Today is a ceremonial day. A sacred day. A person who feels deeply alive day.

Alarm went off at 6:15am and the sky was dark and souls might have still been sleeping, or maybe making coffee, or tea, somewhere, quietly, without any sound, just like the cockroaches that overflow every apartment in this city but stay hidden. Today I start class in an hour and fifteen minutes and for the first time in a long time I feel scared in a good way. In preparation, I spent last week regulating my sleep schedule, reducing alcohol and weed, seeing friends that needed to be seen before entering my hermit era of music-making and studying, and bought nice notebooks and pens because I needbeauty to function. It has been two years since I stepped into this large building. Two years. My navy sweater and navy pants and navy socks and navy bag have been waiting since yesterday night on the chair as if my garments will offer protection of some kind. Maybe I do believe a little they will. That’s why I call myself agnostic. I realize that over the years where I have been able to buy my own things I have acquired everything blue. Navy blue. Deep blue. My dad’s and my favourite colour, which I confirmed last year when I saw him for the last time in April, right before he was deported. An unconscious choice of color made by my brain when I was a child. I said it reminded me of the sky right before dawn. He told me that’s why he loves it too. He was a marine.

I arrive thirty minutes early and wait inside the class. Still dark. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes pass and nobody is to be seen. I walk down all three floors and go up again. I get worried because usually this is when the students that actually care arrive and now I am afraid I have the wrong class. Wrong. This particular class starts next week. I laugh to myself and order an Uber back home.

Tomorrow I really start, really. What else is there but to smile and sit and write. Today is a sacred day. I move to this beautiful apartment with a big terrace at three. I still have eleven days till I get out of here and thefirst and only thing I’ll bring today is my entire bookshelf. I might stay, I might not. I might perform some ritual, I might not. Endless possibilities and I feel blessed. It is now almost nine in the morning and I resist the urge to sleep by dancing to African ambient music and preparing my first coffee of the day.

It is only seven at noon and I remember how that hawk saluted me earlier the moment I entered the new apartment, when the sun was up and the clouds, the big white clouds were bothering it, laughing with feathers and doe eyes, making the day look a violet gray I think I’ve loved before. The host greeted me and left five minutes after.

My friend M helped with the bags and then rolled a joint, played Marvin Gaye and watched the sky from the great windows. I couldn’t stop talking and being a bother, I said. You said I couldn’t possible ever be a bother. Impossible. Then pinched my cheek. Then the hawk, oh, the birds. Are we friends? All the common types were to be seen from above. A not so common one too. Forty minutes of distant eyed Mia looking through the big rectangle that now are big windows of a renovated black container with a patio. Then, I realized there was no internet. Fine, I said a bit angry, to be frank, tomorrow they’ll come, the guest says. I shrug it off and look at my Practicing The Power Of Now by Elkhart Toll copy and remember about acceptance and gratitude. This is the book I come back to when I get stressed and don’t want to do hard drugs. The patio is immense and there is no restriction or policy about parties. Hermit era. I have many dualities. I count twenty different cactuses around happily and a hammock that is now inside due to the light rain of the past hours and days that now gave birth to new buds and clear green leaves. The Sun rises from the East and all that portion to the West is visible to me. Water, water. The cooler is now suddenly scaring me, making a loud electric sound that becomes bothersome, and then becomes unbearable. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I disconnect the apparatus and thank god I hadn’t gone out for groceries. I watch the sunset, listen to jazz, wrapped against him, M, and we look at each other and realize this is the first of many lonely nights. The first time in a while that we go separate ways.

But change is cruel because it is slow. I’ll slowly take away my things until the room is empty of my things and mess, and we already decided it was sad and something to talk about, later, and I didn’t wanted him to leave. I promised I would sleep tomorrow again but now I needed sacred loneliness. I am a slow transition type of person I guess. I have trouble with change he said.

Arranged the desk with my favorite books and first copies I finally got out of storage. My first copy of The Little Prince, remembering when I was eight years old and read it entirely in one sitting and cried and realized things about decay. I order food and now I’m alone. A joint is rolled and the curtains are down by nine.

Sweet dreams

Xx

I wonder how you still carry the way through the gardens of Eden, leading to the holy fountain, and how God has let you stay there because she understands. Surrender! Surrender! I hear her say from the golden skies. Your eyes turn upward, and you say the soil is waiting for you. Don’t go, sweet girl. Your mind is a castle and your eyes knives. You have come to this world resembling the rush of blood that floods the head and subsides fast. Like the ocean who keeps humming and the waves who keep crashing and returning and crashing and returning. That’s what you do, you know? You crash and burn and tear it all down but you are hungry for a home. You crave to be alone but you sit on the lap of any man willing to give you a lesser form of love.

Surrender. Surrender now.

6:58am

The sun has not come up yet and my heart starts racing. I take out my bruxism guard without looking. My little bottle of pills is beside me, and I feel safe. I swallow and on my way to the bathroom I slam my face in the darkness and spit out a little scream. I go back to sleep soon and angry.

10:03am

Dreams are blocked again. My eyes wake up and the first thing I question is if yours are too, in the room next to mine. I catch myself thinking that thought and I don’t like it. I am not supposed to think like that about him. Divine, divine. Gray, cold. Just like the pile of clothes I left on the washing machine yesterday and now they are probably putrid and all needs to be washed once again. The once-pink and pretty and now yellowish-resin stained glass bowl is sitting right next to my perfume, and ironically tarot cards, which I stash twice with bountiful weed, light it up and oh my! Now I feel very distant but I’m in my head and my own space and I fucking love it and suddenly the chores become interesting tasks about making everything in my life beautiful, as it should fucking be.

10:42am

Washed dishes, re-washed clothes, and my roommate is now singing with his guitar. A bit loud for just now and then I remember I do the same all the time. I start organizing my library and two full bags of clothes which arrived yesterday after three years of storage. Opening it feels like a time chamber. I read my pandemic red moleskine 192 page diary and I think it is insanely good, like, actually good writing. I think about posting it here. Where did that poetic nineteen year old go? I need to write more, I start thinking. I was writing every minute of my life and making a slug a metaphor and oh, I did make sure it hit, even if it was just for me. All my books, all my copies, all my diaries. One of my most beloved possessions: My highschool copy of The Stranger which completely changed my life and has the permanent stamp of a single drop of tear I shed on the last page when Meursault was welcomed by the crowd with screams of hate.

11:13am

Spent an entire block of time looking for new Moleskine 192 page diaries, maybe in hopes of regaining my poetic abilities using the same “format”, and lip flips. Dance. Sweat. Face routine. Sing. Eat. Watch the last five episodes of Better Call Saul with lover/roommate and maybe make love after a week of no sex (I fucking hate Saul what a fucking horrible fucking character maybe it reminds me too much of my mother and sometimes myself fuck you fuck you).

1:15pm

Washed my mouth and danced for an hour to post-punk, scrolled ig for thirty minutes. I feel dead and I’m not sweating anymore and that sucks because it is winter and I’m cold and my hands are nowhere near my instruments and now it is late. The only clean panties left are the ones I bought the other day from the beautiful blue three piece lingerie set. So feminine, so fresh, so fucking sexy. My roommate is waiting outside in the living room waiting for us to watch a Studio Ghibli movie he has never seen. “What!!!” I said the other day when he had told me, and now I guess I’m unintentionally carrying him along, with this lovely and beautiful movie, and the only thing that really consoles me is the fact that I’ve been very clear multiple times about the nature of this relationship and that I, me, am in no shape whatsoever to partake in a relationship right now. It still doesn’t help with the small sting of knowing he is probably in love, and I’m already preparing the court case against myself anyways.

2:54pm

I remember hot water on my skin about an hour ago. No music. I let the steam flow inside the bathroom for five minutes until the room is warm and I finally wash my now very long hair after four days, which I’ve been growing so I look like a pre-Raphaelite woman. It has worked. I put on a cream bath, as I always do, and let it sit for five minutes while I scrub my dirty skin with a “strawberry milkshake” scrub that actually smells like milkshake and because the high hasn’t worn off yet I’m living in Disneyland of my own senses. I showered until the broken fan started making that loud noise that warns you you’ve been in the bathroom too long. No signs of my roommate yet.

Exhibit A: The 20-something-year-old oily skincare routine that makes her feel safe and almost sane and finally works:

• cerave foaming cleanser

• around seven drops of hyaluronic acid for barrier skin support

• vit c eye cream

• 345 dr alethea cream.

• a star-patch on the never ending pimple (I think it is the same sad spirit not wanting to leave my body)

• centella water fit spf (THE MOST AMAZING PURCHASE EVER and IT MAKES MY SKIN BEAUTIFUL)

So, SHE had been burning my skin with acne acids and stuff just to discover that HEY! it was HER DAMAGED SKIN BARRIER!!! NOT ACNE! Full skin repair mode which is doing its thing. Bye computer. I am a slave to consumerism. Or maybe a traumatized person who was bullied in school for having acne. Both. JUDGE MIA APPEARS ON COURT.

4:10pm

Went out and bought groceries in the freezing cold. Bought French chocolate, expensive white wine, Parmesan cheese, and vegetables for salad and meat tonight. We are skipping Studio Ghibli because an important scene happened at the end of the last episode of Better Call Saul and maybe that’s for the better because the act of showing and experiencing studio ghibli movies for the first time is a very intimate thing that maybe should be reserved for soulmates.

What if. I start rolling a joint and the TV is on. “Your skin is the softests. It is not fair.”— my roommate says before I press play.

9:59pm

Watched two episodes and ate so much cheese and wine and I let my roommate sleep in my room. We fell on each other’s arms and dozed off. When it was already dark, a couple of hours ago and we were half awake, I felt so horny and I said to him: please touch me. And you touched me and consumed me as sweet as ice cream and my body was your temple and your body was a channel of pure desire.

We still haven’t made dinner and the salad and meat is still in the kitchen outside the fridge waiting since four in the afternoon. You keep rambling about Star Wars like a little child while I write on the notes app as religiously as I can, and also pretending to hear it all, promising myself this has to be done, the writing, anyhow. I grind some weed and pack a bowl and tell you mockingly that if we don’t have dinner soon baby girl is going to be punished. I make you laugh hard. You are such a great cook.

11:19pm

Made a nice green salad. I think of the state of my being and suddenly feel scared. I am still relying on men’s desire to live, to feel contained, to remain tangible without vanishing. As if being perceived as an object of desire takes away all the pain of having a neglectful childhood. I must be wary of the words I use. I decide not to cry or think about it. I just hear the meat being cooked and I remember that soon we will live in different places and I’ll be more alone and it scares me to the bone.

Monday 29th

12:16am

The salad remains cold and untouched and I’m finally in my night solitude. Big Sir is tempting me. He has appeared in my life again. And who am I to say no to help when my brother needs medical care? And what about me being able to finish my studies, pay rent, pay health things, psych, meds, food, without selling my body on the internet forever?

Maybe I could sell my soul for a couple of years, I tell myself. I still get away with whatever I want, I say. Security. Security is so important to my life that, at this point, the thought of having to be hungry or not entering college because 9-5 work makes me feel dead inside. More dead than dead. More dead than using my body as a vehicle toward what I truly desire: education, stability, decency of living, and, sure, a couple of nice things here and there. A cup of coffee somewhere I don’t know. A bus ticket to the South where the big mountains and lakes are.

I answer Big Sir one last time without promising anything. Yet.

8:25am

My eyes are half closed. I open the notes app. The day is here and is waiting for me to take it. Take it. Take it. I reach again to my weed bowl. The sun is coming up and it looks like six in the morning on a summer day. I did not wash my face or mouth before sleeping. I can feel the crusty face. I have the sexy panties still on. Time to perform soon.

9:32am

I did my routine, made some coffee on my french press, and put on the full blue lingerie set with flowers and use it for the first time on my stream. I open my streaming inbox after two days of not working. A man says he was getting enough money to see me again and it makes me sad. Then another says that he thought of me, twice, when he fucked his wife. Then the other says that our conversation, yes, twenty minute fully clothed and paid conversation, was very important to him and wanted to talk soon.

I wonder how much longer I’ll keep doing this. I wonder, while I think of the hours of study and what requires of me to finish my degree. They need money, I need money. I don’t care as long as I finish what I’ve always wanted. I don’t care as long as I live a decent life anymore. I’ve seen the other side and it’s dark. I will not leave camming because it gives me all the extra money that I use for my brother’s health and also currently saving to move and to probably go South, again, and touch the snow and take some shrooms and maybe stop smoking so much weed for a while.

The enlightenment fantasy, one of my favourites to indulge from.

9:55am

Makeup, wash hands, be done.

11:29am

Did fifty minutes. Stopped for 20. Good money. Good traffic. I look beautiful. It is strange how I don’t feel as consumed by men when I do this as when I give them my body and my night. I keep in mind the beautiful lingerie and my perfume keeps me sane. Haven’t eaten yet and strangers are already complementing my “small petite and big ass” body. I mythologize to survive again. What else is there? At least I’m far from suffering. I’m performing.

12:29pm

Finished another round. Pay was around 30% less than the first session. Hum. I take a glimpse of myself in the mirror and reread my previous entry. I need to put some eyedrops in my eyes. My red stained lips look beautiful and a bit used. I still have not eaten and I treat it like a trophy. There is everything wrong with it. There is also a man who wants to meet me, first through Facetime at 1pm, and see if I’m real and maybe come and visit. We’ve been talking for a couple of weeks, but I haven’t thought about it much until now. Refresh, perfume, decompress, call, water, cam again. Then rest. Then create. The only way.

1:49pm

I had the forty minute call. And I wonder where the other time went. He is not the definition of handsome, but extremely intelligent. I took a closer look at his teeth. The teeth reveal so much. When somebody doesn’t take care of them and you still have so much money, there is really something wrong with you. Anyways, his teeth were white and seemed to have been cleaned professionally too. Probably whitening on top of that. I like that. If a man has good teeth he probably smells good everywhere else. I was cheeky and showed the little cutesy persona, lied about being a year younger, lied about being a little naive and a bit stupid, and he was cheeky and happy and he loved me. We both agreed to keep talking. I haven’t mentioned the horrors yet. The “I don’t know what Palantir is” vibe.

Bathroom, water, reset, cam again.

2:57pm

Did another block and upped the price. Went really well. Sent a massive message about being online in five hours “Come and see me! <3 Kisses!!”. Time to doze off for a bit. A hit of a weed bowl. Danger zone, 3pm is approaching. Stomach: empty. On my nightstand: vegetable pasta salad with tuna and tomatoes and olive oil and avocado and some vinaigrette. I can’t work if I eat. My psychologist would be upset if she knew my recent behaviours and thinking patterns. Till Thursday, 11am. I put on How to Get Away with Murder and try to fall asleep for an hour and a half, at least.

5:17pm

I slept for an hour and so and woke up naturally, thinking it was the next day and I was happy and then tasted my salad mouth and knew it wasn’t, and now I’m going to wash myself. I remembered I had sent a massive message saying I would be online in two hours and a half but now I just don’t want to and maybe I won’t enter again for today. I will, actually, probably and most likely.

5:51pm

Decided to do a 25 minute pilates class. “Where is the art?” My mind starts asking before I can say: “We need to care for our body”.

“Have a glass of wine”, says the mind “No, pilates first”, replies the same mind.

6:27pm

I decided to not drink tonight. Point blank. No negotiations. My body feels good. I am eating well. Why would I fuck it up? No, no. Toast and cheese and one egg awaits for me before entering another cam session. The real win today is not opening Ableton but actually not drinking for a day. Even if that means eating more, sleeping earlier, not making anything. One. Day. At. A. Fucking. Time, I say as I pack another bowl and start dancing to the new Brutalismus 3000 album before shower.

6:49pm

I feel… very much alive? After… only one toast and a fried egg? Only twenty minutes passed and my mind is saying: you live in a city where people go out every night. Go out and find out? Go out and find love? I redid my makeup again. I feel beautiful. Is this impulsive? I don’t know. I want to see the world.

6:55pm

I remembered I have a plan tomorrow that involves a lot of people and drinking and decided to not go out.

8:53pm

I made a considerable amount of money in an absurd amount of time and I feel good and guilty. It is still early. My roommate was calling my name earlier from the other room and I felt the little hook of life again. There must be an in-between. Not a techno party. Not disappearing into the city. Not opening another bottle and calling it a celebration. Just a small ceremony for today’s accomplishments, maybe.

Let’s see.

10:34pm

Watched Princess Mononoke instead of going out, which feels like a kinder ending than the one my mind was trying to sell me. I smoke half a joint looking at the bright full moon and decide that it is the time for me. Time for peace. Time to forget about it all in the simpler and structured drama of life that How to Get Away with Murder provides. No drinking.

Tuesday 30th

10:00am

Got up at seven, invited my roommate into my room, he was shivering with cold. We got into my thermic bed cover and cuddled for another two hours. Now I’m here. Guilty? Maybe. Maybe we are just two people enjoying each other and there is nothing wrong about that. I think I’ve lied to myself with that exact same line since a couple of weeks ago. I love the way he hugs me from behind and puts one hand beneath my sweater and another on my waist. He says I’ve got the softest skin he has ever touched, again. “Coffee?” He asks, as part of our daily ritual ever since the first day we lived together.

I remember I need to fly to the dentist by 11am and start doing my routine. Excited to make my music. Excited to work today for some reason. Excited to go out at 10pm with my friends and tell the same jokes. Excited to live. Yesterday was my last day with the period. That must have got a lot to do about it. I splash some milk on my coffee thinking about how I’ll try not to eat until I must. Mischievious and disordered mind.

11:06am

On the subway, on time. Communication Breakdown by Led Zeppelin is blasting on my headphones. A guy in black clothes smiled at me and made a little dance as if he could hear me. Maybe I am too high. Maybe the four bowls before the dentist were a bit too much. Not for me, I think, as I Want to be Sedated by The Ramones starts playing.

My fingers are typing on my notes app. I’ll just close my eyes and let the anxiolytic + weed combo make my dental dentist moment beautiful because I love the dentist. All the order, the cleanliness, not like a hospital, because people don’t die at dentists. It’s like a nice doctor’s office but minty. It’s only cavity restoration. Not pain. Happy.

20, 20, 24 hours to go
I wanna be sedated
Nothing to do, nowhere to go
I wanna be sedated

1:23pm

I arrived at the dentist blazed off my head just to be told the minute I stepped in: “I’m putting the anesthesia now”, meaning, the fucking big needle, but the man had a great hand, and then, to be quite frank, they cured the cavity with such delicacy that those forty-five minutes went by without gesturing stop. With close eyes I started to think about the dentist personal life, his choice of haircut, and how I would be willing to fuck him. Who says men are the only one who think about fucking the women they see in their daily lives lives? 8/10 dental experience. Would be a 10 if not for the needle. Now the money needs to be made and friends need to be met and sleep needs to be contained. I rethink the money situation, and decide yesterday was a good money day and today is art day and I will pour hot coffee and open my daw. There is a reason I’m being paid a lot for the shortest amount of time. The weed man is arriving soon.

2:04pm

Time passes by fast and I’m still in between writing and opening Substack and editing the diary and writing my to-do list. Met the weed delivery guy who winked at me. Bought: one small beer, one avocado, fake chicken meat patty, and a little cute box of a variety of greens. First the beer and my daw. Then whatever else. My roommate leaves to buy weed (I feel guilty for not asking if he wanted any but don’t say that I forgot) and it seems like the perfect sunny afternoon moment to sing my lungs to Leonard Cohen and a cigarette and a beer.

5:32pm

I wake up from a nap that was never achieved. Eyes closed for another ten minutes until I pull myself out of bed and now it’s getting darker and darker and the day is suddenly gone. I research, again, how to make my weed tapering off not so bad. First, I need to log every intake for the first week and second decide if my smoking urge comes from: Anxiety / wanting to soften / avoidance / ritual. Those are the categories and I plan on executing them tomorrow.

7:42pm

A friend who studies nearby is coming before we leave for the bar because her house is far away and the bar is closer. This female friend, whom I will call BECKY has been part of my life since I was sixteen. She is three years older than me, funny, can be a bit too direct sometimes, but also very respectable in her field. ROOMMATE is cooking chicken and rosemary potatoes and we decide to make a third plate for our friend out of ours. We talk about our personal projects, life. I comment on an idea for a project she had told me years ago and says: “Yes! How do you remember?” Because it was so damn good. I tell her she should execute it. “Maybe not in this time… but in the future…” We talk about how fucked up the world is and how everything seems meaningless but how it is in this very moment where we start creating value, and prove that we are capable of creating meaning by ourselves.

8:55pm

About to leave. Laughing so hard. A full 700ml beer inside. It is cold and I put on sweatpants and a hoodie. Red lipstick. Mascara. I hit another bowl and we leave.

Wednesday 1st

3:08am

Went out to an old restaurant where waiters are old and have aprons and it all seems very important. We put two tables together and prepared for the sports game and our favourite team lost after a couple of litres of beer shared. Bad omen. There was a Greek man who looks 25 but is almost 40. There is this friend that seemed cold but maybe I over analyze things. Slept late late. I did not work and it was a beautiful day. Friends invite me for pizza and beer again today. Walk in the city at night. I say yes without thinking.

12:56pm

Woke up two hours ago and ROOMMATE came to my room door again with a pouty face so I did not write and he stepped in and slammed into my bed and we cuddled for an hour until my pilates alarm went off and each had to go to their jobs. S is calling. I feel anxious and stupidly smoke the first bowl of the day without thinking of the mental fog.

1:57pm

I feel like someone gave me a punch in the stomach after talking to S. Something nasty about asking for money before meeting them and I feel anxious and things are not okay, but I remember how much he makes, and then he sweet talks to me about what would I give in exchange, hinting at desire as if it was as easy as just that, but who am I to declare war on what I’ve been feeding? Men who keep me from going insane, men who pay for the doctor’s appointment, sometimes the rent, because two weeks earlier I couldn’t work for two weeks because I felt like dying. My brain is a magical thing. Regret… I feel it. And then it shuts down.

4:31pm

Worked for a couple of hours and didn’t do much. I kind of don’t like myself today. I’m against talking bad to myself but I allow it anyways. Slow traffic. I decided to not go out due to yesterday’s night out. Fuck having pizza with zero degrees outside. The plan seemed nice and gentle drunk, but my mind is not so nice and gentle now. Maybe too gentle and vulnerable. The outside world seems suspicious and unkind.

5:16pm

I decide to smoke two big bowls and play Leonard Cohen again and drink a large coffee. I have not eaten anything at all but made sure I stayed hydrated. I am waiting to do one more working block, eat alone, by myself, just how I like it, and then maybe order sushi or ice-cream. I secretly want my roommate to go out tonight and leave me alone for a while. I love him, but I need space. He already said: “Oh yes, we could see our friends on the weekend and stay home tonight”. I will need to have a serious conversation about us soon. Again.

Complicated emotional roller coasters. I need a guide on how to stay away from those theme parks.

6:08pm

Played Leonard Cohen and The Velvet Underground songs. Still unfed. Cam for thirty minutes. Stop. Eat. Order food. Face. Face. Face routine. I feel like I am fading but somehow I keep going. What the fuck am I doing to myself? What is this twisted game? Am I putting food aside because I am not hungry if I don’t smoke constantly? My systems are really dysregulated. I still decide to not eat until after work.

Thursday 2nd

7:35am

The pale blue announces itself as I consciously and half awake put sports clothes on. Time to delay smoke time by at least noon, and my body already feels the tightness, the sensitivity of it all. I log: URGE DELAYED. One of my favorite artists is coming and I impulsively buy the early bird tickets. Happy. Bank account: enough to survive for now. Did not go out. Instead, I ate at 7:30pm, then at 9pm two slices of pizza, watched How to get away with murder, had a smoke session by myself, and thought about it all. DID NOT DRINK. Today, I’m recording guitar for a song and producing another two. Minimum working hours for the day: $XXX to feel safe. Let’s start this shit.

10:45am

Therapy session done. Suddenly I feel calm and at peace knowing that I got through all my morning routine without weed. Stupid for some, gold for me. I have successfully eaten before noon, stayed sober, did an hour of yoga cleanse, shook it all off with Underworld’s Born Slippy, read Substack posts, showered, and had therapy session. The urge to numb appears again. I delay by washing dishes and clothes and making more coffee and singing to Leonard Cohen.

11:33am

I remember visiting my grandpa’s room at sixteen, when he lived at my home. He was talking about this woman who he had known for years, apparently they were in their teens, and she was a beautiful blonde. He had a sexy dream about her and had tears in his eyes. He said, eyes wide open, how he remembered her soft skin and her little white umbrella to protect it from the sun. By that time, he needed a wheelchair but his mind was lucid. He died shortly after.

5:30pm

Finish work. Time to properly eat and nap.

8:37pm

Feel clear headed. Danced, played guitar. Slept. Only smoked three bowls in the whole day. X target of money made and done. Mentally: exhausted but also tender. Wanting to taste the city, look outside, look outside and watch and burn and dance all night. I open a bottle of wine and share it with ROOMMATE.

Friday 3rd

7:30am

Bathroom, pill, back to sleep

10:03am

Woke up. Drank half a bottle of wine yesterday but it was okay, which is exactly the kind of sentence that should be illegal. Plugging my guitar. No time for words. The day is sunny and beautiful and I still feel like I have been dragged by my hair through a very elegant swamp.

My room smells like skin, weed, coffee, and the faint chemical ghost of my face routine. I look at the guitar like it is a priest and I am late for confession. There are things I need to put into music because if I keep putting them into language I will start charging myself rent for every thought.

5:45pm

Went to Chinatown with ROOMMATE, yes, and we held each other on the subway. I’m thinking this is getting a bit out of control, but my body remembers this morning when without saying a word he pulled me to his bed and touched my body softly and pulled my pants off and fucked me fast and good and I felt a bit used, in the good sense, and I loved it.

Conscious weed consumption is going how it is supposed to be: skipping and skipping and congratulating myself like a small bureaucrat until I ultimately fall for it around 3pm in an alley behind Chinatown before entering the sea of people. The city was cold and bright and everyone seemed to be carrying bags full of fish, soup, sugar, and tiny plastic futures. Bought miso paste, two bottles of sake, seaweed, and two salmon onigiris.

We watched Princess Mononoke yesterday and today we are watching Spirited Away, another classic supposedly saved for lovers, but me showing it anyway, because I still love him and I don’t know what to do. Maybe I am giving him pieces of my inner world while repeating out loud that this is not a relationship. Maybe that is worse. Maybe showing someone Studio Ghibli for the first time is more intimate than sex. Maybe I should be arrested.

Today I cried twice in the street and you said how lovely I looked. I always cry. Thinking of little men and women on the street. Thinking of the environment and greed. Thinking of the fact that everybody is trying to survive and still somehow everything looks like a marketplace of souls.

I don’t want to hurt you.

7:39pm

Spirited Away credits start rolling. We sit close. Too close. I drink sake from a little glass and feel the old fantasy returning: that maybe domesticity can save me, that maybe tenderness can be a country, that maybe a man’s hand on my thigh can count as health insurance, citizenship, mother, father, God.

It cannot.

But for two hours, it almost does.

Saturday 4th

11:03am

Drunk. Or not drunk anymore, but spiritually wet. I scroll through Instagram for two hours and I don’t get out of bed. Everyone is apparently leaning into sex work nowadays. Girls with perfect hair and perfect apartments and captions about empowerment and softness and agency and girlhood and survival. I think of this model that I still admire, who was very popular back in the day and now sells content. I think of my own sexualization as a kid. I think of the state of the world. I think of the way the world discovers your body before you do and then acts surprised when you learn how to invoice it.

Somehow I am reclaiming the possibility of being sexualized by sexualizing myself on my own terms. At the same time, how do I fully own it? It still serves the purpose of fulfilling men’s desire and repeating the cycle. The dichotomy between pure and dirty kills me from inside my stomach sometimes.

I desire to be pure. I decide that doing sex work is not taking that away from me. I want to still be pure. Pure of creativity, of desire, of excitement and love for living. Purity in curiosity. Purity in the soul. My body can be used as a medium. My body can be a bridge. My body can be a little company, a little altar, a little scam, a little survival machine. I don’t mind anymore if that means living a life where I can create and pay for a decent, nice, healthy life for myself and my brother.

1:49pm

I feel the full weight of my existence and it does not cease. I feel ill and well at the same time.

2:22pm

My roommate is going to see one of his lovers. First official time in these two months where he goes and I kind of feel sad. But that is okay. This is the contract, no? This is the freedom I asked for. This is the beautiful progressive arrangement where everybody is honest and nobody owns anybody and still my stomach quietly behaves like a medieval wife watching her husband leave for war.

It is my father’s birthday and I don’t want to call. I decide that I need to, and as soon as I hear his voice my heart softens. This is the terrible thing about fathers. You can be angry for years and then one tired little note in their voice turns you into a child standing in a hallway again.

My brother is navigating illness and when I told my father what had happened, what the doctor said, and that I’m fully paying treatment, he turned inside and said: “I don’t have anything myself”. My mothers narcissism and her addiction have destroyed my home and she is not to be told about my brothers illness, her being one of its roots, and therefore all his mental responsibility lies in me. The only person in this world that cares. And then there is my mental stability. Who cares for me? Who? I scream to the void and nobody answers.

I could die in the street and my family would know a month later.

4:31pm

I am tired. I am tired of micromanaging every single aspect of my life. Body. Consumption. Brother’s mental health. My mental health. Rent. Desire. Food. Face. Weed. Money. Men. Art. Whether I am being loved or bought or both. I watch the rain pour and put another coat on. It is my father’s birthday, I remember again. I take out my pipe for the first time in the day, prepare a bowl, and connect the interface to the computer so I can shut the fuck up about it with words and lend it to the music. ROOMMATE said he was only going for a little while. It makes me wonder if he is going there to talk about what has happened. About today, in the morning, when I whined and cried about the fact that I might need to give myself to men to go through college again. I deeply regret telling him. I also remember he is my closest friend. I don’t want to hurt him. I’ve been clear. I don’t think he is having a great time.

Would anyone ever be okay with their partner doing sex work?

Why am I even asking that question?

6:05pm

The first bowl is looking at me untouched and unsmoked. I seem to be in a dissociative state. Barely touched the guitar but my mind has been looking at the ceiling for hours, waiting for a divine response. No one answers. My roommate came back home and wants to spend time with me. I try to infer that I have not eaten at all and that I want to watch my series and sleep but he doesn’t get it and instead I make him do yoga. I don’t want to drink tonight and I’m too out of here that I just want to be alone but I am too scared to ask for it.

8:53pm

Ordered food and I’m about to eat for the first time. Mac and cheese. We have been listening to Slint’s Spiderland while we stay in silence and I smoked a whole joint. It is the perfect soundtrack for two people who are not saying the thing. The room feels gray and holy and doomed. I love him. I need him to leave.

9:27pm

Food arrives and I tell him to go. Guilt appears on my stomach. He wants to stay in my room. Now I feel frustrated and I jokingly tell him that I need to be alone.

I don’t need to joke about that.

11:08pm

Two bowls. Sleep.

I haven’t posted in a while. Not because nothing has happened, but because too much has happened, and when too much happens I return to the only form that never asks me to explain myself: the diary.

These are fragments from the past few days. They are about work, sex, sleep, hunger, medication, weed, art, money, friendship, and the strange private theatre of trying to stay alive beautifully.

Read them as excerpts, not conclusions.—

June 5th

7:47am

I wake up half drunk believing it is the middle of the night. Wrong. It is almost eight and winter is arriving. Yesterday I was touched by two different men and mentally touched by twenty men online.

My life routine is as follows: I wake-up, immediately take my medication, put my contacts on, face routine, and no weed until I finish classes on weekdays. I give my stash to my roommate, M. Now we are lovers and oh boy it is fucking complicated isn’t it? How many times has he heard jazz buzzing from my speakers while I quietly moan for other men five times a week thinking I’m only dancing? I saw a look in his eyes that reminded me of love. I love him deeply, as a friend.

He knows I had a date yesterday with a man who apparently lives off seven houses he rents in San Francisco. A man who looked like a man but talked like a child. M is someone who has known me for longer than most people survive knowing me, and he didn’t like it but is good at pretending because he knows I don’t have anyone else to tell. I came home early and we had sex three times while I had a bottle of wine in my system and he apologized for cumming too quickly.

Because there is only one set of keys and I don’t have my girl-best friend by my side anymore (a whole post will be dedicated to this), I decide to tell him where I was going, no lying, as he knows everything I’ve done.

June 8th

I dreamt about you, S, the man I’ve been with three times since I was twenty. Now I see you, in my dreams, waiting for me to eat breakfast at some non-existent hotel. Now I remember how we used to get breakfast all the time. S used to steal his family’s car, saying he was staying at a friend’s house while he spent the night, made love till dawn, slept three hours, took me to breakfast, and then ran to his job. I miss when things were easier.

Your mother was there and she ignored me in my dream, and you were there with your curly and fucking soft hair, and I was there too, someone who maybe never really mattered to you. Maybe I did. You have told me before. I have been told before. Monday.

//

The day goes by slowly. I’ve had my third cup of coffee and my favourite colour, blue, is outside my window. Deep royal blue. Blue blue blue. I look at my finished art piece and feel proud. A slashing girl who will protect if necessary. It is always necessary. I put her by my bed. An angel without eyes who kills without seeing.

June 9th

I wake up, hair done, dry shampoo, spf, and the sun appears finally after days of hiding. Walking seems like the sanest thing to do. I’ve started noticing that now I’m practically wearing make-up and short dresses most of my days. If I go outside, there is this weird paradox of looking as if I was about to go out but it’s never that. It is camming most of my days. I recluse myself into a hole, my room, of performing and creating. I perform and I create endlessly and the day is over and I don’t want to see anyone anymore. But I still go out at least once a week, maybe two. I do not stay long. I remember I have Ableton at home and my guitar and my MIDI and my bass and my microphone and I don’t want to be where I am anymore. I have decided that when the lease ends, in two months and a half, I’ll go and live for a month outside the city near the endless river. I start favoriting places on Airbnb.

June 10th

I went to watch a movie and the very famous director appeared at the end and it was an amazing experience. The guy asking questions at the end had the most horrible questions ever asked and I laughed hard and I had a small bottle of whiskey under my seat and I didn’t make a scene but I was loud and now I feel… whatever.

//

I just fucked my roommate twice before lunch and it is starting to feel pathetic but we don’t care nor mind and the world is in flames and at least we are happy with the classic friends with benefits arrangement that was made very clear. Fuck. Shit.

“We look like Adam and Eve,” my roommate says, and I look in the mirror on my wall and our naked, beautiful, bruised-against-each-other bodies look back, agreeing. And I can hardly breathe. Your full weight is on me. I love it. I love it and you know it. I can feel you hard behind me, again. I make you leave my room and wait till nightfall to fuck you twice again.

//

The day faded beautifully into practicing Leonard Cohen songs, three joints, and three one hour episodes of a really good true crime documentary on Netflix. I order food for the first time in almost a week. Two big burgers. Two fucking big burgers and I fucking love it. I have developed the bad habit of not eating till I finish camming and that is usually late and by then I only get to eat a meal and a half in one sitting after smoking weed because now I don’t eat (apparently) if I’m not high. I never was a breakfast person but now I strive and desire that fragile, petite looking body that Instagram and even Substack has fed me over the years. Maybe that’s why I liked being choked out of breath. Because I want to feel something bigger than me choke me and take me out of my own fucking misery.

//

I wake up foggy at six in the evening. A whole gram of weed gone. I’ve eaten so far:

• a cup of chicken soup

• one orange

• two big beautiful fucking burgers

• a slice of toast with butter

• green grapes on a bowl

• banana smoothie

Seems like a lot for what I strive for but today I don’t judge myself because I don’t work and I have not slept well nor eaten well and today it is now an official regulating day where I say FUCK YOU to performance and HELLO to sex with love.

I make a final drawing of a sad child clown. Yoga for thirty minutes. Lights off by 11pm. Time awake today: 13 hours.

-mia

.

GO! I scream.

I take the elevator and throw myself into the four in the afternoon sun glow.

Five seconds pass. Kids are screaming, teens are shouting each other’s names while they laugh and mock, and everything seems full of life. I remember being a teen myself, those after-school hours when I knew there was a world of experience waiting for me. The sun seems to have stayed the same after all these years.

I wonder why I even doubted going out.

My legs start walking faster, smarter, skipping every little water pond and dirt. I tip toe the street in two braids, a long white skirt, and an oversized white Aphex Twin t-shirt. There is music in my headphones, and the bus noise can’t hurt me anymore. The cat-callers are muted. The screams from the ones who suffer don’t reach me. Somehow the walk’s aim transformed from buying things to observing the leafs of the gigantic tropical tree that rests in one of the city’s iconic old streets. Someone planted that non-native tree. That someone is probably dead. Thank you, I say to the tree, and to them, of course.

A few more steps, one block to the left, and a sudden bookstore appears as if it was a gift. I wander inside for an hour, just to discover that my wallet was left at home. I just laugh, and without any sadness, say goodbye to the bookseller. Then I realize in the whole hour I was there no one person entered. Melancholy appears softly. No one wants to read anymore, I think as a grumpy old woman.

Time to return. I didn’t spend a cent and everything is right. I walk by a restaurant I only ordered online and tell the cook in person that I believe her recipes are one of the most delicious I have tried in town. She smiles. Goodbye again. I start walking faster, five-thirty pm, now tears fill all my eyes. They run all over my face. I am not sad. I am glad to be alive. It’s almost unbearable in the sense that it reveals how much life is happening, how wrong I can be when I haven’t had the time to breathe. But now I can.

-mia

I need to start by saying something about this post. This post will be highly sexually explicit. But more than that, this is a post about work, power, and the strange things freedom can feel like.

Today marks my first week as a cam girl. What I expected was something deadening; what I found was distance, performance, and a strange softness I hadn’t planned for. It turns out, dear readers, that even on cam websites there are actually quite nice people who want to talk to you, respect you, and of course, eventually, want to see you slowly get naked, smile, and softly reach for your panties and pinch your nipples while 90’s Japanese jazz sounds in the background. The whole thing feels less like the nightmare I’d been sold and more like a dim little theatre of my own making. Being paid to do yoga while someone is watching. There is something almost obscene about how ordinary parts of it can feel.

Nobody touches me. I can kick whomever I want. I have autonomy. That alone changes the moral architecture of the whole thing. I touch myself, and when I do, I discover that I really like to make sure that the man on the other side of the platform comes, and he comes just for me. What surprised me was not only the pleasure, but how quickly I liked the feeling of being the one in command of it.

The power I feel, the cum that I see, makes me stupidly wet. It is ridiculous, intimate, transactional, and real all at once. He is there, telling me how gorgeous I am, gasping, giving $20 tips just for being nice, before leaving telling them I wish them the best in life and they wish me the best too.

The thing is, readers, I never expected to like it this much. That may be the hardest part to admit. Am I a whore now? Am I an easy girl? These are old words, inherited words, and they begin to lose their authority the moment my body tells the truth. The moment my panties get soaked when I make you hard. Desire looks different when it also covers the month.

I am not romanticizing this, I am simply refusing to lie about what it gives me. I am not leaving my job to do this. But doing it makes it possible for me to actually have time for myself, pay rent, have money in case of any accident, any little thing. If I want to go to the mountains I might as well just fucking do it because in a month I will have enough money to reallocate. Maybe that is part of what feels so dangerous about it: not the sex, but the possibility.

Maybe this is fun for today, maybe it will lose its charm. For now, let me have this without turning it into a tragedy.

-mia

Monday 23rd

12:41am

I am on day 2 of no tobacco, I might fall tomorrow, I can feel it. I am viciously writing tomorrow’s perfect day routine based on well-being proofed science and data I’ve collected from my diary, more specifically, about my “special time of the day”, when at around 3-5pm on weekdays I start doubting my entire existence and the way it has been regulated these past months is by taking half a bottle of wine and weed. I don’t know what causes this fogginess at this time yet, but it has occurred naturally the last ten years of my life. Six years ago, I started numbing with substances. Only a year ago, I started drinking between weekends, “to decompress”, I say to myself each time I take my wallet and run to the Chinese store. Everything needs to be perfect. Goddammit. Dancing. Writing. Morning music. Lessons. Contact with the outside. Sleep. Buy groceries, but please be pretty while you do. Buy your pills. You only have a week’s worth left. Don’t buy weed. Perfect Mia. Perfect skin, so don’t eat shit. Yes, and why don’t you start tracking your calories while you are at it? Fucking hell. Maybe that’s why I fail at doing, at executing. Because if its not perfect I don’t want it. Because if I’M not perfect, I don’t want it. And that’s my fucking downfall. And if I keep on this course, I might never achieve fucking anything as well.

Perfection is the killer of creation,

perfection is the killer of creation.

Perfection is the killer.

Entropy always wins.

Do not go against it.

Slap me at my wrists

// Be kind, please, you need it, please, I beg to my brain one more time before sleeping.

1:50am

I think I just spent thirty minutes looking at celebrity puffy faces after years of many injections. Looking for that perfection. Way too much. I also thought of the beautiful ones who look good. Perfection. A little projection on the upper lip. A little botox. I think of Foucault and biopower. What the fuck? What is wrong with me? I need to stay away from social media, I repeat over and over, as a lost declaration of no will. I recently discovered this post about biopower and our bodies that explains in a much more precise way what I want to say.

Off to watch my true crime series while I light up the last joint that is left and tomorrow will be a new, fabolous day, sensual, in control, bright eyed.

I probably won’t dream tonight, and that is safe.

xx

7:50am

I am sure I dreamt a lot. So many adventures, I remember myself swinging through trees like a monkey. Not much, but maybe everything. Freedom. I woke up at 3am, and pulled the last smokes out of the joint. Made a sandwich, went back to sleep. Then at 8 I need to shower or else it will become a heavy duty mission later. I take my 1.5mg of anxiolytics. I wonder, do people struggle this much to maintain a normal fucking routine?? Probably not, Mia. Fuck. Who will you be if you can’t even decide when to take a fucking shower??

intermission: 8:05

I showered, hurray! I put on pimple soothing cream and argan oil over my hair. I feel more or less the same but my brain reduces stress when it knows it did a human normal thing! And I still have an hour and forty minutes to my first class! Time to write folks!

8:45am

Yesterday autumn started, and two days ago I took out my favourite sweater. His navy blue sweater. I love chilly mornings, fog in the distance, the promise of the mountains (soon, soon); the hyper-romanticism of the mundane seems to work easily on rainy and cold days.

My mind is softly sedated. Not too much, but not little either…

1:16pm

I haven’t eaten at all. Gave three lessons. Drank a glass of wine. Two coffees. A glass of water. Not weed. I want it so bad. I plucked my eyebrows even more. I look dramatic and elegant. Or that’s just what I say to myself. I just reposted a text about not getting smaller, not fighting food, and here I am, lying to myself about “fasting” while drinking wine. I won’t be too harsh on myself today. I have one goal only. Create a new account that will allow me to meet men willing to pay a month’s worth of rent by just talking to them and smiling and reacting and proving I am not brain-dead and that I can talk about literature and science and philosophy while I bat my big eyelashes; “you won’t find me in other girls,” the unconscious message I usually give to my dates.

1. I need to choose the best five pictures I can find

2. block countries and any guy I’ve dated in the past (they usually stay in these apps for years)

3. prepare mentally for the flood of messages

4. block the ones that seem off / ask for sex

I have three more lessons to go and I’m diving deep into it. About to take my other anxiety pill dose before it comes up by itself. What a life.

6:38pm

The working day is finally over. Last class finished forty minutes ago and I spent the other forty preparing for tomorrow. I have failed. I inhaled smoke from the almost dead and possibly poisonous weed pen at around 5:50pm. The desired effect was achieved. I inhaled again and again, and again. And I have drunk half a bottle of wine throughout the day and I never thought I would be like her, like my mother, and here I am, repeating patterns. I don’t day-drink on weekdays, but today I felt the need to ease myself into this week and it seemed like the only way I could cope for now. Not glamorous. Not pretty. Just sad. I remember her and it’s just sad. She hates me. She demonizes me.

I have not opened up my “dating” profile yet. My heart skips a beat every time I think about it, and then I think of the wine and know that this must be done one way or another. I knew it. This is the reason I am choosing to numb. I don’t want to do it. I have to. I don’t know other way. I won’t start pitying myself right now. I refuse to play victim. I have control of what I can and what I give. I need to believe it.

I need to believe it or I will fucking die

9:36pm

Cooked for myself and my body said “Thank you!” and I smiled back. Plantain with avocado and cheese. Sweaters are out of the winter bags. Autumn is here. My roomate came out of his chamber and comically screamed “Christmas is here!”— we both laughed and made jokes till our bellies hurt. I did fail. I smoked a cigarette he gave me an hour ago. We opened the bottle and talked about life.

I bought groceries with my $15 left and felt like god:

• parmesan cheese (most expensive thing)

• wine

• instant chocolate oatmeal (one serving)

• rice

• three cans of tuna.

I then opened the account. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t took me more than five minutes. I feel alright. I told my roomate about it. It felt less heavy. He didn’t fight against it, but didn’t say much either. I overheard him saying that he felt powerless over “my friend that is completely alone, without parents” to one of his best friends. Yeah, I guess that must be me. Haven’t checked the platform messages since I opened, but ten minutes in and three guys had reached out in my DMs. I was impressed by the fact that one seemed very handsome, very successful, and knew the dynamic. It also makes me wonder why. We’ll see. I don’t feel like opening messages right at this moment. I opened the other bottle and shared it with my friend. Today was a rollercoaster but nothing felt better than just getting through it. I’m still here.

I realize five minutes later that, the little moments like this, my roomate, the wine, the mischievous cigarette, will probably be my favourite memories twenty-five years from now.

11:45pm

Time to doze off. We started watching our current series and I could only last an episode. It was good, it was pretty good. I just needed to go inside, be alone, have a cigarette, and think and think, and that’s good. Because now I have a plan, yes, indeed. “To be bored is to open the gates”, I heard a multitude of people say in different ways. That seems to be true. As soon as I touched my room after my skincare routine and taking off my crusty contacts that need to be replaced, I opened my computer, started typing, read about exorcisms and The Roman Ritual; things that need to be researched for my book. A book that will not be so much talked about here but will be in the process, probably for many years. An idea that came to me a long time ago, and only expands in the making. I made the biggest leap of making the (semi-done) outline and verifying it with facts, thus it will not be about this time and age, but very much so connected to it. I need to be precise, sharp.

I once heard at a then local—and now famous—writer (and good person) say in a bar after a book presentation: “Never smoke weed if you want to be a good writer.”— all her writer friends agreed. The musicians laughed while they fired a joint. I guess I’m either.

Goodnight.

Tuesday 24th.

7:09am

I like waking up early, get a taste of quietness that surrounds every corner of what seems to be the Earth. I only left my bed to put on my sweater and socks. It’s now cold, cold, cold. I type and the computer metal feels like a sharp freeze in my hand. Almost three hours till work starts. I’m thinking of letting today go. I can’t. I need the money.

7:45am

I checked my profile. Messages were answered. Two classes prepared from my bed. No big drama. No big anything yet. I think I must move my body before I start suddenly drinking wine at 12pm. Regulating brain matter. Regulating soul matters. Dancing was and always will be present.

This morning: Aphex Twin’s Soundcloud Ambient

8:39am

Where did an hour fucking go?

I can feel the day creeping in. No exercise yet. Just coffee, opening the windows, smelling the coffee, smelling the fresh and cold air. I want to write the outline of my novel. I want to do some research before the day starts. I don’t want to work but I have to. I swear to god if I had some money saved I would just go somewhere else and start over. I am so tired of everything, everything. At the same time I can’t submerge in my tears, though I am lucky to be able to work from home and at least cover food and necessities. I must be a little more grateful. A little more happy, I remember myself. Time to really move the body. Time to dance. Time to shower and condition. Time to put on the red lipstick. Time to sell myself to the world.

11:23am

I had an almost full-blown panic attack in the morning. I was about to delete my teacher account, just date and fuck men, and don’t give a fuck about anything. Seeing my Polish student’s face full of happiness after the class ended felt reassuring. Thank god I was able to push through that first class, my other student cancelled, and still got paid, so suddenly I have an hour and a half free, with a smile, with a smile…

I am tired of having to live around “surviving” and “just making it through today.” I am genuinely tired, and at the same time I already made plans so next week will be much less workload, will get off earlier, and the week after that I will leave even earlier. Scheduled a full week off next month. The day is so beautiful I want to walk around. I had a glass of wine. Shocker. Whatever.

I have twenty messages waiting for me to answer.

9:15pm

My eyes hurt and are spilling tears all over the place. I made it through the day, just to be rewarded with food being stolen by the delivery guy and then my screen on my phone breaking and then Big Sir writing to me and calling to me over and over again saying how everything would be resolved if only I accepted him back. I want to die. I feel like dying. Nobody is there for me. I haven’t eaten yet. I feel so alone. I can’t create. I can’t think. I want to throw it all out and stop feeling and start fucking guys and getting high with horse tranquilizers and forget this reality even exists. I’m on my limit and I can’t live like this anymore. I just want to breathe. I have no parents. I have no secret uncle. I have no big brother, I have a dad who was deported and gaining less than me and a mother who publicly says she wants me dead.

10:37pm

Took 2mg of my meds an hour ago. I feel the weight of the world recede. I just want to be sedated.

Now I laugh, half-hearing my roommate’s jokes while my mind gets into a fog and everything, even the bad memories, disappear into the night.

Wednesday 25th

2:09am

I miss when you compared our love to the obsessive and chaotic but rule-abiding love from Phantom Thread. I miss you telling me that I’m Daniel Day Lewis, the obsessive, silent type. Which of course is only a projection of your fantasies. That you were Alma, making me push into despair to be reborn once again, and only you knew my secret, only you could make me forget about decay. I miss you. I want to hear your voice. I reach for the phone and call you. I do it without thinking and now I only have five hours to sleep but that doesn’t matter.

7:38am

Yesterday was one of the most emotionally intense and charged days I’ve had in quite a while. My mind is hazy and the facts seem scrambled all over the place. Coffee from my country is brewing and life seems a little nicer. I need to move my body. No alcohol for today. Small wins. I feel like a hospital patient counting eating as a win and making art as the ultimate win. I took another dose of my anxiolytics.

I can feel my thoughts fading away.

9:57am

I danced for thirty minutes, starting from Pharaoh Sanders, ending with Death Grips. Showered, looked at how my body has grown a bit, ever since I stopped counting calories three weeks ago. I don’t care. I know it is NOT normal to notice three pound differences in our body but I fucking do and I don’t need a scale to know. I am not feeling ashamed, but surely I want control back at some point. Not now. Not when my brain is hurting.

I put my medieval black dress on. I look like a hot witch. Lipstick on. Mask on.

11:42

Big Sir sent me money out of nowhere, as an act of desperation, without me asking. I just paid my therapist and medication. Life starts to feel way more calm right now and suddenly I don’t want to die. Suddenly I have some basic needs covered. What for him is almost nothing, for me is everything. He tries to manipulate me into really feeling this feeling, if you get what I mean, this feeling of home. He knows that I’m one text away from saying: “Yes, save me, please.” He knows my vulnerability. I do not feel sad or ashamed. I feel finally at peace, for now. I would never go back.

1:50pm

I feel at peace. What can I say? Not peace, no, not exactly that. More like… a sense of normalcy? Is it the money? My roommate randomly bought sushi, for both of us. I bought a nice bottle and we drank only one glass of white wine, Microblank in the background, while he explained Berserk to me and I got to know the characters and the “bad” one, Griffith, seemed so ethereal and beautiful. What struck me was the part when he said that he had to prostitute himself once to gain more money and access more power. I haven’t read a page yet. He seems like a very strong character, I say. My roommate then looks at me as if I’m crazy. Yes, but he is very much evil. I think of myself. I think of my worth. But none of that matters when sushi is in front of you and a nice glass of wine is there. This is the best day so far in almost two weeks.

6:51pm

A student gave me a review today. She said that I was the best teacher she’d ever had. I remembered why I keep going.

Art has been paused for the past three days. It is one of those things that really sting, that really hurt. Three days without producing anything of worth and I already feel my humanity crumble. I’m not trying to sound pretentious. I am on the verge of not having anything and yet the tiredness after all these events has led me to just stare at the ceiling, hot lemon water on hand, no music, no sound. Maybe that’s what my brain wants now. Maybe it is not a time for expression. Time for introspection with caution.

10:29pm

The weight of the world falls back. A friend is coming over. Turn the light on. There are a couple of very decent guys on my profile DMs. They look like people I would date, and to be fair, I fantasize every day with older men. There. I fucking said it.

Thursday 26th

6:57am

I look through my window and all I see is a profound, almost blackish blue colour permeating the corners of my curtains. Autumn is here. I am wearing a sweater for the third day in a row and the cold is suddenly appearing as if it never existed. It’s always like that with seasons, isn’t it? When winter comes and your hands freeze, it seems as if you haven’t experienced it before. Some months later, in the middle of the subway, you are experiencing heat and dozens of different body odors that permeate you. And it is summer and you don’t even remember feeling cold. And you wish for what you don’t have.

I had too much to drink last night. I remember the call from the boy I had at two in the morning and how he pouted when I told him my sleep necessities. “You don’t love me anymore, okay, go.”—he teases me while he laughs and looks at me through the screen, madly in love as ever. We long for each other. I think we better exist when we don’t have each other, because when we do, it is too much, everything is too much. When we are apart, the longing we feel feels surreal, almost too intense to be real. I remember many people saying something along the lines of how humans want something more when the object is not there. I think about it…

11:35am

Yesterday felt like landing back into my body for the first time after leaving it alone on another planet. Leaving that fight-or-flight state where I resided for two weeks. I thought of death more often than this week. I danced for fifty minutes. Brain goes brrrrr. Been texting back and forth with one guy that seems like a very promising CEO who wants to take me wine-tasting. Something to think about.

A friend whom we will call M came over, brought a six-pack, and the three of us watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World because we hadn’t seen it since high school and we laughed and realized we were now around or past the same age of some of the characters and that alone was an experience, to say the least. Not only because of what we compared adulthood to in our teens and now, but because I also could now rewatch the movie where my favourite manic pixie dream girl from when I was thirteen, Ramona Flowers, appeared and was resignified. It felt liberating, I won’t elaborate for now, but maybe I will make a post talking about the different women/girls that shaped us, and I say us because I know I’m not the only one.

It also boiled down to another major things:

1. I upgraded my pay with some students and all of them accepted. This translates into less hours, more money, more time to actually do the things I love (now I suddenly realize we are all just buying free time by working. Again, I don’t make the rules. I need to adapt, or succumb to the depths of sorrow).

2. Big Sir has an 80% chance of sending me enough money to relocate. He bought a ring out of desperation a year ago. He told me about selling it and giving me half over text yesterday at night. He had come to this conclusion with his psychologist that after all that he has done, it would be “the least” he could do. He will go on Monday to check its value and determine the amount. I honestly wouldn’t feel guilty at all. This would change it all.

What data do I get from all of this? That without basic survival needs I always break down to the point of not wanting to do anything anymore, going back into a reptilian state of freezing, of just letting myself go into an abyss. Yesterday and Monday were the perfect examples of that. I need to trust my body when it wants to eat. When it wants to live. When it wants to just rest, rest. Create, create. Oh, to be still, to be still.

7:50pm

I made it. Four classes. Half a bottle of wine gone. Danced for another forty minutes tonight. Listening to Grouper. Alien observer, in a world that isn’t mine, sings Liz Harris. Lentils are cooking slowly. People want to talk to me. I don’t. I want to be left alone and with my thoughts. I am happy for the first time in a long time. I’m smiling, I’m smiling. My efforts seem like something and somehow not everything is lost. I can finally see… and I hope not to forget. I just needed to push through, to get some security, to feel in homeostasis once…

10:28pm

I only want to sleep and not think. Not the time to write.

Friday 27th

7:11am

Fuck me again. I went to sleep late. My alarm is set for 9. Why the fuck do I wake up so early. I can’t go back to the land of my dreams. I watch some TV show for the second time. I waste my precious three hours before work in watching instead of creating. Whatever. It has to be what it needs to be.

10:17am

Woke up, went straight to dancing Sewerslvt for fifty minutes, showered, got ready, feel good. Started working on a drawing. Tired, a bit foggy. My period is supposed to start soon… oh do I look pretty. Only three lessons ahead. No alcohol. No smoke. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

3:29pm

I’m slowly looking through the window and there is a mosquito on the other side. I’m pretty sure he can feel me somehow. I move my index finger and he moves with it too. I suddenly snap the glass and he flies away. A grey sky is what’s left. Friday. The city slowly coming alive again.

Up until thirty minutes ago, I was on the verge of a panic attack. I got scared of myself. I started to contort my face as if I was in physical pain, slowly crying, trying to hug my arms, trying to reach into anything that might hold me.

A day away from my period, I remember again and suddenly thoughts become 10% easier to ignore. Aside from a bad case of CPTSD, I also struggle heavily with PMS around my period, the feeling of wanting to die coming to visit whenever it wants. Some months I just have cramps. Some months I want to get off my skin. My chemical brain is shit and I feel useless and now nothing makes sense.

My fingers are typing but my soul has left my body. I have plans of meeting a friend soon. Maybe it’s the best.

11:52pm

I decided after a whole despair day, which of course it coincides with he day before my period, that socializing would be productive and staying inside, not seeing my friend whom I loved dearly and finally had made time for me, truth to be told, a very busy person that I admire. Because their craft comes first always. Watching them grow since we were kids showing each other music, to see them mastering what they love with true dedication and passion. They chose to hang around with my jokes and thoughts for around four hours, and I decided it was time for me to leave.

We talked about the deepness of the state, of Trump being a Russian asset brought to destabilize “the West”, Lana del Rey, our country’s state of being and our worries.

I told them and their roomate about my life. They listened, they listened while we rotated for different vapes around. THC 99% concentrate. Nicotine 5% concentrate blue razz. A sudden bowl of grass. We laughed, we contained each other. Teenagers today don’t know about One Direction, said one of them. We laughed and then became a bit sad. I guess that’s when we started watching Lana del Rey videos and twenty minutes later I went back home in a dark and long and longing bus.

Saturday 28th

9:07am

Five in the morning greeted me with the stabbing pain of cramps and blood on the sheets. As I had predicted, the dark veil that covered reality started to recede, as in an exchange with some spirit for my mental pain to transform into body pain. I said thank you. The day is gray and beautiful. I read this week’s diary with caution. I look at it and think, Poor girl.

I discovered that I can’t trust my own thoughts. I always knew, but accepting it even more was the first step into some change. Instead of collapsing, which I kind of did but in a much less harmful fashion, I cancelled lessons and received an unexpected amount of money that made me access the things I need.

Watched an episode of Planet Earth to soothe, brushed my teeth, hair, and now about to go buy groceries while the city is still asleep (or at some afters), and sounds don’t make me jump.

I keep working on my painting. It’s a beautiful genderless character among the stars that I sadly can’t share for now. I look at my lines and the stars and the character’s gaze and I’m contained and content.

11:36am

Why the fuck did I try to get solace from the boy? It never works. It’s a big fucking mess. As always. Him trying to resolve my problems as if they were theirs, not listening to me, not listening when I say that I feel like dying, he insisting that I should add more hours at work, me repeating that I feel on my limit, just for him to say that “everyone" feels at their limit but they should keep working. No, you don’t understand what it feels like wanting to die, boy. I don’t need your tips and tricks. I need a shoulder to cry on. I told you I couldn’t keep talking, goodbye, and I hung up. I said sorry three minutes later. You said I was mean. That this “dynamics” where not good for you. I told you I had to put a limit, it wasn’t me being mean. I couldn’t keep hearing this person saying: “Keep working more”, when the only thing that has saved me this last week was letting go of three students. He will never understand. He is not the one for me. I am deeply, fucking alone. He will never go to the mountains and live with me. He, the one who gives me the most joy, doesn’t even understand. Nobody does. And I don’t fucking care anymore.

2:43pm

All is good. My thoughts cannot be trusted. He called back and said sorry and we never really fought. Ugh my fucking god this is so exhausting. I ordered food knowing damn well I shouldn’t. Another pill to the mouth.

8:38pm

Talked four hours and seventeen minutes with my best friend from my home country. I can’t do anything but laugh at the adventures, misfortunes, good fortunes, and craziness that we both get into every month. It feels as if every time we decide to talk, that is, once every three weeks, we have a new life, a new prospect, a new job, a new project. This friend, whom I will call Sandy, is the kind of girl you will notice and stare at in the street by just how she carries herself, unapologetically, fashionably, and slightly haunting. Big eyes with a small freckle on her sclera (white part of the eye). Long but short fringe and black hair. Ribbons, ribbons everywhere. Sandy is probably cursed in the best way possible. I love her dearly. We joke that in another life we were sisters.

9:55pm

Ordered food again. Can’t get up of my bed because of cramps. This will be a short and sweet night. Much to reflect but no brain to compute. That’s a tomorrow task. For tonight, only sleep. Did not shower today. Do not care.

We might do camwork.

Sunday 29th

11:32am

As I go over this same diary over and over, while being stupidly high off some weed butter, I realize that I just documented one of my most chaotic weeks of this year so far. I have no more words to say for today, except that I will watch Lilya-4-Ever and finish my painting and make music. Sleep early.

Thanks to everyone who read until here.

With love,

Mia.

The weather channel says that there will be a storm coming soon. I only see the big bright sun for now but there are heavy clouds in the distance. In Shadow of the Valley is playing softly in the background. My roomate is awake and drawing. I can hear the silent retreat. Yesterday my roomate and I cried most of the night because this might be the end of it all. The first person I came to live alone with at eighteen and the last I will live in here too. I think he is secretly in love. He confessed it once, years ago, I thought it had disappeared. He is the type of guy that will never tell. I’m a liability to our own love as friends. He hasn’t said a word yet.

The seven year stay overseas over the bright and mighty city. My friend group slowly disappearing until each went away and promised to come back and never did. Some are trying to still find a job back home. Two became accidental fathers. One got married. Two died. Everything ends at one point. And I’m not against change. If anything, this is the most excited I’ve been about it for a while. Can you see that it’s not that the sourness, the sadness, is not there. Of course it is. I can feel this city creeping under my skin and at the same time its saying: “Hey little lover, won’t you miss me?”, with big, beautiful eyes. But this day was written in the stars. I always knew that around this time in my life, past 25, I needed to go away, somewhere, anywhere, relocate and explore all the different colors and shapes of human experience while my senses still soak it all in.

It’s almost thirteen years later. A complete, haunting, thrilling, and beautiful life all over again. Its sad. Very sad. I will cry ferociously when I leave. But I dream of cocoa and fresh guava and plantains and strawberry fields. The mountains. They are calling me, I say once again. “What would your life look like in the mountains? I will ask you this in our next session.”— my therapist asked me over our last meeting less than a week ago.

I dare to dream.

1! 2! 123 GO!….

four days later…

Saturday 21st. 12p.m.

Reality struck in my head like a bullet and made the tears flow and I let the gates open and the carefully ritualized day has become a day full of doubts. I am not making enough to make my dream possible.

I dream of living in the mountains…

But how?

I am frantically moving, my mind is moving fast and fast, but my body is still. My vision is a bit blurred, I hear JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure play in the background where my roomate smokes weed and I sit on my computer with numbers and bills and a long list of things I need, including therapy, that exceed my possibilities, while preparing lessons for later in the day.

“Like, in what do you spend money on?”— he dared to ask in a sarcastic and hurtful manner three days ago, realizing little after that he makes double of what I do. I exploded on him. He said sorry eventually. He was mad himself and did not wanted me to leave. The look in his eyes seems to be more understanding this last few days, at least. My only friend. Who also wants to possess me. And I hate it. I stopped going to therapy for two weeks because our electricity bill was over seventy dollars of what was expected. I broke down yesterday on the street because I could not afford to buy coffee.

I know what I need to do. It is not nice, it is not easy.

I wanted to avoid this at all costs, but my mind finds it easy to dissociate when needed. I star playing this character, this seducing little doe eye’s persona that slashes herself with Dior and uses her little Mary Jane shoes and little black dress with a choker that screams: “You could fuck me raw and hard”.

The idea of having dinner with a man and him paying me a full month’s worth of rent just because I make him laugh for two hours seems like the only option in my life right now. But I want you to know this:

I do not feel ashamed.

I do not feel morally wrong.

I know them well.

I can protect myself.

I have a goal.

What hurts is not the act. It’s how much I didn’t want it to come to this. I believed hard work would be enough. And now I understand. I am always one unexpected bill,
one cavity, one mistake away, from losing even a decent life.

It’s not so poetic anymore, is it?

I made you uncomfortable.

Didn’t I?

Coming with more soon,

-mia

8:52am

Your limbs stretch out to me, I remember that line from The Microphones. My eyes are wide awake. Work again. Work again until you make that money that will save you. I dreamed of him getting lost in a big crowd. Again. Love won’t save you, it almost destroyed you. But you want it of course, you want it. Who else is going to pay for my little red dress? When your hands touch my thighs, will you notice the difference if I stopped putting cream? Is it all still a performance? I wonder. I wonder if work is yet another performance about showing the world how big I am. How ready I am. But I’m not. I want to live in a cocoon that never existed. A place called home. A place where I can make songs during the day and write during the night. Have a kid or two. I wonder…

No, working is not killing me. It is setting me free. Love was killing me, and I set free. Until I heard your voice again yesterday and you told me you will wait for me. You will even look for flights. A young boy that loves me, how adequate. I love you, I’ll love you forever, boy.

10:20am

Wrapped a thirty minute session on Ableton before work starts. I guess I can confess I am making an EP. Finishing song 2 demo. I wonder if psychology is something I really desire. I finished third year. I don’t have money to go back. I want to work with kids, but I could be doing something else entirely. “You have your whole life ahead, kid.” —I heard a character in a movie tell someone my age yesterday. Psychotherapist. Yoga instructor. Los Andes calling me. I can start over at a small university over there. I can…

I think of my home country, of the little villages, the soft spoken people, the mist over the mountain range, the cows splattered all over. Abundance. The cheapest and best coffee. The mountains. Here I feel my own lack. The city is killing me. Last time I went outside a woman was beating a man in the face. Yelling, yelling all the time. I need to make a decision in the next month. Will I stay for two more years or will I go? Could I ever forgive myself for not finishing in one of the world’s best universities? Could I understand that maybe the diploma is just an ego play where I prove myself I can get through the “best”? My ego knocks again and tells me: You can be even better at that other university. The best, in fact. And if you aren’t you prove you have failed. If you were good here, imagine yourself in a public low-rated university over the Andes.

The best. I always dreamt of being the best at something.

1:26pm

I think I might leave this city and return to the country I call home. With my income, I can rent an apartment and live comfortably for half of what I make in one of my favourite villages. I roam and roam the fantasy and picture myself, messy braids, happily getting dirty in the highlands and fog hugs my whole body and solitude is not scary and I can smell the wet grass and now my hair is wet, a compressed cloud passed by. It makes me smile. I dream and dream. I could finish my E.P. My book about the mountains written over the mountains. I dream, I dream.

7:21pm

The working day is coming to an end. The sun settles in the distance. My last student said goodbye twenty minutes ago but I keep thinking of the call we had earlier and I haven’t moved an inch of my body and I remember how you said that if I ever wanted to go back you would come with me to the mountains and I never felt a love so pure.

Yes, you said you will start therapy now. That this love has never felt so sure and so real and I feel it too. Yes, sometimes love is not enough but what does two people who keep falling in love in different moments of their lives over and over again say to you? Falling in love over the course of eight years. Separated by distance. Separated by lust. Would you call it nothing? No, you wouldn’t. Because it is impossible to call simplistic to one of the universe’s greatest mysteries for the human race. Love.

7:32pm

Lentils are slowly cooking and my stomach growls. The glass of wine I had is not happy with the morning oatmeal and screams for more. Soon, avocado and lentil soup will enter my stomach and fulfill me. My ex boyfriend from highschool will call soon. His divorced parents are apparently coming back together. Jesus is grand, I guess.

7:42pm

He is not answering. I guess he must be busy. I just made an apple pipe and grind the Critical indica weed strain that makes my body feel like fucking floating in heaven and suddenly I don’t care about anything anymore and yeah, it is true. It is true that weed may make you care less but who fucking cares. The irony. I have 5 subs less since my last post and it makes me think about the poor quality of my writing. Maybe you are right, five people, maybe I lack originality and it’s poorly written. Maybe I just float from sentence to sentence and what I say may not serve as a mirror to you. Maybe it is not that deep and people just want to read a redemption arc which has yet to come and you are all disillusioned. This is my temple of words, I remember. This is the temple that saved me last year from my own self. I don’t care. My own self infliction that I masochistically enjoy.

9:34pm

Showered, moisturized, finally ate the lentils with avocado and two bread slices with butter and a glass of chocolate milk. It all feels very soft. Except for a friend I’m seeing soon for a concert, who suddenly, has turned cold to me for reasons I don’t understand. She has always swung around depression and joy. Between extremes. I say I don’t understand, but I do. I guess your indifference hurts. I repeat it is not personal and open the last episode of the series I’m binge eating like a dog.

Night falls over me not as a romantic love tale, but as another dawn spend on recovery and reflection. I could be flying soon to my home country. I could dream it will never bore me. That the mountains will be enough. But deep inside I’m scared I’ll become attracted to the madness again. One thing I know for sure: I romanticized the idea of coming back, I got a taste of it, and suddenly I don’t want to go out of the house anymore. This city may serve no purpose to me for now. My circadian rhythm is un tune with the sun. This city never forgives that. You sell yourself to the night. You must or they will eat you alive.

The tower fell. The man left. The boy left. Nothing but my fingers to please me. I felt naked as I ran through the city, so I decided to hibernate for a while. My new skin started to form months, even years ago, but now I don’t recognize myself when I see my new scales in the countless reflections on the windows of unknown cars. I have decided to stay indoors, mutating, learning each part of my new body and kissing it softly.

Where is your mouth?

Where is your mouth when I need it to spit on me and purify me?

Where are your hands?

Where are they when I need them to slap me back into reality?

Oh. yes. it left on the Boeing 737.

//

It’s Saturday and I dreamed of the boy who left. Two weeks ago exactly we were touching our bodies and wandering the streets, laughing at everybody who wasn’t us, who wasn’t madly experiencing what we have. Shutting the curtains down from the blinding sun. Le Samourai playing in the background of the music that our moans produce when we kiss.

What we have… Your mother is sick and you had to go back. I never stopped you or asked you to stay.

“Why don’t you tell me to stay?! I’ll stay for you!”- You raised your voice one last time in my balcony, smoking one cigarette after the next, before I said that you needed home more than me, and before I opened my building door and saw you get into the darkness and disappear. I hugged you and told you it had to be like this. You cried and I cried. You called me after you left and told me you were waiting in the corner. I told you I loved you but you needed to go and see your family. The last card you gave me says that you’ll love me forever. That you will wait.

I had to live the whole fucking week knowing it was real.

The rain came later that evening.

I listened from inside.

-mia

The ashes blind my face, while the fire burns slowly. I watch over the distance, the dark, silent tower being torn to the ground. The tower that I had made for myself and once felt safe started to crumble years ago. My fingers reek of gasoline. I don’t remember the exact moment I decided to throw the match.

This tower was built over my rotting body.

I felt it first when we were arriving from a bar in Tokyo two years ago with a man thirteen years older. The veil of reality crashed when the devil, Big Sir, sexually assaulted me. I tried to forget, I made excuses, at least I was “safe” in this container of the world that money could buy, and after a life of being deprived of such container, I went after anything that shone bright. Even after the event, I still had nobody, except myself, in the corner in the back of my head, trembling, asking to be heard.

I couldn’t pay rent anymore, and suddenly, after an hour video call were I performed what Lana del Rey and movies had shown what being a “woman” is, my life seemed covered. Covered with high quality synthetic drugs, twenty dollar bills being thrown like nothing, nosebleeds, lies, lies, so many lies. Morning “wake up” calls. Late night calls. Available for him anytime. Taxi drives, spending a hundred dollars on a coffee shop inviting all my friends, buying the last trending cream for my face that still breaks-out, facials, high quality coffee, medical insurance.

Slowly, slowly…desire, lust, money, all tied to self-betrayal. I learned to live inside a system that limited myself, because leaving felt more dangerous than staying. The tower, built over my rotting body, crumbled.

I ended things with the devil almost two months ago, and with that, it went away the need to numb constantly, to perform something I am not, to censor myself just to stay safe. The tower crumbles and hums.

I can’t “negotiate” my truth anymore.

Exhausted with a life that never fit, craving solitude and being terrified of it at the same time. Two things that can be true at once: I had what I desired the most, financial security, but the person who gave it to me saw me as an investment were he would eventually marry and incubate his child.

The World was looking at me straight in the face, waiting long enough, almost vanishing, but I ran after it and screamed for it to not to go. I begged to be drawn back, and the World let me.

“You will suffer”, she told me. Everything, anything, except to keep living like this.

It is never a happy ever after. It’s returning to my true self, without censorship, without limits, unless those limits are there to protect me, raw, feral, contained destruction. The thing is that I don’t need to escape anymore, because I am learning to live inside myself. I am learning to embody what is mine again.

The World looked at me and said: “What are you willing to let fall without rebuilding too fast?”

And as soft as the kiss of an angel, the World left.

-mia

There is a mystery within the soft afternoon glow as it unfolds across the clouds in the sky. They might be plotting something. My skin feels a little cold. My tarot cards are stacked after a personal reading. Two notebooks sit beside me: one black, unlined Moleskine so I can roam freely in my own world, and another with dots and Mount Fuji on the cover, for what needs to be done inside the realm of the real (so I don’t ignore the outside).

Typing, thinking, writing. For the first time in twenty-four days, I decide to open the gates of Substack to tell my deepest secrets and sorrows, but, most importantly, to speak about the importance of disappearing, renewal, and being born again.

The importance of fire.

The one that brings light but also death. The one that leads the way and cooks the uncooked, even if you don’t want it to. It isn’t inherently bad nor good; it simply appears when called, and once it’s done, it won’t stop burning until everything is down. The only thing that survives it is the naked soul. Without anything to attach to. Without notebooks, tarot cards, or my favourite Mary Jane shoes to hold my personality into. The naked soul, just as it is: unbearable, and absolutely necessary for growth.

I am proud to say I have successfully stopped buying weed to numb, something I did said in my previous diary entry, and the results are good. The reason behind this was very strange to me, and then it all made sense.

My narcissistic (diagnosed) mother wrote to me the worst 600-words text I’ve ever received, explaining why I don’t deserve anything in this life, after I confronted her about stealing twenty-six thousand dollars over the years. That money was sent by my godfather through her so I could live abroad comfortably, something I only found out recently. During that time, I experienced hunger and fear, and even sold my body for food, while she kept it all.

Her words were more than heavy. She even claimed she had the right to do so, that she was “taking back” what she gave me during my “expensive” childhood, because apparently I was too much.

I am not too much, I repeat to myself, even now.

Instead of collapsing, I just laughed a bit, told her that I wished her the best, blocked her, and suddenly I didn’t want to smoke weed anymore. It baffles me. Old me would have reached the ketamine dealer’s number but honestly? I didn’t and I don’t even have the urge to. Blocking my mother and having no contact has been the most difficult, refreshing, strange, and healing thing I’ve done for myself ever.1 And once you start noticing, and acting in ways that actually serve you, the other “stuff” that poisoned you will fall eventually too, because they too were holding that structure that no longer serves.

The old cements are starting to fall.

Many of the old structures that once served me have fallen like ancient building blocks. Others are still shaking. Others are still there.

My mantra this month:
the point is not to burn it all down,
but to burn with direction.
Destroy with precision.
Build with intention.

It takes time, and patience, and even some money to buy time off, but the work I’ve been doing will serve me forever.

My next post will be up very soon, where I will dive deeply into how I got to this point ritualistically, without dying, and even enjoying it. It will be a guide for those that might seek a bit of clarity, and I hope it will deliver. My hands are writing all over again.

Tonight, I will cook dinner for my best friends. And I remember I am far from alone, even when the “most important person” in the world doesn’t even recognize you.

With much love and gratefulness to be here,

-mia

I move slow like a whale in the open ocean,

careful with the child inside me.

I study suspicious faces,

never really knowing what was mine.

In a world that sharpens its teeth on greed,

I push myself toward what can’t be seen.

A red sun. A cross. Watching me bleed.

Silence—

the reward for being like this.

I cry on the street but that seems fine,

another day swallowed by dark.

You’ll know where to find me:

my heart exploding in half.

In the corner of a lonely street,

I undressed for God one last time.

hoping he will finally see

what he has done to me.

-mia

I remembered you, and then I stopped. I decided to call my good friend M, where at three in the morning we talked for hours and life and death, Fugazi’s drum machines, and the void, and coming to the violent conclusion that:

“The universe is chaos without direction. Without humans to perceive it, there is no love, no hate, no beauty, no horror. Just chaos, its natural state.”

We ended the call when the sun was rising, and my bed was cold, and all my weed gone. Thank god. Before sleeping, I decide to stop smoking weed for two weeks.

It’s ten in the morning and I wake up to a faint ray of light that comes through a badly put curtains.

What shall I do today? How shall my free will be used?

The beach.

I got out of the house, without eating, around midday. I walked around forty minutes until I arrived to the entrance of the reservoir. A sensation of being high appeared in my body. The sky was unreachable, beautiful, and blue. I saw multiple hornero’s, four Southern Lapwings, and a Chimango. I press my necklace hard into my chest.

Couples kissing, children running, and here I am, without fear, without fear of the unknown, I start moving my feet in the direction where the sea hums.

Each step, each bird’s chant, being recorded live on my mind. The sun pouring hard but soft, the dozens of fireflies, that seem about to crash into me at any moment, layed aside as each foot followed the next.

The high buildings started to get lost in nature. No headphones. Just being.

As I arrived and noticed the divine line that divides the sky from the water, I remembered.

The last time I came here was with my friend who passed away two years ago. He climbed a tree and I made fun of him. It was the last time we had fun, and he made a song about that day, and then he died three days later, but it is okay, because I am here, and I remember you.

And there is a couple next to me, and I remember the sky was the same as three years ago. I am here. Breathing.

I sit there longer than I planned to.
The sea doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t need to.
I am here. I remember.
For now, that is enough.

-mia

I went to the other room to give you comfort. Then, I saw you on an instagram story less than two hours ago at some party. I went into my room again. “How did I sleep? How long have you been here? I don’t remember.”— You were mad. You just went to sleep an hour ago. You reeked of alcohol.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You just went in here and that’s all.”

Enough to get me off my rails, I told you to leave.

You left 20 minutes ago, drunk, without being able to form a coherent sentence.

I don’t deserve this shit anymore.

Fuck you.

Tuesday

Today is the day everything ends. Today is the day Big Sir dies in my life, like a flower left too long in a vase, flies circling, the water thick and putrid. I am not scared. If anything, I feel powerful.

I already had therapy, walking through the angles of it all.

“But I want to tell him how he fucked me up, how manipulative he was, what he did to me…”

My therapist answers softly:

“Do you want him in your life after everything?”

No. Of course not. I want him out. Now.

“Then do you really need him to understand?”

She’s right. There is no need for mutual understanding when I’ve never even seen him cry.

When I finally make the call, he thinks I’m half joking. He tells me I will never make it in this life without his support—because who else would ever do that for me?

I end the call right there.

I feel sorry for him.

I go for a walk to clear my head. No hard drugs, remember?

As I approach my building, the mailman smiles.

He’s got something.

Something finally for myself.

The treasure this nation hides.

The card that approves me as a whole human being.

After months and months of struggle, I receive my ID. I can finally work legally here. I am ecstatic.

Small fucking Sir.

Tonight I smell something different. My father is safe, and that makes me okay.

Wednesday

Last night I saw, for the first time in a year and a half, the person I was with before disappearing without a trace in 2024. He looks older, wiser. Same crazy green eyes. Let’s call him M.

I arrive at a fancy restaurant downtown. M points out that the art was made by his new girlfriend. It really is beautiful. He shrugs.

“I’m almost forty. A midlife crisis was bound to happen.”

We laugh.

He tells me how, after we broke up, he left for the ends of the world and forgot about his apartment. He left chicken organs in the freezer. The freezer broke. The tenants smelled death from the street, broke in, and found the place covered in intense political posters—words that would scare a normal person—and his own thumbprint painted again and again across the walls.

We laugh until it hurts. We understand each other effortlessly.

We are deeply, undeniably crazy people.

You look at me, and like the other men I’ve held in my eyes, I see the boy again.

Now it’s my turn. You ask where I was.

Big Sir.

You already know.

Your eyes drop. Your smile disappears. I see pain.

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed me? I was here for you all along.”

“I didn’t know if I could.”

We only dated for three months. You look at me, disappointed. And only now do I understand: if I had asked, you would have done everything, and more. We understood each other in ways I haven’t with anyone else.

We hug like friends who don’t know when,or if, they’ll see each other again. I leave with sour thoughts clinging to me.

Thursday

As soon as I wake up, I write:

I will not let any man take control over me. I will enjoy them, please them, maybe love them—but I am the owner of my own house for the next few months.

I get up early. Tonight I’ll see the physicist.

He’s around forty, smells like wood, is smart and delicate in his own way. Our second date. A book presentation. Let’s call him J.

J doesn’t write much between dates. He likes mystery, or what he calls waiting patiently, without force. On our first date, he sent me home with my legs shaking. No sex. Just soft kisses on my temples. He was shaking too.

I think about him while getting ready to go to the mall.

It’s 1 p.m. I convince myself that spending fifty dollars on a dress won’t hurt me. I feel powerful, sexy. I picture the choker, the smudged mascara. The women in the shop fuss over me, little wows slipping from their mouths. It feels mechanical, but I choose to believe them.

Shopping malls feel like heaven when you have money. Somehow I end up in the accessories section of a familiar brand and walk out twenty dollars poorer.

I know, deep down, that this is a long-term, financially damaging illusion of control amid the disaster of my life.

I let it pass.

You’re waiting for me outside. As soon as you see me, you smile. It’s warm. You comment on my braids. You tell me I look beautiful.

We walk, talk, wander through the gallery. We sit through the presentation without touching. When it ends, I meet your publisher friends—fun, eccentric, crazy-eyed. Like you. Like me. Like all fucking artists.

I make them laugh for ages. You watch me with wonder.

“Let’s get out of here and have dinner.”

Yes.

Sushi. Gin and tonic. Sushi. More gin.

Our conversation never stalls. Out of everyone there, we are laughing the loudest. That makes me smile. There is something here, but I don’t let my mind distort what it already knows.

This is for now.

He won’t save me.

Enjoy what it is.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Yes.

We walk for half an hour to your apartment, talking about stars and supernovas. We sit on the same sofa as last week. The ritual resumes.

I make you laugh. You reveal a little more of yourself. I see pain in your eyes. I see the boy again. You avoid my gaze, then tell me I have a pretty face.

This time I wrap my arms around you, and we fall into silence.

You put on my Spotify playlist. A Love Supreme, Pt. IV – Psalm fills the room. Your fingers slide beneath my skirt. I stop breathing.

You know it.

Suddenly, you have the control.

I become the lamb.

I let you possess me, because I love being possessed by men who smell like wood and talk about stars.

Without a word, you make me finish twice. When it’s over, you say softly:

“I think you’ve been well massaged. It’s time for you to go home.”

You fucker.

What game is this?

What are you doing to me?

You prepare the ground. You insist on control. I’m not angry—only surprised by how deliberate you are.

I let you possess me once more.

No more sexual contact.

I’m home by 3 a.m.

I touch myself thinking of you.

Twice.

You know exactly what you’re doing.

— mia

Here’s a little breath before everything shifts again.

Stay for this 31-daily diary.

previous post: Day 6: I drew a clown

Sunday

Tomorrow I’m ending things with Big Sir, and the calm before the storm feels strangely comforting.

Here’s a small poem that came to me on the bus home:

after many empty wishes
long, dreadful kisses
touching the divinity
of another human mind
will only illuminate my existence

if I tear you apart
leave me out of your desire
you never deserved my saliva
it will run on other chests
our eyes will never meet again

go fuck yourself.

I just got home after spending the weekend at one of my lover’s places. It was intimate and pure in the way only exhausted people can be. Of course, we held each other and watched Phantom Thread after a big fight where we both had panic attacks, but in the end we somehow ended up curled together like little babies.

We went to the museum, stared at ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, wandered through the city, smoked cigarettes. We’re in love. It feels like it. I don’t know what love is exactly, but this seems like it. I can feel it in my chest and bones and breath.

It has been an excellent week, my friends.

No need for hard drugs.

I am strong enough.

I fucking love you, Jonny Greenwood.

— mia

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(If you want to support these December entries, or help me get my cat back securely, I can’t use Stripe yet, so here’s my Ko-fi.)

This is the second edition, and some names might be new to you. Consider reading my first entry, where I talk about Big Sir in detail, and the one about myself and the origin. Go from there, make up the pieces, or stay. You’ll see. I’ll wait for you. I’ll be here.

previous post: Day 4

Friday

I kissed him softly. He made me want to do so much more. We spent hours and hours talking about Jung, the medieval age, psychology, and the philosophy of symbols and their meaning. We went to his apartment, and as soon as we sat he said, “Do you mind if I roll a joint?” And I melted, as you know, and said yes, and we sat on the white sofa. He offered me the joint, water, more wine, or a taxi home whenever I felt like it.

You intrigued me.

I learned something about men. Not only men, but humanity in general.

Beneath that forty-year-old lived face, behind all those stories about travels around the world, beneath that wooden cologne that made me melt, the expensive bill, the perfectly shaven beard—there is this human that just wanted to be held, truly. And because my love expands to every being on this Earth, it was more than genuine, so I did.

Sitting on the sofa, after a good laugh that made him red, I suddenly took his head softly between my arms and started to kiss his temples, no talking, running down to his neck, and oh boy, I could hear him hard breathing and saying, “Oh my god,” and making noises of a man that had not been held for maybe years.

Our bodies transformed for each other’s arms, but you stopped me thirty minutes later and said: “I want to enjoy you slowly. It’s almost three a.m. I think it’s good for you to go home.” It was late. Oh, you are a gentleman.

And you added: “I want to enjoy us slowly. Do you mind taking it slow?”
I won’t deny it—it made me feel insecure for a moment.
Maybe he doesn’t really want me?
Maybe I am not as pretty as others.
He has lived in so many big cities. He probably has a model list of girls he’s been with.

As soon as you finished and everything was becoming quiet, you burst: “I want to see you again on Saturday. Would you like to go to a museum?”
Suddenly, everything made sense.

Beneath the curated LinkedIn man was a little boy waiting to be held.
With every man I’ve kissed, I meet that boy. And I hold him. And he feels seen, because I truly want to see people as they are.

My mother-self appeared. I hugged him hard and long until my taxi arrived.

Later, I texted:
“Holding you felt so right.”

You haven’t replied yet.

— mia

This is the second edition, and some names might be new to you. Consider reading my first entry, where I talk about Big Sir in detail, and the one about myself and the origin. Go from there, make up the pieces, or stay. You’ll see. I’ll wait for you. I’ll be here.

-previous post: Day #2

/////////////

hold my face,
slap it like I’ve always wanted.
shake me to the core of my being,
remind me why I choose to live.

you met me at thirteen
a little girl out of her dream,
drinking your psychedelic ways,
moving her body in strange ways.

powder, liquid, pill, smoke
so many different doors into your soul,
putrid but fun.

take me to the edge
take me to the edge
take me to the edge

let’s meet where
death and life
dance on a thin line,
always almost falling.

I want you I need you I adore you
you almost kill me.
the dance of fire,
the dance of death and life.

//

Wednesday

I have no desire to buy more synthetic drugs. I want to kiss them and say goodbye. It is amazing to me, almost a shock. I don’t want to numb myself. But I can hear its hum. And I don’t want it. I want to feel the emotions completely. If it needs to be ugly and sad, let it fucking be.

Calmness and emergency is what I feel at the same time. I am in a limbo between what is supposed to be happening and what’s actually happening. And that is okay. I am in a bit of shock, I guess.

Big Sir is saying that maybe the cat will not come.

That means that I will have to break with him before.

That means I will have to leave my cat with him till I have four thousand dollars to see him.

That means that possibilities are in motion and my body has never felt more valuable.

I am sorry I don’t have much to say today.

Just processing,

-mia

—Previous entry from December: day 1

2nd of Dec, Tuesday

Most of my life I have been scared of being the person I am. And with reason. The gruesome things I have performed on myself to feel something, the ideas that come across my mind: erasure, dissolution, burning everything to the ground, create again. My body and mind are foreign for each other, but slowly meeting again. I always dreamt of ghosts. I’ve always desired the blood. I see monsters where there are any.

I see the sun shining and today feels lighter, for a reason I can finally name. I open my Substack app on my phone and remember that my life is actually happening, and I see your comments, and suddenly what I have lived through doesn’t feel like a lie anymore. You are my witness.

I feel seen for the first time. In my full, complete, loving and monstrous way.

Substack was the only place for me. It has saved me from forgetting who I am. From shutting down my thoughts, just for them to take an enormous form and shape and transform into something more abstract and intangible. It also made me laugh that one comment said: “I feel your emotions, but I have no idea what you are talking about”. It made me laugh so hard in a good way. I read the post again and thought how right it was, and how right it was for it to be just as it is. Intangible, sometimes not understandable. Words are magic, aren’t they?

Yesterday, I saw a post that made me write this theme, and first I’ll say something very clearly: KEEP WRITING. KEEP EXPRESSING YOUR IDEAS. SHARE. READ OTHERS. SEND DM’S. DON’T BE SCARED OF BEING FULLY YOURSELF, EVEN IF IT SCARES YOU.

THE ONLY WAY IS OUT. DON’T BURY YOURSELF IN. THE MONSTER WILL COME OUT WITHOUT DOUBT WITH SUCH A FORCE YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE YOURSELF.

Now: A fellow writer with less than 50 subscribers made a post that stinged. Because I know that feeling too well. They confessed that even on Substack, they feel like they cannot fully express themselves. Most of them have shut their emotions, most of the time for very valid reasons, either escape or just to survive the day, and sometimes even because others have told them they are just “too much”. As a result, some writers, like them, shut and omit and censor parts of their speech. Not because the words aren’t there. Because they learned that those words were dangerous.

But let me tell you this: your words will free you.

Dear writer, if you have ever doubted about writing a line, of talking about a topic that might “damage” the carefully curated image each of us has created to be socially acceptable, I say:

Fuck them.

Fuck the image.

The most honest version of yourself is the most admirable. It is the best version. It is the endgame.

Aren’t we here to do just that?

Feel the human experience, as the universe experiencing itself, and ultimately discover what our mind is able to create without censorship?1

To fully understand each other, to meet our shadow, to say hello, to become friends with it?

How marvellous.

So I say this again: fuck the voices of the people that have stopped you in the past because you are “too much”.

They can go and be shallow themselves.

-mia

(If you want to support these December entries, or help me get my cat back securely on the 20th, I can’t use Stripe yet, so here’s my Ko-fi.)