>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: <No Subject>
>>Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000

As expected, Christmas has come and gone, leaving that empty sense of unfulfilled expectation that all too often accompanies anything with hype. Of course I received clothes I'll never wear, and chances are I'll never even take the tags off them. I did get a VCR, which is good I guess. And about 175 dollars, which should buy a plane ticket. I just have to make it to a bank tomorrow morning so I'll have it in my account and I can use my check card to buy the ticket. I guess that was my biggest concern about the whole holiday thing. I knew I'd have enough money if my mom just gave me the money my grandparents gave her to buy me presents, but I kind of figured she wouldn't do that. I was right, but fortunately the relatives packed in a little extra cash.

I had the worst night's sleep I've had in weeks last night, partly from not taking the Remeron and partly from worrying my ass off about getting money today. I did get some sort of relaxation CD's or something from my parents...some shit that's supposed to help me fall asleep. I listened to it, and it just sounds like some fruity new-age shit designed to take people's money. It's supposedly some sort of pulse sounds cloaked in music and nature sounds that are supposed to make your brain waves mimic the pulses and essentially drag you down into a deep sleep. I guess I'll try it again tonight just to see. I don't guess it hurts anything, but I'll be really fucking amazed if there's any result.

The best thing about stopping the Remeron is that I don’t have those fucked up dreams anymore. Goddamn, the shit I was dreaming. I can't remember any full ‘plots’ of the dreams, if they even had any, but they were crazy as shit. I was washing raw meat out of someone's hair in one of them. My body has the really annoying habit of adapting to chemicals really quickly, whether the chemicals are introduced or taken away, which is why antidepressants work for a week and then stop, and why my alcohol tolerance increases exponentially every day I drink, and why I never really have bad withdrawal symptoms coming off drugs. Today I cut the Effexor by 37.5mgs and the Buspar by 10mgs, which leaves 150mg of Effexor, 100mg of Wellbutrin, and 20mg of Buspar left to wash out. I'll probably be clean by New Year's. What a resolution.

I woke up at 4:00 this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep until I wrote a really strange two-page poem that shifts voices and talks to the reader. It's weird. I don't know what I think about it, yet. It, like most everything I write, started at the end and worked towards the beginning. "He died as he lived/Like a candle in a hurricane."

My dad got a nice bottle of scotch for Christmas and I'm hoping he's going to want to christen it...GODFUCKINGDAMNIT...my brother is fucking right behind me and won't go away and I can't fucking write if someone is even in the same goddamn room as me....shit....

---

>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: <No Subject>
>Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000

Belacqua,

Ugh. In some inexplicable way, my family always manages to keep me extra busy, while leaving me feeling like nothing has been accomplished. So, I'm about half an hour late for being ready to go out, and at any moment, they're going to yell at me for not being ready when they told me to be. But I just wanted to let you know that I tried to call you back like five times yesterday, and the line was busy every time. I finally gave up and went to sleep at about 9:30 and I was in bed for something insane like thirteen hours. Sleep: the only useful thing in this town.

Well, like I said, I'm late and dangerously close to getting in deep shit, so I gotta go. I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better. You know, like slowly torturing your family members in front of you or something like that. But alas, I cannot. I just really, really, really can't wait to see you in a little over a week. It still feels like ages away, but at least it's getting slowly closer.

I love you so much.
Perdita