on days where i have something to do, i get ready in the morning. i wash my face and brush my teeth and comb my hair and put on perfume. i pick up my purse and put in it my headphones and my keys and my wallet and my cart. i wear clothes that make me feel nice. everytime i go out, i realize i forgot something. when im in school, something always smells off. of body odor, or dirty socks, or cat piss, or termite infestations, or no flour in the cupboard, or mold in the bathroom, or an offputting stare, or girls laughing, or trying to stand like a man when i was 12, or not seeing the sun for 3 months, or something else. i always smell. people smell me too, and they don't tell. i don't know why they don't. i don't know if they think i know, and they assume it'd be redundant to point it out to me. or if it's gone on for so long that it's become as common to my person as my skin. or if they don't notice it at all, and i'm assuming too much self-importance. or if they don't notice it at all, and i'm actually an angel.

when i was 13 i had an online friend, and me and him were angels in a past life. we had angel names too, they were made up, and angel-sounding. i always wanted to be an angel. i don't like that i forget things that make me smell. i don't like that i forgot my wallet at my job. i don't like that i'm too tired to talk to people. i don't like that i bump into things easily. i don't like that my attendance is so bad. i don't like that i don't know how to be friends with boys.

something must have gone wrong in heaven when they were making me. i hear a lot of people say that. heaven is a sweatshop. i was made with injured, terrified hands. i don't walk right, i don't run right, i don't talk right, i don't hear right, i don't see right. i wish i could say: "there is no right, and the idea of 'right' i have is an elusive, indefinite thing that exists only to be pursued, and never to be seized.' but it's not how i feel. that's not something i know with my heart. if i knew it, maybe i wouldn't smell. maybe i wouldn't forget to put on perfume this morning. maybe that would matter to me. maybe i would take care of my things, like my 3ds screen. or my glasses. or my friends. when i'm accused of not caring, i don't like it. but it's mostly because i care about not caring. i don't know why. maybe i'm angry at myself for not having realized the potential within me sooner, but i'm not. but my feelings are all so subterrenean. i must have done something to develop such a distinguished and unrelated emotion and conscious. i remember when i was 14 everything i said would make people stare at me in bewilderment.

some concerns of mine: "am i too childish, am i a liar, am i arrogant, is it hard for me to feel sorry, am i regressing, am i progressing, am i stagnating, am i limiting myself, am i wasting time, am i showing people my intellectual and artistic merit properly, am i being lazy, am i being rude, does this feel right, does this feel wrong, is this something i should listen to, is this something i should ignore, is that song lyric on the radio god trying to tell me something, am i going to die young, am i going to die old and regret it, am i scared of aging, am i closeted, are my friends bad people, am i being an escapist, am i being right, am i being wrong, am i an angel"

i think of a world where i'm made of white feathers & crystalline clicks, composed of thoughtlessly perfect decisions & and graceful eyes, where i'm as distant, as wielding of a possible fragility, as unreachable as an ice glacier. where when i melt it's everyone else's fault. and where i assume no action, no thought, no fear, no shame, no dread. that is to say, i think of a world where i'm stripped of my humanity in the most human way imaginable.

i never grew up thinking of myself as a girl. in fact, when i was a kid, none of my friends thought they were what they were born as. as a result i never grew up learning how to assume femininity properly. i am of the opinion that no one is born knowing how to be a boy or a girl, and that it's something we define for ourselves as we grow up. we're all pretending to know what a boy and a girl is. i never liked to pretend. i still can't, one time i auditioned for my friend's film but i quickly backed down because i can't immerse myself in what i clearly know i'm not. i have to at least be under the delusion that i am that thing i'm pretending to be. maybe because i never learned how to pretend, and because i learned what being a girl was too late, i'm weird now. maybe i smell because i'm doing a bad job at being a girl. but i can't do a better job because i don't know how to pretend. but i have to pretend because nobody knows i can't, and all they see is someone who should be good at knowing how to be a girl. and they'll get mad if i try to explain this to them. it's okay if they get mad, i understand why they're mad, but i don't want to deal with it. and now every move i make reaks of androgyny and now i don't make sense to anyone.

i believe the brain works much like a randomly generating video-game map, and if i keep searching for pathologies, it will make more for me. i believe this happens when you're not grounded, and i believe the body and soul are two things that are oft in conflict. there is pain that is vitalizing, like sore muscles, and there is pain that isn't, like razorblade cuts. maybe razorblade cuts are bad because all they're doing is vandalizing your body with your soul's troubles.

i'll never know what i'm signaling