A day (one day, day 1, perhaps) of non-situational euphoria. To actually feel the completion of something that lingered, lingered, lingered. Even after the end of the malady itself. I imagine this is what illness was like in the olden days. Why Beth in Little Women never completely recovered from Scarlet Fever. Although really, she never recovered from her sensitivity to the world. And true sentimental heroines can't survive in a modern, consumptive, industrial world (BTW, I like words for old time maladies. Like The Consumption. Gawd. Sounds scary). Or can they? Hollywood heroines survive everything. But they are made of plastic and boring as fuck. And no one can really identify with them, not in a deep, dark place.

For the past several months, I've found it difficult to reconcile myself with everything around me. The structures of the capitalist system, the disappointment of Obama's Presidency, mass suicide among farmers, the death of journalism, the stories my girlfriends tell me about dating (Gawd. Who ever invented such a wretched thing? I'd just as well stay in my home and never come out. Thank God I've never had to do it). The world is a super shitty place run by incredibly retarded people. I became unglued and unhinged. The way the corners of old pictures are the first to curl away from the black pages of an album. Not mine, not mine not mine, this. This time isn't mine, this space isn't mine. This life isn't mine. Everything felt like a fucking waste. I cried while watching Nova documentaries about Benobos and their matriarchal societies being destroyed by impoverished locals hunting them down for food. I listened to tons of Depeche Mode and Buena Vista Social Club. Take me to Cuba. I really believe Havana is my home. I was born in the wrong place. I thought a lot about my favorite literary heroines during this time. Beth and Jo March, Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Eyre, Daisy Miller, Edna Pontellier, Ammu. Not all of these women were entirely ruined by the modern world. But most of them were. Most of them were burned at the stake or died alone in hospital waiting rooms or disowned by their families and separated from their children. Oh God, I would be ruined by the modern world. Like photosensitivity during PMS, I became photosensitive to the world. Everything in me teared up at everything.

Then I realized I will always be photosensitive to the world. This doesn't make me crazy. And if it does, it does. The light will always be a little too bright for my eyes; things will always be a little too intense for my processing. My processing system is intense. And I don't need to make jokes about it anymore. I don't need to pretend I'm okay. I'm not okay by the standards of the modern world. And I'm okay with that. I'll always identify with ruined literary heroines. They were fucking smarter than everyone else around them. And far more interesting. People get scuffed up rebelling against the inane structures of modern society. But they don't have to be ruined.

This is my afternoon, my time. Finally. After the Scarlet Fever, there's the recovery. But I'm recovered. I also need to stop overusing mixed metaphors. A boy in my writing class said this to me once. Pick one, he said. JUST ONE. Not like five. We get that you like metaphors.

I need to savor a day like today. And harness it and write.