The Prius has been on one bar of gas for three days, so I joked with Lukas before leaving tonight, saying -
    “Do you think I’ll make it up Elliott and around the bend to the Chevron?”
He said, “I think you will.”

I drove the car, and I reached the gas station, but all the machines were off - it was closed. So I drove a little further, praying the whole time I could make it, and after one left - then another - the car rolled in front of the pump without issue. I had the money for gas - a little miracle in and of itself - and I stood alone under the light and felt the liquid move beneath my palm.

[REMOVED]

I’ve been building a playlist for my more anxious moments. It’s all driving tempo, constant drums, screaming. It’s a fools errand to change these moods, I reason, but if I put something with a constant beat on, some lyrics to yell, I can mouth them without noise in my room. I can tire myself out like a dog.

[REMOVED]

My therapist is goal oriented. He says:
    “What do you want?”
I say:
    “Money, really, I think. I’m always so stressed out. I know I’m smart enough. I failed out of school because I didn’t have the work ethic. Other stuff happened, but that’s out of my control. I should have been better.”
He says:
    “Let’s work on school, then. What do you need to do to go back to school?”
And I outline the steps, the classes, when I last heard the numbers five years ago. Because the truth is I haven’t been able to look at anything school related for the past five years. The thought of confronting my transcript summons within me a deep desire to cry. A lot of things do. I never do cry, but I feel the want. That’s enough emotion, I think. That’s control.

The next session, my therapist says:
    “I think you should seek a new therapist.”

I’m obsessed lately with the base questions. I’ve been thinking of a branding campaign for my band - WHO IS ROLEPLAYING? And it’s all pictures of me:

• Standing in a forest in the rain, soaked to the core
• In a beautiful dress, on a small stage
• In a harness that actually fits me, instead of sagging ever so slightly, afraid it might bind me too tight
• As a child, on a grand stage

More recently, but perhaps not very recently, I talked with a friend about the aftermath of my ex’s manic episode. And the line that stuck to me I can’t remember in full, but it was to the effect of -
    “Of course you’re having a trauma response! You went through a traumatic event!”

He outlined it so plainly, and I couldn’t really argue the fact. I still spend nights flashing back to those first few weeks, when I would spend days shaking, worried my roommate would suddenly kick me out, or that my ex was going to fly across the country and stab me, or other irrational thoughts that had enough of a basis in reality they took hold in my mind like so many lice. Nowadays, I simply think the more rational variants of those thoughts:

• A certain subset of people might know who I am, and hate me, or even be slightly wary of me.
• These people are also all the people I would ever want to like me.
• Therefore, I am doomed forever.

But trauma, to me, what’s missing from trauma is retribution. If I was traumatized, then I deserve something back. Then I have the right to take something - I don’t know what it is, but something - back by force. I don’t know how I would do it, and I don’t know how I would measure it, but I know exactly what I want back. I want security in myself back, and I don’t care what it costs them. Because they deserve to feel this way, and I know they don’t.

I am loathe to admit this, and I know it makes me an evil person. So I do nothing, because by doing nothing, I remain good. If I do the “right thing,” and sacrifice my own health to achieve the right thing, I will be rewarded. I am unsure how - but surely, it must be. And to avoid thinking about what I “deserve” - what a selfish concept! - instead, I do not frame this as trauma. It’s not trauma. It’s a thing that happened. I’m over it. It was pretty funny.

I gave two weeks notice yesterday to Starbucks. I’ve worked there a long time now. Almost four years.

I was talking with Lukas earlier in my shift, and he said he’d gone to a concert Micol had put on a few months ago. I went, what concert? I talked with Micol so much when we still worked together. I listened to their music on Bandcamp, and thought it was good, and would have liked to see them. Lukas said, it was a few months ago now.

It was a long time ago, now. These are things I’d never know.

My ex unfollowed me on twitter recently. I only realized it as I was writing this. Ok, I guess.

I met someone at work today, a new transfer who I haven’t got a read on. At the end of his shift, he asked if I had a Discord, because I looked like “someone who had a Discord.” You wound me, Noah.

He messaged me when I got home today with a picture of his cat. “Look how beeg my cat is,” he said. “Like 18lbs.”

I realized in that moment I didn’t know how to reply, how a person normally replies to this, so I didn’t say anything at all.

My habit of muttering to myself has been getting worse in the past few weeks. I’ll think of something, follow some thought down to a logical conclusion, I’ll go, “notbe, can’tbe,” something like that, loudly, like a verbal expellation. It happens a lot in the shower. Recently it’s happening playing video games.

I left Starbucks, then I lost my job at my smaller coffee shop, not even for performance reasons but simply financial. I put my faith in a small business owner. What a fool I was.

I started a new job, and they aren’t giving me even the measly amount of hours they promised me. I put my faith in a small business owner again. What a fool I was.

Half the reason I’m probably putting out some sort of compilation of my music is that I can’t make music anymore. I’ve been trying, and I can’t write anything new.

“WHO IS ROLEPLAYING?” See, I’ve been asking myself that question a really long time. Nothing, it turns out. AI art. Worse!

At my new job, I drive all over the Greater Seattle Area catering coffee carts for various big companies. The company I worked at today I cannot mention. I was under a blanket NDA. I thought this would make the job exciting and important. It was an advertising firm. They had their all-hands meeting in the room with me, and everyone was talking about conquering land.

Yesterday, I worked at a conference of Nurse Anesthesiologists. (I had to google that word for its spelling.) I imagined everyone at the conference knocking each other out demonstrating new drugs, and then others in the room clapping. I was hoping to step over snoozing bodies. Instead, the booth directly across from me showed a live X-Ray of a beating heart, and you could slow it down by interacting with a dummy on a table. The booth next to them had a foam Hank Hill ass with a defined spine you could inject into. Two booths down from that were pretzels.

My job was not to make drinks - instead, I pressed a button on a latte art machine that would raise the freshly made latte up to a food-ink printer and print the word “Anesthesia” on the top of the cup. For six hours of this, I made probably $100 after taxes. The gentleman running the booth firmly pressed five twenties into my palm as we were packing up the cart, which I think he would have been aghast to know was doubling my pay. I did not tell him.

Things cannot get better for me if I interfere - I am realizing this now. To wit, here is a valuable reframing of Closure 2:

• When I was drifting along life with my eyes closed, I ended up in a top-tier liberal arts college with a full scholarship.
• When I attempted to make a friend independently and integrate myself with a larger community, I ended up alone in NYC on Thanksgiving. It turned out I had no friends.
• When I attempted to acknowledge my academic failings and rectify them instead of simply playing teacher’s pet, I was academically suspended from school.
• When I attempted to carve my own path in life by leaving my family home, I ended up broke, with five digit credit card debt.
• When I attempted to bring my romantic partner to Seattle, generating much of said debt in the process, I got vomit on my carpet and a lot of sticky notes.
• When I attempted to then impose some basic terms on that romance (“we need a plan for the future”), said partner split with me then said to many others I was a controlling person.
• When I attempt to bring myself to socialize, going out to bars (with other furries!), I invariably end my nights feeling more isolated and fearful.

Here now is a version of my life where I do not interfere:

• I could have somehow worked my way through college.
• I could have put aside childish things like “friends” or “community” for the ultimate happiness bringer of “a steady career that pays money which can be used to buy goods and services.”
• I could have simply allowed myself to drift along a strange pseudo long distance relationship until it ended with a whimper, as those tend to do.
• I could have simply stayed inside, and give up this “friends” and “community” bullshit for good. Money!

But I can’t go back to that, I think, because I’ve lost something, and I know I’ve lost it, and I think it’s gone for good.

And I can’t tell you when - all at once or over time, when I left college, when I left Starbucks, who fuckin' knows. But it’s gone. Some fundamental joy and curiosity that formed part of my being is gone. When I worked at Fred Meyer, I’d have a 15 minute walk from the bus stop, and I remember occasionally I would think of a tune and hum it into my phone microphone, and then I’d go home and work on a demo.

I haven’t written anything “new” since 2021. A few one-off things that feel forced, uninspired. Nothing, really. Most of what I’ve “recorded” over the past two years - with any real effort behind it - is re-recordings. So it goes.

Occasionally I can reach towards something but it just leaves me. There’s no spark. I’ve always understood myself to be weaker than my peers in any given artistic pursuit. I’m too proud to beg, yet simultaneously begging for someone to give me a direction to go and how to get there. It’s, art isn’t supposed to be like that, right? I’ve always understood myself to be less inspired, and, for a period of time that was OK and I was doing it for fun, but now it’s not fun anymore. “Art is the combination of influences, the synthesis,” well I’m not synthesizing anything anymore. It’s gone! And I consume and I consume and it doesn’t matter.

(and then of course 3/4 of the visual art I make is just me trying to get off. probably most of my problems would be solved if i didn’t have sexual desires, I think about that a lot. i would make far more interesting art, probably.)

I hate all the things I want.

There is no point to any of it. I have gotten, primarily through luck, everything I could have possibly wanted or needed to make good art, good music, or even to just enjoy life. I look at everything I have and I know it should be enough.

But I am so scared. And every time I go out, I feel eyes digging into me. And I get two drinks in at Pony and it doesn’t matter, I’m as anxious as a dog at the vet. And I am so surrounded by people I want to meet and talk to and I just know I can’t make friends, not by initiating, every time I reach out, maybe I put too much of myself into those moments, maybe I’m extremely rejection sensitive, who knows.

But I’ve never even made a friend by actively directly interacting with anyone, and that’s fucking pathetic. I mean, full stop. I have friends, but never by direct contact. Jesus fucking christ, this whole thing is so self-pitying.

Last time I wrote these in the abstract of an anxious life on a cusp, and now I’m just recognizing that everything only gets worse. And I keep on feeling, well, maybe this is the week/month/year I get better at things, but it turns out that I just fucking suck and everything I do just gets worse. And what I should have done from day one (and I have always known this, of course, but I am loathe to admit it) is shut the fuck up.

[REMOVED]

This weekend I think I will stare at some sports until I have enough energy to nurture and then lose hope again. So goes the cycle.

Maybe I actually just need to start smoking weed again. Maybe cigarettes. I love the smell of cigarettes.

It’s so difficult to articulate what it feels like losing your spark to someone who still possesses theirs. I mock myself thinking performance is reality.