Downtown.

I am the cool side of the pillow. I am always tingling with the feeling of outsider-ness. I have never been on the inside. But who has? Surface people are always insiders.

I sleep a lot now. That way, I can avoid thinking too much about my problems, anyone else's, or the relation between the two.

Maybe I will always be second place to everyone. But maybe it isn't so awful to be a last resort? Does that mean I get to attempt pulling people back from the edge when no one else can?

I have spent a lot of this trip looking inside myself. And questioning. I thought I carried some kind of light around inside myself, but I guess not. feeling connected to so many seems to mean that I have no connection to anyone. How long can I pretend to be happy? How long can I love in one direction before I dry up and break and blow away or shatter?

Maybe I am afraid to be something because I am meant to be nothing.

I wish, just once, to love someone and need them and to know that they love me and need me too. I can't be everything for everyone, so I am not anything to anyone. Friends come a dime a dozen, and I am the most invisible of all. Conversations go on continuously, even though I sometimes talk too much.

Trips go, lives go, loves go. Car rides pass in silence, or they do not. I disintegrate, unnoticed.

I am too melodramatic; I whine; I flail like a child throwing fits to grab some attention. I always wonder how long I have to stay quiet and hidden before someone comes looking. it would be a game, except there is no prize when I am found.

Every feeling is false. Every connection is false. Raw is the only thing.

I thought I knew you, but I don't. I am unnecessary. I am weird and grotesque and blue and twisted.

I wish I had no body.

The hole inside makes me too greedy.

I just want to feel whole.

I just want to feel needed.

I just want to stop scaring people away.

I want to trust that something is real, that I am real, that anything is worth it.

I feel like I have nothing to show, except millions of almosts. I almost had a best friend. We almost made it. I was almost included. I almost finished. I almost made it through the day without breaking.

I wish I were stronger. I don't know how long I can pretend I want to stay around. I know that things would be okay without me.

I am no one's entire world anymore. There will be others, better, to take my place. I am so close to being perfectly okay with the idea. The idea of no more almosts. At least I will have finished something, and everyone will be left in good hands. Mothers, fathers, wives, other children, boyfriends. I have never really been here, so it will not matter if I go away. I hope that someone would be touched, or prodded, or poked, or embraced, by my writing (not this, obviously).

I hope I will be easily forgotten, that I will get some rest, and that everyone else will, too. The only person who would not be able to get over it is gone now.