likelycatherinemay

[likelycatherinemay]

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 11/?

What makes nostalgia so powerful? That question came to me today during class at university.

I remember the first time I heard about a transgender person. It was on E! News. If we are using the term 'news,' the dictionary may fold in on itself from the paradox resulting from the content being produced by E! 'News'. The story was about how a transgender man was going to give birth because he still had sufficient reproductive organs. It was like the story was, "Hey, look at how WEIRD this is. Look out how STRANGE this is." And that's what my mom said when she watched the story. Eight-year-old me was simply baffled. There was simply no frame of reference before this moment.

Of course, I grew older, and I learned more. I earnestly want to believe that there was no hostility on my part toward trans people. Of course, that's not true. I grew up in West Virginia, and I still return there to this day. So, when I realized I wasn't exactly on the 'straight' and narrow of sexual and gender identity, the undercurrent of self-hatred had already been sewn. That if I could just put the genie back in the bottle, that if I could push it down far enough, that if I could prove my masculinity, everything could sort itself.

When that is swirling around in your psyche, it's hard to be happy to wake up. It's hard to drag yourself to class, to the gym, to your books. It's hard to open your eyes. You hate yourself for the qualities you want. And it's not like the world stops turning. Your body atrophies from neglect. Your mind spins from potential threats, and injuries you haven't suffered. When you've been on one side of side of the looking glass, it is impossible to not know how the people gazing through feel. They told you when you both stared through. When you were both so confident you would stand where you were eternally, they told you how different and strange it is. How different and strange the 'other' group is. How normal we are.

Nostalgia is the feeling of warmth and safety. It is the feeling of being far enough away to look at an imaginary past with reverence. There are no questions for the specter of the past to answer. Your warped mind fudges all the answers. It makes the monsters horrific and the summer idyllic and wonderous, and it makes the problems seem small. For someone who rubbed the lamp and wished for the genie to go away, nostalgia has a complex relationship in my mind.

Sometimes, I think about Christmas. I think about my grandmother making pepperoni rolls. If you aren't from West Virginia, pepperoni rolls are bread, cheese, and pepperoni. That's it. It is almost heaven. It is something insultingly simple by design. The wives of coal miners made them in Fairmont, West Virginia before the husbands went to work. Before they went to break their bodies in service of unfeeling, unthinking corporate hunger. It was an act of unquestioning love, repeated every day until the mines went dry and the land forgotten. The act now repeats in the shattered lives and bitter people forgotten by God.

Those people did not love me, and they do not love me now. The state motto for West Virginia is, "Mountaineers are always free." My home was a prison, and thank goodness I found the other inmates plotting their escape. But, I think about the uniting myth between myself and those demanding my eradication. We all believe in the warm embrace of a simple meal. Fresh out of the oven, safe and simple. The bread smells just like my grandmother's apartment, and I can still smell it on a cold December day. But the shock of being called a ------ is also a memory of the past.

The looking glass is a funny thing. Once you've fallen through, you don't forget what you thought you were before you accepted what you are. You don't forget what people told you when you were one of 'them.' When they slip and forget you aren't one of 'them,' you don't forget. Maybe time will make the fear only a reflex, and maybe the deep scar will fade into discolored skin. Nostalgia is the wonderous, foolish memory of a time that never quite came to be. It is funny how agony can permit that hypnotic sensation through its iron gates. Perhaps agony wants to twist the knife by mocking us with the past. Perhaps it serves the crueler master of despair. One day, I hope it is not those emotions that run roughshod over the pleasant meadows of introspection. But alas, the prison needs more inmates to consume.

It's been a minute. I finished Black Boy by Richard Wright. Solid book, A+ first three-quarters, then C- finale. That's okay, and I might have mentioned this in my last entry, but I finished Dreadnought and Wake of Vultures. Dreadnought is outstanding and unsurprisingly gut-wrenching. Of course, I will be getting the sequels to Dreadnought and Wake of Vultures, but if there is any more trans fiction (preferably fantasy), please let me know. There is no one reading this but thank you anyway.

"I want to believe that you've got a good heart

Oh I want to believe in some things

I happen to read on the inside of fortune cookies

I want to say no but when I'm offered a hit and it ruins my weekend

I'm nothing but trouble watching you sleep

Brushing your teeth and laughing at me

I'm nothing but trouble, baby believe in me."

[likelycatherinemay]

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 10/?

I painted my nails recently. If you reader, existent or nonexistent, are reading this, you are likely not privy to the fact my name is not actually Catherine May. There is a previous entry concerning this entire dynamic, if you are so inclined to read it. In any case, my sex is male, and at least for the moment, that is also how I identify. There it is up front. I am a 'man' (hehe) that painted his nails. It isn't the first time I have done this, and I braced myself for the response.

I have some precedent for this kind of reaction. The first time I painted my nails, my father clearly did not know what to make of it.

"Why did you paint your nails?" he struggled out that night.

"I like how it looks," I said defensively. You would have been able to hear the things unsaid between us. The echoes of screams and apathy and the death of love. The proxies and fronts waged over the heir to his name before he finally looked over and saw nothing. A idol built for the God of masculinity stolen one day in the night. I was the late afternoon in November. The mesmerizing horizon snatched away in 15 minutes, leaving the blackened waste and darkness. Hills keeping all the little people trapped under the unforgiving sky. We stood in what he had built and despaired. I because he would never understand or care to, and he because his sculpture had been ransacked, shattered, and defiled.

"Okay," he said. My mother's side of the family responded with more understanding. After all, there was nothing to expected from me. I might as well have been an enigma. Every story I tell seems more and more implausible than the last.

"Do you have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend, it's okay either way," they ask me. I have never known what to say to that question. How do you tell someone, No, I am deeply worried about human connection, and I fear I will die alone. I am worried I do not fit the desirable traits for any human alive. But thank you for your concern.

When I returned from my mom's home, the nail polish was gone. Not the remover, of course, but the nail polish was gone. I knew where I had left it. It did not return. For my father, it was not enough that I felt nervous to paint my nails in college. He could not bear to see how far I had gone. The sculpture rebukes it creator, it flaunts around, proclaiming its independence even though it relies on the sculptor for more clay. It needs the artist to reinforce its sides. He could not the stand the sight. He could not bear witness. As my nails chipped and decayed, there was nothing in my heart. A bitterness echoed along the walls of the cavernous expanses. There was no resentment, only acceptance. It was foolish to expect my father to feel any other way. It was foolish to act any other way.

I wonder what he's going to think now. Not only have I painted my nails, I have shaved my legs and arms. I think I'm going to get my ears pierced. Maybe I'll get a tattoo. Fuck it, right? When everything rings hollow, start banging on the walls. Make the cave wail from your very presence. There is no more hiding, no more substitutes for a half-way existence. And if he cannot accept it, let it be torn apart. Let the farce end with flourish. I cannot take the seasons of perpetual agony. The snow falls, the leaves fall and return, and the sun scorches the Earth. I suffer under gravity's inexorable will. I will not suffer under the will of another superficial force if something can be done about it. When my world groans from cataclysm, it will know that it is justly razed.

Future writing. Hehe. The last time I did this I jumped the gun out of uhhh, circumstances? So, no book update. If you are so inclined to know why, retrace until you find the content warning post (the second one, yikes). There will be a discrepancy (definitely spelled that right the first time) forever in the record. Egad! I watched I Saw the TV Glow. It's never too late. Please, please, please, do not forget who you are. Please start your life tomorrow. Please start it right now.

I have a lot to figure out. More than likely, so do you. Start figuring it out. For me :)

"I know that I can't make good

How I wish I could

Go back and put

Me where you stood

Nothing's really something, now the whole thing's soot."

I also kinda wrote this bc I love my Nana (previous entry), but I don't want y'all to get the idea that I think your family is forever and unconditional. There is often attachments to 'love.' Attachments of rust, rot, and ruin.

[likelycatherinemay]

Do you ever talk to someone who is planning their next job/work after retirement?

You're done. It's the REWARD. For God's sake, take it. Do nothing for 20 years and die. I know I'm planning to.

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 9/?

I don't know what to write about. It feels like when all the artists expected COVID to cause them to have some massive epiphany about being alive, but then, you realize that art doesn't work like that and feel sad. I feel sad. COVID did have an alternate effect on my brain, and it was humbling. It was realizing I was not as good of a writer as I thought I was.

We all have to write essays for college and explain why we'd be the perfect little pupil to ever grace the campus. I got all these grandiose ideas about how I would knock the socks off the reader and well exceed my test scores.

Then, I handed my essay to my grandmother. For context, both of my grandmothers are the smartest people on either side of my family. This grandmother, my Nana (love you Nana), was raised in southern West Virginia with seven other siblings.

Broke: Dad lore.

Woke: Your grandmother who had seven siblings, but three of them died before 18 in tragic ways (apparently?). Also, she went to college at 16, speaks German, and is one of the smartest people you know.

Anyway, the most relevant fact to this story is she was an English teacher. Southern West Virginia English teachers have a particular sense of rigid grammatical structures, or at least, everyone that I have met does. Their strongest warrior? My Nana.

She looked up from reading it. There was no sign of sympathy in her face. Then, we sat down for the most humiliating 30 minutes of grammatical schooling of my life. That was, embarrassingly, the first time someone had told me what stream-of-consciousness writing is. I hope you like it because you're reading it. After many deep sighs from my Nana, we cobbled together something coherent. I got into college, yada, yada, yada.

I think about what I wrote in my essay from time to time. Some bullshit about how I wanted to be 'free' of my home, but I wanted to 'embody' it. There were too many substantial ideas for 500 words. My shoddy little essay was shameful, and I cannot imagine what it could have been without my grandmother.

Perhaps there will be time to talk about my other fantastic grandmother, or tell you a more interesting story concerning my Nana. For now, I'll leave you with my little nugget. Call your people. They might be fed up or frustrated with you and your efforts, but they're gonna love you if you love them. Family, found or blood, has a way embedding itself. There is plenty of me that is incomprehensible to my Nana that grew up in rural Appalachia 50 years ago. But I know she's gonna love me. And I know I'm gonna love her.

I'm reading Wake of Vultures right now. I already miss R.F. Kuang and actually questionable morality. I am also reading Black Boy by Richard Wright. It's pretty good, surprise, surprise.

It's a fascinating time in my life. I've been skirting the bottom for long enough that I'm happy. Does make any sense? I'm so okay with feeling kinda shitty that I'm smiling at nothing.

"Oh, I am just a kid

I never use my brain

I only use my heart

And my imagination."

(Kinda lame song, but it's hard sometimes guys :( )

[likelycatherinemay]

Chappell Roan really was like "I won't endorse Harris because of the continuing genocide and the fact that the Democrats aren't protecting trans people. I am voting for Harris but won't endorse. You should expect more from your politicians and that's what I want before I endorse anyone" and got absolutely insane amounts of hatred and vitriol for that not only normal, but morally righteous take. And then because of aforementioned insane amounts of hate had to cancel shows due to mental health and then got MORE HATE. Like wow! Starting to think you don't want principled and authentic celebrities, don't care about women's feelings, and don't understand how mental illness affects people! It will entirely be entitled fans fault if she steps back forever from releasing music

[likelycatherinemay]

Desire is agonizing. It wants to tear you asunder. It wants you to forget everything you have learned. Desire's wish is to rip out the you that through many means you thought was impossible to uncover. Is it trauma? Is it self-worth? Is it shame? Desire does not care to know because for the moment it strikes your inky, blackened heart you forget. You forget who are. For in that moment, you become desire's plaything. All you want is to be enough for them. Your golden idol in desire's temple glints brilliantly and impossibly. Objectivity might as well be a foreign language, you only want to be good enough for them.

Is this a tangible feeling, I ponder, for you too?

His eyes are piercing, brown as the earth. My shoes stick to the bar floor, perhaps the only part of my being resisting his pull. Hours later, when there is hardly space to breathe between us, I will think about this walk. My footfalls echo only in my head. His eyes finally find mine, and I lose my nerve. When he finds the familiar spaces that only I know, this will almost make me laugh. He knows more of me than most could dream. But here, in the moments prior, I'm transfixed in awe.

"Hey," he says. Tonight, he will kiss the breath from my lungs and toss aside my clothes with senseless urgency. I will silently beg to be unmade as to be his eternally. In the morning, the days following, and in the eternal emptiness, he will swim in the deepest pools of my find. I struggle to find the words.

"Hi."

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 8/?

Speaking and its consequences. I take great pains to sit and question the events I have recently lived. And, like, pardon my French, but fuck dude. Things are pretty miserable right now. I sit at a party with people I "know," and they definitely don't know me.

What's with the illusion then? Drop the curtain and be done with it. Oh, if only it were that simple. I live with these people, I work with these people, and I have gone back into the shell I thought I got out of in high school. We're back to the straight, masculine presenting idiot who is afraid to speak because the people around me either expect that, or they are that. I want to collapse under the weight of the conversation.

Everyone is more brave than I am. I have spent such a long time walking on eggshells that there is no sound when I walk. Occasionally, there is a loud creak in the floorboards, and everyone turns to look before looking away. The best I can offer as a person is a passing glance. I hate being good at my job. I hate looking in the mirror and seeing my father. I hate becoming my job. I hate when getting lost in my work is the only solace because I don't have to have real conversations.

The real people, the people I want to get to know are so far removed by proxy of fear. Well, what if they tell someone I acted differently, or my favorite, what if this is the real you? I'll live and die in a small town where the tight pressure in my chest causes me to die at 50. Or, hell if you've read the previous entries in this, far sooner. I'll be strangled by my own hands, slowly and intimately. The real vision grows blurry as the life fades from my eyes until I blink. And it's gone.

I go from bawling to empty. Manic to solitary. Enraged to hollow. The extremes swing like a pendulum in my brain. Or maybe a grandfather clock because every once in a while, the chime shakes everyone awake. I forget how agonizing living is, and the clock shakes me awake. My time growing shorter. My heart beating slower. My life wasted.

But, of course, the wheels keep spinning, the lights stay on, and hey, somebody has to go to class today. Somebody has to eat today. Someone has to breathe today. Someone has to work today. When you skirt the line of life and death, it's hard to be anyone but the character of yourself. I'm playing a part in order for my parents to sleep. If I keep up the performance long enough, they can leave the theater pleased. They can go to sleep with worry far away.

"Have you watched the game?" I have a drink in my hand that feels like an anchor. It drags me to hell every time. Could it drown me? My bloated corpse is a good enough conversation starter.

"Yeah, blah, blah, blah..." If only everyone could shut the fuck up. I take another drink. Make me foolish enough that my brain cannot feel anymore. I can be laughed at until the sun dies. The jester does not strike a meaningful conversation. The jester dances and the court claps. We're going in circles now. Perhaps, it is too late. Alas, apathy is better company than solitude. It keeps the razor away, much to the razor's chagrin. Be yourself for me if not for you. I forgot who I was, and now, it's over.

I finished Babel. It's the small victories people. I believe I mentioned that I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God last time, but I'll mention it again because it's a really good book. Please read it. I'm either going to start Wake of Vultures or Dreadnought next. We shall see.

"You can make it a hasty exit, that's how they handle it in France."

[likelycatherinemay]

The pen can't quite go back into the inkwell yet. But he plants kiss after kiss on my back until the labor I desire is one of love. When I turn toward him, resistance crumbles. The weight of the Earth's shackles grows lighter and farther away. There is nothing more to write, and there is nothing to capture than the picture of hunger. Of starvation. Naked want as hands race across the peaks and valleys of the human form. Until the world is slow and solitary. Until it is forgotten altogether.

I could watch the echoes of that memory dance until my life fades. How our hands intertwined and found comfort in closeness. From the crescendo to the fading embers of the passion. When we wait for our heartbeats to slow to a crawl, the Sun disappears far beyond the horizon. You have stolen something I cannot reclaim. The world tilts on a different axis, and there are no questions.

Perhaps there will be questions one day. When your gentle eyes narrow and shift in confusion from my failings, when I am no longer enough, and there are no mysteries. But no, now, as I watch your even breathing and my eyes grow heavy, my burdens haven't reached your ethereal form. I could lay here with you until the carrion claims my rotting form.

May desire weep when I fail him.

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 7/?

Life goes on. Perhaps in a distant future, far removed from the current tumult, I will look back in disbelief. This will be an unbelievable anecdote to people who only know my joy. I don't want to deceive you, reader, things have gotten better. Blades have not found their way to my wrists in some time. By some time, I mean approximately two weeks.

Have you ever encountered someone who desires to retrace their life? The, "if I could only go back with everything I know now to first grade, I would in a heartbeat." I don't want that. My desire is to rewind the recent mistakes I have made. The tricky thing about harming yourself is all the questions people start to ask.

And despite what suicide intervention posters and training may tell you, at least in my case, no one wants to ask, "Are you planning on killing yourself?" Before you blame me for putting the onus on the people in my life, I want to make it clear that that is an impossible situation to be in. But it does lead to funny attempts at due diligence.

"Oh shoot, how are your arms doing?" Bad, thanks for asking.

"What happened?" Do you want the long or the short answer? Look, the episode is over, we're moving on. There will be another one, and another, and another. The beasts of sorrow and fear circle the narrow homestead of sanity in my countenance. Wolves waiting for the guard dog to lose vigilance. Eyes glowing circles against the swirling void of night. It's as if my suicidal tendencies have their own circadian rhythms, sleeping and waking in turn.

My roommates confound me. It seems I have an outstanding talent for surrounding myself with people who would hate me if they knew the truth of my identity. They are at best skeptical, and at worst, outright hostile to non-heterosexual people. My least favorite part is their gay friend. It is truly cruel to see someone who shields the better part of their identity to be accepted. Perhaps it is to shield from the abuse that would follow, something I am all too familiar with. It is that aspect that hurts me the most. When there is comradery and acceptance, but all parties are scared. We cower from expressing that solidarity.

I am pained by my ignorance. It hurts to think about these arrangements. Putting my faith in people I thought I knew better, I was smacked back to reality. The infernal cries of 'pause' levied against one another. I cannot stand the Olympics of straightness. Masculinity's vice grip is stronger and more fanciful than ever. Let it go! Stop with the pretense! Do you believe your girlfriends and sexuality will abandon you if you act with empathy? You are cowards. To think I lived among this ignorance and fear my whole life, to want THIS. How can anyone not feel agony with this farce of play? This performance, this lie destroys its actors in time. All of the jesters who stand will be suffocated at their altars by the weight of this systemic joke.

Let it go. Let your masculinity fade. What do you stand to gain from this continuity? I know the pain of a lack of acceptance, I live it every day. Cast down the idol. Melt its remnants. Venerate liberation.

If you'd like to catch my performance, check ticket prices for times from 9:00 a.m. to midnight.

I am quite close to finishing Babel. I am on page 501 to be exact. Instead of focusing on this book, school compelled me to read and finish Romance in Marseille. It was a perfectly okay book, and now, I am in the midst of Their Eyes Were Watching God. My apologies to Claude McKay, but Zora Neale Hurston is crushing you at the moment.

"I can hear but I cannot see

I can hear but I can't see

I can hear but I cannot see

Crybaby"

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 5/?

I'm writing this at the same moment as my previous post, but it won't post until today, Sunday, September 15th. How's the future? In any case, I was struck by something from high school and worried I would forget about it if I did not write about it. God, it's really hard to write at two in the morning. OKAY. RALLY.

When I was in high school, I loved a boy. Shock, panic, crisis, do whatever you need to do to process that information. It wasn't a passionate love by any means, he loved and loves women, and he was in a fiery romance for three of four years in high school. She, while I did not love her as I loved him, was incredible as well.

My parents, as far as I ever saw, never loved one another. When I was eight, I sat on the couch with my oldest sister, and she told me as much.

"They used to fight, but they don't even care enough anymore," she said. I guess the marriage wasn't even worth fighting over. Marriage, to them, was the unspoken agreement that kept them living under the same roof for nine more years. If they told me they forgot about their marriage and it was just more convenient this way, I would be tempted to believe them. Consequently, I was eternally puzzled as to how romance functioned. As my sisters grew up and found successive partners of their own, I did not.

As I type this, I'm not sure why. At 21, I'm far from planting my flag firmly. The thoughts of asexuality and aromanticism have crossed my mind on many lonely nights. Clearly, my parents can't be completely to blame. My sisters have both found partners of their own. I have dated but nothing serious.

'So what? Why bring up your friend and crush at the beginning of the story?'

My goodness, dear reader, I didn't know you were so impatient. I worshipped at the altar of this boy. He could have marched me right off the side of the Empire State Building. He says, "Jump!" and I say, "How high?"

I think you get the picture. But, I think what made me love him was how much he loved his partner and much she loved him. For two years, I believed in love. Have you watched someone with the love of their life? And no, I don't mean envy. Watch them as they laugh, act foolish, make mistakes, argue while their worlds burn around them, and come back together. They were a marvel, unstoppable, and brilliant. Their relationship survived tragedy and long distance for a year. Then, it ended.

Distance wasn't even the killer. Truly, I believe it would have been easier for him if it was. They just changed. The piece at the corner of the puzzle no longer fits its counterpart. Even thinking about it now makes me want to cry. How can it be over? I want to wake up in the morning and know my North Star is still shining. Every day there is something undeniable and real waiting to remind the world that cannot erode the pillars we build our life upon. Not every single one, not every single time. But alas, the wind and rain come for us all, sanding away at the foundations of our world.

Did you know the Appalachian Mountains are older than trees? Isn't that incredible? Every day, the ancient forces of a world-long departed bathe under the same sun as you and me. It's wonderful. But, it's not the same. They are a shadow of what they used to be. Older than oxygen, time has beaten down on the giants of the world long since departed. I wonder if my parents ever felt that love. I wonder if I could have watched their love and felt the same as my friends. I have a hard time imagining that. But perhaps.

Love each other enough for someone to love you. That would make me happy.

I don't know how much I've read, future nonexistent reader ;).

"It's much older than you and me

I'm love, I'm alive

I belong to the stars and the sky."

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 6/?

I thought it could go back in the bottle. When goes away for a while and you open the door again, I can't feel anything. How can no one notice? They aren't allowed to notice. If they notice, it would be the end of the carefully constructed reality of the world. It would be earth-shattering.

I want to be unmade. Dying is awful. It's awfully slow. It is agony every second. Razor. Skin. Razor. Skin. Blood. blank expression. Repeat. Agony. Class. Meeting. 'Why are you quitting?'

'My health,' my voice is shaking. I thought I didn't care anymore.

'What's your plan after this?'

'I'll figure it out."

"Well, you don't have much time before you graduate, so we're just worried about what you'll do after this."

'I'll figure it out.'

'Well, we'll have to rescind any benefits you were receiving.'

'ok.'

'Do you have any questions?'

no.

'Coordinate with X about turning in your gear.'

'ok, thank you.'

It's so much easier to tear skin with your non-dominant hand than you would think. Once the razor digs into your skin, your hands seem to remember the requirements for ripping flesh from bone. If anything, the unfamiliarity makes it more seamless. A stranger steals your skin, not you. The subconscious part of your brain that is distressed about what you're doing shuts off. Until the pain hits.

Why am I doing this? The blood trickles slowly and dries again. The band-aid goes back on again. We're no closer than we were before. You have to go and face the people who don't know or don't care about it. How can it end sooner?

My dad is coming to see me this weekend. He's going to see my arms, one way or another. But he and my family saw them before. The fading scars of razor blades pressed against skin. All I received was:

'Are you depressed?'

no.

I've wanted to commit suicide for four years. I have wasted the oxygen for four more years. The yawning void of the truth screams and aches every day. And if it came to being honest, then I have to waste more oxygen. Go to therapy.

'Someone loves you.'

then they're wrong.

'Someone will be sad without you.'

their life will be better without me.

'Those things can't be true!'

I LIVE them EVERY DAY. I don't want to hurt someone any more than I have already. I have two sisters, my parents will be fine. My sisters have always been closer with each other. I have never been loved by someone outside my family. What have I done with that love? rot. decay. I have become worse. I disgrace them every day. I have nothing. I don't want to know that these things are illogical. Logic broke a long time ago. It caved by the weight of existence. When you look into someone's eyes and know, they do not know you. There is not a single person on the planet who does. Whoever will.

I hope tomorrow I will wake up, and I can't feel the razor. I can cut and cut until I reach the bone. I can lay on the floor and watch life escape me.

Do you really care to know if I read?

Do you really care to hear some pretentious lyrics to a song?

It's a farce. Or at least it's a farce for me. I know you, person who reads this, have people that do love you. That would be sad without you. This is simply an issue of an illogical existence. When it is over, an error in nature will be corrected.

If my parents or someone else finds this, I'm sorry. How did I let this go on for 21 years? How did it take this long? Why would I do this to you? Your own son? I don't know, and I'm crying and it's all wrong.

I can't even look in the mirror. How long has he been staring back at you? That's not your son. He doesn't even say he loves you. He doesn't even text you. He can't even get out of bed. He won't listen to you. He just complains.

How long has it been wrong? When did gravity hurt so much more? When did the Sun shine too bright? Why am I wearing sleeves in the summertime?

Emma and Sarah. Why didn't visit one more time? There was always some stupid excuse. I'm busy or stressed or I want to be left alone. Why can't I be unmade? Why did I ever live? Then we wouldn't have to have met. These two brilliant people unshackled. Why wasn't I honest? Did you know something was wrong? Were you worried? Please be okay. Please let the Earth keep turning.

I'm crying too much now. I can hardly see the keyboard.

I have to write to my friends. I feel so far away now. I lost many of you after high school. It wasn't any of you. I keep thinking about the band-aids visible on my wrists. To my college friends, what did you think was happening? Did you think I accidentally cut both of my wrists at the same time? Because that sucks. I don't know if that's better than not noticing at all. But I never made myself one of you anyway.

College is the best four years of your life. Fucking brilliant statement. There hasn't been a day, a moment, a second when I haven't thought about killing myself. First weekend, alone. Now, alone. At least there's no one to stop this. No one's surprised that I'm typing in my room alone at 11:45.

There's no more tears. I wonder how long this will take,

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 4/?

"It is what it is."

What a magnificently nihilistic phrase. My history teacher used to say it all the time. He was a sour man to his bones, and I think that's why I liked him. He had no time for the nonsense that life has to offer. Skeptical to a fault, he would refuse to tolerate students who did not come to class with an attitude attuned to learning. He, like many teachers, was forced to teach classes removed from his passions.

I've never liked to people-watch. People (maniacs) have told me it's great to watch other people living their lives on a day-to-day basis. The routine, the relationships, thriving, and collapsing all in the view of their species. And you, solitary you, get to observe the rising and falling action of someone's intricate arc. For a moment, I understood that when I was in this class. There are seldom opportunities in life to find someone enthralled with where they stand, or at least, I've found very few individuals who have managed to find the exact geographic axis they need to stand on the planet. For 45 minutes every day for two years, I would watch my history teacher live in Elysium. It was like when you watch someone stick their hand out the window of the car on a hot summer's day. They were momentarily liberated from the circumstances of existence. Through the patterns of tragedy and oppression, there was an unmistakable and founded rage against the injustice of the world. It was passion and desire made manifest. Perhaps it is because I grew up in a family of teachers, but it had always appeared that teaching was an unforgiving and unrelenting battle with the brutal circumstances of life. The ultimate battle of groups in which solidarity should bind to a common cause pitted against one another. A profession where the best intentions are whittled down by underpay and desperation from overwork.

He just left his job. He's a principal now. It's easy to see why. Frankly, he ruled his class with an iron fist. There was no room for nonsense in his class as he taught a class about the Holocaust and AP Human Geography. That no-nonsense attitude extended to his coaching, where I was a subpar runner on the cross-country team. For the runners who struggled because of their friends, getting in shape, or both, we were there for the vibes. He loved the team in that same no-nonsense way. Particularly with the hooligans that were "athletes" in the most loose of terms. It would have been easy for us to be an afterthought for him, but when the barrage of bits finally broke through for a smile from the stone wall, we knew we had won a battle in the struggle against his nihilistic nature.

I've used that term to describe him many times. Nihilistic. And it seems perplexing to describe him as nihilistic. At some moments, he loved his team and teaching, but it was unmistakable. The coach and teacher I knew scraped the bitter edge of existence. When something goes minorly wrong, "It is what it is." When tragedy struck his life, "It is what it is." When tragedy struck the world, "It is what it is." It was an unspoken truth he had gone through a tumultuous period in his youth before becoming a teacher. Despite his trauma-laden upbringing, he loved to get sidetracked by a good story. I had met many people who were convinced half of his life was a fabrication, too fantastical, too worldly to have settled for small-town West Virginia. I don't know if I buy it all, my sisters certainly did not, but I could have listened to the sweetest lies for decades. Now, sitting here in college writing this, it has the distinct feeling of a story from a friend you haven't seen in years giving you a little piece of their life. That feeling has become painfully common in my life now, but when I think about those stories, they feel like he was reminding us to live a great and terrible life. Make as many mistakes as you can and come home and hug your mom. Hug her as many times as you can before you can't anymore.

One day, he brought the entire cross-country team into his classroom. For my high school, it was an unusually spacious class for a history teacher, a result of teaching more general education classes beyond his sermons in the classes I took. We packed in to hear his message, the typical mix of jesters and athletes in tow.

"For a long time, my life was it is what it is. KInda you live and you die and that's it." He paused for a moment.

"Then my wife told me," there were tears in his eyes now as he paused.

"we are having a kid." The words barely left his mouth before cheers erupted. Unconditional love was the reason why he told us, and unconditional love is what he received in return. I'm not so sure he conquered nihilism, not that finding a reason to live refutes it as an ideology. Frankly, I don't know if there is some substantial reason for it all. The stars and the universe would not be rewritten by a child. Really, I just hope he knows how much it meant to see someone we all loved overcome life. Overcome their circumstances. It makes me love being alive sometimes. The world has to be stupid and grand and beautiful sometimes, so please let it.

I haven't read my book (Babel if you haven't kept up, nonexistent reader). Awkward. I promise I will have an update soon, so please forgive me. College is evil.

If it helps, I was listening to "Maine" by Noah Kahan while I wrote this. Ooh, and "August" by flipturn. Some other stuff too, but I'm not going to go all the way down the list.

It felt weird writing this one. After not writing or reading for a while, my mind tends to get jumbled up and confused. My writing devolves into pattern and repetition. Nonetheless, I'll never forget that meeting with my coach and friends. It might as well be another lifetime now.

I hate nostalgia, it makes me yearn for things that were never truly real. On the contrary, sometimes it reminds of when things were intimately tangible.

"I am leaving West Virginia for a while

Don't know why but every time I cross that river

Lord, there's somethin' tears me up, makes me wild."

[likelycatherinemay]

Vibe Destroyer

Are you ever chilling with the homie, and they hit you with, "Do you think my soul will ever sing for another?"

My brother in Christ, it's Tuesday.

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 3/?

"We wanted three boys. We were happy with your older sisters, but both your father and I were overjoyed when you came around. Your father was especially happy because he knew we wouldn't try for a fourth," my mother imparted.

"That's wonderful," I responded, smiling. The smile didn't meet my eyes. It was a story I had become accustomed to hearing from my mother, the grand celebration of my existence. It was as if the universe was justifying to my parents why I was worth the months and then years of labor and "love." I knew the second part of the anecdote would be recounted in a moment. The part of coming into the world that continued to track my existence like a looming specter.

"Of course, we had to have a name if you were a girl," my mom recalled. It was a small miracle she had ever fallen for the shambling mess that was my father. He struggled to love, she loved too much. She thought the best part of the day was when she got home from work, he couldn't wait to bury the concerns of home in his job. I had taken the latter habit from my mother but never the former. In some cruel quirk of fate, I would always be my father's son. It was particularly terrible to have been cursed with his signature attribute despite sharing very little in resemblance. His dark brown hair mirrored my oldest sister while my chestnut hair was the spitting image of my mother. I stood four inches taller, coming closer to my tall mother than my father. My thin frame was akin to my mother's in distinct opposition to my father's compact, muscly frame. I had spent time in the gym, but any increase in weight that could've potentially granted me the build of my father was met with the demonic voice in my skull that spoke every time I gazed in the mirror.

They had both been cruel in their own special ways, my father clearly was frustrated with the son he had been granted and failed to mold. A poor athlete and mediocre student, he was forced to endure years of indignity. It was only when he realized how much his relationships with other human beings had deteriorated that he became desperate to mend the bridges with his children. My sisters remarked how they had felt sorry when he was forced to spend Christmas alone after he divorced my mom.

"I'm not," I stated indignantly. They seemed taken aback by the sudden cruelty of the statement. "He chose divorce. He chose loneliness."

His frustration with me lashed out periodically. One of my most vivid memories came on New Year's Day when I interrupted him for the second time during a lengthy conversation. I was not yet ten.

"Do you ever stop talking? It's just never-ending," he spat. It took me a beat to process. My eyes came to the conclusion first then my legs. His heir, his hopes ran away in tears. There was no apology. I cried a lot for a boy. So much so that my mother assuaged her worries by telling me this once as we were driving home from elementary school:

"Don't worry, once you get to middle school, you'll meet real boys," she assured me. Even at the time, I understood what she meant. My closest friend was clearly not the archetypical masculine man. He talked softly, something I discovered from hours on the phone during the summer, he didn't play sports, and he had little care for romantically pursuing girls. I'm sure you've put the pieces together. He would listen to my lies for hours. I spun him tall tails about girls I had kissed, and he would laugh, bringing heat to my face. For a moment, I was someone worthy of listening. I was an interesting person for him. An endless story that became more absurd with each retelling.

I did meet those real boys in middle school, but it was the reckoning with lies that met me swiftly. Finally, the crushing weight of an absurd lie forced a confession out of me. Then, I cried. Far from meeting the boys who would iron out my flaws, I exploded outward in an embarrassing show of emotion. I sobbed in front of my whole family about a relationship that I didn't understand. That I had ruined.

"There's plenty of friends to make in middle school," my mom comforted. It was very like my mom to say something like this. She was the best person to come to problems with. These were the moments she was an eternal optimist in stark contrast to her discoveries of indiscretions. It occurs to me now that it was darkly humorous that she bookended my "friendship."

"You-you-you d-d-on't understand," I sobbed in the backseat of the car. My mom had picked a poor moment to probe the issue, sitting outside my sister's cello lesson. Now, my sisters got a front-row seat to my meltdown.

I read once in Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare (don't laugh) that sobs are much worse coming from a boy or a man. There was a sense of deep shame in those sobs. It feels like the tears were being dragged out and put on trial for their sudden embarrassing display. Those aren't Clare's direct words, and I no longer own the book. I remember reading them later, knowingly. This shame escaped comfort, forgiveness, or a sense of loss. I had known at once what it had meant to be swallowed by emotion.

"Your name would've been Catherine May. How about that?" my mom hit me with her winning smile.

"How about that," I repeated.

Long one, sorry about that.

I'm on page 290 of R.F. Kuang's Babel. I'm on a bit of a Kuang kick atm. I fInished the rest of The Poppy War series in between my last entries if you, nonexistent reader, are puzzled as to where the other books are.

"And I hope you have a good night/weekend/I hope I talk to you soon, alright, GodSpeed."

[likelycatherinemay]

Diary 2/?

TW: SELF-HARM

Isn't fascinating how quickly we become strangers? It was a sudden observation that struck me today in the AT&T store. Finally, it was time to retire my fossil of a phone, a companion that had served me since middle school (I'm in college now).

I'm not going to give you a lengthy metaphor about how my phone was some comrade that saw me through the best and worst times of my life. Instead, I'll regale with my encounter with an employee. An acquaintance from another lifetime appeared at the store. Calling him an old friend would be making the reunion overly sentimental. In truth, it was awkward and painful. If I had things my way, every device in my house would be kept in a period of perpetual stasis, immune to the need for updates or repair or replacement. I was not a helpful customer.

"What kind of phone do you want?"

"Uh..."

"Did you do research before you came to the store?"

"uhhhh....."

"What are you up to now?"

"Well...."

Well, the last question wasn't about the phone at least. But it was a trap, unlike the others before it. My "friend" and I went to Spanish class together. Before I painted my nails, started wearing rings, downloaded Grindr (christ), and left my hometown for another, he knew me as his classmate. How do you even attempt to answer that question?

"Well Billy, I thought I would move away from my home and become more of the person I wanted to be. Instead, I put myself in a new cage fashioned of iron and chains, one of my own creation. I spend more time alone than ever before in my life. I got so depressed over the winter that I started cutting my arms with a razor blade, and when the people around me saw the cuts, they didn't say anything. Then, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to go EVEN FURTHER away from my home and study abroad. Not that this had ever felt like home Billy, you know? If they call you slurs and make death threats, is it really home Billy? But my stupid heart makes me ache for something that was never mine. For a family that never was. A memory soaked and marinated in every bit of nostalgia my brain is capable of mustering. A beautiful home where my parents loved each other, every day I came home without a bit of panic swirling in my heart. Thinking I could love someone." The truth reverberated in my cavernous skull. My head felt incredibly empty.

"Ah, you know, traveling, college, boring stuff," I managed.

"You know, I tried that, but it wasn't for me," he managed back. We talked for a bit longer while the fossil gave its lifeforce to my new joy thief.

"It was good to see you, Billy."

"You too."

I'm on page 300 of The Poppy War.

I'll write again once it feels appropriate.

May your hearts decay,

Catherine May