hopelessness

happy snow day to everyone it affected. thank goodness no one was really traveling today. thank god gerard left early and mike made it here (and then went to work, silly fucker) and mana made it and now shares my bad-weather-travel pain.

i have no money. last night was the first real night of sleep i've had and i wasn't even in my own bed (the heat wouldn't stay on in my room so i slept on the couch like a guest. like kyle, who also stayed here). i'm not eating properly. my body hurts. and this is all normal.

i'm too scattered to write. i'm trying to get it out, to write this out of my consciousness, and it won't go.

* * *

it feels weird being in contact with all the people i tried to leave behind. it is weird to think about adam and tim and JB. the first thing i said when i walked into the brown house wednesday night was, i said i'd never do this again.

i thought i'd never be in contact with them again. i'd kicked everyone out of my phone. the people i maintained contact with are the people i want in my life, and now everyone else is back.

there is a long list of terrible things that have come to light in the past two weeks. i mean serious, life-altering things. seven of them, to be in exact. and none of them are all known by anyone but me, because there are secrets involved.

when did we become statistics? i know too many people who have been raped, too many people who have been in abusive relationships, too many dead kids. i never thought we would be the kind of people who became statistics. i know too many secrets, too many confidentialities, too many things kept hidden. the other night i looked around the table at the atomic. it was JB, tina, mana, sean, sarah, gerard and me, and i thought "i know something no one else knows about everyone at the table, except maybe gerard and tina."

* * *

today i tried something novel: functioning. not too challenging because i didn't leave the house. i don't really know normalcy except as a memory. i did a lousy job.

i hate everything. i'm in a bad mood. i loathe it all.

still haven't heard from bobby.
haven't emailed con law teacher.
i suck.
we ALL need tons of therapy.
i keep thinking, i'm not supposed to be here. i'm supposed to be in philadelphia with homeless people. damnit.

* * *

like i keep saying, i never thought we would be the kind of people who are hopeless. but we're staring hopelessness in the face.

we keep repeating, we don't have the luxury of saying or thinking or believing this will never happen again. three dead kids in four years, all within 8 days of each other, all happened on a monday or a sunday. that's too much of a pattern. this is a sick state of mind, to be finding patterns in friends' deaths. when you plot a line, you start with two points and plot a third in the middle to check your work, much like march 4 and feb 24 and feb 27 in between them.

the two worst words in the english language are: who's next? and we can't stop thinking that.

this trip home was a wake-up call for many of us, even those of us who were already here. (and i do wonder about them, adam and tim and co., what it's like to see us come and go.) all of us are wondering what we're doing with our lives. all of us are thinking about what we love vs our obligations because the two rarely intersect. sarah keeps saying life is short, do what you want.

i have avoided anything philosophical or deep or reflective for a long time. and now it's slapping me in the face. i don't love where i am right now. i don't love most of the people at my school. this is not where i want to be, but i keep thinking i must get a college degree. just get a degree, sarah, then go nuts. then do what tina did. then go abroad. anything. but get the degree first, you must have it. if i leave now i won't go back.

what forces are at work in the universe? how do we face them? how can we possibly NOT think terrible things? "the universe is unfolding as it should." my ASS. fuck you, universe!

we are all so, so scared. terrified. for everyone. it keeps getting closer. what if next time it's too close to survive? i still feel like everyone is suffering more than me, that they deserve and earned more pain by being closer to him. that's fucked up too, and i know it, and i can't not think it.

these past two weeks i've been too fucked up to think straight. it's affected everything from my perspective on an acquaintence's military service to my advice on a friend's ex.

if i died, would random strangers try to comfort those who grieved me with, "she died doing something she loved"? (when people say that about johnny, i think, so did david.)