White Text - 08

whitetext was a private livejournal account I kept following a breakup in 2004. The entries came from a deep depression. They have been recollected here for data preservation.

fridays have been relaxing days for me recently. they are my days when i lay back and let everything go forward without me. i get little to nothing accomplished and never fault myself for it. saturday and sunday can be given over to hard work, but not my fridays. i will lay in bed, watch movies, television, listen to music, download exciting things and chat with people online. i love my fridays, even if they are too short.

when i came to indiana it was a short stop, in my mind, on the road to better things. i was here for a year, two at the most, then i’d be back to the east coast. i would meet up with those people who i was closest to, and we, with our new found degrees, would make a living there. we would play games together, hang out at bars and diners, and stay up into the night having talks about random movies. when i came to indiana, there was a different future ahead of me. it was a future in new jersey. it was a future with special people. that future is a memory now.

we all need our breaks. we need them especially if we are pushing ourselves beyond our normal limits. i’ve been pushing so hard for the past year i can barely look down and recognize my own body. i’ve taken a record number of credits in a semester, argued and pleaded with professors to let me take classes that weren’t even being offered. i have gone weeks without sleep. i’ve turned a second-rate laptop lab into a high-powered rendering farm because of absolute necessity. i’ve given debates, speeches, presentations, and reports in front of officials and administration i’ve never met nor heard of before. i most certainly need a break, but it wont happen. i’ll get a breather in a few weeks. it will be a stint between semesters, but nothing more. i gave myself over to this promise of completing the impossible, and for what? for a promise of a future that vanished while i was off to war.

i have never been dependable. i disappear all too often. i don’t get things done all the time. i take on more than i can chew. all of these things define me to people. no matter that i can accomplish ten times that of another person. pay no heed to the fact that i will literally destroy myself to get a project complete in the face of insurmountable odds. i crack. that’s all there is to it. it is all irrelevant. i am who i am. i will try too hard in some places and not hard enough in others. and some people will hold that against me forever.

i could write about all of this all day long. sometimes i think it would be helpful to do it. the way my mind works, i must spend half the day thinking the depressing thought that all of this is for nothing. i look in the eyes of people i know here, i see promise, hope, compassion, and a genuine plan that someday their lives will be better than they are today. they make decisions on that assumption. they choose who to spend time with, who to ignore, what drama to bitch about, and what lifestyle to live all based on that same optimism. i can’t spend too much time in that world. i constantly need an escape, back in my room, away and alone. i need to revitalize my own sense of being by brushing them all away. i wash my hands all the time, but my palms still sweat this blood.

i went downtown today. there is a pizza place on the outskirts of my familiar area that people were going to. they called me from the parking lot and told me to join them, even though it is a half hour away. i got dressed and joined them. after all, today is one of their birthdays. they were done eating by the time i arrived. we talked for a few minutes. i watched them play in the arcade for a few more minutes. then we left. i asked them what they were doing, but they had no farther plans. and so i went home.

there really isn’t anything i’m working towards anymore. i wanted to teach, but it is growing stale. i wanted to learn about fun exciting things, like video games, but it is wearing on me too. i wanted a life of love and companionship. it will come back to me, i’m sure, but today it is so far, it might as well be a star.