today and all the others - DIARY ENTRY

Today and all the others, I need the words of other people. ⁠I can’t use any of my own – there’s no time, and that’s what it takes, I’ve learnt. Or – never mind – it’s not time that’s important. But just – allowed time. A moment. I don’t give any moments. ⁠

Instead, I fill each hour with several different screens. There is always many – many things, many distractions. I listen to music, instead of the news, only if I feel my eyes are filled with at least two somethings else. I can’t take a shower without the radio anymore because that wouldn’t be enough to do. There must be words through my mind, all the time, and they must be other people’s. ⁠

I thought once it was loneliness that led me here – a fear of being alone, trampled into my brain by news bulletins. There’s no accounting for what your brain might present you if you give it a chance at originality. Now though, I wonder if space and quiet alludes me simply because I’m not used to making it anymore. Perhaps there’s nothing deeper. In a way, my busyness is sloppy and lazy, because I don’t practice at the thing I really crave. ⁠

There is sand in my bed. It leaked from the bottom of a weighted mirror, and now, when I stretch out my feet, I can feel grit in my toes. I only brought the mirror to my bed because I couldn’t bear to sit still. Watching a film wasn’t enough without the added distraction of picking my skin in the magnifying pane in search for ingrown hairs. There weren’t any this morning. ⁠

This is what happens when it gets left to long, I think. My ingrown hairs don’t have time to bend over, because I check for them too regularly. And the quiet is left starved, somehow, too. The fear of my brain leaves it droughted, and numb. ⁠

There’s a lit a candle on my dresser. It means that the time I spend, under my duvet, staring at screens is useful – there’s a purpose to the wallowing. It keeps the quiet at bay. ⁠