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  6:17PM: when i passed mom’s room she covered the talking part of her phone, said ‘meggie? oh nevermind, i was going to ask dad to bring bananas but you want fresh air.’ walked downstairs saying, ‘yeah, yeah, i want that, fresh air,’ accidentally like how terry gross says it on NPR, like, ‘FRRRRRResh air.’

  6:39pm: Driving to Wegman’s instead, to buy mom special Wegman’s eggplant dip. Smoking second American spirit menthol cigarette. Listening to iPod on shuffle mode. Feel like I’m launching or something. Liveblog is helping. There are higher stakes if I fail to complete tasks today. Others will know. Saw that Elizabeth Ellen ‘liked’ liveblog tumblr post. Swerved into other lane. Feeling capable and optimistic and like lame and fragile parts of me are being exposed, but am strangely positive about that. ‘Rubber traits’ by Why? is playing. About to turn left, to Wegman’s parking lot. Sky looks like the sky of a day in July 2008, when I had just broken up with boyfriend and walked around 24-hour grocery store, didn’t buy anything, cried driving home, went on cruise to Alaska with family the next day. Parked. Typing is making me equally more attentive and detached about what I’m doing/thinking, like I’m narrating myself from a distance.

  6:52pm: zero non-green bananas in Wegman’s. Recognized ‘All the way to Reno’ by R.E.M. on loudspeaker after wandering around produce section for some time. Bought eggplant dip and green probiotic drink. Going to whole foods for bananas, kale and kombucha for ‘flushing green stuff through me’ smoothie. Forget why I’m doing this. Have never tried to live somewhere with an application process involving a ‘committee of apartment people’ reading cover letters. Stressful. Would not be doing this if apartment was not a sweet ass studio on the beach, $750/month. Feeling nonspecifically discouraged, maybe due to adderall wearing off.

  7:03pm: drank probiotic drink too fast to taste. Car idling in parking spot.

  7:07pm: ‘earth intruders’ by bjork came on iPod shuffle. Chuckled imagining being the emperor of the universe and banishing Brandon Scott Gorrell to a small white room where he has to do…something…for eternity, while this song plays on repeat (I feel positive things about bsg and wouldn’t do that if I was emperor of universe). Considering eating one Molly pill but that’d maybe…I don’t know. Does not bode well.

  7:15pm: less than 12 hours until I should leave for NYC. Might email Colin that I’ll come Tuesday, not tomorrow.

  7:28pm: pulling in to whole foods parking lot. Texted adderall dealer. Do not anticipate response.

  7:33pm: jogged from car to store. Selected kale bunch, bananas, citrus kombucha. Waiting to pay now. Intense neurotic ‘time is running out’ feeling. Jealous of all the people waiting in other lines who don’t have my life. Want to be cradled by something. Thought I saw a ‘new message’ alert flash on kombucha bottle and panicked. Impulsively selected organic energy shot from box labeled ‘try me.’

  7:43pm: read supportive emails from Andrea Coates, Masha, more article ideas from Sam Cooke. Responded while driving. Felt something in stomach change after checking email. Drinking organic energy shot.

  8:41PM: security alarm beeped once as i closed door to mom’s. apartment smelled like bacon. mom said ‘i’m making chicken BLT’s, i can make you one’ and i said ‘no thanks mom, i’m on a roll.’ unloaded whole foods bag near two plates containing loosely assembled sandwiches. stared at a square of yellow cheese complexly, like i was downloading a message from it. blended smoothie. ate 20mg XR adderall. texted colin a lie about not receiving .pdf of lease, so i’ll be coming tuesday. wrote short recommendation for him on trulia.com. sitting at my desk. robotic and panicky. stomach doing acid reflux things.

  8:52PM: spelled ‘mexican’ as ‘mescxican’ in tweet about my book being available as an ebook. proofread correctly-spelled tweet until words seemed more like ‘alphabet-shaped lines’ than language.

  9:09PM: worried apartment building committee people will google my name. might make liveblog private. printing keith-approved recommendation letter. two out of three recommendations complete. emailed matthew donahoo to outsource writing ‘tao’ recommendation. should’ve considered how un-recommendable i feel before offering to write recommendations, so others wouldn’t have to. i am learning from this. keep thinking ‘i am learning.’ my breath smells a way i’ve smelled on others and avoided saying ‘your breath smells.’ musty/basement-y. going to brush teeth then walk outside, thinking about. something. thinking ‘keep moving.’

  9:48PM: used two strings of dental floss. spit blood. felt vengeful against everyone who doesn’t floss regularly, including myself, inflicting their bad breath on me, ‘forcing me’ into polite silence as i flossed. remembered nervously asking first boyfriend to show me his brushing method, then introducing him (carefully and mindfully of his feelings and limited hygiene experience) to concepts like ‘doing this once a day’ and ‘molars’ and ‘using enough paste to create a lather,’ saying like, ‘maybe you should press a little harder’ and experiencing a new kind of interpersonal anxiety at his ‘it feels weird, i don’t think i need to’ response. remembered another ex-boyfriend’s concerns about my hygiene and thought ‘goddamnit megan, you know how it feels, it’s not an emotional attack or critique of you, it’s practical: you don’t want to smell bad.’ felt like i was performing the humanitarian task of flossing in front of a large and interested audience who would never be the same, ‘after this.’ felt like matthew broderick at the end of ‘glory,’ when he’s about to lead denzel and the rest of the troop into a battle they’ll clearly lose and have been preparing to fight for the entire movie—but my fight is with a nonspecific audience in my memory, or who is reading this now and doesn’t care. ‘this is what happens sometimes, if you consider other people, sometimes your gums will bleed so people won’t have to think about how your mouth smells, let me show you the way my children: you will be better for this.’ i am being insane right now i am aware of being neurotic and insane.

  10:14PM: mom sat in the chair closest to my desk and asked if she could do anything to help. struggled to say something like ‘could you maybe just jot some things down about me, like, as someone who likes my writing and thinks i’m…i don’t know, responsible.’ think i said ‘jot’ more than once, something about tao discovering my blog in 2008. mom said ‘so i should say i started reading you in two-thousand eight?’ i said ‘no no no, no don’t worry about the scheduling or two-thousand eight.’ she said ‘what do you mean, ‘the scheduling?” i said ‘like the events. of like. don’t worry about the events in time. i’m just having a hard time thinking of nice things to say about myself, i think it is, that’s it. could you just write a thing as if you’re someone who thinks nice things about me and like, likes my writing? what a person like that would say?’ she nodded and stood, said ‘oh honey of course.’ i touched part of her bathrobe and said ‘thank you so much mom,’ nodding fast.

  10:27PM: mom’s head poked cheerfully into hallway, said ‘can i say i’ve liked your writing since you were a little girl?’ i waved dismissively but not unsociably and said ‘just say whatever you want, just, whatever is good.’

  10:29PM: jogged to kitchen in ‘sprinkling’ manner. drank big swig of liquid antacid. said ‘you’re the best mom’ in a voice that sounded less childlike in my head. brought can of steaz energy drink to my room. something about now feels like christmas. can hear papers rustling. mom just entered, smiling, said ‘this is a draft, this is a draft, i wrote it as a letter, it’s not perfect,’ handed me a paper. her handwriting was on both sides. i said ‘this is perfect, thank you.’ mom said ‘i think i may have said two or three things two or three times’ and left without looking back. i stood and tripped over basket of pencils, then caught up to hug her before she was gone. she is wearing a green bathrobe. feeling something indescribable about ending up in mom, getting born by mom, knowing mom all of this time.

  10:37PM: read ‘megan has shown a touching, intelligent sense of the absurd and at the same time, the real—sometimes sad, sometimes funny, sometimes p
urely existential experience of being human.’ read ‘fearless.’ walked to mom’s room. on the bed dad was leaning diagonally towards a recumbent mom, looking at her kindle. they were under the covers and smiling. dad had a towel on his head. said goodnight, hugged them, started walking back to my room. in the doorway i said ‘it’s nice to know you guys are around,’ knowing this was not what i wanted to say, not knowing what i wanted to say, but that i wanted to say something.

  MARCH 18, 2013

  12:58AM: used only the word ‘approach,’ i think, from mom’s fake tao letter. dad walked out to hallway while brushing his teeth. a friend of a friend of his lived in rockaway park, near my potential future address, in the only house on the block undamaged by hurricane sandy. he asked if my building was by the bay or the ocean. doing something with my arms, i said ‘there’s one on each side, like, it’s five blocks wide, about five blocks.’ he repeated ‘five blocks’ and my arm motion, displaying the non-judgmentally proud face behind g.p.s. direction. the bathroom door opened after an amount of time i was retroactively embarrassed for having considered myself alone. for some reason suspected dad felt obligated to talk as he stood in the hall, describing a kind of therapy where the main thing is you scream in a room. he repeated ‘the release technique’ several times, with hair fluffily protruding in all directions, as if electrically charged.

  1:15AM: small crisis. thought i’d lost security deposit check. sitting on the floor in the center of scattered apartment application-related papers, that colin recommended i organize in a binder for the selection committee people. typed ‘sup ipad’ in a long-un-responded-to gchat from ex-boyfriend. going to drive somewhere. 24-hour grocery store. buy folders and a stapler. brainstorm article ideas in car. seems important to stay in motion. ‘stay’ is funny/cute. that you can be ‘staying.’ imagining people in their rooms like how i’m in my room. anxiously imagined ex-boyfriend reading this. he wouldn’t want to read this much from me ever, i don’t think, and if he did it wouldn’t matter.

  1:35AM: something that sounds like a piano playing notes at almost not-random, cinematic intervals is coming from either directly under me or behind my closet. sometimes it stops. feeling. i don’t know. i have a relationship with this liveblog now. everyone i’ve interacted with today has been so helpful and seemingly selfless. feel like reaching out to…something…thought ‘if there was something i could do with my arms.’

  3:01AM: want sex badly. heard somewhere that if your cat is in heat and you put a q-tip up to her ass, she’ll back into it and be happy. i am so many miles from anyone i want to have sex with. currently enjoying sitting on heel and tentatively rolling. jesus. not horny enough to masturbate. missing something. everything is in order: the engine checks are finished, all passengers accounted for, weather and runway are clear, but this plane can’t fly without a co-pilot. actually i’m the co-pilot. yeah, it’s just the co-pilot here, i’m waiting on denzel, he’s still sleeping next to the pretty naked lady in a trashed motel room and it says ‘directed by: robert zemeckis’ at the bottom of the screen and slowly we learn the lady and denzel have been partying on alcohol and cocaine all night and soon denzel needs to fly an airplane. we do not yet know the lady is a stewardess who dies. at this point in the movie i didn’t know it wasn’t a true story. the movie is ‘flight.’ getting carried away. stopped being horny. thought ‘it all comes back to denzel.’

  3:47AM: have not moved much. forgot i still need to write cover letter. pasted liveblog up until this update in microsoft word document, ‘LIVEBLOG.doc.’ i could easily write this much or more every day, i think. have been enjoying this. immediate plans: reapply sweater, drink energy drink, drive to 24-hour grocery store, buy stapler and folder, *have happy goodtime thinky thoughts on drive home get oh so inspired teehee*, eat adderall, write cover letter, write article.

  considering eating a molly to make the time before cover letter more interesting. inspiration. goddamnit. should i…

  4:10AM: ‘nah cause last time i did molly after addy binge it wasn’t that great from cross tolerance…but u know, u r the master of ur domain,’ masha tweeted. looked at ‘cross tolerance’ and thought something about bees that did not bode well. not going to eat the molly. will be less functional tomorrow if i eat the molly. want to eat the molly. pictured baby animatronic dinosaur from 90’s TV show saying ‘not the molly,’ freezing for a horror movie interval, shaking something at me antagonistically.

  4:34AM: short gchat with ex-boyfriend. something felt upsetting but neither of us explicitly said what. maybe he wasn’t upset. he’s at our apartment in philadelphia. feel like he thinks i forgot him or something. leaving mom’s now.

  5:05am: opened/closed kitchen cabinets quietly. Drank swigs of antacid while responding to texts from Mira, Sam Cooke, Willis, Alex. Willis is responding.

  5:10am: thought ‘at least it’s warm outside’ walking down stairs. Opened door and was struck with coldness and overpowering ‘wet dog nose’/saliva-like smell that trailed into car a little. Turned key in ignition. Texted Willis about the smell, thinking we’d riff about it to better endure it together. He responded normally. Texted ‘Going to concentrate on driving now.’ Car feels lower to the ground than normal. Merging onto 695E. Checked email. Irritated at mass ‘Matt Monarch’ raw food newsletter. Remembered tweet by Ellen Kennedy like ‘I am responsible for the zero emails in my inbox,’ I feel that.

  6:00am: read liveblog from beginning while driving full circle around the Baltimore-Washington beltway. Tired, physically. Inner monologue is whining things like ‘this is easy for other people, other people just do things, other people would’ve had a folder and a stapler by now.’ Replaying memories of Sam Pink from a few days ago: somewhere in Brooklyn, looking for my car. Talking about how it’s stupid when people freak out when they’re late and already on the way to the destination, so there’s nothing to do but wait to arrive—which is relaxing, and feels kind of special. Me saying ‘wish I had a voodoo grandma,’ him saying something indicating he understood, or at least didn’t want to stop talking. Seeing him in ‘distractingly free of associations shirt’ and noticing the color of his eyes for maybe the first time before the Housing Works reading, thinking ‘what do I say,’ doing some kind of brief physical greeting with him and feeling wetness on my face, but not near parts that normally become wet. Eyes looked gray, then more brown. I don’t notice eyes unless it looks like someone is behind them, controlling where they look. Sam has eyes like that. Wonder if he’s reading this. Seems 15-60% likely. The sky is dark and morning commute cars are on the road. I never assume people like me are on the road. Lost wandering shitheads. Wish there was a Grindr-like iPhone app for lost wandering shitheads, so you could locate others. I probably wouldn’t use it.

  6:14am: removed foot from gas pedal ‘for fun.’ Nearing 24-hour grocery store and house where I lived, ages 10-22. At stoplight heard birds tweeting stereotypically. Still dark outside. Large bald man with reflective tape on his back is walking on shoulder of road.

  6:20am: braked to let truck merge in front of me, feeling a familiar pang of loss/envy/regret. Like, ‘there goes the life of adventure and financial and temporary existential certainty I was too much of a drifting loser to attain.’ Feel like truck drivers know this about me and can sense waves of inefficiency evaporating through my roof. I thought I wanted to drive trucks. I have a Class-A commercial driver’s license. At my first and only interview drugs showed in my pee test and I didn’t have an excuse and I got scared and gave up. There. I said it. Unsure if I’ll drive trucks in the future. Maybe I haven’t failed completely yet. I don’t know what I want. Life is so long. I just want to be okay. Feel close to crying now, in car parked in grocery store parking lot. Thinking about how to type location replaced urge to cry. Car parked near me has had its headlights on this entire time. Achy body. Okay. Going inside store.

  6:37am: still sitting here. Getting colder. Headlights car has ‘finally’ left. Afraid to go inside for some reason. Might jus
t drive home, come back later. Yes I feel good thinking that: going to come back later. Stomach is burning again goddamnit.

  6:46am: street lights against navy blue sky are making trees look orange. Pretty. Still sitting here. Temperature in car feels the same as outside. Focusing too much on liveblog. Need to refocus.

  6:48am: turned head and caught a whiff of me. Thought ‘hey I smell okay’ like it was the catchphrase of a Saturday morning kids TV show theme song. The music would take a sudden turn and almost stop, then a balding man in a sweatshirt would pop out from behind a cardboard tree and say ‘hey I smell okay.’ After a ‘crucial pause,’ the offscreen characters would gather in a circle to sing the refrain and the sweatshirt man would like, run to join them, ‘late as usual,’ trailed by an animation that becomes an exclamation point at the end of the title graphic. This would happen before every episode.

  6:53am: need to refocus.

  6:56am: driving out of the parking lot now, can’t believe I just did this, I just sat there the whole time oh my god. Lawdy lawdy honeychile, shoot. Sittin’ there. Shoot. Peace be witchoo honeychile.

  7:04am: would be funny if that was the last thing I’d type before a fatal car collision. Or if this was the last thing. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Okay guess it’s not going to happen.

  7:08am: OR THIS!!!!!!!!!

  7:09am: laughed really loud. For maybe three seconds.

  7:11am: ‘three seconds’ is not a comment on…nevermind…

  7:18am: Maybe I am ready for the grocery store now. I might just be. Pictured a chuckling Barack Obama finding my eyes in a crowd, saying ‘yes you can’ to America, moving closer to me with a concerned face, placing his hand on my shoulder, saying ‘yes. You can,’ gesturing to his watch and mouthing ‘it’s time’ with a wink.