I feel it closing in, I feel it closing in

[j4]

This morning I looked from the screen to the sky and, for one frightening moment, I could no longer tell them apart. All I could see was flickering white in front of me and flickering white through the window. The only difference I could see was that the one which was fractured by trees was bright enough to hurt my eyes. Then everything was fractured by tears.

There is nothing poetic about tears running down one's cheeks when their fall ends in a prosaic splash on a wood-effect desk. There is nothing romantic about fishing for tissues in a drawer full of teabags. Energy tea, detox tea; a collection of warm, comforting lies. Change your life with tea. Happiness is a steaming cup of ginseng, ginger, echinacea, redbush, flowering fad, organic bandwagon.

I'm hedging my bets today: alternating between the quasi-spiritual cleansing properties of herbal teas and the cheap comfort of sweets, doughnuts, and fizzy drinks. My body is not so much a temple as a racetrack, or perhaps a market.

In between drinking and eating, I watch words scroll past on IRC. Sometimes I even type some of them. Having other people to "talk" to is about the only thing that's keeping me faintly sane on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis; but according to a recently published flamme à clef by a local would-be author it's all just a game of Ego Stroking.

Alt-4. Alt-4. Shutting down applications one by one. They disappear like the days, the weeks, the months, the years. Time to start the daily journey into the dark.

Comments

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

I understand that Janet has a habit of misreading things in ways which make them personal attacks on her. I do not understand why I should be required to support that habit. I have no personal vendetta against her, but if she persists in complaining about the content she perceives in my writing while refusing to actually take up those complaints with me directly, then there is nothing for me to do but wash my hands of the matter entirely.

As for the other stuff: would you rather I restored the deleted comments? Can you understand how easy it would be to read gushing public articles about someone's new girlfriend the way they were read? Please do not demand of me accommodations you're not prepared to make yourself.

[lnr]

I don't *know* how they were read because you didn't actually *say* you just got grumpy. Perhaps you'd like to explain?

One pointed grumble in a journal is hardly "persists in complaining about the content she perceives in my writing while refusing to actually take up those complaints with me directly" though. Or is there something I've missed?

I'm sorry but I just can't believe how bitter this whole thing has got so quickly, and how awful it's making me feel, to the extent I'm nervous about reading each new mail message I get and didn't last a whole day at work today. If you really do think Janet is being so completely unexcusable then please do wash your hands of the whole thing. At the moment it's just making me and her and presumably also you very unhappy indeed.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

The original comment was a grouchy half-joke expressing the fact that I don't appreciate having my nose rubbed in my ex-girlfriend's new squeeze. The second one in the same thread I deleted because I believed it was unjustified given the circumstances; unfortunately I'm not in much of a state to make decisions like that quickly at the moment.

The 'persists' was about Janet continuing to pull the sort of freedom-of-speech stunt that's going on below in the future, which I do not believe is impossible if I fail to make my attitude to open insults clear from the outset.

I agree this has escalated unusually fast; however that's mostly because I believe it would be beyond ludicrous to lumber my entire journal with an albatross of entirely unnecessary political correctness over two slightly misanthropic paragraphs of creative writing, and am also not prepared to tolerate outright rudeness whether or not it's well written. I try not to dig my heels in this deeply often, but in this case I believe very strongly in what I'm being stubborn about.