anti-magic!

Like anti-gravity! HA!

Don't attribute good things to your dead friends, because when those things go downhill, you look back and say "wait, she did hate me. This is VENGEFUL haunting"

super clean

I hope what happens to me last semester doesn't happen again.

I'm like, this close to my future. To actual work life and all that. I'm a little terrified, but I can probably handle it. Worst case scenario is that I can't and I have to do something else. That's fine. It's all fine. I ate a pastry my grandmother made today and cleaned my whole apartment until it looked like out of a magazine. (I'm generally a slob). Then I did some studying, anxiously texted a cute guy.

Hope in the beginning of things. While eating the pastry I thought "Jenn should have lived for this." But yeah, little things? I was on a train and staring at the passing country side, which is one of my life long favourite habits. There are so many strange places a person could run away to. Running away is way, way better than suicide.

I don't mean to dwell, but it does occur to me. Like, I'm pretty happy right now. And I feel guilty for it.

magic

Things are magical right now & I've been dirnking but it's cool because I need to say it: THINGS ARE SO COOL & PERFECT. Even if it falls apart tomororw, RIGHT NOW it's PERFECT. Like fairy tale shit

What's really weird and makes me cry is that i feel JENN I feel her. I feel like this is her. It's coincidence etc, the unviesrse, but this is her. It is. I jsut know like you know anythign I know.

i love you Jenn I mean everything I say. Today's hour in grief counselling went by super fast because i was talking about our memories and explaiing exactly what was so insanely perfect about you. Did you hear? Do you hear me now? Are you watching? Girl I miss you and you were so magically unreal. Now that you're gone its' hard to imagine...I just want to talk to you again and this perfect thing that's happened? I see you in it, I do...Oh jenny.

inanity & the weather

Boredom is a sin, so it's good I have such an excessively dimensioned imagination. Give me one conversation and I can create a whole world in those little sprinkles of space between our faces. It will carry on with my funny little mind, and I'll get through my day all the same.

I'll do my work. I'll think about your smile and pick out names for our children and how I'll get along with your mother someday. I'll almost, but not quite, write your name with a heart around it in advocacy class. Right after I kind of killed it for cross-examining. I'm only good at things because of this funny delusive habit, isn't that weird?

(Then I'll see him again and make some awkward small talk and then go straight to a bathroom stall to laugh at myself. And laugh some more).

Maybe it's because of the spring that brings these giddy hormone games swimming through my thoughts. Oh, life. Yesterday in yoga I was praying to Jenn, but then apologizing to her as well. She's not my ghost.

Sarcasm

Student: "AND THEN I JUST DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO"

T.A. (me): "Sometimes you just have to study more"

Student: "Last Saturday I woke up at 6:30, started reading, and didn't stop until 3:30 the next morning"

T.A. (me): "Joys of law school."

Student: "...You're not getting paid for this, are you?"

T.A. (me): "The heart warming tide of helping you is all the pay I need."

Student: "..."

Sterile perils

Ever have some huge success and then contemplate jumping off a bridge? I have.

Saner friends have accused me of having many nutso friends. In the aftermath of this shit, I have to admit that's true. But then, I have a wobbly side myself. I think if I'm honest, a tiny part of me realizes that Jenn's suicide deprived me of my own. The ideation will never be the same, now that I'm on the other side. My equation will never have much more certainty.

But for me it stays in my head, like everything, so that's cool. Or not everything, but the hilarious amounts of self-destruction I've pinata'd over my otherwise safe white girl life? The outcome never changed. I'm still in goddamn law school. I'm a little older than I should be, but still here. That bridge idea was real. Happened when I got my ranking for class, which literally blew my mind. I stood up from the email at work, walked outside for an early lunch, walked for an hour straight. Grabbed a chain link fence in the shady corner of a park and cried my makeup off.

I tried to be a secretary. And way more than that, I took my life places I thought no middle class girl could come back from. Not suicide because at the end of the day, I'm not Jenn. There's water I can't cross, and I should be grateful. But success, expectation, it eats me up slowly and horribly. Take me at my word that I have seriously rebelled. I have done some deviant shit. I have had some times. But I'm show pony of the day, all the same.

Those eyes that look at me and think I'm smart. It's like a horror movie, me behind the fourth wall, watching myself. I thought I could take away the suspense, take myself down with a controlled burn. Instead I have to keep opening every door in this fucking haunted house. Who wants to be Sydney?

In other words, success is scary, my talent is so flimsy and uncomfortable, and I hate having to disappoint everyone (myself!! what if I believe the bullshit, hard as I grind it out to try and keep it up?!). But there's so much to need, need, need. A terrifying game that I have to play!! Like Jumanji!!

moral suasion

"Moral suasion" is the sexiest judge phrase I've ever read. I just like how it sounds.

I saw a counsellor at school about the suicide thing. I kind of can't stand people feeling sad for me, or comfort from strangers, so that wasn't the best. But she was super nice and then I just wanted her to feel like she was helping me, because that's what I do. I'm not sure I did it right...I just plowed through the session talking about everything to do with Jenn I could think of...So maybe she's right, I'd benefit from structured grief counselling? I shall continue with her and try. Free with tuition, these services.

I'm still having out of nowhere crying fits, between vast pushes of productivity efforts. Eleven tomatoes today. (That's 5.5 hours of straight, hyper-focused, single tasking work, which is wrestled from my time not otherwise in class, eating, fighting a losing battle against my house ants, etc).

I like lifehacker for the pomodoro method and more. Maybe I will win back some credit, in terms of my own life expectations. I was such a promising specimen, back in the day. Before I decided invisible skin itching and falling in love withe people who live a zillion miles away (either literally, as in right now, or literally by my standards of distance anyway...an ocean apart is a zillion...or else, figuratively, by barriers of construction, that they're paper dolls who happen to exist).

What I was trying to explain to the counsellor was that, of everybody, Jenn could sort me out. Now I'm so adrift, with no one clever and minx enough to see my bullshit (she could), or seeing it, kind enough to point it out (she would, sometimes). Oh Jenny. This is too hard.

Bill Hader wins the night

I'm into the pomodoro method of productivity. Until I build up my frontal lobe, I can only manage hard core productivity until 1030 pm and then I switch on netflix to watch a Sherlock.

I wish I could flick love and chemistry like a switch. It's distressing. I'm somewhat convinced I'll eventually freak and marry someone super dull, but nice enough (you know). Then step out like it's my job. Or hobby, more like. Looks aren't everything but they're easy enough to pick out.

So after 10 tiring tomatoes of work and a reasonably healthy dinner, I've diluting the good day into Bill Hader on youtube. I love his Assange. Let me just say, as proven by Assange, and the only other thing I really got from "Nerdist"-- no one is more motivated than a villain. They super get things done. They're the champions of try, try again. And hell, I'm kind of terrible, and envy really has worked for me in the past (I was the primary school prodigy of Alberta circa 1995, only because I desperately wanted to beat Lauren with the long hair, that smug bitch).

Voila le Hader---

Et l'Assange...

Bravery on easy street

I know I'm in a spot where safety-nets kind of abound. I'm very lucky, limited only by the social inanity of my lovely family. We're a successful but bizarre little group of people, and that's fine if you get things done anyway.

The hardest thing is not getting tied up by invisible string. My grandmother was so good at that, she never left the house alone. Almost never at all. Lots and lots of string outside that door, if you look for it. Also, people can secretly start binding your ankles to the chair in the comfort of your own home. That's why parrots make good pets-- you can't keep (audible) secrets with chatty copy-cat birds around.

Enough about my crazy grandma, who I really miss. Someone ("The Nerdist" by Chris Hardwick, actually...it's not 'people' who give me advice in life, generally) said it was a good idea to theme your year. Especially if you're neurotic or anxiety-riddled, like me. My theme this year was to take risks and be brave.

Suddenly I realized today that this is really working out. Success comes in the tiniest little movements, you often don't notice. Like weight gain, even when your jeans get tight. I was cozy in a silly delusion and I snapped the cord. It hurt at first, as it always does, but getting off the poison is suddenly so good. I realized today I'm much saner already.

I also won what was essentially a public speaking competition (a 'moot court' thing at school), and since I consider myself the Bridget Jones of podium-talk, that was...kind of amazing. I literally have to take a moment to consciously not faint every time I get up there to talk. And then we won. Me and this girl I barely know. We were pinching each other.

And I barely even managed to show up to that voluntary torture fest, but decided to be brave. Which I will have to amp up to a zillion for the finals in the big city. Bravery. It's actually kind of great. And I want to live well, to live like it matters, twice as hard, for Jenn. That sounds weird but it's true.

wish

Jenn.

A chicadee landed by my door the other day and sang. As I got in the car to go to the church this morning, the birdsong swelled up again, from I don't know where.

It should be a little harder

Don't do it, but if you type certain things into google it will show you exactly what steps to take to die quickly and painlessly. The simple things to purchase and the precise method.

That is bullshit and why would people put those pages up? That information shouldn't be out there, for a horrible thing that is by its nature easily derailed by simple inconvenience. The enemy of all major impulsive ID-controlled mistakes would be sober second thought, or any minimal amount of time to consider what's being done. I'm just saying, more people die when there are guns around. And more people commit successful suicide when there are instructions available to everybody with the internet.

I don't know, take the information down? Please?

The good of getting lost

I've dating a psychiatrist and he said it's so much better for people just to repress things. Apparently it's all a bunch of bullshit for people to talk about their past abuse, trauma, whatever. I'm totally on board with that. The very worst things that have happened to me (not all of them with me a hapless victim either), I could just about completely forget. Except of course I told one person or another, and then sometimes you're reminded anyway. So much better to forget.

Delusions make you better able to get through the day sometimes, and that's ok. Sometimes I remember what must be happening to people in Darfur (yeah, they're still there) or Syria or those teenage nuns self-immolating in Tibet...Or the polar bears starving. The tigers with no place to go, confused and stressed. The tuna, lions underwater, freaking the fuck out when they see their buddy get murdered.

The little kids being pushed into...the most awful things ever, by the people who were supposed to take care of them? It's alllll out there and you just have to not think about it. Just switch it off, go watch HBO, go read a book (either of which might be just as traumatizing, but at least it's not real).

Maybe we're all evil. I'm not sure we're so great. All sad last week, in one of my fall down crying spells of grief, I thought that maybe Jenn was right, that everybody and everything just sucks.

Of course that's not right either, and you're stuck getting tired out by all the middle ground. That's ok.

You know what you have to do? Think over the last year, and think of the absolute best moments. The best memories. The most fun you had. And ask, why aren't I doing more that? Let's do that all the time. And the worst moments? Avoid at all costs. Exterminate the crying fits and the boredom, because it's not like you live forever and that shit gets absolutely nothing done.

Bonus Day

I really wasted my extra day. I said happy birthday in my head to that girl Julie I used to work with. I did what I had to do, but bare minimum. We had a panel of practitioners chat about lawyer life today, and one abruptly told a story about a client who committed suicide. And then he started to cry a bit. Then I cried a bit.

Trauma is so weird, like instantly I get really affected by deaths on television too. Or when fictional characters start to act all sad, even in books, I can't take it. My friend wasn't in class the other day and I got really worried. I keep telling all my friends "you're not allowed to die, so wear some seatbelts, please". I'm not joking, they're not allowed to die right now. Nope.

I spoke with my mom and said I was so sad, I thought of just wanting to die too (like, once it's in your head, it's a sickly seductive idea), and then I said "of course I can never do that because of I couldn't do that to you." Then she told me "oh if you did that I'd probably just follow you there." Then what about my brother, my dad, etc. What about all the other fucking people!! I was thinking today, she must have known we'd all be devastated. That must be part of the calculation, but that what? We'd just get over it? That is was still the best option, all things considered? Fuck that shit.

I need to spend more time with horses again, or something. I accosted my neighbour's dog and started petting him insanely just now, the snow smacking all around us and my neighbour's irritation just like nothing. I wonder if it's like that when you have babies? I suppose people don't ask to pet your baby, but when they talk to it and stuff. Oh, I do that. Baby rabies. They should spay and neuter people too, maybe someday that will be cool. I bet we'd all be a little more relaxed. My cat was so chill without her uterus.

She took her own life

I mostly can't tolerate euphemisms. That makes me an asshole sometimes. While I was sponging myself with pools of self-absorption and pity during that last post? At almost the exact same moment, a friend of my youth was googling ways to die. She was reading about the Japanese, the painless lonely exits. The things you can do in a condo building, by yourself, where the firemen will find you and the rest of us only hear on facebook. The worst voicemails you can hear.

I was supposed to go to a party with her the night before she did it. I didn't call. She didn't call. This isn't totally unusual, but you never know which decision is the one that'll maybe change everything. If I called? And said, I'm not doing well. Would she have answered, I'm not doing well either. Maybe we would have had seven or eight martinis between us and told each other the wise things we only came up with in concert. Because she was so smart.

Because we had no secrets. There are fewer than three or four people in the whole wide grey sphere that know me, from every angle, all my bits. She did. I never knew anyone who saw things so clearly. If this is the friend that commits suicide, it's obviously a rupture in the way of everything.

I didn't know I could cry so much that my skin would hurt, on the outside of my face. That my neck would ache stiff and that someone I could call, I can never call again.

She really was the centre of a tiny galaxy. I could see everything spiralling out from her tiny wrists. Planets and moons bobbing lightly from her fingers. I wish you could have known her too. I wish to Christ she wasn't gone.

I used to worry about blackholes, and then one appeared, right in the centre of my chest. I miss her. She was there last week, she was there when I was sixteen. Telling me on my birthday to skip class with her, and go downtown for piercings. We did, me the navel, her the tongue. Watching each other fill up with tears, and happy on a June bus home.

It's a loss so limiting. It's the feeling when they cut too much from my hair, and my hands keep reaching for it, slipping off the empty space. It's that, but in my heart.

Let the universe decide

I'm in a huge, immaculate space. Tasteful leather furnishings, TV's bigger than my car, shiny wood and rugs from Dubai. My parents' house, but they're in Mexico.

Also, my apartment has ants and I have to wait for them to die. There's snow everywhere, but ants in my apartment. Ew. Reason to move? Yes, but I'm going to Toronto for the summer anyway, and then after that who knows. And April I will be in California and/ or Europe. High class problems for some girl desperately trying to drown out the noise of impending mediocrity.

Updike said, what you don't do before thirty, you'll never do. What you have done, you'll do lots more. It's creepy to think this way when you're a few months shy of 27 and amazed to realize you have the same weird life you were always going to have...but not fun weird. Circuitous, ironically funny, ezcematous...

I found myself weirded up, calling my Nova Scotia friend who recently had a baby with a fisherman. A funny thing happened, where she was the one ending the call, promising to call me back later, and I was the one like, no! wait! more! What does that mean? Don't do drugs alone. Also, do I want a baby? I asked her "but, tell me more about you! what else are you up to?" Nothing else. Baby, baby, baby. But what about me? I'd be lying if I said more than "half my homework".

Like Jennifer Egan said, TIME IS A GOON. And my brilliant idea of running away to Ireland is dissolving, into the damp, the vanishing act of an ocean, and dog-shit sidewalk-- reality of everything.