Welcome to Excerpts From My Super-Secret Diary, an 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, Carolyn has selected some lines and paragraphs from the last 12 months.

1.

I want kombucha. Also to live in a matriarchy.

2.

I had a tiny breakdown last night, I think — or at least I couldn’t stop feeling like everything was wrong or going wrong or going to be wrong. I didn’t even notice how loud everything has seemed lately — totally alone in this empty house — until I went into the office this morning and it sounded quiet and I could suddenly breathe.

3.

Getting up early has made me feel like I have way more time than staying up late ever did. I can journal! I can work out! I can learn tarot! I can cut and juice and freeze several watermelons for some reason! … Maybe I do not identify as a morning person and maybe I still don’t want to talk to people early in the day but maybe getting up early is a thing I can do.

4.

Maybe she will fuck and date other people and I will fuck and date work. But also other people.

5.

Yesterday I went to the doctor and now I have to go for an EKG and an MRI and bloodwork and an ultrasound. […] I spent all day yesterday evening feeling almost afraid to move and wishing I didn’t have to stay in the house alone, in case I dropped dead I guess?

I am scared, but

6.

Shannon says she can tell the minute I start going down one of those thought paths because it’s like someone is physically there and whispering in my ear.

7.

I’m wearing a heart monitor right now, which feels weird and is making me feel very conscious of my body, even more conscious than usual, if that were possible.

Is it okay to masturbate wearing a heart monitor? Will they know? (Do I have to write it in my activity log?)

8.

When I keep to a schedule each day feels more like a fresh start. I mean there are no fresh starts but each day feels like a chance to be okay.

9.

I keep weeping openly all the time, is this normal?

10.

It was hard to tell from upside down but it looked like there were two egg-shaped masses on the ultrasound. I tried to get the technician to also ultrasound the spot on the left that aches but the doctor couldn’t feel anything there so it wasn’t on the form so she wouldn’t. They are just cysts, I learned today, both “nothing to worry about” and also “find a doctor in LA to keep an eye on things soon just in case.” According to the haltor monitor, my heart has extra beats. My chest pain doesn’t exist.

11.

I wish people could just know I probably don’t feel like interacting first thing in the morning without me having to tell them in an interaction.

12.

Sometimes it is hard to be chill and not proposition everyone constantly.

13.

I am trying to lean in to friendship. As a result of leaning in to friendship last night I had two very strong gin and tonics when I should have had one and now I feel like trash.

14.

The truth is that I love LA but it also terrifies me.

15.

I feel like my body expects me — wants me — to have seasonal depression but the seasons aren’t cooperating. That isn’t keeping me from feeling sad all the time, but every time I leave the house it’s sunny and lovely and warm and there are palm trees and it takes me about 20 minutes to notice it’s not raining.

16.

I need to be less mean. Or more. I can’t tell. Definitely one of those two.

17.

I was anxious and uncertain before I immigrated and I’m anxious and uncertain now. The main difference is that Shannon is here. That helps. So do the sex parties.

18.

I am sitting here with the sun on my skin and in my eyes and it feels good, it feels so so good.

Maybe the relentless sun is why I’m having such a hard time pacing the passing of time. I mean it feels like the months are going quickly if they are even going at all, while the minutes stand out like pinpricks but also how is it almost 10 am.

19.

I want to try to do something and do it and finish it and have it stay that way forever, whether it has to do with me or work or money or people or the arrangement of books on the shelf. I am bad at seeing life as an ongoing site of change, as an art project that lasts as long as I do. (The body as art project is particularly challenging to wrap my brain around.) You can never start over and the slate will never be clear and the difference between today and tomorrow changes according to where you are standing. It’s stupid to always think that tomorrow will be better because if tomorrow can be better why can’t it start being better right now?

20.

Everything I Am Currently Anxious About (a seven-page list)

21.

Sometimes I feel high with loving Shannon. By “sometimes” I mean “most times” or maybe “always.”

22.

Last weekend we went to the woods and I got to see how she looked with her hair everywhere in the rain. I never get to see her in the rain. It was cold when we arrived and it never quite warmed up and so she hit me in front of the gas heater after we turned out to be bad at lighting fires because she is a gentleman. Actually she’s not a gentleman at all and that is why we are wed. I barely slept, it was too dark and too quiet, and the only things that made me feel like I hadn’t died were her breathing next to me and the bruises on my thighs.

23.

Today I could not leave the house. It does not matter which day today is.

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