hemlock-and-bone

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 7

Day by day, the weather gets slightly warmer. We're in the middle of the rainy season right now, but the days when it's not overcast are beautiful. Not too warm, not too chilly, a bit of a bite to the air that fades when the sun hits you. It's finally been consistently nice enough to do some gardening.

I keep most of my plants indoors year-round, so it's not like I don't already have a small forest to take care of. Some of those bastards seem dead-set on eating my apartment. I keep having to smack my maypop vine off the walls. But plants never do quite as well in a concrete box as they do in open air. I don't blame them. In the dead of winter, it feels like a prison in here.

One of my favorite things about the garden shop is it's got a greenhouse room. Temperature controlled, big skylight in the ceiling, humid enough to make you sweat a little bit. Plus all the grow lights are like getting your brain blasted by the sun. I think that shit is what keeps getting me through the winter.

I just...I'm finally starting to feel alive again. Seasonal depression is easing up, I've got plans to get my hands on a few new types of seeds, I swear to god my plants feel happier. I feel happier. All I need now is for the flood of customers in our busy season to not ruin it.

....I just saw some dumbass shove a donkey's tail sedum in his coat to carry it. If I wasn't already dealing with a customer I would've grabbed him by the collar. That poor thing isn't even gonna make it home.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 6

I want to die. I want to die I want to die I want to die I want to die I need it to fucking stop.

It's too much. The lights, the sounds, the people, god, the people everything is too much like sandpaper I want to claw my brain out of my skull I want to smash it against concrete until there's nothing left but a smear I want to die.

Why can't I be happy? Why can't my brain work for more than a day or two at a time before it sends out that signal like a lit fuse and I'm burning down to gunpowder again??

I had to leave. I had to walk out and leave my job today because they saw me breaking. Boss told me to go. I don't know how the fuck she puts up with me. It's getting worse again. I'm spiraling and I don't know why and every stranger on the street is a threat threat they want to hurt me they want to hunt me and rip me apart and I almost want to let them.

I couldn't even make it home before I shut down. Hunkered in some corner burning cigs into my skin to ground myself enough to get back to my apartment but I know my ears were showing I could feel the piercings tug against them thank fucking god no one saw.

No one saw, right?

I need therapy. Or drugs. Or a lobotomy. A lobotomy would fix me.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 5

Have you ever heard of orange thyme? I hadn't. I guess a lot of other people hadn't either, or had no use for it. When the cold sets in for the end of fall, the garden shop leaves the remaining plants that won't make it through the winter outside for passerby to grab. Two years ago, that little guy called out to me. It was just a baby back then, a small clump of winding tendrils and tiny leaves that left the smell of citrus on your hands when you pinched them off. I took him home, thinking of all the things I could do with a mildly orange-scented crop of thyme.

In the end, I did nothing at all. For two years, it rested undisturbed with the rest of my window garden. It grew to fit the largest pot I could afford to give him, and he thrived. I forgot about him sometimes, other times coming back to pinch off a few leaves, just to smell the soft, comforting scent it produced.

It's a beautiful day outside. The air is chilly, but the sun is warm and bright. I had a rare day off with no errands to run and nowhere to be, so I ended up starting a project. Organizing my herbs and harvesting them to dry. I finally have an idea what I want to do with the thyme. I spent a good hour combing through the fragile stalks, stripping the tiny, pretty leaves into a bowl. Every now and then, I would stop to smell the orange scent that lingered on my hands. It's comforting. Less sharp than real citrus, and faintly herbal. I'm going to need to let what I've gathered dry before I can use it. But sitting in the warm sunlight, methodically preparing herbs for the winter, I think...that's the happiest I've been in a long time.

I only hope it lasts.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 4

I really hate summer.

Something crucial about the ecosystem, blah blah, but I remember when summer was different. I remember when there weren’t wildfires constantly choking us every year. I remember when there were so many bees in the garden when I was a kid that I had to be careful poking around the blackberry bushes. I remember, distantly, that when I was little my mom promised to take me to the beach when I could swim.

Never learned how, in the end. I’ve still never been to the beach.

I want to paint it someday. I want to take a day trip, maybe even a weekend, borrow some shitty car and drive down to the ocean to paint the sunset there. God forbid I ever have the extra cash to take a few days off. I’ll have to settle for the lake. It’s especially crowded in the summer. There’s nowhere else to go when it gets too hot. If you can’t afford to run an AC 24/7, you spend a lot more time out of the house at whatever public place can keep you cool. I’ve been camping out at the coffee shop a lot more, lately. Buy an endless refill of iced coffee and hunker down with my sketchbook until I can’t take the noise anymore. It’s either that or going in early to my job, but that place is barely air conditioned to begin with.

It’s been too hot to go for runs lately. Damn heatwave hit 100 degrees yesterday. It cools down a little bit at night, just enough to get some kind of jog in. But it makes me twitchy, running around in the dark. Sometimes, though. Sometimes, I can find a nice, quiet spot in the wooded area behind the shops. Sit down in the grass, pretend I can’t hear cars in the distance or drown them out with the sound of cicadas. I can’t paint in the low light, but I’ve been tempted to set up a canvas anyways. After a heavy thunderstorm, when the air cools a good few degrees and the earth smells like life. It’s soothing.

I feel like I’ve been seeing that guy around more often. I usually try to avoid eye contact and ignore strangers, so maybe I just didn’t notice him before. Something in my fucked up rabbit brain decided to remember his face. It feels weird, recognizing a stranger I’ve never talked to and never plan to. Wonder how it feels to other people.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 3

Alright. I’ve calmed down since the last time. I had a lot of shit going on, way outside of my element. I’m doing better now. I just...needed a break to process the episode.

I’m doing better now, really. “Better” being “back to baseline.” It’s all I can really hope for, I think. I don’t think I’m ever gonna fix what’s wrong with my head. But as long as I can survive it and find small reasons to keep going, that’s enough.

I may have...accidentally taken in a litter of baby bunnies. They all know at work I’m the “animal rescue” guy. Somehow I always end up handling whatever strays they pick up until someone can find a home for them. My place isn’t really big enough to keep one, myself. But I admit I do get attached. This new litter, some dumbass got two bunnies and didn’t know to check if they were male or female. And now there’s babies. I’m working on rehoming them slowly. But it’s really nice to come home from a rough day and get swarmed by tiny twitching noses and eyes begging for food. I really want to keep one. This place is strictly “no pets” though.

I did have to pop in at the pet store to pick up some hay for them. Not gonna feed them that pellet crap, they can get plenty of nutrients from fresh veggies. But hay is essential to their diet. I think I saw that guy there the other day. The goth one. He was carrying a huge ass metal cage. It was kinda funny to watch. If I wasn’t so fucking skittish I might’ve offered to help, but...yeah.

God, it’s gonna be really hard not to get attached to these little guys.

[hemlock-and-bone]

I'm drowning. I'm burning. I want to crumple up my brain like a tin can and set it on fire. I want to smash my face into a concrete wall until the fucker hiding in my skull turns to paste. I need to spray it down with a hose and scrub it with brillo until the crevices are clean again. I hate this. I hate feeling like every second I'm smoldering, about to burn out or light on fire. I know, I know I need rest. I need time to heal and stability and no stress but I can't fucking get that right now, can I?

I feel like I'm going to throw up. I want my insides on the outside. I want to splatter on the walls like a paint balloon. I don't want to die. That's not what I want right now. I don't even want to stop feeling. I just want to rip the feelings out until they bleed and tear and I can stitch up the gory hole left on my insides when everything bad is stripped out of them.

I don't want to smoke. It's always bad when I don't want to smoke. When I know the haze won't be an escape, but just delaying the inevitable. I want it out. I want it fucking out of me. I want to grind my brain into a pulp until it stops twitching. I want to do a million things to make it stop but I just...can't. The only thing I can do is stay stuck in this loop of feeling everything horrible that burns me up inside until it finally decides to spark and let me turn to kindling.

This was bullshit. It didn't help at all. It just made me wax poetic like a fucking idiot.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 2

Okay. Maybe I overreacted the other day. It’s stupid, looking back on it. He was probably just looking at my clothes or something. I know I need to stop being so twitchy, I know. But it’s rough when it feels like every random bitch on the street wants me dead.

Today was a good day. Or...okay, I guess okay is good. It’s better than bad. It was a day. No one really bothered me, I managed to make it through my shift without wanting to die, I got shit done. It was a good day. I’m trying to convince myself any day I don’t want to kill myself is a good day.

Except...in the second half, after my lunch, I swear it felt like someone was watching me. Obviously I couldn’t back it up with evidence. Just my brain randomly deciding I was getting hunted for sport. I’m working on those mindfulness techniques Dahlia gave me. Focusing on my current tasks. The stuff I can work on to ground me, instead of letting my adrenaline control my actions. I think it worked. I still had to smoke around lunchtime, but I feel like I did pretty good. I thought so, anyway.

I was gonna poke my head in the coffee shop after work, maybe grab a treat to calm my nerves. But I saw him again. And everything I worked on during the day flew right out the window. I don’t even really remember it. I saw the same guy, and ducked out before the door could close. I feel kinda bad about it, honestly. This dude didn’t do anything wrong. He was just fucking staring at me. But tell my brain that. Tell my body it’s not under attack because some guy stared too long at my jacket or whatever. I fucking hate it here.

I hate being like this. I hate that my brain is like this. I was trying to have a good day.

Maybe the journal was a good idea. At least now I can word vomit without bothering people.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Entry 1

Shit...I didn’t think I would be using this thing already. I guess it’s a good thing, in a way. Harder to build up a habit if there’s nothing to write about. This was weird, though.

I guess I should start at the beginning. There’s this coffee shop I go to pretty much daily. It’s right by my job, just across the street. Easy to swing over there during a break to grab something to keep me going. I really like the place, honestly. It’s not some shitty capitalistic chain store. It’s local, I’m pretty sure the guy making the baked goods in the back is the owner. It’s a calm little spot. Rare for me to find a place I can actually relax in public. Except...today was different.

I got my order, same as always. Plain black cold brew. I figured I’d have my lunch over there since it was a quiet time of day. Find a corner table to hunker down at, have a rare moment of peace. And then I feel this...guy watching me, from across the shop. I’ll admit, he blended in at first. The place is kind of an alt coffee house, and he was wearing the full casual goth look, fishnet sleeves and all. But he’s just staring at me. He doesn’t look away when I catch him, either. He smiles. I’m not totally sure what expression I was making, but I know it wasn’t friendly. I turned back to my food, tried to ignore the weird feeling.

But then I look up again, a bit later. And he’s still watching.

Now, I’m obviously not a real welcoming type. I want people to leave me the fuck alone. Big guy, covered in piercings, with a resting face my coworkers gotta remind me to fix whenever I’ve gotta deal with customers. I kinda bank on people feeling too intimidated to want to hang around me. Dahlia says I need to give people a chance, but I would really rather have strangers avoid me on the street. But it’s a hoax. Not really, I guess. I can fight if I need to. What’s that thing about snakes? They’re more scared of you than you are of them? Something like that. I don’t like people. And this guy is making me lose my appetite. I decided I wasn’t gonna stick around when my nerves were already shot. I could eat back at work, anyway. So I hustled out of there.

I can feel the anxiety bubbling under my skin. I’m probably being sensitive. I always am. But I swear I could feel his eyes on me when I left, too.

[hemlock-and-bone]

Alright, let’s test this out.

I’m not really big on the whole...blogging my diary to the entire internet thing. In fact I think it’s a really fucking stupid idea. But my not-therapist recommended I set up a “vent blog” to get the shit out of my brain so it feels like I’m actually talking to someone. I guess I can see a point in that. It’s still pretty stupid though. The good news is I think I figured out how to set this thing to private, so it shouldn’t be visible to random strangers.