>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: procrastination
>>Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000

It's nearly 11 o'clock, and I'm about halfway through with my paper, rapidly approaching a roadblock. I've already said everything that I wanted to say. It just didn't take up enough space. It's time to pour on the bullshit. I'm completely unmotivated to do this. I've been working off and on (mostly off) since about 6:00, and so far I have just over three pages. I've got a thousand of the two thousand words I need, and I don't know where the other thousand is going to come from, and I don't really care all that much either...fuck...I got myself a little deeper than I thought on my arm...it keeps running down my forearm and distracting me.

My friend sent me some more leftovers tonight: chili, this time. This is the first time I've had beef in several years, and I'm just waiting for it to hit because I know this is really going to hurt. The problem with eating is that once you start, you lose that immunity to hunger that you built up, and you're hungry a lot more. When I just didn't eat, I never felt hungry because I was so used to feeling hungry...sensory adaptation or some shit like that. Now I'm feeling hungry as hell a lot, and I'm too fucking lazy to make myself any food. I'm not used to having an appetite.

Tomorrow is the last day I have to go to three of my classes before I take the finals. This is the last week of class, finally, and it can't end soon enough. I have all day Friday off, so theoretically, I could sleep late and be well rested when you get here, but chances are I won't be able to sleep at all because I'll be so excited about you coming. I can't ever sleep when I'm nervous or excited about something.

I find it absolutely amazing that I'm still giving any effort at all to school. In the end, my English degree is going to get me shit, and I don't want to be around long enough to try and establish any type of career. I guess I'm just doing whatever I have to do to avoid getting a job. School is pretty laid back for me because I don't really have to work at it at all. So I guess I answered my own question. I'm stalling because I don't want to sit in front of the computer screen with no idea how I'm going to fill up the second half of a paper. It is too late for me to be doing any serious thinking about this kind of shit. I guess I'm going to have to figure something out, and the more I put it off, the more inane it's likely to be.

I hope your morning goes well. I'm going to be an absolute zombie tomorrow, but it will all be done. Then I can set my sights on that fifteen-page behemoth for philosophy. It never ends.

I love you.
Belacqua

---

>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: procrastination
>Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000

Belacqua,

I think I'm going to explode. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I'm suddenly feeling overwhelmed by everything: the amount of money I spent last week, the amount of work I'm supposed to be doing but not, the amount of trouble I'm putting into my website when I shouldn't be, the amount I'm trying to reach out to people I don't know anything about and how frustrated I am that I don't know what the FUCK I'm doing,.... Goddammit. I just want to crawl under a rock and stay there for about a fucking millennium.

Everything's moving too fast right now. I don't know if I had too much caffeine or what, but everything's spinning. I'm cold and tired, but I slept so much last night that I shouldn't be able to sleep any more. I'm aggravated with the world and I want to die right now, and yet somehow I feel like I need to be alive to keep writing. How ridiculous is that? At this very moment, I'm all worried that I have to stay alive for people to be able to read my writing so they'll be able to view depression from the inside. I have this odd misconception that everything I write is going to be vitally important to the study of depression and anxiety and substance abuse and psychology in general after I'm dead.

When I close my eyes, I see green lights that look like aliens. It's very strange. It's like someone's looking back at me from the inside of my head. And I accidentally got all involved again with Columbine this morning by reading a website I vowed never to visit again. I can't seem to keep promises like that to myself. I'm too goddamn motivated by my emotions to ever put any weight in something that isn't RIGHT NOW.

I feel like I've done entirely too many things this morning. How is it possible that I've done so much in such a short time, and how is it possible that I don't feel like I've done anything? Goddammit. Stop it, stop it, stop it. I feel like yelling at the little aliens in my head. First, there were little men in my head like the Doozers on Fraggle Rock, then there were Eric and Dylan, and now there are little green aliens. WHAT THE FUCK??

All I want to do right now is stand up and put all my aggression into running my fist straight into the wall that's about six feet away. If I run full force into the wall, maybe the aggression will fall out of my body.

Since yesterday, I’ve had a sudden and very strong paranoia about biological warfare and the fate of the planet. I'm convinced that the planet is going to become infected with a deadly virus that's going to kill us all, and I don't want to be around when it hits. No goddamn way I'm gonna be here when that happens. And I'm also worried that a lot more people are going to start blowing up things and shooting people before I even stand up and I'm so goddamn jealous that I want to kill them all right now.

I had a lot of stuff I wanted to say to you, but it's all going have to wait until I have my senses back in some semblance of order. Right now, I just needed to get out some of what's on my mind and fucking me up.

I love you.
Perdita