2005-10-04 || 2:15 p.m.

|| but today is better. ||

Last night unexpectedly presented my Darkest Portland Hour, and I paced back and forth across the length of my apartment trying to figure out how to ride it out. I thought of writing to my Brian, first in obnoxious open letter form via diaryland, then in written letter to Oakland form, but the words spilling out after the Dear Brian were those no one wants to read nor send. I got out my sad neglected paper diary, written in only once since I�ve been up here (September 25, 2005: the day Meow Meow died), but I filled less than a page and gave up to give in to a good sound cry. I was able to map out the causes of my D.P.H.

(causes of my D.P.H., October 3, by Jennifer H.:
1. the death of my little old lady/bringing home her ashes to put on the mantelpiece. Feeling that kind of sad that makes you worry your heart is going to tear under the weight of it: how it�s almost confusing, and you replay the especially bad parts and have to sit for a bit and get used to seeing someone you love in box form (it doesn�t quite compare, but I think that is always the most confounding part of funerals: that someone you love is lying there in a coffin at the front of a church or is in a little metal box or has been scattered over the sea.).
2. being so severely stuck on rewriting. Lying to my mother about my progress. Sitting at my desk night after night to stare out the window and get choked up and feel ready to scrap the whole thing, but then what? Then nothing.
3. coming home from the weekend and finding it is irrevocably autumn. All of the sudden it�s twenty degrees colder, and we�ve brought out more blankets, and I have been sleeping with socks on and afghans huddled against the cold cold wall. I like the cold very much, but it�s the strongest indication that all this has not been, contrary to what I have convinced myself for the past four months, just an action-packed make-believe summer vacation that will end with my driving back home to my real life in California the minute the leaves start turning.
4. I have finally discovered my mythical part-time Portland job cannot support my modestly glamorous lifestyle.)

Which made me feel a little better, but sitting at my desk looking out the window onto the rooftop next to our building gave me the worst panicky feeling. Like I couldn�t figure out what was holding me up, and instead of the solid cement foundation I expect to see when I look down, there would be a few soggy wooden poles and water rising and rising.

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