Welcome to Excerpts From My Super-Secret Diary, a new A+ feature for Silver & Gold members in which we publish for you the incomplete and/or highly personal thoughts we’ve written on paper with actual pens. Today Rachel has made some selections from the diary she’s kept for the last two years for your consideration.

1.

tonight my mom said “honey, do you daydream about your life after this year? do you think you’ll be able to slow down? i hope so. you’ve been working very hard for a long time.” and it made me want to cry forever

2.

the thing about sending emails you’re scared to send in a place of drunkenness/tiredness/whatever is that then they get responded to and the email from the first girl you ever loved is just sitting there in your inbox like oh hey, what’s up, what now

3.

what if i came here every day, like just showed up. by myself. if i opened my mouth up all the time and just let it hang there what would come out. what languages would i know how to speak. what would my name be if this wasn’t my name. what are all the things i can be called. when do i get to go home. soon i will remake home, the idea of home. what will it be? where will the wheel stop?

4.

i have been thinking a lot about what my mutant superpower would be if i had one and can’t really come up with anything. growing up, i wanted to be pyrokinetic; it seemed like no one could ever hurt me if i could hurt them worse, like being dangerous was the same as being safe. i don’t know that i feel that way anymore. maybe because it’s been such hard work to be vulnerable at all, it feels like i can’t backtrack now. but it doesn’t make sense either that i would walk through walls or run really fast or whatever. increasingly i feel like my superpower would be being a regular human girl who is smart and tries really hard. which is disappointing but also i guess means i’m already a superhero.

5.

so much of our stuff is packed up but there is still so much to be packed. how important can that stuff be if it doesn’t even come to mind when i think about things i own? and yet when it comes to the actual objects, I’m always like yeah, I guess I need this. i hadn’t realized until mom was here how separate our little lived lives still are. separate books, separate dvds. things i own he’s never seen. maybe that’s normal, maybe it’s not.

6.

the other night i woke up at 5 am and the downstairs lights were on, illuminating the bedroom. i went downstairs cell phone in hand, ready to find an intruder, and just found the kitchen and bathroom lights on. when i went back upstairs, everything looked like a menacing man standing over me. i swear i didn’t leave them on, and F swears he didn’t either. i feel anxious at the thought that maybe i left them on and forgot. like i can’t trust myself, like i was an intruder in my own home.

7.

this weekend was so nice? like in a way where i was just CONTENT. i am not sure when i last felt that way, rather than just like fine.

hahaha and then as soon as i wrote that [redacted] emailed me! like literally then. JUST WHEN YOU THINK THINGS ARE UNDER CONTROL (jk nothing is ever under control, has ever been)

8.

i miss [person] so much and i can’t get over that picture of us. i’m trying to think of what could have precipitated that pose but it’s so specific, so bizarre: my hands covering his eyes, his hands covering mine over his face, and me looking away from the lens, my whole upper body twisted. i get that we didn’t want to have the picture taken, but good lord.

9.

i have been feeling like i want — i don’t know what i want. it’s not quite wanting someone to take care of me; it’s like wanting to feel like i am here, like someone sees that i’m here. like if i push a glass, it will move, it will break when it hits the floor.

10.

today i was trying to steel myself to do some freelance work that i didn’t want to do and then i got criticism on the freelance work i had already done, which i didn’t want to do, and so instead of doing any (paid!) work at all, i cried for an hour and then had three glasses of wine and yelled at the contestants on Chopped

11.

i talked to my mom on the phone and i am becoming increasingly aware that when we talk, she is speaking maybe 75% of the time and 90% of what she talks about is my brother, and almost anytime i ask her about herself what she actually discusses is my brother, or her friend, or [her boyfriend], or anyone but herself

it makes me sad because my mother is important and has had a big life with big things in it, and even the little things are important because they are about her. i hope i never do that but for all i know i already do. at least i stopped apologizing as much.

12.

i think i have felt terrible because for whatever reason i haven’t been able to work, and the only way i know how to feel about myself is based on how much i work. maybe it is some part of my brain rebelling, cutting off my access to that particular road so that i am forced to take another one. i am not sure yet what that is.

13.

i am wanting to do exercises about the use of language and ways to loosen its ligaments and connective tissue. refraction; the way things get wildly abstracted but are still recognizable. renata adler. trying to teach myself a language through practice, speaking with no listener to correct me.

14.

The office is SO messy and smells like cat pee and I don’t know how to fix it and the floor is dirty and the kitchen is a mess and my skin is breaking out on the jawline again and I don’t know why, I’m doing everything right. My body feels like a pigpen, an abandoned garden.

15.

Sometimes it feels like the physical world is taking my hand and slapping me in the face with it and telling me “stop hitting yourself”

16.

i am thinking a lot also about perfectionism, or like the reluctance to do anything if it can’t be done perfectly. if the conditions aren’t ideal, if it might not shake out exactly as imagined, it’s not worth doing. sometimes not even if there’s a threat of that occurring, or a reason to believe that something might not work out totally well, but just like why do anything without a guarantee? which of course means, ultimately, why do anything ever.

17.

a list: THINGS THAT ARE GOING WRONG

18.

want to take the day off to cry tbh

19.

EVERYTHING IS STUPID I FEEL STUPID ALL THE TIME AND IT’S STUPID

20.

i had a draft started earlier this week about how i went to a bar with someone that has been hanging out with a dude that he knows sexually harasses his female friends, and how sad and scared that made me feel. i was so hypervigilant in the bar, watching everyone’s movements. my dumb reptile brain. i wanted to write more about how specifically i felt but i guess if i ever need to look back at this, the context will make it clear how i felt. or it won’t, and it will be clear how much i’ve changed. either way.

21.

who makes their subject line “dreams?” are you trying to kill me? seriously how is that legal

22.

today! is a new day! seize it! yeah!

23.

i think i have to stop watching criminal minds so much, as i was legit marginally convinced there was a serial killer in my house last night. i could try watching haven or fringe. what is it with the one-word show titles? raymond carver, we hardly knew you.

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