i am still in pittsburgh. i'm still dicking around at sebastian's house, teaching his children foreign words to use when angry and helping his wife with laundry. i'm assured i'm not overstaying my welcome, but i can't help but feel they're not as keen with the length of my stay as they were when we planned it. i'm heading home tomorrow morning at 8:15 by train, and should be back in boston before dark. in my place i will leave a trail of feathers, scabs, and frayed threads, which has always felt like a fair trade to me.

no one has made me feel unwelcome or unwanted. i have made my very own self feel that way, as i always do. one cannot help feeling such feelings if those are the usual, every day feelings for one to feel. my usual, every day feelings are a little sour, to be honest.

i was such an ugly child. you'd look at pictures and tell me i was fine, but trust me, i was an incredibly ugly child. my empty playground threats came to fruition more than the average brat's ever could, usually to the tune of asphalt and cedar chip embedded in the side of my face and the shins of all those around me, or the very warm, very wet garments of those who would cross me. i didn't know how things happened, just that they did, and that sometimes, i could will someone to wet their pants for telling me i was "a poo-chewing farfignutin." (not to be confused with fahrvergnügen, the german term for the pleasure of driving the volkswagen they were selling you, although i'm sure it was the root somehow.) i was as ugly then as i am now, i swear to you. you'll have to ask my mom for pictures; i haven't a single print.

i feel as if i may have wasted a few miracles back then, and i assure you for that i am eternally sorry, but the indignity i faced as a poo-chewing farfignutin certainly justifies my actions. i promise to do better next time, though. i promise i will turn the other cheek. i promise i will not punish those who are cruel to me. i promise that no matter what, i will not make anyone experience loss of bladder control through via supernatural means. i promise that i will be good and beautiful and right in all i do.

but you know what a promise from me is worth, don't you.

this is no way to treat the elderly.

sometimes when i feel particularly guilty, i sleep on the floor in the kitchen. it throws my neck out of whack for a whole day. i've been told i don't need to inflict pain on myself, but who's going to punish me when i'm bad if i don't do it myself? i'll exact my penance in my own way.

it's just erin, mom and me for thanksgiving this year. that's okay, we all like each other and we all have a good time together. we're all very thankful and very humble and very pious and all of the other things good pilgrims are at this time of year.

we're not making lima beans this year. every year we have them, even though my father was the only one who liked them. this year, finally, we're not making them. i won't have to throw them away when no one takes a spoonful. my mom says she forgot, but i think she just knows it's time.

you set out to do something beautiful, and that's okay. everyone tries to do something beautiful. however, you're not the kind of person that can. you stumble and stutter and fumble and flutter and ultimately end up smelling bad and feeling worse.

you wrap yourself in torn cloth and paint your lips with bitter words, which only serve to make you uglier and uglier. you're alright with that. you can handle ugly. what you're not equipped to handle, though, is duty, and so you run as far as you can from it.

you're running and running downhill through thorns and barbs and dead leaves and in your hands you have what pandora kept for herself. you've got the tiny golden rose from the bottom of the box, and you've torn it away from those who would break it and you run and run and clutch it desperately as you fall and roll and break every bone in your body and you've got prometheus' fire and eve's fruit and you know that you've got the one tiny, shining thing that could save the world, and you're too scared to let anyone know you've got it, so you hide it. you keep it safe. you protect it from the bad men, the strong men, and the selfish men and you keep it, weak little you.

when i was 14 years old, i brought a cat back to life. she was a garbagy stray, about two years old, and she'd been killed by some dirtbag neighborhood kids. i found her between the curb and the lane, where the street-sweeper can only sometimes reach. she'd been there for no more than half an hour, her body was still mostly warm. i picked her up and brought her into the side-yard of my house where only the tiny laundry-room window faced, and held her for a few minutes, like a kid that just doesn't want to give up their favorite library book. after i was done admiring her perfect, tiny stillness, i put my palm on her face and held it there for just a little while. i felt a precious sharkskin tongue taste the heel of my hand. i haven't done it since, because i haven't really needed to.

i named her bullet, and she's a tiny calico with a shaggy coat of an indeterminate breed. i didn't even know cats had breeds, but i've been informed my cat is well shit by several people, one of whom was walking a hairless cat on a little leather leash while wearing christian louboutin shoes with a scuff on the left heel. every time someone tells me she's ugly, i get pretty pissed. how many times has your cat been dead, lady?

bullet is now somewhere around 12 years old. maybe.

bullet and her sharkskin tongue have repaid me for my help more times than i can count. she sat by me, licking the side of my face until the brothers istok arrived, and kept me from getting up and doing worse to myself, or running away, or any other stupid thing i might have done while bleeding, dripping wet, and smelling of cow-tent.

it wasn't as bad as it looked, i promise. they let themselves into my house and rushed toward me, yelling my name like i was a child in a fire and the smoke was too thick to see me crying in my crib. my little cat ran out to them and when flip saw her dart out, he knew which way to go. sebastian looked like my mother, for a minute, because i've only seen that look on her face before. it was that moment when i realized where i was going to spend the rest of my birthday.

sebastian, flip, the dent in their car, and i barreled toward the hospital faster than an ambulance would take us, me wrapped in the pink bath rug my mother had given me for my appartment, when she trusted i was ready to live on my own. i was only about half aware. we got to the emergency room and struggled to keep the bath rug around me while i sat in my wet underwear, blood crusting at the side of my head, tangling in my hair and getting attention. "he hit is head on a sharp corner of the sink." i have a round sink. someone is looking out for me. i was taken in. a nurse looked at my scalp. a doctor looked at my scalp. i lost track of the brothers. someone shaved part of my head, and they started suturing me up. i didn't need to go to the hospital. i would have been fine. the brothers came back, and it was awkward, because i've ruined my life again this week, even though i've been trying not to, and it's always awkward when they see you in the hospital. being in the hospital is what pushes everyone away. they gave me presents and i really liked them, and i am still wearing a hospital bracelet and a ring-pop.

today i ate somewhere in the ballpark of 40 andes mints. i took a shower fully clothed, and have been sitting here, shivering in nothing but my wet underwear for half an hour. if you've ever been to the cattle tent at your local 4H fair, the smell emanating from me is akin to that. i'm bleeding from the right side of my head, and i'm going to be antsy until i know how things go tomorrow. cool birthday, man!

perhaps i should start at the beginning of the evening. around six pm, a few friends came to visit me for the first time since i got out of the hospital. it's always been a little weird with those two. i wish i could pretend it was for a myriad of different reasons, but it's not. there's only two goddamn reasons why it's awkward. primarily, it's because i frequently put myself in the hospital. i'll get to the other reason when it matters, i promise.

in the past five years, i've put myself in the hospital four times. each time, my friends have stuck by me and generally been the spine and femurs and ribs that keep me from collapsing into a hairy, scarred flesh-pool on the bathroom floor. the first time i went to the hospital, i had just graduated highschool. i was a little overconfident and a little bold and i assumed a few things and made the wrong moves on the wrong person and got my nose broken for it. i went home and slit my wrists and went out to my front porch swing and waited to die. my mother found me and called 911 and i was taken to the hospital and i'd done a perfectly awful job and i wasn't in any real danger of bleeding to death, but i had to stay for in-patient therapy for a good long while and i had exactly one visitor and it was the individual that had broken my nose. i'd say that person had also broken my heart but let's be honest here--the only person i had to blame for that was my own incorrigible self.

the next two times i was in the hospital, i'm pleased to tell you, there was a marked improvement in my vein-splitting abilities. never let anyone tell you i don't learn from my mistakes.

unfortunately, this meant i'd spent a lot of time milling around rock bottom and ignoring everyone who tried to help me and ignoring that one burning, unsettled ulcer in my life, which leads me to reason two: the person that broke my nose is one of my best friends, and i am sickeningly, unfortunately (and ultimately the real problem adjective here--still) in love with him. and i go for months without remembering it, and then i do remember because we see each other and we have a really great time and there's this lingering canopy of bullshit we're stuck under and it's all my goddamn fault, because i went and hitched my apple-wagon to his goddamn star when i knew it was stupid and pointless and would only end poorly. it could not work. it would not work. it will never work because there are some people out there that it can never, ever work with. we're too alike and too different and there's too many disconnects. imagine you're building a set of drawers and there is absolutely no way to re-cut the dovetails you've got, and some of them fit perfectly but the rest are just so wildly wrong you can't cram it together to make a corner no matter how hard you push. that is the way we are.

so he and our mutual friend get to me around 6:00 and my mother isn't home and we sit on the couch and it's just like old times, before i ever fucked it up by falling in love and fucked it up worse by telling people that, and i forget it ever even happened, and in that instant i remembered how exactly it was that i came to fall in love with this person. how even when i am in love with 50 people at once and 7 of them, i'm pretty sure, love me back, and 30 people i don't love are spending extra time in the produce section hoping i'll see them and say "excuse me, miss, but can you help me pick out a good head of romaine?" there is this one person that i love better than the rest and absolutely will never be able to fit. because right in that moment, when things were so good i forgot i'd ever ruined them, i remembered how good it is when he laughs at your jokes and how sweet it is when his dimples show when he smiles and how his frantic, childish energy feeds me and makes me feel like life's something worth giving a fucking shot. i remembered that no, this is a man you fall in love with, even when you absolutely, under no circumstances want to.

i made twice-baked potatoes and microwave chimichangas and we watched RFD TV until midnight, when they were hugged me good-bye and left. when they were gone, i took out a pocket knife and carved into the right side of my scalp where no one will see, and then ate a whole box of andes mints and i think you've figured out the rest from the first paragraph i wrote tonight.

i feel lousy and i want to see erin because i love her and she makes me feel better when my heart it hurting. i don't know if i can tell her all of this, though, because i don't want to ruin things with her. i ruin my life every day, and i'd like to not do that as much.

sometimes in life, you make this thing called a "friend" and you have a vague idea of what you're supposed to do with that "friend." you eat snacks with your friend and you write letters to your friend and you sing french-canadian nursery rhymes to your friend and you smell their breath and you don't get scared of your friend. sometimes, you find yourself completely ill-equipped to handle your friend, and you feel bad and unworthy, because you've been unhelpful to your friend. all you want to do is be helpful to your friend. you must always be helpful to your friend.

sometimes, you get a peak-hours friday amtrak to pittsburgh, the town you swore you'd never go back to, to help your friend. sometimes your friend is more important than any bullshit you've been through, because your friend is what you have to hold onto and improve for and protect, and you want to help your friend. you must always be helpful to your friend. you take a train and you get in late at night and your friend comes to get you and he's a little sad and beaten down from the last time you'd seen each other in person, and you want to change that because your friend is something you love, and you must always be helpful to your friend.

you go to appointments with your friend that make your arms itch and you pull at your long sleeves like a toddler pulls at the last snotty threads of their security blanket, hoping that you won't draw attention to yourself because this isn't about you and you don't want anyone to notice and freak out and turn the conversation to you. it's not your time, it is time for your friend, and you must always be helpful to your friend.

in the end, you're pretty sure you made things worse. you spoke up and said mean things because it made you mad when your friend was hurt. you opened your mouth and let out your emotions and ideas. you spoke too loudly and too soon and with an authority you didn't have. you said things that made someone judge you, and your friend, and you because of that, you ended up hurting your friend, even though you were trying so so hard not to, because you must always be helpful to your friend.

you don't know what'll end up happening, or what, if any, good you did, but you certainly did try to be helpful. you must always be helpful to your friend.

I left school. I couldn't go back. I'll finish somewhere else some other time, but I wasn't going back to Pittsburgh.

My little sister is walking, talking, learning...and of course, my father isn't with her mother anymore. My father would probably swell up and die if he had to stay with a family for more than three years. He basks in all of the attention of being the good, stand-up father for the first few years, and then when it's just monotony for him, he picks up and leaves. He will keep living the same life over and over again every three years for the rest of his life, or at least until his dick shrivels up into a tiny, flaccid worm and his pills just doesn't cut it anymore, and not even the saddest, most broken, most easily manipulated 24 year-old will chew it for him. His skin will hang limp and loose where muscle used to fill his flesh, and all the parts of him that were worthwhile will be nothing. He will have nothing to offer the world when his body goes, because he certainly has nothing going on. A little Just-for-Men and Levitra will keep him sane while he blames whiskey-dick for his failings, and will keep him afloat for a few more years, but his days are as numbered as yours or mine. There's only so long you can cheat. I, for one, can't wait for the day he calls me up to go out on the town and no one will look his way. We'll go out, he'll drink too much, the divorcees and widows and unwed young mothers will take his drinks but not a second of his bullshit, and he'll have no one to take home and leave cab fare for in the morning. He'll have nothing, and I'll laugh and laugh and laugh.

He's not the only reason I left Pittsburgh, though, I promise. Ask my 3D Design professor about that.