I love Sacramento. It’s the same old shit however…in that I don’t think I can be friends with anyone that I don’t imagine into something else. I am always creating the same comfortable yet uncomfortable quilt work for myself (needle pricks and all), and I guess the only challenge so far has been accepting people and being patient.

I wrote this Monday after coming home from this coffee shop. This is an example of how I feel when my adrenaline is pumping and I am more inclined to favor rash acts….

I’ve never meant anyone as complicated in my life. As I sat in the coffee shop awaiting her return, my legs slept on the couch, crossed in their permanent sleep, and my neck drank my espresso shot so that the caffeine streamed, like acid, through main arteries. My lower body has always been lazy and lax, while my upper body acts like it’s restricted by the grasp of thin electric security wires. The coffee shop referred to itself as The Naked Lounge. I mentioned that only naked women were on the walls. She said it was because of the name. I said it wasn’t called The Naked Woman Lounge. She said people would view male bodies as offensive. I don’t know if they would. I think she does. I think the coffee shop owners are just conditioned to think that women’s bodies should be subjected (or rather) “appreciated” and men’s should not. So Beta is offended by the penis? Who is this woman?

She admitted she wore the same white wife-beater three days straight and that she secretly wants dreadlocks but she’s frightend people will subject her to cruel names that she faced, like her broken mirror, almost everyday in life. She used to cut a lot. She’s quite forceful physically, just coming out of a three year relationship with her boyfriend who used to literally “wail on her”. She even took him to court.

 The thing about Beta is that she’s so beautiful and angular with a gigantic smile and full, naturally colored lips and light almond, honey-colored eyes that she looks like a no doubt freak—like she walked out of a magazine and decided to wear authentic human skin instead of paper.

Everyone, in the back of her brain, knows models are not what average humans look like. It’s a fantasy most of us do not physically try to pursue to the extent those handful of  LA clubbing, spa-shoppers do. We observe these few people quietly and comfortably from behind the screen of an alternate reality. Beta, naturally and humbly, looks like a product of photoshop. People must be terrified of her. Apparently her mom and dad are severely verbally abusive and a lot of people throughout her schooling were just as bad. It was like hanging out with Angelina Jolie. I felt uglier than ever, but I also saw, in the way the smart lines by her mouth sagged, she felt almost (if not just) as homely.

As I sat there, tapping my forehead instead of my quiet foot, I thought: “Who are you really Beta? Are you a sociopath who can read people so intelligently that they use others` interests and appeals against them by pretending to be a kindred spirit? Or are you my match? Are you, seriously—the first woman I met in Sacramento, my co-worker— oh-so-fucked-up-and-complicated-but-willing-to-change Juliana’s match? Are you really trying to tell me you’re my mirror—a part of a self that I, as an overzealous, overanalyzing mongrel, missed out on?

“I don’t understand you because I understand you completely which makes me just think I don’t understand you. This doesn’t make sense. What are you going to do that ruins my illusions? Are you using me because you’re in a vulnerable place? Fuck. I can’t afford to be emotionally-used and drained again by another potential friend that I am somewhat attracted to because of what I perceive in her as brutal strength. I feel foolish and immature. Please, if you’re a sociopath, do something quickly so I can recognize the undoing of all good and cut you off completely. Don’t drag this out if you’re not who you say you are. I can’t handle another letdown of this magnitude.”

 My stress neck bump is bulging like a blood vessel in the neck of a captured Jew in World War two. I am predicting doom and am already afraid but hesitantly embracing, the death of an attachment. I can’t trust her. I can’t trust anyone anymore. And is this just my issue? Is my fucked-upness getting its fat body in the way of logic and blocking me from seeing who she actually is? I can’t fool myself into thinking I won the lottery when I already discovered a magician acts as the announcer pulling the numbered balls from my lotto popcorn bin. I’m over thinking this into something it probably isn’t.

I’ve never meant anyone like this. So either it’s that super-intense kind of crazy—the sociopath crazy— that I am encountering to such a degree for the first time (just to put a cherry on how rough things have been for people in life) OR, for once, a massive joke isn’t being played out in its intense lesson-learning way and Beta, might just be, who she claims she is: fucked-up and trying not to be. Either way, I can’t move my neck anymore. It was beginning to heal and soften and straighten and now it looks like a body-builder’s volcano that supports the ball of his skull and I’m hurting. All over again.

When she came back, her skirt hem hanging around the middle of her tan, thin shins, all I could think about was kicking myself, but my legs never work in these conditions.

I guess this might sound like drama I’m trying to fill my boring, lonely life with, but I assure you it’s something more. Or maybe I’m realizing this could be another fantasy of mine and that’s also what’s making it intense. It’s just that she told me so much, from her own voice, that I couldn’t have invented much this time around. But, of course, I’m not sure. I think she’s just a sociopath. If she’s not, then she thinks I’m a sociopath and will tip-toe after the dark of my shadow. Black. White. Black. White.

Is this a feeble attempt at predicting the rate of a tossed spear heading toward the center of my spine? Yes. I just can’t help it. I know it may seem like an excuse but I don’t know if I use it enough and situations like this make me want to scream, “I can’t help it! I’m trying! But for Christ’s sake my dad took a hammer to my mom’s head while I in the house. My brain was developing then! Don’t you understand why I am the way I am yet?!” I hardly understand. Maybe that’s why Beta frightens me. She seems to understand completely. This must be another one of my illusions. I need to take some xanax now. Ostensibly, my adrenaline is out-of-sorts and spiraling through that unclaimed space inside my mind.

It’s weird because as I read this now, I am so horribly embarrassed but at the time it felt somewhat sane and reasonable. See how unstable I can become? I have a book’s-worth of rants similar to this one, except they are even scarier and more idealistic. I sound shameless, because during the writing process it all feels incredibly authentic.

Anyway, I’m a little tired now. I have left Beta alone since she slept over. I am not really ready to have people in my life yet. I sort of want to be alone for awhile. But, of course, I will have them, because although now I want nothing, tomorrow I may want everything.

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Yesterday, Jos, justly, scolded me for attacking him on the stairs. I wanted to protect Beta. I realize I have always held this urge to protect my abused female friends since I also feel like I should protect myself. I don't know. She adores my male abuse, of course. The fucked-up ones usually do. But they also hurt me by acting hypocritical and starting a relationship, or sleeping with these males they swear to me "they don't trust". I guess it just isn't so absolute for everyone. And maybe it isn't all about me. 

He told me my problems weren't his problems and I shouldn't treat him as though he is going to act the same as the people in my past. I said some "shit" to him. I was drinking but yes, it was classless and unjustified considering where he's coming from.

 Example: "Look at you, coming over here with your shirt off. You go to the gym all the time just so you can chisle your body into a statue, but really you're a chipped statue they sell at Walgreens on clearance for 50 cents."

Ouch. I am awful. He proceeded to tell me, as he was teaching me photo, that none of my issues are his issues and vice-a-versa. And, like me, he also deserves some respect. He's right. I can't explain that night now, and I probably never will, but I am slowly recognizing the reality of "victimized" Juliana. Whether I victimize myself or others` do, in the end, I'm only victimizing myself. I beat myself up after my rampage on Jos. I am used to males never talking to me again, or hating me, after I go off on them like I always do, but Jos was willing to sort it out. I trust him more for giving me a chance, but I said I still can't trust him completely. He said that was fine and that he understood.

 I guess I could treat myself kinder and try to pal-up with the predictable kind, but I most likely won't, because I would be bored and anxious from feeling insane. I guess I just must admit that I need the probing of the brain from all four sides. I always ask for the mental-strain orgy. I demand it. I guess this reality frightens me, because I realize I ignite emotions in people that aren't necessairly true to their nature, just proper reactions to my sometimes hostile probing. I must predict. Reorganzie. Then organize again. Jos calls it, sweetly but predictably, "Organized choas".

I guess it seems as though I'm not doing anything of value with my life, working at Walgreens and ready to give a fourth go at city college, but I am learning to embrace the earth with a stricter eye. I am focused on things our society doesn't put value in (like taking things slower and examining yourself so you don't fuck-up the future of this planet), and I guess that's something I have to come to terms with. I'm not my best friend, and I'm also literally, not my best friend Liz. I'm not in post-graduate school in Seattle, studying to become a lawyer and sacraficing 5 hours or more of my time studying once a day. Although I am ridiculously proud of her, that's not how I deal.

I'm still drinking every so often, more so around people since they make me ill at ease. I light up and listen to music.  I'm 21 and so far, this is who I've become, and considering all of my journal enteries, I guess I am pretty proud of this more cautious person who has escaped the inward incarcination of PTSD. There is a peace in dodging the bullet, even if you can always see that bullet as though it is your own pupil.