may

#121 May 1.

We'll all go to heaven when we die of cancer.

-The Band of Holy Joy

#122 May 2.

Sometimes I just lock myself into my bedroom and scream until I can't make any more noise. Sometimes it helps, sometimes I just feel worse and sometimes I just end up with a sore throat.

I've been searching for something all my life which I can't really define - something which would bring a sense of belonging - a feeling of being in the 'right' place, with the 'right' people, doing something which feels 'right'. Instead, I just sit and watch the world go by, afraid to make a move in case I get stomped on again.

-Dogbowl

#123 May 3.

depression is a comfortable place
a well worn sofa
when away
I want only to return

-Scott

#124 May 4.

So is this all there is? Mad panic as I attempt to fulfill the expectations of all around me--my professors, my friends, my singing/drinking buddies, my 'rents--only to realize that, sometime long ago, all of it stopped mattering to me?

I find a friend at a party and switch on "talk" mode--it doesn't matter what comes out of my mouth because it's a party and hey, nobody will take it ser- iously anyway. I never really realized the shallowness of the party scene until I came here to the University of Virginia, where partying has ceased to be an art form and has become something of an industrial byproduct like the five-day work week or ulcers.

I have ceased utterly to care about classes; quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electronics, Nabokov are all alike; all blend into each other like lumps in the shoreless ego of Freud's polymorphously perverse infant. They're all just there, neither interesting nor particularly challenging (unless, of course, they're impossible). I experience an odd floating feeling in some of the classes, as though I'm watching the back of my own head as I nod.

-Prufrock

#125 May 5.

The most tramatic time I can remeber this year was when I was seriously considering buying into the mainstream, you know full time job in some office, a mortgage, etc. I guess I was getting tired of not having any kind of future or security. But I got over it. And moved to Alaska. were I can live pretty cheaply, work part time, and go to school. School is something I can deal with, I guess I'v been doing it long enough, 10 years so far.

A few things remain constant over the years, most notably I'm still alone, and still can't make myself work at not being that way. School. and something that is more recent apathy. I realize that my life will never amount to much on the big success meter in the sky, but so what. I was born so I might as well keep breathing as long as I can.

A couple of things I have learned:
1. I am responsible for my self.
2. Expect anything, everything, and nothing.

-Scott

#126 May 6.

Next Tuesday the police unlock the door and take away my batteries and rubber band and they take me to visit the doctor for a vacation, or maybe I was on vacation from the doctor and it's over, it's not clear any more.

-Eric Boesch

#127 May 7.

I have fewer responsibilities now because people take them away if you ignore them.

-Eric Boesch

#128 May 8.

Now I will work so that I can pay back some of what I owe to everyone for inconveniencing them by living this long. If I pay my part, then Mom and Dad won't have the credit revoked that they thought they earned when I grew up and they won't have to look for some other justification for their lives which is good because I'm not sure they could find one. If I keep going on visits to the doctor, I'll just keep owing more and more, but if I kill myself then I'll go even further in debt because I'll upset the parents.

There's the crescent wrench and the pair of pliers and they're missing something and I have it and I'm missing something and they have it and I test the nerves in my fingers. The nerves still work, but they don't shriek like the ones in my head do when I put down the clips and pliers and wrench and I look for something better. It'd be embarrassing to hurt myself with them and then be found out and have to explain why and even if I don't hurt myself I won't be let out so soon next time but the important thing is to have no one asking why because I don't know why.

-Eric Boesch

#129 May 9.

When they've taken all you ever cared about, pissed on everything you've ever considered of any value and stuck probes into your every orifice and you lie there screaming for death, you still have your bitterness. They can't take that, and they'll not even try. Get to know your bitterness. It's your last and only friend.

-Steven Snedker

#130 May 10.

I've only met one person who I felt went right to the core of my soul and it happened instantly. I don't mean love-at-first-sight, because we were just friends, but we were very close friends, even though we'd only known each other for a month or so. We'd just been talking one night, like we had been for a few weeks, but this was different. This ended up being really deep life stuff and at one point she said something about life and being alone that just connected directly into my soul. It was like somebody had just shot past all my filters and all my defenses and everything and just knew the direct route into my heart and mind and went there. And it felt wonderful. It felt like the whole universe had opened up and there was *FINALLY* somebody who understood me. I mean like the real core me. Beyond all the external philosophy and social structures and all the filters and psychoses and knew exactly what two or three things my existence revolved around because she had the same in her and she said she felt the same. And it was wonderful and I was instantly in love with her. And I think she was with me too..

Unfortunately, there is another part to this story. She killed herself about 2 months later.

-Stephen Okay

#131 May 11.

Do you really SOLVE anything by expressing your bitterness

No, I don't solve anything, and boy does that piss me off!!!

#132 May 12.

Hanging: this has been my favorite recently because of how useless I have been. Guilt and feeling contemptible: I deserve to die like a criminal.

-Eric Boesch

#133 May 13.

I just saw some teenagers with cancer being interviewed. They all said that, after the cancer is diagnosed, they despaired and became very depressed. But then they suddendly started to love life more than they had ever done before, cherishing little things they'd never recognized before. With me I think it I'd despair and become depressed, then despair and become depressed.

-Flemming Kaspersen

#134 May 14.

And then you sit there, quietly telling yourself "No, no, it's not happening" but it is. You're slowly getting more and more depressed. You try the "No, No"-routine again. It doesn't help. Nothing can ward off the oncoming depression. You can't understand why. Then it all slips, and you slide down the steep hill coughing "no". And you're there. There's no way out. You realize there never was.

-Neugamme

#135 May 15.

These are people, not robots. This is not a huge experiment with me as the subject. Nobody has a notebook filled with notes about me.

But it's such an attractive solution... can there be that many idiots out there? The solution is that I'm the only idiot here. It's such an attractive solution... if I'm a guinea pig, then I'm being studied so there's no need to explain to anyone the mess I've made of my life -- they would understand that mess better than I do. Maybe someone could produce a transparency with a scatter plot, point to a dot in the middle of a cluster and say "See, this subject failed according to a typical schedule, given the environment and dosage levels we used." Where is the TV camera? If I'm a guinea pig, the world accommodates me, which is good because I'm too tired to accommodate it.

-Eric Boesch

#136 May 16.

it's been a long time but I still care
die a slow horrible death
live a long miserable life
for me

if you're feeling low
when you need advice
call me
if you don't know where to turn
I can tell you where to go

some idiots find baseless self-respect
and tell themselves they're wonderful
but I know you won't do that
you know better
they look down on others instead of themselves
but I know you won't do that
to me

-Charlie the dog

#137 May 17.

Angst: is like the before the first time you ever had sex and you were worried about screwing up (or any of the usual things that virgins worry about).

Bitterness: is after the first time you've had sex and you realize that it wasn't all that great.

-Umbra

#138 May 18.

I can't wait til the next time I talk to her
It aggravates the hell out of me when I just miss
her on the net, she is terminally happy
and 10 years younger than I am
Am I insane, I know nothing could ever
become of this, yet I feel myself sliding
once again into that pit of confusion and
missed opportunities. Irregardless of what I tell myself,
the emotional half of my brain is closed to all reason.
Why can't I control my own emotions, Damn!

Somebody spin the wheel, cause I'm back in the game

Scott

#139 May 19.

I'd say my social life is in a shambles, except that I haven't got one.

Apparently, it's not that I'm unattractive (although my pupils are dilated from the 20 milligrams of Prozac I take daily, for my dysthymia), or unhygenic, or unkind (I'm told that I'm a very compassionate man, and sometimes I belive it), or unintelligent, or uninteresting (I do tend to be pretty colorful, when I'm not feeling sorry for myself), or anything like that. What I am, apparently, is unapproachable. Almost nobody realizes how fuzzy and affectionate this kitty really is, beneath his sarcastic, mocking exterior. I have a total of two close friends. In my nearly 20 years of existence, I've never been anybody's best friend. Nobody has ever sent me flowers.

And I am alone.

-Paul Curtis

#140 May 20.

Life is boring. Its dullness cuts to the bone. It leaves no taste in my mouth, no smile on my face. It flows from day to day without changing. I feel no pain or pleasure. I see only a constant shade of grey. All these philosphical rhetorical thoughts make me sick. Words mean nothing to me anymore. Is it possible to be passionately bored? Sad movies no longer jerk the tears from my eyes. The bright rays of the rising sun no longer soothe my face with their reassuring warmth. Everything is a task, nothing is new. The music that once inspired me only mocks me now, its beat has become redundant. The VCR clock has stopped ticking, and I see nothing but reruns every day. I can back no cause and feel no allegiance. Political issues are just two-sided jokes told by red in the face egotistical bastards who are only interested in hearing their own voices. So I too sit here alone and selfishly listen to my own voice, shutting all others out. There is a certain safety in apathy, a certain comfort in being alone. I am a coward, and until I decide to reach out and become a player in this strange game surrounding me and take the risk of losing, I will never win. I will walk alone in life and wallow in cynicism and self pity, and the warmth of the sun will never reach within me.

-ucw

#141 May 21.

       The definition of angst:

                ------------------------------------------------
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                      ?                         |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
               |                                                |
                ------------------------------------------------

-Martin Stuczynski

#142 May 22.

Dear God,
Thank you for giving me freedom.

I'm going to use my freedom like this: work for 35 years, 9 hrs a day with only 2 weeks of holiday a year, then get fired, wait 5 years, get a terminal disease, spend 3 years in and out of hospital and then die on my knees (if they haven't amputated them).

I'll be a good boy all the way, and I hope that you approve,

Yours,
-Steven Snedker

#143 May 23.

who the fuck do i think i am, anyway?

i hang out here, post all this stuff, present myself as some sort of authority who actually knows something about how to live, and in reality i'm the biggest fraud in existence. if i'm so fucking wise, why is my life in chaos? why am i destroying everything that matters to me? why do i flail about in a sea of indecision and inertia, waiting for easy answers, even though i tell other people the answers will never be easy?

-sine

#144 May 24.

Parents. Swine bastards from hell. They feed and clothe you for years and then they get back at you by forcing you to rake leaves when you stop by to pick up the money they promised you for your watusi lessons. When will they GET OFF MY BACK and let me lead my life of professional surfing. (True, there are no waves in Ottawa high enough, and 8 months of every year is spent in the freezing cold, but DAMN IT, I'm gonna be the best goddam surfer in Ottawa if I have to surf on the frozen water of the canal, naked.)

-Nik

#145 May 25.

Then there's school.

Need I say more? Oh, let me, please... Consider the following: when you say what you want to say, you get crappy marks. When you say what THE PROF wants you to say, (mainly puke back what he told you), you get good marks. What the hell? I say we burn down all the schools and replace them with photocopy centers. A prof hands you his beliefs, you photocopy them, give it back, and he gives you an A. Simple enough. None of this class nonsense. Just straight forward ego stroking.

Profs don't really want to teach anyway. They're all burnt out husks, painfully blathering the same tired old lectures every year, counting the days to retirement. Most of them have given up on the idea of getting "bright and enthusiastic minds ready for the world", and now just think "keep the buggers busy for three hours" and kick them out of the room.

And then there's the rest of reality: capitalist, money oriented insanity. I personally do not want 47 VCRs and a huge boat of a car. I want some goddam emotional sensitivity from the universe. Remember the days when everyone was trying to find themselves? Now everyone's trying to find a lot of neat, expensive toys to surround themselves with. (Wadda ya expect from me, I'm a psychology student, looked down on by all living things, a mote of dust in the educational eye)...

-Nik

#146 May 26.

When you're reduced to spending most of your time just trying to survive, you don't have the luxury of feeling sorry for yourself.

Angst didn't exist until society got advanced enough that we could forget that there's no purpose to life other than finding the next kill and getting a belly full of meat. We used to know this instinctively, because that's all we did. Then we started giving food to the shaman so he didn't have to hunt and he could intercede with the spirit world on our behalf. Now that we're so advanced that we all become our own shaman we discover that there never were any spirits and the whole thing was just a sick joke that we played on ourselves.

-Eric Murray

#147 May 27.

I still have angst over the pointless of my life, my lack of motivation to work on all the projects I conceive, my inability to write. I still have days where I don't want to talk to anyone and evenings when I wander around the house muttering to myself and screaming at the world.

Sure, there's times when my girlfriend and I perform perverted sexual acts on each other until we're raw, and then lie in bed discussing the philosophy of science or the creative process or something else interesting. And yes, i'm not feeling angst then. But the angst is still there, it hasn't gone away. It's just laying low for a bit while I'm too happy to let it get to me. It's waiting around, circling off in the distance like a wolf. It knows where my weaknesses are; it knows I'll be around later and it'll be able to catch me then because I'll be weaker and it will chase me down until I can't stand and then it will grab me by the neck in its powerful jaws and rip my throat out and stand howling into the moonlight over my bleeding body lying in the snow...

-Eric Murray

#148 May 28.

Sometimes there's this wall of confusion between me and the outside world. Things never make quite as much sense as I'd like them to. I want everything to be totally clear and unambiguous. Other people seem content to make assumptions about situations.

Later another guy asked me for money. I said "No, sorry." and he seemed to accept that. Then he said something that sounded to me like "Where do go?" I thought, "Where do you go for what? What is he asking me?" I asked him what he had said and he repeated it. I still didn't know what he was asking, but I was fairly certain I didn't know the answer. I shook my head apologetically and said "I don't know." Walking away from him, I suddenly realized he probably said "Where's the girl?" He saw a guy walking alone on a Saturday night, and this was such a strange thing that it required an explanation. I guess even the homeless do their part to enforce social norms.

-Paul Callahan

#149 May 29.

I imagine one of the most soul destroying experiences an individual can go through is the condition of not fitting in, being continually aloof, never really connecting with any other human beings, except in brief fleeting moments of misunderstanding...... Being an Outsider, in the true sense of the word, is a condition that eventually leads to a complete numbness, and a cyclic apathy interspersed with intense frustration. Every interaction is an effort, a carefully studied system, a perceived failing, or a meaningless greeting. In moments of high energy when the frustration builds, attempts are made to escape from the ditch, but like a car stuck in the mud, no matter which way you go, or how hard you try, you dig yourself further in........ You then look back into the past and wonder, why? Why does it happen to you, and not all the other people out there, who seem to have lives to lead and things to do, and places to fit in? But, there's no one to blame, nothing to point the finger at, except life itself and chance happenings on the way. Living in a city, a massive monument to meaninglessness, can be more hellish than the depths of space, although I've never been in the depths of space, so I suppose I can't be sure........

-John O'Doherty

#150 May 30.

I can't get to sleep at night any more - I go to bed at maybe 2am, finally get to sleep at around 6 or 7, and sleep fitfully until around 2pm, them get up at maybe 4:00. Staying in bed during the day is nice; there are no hassles, you can hide in the semi-sleeping state you get after waking up for hours... but it's not good for you, and it can't go on once I go home for the Christmas vacation.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking around the town, feeling very alone, and somehow relishing that feeling while at the same time hating it. I decided I needed a complete change of scenery, and bought a ticket on the next train to London. Wandering around London in the early hours of the morning was great - it was completely new (I'd never been there much before, and never alone) and really cleared my head; I remember wandering through the Barbican Centre at around 1am, there was no-one but me about, and these huge blocks of flats towered above me in this huge empty space... it was more exhilarating than anything I've ever done. I was stopped by a policeman, and wound up chatting to him for about fifteen minutes about who I was and what I was doing there. I got back to Kings Cross sometime before dawn, when the first train back was about to leave, feeling so much better about myself and my situation and my state of mind than I had for a long long time, but as soon as I got back here that feeling just faded away and I was left as alone as I has been before I went. The journey hadn't been wasted, but it hadn't helped, if you see what I mean.

-Richard Hindle

#151 May 31.

'Things went completely out of hand when 'Spot' died. I started taking sedatives. But when someone called them 'loony-smarties' I threw them in the fireplace. Instead I started drinking and eating excessively. I gained 30 kilos. Doesn't look well on something that was going downhill anyway.

'Spot' was a real german shepard that I got from an animals hospital 10 years ago. She had been beaten. She never became anything but a little, weak dog. I've never been able to talk to other girls. I've always been with men. 'Spot' was my female friend. She understood what I said. Was happy when I was happy. Was sad when I was. When we were alone in the house without light and heat we went to bed together. Shared a hob-nob. And then we talked, until we fell asleep.

'Spot' is the only living creature that has loved me for being just me. She didn't expect to get anything back. She soothed me when I was ill.

I've experienced a lot with 'Lassie', and like him a lot. But it'll never be the same as with 'Spot'. 'Lassie' has been unfaithful to me. He's an every-girls-dog. 'Spot' was mine. Completely mine. That's why I had such a shock when she died. And started drinking. I feel like the loneliest human being now that 'Spot' is dead.

I fell and fell. 'When will I reach the bottom?' I often ask myself these days. When I look in my scrap book...I cannot understand..I..It's like looking back on your future. I have always had the will to get the best out of each and every day. It hasn't been a success. I didn't have skill and luck required to do this. Now it's too late. I can't go back and change the things...

-Bodil Joensen

june

back to llama central