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7 May 2002 (Tuesday): fragmentation

A sixteen-hour day at the office makes yours truly a dull-witted girl indeed. All day I've been wanting to post on a particular eloquence-requiring subject, but I'm not sure if I feel up to the challenge now, after nine straight hours of staring at table cell validation code.

I am very much wanting to have my hands on a musical instrument just now. Maybe I'll go sing in the stairwell before I head home. Hearing oneself Phonoshopped by natural reverb usually smooths out a few frayed edges.

Here, how 'bout another excerpt from the private diary: postcards from a place I'm glad to have escaped. I have no idea whether anyone else will find this interesting -- hence why it went in the diary instead of here, back when it was originally written. I'm warning you: it's a little intense, in that angsty self-absorbed sort of way, and probably more you care to know about my personal battles. (Of course, none of this is making you any less curious, is it?)

9:32 pm

What the hell is wrong with me lately?

I’m weak in the face of certain completely trivial things, and strong at all the times I should let the weakness in. What the fuck? I can’t handle the stress of implementing one feature in the code plus a show that may go less-than-well tomorrow. And yet I’m dry-eyed in the face of closing the book on three and a half years with Zach. What kind of good-for-nothing emotional creature am I?

I feel like taking something heavy and smashing it into my head.

I’m a goddamn robot. I’m typing these unstable dangerous sentences, but on the outside I’m sitting here calmly, almost making an experiment out of this, seeing what it takes to make myself cry.

Am I depressed again?

I don’t understand what’s going on.

The thing is, the depression was based on self-hatred. I’m not interested in that, really. I’m not interested in falling back into that well of blaming myself for everything I haven’t done and everything I’ve ever screwed up. I know better. But at least that part of me, the bully, was capable of provoking me to the point of tears, or utter frustration, or blazing anger. She seems to be the only one who can do that, still.

I sort of want her to do her magic on me now. I'm needing a release of some kind.

I wish I knew how to feel grief. Not just for myself –- for other people, for things lost. That’s the one thing I don’t know how to do. Mourn. I can dwell on the past like nobody’s business, but feeling crushed by the sheer weight of loss –- it doesn’t register with me.

If it had been Zach who'd broken up with me and left a gaping hole in my life, would I know grief then? If Soren left me now? If Mom or Dad or Emmett or Liz died?

I’m here too late again. I’m going home.

posted by enjelani @ 12:58 AM PST