18.11. I've always had bad dreams. That's not the interesting part. I've always had bad dreams, or so this diary assures me. I've always had bad dreams, though the hand in which this diary is written does not look like mine in the slightest. Perhaps that makes sense. The journal is old. Five years at least. Well-loved and ill-cared-for, consisting of text and water damage in equal measure and so it is not too surprising that the swoop of my "l"s would have changed over the course of its existence. Academic consensus holds that some degree of calligraphic drift is normal. Expected even. Such a thing occurring from one day to the next can hardly be unprecedented either. 19.11 The dreams that this diary describes are formulaic and unsatisfying and I try to use these stylistic blemishes to distract me from the substance of what they might be saying, or more accurately from the idea that they might be saying anything at all. I do not remember having dreams, and, reading the diary, I am somewhat glad that I don't. They seem scary and don't appear to have much of a benefit to them which would countervail this fact. 20.11. While the dreams are repetitive and trope-laden, it is difficult to unify them into any sort of genre. The set dressing varies greatly. The characters, the tone, the approach. Some of them are more psychological, others are... somatic. The one with the surgery in particular now that my temple has stopped bleeding. Still more of the dreams never get close enough to the point to even guess where they could be heading in anything but retrospect, and yet they're all iterations on the same formula: I am looking for something and getting increasingly terrified of what happens when I find it until —when I get really close to the payoff— the fear overwhelms me and I wake up trembling and without knowing what it is that I was looking for and where. The matter seems to have upset me a lot at the time, seeing how much I was writing about it. 21.11. I don't think my friends like me. We'll get along fine until I say or do something which makes all of them turn and stare at me like a creature wrought of mud and string and loathing. Perhaps I do not like them either. None of their words seem to connect and I find myself wondering why I would have ever acquired them in the first place. When did I have the time to write all of these words? Nevermind made friends? There is a hole to be dug so that everything may be put inside and covered with earth. I tried it in my bedroom, though this wasn't right and I filled it with ash and plastic. Next I tried my head, though this too did not lead anywhere and was harder to close. The hole, possibly, does not need to be made anywhere physical and I am still searching and I cannot find the time for words or friends or sleep. 22.11 My diary says that there is a sound in my brain. A high pitched noise like the hiss of a kettle, which you never really notice until you pay attention to it. When one does focus, it says that the sound hurts so much as to keep me from standing upright and that I flinch away long before it reaches its crescendo like a child flinching away from a hot stove. I don't hear a sound, but I don't think that I would flinch. Flinching away from strange noises seems like a thing people who are afraid of their dreams would do. 23.11 Diary-me says that I want to understand it, but I also say that really pinning down the sound breaks you somehow. Elaboration is never given. One of those many things I seemingly made an effort to never touch or even look at. I don't know why I was so sure about that. And I don't think it's true. And it might be where the hole must go. 24.11. Today one of these friends —her name escapes me— asked if I was still doing "that meditation thing". She said she'd been trying it: Looking for the sound in the background of everything but that she was growing increasingly uneasy the closer she got and that she felt it was hampering her progress. Not knowing what she was talking about, I told her that the unease was fine, that the sound was more of a metaphor which loses pertinence the closer you got. That it wasn't a sound at all. That it sounded like a kettle. That the pain isn't all it makes itself out to be. I don't know why I was explaining these things, but I felt that she deserved to hear them since this was the first coherent thing any of my friends had ever said. 25.11 We talked for a bit longer —the details are unimportant— but by the end, she closed her eyes and scrunched up her forehead, seemingly lost to the exertion of some intense mental conflict for the better part of five minutes. I was worried, as one is for their friends, though this turned out to be unnecessary. When she opened her eyes again there was something new behind her pupils. Faint, but brighter than all the rest of her. It seemed that a minuscule flame had been lit in the shallows and that it was waiting to consume her whole. The interesting part is that I found myself cheering for it. 26.11. I shall bury this diary in the bedroom. There is nothing to be learned from who I used to be or at least nothing that I ever successfully wedged between syllables. Words are not the place for everything to be entombed.