13 February, 11:16 p.m. . . . For what it’s worth, I think lack of sleep has a great deal to do with my emotional condition, much more than is usual with most people. I hope this proves the case. If so I may be able to end once and for all my more severe attacks of melancholy. . . . Must be cautious, must not stick my fragile mind in situations it cannot cope with.I don’t remember this next incident, either, and when I saw it I just sat for a long time, staring in disbelief:
17 February, 12:16 p.m . . . I talked with Ma, briefly, about the mental peculiarities that have plagued me since June [1976]: how I oftimes seem to live in unreality, suspended in twilight, how my decisions & actions have not been of the first order. She dismissed the surreality as melodrama, and the “decisions & actions” bit by saying I had never been much of a decision maker & the ones I’m making nowadays are as good or better as any I’ve ever made. Also that, on balance, I am outwardly better adjusted than ever before. I could not make her see that inwardly I feel chaotic.Oh you made her see, all right, I thought. It’s just that our family already had a designated patient and you weren’t it.
You bitch. You fucking bitch.
By this time I’m skipping school on a regular basis. No one seems to notice. A few days later I impulsively hop in a car with several potheads with whom I worked. Soon after occurs an amazing string of flirtations, make-out sessions, all night drunks, and so on with an array of girls--just off-hand I can think of a half-dozen, and I’m probably missing at least a couple--at the center of which soon emerges Jennifer, of suicide note--“I love Jennifer, desperately and impossibly”--fame. Barely three months separate the day I penned my entry about vainly trying to convince Mom that something was wrong, to the day I swallow a bottle of barbituates like so much popcorn.
Prologue - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
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