Feelings of death creep through. Missing someone to the extent of self-hatred cannot be healthy. Mourning comes in waves, even still. Flash floods of remembering what will never be. Hanging on to a lost cause must be detrimental to ones health. Today, I lay dying, dead to the world. I am alone. Earth shattering forces drive into the only place that ever felt like home. Grief builds igloos in preparation for winter. Months to go before it is once again felt twofold, in a literal sense. He won’t be coming back, no, not this time. I will remain, stuck fixated.

An eagles talons stretch down my throat reaching for the organ that fails to cease. Ticking like a time bomb afraid to go off. We all dream of the end, we crave it with desirous envy. I scream bloody pleas begging to be dropped from the sky, flying overhead the peasants who never had an idea that this goes on above their melodramatic lives. They plead for so much more and then cry when they receive what they didn’t know they didn’t need. Fools. Petty fools. A lifetime of loss accumulates into a heaping pile steaming of insecurities and apathy.

There are days when a tortured soul can find no solace. Then there are days where chaos is a past dream and waters remain placid. (I thought I heard him cry.) Docile winds and a lack of undertow and riptides, energy is at an all time peak. Drawing smiley faces on suns and curls of grey exiting chimneys. The world sits peacefully in stasis, everything is alright. So you leave your safety net, you step out of bounds, to shake things up. Do the unthinkable, accident or not, for the sake of something to do. A new focus and muse.

From an innocent creature I carelessly stole life. A devoted life taken away. Twenty years of unforgettable friendship. I’ll never forget all the times I’ve come home, found him lying in the flowers, and had to walk up to him to poke him to ensure he was still alive. As a child I’d put a laundry basket over him, top it with a blanket, and watch him blindly walk into things. Never could I have imagined I would be the cause of his ultimate blindness, creating such pressure that his eyeball balloons and blood pours from his mouth and nose.

Deep and huge as an iceberg. Clenched forces constricting my heart. In the face of death I become an invalid. Paralyzed by dreams so surreal I forget it actually happened. The things I’ve seen, this is for life. Images burned into my brain. Pain escaping his face, his body contorted and contracting. I am so sorry. Waking in sweat and disbelief. Tossing and turning, I believe I kicked the dog off my bed. Feeling followed by everything I never meant to have let happen. They know it was an accident. They forgive me. But this, this I carry for life.

I realize everything I write is the same. Everything I say shares the same taste. Grieving for the father can be easily transmuted into grieving for the cat. My life force is a phone call away; the phone is a million miles away. Surrendering to the pain seems mostly logical when contemplating amongst star lit skies. I am one necessary symptom away from post traumatic stress disorder. (I am sorry – [I’m a psychology major] I self-diagnose). If anyone else were in my shoes then perhaps they would understand. He was so much more than just a cat. I’m still sorry.

It makes me feel physically ill. The only thing that makes this different than all the other losses I've mourned is that this one is pretty much worse on different levels. The physical absence of the cat is a stabbing pain through the heart, piercing my throat. To know that it is my fault: unfathomable. Someone needs to hate me for it, and maybe they do. I hate myself for it, times ten. At least my dad has someone with him now. They go way back. And no one will ever know exactly how much that cat meant to me.

Comfort found within the walls of my skin is lost, stolen by me. I want to do something. To run, scream, cry, unbury. Paralysis overwhelms my senses and I feel nothing but loss. Remaining stiff, in states of stasis unrest, as inwardly dead as the beings I have killed. I am one; I am none. I have killed. I may kill again. The world is full of cruel twisted ironic fate. The story gets sadder, there is always room for me. As with other defining moments, I’ll be done with this when I’m done. It’s over when it’s over. Promise

The chaotic uneven time before my period. Sometimes it’s worse than other times. This time you can say: you’re not who you used to be. And if I think fast enough I’ll ask: who is it I used to be? Nobody knows, that’s why nobody asks. All the world is wrong. Sometimes nothing is okay. Losing words will never hurt as much as losing living organisms that you had known for 20 and 23 years. But a little understanding is far too much to ask for. Please, don’t inconvenience yourself on account of me. I’ll be fine on my own.

When this is who I am, I do not know what it is I am. Stagnant in bloody seas with burning cinder blocks like Buddhists protesting Vietnam. Speckled drops of insecurity reign. Everything that was once good is now rotten. Soured and trite. This is the strange in-between cusp of eerily empty to overwhelmingly overloaded. Nothing is sacred and all can be taken away instantly. Fiery unsettled comets careen toward every tenet held. Run, run I say. Stammering collective vows of silence. Forget everything I’ve ever or never said. It’s not like I ever meant a thing to you anyways.

Creativity is putting into the world something that wasn’t there before. By that definition I am technically creative. Hell, with that I am almost a prolific creator. The thing is that there needs to be boundaries. That is too broad. Who is judging the quality? Should it even matter? Does my future hold more or less creativity? Will I live to see it? Coming up with questions is easy, lately. Answers are what I seek, to no avail. Surety is never to be found. Different avenues taken should lead back to the same outcome – but that is hardly ever so.

Stopped. Cold fingers grasping for icy intentions. and then my father died. Once upon a time. Frozen. Deathly afraid to throw myself out there. Eventually I’ll have to give it up because I’ve been losing all along. The situation is critical and the outcome is dire no matter what happens. I used to have the best job in the world, one I hated but knew I couldn’t live without. I knew I couldn’t. But I tried. And now I’m tearing us all apart with my indifference toward everything other than the most important thing. The answer. I wish I could.

Again? I’m dragging my ass through my daily words. I haven’t written in my journal in at least four days. Normally I write at least once every single day without fail. What is going on with me? It’s either a lot of nothing or a lot of something – those are the two things that can keep me from writing. It’s a sad day when 100 words seems like too much. Mojo. It’s lost. Misplaced along side a missing father figure. I gather prospects like a rock collects moss. My peat fails to stick. Bryophytes. The only nonvascular plants. Bah humbug.

Writing this new story idea should not be hard. But yet it is, very much so. To think of it in scenes seems the most logical approach. I wrote a bit of an outline. I broke it down play by play. Kinda. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. There is no immediate theme, but that often comes during or after the writing. I don’t even know if it has a moral. It has plot. It is all plot. One short story to be cooked up, conjured up through my own innate ability. I have written a novel.

In one day I have read The Bell Jar cover to cover. My number one favorite book. I used to read it once a year but that habit faded long ago. This summer I read it in hopes of it having the same uncontainable effect on me that reading Catcher in the Rye had last summer. To no avail. Never any avail. But I had a backup plan. A book on writing, a book on writing short stories. Plus I’m nearly done reading Plath’s journals, albeit not unabridged. We can’t all win. Someday though. We are soul mates. In death.

Slowly, then suddenly, thoughts change to do I really have to write here everyday?

The world fails to understand. Even upon death they’ll have no idea who I was. This is how a shell of a girl looks, this is how she walks, talks, and goes through the motions. This is how she dies. Trails of chaos in my wake leave you gasping for breath. A breath from the air I have stolen from one. Stifled apologies, they never meant anything to me anyways. They say I haven't been the same, and I wonder how they think I would be.

There is someone out there, alive, who can make sense of me. A mere phone call away, yet the distance is frightening. Sunshine is a mockery to all I feel. Walking the dog in the rain has been the only thing that felt right in days. Should I even continue to care? to show remorse? to eat? to breathe. In solitude I rejuvenate, only to be beat down once more, and then again. A toothache is just another way to say the world has pained me so. There is a gaping hole following me, threatening to swallow me without regret.

Sun feels gentler in the morning as if to say sorry for being gone so long. We all disappear into the night when the moon ensconces our existence. The limitless sky; heavens. Hells. Patterns fall upon the wall, the sun seeps through trees between branches. Everything leaves eventually. Bask until the sun grows mad, red with fury. It’ll beat you purple. Blinded by it’s goodness turned wretched. Swimming in a sea of sweat. Hated with a passion only until it goes away again. Everything goes away in the end. But don’t cry upon departure, the sun does return. I promise.

Even if I do call, even if we did talk, I wouldn't say the one thing I should have been saying all along. I won't tell her how deep rooted this seed of self-hatred has planted itself and how every event seems to only worsen it. This is one I take the grave, my early grave to match the early graves I grieve over. Nobody has come to save me, in all the years this has persisted I have been alone, dangerously alone. This time shall be no different, except that it may end different. Well, it just may end.

I have a plan for next months writings. I may even start this month. Writing prompts. So simple, really. I need it. It’ll be good for me. As it stands now all I ever write about is death, depression and/or writing. Re-pet-i-tive. I miss him, I miss him, I’m sad and I can’t write.. blahblah. I still believe that I can write but I just don’t. But sometimes I’m not sure anymore. I know I have talent, I can utilize it when I need it. Obviously entries like this don’t utilize it. I wish I had meaningful things to say.

We were joined, like form and shadow. The world worked against us but we stuck together. Trudging through the thicket merged us closer. Answers rested in questions unasked. We were one; we were alone – as cold as the darkest shadow hiding true intentions. Dead – he is now dead – frozen to death. Still, there exists no separation. Lingering in crevices, depicting tragedies – it is all the same. Stop, stop caring. Stop reading. Do not tell me this will be okay. The shape of loss never lies. I only wish to die alongside the forgotten. Die with me, I plead to you.

The photographs were curled with age. Frayed edges decorated a few, untidily. Somebody had handled these often; somebody loved them dearly. On the wet pavement in the back of an alleyway was no place for the obvious heirlooms to rest. The topmost photo was sepia tinted. I stared longingly as I knelt and held it in my hands. A moment of time held captive, unknowing of what the future holds nor revealing what the past held. An empty shoebox, at a distance, seemed to be the source of the spill. Someone still had to have dropped, or thrown, the box.

This might be the city’s idea of a good laugh. Or a needless overuse of power. Regardless, I’m forced to feel like a criminal sneaking recyclables into the neighbors bins because I cannot do my own recycling. If your building is more than a three family house you have to pay for trash pickup from independent companies. My mom and my brother won’t pay for recycling to be picked up, I don’t blame them really. I blame the city. There’s no sicker a feeling than throwing a metal can or plastic bottle into the trashcan instead of the recycling bucket.

In a few more days I will be healed. Life will commence once again. I will be sane. I will quit smoking. The edge will have been pulled away from me. As of right now, as of this entire past month since July third, I have been teetering, on the brink of collapse. And death. A death I so long for, the eternal rest and blackness. The epitome of nothingness. Seinfeld. The show about nothing. Any surprise that it is my favorite show in all the world? I have no real desires. Nothing I can’t do without. Everything is material.

Could this lady possibly have any idea of how vital she is to my known universe. Without her in the background I am lost. A little girl abandoned in the grocery store. The shopping cart with the inevitable bad wheel. She is my oil; my watermelon. And I survive without her only because I know she is there whenever I am here, there. Where? The fiery pits. The shadowed side of the moon. In her the idea of sanity remains intact. Tomorrow and the next day, everything is guaranteed. My world continues its rotation, knowing it comes back to her.

Vladimir Nabokov. Can we say swoon. Moved to a multitude of awe-inspired levels, I am mesmerized. From the library I took out a huge book of his short stories. This should be required reading for the world. These words speak to me, me specifically. He has managed to articulate all the things I only wish I were clever enough to say. And his stories about writers/writing are simply amazing. Then there’s Perfection in which he invents a perfect syllogism. I.Only.Wish. Never shall I write a bad story. I’ve been shown the light.

Short stories make the world a better place.

Tired looking men in work stained clothes. Disheveled hair atop weary eyed women. Flood gates open upon the five o’clock bell. The world turns a different shade of blue. Glum feelings trail those leaving their second homes. Day care centers release the animals held captive for the day. Echoes turn to screams. Tears fill oceans. No one is ever happy. Eat to live. Work to eat. Live to work. Tomorrow will be much of the same. Weekends transpire to more tasks, equally daunting. No one wins, ever. Wishing for the end only pushes it further from your reach. Dead air.

We were comfortable. Swaddled in blankets, shielded from the world. Dreary lives a thing of the past; you and I all that survives. The scent of love lingered on our tongues. Never forget that time, the time in which we lived for each other, our reasons for getting out of bed each morning. I remember how you slept, you would awake to find my eyes planted to yours, yours with your green sparkle of eternity. We were supposed to grow old together, remember? Beauty is hardly a word capable of describing your true essence. To me, you were comfort, always.

Alone again. Wrote of wanting to die. You’d think it were merely haphazard death wishes. I kid you not. Life, living, is not for me. Souls tire before birth. Worn down to the point of corrosive rust. Nothing excites me. I can do without everything. My dad and my cat together, I reek of jealousy, envying what I imagine to be the perfect heaven. Dying young has never scared me, I wait in anticipation for I know it will occur. If I make it to thirty-five then I shall remain. But letting go is too easy; my grip continuously loosens.

My personality is such that I can go outside with the look of intent on my face, lie down on damp earth and take calculated pictures of dandelions without so much as a what are you doing? from anyone. They accept me as I am, including all of my idiosyncrasies. I can lie in front of the porch and people will simply step over or around me rather than dare to ask me to move and risk losing the perfect angle. That is who I am. Rather than questioning, people around me will simply wipe the mud off my face.

My bike flies for me as I remain planted to earth obeying laws of gravity no matter how hard I try to defy them for the sake of a rush to blood to my heart as I nearly over extend myself and the bicycles capabilities. That fun hill could easily be the death of me. Anything to make me feel alive inside; careen through the air, break free of annoying barriers taunting in the background. This is something to live for, a craving like a drug. The endorphins make it easier to will myself out of bed the following morning.