intradialogue interdialogue

what is it you want?

i want to always be at peace

does it make sense to always be at peace? aren’t there situations in which you should be agitated?

i think being agitated doesn’t help much? there are moments when i should act because something is happening in front of me that shouldn’t, but is agitation necessary for that? if someone is being victimized within my awareness i can still help them without being disturbed can’t i? why is my suffering necessary?

we want to avoid suffering then?

yes

how do we go about that?

as far as i can tell so far, it stems from how we think about things? i’m upset about the way i look because i think i should look a certain way or at least i would like to. if i didn’t think that way i wouldn’t be going through such strenuous lengths and suffering to satisfy that want.

how we think about things and the feeling of wanting things is what’s causing most if not all of our problems then?

yes, as far as i can tell

wanting to not want things is a want

it sure is

impossible trap? catch 22?

maybe! therein lies the horror of existing, of being anything at all.

maybe it’s better to have that want than the other wants.

yeah, or at least that’s the best i can figure out right now, it’s the only reasonable step to take right now, if we can’t eliminate it entirely, we can at least minimize it.

there’s something that feels wrong, hollow, empty about living a life devoid of desire, devoid of personality.

it’s all we’ve known, it’s all we’ve operated on, of course the opposite would feel strange or incorrect. maybe this is the fabled state of emptiness or nothingness so often spoken about.

i suppose we can’t just operate on assumptions, we can earnestly attempt the practice of living that way

— at this point i stopped writing and went to the kitchen to get some ice cream, i got quite the fright when Adrian spoke up from somewhere in a dark corner, huddled up, eating yogurt. i sat down with my ice cream and we talked, i mean we really talked. they told me about their stepdad killing himself, i told them about my friends and acquaintances who’d done the same, we exchanged ideologies and philosophies about funerals when they asked if they could come to mine. I explained that i didn’t plan on having one, that i disliked funerals and felt annoyed by them because they to me seemed useless and performative, serving presumably no benefit to the dead. Adrian changed my mind by making the point that they explicitly are for the people left behind, that grieving is a communal act as humans are social animals. I admitted that i hadn’t thought about it that way, that i often am blind to the social aspects of many rituals and parts of life, that i often don’t experience empathy or connection to other people. They asked if i was a sociopath because they had been diagnosed as one as a kid, they told me about how they chose to grow out of it and become the person they are today, someone who i would regard as deeply empathetic. it was quite a surprise to learn that about them, but i have always been a bad judge of character after all. i said i hesitated to call myself one for various reasons, but sure, i could be said to fit the descriptions of someone you’d call a psychopath maybe, because id like to think of myself as less hotheaded than the typical sociopath. though in all honesty, i am quick to anger, ive just gotten okay at not erupting and immediately acting on it, more prone now to slowly and silently stewing. we talked about the cancer, we talked about how i felt like at some point somewhere i was shot with a canon and ever since then the only thing ive been able to feel besides despair is a cavernous hole in my chest, with cold winds constantly blowing through it. that is, until yujin of course. i talked about how they were more than the whole of eternity to me, and how i haven’t given myself the grace to understand the gravity of that loss, how that breakup was in itself a second death, how it took two years and an ignored letter for me to be able to finally give up on them. i didn’t get to say the part about how i feel i can’t ever possibly feel for anyone even an iota of a fraction of the way it was with yujin because at that point Adrian’s partner stumbled out of their bedroom in just his pajama bottoms. i dislike him, i dislike the way he treats his friends-

but perhaps here’s an opportunity to practice what we were speaking about before.

yeah, not wanting things, not being attached to anything in particular. you know i’ve been thinking, if we ended up at a point where we were completely devoid of desire, personality, attachments, etc, we’d kind of be just an empty unthinking unfeeling husk, essentially dead which is what we’ve been desiring anyway.

yes,our desire for death was always just a desire for the cessation of suffering anyways. if we can achieve that death state without destroying the lives of those invested in our wellbeing, surely that would be the best outcome.

we can try, earnestly.

and if we fail, we can say we gave life an earnest effort.

thank you for talking with me

thank you for listening to me

i’m glad you’re around, all of you. i do love and appreciate you.

everyone in your head loves you too.

i can hear adrian laughing quite a lot with their partner right now. i respect and admire adrian.im glad they have this relationship at least, after everything they’ve been through.

what do i know anyway?

hey i had an uber driver today, he made me laugh cus he really got a kick outta my name being Sin. Said the last girl he picked up, her name was Honesty! Honesty and Sin. The kicker was, he picked her up from a juvenile detention center! I said “life sure is funny huh? something up there really has a sense of humor”

except i decided earlier today that i didn’t believe in anything out there, because i begged and pleaded to any deity, demon, spirit, anything to please just kill me. i said they could have my soul to do with what they please if only they would just end this mortal suffering. here i still am unfortunately.