I just talked my housemates into believing they needed to go to the grocery store because I needed to go. I rule. I bought lots and lots of Lipton Pasta and Sauce (it is Lipton, right?) because that's basically all I've been wanting to eat lately. And I got a twelve-pack of Big K Diet Lemon Tea (which, unfortunately, I didn't realize was caffeine free until I'd already bought it). I was having a lemon iced tea craving... or rather, a craving for artificially-lemon-tea-flavored aspartamated water. Actually, this brand is sweetened with sucralose. It's yummy. I got made fun of a lot for buying it. And I got a thingy of the weird Snapple Rain stuff. Curtis likes it. I thought I might as well give it a try.

That's probably the one aspect of my personality that I've had people criticize the most: my tendency to dismiss things without ever trying them. I agree: I shouldn't do that so much. I'm going to try to keep that in mind.

I've been writing less than usual lately, and as far as I can tell, the reason is simple fatigue. I want it to be over.

So if you drink sucralose-sweetened artificially-flavored water right before bedtime, does it rot your teeth while you sleep? I certainly hope not.

I did end up cutting myself today. I thought about it a lot last night, before Curtis called, and decided not to. But today... I couldn't think of a good reason not to, not a good enough reason. I don't like how every time I write about this it comes out in this melodramatic tone, and I know that happens because I feel guilty for mentioning it. I don't want to do that. I want to be blunt and open and not worry about what people think. I had one of those days where the cuts just kept bleeding. For... I don't know how long exactly. At least five and a half hours. Not constantly... they'd stop, and then I'd have to walk somewhere and I'd feel blood dripping down my ankle. Fortunately, I was wearing my skirt (the one Curtis commented on before... it made me really happy to wear it, even though he couldn't see it), which is so long it almost drags on the floor. Still, it wasn't something that had really happened before, knowing I was bleeding when there were people around. The cutting felt good when it was actually happening. But today was the first time, I think, that I felt pretty much exactly the same afterwards as I had beforehand. Disappointing. I waited about half an hour for the bleeding to stop and my head to clear, and then I gave up and read Passion Play, and that made me sleepy but at least I felt different.

There's a lot in Passion Play about feeling numb. It fascinated me. Those are not things I usually see in writing. Certainly not in novels. I got that same feeling I get sometimes reading Thoreau, the feeling I got when I first read Philip Larkin's "Aubade": someone understands this. Someone who's never met me expresses something that I've felt. Everyone needs that sometimes, don't they?

My roses are starting to dry. I'm almost done with my tea. I wish it were caffeinated... it would probably help my headache, which is better than before but still hanging around just for fun. I have to get up earlier than usual tomorrow to do some homework that requires reading stuff from a book that's on reserve, so I should get to bed. I need something to read. Hemingway's short stories are good for that. They're really good... and they put me to sleep. I mean that in the best possible way, of course.