My My,

I just saw a horrific ghost (twice)! I’m sure you can guess what earthly form this specter took—It was you. My dear lost love! You were walking down Church Street towards your favorite place to rent movies. I happened to be returning a couple of movies when, unbeknownst to me, you appeared on the street. Now, I know better than to taunt an angry ghost when I don’t have my special ghost-zapping apparatus on me, so I played it cool, looked the other way, and rode off into the sunset. My pulse was racing and my heart was beating through my emaciated chest. What would have happened if I provoked you and said “hello?” Would you have literally kicked my ass like you promised to do not too long ago? Maybe you wouldn’t even have acknowledged me, as we all know it’s difficult to make contact with the spirit world. Even though all my instincts tell me to leave well enough alone, to leave you alone, there’s a part of me that wants to ride back to the movie rental store and try to make contact with you. However, I think I’ll just write about this brief visual encounter instead of making any drastic actions that could lead to my own arrest. I want to think you were bluffing on the phone, but these actions will remain thoughts just in case you weren’t. You were so angry with me; I could feel your energy though the telephone itself. But on Church Street just now, you seemed like your docile quiet self. I’m sure contact with me would have filled you with anger and adrenaline. These are two very terrible chemicals for you. I’m not trying to ruin your life, as you suppose I am, however until I leave this city, there might be a couple more encounters between you and I. You can be sure that if and when we do meet, you will only be experiencing my physical form because my mind has long ago left these lands. That’s not to say I’m crazy, but what I mean is that you no longer get the privilege of my kindness and mental equity. If we share words, they will be logistical instructions as how to make this official divorce function easier for both parties. Even though the visual sight of you still stimulates my nerves, rest assured that you will never stimulate my heart anymore than its already beaten and battered state. I know you think you’ve stricken fear into my heart, but you haven’t. I am intrepid towards your critique. The only one I fear is myself, and that’s only because I haven’t laughed in a long while. Though it was nice to see your ghost, it would have been nicer if you had seen the ghost of my heart, my kindness. You only focus on the bad times, the fearful times. Well Love, my fearful times have been the most rewarding instances in the past. Marrying you, for example, struck fear in the deepest sections of my heart, but I still enjoyed the experience, even though I regret the outcome of our home-building project.

With ghost like thoughts,

Me.

To the voice in my head,

You are still yelling at me in my mind. Whether asleep or not, your voice resonates through me like the sounds of a motorcycle driving by a glass shop. I feel fragile. It’s hard for me to be alone right now but I have no other options. I’m making secure plans for me to move out of San Francisco, but I do so with a heavy heart. I will miss this city. There are a few good people here that I’ve met in the last two months who I will have to soon regretfully say goodbye. Mary, my blue haired post modern buddy, I will miss the most. She’s a brilliant young woman who I haven’t spent hardly enough time with. I’d like to dance with her one more time before I leave. She’s shown me compassion on an intellectual level here in the city. I truly will miss her. Maria, my friend from work I will miss as well. Through all these troubling times, Maria has helped me go inside myself and remember to keep an optimistic approach to my psychology. She offered me a place to stay when I needed it, and a friendly outlook on the dark times. She use to live on the streets when she first got to this city, and so she has been able to empathize with my night wanderings. She’s also offered me food from her own stash when I was broke and starving. Those are what friends do. They help each other in times of need. I told you over the phone that I truly wanted to be your friend after our separation, but you never wanted to accept that responsibility. Friends care about the well being of their friends. You responded to my emotions by rolling your eyes. You said to me “Can’t you understand why I don’t want to hear about your sadness?” This maybe your true understanding of the nature of our breakup – yes, you are the reason why I am sad. I am sad because I love you and can not share with you any of that love. I’m sad because you could care less that I’m sad. I’m sad because I saw something beautiful die, right before my eyes. I couldn’t be friendly to you when I was overwhelmed with sadness. But, you took this as a cold shoulder, as the fact that I didn’t want to be friends at all. Well, I wanted your friendship more than you could have imagined. But, all this is lost now, we share nothing, not even sadness. You amaze me; you are absolutely amazing. But my sadness will eventually dissipate and I will have my life back on track again. There are tuff times ahead of me, but I will survive. I never believed I was meant to survive, and maybe I’m not, but I will continue to work though this sadness to ensure my survival. These are epiphanies for me, considering the mind-state I was in last week. I can almost claim to have reached some sort of enlightenment. Anyway, I miss you.

–the other voice in my head.

My Beloved,

Though you may not know, and in fact, there’s no way you would know, I’m very sexually deprived these days. I had a wet dream last night. I can’t remember who or what the details entailed, but I do know that my body requires a release of my pent up sexual desires. I can’t masturbate like most men I know as I feel pathetic and hopeless when I do pleasure myself, thus not allowing myself to ejaculate. In a way, I proscribe myself the ability to narcissistically indulge in my own body. For some strange reason, my consciousness can only allow another to please me sexually. However, I do believe I told you quite enough of this “problem” of mine, and therefore will discontinue discussing these intimate details. It’s Father’s day today. Will you call your dad to tell him you love him? You’ve always had a strange relationship with that man; of course there was the history of his abuse and neglect. He was never around for you, and therefore you never had a father figure in your life to be a positive male role model. Fathers teach young daughters how to successfully find other positive male persons in the daughter’s life. Your dad was rich, conservative, on drugs, would go from woman to woman, wife to wife, and allowed you, his twelve year old daughter to run away from home. He actually allowed you to go. That man is a disgusting example of what a good father should be. When I met you, you claimed to loathe the man. He would visit you in San Jose, not because he wanted to see you (or so you said) but because that was the location of his auto shops, and coincidentally, the place where you were living. However, as I began to better understand your need for his presence, even though he never really gave you much of anything in terms of love and fatherhood, I understood why you would want to meet him for lunch once a month, why you returned his phone calls with a “hi Dad,” and even why you ended those calls with an “I love you.” You want your dad’s love so bad, you look for it in every man you meet. But to your surprise, all men disappoint you. You are conditioned to reach out for a male figure, but your open arms only know how to net in men who will someday continue the tradition of hurting you. You search for men who can not show you the love you’ve always craved from your dad. It’s an obvious cycle, but a validated one, none the less. This psychosis of a missing father is almost textbook. I’ve been told by many people that with the shit you’ve been through it would take multiple lifetimes of therapy to work out. I didn’t want to believe this haunting statement because I had faith in your mental and psychological abilities. But now, in retrospect to what’s happened between you and I, I do believe you need help – help that your friends can’t give you. You need professional help, as do I.

–your belover.

My ghost,

I am trying to fall asleep midday. There’s music playing in the distance, and the sounds of waves are crashing on top of the notes. I find that when I try to sleep, my body instinctively curls into the fetal position. I feel so vulnerable when I close my eyes. My thoughts become dialogues between us. My body sometimes quivers when I repeat your brutal and vicious words from our past conversations. I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean for us to turn out like this. I am plagued by my past actions, as you are plagued with fear towards me. It’s so strange to know you truly fear for your life at this point. I’ve been so kind in the past. I honestly tried my best to love you unconditionally. I would have never exhibited the anger I showed you in the past if Robert hadn’t convinced me it was natural expression. Robert made it seem as if getting angry was perfectly healthy and normal. It was terrible advice. No one should raise their voice the way I did, especially not to someone they love. But this does not negate the fact that I indeed loved you. What’s more, I still love you. If I told you this, you would call the cops immediately, so I won’t let you in on this emotional secret. You will never feel my love again and I have to accept that. I am not a monster. I am a romantic who never got it right. I feel like a failure with good cause – I’ve failed. You were my fourth love. Four times I’ve tried to love with all I have and each time, something has happened with has broken the bonds of my Love. One reason I married you, beyond the fact that I loved you, was that I wanted something to work at, I wanted to keep us together when things weren’t perfect. When you asked me to leave the apartment, I knew we were through. You gave up so quickly, as I’ve stated before, and destroyed my belief that our marriage could nurture us through those terrible times. Things have gotten increasingly worse between you and I. Now, you swear you’ll kill me if you see me on the street. If that happens, you’ll see that there’s not much left to destroy. If things continue like this, in terms of my defeats and destitution, there won’t any Chris left to punch or kick or beat up. But, as I’ve promised, I won’t bother you again. I wish things were different, and I suppose you do as well, but they’re not. One day we may look back at this and laugh, but we’ll be laughing together for different reasons in different cities. Until that day, we must make the best of what remains and continue propelling ourselves into the future. The waves won’t stop crashing and the music won’t stop playing just because we want to turn our heads and laugh, or cry for that matter.

–Your ghost.

M,

Even though you’ve explicitly told me you “don’t give a fuck” about how I’m feeling, I’d like to inform you that I’m feeling well, and that I don’t have any anger or hate towards you. Though this emotional state will change, as it always does, for the moment, I’m actually happy. I’m downtown sitting on the corner of Howard and Main in the industrial district. The sun is shining brilliantly and the wind is a cozy breeze. The towering buildings surrounding me are mere obstacles in the way of beautiful puffy clouds. They’re the type of clouds that one would love to dive into, like a down-filled comforter, or a heated swimming pool. I’m still waiting for your phone call to give me instructions for signing over the pink slip to our car, but you can take your time with that. You’re probably at work right now, anticipating the moment they let you go, so that you can take your post-work-Saturday nap. I wonder if your fear of me has inconvenienced your sleep schedule? I know how much you enjoy your naps, so I hope I haven’t disturbed your daily routines entirely. I often wondered whether you use sleep as escapism. I remember you telling me you pictured death as a beautiful eternal nap. I appreciate this optimistic approach to the unknown territories of the post-mortem state. It’s a brave outlook on one of the most terrifying aspects of life on this planet. I always wondered if I would accept God on my deathbed. I usually come to the conclusion that I would keep my agnostic faith, and liberate my consciousness by diving into the natural state of the universe. Humanity has a strange narcissistic perspective on life and death. Humans believe in their own importance so concretely that they make living forever (or as long as they can) the ultimate goal in life. Although technology serves in continuing the dominance of the human race, it is humans, however, that eventually rely on, in fact serve, technology. It is a master/slave relationship. Just think of all the seniors who can’t survive without their medication. Think of all the sick individuals who rely on technology to propagate their lives. Technology propagates itself. For instance, the AIDS virus, or the newly mutated Super AIDS virus, requires technological advancements, or rather, technological mutations to battle the disease. Really, there are no human individuals anymore, but just potential mutants and biological mutations. God (or whatever it is we label an Absolute) itself is a mutation of human thought and understanding. Even something like history, once thought to be objective, has now mutated into a fluid-conditioned construct of the human mind. All this philosophizing about life, death, technology and an absolute makes me tired. It’d be nice to take a nap, maybe escape these thoughts for a bit. Anyway, this is what I was thinking about in this happy state I’m in. I know you could care less, but I thought I’d let you know.

–CRD.

To my immediate Curse,

I’m glad you’ve stabilized and fortified your life here in San Francisco. It’s nice to know you have a good job with benefits, friends that care about you, friends who will protect you from the people like me and a home that you can go to when you need a break from the outside world. It makes me feel good to know you’re doing well. Even though my life is a shattered chaotic system of unstable tangents, I know that someday I will be in a position similar to yours. My decision to leave San Francisco has lifted my spirits. I have hope again. Although I don’t have any job prospects in Los Angeles, I am hopeful that when I get there, I will be able to start rebuilding my shattered life into a new exotic and powerful existence. I’m sorry if I take some credit for your new beginning, but without the end of us, how could you have found such a happy place? Of course I can’t take total credit for your happiness, as much as I like being part of the “dark side” of your life. It is comforting to know that now that I am out of your way, you can immerse yourself in the lighter side of things. But dark and light, dear wife, are mere subjective dichotomies, built on traditional thoughts of good and evil. Happiness is a fluid device, which functions as a crutch for survival, and is never an absolute Truth. Your happiness is a reaction to the sadness I have brought you. Without this sadness, you would have never been happy. I can say this wholeheartedly, because I know how unhappy you were when we were married. You weren’t necessarily sad, but you were definitely unhappy. I doubt you will ever give me credit for helping you find happiness by showing you sadness. But, come to think of it, credit is something I can care less about. On the same note, you have given me a chance to revitalize my life. Now, having gone through the destructive process of our break up, I can reassemble the pieces of my shattered life into a new beginning. Like a drawing by Leuvous Woods, or a building by Frank Gehry, I can re-contextualize destruction and chaos into a newly built superstructure. This is not to say that I will ever forget you were a driving force in the shattering of my life. That is where I give you credit. You were my accomplice in destroying this old fundamentally unsound existance. Together we destroyed something amazing, and I love you for that; this is quite possibly the same reason you hate me. But, like I said before, these outdated dichotomies are subjective and arbitrary. The bonds they share synthesize sadness and happiness. The fluid space between good and evil, love and hate, destruction and construction, etc. is the dwelling place of all our thoughts. I do not believe a dialectical understanding of this synthesis will bring us closer to an absolute Truth of being (which is a Hegelian perspective). The space between dichotomies is created by the power struggles of binary opposition (a Nietzschean perspective). And that space requires time and being to propel itself in the instant (Kantian perspective), by giving itself, and uncovering itself (Heidegger), through this secret visible and invisible metamorphosis (Derrida). Okay, so I’m going off on post-modern tangents. My point, is that no matter how much you want to get rid of me in your life, you can’t. I’ll be stuck in your memories forever. You can cross me out, but I will persist through the stains of time and being. We are forever linked in this way, divorce or not, with or without verbal communication.

– Christopher Robin Donham.

To the wife I can’t afford to divorce,

I looked into the cost of divorce today—$249, without legal representation. I have two options: Get the divorce finalized and be out of wedlock with you, or move out of the city without getting a divorce (but leaving you alone to continue your sad pseudo-happy life). The divorce is the most pressing thing on your mind, I know, but let me assure you that if I left the city, the situation would improve. You would feel safer if I was gone. It’s so strange that I can put myself in your shoes, so strange to look at myself through such fearful eyes. You are scared of me, even though I have no intention of harming you or any of your friends. There are no secret plans, no machinations to destroy you, nothing. There is no convincing you, however, of my good nature. You go back into your cerebral dungeons, and padlock them with the most weighty and absurd chains. I don’t mind your fear, though I do believe it is a product of YOUR own past, and not the moments of anger you and I have shared. The night I screamed at you—the night you went to Jhonen’s hotel room—I was convinced you hated me. And now you do. (How’s that for a self-fulfilling prophecy?) The second night I yelled because you tried to convince me that “you” were simply a projection of what I wanted you to be, that your love was just a reflection of my need for your love. I took this to mean that you never loved me (truly) and had been lying to me throughout our whole relationship and marriage. Yes I screamed and called you names. You can’t understand what was going on in my head, I felt like you were a big liar, a liar who turned the tables and blamed me for being afraid. I loved you so dearly. It’s amazing how this love has morphed into a most brilliant hate. This weekend I have to sign our car over to Justin’s parents. How will I get the pink slip, if you still refuse to see me? Will you leave it in the mailbox? Will you tape it to the door? Will you be gone when I arrive? Will you be inside the apartment holding a knife in your tightly clenched fist? It doesn’t matter really. As I promised, your safety is my concern. I will not harm you because I have no desire to. I wish you could understand this; unfortunately, you think I am your enemy. I’m sorry you feel this way.

Best thoughts to you,

The ex-ish-boy.

To my scared friend,

First of all, I want to remind you, I’m not a psychopath. I couldn’t sleep well last night because those words you screamed to me over the phone. “You’re a psycho!” kept haunting my dreams and my thoughts. You see, I’d like to consider myself border- line between insane and genius – that’s all. Yesterday’s stunt with the water gun has helped us be decisive about the future of our relationship – it’s ending, very quickly, forever. You want nothing to do with me anymore and I can sympathize with your request. As I promised you over the phone yesterday, I will respect all your wishes. I do appreciate the fact that you aren’t getting a restraining order on me. You know how I hate legal enforcement in my life. However, I honestly don’t believe my squirt gun antics were worthy of such a consequence. Laughter kills the monster. You should try it sometime. I really did want to be friends with you, but you don’t know the nature of friendship, and therefore cannot comprehend what friendship means to me. Consequently, there was a huge void between you and I, post-breakup. We sent vague emails, didn’t return phone calls, thought of each other as unfriendly, and at times, despised one another. But not out of sheer hate; merely out of your inability to sympathize with the hard times we were going through. However, talking about us being friends now seems a bit absurd and pointless. You now see me as an enemy, someone who is out to hurt you and your life. But this is your mere myopic perception of your narcissistic life. You now equate me with your ex-lover Rick, the one who broke your arm, your nose, who put a real gun to your head threatening to kill you, who almost killed himself in your presence. Well, I’m not Rick. I’m not the one who will stalk you on your way home from work. And I’m damn well not the one who will hurt you, at all, ever again. We are through. You and I have nothing left. But, that doesn’t mean I am going to stop writing to you. Just because you and I will never share a smile again, just because you think I’m a psycho, doesn’t mean I still don’t want to update you on what’s going on in this “psychotic” head of mine. After all, promises are promises. You said some pretty harsh things to me yesterday. I doubt you regret any of it.

–Your not so scared husband.

My soon to be ex-wife,

Oh my dearest memory. I was bicycling down Valencia Street when I happened across Konani’s work. I didn’t know he worked at that specific Buffalo Exchange. When I saw his presence through the window, I had to stop riding to contemplate my emotions (and of course, you realize he was the other body in your scandalous Myspace photos). Although I later came to realize those pictures were strictly platonic, even though the poses were quite suggestive, they still hurt me dearly. My dear, I happened to have a squirt gun on me at the time of this instance, so I decided to, in jest, approach this unsuspecting boy and tell him how much those photos hurt me. “Hello Konani. I want you to know I was hurt by the photos form your vodka-birthday experience with my wife. I’m sorry but I have to do this.” I squirted his heart five times with my water pistol. He seemed to find the humor in all this, however, my perception must have been skewed. He called you, in a panic, telling you I shot him, blah blah blah. In response, you called me, hysterical, saying I was a psychopath and a “fucking insane loser”. I tried to tell you it was all a joke, a way for me to make light of the situation. You didn’t want to hear any of this. You called the cops, and are filing a restraining order on me. You told me you would kick my ass if you ever see me, and to never come near you again (not like I was planning to go near you). You told me to send you the divorce papers in the mail and that you would take care of the rest. I did, however, return to Konani’s work to contextualize my actions, and to apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused him from those actions. I didn’t remember that his father was shot in the chest, mutilated and left for dead. I didn’t think my joke would be so terrible to him. You’ve told me to never talk to you or your friends again. I will respect your wishes and respect my new restraining order. I guess, what I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry, but I don’t regret my actions. You and I will never converse again, except through these letters, but I wish you well in all your adventures. I don’t expect anything in return.

With love – your soon to be ex-husband.

You,

This life is hell. This life of living a lie is torturous. It seems that the natural state of existence for the universe is motion. Therefore human life, a spasm lasting a mere 80 to a hundred years, if we’re lucky, can only be a lie that the universe is trying to either cover up or destroy. It’s no wonder why we as humans find so much conflict with our own existence. Gravity, the master of all humans, has been trying to kill us long before we ever knew of its powers. We have so much trouble dealing with death, when in all actuality, it’s the natural-un-natural state of the universe. We are re-born into motion when we die. This planet seems to be a truck stop for Atoms, a place to fill up on hate, love and the occasional scoop of ice cream. When we move on into the void, we become the void, thus re-uniting ourselves with the natural state of the universe and continuing our path of frictionless motion. Humans use happiness as a crutch, “Oh, no, I’m too happy to die. Just go ahead without me, I’ll catch up later.” Sadness brings us closer to the actualization of our own death, and therefore, we strive to be happy for the finite 80 or so years we exist (or dodge existence). So maybe the post-mortemists are right when they speak of death and decay as the ultimate goal of humanity. But, they don’t take their philosophy far enough because life is not just about the death and decay we experience in the present moment. No, death and decay are mere symptoms of the absolute goal of humanity, which is to reunite with the entropy of the universe. In these terms, death becomes the ultimate blessing god can give us. We re-unite with the spiraling energy of the cosmos. This has nothing to do with metaphysics. Consciousness and the spirit are projections of neurological connections, and are the cause of conflict against gravity and the ultimate. The ‘absolute truth’ Hegel speaks of, the ‘will to power’ Nietzsche describes, and the cogito of Plato; all these descriptions are rhetoric describing the force of our enemy, the motion of the universe. This static and myopic existence will only serve us so long. And then, like a gas attendant letting us know his station has closed, we will be forced to move on, into the void in which we belong.

–C

Mrs. Buhl,

Quicksilver tells me to get over it. “Get a grip,” he says. Bjorn offers suggestions for distractions. “Do some jumping jacks, play violin, run around naked,” she tells me. Mary says that she’s been there, that things will get better with time. “Wow, she really had that much affect on you?” mary asks surprisingly. Morgan, my friend in Arizona, told me I’m young and beautiful. “You’ll get over her, you have your whole life in front of you,” she optimistically said. Maria, my friend from work sympathizes with my psychosis, but still says, “you’ll work your way through this.” My mother tells me I have too much to offer to worry about one girl. “You have so much to give the world, don’t be sad about that.” My bother, whose girlfriend just left him, empathizes with me by telling me “yeah, that sucks man.” Boomer, my friend from Chico, tells me to keep a strong head. He says, “Player, stay strong”. Kaity, my ex-girlfriend form high school tells me, “you’re so special. Why let one just ruin that?” Alexia, my best girl-friend tells me how hideous you are. “Mindy’s way too skinny and ugly for you.” Josephine from Los Angeles keeps reminding me how loved I am by all my friends in there. “We love and miss you Mister,” she says. Corey, my most inspirational Artist friend, who thinks in terms of tangents and trajectories, continues to boast about the good times. “Wha-hoo!” he shouts over the phone to me. My father, who’s been through a few divorces, tells me about the pain it caused him, but how there’s light at the end of the tunnel. “For a few months, you fell like the world is ending. You fell like you’re dying. And then, all of the sudden, it’s over, and you wonder what you ever saw in the girl.” Phil, my cousin in Glendale, reminds me that we’ve all been fucked over by someone, and how it doesn’t really ever get any easier. “You just have to learn to cope with it,” he says. Even you, my dear wife, have offered me advise as how to deal with this situation. “Stop self-loathing. Get over it. Move on.” With all these words of advice, one would suspect I’d be doing better than I am right now. However, I don’t think there are any words that can stop the pain from inside me. None.

–Mr. Donham

Ms. Ran-Away Buhl,

I’m alone, again, like always, thinking about your friends here in the city. I can’t say I’m jealous of your friends, specifically, because I don’t actually like any of them. They were always so insincere to me, except maybe Justin, which is why I dislike him even more than the rest. I know it was you who jumped him after your drunken game of chess (I can’t see him having the balls to make the first move), but still, there’s the matter of common decency that Justin should have respected. Clearly the fucker can care less about me, but when we talked in the past, he had an earnestness that I appreciated. Silly me for being such a terrible judge of character. I guess that goes for you too. I misjudged your character Mindy. I thought you actually had a caring heart, a compassionate center for those who try to do right. I tried, I tried to love you so much. Maybe I was trying too hard, but should I be punished for such conviction? I find your nature abhorrent. You are someone I use to love, someone I would have given my life for, someone I did give my life for, and now, you are a heartless beast, a mindless monster, which makes me feel nauseous when I picture you in my head. It’s a shame I picture you so often, otherwise I might not feel so sick all the time. You tried to make me feel so guilty for having a place to go after our breakup, but you have no idea how alone I am. I have NO ONE to hold me at night, no one to reinforce my sanity, no one to ground me. I have no one here to help me; plus I can’t afford therapy from a professional. So what’s a boy like me to do? How am I going to survive on my own? If only you could have tried to work through all this, instead of kicking me out, sentencing me to walk this terrible and treacherous road alone.

-Robin.

My Pal,

What can I say about today? I was at a coffee shop, the one I use to tell you about on Mission and 16th Street. I stepped outside for a smoke; as I was standing on the curb, a man walked towards me, quoting Kerouac, Joplin, Hendrix, Shakespeare, Williams and Ginsberg. I was terrified at how internally brilliant he was juxtoposed to how disturbingly insane he looked. He was foaming from the mouth and the smell of alcohol wafted from his breath and into my nostrils. I was perplexed, to say the least. But beyond his filthy smelly outward appearance, besides his intoxicated state, I could see the beauty in this man’s eyes. His words were words of Love meant for destruction. “We’ll destroy them with our love, we’ll beautifully kill them.” Who was he talking about? I realized that this man, Kevin, was speaking about any force that stood in the way of the love he was giving. Kevin had been on a 9 day drinking binge because a girl he loved chose an Ecuadorian man, who had money, over Kevin’s love. “But how can we destroy them?” Kevin asked me diligently. “We’ll love them to death!” he replied while thrusting his kung-fu-fists into the air, almost hitting an innocent passerby. What I found most beautiful about Kevin were three sentences he spoke: 1) “If you’re sad and down, get over it, laugh and make those around you laugh.” 2) “Drop your ego and roll around in the street for 5 minutes; get back up and move on.” 3) “Where is there? There is no there!” I stayed with my drunken companion for a couple of hours. I sang and laughed and pondered my own happiness (and sadness). I’ve been so desperate these past few days that I’ve forgotten how to laugh, and how to make other people laugh as well. I use to be so good at the latter. I emailed you last night telling you I was too sad to talk to you on the phone and to complement you on the “nice pictures” you posted online. I haven’t gotten a response from you, and I don’t expect one. I push you away, and you enjoy being pushed further from me (into someone else’s love). And so goes the nature of us.

Your Pal.

MRB,

I can’t say that I’m trying to get better because I don’t know the steps to healing this dementia. I want to get better, not to show you my improvement or to prove I’m a healthy person, but because I don’t want to die, not yet at least. My brain feels like it is shutting down, even when I’m wide-awake. The immediate space around me feels miles and miles away. I’m drinking coffee to see if I can wake my brain up, but I doubt any amount of caffeine can pull me back to reality. There must be a way to renew my connection with the world around me. What I am feeling is the consequence of an overloaded limbic system. It’s almost as if my brain is fried from too much stimulus. I short-circuited a chip on my motherboard. Maybe this is what a lobotomy feels like? I have nothing in common with the regulars in this coffee shop. How can I make friends when my brain won’t allow me to a) communicate with others b) feel anything c) think of other things than my own sorrow and despair and, most importantly, d) get over the dementia. I coddle myself at night. I tell myself that I’ll be all right, that I made it another day, which is progressive to say the least. I’ve become my own best friend. You have Justin, your fuck buddy, and I have myself. I remember you asked me if I had someone comfortable to go back to, someone to fuck, and I said “no”. No, I don’t have that. I only have my fucked up thoughts and myself. So now who’s the lucky one, the one with people to catch you when you fall? You’ve won. Go revel in it like the little brat you’ve become. I’m so lost. I don’t know where to go, where to turn to for help. I don’t want to take this medication anymore. It makes me feel strange, worse than how I’d feel without it.

FUCK!

–C.D.

M,

I feel ill. My stomach burns and my head is spinning. I can’t tell whether or not these terrible feelings are from not eating or from my psychosis. This depression is devastating. When I see my reflection in the mirror, I’m shocked at who I’ve become. My face has become a wretched site as I cannot smile and I cannot look excited about life. I’ve been drained of something lovely. I am the antithesis of Love. How can I expect to get my life back together when I look the way I do? My eyes are swollen and empty. My cheekbones press firmly against my skin. I lose myself when I stare into the void that is my essence. “Where did Chris go?” I wonder. Outside seems scary to me. It’s hard for me to leave the house. Maybe I’m terrified of all the possibilities of death that waits for me outside. When I step outside for a smoke, I tremble with fear. This is in such stark contrast to how well I was doing a week ago. All I want to do is lay in bed with the covers over my head. But even when I do that I feel dizzy and deserted. I’m feeling so self-destructive today. I think it’s best for me not to go anywhere. Fuck, I can barely get out of this chair in which I’m sitting, let alone leave the house. I’m hoping these destitute feelings will dissipate eventually. I need a friend to come over and hug me. At least you have that. All of your friends would gladly hug you; they would gladly fuck you too. Hell, what are friends for if not a good fuck? I’m hurting so badly right now. Numbness would be a blessing. I think I am going to try to lie down for a while. Hopefully my stomach will stop burning by the time I get back up. I feel disconnected from my body. My feet seem so far way from my thoughts that I practically don’t even own them. These are such dark times for me. Even though the sun is shining so vividly I do not see its light. You have no idea how hard this is for me. I doubt you’ll ever know.

–C.D.