by Megan Boyle
there’s no way to change what you think, whoever you are, if you already decided something
2:04PM: dad left a voicemail from a number that isn’t stored in my phone. in the first 14 seconds he apologized three times for being half-asleep when we talked last night. didn’t know he was half-asleep.
trying to learn english at this age would be very hard.
3:27PM: administered another round of windex to fruit flies in kitchen. have been mentally referring to this as ‘doing the genocide.’ nostalgic for summer 2011 when i did a similar ant genocide thing at dad’s place. had forgotten it also involved windex. fed cats.
stuff i thought while doing the genocide:
• respond to texts at 3:30PM in honor of 2:30PM, the one-hour anniversary of when you said you’d do that.
• ‘all is quiet on the jordan front’
• the thing i do with the dry food. it’s like, ‘the retard rotator.’ pouring the dry food from the bowl they don’t eat from as much into the emptier bowl. why do i have two bowls. ‘retard rotator:’ shaking it up. a gruff dirty man in a wifebeater who only leaves his la-z-boy once a day to do ‘the retard rotator’ for his cats. he calls them ‘retards’…affectionately? derogatorily? he like, yells ‘ey you fucking retahds’ so many times a day he doesn’t even know what he’s saying or who he’s yelling at anymore. he and his cats equally don’t know what he’s saying. no one notices, it’s like all the other noises in the room.
• what will you have to say to people at the party, all you’ve been doing tonight…you’re doing the retard rotator on yourself, somehow. what does that mean. it means you like thinking ‘retard rotator.’ it’s bad to say ‘retard,’ maybe i should stop.
• the flies like to hide in the hobby hole [vent above the stove]. someone would say ‘hobbit hole’ whenever i’d say ‘hobby hole,’ like they thought i didn’t mean to say ‘hobby’…it’s ‘hobby hole’…i don’t know…it’s always ‘hobby [something].’ the thing that makes it funny is ‘hobby.’ the reasons why something would be primed with the word ‘hobby’…people with hobbies don’t say ‘hobby baseball rec league’ or ‘hobby trivia night,’ those are just their hobbies. the only thing i know that’s ‘hobby [anything]’ is ‘hobby horse.’ seems so insane. a ‘hobby horse.’ i’m not even sure what it is. i think it’s that plastic horse thing that’s sort of floating mid-air, suspended in this wire frame, attached with springs. they were around when i was little. i always wanted one of those things. you bounced on it. pretty sure that’s not what a ‘hobby horse’ is…‘hobby horse’ is like, a name for a piece of wood…maybe…one of those weird nicknames that catches on…like ‘dingy’…there are better examples.
• there is always something in my eye when i’m doing the genocide. always the past two times. the past two times i’ve done the genocide there has always been something in my eye. and that is a fact.
• should i take a break to write this down so i don’t forget…no i’ll just remember whatever.
• what if there was a little gnome following me around saying things like ‘time is of the essence, m’lady.’ would that be good? who even said ‘time is of the essence, m’lady,’ why do i know that, do british people say that? no, common misconception: people think british people say ‘time is of the essence, m’lady’ because the hobbits spoke with british accents in ‘lord of the rings.’ are there any midgets/dwarves who like ‘lord of the rings’ and prefer to be called ‘hobbits?’ where are hobbits supposed to be from. ‘glendora.’ if i thought more about this i could remember where they’re from but i don’t care. a little hobbit following me around saying ‘m’lady’-type things: how would that actually be different than what it is now? a lot different. no, that’s what…most people would probably be like ‘oh that would be so good, i want that,’ but think about it: in what ways would it change anything? it would probably be annoying. it would be, like, ‘something to adjust to.’ i would feel sort of uncomfortable, at first. what would we say when we weren’t saying stuff like ‘time is of the essence, m’lady.’ what if there was a sexual dynamic. one of us would mention something about it and then it’d…something would be different. we could never go back to the time when it was unmentioned. also, people on the street would definitely notice. people feel more comfortable approaching strangers when their situation is obviously ‘not normal,’ people think it’s more okay to comment on it. i might get less done/go outside less because of this. i would adjust to the thing of someone being around me constantly. when i’m around someone a lot i start feeling annoyed with them. or no, maybe i’m always annoyed, i’m just more likely to tell the person about it when things are slowing down and we’re familiar with each other and i’m starting to feel like i can predict things about them so it’s getting a little boring. the hobbit would annoy me. i’d be like ‘why are you doing this to me, why are you here.’ maybe that passes. i’ve never gotten past that. maybe something else happens after the period of annoyance. it’s probably just indifference. calm supportive indifference, ideally. so i’d probably just feel the same as now. it would be sad when the indifferent period would start…like after a certain point, somewhere between ‘annoyance’ and ‘indifference,’ one of us would try to do a ‘last gasp of air’ thing. we’d start saying ‘time is of the essence, m’lady’ to each other again as a weak kind of joke with these desperate-looking faces…making eye contact but then it feels too intense so we pretend to not look away really fast…sharing a silent awareness of ‘what it once was’…probably each thinking ‘i bet they’re not thinking about ‘what it once was’ like i am. if they were thinking about it too, that would mean we’d be thinking the same thing and it wouldn’t feel like this’…mutually preparing to enter the phase of indifference…but still, that wouldn’t be very different from now. it wouldn’t be too much to handle. it would actually probably feel kind of nice. comforting.
4:25PM: got carried away with hobbit thing, i didn’t think all of that while doing fly stuff. two-hour anniversary coming up.
5:30PM: mom called. cut phone call short due to wanting to prepare for party.
6:03PM: recorded a video which started out as a critique of my body from top to bottom (forget if i’ve mentioned, i’ve been making videos periodically as i’ve been losing weight to see progress and note what ‘needs improvement’ and…just…i don’t know, this whole thing is embarrassing a little, to me). had been thinking ‘i’ll stay up all night and then i can be ‘zany sleepless person’ at the party, i usually like myself more and worry less/feel less self-conscious when i haven’t slept. started dreading party and dreading un-responded-to texts. ate 800mg choline, 800mg aniracetam and then 20mg adderall xr. talked in the video like…in this way, i’ve been doing…i’ve been making long videos of me talking, which i almost rarely re-watch. just feels nice to think ‘something 100% nonjudgmental is listening to me (even though it’s not really listening, it doesn’t really ‘need’ to be listening for me to get the effect i like from it).’ ate an orange. seems very unstable, the ‘making of’ this video and the things i talked about, even though i can’t remember most of what i said. just…the fact that a person would want to do this. gotta stop getting down on myself about stuff like this, it just makes it worse (aware of repeating myself…i think). concluded it was okay to not go to the party or respond to texts, i could tell chelsea in person or email her that i’m ‘in a dark place’ and not wanting to be social, feel like she would understand. still seems shitty of me. i don’t know. for most of the video i’m just wearing a bra and underpants. talked about a lot. covered a lot of bullshit topics. haven’t watched all the way through but i’m pretty sure i’m talking almost constantly, or like, maybe taking 30-90 second breaks. i was thinking ‘you’re always thinking, just transition the thinking into talking, make there be as little transition as possible from thought to language.’ early-on in video i noticed that in this, and in other videos, i’ll get distracted and leave a topic or story m
id-topic/story to focus on the distraction, which leads to more distractions. a ‘reoccuring theme’ in this video was…jesus this is hard to type. hard to figure out words. i wanted to allow myself to get distracted by [whatever] and then eventually go back and finish all the things i started. think it worked, i finished all or most things. felt interested in doing this at the time, like ‘this will be a documented example of the nonlinear way thoughts bounce around in my head, seems sort of like what happens in novels, things keep reoccurring, with a novel you know the author is intentionally making things reoccur but when you’re just thinking/talking it feels like you’re not in control of the reoccurring, but it’s the same thing.’ cried less in this video than the six-hour video from july 2/3 i started to transcribe. at some point shirley peed on the mattress pad and i yelled and freaked out at her, like made her smell the pee and said ‘no’ sternly. then, on a website, i read that cats don’t understand negative reinforcement, they just learn to be afraid of who/whatever yelled at them. felt like the worst person. bad. actually i took longer breaks towards the end, during ‘cleaning cat pee’ time and ‘nurturing shirley and giving her treats so she’d feel less afraid’ time. removed peed-on mattress pad and replaced it with a yoga mat and sat there. shirley acted cautious and like she wanted to be left alone.
sometime during the video it became august 3.
AUGUST 3, 2013
12:00–3:[something]AM: somewhere around here in the video i stopped filtering thoughts before talking, video became me narrating inner monologue looking at the internet. dressed in clothes i was wearing before video. looked at CDs of old pictures, AIM conversations, diary-like text documents from 2004-2009. downloaded iphone app called ‘anxietymint.’ heated two flour tortillas on my stove and spread hummus on them and filled them with raw red cabbage. remember noting this is the first thing i’ve eaten, besides the orange, since the eight cashews on july 31.’
3:[something]–7:45AM: ended video accidentally, ‘for the best.’ ate 10mg oxycodone. my bed doesn’t feel like a bed because it’s technically in the kitchen area. decided to make the table and bed switch places. first i measured the bed with the long side of ‘pop serial 3’ (a little more than five ‘pop serial 3’s), then measured the space i thought it could maybe fit (a little more than four ‘pop serial 3’s). moved it. the leftover/hangover length seemed negligible. swept and mopped floor. this will be helpful for shirley, she will see the bed in a different place and maybe not want to pee on it. how do cats decide where to pee.
dressed in neon orange shorts, t-shirt, gray hoodie, glasses, flip flops to move car. expected to see a ticket. played ‘anxietymint’ game on the walk. there was no ticket.
6:30PM: woke.
6:30–11:59PM: going to type rapidfire style what i remember:
• called mom and talked for a long time
• thought about more thoroughly washing peed-on blankets and things soaking in the sink
• looked at internet
• there was a block party downstairs that [omitted] and i had talked about attending. there was also a reading on michael seidlinger’s roof. the reading was rescheduled for today. i was going to read at the first, non-rescheduled (just…scheduled…haha) reading but cancelled and i think other people cancelled too and there was rain and the whole thing was cancelled. felt guilty about not responding to michael’s facebook message but like, more of a latent guilt, because it didn’t actually feel like days had gone by where i hadn’t answered it. i just knew they had.
• read mira’s and willis’ tweets about the reading
• enjoyed looking at apartment from the perspective of ‘new bed placement’ a lot…like…just sat, looking at stuff
• colin knocked on the door to say he was moving out tomorrow. he asked if i wanted to hang out downstairs with ‘a bunch of us.’ i said i wanted to order food and didn’t feel social. this was around 10PM, i think. he offered to come by again in a half an hour to see how i felt then. i said ‘i mean, i’ll probably be eating.’ he said ‘right’—not in a hostile/resentful way, just like ‘i understand.’
• ordered seaweed salad, salmon/avocado/cucumber roll, shrimp tempura roll, spicy scallop roll from o’sake (which, according to google maps, is 0.3 miles from me but i got delivery to avoid interacting with people at the block party)
• food came fast
• texted with willis and made plans to hang out at the beach on monday (aug 5). felt solid about plans, like ‘yes, there is enough planning, neither of us will flake, i want to go to the beach more before summer ends and hang out with willis, this is a great opportunity to do both of those things’
• colin knocked on my door again as i was unpacking. he had a friend. he’s told me about the friend, reggie. they met during hurricane sandy. reggie said he was hiding in his closet reading bible verses during the storm. that’s how colin found him. colin told me where he was moving and i said ‘oh i go the library near there’ and he and reggie looked surprised in a way that surprised me. colin said we should hang out if/when i’m around there and i believed him. he is a good person i think. reggie too. once we were talking i liked talking. stood by my door and talked with them for a few minutes, feeling some kind of…it was similar to the vestigial guilt about michael’s facebook message i didn’t respond to. like ‘i was never there, so how can i feel regret,’ but still. i don’t know. felt sad that colin was leaving, even though i think our last long-ish minimally awkward conversation was in may, at his ‘welcome to the building dinner’ with the ex-MTA wheelchair man and the fancy food student from the fourth floor. colin gave me a newspaper where he was quoted, saying something about rockaway park. he said ‘i want to give you this’ and showed me the page where the article was before handing it to me. i looked at it. he said he and reggie were going to a bar soon. i said i wanted to stay in, my food had just arrived. he said it would only be for like, an hour. i said ‘i’m really feeling kind of [noise like ‘eeuurruh’ with ‘icky face’ and ‘vague hand movement’].’ he seemed to understand. it felt good to just say i wasn’t feeling like going out. sat in bed and realized it’s normal to say ‘i don’t want to go out tonight, i don’t feel social.’ that is a perfectly normal thing to say.
• think i ate xanax and watched TV. yes. i did that. i watched the news.
AUGUST 4, 2013
12–3:[something]AM: ate more xanax. watched ‘stardust memories.’ paused it near the end so i could look up youtube reviews of ben & jerry’s ice cream so i could decide what flavor i wanted before i left apartment, to minimize ‘standing around deciding’ time at deli. i don’t think i decided what i wanted, i just left after maybe 30 minutes. bought and ate a pint of ‘chubby hubby.’ pretzels were crunchier than i remembered, they are doing something new to the pretzels to keep them crunchy. it had freezer-burn but i didn’t care.
3:[something]AM–7:14PM: remember waking a few times to walk around or pee then almost immediately return to sleep.
7:15–11:59PM: going to type what i remember doing rapidfire style:
• woke and wanted to take a walk on beach but ‘seemed too hard,’ then started to become dark.
• took pictures of my room with the sun hitting the crystals hanging in my window, which make rainbows on the wall. they used to hang in our old house when i was little. mom let me have them. sent pictures to mom to see what she thought about new furniture arrangement.
• called mom after sending pictures. mom didn’t like the furniture rearrangement at first but by the end of the phone call she was saying, ‘it really does make more sense for a bed to not be in the kitchen.’ remember describing to her, with childish urgency, how it felt like there were three main rooms: the ‘walk-in’ room (contains records/books/record player), the bedroom (contains bed, mirror, closet, bathroom), the kitchen (contains kitchen table and kitchen). we talked for a little over than an hour i think. i asked her to tell the stories behind all the jewelry she gave me. seemed like she’d get sidetracke
d, talking about their value, which depressed me a little. i was reminded that she wanted me to have them in case i need money after she dies, and that she’d think i’d ever even want to sell it—that some part of her may have thought it could come to that, for me, someday. remember saying ‘i don’t want to hear about that, i’m never selling any of this, it’s too sentimental, i just want to know the stories behind them’ or similar things whenever she’d start talking about how much the jewelry could be worth. she knows a lot about gemstones. she used to write a newsletter about gemstones. she would go to jewelry auctions, to ‘cover’ them, for a newsletter. mom did the sweetest things with her life. she had her own newsletter, they paid her to travel around the world and write about it. other things. she worked in the ticker tape room. all while having my sister…jesus. mom is a very strong person, i think. wish i could’ve been her friend for all of her life.
• this is hard, honestly seems like the same day, all the days since august 1 or 2 or before that.
• turned on TV and watched ‘locked up’ and ‘the office’ (new furniture arrangement makes TV feel more inviting, i’ve been watching the TV every night i think).
• remember this feeling of ‘it’s okay, it’s sunday night’ that didn’t make any sense.
• periodically wondered if jordan was still coming, i think, or if i had hurt chelsea’s feelings by not responding to her text and not showing up at the party before she left america again.
• made and drank kale/watermelon smoothie.
• ate around 100mg morphine slowly, first 60 then 20 then 20, not feeling much.
AUGUST 5, 2013
• watched the ‘seinfeld’ where george and jerry pretend the limo at the airport is for them and george’s name is ‘o’brian,’ then it turns out o’brian is a nazi.