Late winter and I resorted to spending my time alone, completely. I’m trying to feel it through but my insides aren’t working like they used to. I just want someone to say it back to me. I guess I like you because I know you gave up too. When my body says no I’ll push it harder, and the things we have in common start to fade, and I start thinking about it more, take a walk and cool yourself off. Am I supposed to look at the ground when you pass by?

What could we call it? I’ll ask you one more time before I settle out, settle down. I knew it would happen one day. It’s twisted up just like the last time, but this time it’s going to stay that way. Oh and sometimes I can’t take it, sometimes there is nothing, and that’s when I sleep. While I sleep I feel the opposite edges of myself coming forward. Sorta feels like the last point of the world, resting back into it, losing your voice in the dark. I think of what you wrote, and I think of you. How could I stop? Sometimes I feel like I’m swimming, sometimes I really do want to be alone. Sometimes I forget what it felt like to be close to you,

I don’t really want you to take my shirt off, and I definitely don’t want you to come back into my room. I’m moving my hand closer to yours until I can’t anymore. Conversations with no one, talking you up to no one. If I love you then I love you, what else can I do? I’m burning inside, can you tell? I’m the fire, I’m the heat, over and over and over again. Shhhhhhhhhh, there’s something else happening, there’s something else happening just a bit out of my reach. I know you’re there, I can always see you.

In the middle of the night I walk to your room with a head of wet hair, sweat washed off with rain water. You’re half asleep, and the walls feel like they are moving sideways, like the road used to when I was a kid, and we would smoke a little bit before we went outside. You left your door open for me, and it’s nice, you don’t feel like talking, and neither do I, not really, just a small reach out into the sky. Turns over and faces me just to close her eyes. When will you wake up? Did you hear me? When will you come back for me? I remember you in soft touches and curls of hair I cut off to keep in boxes. I feel you with me more than I used to. You like living with me don’t you? What if I have to spend my whole life like this, and I can’t ever tell anyone why?

Reflections don’t feel strong enough to conjure anything worth titling. My friend reminds me all too suddenly that there is always a reason someone becomes an addict. Are you talking to me?

I meet a relative I didn’t know I had, he makes me nervous. He reminds me of that part of myself. The part that would stay hidden in the basement for years. Cigarettes on the porch, what are you most looking forward to? You asked me. I came up with something but it all sounded like lying. You smile at me anyways, you say that sounds nice. Hands on the pavement, you push yourself to your feet and ask again if I’m ready to go back inside.

When I met you I wanted to be with you, and I asked you to draw a picture of your life for me. Now, when I think about you I can fill in the pieces. It’s the things you think of when you’re alone and you’re driving, those are the things I would like to know.

That summer, she tells me, that was the summer it happened. What happened? My phone is losing connection. I just want to hear you, I have so much to say! I know how you feel! It’s in me too! That summer I was there, I saw it happen. You don’t even have to tell me, I already know!

No… she says back real quiet… you weren’t there.

She tells me they held hands on the hill and watched the fireworks together. I ask her one more time, are you sure I wasn’t there?

I’m sure.

Well, I remember it like it’s mine.

It’s not the same.

Tell me one more time-

That summer, that was the summer it happened. 38 degrees at night. She was drunk, I had been watching her drink for hours. Not like I wasn’t, I always was. I felt like a pervert because I couldn’t stop looking at her belt buckle. Or her hands, whatever. Her jeans, fuck.

The way it feels returning to a place that once used to feel nice, but you destroyed it, so now you sleep on pillows with no cases, and alone. Night breeze through the open door. Good painkillers. Resting, this is just resting.

It would be nice to be in contact. I want to know the things you are doing, I want to tell you mine. The time change would make it tricky. I’m sure we could figure it out.

You both have the same name, in my head anyways. She’s got it good doesn’t she. She doesn’t need me anymore. Roll up another cigarette, go back to the party. Stop thinking about that, it hardly exists.

You used to be real, a whole life in my hands. A whole person in my room, half of my things on your side. It’s nice to think of the porch on the couch. All dusty from pollen and ash. Two full bottles of wine and you tell me I’m a total superstar, I have another glass, I ask you to tell me again.

I have visions though. I see things too. I’m bleeding, oh my god I’m bleeding. White sheets again and it’s done for us. I stopped caring, started sleeping.

If you want the truth I’m sick and I’ve been silent for most of this. I tell you I can’t tell you and I promise I’m being truthful.

But I am lying, about something, always.

She asks me if I’m honest? I said no, she said whhhyyy

Turns out I just wanted to see you smile. I wanted to hear you laugh. There is no point in you knowing all the bad stuff. I hardly know you, so why did I say that? She’s holding my hand in the street, do you see this? She’s holding my hand!

It’s going to be June again, and I’ll be going home. I’ve been thinking of you this whole time, like a fever, that part is true.

It’s just here, this is the place I know now. Dark green trees outside and I can’t remember before. The house looks like one I used to visit, or maybe just one time. The long curtains close over the windows but I see shadows still. I find my way inside and no one sees me so I don’t have to worry at all. I see you and usually I love you but I don’t right now. I’m looking for somebody else.

I think that I’ll find it in the basement, I’ve always thought this. Dark hallway and I pass your drunk and passed out body first. Face down on the cement, liquid coming from your mouth. No one will remember I am here so I don’t have to do anything, nothing to worry about at all, but I remember your body well.

There is a small light on and you’re right there on the couch in the middle of the room. Ceiling is sinking. I had too much to drink but I can’t remember the drinking part. I still want more. I lay down beside you. Your hoodie smells like old rain and you look sick. It makes me feel so sorry for you. I have known you for so long, but I’ve never known how to help. I start burying myself into you with the hope you will bury yourself into me. I want to put your fingers in my mouth but I don’t know where you have been, plus you want it too bad, I can hear you in my ear. I don’t want anyone to see us. I wished we were alone. Really, really alone.

Then I think about being with you in a back room. I think about having locked doors and no life. Staircase goes on forever. No exits. You sleep quiet. I’m in the room, door shut and dreaming.

If it was later, I might call. I would spend the hour listening and breathing back the same words you whisper to me. Sometimes you show up - in theatre seats with no room beside you. I dream of you turning back to face me and smiling like you feel how I feel. You’re trapped in me like a spirit, like I get to own you. I know it’s not real, I must know that.

I remember seeing something out there in the forest from my window. Small and shaking. I felt safe knowing I had you there, holding me back. I couldn’t go anywhere even if I tried.

That was years ago, now I know what it feels like to drive, and I know how to run. The city is full of lights and it feels best when I’m going, and worst of all when l’m gone.

It takes me a minute to connect dots, to know what I mean, then to say the thing out loud. I think about spending the day alone. When I was young and to be completely anonymous meant only to cross the highway and walk to the river. The time I drove you to my home because I wanted to show you, and when we got there my dad was drunk and he gave me his knife. I was embarrassed because we had driven so far. So I walked you to the river and you told me how to hurt yourself. I think I watched you from across the water, knowing then that I was going to be fucked forever.

I’m learning about the word limerence. I am trying to pronounce it right in my head. I woke up last night and said it over and over in the two different ways it might be pronounced. So when I work up the nerve to say it out loud at least I’ll be able to say it right. But I haven’t spoken out loud in three days. Only to my phone. My messages won’t deliver anymore and I wonder if it is my fault.

The train gets stuck for three hours in Albany. They are looking for a new engine. I’m watching my best friend’s movie on my phone trying to cover the screen because there are so many naked girls. Oh my god I love this movie. I barely noticed we weren’t moving. After that I listen to the same three songs for five hours and watch the snowstorm outside. Rushing wind and open white lake. I get up to check my pupils in the bathroom mirror because they just keep getting bigger. Keep watching me, keep paying attention.

I’m tempering myself aren’t I, I just want someone to share it with. I just want to share it with you the way I do in my head. Because I have been imagining this thing for myself since I was little and the pieces start to fit a little bit better but it hurts me the closer it gets. I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want to lose you.

The night here is ice cold light blue and twirls around me while I dream of tongue kissing you hard, then harder, then I am awake. You used to text me like you wanted me but I think you found someone. I’ve found a sister this year, with orange hair and a similar pain. We crashed in waves and did pushups on the beach like brothers. You cut my hair short on the balcony and tell me to sit still or you will cut my shoulders for sure.

Maybe you miss me, maybe you missed me and forgot to tell me. I fill in these blanks because it feels better that way. I know what’s really in there. Blips of moments in the restaurant with you where I forget who I am altogether. Just look at her, I tell myself, just look her in the eyes and she will never be able to tell

.

Getting on and it was like an underworld to a secret dark place, rules gone and replaced by men who get what they want, and I was just letting it happen to me. I said yes, okay, yes, maybe not, then eventually yes again until I was on my back in the train bunk watching the sparks and watching the stars and letting what I knew was going to happen, just happen. Please, please, please and I have no attraction to begging but it gave me time to think about if I care of not, and I didn’t. Laid back, beer down my throat. I need it so bad it’s making my body numb and roll away with the machines movement.

In five minutes you said you would be back, I mean who’s driving this thing right? That’s cool I thought. Yeah that’s cool and I am so happy to be on my own. I smoke my cigarettes and I’m laughing and the window is open and the sounds of the metal along grinding metal is bringing me to the fullness I had already anticipated. I feel whole, inside and out I feel whole with the machine. My mouth is ringing from foreign orange vodka and I stumble and knock my way back through the cars until I eventually get to mine. Moving between feels dangerous, like I might just slip under, ripped apart so quickly I don’t have any time to feel. Just ripped and dead on the tracks.

In my cabin it is dim and it is quiet now, everyone else went to sleep while I was slinking around. I find a blanket in a cabinet and I fall asleep lulled entirely by the fastness, the openness of the land beyond, the border approaching. The dangling gods hanging from strings tied above me. I find darkness there and when I wake the dream is fading fading fading. Grey morning in a whole new country and I remember that I have bags to carry and a body as well. I drag them both far, and farther into the city and I take a combination of pharmacy bought pills to make sure I am okay. And I am okay, in the end I lay with these memories, of sparks and stars, and some of that pain and some of that fear slipped out, now ripped and dead.

But you come from here, don’t you. You told me that. It’s made up in my head maybe, I pieced it together slow but I dream up what it was like for you. How you saw things, what made you want to leave, do you ever go back. Do you want to.

Late day and the greyhound isn’t gonna run any longer. I call your stepmom and she brings me to the familiar Sacramento apartment. The room has seashells hanging from the walls and neon signs. You and I used to stay here together as teenagers. You learned how to do whippets in the living room and I wasn’t allowed to. Whole days spent on the road, whole nights spent on the bus. On my phone, in my world, thinking about yours.

When you were young you had close friends. They took care of you and you don’t mind if they are difficult, just like I don’t. I’ll tell you that next time I sit beside you, you could do anything to me, I wouldn’t mind. You could do anything and I would take it. You had bunkbeds in your room. Like a boy does. Stickers on the posts. Cool kid dressing like you weren’t supposed to. Skateboard down the road headphones in and late night plans with everyone.

I have a memory at 15, of a party in the woods. Tents in the field, dancing late with the boy in the purple sweater. Sleeping in a dog bed on the porch. Strange Molly more like mom’s speed. I feel loopy and high for days and I stay in your bed for most of it. Crawl in through the window, stay locked under your covers. New things new things new things.

I like thinking of you hungover. Bottle throwing smashing on the ground but you are safe now in your place. Making coffee and feeling sorry for yourself. Making music and feeling like it’s over for real this time. I like thinking about you thinking about me, and thinking maybe next time.

The hills stretch out and I am on my way back to the desert. The softness of it, the sadness of it. I’ll take it. You can do whatever you want to…

If only I knew how to get there from here. It is a hot summer day. The water shines and I see my shadow. I’m flying, I can’t believe it, I’m flying.

I’m above the whole thing.

Light moves across my face.

I want someone to wait the whole night to speak, just to whisper in my ear that they can take me there.

I put my head under the water. I wonder if you are watching my body. I think about taking your clothes off. I think natural, be slow, be quiet. Just think about what is happening right now. I have to remind myself this, over and over.

When it’s done and the world is dark I walk home stumbling. And it feels good to not want anything, I say it to the sky. I can’t lie anymore, I’m past it. When I’m flying I’m flying and when I’m down here I’m stumbling home, right next to the water, right under the stars.

I think about how to do this best, which part do I start with?

Let’s start here, I can’t tell what I feel the most. I know what I think about most, but it’s not the same. I know this because sometimes I remember, and then I am hit deep, and it hurts bad, and it doesn’t feel like the other stuff does.

-I hate eating food I hate drinking water I hate sleeping I hate walking places I have to go

-I took it too far last time

-I don’t know if I loved him

I’m standing above this ravine, and the trees are moving slow, and I know I have been right here before, but I’m not thinking of my dead relatives like I’m supposed to. I’m thinking of my best friend and how much has changed between us since we were little. I stay on her couch at her apartment, and things feel kind of the same for the first time in a long time. We drink wine from a box in really big mason jars. She fills mine to the top and I take cold medicine to fall asleep. The rest of the trip I forget where I am and try to act how I used to.

I keep sending my high-school boyfriend messages on facebook asking him to hangout with me so I can ask him questions about all the things that happened when I was 13. He’s avoiding me and I can’t understand it. I’m this old and I still don’t understand when other people don’t feel the exact same way I do. Especially when they used to. Didn’t you used to?

We had this photo together, or maybe it’s just you. I took it, I remember that. I took it at the house I grew up in. We stayed up late and snuck out onto the back porch in mountain midnight and smoked every bit of weed we could find. Your eyes are red in the picture. My cat is on your lap.

I hold onto these things too hard, I know that. Even when it’s painful, it feels better to hold onto it. It’s like that with friendships that, in better practice, would already be over. I don’t want them to go away; I want to talk about you forever. Even when you hurt me, I want to talk about you forever. I’m at the bar and I’m elated, I’m throwing your name around all over the place. Because we used to be close like that. You miss it. I know that.

I’ve had plans to tell you it’s over all summer. I won’t do it though, I’ll just keep talking.

-I moved cities twice

-I hope that girl remembers me

-I have a couple of things to finish by end of week

I will say it again, you’re California hot. You’ve got something I want so bad that doesn’t feel right for me to have. It’s hard for me to speak when my voice gets like this. Words don’t come as easy as they used to, you don’t care. 

But hey, I’ll give myself the grace to at least want it. 

Aren’t you mine? How long has it been that way? Who’s the best? Is it the boy who sleeps in my room who promises that is who he is? He can’t see any further because he doesn’t want to. He will tell me point blank, he does not want anything. 

Maybe that’s what I like about you, maybe I feel untethered and without responsibility beside you. 

But I remember more. A deepness there like a family tie. Like my own blood. Like we grew up inside of each other. My alter ego. The last touch before I let go and drift through the rest of this. 

Alone… is it the first time?

The first memories of our friends losing their minds. The watching nervous eyes as you recite poetry the way only you would remember it. No one knows what to do. 

I told you what I needed. I watch these people I don’t know so well yet. I watch them early morning on the subway looking out the windows. I’m high as fuck. You take your power the same way it’s taken from you. With a beauty that looks down at no one. 

All week I am guided. After begging god to let me be it finally happened. It would have been perfect if they had my song on the jukebox. It would have been perfect if you took me outside and did something to me. I’ve never felt so close.

My book is great, she recommended it to me. Bought my own copy with my sudden richness. Richness like I can even take a trip, so I plan one. She invited me. She’s working hard to make her movie, wipe herself clean of something. Something I witnessed only a part of, something I can only imagine. So I’ll take the train down and I’ll do sound or whatever. I’ve been working really hard on my dreams and I’m totally fine to do sound or whatever. It’s nice to be needed, even for sound.

She wanted me to hear her band play, but the wires fucked up. It’s not her fault and there is nothing we can do. I promise there will be another time, a better one. We both know I am right but it is still sad. We wish it could have been today. 

I sit with her in the middle of her work. All of her things, books and music and small items. They all fit together perfect. I take out her first published novel. I see a picture of her in the back. Is this you? 

I’m drifting and I’m asking other people to guide me now. I don’t even want to go to the store by myself. It’s a room all for me and then for us but for now just me. And I need it, I really do. I’m calling you and I’m thinking of writing her. 

How I see it? I’m not sure, but you’re living in my old room and you look better in it. What does it mean? 

She wants to be my girlfriend, I know that. She knows it won’t work like that. It hurts though, hurts anyway. It used to be different, you used to be in control. You used to not tell me about it. I never used to have the courage to ask. I read her what I wrote about you. She says it’s beautiful, and that it should always be like this.

Oh god and she likes it. She told me! She wants to talk all about it. 

She used to be my best friend. She still is but we used to share the same bed. It was what made me feel safe, it was the same for her. And I miss her. I can’t look at her anymore. I miss her and I can’t come home. I know she understands. She has to.

But I got a job I think. Everyone’s asking me if I do or not. Everyone cares more than I do. We drive out to a place that has more recently become familiar. I struggle with the same things I always have. I tap out of my life again. Have to text everyone what’s going on. I’m saying things I hear other people say but it isn’t coming out the same way. It sounds like I’m lying when I say it. So I try again. Now I’m all consumed with a thing I made up entirely. Well, that is my life’s work; things made up entirely. 

When I was young my neighbour treated me like her own granddaughter. She would invite me over to pick apples with her other adopted grandchildren. Two boys who would not look at me. Can you imagine if they had? I did. I had an entire made-up afternoon about what might happen if one of the brothers paid me some attention. We would lay under the apple trees in late summer light and we would hold hands. I could play that one over and over. Over and over. Entirely made up. 

Sometimes these things happen for real. I was fourteen years old and we had gone down to the river. A slow bend by the fast water that had cliffs to jump from if you could make it to the other side. One of the river boy regulars had his out of town cousin staying with him. He bugged me and stared at my barely bikini covered skin. I didn’t even realize what was happening. His face took me a moment to understand. He was cute, but not right away. I was mean to him for most of that day. My heart driven confusion turned angry before I could feel anything at all. Later, all the girls I had paired up with that evening slept in sleeping bags in someone's backyard in the tall grass. I woke up with the sun barely coming up over the hills and mosquito bites right beside my eyes. I heard something. A whistle. He was watching me from the other side of the field. I looked around, everyone else was asleep. He motioned for me to follow. I got up quickly, sleepy and uninhibited I moved through the summer grass. He met me halfway and we walked back down to the river. 

I guess we knew each other right away. He understood who I was. He tried every excuse to get his hand within mine and even though I had gone over this one a thousand times, I didn’t know how to do it for real. So I just stared at his shoulders and waited for the sun to rise. We asked each other questions and hid from the other kids for the rest of the day. Eventually, I had to go home. That was the best part, going home to make the rest of it up. I had an end to that story, where his hand was in mine. It is so far away now I can’t remember if it happened or not. I won’t ask him. I doubt he even remembers who I am. 

Secrets, secrets, secrets. I had no one to tell.

I see people running around. I’m sleeping in my best friend's old room at my other best friend's house. The blanket is thin but it’s almost summer and I keep the window cracked. Feels like something that was meant to happen, being here. I go into my best friend's room at 5 am to tell her that, all jumpy on some weird pill. I tell her I won’t be like this every night.

It’s breezy these days, no job. Tomato toast and a to-go latte, I’m walking around. I’m thinking about what’s next and waiting to let go. Paying half of half of rent because I’m not supposed to be here much longer.

I’ve accidentally bled all over this mattress this morning like I’m 15 at a new friend's first sleepover. It’s alright though, once I leave the mattress is going to the alley.

We all used to live together. I remember it in nice pieces. Boredom and booze and big plans. Small parties. I miss it but I know how over it is.

It’s not so sad until I think about it.

The feeling is growing. Where do I take myself now? Out back to the orchard where I learned how to hide... Up above, to the magic place, the one guarded and kept to itself. Pack my books in boxes and put them in the closet because something else is happening now, this part is over. My mom wants me to come home now. 

When I wake up I feel sorry for my body, the way I mistreat it. I don’t know how else to do this. I’m sorry. I tried to learn, and I’ll keep trying, but something reminds me over and over that it is no use. I have always been uncomfortable. That is just how it has always been. 

Maybe you have always been this way. I notice things, between us, similarities. Sometimes it feels like you’re punishing me. In my sleep, in my day. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that at all. 

Deep down within yourself, you hear me. I can tell. Can’t I? Where do I go back to? How do I get out of here? 

The house is empty and that hallway is not for me. I lock the door from the outside and yet find myself lying in bed, deep down, at the back of the house. You come looking for me. I don’t want anyone to see me like this. I keep the door locked for a reason. Sleep does not come easy, sleep does not come easy at all. 

And I trust you, it took time, but I do. Driving away and I miss you. I’ll tell you. I’ll find the time and I’ll tell you. Things go missing in here. I search for them and only find bits. Bits and pieces but last night it came together. Just for a crossing moment.

We spent the weekend up at a community run ski hill I grew up going to. My parents got married there. People smell like weed and sweat and cloves. We get a ride down the hill with a young couple who are pregnant. She tells me how important family is to her and her partner who sits driver in the mini van. He has his hand on her stomach. I nod slowly, absolutely in awe of their knowing. Wondering if I could know myself the same way.

Back in the fall I woke up in a panic. For me, the idea of family has almost always felt fleeting. Like a backup plan. An exit if the other stuff doesn’t work out. This weekend it started feeling real. I watched my mom be older then I remember her. I watched my friends be adults I hadn’t met before. Our conversations becoming important. Wine drinking, tear causing.

I lay down at night in the attic of the small cabin we stayed in. I listened to two of my barely acquainted best friends share stories of their loss and their love. I watched the light of their final candle flicker and then eventually burn out. Their voices quieting. The final goodnights. I dreamt of growing up, having a place to return to, having a home again.

Also. This summer my friend Maia showed up on set of my big fucking movie. She’s dead in body life form but she showed up anyway. I didn’t anticipate that either. And I don’t feel those kind of things. Someone had to tell me. Pull me aside and let me know my friend was there to watch. She had been looking over my shoulder at the monitor. She came back every single day. I tell people and they nod and say "yeah" like that doesn’t completely uproot the ground I thought I understood. 

It has been proven to me. Absolutely. I have no doubt. 

So, what if I said the program was changing my god into something I didn’t understand? Does it seem like an excuse to stay sick? You can’t really take my word for it. I’m the sick one. The people I like talking to just agree with me. I’m never going to listen to anyone else anyway. I start keeping secrets for the first time in my life. 

What’s the difference between an excuse and a reason? 

A reason people believe and an excuse people don’t. I believe both, everyone’s reasons are real. They really are. I have no doubt anymore because I have had the ground uprooted and a new understanding proven to me. I understand my excuses. I believe me. What a dangerous thing. 

Sometimes I want to take my face offline. I do sometimes actually. I archive all of my baby photos from 2015. Everyone should be invested in me for ME! Laughing, like my beauty is the lure. Maybe for like three people. Three people I wouldn’t really want to hear about it from. 

The scar has confirmed something for me. Something I needed confirmed when I was thirteen.

These messages pop up from guys sometimes. They want things from me. No, not like that. Not. Like. That. They want um, 

links?

thoughts? 

help? with a potential new project.

It’s worse because these guys don’t even want to fuck me. 

I try to stick with the girls…They see the whole thing…Sometimes…

The “thing” escapes me in September, October, and November. I lie and pretend it hasn’t left me. I lie because this was when I had nothing and to lose the “thing” as well would be too much. But it had gone. It came back in my family’s apartment over Christmas. It came back because I shot a final sequence for CAMP with Zola on Super 8, sat with her on the apartment floor watching her talk, and then spent the evening reading The Rabbit Hutch. 

Now, everything feels cinematic—especially the bad stuff. I can live in this for a long time. I like to. I am going fucking berserk. 

There’s this human understanding—a revelation experienced over and over—that it is not worth it if it is not shared. Well, I want you sitting beside me always, so I think I am starting to get it. 

(Sayward, our final night filming)

My best friend and I called this movie “Drinking and Driving”. It makes me laugh talking about how we started and finished it. Sometimes I get embarrassed about the title in front of older people though. It makes my cheeks go red and I feel like everyone can see through me. One night we bought the boys red wine as a present and as dessert. We had screwed up some scheduling that day and two of them had to wait around at the lake on a cloudy day with no cell service. The wine was the least we could do. My best friend and I probably drank most of it anyway. We sat the boys at the table and talked power dynamics and whether it was okay to masturbate to people's photos on Instagram. I think we settled on, it was okay, as long as you didn’t tell anyone. A tree falls and no one hears it, fucking the dead cat, and so on.

My film friends showed me their strange movie they made for a festival in the UK. I guess it inspired me to write some things down.

Every day I try to convince myself to go for a walk like I was doing when I was in Australia. Everyone said going there would be good for me and then it was? I didn't go because it would be good for me. I went because a director who inspires me asked me to be there for her movie, and she gave me a part. Memorizing lines is funny, like a real job, like homework. My days on set were spent laughing, gossiping and holding my iced coffee with my robe on. Questioning things and being pushed in different directions. My days off I took the bus to the hills. I called everyone back home who would pick up. I stared into the hot grainy valley and wondered how I had gotten there in the first place. I saw unwound again, the second time in one month. The music was so loud this time my ears rang for two days but I went to sleep that night happy.

(Adelaide, on my first real day off)

I told my best friend who made the drinking and driving movie with me about how my sobriety felt like a sickness and she said that was good. She reminded me that we have always liked being sick.

My dreams lately all take place in the same world, some of them feel like they mean something and the rest fade away. Bike rides down the highway. Summer and driving in my mom's car on the way to something my mom had to do. I was guided then, maybe I want to be guided now.

(Vancouver, the other night)

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