by Megan Boyle
5:04AM: if i eat a bagel it might help me sleep.
5:51AM: ate bagel, three cookies, 1mg xanax. watched ‘girls.’ not sleepy. feel like my job is to wrangle herd of thoughts by thinking ‘the fluffier comforter is always under the heavier one, you are under both.’ feel shitty.
6:05AM: gotta be real witchall. i sleep with a stuffed dragon every night. his name is ‘ta ta.’
12:00PM: mom woke me. felt like a small child, unprepared. drank glass of milk. ate two cookies.
1:28PM: mom tried to say something like ‘it doesn’t seem like you really want to live in new york’ and felt irritated. tao is doing a poetry presentation in chicago tonight and invited people to party in his room, it says on twitter. nostalgic for the beginning of our relationship, when i went along on his book tour. read all about it in ‘taipei,’ look out for ‘taipei,’ which reading will likely make you sad and laugh and think interesting things about life the way tao’s books do only this one is my favorite.
plugged phone into charger and hit snooze alarm for 30 minutes. saw barrage of texts and felt good.
1:30–5:30PM: hit snooze several times. made ‘the least you can do’ smoothie for energy/motivation to be healthy today.
THE LEAST YOU CAN DO SMOOTHIE:
• 2 bananas
• 1 large bunch spinach
• ice
it’s the least you can do. it tastes good. continued napping.
at some point i talked with ex-boyfriend on the phone. he’s at his parents’ house in new jersey. sad about things. no more apartment. this is how it went. all that hope in the beginning, and this is how it went. on the phone i said, ‘our lease expires in like a week, then i’ll like, never talk to you again’ and we laughed a little, but i think that’s mostly true. made plans to hang out tomorrow…there is some movie…i don’t know. the last little dingle-berry hangings-on of a relationship. being nice all of a sudden to honor some thing. the hope you had, maybe. the other day he said ‘isn’t it weird that no matter what, we’re always going to remember each other, like, we are the people we are going to remember?’ it was funny.
5:30–6:17PM: later something was said about drugs, dad giving me adderall. mom said ‘you don’t want to have your dad’s mind when you’re his age, be careful’ with an honestly concerned-to-the-point-of-fear face. i said ‘i won’t, i won’t’ unconvincingly.
fed-ex is open until 9PM.
mom said ‘will it bother you if i go play piano in the other room?’ i said it wouldn’t at all. she is playing ‘when you wish upon a star.’
8:36PM: printed 115-page liveblog manuscript. satisfying to hold. happy. happy little shithead deluxe edition idiot deadbeat dad megan boyle (have been referring to myself as a ‘deadbeat dad’ a lot lately).
9:07pm: FedEx was closed. Yoga is done for the day. Did not write cover letter. On the way to get adderall I left at dad’s apartment. Smoking cigarette. Ran over a gray lump. Want to pay someone to read this and diagnose me. Nagging prescience that there is something I can’t see, an obvious problem outsiders can see clearly, that knowing would help change. Feel that thing I’d feel on Sundays, knowing school is tomorrow and I haven’t done my homework. Disappointed in me.
9:21pm: Think I’m less likely to complete tasks now because I used to make more of an effort, things would be completed, but nothing has ever really changed about how I feel. Like all of the things I’ve tried…still feel this directionless…here I am, no matter what.
9:32pm: dad was wearing ‘#1 father’ sweatshirt. I hugged him and said ‘number one dad.’ Saw two security cameras near kitchen. I said ‘are they real?’ he said they were fake, ‘with little red dots’ to discourage burglars, then described scenarios where a burglar would see each camera. He said ‘they’d see one there, but then they’d see the other one there.’ he gave me 2x 30mg adderall xr, hugged him again, left.
9:54pm: passed whole foods parking lot. It was too late. Going to Wegman’s to buy kale and cantaloupe for a smoothie. Might exercise in mom’s gym. I don’t feel funny or interesting or capable of writing anything but robotic ‘this is what happened’ thoughts. This is the boring hell portion of liveblog. Boring low-point.
10:06pm: trying to think of things I want to listen to but feel deadly ‘there is nothing to want at all, about anything’ thing. Trying to conjure romantic fantasies but feel overpowered with ‘none of that is going to happen, too many factors pulling in other directions, plus you are bad to be in relationships with, it is kinder not to inflict yourself on another person. Plus, remember what happens with every person you’ve ever felt happy around. It’s just going to end up the same thing.’
Aware that these feelings will pass on their own, as soon as I feel them enough or whatever, and I’ll feel completely different things soon. Just want to sleep. Thought ‘sleep under the armpit of someone.’ That seems hopeful. Slow return of hope. In the hope-launching process now. Denzel’s voice calmly saying ‘we are inverted now, fully inverted, we are now in the hope launching process’ to air traffic control.
10:23pm: listened to ‘ruins’ by Aloha. I’ve seen them play many times. My ‘can’t do it’ surrendering-arms gesture friend and I were obsessed with the drummer, Cale Parks. He moves his arms so fast and effortlessly and does really sweet fills. Feel stupid saying ‘really sweet fills’ but that’s what they are. Listened to lyrics, which I know most of, and sat in parking spot, crying a little. At the end there’s this part like, ‘at the end of the story I was just beyond camera. Right outside the frame. Waiting for a getaway car that never came.’ Wanted to cry more than I was able to. Cried a little again typing lyrics just now, sitting in pee stall at Wegman’s.
10:31pm: male voice said ‘maintenance.’ I said ‘okay’ from bathroom stall. Female voice said ‘is anyone in here’ as I flushed toilet and exited stall. I smiled and said ‘sorry’ to a woman’s head, peeking in. I was at the hands-washing station. She smiled and said ‘it’s fine take you time,’ closing the door.
10:37pm: selected kale, cantaloupe, green probiotic drink, b-vitamins. Stood in line with least people. The woman from the bathroom rang me up. Selected earbuds from the impulse buy rack. Wondered if woman and I would talk about bathroom thing. Customer in front of me left. I said ‘hi-iiiii’ and smiled. She didn’t look at me and said ‘hi how are you tonight’ I said ‘goo-oooood, how are you’ with the last part mumbled. She scanned my items. I entered my phone number in the credit card pay device thing. She held up a brown and mustard-yellow hippie-looking beanie and said ‘mark is this Dylan’s? It’s been here all day.’ I smiled and nodded and made a face/noise of ‘I know how that goes, man. Dylan, man’ but she didn’t see. I finished paying on the device. She said ‘someone gotta up and take that hat, I’m not about to…’ but I had taken my bags and left at that point.
11:03pm: ex-boyfriend called when I was peeing. Not going to say details. Seems apparent that he’s read this, or at least part of it. He’s not at his parents’ house. Has been in Philadelphia for some days. Corrected me in a funny way. Said I should come tonight instead. Think I will. I don’t know. If I go I can go to the library and write article tomorrow. I like that library. Conflicted knowing he reads this. Will be inhibited when I type now, to some degree, knowing it could lead to hearing him say something like ‘oh you included that, I see. Huh. That’s interesting,’ and I’ll feel bad. Fuck that. Fuck that [name omitted by request] you know this is the end of it. Fuck me for letting things effect me. What I just wrote leads me to believe there is no reason for me to go, if my goal is to feel good. I want to go though. Maybe it will be nice. Used to be nice. It’s actually always nice and kind of bad-feeling, seeing him. Equal amounts. The library. Using the library and ‘wanting change of scenery’ as my rational excuses for going. Desire to go is mostly fueled by emotion, though. Okay at least I know that, both of those things. Parked in mom’s driveway right now. Coat smells like from hugging dad. If it starts to feel more bad than good I’ll just l
eave.
11:47PM: entered mom’s. blender difficulty. coaxed kale and cantaloupe together with a spoon, which required physical effort, like, pushing. allowed eyes to unfocus. imagined spoon colliding with blade, causing blender to explode, glass flying into my throat, blood everywhere, nearly instant death.
11:30–11:59pm: drank smoothie. Called ex-boyfriend to say I wasn’t coming. Left him a voicemail like ‘hey-a thissa the pizza guy, manny, you ordera errr uh pick up your phone.’ called again. He said he was sad to hear I wasn’t coming. I said something about not wanting to think about what to bring. He reminded me most of my stuff is there. I said ‘if I come can we go to the library tomorrow morn—er, afternoon?’ he said yes and that he had written 4500 words today and felt good. I said ‘I’ve been doing that too, it feels good.’ he said something about being focused on words like…‘high’ but he didn’t say ‘high’…but then that he had gone, alone, to 3G—a bar we joke about because of its presentation as ‘extreme hot spot,’ located on the corner of 3rd st. and Girard st., that when I first saw over a year ago, made me think ‘we’ll be living in the neighborhood where ‘things happen,’ this is the ‘happening’ neighborhood.’ we’ve never gone inside. Tonight when he left, a group of people asked him to take a picture with them, and were like ‘why are you going so soon?’ he seemed drunk talking to me in the first conversation leaving Wegman’s and drunk in the conversation just before midnight. But. Seems too complicated to talk about this, the dynamic between us, my wants for going, my ‘knowing better’ but not really, how…you know a person over time…there is sadness…you cause sadness and disappointment in each other but you don’t stop, or like, you almost stop, you’re basically completely stopped until your lease expires. And then you know you won’t know them anymore. You know you will forget most of it. But they’ve been the most consistent thing in your progressively insignificant life for 18 months. You’ve done and said everything mean and bad you can say to each other but it’s also never been hard to laugh. Yeah I’ve laughed the most in this one. Relationship. But also felt the least similar to…the person…a fatal dissimilarity we’re both aware of…goddamnit.
MARCH 23, 2013
12:54am: mom followed me downstairs and for the maybe 90 seconds it took to arrange objects in ‘voyage ready’ car positions, stood in doorway, watching me. She said ‘I almost want to tell you to give him a hug for me but…’ I said ‘no he’s fine, he’s just, don’t not want to hug him, it’s complicated’ and didn’t know what to say. Driving now.
1:41am: have been listening to ‘ruins’ on repeat. Read lyrics and had goosebumps. Thought I was going to cry full-out and didn’t. Words sound newly poignant, like what I can’t put to words right now. The end part. Jesus. Fuck it, I considerately withheld lyrics before but now you must endure (or skip ahead):
We were giants on a plywood stage
In evenings I was your household name
And for a little while, I knew all the words you’d say
Cut me from the movie
Hold me for the credits
I was just beyond camera
Right outside the frame
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
At the end of the story I was just beyond camera
Right outside the frame
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
Waiting for a getaway car that never came
1:58am: passing Newark, Delaware. Predict I will not update liveblog as frequently when I’m interacting with ex-boyfriend. Predict feelings of self-consciousness and wanting to avoid saying or doing things that will elicit a negative response from him. This is fucked up about me, I think.
2:17am: commented on Sam Pink’s thing he just posted about a candy ass racist reviewer. Wish I was driving to Sam Pink’s house instead of where I’m going. Should I not include things like this. No I’m including everything, fuck it, fuck me fuck it. I don’t really wish I was anything at the moment actually. Wish I was a…just…something alive but unconscious. Or like, anything else. Wish I was anything else. Good epitaph for me: ‘she was never anything else.’
2:22am: passed billboard advertising a ‘lifestyle salad.’ Want to eat a ‘Fleetwood Mac ‘rumors’ tour lifestyle salad.’
2:30AM: parked outside apartment. entered building. saw giant nesquick container on top of our mailbox. walked up the stairs to apartment, through door, up more stairs to first level of apartment. lights were off. thought ‘shit, i won’t be able to sleep.’ put vegetables i brought in fridge, then took my coat with me to the bathroom. took 2mg xanax from coat pocket and chewed with front teeth while peeing. coat was propped on the shower. heard footsteps. said ‘that’s too heavy to be shirley’ and saw ex-boyfriend standing in the bathroom doorway, wearing glasses and pajama pants and a giant blue knee-length t-shirt (i have the same one in pink, we bought them at a thrift store shortly after moving in together, but have rarely worn them). he was holding a water bottle and looked sad and faraway and tired and maybe drunk. i wiped and walked to him without flushing toilet. i said ‘hi mingus’ or something, then ‘how about that nesquick?’ he didn’t say anything. it seemed hard to adjust to seeing his body in front of me, like he seemed shorter maybe, or his head was larger. his hair was wet. he held me really close to him and i held him really close back. touched each other’s bodies in places while hugging. felt effected by how he seemed to be affected. smelled by his ear and it smelled like him. on the drive over i wasn’t thinking about…something…that now i seemed to be thinking about, which seemed important, but is hard to articulate. the thing caused by just physically-being-around someone. walked to the bedroom and kissed and took off each other’s clothes. not going to describe sex. hadn’t planned on having sex and sort of didn’t want to but knew i would and we would if i went and wanted to as it happened.
4–5AM: wanted a sandwich badly. drove us to aramingo diner. the waitress said ‘hey ladies’ then realized ex-boyfriend was a boy (he has very long hair) and apologized. this has happened before. i said ‘they think that because of your face also, your face is also very pretty.’ at some point he asked me to change his name to ‘ex-boyfriend’ completely, in liveblog, but this may have happened at some other time. talked about person who i like but i don’t think likes me anymore. he said something about it being because i had introduced the person to drugs. i said i didn’t think so, that i wasn’t the first person to do drugs with them, and that they didn’t seem like the kind of person who would ‘blame’ or hold anyone responsible for their decisions anyway, that they probably didn’t like me anymore because of other things, which i felt i sort of understood and didn’t want to talk about. he seemed insistent on the drug thing. feeling very irritated, typing this now, stupidly obsessively unstoppably irritated. resisting urge to talk about argument in detail. enjoyed the sandwich very much. things seemed better, eventually. it seemed apparent that neither of us wanted to argue but were aware of arguing, so one or both of us stopped or changed the subject. i don’t remember other things we talked about at the diner. remember joking about music in the car. went to bed feeling good.
12:30PM: woke and had sex. felt not fully awake, the entire time. after sex we laid with no covers on. our apartment has never had heat, which is okay, but i’m always cold. i said something about wanting a blanket and ex-boyfriend said ‘you don’t need that.’ i sort of lazily wrestled with him to pull the smaller blanket onto me and he said ‘you don’t need that’ again. blanket didn’t seem to warm me. laid like that for a while, saying small things, some jokes, i think. i said ‘i’m making a smoothie,’ dressed in pajamas, and walked to kitchen area, with ex-boyfriend following shortly behind.
1:15PM: ex-boyfriend played the ‘shirley song’ i referenced earlier and said ‘is this the shirley song?’ i said ‘yes’ and tried to show him, like, sing it as if it was shirley, while assembling smoothie ingredients and blending. in the blending process, a ‘cracked egg mid-falling into a bowl’ sculpture
i like but ex-boyfriend has always hated broke from the vibrations on the table. made an ‘incredulous, losing the most obvious bet on ‘the price is right” face and he made the same face and then a fake-villain ‘hand rub.’ we said ‘oh no’ a few times. i said ‘you think it’s broken, but it’s happened before, and i’ve fixed it’ in a…some kind of tone…fake-mad. smoothie was extremely cold. i said ‘i’m going back to the bedroom to drink this under the covers.’ he said ‘then i’ll go take my shower my favorite way: alone.’ i said ‘fine. then after that i’ll take my shower my favorite way: alone.’ we sounded like children doing that competitive angry thing, only that we were aware of it and making fun of ourselves, maybe, or at least i was. i went to the bedroom and am under blankets. alive is kneading near me. drinking spinach, avocado, coconut water, frozen banana smoothie.
1:26PM: heard shower water run, stop, and radiator switch click on and off, which means there is no hot water. ex-boyfriend appeared in doorway, wearing giant knee-length t-shirt from last night, shrugging exaggeratedly with a crazed face. i said ‘oh, you had to do the thing.’
1:30PM: ex-boyfriend entered shower and i peed. removed clothes. ex-boyfriend sang ‘i’m your boogie man’ in the shower and i sang part of ‘boogie nights.’ he said ‘that’s not the same song.’ i said ‘i know.’ was hard to remember anything but the part of ‘boogie nights’ that’s like ‘dance to the boogie, get down.’ i sang that, then the next part, which is like, ‘cause boogie nights are a-dundun dun [low voice] keep on dancing, keep on dancin’.’ joined him in the shower and sang parts of ‘i’m your boogie man’ and ‘boogie nights’ together.
stood under hot water. at some point ex-boyfriend said something about how i’ve been living in ‘the luxury of your mom’s condo, where you can just order thai food and say ‘hey can you guys just please bring it to my bedroom? i don’t want to get the door, can you just bring it upstairs to my bed?” i laughed a little and like, jokingly defended myself. i said ‘i haven’t even ordered food once since i’ve been there.’ continued to make mild complaints about the water, coldness, each other. i said ‘DONE’ and felt like a child and turned off the water. looked at ex-boyfriend’s face, which was displaying a helplessly uncomfortable expression, looking somewhere in the distance. handed him the thicker/‘nicer’ towel. he stepped out of shower while i toweled off standing in the bathtub. felt myself shivering and unable to focus on anything but how it would be cold until my hair was dry, minutes away, ‘long sets’ of minutes, like at least 15. didn’t feel seriously irritated by anything that was going on. unsure if ex-boyfriend did. ex-boyfriend left bathroom and turned on the kitchen radio. i re-applied pajamas for ‘the cold walk to the bedroom,’ where i turned the radio to the same station, playing tom waits.
