25.01.2005, NY, II

I don't know if it's a cruelty that only once we reach the second half (third third?) of our lives do we learn how precious and special it is to be alive. I don't know if it's a cruelty, because there is so little left to enjoy, or if this is a necessary requirement for this appreciation to spring forth. I know that there's no way to convince the young of this truth, (is that the cruelty?) and that it's something all who experience it must arrive at of their own volition.  

This week while cleaning, I found my "suicide stash", the bag of narcotics I'd horded, and had once upon a time intended to ingest, ending my bodily experience of this world. 

Rather than secreting it into one of the boxes that are even now heading towards my new home,  I discarded it. There wasn't even a sniff of hesitancy.  

While a time may yet come where impossible circumstances rear their head once again, forcing me to consider my options for a peaceful exit, at the moment I'm coasting on the fact that rather than give in last time, I chose to be brave and do the scariest thing I've ever done.  If I did it once, I believe I can do it again.  

As I said, life is precious. 

For fuck's sake, live.

25.01.2025, NY

As I prepare to leave this apartment again, (now, for the last time,) a stone sits heavily in my throat. This entire time that I've been here, that stone has been with me, but I've done everything within my power to distract myself from it, to ignore it lest it cause me to stumble in my tracks, but I'm afraid that today, as I close that heavy, grey door behind myself for the last time, it will grow out of all control and break me apart.  

I'm thinking right now about that meme I posted, twice I think, that warned- "when you leave a place, leave in the fastest way possible". I'm paraphrasing of course, and I can't even remember who it was that had said it, but it was deeply cathartic and seminal at the time, and at the moment I appreciate the sentiment more than I can express.

I won't miss this stale, suffocating place. What I'll miss is the life I once had here, and it's easy- through the cataract of nostalgia, to mistake one for the other, and already, although my brain is resolved, my heart is a little confused.  

Inevitably, I'll invent regrets because that's what I, gluttonous emotional masochist that I am, do; I'll invent them and torture myself by blowing them out of all proportion, because what I truly miss is something that can't be recaptured- that sense of safety, and warmth, and completeness that I had with Carrie. I'll pepper myself with these unjust regrets because regret suggests control surrendered, and control surrendered can theoretically be recaptured, but this is a lie. The past is gone. Nostalgia is- not only blind, but treacherous and misguided.  

My new life- my new imperfect, insecure, exciting, warm, wanting, fulfilling, beautiful life, is waiting for me, and all of it is on the other side of this apartment's door.