september 30 2008 4 am

I am so scattered. I just don't know what to write.

There’s this big bump in my popcorn ceiling, and it really screws up the whole shadowy-starry effect it has. I was staring at it after the movie finished. Sometimes I just sit here and stare at it. I don’t know why. It’s comforting, I think. I’m listening to Randy Newman’s Sail Away, which has become one of my favorite albums of all time, and my favorite album to listen to on vinyl.

The movie I was watching wasAlmost Famous, which I love. I love it because it talks about rock music, which is dead to most people, I think, but not me. When I left to take a piss I thought about how I could write about rock and roll, because I can feel and I can write. But you wouldn’t understand. Or maybe you would. I don’t know what would bother me more.

Kyle died today.

There, I said it. Kyle died today, and I’ve never had a friend die before. No, it never would have even crossed my mind. I feel like I am in this strange world, a bastardized version of my day to day routine. I sit behind the cash register and hit F12 and take their cash and then something hits me that this is my life and Kyle is dead and I haven’t cried yet.

Too many people have written about death, it makes this feel even... less. That's all I can think to say about it. There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

My mind has been so scattered. Whatever used to be my center has become invisible. I’ts still there, I just can’t feel it or see it, and I never know when I’m using it. Maybe I don’t.

God, I miss being in love. Maybe not being in love, but I miss loving someone. I miss the feeling of communion. It’s been over a year now, and I feel so lonely and it feels futile to talk about and ungrateful to think about because Kyle is dead and I’m alive and I’m lucky for that.

All I’ve been trying to do is the right thing. I let Daniel punch me in the face tonight because he said that would end it all - all the drama (I know, it's a terrible word to describe what's really going on) - and I punched him first, but it didn’t do anything. It was then I realized how fucked up everything has become. How did we all start out on the same plane, and turn out where we are today? Are we really that different?

Why haven’t I cried yet?

I didn’t with my grandparents. Not until I went to their house in Sun City, and it was empty. That old wooden tree clock was still ticking louder than hell, and I found a ninja turtle of mine in their couch in the guest room. I don’t want to go there again. Never.

What makes me so sad is that only a handful of people really seemed to mourn Kyle. He was already dead to so many of us, and that’s such a hopeless way to go. It’s not that I didn’t love him, exactly. You have to understand that. I did. He had an old soul – something his mom told me her Tai Chi teacher told her about him, if that makes sense. Even if it doesn’t, it's still true.

Mike didn’t come tonight, which was smart. He knew not to come because he has always been the smartest out of all of us, which he would renounce and I would try to convince him of, and he would never believe it. But his instincts are more distinct and acute than anyone I’ve met in my life. That’s why we love you, Mike. That’s why if you died, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

I told you I’m scattered. Shattered, even. Lost beyond comprehension and waiting desperately to find someone who really gets me and reminds me how wonderful life really is, because it really is, and I know that. I just want to feel it.

I’ve tried to hard to do the right thing that now I can barely tell the difference.

I told you I’m scattered. I read your blog, Maria, and I thought it was beautiful in the way that it was you coming out and showing yourself to the world, in a hopeless gesture of expression that says that you are human, no matter what it says.

My life hasn't been bad, just very strange. I can't believe Kyle is dead.

I'm sorry, I just don't know what to write. I told you I was scattered.