[I almost employed a pun to title this entry]

Yes­ter­day, from out of nowhere, an explo­sion: three short, sharp, wretched, retched-out screams of. Some­thing. I don’t know what. Gone, dir­ec­ted into the ceil­ing. Smacked into con­crete, plaster and cheap white­wash. Pum­melled into the roof over my head. Tem­por­ary relief. A brief res­pite. But oh, too quick. Fleet­ing. By the next morn­ing, I’m once again viciously drunk and unstable on seething.

I am not a viol­ent per­son. Far from it. (Sounds like a defence of the bru­tal spirit: a “…but I would kick you repeatedly in the stom­ach until you coughed up blood” state­ment. No, noth­ing of the sort. Just the cold, hard truth.) See­ing and exper­i­en­cing cer­tain events at vari­ous points in one’s life tends to set a person’s face against viol­ence. Forces one’s body to recoil from it. Viol­ence becomes ter­ri­fy­ing, naus­eat­ing. It resides only in the mind, in thoughts, and in words occa­sion­ally writ­ten in black on white. The men­tal image never pro­vokes a phys­ical action. That’s the story in my case, at least.

Yet there is rage, I can­not deny it. Untram­melled, unal­loyed rage. I know it’s there inside me. I feel it. It pol­lutes me. My body stings from it, my head aches from the forced drug­ging. I want it gone. But where does one send such an over­whelm­ing emo­tion? How does one release such power­ful rage when acts of viol­ence remain, thank­fully, so abhor­rent? Wretched screams into thin air, into noth­ing, can’t be forced.

My body argues with my mind. My head falls out with my heart. My face can’t bear to look at my hands. I feel too much because, I sur­mise, I’ve for­got­ten how to feel any­thing but this one toxic emo­tion. Remind me.

Ripe for (di/con)version

I want to show someone the taut strings and the tendril wires that tie me together, barely keep me together, then choke me dur­ing those moments when I’m incon­veni­ently breath­ing, make my flesh either ache or crawl. Take this someone’s stead­ier hand, thrust it into my skinned open chest and encour­age a bout of internal molesta­tion. Grope, squeeze, touch, don’t be ashamed. Be inquis­it­ive, be repuls­ive. Take what you need, if I’ve any­thing left to give, and then apply needle and thread for a slip­shod reseal­ing in case you need more. I don’t want to be known bey­ond. I yearn to be known within reach. Incon­clus­ive to all but the reader of this open book. I want to imprint my face on your right shoulder as you push your eyes into my left cheek. To sigh-skin, not sting-skin and scratch. They have words for this, I’m told, but I don’t dare add them to my depleted lex­icon. I just keep quiet and mouth hol­lows into my clenched fist.

The Queen who vanished

Bolt upright in bed, sweats and shivers, woken from sleep by a sud­den return: the know­ledge of how dan­ger­ous I could be.

She told me, whispered to me over white noise, that I would prove dan­ger­ous to know. Not in a Byronesque way; no, far more real than that. I had no reason to believe her then. Years later, I can clearly see what she meant.

I turn to lie on my front and attempt to sleep on her words, so as to stifle them again, smother them, bury them, forget.

Absentminded questioning

What would you say is the one main thing you do each day to remind other people, but also your­self, that you exist?

Disconnected diary notes #177

  1. I spent much of yes­ter­day after­noon con­sumed by that most hate­ful and juven­ile of emo­tions: envy. I am not proud of myself. I felt like a selfish eight-year-old child, ‘thk­weam­ing and thk­weam­ing’ about how unfair it all is until they get their way, rather than a sup­posedly mature man in his early forties who has seen a lot of life and should know bet­ter. My even­ing shower took on an extra and par­tic­u­larly bru­tal sig­ni­fic­ance as I felt the need to harshly scrub myself clean of such a sick­en­ing sensation..

  2. Yes, I want par­tic­u­lar things from my life. Does that make me selfish? Who doesn’t want their exist­ence to fol­low a path that they think might pos­sibly offer some col­our to a gen­er­ally grey mundan­ity? I have been told, on occa­sions, that merely hav­ing such desires for my life shows that I am envi­ous of oth­ers. My response is thus: aston­ish­ingly, while my intel­li­gence may not be great, it has developed to the extent where it can cope bey­ond only the most utterly simplistic levels.

  3. Today, I achieved a new but dis­tinctly undis­tin­guished record: I debated, wor­ried and pondered with myself for five whole hours about whether I could send a friendly, informal text mes­sage to someone. A text mes­sage. This century’s most ubi­quit­ous meth­ods of com­mu­nic­a­tion, mil­lions of which are sent each and every day without even so much as a second thought, and I had to dis­sect the prob­lem for three hun­dred minutes, ask­ing myself the usual para­noid ques­tions about whether I’d be inter­rupt­ing, whether the recip­i­ent would really want to hear from me, and who was I to think I could simply send a far more import­ant per­son an incon­sequen­tial, chatty mes­sage out of the blue? Any­one would think that I have a prob­lem with self-confidence and self-worth. Which of course I don’t. Def­in­itely not. Oh, and the text mes­sage? Not sent, of course. It might have been inconvenient.

Disconnected diary notes #83

If I occa­sion­ally behaved like some kind of spoilt juven­ile tout­ing an angu­larly scrawled list of petty griev­ances against the world, then I would have spent a couple of hours this even­ing mulling over why my appar­ently imprac­tical wishes for my con­tin­ued exist­ence on this planet seem so emin­ently prac­tical, even easy, for other people to achieve.

For­tu­nately, of course, I’m not remotely juven­ile or spoilt, and I have no petty griev­ances what­so­ever. None. No.

I’m as relieved as you obvi­ously are, how­ever, that I remain an exem­plary liar.

I’m going to go to bed and beat up a pil­low. That’s more the kind of beha­viour I should be dis­play­ing at my advanced stage of matur­ity, isn’t it?

Disconnected diary notes #37

  1. An appar­ently sens­ible forty-one year-old man should not be feel­ing this way, espe­cially when he’s going to be forty-two years old in less than two months. “And what way is that?” you might well ask. “Oh, you know. That way,” I would undoubtedly respond, hid­ing my true thoughts behind lin­guistic vacuity.

  2. I’m keenly aware that I grew up too soon — pushed, pulled and man­handled into respons­ib­il­ity and under­stand­ing far bey­ond my years before I’d reached my tenth birth­day. Even before that age, I’d seen and exper­i­enced events that any right-minded per­son would be wary of reveal­ing to most adults. So by the time I entered my mid–30s, I was tired of it. It wasn’t just a series of unstop­pable cir­cum­stances that led to my fail­ure to achieve some of the vis­ible signs of adult status — though I’m always quick to place the blame in those con­veni­ent tick­boxes. I recog­nise that per­sonal choice was a sig­ni­fic­ant factor in my retreat from respons­ib­il­ity, too.

  3. Much of my life — the first eight­een years and the last eight, in par­tic­u­lar, plus peri­ods inbetween — has been spent liv­ing beside busy roads, lor­ries and streams of cars trundling past every hour of the day and night. When people asked me how I could cope with the con­stant noise out­side, my truth­ful answer was always that I was used to it because I’d rarely known dif­fer­ent. It was no big deal. Until now. I sud­denly crave peace, urgently crave it with all of my being. I’ve had two oppor­tun­it­ies over the past month to sit in a near silent room, hear­ing noth­ing but the birds singing out­side, and the exper­i­ence brought me close to tears — only the pres­ence of another per­son stopped me from succumbing.

  4. I don’t want to be the kind of per­son who takes two hours to relax in com­pany. Time is short. I want to rel­ish con­ver­sa­tion and human con­tact at such moments, not spend so long being all too aware of my screwed-up, screwed-down psyche slowly unwind­ing, releas­ing itself from its suf­foc­at­ing, tightly bound normality.

  5. I’ve rarely behaved like a scoun­drel. When, by my own stand­ards, I’ve sunk to such a low, I feel too guilty to sleep. Am I tired at the moment? Yes, maybe I am.

  6. I still can’t grasp what the word really means. Even if you make me repeat it and its vari­ous dic­tion­ary defin­i­tions for hours on end, as a man­tra, elu­cid­a­tion will prove elu­sive. Yet there’s a con­tra­dic­tion here — because if you picked up the phone and called me, I could detail its mani­fest­a­tions in a stream of breath­less sen­tences laced with sick­en­ing dis­taste at my reac­tions and my fallibility.

  7. I have no idea why you’re read­ing this. That’s not just false mod­esty. I am truly mys­ti­fied. I don’t know what causes a few of you to stop by this site on a semi-regular basis. Espe­cially recently. The entries you find here can’t, surely, be classed as remotely enjoy­able read­ing mater­ial? Please note: I am not angling for com­pli­ments in the com­ments — those days are long gone.

The shock of the new is now old

  • “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
  • I’ve become a manic col­lector of nothings.
  • Mince words, bleed mouths.
  • I don’t dream of violence.
  • Though I day­dream of violence.
  • That’s why there is no violence.
  • Primar­ily, I throttle up revulsion.
  • I was sur­prised by my paymasters.
  • Every­one demands the right to comment.
  • I stopped listen­ing thirty-two years ago.
  • It was prob­ably a Thursday afternoon.
  • Ever the idiot, ever the numb.
  • There is squalor in my pores.
  • I want to sur­prise you, I will sur­prise you.
  • One day, I’ll have to sur­prise myself.
  • Pick three words. Any three words.
  • I’ll use those as my form of surprise.
  • Ever the quiet type, ever the dumb.
  • I want to see the inside of your face.
  • This sen­tence is this long.
  • This thought is this short.

A catalogue of non-breaths

Here’s the flip­side:

I fre­quently think, too, about the face-to-face con­ver­sa­tions I will most likely never have. A slow, mean­der­ing con­ver­sa­tion with my father (but cer­tainly not the father I’ve been cursed with) on a rest­ful Sunday after­noon. A con­ver­sa­tion with a 12-year-old son or daugh­ter about the mis­takes I made, and why they shouldn’t fol­low suit. Con­ver­sa­tions with people from all corners of the globe, whom I’ll never meet, whose words have appeared (then dis­ap­peared) on a chat screen or an email win­dow at vari­ous points over the past fif­teen years. Con­ver­sa­tions with friends, even a lover, now gone else­where or nowhere (depend­ing on your beliefs). Con­ver­sa­tions at night, side by side, with a kindred spirit who will never be. Con­ver­sa­tions with oth­ers that, for­tu­nately, I’m too too nervous, ashamed and guarded to men­tion here.

On each occa­sion, these dia­logues are dif­fer­ent. Of course they are — they haven’t happened, won’t hap­pen, and a num­ber of the fig­ures to whom I’m talk­ing don’t even exist. So I have to craft the responses in these dis­cus­sions. The responses offered by my con­fid­ant or co-conspirator thus become mine: the answers I’d wish them to give, the words I’d desire to hear them whis­per or speak. Why would I get into dis­agree­ments with people I’m cre­at­ing in my own mind? That’s for the real world.

But, as before, I remem­ber you. I remem­ber your words, your faces, your breaths and pauses, the truths that each of you told me. I recall and revisit our con­ver­sa­tions. Those moments have been sewn into my sum total of exper­i­ence and, for bet­ter or worse, are part of the per­son I’ve become. Here and now, on this hazy week­end even­ing, I wanted the vir­tual ether to know that — though I have no idea why.

A catalogue of breaths

When I review my life, it’s rarely as a series of events, moment­ous or oth­er­wise, that are pro­jec­ted onto the rough-hewn sur­faces of my mind in grainy tech­ni­col­our. There seem to have been few of those, in truth, or at least not as many as I’d have liked.

No, what I remem­ber are the rev­el­at­ory con­ver­sa­tions — the moments when everything around me seemed to move slowly, or even stop, as I con­fided some­thing of myself to another per­son, or they con­fided in me, and we learned more about ourselves, our his­tory and our place in the world. I remem­ber each loc­a­tion — not just the rooms, of course, but the park bench, the riverb­ank, a car jour­ney, the two dif­fer­ent tube plat­forms, the deser­ted res­taur­ant, the freez­ing hos­pital waiting-room, the train to the north, and oth­ers that are too per­sonal to men­tion. I remem­ber the pauses, the nervous breaths, the eye con­tact, some­times the hands entwined in con­sol­a­tion, even the occa­sional cli­mactic embrace of understanding.

I won­der what became of my rev­el­a­tions in the minds of the people in whom I con­fided: people I no longer know, with whom I’ve either lost con­tact com­pletely or whose place in my life is now little more than an avatar seen scrolling past on a social net­work. Do those rev­el­a­tions still crop up in their mind every now and then, or are they long for­got­ten? Do they — though I dread to think it — some­times get recalled with deri­sion, joked about in con­ver­sa­tions that begin “this per­son I knew once told me…”? It’s grossly unfair of me to think in those terms, of course, because the rev­el­a­tions that were entrus­ted to me have neither been for­got­ten nor divulged to oth­ers, and I have no reason to think that former con­fid­ants would act in any other way but with the same decency and respect.

I remem­ber you. I remem­ber your words, your faces, your breaths and pauses, the truths that each of you told me. I recall and revisit our con­ver­sa­tions. Those moments have been sewn into my sum total of exper­i­ence and, for bet­ter or worse, are part of the per­son I’ve become. Here and now, on this hazy week­end even­ing, I wanted the vir­tual ether to know that — though I have no idea why.

Real/unreal events in unreal/real settings

This even­ing, after an exhaust­ing and hec­tic 12-hour work­ing day, I respon­ded to a self-righteous online com­ment by someone I happened to know twenty years ago — a name I there­fore con­sider to be noth­ing more than a ‘vir­tual’ pres­ence in my life — with a sur­pris­ing out­break of pro­fan­ity. I’ll accept that season­ing my reply with a few explet­ives was prob­ably a gross over­re­ac­tion, but there was a tone in this person’s words that gave the impres­sion that they thought they still knew me based on — well, based on what, exactly? Three years in the same uni­ver­sity? Then, after a gap of almost two dec­ades of no con­tact, a passing acquaint­ance via a social net­work? Frankly, I think I know my post­man bet­ter than that.

I’d very much like to escape from the mean­ing­less babble of the vir­tual world for a while, but I’m uneasy. Maybe even afraid. Which world would I then inhabit? As irrit­at­ing as I find the avatars on web pages rep­res­ent­ing long lost (and some­times long for­got­ten) people who assume some know­ledge of me des­pite then mak­ing it clear that they know very little, there’s no deny­ing that their static faces provide some engage­ment, some communication.

Over the past year to eight­een months, my unreal­ity has become too much of a real­ity. I’m not sure in which world I’m liv­ing. I feel the deep-seated need for flesh and blood because, try as I might, I can’t fash­ion pixels and points into a human of any con­vin­cing warmth.

Yes­ter­day, at the end of another very long day, I was briefly dis­trac­ted by an online per­son­al­ity sur­vey. Because I’m gull­ible, obvi­ously. One of the con­clud­ing ques­tions asked “What do you desire out of life?” The area given for a response was large, as if it was expec­ted that thought­ful respond­ents would want to indulge their philo­soph­ical mus­ings over a few lines. So it was with unchar­ac­ter­istic brev­ity that I gave my answer in just a single word.

“Intim­acy.”

One hundred and fifty-five questions

As I start this entry, it’s 2.47am. I’m tap­ping these words into my mobile phone.

I’m on an empty night-bus trav­el­ling into the centre of Lon­don — the N155, if you’re curi­ous — while the late/early week­end drunken hordes travel home in the right dir­ec­tion. The oppos­ite direction.

I caught the bus from a stop right out­side my block. In a short while, the vehicle will arrive at its final des­tin­a­tion, Ald­wych, but I’ll dis­em­bark one stop before so that I can cross over the road and wait at the oppos­ite bus stop to catch the N155 back home.

I’ve done this a num­ber of times before, as you can tell. I know the route, recog­nise cer­tain drivers, know where to dis­em­bark and cross the road safely. But I still don’t know quite why I do it. As much as I’m famil­iar with the jour­ney, I’m con­cerned about the nature of the whole noc­turnal activ­ity. It’s surely not nor­mal (whatever nor­mal might be).

I’ve spent nearly 33 years being largely self-sufficient — cer­tainly emo­tion­ally self-sufficient, often in very much more prac­tical terms too. Self-sufficiency is pos­it­ive, of course. We’re told from an early age to value our inde­pend­ence, which I do. But self-sufficiency is also tir­ing. And I’ve real­ised that more than three dec­ades of it has left me exhausted. I’ve accep­ted that what I’m look­ing for is a little sup­port, a little ground­ing in my life, to inter­weave with another person’s roots — though never thwart them beneath mine, never that — so that I might find some of my own at long last.

Today I watched some simple, unfussy, yet tender ges­tures shared between two people. It made my eyes sting. I felt a steel knot being wel­ded into my throat. That knot hasn’t yet loosened.

The bus is get­ting close to Ald­wych now. It’ll soon be time to go home again. Remem­ber: right hand to left, knuckles, thumb, sooth­ing skin. And breathe.

I’ve wondered at what point I should start telling myself that I’m pos­sibly hav­ing some kind of break­down. (Is that too much? That’s too much, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll delete all this when I’m back home. Promise.)

Start again?

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If I went right back to the begin­ning — at least the point where I think I began — it would be beside an over­grown canal, hid­den away at the far end of a dreary park in a small rural town you’ve never heard of, let alone vis­ited. If I went back to the begin­ning, there would be one song above all oth­ers play­ing over and over in my head, just because the lyr­ics caught me deeply at that moment in time and spoke of look­ing back while mov­ing inex­or­ably for­ward, ever for­ward. If it was pos­sible to go back and start again, it would be a sum­mer 24 years ago: yearn­ing for escape, eager to slough off the first 18 years of life, and with a feel­ing that a much wider world was just about to lay itself bare to me and help me under­stand, help me find a way to belong. If I could go back. If. Then yes, I would. Good­night, child.

Counting our fingers

An even­ing hold­ing my right hand in my left
Fin­ger­tips caress­ing knuckles, thumb, sooth­ing skin
I’ve for­got­ten how touch feels, and breath(e)

Cupboard love and sideboard hate

Do you want to hear some­thing amus­ing? (Qual­i­fier: I think it’s amus­ing — well, blackly amus­ing; your mileage may vary.)

Recently, I’ve felt as if I’m being watched.

Pat­ently ridicu­lous, of course. I live in a fifth floor flat at the top of the tallest build­ing in the area. The desk at which I spend most of my day work­ing is at the oppos­ite end of the room from the win­dow. There’s no way any­one could see me.

And yet.

Of course, there’s the pos­sib­il­ity of vir­tual voyeurs. I sup­pose, oddly, I feel as if I’m being vir­tu­ally watched at the moment as well. More than usual. More than I have in thir­teen years of liv­ing almost the entirety of my life online. Per­haps because I’ve been fig­ur­at­ively spill­ing my guts on these pristine pages, rather than scrawl­ing through the pre­vi­ously employed impen­et­rable lay­ers of mean­ing. Such verisimil­it­ude leaves me nervous. I find myself irrit­ably exclaim­ing “Stop that! Do some­thing else!” when I find that I’m writ­ing here again. I’m say­ing it to myself at this very moment, in fact. I’m telling myself to stop writ­ing about how I tell myself to stop writ­ing. Very meta.

So, yes, I’m being watched. Maybe there really is someone hid­ing in the ward­robe. My worry, if that’s the case, is how utterly, mind-numbingly bored they must be as they endure their daily obser­va­tions of my dreary exist­ence. Any moment now I expect to hear an exas­per­ated scream of rage and a demand that I do some­thing inter­est­ing before my voyeur is forced to start pulling out their eyes with rusty forks.

*

Second thought: I need more hatred in my psyche.

People — I would call them friends, but though they may have been at one time they’re now firmly of the vir­tual vari­ety — who wit­ness my com­ment­ary online, on social net­works, could eas­ily be con­vinced that I’m already brim­ful of hatred and the last thing I need is any more ran­cid blood cours­ing through my veins. They’re wrong. That’s not hatred I dis­play online; it’s exas­per­a­tion, even dis­ap­point­ment. Dis­ap­point­ment with the world I see around me and — just in case you think I’m absolv­ing myself of all respons­ib­il­ity — dis­ap­point­ment and exas­per­a­tion with myself.

Fur­ther­more, all the while that I’m com­ment­ing, that same voice telling me to stop writ­ing this post is urging me to stop com­ment­ing, to stop feel­ing the need to take part, to close down the social net­work and step away. No one’s inter­ested. My stream of bile is the last thing that any­one needs pol­lut­ing their timeline. “Made you feel bet­ter, did it? Did writ­ing those two bit­ter, twis­ted lines provide the neces­sary relief you were seek­ing? No? Do you still want to wash your mouth out with bleach? What a surprise.”

My response to my internal voice is to shrug, look sheep­ish, plead some­thing vague about the need for com­mu­nic­a­tion, then skulk off to hide in the ward­robe with the voyeur — telling them to get out and take over my life for a while, because it’s now my turn to watch.

I need more hatred in my psyche in order to wipe out the other parts of my essen­tial nature that offer any­thing but hate.

That’s enough. I’m shrug­ging. I look sheep­ish. But, well…com­mu­nic­a­tion, you know? Com­mu­nic­a­tion, just that. That’s me done for tonight. I’m going to go and hide in the ward­robe. I want to find out what the voyeur thinks is so very inter­est­ing about me, because I’m damned if I know.

This time of night

Even the never-ending swish and rumble of the road out­side is at least dulled.

My mind is sud­denly awake with the ques­tions I haven’t asked myself for a fort­night or so.

(Not) sleep­ing on my right side, because I don’t want to look to my left.

And I’m big enough, old enough and ugly enough to admit that there’s no song, no poem, no novel, no film, no well-crafted words, no vir­tual web pres­ence, no well-meaning thought — in short, none of the sub­sti­tutes to which I often return at times like this — that can replace the indefin­able com­plete­ness and neces­sity of genu­ine human warmth, both tan­gible and psychological.

My skin has gathered under my fin­ger­nails again.

Message #251

Don’t be shy. You know you don’t want to be. Come for­ward. Say what you’re think­ing. Feel what you’re say­ing. Think who you’re touch­ing. Be inside and out. Listen. I’m listen­ing. It makes a change.

Silence the noise of the silence

It’s nearly 2.00am. There is too much noise and too much silence. I always have too much noise and too much silence. I crave silence. Yet I crave noise. Crave silence. Crave noise. Silence. Noise. Silence. Noise. Silent noise. Noisy silence. Whichever and whatever. I am try­ing to lie in the middle of the bed to fill the space, even though the bed makes me nervous, some­times ter­ri­fied. I touch my arms, stroke my arms. The skin is awful, peel­ing, flak­ing, dried out. Yet I still stroke my arms. For com­fort and for reas­sur­ance. Com­fort. Reas­sur­ance. For an embrace, bet­ter than none. I look through my con­tacts list on my phone. Men­tally tick­ing off. Men­tally cross­ing out. Men­tally eras­ing. Men­tally regret­ting. Men­tally rewrit­ing. Do I know you? Do I know you? I wait for the phone to respond. I wait and I wait. It’s now a little closer to 2.00am. I have to be up in six hours. Six hours. Two phone con­fer­ences. Must be coher­ent, logical, say the right words, spew out the neces­sary jar­gon. But I just want to shout. I’ve opened the win­dow. I want to shout. HELLO. I AM HERE. I EXIST. LOOK UP. LOOK UP. LOOK UP. I EXIST. I STILL EXIST. I AM STILL HERE. I stroke my arms again and pull some dry skin away from the fleshy remains. I remem­ber. I for­get. I for­get to remem­ber. I hope I can remem­ber before I for­get. I trust you’ll be in touch, though. If you remem­ber. But don’t worry if you for­get. BECAUSE I STILL EXIST. I AM ALIVE. I AM BREATHING OUT. I AM NOT SURE IF I’M BREATHING IN. CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME BREATH? SOME OF YOUR BREATH? Put your mouth over mine and breathe. Mouth over mine and breathe. Mouth over mine and breathe. I am in the centre of this bed. I am lost in the centre of this bed. Lost in this bed. I have my skin under my fin­ger­nails. MY FLAKED SKIN PROVES THAT I EXIST. SKIN CANNOT BE VIRTUAL. THEREFORE I EXIST. I want to travel and stay. I want to touch and breathe. I want to talk and hush. I want noise and silence. I want beat­ing hearts and act­ive minds. I want to exist. I need to exist. I must exist. Because it says here that I have to exist. I have to exist. I have no choice. So I exist. It’s now after 2.00am and I exist. I will still exist at 3.00am. At four? Not sure. But for now? For now I exist. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST. I EXIST.

If you asked

My reply would be “Always am and always will be”. Because my reply has always been “Always am and always will be”. Always.

Meaningless exhalation

I know who you are. No, of course I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your name. This puzzles me. That puzzles me. I’m tired of puzz­ling myself. You puzzle me. That’s good. I need men­tal stim­u­la­tion. Crave it. Men­tal input. Avoid pre­ma­ture brain death. I need touch stim­u­la­tion. Crave it. Touch input. Avoid pre­ma­ture touch death. I need stim­u­lants. Crave them. Imbibe. Avoid. I bet I can stare at this wall longer than you can. Count. Here are some egg­shells. Tread. Tread. Tread. I don’t care about softly. You should bite the side of my face. You should. Really. Bite. Scratch. I don’t mind being watched. It’s another reminder. That I exist. Do I exist? I think I exist. Think. Cer­tainty is not my strong point. Remind me. Remind me that I’m human. Not ima­gin­ary. Will you? You will? Will you? What? Why?