2/6/95
I was confirmed Catholic. My mom is Catholic. My dad is Lutheran. The idea of God as a being in whose image all of mankind was created is one which was pressured into my mind time and time again. It’s not that I’m determined to keep these ideas out of my mind, but try as I might to believe, I just can’t.
I can’t believe that confession lessens the cost of certain forbidden sins. I still attend a Catholic mass every Sunday, and though it’s not by choice, I really don’t mind. I can accept the Bible as a fine work of literature open for interpretation, but I will not go to confession. I have not been to confession in four years. I have come extremely close numerous times, but every time, I changed my mind. I always backed out of it because going to confession would have been for my own peace of mind. It would’ve been for personal peace of mind, not because I truly repented. Personal peace of mind that I am not a horrible person, and personal peace of mind for that microscopic piece of my brain that still insisted there may indeed be a God who could possibly help me as I questioned my morality.
After many years of living and many so-called sins I’ve committed, I can honestly say I have done nothing I truly regret. Repenting or seeking God’s forgiveness would be almost mocking Him. Repenting what I do not regret could conceivably be more atrocious than the sin itself in the Catholic faith. Besides, if I was going to regret it, why would I do it in the first place? Am I the only person in the world to think before I act?
So, because of my inability to accept some Catholic traditions, for awhile I proclaimed myself atheist. But that’s not true, there has always been some force beyond my control that has overstepped the bounds of coincidence. And in order to assure acquaintances of my sanity, I refer to that force, that inexplicable thing that I will try to explain to the point where only my mind has the capacity to further the search past the limited realm of words, as God--not the God to meet in that paradise people have created for themselves and named heaven, but a God who sees the world through my own eyes, a God who is a part of me, a God who is the embodiment of my complete faith and trust in myself.
8/29/95
I'm finished. Finally, after about a week of trying, I've packed everything I own and gotten it ready for my first semester at Boston University. That's a long way from Pittsburgh. Hm. I know I will be, but I feel like I'm never coming back. I feel like I'm leaving forever, like I'm dying. I keep looking at my room and feeling what someone would feel were they walking in here after I died. I can feel my own presence. There's a lot of me in this room. I've done maybe not most, but definitely a lot of my writing in here. A lot of singing. A lot of crying. And an awful lot of worrying. I can't stop thinking. Anyone who can live their life without constantly referring to the past must be very happy. I wish I could do that.
9/27/95
Dante,
Pretty soon it'll be three years from the day I first met you. About two and a half since the last time I spoke with you. About a year after the last time I saw you. It's hard to write to you, considering these dates, but in a way it still comes easily. No one since has listened so well or tried so hard to understand. This makes me wonder why I ever gave you up. But then, I didn't really. I think of you too much to say I gave you up. Maybe I reacted too quickly to my feelings, but time worked its way into our lives, and we ended up our separate ways. Nothing can intervene.
I decided to write to you, perhaps in a vain attempt to calm myself down. It has recently occurred to me that when we talked, it was usually about me and oftentimes about my future. I was so certain. I had everything planned out. Now look at me. Here I am in an entirely different place in life than I ever expected to be. It's not that I'm unhappy with things right now, it's just that I find myself acutely aware, and thus unhealthily aware, of both before and after. Because you were a part of the before, everything I told you ended up being a lie. I hate myself for it. Of course, it was unintentional lying. Intentional lying is so much easier to forgive. But this disaccord between what I promised you and what fate has promised me to this point remains unforgivable. I want so much to talk to you, to tell you all the truths I have come across in my journey through life, but I can't. I can't look back after goodbye.
Writing this letter is a personal stress reliever which provides the illusion of talking to you, while avoiding turning around, for I know myself, and I am positive that this letter will never be mailed. Going back is never a good idea. My past is settled and shall be forever, but my past is more irrevocable than my memories. Turning back now could have the potential to disturb the memories I tried so hard to protect.
You probably won't understand why this letter has helped me, but please know that it has, and allow me to thank you for the attempt I am sure you will make in trying to understand. And know also, all these years which have altered my past future have also changed me in other ways. But I still love you, and I am convinced that although my prior promises to you were broken, I can place faith in the promise that in the future, I always will.
Love,
Perdita
10/20/95
It’s 2:40 in the morning. I’ve been sleeping for two hours or so, and I had a dream that actually woke me up. My dreams never wake me up.
I was walking around a college campus that had a little bit of grass, and I was with two friends from BU. The sidewalks were made of red brick, and they were kind of slanted and curved. We walked until we came to a fountain in the middle of the sidewalk that was squirting bursts of water up from the ground. Since the sidewalks were slanted, all the water was running to the road, so we walked up the slant and around the fountain to keep from getting wet. We kept walking and came to a place where people were singing the choir music I had just practiced earlier today. We could hear them from outside, and I thought to myself, “Hey, I was practicing in there earlier. I wonder if the people on the sidewalk could hear me?” My friends and I started singing along. The people on the street were looking at us like we were nuts.
One of my friends disappeared. I was just walking with the other one when we came across a fountain on flat ground. There were dozens of people lying on the cement ground. They were all wet, and the water was spreading onto the concrete around them. Someone was on their way over to throw me in the fountain, when some guy in a black shirt and burgundy jeans interfered and got thrown in instead. I thought he was really stupid for falling in the fountain. Then my other friend disappeared, and I dodged the people lying wet all over the ground, while taking my clothes off. Then my clothes disappeared.
A blue towel appeared in my hand. I thought of wrapping the towel around me, but then I thought I shouldn’t feel strange walking around naked, and it didn’t bother me so much. Eventually, though, I started to feel self-conscious, so I wrapped the towel around me. People were looking at me like I was crazy.
I walked to the nearest building which had a huge outdoor hallway like a tunnel through it, and it was lined with shower heads and curtains to pull around them. I found an open shower towards the far end. Two of the curtains were kind of shredded, but I pulled at them until I finally got decent curtains around me. The water was nice and warm, and I had gotten half of a really nice shower when I noticed two things: the shower was actually so small that it was making me very claustrophobic, and there was a female mannequin with dark hair and blue eyes that had fallen and was looking right at me in the shower.
Then one of my BU friends reappeared with some other girls, and they said, “Don’t you hate that?” and pointed to the mannequins. There were suddenly mannequins by every shower that hadn’t been there when I arrived. I got out of the shower, got dressed, and went with my friend to the bookstore on this odd campus. At the door, there was a guy saying stuff to people as they came in. Everyone ignored him but me, and I just looked at him. We went in and my friend disappeared.
Then my mother and little sister appeared. I followed them down an escalator. There were a bunch of funny looking sideways and angled escalators to our right, and my mom said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to go on those?” and I agreed, but then we ended up in this maze of escalators and it wasn’t any fun at all. I kept falling over backwards, and I got a big red welt on my left forearm from catching myself on the escalator. My mother and sister disappeared again.
The first friend from BU reappeared. We went down one final escalator and got to the bottom after I had sat down on a step to avoid falling over. I grabbed a magazine I thought had Kurt Cobain on the cover, but it didn’t, so I tried to put it back. Then, the guy from the entrance of the store grabbed the magazine from me, and I tried to leave. He said, “You’re not leaving,” so I went to the front lobby where some random college student tried to attack me. I fought him and another one off before I finally got the security guard’s attention. The security guard came to help me, and yet another guy came to attack me: a short, pudgy Asian guy. The security guard grabbed this guy’s arms and pulled them above his head and dragged him to the ground. As he was lying on the ground, I knelt next to the guy and started pounding furiously on his back until I felt myself break one of his ribs with my fist.
The security guard let go of the guy and just turned to look at me with a stunned and horrified expression on his face. The Asian guy turned to look at me too, and I expected to see blood on his face, but there wasn’t any; there was just pain in his face. He looked right in my eyes. His eyes had no whites; they were all red tendons and muscles right up to the green irises. I felt so bad. I was upset that he wasn’t bleeding, and I wanted to knock him out to stop his pain, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch him because I knew I would cause more pain, and I didn’t know how to deal with pain that didn’t involve bleeding. So I knelt there helpless at his side, while he grabbed my arms and looked at me with his whiteless eyes.
I woke up shuddering from the feeling of breaking someone’s rib. Funny. Most of my recent dreams have involved someone attacking me.
12/14/95
Recently it’s occurred to me why I am here in college. Up until my junior year of high school, I was dead set against going to college. Then I felt that I wasn’t quite ready to go out on my own after high school. So, when considering throwing myself into neverland without any money or living for four years with my parents paying tuition and housing, it wasn’t that difficult a decision. But now that I’m here and experiencing working and living, paying for bills, I feel old enough to go out by myself. I see how it works. So my main objective now, considering that I’m not really the school type, is to learn what I can about singing and try like hell to have some fun while I’m at it. So I’m trying to have fun.