>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: goddamn it all
>>Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001

You think when you lay down to go to sleep at night that the bad day is going to be over and you'll wake up the next day with it as just a bad memory, but that's not the way it decides to fucking happen. I finally get to sleep last night, and my neighbor fucking calls me up. Now, I don't care if people call and wake me up, if they have a good reason. If he needed someone to talk to or needed a vital favor, I'd forgive him for calling me, but he fucking wakes me up last night to see if he can have a Paxil. So I'm pretty pissed off about this, but I'm tired and half-conscious, so I tell him okay. He comes up to get it, and he hands me a letter that the courtesy officer here left on my door. The letter says if I don't pay my pet deposit I'm going to receive a lease violation, have to pay a fine of 100 dollars, and then pay the deposit anyway. The combination of these things wound me up enough that I couldn't fucking go back to sleep to save my goddamn soul. So, hours later, I finally fall back asleep, only to sleep through my alarm and become conscious 30 minutes before my class starts. I figured maybe I could still make it, so I flew across town and stood at the bus stop, and the only bus that goes to my class was so full that people were hanging out the fucking doors. When Cassandra's best friend from high school decided to speak to me, I decided it was time to just go home.

It's just after 9:00, I'm wide awake and only half-conscious, pissed, frazzled, and just upset in a general, all-inclusive kind of way. I still have to go straighten this shit out with my lease and try to convince these people I don't have a pet anymore, so I'm not going to pay their fucking deposit. Then, I have to find a way to kill an entire day while remaining fully sober and not killing anyone. I think Lilith is the demon of bad days and she’s really pissed off that I was making fun of her name yesterday, so she decided she was just going to shit on my already raining parade. Now I have to sacrifice 99 small children while chanting "Mary had a little lamb" backwards and completing 666 jumping-jacks to appease her. I wish it were that easy. But what I'll do instead is write out something outlining each and every reason I have to leave this place so when my parents attack me, I'll have a blueprint to stick to that I won't back down from. They can either accept it or bitch to the wind because this is getting truly absurd and dangerous. I'm within inches of leaving right now, but it's only a few more days. Surely I can stay sane until then.

Right now, though, I have to go unwind and unclench for a little while. I've been waking up the past few days with my teeth hurting. I'm so tense that I'm grinding them in my sleep. Maybe I can get some serious progress on my book done. I'm toying with the idea of putting it in a multimedia, hypertext format in addition to a hard, paper copy, with links between poems based on certain words, picture links, things like that. I wonder how annoying that would be to sit and read (much less create). But there are so many extra elements you can use in an electronic format that Gutenberg's press just can't accommodate. It’s something to think about, anyway.

I REALLY hope your day is beginning a hell of a lot better than mine. I'd like to think that things can't go anywhere but up from here, but that's not a realistic or healthy thought. All I can hope is that they don't go down any further anytime soon.

I wrote a poem yesterday called "Anticipation," and the final stanza is:

In the labyrinthian caverns
Of my head, there's a slow
Rumble of distant thunder
And the too-clear smell of rain
The instant before lightning strikes.

Praise Lilith that I have SOMETHING to look forward to.

I love you more than anything.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: goddamn it all
>Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001

Belacqua,

Oh my god. I'm so sorry your day started off so badly. That fucking sucks. Then again, perhaps Lilith is our friend and is only trying to further convince you that leaving the south is the only thing to do. Otherwise, Lilith is a sick fuck who should be starved, beaten, and strung up on a crucifix drafted from the lumber of our daily pain. We'll see how almighty the forces of evil feel THEN.

I hate to add to the pile of growing troubles, but this morning, I spoke with my roommate again. I'm not sure what's going on exactly, but when I spoke with her BEFORE, I could swear she told me she didn't mind at all if you stayed with us. Now, she's saying that she doesn't think she could handle it from March through August, and she thinks she could only manage it for a little while. I like my roommate and all, but I'm not sure where this sudden change of heart came from. Maybe I misunderstood her the first time around. I don't know. I sent her an e-mail this morning asking her to tell me exactly what she's thinking so I don't do anything to seriously piss her off, but I haven't heard back, yet. I'll keep you updated. I'm sure we can work something out. I just thought you should know.

I had a really hard time sleeping last night, too. When I got home from work yesterday, I was unusually stressed out and couldn't settle down to save my life. I thought the beer would help, so I just kept drinking, but I swear that makes my sleeping worse. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. I hate when things don't make sense.

Writing out your reasons for wanting to leave the south sounds like a really good idea. That always helps me when I need to talk about something I really don't know how to talk about. I once asked a boss for a higher pay rate, and when I called him to talk about it, I literally read what I wanted to say from a sheet of paper. I probably sounded moronic, but hey, it worked and that's all that matters.

Only two more days till Friday....

I love you so much.
Perdita