PicoBlog

I have switched my phone to Irish. I would like to take myself seriously.

Anyway. Depression, for me, is a choice. :)

Depression is the most comfortable feeling in the world. The more therapy I intake, the more aware I become. For example: I avoid ambition as soon as it get dark out. What’s that about? Depression has made me very modern.

For seven days I pretended I didn’t have any student debt. I felt very posh. On the eighth day, I slept.

The problem is I’m too quirky to go corporate. You can see it in my face!

I don’t know if that’s true. What’s wrong with your face?

Nothing. All my bougie friends are corporate because they know how to act corporate. At my last job, I just cried and blogged on the clock.

Well, just don’t do that at your next job.

But I want to blend in.

Being chronically anxious means your weight will change. You may even form a fixation for several types of foods. Last week, I was focused on an all carb diet with seldom room for water. I did not run once.

How could I? Too freaking cold!!!!!

You are a true artist.

Depression, to me, is a choice (I am making.)

OKay So What!

I doodled everyday for the month of January. Thanks to the encouragement of all my friends. I get too conscious to draw. But not this year. If you want to see them you must be patient.

In 2018,

A manager asked me what my vices were.

I said: candy. What I should have said: obsession.

10pm

I text Erik, an archivist, to thank him for my interview. I regret the email, because it is late. I read email drafts instead.

Making plans and preparing to…..

 Feeling guilty about money. Knowing I am feeling guilty about it. Give myself props for all the awareness ( niceeee) and realize what is holding me back isn’t unknowing how, it is my lack of discipline. I think: wow I must be such a normal neurotypical person to realize that. Oh that’s not what I meant, at all. What I mean is I am not used to being self aware without the anxiety. It is more normal for me to become self aware and scared. Self aware and self conscious . I need money and I need to not worry too much about it. Improve with confidence. Become more disciplined. Know that I can do without. I am in a state of becoming and a state of being. I am not yet what I already am. Or, I do not what what I haven’t got. I am writing about the most useless things. There goes that self consciousness. Consider quitting weed altogether. Restrict alcohol intake. State running against the cold. Find a balance. Kind of ——— I want him to——- but ridiculously I want everyone to see past me. I bang the door, I swing it closed. Worried everyone hates me. Ok , but…Not everyone has the time to hate you. So true.! Am I actually —— or do I want something to get stressed out about. Lol. Am I used to turmoil ? and is that why I make everything an issue? What if I tried to make all experiences despite the fear worth enjoying.

I know the words but I can’t ever speak them. Stop doubting, take a year off of tarot. 

I now live in a tiny hole in the ground my ex-lover dug.

Do you think this is funny? It isn’t funny. I am burying you alive. 

He was crying. 

Why bury yourself in a hole your ex dug? I could see why you would want to ask that. I, too, have asked myself the same question. But we must start asking better questions. Why not ask me about grief, sex, theft, mothers, nature, ecology, and scents? Ask me about moving forward. I buried myself, with my ex’s help, because I didn’t want to bury myself alone. I want to let you know I am not depressed, nor angry, but bored. I lack a certain kind of drive.

A month before I was buried alive, I was reading a memoir of a sister’s murder. Not my sister, for I am sister-less, but the author’s sister. The author lost her sister to murder. Her ex-boyfriend, the author’s sister’s ex-boyfriend, had suffocated her while she was asleep in her Mexico City apartment. Never have I been to Mexico City. I have been thinking of visiting Mexico City. 

Your cousin went to Mexico City, said my mother, so she could save 2,000 dollars on liposuction. Interesting, I had said. That sounds like something Christina, my cousin, would do. My mother was visiting me, a week before I finished the murdered girl’s sister’s memoir, and a month before I was buried alive. One day, we went perfume shopping. The salesman told me jasmine is a favorite scent of Louisiana natives. I put it on my wrist. It was true. 

I become increasingly reflective in the weeks before I am buried alive. I am noticing little habits of conversation. After buying three samples of Le Labo bottles, my mother and I discussed the Red River. We always bring up Louisiana. This is our curse. When we enter a room, it’s only a matter of time before someone mentions the boot state. Who will get to the truth first? Even upon entering the store, Mom told the perfume clerk that she was visiting.

My mother loves to talk. We are gabbing and whispering and sniffing when she hands me a locket from my grandmother Frances. It was a gold chain of two women wrapped in each other's arms. Sapphic, she says. Her arm reeks of rose and green tea. 

Five days before I was buried alive, my ex-lover called me. It was two days after my mother had left. I was wearing a sapphic locket. I had finished a book about a sister's murder. I was no longer thinking about Louisiana. I carried an iced coffee, and a pair of sunglasses my mother left. My ex wanted to see me. 

The idea of burying myself came to me after I watched a lecture. This lecture was from a University of Chicago student, who is studying ambition. She is studying performance. Er, she is getting her PhD in theater studies. She is giving me a lecture on performative ambition. I joke to my friends that this degree does not seem real. However, I realize I know nothing about ambition or its history, so I find myself checking her website once a week, to see if she has anything new to add. This woman’s writing can be hard to find. She mostly writes on friendship, something I am already good at, thank you very much, and holes.

I have been buried in this hole for over three weeks, and lots of noises happen in the dark. I could offer you an example of all the sounds, but only the dirt can be heard. These are noises and rhythms no one else may recognize besides the worms beneath me. We have been here for what feels like a long time. The hole in the ground is beginning to get cold. Three weeks is a long time in the brush. I can’t make phone calls, and I can’t see. My new boyfriend must be looking for me. He seems to like me very much. Before the hole, we would talk on the phone. Now he may call me and no one answers. I think of a Polaroid I took of him, at my dinner table, behind a vase of roses. 

When we met up, it was still light out. I was wearing a thin sweater and comfortable shoes. He wore his gray coat that was thinning by the elbows. He had his shovel. 

You want me to leave you? 

Yes. 

In a hole? 

Yes. 

That I have dug? 

Yes. 

I bought a shovel, he says. 

Yes, I say. And it is comically large. 

That isn’t funny. Where do I start? 

Anywhere, I suppose. He digs quietly, away from me. 

Thanks for doing this. 

Whatever. I feel a little sick. 

This won’t kill me. 

But I am putting you in hiding, which feels worse. 

My escape route was internal. I needed to get back to the Earth.

When he digs, he tires quickly. I never considered he might be weak. I suppose he is. He sounded pained from our phone call when we decided to meet up. This was when I got the idea to be buried. Ironically, He was telling me about ambition, how he is working on himself, how he’s on his way to blah blah. I didn’t retain any of this, as I was out looking for my sense of ambition, taught from the personal writings of an acquaintance who is getting her PhD in performance research.

I interrupted his spiel to get to the point: 

Do you ever think of leaving? I ask him. 

He stops. With you? 

Oh, well, yes and no. I say. 

Then, yes and no. He says. 

—

I would like to try being a person people forget. 

The new person I am becoming after living in this hole is much more reflective. I am thinking of so many things!!!!! In the first few hours, I mainly thought about darkness, and how I did not like it. Then, I thought of the body with darkness. There is not much room to stretch, though. I thought about Floyd Collins, the man buried in the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. He was a cave explorer, look how that can go wrong. I thought of descriptions, how one refers to you when you die. Is it likely I would be described as a writer because it is what I love to do? You cannot be a poet while you are in the ground. I wiggle my legs around the hole, but it is clear to me more dirt has been piled on top of me. I don’t know how that could have happened if my ex wasn’t digging. I wonder how my mother will feel, hearing I have died from putting myself in a hole. Some folks will say this makes sense, their obsession with gravesites has turned full circle. The more you understand yourself, the more likely it is that someone else will guess correctly. I fear becoming predictable. I worry my new boyfriend will learn too much about me. I have no ambitions. I am delusional. I think I am beginning to give up on breathing altogether. I think of my closing thoughts. I think of wedding receptions and how if given the chance, I would make a wonderful fiance. Okay! I never want to marry. I want a big house. I like dinner parties. I want a new bottle of DS and Durga. I am not a fan of the word, maybe. A grave can be anything. And I like television, I like toast. I like having friends and I want a re-start.

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