I did have some dreams last night, but I’m not really going to talk about them right now… maybe in a bit.

I woke up late, I didn’t take melatonin. I should have. Tonight I will.

I bought a pack of cigarettes last night. I should not have. I still feel optimistic about quitting smoking, I hope I’m not being stupid. I can feel it alter my decisions, I don’t want that. It really is like those anti smoking commercials, a giant monster that drags you out of whatever you’re doing, whenever, to go smoke. It’s stupid.

I lay in my bed for almost an hour after I got up, texting the boy mildly but mostly talking with a figure that I imagine whenever I think of God (I capitalized it so I’m keeping it).

The boy looks so happy when he’s sleeping. It’s beautiful. I don’t know, but I imagine that I look terrible, my face twisted with nightmares and worries and pain. I could ask my ex, he probably does not know. He probably never looked. But he’s the only person who ever would know.

Anyway, once again, when I woke up I thought about cigarettes, and then I thought about my promise to god, and how I have broken it, and how my father is going blind. When I quit cold turkey, he was doing much better, almost miraculously so. I asked for a miracle, and I was getting it, Then I fucked up, and now my father is doing terribly (My heart sinks that I skipped the capital but it was there so I am keeping it).

I lay there, for almost an hour, looking at my phone and trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense. I was trying to figure out a connection to my smoking and my father’s blindness. And it came to me that there was no connection. Other than that I asked for a miracle, and I was getting it, but I didn’t deserve it, and it was taken. I didn’t ask for it to make sense, I asked for a miracle. I don’t need it to make sense, I need a miracle.

As unlikely as it was for me to succeed in quitting smoking seamlessly, it was perhaps equally as unlikely that my father would have a miraculous recovery. Perhaps equally. I will dig deeper into my human brain and relate this to the Improbability Generator that was in the Heart of Gold.

This rate of slow success is probably a more believable rate of improvement for my father’s eye. I’m forgiving myself for the relapse, but I really need a good outcome here, for him and for me. After all, this could be the mark of a slow decline as well. I’m not going to fail here, success is just a little slower than I thought.

My ex adopted, in one of his known aliases, the character of Zaphod Beeblebrox, which is actually quite like him. I don’t envy his scattered splintered mind, although I’d always, as evidenced by this project right here, seek mastery over my brain rather than run from anything in it. After all, you can’t outrun yourself.

I just realized that the reason that I hoard things, and carry stuff with me from apartment to apartment for no reason is that precisely what I said is exactly not true. I have hidden things in here, I hide things on myself all the time, and I find them from time to time, sometimes this is a happy thing and sometimes this is a scary thing. But it is what I do. And what if I throw away a box that means nothing, only to find out that the very thing that would have made everything make sense is in there? And of course I keep meaning to go through it and see if it’s just a pile of sheets or if I’ve once again hidden a pile of hundreds in a pillowcase but I never do, I’m either too busy going out making money to hide somewhere or doing something else that’s utterly meaningless, maybe even walking up and down the aisles of a thriftstore trying on new clothes to throw into the pile after I’ve stuffed the pockets with wads of blue bills, ticket stubs, notes, matchbooks from famous bars, and other clues to what I’ve been doing and what might make my life worthwhile in the past or the future or whenever I stick my hand in there again. It all makes no sense, but I keep trying to make it make sense and I just feel like if I had more data I could predict a pattern here. Nothing looks right but maybe if I just had more data I could figure it out.

The data speaks for itself. This life is utter bullshit.

Either that or I’m too stupid to Figure it out, but that doesn’t feel true.

According to psychology, it never would. I’m fucked.

The boy is in therapy right now. I guess so am I. I feel like this is a good exercise. I probably could still use a therapist, but this page is open whenever I feel like it and I don’t really want more scheduled activities in my life, it was stressing me out.

I’m realizing, more every day, that I suffered a complete psychotic break back in February. Jury’s still out as to whether that’s a good thing or not.

This boy knows me as a psycho. I am, but I’m not. I don’t know what we are to each other. I’m struggling to keep caring. Did I really do this again? Grab a random dude, eat him alive, and leave the bones to the flies in the field? I think I did.

This plague is not compatible with my (I did not capitalize, strange) usual coping mechanisms.

Is this a good place to talk about dreams? They are fading, but let’s try.

I remember we were supposed to take photos of some kind.

We were not in his house, that I recall, maybe it was mine, although where there would have been a kitchen there was instead a workspace of some kind. I imagine it might have been a darkroom setup, there was a bright overhead arm lamp shining into what would have been a sink, or maybe he was wearing his headlamp (I don’t know why I think the headlamp is hot, something about the way it catches his eyebrows, which are incredible I am not ashamed of that and besides, what’s to hide from here?). On waking I believe I know what he was doing.

I have a good knowledge of what physically happens in the human brain when we dream, and this is why I try not to “fill in the blanks” when I’m writing, even though this is the purpose and human tendency of memory consolidation and data processing.

I suddenly got posessed by an idea and I want the boy to work with me on it. I feel wrong about wanting to cement our relationship into a semi-professional structure, but I want to. I wonder if he wants to.

Part of me feels like it’s a half-assed way of justifying his presence in my life, part of me feels like I’m using him, I really should have written this as a list so editorial anarchy ensues immediately

• I’m using this project to justify this man’s presence in my life
  • not boy, I have to change that
• I’m using this project to hide from my actual life
  • I have to think about that
    • the hotkeys are different than in other programs why the fuck does everyone have to reinvent that wheel
      • although I kind of like these better, so I guess that’s why
• I’m using this man’s presence in my life to complete this project
  • Why does this feel like the most comfortable emotional space

I’m forgetting most of this.

I remember I was standing there, talking to him, and I forget the conversation the way that one usually forgets words first from dreams, written then spoken.

I was asking him to do something, take some photos. Did I suggest video? He grabbed his camera from a tripod that was up on the counter behind some other equipment (was this a darkroom? It feels like it, he was wearing black rubber gloves and it would make sense why he was in the sink even though that is not a safe way to handle photo chems. I also find black rubber gloves incredibly sexy and I am not at all ashamed of that).

I remember him saying that he’s much better with video (I think this is true) and following me off into a better lit room. I remember that the camera that he had was an Olympus.

I want to remember him wearing a black rubber apron with nothing underneath, which I also find incredibly sexy. I don’t know why, but it is super hot. I used to think of My ex like that, who was insanely attractive in his welding gear and apron and gloves although it is probably a really stupid idea to be naked underneath. My only regret is that it took me up until this point to totally conquer the shame of having a fetish, which is so weird because I have been a dominatrix for most of my life.

I just texted my father.

I’m considering having a cigarette.