I can start a new life anywhere except here

I woke up this morning at 4:30am.

My internal clock is fucked up, apparently causing me to wake up earlier and earlier as the days pass. It doesn’t matter much what time I choose to go to sleep, I’ll be awake before 6am regardless. I try to be asleep before 11pm, in attempts to avoid midday headaches. I get them anyway. I don’t drink enough water; I don’t eat enough food—both unintentional avoidances I don’t recognize until it’s too late.

My hair feels like it weighs 50lbs. I feel a constant pulling sensation from whichever direction my hair is parted. It’s as if an invisible paperweight has been attached to my ends, and running my fingers along my scalp produces a soreness akin to taking out a ponytail I’ve had in for too long. Last time this happened, I shaved my head. Same with the time before that. I’ve learned these sensory sensitivities tie in with what I can only reduce to forms of identity crises. I’m avoiding all clippers.

Other than these sensory sensitivities, and my apparent inability to care for myself adequately, I feel better physically than I have in a long time. Mentally, that’s a different game.

I’ve become weird. I mean, I was already, but it’s intensified.

Homeschooled-kid-weird.

Socializing feels impossible.

I barely respond to my messages, I ghost anyone new within hours of beginning to get acquainted, and I went to a “come alone” event at a queer co-working space only to leave (alone) thirty minutes after my prompt, on-time, arrival.

I had all these ideas before I moved to my new apartment - I was going to spend the first few weeks “going to shows,” “meeting new people,” “having fun.” I didn’t do any of it. I go the same places I always have, and not often.

I did join a gym - LA Fitness. I do the same thing every time I go. 30 minutes of walking on an incline, 3 reps of various arm or leg things (on machines I don’t know the names of), then I sit in the dry sauna with an old woman who wears a visor, and for some reason is always there. The wet sauna is out of order, but I can’t be bothered to drive to the other club locations and see if another one is working.

It’s weird that people in the Midwest wear swimsuits in the sauna, and they think this is normal, or some form of modesty. I wish I was in a place where these thoughts would never occur - New York, LA, hell… Europe! It feels dirty.

I’ve been considering “going away.” Fly off to some faraway place, sublet for a month or two, maybe I’d get something done that way. I know I won’t, but it’s ironic. I have no doubts in my ability to run away and create a life which I cannot hold onto, but I can’t seem to start a new one here. As a traveler, I’ve never had difficulty finding a place to fit in. I’m a social butterfly while on a trip. It’s only once I take up permanent residence that I can’t seem to leave my home in any actual productive sense. This is why I didn’t go “home” to New York City, I know I would never leave my apartment, and I’d be paying double for it - in more than one sense.

My dog keeps me on a schedule. She keeps me safe from myself, and the world around me. She forces me outside three times a day, keeps men away by simply existing, and when I cry, she knocks me over and lays on top of me until I stop.

Recently, a woman who has spent over two years stalking and harassing me, wrote (in a hopeful manner) that she wanted to “call it,” that Courtney (my dog) would bite me in the face. This was really funny as someone who spends all day with said dog. I think there’s a greater chance of the woman who wrote that biting me in my face.

I’ve been working on a project on the topic of these “snark” forums (*cough* hate groups), but I am going back and forth over if it’s “worth it.”

Many of the people who have participated in these snark subs over the past year (and longer) have been incredibly unsuccessful in their half-assed attempts to conceal their identities. As usual, the Nancy Drew in me kept quiet, and documented what has now amassed to a staggering amount of “evidence,” displaying their deranged obsessions with smearing me. I could sue them, I could file restraining/protective orders, and I’d likely be successful in both regards.

Alas, there is no point in suing a sad, broke, and ill woman in remission. Natural selection has already started the course, and the more I look into her, the more I realize she is just like me, except seemingly going nowhere. That’s why she hates me so much. I have been all the places she wishes she has; she knows I will continue to, all while she fears death in her apartment, posting daily about her various ailments to her non-existent following. “You can tell how badly she wants to be seen, it’s sad,” says my friend. See, I told you we’re alike. She’s the Temu me, but with cancer.

Don’t worry, girlie, I’ll get mine one day. Maybe you’ll still be around to see it, but probably not if you keep your cortisol this high.

We’ve been getting intense thunderstorms in Chicago, which have (as usual) been taking down trees all over the city. Some trees even pulling up from the roots, taking parts of sidewalks with them. I read yesterday that ‘Tornado Alley’ is drifting further east, technically now including most of Illinois in the pathway. Great!

I’ve only ever been in one real tornado. I was fifteen, and in a lockdown facility in Tennessee. I remember running to the shelter, the sounds of trees cracking and toppling all around us, and feeling as if the wind was pushing me in a way which made me feel weightless until I got underground. The facility responded to natural disasters in the same manner as if a patient were running away, or ‘needed’ to be restrained. “UNIT ON LOCKDOWN,” the staff would shout, which was our cue to get face down on the ground and “BE RESPECTFUL” (no looking around). We stayed like this for what felt like hours, eventually lining up, single file, to leave the shelter unit and find the outside world destroyed. We spent the following weeks incessantly cross-sawing, mauling, and feeding down trees into rented wood choppers for firewood and mulch.

Here, the most I can do is be strategic with where I park my car. Closing one eye, I measure with my arm, attempting to predict the distance and potential trajectory of the surrounding trees - hoping that if one were to fall, it misses my Subaru.

A friend (of sorts) is coming to town next week to do a show, then staying the following day to spend time together. I’m nervous about it. I don’t know why. We are similar people in similar eras of our individual, and solitary, lives. I worry about the probable intensity of meeting a match, how that has the potential to spin us both into a whirlwind we have each proven to be capable of full-sending in our past lives.

Another acquaintance (of sorts) died yesterday. An artist, whose work I am very fond of, whom I first met two years ago at a festival. And most recently, was exchanging messages with just a few weeks ago. Nothing deep between the two of us, but seeing their name in headlines, seeing the manner in which they passed, then seeing videos of the wreckage – it’s hit me in an unexpected manner. Perhaps cliché, but a stark reminder that life is fleeting. It made me want to text my ex. I didn’t, haven’t for over a month now, and will not. Sometimes I worry one of us will die before we speak again, and I think it will likely be me.

Often, I believe I am imminently dying. I convince myself the mere paranoia itself will manifest my death, or that there is an underlying illness I will not catch in time. Sometimes this scares me, sometimes this comforts me. When this manifests as fear, the catalyst of said “fear” is that I will “die before I tell my story,” or that I will die and nobody will tell it for me. Not even my own mother knows my home address, because we do not speak (nor will we again). I don’t trust anyone to publish my materials in the event of my death, and my animals would likely eat my dead body by the time anyone noticed I was gone. Anyway, I digress…