twenty five
entries in journals from 2025.
Entry titled “Not Bad”, 01/01/2025, 2:33 a.m.
I’m running out of candles again. With the addition of the candelabra I got during the holidays, which I only put a single candle in, that’s three candles slowly dissolving at once— well, not at once, because I don’t light them simultaneously, but you know what I mean. Only a couple days of light left. I wonder if I’ll have candles on my birthday.
Happy New Year, by the way. This is the first time in almost a decade that I haven’t had to pack some sort of bag and leave wherever I spent the dregs of the previous year. It’s kind of nice, actually. I felt ready for it. By the time midnight rolled around, I was sitting on a clean bed in a clean room, freshly out of the shower with my teeth brushed and my laundry folded, ready to hit play on the list of songs I deemed suitable to start the year off with (it ended up being Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack). And I do feel prepared for the year. I always seem to have more confidence in the winter, so that might be why, but I’d like to believe good things are coming my way. If I’m indulging my own superstitions, then 2025 will obviously be a good year— 5x5 is 25, 2x5x2 is 20, etcetera. Five is the most lucky, righteous number, of course. And, on top of that, I’m turning 20. So it should be decent.
Besides superstition, I’m feeling oddly settled. I haven’t melted into a little pool of nothing over the state of the world or the state of my soul for a while. I’m still not confident about the future, but I’m not despairing. Didn’t I say one of my resolutions was to be not bad? Look how not bad that is. I should probably make some more, in all honesty— not necessarily goals or things I need to do, but ideas to keep in mind. I’ll figure it out later. I always do.
I know I tend towards optimism, but there’s no reason I can’t be realistic about things. I’m not in a great place— no income, terrible health, no in-person friends, no transport, no higher education, whatever is happening in my brain. I don’t know what I’m doing. And although I’d like to think so, it’s obvious that things won’t be doing a perfect turn-around and placing me in a life that’s beyond ideal. It will be an uphill crawl. But, by the end of the year, I’d like to be a bit better off than I am now. Yes? Not bad. I would like to be not bad.
Entry titled “Circle”, 02/12/2025, 12:16 p.m.
Everything in the entire world has coagulated into a great blob of homogenesis. Cultural critique holds no appeal, even though I still love to hate on things that deserve it; hating makes me a modern girl. Time is caught and frozen in a jello mold. I can’t recall what anyone has ever said to me. It’s as if life has only happened inside my head, and the real world was the true dream. And with the way I’m living, I can get away with dreams— the exact same dream, actually, over and over again, just repeating itself until it’s all a blur. Like lights in a tunnel.
The short of it is that I apparently have a personality disorder. Big whoop. It’s not a new idea to me, just one that I can’t remember the origin of. I have still found myself disarmed. Don’t like being seen like that. So it goes.
Entry titled “Sweet”, 02/28/2025, 11:28 p.m.
I do hope you know that I can be a very good girl. I’d like to be a good girl— it’s important to note that in this context, “good” is entirely separate from the concept of morality and instead hinges on obedience and following expectations. There’s plenty of that in my life. Medications to take, food to avoid, exercises to do, messes to clean up, people to soothe. It’s all opportunities for goodness, for a sort of subservience. I create rituals to make that goodness easier to stomach; I create and inhabit a different persona, one of a sweet girl who blushes easily, because she can succeed where I can’t. I won’t name her because I like to think she’s a part of me that I just can’t see right now. Sweet girl tidies the room, puts away all the laundry and makeup, puts on a nightgown, and takes our meds so I can go to sleep and wake up with my teeth sunk into my arm. She’s an angel. My cunt red ugh. Understand why I can’t do it, why I need her. Sometimes I do all of that and still forget some important step, but sweet girl just sighs and wrings her hands before we go to bed.
She’s not that hard to be; this is why I’m hopeful. I think I was her from ages six to eight, in some ways, because that was the time where I really wanted to be a certain way. My first grade teacher wore a well-tailored, perfectly pressed dress with nylons and loafers every single day. She must have been in her 70s at least, and her hair was orange in a way that I didn’t catch then, but now makes me think she must have been dyeing it. Her face was stern like a hound. Everyone else in class hated her because they thought she was so strict— everyone except for me. I liked her almost entirely because no one else did. I wore a dress and tights every day so, even though I never said it out loud, we would match. And I was a very good girl. I did all my homework and dressed neatly and always made my bed and kept my side of the bedroom so clean that my sibling’s side looked like a pigsty in comparison, which it sort of was anyways.
I took a vicious sort of pleasure in doing what I was told to do. If I had any interest in going to Heaven, I would have thought I could maliciously comply my way through the pearly gates. My sweetness came from a place of evil because all the sweetness I saw was evil. Everyone who was sweet had a head that smelled like rot. In a house that thrives on competition and comparison, being sweet and good is a form of being cruel, because others are punished for not being like you. I was a mean kid— brought up to be mean— and I liked that. And I liked that there was a sort of reward in work. It all felt like an act of salvation then, especially cleaning. Cleaning still feels like salvation to me. But I digress.
The point is that I was sweet once and now I’m trying to get back into the swing of it, but I’m the only one I can be bothered to be obedient to, so I just do whatever I want. I’m good at following orders, I know. It’s a bit of a shame that I’m even better at hearing an order, thinking it through, and then laughing in the face of whoever gave it to me. I don’t and won’t ever regret being my own person, but I feel a sort of nostalgia for the time in my life where authority figures were innocent and trustworthy until proven guilty. We’re a long way from the first grade. Something in my head has gone sour in a new way since then. There’s no deeper insight here— I just kind of miss it, even though I know better than to put stock in nostalgia.
Tonight, I put on my nightgown and tidy my room and take my meds. One point to the sweet girl. Long may she prosper.
Entry titled “Becoming A Poet”, 03/14/2025, 9:47 p.m.
I was five, lying facedown on my bed when someone stabbed me in the back, all the way through to my heart. I screamed & my parents came running, My father carrying me into the living room. We sat in the chair with the high sides like wings. I kneeled on his lap, my arms around his neck. My mother sat across from us, saying, honey, it was just a bad dream. I looked over my father's shoulder at the dark ocean of air, at the colorful, iridescent fish. I tried to explain what I saw. It's your imagination, said my father. The fish swam like brilliant magicians toward the window. Then they were gone. My parents didn't know death like I did. Or the fish, their strange beauty my secret.
— Susan Browne
Entry titled “Curses”, 04/24/2025, 2:03 p.m.
My father came into the yard yesterday, sat on that piece of shit uneven plastic chair, and wondered out loud if he’s cursed to be unloved forever. He wasn’t kidding about it. The dogs— we had a foster, but he got adopted yesterday— sniffed at his hands and then flinched when he moved to pet them. We talked about the weather. The patterns are familiar; it’s always cold in the basement where he lives and, for now, it’s always hot out here, especially in the sunshine. It’s safe ground. We like that.
He reaches out again, and again the dogs flinch away, licking his hands nervously, ready to bolt at any moment. I say they’re just shy. He leans way back, head against the brick, and says, no, I think I’m cursed. And maybe he is. Because we’re side-by-side and not face-to-face things come spilling out of him easier, and so this begins to spill out— people see him and are instinctively nervous, dogs get nervous, all animals get nervous. He could make someone cry with a look. I’ve always liked that about him, looked up to it, but I’m in the minority there. We can’t come to an agreement on exactly why he comes across as so intimidating. Sunglasses, baseball hats, resting bitch face, height, just general stormy and dark looks. He says that he can’t help but smile with only half of his face because there’s a muscle in the side of his mouth that a tooth pain killed.
He readjusts in the chair and the dogs startle. It’s like you can see the melancholy sink deeper into him in real time. There’s something childlike about him when he gets like this. I think it’s because his desire for love becomes so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to witness, like you’re looking in on something private and shameful. But the conversation moves on, and the feeling fades. I can see his belief in the curse growing stronger, though, and I find myself frightened by it. People move in bad directions when they’re convinced of their own sin. It’s not a good story to be telling yourself.
You know, there’s no faster way to get yourself cursed than by thinking that you’re cursed. There’s no use in me trying to convince him he isn’t— some of that is because I don’t think he’ll believe me, but most of it is because I really can’t be sure if he’s actually cursed or not. He truly might have cursed himself. I’d probably be scared of him too if I hadn’t grown up with him. I think I am scared of him, actually. And I just don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s hurt. I’m in pain, but I don’t hurt, because pain is in the body and hurt is in the soul and nothing can touch my soul. He’s got pains, too, but it runs deeper. He’s easily touched. He leaves a trail of this roiling internalized misery behind him wherever he goes; you can get stuck in it, like it’s honey or something.
(When I’m feeling less kind, I get bitter about it. Fuck you for making your curse my responsibility. Fuck you for making me the only one in the house who knows how to deal with you. Fuck you for making me pick up after your hurt. Fuck you for training me to like the festering, brooding Victorian types because I don’t know how to like anyone else. Maybe I could’ve been a real kid if you hadn’t raised me into a perfect mirror to take your misery and process it for you. It’s exhausting. Fuck you.)
So that’s what my days look like. Morning through afternoon, I’m on the porch steps— like a hillbilly, my father says— reading or making small talk or something while I try to soak up the sun. I’m feeling very big about it. It’s a good way to spend time, if you don’t have anything else to do. The scent of flowers is everywhere. There aren’t many lilacs on our lilac tree, because we trimmed it down too late in the season, but there are other lilacs around the neighborhood. You can smell them when the wind blows in the right way. Everything is in bloom. It’s kind of unbearable. And the nights cool into something pastellized and beautiful. Just walking back from a house-sitting gig the other evening had me feeling like I was going to die.
Well, I always feel like I’m going to die, but sometimes it sneaks up on me. I can feel it breathing down my neck. I’m not scared of death but there’s still fear there, because when I die, my world will die with me, and the only remnants of that world will be what I’ve communicated. You can never get enough across, really. Language is inadequate. So the death of the world (beautiful, unbearable) is much scarier than my own death— no one sees things exactly how I see them. I don’t care about myself as much as I care about making sure that something or someone loves the same bits of the world that I do, the mosquitoes and the dead grass and the rotting clapboard houses. I think the fear comes from the idea that something might go unloved. It’s a terrible thought. I can’t bear the idea of the ugly things going unloved if I die. How’s that for a curse?
Untitled entry, 05/09/2025, 4:29 p.m.
“If pessimism had a sound it would be the harsh interior noise of tinnitus— the way that every person would hear themselves if they refused their distractions long enough to listen: a lungless scream from the extrasolar nothing of the self. The music of pessimism— if indeed one can imagine such a thing— is the reverberating echo of the world’s lost sound, conjectured but never heard, audible only in its being listened for. The one consolation of this hollow paradox of audibility being, that ‘he will be least afraid of becoming nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now’. The pessimist suffers an unfiltered derangement of the real, a labyrinthitis at the nucleus of their being: always the stumbling ghost relentlessly surprised that others can see them.”
— Gary J. Shipley, On the Verge of Nothing
Entry titled “Fear!”, 05/16/2025, 2:54 a.m.
This is the part in the horror film where the protagonist, blinded by fear or a devil or a lack of sleep, is waltzing into Hell and expecting Heaven. They bite into the apple and it’s full of worms. The illusion fades. Fairyland is a dream and the beautiful woman was a hag all along. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes, it’s like I can look at myself through a keyhole like the rest of the world does and see the way things are really going for me. And it’s frightening! I’m frightened by my world! I need to save myself but I don’t even know where to start. I don’t have any money and it’s impossible to find a job— I have zero marketable skills— I’m not in school— earlier today I realized that my only in-person friend might be my father. I need to get out of this pattern, this house, this life. But here I am. Don’t get it wrong, the fear is not that I can’t live like this. The fear is that I can. I could live here forever until I shrink so far down inside myself that I completely disappear. My life is the size of my bedroom and only getting smaller.
I feel spineless. If I were a little braver, less stuck in my head, then I could find a way to make enough to leave, or at least start living. Instead, I read and I watch stupid videos all day. And there’s mold in me. I’m literally rotting. And I just know that it’s not going to stop until I can get out, until something changes so drastically that the light burns it out of me. Burns it. Angelic possession. I need to fling my body off a fucking cliff or something.
I see my light come shining from the west down to the east Any day now, any day now I shall be released.
Entry titled “Down”, 06/01/2025, 5:36 p.m.
Toddler emotions. Tired. Things go through me like pigment through water and leave behind streaked-out stains. Dreaming about one day becoming solid. Dreaming about dying only because I don’t know how to live. Draw an arrow from a rag to a clean wound. Shoot it and kill something very small and very important. Giving up on making sense. It’s just another periodical phase where I think I’ll never be understood by anyone else. Want to learn piano. Need to do something. Need to talk to someone (not about myself). Small talk. Half-hearted. Dig deeper on irrelevance. Listening to Catholic jazz. Nothing here to talk about. Nothing here to cry about. Wish I could be a person when another person is in the room. Killing the commas in me. I guess that’s a kind of suicide. Like Hemingway. All I remember of him is the white hills and the rain and the open air hotel. Short stories and not much else.
Irregularity, See it in handwriting and the passage of time. Elimination can provide framework for creation. Another suicide. Blackout myself into a legible poem. That’s the symbiotic omnipotence talking. Spoken like a true editor. Lack of thought. Lack of differentiation. Lack of coherence. Mixed up Hilma af Klimt and Hildegard von Bingen earlier. Terribly embarrassing. Negative symptoms. Confusion will roll back around into art eventually. Stuck on it like a bad note. Room is dirty. They’re got Mustangs and debris floating in space you know. Lack of cleanliness tends to disturb. I don’t have to be disturbed if I don’t wanna. See irregularity in emotions and philosophical thought. In thoughts. In dreams. I can never remember how the Roy Orbison song goes. Selfishly I like the Bruce Springsteen version a little more. All life and love is bias. Things are stupid and very old. Getting stupider and older by the day.
Try to speak and end up stumbling. Vulgarity is appropriate when honest. Know that I only say FUCK honestly. It’s not very often. Exclamations are only honest for some people. Filler words are only honest for some people. Obsession with the irregularity of honesty. See it in all the lies I believe. Sore chest. Still tired. Didn’t ever think I would get un-tired and I was right. Like jumping into a pool mouth-first. Like being in a pool with your mouth open. Fear of consumption. Fear of being devoured. I’m sure I’ve got one more round of drowning left in me. Tea’s gone cold. Ironically adopted names now in earnest. Derogatory terms now reclaimed. Trying not to look at things I know there’s no use in seeing. No point in pissing myself off.
Dreams of disembowelment. Dreams of dragging things. Dreams of betrayal. I’m more scared of what I’m dream-running from than my dream-baggage. Trying to follow my head. Edge of the table is digging into the meat of my leg. Numb. Probably no nerve damage. Can’t be sure. Light pastellizing on a reflective floor. Trying to reach the finish line. Trying to follow the line. Trying to get from point A to point B and failing. It’s taking too long. It’s so tragic when the world can’t be fixed by willpower alone. Cede to time. Dry mouth. It’s a long way to mummification. All the spiders in the world couldn’t do it. Clear vision of a G sharp. Validated a psychic. Guessed a boyfriend’s name without knowing it. Sometimes information is just delivered to me. Never know what to do.
Sounds like I’ll start talking about bridges or something soon. Could never ruin a bridge. Marilyn was right about that. You don’t want to kill the small things. They are almost always very important. This is how the world works. But I wouldn’t know that. Just born. Daisy-fresh. Stumbling into everything like a new walker. Nothing is enough. Fear of emptiness. Fear of God. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. These things are expected. How long do we continue like this? Variation in punctuation is a deviation from the exercise. I’ll allow it though. Obsession with rules. Obsession with rituals. Obsession with rigidity. Thinking about the purification of others. Don’t leave the circle until you see the Virgin Mary. Sin eaters. Snake handlers. Church of the pines bringing in bodies like tides. Nothing new at all.
Entry titled “Doom”, 06/26/2025, 10:22 a.m.
I’m committed myself to this haven’t I. Wilderness is a cultural concept. Sacred geometry abounds. I try to express the numbers I see and continually fall short. They’ve got God in an equation you know. Woke up in an awful panic that it was Sunday. Sunday means nothing. I can’t explain my fear. No day means anything because I’m in limbo and that means time is largely irrelevant. And I had this dream that I was married to my father. It was strange because I was also engaged to a boy my own age. I don’t remember much of it. I’ll gladly forget it. I just know that the three of us were walking through a flooded and rotting store and I was convincing my father to buy things for me. Since when do I get to want things, much less actually ask for them? I didn’t want to be in the store. I tried to escape through a window but they dragged me back into coquettishness. It’s a little stupid yes I know but I did wake up afraid of Sunday. To a certain degree I still am. It’s so easy to believe in your own doom isn’t it.
Entry titled “Bondage”, 07/03/2025, 6:31 p.m.
Even now the fireworks are starting. I need to leave the dream but I can’t leave the dream because the dream won’t let me leave and there is no door in my head that leads to waking. Obviously the dream is not reflected past me so I have to find a way to cut it out of me. Everything that rises must converge. Electronic angles rattle and hum. Light has a strange quality to it. Maybe it’s just the summer. It’s a weakness and a brutality all at once. Violence is a process, not an act. Tired face. Dust Bowl women. Someone is about to unburden themself onto me. I’m guessing it was a pain self-inflicted in anticipation of the butcher. Everything that rises. If I met you outside I would kiss you and none would despise me. Arousal manifests as nausea. Had to hold my tongue earlier because there’s no good way to talk back to the television about bondage. It’s not all suspension you know. Screamo in slow motion. Waiting for you to come back. A dream of falling in line. Or something. Nice dream.
I move towards negatives and destruction. I said I did the blue as a gesture of goodwill and I’m afraid I told a lie. I need to be held together. I need a sign delusion open door break possibility. I need a solvable problem. Millions of people like me are out there, so insular and reliant on secret codes and justifications of rule sets. I could fall in love if they promised to keep me to themself. To not touch me. I’m not a person you want to be financially or legally attached to. I’ll never be that kind of angel. Don’t take me home. Not long until the house on the hill. Wish I could drive. Not long at all now. Closeness. Proximity. I needed—
Entry titled “A not admitting of the wound”, 07/21/2025, 11:43 a.m.
A not admitting of the wound Until it grew so wide That all my Life had entered it And there were troughs beside— A closing of the simple lid that opened to the sun Until the tender Carpenter Perpetual nail it down—
— Emily Dickinson
Entry titled “Train Tracks”, 08/20/2025, 1:28 p.m.
Hip hurts. Strange dull pull in the legs. Dreamed I was a fox. Dreamed I was a goat. Dreamed I was something in between a human and a goat and that I was being chased by a much larger human-goat hybrid. Pushed my body on all fours through an endless deer path cathedral so the Devil couldn’t find me. Was sleek and narrow and capable of doing it. Crawled through an attic tunnel like I was swimming in stone. Over bags and abandoned toys and plastic bins. Vision shrunk down to being born over and over through and into another collection of objects. Constantly clawing through. Was claustrophobic without any fear. Need to fill out that intake form for the new doctor. Hate bureaucracy. Feel disgust. Feel like an animal standing in a field at dawn and waiting to be relieved by the light. Sun still down so nothing but the blue and the mist. Static and voices. Dark was the night and cold was the ground. Hum it through. Shift to present tense. A ver cuántas estrellas trizadas en la charca. Or something.
I know I wasn’t born like this— just with the possibility or predisposition for it— but I think some people just must be born sadder and thinner-skinned than the rest. Distant worry through a fishbowl. Hate the noise of the city. Planes engines tires on the road smell of civilization doing laps around my head. A million people breathing and driving and fucking and eating in my backyard. I saved myself from being happy. Spared myself the indignity of delight. Burning low. Probably dehydrated. Stuck in pack ice and dying. Thinking of plovers. Smart birds. Tired of irrelevance and vanity. I’m going to shoot the next cowboy I see. Enough of that. You stand in some places and you can still smell the rotting furs that never even made it off the train. My father says there’s a buffalo carcass for every railroad spike driven into the ground during the 19th century. Bones never made it either. Life permanently wasted. Hide face in hands. Indistinct hollering.
Need to clean up. Room is clean but we all know that’s not what I’m talking about. Time to find a path to the world. I can see the beginning of an end. No real ambition means I’m destined for desk work and I’m okay with that. Okay with being unknown. Good at withstanding that sort of thing because the self is impregnable and I can hide forever untouched in my mind. Get a certification. We’ll see about the fall. Excited about the dark. I like to hide. Have to prove the noise was me. Could curl up in a hole and sleep for a long time. I suppose that’s a benefit of vampirism. Hair and skin are misbehaving. Pardon my vanity. Not a teenager anymore but still very young. Some things are excusable but not that many. Not enough.
I used to jump off cliffs just because other people were too scared to. That’s why my mother says I have bad judgement and that I overestimate my abilities even though none of it killed me or even hurt. Need to watch a movie soon (clean up). Need to finish writing and start writing and keep writing and fill out forms and look into futures (clean up). Forever race that never ends. Asparagus for dinner again and again. I hate Heaven and I don’t trust anything. No one sings like that anymore. Time goes by. Such a sad sound. Thin-skinned. Isn’t everything by now?
Entry titled “Movement”, 09/11/2025, 11:41 p.m.
I am happy because everyone loves me. I am happy because everyone loves me. I am happy because everyone loves me. It’s a good kind of stupid that can make an ambivalent universe feel like it’s smiling down on me. Can’t tell if it’s because I haven’t seen my mother in almost a week or because the weather is finally cooling down or because I am truly beginning to move towards joy. Feels like the world has been singing SOON at me for the past year. Damn near drove me to insanity but yes it was singing. This is not my year. Next year might not even be my year. Nothing is mine because it belongs to the world and I belong to the world and, absolved of this responsibility, I am free. Why make it mine? Why ruin a good thing? It’s not about staking my claim on resurrection; it’s about the spiral shifting to move outwards. Surrender the labyrinth. Save the minotaur. The minotaur must be saved as well as the labyrinth, preserved and released. Or shifted. Pick it up and walk with it.
The important thing is movement. Erotic oscillations of Spirit. This morning I woke already standing because in the last moments of sleep I had gotten to my feet and tried to take off. Like a baby horse. Desire to go is nothing. Hope is not a plan. As long as I’m alone, though, I can have hope, and maybe it will save me. Because the indifferent universe cradles me like a child. Because I just need reason for motion. Because I am happy for now. It really is funny to me. Surely when I look down, I’ll fall off my cliff, but I can’t look down— my neck doesn’t work— so everything is okay. I even feel sort of pretty. And my father will be at the office tomorrow so I’ll really be alone and yes the beautiful world and the autumn weather. Good luck days. It was foggy this morning so I could believe in God again. I always know but belief is a rarity. Faith in the shovel. This is not my grave. This is not my grave. I can’t die here— imagine the indignity! My heart blushes. It would be an ugly and miserable funeral. I think I’ve never grown out of being a child who desperately wants to be talked to like a human being but that’s okay. I love her and she loves me. We’re like fucking Jesus Christ. Peace and love. Sure, why not. Amen.
Entry titled “Scissors”, 10/07/2025, 1:32 a.m.
Held it until I was gone. Didn’t take much. Couch is a devil. Sucked me right in; made me soft and thoughtless. I was planning on cutting my hair tonight because my ends are dead but it’s already almost 2 a.m. Advertisement for cleaning products. Advertisement for laundry detergent. Next to me the dog spasms in her sleep. Tongue out dry mouth kicking paws. I came for you. This is my life. Now imagine a great ball of light. Teeth hurt in that distant tense way. Something pulling on the gums. Surge of electricity. Pulses. The hospital is waiting. I feel like I’m in a dream. I always feel like that but now it’s realer because I’ve woken up to the moment. And I don’t have anything I need to do tomorrow so I can get away with sleeping in for a few hours.
Salt on the tongue. Red jacket. I suppose I’m still doing it. Got a few minutes left in this concert recording that I’m watching. Feels like one long emergency. I would kill to have this on tape. Here the dog goes again. Raspberry swirls on stage go blue. It’s the first white light I’ve seen. Talking about dancing all night. Earrings and mob suits and hats for everyone. Wasn’t I good last night to have turned it off early? Wasn’t I a sweet girl? I have to grab my scissors. We’re still cutting my hair. Trying to go faster. Dead head. Dead air. You should’ve seen the end screen they used to have. Blue wash television and it’s dead too. Song is almost over. Most everything is dead I think. I guess that’s just autumn. Fake outs. Leaves falling. Dark goes cold and familiar. Let’s see if I know what to do with myself yet.
Entry titled “Tarot Reading”, 11/13/2025, 9:37 a.m.
QUESTION: None.
CARD ONE: SIX OF SWORDS UPRIGHT Transition, change, rite of passage, leaving behind baggage, growth, release, the future, evolution, tough decisions and compromises
CARD TWO: EIGHT OF SWORDS UPRIGHT Negative thoughts, self-imposed restrictions, imprisonment, victim mentality, a way out, new perspective, intuition, self power
CARD THREE: KNIGHT OF PENTACLES REVERSED Self-discipline, boredom, feeling stuck, perfectionism, creation of routine, practical matters, need for spontaneity, determination
OVERALL: It’s happening. Don’t be afraid to break routine. Put effort in if you want to see effort returned.
Entry titled “In Dream”, 12/04/2025, 3:12 p.m.
Black and enduring separation I share equally with you. Why weep? Give me your hand, Promise me you will come again. You and I are like high Mountains and we can't move closer. Just send me word At midnight sometime through the stars.
— Anna Akhmatova
Entry titled “Grand Finale”, 12/31/2025, 12:05 a.m.
What did I do? The first half of the year went missing in my head. I know the objective facts— my parents separating, David Lynch dying, getting diagnosed with a personality disorder, a spring in the city and a summer outside of it; five cold nights for every warm one and a partridge in a pear tree. I wore more dresses this year. I listened to more ambient than I usually do. I went to appointments, I took my pills, I never raised my voice. Most of the time, I was sweet. I am no closer to the world than I was last year or the year before, but I said that my goal was to be not bad, and I have been not bad. So there.
What I am doing: watching my way through every Alice in Wonderland film adaptation I can get my hands on, spit-whittling candy canes into points so sharp that I bleed if I poke myself, laying in bed. The latest doctor told me to go outside as soon as I wake up, so I’ve been spending the first part of my morning shuffling around the neighborhood, trying to glean some semblance of larger meaning from the way the sunlight hits the frosty grass. Then it’s tea and breakfast and cleaning something no one else in my family wants to take on. I go through old postcards, boxes of childhood memories, heirlooms. My mother begins to discover that her mother’s mental illness had a greater impact on her than she originally thought. I discover that I have an illegitimate great-aunt, that there is somehow more cruelty in my family tree than I originally thought. We both take great pleasure in finding pictures of my great-grandfather and calling him a cunt right to his dead, handsome face.
A medium gives me a silver statue of the Virgin Mary on Christmas Eve and tells me that I’m going to need it. The doctor gives me a sleep tincture, because this time, we’re really going to sort out my insomnia and dietary issues. My grandmother gives me money for a holiday I don’t celebrate and I use it to give myself a ginger ale. My mother gives me a lot of grace, because she’s realized that the parts of me she struggles with are the parts she gave me, and I’m grateful for it. My father gives me whatever I want because he wants me to love him, and I don’t abuse that. The world gives me a place to live. The birds give me song. The internet gives me friends and books and music and knowledge. It’s not bad. It’s really, really not bad. I don’t want to live like this forever, but I’m coming to terms with knowing that the way I’ve been approaching change hasn’t been working for me— I need to focus on experiencing more good things instead of escaping the bad, small shifts instead of my life getting radically turned on its head. As much as I love the idea of packing up and disappearing forever, I’d probably be more happy with the result if I did things slowly. Figuring out what I want is a slow process, but it is happening. Slowly.
This year, I’d like to think I learned a little bit more self-faith, that I figured out how to be a little less afraid of love. Or at least more aware that I’m afraid of love. I’m good at loving and bad at being loved, but I’m aware of it, and that’s half the battle. I’ve stopped calling myself crazy (at least most of the time) for feeling things or having opinions on the way I’m treated. I think I’ve gotten better at being open to contradicting myself, too. And I started washing my face and stopped wearing makeup, which has done a lot for me. The biggest difference is that I didn’t feel like an adult a year ago, but I do now, as if I’ve grown into my own shoes a bit. It’s less being settled into myself, which I always have been, and more of unfurling to finally occupy space. Maybe it’s because my family has started to untangle ourselves from each other. Maybe the SNRIs are doing something. Maybe I’m just finally growing up. I turn 21 in a few days— it seems big and small all at once. Everything does.
So it’s the end of the year. What am I thinking about? I’m thinking about the Lady of Shalott in her tower, saying she’s half sick of shadows. I’m thinking of poetry; nothing specific, just the concept. I wish it would snow. I want a new album or book or movie that will change my life, because there were a couple of those this year, but not enough. I’m thinking of all the time I spent reading fan fiction this year, which would probably horrify me if I saw the actual number of hours. The dog is asleep next to me, so I’m thinking about her. The vent in my bedroom is open, so I’m thinking about how it’s too hot in here. I’m thinking about the friend who calls me lisichka, the friend who calls me honeybee, the friend who calls me habibti. I’m thinking that I might be dehydrated and that I need to put my laundry away and that I need to shower. Yes, I could be thinking big, grand finale thoughts, but it is mostly another day of the week, and life progresses as usual. Thinking big, grand finale thoughts has gotten me nowhere. I am actively choosing to count my pennies and watch them add up. I am choosing to believe that the days will turn into years.
2025 felt like it was three minutes long. I dreamed my way through most of it. There was forward movement, I’d like to think, even if it was so small that no one else could see it and I can’t express exactly what it was. I’m gaining momentum. Slowly, of course. All things come slowly. Next year, I’m going to teach myself how to be okay with that, but I’ve got laundry to put away right now. Even if it kills me, this is what I love.
my journal probably thinks im sooo lame compared to your journal