. The sentiment is one that has really made me what I am today. The expectations that my parents held me to as well as teachers and peers. If these people had never challenged me to be more than I was I never could have accomplished what I have. But these words, this sentiment does not come without folly.

SelfishOne has been dwelling on my mind lately. It was October when I moved out of the Cambridge residence. Only a few short months that freedom has been mine. I have a lot of healing to do, and as I mentioned in a previous entry, perhaps its time to seek some outside help in this. For the moment however I think I'll engage in some introspection on the topic of SelfishOne and see if I can come to any sense of closure.

It was just this time last year that SelfishOne and I began to draw closer. We had come together at the tail end of my rather tragic engagement in Georgia. (A story for another time) I was a mess at that point, a terrified and wounded child far away from home. At his urging, as well as that of my parents and friends in the NorthEast, I moved home when the fall term let out. I arranged to finish school as a transient student and I moved into my parents house in Maine to "lick my wounds" for a bit.

Soon I began to spend almost every weekend in Boston. SelfishOne became my refuge and he encouraged me to rebuild my life. (With him at the center) I never realized exactly what I was doing.

SelfishOne introduced me to a new world. A world of intoxication and indulgence. A world I now look back upon with regret and say many thanks that I suffer no more than emotional wounds from the experience. So drugs and sexual satisfaction became the pursuits. Every weekend was spent in his bed, drawing from his bong and experiencing a freedom of sexuality I had never known.

I learned to play both sides of the field, it thrilled him to have finally conquered that part of me. He urged me to arrange situations, find new partners for us and stretch my limits in the sexual realm.

I did it. I guess it was the acceptance that I got from him for it that motivated me. Each new experience left me lying pleasured in his arms. The more outrageous the higher the praise and the more 'love' he gave me. (Someone want to hit me over the head with the dictionary definition of love? I don't think this was it)

So that's where it all started. But there are limits to what anyone will do. And over time most anything can become monotonous. So praise dissipated and passions burned with less fervor, and I found myself cast back to my own more frequently.

Ahh perhaps I forgot to mention, I was never his only lover. SelfishOne claimed he was loyal to me in that he always in the end would dump the flavor of the month girl and return to my bed. Too bad that never felt like loyalty as I laid in my room listening to the sounds of sex come from his.

Sex was love right? Well it certainly wasn't satisfying me. When I moved to Cambridge at the end of school I thought life was starting fresh and new and wonderful with him at my side and sharing an apartment.

Things degraded fast. I couldn't do anything right. My job was inadequate and my coworkers absolute dolts. My personal habits were abhorant (I often put the toilet paper on the dispenser the wrong way or left the blinds unclipped. How dare I! Most everything elicited yelling and degrading comments. Hell according to him I couldn't even manage to take care of my cat. (Anyone that knows me, knows that Noah is my pride and joy and that I take impeccable care of him).

Anything could set him off and nothing was sacred. Every facet of my life was subject to his constant scrutiny. Every time I enraged him I could come to expect the sound of another girl in his room. "You're bad..No Sex for You." Sex = Love. "You're bad..No Love for You." (SelfishOne is the love nazi)

So I tried to be different. I cleaned his house, accepted his opinions as my own, adopted his friends, blocked out my own friends and family. His world became mine and my world went black.

Starting to sound like a classic case of emotional and verbal abuse yet?

Well in September it all came to a head. He was pursuing sleeping with my cousin. I could hardly bare the thought. I returned from a 2 week business trip longing to fall into his arms. But when I called to arrange for him to pick me up at the airport he said he had better things to do. I'd met Quivas a few weeks earlier when him and BongBoy had come over to visit. (God did SelfishOne hate that!). So I phoned in a favor and Quivas was there to pick me up.

It didn't take long for us to connect. Quivas seemed so loving and gentle and sweet. He was everything SelfishOne was not. He wanted a relationship..he loved who I was, he didn't care if I was fat or didn't want crazy sexual escapades. Quivas wanted to talk to me, to share opinions, to debate and listen and consider me an equal. Novel concept.

It didn't take Quivas long to see what SelfishOne was doing to me. With a loving and accepting influence by my side (and the urging of good friends at work) it didn't take me long to see the truth of the situation either.

That truth was painful.

Long story short. I eventually moved out. He moved another girl in and lives his Selfish life however he damn well pleases. I'm better off without him.

I'm building my own life now. I don't need anyone to hold me up. Its nice to know that Quivas is there though. (He reminds me I'm strong when I forget)

So why am I dwelling on this tonight? When I moved I cast out most everything pertaining to SelfishOne. All the possessions and memories were left behind, or so I thought. We were at my house the other night when Quivas asked for a sweatshirt to wear because he was cold. I dug through my closet and came out with a hoodie which I handed to him.

It didn't strike me until later where it had come from. I sat there later and just stared. It belonged to the SelfishOne.

Quivas was wearing it again tonight. I don't want to make an issue of it. I'll just take it tomorrow when I go and find a nice dumpster to donate it to.

Blah..long rant...no catharsis....not even entertaining. My apologies.

Perhaps I'll try sleep. Novel concept at 2am

Oops..there was supposed to a point. SelfishOne always claimed that he never abused me in any way. He says he only held me to high expectations in an effort to help me improve myself. There's a difference...and sometimes a fine line between these two things. Remember as you push someone to improve, don't ask them to forget what makes them who they are in the first place. Improvement is not rebirth or recreation, its the building up upon the existing foundation. Build with love, the result is much nicer.