«  Wed.12.13.2000  » 9:43 pm EST        19°F (-7°C) in Ann Arbor Calendar of Updates Today has been very easily one of the worst days I've ever lived. After a venomous personal attack I endured around 3:00 am, I was seriously contemplating suicide — not if, but how and when. I think that to truly get it off my chest and feel better about it, I need to talk about the things that have happened to me today, and how they will affect my life. I won't say who it was that attacked me earlier, but he basically attempted to convince me that everything negative that's ever happened to me is completely my fault. I mean, he doesn't know a lot of the details of various situations I've been in before, yet he felt it appropriate to pass judgment on me. I've known that he can be pretty judgmental like that, but I never felt that it would come to this. I signed off ICQ and laid down in my bed. I was thinking, how am I going to end this? I first thought of staying awake until about 7:15, when the first bus reached North Campus, and stepping out in front of said bus as it approached me. I considered poisoning myself with items in my room, and choking to death on my own vomit. I considered running a hose from the exhaust pipe of the Tercel into the passenger compartment, and sitting there until the carbon monoxide took my life. Some small part of me had cold feet about going through with it. I called my friend Eric in California; I left a message with his father, and he called me back about half an hour later. He stayed on the phone for about two hours, trying to convince me that it wasn't the best option. At least for that time being, he was successful. Still feeling depressed, though not suicidal, I went to bed. I slept until 4:00 pm in hopes that being well-rested would help me get over my feelings. I called Eric again almost immediately after waking; but this time, I faced a letdown that pushed me down towards suicidal again. Everything that I've been hoping for and working toward for the better part of two months is now shattered. As painful as this is to talk about, I have to do it. Eric will not be joining me here in mid-January as I'd hoped. I tried to make it clear that I would do everything in my power to assist him financially, but he turned me down. Getting to the point of the conversation, I now am faced with two much less attractive choices: (1) endure at least three months of my parents, which is bound to include a war over my schooling and other financial matters; or (2) struggle to survive on my own, which will be made almost impossible without rent-paying assistance or transportation. What's more, the success of either path is at least partially beyond my control. I have to worry that option 1 may involve my being kicked out of the house for not wanting to attend school, and I have to worry that just one full-time job won't cut it if I choose option 2. I called Nym over to my room to talk about it, which we did for about the next three hours. He told me about a line in the recent movie American Beauty which I will attempt to paraphrase here: "There's only one person in the whole world on whom you can count, and that's yourself." This is so true — I was counting on Eric to help me survive on my own for the first few months of my independence, at least until I became able to get one of the better-paying jobs I'm looking at in April. He may not even be moving to Michigan until then, at which point his assistance would be (a) too little, too late, and (b) not even needed. I hope that I'll at least be able to count on my parents not to kick me out of the house just because I'm not in school. I am going to have to make them face reality — all along, I've hidden my true desires from them, not only fearing, but knowing, that retribution will be swift and severe. I cannot live the way they want me to live, but I seriously fear that they will make my submission to their will for my life a condition of my living in the house. My parents are so selfish that they don't love me, they love what they want me to be. They love the perfect-4.1-grade-point, longer-haired, straight-and-going-out-with-girls, envy-of-the-neighborhood Larry that existed simply because I didn't truly know myself at the time. They don't give a fuck about the gay Larry who "is really only confused, since you're ONLY 20 years old." They don't give a fuck that Larry has zero desire to attend school; they refuse to consider any options for me other than academic perfection. I'm really in a Catch-22 here — I need to count on at least one person or group to survive, but the line from American Beauty (which, I might add, is very true) tells me I can't. Maybe just ending my life would be the best option, at least in some regards; all I'd ever need then is a simple plywood box and a hole in the ground. Most of the people who should care enough about me to help me out really don't care, so I imagine I'd have a sparsely-attended funeral. All I'd need from there is a ride in the back of some old station wagon to said hole in the ground, and that would be it for my story on this planet. I don't believe in an afterlife or any of that religious bullshit — and don't even get me started on that, because I will shoot .45-caliber holes right through any argument you might have — so at that point, the universe would just forget that I ever existed. Why am I writing this depressed entry, you might ask? I'm down to the one good thing left going for me in this world: my ability to write all of these things down in hypertext and be able to come to terms with them, to heal from all the pain they cause me. Even if nobody ever reads this, it's my way to attempt to remain at least partially sane and coherent. But in any case, I'm searching for the reasons why I should even bother to go on. I'm nothing more than a fuck-up and a loser in everybody's eyes, even in the eyes of those people who should want to see me succeed. I'm going to have to make a deal with some sort of a devil just to survive, now that the one true dream I had has been shattered like the windows of the typical late-model SUV in southwest Detroit. (Word up to my G's on da West Siiiiiiiide! ) I really don't care if these people who have screwed me over ever realize what they've done to me — they'll get it back soon enough, I know. My parents will lose their beloved control over every aspect of my life; Pat Cunningham at U-M Transportation Services will one day be forcefully awakened to the low morale caused by the way he treats his employees; and Eric will get to, in his words, "drown in the sea of idiocy and illogic called California." These people will receive their due, but the question is, will I be alive to see it?