Chain Smoking in Eden

Monday

I come home from Nico’s after another three-day cocaine bender and get straight out of my clothes. Naked through the flat for the rest of the day. My new post takes the whole day but I finish it. The ashtray’s overfull, ashes falling on the bed every time I smoke. Sheets I’ve wanted to change for days, can’t get myself to do it before I fall asleep. Cornflakes for dinner. Midnight, the post goes up, and I’m not too happy with it. Nico’s been acting confusing since yesterday, to say the least. Not going to read into this. Don’t make it awkward. Stupid, idiotic girl. My Russian ex texts after a year of radio silence. A song. Guess he finally finished one.. He blamed me for years for interrupting his workflow while he did nothing but go down rabbit holes of sample packs, on my laptop, while I wrote my journals on pieces of paper. Anyway. I forgot to listen to it. Just might listen today. I still have a soft spot for him. Maybe the fifteen percent Russian in me recognizing the hundred percent in him. Maybe I have a soft spot for everyone, even the ones I definitely shouldn’t. Big flaw in my system. I quit smoking weed and nothing makes sense all of a sudden.

At eleven twenty I realize I have one cigarette left and put my pants on, which are too big now, I need to take better care of myself, and I run to the bodega and make it in time and walk back home. At one I wash my face and take my benzos and go to bed. The window is open and it’s quiet, which is rare here. Normally it’s street racers and what feels like gunshots lullabying me to sleep. I wake thrice. Bad dreams keep following me. For the past thirty minutes I’ve been sobbing myself into dehydration.

Tuesday

Substack didn’t send the email to all my subscribers and I have to delete the post and publish it again. Hate this so much. Hate hate hate. First thing I have to do awake, at nine thirty. Now I’m smoking a cigarette and it’s never tasted better, watching chain smoker cat. Still in underwear. Haven’t got dressed since Monday.

I do nothing useful all day besides fixing the post. I broom because if I stay in bed I go insane. I put the dishwasher on four times a day, four plates and some cutlery, spinach purée and chocolate pudding, and I run it just to hear the noise it makes. It’s peaceful. Beau and I don’t see each other as often as we used to. Don’t want to think about that right now. It’s all useless, there’s nothing I can do to change that. Wait. Do I actually feel sad about this. It’s like I kinda feel sad but not really. I guess I just don’t miss him as much as I used to. But I know if it ended right now I’d fall apart like Yahtzee. I try to write things and they all suck, and hopefully they’ll be useful one way or another or come to fruition as something beautiful. First drafts are always nonsense to me. The nonsense makes me creative though. I love writing down the spine of a story, the sentences that roam in my head and open a book, then sleeping and looking at them fresh. Anyway. I keep falling asleep. I fall asleep sitting up while reading, which is ridiculous. Great. I don’t have the means for a full check-up even though I really need one. Depression? I hope not. I’ve been escaping more, indulging in my debauched desires. Perhaps I haven’t been such a good girl. It burns. It burns my insides to a crisp. It’s raping me, the need to write. The writer’s block. I have no access to my feelings and all I want is this burning desire again, to write my fiction until my fingers break and my keyboard bursts into flames.

Around 12:30 am my stomach is making angry noises because it was a holiday and the stores were closed and three cups of cornflakes aren’t enough to go to bed on. I remove every fabric from my body and get under the duvet, take double the dosage of my sleeping medication and read The Sluts by Dennis Cooper until it kicks in.

Wednesday

He messages at two in the fucking morning, while I’m asleep, and I answer half-asleep, and at seven it starts up again and the trip has changed shape entirely.