every plan is a tiny prayer to father time

yesterday i was thinking about killing myself. instead i showered, washed my hair, got dressed, went to the bookstore, ate lunch in a restaurant, and went to campus to talk to someone about going back to school in the fall.

wanting to kill yourself is weird. you think that what you want is to not continue existing, but you still do things that only make sense if you intend to persist. of course there was the school thing, that is, i am making plans to do something several months from now, and i will probably be in school for at least another 4 years. the book i bought at the bookstore was the second book in a four part series. i took my vitamins. i did laundry. i started a new show on netflix. i made plans with the person i like. i looked at shorts and swimsuits and thought about buying them. i didn't buy them because i didn't want to waste the money i saved up. just today i made plans with a friend to visit her in texas this summer and i thought about getting a tattoo and i looked at hair dye. i did all of these things that would be a complete waste of time if i really didn't want to have a future.

i have two thoughts on why i did these things. the first is the most obvious one and the one i think is true - i don't really want to die, what i want is to not be in pain. also i think there's a certain amount of calm that comes with giving up. i don't know why that is. the scariest thing i did yesterday was go to the university, but when i did it, i hardly felt scared at all. my body felt scared but my mind was calm and peaceful. i easily told the nice lady working in the admissions office about my mental health problems and how i dropped out of school and spent a whole year and a half doing nothing because i was too sad to do things. it was easy because there was nothing to be scared of anymore.
i've always had a part of myself that's so pragmatic that it borders on nonsensical. this is the part of me that thinks things like, "if you're going to kill yourself then you might as well eat all the chocolate in the fridge right now." but then when i eat the chocolate i feel better enough to not die. anyway yesterday this part of me noticed my numbness and channeled it somehow into productivity, and now i have something important enough to look forward to to not die. it is extremely cool.

incidentally, i was very lucky yesterday because it was graduation. campus was nearly empty and there were plenty of parking spaces available. also there were lots of students in their caps and gowns walking through downtown and having lunch with their parents. they all looked so happy. i didn't go to my high school graduation so it all looked very exciting to me. i want to finish college too so people will be proud of me that way. more future tense stuff.

my second thought is a little sillier and i think when i thought of it yesterday i was very hungry, sleepy, and sad. i don't know anything about parallel universes but sometimes i wonder if they're real. i heard a theory once that every time you make a decision you split your universe into pieces and in each piece you made a different choice. so, somewhere there is a universe where i bought a bagel instead of a sausage biscuit for breakfast this morning, and there's another universe where i stayed home and ate yogurt, and there's another one where i ate nothing at all, and so on.
i think that when i was thinking about killing myself, i wasn't sure which decision i made. so i had to prepare for both universes. if i were in the universe where i kill myself next week, i would feel free to, for example, spend all my savings, let my dirty laundry rot, and throw away my vitamins. it wouldn't matter, but i might be in the universe where i live to 100 and die surrounded by my grandkids, so i washed my clothes just in case, because i don't know. i have to keep making preparations for a future that might not exist. but the preparations themselves will the future into being.

anyway let's talk about that tattoo. i don't have any tattoos because i'm afraid it will hurt a lot. this is funny because when people ask me if my monroe hurt, i always say no, because it didn't. after the lady pierced me i said, "oh, is that it?" i'm the biggest baby in the world and i didn't even flinch. but, when i ask people about their tattoos, and they say it doesn't hurt that much, i think they're full of shit.
i think what i want to get is hollyhocks on my lower arms, starting at the inner part of my elbow and growing up toward my hands. i thought about getting them on the backs of my legs, but i wouldn't be able to see them. plus, another thing i worried about was that if i got a tattoo, the colors wouldn't be that bright because my skin is dark. but my inner arm area is much lighter than the rest of my skin, so it'd probably show up pretty well.

but i literally just thought of all of this earlier today. i know there are people who get tattoos on a whim, but i'm a scorpio with a taurus moon and i don't do anything impulsively. maybe if i do well in school this year i'll get the tattoo next summer, if i still like the idea.

also, my trip this summer. the plan is i will visit my friend who i know from the internet. well, sort of. i met her on the internet but most of our friendship has taken place in text. she lives in texas in a city that is about 20 hours away from where i live in south carolina. i initially hesitated to agree to this trip because i was worried about the heat, but the average temperatures here in june are nearly the same as the average temperatures there. since it's a 20 hour drive, i'll have to stop at a hotel. i'm excited about this part too because i really like hotels. i have considered taking a plane on this trip, because it will only be 4 hours and probably not that much more money than gas and a hotel room. but i am afraid of the tsa and the city where my friend lives is not convenient for walking so it would be nice to have a car. and i am very interested to see what texas looks like since i have never been. once, i mailed a package to my friend, and i used her address to see where she lived on google maps. it was very brown and sandy and there weren't many trees. so, i am looking forward to being upset about this so that i can return to south carolina and be grateful.

i think i wanted to write about something else, but i'm very tired. i get tired easily lately. yesterday after my college adventure i returned home, intending to go back out to get a sandwich for dinner. instead i lay on the sofa and slept for 10 hours. this happens a lot and it really bothers me but aside from taking my b vitamins i'm not sure what i can do about it besides wait for it to be over. (i feel that way about a lot of things.) i hope it goes away before my summer trip, anyway.