Britney

Most of my days now are spent rewatching movies, writing, lying aimlessly in meadows with Lula, or emailing John,* who has gone home. For once I am content, but I’m confused. There are moments where I lose myself in my mind, when everything around me dissolves and I feel like a character in an unfinished story, sitting by idly until someone comes along and tells me where to go next. I feel unsettled, like if I don’t talk to someone soon, and fast, then I may or may not be shackled to my thoughts, which is one of the worst punishments ever. They are too out of line for me to feel safe with them.

Does this happen to other people? I worry that if I tell someone how I feel, they will think there is something wrong with me. Maybe there is. (I hope not.) And I feel like voicing something makes it real, and I don’t want this to be real, especially if other people won’t know what I mean. I want them to know what I mean, to say, “Whoa, that happens to me, too!”

Is it possible to live in a memory? Is it possible to lose yourself there, just let yourself be so consumed by the past that nothing else matters, least of all the tattered shreds of the present? I think that is what has been happening to me. I am straddling the line between what has been and what is. It makes it hard to do what I have been trying to do for what feels like forever: move forward. ♦

* Not his real name.