12.06.01 - 12:32 p.m.

So, it's lunch time. And this is my lunch. I suppose I should go and do something, but I'm feeling blah. and anyway, I'll write for a half-hour, and go and do something else for a half-hour.

It is so gray outside, a very gray day - although we have had lovely weather, brilliant weather, extraordinarily balmy weather this fall, and so dry that whole swaths of forest have burned. We have things on a smaller scale, here. People, cities, forests, places. We are an utterly tamed wilderness now it feels like a place of exile. Like - being an expatriot, lolling around in some foreign port getting tanned in February. Without some appropriate level of winter weather, it seems like we're wading through the days after a disaster, shell-shocked and half-silent, sucking in breaths like we're surprised to find (still) air and not water. I'm not sure what to make of all this. It's disasterously easy to fall into a certain pattern of remove, and end up feeling like you're sleepwalking through the day, particularly so when you just don't get enough sleep.

i haven't gotten enough sleep this week, though i suppose i could have last night. instead, i sat down and paid the bills. i wrote them all in a little notebook and started organizing my woefully inexact filekeeping. i think i'll do more of that this weekend. there is something disturbingly satisfying about completing so simple a task. especially when you spend your life sleep walking and afeared that around the next bend a monster (a MONSTER) will somehow pop out and ka-blooie.

hee.

i started a rant last night. i was going to sent it to some people. i'm see-sawing and teeter-tottering between two responses. my emotions are a flag right now, flapping in a fickle wind. one minute, full sail toward resentment, utter (really, bizarre) hurt and world war three. the other, toward an almost serene acceptance, or something. but still hurt. yeah, it hurts. i don't know. i create islands. i create bubbles so i won't get hurt, so i won't be wounded anymore, so no one can hurt me. i don't talk to some people, and i duck my head and smile. and want. them. to. like. me. i know, i know - this isn't a grand gesture. it isn't REAL pain. it isn't REAL suffering. other people have (and always have, and always will) have it worse. other people rise above and forge forward. other people... ...i am not. and so, heh. when something (again) happens to confirm that whole thing, i have to scrabble so hard to stay away from the abyss that it is like dragging in a half-closed breath, desperate. it's like suffocating. it's the first terrible, burning breath after suffocating, when it seems like you'll never, ever, ever get enough air.

This was the rant I started writing and will not send. Somehow, it was satisfying to write. I would like to chalk certain things up to deficits in other people, or come up with convoluted explanations including things like jealousy, poor character and bad dental hygeine. But how about the age-old explanation - human human human?

Okay. That one works, except it still. just. aches. when i think about it. No doubt, I'm making too much of it. And, I expect I'll hear a lot more about it in the next months, so I need to cope intelligently. Though I'd like to go nuclear. I'd like to hurt back. I'd like to throw up some grande, impossible windmill and charge in tilting and - lo! - let them remember that. let them remember me! let them SEE what happens when...

...bah. how silly is that? how can i put one word into the next word? how can i sense-i-fy the abstract absurdities of this whole situation, which isn't even real. and isn't even a situation. and isn't worth consuming, and being consumed over.

and certainly isn't worth the last twenty minutes.

Since, not only did we decide to discuss me in my absence, we also decided to discuss my relationship with X � and repeatedly make insulting remarks and statements � in my absence, this is the only goddamned warning. X and I are friends. We might be close to best friends, but we are friends. We might be semi-romantic friends, but we are nothing more than friends. All the psychological babble about what we are, or what we should do, or how we (I) screw (him) each other over emotionally must stop. I�m sorry that no one seems to understand this, and I�m sorry that high-maintenance, shy, impatient me scares y�all so damn much that you cannot fucking accept that X is my very good friend and there's nothing more to it, and that friendship involves more than sitting around preening at each other, and that I am not the fucking sinking fucking stone on X's shoulders dragging X down into the mucky morass of my terrible and psychotic psyche. I�m sorry that you cannot accept and understand that friendship � really good, really true � friendship, requires a give and take that often results in an emotional rollercoaster, but in the end always leaves you up, and not down.

Some people wave their dicks about their superpowers. Some people wave their dicks about their jobs. Some people wave their dicks about how many friends they have. Some people wave their dicks about how they will not say something behind someone�s back that they will not say to their faces. I guess we all wave our (or someone's) dicks, but generally it's all a little (a TINY) bit embarassing. And honestly, if you insist on puncturing everyone else's little balloon-bubbles that cut off reality and insulate some of their illusions from whatever harsh truths exist, then you deserve to come crashing down sometime, as well, you rude, infantile coward.

Well, some people talked about me behind my back, and didn�t say anything to my face. I don�t believe anything that anyone says about him- or her-self, and I think everyone should have a sense of the humorous absurd, especially when it comes to his or her illusions about the self. It still doesn�t mean I like being the (however, whoever) target of all this dickwaving. Honestly, if y�all had something to say to me, concerns about my interest, stress level or competence or past behavior, you should have spoken to me. I could�ve addressed them seriously and probably would�ve come to the same conclusion (that i did not/do not/will not ever, thank you very much, want to do this), but I wouldn�t�ve felt attacked and wounded and hurt and hated and abandoned and all that shit that happens when people (however well-meaning, however allegedly well-meaning, always a little cruel) get together and say hurtful things without the rest of the package � whether or not you meant to make me feel like that. I know I�m usually in hiding, but I�m never in hiding from two of the principals other than X

The point? Don�t worry. I won�t crash your sandbox. Stop talking about me, and I promise I won't run around slandering you.

so, that was the rant. i still feel like that. sorta. well, kinda sorta. i shouldn't make such a big deal. i shouldn't care. it shouldn't matter. it's nothing, nothing, nothing, and i'll be fine. just let me get enough sleep and i'll be fine.

heh.

i hope.