>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: under the...
>>Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001

I have about a quarter of that gallon of whiskey left right now, and it's only just after 9:00. I've been drinking good and steady since about 6:00 or so, maybe a little before then, and I keep having that "final" hit where I think it's going to fuck me to the point where I don't have to drink anymore, and it's never quite enough. I'm just buzzed out enough to realize I was about to pass out an hour or so ago and I'm coming down too fast right now to make me comfortable.

I've had such a slow day today. I've felt more down today than I have in a long time, but that horrible anxiety and panic feeling wasn't with it, so I don't feel as badly as I did even yesterday. Although, as far as the depression goes, it's worse today than it’s been in a really long time...just another of those amusing little paradoxes that helps to define me.

It occurred to me the other day that if someone asked me whether I'd rather be alone doing nothing or with other people doing something, I'd say every single time I'd rather be alone, even though when I'm alone I go into this total self-destruct phase and feel terrible. But I don't feel panicked like I do when I'm with other people. Either way is equally dangerous to me, I guess. That's a great way to have to think about things. I do whatever I have to do now so that I'll die as slowly as possible rather than quickly. No matter what I do, it's going to kill me. That's so uplifting. That last shot is sinking deeper and deeper into my head.

Have you ever had a day where you got so starved for human contact you started shaking? I had to feel another human being around me. I wanted to grab someone's hand or fall into someone's arms (and I had a particular person in mind, in case you couldn't guess who that would be...) and I was curled up on the couch shaking for loneliness and contact until I went and got a movie and reminded myself how much I hate people and how much the touch of regular people would poison me. Loneliness is my biggest enemy. I can handle a lot of things, but loneliness is deeply permeating for some reason and right now I'm so lonely I feel like curling into a ball on the floor and crying and screaming until someone breaks my door down to comfort me. I'm not asking the world for a whole lot, Perdita. I just want to be able to grab your hand every once in awhile or touch your face or see into your eyes.

Today I discovered a notebook where I had written a few very brief vignettes after coming home from visiting you for the first time. I forget that I write stuff like this, especially when I write them in a particularly unstable frame of mind, which must have been the case, because if this wasn't in my handwriting and I couldn't recognize the emotions captured as my own, I'd have a hard time believing I wrote any of this. Here are some excerpts:

"I wanted to dive through her pupils and attack whatever was raging behind them. She let me see her soul and I wanted to hold her until we disappeared."

"We sat on her stoop and smoked in the freezing cold. It was dark Friday night and the night was full of stars, which was apparently a rarity there. We shivered and sat shoulder to shoulder. It was silent most of the time even though we never stopped talking. Everything was still except for the leaves rattling down the street. Then I saw a shooting star."

"My life was ending. I was being born again."

I'm in that drunken state of excitement where I feel like bursting through a wall because I know I couldn't feel it until the next morning. There's this enormous store of energy somewhere inside of me that is beginning to bubble and crackle and I'm almost afraid of what's going to result when I open my eyes and spread my arms to let this energy loose upon the world. Time for another drink...something like my third in the last half-hour. I'm probably going to pass out soon.

I finally got around to throwing away all the letters and cards Cassandra ever sent to me. I was rereading them and taking note of the parts where she was talking about how much she loved me and all that fucking bullshit, and I realize how much bullshit it is now because of the way she talked about it. She kept saying she knew she loved me because of how happy I made her feel. Everything was relative to how she was feeling. At no point did what I was feeling ever matter at all. She had no regard for me in the least. All I existed for was to justify her existence and make her feel good, and, for the first and final time, I see that completely clearly. Now I'm completely purged of everything about her. I have eradicated her entirely from my life, and all I needed was to see how little regard she actually held for me compared to how much regard I was supposed to hold for her. Normal people and fucked up people don't mix. I care more about everybody else than I do about myself, and normal people care about themselves too much. That's where the leaning tree analogy I came up with awhile ago came from with you and me. I'm holding you up like you're holding me up. The only reason I care about my own existence anymore is because I refuse to leave you behind. I would hold myself as more abominable than Hitler if I did that.

There's something so superhuman about what we have that sometimes all I can do is kneel on the ground with my head in my hands and shudder with the intensity of it. I feel my every nerve come to life and scream silently with that ecstasy and horror that only we can know. I'm seized alternately with these soaring apprehensions about leaving the south and these paralyzing fears, and all I can do is get my fucking money and leave. I just want you to be completely sure that I'm not going to be any type of inconvenience or burden or anything like that upon you, because I'd live in the street before I would impose on you. I'm about to cry and I don't know why....

I'm drunk off my fucking ass right now. That little binge over the past half hour has really taken its fucking toll and I love it for it. Marriage is such a stupid human bullshit thing, but I'd marry my mistress alcohol if it were legal. Eventually, we'll each meet our spouse in that thick, black curtain of death that we'll lower together.

It hurts so much, Perdita. I don't understand why I was fucking born. I hate being god's little voodoo doll. I have to go and do something so I don't pass out into my keyboard...something other than drink...for another hour, anyway. Even if I didn't commit suicide, I'd never live past forty. That's a comforting thought.

I miss you so much, Perdita. I've never been this sick for another human being's company in my entire life.

I love you more than anything else.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: under the...
>Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001

Belacqua,

I really don't want you to think you're going to be inconveniencing me if it turns out that you ARE able to move up here. Like I told you before, I have to ask that you pay for part of the rent mostly as a means of keeping my roommate, as well as both of us, from feeling like ANYONE'S being treated unfairly. Aside from that, though, I just want to be sure that you're doing what YOU want to do. In all honesty, since we talked about you possibly coming up here (whatever day that was last week), I've awakened each morning with a slightly perceptible glint of light shining somewhere in the distance. That's something that hasn't happened to me EVER before in my life. I feel like this is the only thing to be done that is just RIGHT, and knowing that we're both trying to do something to make a significant change for the better in our lives is stirring up an undeniable presence of a strange potentiality of hope within me, regardless of where that tiny bit of hope may lead.

One thing about BPD that is definitely true about me is that I tend to view things in absolute terms; things with me are all or nothing, especially when concerning people. All people to me are either good or bad, and you are all good. No one in my LIFE has been as good as you. In Life Sucks, I talk about that guy, Lucas, who I thought was the absolute end-all and be-all of life, but I never even MET him. I had plenty of opportunities, but I couldn't allow myself to meet him because I knew his very humanness would drive me away. I wanted him to retain all of those perfections that were so absolute to me, and that simply couldn't be done if I met him. With you, though, it's different. I knew you more completely than anyone else in my life after just a few e-mails. If you had been someone who suffered from that horrible disease of humanity, I would've had to have eventually drifted away, but (much to my surprise) the more I discover about you, the more I understand you and want to be with you. You're not so much a human being as you are a walking ball of multifaceted misery, and that is something I never thought I'd find in someone else. I never even TRIED to find it because I was so certain the search would prove fruitless.

Some of the most horrible things about normal people are their endless trials with interpersonal relationships and their relentless need to TAKE. All that normal people know how to do is take and take from one another, not to mention all their silly little endeavors in life. When things are there to be taken, they take. When things aren't there to be taken, they make something up and then take from that. But you and I know better than to try and take something that's not there or to try and MAKE something to take if it isn't already there or shouldn't be there at all. You have so much to give, and I have so much that I want to give to you. The difference between taking and simply receiving what's offered is HUGE, and that's a concept that normal people will never understand.

I love you so much.
Perdita