The lies go back as far as I can remember. You didn't just lie to me; you lied to everyone else around me. You told me that I was smarter than most. You told me that I was special. You told me that I was good at writing, and that I would become a writer someday. Admittedly, you did speak some things into reality, but most of them were lies. At the time I didn't know why you kept lying, but now I understand. I forgive you for lying and expect you to continue lying to everyone. Without your lies I don't think I would love you at all. If you didn't lie that I had what it took to achieve my goals after I failed my classes for the second time, or if you didn't reassure me with your fingers crossed behind your back that "this time I really will succeed," I don't think I could love you. That makes up for every time you convinced me to skip school and ignore my responsibilities. I understand. You lie because you love me and I listen because I love you. After all, who could love themselves when they don't have any aspirations?

The portents of its arrival tingle and hum through my skull. My head begins to hurt, but the numbing dread encourages me to keep scrolling, burying myself deeper. Today was a failure, I should try to escape tomorrow. After all, being in this haze is as good as being dead.

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I've always liked writing about this experience as it's been a daily struggle for me to escape this "haze." I would love to hear about other peoples' thoughts on this or any other similar feelings since I'm pretty certain that this is not an uncommon experience nowadays. <3 :3

In the last few days of lingering summer heat I finally completed my first journal. Around fifty entries over a hundred pages took just over four years to fill. I had expected to be on my third or fourth by now, but I've never been great at judging distances. Measurements of time or space or even the emotional distance between me and my friends all seem fuzzy to me; it all exists within the tiny distance between my ears. Maybe twenty centimeters?

Time is perhaps the most difficult to judge. I'm 25 now. I started my journal at 21. Four years is not an adequate description of the distance between the present and the time when I started my journal. It says very little to me about the connections between one period of time and another. I have always been 25, and I have always been dreading the steady passage of time.

Early last year, my two beloved roommates informed me that, in a month, they would be moving away to different places. In my mind, I was supposed to live in that home — or at least with those two people — for much longer. Upon hearing the news of our impending disbandment, I disappeared. I interacted very little with anything in the last month of living with my former roommates; I only went to work and when I got home I mostly stayed in my room while distracting myself. I did not look for new places to live or try to cherish the last few precious weeks of living with my chosen family. I had ceased to exist. The time came for them to leave and I have not seen or heard from them since.

In early August, I moved in to a tiny room in a house full of strangers. I had only meant to take around two months at the most to find a place to live, but my partners graciously allowed me to live at their home for over four. There is only one short journal entry within those four months when I lived in a different country and with new people, and the single entry was about my two former roommates.

A week ago, in mid September, I suddenly reappeared back in my city with a completed journal and living in a tiny room in an old part of town. I reappeared with aspirations and some plans for the future. I want to start writing more. I have always wanted to. There are so many things to start doing. First, I should buy a new journal.