I Still Wonder All the Time:

"Do you still believe in the stories told?"

It's an amazing thing, pride. Most Californians love the fact that they come from the sunshine state, the promise land for anyone who's ever had a dream.

But I still wonder. I wonder all the time. I wonder what I would have turned out to be if I hadn't been raised here, in this land of sunshine and shitbags. Maybe it was the city smog. Maybe it was the water. The food. The commercial advertising. Maybe it was that I saw through all of that and pinned it for the slimy pollution it really was.

A question rings through my head constantly. It's always there. And I only said it outloud once, to Devi.

"Do you think that if you stopped doing something that defines you as a person, that maybe, you'd cease to be that person?"

It was honest. Well put. I'll always remember it.

But right now, at this moment, I'm sitting on my bed, thinking of anything I can until it passes.

Until anything passes.

Time doesn't count. It's a figure of speech. I lose track of the days, the weeks, the years. Maybe in another lifetime I'll come back as a well-adjusted individual. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be even more fucked up.

Thinking of it now, though, I don't think that's possible. It makes me sad to say I might just have lost all faith in everything I once believed.

My name is Johnny. Johnny C.

I don't know where I come from; I don't know how I came to live in my house, or my own age or last name. I don't know anything about myself, except the fact that I wish I could scream. I want to scream. I don't know why, but I'm all screamed out.

I feel like a child right now. A scared, small child, who's lost its way. Like I never belonged anywhere to begin with, like everyone told me in the very beginning. I get small, random pains sometimes. Really intense, then they go away. Certain instances have led me to believe that those are actual parts of my psyche, and my spirit dying.

I used to swear to any god listening, to myself, to my soul, that I would never let myself down, give up, let a part of me die or any of that cliché stuff. It hurts me to know that that's exactly what I've done. My time here's up.

My time is up and there's no place for me to run and hide.

Again, I'm stuck waiting for something to happen, for the next phase of my life to run a cycle.

I can't hear the voices anymore, and it's quieter than ever. I hardly even hear my own voice from time to time. I can't remember anything and a part of me is shrieking things that tell me I really, really don't want to remember.

Now that the voices are gone – I get the feeling for good – I'm just waiting for the next cycle of whatever it is to start.

I don't kill anymore.

Oh, don't get me wrong. People still make my flesh melt with anger, but I just don't have it in me. Maybe I'm not in my twenties, like I've been thinking. Maybe I'm really in my thirties. Or early forties. It's as though I don't have the energy for anything anymore.

Maybe I'm just all slaughtered out. I got it out of my system.

Which is a good thing, definitely. Now I just scream at people and run away. No one gets hurt. Just frightened - this was probably the approach I should've taken long ago. And even though I'm stuck waiting for something to happen again...

I'm ok.

I'm ok with waiting. Waiting for the next step of this years-long mental breakdown. You have to hit rock bottom before you can start to get up again.

I've got to go now, though...

I think it's time.

It's time to take the next step.

But this time...

No one's here to reason me out of it. Not Nail Bunny. Not the Dough Boys, not that I'd want either of them to be here right now. Nobody.

Not even Devi.

I hope she's ok. I do care deeply for her.

Nobody's here.

I miss my home, but home is nowhere.

I want to vomit, just once. Real quick before I leave.

I'm going to go someplace where no one can ever see me again. And in this place, no one does. The place I'm aspiring to go is vastly different from California. Much colder. Much meaner. Much more...industrialized.

I may be looking for relief, but I'm a city-boy at heart. It's still the center of the universe, and it always will be.

Here I come, New York City.