the last time you cried
Reading about Edith crying in Stoner it occurred to me that I haven’t cried in a while. I looked in my diary to see when I last cried.
21 days ago — July 27th:
I’m crying.
I didn’t write in my book today. That’s not why I’m crying.
I’m crying because no one is here to take care of me.
I’m crying because people can only ever be entertaining to me. But no one has my back. The erotic voltage from David is just that. It’s not love.
I’m crying because of how often I flirt with danger. I don’t always invite it. This time I didn’t. This time danger came to visit me. But every time I seem to face danger with a sort of…interest. Danger seems more interesting and kind to me than people. Do you get what I mean by that?
Danger is a seductive god. Danger is novel. Danger comes in different forms and feels different. Danger is a meeting between me and god. Danger is quiet and contemplative. Danger is a crystal ball. It says here look at your life. This is what it looks like.
Edith crying makes me want to cry. She’s so alone and it’s so unfair.
She’s crying because Stoner said he’d take her to Europe. She was planning to go anyway with her Aunt. It was a sure thing. And then Stoner said she shouldn’t go. She should marry him instead and they can go together. And now it’s been years and she hasn’t gone. And she’s been doing her wifely duties. She’s been taking the violence of his desire and she’s been doing housework. She’s been entertaining guests, even when she really doesn’t want to.
I relate to it so well. She’s so deeply lonely and it’s so unfair that no one ever does anything for her. After all that she’s done.
The loneliness I feel once came from feeling I didn’t have the people I needed. It now comes from feeling they don’t even exist.
When I needed people the most they told me to go help myself.
So I went and learned to help myself. I help myself so much that I now don’t know what I need them for. And I hold on to the bitterness of having been told to be independent. Be independent? Ok. But don’t expect me to need you anymore, because now I don’t.
They weren’t trying to teach me empowerment. They abandoned me when I needed help because they’re too lazy and indifferent and now they want to orbit in the glamour of my life. They’ve never given me anything. The most basic of human responsibilities I expected of them was comfort. But they can’t do that. That’s not part of their evil plan. They want to suck and drain and take from me when I’m at my high. Well they’ve got nothing to trade for it.
I wonder what they’re doing with each other. What they do best I guess. Fucking and fucking each other over.
I always thought that if I was sacrificial, that sacrifices would be made for me too. I didn’t know that the more you give, the more is taken from you. I didn’t know that people didn’t work in reciprocal ways.
I think I’ve turned into a sort of cold unfeeling type. I blocked Irina on a hunch that she is a dark presence. She didn’t do anything incriminating that I could tell. But I just blocked her, because it felt better to have her gone.
And the cruelty of being blocked is something I understand so well. In the past I would’ve never done it to someone unless they really deserved it. But now I can do it as though she is not even a person.