8/21/25 - Crosseyed and Painless

I nearly had a psychological break today. My parents helped me come back from the brink. I've been experiencing some paranoia and anxiety at work, you know. I was on a tangent regarding my fears to some trusted coworkers, and they pulled me back to the real world.

I keep slipping lately. I keep falling out my skin.

When I left my car I had trouble walking. I was starting to bias left into the grass, I think I was uncomfortable with walking on the pavement.

I was having maladaptive anxieties about my supervisor firing me and using his authority to bar me from collecting unemployment. I thought my coworkers were going to assault me if I spoke any words to them.

I've taken a minute to sit down. I'm still not mentally relaxed. I'm still feeling panicked and confused. But I can control what I do with it.

I am learning to accept that maybe I am not a good person. Maybe I am not good. Maybe I deserve what I feel.

I think all of that is wrong actually. It's still here.

I look at the walls in my house. The yellow and blue and the wood. It's too familiar.

I am currently cataloging my anxiety spike.

Unnatural fixations and attachments are typical for those experiencing many different kinds of psychosis. My vision is getting blurry. The left side of my body is tight again.

I think maybe I'm having one of those long strokes. I kind of wish it was a real one. Everything would make sense. There would finally be a reason real enough and cruel enough to necessitate being alone.

I hear their voices in my head! I hear my coworkers so much, this is really aggravating. They don't deserve this.

This music is haunting my mind. I don't want it! I don't want this in my ears anymore. I don't want these idea to come into fruition, nothing will be happy again if I make music. I can't make music. I cannot touch it.

No contact. No contact. No lights. No talking. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. I want to see no eyes. I will see no eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes. No eyes.

I dont see anything eyes. I see eyes on that painting of Baxter. I love Baxter. I miss seeing his eyes. I'm going to cry for a second.

Social debts social debts social debts that's such an interesting term. I keep thinking about it. What do I owe everyone? How much can't I repay? Where did I make the debt? Where is it? I need to know. Why won't anybody tell me? Won't somebody tell me? I need to know! I need to know! 

"I'm not gonna fall asleep I promise."

I made a promise again, I messed it up. I did it again. I did it again. I made a promise. I can't do that.

I think its okay. I talked to my friend. I talked go one of my only friends that exists in the real world anymore. They pulled me out. I'm gonna try to stay in the real world again. Good night everyone. I hope your heart is filled with warmth and love. I hope that everything is good.

8/20/25 - Melinda Ledbetter

The confusion has taken over.

You have to be wanted to be welcomed. You have to be familiar to be family. I am a stranger.

My coworkers don't like me anymore. It's just a job again. I don't know what I expected.

It's only halfway through probation, and I'm already looking down the barrel.

Yesterday a staff member said they saw a mouse in the broom closet. I kept thinking I should let it bite me so I could get some paid time off.

The right people are talking to me again, and I'm still down the well. So it's a me problem.

And there's a stalker of some sorts who's been coming in to work for weeks. Every day. He's making the ladies uncomfortable. I shouldn't be surprised, it's everywhere. It's in the water.

One of the kids came into work and I almost felt like I didn't wanna die again. They're more interesting to talk to. Maybe that's the wrong thing to think. Some of my coworkers hate these kids. Maybe they're right and I'm wrong. I felt really excited about the idea of helping kids in the community. It's the ultimate calling. The greatest thing I could ever do. And it seems like everyone I work with would rather die than be around the future. They never tell you how much of yourself you lose to money. I don't even think about it, it's so stupid. I only think about it as much as I really need to. It's all narcissism. This whole thing is narcissism.

The confusion is becoming the mantra. The confusion is becoming what makes the most sense.

I don't want to meet eyes with any of my coworkers anymore. It's just like the pharmacy, Jesus. The holiday party was so fun it made me want to jump off a cliff. Never let that happen. I remember when they sent me that card... they all liked me. And I left them. I kept thinking I deserved to not feel afraid and ashamed every day I come into work. I now know that I don't know anything. There is nothing I deserve.

I made up some bullshit to ask the pharmacist when I went to visit them. It was nice to see one of my favorite coworkers. I was not kind enough when I was working there. I wasn't mean, but I was afraid. I didn't talk enough. I'm not talking anymore at work. I don't want to talk to these people.

Supervisor just walked in, I might as well be dead. I don't think anyone has wanted me dead more than him. If he doesn't find a way to lay me off by the end of the year, I'll be shocked.

Unfamiliar faces today. Everybody is so friendly here. It makes me wanna cry.

I have finally heard from Remas and Manal. So much of my faith is restored, so much is rewarded.

I've not being grateful enough for this occasion. I must appreciate the rarity of this day, that God chose to be better.

I've had that song stuck in my head, by The Beach Boys.

Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder. Don't talk, close your eyes and be still.

I experienced that sort of tenderness recently. I don't regret a thing. I don't regret silence these days. It's the first lyrics in the song that scare me the most.

I can hear so much in your sighs. And I can see so much in your eyes...

I feel like I don't show it so well anymore. My face has been mangled well enough to have a permanence to it, a mask I can't really take off. I'm just like what I was telling my buddy years ago, I'm that person again. Angry is just what I am these days. Maybe there never was progress, maybe that was in my head. I think it's all just in my head. I don't think any of it was ever real.

Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder. Don't talk, close your eyes and be still.

I've survived everything that has ever happened to me, but I'm not better because of those things. These things have only chipped away at what could have been.

I don't know if the things I'm looking forward to are things that will ever happen. I feel like I'm lying to myself. Something nice actually happened, and it seems more like a dream than reality. I can barely believe they're not imagined. I think I might be schizoaffective, that can't be real. There's no way. I have to be dreaming.

My eye hurts. I'm gonna quit using mascara again.

I haven't started recording the album. I'm kind of afraid of this one. The concept is too interesting. It's a little too cool. I don't think I can pull it off. If people like this album, it might ruin my entire life. I don't think I should have sex again. If this project works out, I may never experience peace ever again.

8/18/25 - Re'em

I made a questionable decision yesterday. I don't think I regret it.

I don't like coming into work anymore. It was bound to happen eventually.

It’s the kind of headache that really shuts me up. It is self induced, the result of hunger and malnutrition. I decided I wasn’t going to get lunch today. I wasn’t going to spend money either. None of the families are responding anymore. Not at least even doing the necessary minimum of reading the check ins, Manal would at least do that. I think they’re gone. I don’t know if Ibrahim and his family are alive. His pregnant wife was shot, I never learned if she is still with us or not. I may never find out. Remas isn’t responding anymore. I’m gonna text her anyway. I don’t want to throw it all away, I couldn’t do that. I feel like I could say these words a thousand times and nobody would ever care. There are mothers, daughter, sons, fathers, friends, cousins, partners being ripped apart, raped, burned, sliced, bombed, shot, decapitated, and nobody cares. You can’t even pay these people to care. A woman I have spoken to and bonded with might have been murdered. A man. Children. All of them could be gone in just a day's time. And the good people I see every day of my life will never open their hearts to care. They will never want to love these people.

There is no human race. There is just what people want. Whatever.

I finally have weekends off. I haven’t had weekends off work in years. I spend such a disgusting amount of money on trying to keep folks around, I can’t let myself regret it. Sure it’s difficult, but they are worth it, I think. I don’t really know anyone anymore. That’s been what's on my mind these days. I don’t know anyone. Sometimes I think maybe I never did. I know it’s part of the experience of being under the rays. I’ll never see them again.

It’s all of my friends now, not just the subjects of the psychotic break we’ve been over so many times.

I’m exactly the same. I’m in the same place I was in my dorm. I’m starving myself for what? I don’t know. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. These people, y’know, they’re winning. They’re going to kill all of those people. In Gaza, in Sudan, in the Congo, in Washington DC, in Detroit. Anywhere, everywhere, it is not love that wins the day. It’s a sort of madness that ravages the heart. It makes me skeptical of what I most desire. It makes me hate what I really want out of life. And then I don’t understand myself anymore. 

I remember doing drag for Halloween. The little Raven costume. It was the only time in my life I felt like myself. Every now and again I can pretend to feel that way.

I am really tired of being sad, and of writing about sad things. I dislike lying much more than that. I hate forcing myself to create something inauthentic more than I could ever hate feeling suicidal. The worst thing you can tell some people is to calm down. I don’t necessarily share that feeling, but I understand it.

I’ll let anyone say anything to me, these days. I don’t believe anybody. I don’t really think I see people when I look at them. I look in the mirror and I almost can’t believe I’m looking at myself. I look so collected and clean these days. I guess that’s a good thing, but I'm doing worse. I’ve achieved so many material goals, and I feel worse than I ever have.

I keep thinking maybe I should be the one to do it. Or maybe just to do… something. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I should save up for. Not an apartment. I’ve been having maladaptive daydreams of pulling that trigger, of taking the best shot I can.

I have really started to become worried about myself. I don’t think I can pull myself out of the psychological hole I’m rappelling down. It’s not just a fall, it’s so surgical. It is cruel in a manner machinated by intent, by hatred. Not by chance, not by the natural world.

I have become fixated on myth, as a source of inspiration for the manuscript. I think about the similarities of the myths of Pegasus and the Unicorn. It all comes down to greed, possessiveness. Control, capitalism. I think of Re’em. I dream of the name itself, Re’em. I almost want to make some art about it. About the ritual of it. A man could grab hold of something pure to our world, something natural. Something divine. And they rip the little jewel out of it’s head, like it’s a toy or something. Like it’s a game. And it was never even real, what they wanted. They would kill Narwhals and sell their teeth as fake game, as if Unicorns are so coveted that they’ll lie just to say they killed one. And they were never even real. They’ll strap a saddle on the back of something greater than themselves and claim its greatness is their greatness. They’ll treat Pegasus as if he’s a pet and not a revelation of divinity. As if its very existence is not a testament to survival, born of the blood of a mother. This is the forever story. This is what we are.

That’s everything, isn’t it? That’s the entire plan. The whole game of it. There may have never been such a thing as the Kingdom of Israel. There never was such a holy thing or prophecy that made sense. It’s all make believe, and yet they’ll wipe out an entire culture of millions just to relish in the dream of it. And to think, little more than 80 years ago, their own people were treated the same way. To think there are “Christians” of my own cohort who would believe in the myth, who would choose to delude themselves with this horseshit. As if God really gives a damn about us, as if we’ll be rewarded for touching that ugly fucking wall in Jericho. With what we’ve been through? It’s disgusting. They’ll rip open an infant child and play with the guts just to say, this is my land! This is my land! I’m from Israel! I love God! My ancestors lived here!

So what? If this is what ancestral rights entitle us to, maybe none of us deserve to live at all. Maybe there shouldn’t be anyone, if something so sinister is meant to be true. Maybe the entire concept of birthright, of monoculture, of “heritage,” is the true devil we have to seal away.

I’m ending this post here. I don’t miss you guys today. Maybe I’ll like you again tomorrow, but not today. I don’t have anything cheeky for today.

8/12/25 - A Story Arc

I've been listening to Bryan Away's stuff again.

I miss him. I wish he would bless our ears again. Godspeed to him, wherever he is.

-----‐-----

There are so many beautiful things happening in my life. I can feel his light in my heart for the first time in months. I've almost finalized a music education program for our kids at work! I'm going to be a teacher, a music teacher!

This is it! I feel love I have never felt. I'm finally making a difference again... I'm doing the right thing. I can make the world better, even if just a small part of it. I'm doing it. I can make you all so proud. I want to see you all smile again. I want to make somebody smile again.

Every time I make my coworkers laugh, I feel like I'm really there again. It feels like I can still do good. I just want to make people happy. I don't want anything else.

And isn't that so terrible? What a sick joke!

Like, choke me please, the regime is really closing in these days. You can't go to sleep without hearing the corn fed gestapo breathing in your walls. They've got a military occupation in DC, so now I won't be able to bother my cousin down there any time soon. 

Ugh... It's exhausting, how do you people do it? I asked that little Incubus, he says he's not doing it. I asked Battle Creek Jesus, he said he's barely doing it. You don't actually get through it, I think that's how you do it.

She's not responding anymore, to my messages. I hope and pray they're all still alive. Every one of 'em. I could never forgive the Lord if he lets them die. I just might turn my back on God if he let's that mongrel state kill them. I don't care if that bad, if that's not what he wants. This is what I want. I want good people to live.

So much, so fast. You know, I see a lot more roadkill these days. It's never fun. I remember when I was a bean counter, I was on the Lodge, and I saw a dead dog on the side of the road. And just a few months ago we see a dog running around the freeway, live on the very same John C. Lodge hell circuit. What the hell are these people doing with their dogs? I remember when I was little there were strays on every corner in Detroit. You couldn't go two miles without driving past a whole pack or two.

My family keeps talking about dogs. About getting dogs. About raising or adopting dogs. It's been setting in, that ache. We miss Baxter. I miss him so much. I miss him, but I can never do it again. I can't adopt any new ones. I like Borzois the most. I like their uncanny visage, and I like their hair. Maybe that's disgusting. I wouldn't know.

Right now, I'm using a grinding machine to sharpen some skates. This job rocks.