July & August, 2024

august 31st, 2024

august 30th, 2024

sleep-deprived, flight to abu dhabi

august 29th, 2024

i’m on the plane; it’s all very normal now. you should have seen me this morning. i got onto the plane to melbourne and realized there’s nothing like it — anticipation and waiting around, and the combination — sitting stuck in your seat waiting for a life your left with only to build, abandoning a good one you loved, knowing you’ll come back for it, but how will it be then? [redacted] and i keep turning to each other and saying, “i’m so excited,” only to say within seconds, “i’m so nervous and sick,” and that must surely sum it up. i’m most nervous for school, but i have a rational feeling that it will stay constant. and i know it’s real. maybe that’s the most comforting part about all this. all my feelings are real, justifiable, sitting in me and i can ask them who they are, and they will answer. it’s a good feeling when you often feel crazy. of course, there are extreme feelings, but no. mostly, no. mostly i am ready for them, and i understand all the important ones; i discard the rest. there is too much going on for me to wait around, hoping they will leave. again, it’s nice. it’s horrifying and disturbing, but in the belly of the heat, there is underlying knowledge it’s going to be okay

last night

august 28th, 2024

this is my last night in my nice room. this is my last night in this bed, wanting things. this is my last night thinking about you here. this is my last night feeling the cord of the electric blanket through the sheet. this is my last night dreaming. this is my last night looking at the journals stacked on my bedside table and thinking, “what if this was a bad idea?” and being relieved in the morning, waking up here. it’s my last night struggling to fall asleep. it’s my last night crying and turning over. it’s my last night feeling guilty for looking at my mum in a vulnerable moment. it’s my last time being alone in this house. it’s my last night

making myself cry

august 27th, 2024

i imagined it like this, like an ominous doom that strikes eternal a wound i’ve never crossed before but i’ve seen in somebody’s eyes. i’m seeing it all before it’s happened. i’m crying on my bathroom tiles and it’s not enough because i’m not sad enough thinking how sad i’ll be, but i know i need to cry. if i don’t cry, it’ll be stuck between this void and the world

i know it’s pointless to cry. i know it’s worth nothing and everything from me, but that’s why i do it. it’s visceral and it’s all of me and none of you. this has nothing to do with the rest of the world. when you lay yourself down to cry, time goes away for you because it knows you need it. it’s spiritual and this heaving cannot be explained beyond want. i know it’s helpless. i know it fucks me to sleep. i know i leave a damn on the floor i shed skin on, but is it better than a movement behind the reckoning? is it beyond forgiveness and understanding? no, no, no. i just want to listen to the memories beating against one another

romanticism — be sad in france

august 26th, 2024

lots has happened today. i dealt with the [redacted] thing at school, by talking to [redacted] and sending a direct message to her, asking her to please cease all contact with me, as it was making me uncomfortable. it is funny how simple adults make things for you. it is funny that they are still right about everything. [redacted] replied to the message with a thumbs-up. i blocked her on everything else i could think of. [redacted] also let me try some of the mochi she made, which was very full-circle in a way, as i remember last year [redacted] pacing back and forth across the road by [redacted]’s car, waiting for her and i to finish talking and to be noticed. i remember that as she got into her car, she told me she would be making homemade mochi for the first time with the ingredients she’d bought that day. apparently she makes it a lot now. funny, i think, that i was eating it today as i reported her for harassing me online

after school, i also got very far with packing my bags. all that is left is some toiletries and my laptop, and any more books i can bear to take. now that my poetry account is no longer being stalked, i was also able to post on it today. some strange man is sending me dms and calling me “blue eyes” despite my name being in my username. grotesque as it may be, i find it strangely romantic

and i facetimed [redacted] on my bedroom floor, and showed her all my packing. she stress ate the entire call, which was impressive as well as concerning. then i texted my host mum about school, and clothing. she’s let me know that the first weekend is going to be completely diabolical. i arrive on friday morning, and on saturday is their little son’s birthday party which he is having with friends at the house, and sunday they have a family birthday for him. as well as the italian exchange student they are letting stay over for a night until her host family return from vacation. this girl, [redacted], i’ve made contact with now. i’m excited at the prospect of walking around the little french town with her in a twenty-four degree night, not being able to communicate all that well together and both being completely beside ourselves with homesickness and anxiousness. it’s actually a pretty romantic and profound thing in itself. she is european; i hope she’ll understand immediately after meeting me that this is all it’s ever been about

depraved individual

august 25th, 2024

i am not depraved, i am not because i know that. because people would tell me if i was, or at least they would look at me like i was. i am not depraved; i will tell myself. the word has come to me in a dream at last, as a means to describe my journey to infernal peace-of-mind. after all my hard heartless searching, i realize this morning it does not exist. it did not exist, not even when i scoured for it. if it was, it would be too far from home and i would not survive the trip

nothing out there like waking to nausea, awaiting a trip to the bathroom so you can hurl. your entire body, lurching. nothing out there like it. somebody making you sick, knowing even though it came from the alcohol; the white and the red(s), it was only mistaken for the reason. the real reason is somewhat of a plague. and how can it be? if she too has a mind and a soul and a body that hurls, that she also wants to listen to. wants you too to one day listen. we are fighting. i’m not sure i’m any better now, now that i have cut off her only life-line. i am doing it to win, yes, but something much dirtier, because i want her to lose. so today i woke up and felt shaky in all my joints. i still feel like a bad person. how can you shake that feeling? i have spent my life devoted to it. i have tried everything. i have embraced it, ignored it, lived with it, divorced it, reacted and denied, i have accepted it as part of me. is that not the right thing to do? i mean, i have cowered, too, of course, and i have

walked on my knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. still nothing. nothing out there like it. who is this person that i seem to like? that i cannot shake despite all hatred? what is there left to do? god, i cannot express it ingeniously. they all tell you that you cannot fix it, so you leave it. your realize it is not a problem you can ignore, so you do the opposite of what you want to, because you know you’re fucked up a little bit, but you realize you should’ve trusted your gut all along. you follow through, throw the punch. now here you are. here i am, and i am so sick i could die. i’m going to wash it off in the ocean. we’re both going to get over it. will this terrorize me forever? i am making the guilt worse by writing it down

sorry for putting you in this position

august 24th, 2024

i’ll be drunk pretty soon. i feel sorry for everyone who has spent time thinking about me. i know lots of people must. i told you it would rain and we’re playing terrible music. i can’t stop thinking about you; i am just like her. i can’t stop thinking about you asking me to do things for you. i can’t stop thinking about you wanting to do things for me. i feel sorry for you. i feel like a terrible person. and i’m so sorry you forgive me every time, because it’s not as if i’ve done anything wrong

i leave for exchange in six days

august 23rd, 2024

regulated anxiety is a wonderful part of life, so it’s a shame how much it manages to ruin mine. i can never outrun it or rationalize it. you have to let it run it’s course, and let it laugh about you. while i was packing my things this morning i felt the urgency that happens whenever you think about it for a second. because anxiety is amazing in that way. the very word brings it back into your body. just like saying the word “tree” brings to mind an image of a tree, saying the word “anxiety” brings to mind the picture of anxiety. but for somebody who has never had anxiety, it is a difficult image to conjure up. when you have anxiety, you can very easily think of your own experience, and that experience transports you. thinking of the symptoms is almost so impossible that the existing anxiety, buried now, says “oh, let me help” and you feel it again. so i live each morning clutching my stomach until i have food in me, enough sustenance to move to the bathroom, then i cringe at my face in the mirror, picturing her prancing around school. it’s laughable again. school makes me anxious again. i feel paranoid about the day. the rest of it. going to bed again after all of it and to wake up again tomorrow to the very same thing. when you get really good at thinking, you can lead everything back to anxiety, and you can make everything good in the world make you feel completely nauseated and stupid in a matter of seconds. it’s fucking paralyzing. that’s all i have to say

fighting the flu

august 22nd, 2024

guessing is one thing. my entire life has been a reach. and i used to think everyone’s was. and i used to think it made me very selfish to think that other people were handed things i wasn’t, and that they live easier than me because they do not think about things how i did. and i am not denying this is a self-centered view, i am not denying it is impossible to know anything about other people’s lives. of course it is. of course it is. but i am tired of trying like this, and i have not seen it in anyone else. this effort is not relational, but more importantly, it is not passive. everybody around me knows of my infection, and i have not heard black despair in anybody else’s breath when they give up speech, blatant disregard for a placemat and other shit you eat off. everything is important and i just seem to carry it around with me in the sore part of my chest and the back of my throat. that awful morning i woke up with chest pain, i thought this is it and i thought i wonder if it would make sense i died from a real illness? but i think maybe that is the only extraordinary physical manifestation of my internal groan that’s ever shown up. it hit all the areas i hide the panic. i did not question it at the time, but it did feel good for everybody to ask me now and again how my chest was feeling—if i could breathe—if my voice was good enough that i could speak again? and it felt good to say, “yeah, i’m starting to feel better” in such a croaky voice

how to go about disgust without self-righteousness?

august 21st, 2024

i served my sentence this morning in the pod room. i did some of my french workbook and felt real sick when i saw [redacted] go by outside, with her friends. her friends who definitely know that she is clinically insane, and borderline-stalking me at the minute. i googled what does it mean when a white girl has only brown friends? because i was curious, but got brought to an online forum which was essentially a twelve year old discord server for racist white parents. and then i googled how to deal with physical disgust for another person? but the first result told me disgust is helping to keep my morality pure, and i realized i might actually just be a highly critical and judgmental person, so i shut down my laptop and went to french

[redacted] and i talked after class about the course she will do next year, which is the training she’ll need to be a school counsellor, or something equivalent. she told me that i am still one of her biggest achievements, and i’m one of the inspirations for why she decided to finally go through the course. it feels like a very big compliment. we talked for all of recess about my exchange and our lives. i’m not sure if today might have maybe been the last time i’ll see her for another three months, but i hugged her twice for good measure. i’m really, really going to miss her. i’m going to miss seeing her all the time. i’m nourished, though. i’ll still have another two years when i come back. i fear now that i know she keeps things in boxes to keep people alive, and my jar of things right above her head, i am forever indisposed to her. indisposed and wildly devoted. what luck to have met my all-out inspiration for love and life at fourteen

stellar part 2

august 20th, 2024

[redacted] came over after school today. we made pasta which looks like tiny balls, the size of couscous; looks a lot like it. she made a sauce and we ate at the dining table. i hate that i like who i am around her. i hate that i am more comfortable with who i’ve spent all this time building over than who i am now, who i’ve built up and who i really do want to be in theory

full moon jargon (for the virgo-libra cusps)

august 19th, 2024

today is the full moon in acquarius. it is the blue moon, too. this moon is extra special because not only is mercury retrograde in leo, but uranus is in taurus (what is making the moon blue, i believe)—so what is meant to normally be quite a fresh, easy, unexceptional full moon is a completely feral one, and it has directly landed on the dates of my period. for those born on the 23rd of september, and who understand the pain of the cusp, the virgo-libra cusp, here is my self-ceremony for a hellish full moon: i’ve taken a bath with lavender oil, held a burning sage stick around my head, washed my hair and chest and back well, and attempted to cast out my usual sins: greed. nothing much else. i’ve put on my lace camisole and sat at the dining table, drawing, coloring in those drawings. i advise that if you, unlike me, lean more toward virgo, you read instead. intuition still feels high to me, but i feel as if it’s extra difficult to go through with what i know will be helpful for me; creativity, romance. i want to shut my eyes and get away from it, without leaving anything behind. god forbid i miss the end of the world

packing

august 18th, 2024

i picked out the herbs today that i will take with me to france. i have ten days left, i think. i’ve been absent-mindedly throwing things into my suitcase for the past week, but it’s time to get serious now unfortunately. so i assigned my jobs for the day: write out my favourite charms and miscellaneous incantations on some scraps of paper i can carry in my pocket, ration and decide the crystals i will bring, and the teas and my other special things, and collect some herbs. i might call [redacted] tonight, and see how she’s doing in terms of packing up her life

so lucky that i have to die

august 17th, 2024

succinctly the memory of ruminating on death as a child, crying and being told to forgive life’s debt has been visiting me often, at moments of the day where i cross the road or tilt my head back when mum reverses from the driveway, i remember time’s sheer generosity when it comes to my filter on the world—how grateful i am every morning it wasn’t my brother, that it won’t be my nana for a while, that it hasn’t been my mum or dad. how this frightens me; probabilities. it’s not true that nothing bad has happened to my family. but my irrational fear has grown from the realization that my family has in all actuality been very lucky, and better-off than most. as we know it. so far. the old people are healthy, the fuck-whits have disbanded; left us all alone, and good health has always followed us. maybe there is more to think of my christian grandparents for thanking god every night than i’ve realized. but whatever this means, it is extremely unlikely. is it just my thinking that a family always has one big tragedy? i pray it’s not mine to befall, but like i’ve said, i pray to nothing. where does it all go but back to me when i will the taxi to the airport not to crash, the plane struck by no turbulence, that my family is still here when i return?

what is it when i scribble hope into a journal, lay a listening stone under my pillow and cry? is that a prayer or is that my simple torment? what is a writer with not yet one reader?

i can’t wait to go home and put on my sweatpants

august 16th, 2024

i just remembered who i am again, and that wonted rationality has returned. knowing your person is so different that knowing your body: it’s painful and i remember that feeling now. that overwhelming clarity of your own voice in your mouth. it lashes you like it brings you to tears like it is the only thing worth a dime. what use is this vessel when impersonal? hobbies are a good thing. they always remind me when i am in the mood. free-writing. reading from the naked shelf. touching your naked self in the bath-tub. wine with the parents. i nearly cried tonight at dinner because my dad told me that i am everything he wanted to be at my age. i can’t stop myself from frowning, though, and being generally unpleasant in school. i feel very rejected by other people, even though they’re perhaps the most inviting they’ve been in some time. this is only because i’m also inviting the challenge. i can’t deny that i sometimes miss other people, but i do not miss the dulling of the mind, and i normally only go back to make sure i still have nothing to learn from the groups i ran away from. still, it disappoints me to know there’s a lack of blistering or blossoming, and i cannot stop myself until post-eruption that their bore is not my fault, not caused by me. they are simply like that. and i am okay like this, too, though a little alienated: indrawn

longing

august 15th, 2024

it smells like flowers here. it hasn’t been hot in months and yet in the last stretch of winter we’ve had four days of heat and rain. i’ve been walking home in summer school uniform and as i said, the flowers are blooming. the bees are working hard. it’s hard to comprehend that so very soon i won’t be here. not for three months. not walking home and picking flowers. not seeing the lavender bush when i get off the bus, before i see myself in the window of the office on the corner and i cross. today my eye was nearly taken out by a pencil in art when the girl beside me stood up and tripped on the back of my chair by accident while she was walking past. my fist moved so close toward my eye and i thought, “wow, i could’ve just been blind in one eye.” i could’ve just screamed from pain but i kept on with annotating my sketches. it’s so green everywhere i look. all i see is green

youngest child syndrome

august 14th, 2024

i’m a convicted truant, and have a detention in the morning next week! i’m not ecstatic to say the least, but i feel very excited to have been recognized for my sins (a rarity), and the level of care assigned to the teacher who was to investigate my mysterious disappearance from media studies—friday last week and monday this—is almost endearing, and i have an uncharacteristic fondness for teachers who manage to be both strong leaders and not total assholes. so i am not salty, but i was simply surprised to hear my actions would have consequences. me? i live without perception, and to have a relevant reaction is completely stunning. i cried in class after because of something entirely irrelevant, but [redacted] took me outside and i got to talk to my english teacher. i realised as the youngest child, very clearly, that i simply just do not have repercussions for my actions normally

nice warm feeling i got today

august 13th, 2024

hearing the two people you love most in the world talking to each other about how much they love you—and will miss you—is enough to make you burst into tears. i imagine their conversation now in my head, and i can see them this morning both interacting with each other in the special tones of both of their voices. their little mannerisms each; how they smiled when they realized they were in the same room and started thinking up what they would say to each other. i would’ve killed to have seen it. to just have been there, one time. to have seen them imagine missing me

i would make a very happy bear, and i’ve always thought that

august 12th, 2024

today was warm. [redacted] took me on a walk and bought me a cornflake cookie after recess, and we walked to class real slow. tomorrow i will give her a drawing of me handing a log to her, desperately trying to keep a wood fire going. above the log i will have a speech bubble above my head and it will say, “don’t burn out!” she’s going to laugh and hold it to her chest and do a thing with her lips to say, i love it. i’ll keep it forever and this way you won’t die

i always worry i’m getting stupider. i always worry that everything comes from something, and that by stopping now i will stop forever. like, by deciding to go home early because i want to lie in the sun; i am setting myself up for a life of skin-cancer and withdrawal from life events

with the breakfast club

august 11th, 2024

if i’d spent more time hanging around with the wrong crowd, i don’t ever think i’d have fallen in. i know now that i don’t like drunk people. i hate them. i find them obnoxious and melodramatic for the sake of drunkness, of bending over at the knees because somebody said they wanted to make sure you were okay—because they saw you fall on your face. alcoholism is not romantic like they say it is in the movies, and not because it destroys lives or makes your face red, but because you become embarrassing; everything you say you believe is a great spectacle, and what romance is built on egocentricism? no successful one, anyway

smoking is much classier. keeping quiet about your absurd fucked-up childhood fantasy when you’re a drunken mess is always much classier than taking it out on anybody who is willing to listen. i don’t care that you are not full of regrets, but is this all you can say for “letting loose”? haven’t you ever taken your clothes off in front of someone who doesn’t want to touch you? at the dinner table an hour ago my brother almost outed me for smoking weed in front of my parents. i believe sometimes that if i sat my parents down and told them i was doing cocaine, they would laugh in disbelief. i can say anything and have them relieved that i am such a trickster. i could have them relieved for having such a funny daughter

mess, over and over again

august 10th, 2024

not much time left, and i’m laying around as sore as your thumb. it’s so good to hear it’s healing. fiona’s never hummed louder, i’d break into a waltz if you were here. if you weren’t. my nice dress is too short, too low, too bizarre, so pretty. it allows for suggestion, but it hides me. no tit popped, no ass out. in fact, frill and poof, but still; they know my body and they want to imagine. just like i want to tell it’s story. from womb to earth to this party at your house in the hills to one day tomb, to a great big emphatic kiss—i finish knocking on the door. you’ll never let me inside. you’re the kind who opens the blinds and draws shut again, the bridge like a banging of fists like, “i never want to see your face again”, but you were never too sick, and you used to think my poems rhymed

untouchable eroticism

august 9th, 2024

what if they knew my pussy was this wet? and this loose? is it erotic or gross? is it only gross when i call it a loose pussy? would they squeeze their thighs together and purse their lips or look to one another with spite, wanting it? would they go quiet with a chill, for they thought it would smell like a sad rose?

the power i posses is something i will myself to never give up, not even when i am dying. i think only of such a thought if i can write it down and know it used to be real, or was there in lack-there-of. one day i’ll know that in an english class i put a leg over the other and as i packed up my things, i thought of the boys on the next table reacting to me. or did this happen? what if they knew me? what if anybody knew me like this? what then? couldn’t they put their hand there and do it themselves? couldn’t they fix me with that hand? if not, if sex says nothing to me, then where do i find the tissue-paper? where do i find the shower-head? where do i find these things that belong to my sex and not to how i have it? do you understand? do you imagine it?

at her house, in her bed

august 8th, 2024

it’s just you and me but we’ve only got five weeks left until childhood is over. i’m counting down the days until we’re not babies anymore and my heart is no longer bright in my pocket. until you’re a grown thing and i’m still downstairs, waiting to put the label on your dad’s glasses, waiting for the camera to turn to me so i can crack a dry laugh, we’ve got this and it’s not enough time, but for some reason i find it passing anyway. i find it like it finds me: just okay, just waiting, just hoping to see your car as it comes out of the parking lot

my usual comforts aren’t soothing. i cannot say, “oh, but i can’t wait until christmas” because by the time i’m back for presents yours won’t be under the tree, mine will be wasted, and we’ll both be gone. so what if? what if i stayed and you stayed and we lived together, together forever? and i made you toast in the mornings, and at night we’d fall asleep in each other’s beds by accident, even though we had our own separate rooms? we’d take deep breaths as we lit the fire and dried off our wet hair under the dining room table, shaking like dogs. we’d miss ours but this would be better

deathly hallows, part one

august 7th, 2024

i watched the first deathly hallows harry potter movie with my mum after school today. we started watching it a couple of nights ago, but didn’t finish. i have not experienced real dread before, only now in the lead-up to escaping the proclaimed prison to my unconsciously decided paradise—my small city in australia to the empty french countryside—now i’m thinking, what if i miss the burning, and the smoke and the suffering?

stellar

august 6th, 2024

my childhood best friend is for the gods. i don’t know in which way i mean that, because after my dad told me that not everyone is linear, i decided to pick-and-choose; she belongs to revolving ring around saturn which when rung like a bell holds her dry, squeezes her clean. perhaps the god will one day pick her off and say, “this is a place too dangerous for a saint,” and bring her back to earth, and there she’ll be. happily married and there’ll be a home and a chimney and three boys with sweaters, and each morning she’ll bop each one of them on the head and call them by the name of her brother and her father and her real dad, and ask them what they want for breakfast. one day though, maybe will never come. if she stays listening and spinning and letting her wet clothes be wrung dry, i imagine she’ll stay with her eyes up at the stellar stars and that’ll be it forever. she’ll never remember the other planets and she’ll never remember what breathing feels like. she’ll be taken farther and farther away by black expanse, and the last time i see her will be a random tuesday evening at the sushi train, where she tells me about being angry and all the things she’s looking forward to, but she’s only ever looking up

in the prime of life

august 5th, 2024

it’s good when you squeeze my arm and i reach out like it might go through you again, and you watch my wrist hang there like a dead thing. it’s good when i walk away from you and feel where your thumb was pressing down into my forearm, enjoying the still pulse of the little vein. it’s good when i act like there’s nothing wrong with me even though i used to squeeze crystals and whisper into my knuckles at night, “moon. tomorrow afternoon, make her good to me. condemn me to doom if it means she’ll kiss me sooner. moon,” and i used to make it happen. i used to want it so bad that we’d find a way through the storm. it has all amounted to this. so that i can look up at you and call you a cunt, and so you can smile so big the moon can see

coming home and making everyone proud, making them all so happy: it’s my job. to not make sense and to then say something so smart that my knowledge is in fact the thing with the most laughs. and i know it’s not how it really is. i know that they’ll die for three months without me to lead them through a great dinner-table discussion centered on the political climate. i know that my mum will miss me when she misses my dad, and i climb into his side of the bed so that we can watch the harry potter movie she first denied me

miraculously, the comparison between self-harm and hedonism is inevitable

august 4th, 2024

i could talk forever about all the things i want and i could talk forever about the emptiness, but to tell you that those things are in any way related is a fascinating lie. i am going to ask you a boring question that has infinite answers (such things exist): what other way is there to live but one of self proclivity? it must always depend on the impulses and tendencies unique to each one of us. there are obvious links between desire and self-pleasure and human suffering, and we know it, but to live a life of eating and giving and re-feeding or growing and birthing is something, are those things not all out of desire for life? this life sounds like a motion to me. when i imagine a life that isn’t raptured by insatiability, i think of the pac-man video game. would it be a lot like collecting dots?

the controversy of hedonism as a faith is understandable—wanting too much leaves you intoxicated and unhappy in the end, we all agree—but where is the line that must exist between wanting too much and then also having the will to live in such a way that it only brings you pleasure? and that doesn’t mean there is no pain and suffering in a hedonist’s life, because surely a hedonist understands that their self-destruction is inevitable, but that it is all part of the pursuit. what do other people want out of their lives?

sometimes i live so that when i finally decide what to wear at 5:30pm, and it is a red-wool jacket that when zipped up looks like a sweater and the ass-shorts that belong now to a ghost, and i find myself stumbling madly to the shower and i pull it all off everything i put on, and i wax it all first my whole body and then i shave over it in the shower and cough out the steam but i feel it seeping into my face, and i am violent to slather my scalp in oils and peppermint scrub, i am doing it out of love for myself. i do it because although the violence itself is nice, although sometimes it only exhausts me, i don’t know or care about any other way to live, and when i have tried i have been half-hearted in my efforts and felt depressed about the change and about feeling fine after all of it. i am employed to treat the wounds by making them; i get over my big emotions by grinding them out of me and bearing witness to them

it is all i’ve ever wanted, anyway: an audience

j’oubliais prendre mon somnifère hier soir

august 3rd, 2024

it’s easier to think in english when i’m listening in french. i can very clearly hear myself. i have a narrator’s voice. i don’t normally write and listen to music at the same time, but when i do always find my art mimicking the music. i’ve been listening to french radio to fall asleep at night and whenever i can, really, and it’s just a side-effect i’ve noticed

at around 5pm today i had to drop what i was doing (which was not very much) and do a smudging ceremony. i can tell you it was about a strange and sudden fear i had of [redacted] dying tonight. she is out with a friend. it came very randomly and in an impossible way; i knew it had to be dealt with. i wonder if this is how it feels as an obsessive compulsive? to understand an uncontrollable idea and despite knowing that it’s no more of value than it was yesterday, or than tomorrow, you still feel you must feel like you’ve done everything you can. and everything right. without bothering the thing or anyone else. i can’t explain it yet

unattainable desire

august 2nd, 2024

i wonder all the time what it is like to be so crazy that you upset people. i often think my whole life is a series of failed attempts to have people upset by me, as if i am trying to undo the years i lived in my box of kind and shy. but as i said, they are all failed. i am not a bad person for this. annoying, yes, but everybody wants a reaction. it’s a gift specific to humans: expression. today i clutched her hand so hard that i dug my nails into her palm and i did it because i wanted to see her squirm and i wanted to see her show me the marks. i don’t enjoy hurting people, but i enjoy surprising them. somehow i can never do it in a way that makes me satisfied, and i know it is because they don’t know i’m doing it. my surprise is always cloaked in a mirror; they only ever seem to watch themselves and they don’t realize who i am in the plot to observe their lives, and find answers in my own. but i would never pry an answer out of someone if i felt in my gut they knew i was coming onto them, and it’s only ever been different with [redacted]. even when i realized she felt me aroused by her intellect and her softness and her brilliance, i never saw her closure, so i never doubted that i could go in and out of the dance as i wanted to. i make a good flirt and she makes an even better admirer. but still this has not satisfied my passion for reaction, although it comes so close. no sought-after practical satisfaction i am finally clear on is ever actually attainable when it comes from another person, which in desire, it always is

i’ll be there

august 1st, 2024

dear you, i passed by my reflection in the window of the church i used to throw tennis balls at in the forth grade and i felt okay about the person i saw walking by me. before me. the person i saw. the person i might be. the person i am forever. i felt okay about being on a plane soon and about letting my shin-high socks fall down around my ankles into my boots at the end of the day. i felt okay about feeling bad through the best of it, and the best during the worst of it. i felt like my hands were not so dirty and my mouth, not so bloody. i felt okay about the pain in my throat and the bleakness in the air, and the sunset which though never amazes me as one moon-rise, comes to see me each evening to bring me down to earth. to yes, the moon in the street which rains white light for me to know. the girl on the other side of the universe who is honest and open and believes in me too, because she has to leave to love. i felt for you, and i felt as you. i want you to feel me too one day, when you read these and know i whispered, “i’ll do it, i’ll do it, i’ll be there”

fantasy of mine

july 31st, 2024

i have always imagined myself marrying someone who is less than me in animosity, and more than me in loathing. when i was younger i pictured a man who secretly wanted nothing from me. in the morning he’d shower in the same bathroom that i put my makeup on in, at the very same time, and he’d beg me to join him. i’d tell him i wanted to, really, but if i did, we’d be there all morning. we’d eat real fast, the breakfast he made us, and he’d kiss the back of our two blonde babies’ head and give me a long kiss at the front door—putting his hand in the crease of my back as he did it—then the front door shut and he’d leave me alone all day long. normally in the fantasy i’d forget about the kids, and instead i’d write and drive to the beach to read and i’d feed the dog and take a bath. then he’d get home and only love me. i’d think to myself, this is all i want and that was it

i want fixation, not a brilliant love. i want vapid hunger that is fed when empty, not a constant streamlining of fulfillment. i want attentiveness in bed, not a warm body. and i want to feel sick when he leaves me, not angry

an observation about balance

july 30th, 2024

i cannot believe how uncomfortable i am still by obligation. responsibility of any kind seems to be my mortal enemy; i start to lose my way. i know it’s ridiculous because admitting it is shrinking me, but it’s the truth. any time i am swamped by external factors, by must and not maybe i should? i start to feel like i am living a simulation, and like i am going crazy by act of confirmation, or even worse, congeniality. i am a child who will grow out of it, but the person, and i promise you, we are familiar enough now despite my adolescence, is clearly not persuaded by controlling these factors either. what obligations i opt for, i continue to be insufferable because of. the responsibilities as well that i complain about are scarce and also by my own volition, but still i am about ready to jump into a lake with weights on my ankles when i have a day where i am only doing. yet i have no problem with commitment when it comes to love. disappointingly so, i would give up any and all of my endeavors for it. [redacted], my best friend has this problem’s parallel. her burdens and ventures and labors do not tie her down like they do to me; they ground her. but in turn she doesn’t love as easily. like obligation traps and suffocates me before i can get to having a relationship with how i feel about it, this is what love is like for [redacted]. i do not envy her for this—even though loving plagues and overwhelms me, i’d never give it up—but her sense of duty is lucky, i think. it keeps her tough, just as love keeps me soft. without these essential illnesses by nurture, and i really do think it is nurture, we could not love each other so well naturally. the bad is the most obvious always, but i forget to thank it for humbling me and being so fond toward my daughter love of balance

give me a sign! damn it

july 29th, 2024

it’s not nearly as bad as it should be. it’s not nearly as bad as i want it to be. i just feel like shit. i look okay, though. i’ve been feeling prettier than lots of other people, and they know that. it’s the only reason why they still want to talk with me. fuck those merciful shits. fuck how the others see past tone and colour, and they see my unintelligence. they see i am just a sadistic brute. and i am such a fraud that it mortifies; they can smell it. and she doesn’t touch me anymore because of it. i’m sure my grossness is the reason. she says she will love me forever but she won’t. she forgets she ever said that. that i ever felt that. they we might’ve been alone and lovely together. there’s too much time between our hearts and her pulse is only growing weaker with age. mine gets fonder in it’s youth; i need to chew myself out a bit. i think we’re going and going and i think we’re going to know each other forever until there’s this and it rushes over me again. that doom. that dread. that disastrous intensity which can only be cured by distraction. nothing about it can be said that i haven’t already tried. it would only be to console myself with. if i didn’t feel like i needed to fix it and to be what she wanted in order to have her, i would not be so deep in shit. now i am confused. am i changed or am i hurting her? what have i done that means she no longer finds me a fascinating superior species? one worth studying? watching over acutely? how can i prove i am i am i am any more than i do try?

i’ve been hopeless before. this definitely isn’t that, but it is a generation of hopelessness; insatiable, voracious hunger for love reciprocated. for a sign. what is hopelessness if not putting all of yourself into the home of “a sign”

artistry; perhaps my job is only to think

july 28th, 2024

i sometimes think i could write forever, until i begin to write with the intent to and i am able to transcribe but a mere few sentences, all of which say something i was not trying to say in the first place. when i begin with a physical appearance to symptoms, i lose the disease somewhere inside the form. but everything i know about writing, which comes from another writer, is that you must start with a body. a painter is just as mystified by their blank canvas as a musician is by their unfinished chords as the writer is by the space between their empty document and heaving heart. but what if i cannot allow my writing the comfortability of a body? i wonder where it leaves me then, because as i get closer to a tangible idea, i begin to understand that it’s all pointless. my job is better well-done when i am the book, for i cannot in so many ways understand my own point when i begin to transform the ideas into literacy. no thought is great enough for a product, but they are all wonderful suggestions

roller-skates girl

july 27th, 2024

i’m outside today. i’m looking out at the garden of our aldinga house and i am thinking about how cold i feel, but how much time i will waste if i go inside. i watched the aristocats in french this morning, while i drank a spiced chai and waited patiently for my meds to kick in and for the world to look more alive. at the op-shops with mum and theo i bought eight different clothing items (a long denim pinafore, a denim jacket, pink ballet flats, a thin grey jumper with a bunny in a wool hat, two long-sleeve see-through rib-cage blouses, a checkered tube top with sleeves, and another lace camisole) as well as a mint-tin. is that what they’re called? while we were in the first op-shop, a girl with roller-skates came in and the shop owners knew who she was. i thought, “i wonder what that’s like; to live here and to have that”

my parents are going to walk the dogs along the beach in a bit, and i’ll come with them. i just want to smile about something today. maybe a joke or something somebody does. it would be nice to not need a drink for that to happen. i’d smile a little easier if the wind wasn’t so hellish. reading has been bothering me. i’ve picked up three different books and despised them all in the last week, but i’ve been writing. and doing lots of french. surely i cannot be too hard on myself. i found new ballet flats in an op-shop today, for christ sake!

all the pulsing around us

july 26th, 2024

friday is the worst day of the week sometimes. it is only good when the day is long gone and you can say in the trenches of the bed-ridden afternoon, “thank god it’s friday today,” as if it should not be in the past tense. as if you did not sob in the hallway when you came home and listened to your dog whimper at the front door. i look forward to the day i understand how i might not generalize something. i am doomed to even things out at this age, and the worst sits at the front; it drives the plane into the towers and the rest of us are all simpleton cabin-crew. the hairs on my arms might be the awkward bystanders. everything is complicated does not give any sense of justice to just how complicated everything actually is. while i am thinking of scenarios to give to you, i am thinking of the scenario that i am just an ornament. that last night i actually died and my underwear wasn’t eaten by my dog. that tomorrow i’ll wake up again and it’ll be the same day it was three weeks ago, and i won’t know. that perhaps there is something pushing me backwards over-and-over and i have no memory of it. you could tear yourself apart with any idea, even if you do not use nihilism as an argument for any self-imposed complication. you do not need to be a pessimist to know that doom is approaching every living thing, and every living thing around you is pulsing with anxiety

prolific consciousness tumor

july 25th, 2024

the many voices are occupied with what we don’t know, so i let the grasp slip on a wide-tooth comb that drags by my own knotted ends, ends that don’t ever meet—but could they?—in the middle with me and a ghost’s prayer: blessed be who knows no end to proliferation! cheers to eternal growing, and let’s have something to look forward to that isn’t death

baguette and brie at the park i believed i’d die in

july 24th, 2024

mum and i talk so open when we are wine-drunk and slurring and it’s only half past nine. she says to me, “you’re so clever” when i tuck her into bed from my pillow, and i want her to take me away from here forever. just me and her, away from the girls and the treats after dinner and the rainstorm outside (i wish would last forever, but not here, not now) and the grossness and the guest pleasantries and the, “no, no, please don’t cry” look in both our eyes, “don’t talk about death, please, please not at the dinner table.” we would go to scotland and talk about what was pretty and what was… not so much. and we’d laugh about something that happened next year, which would be so many years ago by then, and somehow when it was quiet we’d be the loudest in the room. i’d never be embarrassed again about it. i’d buy her something at night and she’d return the favor in the morning. we could make each other really happy if it was just us all the time

at lunch [redacted] and i took a baguette, brie cheese, a cherry plum kombucha, and a chocolate mousse to the park by our school. we ate there and talked about simone de beauvoir and sylvia plath and our shared love of our english teacher. i read my name poem in english today and [redacted] looked at me like a wet wounded animal, so i just said, “it’s all right. thank you”

today, if we kissed

july 23rd, 2024

there is a particular level of intrusion which comes about with a glance at someone you love when they are with somebody else. today i witnessed that; the becoming of something new. i want to be a fraction inside her mind. in days of accusation and suffering because of social exclusion (a fantasy world now), to declare any of these practical thoughts i have about having her, someone would burn me—so you think, then share! but if now i were to explain the lust of our unconscious affair, you’d think worse; that i were normal. you’d mistakenly excuse me for writing about something so erotic and distasteful. so much of my own impulses are vulgar, not different from any of yours, but they are not naturally romantic. i shape them that way, manipulate the itch; i tell that itch the story and all of it’s bones click into a place. they interact with something so entirely cruel it would be obsolete for me to think i had a right to interfere. i do not think about sinking my teeth into her upper-lip during a fight with her father because i believe it would be extraordinary or allow a grandiose explanation of attachment to form in both our hearts and her mind and my body, and despite my own best efforts i also do not think our sharing a kiss would answer for all or any of my sins. i do think it would be something, though. i do think i would perhaps sleep better at night

growing up

july 22nd, 2024

time goes by very fast. alarmingly fast, i guess. i guess. and it’s just a guess, anyway. nothing to feel sad about, but you do anyway. you feel sad that your dog doesn’t get up so much anymore, and you feel sad that your fan is so dusty, that your toenails have grown so long, that your plants are also dying because you are too, you feel it too, and you feel sad that nothing is new anymore, and you feel sad that you’re getting so close to growing-up and having none leftover, to hitting the final mark on the wall, and sad that you want more because you should be happy with this. and you feel sad about the future, and your past, and what’s in front of you, but you also feel just as happy with all of it. with everything you just said; your plants and your toenails and your dog because it feels good to move. you know that, but you’re still sad. you’re still sad because forever is waiting, and there’s not enough time

but i guess everything is relative. i guess you also always feel sad when your hair hasn’t grown any longer in a couple of months, and when you’ve been fifteen for too long, when your book feels like it’s going on, and on and on, and on (and it should stop before you lose interest!), and when the bruises on your knees haven’t healed from last week, and when france is just a month away, which is way too far away because you’re ready now like you’ve waited your whole life, and way too soon; way too soon because you’re only fifteen you’re only ten still, only nine and three-quarters and waiting to be a “tween” still, as if that might’ve ever been a real thing. i guess you’re still sad because forever is waiting, and there’s so much time to fill

sorry, goodbye

july 21st, 2024

she will tip-toe out the door late at night and then she will be gone. she is. she’s gone. i lie here thinking about it because i won’t throw up, i won’t wretch, but i will get it out another way. all the pain and the confusion and the knowledge that i don’t have, but i feel is there. another year, another year, another year, i say. fast and slow. because i want them both to hear it but i don’t want to know i said it at all. everything is late with her. all the right way to feel. it comes after the fact. i haven’t known a person like that before. there is no immediacy in how we interact, and how we sit with each other. last night we sat and spoke about sex. we said the word as grotesquely as we could. we listened to each other and we weren’t offended, but we looked at each other’s bodies through our clothes. we imagined what it would have felt like to touch each other on a night like last night, but we didn’t let it swell up inside out. we knew she’d get too hot, and that she’d burn and crash and that’s exactly what happened. goodbye at the door like an apology for being alive, for making her come back for this, only so that she’d need to leave it again. goodbye is what we say when we put our hands around her heaving chest and i listen for her heartbeat one last time, but i’m sorry is what we mean when she shuts the door and we listen for the pain in our ankles; and while we wait for it to rise

drunk on wishes

july 20th, 2024

dear dad, i love you all the time. know it forever, even when i don’t. next to nothing by this limbo is the space you take up in my soul and my only wish to live has been fortified by your nearness of death and the hearth of the fire you keep going, you keep going, on and on. your closeness to the heart of my issues which stem from what you couldn’t resolve before maybe our only great love fell pregnant a second time, and mum’s the first. sorry to see you see me like that, but i’m getting over the hedge as if i trimmed it myself, not by your own teeth but these sharp nails of mine; i couldn’t have cut any cleaner. let’s talk and talk away until you can forge my name in the sleeve of sanctimonious hell (which you, thank god, escaped for me, and you did it beautifully), with a sense of duty unbridled and i see you as a hawk which watches over me. you know me like another body you had only to harvest. mum knows me like a blunt angle peaking out over the mountain, looking down while walking up to the winery that named me, sweaty craven as the angel you bled out to protect me, and i bet the sky she thinks to herself that i am so good and so understanding and so bitter sometimes

it takes nothing to cry and mean it when we are sharpening our knives. heat splashes wet on our cheeks; your plays, my story-books. my one-day of writing that i drag behind me like a child’s rag-doll and entrust my life to it. if i lose it. god, if i lose it. you tell me, “that’s so beautiful”. and it takes nothing. it takes just that for me to believe in a heaven that wants to take me, or else why would you weep so large for a mere daughter? “i forgive you,” she would say as she ascends, a quite sexual and serious thing about the filthy rag-doll that she will leave behind in the dirt in space of reaching for the clouds, but i am not her so, dad: i’ll never forget about all this time left and right or forget myself and where i come from. i am heaven in every little way what you lost, i’ll put it together for you, i want to, i know you wish i cared less for it, and you are the only one i’ll take with me upstairs when i can’t exist (in these moments) inside our lovely little limbo anymore

blackout-side, there’s rumbling in the sky again

july 19th, 2024

lots of horrors but tonight there’s no power, so they are all hid in the deep dark. the candles frightened them and it all seems very sacrilegous. we are warming the spirit sat by the winter fire. [redacted] and i’s fingers stained with pot and horrid malboro gold smell. unsuccessful evening we spent out scavenging for papers to get high buy we didn’t know what we were looking for was a turn left up my street only to realise the dark spell plagued the whole neighbourhood. it was not just us. my chest aches as if it knows (really) what i am doing to it. i wish [redacted] were with me. i wish she was in her happy snuggly munchkin mood and she asked, “can we make hot chocolates right now?” but this night is [redacted]’s last. i am worried that i won’t cry or do anything worth her having come. maybe she’ll forgive/forget me by then and [redacted] will resent/remember me. a lot can happen in two hours of nothing. i could just hold it under my tongue like a poison curse. if i let it out, my parents would never laugh in front of the tv while eating dinner again, and my brother would never wish i’d stop speaking so much nonsense at the dinner table. i’d forgive myself for lying. i’d be clean again and salty like a rinse in the sea. i’d put my pen down and my rib-cage would stop hurting beneath my armpits

i’d write you a poem so they’d remember all about it. the fireplace and smoke flannel pj’s. a bad goodnight against the temple of your only hope of joy’s head? the reasons you thought you’d make it? and then how come you threw it away? because the song got bleak as the tune? the one her mama sang to tell you, “i love you. i love you.” even more than the beast can bear? because only big fools wear towering crowns. they think themselves to mighty to wield a fang of poison to one poor calf’s head. then they bite down hard on a killing creature and They Could Be God! if they might’ve only tried once upon a time when the boy was but a teen, and the girl had not yet learnt the meaning of “queen” or to clean herself off under the rain-storm so as not to bathe for the seven watery hells

longlegs

july 18th, 2024

i give up my view out the window to sit across from you on the way there and back. i do this because i want to believe i am taking in all features of you so i will not ever forget, but i know it is not that simple. it could not be, even if i tried. i know with a glance away i am just as ill-informed about the freckles all along your nose; the big fading ones, mellowing to blonde, and the little ones which sound like hollow wood if you put your nail out to scratch it. it is a broken record. and in the city we wait around eating burgers in the booth waiting for the thrill inside the little dark room filled with strangers, to feel it like a hand that reaches up your spine and grabs you, shocking you back. we sit outside in the dark park at the bench and talk about what we want to do. it is not pessimistic when we say we could never because we know that we will, we know we know we know because it’s you and me. and i know you could do anything, and you know i’ll be anyone

now i wait around for your call which i hope won’t ever come but i’m waiting like it’ll never end like i’ve not got a life beside me breathing and writing itself to death. i’m waiting because i love you and i am trying not to be scared about the way your voice sounds. like his very own rattle; i imagine that sound now but it hurts my chest

ça ne me dérange pas

july 17th, 2024

[redacted] has made a home in my sheets, and i’m starting to feel very comfortable resting my limbs on hers and talking honestly about my camisole addiction. i have been laying horizontal far too long in this bed with her to not feel a strange sense of becoming a rotting corpse, like i was made for this (a putrid red line in the fold-over of my sitting body, a trashy television show and a video game open at the same time, picking the skin off my lips instead of reaching over for vaseline). i suppose it feels vaguely like how everybody understands we are made for death at the end of the day, so we keep on living like we know it’ll end. i am lying down like i know it’s the truth skyward, like if i looked up god would tell me “how”, or to let me know if this is a willing break, or simply the epitome of pathetic. he tells me that i already know. yeah, i know

last night we were laying down and looking at the ceiling and i kept on telling her “i don’t mind”. i can’t remember what that was about now, but i remember the words kept on repeating themselves. she is very apologetic and it gives me a drowning stomach ache, so maybe this is my attempt to empathize: her sorry for my i don’t mind. we both knew it was late, but to fall asleep to the sound of her voice and well, to have dreams about it, that is nicer than saying goodnight like it’s final (we know it might be one day, but we’re hopeful still)

who ever once said i wrote another?

july 16th, 2024

french in my bed. je n’ai pas envie, i murmur sadly over and over to myself. what good is this mess of life when i cannot care to understand what i am trying to say? and how will they? and still hollow is the cruel underworld outside; the one filled with people and the other unhappy objects i notice when i walk my spotted puppy-dog, which all frown at me and want me to write about them so i say with many blinks, “no, sorry, sorry, no, i’ve got no ink, sorry”

you can only dream of seeing my underwear

july 15th, 2024

bought things for exchange today. two pretty bras, one pair of underwear which matches the blue bra, and one t-shirt bra for the airplane. and i also bought the presents i wanted to for my host family; an australian-scented candle for my host-mum, tee-tree oil for my host-dad, because it’s used medicinally here and he is a doctor, some gold-flakes in a bottle and a platypus toy for the nine-year-old boy, and a wombat toy and some cute hair-clips for the little girl. all that’s left is to buy an extra pretty card (which i will write on), and maybe some australian snacks for the kids to share. i went looking for some sweat-pants as well, but couldn’t find any that were the right ones. they were all too high-waisted or they just looked funny or came in weird at the knees. i’ve been writing since we came home. i would like to finish my book once i make this entry and hopefully do some french until dinner. this is boring to explain. i feel as if my ideas are better on paper

mum’s art teacher

july 14th, 2024

this morning i went on the hike with my mum’s art teacher. she is very interesting. of course, artsy, but not pretentious or stuck-up about her art. i don’t think most artists are, but she was on the very opposite end of the spectrum. she was exciting and flashy and raw and energetic and free-thiking. she’s kind of like a ghost now, because while i was there it all felt so open and i did not need to pry for information about her; i just knew based on her character or it just came out. and now i think maybe i didn’t know anything about her at all. very allusive. we walked to the pine-forest in belair national park in the post-rain weather, with the sun just poking it’s head out. it’s so beautiful there. the trees were planted in commemoration for the soldiers of world war 2. there were pictures along the pathway which showed people walking the same route we were but during the time the trees were just growing; eighty or so years ago. most of the time we talked about nature and art, and it was nice to have an artist to talk to who is happy, very genuinely happy, to be an artist. she doesn’t wish she did anything else, even though she seems highly thoughtful. she is just engaging. she asked if i would walk with her again, and i said yes. i hope we get to go again before i travel to france. i think i felt very comfortable, very relaxed. with her and with the nature

but i have happily played the sims 4 all day otherwise, which seems very ironic considering the healthy morning i had. i don’t think it’s unhealthy to play video games or stay in bed, but it’s unusual for me now. i haven’t done that kind of thing in a while. [redacted] also came over around 5pm. we played trouble twice, and i sat in front of the fire while i peeled and ate two oranges. there is something about eating oranges that is so satisfying. she talked to me as well about her new obsessive friend-crush, which she often gets, and i just listened. later on she ordered us mcdonalds and we ate it in front of scream because neither of us had seen the first one. i was hoping to read today, but maybe tomorrow i will. i’m going to bed now, at any rate

time is a trap

july 13th, 2024

very excited to write this evening. ideas are coming to me without such a heavy blurred-vision in their front, but i do feel as if i am sometimes walking into a trap lately when i allow myself to explore them. i woke up very early to do the five hour first-aid course with my dad this morning, and now i am burdened with time! more of it to fill, thank god. all anybody wants is more time. time is terrifying because it’s all that matters; you avoid the expensive creature. it’s why i waste it like i do. tomorrow morning i am hiking in belair with my mum’s old art teacher, [redacted]. she seems nice, from what i’ve heard, and i hope there’s no silence; i want someone to talk to. i always do. new people are fun. new women, adult-women. artistic women. it’s such a shame i’ve finished no books this holidays. i used to read so quickly! what’s going on? too many big gaps between my picking-up of the book and thinking about what is in front of me. this will be it for today. i plan to save my writing capabilities for my novel draft, one of the fleshier scenes i have a sudden unexpected enthusiasm for, and transferring some poems from document to page

self-obsessed. you only know you

july 12th, 2024

some fate it is! to know who you are may be no more special than all great others unknown, but it may be. and it is only fate because you hold onto that may as if a useless heirloom. well, you say you say, it could be. but sometimes, really a lot of the time, you are no more special than the lady beside me with the folded hat in her purse, or the little boy holding a sandwich opposite his young blonde mother in the park, or your dad and older brother fishing on the jetty — last time they ever did. the very real fact is that what makes me feel shiny and real is that i know where i came from. i do not know where the hat came from (a country abroad? the convenience store? a late grandmother? stolen from the road-side?) or how the sandwich was made (in the kitchen? with what knife? by the boy, or his mother? is he even old enough to hold a knife?), and i do not know why it was the last time they fished (did the brother get too old? did the dad get too busy? did they drift apart? did the world get much too loud for the jetty?) but i know my own stories like you know yours. they are yours to tell, to know, to own. and perhaps special is the wrong word for it, then

there’s nothing wrong with some self-obsession, some pride, some underlying belief you will be worthy and good at your life—or the art of living in general, that you will potentially master it—but my belief lies in the idea i am born for it; that i am more talented than everybody else in the room. and what happens when that idea goes hungry? because of course! it is not. and even if it were, i meet people all the time who leave me star-struck, envious. and i realize i am not the game’s creator, i am just another regular player, and my belief does not make me right. being wrong does not unsettle me, but the idea that i will never see past myself and my dreams does. i am worthy of something more than that, and i do not want to be lonely forever

hungover from being alive

july 11th, 2024

last night was lots of fun, i think. i slept very badly last night and woke to [redacted] in bed with me. it was fun when we left the oval at 8pm-ish and we were all still a little bit high. when we sat down in the middle of unley shopping center and the piercing white bright light came down hard on my brain like a horrible parasite was eating it, then i felt i was very close to dying. i talked to [redacted] about art and how i think it is great he has a passion for something, when so many others forget themselves in substances; he remains seeking to produce a certainty for himself. we also talked about time (after [redacted] and i bought a pack of four ice cream sandwiches (that melted later on into the night) and hugged each other in the biscuit aisle) and i freaked myself out talking about the expansive universe and he told me about an acid trip he had where a humanoid creature revealed a swelling ball at his outstretched finger, and it became the unfolding of space

i have to obtain a usi for the first aid course my dad and i are doing this saturday, but it is proving very difficult, and i will need also to complete a four-hour-long enrollment, which i can’t start without my usi, so i am writing this instead while i wait for my mum to come out and help me. even though [redacted] left this morning, we’ve decided after my art exhibition tonight, which my mum is taking us to, i will come over to hers very late and we will play minecraft on her tv and pretend we are little kids again. i remember post-school afternoons in [redacted]’s front room, her old art room turned bedroom, how we sat limbs-curled-in on her maybe black definitely worn-away leather couch with controllers and blankets right to our chins, and she would scream my name so damn loudly (”beth!” “BETH!”) in that shrill voice when i made my pet wolf-dog in a magenta collar attack her. and she would kill my ocelot after. they are some of my best memories with her, when we hurt each other with nothing so real i shunned her after

breasts

july 10th, 2024

i danced around this morning in my room to a song i haven’t heard in a while, post-shower and i thought of how much i am going to miss my breasts. from when i was fifteen. you know? i know that one day i will think, “wow. it was extraordinary — those boobs. i used to hold them and they used to be mine.” poor men, who don’t know the delight of taking your top off and holding them up as you march around your room, collecting missing clothing items from the floor, throwing them onto a chair, looking back into the mirror every now and then just to see for yourself. massaging oil into your chest with always a level of friendly eroticism, but mostly maternity. so i am like the rest of us, i want them different! i want them changed. i want them better fit to my body, to my soul. these are not a reflection of me. they are too big, too round. they take up too much of me; i am sure the people who meet me would agree, which bothers me. but i often delight in them when i am just alone. the pure shock of them. across my chest. this morning the rest of my body also amazed me, just as much as my breasts always do, and i think it so notable i should write it down. i felt feminine, spectacular even with the breakout on my chin. always in that spot on the left under the lip. and i did read on my floor, but not much. [redacted]’s birthday is tonight, and i do not feel like going. i know that is a sad thing to say, because i’ve not left my house all day and i should feel excited, but i don’t feel like drinking tonight, not after yesterday and how good it was. how beautiful wine always is with my family. teenagers ruin that kind of thing with sick over-indulgence and i would know. it is just that i am not ready to return so quickly to blunts and bad vodka sodas that do not get me drunk, or even happy. at least, not tonight. but what else would i do? i’ll dress-up before i leave underneath my winter clothes, put on a nice lipstick and maybe even wax my pussy

the wren, the wren

july 9th, 2024

i’m drunk! and i’ve eaten a small mandarin that has made the roof of my mouth very itchy. my head is resting against the edge of my bedside table. it’s my dad’s birthday today, so we celebrated in the dining room with a bottle of champagne, a glass of tempranillo each, and some of theo’s port. [redacted] slept over last night, and all her stuff has been left here, but she is spending the night as somebody else’s house, and when we woke up this morning we stroked each other’s hair and the tops of each other’s arms. we could not fall asleep and so we watched an episode of parks and rec which was purely for my own purposes, and i did fall asleep shortly after that. i had a horrible dream about exchange. that my host mum died and i could not find directions to the house, or that i couldn’t remember the suburb, or something like that. it involved google maps. i woke up very stressed and uncomfortable and worried. so after this morning when [redacted] and i had finished showering, dressing, and eating, and after we had gone to coles ( and i bought my wonderful cherry-vanilla candle! which i buy once every six months as it is $20 for the single candle! and today was the day! it is my favourite candle scent and it made me very happy to buy it today! ) i made an effort to come home with her and do my french homework while we started watching normal people , which i’ve already seen before but i thought i’d introduce her to. i’ve been trying to memorize my important conjugations for verbs for a few days now, and i haven’t gotten around to it, but today i think i got very close to memorizing for my être imparfait and futur conjugations in the indicatif, which is embarrassingly more than i’ve done for a while. but when she left, i went to my grandparents’ with theo and [redacted]. it felt good to do. they love us a lot and i don’t see them very regularly. i feel very ashamed around them for some reason

but tonight was good. i love my dad a lot. i hope he feels very loved and known when he reads my letter

in longing, i seem to forget things

july 8th, 2024

today has been my first normal day for a while. i spent the day with [redacted], who i haven’t seen since year six, in primary school. she is different now, and looks a lot like me. we’ve always looked alike, but especially now. she is very talkative, outgoing, and artsy, in a non-intellectual way. a drama-teacher way, i think. bubbly. optimistic. we got coffee and sat in the cinema, then went to the botanic gardens. it is weird to “catch-up” with people. i think so often it is a very adult thing to do, but not really. i found it at times boring. but for the most part, i felt very mature and also very level. i have not spent time with somebody so energetic and generally happy for a while. it is difficult to explain how she is. we sat in the gardens for a while, just talking, then went to a place nearby for pizza. it was cold outside, and when we waited for the bus, i thought i’d pass-out, but it was important i wore a skirt today for some reason. a homeless woman come up to me when i was crossing the street and asked me if i was cold, and i told her that i wasn’t. she asked me for change, and when i told her i had none, and that i was very sorry, she moved closer to the gutter and i thought for a minute she was going to run out in front of the traffic

it’s 6:16pm, and [redacted] is meant to be coming over in about three hours. she’s staying for the week, so that’s going to be interesting. i might walk the dogs before she comes over. my parents are also back tonight, from queensland. brisbane? i can’t be sure. they’ve been gone for three nights. i can’t wait to see my mum and tell her about everything in the morning, crawl into bed with her and debrief, and i will need to write a short letter for my dad for his birthday tomorrow

i’m thinking that after two weeks of hanging out with at least one person every day, i will need to coordinate a break for myself. i have curated a list of five or six books i want to have read by the end of my two week winter holidays, and i think this will allow me some time alone. i will be motivated to slow down, at least, i think. [redacted] is going away to some kind of retreat with no internet in the last week, as well, and i doubt i will want to hang out with anyone either in that week. and of course i wish i had learnt more from this experience of being so completely absolved in love and illusion, but that is how i often think, anyway. i always wish i did not move so quickly from things. time is what everybody wants. more of it. and we cannot help but always seek it out. i am better than lots of people, i think, in taking what i can from things. i do not want things to pass me by, so most times i do try and keep a hand out. i do hold my keep-sakes tightly. but i am sick of not surrendering. i am tired of feeling struck so easily. i need at least one thing i can devote myself to, and i think love is too lonely of an art now, and i am too prone to losing myself in longing

deciding not to kill myself and to be honest instead

july 7th, 2024

i was honest today! i said it. some of it, anyway, and i could not have said all of it, so i will settle happily for some. i woke up late, exactly on the dot for the hour i was meant to start working. i cannot believe the irony. i am normally never late for things. last week was my french exam, and this week for work. i also woke up on my period. blood had stained my favourite pyjama pants. properly soaked them. after i got changed, i had to rush next-door to feed my neighbor’s cats (extremely late from when i was meant to be) and let them outside, and then i raced to work. it was okay. i only worked for three hours, because i made up an excuse to go home. i felt contemplative and i walked the dogs and showered and i waited and waited and waited by the phone, and i pretended not to because i thought it might help. but it didn’t, so i waited more

i sent another message and got high on my bedroom floor. i cried and rory licked off all the tears from my cheeks, and she lay down on my chest while she did it, with her hind legs resting on my belly and knees sticking into my abdomen. i felt very unlucky for a moment

then i said something stupid and made her come over. i told her the things i’ve been writing about, that i feel very confused and it is because of what we do. she agreed and said more things, special things that i am going to forget. but we are back to basics. i want her to be free and i want now more than ever to have somebody that is not just her. it feels very powerful to have closure on this thing i did not know for so long was causing me distress. i knew it caused unhappiness but that was something i relied on, and was even at times proud of for enduring

insomnia — i wore something cool today

july 6th, 2024

i decided to stay awake last night, for the entire night. it was not hard at all. my insomnia has been in full-flight. i have not had it this bad since year six. but i do remember it a lot in primary school, and how it started when i was nine. my problem is not staying to sleep, but has always been getting to sleep. it is always when i am stressed and i become over-tired, and more stressed. as of now i’ve been awake nearly thirty-six hours. i am not feeling any effects but i did while i was out today. i saw [redacted] at the gardens, met up with her and the other girls and we had a picnic. it was very weird to be with her. we went into cheep store in rundle mall and [redacted] was there with [redacted]. i just pretended not to be completely there. i had not planned for that, and besides, i was extraordinarily out of it. i bought a five dollar t-shirt and [redacted] left to go home. we went to the park afterward, and after [redacted] left, i cried very softly and [redacted] did not know what to tell me, but i told her that was fine. i was listening to a very sad song until i caught the bus home. for the most part today was awful, and i don’t know how i did anything. i told my boss i would work tomorrow, for a couple of hours. and [redacted] told me she might come over tomorrow, which is potentially quite terrifying. i am handling this all, which i can’t explain to you as anything more than a horrible confusion, by thinking and writing and going out. i have never spent so much time with so many different people, daily. this is not me at all. i hope i sleep tonight

bluebelle

july 5th, 2024

it took me until 5 in the afternoon to lift my spirit. i think the wine helped. it was very good wine. i knew that because i didn’t like it. i felt ugly today, too. everything feels ugly at the moment. a product of winter, maybe. all the death. i need to do something urgent about that. it’s intolerable, not seeing beautiful things. i went out with [redacted] tonight, in tune with my seeing somebody every day until emotionally available again. i had a good time for half-an-hour, but when she brought me home all i wanted to do was get back to writing. every day we all try to bring ourselves a little out of the gutter, but today i’ve really really really tried to change the angle, like oscar wilde says, a little more toward the stars again. i feel like i’m failing epically. i know it is about my method. i am in no space to correct the way i am seeing things, and until i am, i will continue in negativity. i am not meant to be this way, like i am now; i am born looking for good. as is everyone, surely, but sometimes i’m doubtful. good old faithlessness. even though i do feel so stuck and anxious, i will tell you, i am trying hard. i am fighting off winter and lovelessness with my all. i am using so many words to describe my state, because they all manage miraculously to participate in some small way

i’ve also started writing something big and i think it may even be some good to me. big because i do not write stories, not easily anyway, and this is a story. maybe this one feels different because it does already exist, like authors say, it wrote itself, but i need to find a way to bring it out. for now, i am calling it bluebelle

trying again, feeling less alive

july 4th, 2024

this morning i experienced that awful feeling of waking up and being disappointed by yourself, and then the thought that such a feeling used to be every-day reality. i sat at the kitchen counter and patrolled instagram (for two hours) until i gained the courage to swallow my pills and shower. a long shower. i decided early-on today i would shave everything. i like to do that sometimes, like a clean slate. it’s nice to be smooth and to feel as clean as ever. i thought i’d straighten my hair, but the thought of the hour-long process and how gruesome it can be was too troubling. then i lay around and started writing. writing really is so fucking cool sometimes. getting comfortable, having a brilliant idea, working on executing it. some days nothing else seems as tangible. also, i had [redacted] over in the afternoon to get high. i am trying to do something social every day. it’s absolutely too much, but i cannot think of anything else to do while refusing my mind. she cried while talking about her mom, and not having friends. we bought drinks at the otr and snacks, and ate them in front of the oval. i felt alone while i was with her

i have been so good at letting myself feel things but i am worried this one is simply too painful to give into. i am worried if i make some attempt to let it pass through me, it will hurt everything else inside. it is just that huge. it is a storm and i am waiting outside with no defenses, just watching it get closer and waiting, feeling shameful

justus

july 3rd, 2024

i need today to die with the fact. god, you will never believe some of these feelings—they are so juvenile! i even don’t. you would like to hear about my afternoon first; i have decided to get stoned and read the book [redacted] gave to me which i should’ve finished light years ago. my mother’s friends daughter is roaming around in our house with our dogs. she’s getting paid by my mother to dog-sit them while she works online. i’m eating popcorn and i’ve also been writing poetry in my notebook

for my epic morning i decided not to set an alarm last night because i left my blinds open. i figured the sun would wake me up and i’d have hours to get ready for my exam. but actually i had such trouble falling asleep last night that i put a pillow over my head, so i saw absolutely nothing this morning. and i slept in until 10:54. you don’t know the horror that became me when i saw the time. my exam was at 11:30, and they make us get there half an hour before it starts as protocol. luckily, mum left her work to drive me there. i put on my school clothes and literally nothing else, meds in my hands and dry-swallowing. i was at school at 11:05. closest thing to teleportation i’ve ever experienced

rest of the day was quite shit. cried on the walk home because i went to see [redacted] after my exam to say goodbye but a random feeling of complete worthlessness and self-absence hit me hard as i came to face her. wasn’t myself and i acted a fucking fool. couldn’t explain it any worse for you, but as i said, i am so fucking done with today and there is also no better way of putting what overcame me. besides, after yesterday, i’m tired and a nervous wreck and i’m making everything so confused. more confused than it is meant to be just left as a volatile mess

tuesday sex & love

july 2nd, 2024

there’s something wrong with us, i think. maybe we’re not really the very best at all. it evens out. we’re the worst and the best. i’ve told you that before. we’ve talked about all of it. but it doesn’t make it better. it makes me sicker. it makes me think it’s okay, but maybe it’s not. this is all a big, confusing mess. you are setting me up to fail. to look at love and gag. ugh! because i’ve had it better before. of course, i know this isn’t normal. but friends fall in love all the time. and somehow we have never fallen out of love? i can name some things why; we are friends always, limitless, ‘til we’re not anymore, and then we’re something more but only ever when we can’t contain our friendship, when the foundation has some real big cracks and it’s not because it’s old and empty and caving-in, but because it’s too much to house inside. then it explodes. and that feels good. weird and wonderful, i guess. bad after always. always bad after. after always bad. and you know when we do it, fuck or orbit, that i know you wish i was a man for you, and you know deep down i wish you were a woman who only loved me like a woman. the two sides battle. we both have desires that each other can’t fulfill, and we try. i try to let you relax in my arms, allow you to be feminine. i try to let you rest on me. lay it down. it’s hard for you. and you try to give me consolation. you try to be a warm body and a mother on the phone. but we’re mad for each other. we don’t fit like that. we slot perfectly into the crooks in each other’s ribs and hips, but not into each other’s souls. you make mine so fucking frustrated, like i would like to tear you apart. i make yours disturbed, and you would like to leave me. i know it when i do things with the intention of hurting you; making you watch things. making you try to understand and fail. confusing you. i know it when you do things that make me feel alone and dreamless

you don’t know i think of this, right? that this all makes me feel quite unwell. the general understanding of what is going to happen to each other. you’re going to grow up and be comfortable in it, question who you’ve ever been(!), then you’ll find a man who doesn’t bore you, and that’ll be good; you’ll have kids and it will make you happy and destroy you. i will stay trying to hold onto things, like dreams, and i’ll chase them and you’ll laugh at me but mostly you’ll ignore me — you’ll be successful, more than me — until i stare at you grown and it’ll be all empty and quick and you won’t consider my judgement. you’ll realize you’re suddenly simple to me

farenheit 451

july 1st, 2024

in the break between my maths and english exam, i took [redacted] back to my house and we shared a glass of red wine at my dinner table. i talked to her about actors making performance art, and how interesting it is; the judgement they receive for it. i felt quite depressed while i was lying on my bedroom floor before we went to the kitchen, because i noticed i was very skinny from the angle i was looking at my body. not because i do not like my body. i like being thin, but because i still am not used to it looking like that, and i often am able to ignore the changes. when [redacted] commented on my sad look, i told her i was feeling hopeless, and followed it with, “i’m wishing i had something to need, and not so many wants”. this is true

my maths exam was fine this morning. i did not do well, though. i didn’t get much sleep last night, despite trying. when i walked into the hall, [redacted] hugged me from the front and told me she read my letter. i didn’t know what to say, and i let out an awkward, “well… what did you think?” as she ushered me to my desk. she told me it made her cry. i don’t know how that makes me feel. i wish i had written something different now. i wish i had told her the truth about how she sometimes makes me feel. which is not so good. she forgets i am not an adult. but i forget, too, so i can hardly blame her. i don’t know how to tell her that i need to grow up more. i only say that because i cannot help her when i am in this body, and that is a very unfortunate feeling