The Waking Journal [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]

52
Autumn Christian’s waking journal (Written down per instruction of the giant psychic therapist spider):

I walked through the Denton square and the sun burnt the top of the head and the top of the trees. I breathed in heat. I’d never seen green like that lawn before. It’d been so long since I’d dropped the shield walking around, and observed the rawness of the color green.

I was driving home through traffic in Fort Worth and the light shone on my hands. I thought if I could have prisms hanging from the back of my car I could push rainbows through my knuckles. Behind me the sky is the color of a blood orange, and it’s casting its deep shadow down on the highway, down on the cars, permeating through the surface level of the city.

I’m vibrating with the frequency of a hundred strangers and most of them are desperate for approval. It sits on their skin, like a kind of bacteria, the hopeless smile, the hopeless nod. There’s always one person in every cafe that has to proclaim loudly how wonderful their life is, but it’s with the submissive grin of an orangutan, waiting for someone to tell them, “It’s okay, you are worthy of life.” I wish they could know they are making themselves less and less worthy with every self proclamation.

My brother’s friend sits down at the table with shifting eyes, loudly complains about me being on my phone. “I guess I’m old-fashioned, I’d rather have a real conversation.” I shrug. “You’re boring me to be honest.” He said, “I’d rather people watch than be on my phone.” I stand up and scream, “Why do you constantly have to try and prove how much better you are than everyone else? Get the fuck over yourself!” Everyone tries not to look at me on the way back home.

It is dark and clear on the highway. I’m listening to Angel by Massive Attack and my nausea is dissipating.

I am having sex, and his fingers are pushed through my hair. I’m learning how to look at someone while we fuck and bite my lip and not hide my face, not close my eyes, as my eyes roll up in my head, to push myself back into the present moment, to stop fantasizing about being on a dark cloud fucking a storm. I am here, in this room, on top of him, the cool air pushing its way through my spine, his hips pushing upward against mine. I am real I am real I am here.

I am here.

53

In Paul Sarte’s “Nausea” there’s a scene where the protagonist’s hand becomes unfamiliar, described as akin to a white worm. Derealization, or depersonalization can strike like a sudden nosebleed. Objects in space do not appear to be attached to anything. They take on a strangeness that is independent of all other items in existence and nothing feels real. This happens to me often while I’m typing, if I look down in the dark at my fingers under the lit glow of the monitor my veins appear like wriggling squiggles, carved insects, pressing a dance at the keyboard.

I spent six months in a basement on an Oklahoma dairy farm and the more isolated I became the bigger the insects got, the wriggling, squiggling pale things, they were monsters inside my hands, they were waiting to rupture out and carve new beginnings. I scratched at the wall in the corner. I attempted to feel pieces of my body again, not as foreign objects but as MY BODY. I took pictures on my webcam. I scratched at my head, I pressed my face into the couch rest. I kept writing. I went outside to the hills and I ran laps around the dairy barn. I howled to coyotes. They howled back, the sound made a hollowing aching impression in my chest. I wrote, but the world kept seeping back into gray. I began to think, in half-flicker thoughts, perhaps I was the only person alive.
I needed to get out.

December 30, 2009 [Diary Entry]

I'm moving to Austin. In about a month and a half, I'm going to pack up, say goodbye to this Oklahoman hell, and take off. This Oklahoman hell has treated me well. I will miss the pressure of the red earth on the back of my head and the creeping warmth of my coyote den. But I've reached a point of complacency. I am not advancing how I'd like, and I find myself once again in the care of well-intentioned relatives who want to soften the inevitable blow that comes from living in this world, this vicious, gorgeous vagina dentata of the universe.

Well I don't want to be in this cocoon for the rest of my life. I don't want Mommy's trust fund, a pent house, or an asylum room that keeps me from hurting my head with the padded walls. I want to break my head against that fucking wall. I want to be bludgeoned to death. I want to be castrated by the fanged earth. I want to be miserable and heated and shivering in the cold and dying of fever. I want a headache every day of my life. Every time my hands touch the keyboard to write, I want to vomit blood. I want desperate sex. I want to learn who I am beyond these four walls.
I would rather be miserable everyday than continue in this stagnant complacency.

Virginia Woolf writes that a woman needs “A Room of One’s Own” to become a writer. But the room is not enough. I had the room, but instead of expanding the universe inside of me, it shrunk. I was no longer sondering, I was small and solipsist. I tried to stare at a stranger through a keyhole and instead looked back at myself.

Note: This is part of my Psycho-Surreal Memoirs Series. You can find more by looking through my feed. They're designed to be able to be read in any order.

You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and my website. You can also buy one of my books here.

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The Genius with Eyes That'd Seen Fire [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
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My Favorite Resources for Writers
Crooked God Machine [My Books]
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Industrial Noir in the Red Earth: My Trip to Oklahoma