Graduation party today. 9 am. uncles. Family. I talk, mostly listen. Cafe, tamales, not hungry, but I must do things to make others happy. So I eat the tamal. 

I miss you. You always said that you'd never be able to fully understand me, butyou know me more than I know myself. Because there is no me, just what you think I am. Thats all I'll ever be. Today Im the grad. Friends around me. They don't get it. I don't get it, but again I'm not real. One sunny Sunday. I realize I don't know these people. I'll never know these people. All I know is that I've caused them pain. They'll never know me. But they get to see me cut the cake. Look down at my hands. Make sure. 

It's time for cake. I stand and look down. I can't let them see me. Who Am I? What did I do to deserve this? I'm a fake, a phony, and a fool. Mostly blue and never golden. How long till this is over? 

I'm a brat. I don't know how to love. But I smile and I practice the things you say to people: "OMG, they're so big now." I don't think I like kids. I don't want kids. Everything feels oppressive. I spiral. There are flowers on the cake. I think about the flowers you got me—the ones rotting in my bedroom. 

Lose monopoly. Get overstimulated. Think about my friend thatwont talk to me anymore. Think bout the love I lost. Make people upset. go home. pee. cry. 

I like the color Green

I bought a new journal yesterday from one of those artsy bookstores in the Mission District. $20 to start my life over. Hopefully, I'll actually write in it this time because it's green.

I graduated from university last weekend and have no idea what I'm doing with my life. These days, a bachelor's degree means virtually nothing. I was severely depressed for like 20 months because I got declined from a fellowship and felt like the biggest failure on Earth. Now I'm just happy to have a part-time job and have some money coming in. My family really wants me to move back home, and I'm not sure how to tell them that the thought of waking up in that bed makes me want to vomit. My sister even offered to paint my room green, which is very sweet of her.

They came over for the weekend and for some reason unbeknownst to me, my body shivered with discomfort every minute of it. It's not like I hate them or anything; their presence just made me want to crawl out of my skin and rip my eyeballs out. They're really not that bad though, just a bit pretentious and annoying.

 I settled on it being a symptom of CPTSD (which I'm aware that I have after two conversations with my Medi-Cal-covered psychiatrist), which has gifted me with the inability to form healthy relationships with people. Anyway I think my bitchy attitude made everyone hate me a little extra than before. I don't know if I'll ever be able to make the people I love like me. I'm self-destructive as fuck and it's so annoying. Now that I think of it, I don't even think they really like me all that much; they just have no one else to talk to, and they can never get rid of me.

I'm really excited to stay in Berkeley for the summer. I love being able to walk to the bakery and order a decently shitty coffee for $3 and walk by the house with the chickens. I'll buy some...whatever it is chickens eat, and make it a daily routine to feed them. Perhaps I'll start some healthy girl routine like pilates or something. I told myself I'd run every morning before studying for the LSAT in an attempt to subdue the dread that comes with it. I can also take the train to SF whenever I feel like it, I can sit by the ocean and wish I were drowning in it, but never touch it. 

More than anything, I'm excited to finally be alone. I know that I should like community, and people, and relationships, I mean, for god's sake, I majored in anthropology, the literal study of humans. But right now I just don't want that. I need to know what it feels like to come home to absolutely nobody, to worry about no one except myself, in proper American style. God Bless this isolationist ass country. I feel like I need to truly be alone, so as to learn how to deal with the voices in my head that make me such an awful human being to be around. To feed the chickens without caring what others think about me. To lie in bed in nothing but underwear and read a really pretentious book that I have to convince myself to get through.  I need to appreciate the deprivation of human connection to thirst for eventual contact. 

I don't know, I guess I've just been feeling very mentally ill lately. We had a curious souls meeting last Monday where we talked about AI and our fears of it. My friend Zara said something brilliant, like always, where she pondered on what AI means for humanity, like what exactly does it mean to be intelligent? and what does it mean to be human? How does AI further complicate these already repressive categorizations, and what is prioritized when developing them? I think about this a lot because I genuinely often feel like I'm not "human," I mean, I know that I am a human, but the threshold between human and highly intelligent machine that operates quite successfully seems obfuscated to me. I mean, if we can just make machines that look and act like humans, what defines us? Our consciousness? Our sociability? Are we all just circuits of neurotransmitters? If a brain is a machine-like entity, then maybe that is why I feel like one. Fuck I mean I have this pulsing desire to disappear, to isolate myself so that I stop unintentionally hurting people because its literally so easy. If I just distance myself from people, then all of my problems would go away. But we can't do that because we're human. We can't be machines because we're "social creatures" with an innate need to build relationships.

Journal Nov 4

 

Today I saw a water fountain and it made me want to cry.

That's all I want to be for you.

I don't know when my water turned to fire, but I want it back.

I think I know how.

A water fountain is always running. It doesn't feel the need to put on a show when people sit and watch.

It doesn't need to replenish itself for the critters who drink its water.

It just is and it flows and flows and flows in its own certainty.

I'm so sorry for losing my own serenity.

I am a water fountain and I'll be here for you whenever you need me or don't need me.

I'm just here and I flow.

I'm so scared of losing you, I fucked up. I get angry and I lose myself like a fire whose embers catch on to everything around it.

I need to remember what love is. Im here to love. What else do I have in this world if not for my love for you. 

I'll never forget it again.

Cat's Cradle

 

My love only ever played in the dark,

then you came and set the blaze.

The whispers from the ether. they know me well,

touch the flame and let all your dreams whisk away. 

Or let it burn, let it toss and turn until the ashes consume its disdain.

You gave me a precious stone, 

One     I    could hold      days at a time    to remember you by.

but it slowly got chipped away

piece by piece,

by the evil deity---- who lives in the pantheon of my muddled ideology.

It wants me to come home to the dark,

Where I'd lie in a game of Cat's cradle 

strange fingers unbeknownst to me,  threading the strings of my sorrow and desires,

pulling my love

farther and farther

away from your blaze.

mom

 

I never write here.

I think it's because I've always felt so awkward about it. I don't feel like I deserve to. Like what the fuck do I have to offer lol.

                    Don't feel the need to share. Don't raise my hand in class. Don't call the people I love.\

I'll do it. 

Anyway.  

    I fucking hate my mom sometimes. I went home last weekend for Joever's sister's engagement party. 

My mom didn't know I was coming home with pierced ears. I was so afraid to tell her. Partly because she scares me but partly because I knew the needle would run straight through my ear and into her cobwebby little heart. I don't know why I care about her feelings so much. It's not like she's ever cared about mine. Thanks to her I have no sense of the sticky enterprise called love. I've got no fucking capital lol. I know i have it in me, there's something in me that craves so bad to be sensitive but just the thought of vulnerability makes me break down entirely. I want to be able to show my lover that I'm here for his darkness and brightness and foggyness but my mom never told me about the weather. I had no one there for me when it was time to get ready for school or time to brush my teeth or time to renounce the monsters under my bed. She probably didn't know my favorite color or my favorite food. I ask her what she remembers about me as a child and all she can say is that I was quiet. Yea of course I was quiet I fucking hated her. 

When I finally told her that I pierced my ears she couldn't even look at me. She yelled at me for like twenty seconds and then pretended like nothing happened the rest of the day. I genuinely wanted her to be mad at me. Show me SOMETHING. Be fucking vulnerable for Once. Show me your actual face you charlatin. I love you but you constantly seek to fool me. I cant trust you or anyone. When I try to peel off the mask you snarl and bark like a sad sad dog who has no one to love.

        

Memory Log

 

... Professor Alexei suggested I create a memory log for my thesis. I guess I should. Memory has never been something I could boast about. In fact, I think my shitty memory is the cause of most of the detrimental ruptures in my relationships. I think theres something noteworthy about the relationship between trauma & memory that psychologists love to theorize about. But I'll start trying to remember. then hopefully I can forget?

Before:09-09-200[] After:02-02-2002

I'm lying in bed with abuelita. I love her warmth. She smells like roses and her skin feels like a leathery couch. The covers are over the both of us and our bodies are parallel to each other, like two little sardines tucked into a tin bed. The blanket is flowery and pink, because pink is for girls abuelita says. We sleep together every night, I don't mind it. My sister is on the other side of the room, I wonder what she's thinking. I wish I could do this with her too. 

Jehovah es mi pastor, nada me faltara,

en lugares de delicados, pastos me hara descansar,

Junto a aguas de reposo me pastoreara,

confortara mi alma

I don't know what it means. We say it every night but I don't know what any of it means.  Every night I get closer and closer to remembering the words. Abuelita says that we have to say it so that Diosito remembers to take care of us at night. I hope my sister says it too so she can go to heaven with us. I love Diosito and I love papi Samuelito too. 

I don't care that my grandma makes us say the salmo every night. She has a beautiful voice. At church, her voice sounds like beautiful bird. Chirp chirp chirp, she flies so high like a bird. She says I should join the choir so that one day I can be an opera singer. I hope Diosito likes that.

...

December 14, 2014

...

It is late at night when the event occurs. We've been here for a few days now, ever since Apostle Samuel's death. The air is cold, Guadalajara is dreary. The place which once felt like a spiritual refuge has now been overtaken by a hellish shadow. Tears precipitate from the faces of everyone around me as I watch the rain fall through this wrought iron-adorned window in the front porch of our home. I wonder whether God joins us in mourning, or if He holds the sky up as a mirror, reflecting our self-inflicted misery. I'm worried about all the days of school I'm missing. I reach down to touch my sore knees which have bruised from all the kneeling, my fingers graze its bony infrastructure and I remember this isn't a dream. There is a worm whose been living in my throat, getting bigger as the days go by.

We haven't slept for days; We've been told to just wait and pray while the universal consecrations continue, 24 hours, a new preacher replaces the last as the clock ticks at every hour. Our days are filled with melancholic mornings and painful nights, while the uncertainty of the future looms over us like a storm-filled cloud waiting to release its buildup and flood the streets of an entire city. The church has asked everyone to submit their dreams to the ministerial body, hoping it will provide the salvational puzzle pieces needed to make sense of this haunting jigsaw. God will reveal the next apostle, they say. Any day now. 

"Turn on the T.V.!" my aunt screams as she runs down the stairs struggling to put her veil on and jerking me out of my state of existential limbo. Could it be? Is there news? We don't have time to run to the temple.

My family and I are gathered around the small cable T.V. whose antennas extend beyond the length of the frame itself. It's positioned liked an anchor at the center of the living room, it's stopped us from going adrift all day. I hear the scratch of metal dragging across the tile floor as foldable chairs arrange snuggly around this shabby little device that will soon become our makeshift portal to heaven.

I can see the reflection of the screen on everyone's eyes around me as I scan the room. I choose to experience this through their eyes because I don't trust my own. A flood of hope fills the living room when a minister on the T.V. takes the podium inside the temple and begins to recount a testimony that he said will reveal the name of the next apostle. None of this feels real to me. I look to abuelita, she's already crying uncontrollably and rocking back and forth in her seat. The worm in my throat just got bigger and it's hard to breathe, it needs to get out. 

The world got silent as he began recounting, "I had a dream.." everyone's crying. "I began to see how the a cloud descended from the sky. And I stood up from the floor where I was praying to God. And with great necessity I looked towards the clouds and when that cloud got close to me, I saw that the servant of God come out of it, with his resplendently white clothes. I got closer to identify him... and when I saw him, I head a voice that said 

Naason, is my chosen one."

Everyone in the room dropped to the ground, including me. It was as if some external force hit our knees and knocked us to the floor all at once. It was if that force hit us so bad that we all cried like helpless children. It was if that force had given us a wound so painful that we wailed and wailed, speaking in a language that was incomprehensible to anyone else. But there was no external force, no pain, and a whole lot of ecstasy. 

Never mind the bullets, I'm swallowing salvation

 

It's easy to die, but it's hard being soulless. 

I tell myself life is worth living. Handing me the gun is easy, but don't force me to convince you why I wouldn't use it. I walk around with a wound in my hand on display, yet I still smile at children. It's funny, it's ironic, and it's beautiful. It's life after war. 

"May the peace and grace of God be with you," they say. They're right. Since the womb, I've been fighting for the title of God. The moment of umbilical separation was the 3..2...1... I puked at every chance they had to shove their milk in my mouth. It's just me and my competitor, God, throwing punches till one of us loses the faith of our audience, like two twins doomed with the faith of murder. 

I am a winner; I am God. 

I didn't know this back then.

I never knew how to make the coffee. It never interested me. Nor did I fluff the China that sat in the cupboards. I didn't prepare the baths. The bed would be left unmade if it were up to me. How would this save me? I'd have to swallow the murky residue left in the coffee cup to make it to heaven. Bend down on my knees and hope someone shoots me. No glossolalia would be enough to open the gates of heaven, where the jury awaits my indictment. I can't die, but I can't be the living dead. Death would be surrender; I needed victory. 

They fooled me. I was so close, but they convinced me I was stuck in the deepest part of the well. Occasionally, they'd uncover the well cap to see if I was still breathing. So typical of their God, depriving you of your humanity yet constantly checking to see if you still believe they exist. Otherwise, what's the point of fighting at all? We'd drop our arms and surrender to the forces of universal peace. It can't be that way. Dichotomies of good and evil make the world go round and round and rumble and tumble. I didn't even realize I was so close to the top. If my fingers so happened to slip from my grip on the tethered rope, it would all be over. I'd let my body scatter across the ground, and they'd come and collect the pieces of dust to sprinkle into their glasses of wine made from the blood of their prisoners of war. 

Esther was a whistleblower, or Ishtar of Babylonia, or Star, the savior of morality at God's behest. Being selfless has never been a good thing, at least in the favor of another God. The people will take every ounce of benevolence and safety they can get. They'll watch the boat sink as long as their raft is afloat. They watch the sun rise and fall daily without ever thanking it for its consistency. They do this all in vain. They depend on an answer for salvation. They rely on a merciless God. A fraud. A fake. 

But maybe I'm still looking for salvation.

In a person, in an ideology,  in a marketplace, in a diet, in the poplar seed pods that float around in the air while I'm on my daily walk. I'm never going to find it. I am God. I look at myself and see a blistering light. My blood is glitter, and my skin is cut from the cloth of serenity. I won the race. Once I convince myself of that, I'll be free—okay, even.