the heavy wet blanket of august; journal excerpts
29 August, 2025
> 07.15.
yes. i am drunk.
it always comes back to this. these pages.
> 07.26.
its 1148. i called out sick again. third time this week. i don’t have a doctors note, it’s not the kind of sickness you can see.
i receive emails from a life i am supposed to be living.
abusing distractions; burying my head in video game task lists in order to sink into lukewarm fake progress. forget my ambition because it’s too painful being unable to fulfill it. panic when i call in sick because i need the money in order to fly back to my cat.
when Kafka said “Do I lack even the resolve to take this penholder, … I suppose I do lack it.” he was actually talking about me.
the ink in my pen exploded on the flight back here. had to replace a full canister with a smaller one. shattered and leaking and tossed away by a meeker shivering little creature of shame and guilt.
my vocabulary has rotted away since i’ve neglected my pen. this sickens me, it has scared me away from the paper. softened by my darkness. i have no more raw want, no yearning, only gaping grief. it dulls my senses, my need for greater things. i left my discipline in BC. i saw trenches ahead and instead of preparing i sunk deeper into the mud.
> 07.27.
there is a cruel desire in me to stab this body in the temple over and over and over. like a pressure release valve.
coming back home has set my rotting guts aflame, filled me with putrid gas that seeps from my mouth in hateful words and overly sad discord messages.
★━━━━━━━━
> 08.06.
a bluff exploded into pigeons and lifted my chin toward the sky in time to see their ten thousand wings flourishing in the sunlight. so close i could feel the weight of their wind push me as they flocked above on a set of power lines. their pause reminded me i was still on my way back to work. i tended to my wounded mood on the remainder of my stroll.
reading kafkas diaries last night, very relatable. reading back in my own journals sometimes makes me cringe. how could i have written something so pretentious? or claimed grievances that now i could scoff at. such is age and experience i guess.
this ache finds me at every second, it hunts me down and flaunts his absence. i have been shunned to a great depth under the sea that has crushed my lungs and seized my heart. time spent apart is time i’ve spent dead.
> 08.08.
i squashed a beetle at work. afterward, staring at his twitching corpse, i frowned at how evil i had been to disregard his life for the sake of keeping the business clean. i did not even take a breath to consider bringing him outside. i imagined my lover beneath my shoes, comically twisting and squishing. the carcass looks up at me from the floor as i write.
the window blinds shun the sun from my rooms, makes it lonely. but when they are open fear and paranoia creep in and they end up closed again.
my materialism is the most american thing about me.
> 08.15.
my mind is plagued by work. it follows me home like a lame dog and curls up next to me in bed, drooling all over my pillow and flooding my dreams.
> 08.19.
his hair a mop of brown sitting on his scalp like a dead caterpillar. tan skin pulled over thin muscle and painted with tattoos. he looked down and away often, tugging on his ear when he asked me to unlock the bathroom, almost meek but slightly suspicious. the second time he had a girl with him. she (a foot or more shorter) refused to look up from the ground, waiting as a statue expecting another command, a cold distance between them. i let them in, against my better judgment. it’s barely been a minute before i hear the animal grunts and the thick slapping of flesh. they produced an irregular rhythm that penetrated the walls of my office. i imagined he had his hand on the wall over her shoulder and the other grabbing at her waist to force himself in with more vigor. their clear disinterest in privacy made me wonder bout their sobriety.
i couldn’t keep myself from snickering so i locked up the office and hid inside until i heard them finish.
that musty swamp smell of home splashing my face through the truck window. roar of the wind reminds me of my best friend and the first time i road in his passenger seat, speeding down the country road and breathing hard full of adrenaline, anticipating a crash to end us both. the happiest i’d ever been.
the bubble of a scream in my chest and tears cooled by my head leaning out, reaching for the canadian wilderness.
━━━━━━━━━★
> 08.21.
our first customer of the day was a couple, sun kissed and wrinkled by the stress of big californian cities. their daughter threw herself from a bridge, now they want her things from one of our storage units. what value we put into things. anxiety spilled from the man in waves, each one pushing my eyes further down and washing away my spirit. i could not share in his grief and shrunk before it. his face is foggy in my memory because i was so focused on avoiding it; i knew how deeply his eyes would penetrate me. we couldn’t let them take her things without a death certificate. we looked her up on the company computer after they left, she looked exactly like her mother. same sunken face and jet black eyes.
caught sight of myself in the reflection of a psychic store window and imagined how i must look walking: hunched forward so as to walk hurriedly toward his next goal and blind to all other responsibilities around him.
like sheep holding prayer pamphlets looking for GOD outside planned parenthood. pacing back and forth on the street corner while his fingers fiddle the brochures bending corners, slowly crushing it in his sweaty grip. this is a different man than before, i did a double take because his mannerisms so reflected the first that i mistook him for that other gentleman i passed here earlier. im sure this scene repeats even when i am not here to witness.
★━━━━━━━━
> 08.22.
walking to work: passed a tall (everyone is taller than me) lithe man. we nodded to one another. a minuscule but positive interaction. immediately after i imagined myself being grabbed from an alley off the street, my wrists held bruisingly tight and unable to reach my knife. i lunge forward and clasp my mouth wide and hard around a jugular, pushing past the jerk of fear and mashing my teeth through the pressure of tough skin, pressing my tongue into hot blood and muscle and ripping away with the prize sliding down my throat.
> 08.23.
i am frightened by how much i love you. how badly i ache with urges to consume you, warp around your body while you peel mine apart from the inside out. like vomit and bile rising hot from below this feeling overcomes me at odds hours of the day.
> 08.27.
i found my hanging flowers on the floor this morning, their dry petals decorating the wood boards. i need give in and just nail them to the wall.
a song plays that reminds me of those blissful months, it winds me up and makes me think of all the things i could be doing if i had been allowed back. out on the empty streets drinking with friends in a skimpy outfit that leaves me shivering in the night air. my bedroom suddenly suffocating me. i shy away from the overwhelming desire to scream and cry and freak out and topple the gates of heaven just to shake god by his wry little neck and ask him why?
★彡
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(` -7
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じしˍ,)ノ... goodbye!