"You Never Knew" by Negative Gemini.


I thought a lot about dying today. I mean, compared to normal, that is. I think about dying all the time, but today I thought about it more frequently. My parents drove down south to visit my aunt and uncle at their new house, and I had to take them to my other aunt and uncle's house so they could carpool. Coming back from there meant driving along the road where I got into the accident last year. Although I'd driven that way by myself since the accident, it had been a pretty long time, and my mom kept asking if I would be okay. I told her it didn't really matter, because I get anxiety now whenever I go around a curve anyway (it's just that the amount of anxiety varies).

The whole way home, I imagined what would happen if another car hit me on the road, or if I didn't brake in time and slammed into another car. When would my parents find out? When would my friends find out? Would I die on the road or would they cart me to a hospital first? I thought about what it was like to be in the car for the accident last year, and the noises, and hearing myself screaming without realizing that it was coming from me. When the car landed upright, I sat there staring ahead, gripping the steering wheel hard, my whole body rigid and tense. When I heard someone calling out to me, asking if I was able to get out of the vehicle, it was like waking up from a dream, and I couldn't really understand what had happened or how I got there. Then I realized that the radio was silent.

It's hard for me to drive without music playing. If there's nothing to occupy my white noise thoughts then there's more space for anxiety. I guess music is kind of like a security blanket for me in that way. It helps drown out the bad stuff in my head.

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My friends were busy tonight, so I went to the art walk downtown by myself. It was... a strangely emotional experience. In the quilt and textile museum I saw some quilts that were the winning pieces in the Japan Handicraft Instructors Association, and they were absolutely amazing. I don't think I've ever been so stunned by quilts before. I wish I had taken pictures of more of them... I only got one picture, of a quilt named "I touched your scar in the dark". For some reason beyond my descriptive abilities, the name of that quilt struck me deeply. It evoked this intensely intimate, vulnerable imagery, as well as feelings of loss, distance, loneliness, and pain. It reminded me of lying awake in the dark next to a sleeping figure, physically close but... alone.

I think, no matter what I might feel for the person sleeping next to me, if they're asleep and I'm awake, it is lonely to be the only conscious body in the bed. The separation feels so profound, even though I know that in theory I could wake them up if I wanted to. It feels like an uncrossable distance, a metaphysical Grand Canyon. Seeing as how I find it very difficult to sleep around other people, I've been in this lonely spot a fair number of times, now.

Despite my dislike of platitudes, there is something I find fascinating about clich�s, and I often find myself unraveling them in my mind. "So close, and yet so far" is such a tired and overused expression that it's practically meaningless, but it does succinctly describe the feeling of being awake next to someone asleep, in a way. I mean, it takes all of the emotional complexity and depth out of it, but it does apply. I've had this longstanding habit of using these kinds of sayings and aphorisms as axioms in the logical propositions I spin for myself about life. I don't know why; I guess maybe I just like to reinterpret what I know until it makes sense within the current framework of my life. These little sayings are like shortcuts, verbal placeholders in my philosophical formulas.

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I think, once I have some spending money, I'm going to get this book:

The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel by David Levithan.

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Last night, after my weekly Skype call with friends, Sean and I stayed on for awhile and talked, just the two of us. I ended up opening up to him about a number of things that have been on my mind, and... it was hard, and it was sad, but I felt heard, and that was nice. Back when we first became friends I felt like I could be open with him, but there was a long period where I didn't feel like he was really listening to me, so I didn't talk to him as much about things, and I felt like we grew a little more distant. But yeah... last night was better. There's no resolution, but I didn't need a resolution, I just wanted to feel understood, I guess. That's all I really want, most of the time. It just happens very rarely. Sometimes I wonder if the part of me that lets me feel connected to other people broke a long time ago.

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