April 14th 2011
email from me
I don’t think I really like most people.
I get along with them easily, and that’s nice. I mean, it’s nice having people to be nice to, who are nice to me, and who I can interact with and enjoy things of similar cultural enjoyment. I really do enjoy that. And even can be comforting and attentive when talking about personal distress. Having some regular casual social interaction with others has done amazing things for me. For my emotional well being.
But.
Almost all people annoy me, I find. It’s so odd. Enjoying the social interaction, but… there’s so few people that I’m not making an avid attempt to NOT be entirely annoyed and/or disgusted by at some point.
You never annoyed me. Not ever.
My roommates are entertaining, young and…. filthy.
Frustratingly filthy as they are, it’s really amazing to be around people who aren’t angered or annoyed if I clean or organize something. But, I’m not sure how long I can suppress my raging frustration at coming home to find… lazy chaos. To have drunken hollering. I like having people I can easily get along with socially, though. Even if I’m not sure how much I like or trust who they are.
I feel so old. So much older than everyone. Always. And every time someone thinks I’m 26, I get angrier and angrier.
Because I feel ancient and aching and running out of time. Broken and filled with hatred.
Meeting people who are successful and well-known in their way is…
I’m becoming more disenchanted. With everything.
But hanging on to the momentum. Trying to keep moving. Because if I stop moving, I will, like a shark, die.
I ran away from NJ, basically. Left for a week, came back, said I was basically homeless, living on couches, that staying in New Providence was isolating and KILLING ME, and ended up in a terrible fight during which I was on my knees at Aunt Mary’s feet and sobbing, begging for answers… left again and haven’t been back in a month. Family hasn’t bothered to ask where I am, or what I’m doing.
I’m explaining all this because… you said that you’d …
It’s why I’m here. The only reason I’m here. Because. Living in my situation with my Aunt was literally killing me. The total social isolation. The complete lack of self suffieciency. The inability to fend for myself. The lack of any social interaction. The lack of interaction with the outside world. The limitations.
The having no fucking way out. Being so trapped, and everyone just looking at me being trapped, without DOING anything to get me out. I was trapped in a well, and my family just threw me scraps so I wouldn’t die. You came by and talked to me, brought me things, helped to keep my spirits up, helped me to forget the doom, you did so much, but… you, too, still just left me there. While I was screaming to be free.
I’ve been tottering on the brink of suicide for a really really long time. You were what was keeping me afloat. But… like I said… it ended up being “feed a man a fish” between you and I instead of “teach a man to fish”. Too much pressure to put on you, and I was still hungry by the end anyway. It’d have been easier on YOU if you let me be part of things, if you helped me get out. You wouldn’t have had to check on me so often, or look after me as you did.
I was going to die. I was going to die in New Providence. Sobbing daily. Begging, literally… begging on the ground for my Aunt to say something. Give me something. Explain SOMETHING.
So. I did what I always told myself I’d do when I was on the very brink of suicide. I’d do something crazy. I’d do something and not have any plan or idea what to do if it didn’t work. I’d leap into empty space, expecting to plummet to my death, but hoping for a swimming pool to arrive.
So. I started smoking weed again. I ran away to the city. And I’m living in filth. But I’m surrounded by activity and things. And I’m going out into the world every day. And I’m drawing on the subways everyday. And I’m trying. And I’m even hoping. (And trying not the think about the fact that my health could crap out at any moment. Like, the entirety of summer.)
But. At the same time. I’m not sure what will happen when the momentum trickles out …. what will happen if I don’t actually GET anywhere, if I don’t wrangle together solid footing for myself…. This might just be temporary.
It’s hard to explain. I’m happy these days. I mean, I’m bouncy and happy and less panicked and jittery and I shower and DO things and don’t succumb to self-loathing so much. But. It’s a sugary surface happiness. I have to keep feeding it. It doesn’t last.
I’m still standing on that edge. I’m not secure. I’m ….
Being part of the world means that there is SO MUCH to see and feel inwonderful ways… so many strangers to be friends with, so many people to share random moments of smile with, and I love the stupid hellos I get from the old men that work in the bodegas, or the bus drivers…. it keeps me going.
But… the people who just coast. The people who just coast along and don’t suffer and don’t PAY for being handed just a gilded future. They aren’t lacking anything that I possess for all the pain and shit I’ve lived. And that fills me with hatred. And envy that consumes me.
I’m clinging.
I feel so old.
And I don’t have anything that I really want to do. I’m just treading water. I wish… I wish I had a drive like yours. I wish I knew that I wanted to paint as my life.
But. My life is better than is has been in a very very long time. I have a life of my own. Out of desperate survival, I’m back IN the world. Doing things. It’s pretty awesome.
I wish you could have been part of it. I wanted you to be. I wanted YOU to be the person to bring me back to the world.
I still miss you. I still don’t feel right without you. You’d said a number of times that… you doubted if I’d still feel the same about you if I was out in the world and meeting people.
Well… I suppose that I can tell you now that I do.
It’s a shame that we aren’t carving our place in the world together. I really tried. I begged you to bring me with you, where other people were. I begged to be free of my trapped place. I tried to explain to you how much it was wrecking me to be there. How isolated. I begged you to let me interact with you when you were social with others. I begged to be invited into your home, the way I’d invited you into mine. I was starving to death. Starving with lonliness and isolation,
and ….
I’m still so confused. And now…
I still don’t understand.
I still hope that you’ll read and listen to my uploaded last words to you. They are still there, waiting for you to hear, waiting for you.
I don’t cry every day anymore. But I’m still standing on that cliff.
I’m still just clinging by my fingernails. It’s just a different set of things that haunt me.
I wish we were doing this together. I feel wrong that you aren’t here with me.
I wish… I wish I could trust you with myself. I wish you could say things to explain things and make things ok. I wish you could take back everything awful. I wish you were honest with me. I wish you weren’t someone who said the things that you said to make me bleed.
I’ve sort of resigned myself to the fact that I’ll always love someone immensely who doesn’t want me, who wasn’t proud to be romantically linked with me. Who doesn’t want to be intwined with me. Doesn’t want to be seen with me. Doesn’t proudly show my work to his friends the way I still show yours to mine.
You are doing things, now that I’m not around. You are painting, like you should have been. You are having shows, like you’d said you’d do since I met you, and never had. And this is what I mean. Had you lifted me out of that well I was trapped in, we both would have had the energies and time to explore. We could have been helping each other succeed, instead of me reaching to help you, while I could hardly survive, and you spending so much of yourself just to keep me alive.
I so desperately want to give all of myself to you, like I had, to trust you as much as I know I’m completely capable of. But… I just can’t, not even just as friends, not unless…
I guess there just isn’t anything to be done.
I suppose I’ll probably see you around, from time to time, being that I’ll be hanging with Justin & Co. I’m sure I’ll be happy and excited to see you. But I can’t show it. I can’t be close to you.
I want you. I miss you. I miss us.
You were IT for me.
Now I’m on my own. Completely. Surrounded by friends now, yes.
Engaging in every day interaction with humans that LIKE me. But I always used to be able to think of you when I was alone, and know that I wasn’t. But now… I am alone.
I worry about you. I worry about you being alone, too.
My brain is a mess. I’m so much better than I was, but emptier.
The lack of you still eats away my insides.
I’m not sure… how I am.
This is just words.
I wish you well.
Maybe if I can crawl myself completely upright, I’ll be ok.
You said you’d listen if I was suicidal. I’ve been this way for a very long time, and I tried to tell you. What did you think the year of awfulness between us was doing to me? How much sobbing to the point of collapsing, how much pain, how many slicing words did you think I could take in stride? Had I been physically able to go through my belongings and sort them as I felt neccessary to properly leave them behind, I’d have died last spring.
I’m living on speculation now. A mad gamble that things will improve.
I’m dancing and dizzy without a safety net.
You said you’d come to my aid if I was suicidal. You can’t help me.
But the idea that you might actually read this… you, the person I can’t trust, but at the same time, still trust more than any other human on earth… somehow, that helps.
Because sometimes… I still think of you when I’m lonely, and sometimes I still don’t feel so alone. Sometimes, I think WE is still there, underneath it all.
I so desperately wish for a new beginning between us. An Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Things are almost ok. I think. sort of. So why do I still have this aching knot in my chest and still… I want to sob. Or punch. Or bleed.
Or call you.
I suppose my life will slowly edge away from yours, until you aren’t the person I have dipped in amber in my head anymore. Maybe that’s when it’ll stop.
Off I go, and dive back into my life and hope I can stay afloat.
Wish me luck.
I hope you are ok.
I hope you aren’t alone.
I hope you know to find me if you need me.