Today isn't a good day. I don't feel present or alive in my body. Now that I've experienced a different state of mind for comparison, I'm aware of how absent and dead I've been for the last thirty years, as if what's walking around is just a poor sixth-generation copy of the cells I was born with. This kind of existence is worse than a state of illumination and terror. I'm not going to harm myself--I'm just going to suffer the loathing and, for now, hope. I hope the meds were responsible and not a fever or some rare, unrepeatable alchemy of factors.

I don't have a lot to say today, but I did want to say that I've been getting a lot out of giving to the people in the shelter--on a daily basis I get to surprise people with gifts of food, movies, cold medicine, cigarettes, phone chargers, whatever I've been able to identify that they need. I've been spendy, but just the right amount, I think--I still have money set aside for myself.

One of my current roommates is a weathered woman, a self-identified crack whore with a raw voice, a disintegrating body, and the short-term memory of a gerbil. This morning when I brought her some strawberry milk and M&Ms she was so happy and said how baffling it was to get things without any expectation in return. "Usually I have to perform."

I'm going now to get my other rommmate a blanket--she's breaking out in a rash from the shelter-issued emergency blankets--and something else that I've forgotten and will try to remember between here and the store.

The weather is beautiful today.