November 22, 2000 [7:54 pm]

After recieving this, I knew I'd end up writing in it tonite. I'm in a Best Western hotel and my mother is asleep and I'm listening to PJ Harvey because I thrive on angst and my guinea pigs are scratching around their carrier and I have to be up at 4 am tomorrow and I'm wearing new pajamas and old bracelets that chirp metallicly when I wave my left arm and I'm hopelessly lost and drowning. "Teclo" is playing and I'm thinking of Daniel and how I really broke his heart but this one was unintentional and I don't know if I had feelings for him and I wanted to apoligize to him before I left and let him know that if I fell for a boy it would have been him. I haven't even begun to mourn Kristin yet. The only goodbyes that left me satisfied were between Nikki and the Hitz Chicks and Shereena.

I've moved into the bathroom cause I think I was disturbing my mother. Bathrooms are so...comfortable. It's a place where you're always alone, so the vibe is full of solitude. Public restrooms are even better, because you shut yourself into a little shell where one can write, cut, cry, or make love without being distrubed.

I can't find any music to make me un-numb. Now I've got "Gun-shy" by Liz Phair on and I remember watching dawn through Summer's basement window.

I never got to say goodbye to Crystelle, Daniel, Dani, Allison, Bobo, Maria...but worrying never does any good. I also told my koi Kristin I'd call her and I couldn't. Please forgive, dearest? The thought of hurting her just kills me. I ever forgot to give her my arm band. Oh, well, Christmas. Well, book, I've covered a whole page with insecurity and desperite pity. Care for another? Ah, book, book, what shall I call you? Book works for now. So, book, what's your story? (think Weetzie Bat). Everyone has a story, and soon you may well have mine. Onward.

I will never see this city again. Well, I won't live here again; I've learned my lesson. I saw the tiny, white houses and thought they would replace snowflakes, manufactured to make use of the very air inside, every vulgarly-new wall un-naturally pale. I thought if I lived in a place like this, I would never eat again, only drink filtered water like lead crystals, basking in the sun like a lizard. I would be paper, lined thinly and white as the angels I hate so. I would be the empty page that always follows the story. Silly girl. I tried to make myself brittle and dry because I like the sound of tearing and I am the orange flame swallowing the blue, but sometimes the blue that can be defeated but not destroyed. Cities like this are dead and even the stars pull away in disgust. People like me follow the stars.

I will return here someday with a rock star husband and we will explore the strip and be the lovely upper-class couple in all the commercials. I'll leave my lipstick marks on the dice and on his mouth. I'll point out my house right before we drive away. I'll tell him again Tylonal and Sarah and nightswimming and my piani and my first true koi. And he'll paint those white walls red and orange and blue and black. Won't he?

The closer I come to bursting the bubble of numbness around my body, I more frightened I am and the more I write. I have "Black-Dove" by Tori playing. Ouch.

How I loved to hate this place. I wanted to kill myself here. I discovered Tori and my sexuality and witchcraft and god. I found Baby Biblethumper and the night sky and my first real relationship and conquered the Harlot. I broke and I mended and I wore bracelets and mascara. I drew and I danced and I crushed and I peeled my own feelings back like an orange's skin. I fought the Red Bull and I haven't won yet but at least I know him now. I found my anime and my 17-year-old like I prophisized. I'm almost there. I found my Spark, and that's farther than most people get. And I'm so very grateful to be alive and to be alive again. I'm so glad because of the pain and the darkness. Some people never feel this much...and life is all about feeling. Experiance is why we're here, and isn't scar tissue harder to pierce than virgin skin? I still love the Harlot, though she cursed me. She blessed me, too, leaving wild lipstick marks across my cheek that are almost as red as the blood beneath my nails.

i'm done here, done writing for tonite. Thanks, book.

By the way, the song that finally pushed me over the edge was "Spark". That and too many frosties and Joeseph Campbell books.