apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime

it's been over a month since my last post, and i feel oddly guilty about that even though this blog doesn't have an audience? nor do i particularly want or need it to because it's only my own thoughts written down somewhere that isn't a material object i have to maintain or fill. and because sometimes the detachment of a keyboard makes honesty easier. even if i have always liked the way a pen moves on paper. i remember back in the day (high school) having a diary in the form of email drafts in a yahoo inbox, because that was the only place i felt i could handle talking about my friends growing up and starting to deal with sex and drugs. not so much rock and roll. what is this blog but an expanded yahoo email inbox, with perhaps less spam in it.

things haven't been all that great here. KW's in a full depressive episode and it's frustrating that i don't know how to support him. when a depressed person wants to be left alone, is that the depression talking, or them? how do you make someone smile when they don't want to? when they think they can't do something because they're not up to it, do you let that stand or do you push them into it because you know that they really can? and then i know his depression has nothing to do with me, but it drags me along with it sometimes. it's a fucking bummer, to feel so useless and unhelpful when the person you love is in crisis. but in the moments i've been unable to stop myself from being down on myself and giving the negative thoughts a voice, KW has attempted to be there for me, sometimes successfully, but at other times telling me he can't deal with the same conversations again and again, or that he can't really give me the support i'm looking for because he's unequipped, also depressed. so... i try to tamp it down.

it's one of those days. KW's been in the bedroom all day, i've been out in the living room listening to the songs from the most recent bo burnham special, inside -- a musical depressive episode played out in quarantine, and watching his old performances. just a big bo burnham kick today. i tried to go get KW to do dinner with me, but then raised the idea of maybe going out either to pick something up or eat at a restaurant, and then... things just collapsed, until he basically stared at a menu on his computer for 5 minutes straight, and the plans for the evening ended. i can't get him to have dinner. maybe if i'm lucky at midnight he'll decide he actually is hungry and will sort something out then. i microwaved the remaining 40% of last night's leftover burrito and ate it at my computer. we were going to watch the new in the heights movie; he's been excited about it coming out, and this is actually a night where we're both at home without other real obligations. oh well.

i don't want to be egocentric, what's going on in his head is about him and his brain chemistry. but he seemed to be doing okay, until i tried to make dinner plans. he told me he was a little down, and then i just watched him decline.

anyway, i'm still at my computer, where i've spent the better part of the day. i probably shouldn't, given that i learned at the end of the last month that i actually need glasses now for the computer. i have hyperopia - ironically for my life, i'm farsighted. she who fears thinking of the future because that's how hopes are made, and hopes are how disappointment comes to fruition, is farsighted. excellent distance vision, is what i was told, but having to focus on the screen in front of my face all day is straining my eyes and worsening my vision overall. anyway, i got a pair of glasses but then immediately decided i hated the frames on my face and went back (with my mom's assistance) to pick out new ones, but i had to give up my old ones and haven't gotten the replacement yet. so... here i am. spending the entirety of a day i'm not required to be on the computer, on the computer.

one thing that's become clear - or had its clarity reinforced, rather - is that KW vastly prefers when i actually engage with the world. that's been a theme for a while, as was bravery in our first relationship. and i think the definition of that's pretty flexible - to do more than be carried through life by the relentless passage of time, to be conscious in how i spend my days. it can be playing video games and watching netflix, as long as i do it with intention and find a form of joy in it. and growth. if i find it fulfilling, and not just treat it as a way to make the day end. this comes back to being interesting. passivity isn't interesting, action is. intent is. purpose is. thinking is. i still say creativity is but i don't have that. i find myself, right now, at 11:50 PM (and earlier when i started this post) wanting a way to improve myself, right now. to learn something, to practice a talent somehow. i'm watching bo burnham and i'm watching him express himself and perform with piano, with guitar, with words, with cinematography and lighting. what is my... any of that? on a smaller scale of course, since i neither expect nor have a desire to be famous or renowned or particularly widely appreciated. i'd just like to do something for myself that KW can see me do and be proud of me for. for whatever it is, it would be a thing i did with purpose and found something in it for myself, even better if also for other people. i want to make him proud. i want to be worthy of him. i don't want to be sitting here trying not to fall apart alongside him, i want to show him that i am and/or still can be the person he's fallen in love with. although a part of that has always been a potential, not an actualization. part of what i strive for is to realize that potential, lest i let him down. i can't grasp what he sees in me, but he hates not seeing me be it, or be working toward it.

can i do art? can i paint? can i draw? can i find a class online and actually stick to it? can i put effort in without immediately feeling it's too hard and giving up? can i do more photography? can i take pictures and like what i see and enhance them in lightroom and photoshop, rather than looking through my shots for the day and feeling disappointed that nothing in there is spectacular? can i study code to advance my craft and my career, or dedicate myself to learning for its own sake, as long as i stick with it and retain it? can i practice languages and not be afraid to use them?

i want to be more confident. i know, i'm sure i've said that before. my self-image is at quite possibly an all time low. and yes, i used to have anorexia. i still feel worse about my body than i did then. at least then i had discipline. my skin's gone to shit and i can barely take care of myself for more than three days at a time. i've gained weight because not only did i stop going to the gym, but i picked up baking. i don't get dressed in the mornings because there's no reason to, and i don't want to wrinkle my clothes and be uncomfortable just in order to spend all day in my living room, or bedroom as the case may be. it's hard to dress up for KW either because he's never really been clear about what he likes to see me in, other than not skinny jeans. even when i try to ask, he just says confidence. he thinks i'm sexiest when i feel sexiest. what a fucking ouroboros of sex appeal. i guess that should make it simple, but it doesn't.

so... what? what'll it be?

precipice

cross the street from your
storefront cemetery

it's almost funny how evocative something can be. those are song lyrics for an old song, but a local song, contemporary to where i've been. KW came home while i was listening to music and a song came on that i didn't know, but he began singing it - all the lyrics before it even got to the vocal part of the song. a song he knew well, clearly. the album art given by spotify was a sort of blurry off-angle photo of a walk light on a street corner, at night. it's a TV on the Radio song from 2003, so the picture is assumedly of some corner in brooklyn. it's not the lyrics that get me so much as the tonal undercurrent of energy that doesn't quite crest that the song carries, imo. 

it's not my new favorite song or anything, but it just hit me at the right angle to slip through a crack and get into my soul and echo around in there, knocking loose some nostalgia for a life i never quite got close to living. it's a song i could have liked, a corner i could have been on, a connection i could have had with a version of KW i probably pined for in past years, or would have strived to be interesting to.

this feels like a related feeling to the book i read, meet me in the bathroom - given that tv on the radio is featured in there, being local to the scene and of it in the moment. 2003. brooklyn. did KW even live there yet? yes, having run the clock through my head, he did.

you're staring at the sun, you're standing in the sea
your mouth is open wide, you're trying hard to breathe

my brain's been being mean to me. i haven't felt equal to anything. not only in past tense, but expansively. i have felt that i will never be equal to anything, will never know how to be equal to anything. i went for a walk on a beautiful day, up to a beautiful park, summer weather inaugurating our hopes for the rest of 2021. some guy even hit on me a little bit after asking for directions. i took some pictures as the light leaned toward the golden hour, although i'd forgotten to bring my new camera (speaking of things to inaugurate). but i still just felt so absolutely miserable, like my muscles protested carrying the useless mass of my consciousness around for nothing.

i don't want to feel this way. KW himself said he felt himself on the verge of depression, like his brain is trying to shut down on him but he just simply doesn't have the time. his work is piling up on him, he's behind on a deadline, he's got term papers and exams and paperwork, he's got no time to sleep, he's got 100 hours of rotations to cram into a month, around a full time job and a doctor's appointment that's keeping him from dropping a shift to save time because he needs to stay full time to keep his health insurance. on top of this, his grandfather's dying. imminently. any day now. KW flew across the country to be with his family on friday and saturday, mostly to provide comfort and familial medical authority rather than to get any comfort himself from being able to be with his grandfather one last time. and that in and of itself is a tragedy, his grandfather's death. i've been really looking forward to meeting him. back in 2019, when i moved to boston, KW was out at his grandfather's remote island house - his favorite place on earth, even with how much he's seen of it - and i remember sitting alone on EG's couch when i was crashing there and talking to KW on the phone about how he finally was able to tell his grandfather about me and that he said i sounded like "a neat lady". he said his grandfather's got an incredible talent of being able to make whoever he's talking to feel really interesting and special. earlier drafts of this year had us going out there to the house to celebrate KW completing paramedic school. truth be told, the house is being left to KW and his sister, so it won't be lost to the family. but i'm sure it'll change how it feels. i really do want to go out there someday. KW's really talked it up, like the phenomenon of watching the orcas gather in the waters just below the house...

to the point, though. this is a hell month for KW and i just want to be as useful and supportive as i can be, so i'm trying to operate in a... facilitative facility. i'm stepping up and taking the household chores, because if KW is here he either needs to be doing schoolwork or asleep. and if he's trying not to slip into a catatonic depression and checking out, i want to be a source of joy and comfort. and that, i think is where i'm losing it. i don't know how to be there for him effectively and my brain is all too aware of that. so him being on the edge of depression is throwing me over it at as well. which is just not a productive dynamic and definitely something we're going to want to get a handle on, given that we both, obviously, experience depression.

it led to the horrible experience this weekend though of feeling like i was about to have a breakdown but KW was there and i just needed to try to keep it together to the best of my ability but i didn't do a fantastic job because obviously he knows me really fucking well by now but what i'm NOT going to do is say "your intended support system instead needs to be yet another thing you have to take care of and worry about now." i cannot fall apart right now because that would just be more shit for KW.

i don't want to trivialize my own feelings by saying that it was just because i've been sad that i don't know how to make KW happy. it's possible that was the gloom-spark but i fucking wallowed in brainshit all weekend while KW was out west. but substantially i kept beating myself up and feeling like the right person for KW would know, the right person would know how to keep him happy and make him be his best self all the time and would be by his side to support him through difficult times. and because i wasn't by his side, because i can't make him do his schoolwork, because i can't keep his brain from shutting down, i'm not the right person. there's a better person out there, someone who would love him better and whom he would love better. someone who would do for KW what he does for me, which is make me want to be more, want to live to and through my own limits. i spend too much time thinking of the other person he loved in high school, when it wasn't me anymore - in seeing him succumbing to his addiction, i just felt sad and powerless, but i continued to defer to him. if he was doing it, he couldn't really be fully out of control, right? i trusted him, so if he trusted his judgement, i decided he must have the right of it since he's smarter than me after all. this other person loved him enough and was certain enough that they were right and he was wrong and dumb that this very petite person punched him in the face about it. he once told me this story with the hint of a smile. he loved that they were driven to physical means of aggression to try to get their point across. not to sound too stupid, but i want to love him in the way that means i will punch him in the face if i think that's what's right. (i am not advocating for domestic violence, hopefully it's sufficiently clear what i mean here.) the way i am now, he'd just say something like you don't need to punch me in the face and i'd go yeah, you're probably right and then he'd continue being a fucking idiot and i'd feel powerless and useless and insufficient as i watched the man i love destroy himself before my eyes. i'm not being melodramatic, that's early 2010; we've literally been there. it was a hell of a boon to my poetry but fucking misery.

i was plagued by cravings to cut all weekend. i wasn't wholly successful in resisting. i kept it light, though. two extremely superficial scratches to my arm that faded by the end of the day (although were def visible as i was out walking around at the park) and one a little more thorough on my hip that honestly i can still see because i know what i'm looking for, but it'd otherwise likely go unnoticed. this may be something i need to confess to him once it's all past us, this tough time for him. but in the meantime i just... needed an outlet and couldn't go to him. trying not to get too hung up on the fact that i'm twenty fucking nine years old and still dealing with cutting urges like a stupid juvenile emo teenager even though i know as i say that that that's a terribly inaccurate and harmful stereotypic stigma, but it's an extant one nevertheless.

monday was better, though. i didn't feel so mentally well during my work day but once it was over i got to snuggle with KW and finally have a lot of good sex and watch tv and cook dinner and enjoy the evening with him. i've felt substantially better since then, although physically absolutely exhausted. we've got some minor germs swimming around up here, that's for sure: low grade fevers and sore throats; KW's gotten two negative covid results so it doesn't seem to be that. anyway, physical health aside, i doubt that a good evening of quality time has fully cured me, nor would that be unconcerning if it did, given that that's a level of dependency i would have hoped to never experience, especially not when i've been feeling so much more independent than i've ever been in a relationship before. and doubly concerning because with KW spread so thin this month, that quality time won't be coming again for some time. i don't want to be in a crisis spiral for a month, instead of the happy helpful person i want to try to be for him.

the water's at your neck
there's lightning in your teeth
your body's over me

incidentally, 3 years ago at perhaps this exact moment, i ended my prior relationship. happy cinco de mayo.