People may parochially label me with a complex, but they just don't see the unpleasantness of it. Just like when they look slighted or gaze at me with concern whenever I verbalize my repugnance at certain institutions, like marriage. Or "the American Dream." Both of which I regard with horror, abhorrence, and contempt.

Branching off my original purpose here, does anyone else feel stifled/assaulted by society's expectations?

So you see, this is why I write stupid stories and imagine things.

Some rather unpleasant things happened yesterday. The unwelcome "blast from the past" and potential to emotionally scar notwithstanding, I think I've come to realize several things:

• There is no happiness and significance and grand purpose to life, no matter how many bastards tell you otherwise.
• Situations where I can survey the whole, contemplate individual beauties, and be apart from the clamor are scarce and not so spectacular.
• And even when I'm up there, in the cold and rain and beyond the pathetic, mundane realm, all I can think of afterwards is that I should've stayed up there longer.

OK, that was a rough list. Watch out, I think this one's even better.

• I've died and become a part of nothing. What is this "person"? Who was that moron? How can other people look at photographs, memories, each other, and identify?
• Fiction. Can it touch you with a sensate hand and tell you what where you've been, what you've missed, what is missing?
• A nascent or lasting reality? These figments of imagination…
• I have a feeling my "past" will keep severing itself.

Also, some "people" have told me that I'm an unpleasant "person." Which leads me to…

• If smiles and laughs and human expressions can't be genuine, then will they castigate "me" for it?
• Why does society viciously ostracize those they can't comprehend?
• Why does no one see? Understand?
• And not "my" trivial plights but those of the common nature.

Could you see a drop of water in a rainstorm?

The rest is silence.

Who knew that Simone Simons would have it so right?

I resent being awake. Period. And don't you dare give me that crap — needless to say, I would think there's some universal applicability to every person who sleeps only two hours every night, and is callously dragged awake every crack of dawn to go to a place one would rather burn down than see again. Even worse is the struggle to maintain consciousness and lucidity. Seven hours. An entire day of physical torture. And then the biology teacher has the gall to chastise me for my lack of dedication. Well, isn't that swell, coming from a person who goes to bed at 9 pm and plainly has no concept of what lack of oxygen really does to the human brain. You know, as impossible as it is to believe, I would really like to do that essay and pay attention in class and contribute to intellectual discussion and be an attentive, superficial prat (since that's what most people seem to want), except that my neurological processes somehow don't seem to function, and your vapid wisecracks do nothing to alleviate the situation if not exacerbate it further, since none of those silly remarks are at all amusing and instead cause me to feel as if I'm trapped in a crowd of chuckling dunderheads.

This entry would've been a lot shorter except that no one, especially not callow, Pollyannaish pop music lovers, would see the justification behind my hatred of the waking hours. And you think I despise everything I see… there's no shortage of insular antagonism, is there? And I mean on your part; of course I know there are individuals out there waiting to lash out and turn it against me. Perhaps you envision some sort of heroic circle of triumph, and the diminishing ogre at its center, vanquished by a righteous, united front… I don't know, I merely speculate. But then, why don't you add me to your castrate list? See if I care. The whole world could do without ovaries.

And I don't say "happy birthday" because I know you don't need to hear it again.

I remember the last time we did that. I was only six or seven. I was furious that time, too. Seized, perhaps, by fancy or necessity (and the scissors having already been stowed away), I obtained a knife from the kitchen, then proceeded to saw away at a sheet of paper. A sullen child, naked blade in hand. See those eyes glower! I wonder why he didn't wrest the thing away from me.

But of course, I know. The same reason those false, impish smiles and chuckles continue unfazed around me. Because life wouldn't be quite the same without that obstinate, habitually reticent background fixture. If that fixture, say, moved to Antarctica or dissolved into quarks and protons, no one would lament its passing save for the procurement of a replacement. A matter of course! Something else to neglect with ignorance, bruise with self-importance. We (the rest of the sensate world) suggest a puppy.

But even a puppy will whine in discontent, bark in anger. Those unfeeling, unseemly lashing-outs and bouts of muffled silence evidently raise no such flags. Since when did visible unhappiness equate normalcy? Since when did mordant remarks indicate a genuine bad nature, a natural ill-temper, a harmless, prolonged despondency? One might laugh thoughtlessly at the silly, silly child with the dark eyes and concealed kitchen cleaver, and suppose the thing an unappreciative, ungrateful dunce. Congratulations, then. Top marks! The dunce will now take her bow. In the meantime I marvel at and curse you all.

Illusiveness, the cope of night, ambiguously, betrayal of your mind
Passing through the evil dark side, the moment of metempsychosis…

The pale, white, fragile blossoms in the deserted street. A silent sanctuary. The greenness enclosing me from all directions. Gently, grimly, an ethereal solace. The serenity of the clouded, rain-flecked sky. If only there were no inhabitants in those gray, verdure-covered houses. The world without whispers and judgments and meaningless farces. I speak, then perceive the obstinate wall, a paramount of foolishness. Superficiality. Have they known anything deeper? I refuse to move. I am entwined in verdure.