8

(Sunday, 07OCT2007)

I remember my attraction to women began before I was in kindergarten. It's okay, I keep thinking, in my language, according to my rules, it's okay, no matter the English.
There were these stories the adults would tell of how I’d see a pretty woman and just start following her, the adults kept losing me in stores and shopping malls.
It's my birthday and I didn't kill myself yesterday.
The more true something is, the harder it is to prove. And I knew the truth before anyone ever spoke to me, before I had met anyone, even before I came out of the womb, even before anyone ever knew I was in there. And they had the gall to teach me that I had to prove it to them before the truth was true.
I feel clean. I don't know how to explain it. Even when I was sitting in Bi__‘s apartment drinking beer in a long sleeve shirt which Bi__ found odd because I never wore long sleeves, I felt clean, the long sleeve covering the bandages.
Like the people in movies how clean they look all the time.
__________
　
(Monday, 8OCT2007)

I feel as clean as the guy in The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. When I was a teenager I would dream of being that clean. I read the book over and over.
This suicide thing has not gone away, I just assumed it would now that Saturday is gone. I think about it all the time, the choice I made, to live.
__________
　
(Tuesday, 09OCT2007)

Since I’ve realized I have own language I realized one secret to listening: Everyone has their own language, even though they are speaking the same words.
W__ could say the exact same words as me but I say one thing and he says another because I see his body movements and his eyes, and he sees mine.
All I have to do is look at the new line on my wrist, and I'm back. Red and scabby and ugly, more like a carve than a slice.
For some reason it was the fact that I could actually keep my own promise, it gave me some mysterious power.
It's been an eerie week. It's like all the stories are coming together. Thursday night there was the House, the story still going, that girl I ran into on the street, I can't remember her name, talking about how she totally understood why I liked to be barefoot all the time, who wouldn't after the land she had now seen. God’s Country, where I’d grown up.
And then tonight, in there talking to D__, the story of ___ Community Church, that horrible place I’d get dropped off at when I was a teenager ..
And I’m hanging out with Bi__ and Ms M__, my neighbors, and then W__ calls and there is L___burg and the military and that story.
All these stories I used to keep so separate all are in one day now, centered around me and this apartment, all are one story, with one hero, me, except there’s nothing heroic about me.