by Megan Boyle
• talking about relationships
• gossiping/shittalking/drugs
• reviewing ‘what happened other times I’ve seen you’ (just as easy as ‘what happened last time I saw you’ but feels a little worse so it’s lower on the list)
• curiously trading ideas about ‘what is the universe/why is this shit here/why am I here/what is life/what’s going to happen’
• talking about sex
• encouraging people to do anything to make whatever we’re doing more interesting
• analyzing interpersonal things slowed-down Woody Allen style (must be slowed-down to be enjoyable)
• social scripts/customer service/formal/impersonal/‘knowing each other’s roles’ things (this feels like the mid-point, it starts becoming harder after this)
• listening/learning/following instructions
• consoling (would be higher but don’t feel like I can really help ever)
• exuding calmness during cop-like/high-stakes situations I don’t care about
• exuding anxiety during lower-stakes things like ‘saying ‘hi”
• apologizing
• talking about internet/books/current events/art/movies/stuff that feels like school
• ‘quietly enduring’/‘politely restraining’
• shooting the shit with parents of boyfriends
• aggressively reassuring someone that I think they’re okay
• repeating conversations/reminding/getting reminded
• begging forgiveness at the last minute so I don’t fail a class or get my license suspended or car repossessed or things like that
• expressing irritation/sadness/disappointment about a person to that person (seems really easy if I’m close to the person, is low on the list via how unpleasant it feels to do and depressing it is that I will probably always do it)
• arguing ‘theoretically’/intellectually
• arguing bitterly
• yelling uncontrollably
4:04PM: did 300 crunches, 50 push-ups, 50 squats. ate 10mg adderall. fuck it i’m eating the other 10mg. going to shower, go to petsmart, deliver kitty things to kitties, go somewhere else. a library. something.
4:52PM: ate noopept. mom called about visiting tuesday. feel empty thing. big empty. big empty. wanted to keep repeating ‘big empty’ for indefinitely. no one to realistically fantasize about and it’s all my fault. cool. liveblog mad less interesting now. okay. what can i do. i don’t feel like doing anything. i’ll do these things i said i’d do, then i’ll come home, then what. i should try to be more social. it takes so long to get from where i live to where anyone else lives. losing pleasure in social things. i don’t know. therapy. they would put me on a pill to make me feel less. it would probably make me feel big empty style. liveblog is boring now because i’m not interesting. okay. there is nothing else to do but do the things you said you’d do today.
6:20PM: starting to feel adderall. feeling better. started writing account of ‘mushrooms night’ that was too big to answer for someone’s ask.fm question, going to finish it after going to petsmart, then post it on may 7 or 8….you’ve already read it if you’re reading this and didn’t skip that part.
7:15pm: showered, dressed, dried hair, applied coconut oil to body, perfume, put water in plastic bag to not disturb electronic devices I’m not sure why I’m bringing. Wandering aimlessly around apartment. Leaving. Adderall wearing off maybe, vague pangs of ‘[indescribable].’ feel better than yesterday.
Stuff I want to write: ‘self yelp’ thing, most emotional t-shirts, livetweet of something on MDMA…moma on MDMA lol…ask if thought catalog is interested, alt citizen article I said I’d write to go along w/interview
Tomorrow I will return attorney phone call and get my car inspected
Also email Brad Listi egregiously late email also Mira egregiously late email also Jordan not egregiously late email
Friday I have an update interview with Juliet
7:20pm: teenage blond boy was ‘perched’ on railing outside my building.
7:23pm: entered car. Had epiphany-like feeling of ‘I’m far in distance to wherever I was when I was mostly at my mom’s, I’m not sure how to do this [live].’
7:29pm: fishermen. They always seem to be there. I like them. Listening to ‘goodbye stranger’ by supertramp. Song gets me emotional in weird stabby molesty perfect in its hopelessness way. Like there is a lost montage of my life to this song that they couldn’t find a place for in ‘boogie nights.’
8:10pm: non-anxiously shot the shit with guy ahead of me in line at petsmart. He said he wanted his dog to eat food to ‘remain masculine.’ he thought he was going to receive three free tennis balls. Guy ringing me up said he had two dogs, two bearded lizards, a fish. I said ‘bearded lizards are friendly, right?’ The petsmart man said they’re some of the more friendlier lizards, definitely. But his aged at different times. The female was bigger and she doesn’t like the male. They had to be separated. At the end he made some comment like ‘so you gotta trade in your lizards sometimes, it’s alright.’ he asked me if I needed help loading my ‘kitty tower’ into my truck. I said ‘no thanks I got it, I got it, let me just get my bag maneuver’ and put all the bags on one arm.
8:15pm: still sitting in parking lot. Not enough time to go to Ikea to look at tables. Which is good. I want a free ass Craigslist table. Mama just love smelling that Ikea smell fuck you I like smelling it and lookin in all them fake ass rooms they made look all nice
8:29pm: passed cop car and remembered I was supposed to handle ticket for using cell phone weeks ago. Also have maybe seven parking tickets since this winter. I am in trouble. Handling this when I get home.
8:54pm: just noticed mysterious gazebo outside of Duane reade on 116th st. Bought e-cigarette refills, swiffer batteries, two sf red bull four-packs on sale.
9:00PM: parked two blocks north from apartment bulding. carried ‘kitty tower’ thingy with me. passed a woman sitting on steps in a fenced-in yard who said ‘he’s just jealous’ about her dog. it was a pug dog. it started barking after i passed. i said ‘hey woof woof.’ the woman said ‘here, [dog’s name], you want some cheese?’
9:01–10:36PM: unpacked kitty tower and put catnip on it to try to get
them interested. put batteries in swiffer and swiffed the floor. put down cat grass. cats seem uninterested in cat tower, especially alvie, who i bought it for mostly (he likes to sit ontop of the kitchen cabinets like ten feet in the air). shirley seems a little interested. threw away trash. texted (am still in the process of texting) back and forth with jessie from canada who made me the mix and who wants me to edit a story and zachery. sitting on bed. ate 20mg adderall to ‘help me do the thing i forget.’
THINGS I WANTED TO DO:
• elaborate on funny parts of mushrooms night with zachery
• send emails
• write alt citizen article
i’m doing all of that after i finish editing the story.
10:37–11:59PM: sat on my bed and drank 16oz sf red bull. edited jesse’s richard brautigan style story. edited the shit out of that shit. if anyone ever wants me to edit things i like editing maybe more than writing, i’m happy to edit things.
MAY 16, 2013
12–2:11AM: edited and sent jesse’s story. listened to ‘bamboo cactus’ by i, cactus on repeat. didn’t look at other things on the internet at all, i think. i took a pee pee break. focused big time on editing. listening to ‘goodbye stranger’ by supertramp now. archived may 12-15.
3:22AM: how is it now 3:22AM. thought of myself as ‘fluffily hurtling towards death’ instead of ‘placing red bull on windowsill.’ considering re-reading parts of this to see ‘how it came to this.’
3:30AM: i don’t know what i did from 2:12-3:21am. going to look at my internet history and fucking…i’ll upload a screenshot to flickr…seems like it’s going to be embarrassing.
3:40AM: i must’ve been doing other things. i don’t kn
ow. want to be held by something. should i drive to maryland now…for just…sad…i don’t know. what the hell am i doing. have been liveblogging for two months, tomorrow.
3:44AM: seems like i lost focus of something but i don’t know what. i would pay someone to read this and tell me where i lost focus, and of what.
6:31AM: typed 3k-word summary of every day i’ve liveblogged in msword document. e-cigarette definitely broken. want to drive to maryland. feels so hard to do this. i’m not even doing anything. look at all of that shit, all of that summary shit. i’m not even doing anything. i don’t know what i want. how has all of this time has passed. i don’t feel like i’m here right now, at the apartment. i don’t feel like ‘yesterday,’ i can’t remember yesterday. going to petsmart. i can’t do this anymore. i don’t know what i can’t do anymore. i know this isn’t making sense. this is how my brain sounds. i feel horrible. i don’t care about sounding. just, whatever. i don’t care about whoever’s reading. nobody cares about me. how do people look at this. people say stuff to me. my parents like me but why. people keep looking at this and asking me questions. nobody really wants this. i’m not saying this to…just, whatever. i don’t have an agenda. if you’re reading this and you think i have an agenda i think you’re an idiot and there is no hope for you. there less hope for you than there is for me. that is sad. there are people like that, with less hope than me. i know that. there’s nothing i can do about it. i’m not condescending to whoever, it’s just. goddamnit. i know something is different about how i’m typing. let me be dramatic. give me a goddamned break. i don’t want to be funny. i don’t want to say stuff to make anyone like me. the sun is rising. i don’t feel happy about anything. the e-cigarette doesn’t work. there’s nothing i want. i get excited when i get to feel different, chemically. i feel hopeful when i’m driving because i’m not in the place where i’ll end up. there’s nothing i want. the thing i used to want is stupid. the thing of wanting another person. it’s stupid. it’s always going to be the same thing unless i want to force myself to be with someone forever and then i’ll always be wondering ‘why did i do this.’ if i don’t do that i’ll always be wondering ‘why am i doing this, why didn’t i do the other thing.’ i’m not happy and i’m not fun to be around right now. it takes me forever to respond to anything because i know i’m going to just end up feeling the same after anything. it’s always this. no matter what everyone is going to leave at some point. i’ll mess up and they won’t like me or maybe they’ll mess up and i won’t like them. or we just won’t talk. it’s always me, alone. or me feeling obligated to all the people who don’t realize whatever is happening between us is going to end in some way. nobody gets it. or no, they don’t get it because that’s not true for them, people just stay in their lives. my life is not somewhere people want to stay. statistically. you could figure it out. my life isn’t even somewhere i want to stay but i don’t want to die either but i can’t think of anything i want from this. i don’t know if i’m being dramatic or not. my life is stupid. it’s the stupidest joke of a life. a psychologist would say i haven’t gotten over relationships or the abortion. they would maybe be right. i don’t know. it doesn’t matter. i can’t tell anything. all i know is the only thing i have to look forward to is some idea that it’s not going to be ‘now’ someday. it’s always going to be now though. a lifelong series of different ‘now’s. if anyone thinks anything bad about me the joke is on them because i think so much worse shit about me than anyone could ever know because nobody knows me as well as i do. i don’t know how to change anything about me, that would make me not think things like this, but if i didn’t think things like this i would be happy probably. i don’t know if i’m exaggerating, i feel completely serious and rational, like rationally assessing my potential to feel better. i’m not looking for attention. the only thing attention does is make me feel obligated to say ‘thank you’ or comment in some other way and i feel so shitty when i do any of that. any kind of talking i feel bad doing. i’m sorry. i’ve been lying the whole time. if you think i’m nice or funny or a nice person or a good friend or something it’s because i’m good at lying. i feel so bad when i talk to anyone. unless it’s a certain kind of talking or a certain kind or person. or unless i’m on drugs or alcohol or something. i’m lying the whole time. i’m sorry. it feels bad in a different way when i’m not talking to anyone. there is more hope when there’s another person around maybe. i get more distracted but i also think i’m stupider and i can’t think as well. i am annoying and i try to make too many jokes. or else i feel paralyzed and like everyone hates me and i say stupid things i don’t mean to help make something go by faster. it’s not always like that, i’m not being realistic. i’m being dramatic. just please read this and think ‘she’s being dramatic’ if you think anything. don’t think anything. just keep doing whatever else you were doing. i’m jealous of whatever else you were doing or whoever you are. i don’t want to be this anymore. i don’t know what to do. what do people do. i already did therapy and it didn’t work. do i just…i don’t know…i just should try to not pay attention to thoughts like this and find something else to make me busy. i guess. it’s always going to come back to this feeling though. for years i think, since…i don’t know. actually this is recent i think, for it to be happening to this degree. i think it started last summer. wait. i don’t know. the one before that. i don’t remember. it wasn’t always like this. i think i’m happy also. sometimes i’m also happy.
7:47AM: ate 2mg klonopin. considering driving to maryland. want to lay without thinking for a while and maybe sleep.
1:19PM: woke around 30 minutes ago.
1:36PM: did 300 crunches, 50 push-ups, 50 squats.
2:13PM: picked at skin.
2:44PM: did 50 squats, 50 push-ups, 100 crunches. e-cigarette works again.
3:10PM: received email coupon for 50% off rite aid brand products.
3:29PM: it’s good when shirley is here.
3:37PM: colin texted about a ‘business networking’ event in manhattan tonight. have been texting funny/commiserating style with masha, arranged drug trade.
4:14PM: going to drive to maryland.
4:32PM: ate 10mg opana, 5mg vicodin.
4:47pm: have been carrying things Matthew donahoo mailed me, in my purse, ‘for good luck.’ Colin said ‘hey Megan’ when I left building. He was in the sand, seemed to be using a metal detector.
5:24pm: listening to ‘parking lot music’ by e*vax, a ‘reminds me of an ex-boyfriend’ album.
5:26pm: heavy traffic. That is okay. I’d rather be in traffic than anywhere else. Want to re-read ‘slapstick.’
6:52pm: gas station attendant said ‘hey howya doin man.’ Listened to around 25% of a Schopenhauer audio book about pessimism and thought ‘yeah I think this stuff anyway.’ listened to around 25% of einstein’s theory of relativity and thought ‘I almost get it, would be better as a powerpoint.’
8:45pm: pulling into parking space at mom’s. Thoughts in car were mostly ‘what could I have done differently’ and ‘why am I doing this’ and ‘will someone be mad at me for doing this.’ A little ‘that looks interesting’ and ‘why isn’t e-cigarette working’ and ‘I don’t feel effects from the pills I ate’ and ‘am I hungry.’ I am hungry.
9:08pm: mom was watching the second to last episode ‘the office.’ She hugged me hard and asked if I was sick. Knew I wasn’t but felt my face look like ‘maybe.’ I said ‘no I’m just feeling not so good.’ she hugged me again and said ‘you have to watch the farewell ‘office.” I sat beside her on the couch and said ‘I didn’t know it was the last one already.’ she said something sweet and goofy and cheerful and sounded a little embarrassed.
When Jim said he hoped someday someone would be inspired by ‘the office’ mom made a crying noise. I ordered Thai food. Mom said ‘is the pizza coming?’ and laughed knowingly, said ‘I mean are you going to the pizza place to pick up your Thai food.’
Ate handful cashews, bite of whol
e foods cookie, 1mg xanax.
9:16pm: ‘the office’ is on TV at the Thai place. No other customers.
9:24pm: warm and spring-smelling outside.
10:22pm: sleepy. I wish I was on ‘the office.’ I love mom. So sleepy.
10:32PM: watching ‘the office’ on demand with mom.
10:37PM: ate tom kha soup, pad thai chicken, piece of peach pie. great. trying to find old episodes of ‘the office.’ mom said ‘well we have both agreed that we like to see the ones with jim and pam in love.’
11:02PM: started falling asleep saw mental image of hands over a sink and cans kept dumping different colors of paint to maybe wash the hands which kept pulling away.
MAY 17, 2013
[some time before 1AM]: fell asleep during ‘the office’ and ‘grumbled’ childishly to bed.
[some time in the night]: woke distracted by the blue light of e-cigarette, moved it to my bag.
11:50AM: woke from sex dream with the second guy i had sex with, one of the joaquin phoenix-looking brothers, who looked more attractive as he had aged. it felt really good. i was on top, we were both facing the ceiling. then i was outside tao’s old apartment in brooklyn and i think we were having sex standing up near a small pole, like a toilet plunger. tao said ‘i have new roommates’ as we walked inside. there were three 40-50lbs overweight women and six bunk beds in the room where the kitchen was. i said ‘where did your room go?’ tao said ‘it’s still here, you just can’t see it because of them.’ he asked if i could stay two nights and i thought ‘he wants me to stay two nights, sweet.’ one of the women was ‘lounging’ in a top bunk bed. she said ‘no not two nights.’ tao got in the bottom bunk of a bed and the top was empty and he motioned for me to join him. there was room for two people. i realized we wouldn’t have sex. the overweight women talking continuously and making food and tao and i were looking at each other and grinning and being like ‘what the fuck is this shit.’ woke next to half a glass of milk by bed.
