July 1996
I wasn’t ready to move back to San Francisco. I wasn’t ready to leave the house in Berkeley. It feels more like a displacement than a move.
I’ve cut off some acquaintances. I decided to stay in touch with SHAG, they might be valuable connections. Kevin I’m staying in touch with; Cat I’m staying in touch with even though we’re drifting apart. I’m getting along better with her housemates, Daniella and Emily. Tria is gone, as are all the remnants of Oberlin in the East Bay. Good riddance.
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My car got broken into when I was visiting Emily and the CD player was stolen. I drove to the police station and filed a report and had the window fixed within 15 hours. It was no big deal. It’s either that or I’m repressing again. I really think it was no big deal. I don’t feel violated or invaded at all. It was purely material. It was just an annoyance I had to deal with. I have too many problems to let myself be caught up with such trivial things. I could have laughed.
I’m glad it happened at Emily and Cat’s place. If it happened in front of my new place so soon after moving in, that might have made me feel even more apprehensive about my move back to San Francisco. It’s not the greatest neighborhood. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about my car getting broken into anymore.
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Cat organized an overnight camping trip somewhere up in Marin and a bunch of people went. Not the best thing for an anti-social like me to go to, but I’m glad I went. After dark, everyone was seated talking around a picnic table lighted by lanterns and camping candles.
I stood away from everyone, watching the scene from a fence that surrounded the campground. No one noticed me slink away. I could hear everyone equally well because I was relatively the same distance away from everyone. Darkness surrounded the glow of the scene, making it seemed isolated and contained.
It was the most enjoyable conversation I’ve been in for years, and I wasn’t even a part of it. It was fun just watching, seeing people interact and enjoy themselves and have fun, enjoying each other’s company.
That was what I want to do. I want life to be a spectator sport, I just want to watch. A ghost or an angel. I imagined the spirit or angel that I’ve always felt following me all my life, sitting there with me, next to me on the fence. What she has been doing all my life, I want to do. I want to go around invisible, exerting the subtlest of influences, knowing what’s best, knowing thoughts, whispering suggestions, but not have anyone know why they do what they do or think what they think. I can’t feel anything, I hold no judgments, but I watch and I appreciate.
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I’ve been setting dates to kill myself more often this year than ever before. I’m not sure what the feeling is whenever I get past those dates without killing myself. Blessed? Cursed?
So far, so good, but each time I survive one, I’m a little more wary of the excuses I’m making to stay alive. They are difficult to get through.
Leading up to them, I am psychologically preparing and bracing myself to go through with it. I plan, I go through the scenario, anticipate the feeling, the motions, the emotions, the actions, the act. Try to imagine every bit of the experience. After I survive them, all I have are questions, feelings of doubt, wondering why I’m still alive. Feelings of guilt about surviving when certainly some part of me had died.
Do I deserve to die? I know I don’t deserve to live. I’m living in a twilight zone between not deserving to live and not knowing if I deserve to die. Dying is a privilege. It is a rite of passage. It means you reached the ticket gate and your ticket was accepted. You can go through. I guess I’ll know when I deserve it. I will have succeeded in doing it. Unless there was another way for me to go. That would be the best. Until then, I will keep setting dates and they will come, and the pattern is that they will also always go.
