March 1996
Diem had been getting my postcards. I wasn't sure whether she had or not. I don't know how many had to be forwarded to her since I don't know when she moved from Oberlin to Cleveland. She didn't feel that it was important to tell me I suppose.
For the past year she hasn't been saying anything in her very brief and sketchy letters, which never gave details and never told what she felt. And when she did mention her feelings, they felt glossed over as if to make everything seem fine.
So I wrote to her and told her our friendship was over. I told her where my life was and where I was in my life. I told her that I thought she had a lot of issues and hoped that she was dealing with them. I told her that I found life sad and people disappointing. I told her I loved her and called it quits because I wanted to end the friendship before it deteriorated into nothingness, with nothing good to remember.
I cited how I felt Shiho and I had become pen-pals in 1991 and how I wanted to break off all communications. Shiho meant so much to me that becoming pen-pals was too degrading to the meaning she had to me. But we didn't cut communications because Shiho didn't want to and we ultimately lost everything. Including the friendship and whatever meaning we had to our few memories. I didn't want that to happen with Diem.
I never found out what it was like between Diem and Amina after we broke up.
Ana Claire was just as easy. She called and got a cold response from me, and when she asked if I didn't want to talk to her, I told her not particularly. But that wasn't sad, and Ana Claire wasn't a disappointment. She was everything I thought she was and hoped she’d be, and in the end, that's all she was.
Feelings don't matter anymore. Neither does trust.
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Diem out, Ana Claire out, Luyen out. Luyen visited for five days because she's thinking of transferring to a college in the area. It did not go well. On her second night here, we got into a big discussion about “us” and “our” communication, and that discussion should never have happened. The assumptions, the gall, it was offensive and presumptuous. For someone who I hadn't seen for however long, she certainly took liberties about the things she felt she could say.
I can't even go into it, it was so appalling. I don't care about whatever she thought was a problem. It didn't deserve any discussion at all. If she has a problem with me, she can get the hell out, we're not that close anymore. What, is she living in a time warp? No one is going to have a problem with me and stay in my life anymore. I don't care about anyone's complaints about me. I am who I am and I'm not going to subject myself to criticism regarding who I am anymore. If anyone has a complaint, I'm the last person to whom they'd want to bring it.
It's almost laughable. I'm getting rid of people right and left, and she comes waltzing in accusing me of whatever and complaining about what is between us. Accusations? Get out. Complaints? Get out.
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I hate all this. I hate my life and I hate myself. I hate people and dealing with them. I hate walking down the street and seeing them. I try my best to keep my line of sight above everyone's heads so I don't have to look at people. I haven't done anything with my life and I have absolutely nothing to show for it except a lot of material possessions.
I don't care about anything. No more deep or in-depth discussions about anything with anyone. I'm just not interested. Politics, race, religion, injustice, inequality, civil rights, international relations; it's all talk and the world goes on the way it goes, and I can't even pay attention to my own needs. I'm not even listening to myself.
It's not better to burn out than fade away. I kind of like fading, slowly disappearing from peoples' lives, then remove any significance or presence I may have to them, then remove myself physically from their reality.
I told myself that I never want to feel this way again, that I wouldn't let myself. Well, here I am feeling this way again and I resolutely do not want to continue, to wait until things change. But what am I doing about it? Waiting until I'm 34? I don't like people or dealing with them, I can't communicate with anyone and no one knows what I'm about or where I'm coming from or where I am. It's as if I don't exist.
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I'm living week by week. I'm only living if there is something direct in the next week to live for. It started in February when I put an ad in the Express looking for musicians. Pathetic as it is, I only got one response - a Japanese-Filipino American drummer who's an ex-con. That's what I get? Is someone trying to tell me something? If someone's trying to tell me something, the message isn't being wasted. It's not even pathetic, it's genuinely funny!
That ad ran for three weeks, three weeks to endure. Then Luyen visited and I had to be here for that, then Madoka visited and that was another week. Then I put an ad in the Guardian to run three weeks, another three weeks bought. After that, let's see what keeps me here for another week. That will be the middle of April. On April 15, there will be a photo exhibit at school and I'm going to enter some photos. I can wait for that, too.
Mid-April? Amina's birthday? It's funny finally having a concrete plan. How long has this been coming? More than ten years?
As far back as I learned of a thing called suicide, it has meant something to me, a calling, a destiny. I've been suicidal all my life and never has it been completely gone. This isn't a recurring impulse that comes and goes, it is something that has always been here constantly as far back as I can remember.
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I wonder to myself what I would do if Amina called. I'd have an easier time if she sounded cheerful than if she sounded tentative or careful. I think I could tell her of the two loves I have for her. The human one, which is only a memory, which removed a good half of my trust. And the one that is beyond human, the one that would make it easy to be friends with her and to feel love towards her in that form. I don't know if I would decide to not kill myself if she called. I think it would depend on the circumstances. I would like to think that I would go right ahead with it regardless; having closed that gaping emotional wound she helped inflict.
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I can't begin to express how frustrating it is being human, being alive. Alive? I don't even know what that means. A study appeared in today's paper that tea and fruits have something in them which encourages the production of some kind of blood cell which is beneficial in preventing strokes.
I don't think I understand that impulse to control what our bodies do by controlling what goes into them. I understand a healthy diet to feel good, but to consume something so that certain chemical reactions happen which affects that which in turn helps prevent something as attenuated as strokes? That's just way too high maintenance. That's not being alive. If it takes too much thought to be alive, it isn't being alive.
I hate having to eat. I hate having to shower. I hate dealing with whatever is wrong with my skin which gives me a rash nightly. I hate body functions. I hate anything I need to do. I hate being contained in this skin; these defined borders of my existence which in reality is leaking away. I hate things I enjoy. I hate living. Not because it's miserable being alive, I can see how it doesn't have to be, I just don't like it.
I hate humanity and what it has done to this planet, to its people and cultures. I hate its values and what it emphasizes as important.
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I made contact sheets of two rolls of film that I shot from the end of February into March, and was discouraged by the results. None of the images grabbed me. It was all crap. I wondered if I should give up photography for a while, but I didn't want to join the line of people I've met who "used to do" photography. I don't want to feel like it's something I'm dabbling in and giving it up because it isn't making me feel good.
I only started doing photography a few months ago, what am I expecting of myself? That's no way to learn and grow if it's truly a way I want to express myself. There's so much more to photography than coming up with good prints. This was so basic when I started and was humble enough to not presume I could come up with good prints at all. I just need to go with these shots, pick the images I can remember why I shot them, and print those as best as I can.
