2025, 18. April, 05:42 AM
Soundtrack: Apistat Commander - Werewolf Costume (on YouTube)
What does it mean to pray? And I don’t mean that in a metaphorical or spiritual sense, I mean, in a physical way, what does it mean to pray? Why would our almighty Father in heaven need us to enact these physical rituals with our bodies? What about praying requires us to hold our own hands together, close our eyes, and in the most dire of desires, get on our knees?
What does it mean to pray? What does it mean to close our hands together? Close our eyes? Get on our knees?
What does it mean to have hands? Eyes? Knees?
A line is a series of infinite points. A line is one dimensional. An area is the plane enclosed within a border of lines made out of points. An area is two dimensional. A space is, well, a space, comprised of endless two-dimensional planes. We are three-dimensional beings living in a three-dimensional space, made out of endless two-dimensional planes, which are made out of an endless amount of lines, made out of an endless amount of points.
Up, down, forwards, backwards, left, right, diagonal, horizontal, vertical, north, west, south, east.
I used to imagine that our souls were limbs in higher dimensions, a leg or an arm which we can not feel or are even aware of most of the time, and every time we do something wrong, it’s like we knocked over a vase in a higher dimension. And maybe praying is us using our higher dimensional limbs to clean up those broken pieces before we cut ourselves on them.
Today is April 18th, 2025, 04:52 AM.
Yesterday (the 17th but I tend to count all these hours together as one day and one long sequence of events), I may have been the last person to talk to someone who may have taken their own life.
I walk around at 4 in the morning, smoking cigarettes, walking around, and listening to the music of an artist that this person has put me on to.
I don’t think they were particularly religious, but I am, and I think I should pray. I imagine that praying could save us all, even the nonbelievers. I have to believe that, because otherwise I might lose the feeling in my limbs at the thought of an eternity where the people I hold dearest to me are doomed to a presbyterian idea of unbelievable torment, and that’s not even mentioning how full of myself I must be to just take it as a given that I’ll be somewhere more peaceful instead.
I think I should pray.
What does it mean to pray?
Why is it that I need to get on my knees in this empty asphalt plane, and close my hands and eyes together?
Why is how much I want it not enough?
Why is it not enough for the Lord to know how desperately I wish for my friend to spend the rest of eternity somewhere peaceful after a life defined by higher-dimensional blood?
Why do we need to pray? What does praying mean?
Is this not enough?
What does death, pain, violence, sex, and love mean?
Why do I refuse to ever use that bottle of water on the counter at the front door, that I use exclusively to wash down tablets of Acetaminophen to wash away headaches, to rinse my mouth of nicotine spit?
Why is it that I have a strong sense that the reason for that has less to do with mouth-to-bottle hygiene and moreso with upholding some kind of sanctity and considering the water in that bottle that helps me soothe so many headaches so dear to me that I wouldn’t want to use it to wash out my afte -cigarette spit?
Late in January, the man I met was not exactly a fairytale-prince.
The moment that defined that day was not a small dent in an otherwise charming and perfect first time.
He was brutish and uncharismatic.
I’m telling you this, not because that somehow adds to the weight of that moment, on the contrary. I’m telling you this because it means that I have a bias, that I have no reason to make an argument in favour of that moment and downplay it because everything else was otherwise perfect.
I’m telling you that there is a conflict of interest, or lack thereof in the first place.
Though he did eventually stop, I had to tell him over and over that it hurt, and eventually I had to scream at him to stop, at which point he covered up my mouth with his hand, the little fraction of a moment that ended up recolouring the entire night.
What did that mean?
What was that?
Why is it that skin is not enough?
Trying to get away as quickly as possible I refused to wait for a cab and started walking.
There I questioned what it was about this meeting of skin and flesh that left me reeling several kilometres away from his place.
It was only atoms, I thought. It was only skin. It was only flesh. It was only him and me. It was only body parts touching, on top, along, within each other, and it was over, I was no longer there, I was out and safely at a distance from him, so what was it that left me dizzy at that desolate bus stop in the farmlands, staring at a fluoride light in the sky and spinning in place around it, wishing for the angels that I used to think haunted me as a child?
Why did it derail my entire life in the subsequent months, and any plans or ideas I had for how 2025 would go?
Why is it that I would ask my friends why it still bothered me so much even though I could still do all the things I used to be able to do, go to work, make music, write, explore, and more?
Why was it not apparent to me how self-evidently contradictory, defeating, and meaningless it was of me to wonder why this thing felt like it was still under my skin despite being able to continue on with a semblance of my normal life, when days spend unable to eat, disgusted with myself, trembling and frozen at every hint of tastes of him in my mouth or scents of his home or the mustard oil on my hands with which I tended to his sore back at his request with in my nose are nowhere even close to what it should look like to be able to continue on with your life?
A few weeks before the hookup I visited a spot down by a river path somewhere.
I had seen this lone duck, face down, frozen in the water, dead, and decided to make some folklore out of it.
If you arrive to that spot by walking along the footpath under the bridge, you have to go home back through the footpath on your way out.
If you don't retrace your steps, your soul will get entangled or something, and you will leave a part of it there.
I walked back up through some stairs above the bridge and took a taxi home.
I was happy to leave a part of my soul there by the water, in cameraderie with that lone little duck.
I had arrived in front of his home by bus. I walked home.
Why do we need to kneel to pray?
Why does it hurt that a person I barely knew for more than 3 days might suddenly have exited my life forever?
Why did that hurt only hit me all at once 4 hours after their last message to me?
First message to me from them on April second, a frantic apology about accidentally calling me over the phone through a mistaken press of the wrong button, but the first message that would develop into a proper lengthy conversation only being sent on April 16th.
1836 messages from them, 1831 excluding the frantic apology on the 2nd, and 995 messages from me, 991 excluding my reassurances to them that the mistaken phone call was no bother and 2 song recommendations prior to the lengthier, more fleshed out conversations.
2822 messages (excluding the exclusions) over 2 days.
Why does it burn me up that a person that wasn’t in my life for the vast, infinite majority of it is no longer in it once again?
2025, 21. April, 23:47 PM
Damn it, S, maybe I loved you.
Maybe we could have had something.
Maybe we could've figured it out.
Maybe I could've figured it out.
But now you're gone and I try to be careful about when I use the word "left" vs "gone" depending on if there's even a shimmer of a hope that someone will come back, but even if you returned right at this very moment I still don't know how I would go on with this.
The main thing that kept me from loving someone these past few years have been my ever-present suicidal thoughts, and I didn't want anyone to get so singularly attached to me that my death would derail their live as well.
You're the only person in front of whom I did not have to pretend that my "when"s were "if"s.
Final toll:
S: 4001 - 5 = 3996
K: 1907 - 4 = 1903
Last Message:
2025, 21. April, 16:48 PM
"oh
uh..
song I'm listening to
I am encircled by spring flowers
I am encircled
By spring flowers, flowers
And the sky is chiming
I'm burning, I'm burning
I want to hold the rain
I held its entirety
I want to hold the rain, I held its entirety
My hands clench around the cerulean amber
I want to hold
I am encircled by spring flowers
And the sky is chiming, I am burning
The sky is chiming, and I am burning
I want to hold the rain, I held its entirety
My hands clench around the cerulean amber
I want to hold it so close to me that it holds me too
I clench so hard it breaks
I want to hold the rain, I held its entirety
My hands clench around the cerulean amber
I want to hold it so close to me that it holds me too
I clench so hard it breaks and I become every river
I am crying, I am screaming, "I love you"
I want to hold it so close to me that it holds me too
I clench so hard it breaks
I clench so hard it breaks and I become every river
I am crying, I am screaming, "I love you"
I'm encircled by spring flowers
I'm encircled
I want to hold the rain, I held its entirety
My hands clench around...
I am crying, I am screaming
I am crying, I am screaming
"I love you"
"I love you""
and now you're gone.