Monthly Archives: August 2003

Ride To Nowhere

I took a bus ride today, not know­ing where it went or how it got there. For the first two hours I felt lost, not under­stand­ing any of what I was think­ing or feel­ing. In the last hour I almost broke down, a lit­tle clear­er in my head but not much. All I found out is that I hurt, that I don’t want to get out of bed, that I don’t want to talk to peo­ple, that I need help.

Stepping Into New

There’s about two months through the entire year when step­ping out­side makes me feel as if I’m only begin­ning my life, when I for­get every­thing and lose myself to the blan­ket­ing sun, the brisk breeze, the fresh­ness of the air. Ever since I was young I’ve had a pic­ture in my mind of walk­ing down a city street on a new morn­ing, emer­ald lawns sway­ing in the shade, almost inde­scrib­ably per­fect. I’m deter­mined to find this place one day and share it with some­one.

Dzhanechka

I feel worth­less.

She hugged him tight round the neck, her arms trem­bling, as though she was try­ing to pass her soul to him with that kiss. No, it was right and prop­er she should die!

I find that I’m begin­ning to com­pare myself with oth­ers, in order that I feel bet­ter about myself. I keep telling myself that I have no debt, no ail­ments, and bare­ly any respon­si­bil­i­ties. I’m a uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate, I live in a great city in a com­fort­able apart­ment, I’ve final­ly fall­en into a great bunch of stand-up friends. Why does it feel as though I have noth­ing, that I’ve accom­plished noth­ing, that my life is noth­ing? That in my near­ly 23 years of life, I have noth­ing to show for it but a few fris­sons and a life or two affect­ed.

If only I was being too hard on myself.

Garrulousness

I recent­ly renewed my con­tract with my cur­rent host for anoth­er year of ser­vice. I’m a lit­tle sur­prised that this page has­n’t fall­en into desue­tude over the last year. I sup­pose it’s only now, at 22, that I’m able to find mean­ing in almost all aspects of my life, that I have enough to write about. My pre­vi­ous sev­en or so pages have been rather emp­ty, although there was more vari­ety in the con­tent. I don’t think I’ve ever had a lay­out last this long.

It’s usu­al­ly when I have a neg­a­tive emo­tion that I’m able to write, but the last year has been a series of ups and downs, although most­ly ups, and con­sid­ered to be more sta­ble than pre­vi­ous years. Sometimes I can read back on pre­vi­ous entries and re-expe­ri­ence the emo­tion I was feel­ing at the time of writ­ing them. I’m sur­prised that I’m not embar­rassed about some entries, how rawly I’d express myself, and what I was think­ing at the time. I find that I’m usu­al­ly embar­rassed by how igno­rant, stu­pid, and idi­ot­ic a per­son I used to be. Aaron explains to me, of course, that it’s all just a mea­sure of how far I’ve come, but it’s some­times it’s dif­fi­cult to think of what I was like and not feel shame.

I remem­ber the nights I spent, after all class­es were fin­ished, com­ing home, cook­ing a meal, tak­ing a show­er, all I’d have left was to sit in front of my glow­ing mon­i­tor and write. When all I want­ed, at the end of the day, was to be able to turn the lights out, write until my eyes felt too tired to focus, and go to sleep sat­is­fied. I’m not sure if I remem­ber those nights fond­ly or not.

And per­haps there are more to come.