It's Christmas... but it's hard to ignore that if feels like summer all the time.

Is that it? All my life I have feigned the experience of true suffering? It has never been legitimate?

This is a sick psychological game-- how long before I crack? It's not a question of strength or lack thereof and I'm starting to think that it's not stupidity either. I'm not sure what it is. Unsure of so many things. I knew it the first week I came and even then I think I knew the toll this would take on me physically. Tough as shit. You are tough as shit. Is that what I become? But I took the responsibility. I knew that in some ways he would hold me back and I knew that he would make me suffer. That's dedication. Or some form thereof. And suffer, from worry. And finances. But to find motivation? Your mind is elastic but your body is not. Time can be a greedy thing. 20-something and lost. Or, tied down. I will forever be tied down by this.

And me? To be stuck in this society. Tattoos, piercings. Where did academia go? I would walk with my people if I could find them. I don't think there are any here. Today is a day where it's difficult to be strong. Where your picture is at eye-level and I think of it as a movie, stuck somewhere that time was greedy and took it away from me. It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.

Here the holidays aren't holidays, it's the first time they've just become another day on the calendar. It feels like summer all the time. I'm sick of the sunshine. And the music. Reminding me of when I was a kid. Grandpa's ghost. Cutting crayons into film canisters, here's your medicine. Gum in the cabinet above the sink. Cigarette smoke. Boat races down the creek. Dead man's hill. Those were the days. Blood oranges. Paris. Airplanes. Sirius. I'm not your star, isn't that what you said? No exams, no sickness. No initials in the snow. Sliding down the sidewalk. I didn't realize it, I haven't thought about you in years. Yes, it has turned into years. The only exams now are mental-- will I crack? Will I survive? And I knowingly put myself through this. Fuck building character. That is NOT what this is. No one respects us here. Indentured servants, I believe that was the term she used. I always thought education was more than it ever was. I'm always unsatisfied. I always thought I would be smarter. Could be smarter. Will be smarter.

It's always worse at night. I never want to talk anymore. No messages, just burrow into my bed, escape with sleep. Wake up to the same thing in the morning. Just another check list, just another thing to wait for. Stop stealing my time. Waiting, waiting. For this and that. To get old. For my back to hurt worse. To be healthy. To eat right. For the letter to come. Or not come. Waiting for the unknown. Waiting to give up. Waiting to not care anymore. I don't think I can convince myself out of it. Just pretend I never had it. I never claimed to be a good actress.

Tomorrow will be another day of sun. Another day of not talking. And another day of trying to find the spaces between.