by Megan Boyle
8:32pm: the idea of decorating dad’s apartment as a birthday surprise: is it sad? Sadder than if there’d be nothing, he’d come home to nothing? Something vs. nothing. No win on this one. This one is what you’d call a ‘draw.’
8:35pm: something would be better
8:47pm: waiting in long line w/small basket. Have been thinking of a rap:
yeah I wear a target dress when I go to target
and you know it’s my dress cause I got it at target
my shoes an my dress got em both at target
and if you tryna mess we goin outside target
all target eythang all target eythang (4X)
a birthday dad is a birthday occasion
step in line to the checkout least ragin
scanner shut down but dads stay agin
barcode price check hurts when they page em
red shirt uniforms all upstagin
Fred Durst rearrange em
all target eythang paid freemason
8:52pm: the beat for that is so real in my head. When it goes ‘all target eythang’ people make background noises like ‘tawget’ and ‘oh pawty’ and ‘guhhh’ and there’s this…sneaker skid? A whistle. There is a whistle. Sounds like the beastie boys.
8:58pm: driving back to dad’s. Listened to a YouTube video called ‘how to pronounce ‘Julian Assange” (like it rhymes with ‘carte blanche,’ yes that’s really the first thing I thought, no I don’t know what it means, I also don’t know what Julian Assange did or why people are mad at him).
9:25–11:00PM: taped crepe and shiny paper decorations to ceiling. ate 20mg adderall. i liked thinking about where the next strip of paper should be taped. i preferred doing that to taping. if this was a job i’d start out as a taper and work my way up to ‘telling tapers where to tape.’
11:01–11:45PM: dad didn’t notice the ceiling when he walked in, which was both surprising and not. hugged him, said ‘happy birthday’ and ‘seventy-one, look out, whoa, big time.’ he said ‘oh, thanks’ absently. he seemed very tired, stressed about the construction of a new office. thought he’d go to bed right away but we sat and talked for a long time. he said something about how scientists think the observable universe is only fifteen percent of the universe. i said ‘what happens…so if there’s a fifteen percent that means there’s a one-hundred percent, so what happens after the one-hundred percent?’ he shifted a little in the chair and said ‘you know? i don’t know.’
at some point he handed me a book called ‘dialectical behavioral therapy for teens’ and said ‘we’re all teenagers when it comes to emotions, really.’ book contained sentences like ‘emily has problems with eating.’ looked funny. dad said ‘dialectical behavioral therapy is really the best, it’s all they’re doing now for borderlines. but i don’t really think you’re a borderline.’ i said ‘i don’t think it’d be bad if…i mean i fit like, ninety-nine percent of the criteria. wait nevermind it doesn’t mean anything.’ it was quiet. he said ‘i told my therapist you said you thought you had borderline personality disorder and she said ‘borderlines are fine, they go through life fine.” he looked concerned. i said ‘i didn’t think i wasn’t going to, either way.’ he said ‘i think you’ll be fine.’ his face didn’t change. i said ‘i know, there’s nothing…everybody’s just fine, no matter what.’
11:53PM: listened to dad get ready for bed and walk around living room area. forgot he was there. he stopped by my room and said ‘it’s really something, you went up there like a monkey on the ceiling, taping that up there. that’s going to be up there for a while, it’s something to be celebrated.’ i said ‘it’s for you, for your birthday. you get celebrated, not it.’ he said ‘well, it’s very neat.’
APRIL 12, 2013
12:34AM: smells big time like big smoky weed. smell hit me like ‘WOOF.’ a guided meditation CD is playing.
1:13AM: dad seems to be chuckling in his sleep.
1:43AM: thought ‘tuna forest’ and pictured scary, endless gray cat hairs that go up and down forever against a white background, getting lost in them.
1:51AM: twinkly music stopped.
2:16AM: ate maybe 10mg adderall for. i don’t know. i like being awake. 36 hours awake currently. thought of a good new extreme sport: it’s basketball but everyone has been awake for a minimum 48 hours. the winning team gets to sleep and the losers have to stay awake until they win or they fall asleep.
3:07AM: staying awake for days in a row while having not-urgent tasks to complete means i could lie and say i fell asleep and just do nothing-type shit like what i did from 1:45-7 today, not telling anyone anything. maybe i should start posting screenshots of web history.
WHY IT’S GOOD TO SLEEP: so body can rest (?) for the next day; because other people sleep; to feel more ‘part’ of something; [something about success, sleeping for success]; you are more coherent (i.e. just deleted ‘over time things become harder’ from this part what did i mean).
WHY IT’S FUN NOT TO SLEEP: everything is funnier; you can use this time to do the fun stuff you kept forbidding yourself to do earlier; body/brain feel dynamic and shifting around a lot; being extreme feels good; everything is quiet; you know what to expect from artificial light; don’t know why my body wants me to do it/seems sneaky of body.
3:30AM: pictured kramer sliding through jerry’s door going ‘i got a case-a the rapes, man! hacheecheecha!’ and a few moments later jullian assange is wheeled into the room from his wheelchair which is more like a ‘sitting sled’ pulled by expensive exotic cats.
3:33AM: the last time i smoked weed i was on cocaine and very little sleep also, i think. remember feeling like everything was a game show. i kept interrupting conversations to say what would happen on the game show next.
6:20AM: answered ask.fm questions. ate maybe 15mg adderall. in bedroom at dad’s. just thought ‘wonder when i’ll go inside the mall, i’ve been in this parking lot for a while.’
7:55AM: ate an amount of noopept. miss the goddamned mini-scooper. micro-scooper. briefly started writing dad’s birthday card as if i was thanking myself for being alive for 27 years.
8:09AM: throw a little time in there why not. there are people who. jesus. tried to form thought from images of ‘screaming nu-metal man against firey background’ and ‘pick-up truck in driveway’ and ‘gravestone’ and ‘people actually try to do this after they die.’
9:53AM: made coffee. gave dad birthday card. thought something like ‘they’ll find the liveblog, someone 1000 years from now will find it somehow,’ then ‘it doesn’t matter that i’m me, that i ended up in me, body is just the spaceship i get to drive around until it’s dead.’
10:00AM: people will laugh really hard at a picture of a face sometimes. candid facial expressions. that’s all it takes sometimes.
10:08PM: laying on back on bed.
10:09AM: there are some faces i see for the first time and it feels like i’ve seen them like 500 times but for the first time, every time.
10:11AM: it would be good if you were here so i could sing this part of a pearl jam song and you could tell me what it’s called. it sounds like, middle-eastern. ‘nr-nr-nrr-nr-nrr-nr.’
to my eyes right now this looks like a cartoon: ‘nr-nr-nrr-nr-nrr-nr.’
eddie vedder’s face is like the charmander to DFW’s charizard
imagine how annoying all the women who’ve had one night stands with DFW are
they’re like ‘yeah, but you know what? all of that aside, it really was perfect that it happened that way’
10:23AM: losing…something…grip on something…you can only achieve this level of consciousness by staying awake and letting time move through you. there is no short-cut to no-sleep consciousness except maybe an equally large dose of LSD and xanax.
10:25AM: THIS IS THE HOUSE WHERE SEVEN STRANGERS STOP BEING POLITE AND START GETTING REAL:
• procure continuous water flow device for alvie
• interesting: can see ‘rips’/dots or something, kind of hot re
d-colored. they seem to be on the same layer of my eyes that the neon orange and icy blue overlays were. focusing eyes on the rips or on any of the shapes makes me feel dizzying/not-unpleasant vertigo thing, like when my lips felt pins and needles-y on top of each other. have not been thinking since the word ‘vertigo.’ i like, told another part of me ‘write about the lip thing’ and stepped away for a moment
• mail the goddamned packages
• was going to say ‘exercise’ but man i don’t know
11:27PM: isn’t it a little odd that i know what noise music is but [everything else about my life]…think zachary said something like that first as well.
11:54AM: dad left. sad when he left all of a sudden. he seemed happy today, it was nice to see him like that. he said he wouldn’t have cared about his birthday but he liked my card and decorations. ‘emily has problems with eating.’
11:57AM: immediate plans, big time punisher plans—not the healthiest, i am aware this is not the healthiest plan—yes i have been informed of the risks and i give my consent not to have a colposcopy—
IMMEDIATE PLANS:
• eat 30mg adderall
• beast out emails
• beast out packages
• mail that shit
• obtain continuous water flow device
• exercise?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!??!!?!!!?!?!
12:20PM: drinking coffee. heart pounding. holding off on adderall, coffee is doing the trick. just like how it does with normal people. craving the feeling of being on more adderall. think i can see inverse image of rear view window in upper half of peripheral vision, mostly right side, there is a light up there and movement. why does adderall fuck up your eyes. jaggedy. shit this shit isn’t healthy. next week will be for being healthy, this week was focused on ‘do tasks you said you would do.’ WHICH YOU HAVE YET TO DO. you are allowed one pack of cigarettes before switching to e-cigarette. you don’t need to know why i am allowing you this. i am allowing it because i make the rules and you do as i say.
12:31PM: do people know when i’m not being serious? that’s why i can say stuff like that…making fun of my horrendously slow plight to do things that used to feel regular to me. 2:57PM marks 48-hour awake period, now i’m ready to play basketball. i’m a real sherman shanty. i’m shoe city. a real, how you say, ‘lender’s bagels.’ your textbook h&r block, that’s me. they make an h&r block drive thru, i think i’ve seen that. majesty. pray for your baby at 2:57PM, baby better be knocking em off that immediate tasks list by then.
12:32–4:19PM: sat in backyard and smoked two cigarettes. thought of something: someone should say ‘THERE ARE ONLY FOUR LEFT OF [whatever it is] IN THE WORLD’ and sell [whatever it is] to four people, along with a letter that says ‘i lied. there are infinite [whatever it is]. only the five of us know the secret. now it will be valued more.’
is that what oil is…are they doing that with oil…
i thought of something else interesting but i didn’t write it down.
wanted to be sure to include that i heard a squirrel or small animal chewing during cigarette break but now that seems stupid but maybe now it’s okay, since now you know i thought this was stupid.
last night i thought i’d be going back to mom’s and left the envelopes i need to put the packages in there. will not make it to post office today anyway. starting to feel disadvantaged by not sleeping, i think.
NEW PLAN OF ACTION:
• return call from macmedics
• procure continuous water flow device for alvie
• get envelopes from mom’s and pack things [NOTE: I FORGET IF THE POST OFFICE RUNS ON SATURDAY. IF IT DOESN’T I HAVE TO FEDEX EVERYTHING AS PUNISHMENT FOR BEING LATE].
• make smoothie/eat something, think kale/cantaloupe smoothie yesterday morning is last thing i ate
• do emails if you feel coherent
have been stalling via email stress (not anything about people i’ll be emailing, just keep picturing sounding incoherent or like i’m not giving full attention to emailing). writing this down is a step towards pushing through it. i have pushed through ‘stopping rambling things.’ maybe ‘write emails faster’ is next. got on an email kick another time during liveblog. perhaps that reign of peace and glory shall again inherit my inbox.
want to concentrate on driving and not look at phone so i will be updating minimally. feeling good about this shit again.
5:49PM: thought i was in philadelphia and couldn’t deposit check. L.O.L. this is crazy should i just keep not sleeping as a social experiment
6:22PM: texting with colin. progress is happening. going to new york next week for a meeting. also ‘alt citizen’ wants to interview me and have a photo shoot. new york luxury treatment. thought i could go to the walgreens on reisterstown road to buy cigarettes. remembered i’m not near that road.
7:16PM: ate unknown amount noopept and saw ‘blinky things.’ then that stopped. i’ve been sitting in the same spot. feel like i’m on a debilitating hallucinogen but mostly only physically/thoughts are mostly normal. i’m taking the night off after i get alvie’s water source. thought ‘the chrysalis. the 2014 toyota chrysalis: hybrid car that will fly after six weeks in the garage.’
thought ‘going to smoke a coffee and be right back’
going to:
• alvie water source.
• mom’s? forget why but it seems good there is food.
get it together boyle man up
i’m just being lazy with typing, i feel fine, i’m better typing this is improving something
why is shirley licking the bed, you ask?
because shirley knows how to party
7:25PM: feeling more alert, engaged in act of typing, i was just needing to engage myself in something. colin just emailed me lease signed by landlord and says i should hear from them soon. okay. ‘leaving here’ act [unknown] scene [unknown], take two.
wait before you go, you need to mention that as you were typing all of that you thought ‘this would be an interesting place for this to end, like if i died in car crash and couldn’t update again.’ so. by saying this right now i’m undoing that thing. though now it would be interesting, this new element. if i died after writing any of this. hm. just have a feeling, very strong feeling i’m not going to die. damn, but now…that thought is in this vortex, it’s gained some kind of intelligence, like in ‘contagion’ where the virus keeps mutating and beating everything. hold on i think i’m beating it. in my head. not typing this part. my face just…i like, made ‘a person is watching as you are suddenly attentive to something’ face but no one is here. okay i beat it, i beat the dying thought. shit. shit…there are so many thoughts i’m not including now, about how i just needed to restart process, am now re-beating/outsmarting it, because that’s part of the process. this is fun. i’ve done this before, i think. shit need to restart. shit. hold on.
i figured out a system to beat the afraid i’ll die thing. it’s a pick-up system. i can’t update right now because anything i type will seem like ‘perfect last words.’
9:12PM: it’s raining. does not bode well. got in car and said ‘you can’t look at your phone if you want to get out of this’ aloud and the mothership-like seriousness stopped. drove to petsmart. raining hard at petsmart.
9:20pm: have been sitting in car looking at instagram since 9:13pm. Scrolled to the bottom of my feed and something happened. looked like pictures were coming out of my phone. Red-orange lights on the edges of peripheral vision are twinkling mildly. Sometimes there is a blue light. Realized this via thinking ‘is it a cop moving towards me.’ Why is this happening, this didn’t happen the night I was up for this long in march, is this from adderall
9:40PM: mom is making eggs for me. hrrrl yarll.
10:12PM: watching judd apatow movie about being 40. feel better after eating. in the beginning paul rudd was talking about his penis and i was eating sausage. said ‘well i can’t eat this right now’ comedian-style and mom laughed. paul rudd’s peepee. now he�
��s trying to wake his daughter by saying ‘[whisper noises] i actually hate youuuuu.’
10:17–11:59PM: ate toast, banana, chocolate ass milk. i liked the movie. it turns out paul rudd was 40, also. surprise ending. started eighth episode of ‘homeland.’ shittalked mandy patinkin’s backwards-talking a lot, to mom’s delight, it seemed.
APRIL 13, 2013
12:01–2:21AM: finished seventh episode of ‘homeland.’ mom brought in pringles and the baba ganoush. tricked her into giving me most of the chips, by making her think she had taken too much…seemed devious, what i did…at some point i said ‘i haven’t eaten in three days,’ out of guilt, wanting to justify eating. mom said ‘and i have, ho ho ho!’
2:22AM: woke near the end of a ‘homeland’ episode. mom said ‘i’m too sleepy.’ i said ‘me too i’m going to sleep.’
2:25–2:45AM: peed. picked at face in mirror. thought ‘you look so old, your skin. eating so poorly.’ got in a trance. skin picking trance. washed and applied tea tree oil to face, coconut oil to body. put on pajamas. didn’t feel tired anymore.
2:45–4:00AM: ate 1mg xanax. tweeted that i’ve been awake since 2:57PM april 10. felt dehydrated bladder irritation things and drank water. set up camp on toilet for a long time, waiting for water effects to ‘kick in.’
watched aol.com newsreel, ‘morning rush.’ mostly entertainment-based news. they interviewed hugh hefner’s new wife, who is 26 and looks older than me. in the newsreel i remember…oh, it was about a kidney donation. strange to me, their coverage of a stranger donating a kidney to an old man. the stranger was a woman on a couch with her girlfriend. thought ‘they’re doing this for political reasons but [lost interest].’
peed finally (a lot of pee) and went back to bed. covered head with blankets and fell asleep to an ASMR video.
1:26PM: got a glass of milk and two oreos from kitchen. mom was reading on the couch. i said something about cookies. thought ‘sweet, i’ll sleep for another hour.’