In an effort to clear my head before sleep, an uncharacteristically uncryptic set of words. 

Today was difficult. Most of the last few days, difficult. 

Ridiculous, really. Here, these tasks, not back-breaking. Illness that could be so much worse. The sense of shame I feel in response to my own weakness is, perhaps, my most debilitating weakness. 

I realize you have a cold, but you can write a fucking email without letting panic crawl up all your limbs.

I realize you have a difficult combination of ambition and sloth, but you can live your life without spending quite so much of it berating yourself for not doing more. 

A migraine lay me low in the bed of a man I adore, and I felt briefly the sickly sweet temptation of the give-up girl I have at moments been. Let me just lie here for days, set down all the things that keep me running so frantically from place to place. But no. That is not my style, not for years. And while beds are more appealing with men in them, a great deal of the allure is in those who will eventually have places to be, who expect the same of me, because the world is full of things to throw yourself into.

I am in such a better place generally, the last month or so, than I have been in ages. I have mostly disentangled myself from the thick pitch of one of the worst depressive episodes I’d had in years. But my anxiety this week has been at points almost intolerable. 

It is perhaps the various minor stresses of graduate school, when I’m itching to only focus on my project–when that doesn’t terrify me to the point of paralysis–and feel so ready to be out of school again. It is also the desire to immediately make plans for a future that is not quite close enough for me to do so, a few too many steps in the way between, a few more questions to be answered. There’s a part of me that wants to run away back to Los Angeles immediately and be on vacation forever. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time. 

There are of course exceptional moments: pride or at least relief in the face of completed tasks, laughing until I cry with my best friend, drinking and dancing and beautiful sounds, dressing like a fool, free drugs and dumb jokes and your body and how could days really be that bad when I’ve seen your cum glinting in the winter sunlight and you smile that dumb way I really like after you’ve said something clever and I have some friends that are really really great and for five minutes I’m not flat broke and I get to make art a lot and fuck it’s not even that cold out?

I guess what I am saying is I need to get my shit a little more together without beating myself up. I guess what I’m saying is that’s hard for me. I need constant reassurance and snacks, like a little nervous dog when I want to be a majestic wolf-summoning witch woman. 

I guess really what I’m saying is that I need to lay off the extra-caffeinated Starbucks, because it gives me panic attacks that make me feel aggressively inadequate, and yes I know exactly how not punk rock that sounds.