in times of stress i skip class...in the last few years, fruits basket has also become one of the things i can do. i wish i could write japanese so i could tell natsuki takaya how much her series means to me. i mean, one can never know anything until after it's happened, but fruits basket helps me--actually helps me, to know what i can try to feel when i feel like such a piece of crap, to know what in myself i can try to see.
and i do have to try to be strong, however bad i am at it. it's just so weird, this whole thing is weird. today i threw away a paper towel three times--because i didn't throw it away the right way the first two times? i don't know! it was the multi-stall bathroom at school, too. i mean, nobody else was in there, but someone could have come in and seen--or heard--me walking from garbage to garbage in my abrasively percussive high heels.
mais je n'ai pas peur. i have a best of leonard cohen cd--i like only three songs on it. "famous blue raincoat," "the partisan," and "who by fire." however, i really really like both "who by fire" and "famous blue raincoat," so i can't say i dislike leonard cohen.
i realize i can't convince myself of what i have to do. this whole thing is not just an inconvenience to me--it makes things difficult for other people too, and that bothers me more than i can say. but i think i have to stop fighting--i can't dictate the pace. i want to face it, but i can't, because some part of me that either hates or more simply fears for me isn't convinced that i can't continue to survive without knowing whatever is hovering on the edge, whatever's causing me to sit at the bottom of some dark lake looking up through a whirlpool. it's not giving up, precisely, what i'm talking about--it's more just the cessation of hostilities. i can't control this. when it gets bad, i'm terrified of the dark. when it gets bad, i can't touch door handles. i smoke. i don't trust people. and sometimes when it hits hard i can't really see and can't really hear. i only cut myself because i'm angry, and because i like the look of my own blood, though i can't stand to see others'. this isn't complaining. it's a catalog of facts. i like both the ideal and the actuality of pain, though i have only self-inflicted experience with it--but pain isn't the end; beyond all this, and beyond pleasure, is an unfolding, like the wing of a large bird preparing to take flight.
i'm not brave. but i won't back down. i'm weak, weak beyond comprehension. i'm torn easier than a petal, torn easier than a word printed on a cheap page. but it doesn't matter. anything but surrender, even in surrender. i surrender; i have no pride. but i don't give up, because i am myself, a thing i'll willingly apologize for a thousand times a minute, but a thing i also refuse to be anything other than. is it a case of semantics at this point? the substitution of one term for another?
my own personal opinion is that it only matters to a certain extent. the point is that because both the statement "i surrender" and the statement "i don't surrender" at this juncture of self-scraped-ness are true, i'm at the point of paradox, and thus i have to make a sound. that's why i write in this blog--and it's why, if i can harness this point, i'll be able to sing to the full extent of my abilities. of this i'm not afraid. i'm not afraid of standing in the mouth of this thing and becoming its sound.
though technically, at the moment, i don't have the energy to be afraid of anything. throwing away that paper towel really took it out of me.
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