Straight No Chaser

Yardsticks

my first ever topless entry. it's hot as the fucking congo out there. and twice as humid. today has been a very bad day. i'm sure that statement loses meaning when i make it three or four times a week. you don't have to believe me. i don't care. for once, i don't even care how incisively you might be judging me. i care about nothing right now, or very little, besides what i just did (cried in the car, all the way home), what i'm doing (writing a journal entry, sans blouse) and what i'm about to do (retreat to my room and fall asleep with the director's commentary to "secret window" humming in the background). the latter is very typical, very old-school shannon-style. i used to live one hundred percent in my head, in cocoons like that, where it was just me and a movie, me and a good song, me and a notebook, me and the wonders of my own fingernails, or whatever. and everything that wasn't me was hazy, minimally there. it was mostly just me.

(anticlimactically, i've put on a shirt, a tank top that makes my collarbones jut out, and i've switched black dress pants for the skirt that makes it look like they sandblasted my thighs and my butt.) there were times when i had, like, zero friends. lots of times like that. not because i was exceptionally weird or repulsively brilliant or ugly or smelly or anything. i just didn't. i didn't try and i didn't care. starting in high school it wasn't like that anymore; i always had one core group of two or three people to keep me tethered to the real world, and that's when problems started. then and in fourth grade, when there was kelli. and then again in college, when there were others. being a loner seemed like it sucked at the time, but now, looking back, i kind of want that. i yearn for that. i would love, right now, to really not care what is going on outside of my room. i've never done drugs, never been hooked on anything external, and never needed to. i had moments of clarity all the time, back when it was just me. and i didn't really think much about whether i liked myself then, either. it was really nice.

my fucking head hurts. it always does when it's this hot. but i kind of want to go outside and just lie there, blacken and frizzle, like a leek. seven or eight years ago i'd have done it, grabbed a book and stumbled outside with a beach towel, read until i conked out, woken up with a sunburn. i'm not quite that stupid anymore. considerably less so, in fact. but still not so smart that i'll actually fix my biggest problem, or address any of the slightly smaller ones, rather than just whining and saying "fuck" a lot.

shannnnnonnnnnnnnn don't be discourrragggeeedddd. says my subconscious, only her voice sounds a lot like mort rainey's, and it's hopelessly confusing.

let me write you something, just to prove i still can. something short, while certain more difficult tasks simmer on the sizzling surfaces of my overheated mind. it's hot and my head hurts, and now, with any luck, i'm going to sleep.