Welcome to Excerpts From My Super-Secret Diary, a new A+ feature for Silver & Gold members in which we publish for you some of our incomplete and/or highly personal thoughts we’ve written down, usually with actual pens. But today, Carmen is sharing excerpts from her secret Tumblr, all of which happen to be excerpts from her secret Tumblr that you’ve never heard her read at A-Camp and never will. But she does that, too. Just in case you wanna know.

1.

i didn’t really have any expectations for this place when i moved here, only expectations for me, which might explain why i have trouble deciding whether or not it’s working out so far. all i have now are my new life resolutions: learn how to do yoga, take eli to the park every morning at 7AM, drive on the freeway alone, write more, cook new things, figure it out. i called my mom when i got back from canada and told her i was alone, really alone, and it feels weird, y’know, to wake up by myself and walk eli by myself and be bored by myself, and all she said was “that’s what you wanted,” and she’s right. this is the hard part i was dreaming about before i actually had to look it in the face. this is the part where i change.

2.

i’m terrified to let 2013 go so i’m spending its final hours with the person who reminded me i was alive when i was more forgetful of who i was. last night i sat next to eli in the car ride home staring out at the highway and i wondered if other people are born big, if other people feel big inside, if other people feel like manifest destiny and rare particles of energy colliding inside one skeleton. i hope in 2014 i feel bigger than ever.

3.

the first good thing and not the last. two years ago i mumbled that to myself in the middle of the night, murmured it on the way home crying on the plane, left los angeles with a pen and a journal in my hand writing about how determined i was not to forget it. the first good thing and not the last. maybe the good things have all run out.

4.

i remember when i was broke and i ate ramen six times a week with frozen spinach and onions and i remember that porch i lived in with no air conditioner where every morning i felt like i was looking out at a city that i didn’t live in and i remember crying to my mom on the phone and my bank on the phone and the water company on the phone and i remember that i hosted that brunch and i had to ask riese for money just for eggs and cheese and i remember the time marina and amanda paid my bill at the looking glass and i remember drinking leftover vodka from parties during the week and i remember it all, i really do, and i remember that it was hard but i also remember that i survived. i survived. i made it. i got out. i went on. i lived in amanda’s living room and they took my dog away and i would cry when i went to visit him and i would watch wes anderson movies on the big tv downstairs because my computer’s disc drive was broken and i couldn’t afford to replace anything and sometimes i fell asleep applying for jobs and i remember stealing from the grocery store and i also remember getting on that plane. i remember i had almost no money to my name when i bought the tickets: $129, round trip. i remember i took the bus to bwi because i couldn’t afford a super shuttle with a heavy suitcase in my hand the entire time and that i cried at every tarmac. there was a time i did what wasn’t justified and it opened up my heart and i bled and i dropped my phone in the toilet and i felt like i was born again or a little more naked or a little more light.

5.

there’s a bunch of photos on my camera that won’t come off, no matter how often i import them in and tell picasa to delete them. they’re from the grand canyon and new mexico and all the places before that, just tiny little pieces of information that set off memories that already feel too far away to touch. i don’t ever wanna forget geneva walking down the outdoor hallway at the econo lodge in abq. i don’t ever wanna forget how it felt to look at the grand canyon. i don’t ever wanna forget that night in flagstaff or the rainstorms in tennessee or the windmill farms in texas and oklahoma. but i know i will. i always do. i already can’t remember dc, not really, not like i used to when i woke up every day swimming in the past. things fade away, just like i was always worried they did. i didn’t take enough pictures. i didn’t leave enough behind. i didn’t write enough down. i’ll never remember the conversations we had or the places we went the way i thought i would when it was happening. i have to let it go instead, or cross my fingers and hope it happens again.

6.

i stood on the corner and i screamed. i just yelled. i wasn’t saying anything – i was just screaming. i was shrieking, crying, running in place. the cops asked what was wrong and i just yelled, yelling and i couldn’t stop yelling because i was convinced that was what had gotten me there, what had gotten me to a place where i was breathing again. i had everything i owned but i was empty inside and i was yelling so that people would know how that felt.

the cops thought i was hurt. i screamed anyway. i screamed because at that moment all i wanted were my primal instincts and to come back to life, to be able to remember the smell of his flesh and find him so i could remind him how he made me feel. i screamed so i could still be free.

7.

i didn’t make resolutions for 2012. i can’t decide why: maybe because 2011 was so good, because i went into 2012 grinning like an asshole at nellie’s and spilling champagne over myself, lovesick in someone else’s bed and filled with warmth and joy. maybe i thought 2012 didn’t need resolutions. maybe i thought i’d made every promise worth keeping already, to myself, to her, to my friends, to my enemies.

i was wrong.

8.

right now there isn’t much i want besides to finally make a mistake that makes me happy.

9.

the desert made me feel small, but in the good way. like maybe life would ramble on forever, like maybe some things would remain the same for miles and hours. i rode ten hours to vegas and nine back with geneva in the passenger seat, trying to DJ and trying to stay awake and trying not to cry.

10.

one of the reasons i wanna get out of here is that i can’t stop trying to piece these things back together. it’s like, when people first started leaving i looked around at all we still had and i said, ok that’ll do and now it’s so few of us and it feels so far away that being here is mostly just my own way of admitting defeat. we’ll never live in that house again. i’ll never be that person again. and the longer i stay here, the more i have to think about it. the longer i stay here, the longer i will miss her.

11.

maybe i don’t know who i am and i’ll never know and i was never anyone and i don’t exist at all. maybe i’m just dust in the wind. maybe i’ll never be enough. maybe i imagined all the sparks and the greatness. maybe it was all in my head. maybe nobody gets me. maybe nobody likes me. maybe i will never really get there because i don’t know where there is.

12.

[justin bieber’s acoustic recording of “beauty and a beat”]

13.

lately i think about it more than i used to. well, no, that isn’t true because i’ve never really stopped thinking about all of this stuff, not for years. every once in a while when i’m at work staring out the window or here in this basement i live in or standing outside walking eli i look up and out and i wish i was somewhere else. i called my mom on the phone and i told her i was moving, i said it quick like pulling off a band-aid. “i think i’m moving to los angeles around my birthday.” and now i can’t take it back.

14.

i’m turning twenty-five in two thousand and fifteen. i am a fraction of the earth and a millisecond in its time. stefanie said she turned twenty-five and looked back and thought, “i’ve done a lot of things i’m proud of.” when i close my eyes i watch myself like a figment from my own imagination. i loved who i was a few years ago and then i let her go. it felt like that was what life was supposed to be like, like something else would come, like someone else would emerge to fill the skin and bones she left me. nothing did.

15.

crossing the country was like a workshop in building myself a new heart, a new skeleton, a new soul. i think i got rounder? that’s okay. i think i reinvented my priorities and forgot how to sacrifice myself and lost touch a little with the world i thought was really important to me. one day i’m going to figure out the formula for leaving everything behind – every last speck. and i’m only taking geneva, my dog, and the pieces of my heart i shattered across the country with me.

16.

why doesn’t anyone ever make their shit look hard? my shit is all over the place. i have a million thoughts each day about tiny houses and plots of land and open windows and cars with no tops and the faint memory of what the sun feels like on my skin. i contemplate every day why it isn’t tomorrow yet but i don’t even know what that looks like. sometimes it feels like every single narrative is someone saying they “stumbled” into their dream job or “worked really hard and it worked out” and like, you know i know that’s bullshit, right? you know i know we all work hard and we all dream and somehow we’re not all getting the stuff we were working and dreaming for, at least not when we want it or need it.

17.

i told myself for months to write more, but nothing would come out, so now i am filled with words that were hidden under the floorboards in my brain and can’t wait to spill out. i challenged myself to try and peel away at the layers of what i’ve gotten myself into in this life and i think i’m a little closer to my core. i thought i knew who i was: when i was seventeen and when i was twenty but not right now. it was a nice illusion, so sometimes i fall into the rabbit hole to try to get it back.

18.

one day the only person who will need something from me, is me. one day i’ll never be tech support ever again, not a day in my motherfucking life. one day, all the people i consort with will know how to write an email. these are my dreams. not lofty, but ambitious.

19.

i keep saying to myself “i should really change my life” but then i keep waking up late and reading the paper on the train and listening to the same playlist at work and i don’t know what’s broken so it’s hard to figure out what went wrong. somewhere there is a tiny person in my heart trying to build my new life but i can’t find her. somewhere there is a light that never goes out but i’m too far in the tunnel to see it.

20.

tired of snow, tired of cold, tired of waiting, tired of blankets, tired of sweaters, tired of pants, i miss dresses and i don’t even wear them, my hair is too long, this music is sad, i’m bored, lately i feel bankrupt, i really wish it was warm outside, i miss my air conditioner humming, i miss long sessions with the sun, i miss iced coffee, i miss sweat, sometimes i don’t know if i’m gonna make it out alive.

21.

i’ve been crying on and off since 3 pm, and i come back and forth between my two options like two lives, and i alternate between things these days every second i’m awake and i’m emotionally exhausted and slightly sunburnt and i just want someone to get what i’m saying.

22.

“if i gave up on the real world i could do anything.” it’s one of those things you say out loud and then you realize it’s true.

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