The Truthful Thing To Do
<<2003-11-17 - 11:05 p.m.>>

That's a terribly Tori thing to say, but, funny thing, it's true. It's very physical. I'm biting my tongue, and there's a funny feeling at the top of my stomach that rattles up into my ribcage like someone slinging a stick along submerged fenceposts. Downstairs there are the plosives of Fury yelling at the cat: "BAD CAT! BAD CAT! HEY!" and I want to scream, I want to scream, I'm going to scream, I'm going to fucking scream and I bite down hard and don't let up. I can hear myself screaming in my head, my voice shrill and out of control.

If I were the screaming type, I'd scream STOP IT! but I've never screamed but once (at Rowen, that night).

It took all of five minutes today to convince me that Claire doesn't love me (it's okay to say because I don't think she reads this anymore so it's not a cry for attention, it's just what happens when she doesn't spend time with me and doesn't care but has dinner at Marlene's and mentions it casually the next day). I called Maggie and could feel things starting to unfurl themselves in the back of my throat but it wasn't fair because I called because she was upset.

I want to take off. I want to take a semester off and just get the hell out of Dodge. Seattle, London, Santa Fe, New York, anywhere, anywhere, anywhere, I don't care, just God, get me out of here and out of this and everything's all wrong and I hurt so much. I sat in anthro this afternoon and just tried to keep myself from losing my shit, just tried to keep a lid on the chaos in my stomach and smiled and stared at blank notepaper and turned the page and started listing cities I could go to, things I could do there, logistical steps toward getting myself there: check Craigslist for office jobs, look into Brooklyn (NOT WILLIAMSBURG), ask my mother to research semester-long language programs.

And I shut people out when they love me and I hate myself, I hate myself, I fucking hate myself and I hate myself for hating myself because it's all very teen angst and awful and I want to delete it and I think I'm going to post this just because, although I do not know what the value of proclaiming myself a self-pitying moron before an audience is, it seems somehow the truthful thing to do.

And now I've started to cry again. Fucking great.

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