LIVEBLOG

by Megan Boyle

  8:38pm: made a few turns to continue scanning liveblog for interesting things to read while smoking two cigarettes

  8:42pm: fake teeth security guard saluted me and I saluted back. He said ‘have a good night hon.’ I said ‘thanks, you too’ and meant it.

  8:51PM: fed cats. walked around apartment, like someone watching would think ‘she’s busy.’ ate 60mg vyvanse before leaving mom’s. texted rachel back. matthew donahoo emailed that there was a jeopardy question about ‘homeland.’ going to shower, promote reading on social media, practice speaking part of liveblog i’ll be reading. feel like i’m about to audition for acting school.

  9:22PM: this is an introduction to my reading tonight. i will be reading an excerpt from a liveblog (which i am currently typing this sentence into) documenting my daily thoughts and activities, which i began on march 17. i started the liveblog because i was feeling unhappy and like i’ve been unwittingly allowing myself to act in ways that further my unhappiness, so seeing these things written down might help me be more aware, and if nothing else, get me in the habit of writing again because writing used to feel good.

  the sentence you just heard has been said aloud maybe seven times in less-organized forms as i was showering about twenty minutes ago.

  APRIL 17, 2013

  9:21PM[yesterday]–3:44AM: insane circular argument with dad. allowed myself to continue arguing mostly via thinking the amount of times i was repeating myself would become ridiculous, like dad would definitely notice, which he didn’t, even when i started accompanying repetitions with ‘i’m repeating myself again.’ dad is big into ‘cause and effect, family history, explaining things’ and i am big into ‘if you ask for permission to interrupt me you’re already interrupting, just do it or don’t do it, it doesn’t matter, you’re doing it to be polite but it actually feels impolite, it doesn’t seem fair to expect me not to act annoyed when you said you didn’t want to ask permission anymore but you keep doing it.’ felt like i was ‘channelling tao’ and dad was ‘channelling me.’

  at the end he said ‘it’s just an innocuous movement’ about a…jesus. i noticed he was turning out the lights and asked him why, because we were still talking. he said ‘this? this is just an innocuous movement’ in a ‘neener neener neener’ voice. followed him to the bathroom and sarcastically said ‘me too, look at how ‘innocuous’ i am when i follow you.’ he brushed his teeth slowly and said ‘i see.’ i said ‘why not brush your teeth again.’ he said ‘i don’t know what that means’ like he knew exactly what it meant but it was ‘beneath him’ to acknowledge this (i didn’t know what i meant by ‘why not brush your teeth again’ but felt like a class-A-bitch-to-high-hell as i said it). walked outside with backpack, to drive to new york for interview. looked for my car.

  3:45am: looks like my car has been towed. Dad drives a dodge challenger, which suits his arguing style. Sat on stoop and smoked cigarette. Man with dog said ‘good morning.’ Thought I saw a giant full moon rising from ground but it was just a window.

  5:17AM: twinkly music i heard on dad’s birthday is coming from his bedroom. the guided meditation CD. seems ‘hard to take.’ it was sad the other night, but tonight…jesus. one of the cats peed on my bed. car towing place isn’t answering phone. dad and i hugged and apologized three times but seems like we each sadly and silently agree that the other is impossible.

  5:28AM: it feels good to be laying down. wearing ‘clothes for 11AM interview/photo shoot.’ no car. no busses to NYC until 8:45AM. comically bad timing. rescheduled interview for next week, april 22.

  quotes i remember from argument:

  ‘well is there anything you want?’

  ‘no i tried everything i don’t want to be awake i don’t want to be asleep i don’t want a person i don’t want alone i don’t know what to do i don’t want to be here i don’t want to live anywhere i don’t want to be awake or asleep or awake’ (me, crying)

  ‘you’re staying here and going to therapy for six months’

  ‘that doesn’t work, i know you don’t mean it, you’re just trying to take initiative and do parenting instead of letting me, which is nice but i don’t think ultimatums work’

  ‘it would really do you some good, do you the trick, this lady i found’

  ‘i don’t think i would make it for six months here’

  ‘well, you know what i think’

  ‘wait this is actually helpful because now i know what i don’t want, so this is good, i know something i don’t want now, that’s sort of like wanting’

  (this was a good part, before hugging and it being over for a little while)

  ‘it’s a real head trip [forget what followed this, was surprised i spontaneously said ‘head trip’]’

  ‘so what you’re saying is your view of me from your perspective is the only view there is?’ (dad, multiple times, this one really gets the circle going)

  ‘you seem so angry to me, in general’

  ‘i don’t believe in anger, anger is bullshit’

  ‘it’s just an emotion’

  ‘yes but it is a secondary emotion. anger: the emotion secondary to pain and fear.’

  ‘well then you seem very in pain and afraid to me, in general.’

  [seems like he agreed, facially]

  “tired’ is not an emotion, it’s a physical sensation.’ (he said this a lot)

  ‘to me it feels like both. it doesn’t even matter, we know what ‘tired’ means.’

  ‘it is absolutely based on your physical state.’

  i sound rational in this description but think argument was mostly me talking in an uncontrollably emotional voice. dad sometimes sounded intentionally calm/machine-like, which provoked me or something, like he was ‘showing off’ his calmness and suppressing calling me on my bullshit. at one point i said that. but no bullshit was called. at another point i said i was continuing to argue only so we would remember the argument as insanely long and un-repeatable, because we had learned. dad seemed briefly interested in this and we like, shared a moment of ‘should we?’

  6:06AM: eating an apple. roof of mouth is hot/itchy, maybe swollen. turned fan to ‘white noise’ but can still hear dad snoring. headache. no sleep for close to 36 hours again. alvie is howling and being insatiable. worried he’s going to pee on me.

  6:11AM: goddamned me and arguing and car shit and not replacing the visitor pass and thinking i’d just be at dad’s for a few hours. ‘told by an idiot full of sound and fury in the end signifying nothing’ is good to mentally repeat, instantly calming. when i came inside from the cigarette after discovering car was towed dad opened the door before i did, think we both looked the same way, like ‘drained of shit.’ was surprised to see him at the door but unsure of why.

  6:38AM: trudged through itchy mouth apple. eating 1mg xanax. ‘master of the house’ playing in head. yuck.

  12–2:30pm: dad woke me and had made coffee. Paul McCartney live concert video he likes to play in the morning was playing. We were acting careful around each other. Felt heavy, still do. Apologized for letting argument be so long. He did too. I said ‘I don’t want to do that again, it doesn’t seem to help, we just feel bad and say things we’ve said before and we won’t remember.’ he said something like he’s okay with talking that way and not remembering and doesn’t want to avoid in the future. I said ‘I’m just not going to let it happen again, I could’ve prevented it.’ he said something like he didn’t want to prevent it. Felt like ‘fuck…’

  2:42pm: have car again. Woman drove beside me asked if she could get in front of me. Seemed nice. Had epiphany that ‘I’m the one deciding my life feels bad, I could just as easily think it’s fine, yeah it’s just fine, there’s just always good and bad parts, the main thing I feel bad about is aging/things I thought I’d be doing now, might as well accept things how they are.’ Not the first time I’ve thought this but seemed helpful.

  2:53pm: in whole foods parking lot. Watching teenage-looking boy sit on a ledge with his back to me, doi
ng some kind of ‘sharpening chopsticks’ whittling maneuver. Thought ‘Walter Davis, I wish.’ Still feel heavy from argument. Parents are at the beach until Monday, invited me to come.

  3:01pm: whole foods was out of the green juice I like. Mostly wanted to go there to ‘do a lap, check if it’s still there,’ didn’t really want anything. Chopsticks boy was still there when I arrived at car. Going to ‘take it easy’ on me today, no pressure to do shit, I’ll feel less heavy and more able to do things if I don’t pressure myself for a little bit.

  3:06pm: one thing I want to say before break: a Kia SUV was behind me at red light. Remembered getting trained at the book store with two people: Nate, who would become my friend, and a girl named Kia, who didn’t make it through training. She called out twice due to car problems. I forget if Nate or me started saying ‘Kia dead.’ It became a thing we’d say.

  One more thing: one time in the back room Nate and I were on the schedule to do ‘book buyback’ orders and we found a Santa Claus costume, which we took turns wearing. We put on Christmas music and took people’s orders with the Santa outfit. This was in May or June, I think.

  3:15pm: car ahead of me honked again. Girl on sidewalk said ‘hey! Where you going?’ driver said ‘to study hall, what about you?’ she said ‘I’m going to donnelling.’ they were quiet and looked at each other and waved when the light changed.

  3:41PM: feels like ‘doom.’ does anyone else reading this feel ‘doom?’ solitary confinement christmas basement doom. want to do something fluffy today, like frolic around in nature, escape the doom. unsure of where to go in nature where i won’t feel doom. i’m in nature. shit. i’m going to drive to…western maryland…see mountains…do i want to nap…shit…just want to frolic about…want to take alvie and shirley on a walk with leashes…picturing me in a meadow and ‘20 tubes of colored liquids appearing in the sky, slowly targeting and ‘tunneling’ down to me on earth, pouring onto my head/into my mouth, completely engulfing my body but i don’t get wet.’ is that so much to want from life…lol…

  3:42–9:50PM: looked at internet passively. answered questions. i forget most of what i did. decided to see ‘the place beyond the pines’ at 10:35PM and order take-out. strong urge to masturbate before i left apartment.

  9:54pm: driving to ‘asian taste,’ to pick up sushi. No longer hungry after masturbating. What would happen if I did nothing, like less than this, for as long as possible. Wearing sheer black shirt with a galaxy print over a sheer beige bra. If you look carefully you can see my nipple. Two nipple asteroids hidden beneath galaxy.

  10:07pm: ‘Asian taste’ called to ask if I was coming. Picked it up. Going to eat in car now before movie.

  10:44-11:59PM: bought ticket from a guy in a suit with long dreds. he said ‘for how many?’ i said ‘just one.’ impulsively livetweeted movie from unedited twitter account as placeholder for liveblogging.

  APRIL 18, 2013

  1–1:30AM: Eating seaweed salad leftovers w/chopsticks in car. Man who sold me ticket and janitor just walked out of theater. We are the only people I can see in the parking lot. Heard car start behind me and ‘make em say unh’ playing, then car driving away, fading out, and now nothing.

  I want to keep partying all night in a 24-hour movie theater. I want to work an overnight shift doing whatever in a huge strip mall place with huge empty parking lot.

  3:46AM: parked far from dad’s apartment door. imagined person mugging me, giving them everything i have on me, then if they wanted to rape me i’d say ‘i have AIDs’ but somehow that wouldn’t stop them from raping me, they’d just kill me after the rape. arrived at apartment door. imagined me sprawled out in front of apartment with blood coming from two big gashes on the backs my thighs that went down to my knees and me staring up at the sky like ryan gosling when he died in movie. gosling-style. there was also blood around my head.

  3:50–6:00AM: ate a cadbury mini-egg, 1mg xanax. tried to fall asleep to ASMR videos about food, then thought ‘you haven’t eaten much lately, treat yourself.’ decided to smoke some of my dad’s pot eat the rest of the cadburry mini-eggs. then i put peanut butter on three fig ‘triple berry’ newtons. then i ate half of the bag of fig newtons without peanut butter, just raw-dogging it.

  6–7:00AM: smoked more pot. wanted to watch people eating chocolate as i was eating it to ‘intensify the sensory experience.’ looked at nigella lawson video, then porn.

  7:40am: wonder who the first person to order pet meds to get high will be. probably me, re alvie’s anxiety. i’ll get him pet meds for me. how do some people just know how to cook, they know enough to have shows about how they do it, we want to see that, this is what people want to see

  everything looks/feels like porn right now

  friends = comets that orbit every few years

  3:35PM: woke feeling good. ate two fig ‘triple berry’ newtons, wanted more. ate under ten quaker ‘cheddar cheese rice quakes.’ ate under ten cashews.

  4–6:58PM: fed cats. made coffee. watched youtube videos about life in prison. jogged to move car in ridiculous outfit. smoked cigarette in backyard. have been feeling plagued by not knowing what drugs/food i want.

  7:12PM: gave cats treats. drinking a canned ‘amelia earhart’ brand of sparkling water with ‘essence of raspberry.’ seems insane that my dad bought this…like aol.com morning rush playlist thing…eating smallish stack of cheddar cheese pringles. read ingredients and felt solidarity with inmates from prison food documentary.

  8:02PM: going to yoga at 8:30. cheddar cheese pringle-eating has stabilized, half the can remains untouched, no longer interested. want to eat sushi and seaweed salad again. last night i ordered a shrimp tempura roll, salmon/avocado roll, and spicy scallop roll from ‘asian taste.’ so good. asian taste. i want to see another movie again but it’ll be too late after yoga. feel like i’m on vacation.

  9:47pm: looked for parking spots near yoga for about ten minutes and gave up. Drove to mom’s to check mail and get books to mail tomorrow. Feel shitty. Ate an orange. Talked with mom on the phone and felt looming thing, she asked me how I was and I told her I’m not doing anything, seems like life is going to continue being nothing, so hard to want to do anything right now. Like even talking to people I like who I feel happy around seems hard. The world is happy and functional without me in it. I’m barely in it now and it seems to be thriving, aol.com has news to report, people have things to say and other people are interested in hearing them. It would be fine without me here. People would adapt and continue to thrive and say interesting things to each other.

  9:56PM: mom called as i was parking at dad’s. she said something like ‘i just wanted to say that i know you’re going through a hard time and i don’t want to minimize the fight you had with dad, i want you to know i’ve felt the way i think you feel before, and that it’ll get better, and no matter what i’m always less than five minutes away on the phone, if you’re ever feeling hopeless and alone and like there’s no one.’ it felt like she meant it. thought ‘she might actually really get it, people might actually really understand what it’s like for you, that’s a possibility, start considering that possibility more, you don’t believe people enough.’

  10–10:30PM: milled around apartment, changing clothes and petting cats. put on a little black eyeshadow. ate 20mg adderall. emailed with rachel white about when we’d start skype-ing (she’s writing a profile of tao for the village voice and wanted to talk to me about him)

  10:24PM–11:59PM: talked with rachel on skype. felt really good to talk to another person who is alone with a computer and their writing all day. highly enjoyable conversation. felt like i was not being very clear about some things/was rusty with conversational skills. it’s 5:16AM right now and i’m tired/ate 1mg xanax and drank a beer, leaving out details from this conversation but might elaborate later.

  APRIL 19, 2013

  12–1:25AM: still talking with rachel, internet cut out twice and the last time it was when i was starting to talk about something i
nteresting/sex, exchanged emails a little).

  1:26–2:45AM: masha texted and i saw another text from her from 4/13 about doing DMT. read and related to her DMT account. texted her a long thing but it kept failing to send.

  2:45–3:41AM: picked at everything on my skin that looked like it could contain something that would pop out of me. i looked at my back in the bathroom mirror. have two painful ingrown hairs or…somethings…i don’t know what they are, they’re in my right armpit. picked at them until they were big and red and it felt hard to put my arm flat against me. kept thinking ‘why are you doing this, you know you don’t want to be doing this, this will make you feel bad tomorrow, what drug do you want [not adderall anymore, xanax? no, just drinking? maybe. molly? molly would change your thoughts but you’d feel depleted tomorrow. you mostly just want your thoughts to be changed. pot would make you feel even more dissociated or something, than this, don’t do the pot, you’re doing devious skin-destruction things, the pot will make you paranoid. drink more green juice so your skin is better and you’re not afraid of cancer, the gyno is going to find cancer in you tomorrow maybe, maybe if you squeeze stuff out…something…there is the perfect thing that if you watched pop out of you it would make you never want to do it again, that’s the drug for you, keep looking for that].’ then used a skin brush on my skin and rubbed all of me with raw coconut oil.