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I don’t want to endure any more, I don’t want to keep trying. I have been so good and I am so tired. I just want to die. And I can’t. I won’t. I’ll just keep enduring. But I don’t want to. I don’t want this. I don’t want to pack up my life again. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to start over. I don’t want to go forward. I just want to die.

Why do I have to stay? Why won’t you let me go? Why can’t I just be erased? So stupid to keep asking. As if the answer will be different now. Six years later. As if there will be an answer. When there is only endurance. When always that is what there is.

It will pass but it won’t. It will be buried again. It will be stored away deep in me and I will endure it. That pain that never leaves. Just gets hidden. And I will smile and say all the right things. And I will ask myself to believe it when deep down I know that I don’t.

I wish you’d let me go. I wish you’d take it all away. But you are nothing and I am begging no one. As always. I write but it makes no difference. I need something the world will not provide.

I miss Gene so. When I can’t move for such sadness, I try to think of somewhere I can go in my mind. Some place that’s safe, where I can get relief. And there isn’t one of course. That place no longer exists. Through growing up and losing too much, I’ve lost that too. There is nothing I can imagine that makes me happy. When I ask myself, what do I want? What can I give you to make you feel better? My poor heart wishes for him. His arms around me, his voice in my ear, his presence. And it aches because it knows I cannot have him. That he and everything he brought me is gone.

I wish I could kill myself and I can’t. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to live. I don’t want to be anymore.

I apologize to myself. I know you miss him but I can’t bring him back. I know it hurts but you have to endure. I know you don’t want to but you have to keep going. I am so tired of forcing myself on. Of not allowing myself to die. I’m so tired of this. What a miserable life when all you want is to die but you have to keep pushing yourself.

I want to go back. I want to go back into his arms and that life when I was alive. When I wanted a future. I’m so sick of living this.

I found this in my work notebook. I think it was written a couple months ago, when W was still at the office. I remember getting this sudden feeling and stopping what I was doing to write it. I wanted to talk to him about it but somehow felt it would make him sad. And he was always sad enough.

Beautiful D also walked past as I was scribbling and remember thinking to write extra messily so that she wouldn’t be able to read it. Not that she was looking anyway.

For just a moment, to get a wave of optimism, a feeling I remember yet only just. That feeling that anything is possible. Is this how normal people feel?

Filled with such a sense of sadness that for me this is so fleeting. Tried to hold on to it as long as possible.

I miss Gene. I've missed him so much recently. Not that that's unusual. But it's been really fierce these past couple weeks. When things are really shitty, I tend to miss him extra, no surprise. But I think it also just comes in waves. It's grief, after all. I guess my mind just gets on a track and, even when I think I'm off it, it still comes back to the same things. This couple weeks being Gene, instead of Courtney.

But god, do I miss him in the fall. I think about him less in the summer. But the fall, when we met, when we started things, when he first touched me, when we stayed out and up all night in chilly evenings, eating and walking and laughing and quietly holding hands, in this season I think of him more. Plus there's his birthday, and Halloween, and everything that goes with that. My memories of that year's autumn are so clear. And those of the years since then everything has felt like a blur.

Today is Friday the 13th and I, being who I am, have this silly notion that I should have made use of it. I should have dressed in something witchy or stayed out all night or done something wild. Or just stayed up all night watching horror movies and eaten snacks. But I didn't do anything. I worked my boring job, I cried (again, always, and again) on the way home from work from exhaustion and frustration and self-hatred and desperation, I ate dinner while my grandmother slept in the armchair next to me, I looked for baby stuff (for other people's babies) and then I remembered that I'd missed Friday the 13th and all its magic and wildness and will miss Halloween and will turn 30 and still have nothing exciting happen. Not because there's no magic out there, but because my life is so full of survival that there's no room for being wild, or having fun, or feeling powerful. There's just getting on a subway and feeling like there's no way out, even afer you've gotten off.

I missed Gene suddenly because with him, even a regular night was fun. He would have indulged me when my silliness came out and prompted me to take advantage of the day. He would have understood when I thought that wouldn't it be cool if something spooky or weird were to happen. He would have laughed at my wanting to do something to celebrate. Even if all we had ended up doing was watching movies and eating, how much I miss being able to do that with him. I can imagine lying here, watching anything and, with his arms around me, remembering that it's Friday the 13th and getting a nice little shiver because something weird just could happen.

I wish I could disappear. There's no point to a life that's not being lived. There's no point to this suffering. When nothing ever pays off but you have to keep going anyway. When every day is hell with no relief and no hope for a future. There is no point to this. So why can't I just die? Why won't you let me die?

I want to say I feel tired. But it’s not really tired that I feel, it’s weary. It’s that deeper sensation of exhaustion that you know won’t be fixed by any amount of sleep, any amount of time off. That weariness that goes deep and unreachable, caused not by lack of rest or by overwork, but by fighting constantly against something. That’s more what I feel.

I looked in the mirror the other day, thought about J’s baby and then wondered why I was so unexcited, why my face didn’t change at all thinking about such a big thing. It was supposed to be a joyous thing, a good thing. Something I could be part of, if only as an outsider. But I feel nothing. I mean, I know deep down, somewhere in there, I must feel something. I know I do. I can see that feeling sitting down there. But I can’t feel it. It just won’t come out. Why? I wondered why.

It’s like this with a lot of things now, although this a big one. I just can’t feel anything. I’m supposed to feel happy or bittersweet or sad but I don’t. And the months keep slipping past, and I keep missing more and more, and then realizing that I should have felt something, but all I wanted was to get through it. To endure and let it go. It’s been years really, but over the last few months things are getting worse. I think this was how I was in Japan. Nothing reached me, nothing mattered. I remember talking to Jn at that time and being so disconnected that I don’t remember having anything to say. I must have said things, but I don’t remember what they could have been. I don’t remember feeling much or reacting to much. Because my heart didn’t see much to react to.

I think it’s survival mode. I think I’ve reached the point again where everything in me is working to keep me going. All my energy, all my resources are trying to get me through the next day. Each moment I’m awake is so desperate, so sad and anxious, that I wonder if I’m not just running on autopilot, waiting until I either get through things or crash.

Here is what I’m fighting, constantly and always:

- wanting to die

- deep self-hatred and lack of worth, feeling ugly, slow, ignorant and useless

- needing someone to be there, knowing no one is

- trying to move to a place where I can do more than just survive

- applying (again) to Canadian immigration

- finding a way to quit my job professionally, appropriately and without bad feelings

- continuing the now year-long search for another job, despite the above

- applying for grad school, and thinking about should I and why

- finding a place to live and a way to pay expenses without crying all the time when I come home

- getting the mice and bugs out of my parents’ house so that I’m not worried about them getting sick (my parents getting sick, not the vermin, that is)

- helping my parents live healthier, happier lives

- getting my mom to rehab

- getting my dad to eat and not work as much

- saving so that I can take care of them, as well as myself

- berating myself every time I spend money on food or clothing or accessories or books or new glasses or a dentist appointment or shoes or facewash or shampoo or vitamins or counseling

- finding the balance between escape and despair when all I seem to be able to do is escape because if I don’t, despair doesn’t let me rest for a minute

God, is everyone like this? I’m not even thirty. And let’s not even go into that. The fact that time bleeds away, as I desperately try to change things for the better, while instead just cause that list to grow.

It’s become day by day again. Only this time, instead of as in Japan, there is no security left, there is no comfort of being alone or outside, there is no healthy escape. There is only endurance and time passing and wanting to die more every day as more of my “life” is sacrificed for nothing. As I pretend to live. Do I have the right to be weary? Even that I would deny myself, knowing others must suffer more than I. Except I can’t help it, weariness seems to come anyway.

I often realize suddenly that this is my life. And I don’t understand. Nothing makes sense. Maybe that’s why I can feel so little. Because none of it seems real anymore. This isn’t who I am, Courtney can’t be dead, I can’t be still here, my parents can’t be living in a house filled with vermin, my grandmother can’t be without a memory, my friends can’t be so distant that I don’t want to talk to them anymore, I can’t be someone who struggles to read, to travel, to write. None of this makes any sense. This can’t possibly be my life.

This is why I wake screaming or exhausted, consumed by one of my two extremes; horror and desperation, or resignation and despair. This is why nothing matters. And this is very, very dangerous. Because I’ve been here. And this is when I need to start calling hotlines and having someone to talk to. I survive, I endure, quite functionally on my own. But when death is so remote it becomes simple and easy, I’m still smart enough to know that someone else might need to stop it.

GIVE ME MY LIFE BACK. Give me back my years spent wasted on nothing. Give me the time that I used only to survive. There has been no time for me to live. No time to be alive. Only time to endure, hoping that I was doing enough for things to get better. What a waste my life has been. What a complete waste.

Kill me. Please kill me. Don't make me live anymore. Just kill me.

Please let me die. Don't make me suffer anymore.

I want to disappear. I'd give anything to go. If this is life, I don't want it. I want to be gone. I want to be done. I hate my life. I hate myself. I'm worthless and wasteful. It would be so much easier to be done. But I can't. I have to stay here, a waste of everything. I wish I could just go.

Why won’t you kill me? Please just kill, Make this stop. I want to die. Everything just gets worse. Nothing matter anymore. Please let me die. Please let me die. Please let me die. Please kill me.

Why won't you let me go? Why do I have to stay here? I want this to be over. I want to disappear.

I wake up wanting to die. I wish I could die. What kind of life is this?

I wish you would take me away. I wish you'd let me go. I wish I didn't have to be here in this life anymore. I'm worth nothing. Won't you give me a way out? There's no one there. I beg and I beg but it doesn't matter because there is never going to be an answer. I will never be allowed to leave. There is no one there to make that miracle. There is only the universe. Forever listening, forever unable to do anything. Sometimes, I think of the world around me as being sentient, made up of beings with voices. I know it's my imagination, though I wish it wasn't, when I hear them say things. Maybe it's because I'm so alone, because no one else is there when my heart aches. But it's one of the few comforts I have, even imperfect as it is. Recently, feeling so desperately hopeless and worthless, I look up to the trees and sky as I cry on my way home and imagine that they speak to me. "We're here. We see you, we hear you. We're sorry that we can't help, all we can do is be here." And I tell them I know, it's not their fault. And they ask me to forgive them and though my tongue forms bitterness, my heart knows there is simply nothing to forgive. It's not their fault. I am the problem. I am always the problem. Yesterday it was the subway. Saying it was there, it was holding me, protecting me as I traveled. It could only hold me as a subway does as I cried, but it was there. And I thanked it, grateful for it seeing me, at least. I've long thought that it'd be nice if the great things that we've created, like trains and buildings and computers might have some kind of sentience. I know it doesn't make sense scientifically but in the part of me that still believes in something more, I can't help but imagine them listening, seeing, recognizing us. Perhaps sometimes more perceptive than our fellow people. The plane wants to fly, the train station wants to arch and spread, the Mars rover wants to explore. Can you not feel their joy? I think the trees hear me because no one else is there to. They are there because there is no one else. When I cry, when my heart is breaking inside me, and there are so many people around but not one who will say what I need to hear, the things which can't speak then have voices, so that I'm not left so alone.

Please erase me. Please just erase me. I'm so worthless. There's no point to my being here. Won't you get rid of me, please?

I want to die. Why am I still here? What is the point of this? There’s nothing I want. Except to go back. That’s the only thing I want. I just want to go back and be there with him, before life became pointless again. So what am I supposed to do? Just make some decision and move forward? Even though no decision I’ve made in years has moved me forward. What do I do when everything makes me want to die? When thinking about doing anything makes me want to hurt myself. There is nothing left for me. There is nothing left for me. Why won’t you erase me? Why won’t you let me die? Kill me please kill me. I don’t want to be anywhere anymore. I just want to not feel, to not exist. There is nothing left for me to want. Why can’t you kill me?

I’ve been thinking about Courtney a lot recently. I guess that’s how it goes. Grief comes in waves. For awhile you’re ok, then it washes over you again. My waves last a week or two, it seems.

I wonder what triggered it. Maybe nothing. I think about her every day. The difference is that the memories don’t manifest as clearly. Usually, I just think of her vaguely, my heart twinging at the thought of her entirety, of my whole time with her. But the past week or so has brought me distinct memories, especially of the hospital. Of Willis holding her as she was dying finally. Of her talking to me, for pretty much the last time, about coke floats, as we ate our makeshift ones in plastic cups in her room. At that time, I wasn’t sure she was dying because she didn’t want us to be sure. There had to be hope for her. My mode of operation at that moment was that whatever the future was, whether she would pull out of this or not, I had to be there, I was going to be there, in any capacity that would help. So though bathing my dying friend, helping her use the toilet, debating with her parents about life support were things that even in the moment I begged the universe never to make me have to do again for anyone, I was glad that I could be there. That any comfort I could give was given. I hope that I brought her comfort. I tried to tell her, and I hope she knew, that I wanted to be there. I wasn’t there out of duty or obliagtion. I was there because I wanted to be there. I hope she knew. My feeling is that the dying know. That in the end, amongst pain and the struggle to stay alive, they know. It all comes down to love, in the end. Maybe that’s wishful thinking though.

I also think of other times, good times. Which makes me sad, even as I’m grateful. I remember us, Courtney, Juliana and I, barefoot at the playground near Manhattan Beach, comparing our toes. Juliana’s pinky toe missing the nail and Courtney’s that looked just like her fingers. I remember her at my apartment just before the diagnosis, asking for oh, tea, please. I remember her laughing so many times and saying, omg, Irina! She giggled mostly and then once in awhile really laughed. I remember her playing piano in high school and her prom pictures and glue-and-move-on and times when she took us to Chinatown before Japan and buying that damn frog for Juliana.

In these weeks where I remember, where it all comes back clear and vivid, with such detail, I remember each memory one after the other, coming in and out of my thoughts like birds. And even sitting at the computer, trying to focus on work, the memories come unbidden and my eyes get hot as I try not to cry because I’ve just remembered the sound of my friend’s voice while knowing that I’ll never hear it again.

Willis said, more than once at hospital and funeral, that it was him and her against the world. And I’m sure it was. They were there for each other in ways no one else could be. And it was supposed to be them together, like that, for as long as possible. But it was also supposed to be us. We were supposed to grow old together too. We were supposed to live in houses across from each other and raise our kids together and share our lives. What about our clinic? Where Courtney was going to do the finances and Juliana was going to be the doctor and Jaclyn was going to write and I was going to bake cookies? What about our road trip? What about our trips abroad? You never went to Japan with me. I never got to show you the one thing I’ve accomplished amongst all the failures. Did you know that the skincare set was a hit, the one I bought for my mother that you said was a good deal? Do you know that I wear your necklace all the time because it’s the one that goes with everything and suits me the best? Do you know that you’re still on my Christmas list? Oh there are so many things I need to tell you, Courtney. There are so many things we need you here for. I know you had to go, it wasn’t a choice. But you were supposed to be here. It was supposed to always be us.

The sounds from the woods are so loud tonight. I love it. I think it's a lot of bugs and maybe some frogs. But they are so loud. It's wonderful. I've heard the cicadas recently which always brings me a little blossom of happiness. In the background, very faintly, I can hear music. I think it's our bothersome neighbors. They talk loud and play music outside. I know it's a silly thing to complain about but it's so loud we can hear them even with our woods between us and them, all the way up our little hill.

I hate it but I remind myself to pity them, to feel sympathy for them instead. I know what it is to need constant distraction, to always need something on because being left with just oneself is too hard. If they need their music playing all the time, it's probably because they too are afraid of themselves in the silence. We're all like that now. We escape into headphones or screens or speakers or games. Things that take our minds off the realities we don't want to have to think about constantly.

But I hate it. I hate living so close to other people. Yes, it's their fault for playing music too loud and cackling with each other at 4am. But it's also just living in a place with so many people. I miss Hokkaido so much. I miss the quiet and the expanses of field and sky. Now the closest I get is the sounds of the woods and glimpses of the sky as I run. Sometimes if I look only at the tops of the trees, I can imagine I'm back home. With pine branches reaching to the wide blue above me.

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