*sigh* And so this dreadful month begins. Well... perhaps it's not dreadful, but it marks the end of the better and more inspiring part of the year for me. I don't do well in warm and hot weather. I pretty much expect that once June hits I will be creatively bankrupt for three months and slugging around the apartment with no focus on anything except why life sucks. I wish I were exaggerating, but I'm kind of dramatic and sensitive about the weather. It takes an extreme amount of will power for me to write in summer a story that I have designated as a "winter story" or "fall story", because I'm not experiencing the right stimuli. I always like to feel connected to the characters, seeing things that they would see, being able to address the simpler aspects that shape their experience. I remember there was a time when I would purposefully sit outside in November and look up the street (as we, naturally, lived on a hill that went up from our house and resembled the one in He's There) to write parts when Lily went outside or thought about it, or wondered if she was imagining "Erik"... It was years ago. I'd put on a sweater, a jacket, and my (now) Orlok coat, and I'd bring a cup of pomegranate tea.

Anyhoo, I'm also becoming numerically older this month and having to remember on the 14th that I'm alone, and on the 20th (my birthday) that Max Schreck is deader than dead.

To be honest, I'm not very happy right now. I'm very discontent with my life, disappointed where I work, how financially weak I am, how alone I am... Sometimes I'm just totally incapacitated with negativity, and earlier this year, way earlier, when I was still in school, I was having a breakdown every few weeks. I was too tired of and frustrated with living my life that I couldn't bear to even leave my apartment, so I wouldn't. A lot of that had to do with the crumbling stress levels of being a full time student, so I'm not longer stressed exactly, I'm just tired of being at work all the time and doing nothing besides that. In my free time, I never see anyone, my friends are too busy or live too far away, so I have no inspiration to leave the apartment, even if I need groceries or need to do this or that... I still seem to deal with incapacitating negativity and feeling like nothing is going to work out, nothing that I desire is accessible to me.

I've considered that I was depressed, but I lack some of the important symptoms, and I have no money to be analyzed by a therapist. But there is definitely something going on with me that made pulling creativity out of my head last year so hard, especially compared to 2012 where I can say with certainty that, somehow, I was happy. I knew it wouldn't last. I still don't know what magical thing brought it about, so I'm not sure how to get it back. I somehow loved to be alone and grew to appreciate myself. It's sad that that is gone. That now I take it as a personal defect that I don't have physical people around (besides my immediate family) who can give me good times and emotional support in between doing stressful things like working. And, at work, for a couple of reasons, I always feel inadequate. I'm reminded why I'm not good enough to some people, and that's all I can focus on because nothing else will happen to contradict that. I believe that how I feel is situational because of this unnatural solitude that no one should have to go through if they aren't wanting to be alone. I think it's good to be alone sometimes and enjoy being with yourself, but we also need others, so having no control over it when the desire for solitude passes and you can't get out of solitude... bleh.

I think I need people to be able to write. So many of the best little situations in my writing came from charming social interactions, or even just imaginings that special personalities made me have. It was exhausting just having Lily write about feeling alone and wanting to get over someone who wasn't what she'd hoped for, etc. etc., in the last chapter, but at least they were relatable feelings. Moving on from there, writing something filled with life, and light, and energy... can I even do it when I feel kind of dead inside?

My goal was to write an AIW fic this month, but I can only desperately hope I even have it in me to do it. I want to do it because I feel like I need to do it to make myself happy, but it's kind of like I'm trying to give myself back energy to live by expending energy I don't have, since writing is such a mental exercise.

How do I borrow energy in order to be creative again?  People make it sound so easy, "get out more," "bother your friends to see them more." They don't know how deeply you can burrow in solitude until you don't remember how to people anymore and it is so much work to dig yourself out. It's like being stuck in quicksand (why am I using metaphors now?) People with these suggestions assume there's something just beside you that you have been taking for granted. There is not. There is nothing beside me. I can nag my friends to see me, but then they will join me for lunch and check it off their list and that will be the end of our time together for months and months. I don't know how to make new friends because all I do is go to work, and my coworkers are not going to become my friends. (Trust me, I've tried. The one person I wanted to be closer to turned out to be a big asshole.)

Why am I using my writing journal as a regular journal? Eh, when you're a writer there's not such a clear line between yourself and your act of writing. Everything about my life affects what I will have to talk about if I come here, and at my personal journal none of my friends are using this site anymore. It's either I write here or no one even knows this is how I'm feeling.

Well, that'll do it for now. I wanted to plan my story today, but I've only got a few hours to screw my ovaries on in the right direction in between working what will almost be four full days in a row.

J

I was just thinking about the fact that the concept of "Jennifer", who I am, what I emit, what I seem to be, is probably a very ambiguous, eclectic thing to someone who has been around me long enough to see most of my facets. Sometimes I'm not even a clear person to myself. One side will seem "fake" or not "all the way there" because there's another side so different (like having an appreciation for darkness and even pain and then also wanting to live in AIW Wonderland and have gigglefits with Hatter and Hare all day long.) I put on Orlokian or German or other accents without even thinking about it, so much that when I started at my job a few people thought I was foreign. I am a strange person. But I have come to disagree with the idea that having multiple facets and projecting differently to different people at different times makes me a phony or confused about my identity. Although it isn't always clear to me what "Jennifer" is, I think it will be someday, and I've certainly learned a lot in the past few years. All of these parts, all of these appearances and voices I put on, all of these dispositions I have at certain times, and their particular mannerisms... they're all me. They're all choices, yes, that I make about myself, but I'm not just a mirror that reflects everything. I reflect very particular things that are expressing the parts of my personality that I need others to know about and accept, and I hope to attract those who will be positive forces in my life by emitting these things.

"Erik" has lots of philosophies that come from me, and the above was half explained in chapter 45 when Lily puts off getting intimate with him by wondering if the way they act around each other is a big lie and that they are not sure who they are. It's always an ironic situation when I have "Erik" say things I believe in, because he takes my philosophies to such an indecent degree, and he is the representation of what happens when your desires and frustrations, as an overly creative/sensitive/expressive person who is drawn to elements of fantasy, take over your life and drive it off a cliff. A philosophy is just a philosophy, and there is still room for infinite decisions about how to interpret and act upon it, and "Erik" is the incarnation Lily comes into such close contact with that shows her she must find a safe, practical, fulfilling way to use that philosophy so that she is not miserable and creatively starved, which lead her into roleplaying with him in the first place, partly. I mean, "Erik" clearly isn't any happier or any surer where his life is going. He'll say that he is, but then ten minutes later he'll talk about being miserable and alone and needing Lily, when Lily is not really involved with these choices he's made (she wasn't there, she wasn't telling him to do it, she wants no part in their full realization). He will argue that she is in every way involved. He will come up with reasons why what he's done is absolutely right. You could argue with him until you're blue in the face and he will still make you feel like it's hopeless for you to have an effect on his mentality.

But that's where I feel Westin comes in. He is part of the reason Lily starts to feel there are ways to pursue her desires that will be good for her instead of devastating. The problem in the first draft is that it's not nearly as clear as it could be why she feels so drawn to Westin outside of the fact that he is very talented and has an air of suggestion about how much she could apply herself as an actress and move on to better things. What if some similar conversation happened between her and Westin about her habit to imitate and to be many things all inside the same person. There are things about Lily that she has added to her concept of self for a while, and other things that she has added after being around "Erik", and surely there is a manifestation of that which Westin can see and appreciate. I think I was hinting at him being in a similar position when he walks Lily home and starts acting, in small ways and mannerisms, like Bat Boy with her mother. In general, they have room to have more of a connection. They never even talk about their shared history of being moved by their parents at a time when they were not ready and had already established their identities. Westin would surely be dealing with fresh feelings with which Lily could empathize, and her empathy would surely attract him to her more.

Ugh, there's just work to be done between them, and that is one of the bigger things that needs fixing in the later chapters.

But I hope in the future that as more people read this, they will think about it critically and pick up on how Westin is not a Raoul-type character. Surface-wise, he seems to be, and I intended that, but beneath the surface he does not represent the meaning of Raoul for Chrisitne the way Mariam does for Lily. There is no indication in The Phantom of the Opera that Raoul has the ability to show Christine how to look towards the future instead of the past, how to deal with her feeling that she must live life in reaction to someone or something that she feels was cut off too short. To me, he represents safety and understanding of much of but not all of who she is, but he can't do more than show support. I've never felt that she should choose Erik over Raoul, but I have also never felt that Raoul would help her be at ultimate peace. Mariam is in a similar position as her best friend. Westin, on the other hand, is sort of a character that maybe Christine would meet beyond the story's time frame, someone who CAN bring her to peace and who has experience that a Raoul-type character doesn't. I could have made a promise to the reader in the last chapter that Lily could end up with him, that she'd find happiness, but life isn't really that simple. Her involvement with "Erik" messed with her life enough that she will be hard to understand unless she spills the whole story... and that can't be done any time soon. Plus her feelings for "Erik" are too much in the way and will extend far past the story, keeping her from committing to anyone else. She will feel guilty being near other guys.

Ughhhh, I hate that there is more to this story but I stand on principle against sequels that try to explain the mystery of original endings, especially ones without the substance of the originals. In the future, I imagine Lily and Mariam will not be going to the same college because they will want the other to pursue their different careers to the fullest, but that Lily may well follow Westin to try to "undo" and "restring" their friendship. I can see them both retaining feelings for each other, especially as they see the other blossoming into better, stronger, more self-understanding people, but I also see "Erik" released from prison either right in the middle of Lily's college education, or immediately proceeding it. And wanting her back. But that is just too much for me to deal with right now.