Private thoughts (October).
October 1st
I am so full of bitter rage and anger tonight. Human beings genuinely make me feel nauseated. Lately I've been thinking about maybe starting small fires or just setting things on the street aflame to help get some of this out of me.
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I can easily cry about the suffering of others (and marriage proposals, for some reason), but am still totally incapable of crying about my own suffering. What does this mean?
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Last night, I signed back into Instagram and Facebook for the first time since June 22nd. I unfollowed and removed anyone who was online friends with her or the new guy on Instagram, unfriended over 300 people on Facebook, and preemptively blocked many dozens of people on both. As soon as it lets me, I'll be deactivating again, but it was nice to feel like I had some level of control for a few hours, though I did have to discover in the process how many people I really liked and respected had unfriended me because of the false allegations made against me by them. The amount of cruelty, injustice, dishonesty, and hypocrisy I've witnessed and been subject to just in my own personal life in the past year and a half has left me feeling more comfortable with being alone than I've ever felt in my entire life. I go on spree shootings in my head every day.
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Everyone is a fucking Etch-A-Sketch. It's alienating knowing exactly who you are and what you believe in a culture where everyone changes with each t-shirt they put on.
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October 2nd
Okay, liberals outraged by people celebrating Trump getting Covid: would it be better if we voted on whether or not Trump should die?
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October 4th
No, not every feeling or experience is valid. Yes, some feelings are wrong and some experiences just didn't happen. Some "feelings" are actually just accusations, and if something didn't actually happen, then it just didn't happen. Trauma language is oftentimes used as a means of gaslighting, and I'm sick of it.
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October 5th
For a while now, I've been completely unable to notice anyone who wasn't her. Even the thought of sex with someone besides her made me literally queasy. I find myself now being so deeply sickened by her, who she's become, and the ways she betrayed and hurt me, and I really do feel like I hate her in a way I've never hated someone before. As a result, I think I've regained my capacity for certain desires. Mostly, I just really want to feel good things for someone, to receive and give physical affection, to feel close to someone, to fuck someone. I really just need someone to be around and to be nice and gentle with me. There is absolutely no possibility of any of those things happening since I am all alone in my life now, and also lack any attractive qualities. I don't want to want anything or anyone anymore, so I'm actually kinda disappointed to be having feelings of yearning again.
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One of the women I work for at the Chinese place, Tina, is outrageously beautiful and sweet. Seeing her is like a little sunshine to these forgettable and shitty days.
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October 8th
Today, Tara texted me a screen shot of a Facebook memory. It was about when her and I were in Roanoke and got invited to come back at night and check out a "secret oddities museum in a basement" by the owner of a small shop. She very rarely is openly sentimental, and I oftentimes assume she never even thinks about me or the times we've dated and all of the intensity and adventures we shared. It made me feel a lot of things for her to send me that. With my feelings about my most recent ex mostly composed of absolute disgust and hate and bitterness at this point, it's hard not to fall back into the reflex of missing Tara and romanticizing all the time we'd spent together, like I'd done my entire 20s.
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It's impossible to talk to Jess. I want to because she's my soulmate in suffering, in the sense that both of our lives are over for all intents and purposes, but I can't bring up anything about myself. If I bring up something good, she gets upset because she's envious; if I bring up something bad, she has to tell me how much worse she has it. Starting tonight, I'm not going to volunteer any information about myself and see how long before she asks me something about how or what I'm doing. She treated me so horribly when we dated five years ago, but I want so badly for us to be friends. She came out of prison as bad as she was when she went in. She's really never going to change.
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October 9th
I'm finally watching Immigration Nation on Netflix and it is physically nauseating.
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October 11th
I'm not sure why, but the music to "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers fills me with an overwhelming melancholy every single time I hear it. Milo samples it for his song "Folk-Metaphysics" and it still has the same effect. Something about those string of notes.
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October 12th
There are moments where I remember and miss stupid little things. She would always get on top of me and just lay limp. She was like a blanket, and I always felt like I could fall right asleep with her there.
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October 13th
Listening to a lot of Baths tonight. I hadn't realized how long it'd been since putting them on, and know it was likely a subconscious avoidance of music that reminds me of Tara.
Specifically, it reminds me of one day at the start of the third time we dated. It was mid-April, but still snowy and frigid here. She was mostly bedridden due to being sick from a mysterious autoimmune disease, so we spent the entire day in her bed, under the covers, with all the lights off, cuddling and repeatedly having sex, over and over and over again. The entire time, she played her iTunes library, starting at the Baths discography, and we'd let it play in alphabetical order through Band of Horses's "Everything All the Time" and a few Beach House albums before going back to the start of Baths. We did this all day and late into the night. A few days later, I put it on in the car and she said it almost triggered her vagina to get all tingly. Long after she broke up with me and toyed with me for a few months until I lost my mind and attempted suicide, she'd asked me if I'd heard the new Baths album. I had. She said, "I wasn't sure if it'd be, like, weird to listen to." It was so exciting to have her hint that she remembers that day, too.
No one has ever consumed me the way she always did. There will always be something between us; an inarticulable, electric magnetism. I know we'll never date again. The embarrassing, long scars down my arms remind me. I always thought she'd be the only person I'd ever love that way, and falling for my most recent ex proved that to me. However, what that ex and I had was very different, and at first I thought that it meant I didn't love her. I eventually concluded that it felt different because it was healthy and safe--not the trauma bond I had with Tara, nor the unhealthy infatuation I had with her. It was strange but exciting to experience a love that didn't make me feel absolutely crazy, after an entire life of thinking that was what real love was supposed to feel like: painful, overwhelming, all-consuming, maddening, obsessive, codependent. The intense, fiery passion we always shared would never be matched, but I found a new version of it with my most recent ex where it was organic and smooth and gentle.
That all being said, I crave the self-destructive insanity that enveloped me with Tara lately. Hating my most recent ex in a very deep, real way has me without a compass, and feeling mostly empty most of the days, to the point that I'm operating on autopilot and fueled almost purely on anxiety, it'd be nice to feel something, let alone the intensity of what her and I will likely always find when both single and talking to one another. I asked her a while back if she was dating anyone and she blatantly ignored both attempts to ask. I'm sure she's seeing someone, though... she always is. Because she's a codependent, depressive love addict with a ton of trauma like I am, except beautiful and well-liked and upper-middle class. Oh, well. It's for the best that I am forced into isolation and safe from the hurt that all humans are capable of causing me. I have designed my life in a way that renders repeating past mistakes almost impossible, like handcuffing myself to a radiator so I don't do anything stupid.
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One time, for a short time, I became very close with and even had sex with one of the girls from season 14 of Bad Girls Club. I miss her. I heard she was back in town recently, but I'm too afraid of rejection if I hit her up and she thinks I'm a serial abuser and rapist because of the internet.
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October 14th
I had such a vivid dream about hooking up with Rina Sawayama last night. It was the most pleasant dream I've had in months.
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October 15th
I've been having trouble falling asleep no matter how little sleep I get the night before. Even when I do sleep, I'm taunted by dreams, usually nightmares, and wake up every hour or two. Oftentimes, I still wake up at first completely unsure of where I am and where she has gone.
I have one pillow for my head and another I hold really tight. Usually during one of the many times I'll wake up throughout the night, it'll be nice and warm from my body heat squeezing it, so I'll put the warm side next to me while I lie on my back or behind me if I'm on my side, and it's almost kinda like someone is sleeping with me again.
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October 16th
Every now and then, I still find myself disoriented by intrusive memories from the last couple of months, still absolutely shocked and confused by all that the person I trusted most has done to me. More than anything, I have no idea how she lives with herself and sleeps at night, because while she may have lied to the Internet, I know she knows exactly what happened. It is a daily reminder of how terrifying and dangerous people are, wondering how it is even possible for someone to shift literally overnight from sharing everything with another person for two and a half years to completely ghosting them and not even being interested in where, what, and how they're doing. I'm starved for physical intimacy, but no longer for the love and understanding I've repeatedly tricked myself into believing others were capable of offering me. I accept that what I seek is unattainable, and that my capacity and propensity for love, compassion, and loyalty is not an asset, but actually just another symptom of my mental illness and history of trauma that will only exhaust anyone I get close to.
I can't stop listening to this new Kacy Hill album. It makes me so sad.
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None of the deaths that have happened around my neighborhoods make it to the local news. Our blood isn't valuable.
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It's 2020 and I still need to remind people that all politicians are crooks and liars. Everyone always pretends they've finally found the one good one--there's no such thing. All politicians are bastards.
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Tonight I saw a very old ex's mother coming out of the Chinese place I work at. We dated for a little over three years from when I was 17-20. Even though it didn't end well, and she decided she never wanted to speak to me again after she broke up with me, it was probably the best relationship I've ever been in, as well as the longest. No one until my most recent ex has ever treated me as well as she did.
When she left me, and many times after, she wrote online about how I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life, and how that fact brought her great joy. I really don't ever want her or her family to see me and know that she was totally right, even though I'm sure she already knows or assumes.
The very last time I saw her was probably five or so years ago, coming into a local burrito bar I was loitering at. She looked absolutely beautiful and seemed really happy. I was the fattest I'd ever been, was loitering there because I was homeless, was single and hadn't been in a real relationship in a couple years, and as she predicted, I was completely miserable, over half a decade since we were together.
She's married now and has a career. I'm glad she got out when she did. As her mother once told me after we broke up, "She just doesn't want to become like us." We initially bonded over both being poor and having fucked-up families, and she was willing and able to do whatever it took to escape that, unlike me, who had accepted it and wanted an unconventional life of resistance.
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So, I had never heard the term "e-girl" before this year, because my internet usage takes me more interesting places than that (well, used to). It wasn't until my most recent ex left me and moved in with her cool new sugar daddy that I saw it, because within a week of being gone she started piling ridiculous hashtags under her photos on Instagram, including like five variations each of "e-girl", "goth", "alt-girl", and "witch". She used to make fun of those things, and would jokingly use things like them on posts to make me laugh.
Anyway, now that this secret Tumblr has become my only social media, I've been forced to realize that my ex left me in part to create a new identity largely focused on looking and acting like a 19-year old Tumblr girl. Cool. I'm embarrassed for her, even though everyone just thinks she's "happier" and cooler by virtue of behaving just as materialistic, consumptive, vapid, and vain as they do.
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October 17th
It's really cool to see all these posts on Tumblr about what people want and need out of a partner and know I literally did all of those things but all it got me was lied to, cheated on, abandoned, ghosted, and accused of abuse. The worst thing I ever did was get sad sometimes because of mental illness.
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At the end of last year, my most recent ex was talking about us getting a real place together. It was nearing two years since she let her last lease end and decided she was going to live in her car, before we had started dating. She joined me for the homeless transient struggle that I had been cultivating for my entire adult life. We lived in the back of her SUV and traveled for three months, squatted an abandoned apartment building, couch-surfed a bunch, and house-/animal-sat for many of our friends, before staying long-term in the basement of a Christian woman who was fascinated by us and our beliefs/lifestyle.
I should have known better, but I was always so amazed, relieved, and in admiration of how easily she took to such an exhausting, chaotic way of living, especially since she didn't have to--but every time I'd tell her it wasn't good for her to be dragged along with me, she told me I was worth it and she enjoyed the freedom and excitement of the way we lived. She was so fucking tough, I thought.
That is, of course, until the end of that year when we came back after a month on the road so she could focus on her mental health, which had been declining while she insisted on ignoring it.
I was initially very resistant to the idea of trying to find a home with her. I hadn't had my own place since 2016, and had never really had any good experiences with domesticity or the exploitative landlord/tenant relationship. Besides, I wasn't at all confident I'd be able to afford it, let alone afford it alongside a vehicle and any attempts to enjoy life outside of the house. I was also deathly afraid of winding up like my brother and his girlfriend of 15 years: stagnant, miserable, codependent, on different schedules, caught up in the nonstop task of maintaining possession of their home. Still, I told her I'd do it, though I'd throw out a compromise first: the pop-up camper. At that point, she easily could have kept staying at her mother's beautiful house, for free, for as long as she wanted, but she excitedly agreed that we try the pop-up camper lifestyle.
In the end, I find myself wishing I'd just gone along with getting a place with her. Maybe then, we'd still be together. After all, she left me for some guy on the internet so she could immediately move into his giant house on seven acres of farmland. On the other hand, I'm so fucking glad I didn't agree to it, because she probably would have done all this eventually, anyway. Worse, she's fabricated this narrative online that describes this time period as one where she wanted out of the relationship but was stuck with me and couldn't find the right "escape plan". This girl wanted to live together!
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Yesterday, Tina at work wore all black with black boots and looked so, so pretty. I've considered telling her, but never will because as a general rule I don't compliment a woman's appearance unless we've been friends for a while. No woman has asked for the ogre's opinion on their looks, after all. Anyway, she is so beautiful.
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October 18th
My brother is in an abusive relationship and there's nothing I can do to save him. :(
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I wonder what it's like to be begged for your forgiveness. I bet it's great. I wish the people who have hurt me showed any signs of remorse. I don't think most people have the humility to apologize even if they know what they did was wrong.
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I've been resisting the urges and desperate excuses to text Tara. I have this strong paranoid feeling that she only texts me every now and then as a subconscious means of checking whether or not she still has control over me, so I told myself I'd wait for her to text me first. Today, she did! It's so sad, but it is genuinely exciting to get attention from her. Coincidentally, I looked at her Instagram this morning, admired how beautiful she was, and my inner monologue grumbled, 'Why the fuck couldn't we have worked out???'
She sent me a picture of an obscure brand of soda we'd tried before while traveling. The flavor was pumpkin pie and they had bottles of it for sale at a cute little grocery store near her house. One time in Philadelphia, we went to Rocket Fizz and bought eight of the weirdest, grossest flavors we could find, and then tried them together one by one; most of them came from one brand called Lester's Fixin's. The idea of Tara seeing this soda and it making her think of me and our past, enough to even go out of her way to tell me, just really fucks me up. Now she's trying to make small talk. I should not be talking to her, but trauma bonds are forever.
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Because he's mysteriously wealthy, he took them on a week-long vacation in Jamaica. They spent every day at the beach. She hates the beach. Like, a lot. I remember this because I remember everything she's ever said to me, but this detail stands out in particular because the one time we actually went to a beach to walk in sand and go in water, she was miserable. She pouted practically the whole time. I have a childlike love of the beach, so it was disappointing. She said she couldn't enjoy beaches because her pale skin burns too easily, which I understood, and she just "didn't get all the hype", whatever that meant. We got her all the vegan lotions and sunscreens and she had an umbrella with her, but she still wasn't happy, and we basically never went to a beach again because I always adapted to her preferences if I felt the thing was less significant than her feelings and interests. There's no reason to overthink it, but I can't help but wonder what it means that I got to see the her that hates beaches, while he got to see the her that (almost definitely) pretends to like them enough to swim in the ocean every single day.
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Every day, I'm getting by on just the simple mechanics of being a person. I wonder if I will ever feel tangible again.
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October 19th
The prospect of eventually moving forward all alone is very scary. Some days, I fear reaching my goal and getting out of here. Driving away from this area code with the camper one day all by myself will be the conclusion to a really shitty story, but the next chapter won't even have a cast of characters. I'm having trouble figuring out what life is about after losing all trust and faith I had in love and the potential of human beings. If I can't love or trust anymore, if I fully accept the futility of human interaction, if I stare the end of my life and this world in the eyes, what else is there to live for?
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Sometimes I start writing something and have to take breaks because seeing the thoughts appear in word form on a screen makes them even more real and I become overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. In the end, it's very cathartic, but it's a tiring process. I'm glad I have writing in a mostly private space as a resource, though.
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If my feelings made a noise, it would sound like Mitski's tortured voice.
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Sometimes I wake up feeling the devastation in my chest of a dream I can't even remember.
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October 20th
Last night on the phone with Jess, she told me she thought about every argument we ever had a thousand times while in prison and felt so stupid and ashamed by the way she treated me. She was probably the first romantic relationship I had that was emotionally abusive, but that's likely because she was my first official relationship with a label in my adult life. She apologized a bunch and told me she'll be sorry for the rest of her life. She cried about it. She told me I was a perfect boyfriend. It was really nice to hear an apology and acknowledgment of how good a partner I am.
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Validation and a sincere apology go a long way. Unfortunately, most people lack the maturity, humility, self-awareness, and compassion to offer those things to others.
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This Tumblr is largely things I'd usually text to her or tell her about. Since I can't do that anymore and have nearly no one left in my life, all I can do is share it with the void that this site is for me.
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October 21st
I just watched this 15-minute long video of an older woman finding her husband nude and dead in his chair. The video was uploaded by someone who came across his lifeless body being live-streamed and screen-grabbed it until the paramedics got there. The man was on Chaturbate at the time of his death.
Her trembling screams of his name over and over, sobs, and cries of, "This can't be happening!" as she attempts CPR and keeps shaking him in hopes of him just waking up, all made my heart hurt really bad for her. I thought about how long they had probably been together; the nest they cultivated together and the sacrifices made to maintain a relationship they must've believed was worth the trouble; the endless amounts of trivia, secret shared experiences, regretful fights, and traditions stored in their brains about each other, much of which no other human beings in their lives will ever know.
I couldn't help but think about how badly I've always wanted that, and how I know with near certainty I will never have it. All I've ever really wanted in this stupid life is a safe place to live in and a love that will stay. One day, I will die, and it will more than likely be while completely alone. There will be no one to walk in and find me, to desperately try and revive me, to cry and scream over my dead body because they can't imagine a life without me by their side. In fact, wherever I die one day, if it's relatively private it will probably be weeks before anyone even notices I've been gone. The last couple of months have more or less confirmed that for me. There is no one who can't live without me. If anything, there are more people who have decided they can't live with me.
It's embarrassing to state this, but I really truly believed that I had found that person in Alyssa. It took a long time, but she really earned the unwavering trust and confidence I had in her. She showed me a patience and compassion I'd never experienced before. I don't think anyone has ever loved me the way she acted to. I went in so cautious and scared and paranoid, but how gentle she was and how calmly she waited for me to let my guard down for her, the willingness with which she stood by me through the chaos and drama and misfortune that contaminated my life, all demonstrated a boundless love that I had given to others but had never had reciprocated. I've said this over and over again, but I really had never trusted someone so fully in my entire life.
But in the end, she showed me loud and clear that she would not care if I died tomorrow. She apparently even believed it was actually likely that I'd kill myself after she woke me up that morning and told me she was leaving me and taking a plane home. She certainly made sure to tell everyone she thought I was going to, even though I'd made it very clear to her I would never put her through that even if we broke up. My conclusion can only be that she had come to terms with and accepted that what she was doing might result in my death, and that it was absolutely worth it to do, in the exact way she wound up doing it. Even though the short letter she left me said otherwise several times, she always planned to never speak to me again after that day. In her DMs with the guy she was cheating on me with and now lives with, she said to him at one point, "I can't believe this person isn't going to be in my life anymore." With the exception of some short, dishonest responses to texts I'd sent her the day I found out she had lied to me, she has not spoken to me since. She has ignored all of my attempts to communicate with her or to ask her questions, while telling lie after lie online with her new boyfriend. More than simply not caring about my well-being, she actively wanted to cause me harm.
We spent nearly every day together for two and a half years. She was my best friend, my muse, my teammate, my partner. She threw it away in 15 minutes one morning and, now almost six months later, has moved forward not once contacting me, like I never even existed. Since I've deleted all of my social media and no longer communicate with any of our formerly-mutual friends, she has no way to know how I am or where I am. She doesn't care, at all. I am the type of person that people can do that to. I could be dead right now and she would have no idea. She didn't know where I'd go after she abandoned me in a city 1,300 miles from my hometown. When I shut my phone off for a whole week while grieving all alone in a hotel and both my best friend and brother reached out to her about it, she did not care. She was busy shopping online and getting real cozy in her new house on seven acres of private land with a guy she had only known in real life for about a week at that point. When she finally started telling people I was refusing to return her car, she knew I had no alternative modes of transportation, let alone something that could tow the camper that at that point she knew was the only home I had. When she and her boyfriend began retaliating to me sending her desperate e-mails and venting online about what had happened, by posting outright lies about me through Instagram callout posts, she knew she was getting what little of a support network I had left to abandon me with her. She didn't owe me anything, of course, but she had no mercy, sympathy, or compassion left for me for some reason, and made it very clear she was comfortable with upending my entire life and never knowing the end results or gravity of it all. She did not think I deserved better; not honesty, not an apology, not a fair chance to prepare for this dramatic change in my life, not a chance at at least remaining friends like we always promised each other we would. She has no idea if I'm okay, or where I'm staying, or what I'm doing, or anything, and no one has reached out to find out, let alone on her behalf. She burned our bridge and all ties we had left to one another have been severed by the deactivation of my social media and the swaying of friends to turn their backs on me because I was such a terrible, dangerous, crazy, abusive person.
If this is what I'm worth while still alive, I can only imagine how worthless my death will be. It's hard to stomach my own worthlessness, how forgettable I actually am; to see so vividly how disposable you are to people you trusted and loved and cared for and gave so much to is absolutely devastating. The ease with which people can leave me, how nonchalant they are about their cruelty, makes me feel so small. I've never felt so unlovable in my entire life. I feel like litter, like waste, like a bag of bags, a pile of dirty laundry; I no longer feel like a full person. If leaving and forgetting about me is as simple as changing the channel on a TV, what does that say about my value? What do I live for now that I've accepted that the love I've always been sticking around in hopes of finding does not and cannot exist for me?
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I don't want to be a product. I don't want you to be, either. We talk to each other and engage in relationships like performances and transactions and nonstop networking; walking, talking resumes and commercials. I want out.
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October 26th
Thinking a lot about F********* tonight for some reason. She was a lot of fun to be around and we had some of the most amazing sex I've ever had. I wish we could have stayed friends, but she said she'd never be able to just see me as that. I wish I hadn't only engaged in serious relationships so I could at least have booty calls or whatever like they have in movies.
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On some days, I feel pretty certain that I'd rather have any other affliction than poverty.
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Tagging and trashing the rich online is fun and all, but holy fuck do I wish these evil billionaires like Jeff Bezos and his ilk were out and about on the streets so we could all publicly shame them to their faces and actively bully them, perhaps even physically attack them and run their pockets.
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October 29th
Sure is weird and kinda shitty feeling to give money to the local vegan doughnut company knowing that the owner thinks I'm a rapist and started a Twitter thread about it last year.
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October 31st
Tara texted me another Facebook memory involving us. It is driving me crazy.
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If I ever return to social media, one of the first things I'm doing is taking back most of the apologies I made before leaving it. I'm sorry for very, very little because I did nothing wrong.
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Last night, I dreamed that a pigeon landed on my fingers and then let me pet and hug them.
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Last night at 2:30 in the morning, I texted Tara, "Honestly, a lot of the time, I still really miss you being in my life. I'm glad we can text sometimes, though. I would hate for us to hate each other. Feel free to ignore this text, just being sentimental at 2 in the morning." She never responded and now I feel so stupid!
I am so full of bitter rage and anger tonight. Human beings genuinely make me feel nauseated. Lately I've been thinking about maybe starting small fires or just setting things on the street aflame to help get some of this out of me.
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I can easily cry about the suffering of others (and marriage proposals, for some reason), but am still totally incapable of crying about my own suffering. What does this mean?
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Last night, I signed back into Instagram and Facebook for the first time since June 22nd. I unfollowed and removed anyone who was online friends with her or the new guy on Instagram, unfriended over 300 people on Facebook, and preemptively blocked many dozens of people on both. As soon as it lets me, I'll be deactivating again, but it was nice to feel like I had some level of control for a few hours, though I did have to discover in the process how many people I really liked and respected had unfriended me because of the false allegations made against me by them. The amount of cruelty, injustice, dishonesty, and hypocrisy I've witnessed and been subject to just in my own personal life in the past year and a half has left me feeling more comfortable with being alone than I've ever felt in my entire life. I go on spree shootings in my head every day.
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Everyone is a fucking Etch-A-Sketch. It's alienating knowing exactly who you are and what you believe in a culture where everyone changes with each t-shirt they put on.
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October 2nd
Okay, liberals outraged by people celebrating Trump getting Covid: would it be better if we voted on whether or not Trump should die?
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October 4th
No, not every feeling or experience is valid. Yes, some feelings are wrong and some experiences just didn't happen. Some "feelings" are actually just accusations, and if something didn't actually happen, then it just didn't happen. Trauma language is oftentimes used as a means of gaslighting, and I'm sick of it.
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October 5th
For a while now, I've been completely unable to notice anyone who wasn't her. Even the thought of sex with someone besides her made me literally queasy. I find myself now being so deeply sickened by her, who she's become, and the ways she betrayed and hurt me, and I really do feel like I hate her in a way I've never hated someone before. As a result, I think I've regained my capacity for certain desires. Mostly, I just really want to feel good things for someone, to receive and give physical affection, to feel close to someone, to fuck someone. I really just need someone to be around and to be nice and gentle with me. There is absolutely no possibility of any of those things happening since I am all alone in my life now, and also lack any attractive qualities. I don't want to want anything or anyone anymore, so I'm actually kinda disappointed to be having feelings of yearning again.
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One of the women I work for at the Chinese place, Tina, is outrageously beautiful and sweet. Seeing her is like a little sunshine to these forgettable and shitty days.
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October 8th
Today, Tara texted me a screen shot of a Facebook memory. It was about when her and I were in Roanoke and got invited to come back at night and check out a "secret oddities museum in a basement" by the owner of a small shop. She very rarely is openly sentimental, and I oftentimes assume she never even thinks about me or the times we've dated and all of the intensity and adventures we shared. It made me feel a lot of things for her to send me that. With my feelings about my most recent ex mostly composed of absolute disgust and hate and bitterness at this point, it's hard not to fall back into the reflex of missing Tara and romanticizing all the time we'd spent together, like I'd done my entire 20s.
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It's impossible to talk to Jess. I want to because she's my soulmate in suffering, in the sense that both of our lives are over for all intents and purposes, but I can't bring up anything about myself. If I bring up something good, she gets upset because she's envious; if I bring up something bad, she has to tell me how much worse she has it. Starting tonight, I'm not going to volunteer any information about myself and see how long before she asks me something about how or what I'm doing. She treated me so horribly when we dated five years ago, but I want so badly for us to be friends. She came out of prison as bad as she was when she went in. She's really never going to change.
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October 9th
I'm finally watching Immigration Nation on Netflix and it is physically nauseating.
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October 11th
I'm not sure why, but the music to "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers fills me with an overwhelming melancholy every single time I hear it. Milo samples it for his song "Folk-Metaphysics" and it still has the same effect. Something about those string of notes.
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October 12th
There are moments where I remember and miss stupid little things. She would always get on top of me and just lay limp. She was like a blanket, and I always felt like I could fall right asleep with her there.
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October 13th
Listening to a lot of Baths tonight. I hadn't realized how long it'd been since putting them on, and know it was likely a subconscious avoidance of music that reminds me of Tara.
Specifically, it reminds me of one day at the start of the third time we dated. It was mid-April, but still snowy and frigid here. She was mostly bedridden due to being sick from a mysterious autoimmune disease, so we spent the entire day in her bed, under the covers, with all the lights off, cuddling and repeatedly having sex, over and over and over again. The entire time, she played her iTunes library, starting at the Baths discography, and we'd let it play in alphabetical order through Band of Horses's "Everything All the Time" and a few Beach House albums before going back to the start of Baths. We did this all day and late into the night. A few days later, I put it on in the car and she said it almost triggered her vagina to get all tingly. Long after she broke up with me and toyed with me for a few months until I lost my mind and attempted suicide, she'd asked me if I'd heard the new Baths album. I had. She said, "I wasn't sure if it'd be, like, weird to listen to." It was so exciting to have her hint that she remembers that day, too.
No one has ever consumed me the way she always did. There will always be something between us; an inarticulable, electric magnetism. I know we'll never date again. The embarrassing, long scars down my arms remind me. I always thought she'd be the only person I'd ever love that way, and falling for my most recent ex proved that to me. However, what that ex and I had was very different, and at first I thought that it meant I didn't love her. I eventually concluded that it felt different because it was healthy and safe--not the trauma bond I had with Tara, nor the unhealthy infatuation I had with her. It was strange but exciting to experience a love that didn't make me feel absolutely crazy, after an entire life of thinking that was what real love was supposed to feel like: painful, overwhelming, all-consuming, maddening, obsessive, codependent. The intense, fiery passion we always shared would never be matched, but I found a new version of it with my most recent ex where it was organic and smooth and gentle.
That all being said, I crave the self-destructive insanity that enveloped me with Tara lately. Hating my most recent ex in a very deep, real way has me without a compass, and feeling mostly empty most of the days, to the point that I'm operating on autopilot and fueled almost purely on anxiety, it'd be nice to feel something, let alone the intensity of what her and I will likely always find when both single and talking to one another. I asked her a while back if she was dating anyone and she blatantly ignored both attempts to ask. I'm sure she's seeing someone, though... she always is. Because she's a codependent, depressive love addict with a ton of trauma like I am, except beautiful and well-liked and upper-middle class. Oh, well. It's for the best that I am forced into isolation and safe from the hurt that all humans are capable of causing me. I have designed my life in a way that renders repeating past mistakes almost impossible, like handcuffing myself to a radiator so I don't do anything stupid.
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One time, for a short time, I became very close with and even had sex with one of the girls from season 14 of Bad Girls Club. I miss her. I heard she was back in town recently, but I'm too afraid of rejection if I hit her up and she thinks I'm a serial abuser and rapist because of the internet.
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October 14th
I had such a vivid dream about hooking up with Rina Sawayama last night. It was the most pleasant dream I've had in months.
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October 15th
I've been having trouble falling asleep no matter how little sleep I get the night before. Even when I do sleep, I'm taunted by dreams, usually nightmares, and wake up every hour or two. Oftentimes, I still wake up at first completely unsure of where I am and where she has gone.
I have one pillow for my head and another I hold really tight. Usually during one of the many times I'll wake up throughout the night, it'll be nice and warm from my body heat squeezing it, so I'll put the warm side next to me while I lie on my back or behind me if I'm on my side, and it's almost kinda like someone is sleeping with me again.
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October 16th
Every now and then, I still find myself disoriented by intrusive memories from the last couple of months, still absolutely shocked and confused by all that the person I trusted most has done to me. More than anything, I have no idea how she lives with herself and sleeps at night, because while she may have lied to the Internet, I know she knows exactly what happened. It is a daily reminder of how terrifying and dangerous people are, wondering how it is even possible for someone to shift literally overnight from sharing everything with another person for two and a half years to completely ghosting them and not even being interested in where, what, and how they're doing. I'm starved for physical intimacy, but no longer for the love and understanding I've repeatedly tricked myself into believing others were capable of offering me. I accept that what I seek is unattainable, and that my capacity and propensity for love, compassion, and loyalty is not an asset, but actually just another symptom of my mental illness and history of trauma that will only exhaust anyone I get close to.
I can't stop listening to this new Kacy Hill album. It makes me so sad.
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None of the deaths that have happened around my neighborhoods make it to the local news. Our blood isn't valuable.
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It's 2020 and I still need to remind people that all politicians are crooks and liars. Everyone always pretends they've finally found the one good one--there's no such thing. All politicians are bastards.
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Tonight I saw a very old ex's mother coming out of the Chinese place I work at. We dated for a little over three years from when I was 17-20. Even though it didn't end well, and she decided she never wanted to speak to me again after she broke up with me, it was probably the best relationship I've ever been in, as well as the longest. No one until my most recent ex has ever treated me as well as she did.
When she left me, and many times after, she wrote online about how I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life, and how that fact brought her great joy. I really don't ever want her or her family to see me and know that she was totally right, even though I'm sure she already knows or assumes.
The very last time I saw her was probably five or so years ago, coming into a local burrito bar I was loitering at. She looked absolutely beautiful and seemed really happy. I was the fattest I'd ever been, was loitering there because I was homeless, was single and hadn't been in a real relationship in a couple years, and as she predicted, I was completely miserable, over half a decade since we were together.
She's married now and has a career. I'm glad she got out when she did. As her mother once told me after we broke up, "She just doesn't want to become like us." We initially bonded over both being poor and having fucked-up families, and she was willing and able to do whatever it took to escape that, unlike me, who had accepted it and wanted an unconventional life of resistance.
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So, I had never heard the term "e-girl" before this year, because my internet usage takes me more interesting places than that (well, used to). It wasn't until my most recent ex left me and moved in with her cool new sugar daddy that I saw it, because within a week of being gone she started piling ridiculous hashtags under her photos on Instagram, including like five variations each of "e-girl", "goth", "alt-girl", and "witch". She used to make fun of those things, and would jokingly use things like them on posts to make me laugh.
Anyway, now that this secret Tumblr has become my only social media, I've been forced to realize that my ex left me in part to create a new identity largely focused on looking and acting like a 19-year old Tumblr girl. Cool. I'm embarrassed for her, even though everyone just thinks she's "happier" and cooler by virtue of behaving just as materialistic, consumptive, vapid, and vain as they do.
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October 17th
It's really cool to see all these posts on Tumblr about what people want and need out of a partner and know I literally did all of those things but all it got me was lied to, cheated on, abandoned, ghosted, and accused of abuse. The worst thing I ever did was get sad sometimes because of mental illness.
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At the end of last year, my most recent ex was talking about us getting a real place together. It was nearing two years since she let her last lease end and decided she was going to live in her car, before we had started dating. She joined me for the homeless transient struggle that I had been cultivating for my entire adult life. We lived in the back of her SUV and traveled for three months, squatted an abandoned apartment building, couch-surfed a bunch, and house-/animal-sat for many of our friends, before staying long-term in the basement of a Christian woman who was fascinated by us and our beliefs/lifestyle.
I should have known better, but I was always so amazed, relieved, and in admiration of how easily she took to such an exhausting, chaotic way of living, especially since she didn't have to--but every time I'd tell her it wasn't good for her to be dragged along with me, she told me I was worth it and she enjoyed the freedom and excitement of the way we lived. She was so fucking tough, I thought.
That is, of course, until the end of that year when we came back after a month on the road so she could focus on her mental health, which had been declining while she insisted on ignoring it.
I was initially very resistant to the idea of trying to find a home with her. I hadn't had my own place since 2016, and had never really had any good experiences with domesticity or the exploitative landlord/tenant relationship. Besides, I wasn't at all confident I'd be able to afford it, let alone afford it alongside a vehicle and any attempts to enjoy life outside of the house. I was also deathly afraid of winding up like my brother and his girlfriend of 15 years: stagnant, miserable, codependent, on different schedules, caught up in the nonstop task of maintaining possession of their home. Still, I told her I'd do it, though I'd throw out a compromise first: the pop-up camper. At that point, she easily could have kept staying at her mother's beautiful house, for free, for as long as she wanted, but she excitedly agreed that we try the pop-up camper lifestyle.
In the end, I find myself wishing I'd just gone along with getting a place with her. Maybe then, we'd still be together. After all, she left me for some guy on the internet so she could immediately move into his giant house on seven acres of farmland. On the other hand, I'm so fucking glad I didn't agree to it, because she probably would have done all this eventually, anyway. Worse, she's fabricated this narrative online that describes this time period as one where she wanted out of the relationship but was stuck with me and couldn't find the right "escape plan". This girl wanted to live together!
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Yesterday, Tina at work wore all black with black boots and looked so, so pretty. I've considered telling her, but never will because as a general rule I don't compliment a woman's appearance unless we've been friends for a while. No woman has asked for the ogre's opinion on their looks, after all. Anyway, she is so beautiful.
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October 18th
My brother is in an abusive relationship and there's nothing I can do to save him. :(
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I wonder what it's like to be begged for your forgiveness. I bet it's great. I wish the people who have hurt me showed any signs of remorse. I don't think most people have the humility to apologize even if they know what they did was wrong.
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I've been resisting the urges and desperate excuses to text Tara. I have this strong paranoid feeling that she only texts me every now and then as a subconscious means of checking whether or not she still has control over me, so I told myself I'd wait for her to text me first. Today, she did! It's so sad, but it is genuinely exciting to get attention from her. Coincidentally, I looked at her Instagram this morning, admired how beautiful she was, and my inner monologue grumbled, 'Why the fuck couldn't we have worked out???'
She sent me a picture of an obscure brand of soda we'd tried before while traveling. The flavor was pumpkin pie and they had bottles of it for sale at a cute little grocery store near her house. One time in Philadelphia, we went to Rocket Fizz and bought eight of the weirdest, grossest flavors we could find, and then tried them together one by one; most of them came from one brand called Lester's Fixin's. The idea of Tara seeing this soda and it making her think of me and our past, enough to even go out of her way to tell me, just really fucks me up. Now she's trying to make small talk. I should not be talking to her, but trauma bonds are forever.
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Because he's mysteriously wealthy, he took them on a week-long vacation in Jamaica. They spent every day at the beach. She hates the beach. Like, a lot. I remember this because I remember everything she's ever said to me, but this detail stands out in particular because the one time we actually went to a beach to walk in sand and go in water, she was miserable. She pouted practically the whole time. I have a childlike love of the beach, so it was disappointing. She said she couldn't enjoy beaches because her pale skin burns too easily, which I understood, and she just "didn't get all the hype", whatever that meant. We got her all the vegan lotions and sunscreens and she had an umbrella with her, but she still wasn't happy, and we basically never went to a beach again because I always adapted to her preferences if I felt the thing was less significant than her feelings and interests. There's no reason to overthink it, but I can't help but wonder what it means that I got to see the her that hates beaches, while he got to see the her that (almost definitely) pretends to like them enough to swim in the ocean every single day.
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Every day, I'm getting by on just the simple mechanics of being a person. I wonder if I will ever feel tangible again.
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October 19th
The prospect of eventually moving forward all alone is very scary. Some days, I fear reaching my goal and getting out of here. Driving away from this area code with the camper one day all by myself will be the conclusion to a really shitty story, but the next chapter won't even have a cast of characters. I'm having trouble figuring out what life is about after losing all trust and faith I had in love and the potential of human beings. If I can't love or trust anymore, if I fully accept the futility of human interaction, if I stare the end of my life and this world in the eyes, what else is there to live for?
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Sometimes I start writing something and have to take breaks because seeing the thoughts appear in word form on a screen makes them even more real and I become overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. In the end, it's very cathartic, but it's a tiring process. I'm glad I have writing in a mostly private space as a resource, though.
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If my feelings made a noise, it would sound like Mitski's tortured voice.
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Sometimes I wake up feeling the devastation in my chest of a dream I can't even remember.
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October 20th
Last night on the phone with Jess, she told me she thought about every argument we ever had a thousand times while in prison and felt so stupid and ashamed by the way she treated me. She was probably the first romantic relationship I had that was emotionally abusive, but that's likely because she was my first official relationship with a label in my adult life. She apologized a bunch and told me she'll be sorry for the rest of her life. She cried about it. She told me I was a perfect boyfriend. It was really nice to hear an apology and acknowledgment of how good a partner I am.
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Validation and a sincere apology go a long way. Unfortunately, most people lack the maturity, humility, self-awareness, and compassion to offer those things to others.
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This Tumblr is largely things I'd usually text to her or tell her about. Since I can't do that anymore and have nearly no one left in my life, all I can do is share it with the void that this site is for me.
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October 21st
I just watched this 15-minute long video of an older woman finding her husband nude and dead in his chair. The video was uploaded by someone who came across his lifeless body being live-streamed and screen-grabbed it until the paramedics got there. The man was on Chaturbate at the time of his death.
Her trembling screams of his name over and over, sobs, and cries of, "This can't be happening!" as she attempts CPR and keeps shaking him in hopes of him just waking up, all made my heart hurt really bad for her. I thought about how long they had probably been together; the nest they cultivated together and the sacrifices made to maintain a relationship they must've believed was worth the trouble; the endless amounts of trivia, secret shared experiences, regretful fights, and traditions stored in their brains about each other, much of which no other human beings in their lives will ever know.
I couldn't help but think about how badly I've always wanted that, and how I know with near certainty I will never have it. All I've ever really wanted in this stupid life is a safe place to live in and a love that will stay. One day, I will die, and it will more than likely be while completely alone. There will be no one to walk in and find me, to desperately try and revive me, to cry and scream over my dead body because they can't imagine a life without me by their side. In fact, wherever I die one day, if it's relatively private it will probably be weeks before anyone even notices I've been gone. The last couple of months have more or less confirmed that for me. There is no one who can't live without me. If anything, there are more people who have decided they can't live with me.
It's embarrassing to state this, but I really truly believed that I had found that person in Alyssa. It took a long time, but she really earned the unwavering trust and confidence I had in her. She showed me a patience and compassion I'd never experienced before. I don't think anyone has ever loved me the way she acted to. I went in so cautious and scared and paranoid, but how gentle she was and how calmly she waited for me to let my guard down for her, the willingness with which she stood by me through the chaos and drama and misfortune that contaminated my life, all demonstrated a boundless love that I had given to others but had never had reciprocated. I've said this over and over again, but I really had never trusted someone so fully in my entire life.
But in the end, she showed me loud and clear that she would not care if I died tomorrow. She apparently even believed it was actually likely that I'd kill myself after she woke me up that morning and told me she was leaving me and taking a plane home. She certainly made sure to tell everyone she thought I was going to, even though I'd made it very clear to her I would never put her through that even if we broke up. My conclusion can only be that she had come to terms with and accepted that what she was doing might result in my death, and that it was absolutely worth it to do, in the exact way she wound up doing it. Even though the short letter she left me said otherwise several times, she always planned to never speak to me again after that day. In her DMs with the guy she was cheating on me with and now lives with, she said to him at one point, "I can't believe this person isn't going to be in my life anymore." With the exception of some short, dishonest responses to texts I'd sent her the day I found out she had lied to me, she has not spoken to me since. She has ignored all of my attempts to communicate with her or to ask her questions, while telling lie after lie online with her new boyfriend. More than simply not caring about my well-being, she actively wanted to cause me harm.
We spent nearly every day together for two and a half years. She was my best friend, my muse, my teammate, my partner. She threw it away in 15 minutes one morning and, now almost six months later, has moved forward not once contacting me, like I never even existed. Since I've deleted all of my social media and no longer communicate with any of our formerly-mutual friends, she has no way to know how I am or where I am. She doesn't care, at all. I am the type of person that people can do that to. I could be dead right now and she would have no idea. She didn't know where I'd go after she abandoned me in a city 1,300 miles from my hometown. When I shut my phone off for a whole week while grieving all alone in a hotel and both my best friend and brother reached out to her about it, she did not care. She was busy shopping online and getting real cozy in her new house on seven acres of private land with a guy she had only known in real life for about a week at that point. When she finally started telling people I was refusing to return her car, she knew I had no alternative modes of transportation, let alone something that could tow the camper that at that point she knew was the only home I had. When she and her boyfriend began retaliating to me sending her desperate e-mails and venting online about what had happened, by posting outright lies about me through Instagram callout posts, she knew she was getting what little of a support network I had left to abandon me with her. She didn't owe me anything, of course, but she had no mercy, sympathy, or compassion left for me for some reason, and made it very clear she was comfortable with upending my entire life and never knowing the end results or gravity of it all. She did not think I deserved better; not honesty, not an apology, not a fair chance to prepare for this dramatic change in my life, not a chance at at least remaining friends like we always promised each other we would. She has no idea if I'm okay, or where I'm staying, or what I'm doing, or anything, and no one has reached out to find out, let alone on her behalf. She burned our bridge and all ties we had left to one another have been severed by the deactivation of my social media and the swaying of friends to turn their backs on me because I was such a terrible, dangerous, crazy, abusive person.
If this is what I'm worth while still alive, I can only imagine how worthless my death will be. It's hard to stomach my own worthlessness, how forgettable I actually am; to see so vividly how disposable you are to people you trusted and loved and cared for and gave so much to is absolutely devastating. The ease with which people can leave me, how nonchalant they are about their cruelty, makes me feel so small. I've never felt so unlovable in my entire life. I feel like litter, like waste, like a bag of bags, a pile of dirty laundry; I no longer feel like a full person. If leaving and forgetting about me is as simple as changing the channel on a TV, what does that say about my value? What do I live for now that I've accepted that the love I've always been sticking around in hopes of finding does not and cannot exist for me?
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I don't want to be a product. I don't want you to be, either. We talk to each other and engage in relationships like performances and transactions and nonstop networking; walking, talking resumes and commercials. I want out.
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October 26th
Thinking a lot about F********* tonight for some reason. She was a lot of fun to be around and we had some of the most amazing sex I've ever had. I wish we could have stayed friends, but she said she'd never be able to just see me as that. I wish I hadn't only engaged in serious relationships so I could at least have booty calls or whatever like they have in movies.
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On some days, I feel pretty certain that I'd rather have any other affliction than poverty.
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Tagging and trashing the rich online is fun and all, but holy fuck do I wish these evil billionaires like Jeff Bezos and his ilk were out and about on the streets so we could all publicly shame them to their faces and actively bully them, perhaps even physically attack them and run their pockets.
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October 29th
Sure is weird and kinda shitty feeling to give money to the local vegan doughnut company knowing that the owner thinks I'm a rapist and started a Twitter thread about it last year.
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October 31st
Tara texted me another Facebook memory involving us. It is driving me crazy.
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If I ever return to social media, one of the first things I'm doing is taking back most of the apologies I made before leaving it. I'm sorry for very, very little because I did nothing wrong.
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Last night, I dreamed that a pigeon landed on my fingers and then let me pet and hug them.
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Last night at 2:30 in the morning, I texted Tara, "Honestly, a lot of the time, I still really miss you being in my life. I'm glad we can text sometimes, though. I would hate for us to hate each other. Feel free to ignore this text, just being sentimental at 2 in the morning." She never responded and now I feel so stupid!