Krista Lester’s Journal
07/19/00 to 08/10/00
07/19/00
This may seem like it's coming out of nowhere, but yesterday, I was talking to a guy at work about removing warts. This guy had a nickel-sized wound on his hand, and when I asked him what it was from, he said he had recently heated up a knife to cut out the roots of a wart. The wound was round and fascinating (if you ask me), and it was oozing mercilessly. Fun stuff.
After work, I was walking home from the subway stop when I realized that the air smelled wonderful. It smelled like a giant campfire. For a moment, I was concerned that my neighborhood was burning down, but I decided that nothing that horrible could smell this good. Upon realizing that it must be the good kind of fire, I was suddenly amazed that I wasn't feeling immediate allergy congestion. I thanked my lucky stars and continued home, only to find my eyes itching and burning like hell several hours later.
Now, I am entirely of the opinion that the subconscious is merely a conglomeration of thoughts and images collected from events in our lives, as well as the more subtle things in our environments. Thus, the extraordinarily disturbing dream I had last night seems understandable, but nonetheless disturbing. You see, last night I had a dream in which I (for one reason or another) needed to peel off a layer of my eyeball. Yes, you read that correctly: I needed to peel off a layer of my eyeball.
Have you ever had a hangnail that you thought you could pull off, but then when you pulled at it, it just kept pulling off more and more skin and becoming more and more painful? I used to have quite an issue with dead skin peeling away from the bottoms of my feet, and I used to pull at it until it got so deep and painful that I had to cut the thick, calloused skin off with nail clippers. If I didn't cut it down like that, I couldn't stop myself from pulling on the dead skin. It just seems like you should be able to peel off an entire layer of skin, if part of it starts to come off.
In any case, this is sort of what happened in my dream. I started pulling at the white part of my eyeball, right in the corner of my eye, and about a sixteenth of an inch in thickness peeled away easily, until I reached the green iris. Then, it started to hurt, and I started to think I was going to pull my pupil out right at the root, and I felt I HAD to in order to fix whatever was wrong with my eye, but I knew I couldn't if I still wanted to be able to see. I realize that pupils don't exactly have roots like warts, and I have no IDEA what problem I could've possibly been trying to solve, but EW! It was quite possibly the most disturbing dream I have ever had. And if you think it's disturbing to read about, try having the image of it stuck vividly in the back of your mind all day long.
07/20/00
I made a big step today. You'll never guess what I have finally decided to do. I have finally decided to give in to hypocrisy. You don't hear too many people say that, now do you? But for me, it's a conscious decision.
You know how teenagers can see hypocrisy so easily in the adult world around them? I believe there is a point at which every teenager comes to terms with hyposcrisy. Teenagers rant and rave about how much the world sucks (much like I do in my book), and then they go and become an adult; they give in to the hypocrisy. Hypocrisy always wins. Most people don't recognize it when it happens. It's called maturity, I guess; you grow and grow with the world, and eventually you realize that you can't take it on all by yourself. You also realize that the world isn't out for you, specifically. You realize that everyone has issues, everyone has problems, everyone has hard times in their life. There's really no use in comparing the amounts of pain people have in their lives. I think that's what I've been doing for entirely too long: I've been comparing my pain to the pain of everyone around me.
Depression is a funny thing. Add to it a tendency towards anxiety, and you get a funny thing called violence. Human physiology needs to release all that anxiety, all that pain. There are very few healthy ways to relieve tension, anxiety, frustration, anger, and pain. They take a lot longer to get rid of than an emotion like happiness, which seems so fleeting in comparison. My depression, my anger, my frustration, my pain, while it has a medical identity and a pharmaceutical semi-antidote, is not so very different from everyone else's. Everyone experiences pain. I refuse to believe that everyone experiences depression, and I will argue that to the day I die. However, I no longer need to try to convince the world that my pain is any more important than theirs. I no longer need to be a front-line warrior in the fight against the world. This may sound like a wonderful epiphany to some, but to me, it's giving in to the hypocrisy. But that's okay. If that's what I need to call it, that's what I'll call it.
Many years ago, I wrote a very simple poem in which I tried to express my overall goal in life. To the best of my memory, here it is:
If I have a goal in life,
I’m not sure what it is,
except that it’s unique
from yours or hers or his.
I don’t want to live
in a millionaire’s estate;
an apartment in the city,
for me, is just as great.
I don’t need to have
a hundred thousand friends;
it’s not upon others
that my happiness depends.
I just want to wake
in the morning once to see
that where I am in life
is where I want to be.
The poem was intended to express my goal in life as being the end of the black hole of my depression because when you're depressed, you never wake up any way other than depressed. To the non-depressed eye, that's not exactly what comes across in the poem. It comes across as being of much less dire significance than it really is. Regardless of the apparent failure of the poem to express anything it intended, I like it. And I have recently come to terms with the fact that overcoming depression doesn't necessarily have anything to do with happiness. All this time, I've been striving to become happy, when all I could've expected to become was somewhat satisfied with my place in life.
Several days this week, I've awakened to face the oncoming day with the vigor of your everyday nobody. I am here today to declare that I have officially been medicated and mentally worn down to a point where I have finally accepted the ways of the world. I've given in to the hypocrisy. But right now, I'm where I want to be.
07/31/00
You know what I just realized? I just realized that I'm not addicted to anything. Perhaps that reads as an unusual conclusion to draw all of a sudden, but it literally just occurred to me as I began typing. I am not, for the first time in five years, addicted to anything.
Of course, for that statement to be true, I have to say I'm not addicted to anything right now unless you include the prescription drugs that have finally achieved a certain level of normalcy. So, I guess technically I'm addicted to the drugs. But that's a big step. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not a smoker. I've stopped doing designer drugs. I'm not even addicted to sleeping, eating, or drinking coffee anymore! I still drink coffee, but I'm fine without it. We're talking one cup a day now instead of five. Congratulations to me!
I approach life on an action and reward basis: I achieve something, I get a prize. Generally, the prize has been something extremely harmful to my body, but I think I've finally come up with something that's not addictive. I can reward myself by playing House of the Dead 2.
08/01/00
In ancient Egyptian religion, Horus was the name of the falcon god, son of Osiris, the god of the sky. Horus' eyes were supposed to represent the sun and the moon. Osiris was killed by Seth, who in turn took over the kingdom. In a battle for reign over the sky, one of Horus' eyes was wounded by Seth. It was through this belief that the Egyptians hoped to explain the phases of the moon. Eventually, of course, Horus defeated Seth, revenging his father's death and healing his battle wound. The restoration of Horus' sight was also a symbol of unity between Upper and Lower Egypt.
Interesting story, don't you think?
It's always fun for me to discover the religions of ancient cultures. It makes me feel less ridiculous for trying to explain things I don't understand. They all did it; why shouldn't I? The Egyptians had their gods, the Greeks and the Romans had their extensive mythology. We have so many different religions now. It's such a shame, really. It's a shame that we have to be so diverse. Religions are nothing but a means of explaining the inexplicable. They're nothing but an oxymoron in and of themselves. And yet, we're taught to accept them all. We're taught to accept religions and cultures as no better or worse than our own. Don't you think it's time to recognize that, in keeping our own faiths while recognizing others, we're only doing what the ancient Greeks did? We're only comparing mythologies.
I'm positively horrified by the way religion affects our lives. Of course, it's nice to have a god or something to throw all your troubles on. Who wouldn't want to? But is it really necessary? Isn't there some other way for us to be satisfied with our lives? If we have to place faith in something other than ourselves to have any sort of happiness in life, then I'm totally fucked. I can't do it. In doing that, I feel like I'm telling the rest of the world they're wrong and I'm right and it doesn't matter what they say to convince me of their religion, I'm just going to humor them and continue thinking they're dumb forever. Yes, I know that's what I'm doing right now. By saying everyone should give up on religion, I'm essentially saying they're wrong to believe. Maybe that's why I'm such a misanthrope. But at least I give everyone a chance for redemption before I condemn them. It's almost like I'm my own god. That's why I'm Satanist.
More to the point, though, the eye of Horus is a really cool idea. Horus' eye was damaged to a point of disastrous defeat, but once through its full cycle, the defeat turned into the most wondrous victory. Horus prevailed over gods, the sky, and himself. Horus was injured and renewed, blinded but reborn. In a brief comparison, it may seem similar to the whole story of Jesus dying on the cross and being resurrected, etc., etc. But to me, the eye of Horus is a more applicable story than that of Jesus. Call me insane for not being able to relate to a human being as much as an imaginary falcon, but I will compare myself to whatever the hell I want to compare myself to.
Jesus prevailed over death. Horus prevailed over himself. Horus prevailed over trauma. Victory over trauma is a much more precious cause to me than victory over death. Please, PLEASE let me prevail over trauma and then just die and be dead. Let me rest in peace. To hell with life after death. I just want to be dead, and THAT is when I'll finally be at peace.
08/02/00
This is me crying. This is me punching the wall. This is me relieving frustration. This is me once again drowning in my own well of self-pity. This is me trying to swim, float, or at least gasp for the occasional breath of air,...but drown I must. I am drowning, drowning, drowning, dying,...
I bet it would be really fun to cry. I bet it would be a really great way of releasing your feelings. I don't know what it's like to cry. Crying is a lost art for me. I've cried very few times in my adult life, and most of those times consisted of only three or four tears. I just don't know how to cry, but if I could cry, I would cry right now.
Why would I cry? Well, I would cry because I hate myself. I hate myself more than I hate the concept of God, life, the universe, humanity, and everything else we perceive to exist. I hate myself. And I REALLY fucking hate those people who think you can just magically stop hating yourself.
I met someone online the other day. He seems like a really cool guy. He's pleasant, caring, friendly, and extremely self-aware. Self-awareness is good. Consider yourself banned from thought in my life if you have no concept of yourself. But this guy is self-aware, and I really enjoy chatting with him.
He mentioned to me once that he hated himself a lot at one point in his life, and he knew that hating yourself was extraordinarily unattractive to others. You can always tell when someone hates themself. And that's positively the truth. So he just decided to change things, and he did. That was that; no more hating himself. Yay for him.
Well, it's not that easy for me. I'm exceedingly jealous of people who can do that. I've recently been contacted by an extremely profound person whose journal I think you should read: broken-glass. She's the sort of person I can tolerate. She's the sort of person I understand. She's the sort of person for whom I have boundless compassion. She's the sort of person who knows how hard it is for someone suffering from depression to do anything at all. I'm sure she would understand why I can't stop hating myself.
Sedatives are life-savers. I love my sedating medication. The only thing I hate about my meds is that I can't actually DO anything. I can go to work, have conversations, write coherently,...but I can't cut myself as much as I want or as deeply as I want. I can't punch my fist through the wall even though I do it mentally every time I see a wall or a
window or any pane of glass I believe I could break with my fist. I want to do it, but I can't. So I suppose the meds are doing their job. But I don't necessarily FEEL all that much better. I just don't react to how I feel.
I'm feeling a lot of hatred right now. Hatred's such an awful thing, isn't it? It's such a horrible, detestable, vile thing, but I can't let it go. It's attached to me like the leeches attached themselves to the boys in Stand By Me. Hatred is in me, and it is part of me. I don't like to hate, but hate I must. I'm a lonely reprobate abandoned in space, an unprincipled pariah of misery, even through the love I try to give, even through the persona I try to uphold, even through the veil of contentment I try so desperately to grasp onto.
I've had to do a lot of self-study over the last year of my life. A year ago at this time, I was working in a job I hated for too little money. I was sleeping on a couch in my brother's apartment. I was drinking, smoking, and doing drugs nearly every single day. It's not that I need someone to pat me on the back and throw me a party for coming as far as I have, but Jesus Christ, COME ON, PEOPLE!!! Do you REALIZE how hard this has been for me? Do you have any CLUE how many times I've had to wake up and look at myself in the mirror to wonder who I was going to be that day and how many times I would fail in what I attempted? Do you know how much self-restraint I have? Do you know how much effort this has taken?!
I now work in a job I love. I have a beautiful apartment, and I support myself with no outside help. I am alcohol, nicotine, and designer drug free, and does anyone care? No. Does anyone think I'm a better person because of it? No. Does anyone give me credit EVER for anything I've ever done in my life? NO!
Have I achieved a miracle in one short year? Yes. Am I happy? No. Content? No. Satisfied with myself? No. Do I hate myself still? Yes. I think I even hate myself MORE for giving up all those things I loved. Those were the things that were rewarding, fulfilling, and gratifying. I haven't found anything quite so satisfactory in myself or anyone else. What the fuck am I striving for?
I've tried to refrain from mentioning Columbine much lately, but I feel I must say something today. I want to mention that I stand by my initial opinion that Eric and Dylan were RIGHT in what they did. You fucking try to tell me I'm wrong, and I will lie to your face and tell you I sympathize for everyone else. I will tell you the social environment was not a factor at Columbine. I will tell you I feel for the victims and the families, and to a certain extent I do, but I feel SO MUCH MORE for the pain those two poor boys had to endure for so long. I wish I could be as brave as they. I wish I could do something to speak from the heart of depression so eloquently, so purposefully, and so effectively, but alas! I am too weak. I am too sedated. I am too bored with life to bother with the effort. And I hate myself for it.
I believe I could probably write forever today. There are so many things I want to say. I want to say that I don't believe I could ever date someone who didn't know depression. I could never date someone who doesn't know what it feels like to dig a razor blade into your forearm till the sight of so much blood makes your eyes flood in and out of blackness. I could never date someone who couldn't empathize with my hatred, my pain, and my passionate helplessness. I believe it's hopeless for me to ever find someone with as much of a tortured soul as my own. I believe it's hopeless for me to lead a normal life. I believe it's hopeless for me to ever be satisfied with a relationship of any sort with anyone who can't show me their scars. Broken-glass could show me hers. I could show you mine. Fuck all you people who think ripping your flesh open with a knife is repulsive, wrong, or ha! even painful. Fuck you all. Fuck humanity. Fuck pity. Fuck life. I hate you all, but I hate myself more.
I forgot to take my medication a few days ago. I'm supposed to take meds in the morning and at night. At night, I take twice as much as what I take in the morning, and I forgot only my morning dose. But it still majorly fucked me up. I ended up half scared by the speed at which the thoughts began to rip through my brain. They swirled around so rapidly and so mercilessly (almost like they're doing now) that I thought I was going to fall over. I felt as though I was acting out every scene of action in my head, but I never left my chair. I never moved. I just sat there, a prisoner of my own thoughts, bound by invisible chains, but nonetheless imprisoned. That's not so very uncommon for me, so the only thing I could think when my thoughts slowed down was how there are so many of you out there who don't know my misery. You don't know. You'll never know. You fucking lucky as shit bastards. I hate you all.
08/06/00
It's a beautiful Sunday morning. We have no cable at home, so I can't watch anything of quality on TV. It's too early to practice. So, what do I do? I pull out the old-school Nintendo and play Super Mario Bros. 3 for awhile. We're not talking Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64 or any of those other systems that have come out in the last decade; we're talking about the very first Nintendo, the game system that came immediately after Atari. And, as with most things, my interaction with the Nintendo gave me something to think about.
I think I've realized something fairly important today. What I've realized is that the old-school Nintendo is something that only people from my own generation would understand. It's something that even today's high schooler would think was positively ancient. When compared to recent video games, that's true. But anyone of my generation KNOWS that old-school Nintendo rocks some major ass, regardless of how passe the graphics may be. And that made me realize that it's okay for me to be getting older.
I've always had an intense fear of aging. I DETEST the thought of getting older; I thought I was old at the age of fifteen. However, today I realized the one thing that makes growing older somewhat tolerable: it's the fact that your entire generation gets older with you. It's almost impossible to think someone your own age is old. I've never considered any of my friends old, just myself, and even now, I'm only twenty-two! So, it comes as quite the comfort to me to realize that none of today's teenagers would recognize old-school Nintendo as cool, but everyone in my generation would. Well, those of my generation who are cool to begin with, of course.
Last fall was when I started on my meds. Last fall was the beginning of the end of the stage of my life which HOPEFULLY was the darkest. I won't physically or mentally be able to handle anything so dark ever again, so it best be the darkest period of my life. In any case, when I started my meds I found that I was suddenly able to understand so many more things about the world around me. For the seven years since my sophomore year of high school, I've been stuck as a teenager. I never outgrew high school. And, with the addition of my meds, I was suddenly able to interact with people again so I started to interact with teenagers. Teenagers were the only people I could understand. I believe I was WAY ahead of my time in high school, and now that today's high schoolers are ahead of where high schoolers in my day were, today's teenagers are, therefore, more like me as an teenager than my own generation was at the time when I really WAS a teenager.
I've learned so much in the past year. I learned that I was hidden from the world for seven years. Everything that was going on around me was completely outside the realm of my understanding. All I understood was what was going on in my head, and for all I knew, the world around me didn't exist. I didn't know about the shooting at Columbine until eight months after it happened. I didn't know until last week that the Republican National Convention is something that happens every election year. And there's a Democratic National Convention, too! Who the fuck knew? I'm twenty-two years old, and I didn't know the process for electing a President of my own country. And those are just the things that are on my mind right know. Can you imagine how many other things in life just passed me right by?
I suppose it doesn't really matter, though. I can actually look at my circumstance right now and be GLAD that I have the opportunity to be twenty-two and seeing everything for the first time. It's kind of refreshing to know that there are people in the world who are struggling through their own trials and tribulations. And today, it's refreshing to know that I am not alone as I grow older. I have an entire generation to grow along with, and I will have that as long as I live.
08/07/00
I watched Dogma this weekend. Three times. Since we no longer have cable, I spent my weekend wondering what I could watch on TV, and ended up watching Dogma, Dogma, Dogma. Luckily, it's a good movie, and even luckier than that is the fact that it got better every time I watched it. Kudos to Kevin Smith, and I assure you I was never a fan.
Kevin Smith is to blame for all those movies that might as well have been titled Sex, Sex, and More Sex. That's not an interesting topic for me. I'm very much of the opinion that movies, and entertainment in general, should consider SOMETHING more than all the things we witness on a daily basis. The general populace of America is bombarded with sexual motivation all the time. I get fucking offers for sex when I walk down the street. Why would I want to watch people talk about sex on the screen?
In any case, Dogma fucking rocks. It's so DIFFERENT. At first, I wasn't sure I liked it because I was tired and not really paying attention to it. I usually watch movies that hit me in the face with action and suspense. I generally need something like that to hold my attention because of all those crappy screen plays that are out there. If I'm not learning something from it, I want to see people get fucking blown up. I want to see something that's more than just a nice little story. I don't need people to tell me stories; I see plenty of those in my head all the time. What I need to see is PRODUCTION. I need to see disaster and chaos. I need to see something that pumps up the adrenaline until I can be certain I'm alive. Dogma doesn't do that, but it still fucking rocks. Why? It rocks because Kevin Smith took a chance, and it worked.
The screen play is amazing. Kevin Smith must've read the Bible about fifteen billion times, if all that stuff is true. I wouldn't know. But it's intelligent and inspired, and it has a logically rationalized POINT. It's amazing to me to witness artists in action. Kevin Smith is an artist. He has something to say, just like I do; he has something to say that is so HUGE that it needs an extended metaphor as its vehicle. It needs to be experienced to be understood, and yet, so few people actually understand these things. No one realizes how much work goes into that kind of production. You can finish a work of art and be SO PROUD of what you've accomplished in the message which is now ready to go out into the public, but then, it fails. It can be flawless, and it's still likely to fail. And then, just to make you feel worse, the crappy screen plays shoot straight to the top of the box office. It's hard to be an artist.
It's so sad that artists want nothing more than to speak their minds, and so often, that message is miscontrued. So, I just wanted to say that I witnessed and I understood, and I fear to attempt an explanation, since I would be certain to leave something out. All I can say is that I agree that faith should be based upon ideas instead of beliefs. There IS a difference, and the one who can conceptualize is the one who wins in the end. The one who can believe without a doctrine, the one who can fully experience and respect time on this planet, the one who can accept the ideas of those around him: HE is the one who will eventually be satisfied, no matter what happens when we die. He, who has faith that no single organized religion holds all the answers, is the one who can truly be redeemed by his unbiased acceptance of life.
Did I mention that the movie was funny? I would like to close with this quote from Dogma:
"Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity anyone can engage in, next to soccer."
-Loki, the physical manifestation of God's wrath (Matt Damon)
08/08/00
I was walking to work this morning when something occurred to me. It's really fucking hot today, and I can't STAND hot weather, so I was really pissed and uncomfortable. And I'm wearing jeans with a black T-shirt, so I'm not dressed up or anything. In fact, I was wondering as I walked, if perhaps I should've dressed slightly nicer for work, but I know no one really cares, so I dismissed that thought as swiftly as it had been conceived. The point is this: even though I was sweaty and uncomfortable and mad at the whole fucking planet, I noticed that nearly every man I passed on the street stopped to look at me.
I don't believe that I'm a terribly attractive woman. I know I am more attractive than some, but I rarely FEEL like I look good. More often than not, I feel like I want to jump out of my body and make an entirely new one that would be more ME, but we all know that's an impossibility. So I just get pissed a lot and try to accept who I am. The strange thing is, though, that I can't understand why men look at me. It's such a horrible circumstance for me. When I'm walking down the street and the men turn to look at me from their cars, or they stop putting a new sign up on a building to look at me, or they flat out STARE at me as I pass by where they just happen to be waiting for the bus, I can't deal. First off, they make me fucking nervous as HELL because I have an ANXIETY DISORDER and I have to tell myself to remember to breathe and just keep walking past them. If I don't tell myself to remember to breathe, I completely forget. I'm about fifeen times more likely to fall on my face when some random guy is looking at me because I feel so fucking self-conscious that I just want to die.
Part of this problem stems from my intense hatred of all things sexual. Pardon my lack of sympathy for the fact that all men think with their dicks, but I just don't understand what it is that makes them stop to look at women on the street. And why me? What is so interesting about me? I wear jeans every fucking day. I hide behind sunglasses so no one can see my eyes. I don't look at anyone, and I probably look like I'm about to kill someone because of all the things I hate that seem to be constantly running through my mind. So why do they look at me? I want them to leave me the fuck alone. I want to scream out at the world, "No, I will not have sex with you!!! I don't even like sex!!! IS THAT OKAY WITH YOU??!!"
Then people tell you, though, that you must be doing it wrong because EVERYONE likes sex, right? WRONG, motherfucker. Not someone who's been depressed. Not me. So leave me the fuck alone.
It sucks, too, because as soon as men on the street AREN'T looking at me, I get all depressed that I'm not attractive enough at the moment to gather any attention. What the hell is wrong with me? Why is this such a big deal? Why do I want to be attractive if I hate to attract attention from my looks?
I really like to people-watch. Really, I do. There are few things more pleasant than sitting on a city bench with a cup of coffee, just watching the people hurry by. When I watch people, though, it's not in a sexual way, it's in a purely observational, everyone's my equal kind of way. I really don't even consider there to be much of a difference between women and men. I just watch everyone as if they were one and the same. I wonder about people. So, it's not like I don't understand people-watching. But there's a definite difference between me wondering about other people's lives, and some guy stopping what he's doing to watch me walk down the street I live on, while elbowing his friend in the stomach and nodding in my direction.
I don't know. Maybe it would be better if they smiled and said hello, but they just fucking stare and make me all paranoid. Treat me like a fucking person, dude. I was in a casino in Atlantic City just a few weeks ago, and some guy came up to tell me I have the most beautiful eyes he's ever seen. He said he just had to tell me, and then he told me to enjoy my evening, and he walked away. That was really nice of him. It made me feel good without making me feel like a sex object. Why can't more men be pleasant like him? Why can't they treat me like a person who doesn't necessarily want to get into bed with them? Why can't they behave themselves?
08/10/00
Guess what? Due to the number of entries I've been adding and the fact that this is an atrocious means of organizing my journal, I've decided to move my journal writing to Diaryland.
I will be writing just as often in that medium, and it may not be as pretty, but it will be more organized. I'll try it for awhile. Let me know if there are any problems. My new journal is here. Please visit and drop me a line! Thank you, devoted readers.