You know, I'm really not a fan of re-releases and remasters. I don't think I am. It's possible I don't know the difference.

Tonight we are trying to figure out when the change happened. Spotify's on to me, so when I went for sleeping music, it gave me even earlier music in my history, before I ever really listened to "cool" music, or thought I was "cool" at all.

And it has me wondering. When did I switch from the young romantic poetic bubbly goof playing with candles, listening to Mix 96 on my 80s stereo and swooning over Dave Matthews Band into... whatever came after. A transition into something harder, or at least pretending to be to be protected.

A transition is right. Softer bits still remained, struggled to be seen, but the table turned.

And before then, trouble started peeking. I was having fun, staying up late night listening to music and building websites or whatever internet things. I lit incense and wrote. Reality used to be a friend of mine, but there came a point where a crack in the wall became a trickle. If I look back at the start of this diary, I might see it, but I try not to do that.

At some point I wrote something about a wall. The loss of innocence and breaking down a wall. I don't think I was that young. My mom thought it was very good. I don't remember talking about it.

Obviously it was a transition. But there must have been a moment that crossed over, right?

The visitor's kiss I didn't ask for that I got in trouble for even though I tried to explain.

Being my mom's confidant when she came home late from the date I knew she'd been on, and the drop in my stomach when she said she'd kissed him.

17 and standing on the couch arm drinking parent approved Kahlua and reciting Hamlet for school, in the near dark, lit only by the computer screen, my brother taking his mug to his room, while my parents had The Talk in their walk in closet.

That summer my brother mostly stayed at my dad's. My mom mostly stayed at Keith's. I cooked macaroni and cheese in the microwave, slept on the couch, danced with a chair for the first time.

My mom moved out and it was like she was gone. The boys moved back in and the music in the house changed.

People died, people changed, and drugs were new. I never did many, but I did enough. I hid cigarettes from my friends and not my family.

Casey and the non-con. Not understanding what it was. I wasn't in trouble as much as it was on my record.

Getting to college orientation and understanding what it was. Not being believed at first.

Reluctantly starting college (two hours from home) in August of 2001. Deliberate infidelity with someone still in my life who is a complicated person and always has been. Going home in.. October? November? It felt like torture before that.

Home again. Accidental date turned into more non-con that I didn't understand until later. Better to date it and do drugs and very dramatically get caught by my still-boyfriend who was supposed to still be at college.

I guess I've answered my own question pretty well. For any golden good that came after that, for any monstrously dreadful feelings and experiences... I was pretty much fucked over the line after that.

do you wake up on your own and wonder where you are? you live with all your faults...

It's a little stupid how much the lyrics to that song encompass what I'm feeling right now... but addressed to myself instead of some disembodied woman... and rather than requesting she slide into my bed or room, I am requesting that I let all of this slide, someday, off me...

I don't know if it does any good - figuring out "where it all went wrong" - but I'm not in therapy and I haven't expressed much of this, not like this, not in awhile.

And this musing is far preferable to the way I normally go through these thoughts at this hour.

Another one for the series of "a couple lines become a couple pages"

Ah, I'm still looking for something to replace cigarettes in these moments. Satisfaction. Contemplation. Nostalgia. A little bit of pain. Release.

Someday I'll find it.

(you know what the answer probably isn't? Undo all the good work and drain the battery on songs digging your fingertips into your sternum k thx