Celebrated my thirtieth. Quietly, unceremoniously. Begged corporate to let me switch departments to one where my life doesn't revolve around you for more than an hour each week, one where your name isn't spoken with quiet reverence but with snide remarks.

This time around, I'm stopping myself from letting the needle slip back into the groove. No more swansongs, no more half years of half yearning. I won't let autumn take hold of me.

When you said that all girls working in tech look like -- vague disgust pointed at me -- this, I laughed it off. Then I went home and dismantled myself. Bleached the black out of my hair. Scrubbed off the goth eyeliner, wore cashmere and gold, perfected french tips over and over until my cuticles bled, crafted up cathy and hid harrier beneath foundation and pink lipstick, all to prove a point you weren't even there to witness.

Hiding something sinister behind a perfectly crafted facade got boring, eventually. Instead, I flipped the script. Learned to look dangerous while becoming (god forbid) kind, isn't that the better trick? To disarm people with genuine warmth?

So I relearned human ways, feigned normalcy until it became second nature, one paper star and self-help book at a time. Started going to the gym. Stopped going to that book club I went to just because it was two blocks away from your house. Chopped off my hair. It's short now, just a bit past my ears, just like I always wanted it.

I like to say it's not for you but I still feel that pang of excitement when I imagine you bumping into me in the halls. You'd do that cartoonish double take, exclaiming something like "Wait... You look *different...!*". Those sort of trained microexpressions were what drew me to you in the first place - those that made me think that you and I were sculpted out of the same clay, that we were both just pretending to be humans, all our emotions and reactions perfectly crafted.

I want to believe that the familiar ache isn't devotion, just muscle memory. That it's possible to unlearn an obsession the way you unlearn a bad habit: through repetition, denial, ritual.

The first snow comes early. It's not even november. LS walks me home.

My heart skips when you enter my field of view. My hand trembles in his hand, I play it off as starstruck excitement.

"Oh my god," I laugh too loud, "That’s RM."

"Really?" he squints. "He’s smaller than I thought. Kind of a funny walk."

"Now that you mention it, I suppose," I smile.

I don't mention that it's this exact gait that I know so dearly, from the tip of your hurrying feet to the way your hair falls in your face with each bounce of your step. I don't note down the exact time you passed me by, I don't recite aloud all those passwords of yours that I memorized.

Instead, I keep walking. His arm is warm around mine. You pass, and for the first time, I don’t turn around.

Oh, fuck off. I keep thinking I'm past it. Really past it. Not fake-past-it like I've been performing lately. I can spend months and months walking by your house just for the off chance that I might meet you and you have the fucking gall to appear only when I least expect you to. I come entirely unprepared, only ever turning that corner by force of habit, and there you are -- that same gait I'd memorized, the exact outfit I'd imagine you wear on a sunny day like this. You hit me with a casual "Ah, hey, you graduated yet?" and my heart leaps and races at the imagined implicature, calling upon gods of pragmatics and manifesting an unsaid "Are you fair game yet?" behind your utterance (Gricean maxims be damned).

I hold on to that sentence, let the flickering candle of the unsaid proposition warm my heart, let myself count down days and hours and minutes and seconds to our performance review. Our last one before my graduation, I remind you. The worst part? You probably just asked because you couldn't think of anything else to say. I don't let that thought reach my brain just yet.

It sneaks up on me later, two hours into the meeting. I don't know why I expected you to fawn over my backend, as if a neatly structured node file could bring you to your knees. Like it ever did. I could polish my repos to perfection and you'd brush them off with a snide remark every single fucking time.

There was a time where a comment like that would have pushed me to work even harder. Today I just close my laptop with a quiet click and bark a noncommital response. Walk out before you can see my face do that thing where I ugly cry in front of project leads at the slightest hint of criticism. This time, I take it personal. I've let you push me to the brink one too many times.

I bury you for the last time. No elaborate spell jar rituals like that time I buried DZ (pink salt, wilted leaves, rusted nails and all), just a clean and dry keystroke. Shift and delete. Sudo rm RM. Hark, hark.

Two months later, just when I'd moved any and all remaining thoughts of you to the postmortem tab of my kanban, just when I'd stopped syncing our steps and decided to take the longer way home (where the odds of meeting you decrease by 15,02 percent, to be exact), I run into you again. Outside the bar under my building, chatting with someone I don't recognize. Like you live there now. Like you've been there all along, waiting for me to stop trying.

And maybe the worst part is how visible I made myself. Like I was hoping you'd notice. I bleached my hair to all hell last week. I told myself it was for me. (It wasn't.) I walk past you, my steps confident, certain. (You didn't like the meek persona.) I look. I wait for you to turn, to wave, to do something, *anything.* But that didn't happen. It never does. And I kept walking and walking until I was running up my steps, seven floors of choking back tears before breaking down in the safety of my bedroom, breaking out into a sort of interpretative dance slash exorcism. And for once, the anger feels final. Resolute. It's over once and for all. Your biting comments still resonate within me. I let them rot and eat away at my heart until the sympathies disappear.

Loving LS feels easy in comparison. Almost too easy. LS doesn't make me guess. He says things. He stumbles over his words sometimes but he says them. I don't have to decode him. I don't have to fall over trying to search for implicatures in polite conversations. Hell, I could carve whole symphonies into his back and he'd just keep smiling back at me and bring me breakfast the next morning. Beautiful, foolish, touch-starved LS. My favourite little toy, one who asks me how my day was and *means it*, one who holds my unlovable hands under conference tables even better than I thought you would.

But for what it's worth--I *do* hope you saw the hair. Hope you developed a fucking allergy to platinum blonde.

What *is* it about this date that always makes me act this way? Is it RM? How long has that name been haunting me now? Two years ago, I was playing with MS and RB like dolls, twisting their limbs until they broke or bored me. Last year I took ML for the manic pixie dreamgirl cruise just to kill boredom. Love to the point of invention. This time, LS pulled the short end of the stick. Poor thing.

Crescent shaped burns dot our palms. Modern day blood pact. Press down right where it hurts then kiss it all better, as if my lipgloss and gin stained lips could absolve me of all my sins. And then it's back to staring into each others eyes--Zoom squares--on the Wednesday morning calls with corporate. Exchanging loving glances through the screen and avoiding each other in the halls. Feigning normalcy as if I hadn't just altered the trajectory of your life forever, as if you hadn't let me carve my name into your thigh mere hours earlier.

Ah, Harrier, you horrible beast of a woman! Always crawling out when you least expect her. Don't you just love ruinning your life in ways others can't even comprehend! This isn't even the kind of experience to laugh with your friends about over a glass of wine. The other ones at least made for funny stories -- this one would make them schedule an intervention.

At least it's a step up from the whole RM debacle. Why bother trying to get metaphorical blood from a stone when the real thing (hah!) is much better? Cathy acts polite, pulls you in with subtle touches and corporate-friendly affection and the second everyone goes home, Harrier crawls out from behind that smile and picks at your scabs until you bleed all over your highball glass. Oh, LS, you beautiful, naïve fool. Why do you let me do this to you? (従順な子犬みたいな可愛さは最初から求めてないから...)

When I break skin for the first time (consent forms signed thrice), he cries out. Hana, *please*! I recoil. I flinch. That name feels filthy in his mouth. My birth name doesn't belong here, not with this. I warned him, anyway. I told him there are girls inside me he wouldn't like. He said he wanted the real me. As if there's something real under all this.

In the mornings, I keep it all under wraps, but it's all a matter of when. Of how long will it take Harrier (officially voted Most Likely to Start a Fight at the Q3 Review) to bleed through to the surface? To take her horrible games to the boardroom? i already felt how you shuddered underneath my touch when I let Harrier pat you on the back in the breakroom. Don't make me go further. I know where HR hides the knives.

It's a lazy Tuesday morning. Midway through our coffee break, inbetween loading spoonfuls of sugar into your tea (gross but endearing), you make an offhand remark about a club you went to. “Wow, never thought you'd be the clubbing type!” I quip and move past it, prentending that I hadn't just scribbled down "CLUB?!" (twice underlined) in the margins of my imaginary dossier on you. I spend my lunch break researching ResidentAdvisor.

I invent a new girl for the nights. All smiles and good vibes, bouncing to whichever beat is on, downing shots, burning brighter than the crowd. Rina. Phonetically easier to shout in men's ears, sociolinguistically easier to explain than Harrier (no, not like the plane, or the dog, or the bird) , historically significant (disappear with a "nya, bye" as well?). Greets her enemies with a smile and an invitation to dance the night away, spends the evening sneaking glances at the exit for the off chance that you might be standing in the corner somewhere, nodding your head to the beat, towering above the crowd. But you never are.

After the party's died down, at a sketchy bar at the far end of town, she's Vicky. A washed-out sociologist who listens well and talks music if you've got a cigarette. Knows her politics and her boundaries. Profoundly lesbian. Honest. Dependable. Blunt. Doesn't breach boundaries. Doesn't spend the evening staring at the door to see if you happen to walk in. Wouldn't even care if you did.

In the mornings, never hungover, she turns into Cathy. Cathy from Corporate. All cashmere sweater and soft blush and tepid air. Workplace princess, treats and sweets and employee of the month badges. Emails sent with robotic cheer. Straight A student, quietly and inoffensively catholic. Softspoken, kittenheeled, pleasant conversation partner to have. Entertains guests at company dinners (a glass of white, please!).

She's my proudest invention. I wear her like a suit whenever I'm around you. We go to formal parties, we laugh at the boss's dog photos, we check action items off of our lists. You hover near, in these safe little intervals -- asking about my weekend, helping me debug, always so polite and pleasant. And Cathy smiles and brings you one latte after another. Saccharine workplace domesticity.

Is that all it takes to get to the bottom of your heart? Noted. Twice underlined.

They say that you turn into a wizard at thirty. Certainly feels that way. I feel like I could set the whole building on fire just by aiming the repressed yearning in my chest at the ceiling and letting it all out, like a mass spell of destruction.

You know the sob story all too well. Youngest of four, always on the sidelines, never enough money left over for a proper birthday party. When HR insisted on wheeling a fucking *cake* in for the birthday girllll (do the voice, you know the voice), I was mortified. A room of fifty people, clapping their hands in unison, feigning enthusiasm under the flickering lights of the boardroom where some poor sod got sacked just a few days ago. My kind of personal hell.

I took it like a fucking champ, all smiles and "Oh, you guys!" until you walked in at the very last second. Just how I like you. Overworked, disorganized, wearing your white labcoat-y shirt, moderately disinterested, severely sleep deprived, hand in hand with—

Oh. So that's how it is. My fault for reading too much into the "thanks, hattie -- good catch!:-)" in the pull requests, as if an exclamation point *and* a smiley meant a marriage proposal.

I greeted you with a nod of acknowledgement, a wink and a crude hand gesture, disguising my unholy rage with pretend masculinity, wolf whistle and all. Go on, have fun with the new intern. You've earned it, man. Throwing around jokes as if I wasn't digging my french tips into my thighs under the table. Spent my afternoon getting drunk and shopping for clothes (none fit) and making peace with the old woman in the dressing room mirror. I'm way past throwing hissy fits of rage and jealousy. Too old to be a pretend nymphet now, all doe eyes, all perky breasts and whoops-my-code-doesn't-work. Bought a drab, baby-pink dress, one that makes me look like a well put-together matron who will most definitely not drink herself to sleep tonight. Or who knows. Maybe it's time I embrace my post-divorce milf era.

On my way out of the store, a gaggle of teenagers said I reminded them of their mom. Icing on the fucking cake.

Oh, I've earned it. World's worst fumble. Script-kiddied too close to the sun. There would be a time where I'd have spiraled over shit like this for days. Thank god I've been through enough therapy to just take it for what it is and stop being ashamed of myself. It's all a part of me now. If anyone confronts me about it, I'll just come clean. Yes, I did all that. Yes, me, Harrier. That's right. What else is there to do? Flee the country, change my name, deny my involvement? It's not like my reputation in this town hasn't already gone to shit. Might as well own it. Dig myself deeper into the pit. Just keep posting frogs, I'm sure things will work out.

It's funny. I always thought that our last moments together -- those where we're contractually *bound* to be together, I mean -- would be much would be much more grandiose. Me, dressed in a silk red dress (slightly off the shoulder), camera zooms in on my face, a single tear glistening on my cheek, Roy Lichtenstein style. I'm wearing a bold, red lip, tastefully smudged mascara runs down my face. Entirely different from *that* one time where I ugly cried in front of you during code review. This time around, I'll be theatrical, romantic, cinematic. Sobbing, breaking down on the altar, while you (like the merciful deity you are!) take my pale hand in yours and tell me that it'll pass.

But here I am instead. Slouched in a squeaky chair in an uncaring office. And you're not you -- you're dethroned and stripped of divinity. Deprecated. I notice subtleties I could've sworn weren't there before -- the way your cheeks seem suddenly so hollow, the gray hairs dotting your beard. Are you a milimetre shorter?

Where I would have once worn my most intricately crafted shirtdresses, I now wear jeans torn at the cuff and sweaty graphic tees with prints I can't even stand behind (The "Senior JavaScript dev" tee? A throne of lies built on a legendary thrift store pull.). Is this what *real* coders dress like? Am I finally being *authentic*, or is this just another meticulously crafted "effortless" persona? See, I'm just like you now. Is this how you came to be? Will you have me now?

I guess I stopped fixating on these occasions once I deluded myself into thinking I'll have more chances with you once I'm out of here. Or have I got my sights set on better, riskier targets? RP and his "I like you, Hattie, I really like you", the ever-so-innocent LS, hell, even AK, wife and kid be damned. I'll let any of them have me. Friendship is overrated, anyway.

Oh, how it kills me to keep my interactions professional! Shame pinned to the pocket of my pressed-white shirt. A badge of honor or a warning sign? Picking out funeral bouquets. On my way to untie knots, again. Safety scissors, clean-cutting through single column ties. What's with these streets and heartbreak? Wishing on dandelions, cross my heart, hope not to die. Is this really my fate? To die in a forgotten bar, bleed out on a faux-leather sofa at the end of the world? Raincoat drenched in embarassment, corduroy shirt steeped in cigarette smoke from all those times I pretended to be cool. Now I just limp around town like a dying dog and make everyone do a double take, make them really wonder: Was that really — yes, yes it was. It *was* her. In the flesh. Now with 10% more fat and 10% less self respect.

Three nights in a row I dream of rabies. The three hours I get to spend in your presence is simply not enough. It's never enough. I want more, more, let the obsession devour me completely. Curse the cedarwood trees for covering up your window, trace your steps, walk your stride. My days revolve around you. Frostbitten to the bone. Do we even have a safeword in this game we play? How far is too far? I know I'm willing to go to great lengths.

A random encounter, running into you out on the streets when I wasn't expecting it. (Or was I? Have I not exactly timed my steps to match yours?) Is one encounter really enough fuel to feed my fire for weeks? Apparently so. The next day, I return. Inconspicuously pace back and forth just for the slim possibility that you might return. That night, I dream of you again. This time around, I'm your dog, kneel in front of you in our office, for all of the design department to see. Hot. Oh, I wake up disappointed every time!

Is there such a thing as forensic code analysis? I'd like to see you try, identify a pattern in the ifs and elses, compare my containers and flexboxes. God knows I've thrown enough breadcrumbs your way. And so have you, practically inviting me to go looking for your past again. To know your face better than reverse image searches, remember the subtle curves of your nose, the way your hair falls in your face, recall that bounce in your step better than anything else. Yet another dream. We're roomies at a conference, I sleep with anybody else just to get a reaction out of you.

Fighting back against my nature. Painted my nails pink (a revolting shade of coral). Would a slob paint her nails pink? Would a freak do that? Take responsibility. Creep below the radar, wear my sweaters cable-knit and white. Cultivate an aura of effortless elegance and grace. Wear charms and pins on my bag. I replace my face with another: lamb-like eyes, gazing at you with adoration. Shameless idolatry.

Shirk my responsibilities just for another hour in your presence. Another detail about you - the way the corners of your eyes scrunch up when you giggle. The way you search for my eyes first when you ask the boardroom a question. Adorable. I could probably draw you from memory. When I paint people, my brushstrokes instinctively make the shapes of your face. I wonder if I come across as too creepy. You threw me for a loop today; almost forgot to pay at the store, almost forgot my keys in the boardroom. (Although, hm - that could be a viable strategy. Have to try it someday.)

Another dream today. I'm in your office, you admire my nails (a vile cotton candy pink), I use this opportunity to reach out and hold your hand. You don't flinch. I say I've figured it all out -- you changed your name. That's why you don't look like a RM (short for Artem, for the uninitiated. Name reveal! In my dream, you were a Dmitry. DM?). I'll have to bring that up to you some day IRL, see how you react.

When you insist "no certainty exists", it also implies that I can't ever truly be certain you don't want me back. Until then, I'll take my non-zero chances. (But oh, if you're ever so inclined...)

I've been spending an obscene amount of time in drugstores lately. My poison of choice? Nail polish. I confess that I'm a fiend for reds, in case the blog theme hasn't already tipped you off. Probably own like five identical crimsons by now. Hours spent walking up and down the drugstore makeup aisle, religiously comparing the undertones of the bottled polishes to my skintone and palette. I'm a clear winter, a theatrical romantic, an ISFJ, you name it. If there's a category, I will bend and break my spine to fit into it. Confirmation bias my way in.

Every once in a while, I let my gaze slip toward the blushes and highlighters, the liquid eyeliners, imagine the person I could have been if only someone had handed me a brush and a beauty blender at ten, eleven years old, taught me the delicate art of painting my face.

The first time I ever wore makeup, I was twelve, on a class trip to the mountains. It was my best friend who was the first to wear makeup in our class (and down the line, the first of many to develop an eating disorder. She works as an influencer now. Har, har.). It was her and me and two of my friends, the three of us the final frontiers of tomboy resistance. In the sanctity of our locked room, she christened us with mascara, one after the other. I remember being ashamed before, during and after the ordeal. Spent the rest of the day sitting on the roof of the cabin, pondering femininity. (Climbed through attic windows to get there. How unladylike of me.)

When I was sixteen, I snuck off to the drugstore and bought my first eyeliner. Brown, chalky, four dollars. It had half-melted in my bag by the time I arrived back home. I crouched over the mirror in the kitchen and dotted my face with it. My mother, never one to let something go unnoticed, immediately questioned and mocked me about purchasing such a thing, I lied about finding it at school (It was just laying there on the floor, I insisted). I never attempted fake freckles ever again since then, the shame of that summer day still eating away at me.

After moving out at the ripe age of nineteen, I realized I could free myself of these shackles of shame. Imagined myself wearing only black and gold, built an ideal self around it. Spent at least an hour in the makeup aisle, walked away with a cheap 10-color palette. All glittery and garish. That night, I had a man follow me home. Utterly convinced I was about to be murdered, I felt a fresh wave of humiliation at the thought of my last act on earth being the purchase of drugstore eyeshadow. On the bus home, I overheard girls laughing and spent the whole ride convinced they somehow knew of the horrid thing I had bought. It lay in my drawer for years, until the boredom of lockdown led me to finally experiment with eyeshadow. Decorated with something that looks scarily close to a black eye (on both eyes nonetheless), I set out for the store. The gazes of concerned citizens were quick to put me back in my place. The purple and blue part of the eyeshadow pan sat untouched since then.

I've gotten better at managing the shame since then -- and at toning down the intensity of my eyeshadow looks, for that matter. A simple brown in the inner corner of an eye does the trick, a little glittery white detail around the tear ducts to bring it all together. A light brown on the ends of my eyebrows and the job is done, and I finally look like a person. Only took me almost thirty years on earth to perfect this delicate ritual.

All this time, I convinced myself that if I ever start wearing makeup regularly, it will be an act of defiance--bold, colorful, experimental. And yet, more often than not, I find myself reaching for the easiest option that will make me pass as a functional member of society, the one that does away with the are-you-okays and you-look-sicks that a bare face invites. A little warmth in the right places, a little extra something that makes people's eyes linger. For those few fleeting moments, I get to be pleasant to look at. Until I forget and rub my eyes, that is.

The fear of buying makeup never really went away. I still feel alien when I walk the aisles of drugstores, hyperaware of my presence, imagining I stick out like a sore thumb. I think of my childhood best friend, of all the ideal selves I could become. Pick up blushes and compare them against my skintone, mindlessly sample eyeliners, look around at the other shoppers and mimic their behaviors before inevitably running away, tail between my legs, another polish in my cart, as if that's all I ever came for.

The shame keeps me in check, like a leash. Keeps me from going too far, from fully surrendering to the patriarchy. Keeps me from waking up one day and realizing I've crossed a line I swore I never would.

If I ever start wearing foundation, just shoot me on sight. Full permission.

More fuel to feed the beast, enough attention to keep me alive all semester long. The playing field is clear now. What more is there to want? Folding paper cranes ad infinitum. You observe my hands, nails painted BSoD blue, movements rehearsed. Fold the paper crane unto itself, into infinity, seven folds until the atomic structure of paper implodes. Fold and fold to keep myself from imploding. You're playful, letting your guard down again, singing and playing pretend for me, making the cranes kiss with their paper beaks. Like spitting in my face, routinely turning the knife in the salt-wound. Consensually, of course. Wouldn't have it any other way.

A regular Friday night of song and dance. Except that this time, the roles in our regular game of cat and mouse switch places. You bring up my precise geographical location, an offhand comment ("How's the weather at the lake these days?"), nonchalant, uttered with professional curiosity. Wouldn't expect anything more from you. What kind of lunatic goes out of his way to triangulate my location on Valentine's Day? (And to confess to doing it.) Only I'm allowed to do that. Let's see if you can follow this trail of breadcrumbs to the end. Good boy.

You walk me all the way to the outskirts of the town, your voice hoarse the next morning from spending so long in the biting cold. Made my mark on you, finally. Fall asleep on the park bench to the sound of your voice, prattling on about your apocalyptic visions. Never ever stop talking, please.

Thirteen minus two. Two weeks to go til I see you again. Sickly sweet smell of medication. Considering ditching the daily vitamins. Pouring my money and energy into nail care. Stuck in a perpetual timeloop. In love with drugstores and the idea of cleanlines. Reinvention of the self one soap dish at a time. I think the pain is psychosomatic. A manifestation of... What exactly is a fractured knee supposed to represent? Entertaining semi-suicidal thoughts just for the fun of it. Killing myself would be so easy. It would be so easy, wouldn't it? It would be so easy, wouldn't it? It would be so easy, wouldn't it?

One week left. Loop back around. Hopelessness meets hope meets hopelessness. Your name uttered at this week's introductory meeting at my new job. "Oh, and your colleague, RM..." — music to my ears. A symphony. A promise of something far better than I had thought. (Although, they only refer to you as M. Takes some getting used to.) Now you're closer than I could ever have hoped. Just slightly out of reach, I could have you entirely in my grasp if I only tried harder. But I won't force it this time around. Try not to leap out of my chair at the slightest mention of your name. Occupy my mind. Make a herbal tea. It's normal. We're so normal. We're normal coworkers. Don't throw up. Nobody knows just how you've changed my life. Nobody has to know.

Monday. Two days to go. Greet the birds nesting in the swaying reeds. Haunted by visions of dying gruesome deaths. Cable-knit. On the prowl; on the move. A new personality for the new semester. Was it you sitting in my chair over the weekend? Another reminder of your untouchability. Suddenly aware of every hill and incline, ground rises and falls beneath my feet. Was it always this steep up here? Convince myself I'll be entirely normal about you.

T minus zero minutes. You stand before me. Corporeal. Tangible. Terrifyingly real. Detailed. Down to the freckle on your right hand. (Was it there before? Will you let me reach down and kiss it? It's just the polite thing to do.) Assure everyone I'm normal about you. And then you dedicate your first words of the coming semester to me ("Bonus points to Harrier for remembering...") - and there goes my heart again. Oh.

The amount of posts here directly correlates to my mental wellbeing. The less posts, the better I'm doing, the less of a need I have to pick at the scabs of my feelings right down to bone.

Almost feels like a new me, doesn't it? Amid rites and passages I can feel a new persona begin to form. We're entering the year of the jellyfish. Professional and polite, moderately enthusiastic. Rising star. Early-riser. Starkissed. And it seems to work out in my favor so far.

Thirteen plus three. Once again defying the principles of human behavior. Taking the path of most effort. Cracking your apocalyptic visions open like a shell, worming my way in. A noticeable shift in your demeanor. The new persona seems to work well on you.

Thirteen plus four. Entirely drunk on the thought of you. Sacrifice hours of my day to appease, crafting up a plan, devising a meticulously planned typo to bring me closer to you. How can someone be so good at studying human behavior but so bad at getting the message?

Thirteen plus five. Skirting the edges of professionalism, high off of praise. My little experiment was deemed an extreme success, made all the better of the vision of us actually being colleagues in the future. Why mention that you're meeting up with my boss? Did we get hired at the same fucking factory? Is this your way of playing cat and mouse? Are our futures gonna be entangled more than I've hoped for? This was supposed to be my last year spent in your presence, I've already parted with you a thousand times, said my goodbyes, was that all in vain? I sure hope so.

Either way, seems like it's going to be an interesting February.

The wellspring of my creativity has run dry almost entirely. I've been putting off writing these again and again out of the fear that I have nothing more left to say.

Spent the better half of summer in a half-romance with ML, a prototypical recipient of Harrier's signature manic pixie dreamgirl affection. Lasted a grand total of two months before I got bored of his stupid fucking ways. Some people act like it's their first time being alive, while us, enlightened reincarnationcels, go into life with arcane knowledge on how to get whatever we want, isn't that right?

It's the fifth summer in a row now, another season of desecrating all things holy and then lapping up the saltwater of grief. Counting down the days from RM's name-day until the day he sees me and once again mispronounces my name (curse you-don't-know-who and bow before the same!).

Thank god I know how to have fun all by myself. Here's a half-written piece about a certain summer encounter:

we're strangers at a fancy event for fancy people where neither of us want to be. im in my sunday best, you're in your sunday best and theres a certain look about you. i know your gaze all too well. it's that of an examiner, flames of curiosity alight in your eyes, brown or blue, can't recall. an undeniable spark of sadism in them, entirely out of place against this backdrop of a picturesque sunny afternoon.

just out of sight of my wife and your husband (or vice versa), you pull me aside, drag me away by the wrists, hurting me with clinical precision. i whine about permanent damage and you grin: it's temporary — it's always temporary — and press down further. displays of submission in broad daylight. and then you leave, not saying your goodbyes out loud, but instead pressing them into bruises down my arms

The semester is fucking over and I accomplished exactly nothing. Having my last supper in my little hideaway right by your office. Wish you were here. Meaningless slogans take on different meanings now. Good luck and don't fuck it up. Enjoying the ride with tear-streaked faces. I guess I couldn't have asked for a better way to say goodbye. I just wish you didn't have to fucking leave at all.

Each corner I turn, each pathway I take, I imagine you're just out of sight, bound to appear anytime now. I keep putting off the date where we see eachother for the last time. It was supposed to be a week ago at our review. And there I go again, messing the whole project up just so I can meet you again next week. It has to be plain fucking obvious that I'm head over heels now, so why not just give in? Keep dropping little breadcrumbs that might just lead the observant reader toward who I truly am. Come on, take the bait. Fall into my arms.

It's the same every spring. I can't believe it's been over a year since the whole debacle with MP, RM, MS and the like. Feels like I've been stuck in endless thoughtloops since then, word-ropes tied in anchor bends. Feels like my brain has been slowly deteriorating over the months. Trying what I can to salvage it by swallowing up books, gulping down hundreds of pages per day. This year's spring is suffocating me again, my lover's dogmouth tastes like pollen and I'm running out of time.

The semester is over and I'm once again left friendless and alone in the blistering summer-heat of the city. Toying with the idea of inviting another puppydog into my life. ML. Rightfully earned lovername. Another summerspring of learning how to count to ten in Japanese. At least someone is willing to fall for the classic Harrier manic pixie nightmare girl trap.

Thirteen weeks flew by in a flash, slipping away like water through my hands. Thirteen times three chances at finally speaking my mind and asking you out, thirty nine times I bit back my tongue. How much sidestepping is there to do before you realize I do all of this for you? I wander around for you and break my ankles for you, I crawl up staircases and lurk around dusty corners. Friday I'm finally seeing you outside this labyrinthine building, and I'll do what I can to make you dance around me all afternoon. Leave a mark on you the same way your silhouette stays burned into my retinas each week. Did you miss me on your way home? No shadow trailed behind you today. Did you notice? Would you care? Can you feel my heart beat?

The horrifying loneliness returns. It's festival season again. Last year I posted about being elated to meet MP after all these shows, now I'm dreading meeting him (and his newest trophy girlfriend) there. I can't believe that it's been over a year and a half since the incident and I still remember it like it's yesterday. Realizing that he's taken now really feels like the end of a chapter, bittersweet as it is.

Well. There's always other men.

Are you a creature of habit, RM? Well I'm a creature of patience.

Following a string of almost prophetic dreams, I finally sprang into action, proudly declaring myself a prophet gone mad. By the time the second week came around, I had learned the intricacies of habits and routines and adapted accordingly. I'd realized I was head over heels sometime back in November. And from that moment on, every hour spent in RM's presence had been forever tainted by the bitter aftertaste of desire.

And suddenly I was everywhere in his path, doing anything to remain in his mind. And when I wasn't trailing behind his presence like an excited dog, I was planning and recalculating the pathways I took just so I could bump into him. Who's heard of it? Sabotaging my PhD for a brief chance at an awkward one-night stand with a lecturer. I've sabotaged my life in worse ways, belive me. I'll proudly admit that all this is just so I can finally indulge in my burgeoning kink for positions of authority (and to add another prized trophy to the body count).

I like to think it's mutual. I, the world's leading expert in calculating and quantifying human male behavior, had expertly deduced that he's giving me on average of 15 minutes more eye contact per lecture than any of the other girls in the PhD program. And that's enough for me, grasping at imaginary straws and tying red-lines together. How many swipes does it take to get to the heart of the beast? In either way, consider this a confessional. If you're out here reading this, just give in.

If I don't make him fall in love by time this semester is over, I will finally declare my nymphet career over and hang it up once and for all.

It's soon gonna be ten fucking years, isn't it?

Ten years ago one of my family members (fuck if I know which crone that was now) made a remark that I'd been gaining weight and that I must be over 60 kilograms by now. I was fifteen, sixteen then and for years, years, I fixated on that number. When I swallowed my friend's pills and threw up for a week my heart could not have been happier when I saw that 51 on the scale, treating 60 as this uncrossable rigid boundary I could never cross, or else. And from that moment on, every single look I'd take in a mirror would be dedicated to hating my body, to checking if I'd lost any weight, if I was performing right, if I was hot enough.

I spent the larger part of my teenhood looking back on how thin I looked x years ago and hating myself for my current weight, in a vicious cycle where I was never truly appreciating the current state of my body unless I was mourning it years later. On top of it all, I always knew how to contort my body in photos so that I would look even skinnier in pictures. I crossed 60 when I turned nineteen and have been gradually gaining weight since then. And for the numbers-obsessed anachans of the web, I'll proudly admit that I'm at 70 by now. It feels so fucking bad, I'll admit it. It feels horrible. My stretch marks have stretch marks, I have fat folds in places I never even knew I had and everything feels horrible on my body. And yet, funny thing is, I'm quite literally at a normal weight for my height and age. It's funny how always toeing the line of being medically underweight changes your perception of yourself. When I look at other women my size, I dont even think "Look at this fucking landwhale" like I do with myself.

I've been trying to psyop myself out of reflexively hating my body every time I look at it, forcing myself to say a funnyphrase like "I'm based and hot" anytime I catch a glimpse of it, but there comes a point where lying to yourself just stops working. I'm not based or hot, I'm a normal human female with a normal body that pisses me off. But what is there to do? Starving stopped working for me a while ago, I'd just pass out. My teeth hurt too much for me to pick up binging again and I don't have the patience and time for overexercising. So what's left now but to recover? Grin and bear it one day at a time, one body neutrality mantra after another. Not much else left for me.

It seems like the only thing powering me at this point is revenge. Spiteful winter, spit and bark and breathe smoke, ill-fated hound in the attic dim light. Wandering halls again? I constantly feel like I'm on the verge of an artistic breakthrough of sorts. Poetic winter. There's bits and pieces of poems lodged in my throat I can't seem to hack out, Yeats and Keats and all that pretentious bullshit. Kissassery as the part of peace. Fuck your breakups and divorces and vague threats. I can occupy my mind just fine with obsessive thoughts and graphs, tie myself in knots all on my own. From an Interpol autumn into a Duster winter, it seems. Not even my dogs keep me warm. Fluoride white dims to sodium lamplight yellow only at the slightest suggestion of blood being drawn. I yearn to sink my teeth into another prey animal. Tar-black gaze dead set on two targets now, JM & RM haunt my waking dreams with visions of kneeling and licking hands clean like an obedient hound under your dinner table. I'll stop at nothing to get my way. You already know I love to wait and wait and wait. Is it even possible to chart human behavior? I know I'd like to try. If anything goes even slightly more wrong you know I'll find myself wailing at your doorstep. I'll make sure you remember I exist forever.

I wrote this in the middle of summer:

"i look in the mirror and for the first time, an adult woman stares back at me. in all her glory, with all the things i've done to make her look more like *me* and less like my parents. i never thought i looked similar to them — or even, to myself — a creature beyond normal recognition. wearing a different face each time she sees you. but now she stands there, immutable and final, no more contorting to be done

and it all clicks into place. they say one day a switch flips and you stop needlessly worrying and fretting and you start behaving like a functional adult. does that mean you also lose all the characteristics that made you unique?

i didn't even notice it happening and suddenly i found myself eating and behaving like a normal, adult person. my moral compass is pointing north again. my body shifted and cracked and set like a sculpture of clay fired in a kiln. and for once, something feels stable and permanent. and finite., for once."

Looking back on it, it feels more like a make-believe manifestation manifesto of a lunatic coming to terms with her adulthood for the first time, but looking back on it fondly I realize she was actually right (and very much ahead of her time). I did do a lot of growing up these past few months. Let's reflect on that.

I've been doing everything I can to stay afloat this semester and it's been paying off. I started a double major and by god, it's really trying to chew me up and spit me back out, but no, I persist! I've been really trying hard to stay organized and focused AND do my housework on top of it all and it's been paying off. Let's see how long I can make this last!

While washing the dishes today I came to realize one thing. I'm endlessly stuck in the past, dragging its dead weight forward with each painful memory, with each scroll down to the archives of my being. I spend too much time hate-reading the blogs of people I fucking hate for leaving me behind. Thinking about all the people who've wronged me eats up a considerable portion of my day. A song from my ex came on shuffle while I was in the middle of cleaning and I relished those memories for far longer than I'd like to admit, as painful as they were.

That's fucking cringe, isn't it? So here's a challenge for this month. Each time I come across something that reminds me of my past and I find myself reveling in the pain the memory brings forward, I throw that shit in the bin. Spiritually, physically, digitally. Already deleted a game off of my computer today, let's see how much more I can purge.

And not in the food sense. That hasn't been working for me for a long time now. At least there's that.

Another summer that won't last forever. Come end of August I'll be treading bitter water again. Reckoning is coming for me and I don't think I can even force myself to enjoy what I have while it still lasts. *Who* I have. They have a shelf life of a few months tops before I throw them away like used toys. This marks the third summer in a row, doesn't it? I wonder how long I can keep this up before I start inevitably hating myself for becoming too much like my own mother.

A singular name written down in today's calendar page in my heart. Gaze averted from this week's bedwarmer, I call for him wordlessly. MS, MS, MS. Calling your name out in my mind, like a lonesome dog barking for its owner. Drive on over here and pull me out of this rut, coax me out my low. Surely a few more shiny trinkets will fix me. Or just distract me for the time being.

Let me pull you on the leash of my love. How long until you get sick of being strung along? They say it takes a few weeks on average before they find out, it's a miracle he'd been able to keep me under wraps for this long. I wonder how long I can keep convincing myself that I'm actually enjoying this.

Everything takes too much effort. Doing anything other than the bare minimum is such a fucking chore. We're back in our old ways. Tired, always dissatisfied and struggling to pull at my own leash. Time seems to drag on forever while running faster than deers caught in headlights. Can't believe it's been over half a year since I started this project. Progress has slowed to a crawl, both website-wise and mentally.

Got caught up in a catastrophic, almost life-ruining sequence of events. Spent the better half of spring and summer meeting up with MS and having him - the most obedient dog on earth (and in orbit) - cater to all of my fantasies and whims, all while trying to keep RB from finding out. Ringing dogwhistles and exchanging knowing gazes at work. All within the realm of plausible deniability, though still earning us a fair amount of threats from the boss himself. Thank god I'm good at gaslighting men into thinking they're just being paranoid. I think it's all over by now, but god, was that a stresful few months, living under constant threat of being fired. But knowing myself, I'd probably devise a way to avoid that too.

My restrictive habits are once again back and in full force. Couldn't stomach looking at myself and working out was simply too much effort. Might as well go back to starving myself while I'm still young enough for it to work. If anything, it makes drinking easier.

Fucked a guy in a bog and got the world's worst UTI from that. Starting the month off strong.

Anything past this point is written retroactively. I put this off again, as I always do. I was supposed to spend all of May studying for my finals diligently, then I caught a horrible infection from playing manic pixie dream girl and swimming naked in a bog in early May weather. Spent the better part of the month in bed trying to sleep it off inbetween sneaking off to the races again and again.

Kept digging up more and more dirt on MS. What good is having zero internet presence if you have a wife that overshares? Why pretend to be oh so mysterious when you let your mouth run so often? Turns out we've got a LOT more in common than I initially thought. Girls, I might be in love.

My temptress ways are coming back to bite me in the ass. Can't get RB off my trail. Spent the better part of the month convincing him that no, no, I haven't been talking to MS at all, swear, promise, I've been nice. Endlessly beg and plead for forgiveness and play his good girl knowing full well that if it were up to me, I'd be practically crawling through broken glass just to kiss the ground that MS walks upon.

My only solace is knowing that he'd do the same for me in a heartbeat.

Bringing myself to write these is a chore. Back when I started out writing these entries, I had hardly anything going on in my life other than my job and my ever-present embarassing crush on MP, but since then things have spiraled into horrible sequences of events that are nauseating to even think about, let alone write paragraphs detailing them.

Played my cards well enough to make MS fall into my trap. Weeks of pining and strategically played flirty gazes and subtle touches drove him to insanity and he finally got enough courage to take me out for a date, if you could even call it that. More like an impromptu roadtrip where he'd drive me to the nearest woods to feel me up with the passion (and restraint) that only men in loveless marriages have. This was certainly the most fun I had in a long time. Funnily enough, he's more concerned about RB finding out than his wife. He's staked his claim over me and has threatened to fire MS multiple times if he doesn't leave me alone, even going as far as to ban both of us from ever being alone together in the same room or talking to eachother, ready to scold me whenever I let my gaze linger on MS for too long. Funny stuff. This is literally like living out a forbidden romance plot. Can't say it isn't pissing me off, though.

I struggle to keep my focus long enough to finish this. I had "update the website" on the top of my to-do list for weeks now, actually forcing myself to do it feels like such a hassle. There's such a weight on my chest when I write these down. I need to start taking my meds again.

Proving to myself that once again I can't hold a promise for shit. Tangled up in red-string webs of my own creation and once again throwing everything away for fleeting pleasures. Promising myself I'll do better and then being a thousand times worse.

I've been trying to stop doomscrolling and forbade myself from using the phone to pass the time mindlessly (like when I'm waiting in line or on the bus or elsewhere). What worked like a charm for the first few weeks became kind of hellish as I realized that I overcompensate for all that scrolling when I'm on the computer. I can't focus on anything, I instinctively find myself clicking away to scroll to get that dopamine again and again. The itch is always there. I need to get stricter with myself again. I'm once again skipping the gym (but to be fair, I *was* sick this week) and sleeping in. I've accepted that I'll never be a morning person, but I can't just keep putting everything off and sleeping in forever.

For the past few weeks of no scrolling and mindlessly consuming I found myself thinking and contemplating way more than before (at least as long as I'm outside and don't have access to my computer). I need to get a little notebook to write down my thoughts on the road, as soon as we get over how cringe it is to write shit on paper in public. I've been meaning to make this post for so long, endlessly repeating phrases and sentences in my head to make it sound way more poetic but when it actually comes to it, I find it's way more comfortable to just let go and brain dump as the thoughts come along. I've written more notes app poetry than ever before. Think I'll transition slowly to this sort of writing. Feels less pretentious and cringy. Looking back on my poems, I kind of regret I didn't write more or at least vent more about my feelings back then. At least when all this blows over I'll have a detailed log-archive of my Thoughts and Feelings(tm) to look back on. Remind myself how stupid I was acting. Too bad I'm too much of a hedonist to stop. Always giving in to the pleasures. Act first, think... sooner or later.

Think I'm gonna have to cut off RB for real this time. He's been a massive fucking cunt to me at the last board meeting. Let's just hope that rejecting him won't mean that I'll lose my spot at work. That would kind of suck. I'd miss MS and all the crimes we'd been up to.

Once again diving headfirst into something I never wanted. Monday morning work lunch. Meant to tell RB to fuck off entirely, ended up lying my way out of it again and crafting up a new persona just for the occassion. Bits and pieces of my real fears amplified tenfold into a worrisome paranoid girl too broken to date him. Salome. Someone he wants to protect and keep all for himself until he realizes she's too much work. Too scared. Too traumatized. All it's gonna take this time is a few strategically played panic attacks to scare him away.

Speaking of guys at work. Turns out MS can't be trusted either. Keeps running his mouth too much. Time to take my hands off that one before it's too late. But it feels too good to tiptoe on that line of what I can do to him before his wife or our boss finds out. This is gonna get me fired, isn't it?

JK's birthday was two weeks ago. When we split back in January or February or whichever month that was, I knew his birthday was nearing and made a point to text him once it comes. Like I always do with exes. The last resort, the I'm-still-thinking-of-you, the hope-you're-doing-well. Perfectly crafted, personal enough to guilt trip them into responding. Sent at midnight exact to show them that yes, I remembered. I'm the type of girl that remebers. And then I didn't. I forgot. It was oddly freeing for once. When I congratulated him last year, I barely knew him. now we barely know eachother in a different way. We're strangers again, huh?

Kept running into MP all day. On like three separate occassions all over town. Can't say I didn't expect it, he *did* talk about going to these shows, I just half expected him to just be there with his clique, him going out of his way to greet me and talk to me about the shows was certainly a welcome surprise. I need to remind myself again how much of a cat person he is before I fall for him again. I almost feel like it's too late to stop that from happening.

I fucking hate men.

AHAHAHAHHA OH MY GOD . ONCE AGAIN GOT WHAT I WANTED. HARRIER NEVER MISSES. I THOUGHT HE'D NEVER FOLD BUT THEY ALL DO THEY ALWAYS DO. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHARBINGER OF DESTRUCTION !!!! DRIVER OF RIFTS AND RUINER OF MALE FRIENDSHIPS!!!!! the high i get from doing this is sooooo unreal nothing can compare

I finally picked out a name for myself. Harrier. It wouldn't leave my mind, like a curse, a self-fulfilling prophecy. And thus I went, much like my counterpart, on a regrettable three-day bender. Inlyrics to Einstuerzende Neubauten: Perpetuum Mobile einer melange aus Jet-lag und Alkohol, half-recovering in the office throughout the day and then going for it all again in the evening, tying my red strings in different knots each time.

Monday. First in line was MFIronic initials. He *is* kind of a motherfucker.. Fate always seems to bring us together in odd ways. First time, it was a meet-cute encounter after years of radio silence, the second being the rest of his band cancelling on us and leaving us alone to get trashed all by ourselves, wine and moonlight and park benches and all. In the same place we sat when I first went out with him, enamored and fascinated by his presence all the same. Only this time I dared to act on my desires.

By the very nature of our demonic and fate-entwined kind of relationship, I didn't get closure this time around either. He's the kind to beg you for more, then swear on his morals and disappear once his self-preservation instinct kicks in and he remembers that he does in fact have a girlfriend back home, storming off to walk the twenty miles back instead of letting me bed him. And I thought he was supposed to be the charmer here.

Then came Tuesday and with it an evening of cat scratches and pretend fights and one real fight on top of that. MSCoworker. Married, allegedly. got too out of line with his sexist bullshit and earned a blow straight to the throat. (What? By now it should've been apparent that I'm the kind of cunt to punch someone in the throat.) I cherished those bruises unlike any others. Any thoughts of feminist theory and praxis went gone in a flash when he grabbed me by the wrists and told me a thousand times over that this isn't what good girls do and I had to promise him that I'd make it up to him sometime. Don't threaten me with a good time.

And finally, RBCoworker. Practically my boss. Don't shit where you eat, as they say.. Not as much of a cat person as I thought. Surprisingly (com)passionate and respectful and very much a loser. Fun little emotional punching bag with pretty pills in his nightstand and a hole in his heart that only long-haired women can fill. He told me he'd already died twice and I swore to him, naked in his kitchen with my hands on the knives, that I'd be the third thing to kill him once and for all.

I got a haircut the other day. It's almost nauseating how I depend on my hair as a source of self-worth and how getting two inches lopped off was enough to send me spiraling into self-doubt for the remainder of the weekend, weeping at how unrecognizable I'd become. I would stare into the mirror and find a bug-eyed creature stare back, a portrait of my own mother with the gaze of a coked-out news reporter in the middle of a manic fit, topped off with a cut that looked just like the way twenty-eighteen me would wear her hair; bleary-eyed, brown-haired and sedated under fifty miligrams of whatever this week's pill was. Narrative parallels!

March, first day of spring. I find myself tip-toeing and hurrying, always on edge and always just in time enough not to miss any of my trains (Oh, not again--). I think it's caffeine related, but at this point I'm in too deep to just quit. The all-consuming feeling of vague dread has gotten better AND worse at the same time, as if both the negative and positive feelings split off. When it's good, it's good. But when it's bad, it's super fucking bad. At least I can thoroughly pinpoint whatever is causing it this time.

All this time, my only source of happiness had been the weekly board game club meeting I'd go to. Partly for the games themselves, partly for MP and the half-flirty moments we shared together over whichever shitty game of cards was planned for this week, for our little pretend-fights and quips we barked at eachother for months. And same as bark always turns into bite, I always get what I want. For one night and no more. Ouch.

Mind made up, I started searching for the same crumbs of affection in whoever the fuck was next in line to get their hands on me. Eyes on the prize, got weight on my chest. And believe it or not, this time it was RB, finally getting his way after months. It's set in stone at this point; inevitable. As if every week I'm now supposed to come in and waltz right into his arms and subsequently into his bed. It feels inevitable at this point. Might as well lean into it and pretend I'm doing all of this willingly.

Bet he's a cat person. They always are.

I have a thing for ears, old cassette tapes and whatever that was that you were into. I'm your erotomanic pixie nightmare girl, I'm your cool girl, I'm whichever trope you want me to play. I contain multitudes in the worst way possible.

A lot of the books and stories I'd read over the course of my life had an overarching theme. A brooding self-insert of a man gets swept off his feet by whichever girlfriend he dreams up, they go on a wacky adventure and then she leaves his life as abruptly as she swooped in. God, I wish it were this easy.

I know her role all-too-well. As every girl comes to know, males are surprisingly easy to manipulate once you know at which heartstring to pull with your role. The cool girl that's just like one of the guys. The caring and sensitive mommy type. The cute and innocent creature. And then it's a few strategically placed hands and touches and caresses and sooner or later they'll fall for the cool girl delusion and beg you to leave the bar with them. At which point you'll take them for an adventure of their lives, make out in dark alleys, climb trees and take them for theme park rides, sleep in train cars and then disappear the next morning.

Except that disappearances never go as well as you want them to. There's always the follow up texts and when-can-I-see-you-agains and sooner or later, you're tripping over red strings again and getting caught in nets you'd never dreamed of being trapped in.

In other news, I fucked it all up again.

had a particularly weird night and came home with lots of feelings about it that i wanted to expand into a post.

"containing multitudes in the worst way possible / fighhing the anxiety head on, bar hopping with a bunch of strangers, preaching feminist theory and then getting felt up by whichever male agrees with you the most. is this how we're spending our thirties? once again playing the manic pixie dream girl for crumbs of intimacy. being a girl is about being used by men. idk how the fuck am i still soooo obsessed with him literally thinking back on it hes sooo medioctre but irl im always there looking at him like hes the literal incarnation of god"

For the past few weeks I'd been living in a sorry state of everpresent anxiety, hands shaking out of an unknown fear, scared of something horrible happening any time now, any moment the sword of DamoclesNick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Oh My Lord
"But when she looked up at me
I could clearly see
The sword of Damocles
hanging directly above her" is bound to fall down and stick right through me. And as fate would have it, today my bus almost crashed in the exact place I was fearing it would. Every morning on my route to work I would think about the sharp turn it has to make there and how horrible it would be if it just didn't make it for once. And then it happened. I fixated on this particular spot enough to think an accident into existence. Again.

Right as I was about to enter primary school, I had a vision. In my daydreams, I had dreamt up a girl to sit next to me. She had ash-blonde hair in a too-high ponytail, stark blue eyes and a glowing black hole for a face, not unlike a missing texture in a shitty horse videogame from the 2000s. And just like I dreamed her up, the girl sat down next to me on the first of September in all her ashy-blonde, blue-eyed glory. Except that she actually had a face this time.

When I was twelve, home alone for the first time, my then-friends pulled me aside told me there's been a deadly accident at our small town crossroads. Two cars crashed head-on into eachother, crushing the drivers alive in an instant. The corpses are still there, come take a look, the girls lured me with hushed breaths, faces wind-streaked and knuckles clenched to white as they gripped the handlebars of their bikes, having just returned from the crash site with all the details. A red and a silver car, two adults, one kid. The descriptions seemed to match my then-family perfectly, down to the models of their cars. And they begged me to look.

I didn't go there. If I did, I just know I would find the corpses of my family there, mangled in their cars beyond recognition. So I persisted, didn't succumb to my inquisitive urges and waited home. And some hours later, they arrived, safe and sound. I still think about what would've happened if I went.

In other good news. Slowly dipping my toes into being able to create again, one shitty drawing at a time. Picked up new games as well. Completing quests makes the brain busy enough, I guess. Yay for progress!

no more carefully constructed lamentations im fucking mad. i will delete this later im seething fuming coping. the whole package. i cant believe that i, a grown ass adult human woman with a job is caping so hard for this shitty guy and falling for his tricks. and crying when he deliberately ignores me and pushes me out of his life. even though i knew from the start that he wasnt looking for anything serious. i fixated on him so hard in all of his mediocrity. he has literally nothing underneath the surface hes just a standard issue lowlife male. why why why why do i allow myself to get so worked up over this

web dev note: think anything into existence -> apotheosis -> webshine prayerlog

It took a grand total of one week to go from pseudo-artsy literary babble to classic highschooler whining in diaries. Except I never had that opportunity as a teen (thanks, perpetually inquisitive parents!). Here's a poetic thought to kick it off: january like the uncertainty of diving headfirst into a pool, february like ripping off bandaids from wounds still unhealed. Starting the year off strong.

Last month I made a promise to break off all the [red strings] I've tied myself into and stop catching crushes just for the fun of it. Feels poetic, doesn't it? To be yearning for a love unrequited. MP was just perfect for the occassion. Authoritative enough to pull at the strings of my heart while also being pathetic enough to activate the I-could-fix-him switch in my brain. It took a few weeks to get him to budge, but I eventually got what I want, all in one night, fueled by one too many drinks and one too many half-confessions of love. And then it was supposed to come - the breaking point that all men eventually reach, where they crawl at my feet and beg for crumbs of my attention, except that this time, I'd pulled the short end of the stick. I was the one who found myself practically begging for replies, for validation. That's on hubris, I guess.

Today's dream was about my coworkers, my husbands and my exes all meeting up and colliding in one half-flooded space not unlike my town's main train station. Lots of swimming naked in rainwater, hiding behind corners and keeping secrets. Felt oddly prophetic for once.

Growing up, I always enjoyed resource management games. all about keeping the perfect balances and managing resources to keep something functional, to keep something alive, not counting all the hours spent in shitty girls' games about nursing sick animals back to health. Why is it that I can't bring myself to nurse myself back to health, the sickest and poorest animal of them all? The hyperbolic poor little meow meow, the sickly kitten? The losing dog pulling itself by its own leash, dragging itself to its own suffering like J*sus carrying his cross. Like Sisyphus pushing up the boulder knowing full well it's gonna roll down again any given moment, like the fabled foxThe Fable of the Fox and the Pitcher. Fox, not crow. drowning herself due to her own arrogance. It's getting harder to bring myself to do anything to better my sorry state, whether that be cooking a proper fucking meal, finally doing the dishes or hauling my ass to whichever therapist the union has to offer. Until I psyop myself into doing that, we're back to fighting away the ED thoughts with a broomstick. Fuck off, bestie.

Speaking of. Last week I had the brilliant idea to psyop myself into getting rid of my anxiety, to stop worrying about stuff just because it's stuff that I conditioned myself to worry about, phone-calls, e-mails, conversations, stuff I'd been fearing (or that I'd conditioned myself into fearing) since middle school. And for that week, I threw myself headfirst into whatever, got uncomfortable conversations out of the way, made plans and faced the fears head-on. And it made everything a million times worse. But I'm the stubborn type of dog, an all-or-nothing kinda girl that just won't accept that some things have to be taken slow, no matter how many times life teaches me this lesson, leaving me to patch up those opened wounds and lick up the blood I drew myself, unwittingly.

February has me in a tight grip, its murky and mud-stained days either slogging on or passing incredibly quickly, flashing by just fast enough to make me wonder whether I'm time-travellingDid you know? I can travel forward in time. Skip to the good part. again. Year after year, the Alt-J songALT-J: Last Year

January came and took my heart away
February felt the same
...
June, I learned to count to ten in Japanese only proves itself to be true, lamenting about a January that comes and takes your heart away and a February that feels the same. Just like last year'sA year ago I found myself in the exact same position, heartbroken and jumping from one rebound to another. Guess not that much has changed.. Call it deja-vu, call it a narrative parallel, call it a time loop. Oh, June can't come fast enough. Wonder who's gonna teach me safewords this time.

Had a dream about NEMusician guy. We've only really spoken once, the rest of our conversations was silent, through smiles and pointed gazes. today; first one in a really long while. He arrived at my hotel room, plucking my favourite melodies on my shitty guitar and cuddling up with me under the sheets on a fold-out bed. The dream threw me for a loop for the entire day, only exacerbated the fact that it's probably going to be at least ten months until I get to see him again, unless by some miracle he appears at one of the festivals I'm booked for in the summer. A part of me hopes he'll remember me by then, another part of me hopes he won't. Just so we can have that first encounter again.

Studying for my literary analysis finals I came across a paragraph in my textbook which hasn't left my head since. Loosely interpreted, it says something along the lines of:

Every text is written for an audience, even private ones. Every journal is written with the expectation of being read. This leads to authors developing a certain journaling authorial style, willingly or not, effectively self-stylizing themselves into the role of the journal-writer, obscuring their real self in order to fool the audience into seeing them as whichever trope they've portrayed themselves as. That's the writer's fate, isn't it?

I guess the most harrowing thing about it was how true it rang within me. All of my physical journals addressed the reader directly and were presented in appealing, *aesthetic* ways, written to impress whoever combs through them. This is why I could never stomach reading through my friends' public journals. Their journal-personas were always inevitably different from the people I knew them as. I knew that feeling all too well. Same for the online domain - I'd grown so used to presenting whatever was on my mind in short, digestible, relatable funny phrases often enough for these phrases to replace my inner monologue entirely, the role of the internet funnygirl replacing whatever role I had previously written myself into. But her days are long over, it's time for the real me to come through.

Or so I say. Even now, when I write my thoughts out like this, I instinctively find myself picking up the role of some sort of esteemed author writing her memoirs, carefully picking out well-constructed phrases to make herself sound like less of a loser than she actually is. That's not the real me. That's not how I want to express myself. Or is it? Guess only time will tell.

Four years ago I had made my final vent-post online bearing the same title, an incoherent thinkpiece by then-teenage me, thoroughly detailing her frustrations with the need to express herself vs. the ever-present threat of being constantly observed, promising to delete the post soon before anyone has the chance to find it and reply. And she did exactly as promised, running away from confrontation, with her metaphorical tail between her legs.

Things have hardly changed since then, if not gotten worse in the sense that by the end of twenty twenty-two, I'd become so afraid of posting anything online that I locked down all of my profiles; zero information, zero comments on public posts, nothing more than a silly username and an illustration of my likeness, all of my thoughts and feelings bottled up inside out of fear of being mocked for posting about them online like I was time and time again. But that's a debate for another time.

As it happens around this time every year, I once again felt myself succumbing to the urge to write it all out, however this time overpowering the innate fear of being known and observed. Which is why I ended up starting this blog, to explore the self and vent my frustrations through endless blogposts without any shame.

Yet even now, I find myself instinctively clicking away from the HTML editor in shame, anything to put off writing this. But I can't do that, no matter how much I'd love to. There's progress to be made, as horrifying as it sounds.