>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: piss fucking drunk
>>Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000

A friend of mine called at about 4:30 and asked if I wanted to drink, so I met him and his girlfriend at a Mexican restaurant and I’ve been doing tequila shots all fucking night so I'm fucked up beyond belief right now. Thank god. I've been needing to get smashed out of my head for awhile. It was an interesting drive the quarter mile back to my apartment, too, because I've never driven even slightly intoxicated, but I figured it was practically across the street, so who fucking cares? All night, they were talking about how they're going to have this marathon sex session when they get back because they haven't fucked in days. Part of me was totally disgusted, and part of me was so jealous I could cry because I can't remember the last time I looked forward to having sex. They kept leaning over and kissing, and they were so fucking happy and I felt so fucking horrible. I don't think I can ever have something like that with someone. The only way I could stop from crying in the middle of the restaurant was by thinking that you'll be down here in a few weeks, if only for a few days, and I won't feel so sickeningly lonely.

I bought a book today called I Hate You - Don't Leave Me. It’s about borderline disorder, and I'm pretty fucking convinced that's what's wrong with us. I have to let you look at it when you come down. In the book, it says we're afraid of intimacy, but terrified of being abandoned, and that sums it all up. I can't get too close to someone, but I'm fucking terrified that person will leave me. The borderline personality cannot tolerate inconsistency in others’ thoughts, but their life is marked by inconsistent decisions, and I almost cried because it felt so fucking true. Two red scabs on the back of my hand are staring at me as I type this, and I can sense the bloodstains on the legs of my pants from where I let the blood run after I bought a knife today. Medication really doesn't do shit for the borderline patient, which explains a lot because it's a way of thinking and not so much a chemical imbalance. Another issue for borderlines is feeling completely isolated with no one to understand the way they feel, which is how I've felt for centuries it feels like, and now you're here (and you're really there, but you know what I mean) and it's like the world has stopped being a desert because there's one other person.

I have no fucking clue what I'm typing. I can barely see the screen, but my one flaw when I get drunk is that I get brutally honest. I can't fucking lie when I'm drunk for anything. I know I'm not capable of a relationship in the normal sense of things; it's just one of those universal impossibilities: no marriage, family, etc. All I can hope for is to find someone to understand and hurt with me and someone for me to hurt with, and I'm so fucking terrified of what I'm going to do. It seems like all that's left is to just fucking snuff out the candle and embrace everlasting darkness, but there's that really fucking annoying part of me that won't let me do it, and I don't know what the fuck is going on anymore. All I know is that you understand me and I understand you, and that's more than I ever thought I'd accomplish in my lifetime. I love you like crazy for it because you make me feel like I wasn't born for nothing. I don't even know if that makes any sense.

The last shot I took keeps coming on harder and harder, and I bet right now my friends are having a spectacular time of it, and I hate that I can't feel that. They kept saying to me, "All you need is some good booty and you'll feel great...trust me," and they don't understand that it's so much more than that. Sex doesn't solve my problems like it may solve theirs. Sex is a fucking way to reproduce and it feels good for a little while, but it's such a temporary pleasure that it ends up depressing me more because I can't harness that feeling and spread it throughout my entire life. So yeah, I have these human urges towards sex, but they're so human and elemental that I can't imagine them solving my life problems. If I get delirious with desire (which almost never happens) then I take care of it, and that's that. I don't feel any better afterwards. Hell, most of the time I try to stop from crying. I just wish I could be as easily satisfied as they are. I wish sex was all it took. I wish I could flip this switch in my head that would make me feel better. I wish I could "accentuate the positive," as my dad suggested, but there's something so deeply ingrained in the way I think that these superficial patches cannot come anywhere near solving this huge melancholia towards life that I harbor. I'll only feel better when I don't feel at all. As I draw lines down my neck and wrists with my knife, I feel so calm because just an ounce of pressure and it would be over. I can feel the line I traced stinging down my throat, and I fucking love it.

God, I can't wait to see you again. My friend keeps thinking we have this sexual thing going on, and I can't explain to him that it's nothing like that at all. He doesn't know what it feels like to be so trapped in your head for so long, and to finally be able to find someone who understands, and who you know understands without even touching. I just need some sort of physical reminder that the person beside me is real, but sex is of such secondary importance, and they refuse to believe me. God, it must be great to be normal, to be concerned with such petty matters.

I have no idea how long this e-mail is. I've been typing for a long time, so I figure it's pretty long. I probably should be checking to see if I have anything due for tomorrow so I can at least give it a half-assed drunken try. I can still feel the blade sliding down my neck...just an inch deeper....

I can't wait to see you again, Perdita. I hope you made it back home without too much trouble, and I hope to hear from you tomorrow.

I love you.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: piss fucking drunk
>Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

Oh, thank god I'm back. I know it's a sick fucking world when I’m actually thrilled to be back at work. I try really hard to get along with my family and all, but I feel like I have to try so fucking hard just to pretend I'm happier than I am so their memories of me when I'm dead will be of a relatively happy Perdita. It's sickening, and I'm so damn tired of it that I'm delirious with relief at being back here. There's just something about the air here that makes me feel so much more at home. My real home is so dull and lifeless, but here there's always a feeling of intensity or excitement or at least some form of LIFE. That's why I love the city so much. Christ, I can't stand being at home. I have to censor myself so much that it feels like I'm literally wearing a costume of the person they all want me to be, but I'm so NOT that.

I'm glad to hear that you had access to alcohol last night. I spent the last four days DYING to get drunk. I had a few drinks Saturday night with my friend, Ami, but it wasn't enough. I also had to go almost completely without cigarettes except for those few sweet hours with Ami. She didn't even yell at me for smoking for a change. She may possibly be getting the picture as to how hard things are for me these days. I know she's really worried about me, as are my parents, and the really shitty thing is that I know no matter how much they might want to help or think they CAN help, there's nothing they can do. That totally fucking sucks, but it's not like totally shitty things are a new concept to me.

I'm in a lot of pain. The moment I have to go without multiple chemicals in my body, I start to get all fucking twisted up with pain because my back likes to fuck with me.

I find it absolutely hysterical that your dad told you to just "accentuate the positive," and he probably thinks that's all that needs to be done. My dad told me while I was home that he really feels for me and that my problems run in the family and he knows how I feel because he felt the same way when he was first out of college. That's all fucking bullshit, though. If he had the first fucking CLUE how I felt, he wouldn't have subjected me to it in the first place. He wouldn't have contributed to my existence on this god-forsaken planet. He wouldn't have found anything even remotely satisfying in bringing another soul into this world to suffer through the ungodly pain that eats away at the very core of my existence. Accentuate the positive, my ass. My dad told me that everything would be fine if I just found a job that I like and got my life on the right track. What he doesn't realize is that I like my job as well as I can, and I can't do anything more that what I do now. So I sit at a desk all day, typing away to people I only know in cyberspace, occasionally helping my boss out with a memo or a meeting time. So what? I can only do things by rote memorization or in-the-moment freestyle writing. I can't put any effort into life. It would kill me. I can't find a job that takes thought because I'd be dead by the time five o'clock rolled around. My last job was so fucking stressful. People also try to tell me that just getting my mind off things and having less free time would help me, but when that happens, I turn into a hopeless alcoholic. I've BEEN there, and it's so much worse than where I'm at now.

I'll have to do some looking into borderline disorder. I've never really thought about that. I'm thoroughly convinced that I have severe depression, moderate panic disorder that's getting worse everyday, and a tendency towards bipolar disorder (but that one's helped a lot by the meds).

As for Sam and Mary thinking that all you need is "some good booty," well, hm...that's such an annoying normal person way of thinking. Normal people get laid and then walk on air for a few days. Sex is such a lost art for me. I'm rather indifferent about it. It doesn't even feel good to me for a moment. All it does for me is make me think about how fucked up I am and how much I wish I COULD enjoy it, but then I convince myself that it's just something I have to do to seem more normal to other people. It's like fucking walking down the street to me; if I have to do it, fine, but I'd rather just sit and watch TV. Every once in awhile, it's nice to feel that physically close to someone, but it invariably puts me in such an awkward place where I feel stuck in between the normal world and the world of my head, and it's really hard to explain to a normal person why I get this pained expression on my face and I feel like I want to cry when they're enjoying themself so much. I don't understand it at all. Sex makes me horribly panicked and I always think it'll be different, but it never fails that I end up literally shaking because I simply can't allow myself to be so vulnerable.

You mentioned in a previous e-mail that you were thinking about what you mean when you say you love someone. Well, I'll tell you that when I say I love someone, it's with the personal understanding that that person has taken such a significant place in my life that I would do anything for them. They take on a higher significance than me in my own life, and all I want to do is give them everything I can. In Damn It All to Hell, Trista says how she just wishes she could wrap up all her love in a box and give it to Edan, and that's exactly how I feel. I wish there was anything I could do to SHOW that person how much I feel for them, care for them, and need them; I just want to do anything in the world to let them know how important they are to me. Generally, it's an impossibility for anyone to understand that, and even if they do understand it, it usually scares them away because they think I'm fucking psycho and obsessed and maybe I am, but I don't fucking care because that's me. I'm not ashamed of how intensely I feel things. Instead, I think it's rather a shame that most people will never know that intensity. That's sad to me, even if it means an easier journey through life for them.

If your friend thinks we have some sort of sexual thing going on, let him think that. Whatever. The fact of the matter is that what we have is probably considerably more satisfying than the simplistic normal person ideology about relationships and sex. It's probably not even worth trying to explain. I imagine he'd only get increasingly confused.

Well, I've been typing for awhile now, and my e-mail account has probably logged me out again (as it seems to log me out before I finish typing my e-mails...?), so I should probably get back to work or something. I can't wait to see you again, and I hope to hear from you soon.

I love you.
Perdita