I remember being with John in a moment of intense frustration. We were sitting in Thompson’s classroom, and it was an overcast day outside. His blue blinds were cast aside, and we could hear the students playing outside through a crack in the window. It was lunchtime and we were eating together, a tradition that grew out of being mutual loners. I don’t remember what actually happened to cause his frustration, but he became so affected by it that he chomped down on his ballpoint pen out of spontaneity.

The pen cracked, and flooded his mouth with thick, dark ink. Upon realizing that his stress relief method would cause him even more anxiety than he thought, he quickly ran to the window and desperately tried to spit out as much ink as he could, the ink overflowing in his mouth and spilling down to his chin.

We tried our best to clean him up before anyone could have found out. After all, high school was hell. I remember secretly hoping that the ink would stain his teeth (only for a day, of course) to see the extent of his creativity in explaining what looked like super accelerated gingivitis to his father.

Sometimes I feel like bursting out from frustration in such a “self-destructive” manner. Usually, I can never bring myself to act out on such an impulse though. I always see the results of the destruction before I do anything, and in the end it never seems worth it.

It leaves me with my emotions bottled up inside me, and a desperate need to opine. Sometimes I can find relief through this medium. Sometimes it’s not enough.

Sometimes it doesn’t do anything.

I always wonder who reads this. I try to never write for anyone else; after all, the things I write about are things that bother me, that I need to get down. It puzzles me sometimes when I read people’s journals, and they start to talk to their friends about something, or to some phantom audience. I can understand why one would do that though, since the point of some are to inform friends of how one is doing. More often than not, however, it seems to be an exercise in narcissism.

I wonder what someone would think of me, if they were reading this without ever meeting me. Would they be able to see all sides of me? Would they be able to understand who I really am? Most of the time, what I write is out of necessity, and ends up being some sort of complaint, rant, or confusion.

I think most people would believe that I’ve lost hope. It’s quite the contrary really. Ever since the summer, I’ve gained hope to a degree. Of course, I’ve often stated that hope is a bad thing, and I still feel that way to a degree.

What I’ve come to realize is that I should possibly try to hope for the future, but not get my hopes up. The difference between the two is in length of time. Getting one’s hopes up has a more short-term connotation for more tangeable ideas, whereas hoping for the future is thought of as hoping for something that is currently unknown. If the future is ever to become the present, I’ll try to keep myself more grounded.

And if the present were to come to fruition?

Maybe it would be a good thing.

Though the page hasn’t been finished yet, I feel the need to write. What about, I’m not quite sure yet. Things have been changing so much, there has been so little stagnancy around me, that it will take me quite a while to understand what is going on. Another…six months let’s say?

And these thoughts roam in my head, this and that, coming back and forth like a mass of dense liquid dropped in another mass of denser liquid. I don’t know what I’m seeing. I don’t know what I’m feeling.

I’ve been waiting quite a while to do this; I wanted to get something down the first minute I wanted to make a page again. The whole time, thoughts just kept coming, things that I’d like to write, express, be understood. I didn’t think that I’d know where to start. And I don’t.

Perhaps it’s the draw of the machine, the beauty of a custom interface, the clickety-clack of the keyboard. Or perhaps I’m just weak, and I’m just waiting for a chance to be heard. I’d say both cases are likely, and not mutually exclusive.

So what can I say? What can I write? Only that I don’t know what to say, or what to write. After all, what better way to start again? It feels like I’m moving towards the centre of my being, travelling as the poet through the inferno, but without a guide to the next bolgia.

I wish I knew.