for the people who are still alive

I wonder if this is what being dead feels like. It’s plausible, after all, that death could simply consist of doing nothing, more or less, which is what I’m doing now. If this is all being dead is, then I suppose I’m not as scared of it as I assumed I was. I suppose I am just indifferent, but with the way things are now I am indifferent to life too, or at least, this kind of life. Right now I’m a little too indifferent. Any moreso and I’m afraid I’ll melt into the molding at the base of the wall.

I am not doing anything, not doing anything at all. I talk to people but I don’t really say very much. My bedroom floor is a sea of clothes and objects, only flung out of duffel bags in order to find something to wear each morning. I took a three-hour showerbath and attempted to shed my skin. I made buttery pancakes for breakfast at 2 pm, just because I wanted one, just because there’s nothing stopping me. I don’t understand how long this can last. Something’s got to give. Hasn’t it?

This evening I fought with my mother, sort of. I screamed “fuck” and ran out of the room, anyways. I realized that I’ve never felt an extreme of love towards my family, only of hate. I know it’s a false hate, but it feels so intense; it’s just like the kind of crush that isn’t really love and you know it isn’t the end of the world but if it weren’t for the fact that you have a brain, you wouldn’t hesitate to throw yourself in front of a truck for that person. It’s like that, so intense and yet false. But I’ve never felt anything close to an equally intense love for my family, and isn’t there something wrong with that?

This summer was the first time I had someone that was crazy attracted to me, enough to deal with my fears and my insanity, the first time that someone was that caring and got so close to me, that we could spend hours making out in chairs, that I got past about a dozen individual fears for him. So many firsts and too many firsts and now that these things have been taken away, the shape of the space where they used to be is clearly defined and painfully empty. Their absence makes me crave: lips and hands, always lips and hands that I want. No idea where to find them now.

Tomorrow I plan to break this emptiness. I will shatter this infinite plane of smooth milky glass that seems to be separating me from the world, from productivity. I will clean my room and heal my body and write a letter and mail Berger cookies and buttercakes. I will look halfheartedly for a job because it was halfheartedly suggested. I will escape my house and absorb the summer sun and like a plant it will help me stay alive.