"A long December and there''s reason to believe 
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can''t remember the last thing that you said as you were leaven'' 
Now the days go by so fast"

This morning, I was running late for outpatient, and I ran into a pathological liar who I''ve known for a while.  I''ve always considered the acquaintance to be an unfortunate one, but she really helped me out this morning.  I wouldn''t have been totally f@cked otherwise, but the situation would have been decidedly more inconveniant.  And, it was a really sweet gesture.  It made me think that maybe I had been unfair.  I''m certainly not the picture of mental health myself, and here this girl had just done me this huge favor, out of nowhere.  Afterward, she started to tell me about how she used to live in California with David Blane and some girl who''s now a supermodel. 

Maybe, it''s too much to expect too many good qualities in one person.  If someone''s really, really nice, there''s probably something else amiss.

I know that''s pretty dark, but if you disagree, don''t worry, I probably will too in a couple of hours.  I am as unstable as hell, right now.

"The smell of hospitals in winter 
And the feeling that it''s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl" 

I feel like the walls are closing in.  I don''t know how to explain what''s going on in my head.  It''s like I was rolling along, getting by, even doing well, and then, within the past week and a half or so, it''s all started to come undone.  Like, I looked up, and everything was suddenly way too f@cking big, and this all to familiar paralysis started to set in.  Now, I feel like it''s all closing in on me.

I don''t understand anything, right now.  Least of all myself…

Even on relatively good days, I don''t really like myself very much.  I''m not sure I''m someone I would have coffee with.

I don''t know how to react to this (other than seeing my shrink, which I need to do this coming week).  When examining my past decisions, mistakes, and relationships, looking for patterns, and whatnot, I recognize what I would usually do in a situation like this.  I would unwittingly shift from confusion to the certainty of some extreme or another, and that extreme would inform my life for some random block of time.  Depression, mania, or even a more specific extreme…  wrecklessness, ambition (it''s been a while on that one), hypersexuality, a fixation with pleasing others (being a good friend, ect), getting lost in fantasies (little narratives I author in my head and may or may not write down), ruthlessness (again, it''s been a while on that one, but I have gone there), ect….

I have lost too many people.  When I have issues with friends these days I think about the friends I''ve lost.  People who are gone now, who I couldn''t reconnect with if I wanted to, because even though it sometimes feels like they''re just somewhere else, and I haven''t seen them in a long time, I know they''re gone. 

I don''t visit graves very often.  I don''t feel like the people I loved are really there.  Once we die, we''re like everything else – just decaying organic matter.  The unity of that is almost comforting. 

"Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m. 
And talked a little while about the year 
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her 
And it''s been a long December and there''s reason to believe 
Maybe this year will be better than the last 
I can''t remember all the times I tried to tell my myself 
To hold on to these moments as they pass" 

I thought this New Year''s was going to be very different.  In recent years, New Year''s started to feel like a sad marker of how long I''d been trapped in a life I couldn''t see my way out of.  I''m not strung out, now.  And, I''m doing well with my artwork.  I have two window displays, right now, and a couple of shows on the horizon, and yet…  I was sad and alone at the stroke of midnight.

I guess, it''s all manufactured significance, anyway.

And, Ace did talk me through much of the evening.  He''s an amazing person, and he''s stuck by me through so much ugliness.  He deserves better. 

"And it''s one more day up in the canyon 
And it''s one more night in Hollywood 
It''s been so long since I''ve seen the ocean... I guess I should"  (Counting Crows, "Long December")