2/5/97
I finally get to see Chase again. Tomorrow night. I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen him since I was home for Christmas. I can’t believe how fast the last few weeks flew by. And I can’t believe he’s actually coming. I’m a complete and total wreck. I’m nervous as hell. It just hit me right now. I hung up the phone with him, and he said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and it finally sank in. What was I thinking? I’m going crazy here! I think I want to see him, but it has also occurred to me that I just want to remember how much I liked him. I mean, I’m still alive after three weeks without him, and I’m not sure how much I’m going to like readjusting my entire life every so often whenever he decides to come visit. Long-distance sucks.
I still feel like I barely know him. I’m so nervous about seeing him again that I feel like I’m going to puke. This is remarkably similar to the feeling I get when I sing. It’s one of those “I’m forcing myself to do this because if I don’t, I might miss out on one of the best highs of my life” kind of feelings. I think he would kill me if he knew that was my attitude here. I would if I were him. He seems so serious about me. It’s actually scaring me a little. I don’t think I know how to care for someone as much as he cares for me.
2/9/97
I’m still alive and functioning. Chase left today after four very interesting days. Thursday classes went by much more quickly than I had thought they would, and I was on my way to the airport before I knew what was going on. I couldn’t get past security to the gates, so I sat in the terminal and studied some music while I waited. He found me eventually and the instant I saw him, I remembered why I wanted to see him. I was almost expecting to be disappointed. You know how sometimes you think more highly of someone when you don’t see them for awhile? Well, I think I was so worried that that would happen that I expected less. So I was pleasantly surprised.
We left the airport and came back to go to shoot some pool with my roommates, Susan and Camille. They each had a few drinks and when we got to the pool hall, Susan got really upset about something. Camille wasn’t feeling so good either since she had decided to drink even though she’s taking antibiotics. So we only played about a half hour of pool before things got a little odd. We ended up dragging them both home. Mostly Susan, though, because she passed out in the bathroom, got sick, and couldn’t walk at all. She actually ended up locking herself in the bathroom stall. We had to call some guy that worked there to help us get her out. We took a cab home and felt like we had had a horrendous evening. We pretty much went to sleep then because I had to get up for class on Friday.
Friday, we woke up, went to class, went to my voice lesson, and then went to dinner. It was really cool having Chase in class with me and at my voice lesson because I really wanted him to have some idea what I spend all my time doing. He didn’t respond so much to my voice lesson until a day later when he told me he knew I’d make it big someday because he could see in my teacher’s eyes when she talked about me that she thought I was good. You have no idea how nice that was to hear.
Dinner was really cool. Then we were going to rent a movie, but I needed a credit card to get a membership at the video store, and I don’t have one, so we couldn’t. We came back and were in bed from 7:00pm until 5:00pm the next day, and we only slept for about five of those hours. When I woke up after my five hours of sleep, I was really confused because he was gone. I looked around and noticed him on the floor, and immediately I assumed I had accidentally pushed him off the bed. Then I realized that he had a pillow and a blanket from the living room. I, of course, became even more perplexed, so I stuck my head over the edge of the bed and he looked at me, so I asked what he was doing down there. He just said it was a long story and tried to let it go, but then he mentioned that at about 5:30am I started yelling at him to get off of me. After he mentioned it, I did recall the incident a little, although not very clearly at all. I’m assuming I was asleep and dreaming that it was someone else or something, but I can see it happening given my rather adamant opposition to touching. I don’t know. Something about the way he touched me made my skin crawl.
Saturday, when I went to get a shower, I totally felt like I had just been attacked. I had two big red marks on my face from his facial hair rubbing against my face. He doesn’t even have facial hair. He’s just scruffy. My lip was swollen because it kept getting caught between teeth, and the tendon on the bottom of my tongue felt like it had torn or pulled or something, and it’s still red and hurts like a bitch. I also had a big bruise on my elbow from hitting it against the wall somehow. I guess things were a little rougher than I thought.
Last night, he was kissing me and I said, “Ow!” and mentioned my swollen lip, and he became dismayed that he would have to be careful, so I thought it safe enough to tell him that pain really doesn’t bother me. And much to my surprise, he replied that he actually enjoys pain sometimes too. Interesting.
At one point, I was sitting on the edge of my bed watching him get dressed when I had a really intriguing thought that I was certain was too weird to share. On this random brain tangent of mine, I imagined him telling me I couldn’t scare him. Following that was my disagreement and his challenge to that. So in order to prove to him that there are things I do that would probably scare him, I asked to see his key chain with the very cool knife on it. I opened the knife and sliced my left forearm with it much like I do when I’m upset. He looked at me unimpressed and said he did that occasionally too. So in another attempt, I took the knife, sliced the tip of my tongue open, and then kissed him. And the thought was just so very appealing to me that I almost said something to see if he would agree to it, but it’s probably a good thing I didn’t.
3/6/97
Ami is in town this weekend. The first thing I thought of when I found out she was coming was that she was the first person I saw when I went to school the day after I found out about Dante’s brother. I walked off the bus, in the door, and halfway down the hallway where I saw her. I couldn’t really see her very well. I remember my eyes were all blurry, and they probably looked completely glazed over. I was dead tired, but every sense in my body was on guard, almost nervous. I felt like I had just had ten cups of coffee and then tried to fall asleep--agitated, you know? It’s like when you lay down with the intention of staying awake; you can’t do it--your heart beats faster and your breath comes short, and everything feels numb. Well, for me anyway. You never can tell if something is exclusive to me.
6/12/97
Have you ever noticed how your perspective changes? You know how little kids look at things from different angles all the time? Kids are always looking up at adults and down on something else. They’ll climb up on a hill and feel miles above everything like nothing can touch them. One minute they’re walking, the next they’re crawling, then they’re tumbling over upside-down. They never look at the same thing the same way twice. Why do adults always have to see things one way and one way only? This I don’t understand. It’s like if anything alters their perception, it doesn’t open up new ideas to explore, it just confuses them and scares them back into interpreting things they’ve already seen before. If you spend five minutes crawling on your hands and knees just allowing yourself to look at things from a different angle, you’ll notice hundreds of things you overlooked before. It’s like when you’re playing chess and you just don’t see a good move after ten minutes of silent contemplation; nine times out of ten if you look at the board from a different angle, you’ll suddenly see an intelligent move. Even if you change your breathing pattern, something new will present itself. You can spend all day trying to find one piece in a jigsaw puzzle, get up to get a drink, come back, and find that it had been staring you in the face the whole time. My perspectives have gotten too practiced lately, too narrow. I feel like something big should be happening to me and I just can’t see it right now.
9/14/97
You know, people basically mean nothing. And I'm sure I mean nothing to people. The only thing that differentiates one person from another is your own personal feelings towards them. Every person has a varying degree of meaning to you. You love some people, you like some people, you can't stand some people. And sooner or later, people leave. If someone you love dies, you have two options: deal with your grief and get over it, or throw away your own life in the desperation of an eternity of longing to be with them again. So if you choose not to go mad, you have to deal. Consequently, any person who leaves you in the future receives less mourning from you because your mind has determined that it has to get used to the idea that people leave. Therefore, people start to mean less to you. You can't trust anyone because you know eventually they will no longer have anything to do with you. Likewise, you begin to feel that people don't care about you. People you thought meant a lot to you leave without giving you any means by which to reach them.
9/29/97
Chase is in town visiting again. The other day we went downtown to do some shopping and we came across a really cool cutlery store. We spent most of our time in there. Chase bought himself a new Spyderco for his collection, and he bought me two. We came back, met up with Braedon, played with the knives for awhile, watched Romeo and Juliet, and then headed to a party.
After exploding a bottle of champagne and then drinking it all, Chase and I decided to leave the party. Once home, we had the greatest time in bed. He took his knife and ran the tip all over my body and it was so cool. Of course, now I have little lines everywhere and I woke up in the morning with dried blood all over my arm, but who cares? That’s kind of the point. Damn. I’m so lucky to have found someone like him. I never would’ve expected him to be into this stuff.
10/10/97
I’m not sure what exactly it was that kept me so busy this week that I couldn’t find time to write about something very important, but apparently it too was of great importance. In any case, it’s been six days since I got my tongue pierced. Perhaps it’s a good thing I didn’t take time to write until now because now I feel good about it. Now I can talk and eat.
It bled a lot. I was in the bathroom at the piercing place for half an hour, rinsing my mouth with cold water and spitting out blood. You would think they’d have told me the day before when I made my appointment that I shouldn’t drink that night. But no, after it was pierced they said, “It’ll bleed a little, more if you drank last night.” It bled for four hours. Of course, I was drinking champagne for those four hours so I didn’t even really notice it that much. But I can totally see how someone could look in their mouth after getting it done and just pass out. I looked in the mirror and noticed that I looked like I had just sunk my teeth into someone’s neck and drank half of their blood. The blood was all thin and runny and all over my teeth. It was pretty cool.
10/13/97
I don’t know why a piece of metal stuck through my tongue makes me feel so good, but it does. Maybe it’s the same reason a piece of metal stuck through my bellybutton makes me feel so good. It’s a new part of me. It reestablishes me in the present. It reminds me to forget about the past. I had to relearn how to talk. I had to relearn how to eat. I had to renew myself--not that I’ll ever be able to abandon my past, but at least I can keep myself from still living in it. Somewhat. Maybe.
God, I love where I am right now. I don’t ever want to grow up and have to be responsible. I remember not being able to wait and see how my life was going to turn out. Right now, though, I think I’m happy being somewhere along the way. And I’m in no hurry to get there.
10/20/97
I sang in class tonight. It was not at all what I expected. I sang Il Pleure dans mon Coeur from Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliees. I love the song and I know it well, so I don’t even really know why I was nervous, but I was. Maybe it’s because I really wanted to impress our teacher. In any case, when I finished singing through it, she not only said it sounded beautiful, but she also said that I have a big voice. That is just so something I needed to hear. I’ve always wanted a big voice, but it’s not something you can really tell from inside your own head.
11/2/97
Last night I met Sheridan. Sheridan is a friend of Susan’s. Sheridan is very cool. His only major downfall is that he’s an alcoholic. But if we can look past that for a moment,…someone had asked to see my knife and when Sheridan saw it, he said, "Oh, you’re the friend that likes knives?" Then he asked if I was single. He asked to see my knife and I watched him slice his arm several times and then lick the blood off. Then he licked the blade and gave the knife back to me. Watching him do all that just fascinated me. But not as much as later when he asked if he could cut me. So of course I let him and now I have these nice lines on my arms. It was so cool watching him cut my arm open. I’ve been wanting someone to do that for a long time, but it’s not exactly easy to ask someone to. It was especially cool because we were at a party drinking, so the blood was thin and ran nicely all over the place. Bleeding when you’ve been drinking is kind of like a game to lick off all the blood before it drips all over everything; it’s like trying to keep up with an ice cream cone that’s melting faster than you can eat it. I was so pleasantly surprised that Sheridan was willing to do that on our first meeting. There’s just something to the fact that he’s not afraid to make me bleed. Now, there’s a difference between say, hitting a girl because you’re mad and slicing a girl’s arm with her knife because both of you are into bloodletting. It’s particularly nice to know there’s someone else out there who thinks it’s normal to like blood.
11/29/97
Yesterday, I went to Chase's for a party. It was actually a lot better than I had expected. Chase had a really cool Spyderco with a curved serrated blade, and I was playing with it for awhile. It's beautiful. Some guy came over and started talking with me about knives. He said he has a butterfly knife, and he likes straight blades better than serrated ones. He said serrated blades are too messy. He asked if I had ever cut someone with my knife. I said, "Yeah," and showed him my arm and then Chase's arm. Then he asked if I'd let him cut me, and I told him he could, but he didn't. Then he said he once stabbed some guy until blood was coming out of his mouth. I'm not sure I believe that. I want to, though.
11/30/97
You know, everything good in life is an escape. I went home to escape the stress of school. I came to school to escape the stress of home. Drinking is an escape from reality. Cutting myself to feel physical pain is an escape from emotional pain. Even drinking coffee is an escape because it's slowing down to really relax and enjoy one moment, however brief.
I have a really nice cut on my arm from the party--three actually, but I did the best one. Chase did the other ones. I wonder if my liking guys to cut me has anything to do with feeling like I'm forced to be with them. It must. I'm not entirely sure why I can't handle relationships, but I can't. I hate them. So maybe instead of thinking I'm being taken advantage of by them getting me to fall for them, I'd prefer to think I'm being taken advantage of by them threatening me with knives. Of course, why should it make me feel like I'm being taken advantage of either way? I guess that's the problem.
Chase and I had a bit of a serious talk last night. He said he has trouble reading me, and he doesn't know how I feel. So I told him not to ever expect me to be normal and that events in my life have led me to be basically stoic about things. He seemed to be okay with that.
12/5/97
You know, I get this remarkable feeling of satisfaction from looking at my arm. Sometimes I wish it would heal faster like in the movies when they can be shot right through and the wound will just close up. That would be awesome ‘cause then any time I felt like it, I could take my knife and slice my arm open as deep as I wanted and get the satisfaction from it without the lasting effects. But other times I’m glad the healing process takes awhile. I kind of like that I have something to show for my struggles.
A few hours ago, someone asked me what happened to my arm, if I had fallen or something. I didn’t answer and she dropped it. I like telling people that no, it wasn’t an accident, I quite purposely pulled out my knife and sliced my arm because I wanted to feel pain and I wanted to see my own blood. Or that a guy sliced my arm because it’s the one thing he could do that would really turn me on. I like telling people these things. I like the looks on their faces. It’s kind of a power trip, knowing I like doing something that other people couldn’t even imagine doing. It makes me feel superior. And if they think I’m completely crazy, I’m flattered that they find me unique. If they become worried about me, then I’m flattered that they care.
12/12/97
My parents just called me. I knew something was wrong immediately since they never call me; they always just wait for me to call them. Of course I was right; something was wrong. They called to tell me that my friend Cecilia died. She dropped dead of heart failure at the age of nineteen. I don’t know what to think. Well, I don’t know how to react. They told me and my first reaction was just, "Oh." Now I keep starting to cry and then stopping. I’ll be halfway through a sob and I’ll suddenly just stop and feel fine. Then it’ll happen again. Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t care because it’s not like I see her everyday anymore, and if no one had told me I wouldn’t even know. Then I feel guilty for thinking that because I should care. It’s amazing: no matter what I start thinking, it’s always the guilt that wins out. Why should I feel guilty? It’s like I’m Hamlet, “My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent, and, like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, and both neglect.” I wonder when I forgot how to cry?
I was planning on getting trashed tonight. Today was the last day of classes and I was so looking forward to celebrating. Drinking would probably be very detrimental to my well-being right now. But I don’t want to let this get to me to the point that I have to set my life aside. My head is tingling and I can’t see straight. And my ears are hot. And my fingers are freezing. And all because I don’t know how to react.
I remember driving her around one night when we were in high school. We went out for dessert, and we had had such a good time that we didn’t want to go home when we finished. It was late, and the only place open in the middle of the night was the grocery store. So we went there. We wandered around aimlessly, chatting about everything and nothing, until we came to the aisle with the stationery products. We started looking at crayons and coloring books and lots of random Crayola stuff. By this time, we had gotten kind of bored with the whole wandering aimlessly thing, so we decided to buy a set of three glitter glue pens. They were really cool. We bought them and went outside. We each took one, and we quickly discovered that opening them was not a simple task. I was fighting unsuccessfully with mine when I suddenly heard a shriek and a popping sound. When I looked up at her, she was laughing hysterically. Apparently she had been squeezing her glitter glue pen with such force that the tip flew off and the glue burst out of the plastic tube. We had been standing in front of the store next to a stone pole that was now covered in glitter. I happened to notice about a year later that the glitter was still on the pole. I wonder if it’s still there?
The last time I saw her she gave me a big hug and told me she was leaving for college in a day or two. I told her to give me a call before she left so we could go out for coffee. She said she would. She never called and I didn’t really expect her to because I know how hectic the last few days at home before going to college can be. Plus, we’re both like that: bad at keeping in touch. All semester, I had the intention of getting her school e-mail address, and I never did. So what thought occurs to me next? Well, I’ll do it now. Then I remember she’s dead and I don’t know what to do again.
You know, I really feel like shit. The truth of the matter is, I haven’t thought about her in a little while. I told her I’d call her so many times and I never did. I told her I’d get her e-mail address and I never bothered. Yes, I had other things on my mind, but were they really more important? I am so selfish. I always put myself before other people. It’s supposed to keep me from getting hurt. Well, it doesn’t help. I work so hard at school, and not only do I not get anywhere, but I treat people like shit. I can’t talk to people on the phone because I need sleep. I can’t go out because I have to practice. I can’t spend two minutes to try and find an e-mail address for someone I never see because I don’t feel like it. And it’s not that I didn’t want to hear from her, it’s that I just plain no matter how you look at it didn’t bother because I’m selfish.
She looked up to me. I know she did. I could see it in her face. She wanted to be a musician, and there I was being a musician all my life. No denying that I’m a musician. And she was good too; she was an amazing French horn player. After two and a half years in a music school, I have yet to meet someone else with as great a passion for music as she had. I really appreciated that. I appreciated her passion and I appreciated that she recognized me as a musician. Few other people in high school cared. I’ve been thinking about her and wondering why I’m not crying. I want to cry. I feel I owe it to her to cry for her sake. But for whatever reason, I can’t.
12/29/97
I hate life. That’s all there is to it. I just hate life. Everything I like in life is artificial. I hate nature. I hate time. I hate death. I’m so frustrated. Occasionally, I’ll almost enjoy something, but as soon as I do, I come down hard and remember. The dark cloud of truth always comes back. And that’s the only way I can describe it. I feel like there’s this dark cloud that descends upon me with such a concentrated disgust for life that I literally, physically find it hard to breathe because it’s suffocating.
I have no desire to do anything. I couldn’t care less about anything or anyone. I find what I feel to be my most precious time is spent staring blankly at the wall wishing that whatever has hold of me would let go.
I feel like I’m in the middle of a high-wire act, hundreds of feet above the ground with everybody watching me. Every step is the same as the one before, and every time I think I’m getting somewhere, I look at where I am and realize it’s the same place I’ve been. Then I realize I didn’t know where I was going anyway. All I want to do is take one step to the left or right and send myself plummeting to the ground to end the painful monotony, but I can’t! I can’t!
I am so angry that death has to exist. I just can’t get why young people have to die. I don’t get it. I want to die. But I don’t want to die until I’ve accomplished something with my pitiful life. And I can’t accomplish anything because I can’t convince myself it’s worthwhile because I’m just going to die soon enough anyway!
I told Chase the other day that I think I need a psychiatrist. When he asked why I didn’t get one, it struck me that it would be really hard for me to accept that being who I am isn’t right. I would have to change. I don’t know if I’m perfectly me, or if I’m me with a few correctable flaws.