10/10/99
You know, I just can’t go on like this much longer. There is something about me that is chemically, or physically, or psychologically just very fucked up. There is something about me that simply will not allow me to live a normal existence. I cannot tolerate waking up day after day trying anything in the world to put me in a good mood just to find out how quickly the attempt fails. I tried to go out and get a little something in my life today. I generally don’t leave the apartment on Sundays, but today I decided to try and cheer myself up. I went out shopping for a Halloween costume with Cara. The store we wanted to go to ended up being closed, so we went elsewhere, and I was so upset about not being able to find a Halloween costume that I couldn’t talk for the rest of the afternoon. I was frozen stiff. I left Cara when she wanted to run some errands, and I walked home by myself in the pouring rain.
Fall is my favorite time of year. I like the dreariness, and the coolness, and the general feeling of impending winter. Walking home in the rain turned out to be very unusual. I was walking down the sidewalk absolutely soaked through to the bone, and all I wanted to do was sit on a bench in the park and watch the rain. I started walking extremely slowly, and I felt like I didn’t have the energy to get home. My feet felt so heavy, and I was so lost in thought that I was afraid I was going to fall over because I couldn’t keep myself in the here and now enough to even have the ability to concentrate on walking. Walking isn’t supposed to take concentration. I was overwhelmingly dazed. I kept thinking I should be walking faster so I didn’t get as wet, but instead, I had to see if it was possible for me to get any more upset. I was so wet and miserable. Now I’m dry and miserable.
I hate life with greater intensity everyday. I wish I could describe it in a way that would make sense to normal people, but I know I can’t. I think it’s something people just can’t understand unless they’ve had a similar sort of mental problem themselves. All I can do is stare off into space. I can’t hold conversations at all. I can’t even pretend to be happy anymore, and I feel exceedingly guilty about hating everything so much that I feel like I need to keep other people in the dark about how much I want to die. I can’t throw all my problems out at the world, that wouldn’t be fair to them. So I end up trapped in a place halfway between hating life and not being able to express it. Why do I feel the need to keep my inner struggle inside? I hate life. I hate myself. I hate all other people. I just want to die. I feel like I’ve been cursed with the ability to see the reality that everyone else manages to for the most part ignore. I cannot function. I can’t even think. And I’m getting really sick of trying.
10/17/99
Earlier this week, I almost ended up in the emergency room because I couldn’t breathe. I laid down in bed for the night, and as soon as my head touched the pillow, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest and choking me with their hands around my neck. The more I tried to concentrate on breathing, the harder it got. It got to the point that I was actually terrified that if I did somehow manage to fall asleep, I would stop breathing in my sleep and just die. The thought of waking up in the middle of the night choking to death didn’t appeal to me so much at the time. I even called my brother to come pick me up and take me to the hospital, but he wasn’t home, so I decided to give it about an hour and see if I felt any better. I don’t think I actually did feel any better an hour later; I think I was just too unmotivated to get to the hospital. Eventually I decided I didn’t care if I fell asleep and never woke up, so I waited till the next day and went to the urgent care unit at my new medical group. The doctor there told me that my lungs are fine and my heart is fine. He said my trouble breathing is due to anxiety. He didn’t even give me any medication. I think it’s kind of funny that you can go to the urgent care unit and tell them you can’t breathe, and they won’t do anything about it. But, I think he’s right. I’ve since noticed that if I’m watching a movie and getting scared or worked up somehow, I can’t breathe. If I get upset with someone, I can’t breathe. It’s definitely anxiety-related. I have an appointment tomorrow morning with my regular doctor, and I’m hoping desperately that she does something to help me out. If she doesn’t do something to help me, I think I’m just going to shoot myself in the head. Please, please, please let this do me some sort of good.
10/20/99
Happy drugs aren’t very happy at first. I went to the doctor two days ago, and she gave me a prescription for an antidepressant that’s used for treating anxiety, panic attacks, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Who would’ve ever known that the reason my hands were always going numb was due to panic attacks? I was all excited about the medication, and I expected it to help right away, but right now I feel very strange. I only started taking it yesterday, and already I’m fucked up. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I’m terrified I’m gonna puke. I just feel weird. My throat feels all gross and swollen, and I’m so thirsty. I suppose I’m slightly more aware of what’s going on around me, but I’m not sure. I notice I’m not getting as angry about things, but overall I’m not sure I like it. It’s just proving to me that a lot of people live in oblivion. I can actually feel myself getting pulled in.
10/22/99
The whole world should be on happy drugs. It’s like I have a bunch of little men in my head following every thought I have with, “...but it’s okay.” The world sucks...but it’s okay. I hate my life...but it’s okay. All of my friends are at each other’s throats...but it’s okay. It’s pretty cool. Not very interesting as far as living in my head goes, though. Things are a little less interesting, a little less bothersome, a little less of everything. There’s no denying the fact that I am much more capable of leading a normal existence with the help of these drugs. My concentration is better. I’m spending much more time in the present. But somehow I feel like I’m losing a big part of who I am. I feel like I’m being awakened after a long lapse into some other dimension of wakefulness. Two days ago, I looked in the mirror and felt as though I hadn’t seen that reflection since my early teens.
I feel like I can talk to Larke and actually be on her level of non-depressed. Almost. She’s the most non-depressed person I know. Or at least the most mentally well-off. I feel like I’m seeing things on a bit of a different level. Everything’s brighter, sharper, like a dark haze has been lifted from the world. I don’t need as much sleep. I don’t feel like I need to smoke. I don’t feel like I need to drink. It still isn’t helping the panic attacks, though.
10/29/99
I went to see a shrink today. It’s kind of a good thing, I think, since I hate the world again. She told me to start taking more of my happy drugs. Thank God.
Gale came in from Wyoming last night. He came in from Wyoming, and then took off after an hour or so to go see some of his other friends. What the fuck? He came in on a Thursday night, and he’s leaving Tuesday afternoon. Did he really have to go see them the day he came in? Then he told me he’d be back at 11:30, and he wasn’t back till midnight. Admittedly, that’s not so late, but I was already asleep when he got back, so he got all annoyed. He got in bed, and every time he touched me, I positively shuddered. It was horrible. It’s another side effect of those damn drugs. They told me there were side effects. What they didn’t tell me was that I’d be experiencing every single one of the side effects.
So Gale was annoyed that I didn’t want him touching me, and I was annoyed that he was touching me anyway. And then this morning, I asked him to stop by and see me at work since my boss was out for the day. Larke offered to bring him along so he could find it. Well, I showed up at work today after my appointment with the shrink, and I just happened to run into Larke on the street. No Gale. I figured it was okay because he must’ve decided to do something else. But then Larke told me he offered her a ride to school. So he came down here, dropped Larke off for class in the building next door, and didn’t even stop in to see where I work or anything--not even to say hello.
Now I don’t know where he went or when he’ll be back, and I have to sit around at home waiting for him to either call me or show up. I’m more than just a little annoyed. It’s almost like he doesn’t care at all. I thought my medication was helping, but all I want to do right now is throw things around, and yell, and scream, and kick my desk. I’m fuming, and I’m simmering here all by myself, allowing myself to feel worse and worse. It’s just a matter of time before life gets to be too much.
I don’t remember why I loved him. At all. I hate the world. But I hate the world on a strange new medicated level. I don’t know what to think. Am I jumping to conclusions here? Was I too drunk when I was hanging out with him in the spring? Was it the atmosphere? The change of lifestyle? The weather? Was I desperate? Crazy? I’m going out of my mind.
10/30/99
Today is the day before Halloween--my favorite time of year. Gale is in town after five months of not seeing him. You would think that would make me happy. You would think my happy drugs would make me happy. You would think maybe there was something in life that would make me happy. Gale can’t do it. The drugs can’t do it. I’m eternally damned to an existence of misery and abandonment.
Gale’s third day of being here and he has moved all of his stuff out and decided to sleep at his friend’s place tonight. What the fuck? Granted, I haven’t been exactly myself of late, but give me a break--I’m on drugs that rearrange the function of my brain. I’m on these drugs partially as a result of a suggestion from Gale. What I could really use right now is some support, and it’s all leaving me. I have nothing now--nothing to fall back on. I have no hope. Perhaps I was mistaken, but I was under the impression that Gale came here to visit me. That’s apparently not the case at all. He’s spending all of his time with his friends. He spent the entire fucking summer with his friends! Why does he need to see them every single day here? I haven’t even seen him during daylight yet. I don’t know what to think. I’m partially furious, partially devastated, and too sedated by the drugs to throw things around. I hate the world. It’s possible that Gale is thrown off by the fact that I won’t let him touch me much, but that’s not my fault; it’s a side effect of the drugs. I don’t know if I should understand his point of view or be mad that he’s not giving me the support I need. I’m leaning towards being mad. And sad.
10/31/99
What a lot of emotional trauma to put me right back where I started. Gale called me once today for about five minutes. He got a call for someone else on the other line, so he said he would call me back. He never did. He’s completely given up on me. I’ve completely given up on him. I hate him right now. I canceled plans I made two months ago for a concert last night just so I could hang out with him, and I didn’t. I stayed home all day today waiting for him to call me to get together, and he didn’t. I wasted my entire Halloween weekend waiting around for him. Now he’s nothing more than a fond memory of college. He’s another face in the crowd of people to create a time-line of my life from. Now he’s just a means for me to remember college. I made him into what I needed him to be. He can’t be that anymore.
11/2/99
The thought of ruining my entire Halloween weekend killed me, so Monday at work I called Gale’s friend’s place to leave a message for Gale to call me at work. He never called. I decided that I was going to go home and wait for him to call until 7:00, and if he didn’t call, I was going to just go out and get drunk to make up for the lack of a weekend. Well, instead, I ended up buying two bottles of wine on the way home, and I started drinking as soon as I walked in the door. At about 8:00, I got upset and called Braedon to come over and cheer me up. At about 8:15, after one and a half bottles of wine, I decided I was just too pissed to let it go, so I called around to Gale’s friends and tracked him down.
I finally got a number where he could be reached, so I called and Gale answered, “Hello?” And I said, “Hello?” We said several more hellos until I finally came out with, “What the fuck?” I told him to come over. He was here within half an hour. I then proceeded to very poetically tell him off. I gave him the world’s biggest guilt trip. I never thought my Catholic upbringing would come in so handy. I told him that I’m going through a really rough time, and all I need is support. I told him that I love him more than anything in the world, and it killed me not seeing him more while he was here. I told him I canceled plans for him and waited around for him to call. I told him I didn’t want to interfere with his friends, and I was waiting for him to come to me, but he never did. I told him so many things. They were all true, but I don’t even know where they came from. I didn’t know I could be so convincingly pissed. I’ve never actually done that before. I think yesterday was the first time in my life that I’ve been able to relieve frustration in a way that didn’t physically harm anyone. I’m very impressed with myself. I’m still pissed, but I’m not beating myself up. I’m mad at him, but I feel I represented my point well.
He came to meet me for lunch today at work. It was weird. We didn’t have much to say to each other. And I don’t know where we stand right now. He fucked up royally. I don’t know what could possibly fix this. The ball is in his court now. There will be no attempt on my part to contact him. I can’t believe what a lousy Halloween I had. I can’t believe that was Gale that was here.
11/3/99
I’m not as upset as I want to be. Perhaps it’s the drugs. Who knows? I’m very confused. Not much in life confuses me. I can usually come up with some sort of an explanation, but the Gale situation really just confuses me. I’m not mad. I’m not sad. I’m just confused. Admittedly, something was strange between us from the moment he got here. I kind of wonder if anything would have been better if I wasn’t on the medication yet. Probably. Then we could’ve spent the weekend drinking and fucking, and I would’ve been tearing my hair out and hating the world, but at least I would’ve been desperately needing him to keep me sane. I think it was me. I am different since the medication. He says he’s happy for me, but I think he feels cheated since he isn’t my only hope anymore.
Life is so strange now. I still hate a lot, but it’s okay. I don’t really get angry as much. Everything just sort of catches my attention and passes right along. Everything makes me wonder. I have a stronger sense of self-awareness, a stronger sense of self, a stronger sense of everything going on around me. But I still feel lonely. I’m not as afraid to be by myself, but I feel even more like I have something missing from myself. Whenever I’ve felt lonely these last few months, I would just think of Gale and it was all okay. Now I think of Gale, and it’s all not okay. I think of Gale, and I wonder what’s going on. I imagine I probably feel how he tells me he always feels--completely destroyed because someone I love truly believes I’m a horrible person.
11/4/99
I’ve been taking my medication for almost three weeks now. It’s not what I would call a reliable kind of thing as of yet. It seemed to help a lot when I first started taking it, but then it got progressively less useful. So the shrink told me to up my dose and that too helped for a few days and then started becoming ineffective. I wish it would just stay where it was the first couple days. Then I would be fine. This is kind of a fun process, though, I must admit. It’s kind of like I get to do E all the time, but it’s legal. It’s not quite as good, but legal is nice.
At first, I was amazed with the way it smacked me right back into everyone else’s reality. It was like awakening from a dream, like having a fog lifted from around my head. It was like I was finally freed from some sort of a weight of distance that I’d been dragging around for years. A few times, I actually thought I was entirely cured. I actually thought I was going to be able to continue living life as though nothing had ever gotten in the way. I don’t think that’s so true anymore. There are a lot of other things to think about.
First off, it not only changes the way I look at life right now, but it also changes the way I look at things that happened in the past. I picked up the journal of my last semester at school last night and again this morning. As I was reading through it, a lot of things seemed more clear than they ever did before--things like Gale. Of course, the current status of the Gale situation doesn’t help matters a lot, but I honestly think that was all just my own way to sort of hang on to college. It was me trying to deny that I was leaving and that college was ending. It was my way of reaching out desperately to grab onto something that could help keep at least a shred of my sanity intact.
Seeing Gale last weekend was horrible. It was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. He looked entirely different to me, but it wasn’t physically. It was like his aura was different, like he and I no longer had any sort of connection because whatever connection we had was entirely in my subconscious. It was a horrible, horrible realization. It was a smack in the face as to how far lost I have been for the last eight years of my life. And now I think he’s still lost and he needs help. I can’t see him as someone to help me because he’s not helping himself. I don’t have the longing for something to rely on because it’s since been implanted into my brain medically.
I don’t know. I’m on a different level now. I was somewhat concerned at first that I was going to hate it because it would make me stupid. I have heard that these kinds of drugs turn people into zombies. Not literally, of course, but they supposedly take away from whatever personality the person had previously. And I can see that. I truly can. I can understand that I have changed. I was concerned that it would make me stupid because being depressed gave me the impression that I was seeing reality more clearly than everyone else. Now I am so confused, I don’t know what to do. I’ve lived in two separate realities. How am I to know which one is the right one? Just because I’m happier doesn’t mean I’m seeing things realistically. If you ask me, reality is what causes depression, so saying that I’m seeing things realistically now is like saying that it’s healthier to just ignore it. And indeed, I think it is. It is definitely healthier to ignore the things in life that are depressing. I can argue for either side. On one hand it’s better to ignore the depression so you can rely on the drugs and enjoy life. After all, what’s the point of life if you can’t enjoy it? But on the other hand, what’s the point of life if you’re ignoring what’s really going on around you? I guess the only thing to gain from this whole discussion is the knowledge that no matter which way you look at it, life has no point. You either fully understand it and hate every second of it, or you ignore truth and try to make the best of a worthless existence. In my opinion, you can only truly enjoy life if you are too stupid to understand it. The drugs can help make me happier and more indifferent about hating everything, but they can’t make me stupid. It’s like I know too much already and there’s no going back.
Larke tried to tell me the other day that she tries to think of it as getting the better of life. She tries to tell herself that she’s fighting the battle and not letting it get to her. She tries to say, “Fuck the world--I won’t let it beat me.” I don’t know about that. I think she might be one of the stupid people. There’s no way she could possibly think that way and still know things the way I know them. I’m very jealous of her serotonin; it doesn’t spin wildly out of control every time something goes wrong.
I’ve completely lost track of why I’m trying to become happy. I’ll admit that the drugs definitely gave me back a lot of my concentration. I’m much more effective in conversation. I’m much more able to think about the future. I’m much more capable of thinking things through logically rather than just knowing through emotion and atmosphere. Of course, I’ve lost of lot of my grasp on the less prominent things in my environment. I’ve lost my ability to know if people are lying just by the tenseness in the air. I’ve lost my ability to know what people are feeling--not completely, but it’s definitely diminished. And I care less about what they feel because I have to be concerned with how I feel right now. I have to reevaluate everything I’ve ever known in my entire existence as an adult. I think that qualifies me as more important than most other people in my life right now.
So I am putting myself first because I am relieved of a lot of unnecessary guilt. I feel more able to lead a normal existence with the occasional blip of happiness on the heart monitor of a depressing life. But why do the drugs not work everyday? Today, for instance, I feel really strange. I feel just as removed from awareness as I did a few months ago. I feel a little dizzy and a little tired and a little like I’m not myself. I keep looking at my hands and wondering why I don’t feel like they’re attached, kind of like what you might expect to feel if you were in Being John Malkovich. I feel like I’m looking through a tube, like I’m seeing life like a racehorse with blinders. My vision is blurry. My head feels heavy. I feel kind of limp and soft like I’m a Gumby bendy toy. Things aren’t just passing sights, they cause an actual disturbance in my train of thought. For instance, I just looked at the stapler. Instead of taking it for granted that there is always a stapler there on my desk, I looked at it and thought, “Stapler,” and everything around it faded into the background, leaving the stapler to float mysteriously in front of everything else.
I’m unusually fascinated by light and colors. I have always had sort of a fascination with colors, but yesterday I sat on the curb in front of my building here at work and I just stared at the changing leaves blowing in the wind for awhile, noticing how beautiful they were and how the light reflected off of them. I noticed how the light changed the way everything looked. To my right, everything was bright and colorful and beautiful and cheery, but to my left, everything was black. Everything was black, and it hurt my eyes because the sun was so bright behind it all. The sun was glaring in my eyes and seemed to illuminate everything with action and movement that wouldn’t have been there without the light. And the light, aside from hurting my eyes, feels wonderful. It seems to soak into my skin like I’m a plant gaining strength and growing from its power.
I don’t feel like myself. I feel like I’m someone else. I think I’m having a particularly bad day. Well, tomorrow I get to increase the dosage again, so perhaps that will help. If it turns out that this drug is not the right one, I don’t know how much patience I’m going to have to keep looking. This is not an easy situation, and I lack the ambition to care.
A stuffed frog is sitting on top of the cubicle wall next to me, and I feel like I just can’t handle that.
Now, I wanted to mention that my tendency to want to cut myself has not diminished at all. I think it’s because that began as a depression thing, went to an anger thing, and evolved into a just because I want to thing. So an anti-depressant is not really gonna help that. I don’t think. In fact, I kind of want to cut myself right now just to see how it feels. I want to know if it feels any different. I want to know if it bleeds faster or slower because of the chemical. I want to know if I’m numbed to pain at all. I want to think about cutting myself in my new reality.
My God, everything is so interesting. Everything seems to be in slow motion--or choppy, like a Japanese cartoon. And my hands look so weird. I don’t get it. Why is it so strange that I can see my hands in front of me? Why is it so strange to think that they are attached to the same body that contains the brain that is thinking right now? Why can I not be normal?
11/8/99
For awhile, my drugs allowed me to exist alcohol-free and perfectly happy. Today, though, I had the overwhelming desire to stop at the wine store on the way home from work. Ever since a little incident with a bottle of Stoli a few weeks ago, I haven’t been able to drink hard liquor. So I’ve had five bottles of wine in the last week or two. Pretty soon, I’m going to be on a first-name basis with the people in the wine store.
It’s a Monday night. Why did I feel the need to buy yet another bottle of wine? It’s almost gone already. My drugs are not helping a lot right now. I just increased the dose again two days ago, and I still don’t feel any better. I sat down with my nice dinner tonight in front of the TV with my bottle of wine, and I started going crazy. If I wasn’t on the medication, it probably would’ve turned into a panic attack, but instead it was me sitting on the couch watching TV and harboring such tenseness that I just had to periodically punch the pillows. I suppose it’s better than just retaining all that tension and releasing it some other physical way, but I’m not sure. It’s rather annoying.
It’s also rather annoying that I’m getting increasingly confused as to who I am. I can stare, and stare, and stare at myself in the mirror for hours, and I just get really confused. I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing. I don’t know why I stare at myself in the mirror. I haven’t the slightest idea what I look like. I don’t know if the drugs are reprogramming the operations of my brain and telling me I’m outside of my own body, or what, but I never know what’s going on. I think I’m having an identity crisis.
11/11/99
Here I am, sitting in the doctor’s office. This is no fun at all...but it’s okay. The doctor refilled my prescription today. Thank God. I told her how it helps me see more clearly, and she said lots of people say that. I love this drug. I think it’s finally leveling out some. The little men in my head have stopped throwing temper tantrums, and everything is okay. The biggest problems now are the side effects.
The touching thing and the complete lack of a sex drive are no big change for me, but I’m beginning to wonder what it would be like to actually enjoy sex. I don’t really think it’s possible for me, but at least I’m wondering. Also, I’m constantly hot. It’s November, I’ve been wandering around in T-shirts, and I’m still sweating profusely. I’ll be sitting at my desk at work, I won’t have moved for hours, and I still get all sweaty. So that sucks. I’m trying to decide if it’s better than being incapable of interacting with other people.
The last side effect is probably the most annoying of the bunch. Whenever I would ordinarily get outlandishly tense and upset, nearing the point of another panic attack, I get these very strange muscle spasms. I’ll be sitting alone, pondering the worthlessness of life, and how it’s okay now, I’ll wonder why I’m not getting all tense and upset, and then I’ll just spasm. It’s like I’m suddenly trying to jump out of my skin. It’s like a demon is being exorcised from my soul. It’s like the little men in my head now have little buzzers that give me an electric shock every time I think too much. It’s interesting, but it makes me feel completely crazy. The people around me in the doctor’s office probably think I’m beyond wacko because I’m sitting here writing quietly, and then I bolt upright and look around wildly for whatever is trying to escape from my head.
I notice as I’m sitting here that today I’m aware of what’s going on around me while I’m writing. This is extremely unusual. Usually, when I’m writing, I completely lose track of everything else. Usually, everything disappears. Usually, I’m mentally spotlighted at a table by myself with my pen and my journal, and everything else is backstage in the darkness. This is amazing! I’m sitting here writing, and I know what’s going on around me! I do still feel like more of an observer than a participant, though. I feel like I’m here in the world to observe, take notes, and put them together into a coherent explanation of all the things no one else understands. I wonder if I’m ever going to be able to just live my own life instead of trying to put all the nonsensical things in the world’s environment into some sort of order? I’m just curious about whether it’s possible. It doesn’t really matter one way or the other. Everything’s okay. It’s kind of nice to be able to say everything’s okay because I know I’m crazy. It’s much less stressful than wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Whenever things get to me, I just remember that I’m crazy, and it’s okay. The world isn’t falling apart. I don’t have to worry constantly about what everybody thinks of me. I’m crazy. It’s okay. I think I may still need to increase my dose a little because some little things still piss me off too much. Like happy people. Background noise. Babies crying. But my God, everything’s so much better. There’s a lot going on in the world. Who knew? I can’t believe my trouble was all just a chemical imbalance.
11/24/99
As soon as I leave work today, I’m headed off to the airport to go home for Thanksgiving. For the first time since I’ve moved out of the house for college, I’m looking forward to going home. Theoretically, it should be an entirely new experience for me. Whenever I set foot in my hometown, I usually feel that dark weighted cloud return to haunt me. It’s like I set foot in the town and suddenly the whole idea of death surrounds me. All I can think about it Dante. It’s horrible. But this time, it should all be new. Considering how everything I look at is new and different and somehow completely tolerable, everything at home should be too, right? I’m trying to decide if it would be a good idea for Mom and Dad to read my book or not. I want them to, but I don’t know how they would react to it. I kind of think they’d worry a little bit too much. I’m sure they still wouldn’t understand, but at least they’d have something to go on. At least they’d have some idea of who I really am. That would be really nice.
I think this may very possibly be the first time in my life that I’m satisfied with who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing. I’m twenty-one years old and this is the first time I’m completely happy. This is the first time I’m not losing my mind. Even when things were good with Gale, I knew something was wrong. Even then, I knew I was only happy because he was there for me to dump all my frustrations on him. I wasn’t truly happy.
All this time I was right. Every time I was happy, it was just a matter of time until I came down hard and was depressed again. I was only happy through a veil of tears. I knew it. Why did it not occur to me that medication might help that? I don’t think I really believed it. I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life. I feel much younger than I have in the last few years, but I still feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time. I can’t even imagine how much better I could’ve done in school if I had been convinced that it was even remotely worthwhile.
The feeling I have right now is one of complete and total wholeness. I feel at one with myself. I feel like I just had an hour of yoga. I feel like I’m ready and able to do anything. I feel like I might want to do something for the sheer joy of doing it. God, it’s the strangest feeling. I wonder if it was possible for me to have died from what was happening to my body? It would make perfect sense to me if that were the case. It seems to me that my body was wearing down so quickly and effectively that it was physically slowing down. I think my body was trying to acquaint itself with the stillness and coldness of the world. I’m not sure, but I think it’s in Crime and Punishment that Dostoyevsky says the time when you’re most likely to see a ghost is when you’re sick or dying because your spirit is weak and therefore more like the spirit of a ghost. That’s what was happening to me. My spirit was weakening and my soul was tired. I was becoming a ghost of myself. My body functions were all slowing down. My ability to get out of bed every morning was getting almost to the point of becoming an impossibility. I thought I was just lazy. I thought maybe I just required an inordinate amount of sleep. I thought maybe it was me, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t me. For the first time since I can remember, I feel like I’m not letting myself down by being me.
11/24/99
I’m home in Pittsburgh for the first time since July. Or maybe it was June. I don’t know. Whenever it was, it was a long time ago, and whoever I was then, I am no longer. I thought coming home might be easier with the whole drug thing recently. I thought the possibility existed for me to come home and actually be happy. What was I thinking? I was actually considering letting Mom and Dad read my book. I was considering giving them a bit of a glimpse into my head. I thought maybe I had been too quick to judge. I thought maybe they had recently come to a realization. I thought maybe if I gave them the chance, they might be able to understand. They will never understand. They will never know. The things that are everyday occurrences in my world don’t even exist in their world. How could I ever have expected them to understand?
I knew things were going to look different. I was prepared to be amazed by what I saw when I first stepped over the threshold into my childhood home. I had hoped my drugs would make me see it in a good way. That is not the case. I walked in and I was immediately struck by how small everything looked. I felt like I was stepping into my elementary school building. I couldn’t believe how much smaller everything looked. It was like I was witnessing a real-life miniature snow village or something. It was like I was Alice, just having eaten a cake that made me gargantuan in relation to the house. It has only been a few months. Why does everything seem so small?
Everything is warm and colorful and comfortable. It makes me want to cry, but since I don’t know how to cry, I end up staring inefficaciously into space, hoping the dream will turn out to be just that: a dream. I’m even more confused about my identity now. When I look in the mirror, my reflection seems to ask me who I am and it looks at me with a peculiarly scrutinizing glare. All of the posters have been removed from the walls. They’re now entirely white. They have now been entirely cleansed of the tiny smudge of myself I had tried to leave behind. It is so cold and lonely here. My own room doesn’t recognize me. The drugs do make things clearer, but it’s certainly not uplifting. I feel more deserted in a room with my family than I do on a deserted street in the middle of the night in Boston. I thought I was alienated before, but now I know it to be fact. I am alone. I am cold, lonely, and miserable in the place that I call home. I feel so out of place. I feel like I should have to check out at the concierge desk before I leave. I feel like I’m sitting at a dinner table with someone else’s family. I don’t think I belong anywhere. I am such a tortured soul. I wish I could believe there was a reason for what I’m going through.
11/30/99
I can’t breathe. How long have I been on the medication now? Four weeks? Five weeks? Who knows? Whatever it’s been, it’s been way too long for me to be just discovering a problem now. About half an hour ago, I was sitting here at my desk at work, trying to get ready to go to lunch when nothing happened. Nothing happened that would have or should have sparked a panic attack, but all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. One minute, I could breathe. The next, I was running to the bathroom trying not to let my lungs explode before I got there. This was the most sudden one I have ever had. Generally I see them coming, but this time I was completely shocked. I was just sitting quietly at my desk! What the hell? I’m still having trouble breathing, but at least I’ve calmed down somewhat.
I thought I just had to cough, so I tried to cough and I couldn’t. Then I felt a tickle in my throat, so I tried to clear my throat and I couldn’t. I took a sip of water and it seemed to help for a moment, but then it came back and was even worse. I got up and ran to the bathroom choking. I closed the door behind me and looked in the mirror. My eyes were completely red and bloodshot and tearing incessantly. My chest was bright red and splotchy. My hands were shaking. The only thing I could do was stand there and wonder why I couldn’t breathe. Eventually, I started coughing like crazy and I had to brace myself against the wall to keep from falling over. My knees were weak and my head was heavy. All I wanted to do was lay down and fall asleep so I could wake up to find that I had been dreaming.
I’m at work! I don’t want to have to deal with this at work! Why does this not happen to other people? I understand that it does happen to other people, but it’s never happened to anyone I’ve ever known. No one I’ve talked to about this has mentioned knowing anyone else that this happens to either. It’s not fair. I hate my life. I feel like such a spoiled little brat of a teenager saying something like that, but I hate my life. I can look around on the street any day of the week and see several people that are homeless or starving or freezing cold, and I just can’t fathom the possibility that what they are feeling is worse than this. I can’t trust my own body to support me. I can’t trust my mind to support me. I can’t trust anything to support me. I am falling apart. Every time I think it can’t get worse, I find out that I’m wrong. I am watching myself go crazy. I have half of a sane brain and half of a crazy brain. I like to think I’m generally sane, but I always get flashes of not sane. I always get reminders of my insanity. It’s like I’m my own psychiatrist, but I’m not schooled in ways to help myself. All I can do is sit and watch myself become something else. I don’t even know what I’m becoming, but it’s not human and it’s not sane.
I don’t know what’s going on. The world is disintegrating around me and I’m the only one who can see it. It’s like the world became a window and someone just hit it with a hammer so I can watch it as it falls on me and cuts me into tiny little unrecognizable shreds of myself. It’s like I’m living in a video game and whoever’s controlling me doesn’t know how to play the game.
12/3/99
My shrink told me today that it might not be a bad idea for me to let my parents read my book. I think she’s right. A large part of my issue is that I feel like I have to hide everything. Sooner or later, you just get sick of hiding things. Something’s got to give. Secrets are no fun at all.
My shrink also mentioned to me that I seem to prefer being alone over spending time with people. Again, I think she’s right. I always thought of myself as such a party person, such a people person, someone who cannot ever be entirely alone without going crazy. It’s still true that I am that way, but at least now I realize that I am much happier when I am writing alone at work or in my room. I actually enjoy being at work and typing away on my computer even when no one else is around on the same floor. I kind of like to know that someone is downstairs at least, but it doesn’t really bother me that it’s quiet. Silence always used to drive me crazy. I wonder if that means I only hate silence when there are too many people around for it to be quiet? I don’t know. At least when I’m in the city, I know that people are always nearby. I still can’t even fathom the thought of being alone in a wide open space like a field or a valley or anything in the outdoors. Maybe it’s the distance that scares me. Who knows?
I’m considering telling the shrink the next time I go that I want to try a different medication. I’m not sure, but I am definitely thinking about it. Something still tells me I could be happier. When I was telling the shrink about the little men in my head that tell me everything’s okay, she said, “Do you think it’s the medication or the creation of these little men that’s making it okay?” I thought it was rather funny. Perhaps I should clarify when I’m speaking metaphorically. I am a poet in my own right, after all. Everything in life is a metaphor to me. Things are so much more understandable to me when they’re interpreted through a metaphor. It’s like the suggestion of something describes it more fully than the actual description would. If you’re given a metaphor with which to work, the average person can take it and go with it to whatever extent their brain allows. My brain allows me to take a metaphor to the end, to the truth before which so many people stop just short. Metaphors are the best means of clarification to me, the best means by which to compare things, the best means by which to explain things, the best way for me to describe who I am and how I think.
I wonder why I have to explain myself? I wonder why I can’t just live? My boss said to me this morning when he came in that he loves coming into work. He said the only thing he’d rather do than come to work is practice his trombone. I think that’s amazing. I enjoy coming to work, but it’s only because it generally allows me to write. I think there is nothing I would rather do than sit alone and write. Why did I not realize this sooner? Why could I not write for several years in the middle of college? I wonder if I stopped writing because I didn’t have the time or if I stopped writing because I didn’t have anything interesting to say? Or maybe I just didn’t like writing then. I don’t know.
I like writing and singing for the same reason. I like those two things so much because I do them well and I do them entirely by myself. I don’t enjoy singing with other people. I can’t write when other people are around. They can be around, but not close to me and certainly not talking to me. During both things, I lose myself into some strange meditative state. I don’t know if this is a normal thing or not. I don’t know if it’s logical for me to suddenly have blurry vision and no sense as to what else is going on when I’m involved in my singing or my writing. It’s probably not a good thing that my hands used to go numb when I sang well. I was either not getting enough oxygen, or I was allowing myself to be completely immersed into a fourth dimension of wakefulness. It’s like I go somewhere else. It’s like I become someone else. It’s like something is taking over my fingers and writing it for me or singing it for me. Sometimes I like to think of it as a spirit of some sort, an additional soul, or a ghost that has decided to use me as a channel for its thoughts. I don’t really understand where thoughts come from.
Actually, a lot of things are getting very hard for me to understand. I don’t understand anything anymore. I don’t understand where the words I write come from. I don’t understand where the voice I have comes from. This must be why everyone else in my family is into math or science. They need the explanations. They need the written answers. They need something to see in front of them to convince them that it’s a solid art form with which they are intermingling. I, on the other hand, would rather go out looking for my own answers. I would rather sit around writing all the time just so I can return to my prior writings to do research, study, and interpretation of my own life. I want to know if there are parallels somewhere in the universe that no one has yet discovered. I want to know if there are ideas in my brain that have never been thought by anyone else before.
I am simply dissatisfied with knowing something just is. I need to know why it is. It’s not enough to know that the stars are made up of gases. I need to know where the gases came from and for what purpose they arrived. The fact that I enjoy writing is not good enough for me. I need to know why I enjoy writing. I need to know what part of the brain it is that makes some people decide they like chocolate and some people decide they like vanilla. I need to know how that part of the brain works and how it gets out of whack and how it can be fixed. I need to take things further. I need to beat them into the ground. I need to think and think until it’s not possible to think anymore. It can get very taxing on the emotions.
I suppose it’s this curiosity about the brain and the human thought process that inspires people to become psychiatrists, psychologists, or social workers. It’s the interest in the alien parts of humanity that so many people find fascinating. It’s the force that drives people to try and understand themselves through learning about their fellow man.
12/12/99
Today I woke up and went into the living room with my coffee to relax for awhile. I was going to watch some TV, but nothing of much interest was on so I turned it off and just sat there. Nothing is more gratifying than sitting quietly with a hot cup of coffee on a Sunday afternoon in December. After a little while, Larke came in and turned on MTV. She started watching some sort of a millennium countdown of the best music videos of all time. I wouldn’t ordinarily have been interested in that, either, except that the first video I caught a glimpse of was Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” That’s the only music video I can say I really, really like. It’s an amazing video. It reminds me of how I felt in high school, so I watched that video and I ended up staying to watch some more because I was too lazy to move.
After the countdown ended, MTV had some sort of a countdown of the top ten news stories of 1999. I have successfully avoided watching the news for years. I hate the news. I have always hated the news. I hate hearing about the news stories. My parents watch the ten o’clock news every night at home. Every time they used to turn it on, I’d get up and leave the room. I can’t stand watching the news. Of course, when MTV said they were counting down the top ten news stories of the year, I thought they meant music news. I thought that for awhile since one of the stories was about the riots at Woodstock this year. Apparently, though, not all the stories were about music. The number one news story on their countdown was the Columbine High School shootings. While I had heard the school mentioned periodically all year long, I pretty much successfully avoided the lurid details of it. I hadn’t seen any of the news coverage of the shootings until today.
What I saw on TV today was the perfect example of why I can’t stand the news. I watched as the cops pulled some kid out of a second story window. I saw the doors to the school with shattered windows and a body lying at the bottom of the doors on the outside. The body was lying there in a giant pool of blood with broad, majestic music dubbed in the background. I’m not sure what it was, but when I saw that body and that pool of blood, something in my brain clicked. Something in my brain suddenly needed to see more blood--and especially Columbine blood. I couldn’t move after having seen the beautiful sight of all that blood. I just stared in disbelief at the TV screen. Either the news has changed since I used to watch it, or I never noticed how graphic it could get. Why did they have to show that? What the hell was the point of showing it with clips of music? I remember being completely offended when they showed Corbin’s blood on the news after the hit and run. I can’t even imagine what the family of that body thinks when they see the footage of their son or daughter lying there in a huge pool of blood for the whole world to see. I couldn’t even tell if it was a girl or a guy. All I saw was a human body and a pool of real blood. You don’t get to see that very frequently in the real world. I can’t believe the news would do that! Haven’t the newscasters ever known someone that they’ve done a story on? Don’t they know how much it hurts to see the blood of someone you know on the TV screen? I don’t think they do.
I can’t decide if I should be offended or not. I'm offended that the news media would show that, but in another way, I’m pleased that there is somewhere for me to turn on the television and see something even more interesting than a movie. I’m dying to see more blood. I need to see it. It’s like a hunger. I want to see it, and I want to feel it. I want to see all of the news coverage from that day. I want to know the whole story. I want to get to know all the facts so that I can become a part of the story. I want to make it into my own journey. I’m not sure why all of a sudden I want to see all of this news. I know I like the blood, but I thought the news was all boring political debates about stuff that I don't care at all about. Apparently, I was wrong once again. It’s all about the blood. It’s all about stories of the people who have more interesting lives than everyone who’s sitting at home watching their life on TV.
In a way, I always thought people watched the news as a means of getting to know the status of the world around them a little better. I thought they watched it because it made them feel better about themselves. I thought they watched it because it told them what was going on. I always thought they figured if they were aware of how bad things could get, all those bad things wouldn’t happen to them. They seemed to watch it to familiarize themselves with the horrible events so the chances of it happening to them would be lessened. The more aware you are of what’s going on, the more you can try to avoid it, right? No! Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with people? Well, if the news is there for me to watch lots of blood, I’m going to start watching it. People can’t think less of me for trying to familiarize myself with what’s going on in the world around me, right? It’ll make me look studious. It might even make me look like I care. What can the news and the stories of all the people around me teach me about myself, though? All I seem to be getting out of this is the knowledge that my medication allows me to watch the news when I couldn’t before. Any mention of the news over the last several years would’ve sent me into seclusion. Any mention of the news would've made me irritated and aggravated to the point that I would have had to leave the room.
I remember when I first heard about the bombing in Oklahoma. I remember my Mom asking me if I’d heard about the bombing. I got so angry that she thought I would care. Why would I care what’ s going on halfway across the country? Why would I care what’s going on in anyone’s life other than my own? Why should I? Why should I watch someone else’s pain? Why should I multiply my pain when I can’t even handle my own? What could I possibly do about the stories on the news? Worry? That’s all I would do! I’d spend all my time feeling like the world is going to shit and then I’d be so afraid of what’s out there on the streets that I’d never leave the house! What’s the point in being afraid? Why would I want to be afraid? Right now, I’m not afraid of anything. I am aware that sometimes bad things happen and it really sucks, but I also know that worrying about them won’t help matters at all. Why would I force myself to worry about things that have absolutely nothing to do with me?
I always thought of the news as something that gave adults topics of conversation to talk about with each other. It gives people some common interests. Whenever you see people meeting at parties, they’re always talking about the news and how horrible everything is. Great--the news media allows us to talk with new and interesting people. Big deal. I don’t understand the concept. What is the news really for? I know what’s out there. I don’t need to know any more than what I hear on the morning show on the radio. I certainly don’t need to see the blood and guts of people I know on television. If it’s the blood and guts of someone I don’t know, apparently it’s okay.
I remember seeing the Challenger blow up. I remember seeing the coverage of the earthquake in San Francisco at the 1988 World Series. I remember seeing the coverage of the car bomb in the World Trade Tower. I remember seeing the video of JFK’s assassination once in social studies class in high school. I remember a few years ago, some stunt pilot at the Pittsburgh Regatta lost control of his plane and plunged to his death in the river below. They must’ve showed that fifty times a day on TV, even on a news brief in the middle of a cartoon like the Animaniacs or something. What’s the point in showing that? It’s like the news media knows that’s what people really want to see, but nobody is willing to admit to that being the case. You never hear people say, “I like to watch people die on the evening news. I like to watch the news because of all the blood. I like to watch the news because I’m in touch with the darker side of humanity.” Anyone who might say these things would be considered sick or twisted, and yet the news knows that’s what America wants to see. Why don’t people come to their senses? Why don’t people admit to themselves who they really are? Do you really watch the news to make yourself smarter? Does anyone watch the news for any reason other than to see bad things happen so they can feel better about themselves? Hell, I’m gonna start watching the news so I can see blood. It’s cheaper than going to see Die Hard 4 or yet another version of Scream, and it’ll make me sound like an upstanding and highly aware member of my falling to shit society. I can’t wait to see more news about this Columbine thing.
12/13/99
Susan didn’t understand how I thought the incidents following Columbine may have been avoided if the media hadn’t made such a big deal about it. She was convinced that it was a big deal and they needed to make such a big deal about it because schools have always been a safe place for kids to go. See, I don’t think that’s true. There have always been issues as far as bullies in school go, and while there’s obviously a huge difference between a school bully and two kids planning out a massacre with guns, it’s the same principle. There will always be frustrated kids in schools. There will always be kids with problems. There will always be parents that by all rights should have raised a perfectly “normal” child. There will always be access to guns. There will always be a way for bad things to happen to good people. It just makes sense to me that if the media hadn’t made such a huge deal about it, students wouldn’t have responded by getting so out of control around the rest of the country. My reaction to horrible situations is to throw myself as deeply as possible into them soas to make sure I’m not the victim. I go completely around in circles, trying to ensure that I am the one in control, that I am the one with the gun, that I am the one with the knife, that I am the one who is killing instead of being killed. If you are the killer, what do you have to be afraid of? Doesn’t it make sense that high school kids would find themselves at a loss for what to do in case of a massacre in their school? Their reaction would be to panic and try to avoid being the one killed, the one paralyzed, the one dragged out of a window bleeding all over the cops never able to walk again.
I think my tendency to react this way to things is because I’m mad that I didn’t get the attention. I don’t understand what makes Columbine such a big deal. If Dante’s brother getting fucking killed by a hit and run driver that was never found doesn’t make the world stop, doesn’t get me an invitation to the White House from the President of the United States, then why does Columbine? I realize my experience is not the same kind of grief as losing a child or a teacher, but it’s the same premise. It’s the same inability to deal with the concept of death. Why didn’t the world care about me? Why does the world care about this school that was nowhere near them? Why don’t they spend time analyzing their own lives in an effort to make their own lives better?
Susan and I were sitting in the food court at the mall the other day, and we were talking over pizza. She asked me at first if I would find it wrong for someone to kill someone I love. I said no. She asked if I thought it would be wrong for someone to just stand up and start shooting around the food court in the mall, and I just looked around and smiled because all I could picture were the bright white floors covered with blood and the colorful tables and clothing scattering as the people ran screaming for their lives. I thought it would be cool. I’d give anything to stir up a little more excitement in my life, anything to make me think, anything to see something new, to take my mind off of the pain.
In the Columbine situation, what makes me the most angry is that the kids who did that shit didn’t get enough attention. The only difference between them and myself is that they actually did it and I to this point have not. I feel sorry for them. Obviously, they are more fucked up than I am. Well, they were. Obviously, something was wrong and no one could help them. Obviously, they needed help and no one was there to fix things for them. No one was there to tell them that they don’t need to kill. You might think they shouldn’t need to be told, but apparently they did. I wish I could come out with something that would fix the situation, something you could say to a crazy person that would make them understand your point of view, but there isn’t anything. There isn’t anything that would convince them to see things your way.
I told Susan that the difference between her world and mine is so vastly different that I don’t even want her to attempt to understand because I know she can’t. There’s no way she could understand it. The world in which she lives and the world in which I live are two entirely different entities. I think more people live in her world, but I think my world makes more sense. How can people say I’m wrong that things make sense? How can the way my brain works be wrong? I’m a smart person. I’m one of the smartest people I know. I have an IQ well above genius level. How can I be wrong? How can they see reality more clearly than I can? That doesn’t make any sense at all! Of course I admit to the possibility that I can be wrong, but I find myself to be just as right as everyone else does. I know if anyone ever reads this, they’re going to wonder how I can think this way. My question to them is, how can you think your way? How can you think I’m wrong when the way I think is just as rational as the way you think? My way is just different! My way is just part of a different reality than yours. My way is, as far as I’m concerned, more logical. There is no such thing as God. There is no such thing as good. There is no such thing as a reason for anything. Everything sucks, everything is irrational and illogical and entirely futile, everything that is good is the creation of the mind of the person seeing it. It is the creation of the mind of the person who wants it to be there or needs it to be there to remain sane. Fuck sanity--it makes people crazy.
Those kids at Columbine were just like me. Those kids were like me in that they had the same sorts of thoughts that I have. One of them was on medication to make his brain work better. I think insanity is the world’s way of keeping the sane people quiet. It’s the world’s way of ensuring that the people who understand the world correctly don’t do anything about it. If you give us drugs, we’re likely to be able to plan out ways to kill the world better. We’re likely to think that everything’s okay. It’s okay to kill. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. Killing was okay before my drugs, but I wasn’t about to go do it. I wasn’t about to justify it. I just thought about it a lot. I’m not insane. Help. You don’t know how much it sucks to be me. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I don’t like feeling sorry for myself, but the thoughts that are in my head are taking up too much room. It’s like I’m an old computer with too many programs on it--eventually I’m going to crash. What if I don’t want to? I’m losing to myself and I don’t know how or why.
12/17/99
You know what? I’m not crazy. Everyone else is crazy. Everyone else above the age of twenty-five is crazy. Everyone who thinks that the world is not a horrible place in which to live is crazy. Everyone who thinks that America’s youth is crazy is unfathomably wrong. America’s youth is too smart. America’s youth is too independently intellectual. They grow up researching things on the web just because it’s the only thing they have to do. They grow up watching TV and seeing people get blown up, not by the movies or the sitcom characters, but by the news and the news media. The news is not supposed to show things like that! The news is supposed to help the world, enlighten the world, make the world find something out of the awful things that they don’t see everyday. The news is supposed to show the world what is being done to destroy civilization as we know it, and instead, they glorify it! They make it into something that people go out of their way to become! They make it into something that is worthy of the prostration of hordes of worshipers, throwing themselves at the feet of yet another god they don’t understand. They made me who I am. They made me hate the world. It’s all their fault.
I think the world needs someone like me to tell them what they’re doing. I think the world needs someone like me to lead the way. The world needs someone like me because I’m intelligent, I’m inspired, I’m fucked in the head and I denounce the fantasy world that we’re being told to believe in! The end of the world is going to come soon. We’re going to spontaneously combust. We’re going to end up screwing ourselves over because everyone’s going on mind-altering medication before the age of fifteen. We’re going to end up killing each other because there’s nothing else to do! We’re going to end up giving all of our children a drug we don’t understand because no one is smart enough to go out and fix it. All we need is a drug that calms down the serotonin levels in the brain without making people murder.
I feel fairly confident that the world is going to be taken over by people that are on drugs like mine. I feel fairly confident that everyone who isn’t taking the drugs is going to become a minority. There are so many people that are on these drugs. The drugs make everything okay. This is going to make for a lot of people that are pissed off at the world and are ready to use their intelligence. I can feel myself getting smarter day by day. I can feel myself getting thoughts that shouldn’t be there. I can feel myself getting thoughts that make me think things are possible that might not actually be possible, but it’s okay and it’s worth a try. Look at what happened at Woodstock this year--the people in the crowd were all fucking rolling on E or tripping on acid and they decided to take matters into their own hands and destroy something. You have to destroy something to make a scene. You have to punch through a window if you expect someone to listen to what you’re saying. You have to make a scene and cause some trouble and frighten someone, or you’re just among the masses of people who don’t make a difference.
I can’t remember how many times I sat in the living room of my house, listening to my parents give me a lecture of some sort, looking at the window in the kitchen wishing I could just go over and punch through it. I should have. Now I would. I absolutely would. It’s not that I’m violent or aggressive or distressed, it’s just that no one in my life has ever stopped to listen to me. This generation is too strong, and the last generations are too passive. We’re going to start a lot of fires. We’re going to cause a lot of problems. We’re going to kill a lot of people until someone stops to listen to us. We’re going to do whatever it takes because we’ve been forced to live our lives as someone else. We’ve been forced through religion after religion, knowing full well that the only thing true about them is the fact that people older than us need them to stay sane. Maybe we’ll go insane, but that’s not the issue. The issue is to take over the world by any means necessary. The issue is to teach people what is true about life. The issue is that we are discovering what everyone else has successfully ignored. We are the generation that is discovering it. It will make us crazy, but it will get us somewhere. It will result in one of two things: it will either cause us to start the world anew with truths and make it easier for our children to survive without going insane, or it will spark the apocalypse. We might be the end of the world. We might be the generation that becomes too smart for our own good. We might get to the point that nothing is left to discover, and we are all going to die. The end of civilizations happens. It’s just a matter of when. It’s just a matter of how smart the people get.
The simplest analogy I can think of is the Santa Clause issue. Santa doesn’t exist. Everyone knows that. Four year olds know that. It’s in every new Christmas song, every new Christmas commercial, it’s everywhere. Who the hell is going to keep on believing in Santa Clause? I learned that Santa was nonexistent when I was in fifth grade. For a fifth grader now to not know that Santa is a figment of the imagination would be basically unheard of. My little sister came to me when she was in first grade and said to me, “Santa isn’t real.” She’s only five years younger than me. Look at the difference in such a short time. All the mystery is gone. Everything’s getting faster and better. Everything’s getting darker and more superficial, but at least everyone knows it. Everyone knows that there’s nothing to believe in. Why would we believe in something that liars told us? What made you stupid enough to believe it when your parents told it to you?
If I wanted to take over the world, I would start to work for a pharmaceutical company. I’d get my fucking degree in chemistry, and I’d go out there designing drugs that would be prescribed for depression, and then take over someone’s brain. It may have already been done. It may have been done to me. I may be the product of a scientific experiment. The problem with depression these days is that everyone thinks there’s something wrong with it. Yes, it is real. Yes, it makes you incapable of dealing with a normal life, but normalcy is being redefined. The parents that put children on drugs are trying to medically alter their thinking so the kids become stupid enough to listen to them. Anyone who has kids now is crazy--crazy or stupid. You can’t keep your kid from becoming smarter than you. Every generation is going to speed up until all that’s left is a smoldering, ashen earth of facades taken down by the flames. Life sucks.
I am not myself. I am generally not myself. I am generally jesussllllliiiaajii am not myself tiehsiek figment of imagination.s iroee. I am jesus. I am not in my own body. I am being taken over by sliehtihndkthiellang. I am being taken over by the ondlerghekrnalcicnd.. Help.
What the fuck? See? Something is taking over my fingers and trying to write. What is that? Where does that come from? If you just let yourself sit and write, or sit and type, and you just keep going no matter what, you find out all sorts of cool shit. You find out that you’re really the savior of the world. You find out that someone controls everything you do and it’s not yourself. You find out tha tyo=a jhdkeial l. Help. The drugs. The drugs. The drugs re taking over. I am jesusle ingjkkaeok aiam jesus. christ...............
I am not telling my fingers to do this. What the hell is going on? I want to know what it is about the human brain that makes us so easy to control. I want to know what part of the brain it is that controls what we feel, how we know things.
I heard someone say not too long ago that they’re thinking about making a computer chip that they can surgically implant in the brain to aid in memory storage. What a horrible idea. What an awful, horrendous, horrible, terrible idea. I can’t believe that anyone would find that to be a good idea. dIt kekktosmetone tell me that i an ntot omay find me anotu skeplanet oaidneklsinchxkaheaktyea lprdilt Kperdi akjpreif erdita lpris not jsuiokjf p..........
I found out what is different about bleeding now that I’m on medication. I found out that I don’t bleed right. I cut my ankle open several times the other day, and instead of bleeding freely, it bled beneath the skin. It’s like my body doesn’t want my blood to escape. Why? Why not? I don’t understand that. I don’t understand why I can’t be who I am? I don’t know why I don’t know what I’m typing and the drugs and jesus are taking I dont’ even know if I am okay. I athinkking athat I am not okay i am jeusus i don’t believe in jesus. Jesus doesn’t exist. Well, he did exist, but not as the savior of the world. Not as anyone better than you or me. Not as anyone better than lkthe rest of us and i dhate thate hate lkjalkjid nmc,ijdflkjkjfiewoqkjworld i tstk taking over now. Hangd. tieow-iofkd rekwjmdhjworkd. ainfkleifhl. Help me. HElp me.
Who is in my brain? Who is in my brain? I sit a person that exixsts or doesn’t exist? Is it someone I want to know or someone I don’t want to know? Is ti someone I can seee? Or is it someone wh is causing the clouds in front of my eyes? Is it someone that is telling me to take over the world? Is it pinky and the brain? Is it mice? Is it roaches? Is it me being becoming lost within my own head? I don’t think I am crazy. The world is crazy.. The world made me crazy. The world crazy. Crazy world. Not Perdi. Not Perdi. Not my hands. Not my eyes. Not me.
JEsus.
Okay, back to my senses. Well, not really. I have no senses to get back to. Susan just called me. What I really need is personal contact. What I really need, what all people like me really need, is someone to listen, someone to be there, someone to rely on that knows what we’re going through. We need someone who understands why it’s okay to blow up the world, someone who doesn’t think the kids at Columbine were unusual, someone who doesn’t think I’m fucked in the head, someone who doesn’t think I need help, someone who knows that it’s okay for me to be me. That’s what we need. We need someone to say it’s okay to be crazy. We need someone to say it’s okay to kill and it’s okay to not have any idea what you’re going to do before you do it or any idea what your’e going to say before you say it. We should fucking kill the world. Fly a plane into NYC my ass. What a dumb idea. We need something big. Something big to destroy the world. Something big to tell me it’s okay. Someone to say it’s okay. The drugs tell me it’s okay to be not okay. I like that. I like that I can be me. I hate that my parents don’t let me be me. I hate that kids look so fucking goddamn innocent when they’re the ones that are going to end up hating the fucking world and blowing us all to bits. I need personal contact. I’m sane when there are people around. I’m sane when I have someone to talk to that doesn’t tell me everything I do is wrong. I am not wrong. I am not crazy. I am not stupid. I am not young. I am smart, I understand, I do, I am right. I am sick of letting people fucking walkk all over me. I’m gong to do what ever the fuck I want and it’s okay. It’s okay. I can write a book if I fuckig want to write a book, and it can be about as much violence and drugs as I want it to be about because it’s all okay.
I don’t even do drugs anymore. There’s no way in hell I would do E now. If I did E now It would probably kill me. It would make my brain implode. It would make me go even fucking crazier than I’m already going.
12/23/99
I wonder if people get scared when they look in my eyes? I wonder if they can see the color of the hate that’s been welling up inside of me for years and years? I wonder if they see my eyes and think to themselves that they should grab their children by the hand and turn the other way? I wonder if they see me and ask what’s gone wrong with their happy little fantasy world? I wonder if they know anything about people like me? I wonder if they have a primal instinct that warns them? I wonder if they look at me and wonder what’s wrong with me? I wonder if they want to help?
Why is it that the more you try to find someone to listen or understand, the more you notice that no one can? You know what I think it is? I think the world is becoming Satanist. Everyone’s had bad things happen to them, and they have no one to talk to about it, so they end up finding their own explanations. If everyone finds their own explanations, there are bound to be clashes. There are bound to be no ways to explain, no ways to comprehend one another, no ways to compensate for the loneliness and the excommunication. The world is becoming Satanist. We all feel alienated. We all feel uninformed. A lot of young people are growing up into a world that can’t offer them a place to grow to understand themselves. Perhaps it’s the technology that’s making people scientifically and mechanically smarter with no way to understand things about humanity that for a long time were naturally inborn common sense realities.
That’s a huge problem with youth right now. We don’t understand anything. We don’t see why killing people is bad. We see why other people may think it’s bad, but we’re just as convinced of our being right as everyone else is. If you think killing is wrong, you’re just as sure of my insanity as I am of yours. Just because killing is wrong to the majority of people doesn’t mean the majority is right. I’m not saying I’m right, either. People in medieval times used to torture other people for fun. Puritans used to hang people and burn children at the stake. Does their intense acknowledgement and faith in their own beliefs and religion make them wrong? Does it make them right? They believed they were right. The ancient Egyptians believed they were right when they placed faith in an afterlife surrounded by their mortal riches and treasures. We have what most people would consider proof that their riches did not follow them into the afterlife, and yet nobody sees themself doing the same thing! I don’t get it. What’s the difference between placing your faith in God, or Buddha, or a pickled egg as long as it makes you happy? That’s all it’s for! It’s just to make you slightly less consumed with hate, but when you can’t believe in anything, where does that leave you? I can’t sit myself down and say, “Tomorrow I’m going to start believing in God.” Something traumatic enough to scare you into believing has to happen first, something to convince you, something to force you to believe. My generation has been taught to accept everyone’s race, sex, religion, and opinion as something which should not be argued. What does that do other than teach us that nothing is better than anything else? If I can’t find someone else wrong, how am I supposed to be right? How am I supposed to believe that anything is wrong or right when I’m supposed to accept everyone’s opinion as being important as my own? Blindly following someone else’s faith is not an option in today’s society. By virtue of the fact that I have nowhere else to place my faith, I now know I have to label myself Satanist. For those of you who are less informed, Satanists do not worship the devil. We don’t believe in a god or a devil. I have been raised in an age where everyone has a right to their opinion. I can no longer believe in anything. I am Satanist, but I still believe in the purity of my own soul. Doesn’t everybody?