February 23, 1999.

I'm not coping very well. I think the decline started in B-ton, when I was put on a little gerbil wheel of guilt and desire. I was supposed to read Clarissa. I was supposed to spend time with my mother. I was supposed to help prepare for my brother's 21st b-day. I wanted to spend time with the newly single Little Spider. I wanted to spend time with the Boy. I wanted to get everything done and make everyone happy. It didn't happen. I wanted to make myself happy. That slowly ceased to be an option as well.

My biggest problem with living at home is...well, living at home. Suddenly, my relationship with the Boy is forcibly shoved back into pre-teen level, and it hurts. To extend the gerbil metaphor to its breaking point, living at home is a lot like being in one of those cages...freedom is so tantalizingly close but so frustratingly far. I eat my goddamn heart out in Brampton, and I eat it in large unsalted chunks.

But I was happy before all this, happy for stretches measurable in weeks. I guess one of the problems with being happy is that you have no time to wallow in your worries...and when they finally demand entrance to your protected forebrain, they're complete strangers instead of mean little friends. Should I desire one state over the other?

Now that I'm back in the Big City, I'm forced to think about all the essays I have due in the beginning of March. The specter of failure is sleeping on my couch these days. Agamemnon and Javina are leaving town within two days of each other - both forever. It's unforgivable to miss any of their final celebrations, but I've already managed it by way of a delayed message (thanks, dad). I'm in a constant state of wariness, ready at any moment to feel like an asshole for letting someone down.

I should count my blessings, I suppose. I'm not sick. And I didn't just break up with the Boy. Either or both of those things would probably brake my puny mind at this point.

Then again, I had a dream last night that Mahatma Ghandi was leading my exercise class. He took time out to criticize my use of makeup and then made sexual advances. My point? Only that my mind may already be broken, kids.

Hung out with Agamemnon and Paris last night. I had a pretty good time, all things considered...but I would've rather stayed in Paris' disreputable apartment than gone out to the Joyce...ever since the financial drain of Fireball, I've become loath to spend money on mid-week alcohol. There was a lot of silence among us, for whatever reason. Contemplating the void, I guess. Contemplating the demise of nights spent in drunken obnoxiousness, nights where slighting comments about my sexuality have become deregeur and unobjectionable in their very familiarity. Nights of silent depression, broken only by mournful singing to "Counting Blue Cars" (god, I hate that song). Nights that taught me to drink...for what better teachers are there than divinity students and poets?

This isn't going anywhere, is it. Please stop me if I start to ramble.

Last night wasn't half as serious as I'm making it out to be. Only one slighting thing was said about me, and it concerned my weight. And last night I discovered what I'd known all along: that the comforts of weight loss are cold and sterile compared to the wild sensual joy of a midnight chicken burger.