1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I just don’t want to be here anymore. How many times and for how many years have I been saying that? I just don’t want to be here anymore. My physical existence is flesh and blood. I sat in a movie theater yesterday and I felt myself breathe, my muscles, my lungs, what do they do? They give me oxygen, who the hell cares? What the fuck ever. I can’t be doing this.

The frustrations are huge and they grow and grow. Doing something that I don’t know why I’m doing it. To make money? Not knowing who I am or where I came from or what I’m about? To have this past but not being able to make sense of it or to have any concrete meaning attached to it? How many times and for how many more years do I have to ask what is the point?

I rearranged my drums again. I think I really like it this time. It sounds really good. Non-drummers don’t know that the arrangement of drums affect how they resonate and how they sound. I’ve never been happy with the sound of the 12" tom as it was set up as rack tom. Positioned as a floor tom, not interacting with the bass drum, has changed the way it resonates.

How’s that for fodder for some psychiatrist? Write about how my existence is unbearable and then go right into something as mundane as the arrangement of my drums.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I have no connection with my past. There is no continuity. From less than five years ago, I’m completely disconnected from my feelings and my being. That was real. This is real. But they are incongruent. I was volatile and self-destructive then, and I was something. I’m passive and floating now, and I am nothing. Is this any way to survive? This is getting so stupid, I’ve been sucked into what I’ve always wanted to avoid. Another reason to once again leave, but it’s harder to leave because this is so hypnotically comfortable, I can do this. But that is all.

I’m about to quit my job, and this is another reason to do it. I need to get back to the place that’s dangerous; no safety net. I can’t quit when I know I necessarily have something else lined up. I need to quit and have that doubt that I’ll be able to get another job. I need to be in that free fall of doubt and uncertainty about what’s immediately in my future.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

These people around me, what are they doing here? Do I have anything to learn from them? Maybe they’re giving me a hint as to what I think is special in a person? Not even for a relationship, just an intimate; a connection.

As for a relationship, at the first mention of other people they’re interested in, it’s automatic - any interest I may have had is gone. I learned from Amina and Shiho never to be someone’s second choice. I’m much too good for that. Even I know that.

I want someone who is passionate about something; motivated and driven and has the clarity to pursue it and is not encumbered by their own fucked up past. I want someone who has struggled and grappled with something but has risen above it.

Hmm, Josephine actually fits that criteria. I don’t know what she was passionate about, but she was about something. I could tell it was there when she laughed; the way she got excited about things. I don’t want someone who is cynical and bored. Too many people around me are cynical and/or bored. Including me.

I don’t want someone with whom I can’t reach any depth in conversations. Recognition and appreciation of one another’s depth is necessary. I can’t even remember the last time I had a conversation that had any depth to it.

I don’t want someone with defenses up. I want someone who sets their sight on me and goes for it and wants to figure out what I’m about. That’s actually really hard because there isn’t a lot attractive about me on the surface to make anyone want to delve further. She has to not be afraid of what I really am.

Politics aren’t too, too important. I’m actually willing to give lots of leeway in regards to politics, but to the extent that they help shape perspectives in general, they have a baseline significance. And the lack of any political awareness in regards to race is intolerable.

I don’t want someone with a lot of anger bottled up inside.

Obviously, this is all to say, I don't want anyone.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I have no friends, no community. I'm listless and drifting. Work sucks, music is sucking, life sucks the most. It has totally stagnated, what I've always been afraid of happening. And things have been getting out of control, discipline is slipping away. I can't relax, I can't stop. I'm too tired and I can't get enough sleep. Cutting is a daily occurrence now. I'm surrounded by people who mean nothing, who I don't care about. I'm in a job that causes stress and I care nothing about. I couldn't give less of a shit whether these people get their Green Cards or not.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Things have gotten bad.

I don’t know what the feeling is exactly, but I know it isn’t good, it’s bad. I’m stuck. I’ve stagnated. I don’t know what I’m doing with myself. I don’t know what to do with myself.

Work is good, but it has created a lot of changes that I haven’t adjusted to. After a productive day’s work, I walk out and wonder what I’m doing with myself, what is my life.

Sometimes I’m depressed, sometimes I’m lonely, a lot of times it’s the weather, a lot of times it’s stress, and almost all the time it’s my old problem with reality and existence. Work has put my life out of balance, but I don’t know how to cut through to the next thing that gives life meaning. That’s what we’re all doing on some level, trying to give our lives meaning. So what gives my life meaning? And to whom?

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Does anyone mean anything to me anymore? I don’t think so, I’m numb to feeling that there is any deep meaning to my friendships and acquaintances. Even Josephine, as attached as I am to her, and as fondly as I remember her, I’m pressed to find the meaning in that relationship that compares to the friendships and relationships that I had in my 20's. Even my re-acquaintances with Vikki and Frances lack what they used to have.

I struggle to think what it means to have someone mean something to me. I can’t imagine meeting someone or getting into a relationship and touching that feeling again. Maybe I’m done with it, like I’m done with relationships and falling in love. Just part of the series of plateaus that indicate I’m in the twilight of my life.

I had a conversation with Lisa earlier this week down at the studio. We went down even though Chris is out of town. We talked about personal stuff, but there was no bonding. It didn’t have any meaning, there were no meaningful connections made.

I have a considerable doubt about my thinking and feeling these days. Hmm, when I put it that way it doesn’t sound so bad; that’s the way it should be. I don’t want to be definite about anything, but I think having a job kinda makes me take the world a little bit more literally and my role in it a little bit more seriously.

There’s a tension in my life now between knowing and not knowing and belonging and not belonging. Actually, all opposites regarding reality and existence are coming into tensions with each other.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I’m getting OK. I think I’m coming to a point of clarity, although I don’t discount that it may be weather-related; two days of 80 degree weather has me blissed out.

I had some break-throughs today. A band confrontation with Josh highlighted that I am different from other people and that I’m comfortable with my approach to life and conflicts. Some things have been reaffirmed such as my comfort and security in my sense of self and not having those things dependent or overly-influenced by what others think.

I recognize that there is a core of pain inside me that makes me somewhat unstable. That is, in fact, a part of me. I don’t have a desire to live a long life and I don’t mind dying. It’s possible that is a manifestation of unresolved issues, but that’s not absolute and I’m not convinced of that. I don’t feel any sense in being so attached to living when you understand the Buddhist principle that physical existence is fleeting and that it’s not all that there is. I appreciate and enjoy life as I’m living it, as it’s here, but the greatest bliss I’ve felt has never made me fear or wish to avoid death. The core of pain inside me is part of my appreciation of life.

I’ve figured out why I’m still a cutter. Cutting is the connection between me in the present and my own past. I don’t have any real reason or need to continue cutting, I do it just because I did it. It isn’t an indicator of lingering issues and problems, it isn’t even hurting me. But what I went through that led me to start and continue cutting is part of me and my identity. However, I’ve changed so much from who I was back then that it’s really important to me to not bury and lose that part of me. Cutting allows me to retain a present connection to my past.

It also serves as a notice to people around me that what they see is not all that there is. That’s actually an important point on why I still cut. It’s not good enough that I have the very noticeable scars on my arms and legs. Healed scars are a record of the past, but don’t say anything about the present and how the past has affected my present and how the present is a continuation of the past.

I was talking to Angie Chen, and we talked about our screwed up pasts and about being screwed up. I dived right into it like someone who knew what he was talking about. And I did know what I was talking about, but it wasn’t who I am now. In discussing those things, I was basically playing the part of what I used to be. And that was strange because that past is so much a part of who I am. There’s a big risk in losing touch with how I got to be who I am, cutting maintains the connection.

So the band is going through a crisis centering on Josh. He’s got some serious issues going on and he’s taking them out on us. He claims he’s unhappy and frustrated with the band’s direction, but all he does is criticize, and contributes nothing constructive. He’s convinced that we need to have a package to sell, but he roadblocks any plans to go into the studio soon. He says he doesn’t want to rush into something when we’re not ready. Who’s not ready? They’ve been together for two years, I’m ready to record. Readiness is not the issue. I’m predicting he’ll be out of the band by the end of May.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Life has been sucking lately. Nothing is wrong with it, it’s just sort of empty and surface-appearance like. Nothing around me has any substance. Ah, it’s March - the start of suicide season. March and April are always the hardest to get through, even knowing I won’t off myself anymore. There’s no connection in my life, and so in these times it feels like I try a little too hard to make a connection and I come across as being desperate. Maybe I need to let go a little more, loosen my grip on reality and feel a little more what’s behind the appearances and within me. That’s the hardest part.

I don’t feel anything anymore, I’ve repressed all my real feelings and they’re deep inside now. I couldn’t conjure them if I wanted to. I have no conception of what they are or what they are like. I don’t feel anymore and anyone who gets too close to those feelings are going to experience a lashing out. Maybe that’s why it was comfortable with Josephine, she never would get that close, she just didn’t have that empathy.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

September 1996

So this is what it feels like knowing that I will never fall in love again. Attraction is just a game. Falling in love is not in my range of emotions anymore. It feels empty. Numb. Interesting. Love is so important.

Turns out that Susan was interested in me way back last Winter. She didn’t think the feeling was reciprocated and it never went anywhere. I actually did have a crush on her. All for the better; we weren’t exactly compatible. I never quite knew where she was coming from. Apparently neither of us were any good at showing our feelings or letting them be known.

I don’t think I can love anymore. Even hearing about Susan, it was just a fanciful thing. A tickling. There’s no way that I could have ever really fallen in love with Susan. We are too different. Just as I could never have fallen in love with Ana Claire.

Maybe I do know what love is. It’s not anything about a person. I still love Amina two and a half years after the fact and our last contact, and considering what happened between us, that’s an incredible statement. I can’t make a list of things about a person that would make me fall in love with her. Anything I can place on a list, I’ve already found and have been disappointed or betrayed by already. There are things I could like about a person, things that would attract me, interest me, but nothing that would necessarily make me fall in love with that person.

Love just happens. When it’s there, you know it. I just know I won’t ever love anyone again. I’m too damaged in myself, much too uncomfortable with who I am to trust myself or like myself being with someone else.

***********************************

Yukiko moved in at the beginning of the month. We get along alright even though she’s kind of conservative and hangs out with mostly white people. She’s one of those Asians.

If we didn’t have to live with each other, we wouldn’t even associate. She’s a lot better to live with than Jeff, who owns this house. He’s also conservative, but in addition he’s also a typical male. He's a male stereotype. He also has a good side, generous, but he's definitely not the type I would hang out with. Yukiko is clean, considerate, open and amiable. Personal feelings aside, she’s a good housemate.

***********************************

I’ve stopped cutting since I’ve moved back to San Francisco. I also haven’t had the drive to set any dates. Since August. The desire to set a date just hasn’t crossed my mind. As part of my personality, however, it’s always there.

Things have been changing. I feel that I have to kill myself, it’s part of my destiny and responsibility. It is what I’m supposed to do, not what I’m supposed to avoid. It’s not a test, but what is supposed to happen.

Sometimes I feel that suicide is not so attractive an option, but in those times I feel even more strongly that it is something I have to do. Those are the times, strangely enough, that I’m most certain that I should kill myself; when I really feel that I don’t want to. Suicide is not a desire that I should succumb to, but an end that I have to learn to accept.

I cannot die in peace. My soul is too tormented for that. I don’t want to. I think that when I die, I’ll spend some amount of time as a ghost of who I am now. Released, with no judgments. But present, damned, chained. But I think I will be reborn. I think I’ve been “good” enough and true enough to myself that I won’t be reborn in a worse position. But I hurt too much and I’m too attached to that hurt that I can’t advance. I have to settle and understand these issues before that happens. I can’t even rest and take a break from the cycle.

Maybe my role as a ghost will be to teach my parents something. They are the ones I’m to “haunt”. I think that my soul will only start to heal once I’ve expanded their minds beyond their narrow conception of life. If I can change them in some way, set them on some sort of path of realization, instead of the smug complacency in the comfort of their materialism, then I can go forward. The longer I live, the less time I’ll have to accomplish it. I need to heal. I’m a long ways from becoming what I want to become.

I want to kill myself for that reason. Because it is my destiny and it may put me in a position where I can do something that would give my life some meaning. Even though it is very unattractive that I care about my parents enough that I’m trying to set them on the right path.

247 19th Ave, #2, San Francisco

Today was the last day of classes for this Fall 1994 semester. How am I doing? Angry and frustrated as ever. More angry. A low-key, subtle, seething anger. That's what I felt as I walked away from school to catch the first 1AX bus of the commute hours.

I called to check in for a catering job I have on Saturday, I paid my rent, finished off one bottle of whisky and bought another, received a utility bill twice what I usually pay because I've been using the heater a lot. I bought a plane ticket to go to New Jersey at the end of December.

For the first time in a while I felt genuinely close to Joy. Like there was something connecting, something worth placing worth in. Not that it's a worthless relationship, per se, it's just that it's a very low-key relationship with not a lot of risk, not a lot of challenge, not a lot of change.

It wasn't overwhelming. She told me of a problem she's having, how she's not satisfied with her life, that it's out of control in a downward spiral. I don't know why, but it was a relief to hear that she was in that position. To hear that she isn't so impenetrable and sequestered in her superiority. To hear her vulnerable and that she isn't complacent about her life. She is striving for something and so maybe her happiness in our relationship isn't some complacent abandon and satisfaction in what I consider the severely mediocre.

On the other hand, she went through the peak of the crisis yesterday. She didn't mention it at all when we spoke yesterday. She said that she wasn't ready to deal with it then, she was still in shock of it and couldn't talk about it then. OK. She brought it up today and told me about it, but only after she talked to her parents about it.

There is a lack of passion in this relationship. It's very cold and calculated. It is complacent. It doesn't bother me. I'm kind of numb to it. It probably doesn't bother her that she couldn't come to me about the problem. That says a lot about the relationship.

I realize I can’t get sucked into her problems because my position in my life is still so fragile. I don’t know if I could have effectively dealt with her problems even if she had brought them to me. So it’s best that I keep a distance. If that’s a problem for her, then it’s her problem, not mine. Eventually this relationship won’t be able to go on if this philosophy is maintained. She will need more from someone than I can give, and she will realize how unsatisfying it is being with someone so different and who makes such completely different assumptions about life and living. So will I.

247 19th Ave, #2, San Francisco

Perhaps what is most upsetting is that I'm not sure how I got here and from where. I know I've matured to a point where I can be less selfish in relationships and not just concentrate on my own needs based on my own pain. I can deal with other people. I can compromise without giving up too much of myself. My fear now is that I'll slip into my old patterns and miss seeing a bigger picture. Why did I get involved with Joy in the first place? Sometimes it's really hard to see it.

Several months ago it was clear that I wanted to win her love and I compromised and bent to win it. Compromised and bent? Isn't that a way of saying I lied to her? That I didn't let her see a genuine article? I knew it was happening then. Now I ask myself how could I have done such an awful, insincere thing (but isn't that what "dating" is about?). Either I'm a jerk or I'd better keep it in perspective and deal with it maturely. It's rectifiable.

Things have changed. It's easy not to see the things I saw several months ago. We've moved to a different level. I see an ordinary Joy, comfortable at home, not the Joy that had to be self-conscious in front of me. Our relationship has moved from the special to the ordinary, the daily, the taken for granted. A relationship has to survive this transition.

She's not musical at all. She has no religious or metaphysical bent. She has an understanding of the spiritual, but not a deep connection with it. What do we have in common? We don't enjoy the same things, we have very little to share. We will break up within a year, and it will be mutual. We will both realize that we aren't able to give to each other what we need.

It will fade. The love isn't so intense or passionate that it will cascade around us and feed itself ad infinitum. The love grew steadily to a certain level and stayed there and held there, and when it is time to end, it will fade and descend. We'll hug or something and go our separate ways. She's not the type to hold on to other people. I won't.

That's the future, though, and there is the present to contend with. Presently, we go our day by day. There must be a reason I'm going out with her, there must be something to discover, there always is. Unfortunately, it's something for me to discover by myself, Joy has nothing to do with it, not actively at least. She's not part of the discovery or aiding me in it, she's just a vehicle for me to find it. She doesn't see where my eyes look. She has no idea about the way I see the world, what colors I see, what details I notice. I can't lose sight of my path.

So really, what good do I have to say about Joy? What good is she in my life? I don't know. It doesn't seem like there's much, but I'm not adverse to this relationship. I do love her, I'm not unhappy, but...there's always a "but". There is a door that needs to be opened, and if it is not, this relationship will end.

This thing can't last too long. We could never live together; our lives and lifestyles are just way too different. I couldn't live with someone who was completely unmusical. Good god, what am I doing with someone who doesn't have music in her life?! How can that be? She has no idea who or what I am if music doesn't touch her. Ouch!

Then there are my hours and my drinking. It's been hard not cutting. I avoided showering with her for two weeks because of cuts on my foot. I had a band-aid on them for a few days, but if she saw the marks now, she'd know and she'd know that I lied when I told her I dropped something on it. We could never live together, so the way we are is pretty much the way it would have to remain. Stagnation.

I wonder about who I love. I miss many. I miss Luyen. I miss Hiromi. I miss what Amina used to be. I miss Diem and Madoka. Not that any of them are now what I miss of them. I don't know if I love any of them. I do still love Shiho, but that's a given in its limited way.

I'm 25 years old. I wish I had died at least three years ago. What am I doing still alive? How many more years do I have to go and struggle being myself? Am I prepared to die at any time now? I don't know. I hope so. If I came across an opportunity to die, I hope I would take it. But it wouldn't be automatic, it wouldn't be impulse. I would think about it for a second. And maybe that is what would stop me. That consideration in the moment of the true nature of this and now. It's a long moment, long enough to be cursed by the impulse of self-preservation. To choose safety. That is probably what I would do. Nothing in my life suggests that I would do otherwise.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

October flew by. Joy helped the time by. How different it all is from last year. How muddy last year was; through fish-eyed lens, under bell jar, in a fish bowl. I left Japan two years ago in October. Recollections are still so vivid, and whenever a specific memory comes to my mind, it comes back to haunt. The trains, the river, the people, the air, the land. I want to be there, I belong there, I just feel it in my bones.

Joy has been so much, more than a comfort, more than a friend. Slowly, very slowly, she's making her way into my life. But nothing endearing, nothing that has truly pierced my heart. Everything is so cerebral, the passionate is completely outweighed, almost absent. I love her and wouldn't leave her, but if we did separate, it would be mutual, a decision. She wouldn't even get the benefit of the passion of a pain. No yelling, no drama, no scene, no wrestling over emotions and feelings. We would have thought it through. She wouldn't have felt it through. We wouldn't be friends afterwards either.

The benefit of the passion of a pain. The benefit of the passion of a pain, I say, as I hunger for revenge against or restitution from Amina. For once, I've gotten the "benefit" of the "passion" of the pain.

I love Joy in my life at this point. My life is so much better than it was a year ago. I'm clearer now, I can handle my work, I can deal with myself. Why am I not happy? Why can't I get on the topic of Joy and stay on it? Why am I not at least somewhat satisfied? Where has the passion in my life gone? I've lost something and Joy isn't making up for it. She's not offering anything new.

Was I more passionate with and about my friends at Oberlin? Or am I doing my usual psychological step of making the past look so much better just because it's safe in the past? Did I really love Diem and Luyen and Madoka so much? And love Amina so much that I can hate her so much now? I'm probably comparing Joy unfairly to something against which she can't possibly compete; memories and a denial.

Things weren't so hot with Hiromi. If they were, we would have stayed together and Luyen wouldn't have tugged at me. Things weren't so hot with Luyen. If they were . . . they weren't. And if we were together now . . . they definitely wouldn't be. Things weren't so hot with Diem. If they were, why didn't we get any closer? Things weren't so hot with Amina. But I loved her anyway. Why can't I get on the topic of Joy and stay on it?

Are things so hot with Joy?

My only problems are the problems I have with myself, my inability to deal with being inside my skin, of still having the 'rents pulling my strings, of still not being able to find a musical community. My issues are about me, not her, they only affect my relationship with her. I have to learn to be happy with what I've got. And I still can't get on the topic of Joy and stay on it.

Joy and I got together downtown for a short bit last night. She was going to a comedy show and meeting up with someone, so I held off coming home so I could meet up with her. It was wonderful seeing her face and seeing her for the first time noticeably healthier than she had been in the past four weeks. Both of us have been pretty sick. She gave me her flu at my insistence. I can't say I minded how I got it.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

March was a tougher month than I had realized. The blizzard and dealing with the 'rents really took their toll. I ended up going out to Oberlin last week. Things turned out fine, great, but they started off rocky. I wonder if this isn't the greatest time for Amina and I to have started going out. My situation here is so unstable and makes my feelings uncontrollable and unpredictable. I don't think Amina really grasps or sympathizes with what it's like for me here, and it makes me anxious whenever I feel emotional distance between us.

Before I went, I tortured myself deciding whether to go or not. Amina hadn't been able to sanction it because I couldn't get in touch with her, and that was extremely frustrating and probably where I felt the emotional distance. The night before I left, I spent hours sitting and thinking about it before I fell asleep. Then I grappled with it some more after waking up. And still l couldn't reach her on the phone. She was still inaccessible.

I had been feeling that our relationship was beginning to slide and that it would be jeopardized if I didn't go see her and make a connection. But there was a big risk in going out without her sanctioning it. Finally I decided that I had to go and left without telling her I was coming. I really thought that I was going to regret it and that something awful was going to happen between us. I kept wanting to turn back and I drove for five hours straight because I if I stopped for gas or food, I probably would have headed back to New Jersey.

I arrived a total mess and then I distracted her from her work and then we had one really tough night. We talked it through and I think we managed to do some serious building, but I'm not sure why or what. I can't make the direct connection between that talk and what we built. But there is something between us now that wasn't there before, so we definitely built something.

It feels like there is a new dimension between us, something fresh, more mature, although it didn't feel like there was anything missing or anything immature about us before. I don't think there is anything before that I regret, but something needed to be addressed and accounted for. I just can't put my finger on what. It feels like we've gotten through a major crisis, but we haven't. We weren't threatened in any way, it was just that something wasn't clear.

It's wonderful what we have now (but wasn't it wonderful what we had before last week?). The tough time added something substantial and colorful to our relationship, and then we were able to have some awesome times and kick back some. I think. The second night in Bess's apartment was so comfortable and secure and rich. I don't even want to think about if I hadn't gone out.

I got in touch with Ching Ching last night. I keep forgetting how well she knows me, how well aware she is of my situations, reactions, and feelings. The unwavering support she gives me against the 'rents is so unprecedented that I don't even know how to put my appreciation into words. She knows I'm always at risk when I'm here and her concern is a moral boost.

I will always remember her as someone who really cared to find out the truth about what's going on with me. She was there when I had my troubles with Oberlin, she wasn't a participant, but she was around when it happened. We had become friends our first semester, she was so far removed from her roots in California and we just found each other friends. Then suddenly, second semester I was gone, stuck into some hospital and then suspended. So now when she gets a hint that something's wrong, she probes deep to make sure she’s in the know.

She is like kin now. Our connection runs deep, even though words are a barrier between us and the ideas we share don't always fully develop into each other's understanding. We don't automatically understand each other and we have to explain our ideas a lot and make them tangible and concrete, simplified in a way that doesn't do the thoughts justice.

82 S. Park St, Oberlin OH

But we didn’t break up over the Summer. We kept at it for whatever reason; fear of being alone, fear of losing something that we thought was so good, sex, not wanting to make all our efforts and sacrifices go in vain. Now it seems clear that all we’ve done since the Summer is postpone a break-up. We were resisting something that was definitely going down.

It’s the same pattern. It’s my fault, I know. I pull someone in as hard and as close as possible, but when it gets too close and expectations change, I bail. There’s nothing wrong with Sakuko. The faults I find are perfectly human, I make them into something huge and unacceptable. I don’t know why.

What am I learning from all this? Why am I so stupid? Couldn’t I have foreseen this? Why do I do what I do? We didn’t really connect, even in the beginning. It was just attraction, nothing special, a decision perhaps more of the mind than the heart. I never sensed that she was interested in my life or aware of my situations. Her attention was so much on superficial things, not substantive things.

I don’t want my life just to be ordinary, conforming to social molds. I don’t want to be in a relationship just to be in one. I don’t want to live life just to live it, I want to get something out of it, it has to have meaning and connection. I want to explore and enrich my life and that includes the people I’m close to.

What a myth! I’m my own myth. I grew up thinking that I’m special. My parents’ neglect didn’t bring me down in my eyes, it lifted me up. I’m a survivor. I compensated for my parents’ treatment and built my own pride and survived by maintaining a high self-esteem.

But I’m so ordinary, I can’t do anything well, I can’t make anything work. I’m nothing, a loser by my own assessment. The irony is that to survive, I perpetuated an illusion. To survive I needed something I can’t live with. I have to deconstruct myself.

It’s done. It couldn’t have been more painful. I have no idea where my life is going. I’m lost, comfortably numb, crazy. I think I want to be alone. Just for several years.



That’s it, the end, goodbye Sakuko.