calling a series of private activities a "secret life" makes it sound so...i don't know, interesting, i guess. a secret life isn't necessarily interesting. it's just a life you don't tell other people about. maybe you're ashamed of it, but maybe it's just something you don't speak of. maybe it's something you're a little ashamed of but mostly just don't speak of.



on other (or similar) fronts, i kind of want to die. i don't know how cherubino did it. i hurt all over. i can now understand that the power of fiction is, not necessarily to transcend, but just to take us out of these sorts of moments, sometimes by putting us further into them. i've experienced longing, but not like this...hopelessness, but not like this. in some ways it isn't even that bad--i know everything's for the best, and it's not like i've run out of hope, and it's not like i had firm expectations that are now being dashed. it's just a different variety of longing and hopelessness. and when looked at from that angle, it's kind of interesting, even--it gains a certain sort of savor, if you see what i mean. i'm like, "hunh, experience!"



and meanwhile everything even slightly below the skin is pulsing with something akin to pain, and the skin itself feels new to the touch.



why would anyone want to get involved with me? look at how i look at things. look how bizarre and clinical i am, and how i tell unnecessary details about myself as if the world were a cave and my body and i the sole dwellers in it. look at how i see everything as splitting apart and coming back together nothing more than a mess--a beautiful mess usually, when one looks closely enough, but still a freaking mess.



look at these eyes, and the way i see out of them, and the way they latch on to someone as if he or she is a star that can look back at me... who wants to be a star? it's a stupid and terrible thing to ask of anyone. i'm sure laura didn't want to be laura, and beatrice had no desire to be beatrice. i don' t want to be anyone else's star; why do i make others mine? god, i'm sorry, for feeling this way. really. it's an imposition, and it's wrong, and--



i wish

you would look back at me.

i apologize for this wish.