I-Extracted-A-Sentence-From-Various-Chronological-Journal-Entries-During-Isolation-And-I’m-Now-Concerned-For-My-Mental-Wellbeing

WORDS by Dakota Warren, IMAGES via Dakota Warren

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22/03/20

Quarantine day 3. Time is an illusion. Nothing is real, except for back pain. 

24/03/20

Good morning. I’m not sure why I’ve abandoned writing in cursive. Who cares. It’s good to be fluid. 

30/03/20

I am watching Twilight again and I am catapulted into a sentimental time capsule. I am 11 years old. Maybe I still am 11 years old. I don’t feel 21. I am too young to be 21. I am too old to be 21. I am not even sure if I am real. If I can count my pulse is that evidence? Does a heartbeat equal existence? I think I am a vampire.

02/04/20

Quarantine day ? — there’s a buzzing static in my head, too many thoughts at once.
Stained my cheeks green with acrylic paint. The word of the day is blasphemy. 

07/04/20

The crisp, cool hours of the morning, before the sun has fully risen, and the earth’s eyelids are still heavy. The birds sing softer and the cars seem to drive slower. There’s a different universe tucked beneath the hours of sunrise. I am going to read my tea leaves after I finish it, and I am going to read a book, too, and I am going to read the sun’s rays as she rises from the east. Today is going to be a sweet day, no longer hollow, but not quite whole, so there’s room for wanting. My tea leaves are ready to be read. 

09/04/20

I am trying to see the glory in this morning, the glory the birds are singing about,
but I think I might just roll over and squeeze my eyes shut, and try to keep dreaming about him.

11/04/20

7.39 pm. Déjà vu. Navy evening light filtering in broken through a kitchen window. Not my kitchen window. The world has gone private. The end of touch induces the imminent decent into the mind — a divine madness which will only be found in the darkest depths of solitude.

12/04/20

I am grateful for the sun, and blue skies, and ducks. The ducks that aren’t afraid of humans, and the humans that aren’t afraid of longing.

13/04/20

I’m not sure when I became afraid of something that does not exist. 
I’m not sure when I allowed time to become my primary motivator. 
I’m not sure what I am waiting for. I am not sure waiting is physically possible, given the theoretical lack of time.

15/04/20

There is an insect borrowing my laptop’s light and warmth again. He can have it. I’m happy to share.

16/04/20

Two dogs, one sunset. Pink skies, silk lavender pyjamas, the hum of a French tune, nostalgia. Jolted to a stop. Angry. Calm. Content. Birds conversing from branch to branch. Branches conversing with gusts of wind. Gusts of wind conversing with my tangled hair. Neighbours drunkenly singing. Oblivion. Sweetness. Innocence. Time is frozen. I feel gentle. I feel soft. I feel pretty. 

17/04/20

I have washed my hands thirty-four times today but my hands are still stained with last January.

21/04/20

I want to carve out my bones. I don’t believe in your God. 

22/04/20

All I have done in an entire month is go between cleaning my room and writing some words that I don’t even believe in and using various forms of artistic mediums to create various forms of non-artistic things and eat porridge and then feel bad about eating porridge and then eat more porridge because I feel bad about eating porridge. I want to run away.

29/04/20

It is 11.35 pm and I am laying in bed watching an Italian film and crying because I want stone fruit and forehead kisses too.

31/04/20

I was strolling through a perfectly cool evening, lit by an almost full moon, tucked beneath shadowed clouds, when I crossed paths with Micheal, who said I reminded him of Art Angels-era Grimes. I thought about it the entire drive home. It’s likely because I try to cram too many linguistically unique and somewhat intelligent words into sentences where they don’t belong, or because I talk so fast that if my words were atoms they would split. Or because my hair is pink, patchy pink, patchy bubblegum pink, and untamed. Or because I am pretty in a backhanded kind of way, or cool in a way that’s kind of off beat. Or, most likely, because I am weird, and fidgety, and moderately socially inept. In a distant dimension, a parallel universe, it may be because he sees me as creative, original, and talented. Regardless, I have been glowing ever since, and have dedicated my evening to sitting in a dark room and listening to Grimes so I can absorb her into my neuro-sponge and embody her eternally.

07/05/20

My brain feels like it’s multiplying and then splitting and then growing another brain on top of it then splitting again. Cognitive dissonance kind of night. Perhaps it’s because I’m trying to sleep in a messy room.

19/05/20

Can everything just collapse in on itself already and reduce to megabytes?