12:12pm
Library
Glad I came back to the library.
I came here every day a month ago when this all kinda started.
Then I was sick (but not a virus) for like two weeks I guess.
I want to be poetic and direct and say things necessary and important to share.
I am in a state of shock - but I want another word for it.
Chronic shock?
What does anyone expect you to do?
Where are they? All these people who seemed so involved in my situation for years?
Implied people - whoever was arranging the inside jokes and banging on the walls of my apartment.
That sad thought again : that older people designed something you're living in and even they didn't understand how it would change when they weren't around anymore.
Imagine someone building a dam and then when they died the dam collapsed.
Building a house and the house just falls down.
Whatever metaphor.
My brain doesn't feel like sludge but it feels pressured. I feel asleep curled over onto myself for a little while this morning. Like how you sleep at your desk at school. I think I feel better for getting to sleep at all.
There are some people from the shelter here - we aren't hanging out, they're here on their own, but I don't want them to leave. I like it better when they're around.
Getting attached to people's presence when I don't even know them - that's dangerous. Dangerous if I miss them when they just don't come to the shelter anymore at some point.
Jan 21st - got evicted
Feb 4th - got tested for virus, was sick (and ankle issues)
Feb 13th - started sleeping at this night shelter
About March 17th - got tested for virus, was sick again (more coughing this time)
April 5th - today - not sick at the moment (just muscle and nerve pain stuff, probably a 4 out of 10)
I wanna cry. I just need to be somewhere and cry.
I don't know what to expect and shouldn't be surprised if .... things get worse .... please don't get worse.
I need to be able to talk - I can't write fast enough - or not this way - to get my .... stop saying "I CAN'T" ...
Just calm down for a second - I literally need to just stop typing and wait a second.
I should ... um ... imagine this really conservative and powerful person who wants things their way and they were going to get a story they wanted out of my life no matter how it went. They want me to ruminate over every little detail and rake myself over with some kind of guilt that I didn't try more, do more, be more, so on. They would love for me to spend the rest of my life wasting it on half truths about what I could or couldn't have done different. I don't want to deal with their metaphorical ass.
I am trying so hard to relax enough to think. You need to understand right now it's like watching a news ticker going by too fast. I feel rushed. I feel rushed all the time - even when I notice there is no rush.
As someone now homeless and living in a shelter - be it what I think is a nice shelter - I keep thinking about turning 70 and being in the same place. A lot of the people are elderly. They would be in special independent living nursing homes or something if they could afford it. People waking up in pain in the middle of the night. People who seem legitimate and need extra help. There's also a clusterfuck that seems like they are faking issues sometimes or using the shelter for some kind of information resource tactic but ....
12:51pm
text to my sister: "I am at the library right now. I need a place I can just talk out loud and record it for my own use. I've been doing this therapy method for years - if you don't record it, you can't reference what you said, use it for other work, edit yourself, keep track of anything. So you have to have a way to keep track and you have to be able to just go whichever way your brain blows you and explore ideas without knowing what you think yet etc - say stuff you might not stand by but it's fine you're just emptying the junk drawer of your mind and you'll put it together the way you really think about after you figure it out.
I need that sense of my own space to just talk so fucking bad."
....
It's weird because in some ways I feel better than I usually do. I don't feel like I desperately need coffee right this minute even though I didn't have any today. I didn't smoke a cigarette today and I want to try not to - I only have one left and if I buy another pack I might not be able to get more medicine which is more important. Buying cigarettes was like suddenly opening a faucet you needed a while ago and getting a deluge of nicotine pouring out all over the place and now you gotta stop the water again. If I stop right now then I quit cigarettes for 5 years, randomly bought 4 packs that got smoked before the weekend was over, and stopped again.
There was a man smoking in a car the first morning I was smoking outside. In my mind, I was hanging out with an old friend who I have not seem in years. We would have cigarettes and coffee and talk in the morning - sometimes they brought me to work and we could just talk there, smoking cigarettes, like we were an advertisement for the store itself. It was a really cool job in that way - fun, freeing, some kind of social. Well - it just makes me feel less lonely, like the ghosts of old friends are with me .... and oh my god I am getting a wave of nausea I am so hungry. Every sound is amplified. I fucking knew as soon as I typed "hey isn't it weird I feel kinda balanced today" I would suddenly be hungry or something.
Maybe someone would say I am medicated - I'm kind of sedated or something.
Eating a granola bar they give us in the dinner bags...I want to cry again.
If I could draw my current mental state - sudden interruption - hey Laura, don't you realize you mistook medical data collection for attention.
A very simple concept comes to mind :
I just want to be in love
I just want to be in love
I just want to be in love
What if I never meet someone and we don't get together and grow into a partnership and want to stay together and instead of dying with them when we are super old I end up dying in a shelter situation without anyone to romantically hold me, or to hold back? Or you end up with someone you would have never spoken to because at some point they were the only other person around...The fear of that being designed.
It would be morbid if someone was "testing my capacity to love" having me interact with people who aren't all there - if I can't deal with the sad old lady yelling in the night, or the girl farting and laughing and moaning while she masturbates openly in lit room - and then they say well no one is going to take care of you if you can't find a way to not be upset.
Remember the same feelings about being woken up over and over all night every night for long stretches of time - that felt like being trained to take care of someone's kid maybe. They say the kids wake up and cry at night.
You want to be part of a community - whose community? What the fuck is going on?
There are so many things I can't prove.
I can't prove that's what they're doing to me - but it has felt like it over and over again. Someone lays a blanket on you and you have to guess what it's made of - cotton, wool, silk...
... this is just what it feels like.
*
1:15pm
*
Feeling a loss of everyone. It feels extreme. It feels like they could just not exist anymore. They could have died. They could have wiped the east coast off the map. Could have replaced everyone with AI. Could have sent me to an alternate dimension for what it feels like... except for one person who lives on the west coast, at the moment it feels like the rest of the world is ... missing.
Is no one going to hug me again? Ever? No one I knew and loved and felt connected to? Why do they make you feel bad for not really wanting to hug new people. A dog that lost its owner and isn't as cuddly with the second family. The older I get, the more wary I am of new people. Everyone is new now. Trust people? Trust them with what?
I need some time to wonder what might be going on even though I don't know everything...
....I had five years to wonder whatever I wanted...five years alone
... I need time alone but that was ... everything at once, and now it's opposite and on top of it it was never really alone the way you thought you'd be .... like someone just wants you to say it's okay for people to stalk you sometimes, how else will they "help" you?
....but that isn't a "thing" - no supposed to be a thing - people don't just get five years to live and then you do weird shit to them
..... I just hear the conversation on the other side of the room. I can't think. My body is getting stiff.
I could talk about what friendship does for people - the calm you can't replace when you just have friends. Friends signal that you're in it together. Whatever happens, you can turn to your friend and at least talk to them about it and they will care, they will know, they will have been there with you through it. They don't want you to die, they don't want you to get in trouble.
.... I feel like I just wiped snot all over my face ....
friends would be there to be like nahh you're fine
there are some people here who remind me of being at MHS / school like when they're around, it's a different universe
I do still expect more from adults/people older than me and I think I get really...disenfranchised...when the older adult type person needs help too - yes that makes sense, why wouldn't I still need help and friends no matter my age - but I'm talking to people like they are moms or teachers or someone who knows how all the big important things in the world work and they barely remember what I said and gets the details confused and talks in choppy blocks that don't always make sense.
I am feeling so goddamn uncomfortable and I want them to stop just having a conversation in the doorway so bad. I could get a private room instead. THEY JUST TURNED 21 like .... oh my god, are they really so lonely they are making up with story just to talk about something? Again, reasons why I want friends but you know what - I'm good. It's cool. I am too tired to sort through what's bullshit about whatever the fuck. What a waste of my time.
Is it possible to be someone who just isn't clear about details enough to the point it always sounds like you're lying? I could ask clarifying questions if we were talking but it's not even my conversation. I shouldn't even be hearing this but whatever. You look around and realize everyone here knows each other and runs in the same circles of stuff. Which makes sense I guess. It's a gorgeous sunny Sunday why the fuck are any of us in here. Oh right, it's Easter. Yeah, everyone here is well...one of us.
You see a lady sleeping. Maybe the other person talking is distracting the guard - so she can snooze a little. That's a sweeter story.
Those things people remember about you ... things you said, special flourishes, how you would do something, remembering something that happened - one day there might not be anyone there to remember.
What happened with the war in Iran? I've been meaning to ask for headphones again so I can listen to Hasan but I am being shy and I need to pee and not sure if I would have to go to the bathroom again and then I have to bring my whole cart with me...
....they thought I was deficient and put me in an adult day care program....
My mind is spinning around the concept of "caring" about people. Images of 2020. The burden on the healthcare system. Getting people to wash their hands. Sabotaging measure 110. People dying without saying goodbye or dying in the hospital. People who didn't know anyone who died at all and now it's just a joke to them. Deranged empathy exercise.
My brain just exploded:
I HAVE WORKED MORE THAN YOU I HAD TO SCRUB TOILETS SINCE I WAS 10 AND I DON'T HAVE PARENTS AND I WAS EXPECTED TO BREAK THE CYCLE OF POVERTY AND I CARED VERY VERY FUCKING MUCH AND WAS A SUPER STUDENT I DON'T NEED ANYONE'S COMPETITIVE PISSING CONTEST ESPECIALLY WHEN THE WORLD IS FULL OF SHIT ABOUT WORK.
I worked harder than I ever had to in order to be a character in a story I didn't write
Frustrated
Stuck
Need to pee
Need to get headphones
Need to be sure no one will steal my shit - they won't steal my shit right? How many times have I left my stuff now? How do you know when you're somewhere and whether people would steal your shit or not? Feels like vibes - you just go somewhere enough times and that never happens and just...don't leave stuff out and not tucked into stuff or tied to the cart or whatever. I can leave the stream running even. You'll literally see whoever would walk up and take the laptop if they did...
I want to know people care about me. Smart and chill adult types who were able to survive in the system - it's not like they got weeded out - people who do jobs that run communities - and they care about me like I'm their own kid. Who have had my back the whole time or something - what sad delusion is this? Why would there secretly be secular older people who know what they're doing - who you would agree with - who would just follow you around and never tell you they exist? Never hug you. Never comfort you. Never talk to you. Just take notes and give clues and feedback? I don't want to become a mean person. A selfish person. Someone I can't even talk to - what happens if it gets too hard to think? And I didn't spend the last 20 years with friends and loved ones who know how I think and could even imagine what's going on inside my head?
There's a lady. She doesn't really talk. I got the idea she likes to be tough but she's chill. I have no idea what is going on in her mind. It's not my business, but I wonder. Like normally I would have said hello already, but things are different, and I just let her be. I don't know if maybe she just wants to be around someone familiar too - I'm pretty sure she recognizes me from the shelters, though I guess it's possible she doesn't - anyway I like seeing her here. I don't mind she's been sitting across from me for like an hour. Other people from the shelter say hello - like I said, it seems like mostly all that's here are people from the shelter or the unhoused community in general. The point is that I don't know her just like she doesn't know me and some day I am going to be alone and sitting on a couch at the library and whoever else is there won't know me either and whether I was kind of angry the first time we interacted could potentially frustrate our entire existence. Can't just say hello, hello. Maybe my stomach could calm down or my muscles could relax - wow, really hope the tension isn't on purpose.
Tension Seekers - sounds like a theater kid thing (fun)
...2:19pm
See - all better.
And I got earbuds for my laptop (too bad they don't work with the phone)
Part of me wants to take a break. Walk around the block. Be in the sun a minute. Now the day is passing too fast. Soon it will be 3 then 4 then 5 then the library closes and I have to occupy myself until between 7 and 9pm.
I am fighting to be the person I want to be and not the schmuck version of myself who is just kind of whiny and has no priorities or sense of enlightened perspective. Right, so about that war stuff....
2:35pm
Watching Hasan Piker again
I can't believe how emotionally invested I got in this situation - I mean, he doesn't know me. I ended up with a whole world in my head like these streams were a way to have a friend. ~ You need to be cool ~
WAR COLLEGES
so much for "not learning war anymore"
*
Mental images of these people who spent their whole lives working for human and climate rights and that in 2020 they were about 70 something years old and ... well there are a few scenarios ...
imagining elder generation - born 1926 to 1946
adults - boomers 1946 - 1964
adults - gen x 1965 - 1980
adults - millennials 1981 - 1996
young adults gen z 1997 - 2012
teenagers/kids gen alpha 2013 - today (13 years old and younger)
(I did such a big long timeline this feels ridiculous - also has both everything and nothing to do with what Hasan Piker is talking about)
- the adult generation promised the elders they would do things and then said fuck it
- the entire population was decimated and you still don't realize it
- the elders gave up on us or tried to skip generations
-
How dumb do I look trying to "play 4D chess" here?
The idea I need to navigate this all on my own ... again, people are gonna put me in a test and die before I get out of the maze and I won't know what happened and that will be it for my life and I want more than that before it's too late.
I feel so fucking limited. Energy. Muscle. Who to ask, who to talk to - no one is working with me to solve the mystery of my own life and they need help for their own stories. Why do they have to feel so fucking vicious and waiting to fuck with you? Imagine a crowd of people saying "we just wanted you for sex" "we just thought you knew secrets" "we just needed a nurse to take care of us when we couldn't deal with the pain anymore" 'we wanted someone to blame if shit went wrong"...
What can I do? Someone wanted me to just go live in the woods, just go away, just make it look like you left even if you didn't - that's all they ever fucking wanted and probably for a stupid reason like to make me look like a coward. I wouldn't just go away.
.... is no one really looking out for me? and why do I feel stupid no matter how I think about it?
...people use twitter? .... breaking stories? the world felt like it slowed down and died like three years ago. like there are no new things really - just one or two movies to make it seem like that's something people still do. There must have only been five people controlling things in the world and they went on vacation or died.
I am getting so anxious - this empty balloon filling and changing the pressure of my spine.
I should go for a walk and come back and then get a private room maybe. Do I need to pee again? Oh my god.
So sophisticated. So smart. Yeah.
I am trying to be gentle. Realistic. Human. Kind.
I am trying to be someone I want to be.
So let's change frequencies. Someone I want to be is someone who does what they want without hurting anybody else. Or at least what they want with the options they have at the moment.
Someone in me is like hellllo YOU HAVE SO MANY MORE OPTIONS THAN YOU ARE ALLOWING TO BE OPTIONS. You could just go to LA. Will you meet Hasan Piker? Will he say oh I was just waiting for you to show up here and now we can be in love? Absurd and unlikely. And who would I be to him right now? You think he has time to just hold me while I cry about how I feel? Or that I am articulate enough to contribute to his stream - that I wouldn't just be like a stray cat he brought into his house? This is a sick, sad, joke - but keeping me in a mental limbo where it was possible for some kind of love story kept me going when I was really lonely.
Another imagined scene where astronauts in the military tested out isolation shit on me and wanted to know if they could give someone a friend even if they can't ever really meet. Imagine them doing this to a kid with an AI video series of someone like Rod Serling or Carl Sagan. They play the videos for the isolated test subject kids that has the "wire/cloth mother" effect and the kids get attached and can endlessly ask questions even on their deathbed of the same personified computer program.
What the fuck happened to everyone in Ithaca - there are still people out there who appreciate Rod Serling and Carl Sagan. Who understood their hearts and purpose. Who wouldn't give up on me or anyone like me. And who would never participate in a religious cleanse genocide thing.
I'm starting to get ... bad feelings. Like I haven't taken a breathe in 20 minutes and now I feel whoozy.
I don't know why I am letting the pressure get to my spine - I am nervous because I am deciding whether to take a private room, to take a walk around the block and come back, just leave for the day - NO! My brain cries. I need someone to talk to and the computer is my outlet and you haven't been in here for days and everything you need to say is all backed up. Well, I have 100% battery you could do an outline stream? For 30 minutes.
NO I WAS NOT JUST DOING .... out of context sorry .... I am just sick of defending that I was always working. I have always been "working" - never just doing nothing. Am I yelling at a blank wall or one with spies behind it or was it a two way mirror built to unethically surveil me? And remember when I would dream Obama would come and help me? How serious was I about that? Why not? Some things are absurd but not impossible - Bernie and Obama showing up and explaining everything about everything for real. What 2020 was - the lead up - all the moving parts - something I don't even realize I should be asking - and please no it wasn't just a "simple cleanse" right - you would never let that happen right? What curse is this, to even be worried about it? Did people who died leave us with this intellectual curse just to spite us? So we could really just let it go, let their pain go...what will happen when you are old? Will you get to be old?
The idea of someone so much more confident, so much more stable, so sure, of how life might pan out....and they have a high functioning brain?
I don't want to shut Hasan off. I want him there all the time. I know he's just a human on the internet - I know we have never met - he just feels like a life saver while I'm drowning in the ocean.
the glass while I am slowly dissolving like sugar in water - but at least the glass is there - holding me.
so poetic.
3:33pm
WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
screaming these words every single day - until the sound reverberates off the trees and then the trees themselves are screaming too
what trees would have cried about if they could have explained everything they've ever witnessed and how cruel and unnecessary it all was
whatever is going on must be so insidious and horrifying ... easy to think even this footage is AI and we have no fucking clue who is running anything
whole thing is psycho
oh no what if this gets real and real bad ... what if they let it happen ... what if they seriously shut off everything ... just make the numbers make sense if they already killed them 5 years ago - one day new kids will learn all this horrible shit happened for a few years and they won't realize the actual chronology of events - am I gonna be here to say anything, what am I gonna say, are they gonna listen or call me "a crazy homeless lady"?'
Really having trouble deciding if I want to:
- go outside (pack up and bring the cart)
- try to go outside but leave everything here (bad idea)
- just get a private room now - or for between 4:30 and 5:30 is also possible
- are you going to the grocery store after?
- where the fuck are my old friends and why did everything split so badly...so sadly?
- what's gonna happen years from now and my sister is gone or something and I need shoes and if the night or day shelters closed down or they don't like you anymore or... you're just alone and lucky you ever lived....
I can listen to him on my phone if there is internet but my headphones are dead and I have been having trouble finding the cords
I know nothing I am saying is important geo-political stuff like what he's talking about - China and Taiwan - I'm like "oh no my tummy hurts and someone tortured me for five years and I was lonely so I got attached to a political streamer and now I'm homeless and I don't know what to do"
3:51pm
There is going to be a time when I am so sick of needing to pee
or dragging the cart
or the area I need to stay in so I have access to a bathroom
or if the pain never stops - only gets worse - in my hands, my arm, my neck, back, shoulders, stomach, hips, legs, ankles... no one has had any check on my head since that April incident last year.
Why can't I just raise my hand and anyone who would be in love with me raise their hand too and I can look through and we'll talk lol
I don't have to give a fuck what someone thinks WHO WOULD NEVER LOVE YOU ANYWAY
I don't have to worry you will "change your mind" because your "friends" don't like me or someone you respect more told you I was somehow less than and you listened
Everything and everyone is chemicals and drugs - even people - and they have to love you like they love anything else that makes them happy - consistently. They need to want to love you. Sometimes you love what you can't help but love - you didn't want to love them but you do anyway.
"Post Tuesday it could be a very different world." Shortages everywhere.
That seems like the most directly impactful thing they said for a minute. I don't want to shut the stream off.
There seemed like so much invested in figuring out everything people need - how could we be starting over again? There was only room for so many in the made-made paradise they must have created. Or totally different perspective - this is all still a lesson - a curriculum - and these are just the things that were important to someone else who was more powerful and geo-politically important than you.
I am going to leave and come back in like 30 minutes. I think. I don't want the day to be over. I know I'm not directly talking to anyone right now but I still feel like I'm connected to the future, writing a hidden letter that will be found eventually, someday. I don't want to hang up my inter-dimensional telephone.
...but I guess that is a good place to pause.
No comments:
Post a Comment