I’m sitting on the roof with a bottle of wine. Inside, my overpriced Marshall speaker is playing “The Metronome” by Pinegrove. I can hear it through the window. Kirsten Stewart has a tattoo commemorating Pinegrove. Kirstin Stewart also cheated on her Twilight co-star, Robert Pattinson. Pinegrove’s lead singer has also been accused of sexual coercion, but that was some years ago. A long feature on the issue was published by one of my favorite journalists, Jenn Pelly, on Pitchfork. I read it in high school.

Deliberating between the process of holding someone accountable and believing in restorative justice and the process of forgiveness is not something I thought I would have to apply to myself, on my own account.

Sometimes I stop and think about how poorly things have gone for me the past few years. But I don’t want to feel too sorry for myself. I wonder if this is rock bottom, or if I can go lower. I swear I thought I was at rock bottom last year, after I figured out Eyelash [alias obviously in place of his real name] was using me to cheat on his on-again-off-again girlfriend for around a year. 

Two police cars just drove by, lights blaring. It’s actually nice out here. Maybe I’ll sit on the roof more often.

I’ve been thinking about moral exhaustion. Maybe that’s how I ended up here. Or at least, that’s what got my foot in the door. I was too exhausted–from life, from romantic troubles, from just being young and confused to prevent the same thing from happening twice in a row. Or progressing into a territory where it was yes, morally wrong, and I was hurting other people.

I’ve been thinking about going to grad school. As I’ve sat in my apartment swallowing my own guilt for the past week, recognizing my own part in a fiasco that was not altogether my own fault and really awful for me in its entire duration anyway (you can grow accustomed to anything, and isn’t it true that the things that are the worst for your brain and body are the most addictive?), I’ve been thinking about higher education as an escape.

Well now I’m crying. It feels so weird to have wrapped your entire body in a person who was in a relationship you were never central to–to have dedicated so much mental space to something that, in its end, you do not receive sympathy for leaving. But in a way it was like cutting off a benign tumor I was a little fond of, and accidentally severing an artery in the process–because after all, I lost a job (that I was in the process of losing anyway), and I lost what little regard I had from people at that job, and I lost a friend I cared about (unrelated to the incident, but irreplaceable confidante to me).

But I don’t want to feel bad for myself. Some part of this reminds me of Kanye West’s unreleased track that many assume was a sort of suicide note that he wrote after interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs in 2009. It’s a good track, but obviously I refrain from listening to his music because of the antisemitic remarks and all that.

The buzz is cradling my brain, and I can’t think of a better place to be than on the roof. I’m getting bit by mosquitoes. I don’t give a shit, because I’m not moving.

“Can’t Get It Out” by Brand New is playing through the Marshall speaker. I never really listened to Brand New to an overwhelming depth, but this song feels applicable to me right now. It’s true–sometimes I can’t get it out.

The only perspective I have is my own. Sometimes I feel like it’s my job to just be as vulnerable as possible, all the time. I’ve got nothing better to do, really. Just expose my insecurities, my faults, my problems on the Internet. Really we’re all the same, anyway. At least something will resonate with someone, somewhere. Maybe. If I’m lucky.

I’ve been listening to billy wood’s discography and I’m inspired by his poetic ability to just say things, even though a lot of it goes over my head.

I wonder if I should go to a meditation retreat again, even though that was one of the most awful things I’ve ever experienced, but for about 24 hours after the ten-day retreat I was the most honest I think I’ve ever been with this Nepalese girl I had barely met, because I just hadn’t talked to anyone in days. I think I gave away my whole life in conversation that one day afterwards. 

I haven’t talked to her in about a year, but I wonder how she’s doing. The same way I wonder who a lot of people are doing, and the same way I’ll wonder about the people I know now, a year from now.

I feel like my whole life fell apart in one week. Not that there was much that I was worried about losing–I was emotionally and sexually involved with someone who couldn’t care less about what happened to me, so long as i didn’t screw up anything he had going on in his life (which I did–how badly only time can tell, and honestly, it’s probably something I’ll never find out, since he has me blocked everywhere, and I blocked him back); I had a job bartending somewhere that I figured they were probably trying to get rid of me anyway; I was eeking along doing things I didn’t really care to do, absenting the presence of anything I did care to do.

I’m still sitting on the roof with my bottle of wine. I really wish things never happened this way. Just for once, I wanted something normal. But–and lately I’ve been telling myself this a lot–things happen the way they happen for a reason. I’m not sure it’s true, but it’s a comforting statement. And I’ve got nothing else to keep me going, anyway.