Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I watched Waking Life today. I found it deeply upsetting and probably won't watch it again. I thought it was good though. As people who've read this diary know, since an overdose about fifteen years ago I haven't been able to shake the feeling that everything that I am experiencing is going on in that last moment as I'm overdosing. As time goes by, and I lose more and more of my memory, it becomes even more upsetting and “real”. I can compensate for the growing holes because I'm a pretty bright guy, but I do wonder sometimes if I'll eventually hit a threshold where I'm no longer able to meaningfully understand or communicate with the outside world.

Seriously though, I wish I could explain what it's like to live without memory and without a sense of time — for example, as I'll note later in the entry, I cut my facial hair off today and wrote a brief paragraph about the winter weather. Yeah, I know it's not winter. But I only know because I can look out my window. If I didn't look out my window, I'd have no idea what time of year it is let alone where I am (although I'm sure I could eventually deduce it by slowly trying to unravel recent events). Well, anyway, like I said, I cut it off again, but it keeps growing back.

But I wonder… am I changing as a person as I lose bits of myself, or does it make me more pure, or is it just a thick layer of mud that somehow I can't see and can't shake? Sometimes I think to myself that all I need in life is for someone to tell me that I'm real, hold on to me, and somehow, suddenly, reality will feel real again and I'll wake up and feel a crispness in life, like the way the air feels different on a cold, windless day over fresh snow… But I doubt it's that simple.

I'm going to try and make it an early night tonight. I can't get myself — no matter how tired I am or how many sleeping pills I take — to sleep a full night. I think the most sleep I've gotten this year is about five hours at a time, and I'm fairly certain that I'm getting less as time goes by. I think maybe if I knock myself out early, even if I wake up at four or five in the morning as the sun rises I'll get a little more sleep… I just hope I don't wake up at 2AM and then can't get back to sleep.