January 18–February 1, 2003 — This feeling used to pass

I don’t think my priorities are quite what they used to be. Each week I work my three days, and I don’t get anything done in my four days to myself. My sister, parents and friends are worried about me. I don’t know what I want to do with my time anymore. I’ve no desire to write journal entries, but I feel obligated to write something about the last two weeks before I forget what it was like skulking through them.

A lot has gone wrong. I try to believe that I am not a terrible person, but the looks on the faces of others make that impossible. I tell myself that I have made a lot of mistakes, but that none were malicious, none orchestrated to hurt others as a side effect of getting what I want. It’s difficult to believe myself when I don’t think anyone else does aside from my friends, the ones who are obliged to believe me.

Amy used to tell me that I didn’t write enough about girls, that I left out the details. I’ve changed that a bit lately, and there’s a simple formula to it: The easier on my conscience a relationship was, the more I write about it. If I was honest about the terrible, heartless things I’ve done, I wouldn’t have this identity to hide behind, the one where I’m thoughtful and maybe a bit broken but still human and still someone you might be willing to talk to and spend time with.

Honesty would destroy me. I’m only honest when my conscience is clean. When a girl breaks up with me and makes me the one with a license to act bitter and hurt, I can write thousands of words about what happened. But when it’s my fault, I lie; when I convince a person I’m capable of a relationship because I want to make out with them, I leave out the details.

And without someone to blame, I don’t have much to go on. My writing exists to make me a victim, to give you a reason to feel sorry for me. I don’t even know that I succeed at that; I feel like part of a community play that doesn’t deserve the small audience it has, an audience whose members enjoy having a row of seats to themselves and watching the untalented as they try to affect love and sadness and excitement. The many failures are a bit like entertainment, and it’s free; maybe that’s enough.

My life is not very exciting. I’m not enjoying it very much right now; I don’t like the cold, and I don’t like the aimlessness. So I write about my life with enough negative energy to pretend that it’s worth reading about. I make every day sound sad and horrible; I make sadness an end all its own, something to keep me going.

Most days, though, I’m not very sad. I’m just here. I stare at the ceiling and I read my books and I find missing parts for customers whose TV benches didn’t come with enough dowels.

Without much to go on, I’ve written very little in the last three weeks.