But I will stay here. There will be a point where this city starts to feel like home. I will walk the streets with a sense of certainty like I did in Taiwan, to places I know and love. I will buy things I live that give me peace. When people come here I'll lead them to these places and see the city through my eyes and I won't be able to remember how it was to see it as strange and scary. The mess in my room will become my mess, my old lovable Trainwreck of a life that I come home to. The people here will become familiar and warm, and when I am sad they will be enough. When I leave I will miss the talks we have at restaurants and bars late at night.

It's really that I don't feel powerful here, I think. I don't know how to deal with my problems. Home is when you can walk in to a space and know how to feel happy in it. But I don't know how to feel happy here. I'm still trying to do everything right. How do I not make Sandra feel disgusted at my lifestyle? In Sandra's house I feel like I'm still trying to survive. It's been one long ordeal. I am a disaster happening in slow motion. It is tiring to live a life others can tolerate. Let me fall apart in peace. Let me smell and starve and waste my money again. I miss home.

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you are a god of hard lessons but also a god of opium stillness. you are a god of people who struggle against impossible odds and people who break apart in human ways.

you are real right now and the world is kind. please stay with me awhile.

i love you everything in the world i can muster. i love you i love you. thank you for giving me this lifetime to live, i love you.

stay with me awhile. let me remain here in your love.

ps hey lemme get close to kayla, k?

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okay, so, opiates. you know that thing where you realize something is way worse than it is because someone tells you their story? i had that with cherr before the vacation and it hurt a lot. where you know rationally the full extent of something is much larger than you had thought, even if your feelings haven’t caught up. i’m getting that with opiates now. i think i am on an actually dangerous path. i have found myself thinking about buying bags of seeds when i get back, thinking about those early morning walks to the supermarket in the rain, walking down supermarket aisles in a haze lost in your own warmth. it’s not good, it’s dangerous. if i even let myself use them a few times more i could get addicted. i need to tell myself that. i am an addict, i will be an addict, using this is spelling death for myself.

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future zef, how did kayla turn out? i’m secretly praying you guys are dating, but there’s no way in hell she’d like someone like me. my hair is awful… i’m stressing so much over it. i’m such a sucker for cute, for ESFPs.