I broke down and cried last night.

It could have been the contradictory combination of strong coffee and my mother urging me to go to sleep that did it (after all, it was already the stroke of twelve, and I've had more than enough no-sleep nights). Or it could have been the realization that my play was a complete mess, and I had to think of something brilliant enough to persuade Ma'am to forgive the abrupt change, and think fast. So I lay sleepless in bed, deep in swirly, caffeinated thought. Then it came crashing into me, landing with a bone-breaking thud in my chest.

I couldn't write anymore.

My ideas, all wondrous and sincere and unapologetically mine, all gone, like I'd been left with pathetic leftover shreds of the dreams I once so proudly peddled on paper. All gone.

Then I began sobbing. Quietly now, it's rude to wake your mother sleeping a few inches away from you with your weeping. So, being a good little girl and clutching my purple-yellow stuffed dragon Char to my chest, I tottered to the bathroom, locked the door, perched my pet carefully atop the toilet, and bawled my eyes out. I was useless. I was a complete waste of protoplasm. I'm a walking shame to the ranks of writers everywhere. Nobody cared anyway, so why bother?

Then Char fell and plonked himself right straight into the toilet bowl.

Snivelling, I fished poor Char out of the icky pool and had no choice save to give him a decent soap-down. I tugged the small pail of water we used to flush the toilet with, grabbed our bar of Safeguard Ginseng, and scrubbed my baby good and clean. How pathetic I must have looked: me crying into Char's bathwater, keeping sure to scrub behind his ears and soaping his tail. After the ordeal, (as I had to twist the poor animal this way and that and squeeze out the few washdrops I could out of his cottony self) I couldn't help but think to myself how soppy and wet he was and how Mama might freak in the morning, but at least he smelled nicer.

And so I put him on a safer perch, and bawled my eyes out again.

This morning, I went without breakfast just so I could get to the UP Library earlier to give me some ease, and to get out of the house before my mothr could notice her daughter was turning into a walking gloopy pile of emotional jell-0. In the morning, I smoked my first Winston Lights after a long, long while. The Breakfast of champions. Kurt Vonnegut smoked too much. He had something to say about it in the preface of Welcome to the Monkeyhouse: The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide. that's what he said.

To hell with it.

So far, I have survived two college classes and five rides total to and from school without any attempted suicide. Self-initiated roadkill is obscene, messy and entirely unsophisticated. Jumping began to look very good, except when you're in a University that has less than six stories per buiding. You need at least six stories to make a good and quick getaway. Never mind clean; you won't need to mop your smoshed brains up once you're dead anyway.

I'm still not entirely safe home though. I encode this entry from a rented PC somewhere in Robinson's, along the same lane where computer supplies are sold and juicy grilled chickens are served. There are still unruly and equally unapologetic G-Liner bus drivers to deal with, so we'll just have to wait and see what becomes of me.

And of course, there's the pollution. Can't get enough pollution once you live the way I do.