My thoughts are all incomplete, but y’know… that’s…

There would be a picture here of my notebook, but I don’t have a webcam on this computer in Sweden. The notebook doesn’t have a front or back cover, or the first two or last two pages. They’ve been destroyed by time and my pockets. The next pages are illegible because of rainwater and food spills. In the middle is somewhat legible scratches of meaning. A picture is worth 1000 words. My description is only 45. Bear with me.

This is what I find inside:

She pressed the button because she needed to know what would happen, but she knew it is embarassing to be so interested in a toy’s sounds. Every time she pressed the button she exclaimed: “What the heck!?”

My dad’s proud of me the way that you’re proud of your pee stream when you piss off a roof – unconditional, and inextricably tied to masculinity. I could call him to explain how I just threw away all of my belongings and am planning on living at the bottom of a lake, and he would start emailing me cheap deals on underwater abodes. If I told him I was a cannibal, he’d send me a recipe for intestine stew with tofu. This is the kind of thing that’s embarrassing in high school. There is nothing more embarassing than having supportive parents.

“Real mature, just run away!” She yelled as she was running away.

I had slammed the door in anger because I didn’t want to start my day angry. Our back and forth hypocrisy was lost on us as we were too focused on the hypocrisy of the other. It’s emotionally draining to imagine emotional abuse all the time, but I had mastered the art.

“It makes me sad when you don’t think of me” had become “You hurt me constantly with the emotional distance you’re forcing between us” in my mind, and by the time I had gotten a block away from her apartment huffing and puffing my way down the sidewalk it had become “You don’t care about me or this relationship.” 

To be fair to me, this had started because I bought a ticket to our mutual friend’s performance online. This became “I bought one ticket to our mutual friend’s performance” and by the time she had huffed and puffed her way through brushing her teeth it had become “You should have bought me a ticket because you care about me” and by the time I apologized and explained my regret for waht I thought still seemed like a reasonable mistake, it became “It makes me sad when you don’t think of me.”

I marched home in a temper tantrum to get cleaned up so that I could go teach children. It’s hard to be a role model when you hate the role you’re playing and the model you’re setting.