I’ve got to learn something from my mistakes instead of establishing a new record to break. Maybe stop fooling around with all these human beings and fall in love with a chair. It would have everything that the immediate situation has to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need. Less emotional and intellectual feedback, less warmth, less approval, less patience and less response. The less the merrier.
Chairs. They’re always there when you need them and, while their staying implies total devotion, they still manage to remain aloof, noncommittal and insensitive. Immovable and loyal. Reliable and unconsoling. Chairs it is. I must furnish my heart with feelings for furniture.
But with these human beings you never know. They might not want to hurt you. They might even like you, and that would be the worst possible thing that could happen. Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?
It’s very dangerous to have someone like you, because one day he’ll find that you are not the person he thought you were. He’ll end up someday having only one thing in common with you and that’ll be a shared sense of contempt and disgust for you. Of course you knew all along how foolish and worthless you were, you just hoped that if you crouched down behind yourself enough he wouldn’t see it. But one day when your guard is off-duty you see him see. You both catch you at yourself. Catch you behaving. And then you’re lost. No. You were lost all along.
Don’t offer me love
I seek disinterest and denial
Tenderness makes my skin crawl
Understanding is vile
When you offer me happiness
You offer too much
My ideal is a long-lasting longing
For someone whom I cannot quite touch
I am the only one who can come to my rescue. I am the only one who can help me now. But I don’t know how to help myself. It must follow then that I don’t want to help myself. That I want to completely drain myself of all hope, which will leave me safe and dry with nothing to lose. The point where it can only get better, if I allowed it to get better.
I can’t focus on the good things. There are good things going on all around me, but I don’t trust them, I can’t make use of them, don’t have the time for them; I’m too preoccupied with my precious panic. It seems to be demanding almost all of my attention. My own personal private collection of panic.
I need to write. It keeps me focused for long enough to complete thoughts. To let each train of thought run to its conclusion and let a new one begin. It keeps me thinking. I’m afraid that if I stop writing I’ll stop thinking and start feeling. I can’t concentrate when I’m feeling. I try to put the feelings into thoughts or words but it always seems to come out in disjointed sweeping statements. Adolescent jargon peppered with random selections from a fairly gaudy vocabulary. A Frederick’s of Hollywood vocabulary. I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough. That I deserved time off for all my bad behavior. Let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack where I am both torturer and torturee.
I confide in everyone. I have no restricted private self, reserved specifically for certain trusted special people. I trust and mistrust anyone. I have traveled a full circle. But this time, on returning to zero again, I am able to act out the mistake more adeptly. I am on my way to becoming a very skilled loser. A specialist, a loser to end all losers. A flair for failing. I do it with style and finesse.
I’m on physical and mental reserves. Carefully selecting and gathering all the ingredients for my recipe for ruin. Homemade hysteria. Fresh from my mind and ready to serve. Torment to go. I must never again involve myself in a situation that makes me feel this sordid.
Hand over hand on the way to the top So afraid to fall back to the beginning Wishing it were more of a drop Happiness beckons you In the guise of money and fame It can all be yours someday At the drop of a name
To be one of the familiar faces Calling the shots on a first-name basis That’s your desire
But you’ve got to get a lot higher On the ladder
Then nothing will matter You’ll be all set
On top of the world
That’s where you want to get A household word Like Ajax or Abbe Lane A reputation to live up to An explosion to sustain Watch him! There he goes, folks, higher and higher Hoping to get out of the anonymous frying pan And into the Hollywood fire
The compromise I made was not an easy thing to do It was either you or me and I chose you Although far from a joker you spoke in wry, wry riddles I could’ve given you so much but you wanted so little I thought you might supply some tenderness I lacked But out of all the things I offered you took my breath away And now I want it back
I never had what I wanted because I would never want what I had I thought you were different, prettier than most and twice as bad Uncompromising and caustic, sort of short and sometimes sweet I tried to read between your lines as you would so rarely speak But I gave you far more credit than you were actually due You see I thought I was only seeing half the man But that was all there was to you
You took my breath away
Took my breath away
You took my breath away
And now I want it back
I am closer to who I want to be when I am alone lately. With people, I hear my voice and I just wonder who or what I’m doing all this for. Spreading myself out in front of people. Devaluing my ostensible worth by being so readily available to almost any random pedestrian who wanders into the crosswalk of my focus. If someone is within an earshot I shoot off at the mouth.
This drug has placed me in the eye of the hurricane. Or is it a tornado? Whatever it is, it’s a whole lot of weather, placing everything valuable in jeopardy. If I could only get a fixed idea myself, I wouldn’t have to constantly look to other people. Trying to outguess them, to convince them of my idea of myself. Hoping that if they believe that’s who I am, then maybe I’ll be able to believe it, too. But when they do believe it, when they seem convinced that I am who I’m seeming to be—and they even approve—I inevitably feel that I’ve fooled them. That they must be pretty goddamn gullible to fall for my routines.
My panic is rising again. My sense of isolation and worthlessness. And no other senses worth mentioning apparently. It’s not nice being inside my head. It’s a nice place to visit but I don’t want to live in here. It’s too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I’m tired of it. The same old person, day in and day out. I’d like to try something else. I tried to neaten my mind, file everything away into tidy little thoughts, but it only got more and more cluttered. My mind has a mind of its own. I try to define my limits by seeing just how far I can go, and I find that I passed them weeks ago. And I’ve got to find my way back.
Stop playing the part of the glib martyr. You’re just trying to make cyanide out of 7-Up. I talk about myself in the third person, as if I were talking about a child of mine, or a new television series. I talk about myself behind my back. I talk about my private life and self like they were just common gossip. I make and sell myself cheap. I serialize myself. I am the Mad magazine version of Psychology Today. I waste myself.