[12:10pm | friday, 4/6/12 | entry nine (9), i am the opposite of slowly loosing my mind, and this is what makes me apprehensive.]

i do not think i know where i am anymore. i do not know where you are, i just am realized to your presence, that it lines this place like a thin piece of film. you are everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and this is why i do not think i know where i am anymore.

i used to feel you nested behind my ribs, swimming in the ocean around my heart, funneling yourself into the veins of my body to entrench yourself in every available tissue of myself. and then, i used to feel you underneath my feet, cunningly trying to trip up my tentative steps; i used to feel you winding yourself around my fingers, forcing them to touch things and feel things i do not, and how you used to curl yourself around my neck, like a pretty little fatal scarf.

the closest i feel you now is in the world “child.” the closest i see you now is when i appraise the contempt you try to lay inside me. i do not miss you, monster, but i fear your lack of presence.

what do people do when they do not have fear, when they subject themselves to reckless things and criminal conditions willingly and submissively all for one little, marginal profit ? a little, marginal profit that is no profit at all, really, just a placating gift. as if you so desired to hear your idol speak to you, but they grace you with nothing more than a thin exhale to buffet the fringe from your forehead.

what do you do when things feel very scary, but you do them anyway ? when you talk to people that are terrifying, who you do not know, who you do not want to know, who are so far removed, and their presence unlocks a torrent of emotions one cannot decipher, and still it is scary, and still you talk to them ? when tears sting your eyes, and your body starts to feel immobile, and you feel irrelevant and yet at the very same time, you rationalize it to yourself that they are talking back, and inquiring, and though they are not the same person, they are a person. a variation, a substitute, an acceptable imperfection. what does it mean when you hate your train of thought ?

[8:40pm | wednesday, 2/15/12 | entry eight (8), a direct account of three mighty mistakes of mine; another dream; a deadly dream.]

take a breath. the must and tangible memories funnel into your mouth, coasting across the soft tissue of your throat and the ever-more delicate membrane of your trachea, the diligent infantry inflating your lungs with a kind of restricting fullness that does more to make breathing difficult than make it any easier. exhale sharply, as a consequence, but gasp again, swallow another breath, suck in the oxygen around you, display such profound gluttony. your heart thundered.

thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

alive, then, you discern. you were alive. i was alive. yet dragging my fingertips through the cotton folds of where i lay, i knew i was not in my bed. there was too much comfort here, and not enough color; muted, neutral tones screamed at you from every shadowy corner, even the floors heaved up at you in their sickly brown stained-wood fashion. it made your mind reel, and spin, and this made the shadows more keen to swallow up every detail of what was around you.

the bed did not partake in the ill-inducing carousel. the bed was a consistency, though unfamiliar. why was the bed unfamiliar ? but it wasn’t. but it was, something told you. you didn’t know who, or what, it was. it seemed accurate.

your head stops spinning, or the act of it became too mundane and boring to keep up, because it stopped abruptly. the shadows spoke to you, slithering around, desiring to wrap around your ankles, but you began to notice there was a thin, watery light around where you sat in the folds of the unfamiliar-familiar comforter, but no apparent light source. that was wrong. i would have guessed moonlight, but the shadows swathed around the dull, very distant window in a screen so impenetrable-seeming the idea seemed more ludicrous than light-from-nowhere. so the light was from nowhere, you decided.

my hands had kept wandering in the shallow crevices of the blanket, creeping along the funnels the folds made as if an expedition. and not one of anti-abstraction, you remark to yourself with grim humor. but it wasn’t very funny. startled, though, they found something cool to the touch, freezing actually, and despite the coursing amount of terror inside your veins you seized the thing and flung it outwards from the blanket, throwing it unmercifully into the light-from-nowhere that glazed your skin with an eerie translucency. i wanted to yell at the sight. the object was attached to a human, a human body beside me - the object was a hand. i wanted to yell. what thing of a human was so cold-blooded i could not have felt it’s proximity brushing me through the blankets ?

“sshh, baby.” the thing murmured. the shadows threatened to continue their wheeling spins of dance once more, but i refused to look past the boundaries of the bed to acknowledged the disorientation. “go back to sleep.”

i will not, i thought derisively in response, feeling that musty air constrict my lungs uncomfortably once more, feeling sick once again, the peripherals of my vision noticing how the shadows and muted tones of the room swung in crazy somersaults and abstract dances. i realized my hand was still touching the thing that also seemed familiar, but had to be unfamiliar, and i attempted to sharply release it, my arm still poised outstretched in midair with the conviction of the find, but i realized it in turn held on to me. “stop.” i said. “stop.” it was a trapped voice, mine was.

“go back to sleep.” murmured that sleepy, sleepy voice, the head it came from still rolled in the folds of the blankets, unseen. i remember what i used to call it, how i’d coo at it with a lovingness in my tempo. i started to violently shake my hand, passionately, rigorously, attempting to free myself, but it refused to let go, and the cold hand dropped back to the surface of the bed, not releasing it’s thrashing captor.

i did know this room. i did know it’s neutral tones. i did know that voice, but not from that cold mass it came out of. i stared around sharply, fearfully, and it was as if the shadows balked at me. the shadow-screened window paled to let in more light, as if jeering at me, revealing a thin, chalked-up doodle on the glass pane. the musty air was hard to come by, now, in my lungs. i gasped and shuddered for it to fill my lungs, even painfully, i gasped for any bit of air, but my throat seemed to crack and swell at the complete absence of oxygen. no human could live in these sudden conditions. the shadows themselves emitted a temperature chillier than the bite of space, i was sure, and the feeling in my hand was quickly fading from the boy who still seized it tightly, inviting his chill to bite into my fingers. they would be purple, i thought if i could see them, they would be blue and purple, and not in the alluring way.

“baby, go back to sleep.” that lazy-sleep voice murmured again, shuffling slightly in his bed as if the chill were only a passing discomfort. i could not breathe to answer; i could not say stop, get away, what are you, or scream how much it felt like his stone-like hand was sucking all the life-force from my violently dry-heaving body. he wasn’t going to let go, i realized. my mistake was that i fell into the trap in the first place. i knew what this place was, the hollowed-out corner on the far right of the room and how it was the breeding-place for all these shadows that writhed around me. my heart ached and grieved and my body shook from oxygen deprivation, and my eyes stung sharply and shined in the semi-light with misery. i tried to swallow by the throat and tongue was a swelled-up mass, my lungs felt flat and flaccid with the lack of air in them, my heart beat so slow and weak yet it’s drums were deafening in my ears.

thh-ump.

thhhh-ump.

i could not talk, but i tried. “stop, stop, stop, stop!” shadows unrelated to that of the rooms’ crept up in my glassy, reeling vision. i was to die here, i thought. i flailed my hand with all the strength left in my body, shaking and vibrating violently all at once i wasn’t sure what were the difference between my shivers and my struggles, and by all account my struggles were meek at best. i didn’t care. all i could think was how i did not want to die holding his hand in this awful vacuum.

thhhhhh-ump.

thhhhhhhh…

“babe. go to sleep.”

[2:00pm | tuesday, 12/27/11 | entry seven (7), ”yes, doll, let me win.”]

my priorities are perpetually messed up, i feel. things feel out of order, although systematic, they feel mundane, irrelevant, chastising. i thought, for a while, i could best her. this lurking, prowling, disgusting monster. i am beginning to get ever the smallest clue that this, however, is impossible, due to how interwoven she is to my very existence, due to how all my life i have only tried to not succumb to her. and haven’t done a very good job about it. perhaps what is intended to happen, all along, is an embrace of this monster. acceptance, as you will. coexistence. everyone is a little vile - isn’t everyone something of a weapon, isn’t everyone a little rotten ? aren’t all humans such ?

i feel like i talked with her last night. simply talked. simply had a conversation with her - what an idea. how out of this world. i can’t talk to people, i never do. except to myself, and i suppose now that my monster is a part of me ? is this why i can concede her reasoning, even if i disagree ? perhaps it is because i will always be susceptible to her. sometimes i like to think i am strong when faced with her. other times, i realize it has been me under her control all along.

i know this because i know when i actively do malicious things. things like saying a word that will trigger a pang in your heart, or a photograph i know will stir you wrong, just as the similar photographs i see all over your face that give me a pang, that lovely pang. [pang, i am still alive. pang. why ? pang.]

but i’ve only nearly lost myself to her once, just once. at that time, i could have only truly been the monster poised above her prey; her lovely, scavenged prey, a tangled and mutilated mass of which i got the scrapings of. but the scrapings, oh, i adored. but i caught myself, right as she thought about destroying me. she lost, that time.

and perhaps i actively let her win sometimes. out of weakness. out of desire, perhaps out of weariness. “i fight you so often.” “yes, doll, let me win.” “that sounds nice.” “it will be so nice.” and even as she talks to me now, in undertones, she is compelling.

[4:02pm | tuesday, 11/22/11 | entry six (6), myriad of mysteries, mourning, and messed up.]

i am considerably less confused today. it is as if this weight has been lifted from my shoulders that was bent on breaking my bones, causing bruises in a sense i do not think is alluring at all. i wanted them, i wanted them ravenously, but you as a causality was causing me grief i could no longer walk alongside. i did something i finally feel in my bones is correct, this feeling is something i am trying to hold on to, hold on to.

through the torrent of dreary rain and dismal darkness, something happened last night. i saw your face and it was lovely. i thought this was real life, you in your proper slouch and turned up lips and dirty locks that cry when cut. it was real, to me. so many feelings fluttering inside of my chest cavity, i felt near combustive. it was that shallow skin, and long legs, and how i knew where and when i could see your ribs if your shirt was off, and the mysterious scar i loved so much in that old photograph with your eyes closed, but lips always turned up.

the light could’ve been cast against you in a way you positively gleamed, in that silly dream effect that is charming and the light is always slanted in such a way it illuminates every beautiful speck of dust that dared cluster near your face that i missed pressing my palms against. you were with friends, as always, but they left, they faded away like salt dissolving in a water solution. that was the solution.

i was hollow. i had to be. i could hear my blood in my ears, i couldn’t feel my feet, i was falling apart in front of your stare, i was falling apart in front of you. i didn’t know why you were there and i couldn’t guess. but you sauntered up to me and had nothing against your hands but air, you had nothing in your mind but empty wordlessness. you hadn’t prepared anything. did you know you didn’t need to ? a faint slap of disgrace that reminded me of the nightmare i refuse to believe was reality. this was reality. this right now.

you wanted - and you didn’t need to finish. i just fell against you, breathed in the must from that old reddish shirt, buried my cheek in its softness, let my lips brush against your neck. i could have cried. this was the happiness that has escaped me for all these months - you know i don’t even know how long, strange, because i used to count with…

normality had returned to my life, a sigh of relief, a fantastic outlet no one else seemed to be able to satisfy. i was awake, and alive, and i didn’t even question the realness and solidness until i was blinking awake to rain tumbling outside my papered windows and the cold had frozen the marrow of my bones throughout the night and my phone whined and desired my attention, and it was just a duty call, and it wasn’t you, and you were never even in the reality of my present life. my morning has been off ever since.

how could it not have been real ?

i am giving monster me too much ammunition as i sit here in sourness and discontent. i let go of too many priorities.

[11:03am | tuesday, 9/27/11 | entry one (1), the anticipation, the insipid, the anxiety]

sometimes i fear you to an overwhelming fault. creeping, crawling, cloistering claustrophobia condemning my mindset. too early. too soon. last night was the already arresting abolition of my expedition. i felt i made another mistake in an already too extensive series of faults. a vast list too numerous to mention. to do so would require delving further into the depths of this place and i am apprehensive of the fact that i am not ready to face such a thing. too early. too soon. shivers acquaint themselves with me as if they think i fancy their company without even a murmur of caution; cold, thrilling chills shake my slender limbs, of dear this dusty, dingy cavern may simply collapse. an inhibition of mine. collapse. oblivion.

[9:40pm | tuesday, 11/01/11 | entry five (5), tongue-tied.]

it’s been a while. not that i haven’t been stalking the dirt halls of this ramshackle cave whisperingly close to the depths of the inferno, no. i’ve been down here all this while. it is the simple and complex matter that my own notions, faults, depression, and stress have rendered me tongue-tied. i wish i wasn’t here, i tell you. i think incorrect. i am wrong. i want to be in your head, not mine. in a heartbeat.

yet i come back to the idea that my thoughts haven’t strayed too far from the forefront of my mind. i contemplate them endlessly, but am mute when it comes to communication. i cannot tell you the extent of this. you’ll think me silly, given you reading my journals despite i have told you to leave this alone, my savior anonymous (who has become a reality to latch on to, amidst this chaos and confusion and warping surrealism). yet words are mine, my own, my very. spokenness requires different muscles, a different mindset than the one i have, requires the opposite of apathy and fear, and i possess those very two. i want to tell you why i was overcome with a desolate stare and anger welling in my eyes the other night, i do. except i will not. the words are here somewhere, an explanation, but they are trapped, much like the voice in my throat. this seems to be the essence of me. and people can’t deal with it – they leave. they always leave, because of this, because of me.

i confuse myself. often. this confuses me. shallow light, on a brazen face, curtained by loose and weak curls, coughed down the side of slim skin like a soul diagnosed with a detrimental disease. i, i like that. i like that. and then, i am fond of the opposite reality we marathon endlessly for our captivated eyes. constantly, however, i endure the awful, sick fact i can’t enjoy them together, as one, committedly. sadness and revulsion steals me away that i continue these steps i am taking. i keep thinking you’ll understand, but truly i think you have something else set in your mind entirely. i am sorry.

i am sorry, i say this a lot. i am sorry, i am sorry, i am sorry, and if i say this three times it is either true, or i am trying to convince myself of the truth in my words. i am generally heartfelt. i walked around a big, empty shell of a place with lots of empty shells of souls today, and thought with teeth drilling into my mouth that i would apologize. that i would drop the pettiness i harbor right there, on the ground, as i wandered, and it would be left behind, falling deeper into the abyss the further i meandered onward. i was close to it, but something inside me said the opportunity hadn’t yet presented itself. i walked on, with my heavy burden. a burden that never used to carve a hole and sit inside me, but increasingly it’s hole has gotten ever more consuming over the years.

this year, in short, already makes me weary. i am without my special strength and i am appalled by the approximately aghast arched before me, in replacement. i am without passion and yet the horror of dedication lurks my every footfall. it is heavier every day, and with each day, i can bear it less. the lack of enthusiasm, love, and meticulous ideals that i once invested has been swept away in the fury of vindictive bitches with immoral, raging judgments. i feel full of fury and consequently and instantaneously full of wretched misery.

if i get any deeper, the stitch may be split again. you know the light in here is limited. i never know what the sky looks like, it’s just all grey and black and brown and maroon. something else big has happened, i just don’t have enough energy to tell you. this seems to be the essence of me. and people can’t deal with it – they leave.

[5:03pm | tuesday, 10/04/11 | entry four (4), i abhor]

three things have come to my attention, whether by accident or mistake or logical flaw. this place is uncomfortable, smothering, and morbid, and this place is not where i want to be any more, and this place will be my demise. these are not the three things i have to share with you.

one. precious stones are insulting artifacts of over-acclaimed beauty. yes, beautiful, but in a warped way. i have begun to realize it has to be a spell, maybe among the humidity and dense air i have simply become mired in fascination by the only thing i can perceive to be precious. i have slowly started to become aware of how rough the crusted thing has been to my hands, trying to hold it to me and all it does it poke and prod and hurt. i believe i know this now. i just don’t know where to go from here. you see, it’s just so beautiful and i have to keep it with me at all times, i have to keep this gemstone.

two. pettiness. it’s something you get acquainted with when you spend so much time in your own thoughts and live inside a state of all-encompassing reverie. it’s shameful. makes me anxious. makes me apologetic. i am sorry, i am sorry, a thousand times i will say. yet for being pathetically petty, predictably paltry, no one accepts your apologies. i can only spread my hands, for i do not know how to help myself. perhaps this will be a side task. or perhaps not, perhaps i will embrace it even further, if only vengefully, if only with every bit of spite i can muster. embracing it would assert my inferiority, though. that wouldn’t come to pass.

three. recently i have felt condemned by a lack of self-control, and it’s a hated thing i can do nothing about. and this is where my inferiority is asserted. somber sorrow, red rage, ludicrous laughter, all for no goddamned reason, no goddamned reason at all. it was then i felt the most anxious in front of you than i ever have before, to a point where even in my mind there were only stutters and disjointed sentences to be found. oh, and libido for just generally everything at the moment, which i seduce down to the phantom instincts of jealousy i spy through mementos that once were mine, but are no longer, it seems. they are for another. 

[10:12pm | thursday, 9/29/11 | entry three (3), monster me]

i acknowledge the notion that anyone happening upon this still have questions. ironically, as do i. has there yet been an overwhelming sense of realization and epiphany and thus the resulting renovation or understanding of this place, my mind ? no, i think not, no. sad for me to face, yes, but not surprising. i know what i’m doing, i know my inhibitions, i know my fears - and this is it. days have passed and still i only skim the surface of my conscious and unconscious and nothing of the world in between, where i could lose myself, the transplanal state of existence this concept, reality, of a monster is truly and potentially inside me as much as it truly and potentially does not exist. i refuse to answer your questions. but if you insist on seeing the contents of my mind, insist on dwelling up there on the surface waiting for me to come back, and when i don’t, and you try to find me, i concede the eventuality of you learning about me. i accept you will know vaguely the things i talk about, or you will know the monstrous truth. forgive this unease sweating from my emaciated and pallid body, just listen to my words now. f-forgive my tremor, my hes - itation, forgive that in telling you this, it gives you your monster.

i’ve simply learned it is a foul thing. a rotten thing. a thing, that is what i have learned. not humanoid, not me, certainly not that. not ever will it be me (this i hope, biting my thin bottom lip red, ever red, red and raw - this is how hard i hope). i am unsure if it is living. if it exists in this plane of being. if it is in my head. or if people can see it in me, inside me, where i feel the filthy thing lives, forming a nest out of my caged ribs and palpitating heart, stricken with the fear of the thing: palpitating. in the simplest terms it is my immorality, and a sinister immortality. in the much less concise, it is the brash and brazen idiocy of every mistake i have committed, and those i haven’t yet but probably will. it is the atrocious atrophy of whatever i have hope in, because it isn’t any kind of pathetic faith, not here, not with this mind. it is my morbid, my hideous, my loathsome inhuman nature. monster me isn’t me, make me stop saying this. monster me is the dreadful embodiment of my fears, my fear of everything in the world, even things i do not know (perhaps especially this); it is the concept of disgracing myself for the standards i try so hard to hold myself to. you shouldn’t know this. this is too much ammunition if ever this were to be found -

oh, my personal enigma. this is all it is, this concept. ha, concept. hear me ? simply an intangible insubstantial amorphous nothingness, nothing to worry aboutness.

[9:33pm | thursday, 9/29/11 | entry two (2), my precious, the charming cheat, the gemstone.]

god this place is a chaotic cavern, my subconscious a sickly sight. within this dirty, dusty, dull demeanor, things are buried here, things like bad memories; things like my nostalgia that sweeps through these underground tunnels like a flash flood, there and gone that fast, unpredictably. in this place there are also lavish luxuries, marred and encrusted with acid as they are. gems that seem to posses malevolence proving plentifully precious to my perception. a certain gemstone botched in a pallor, alluring shine enchanting me. i don’t know why. it harbors an almost tangible aura of evil, of certain impending doom. often, i fumble and lose this stone. i sometimes have misgivings i’ll be chasing this charming cheat ever-long (for there is no such thing as time down here). this gemstone is beautiful and occasionally devilish with its intentions, though pure i am sure, so pure.

[8:02pm | monday, 9/26/11 | the prelude, the preamble, the prologue]

well, no no no. i fear i find it arduous tasked to answer your inquiries. no. i have no answers, i never have. i’ve never had your answers. you can’t ask, you have to figure it out. you have to figure me out just as much as i have assigned myself to undertake the same. you will see, slowly, as i open my mind, the things that crawl out. disgusting things, like insipid liquid and beautiful things, such as antique and fragile anamnesis, and - well, you’ll see. you will see, i assure. so will i. so will i, it seems.

alas, i can no longer talk to you. you’re lovely, and heart-aching. these are good things, this means you make me feel. i can’t address you any longer, for fear of who i am tackling in this expedition. but will you tell someone, anyone, where i am if i fail to resurface ? i don’t mean to worry you. just understand the permeating effect of my adversary, for it is this enigma i have to endure to truly come to understand the essence of my mind.

hear that, enigma ? oh yes, monster me, i know you sulk inside my every thought process. are you frightened of me in a way to rival my fear of you ? silence, silence. i’ll soon get my answers.

just as you will, spectator, my love, my link to the surface. perhaps not dwell too long, it could very well not be me who emerges from my mind at the end of this escapade. what of you, anyway ? will you be the same ? perhaps turn away now. i have to tell you off, i’ve told myself - ah, and yet my endearing names for you. please leave, good-bye, please leave.