There's a lump in the center of my chest. It throbs slightly and slides up and down; it creeps into the base of my throat and then eases itself out again, as if whatever controls its motion is trying to decide whether it wants to see me vomit my heart out or not. Yes, it could be funny, but does the joke justify the mess? And the audience may not see the humor of it.

My gut feels icky; cold and hollow, but not entirely, as if the walls of it are coated with that slime that fills the gel-packs one freezes and stuffs in lunch boxes to keep orange juice cool. Outside, a squirrel darts across the driveway. No, a rabbit. I've never seen a squirrel that moved so fast or with such purpose with such a linear course. No pauses, no deviations -- a straight jet, almost as if the thing had been skewered and yanked across the concrete on a metal rod.

I cannot seem to fall asleep. I spent the day twisting in bed, entertaining strange daydreams behind my eyes while remaining conscious enough to question everything about them. Mostly, they were unpleasant -- people I know or have known criticizing me harshly, telling me how much they hate me and their reasons for doing so and then shoving me backwards. Not as if trying to knock me on my back, though; the angle of their shoves almost suggested that they were trying to send me hurtling down through the crust of the earth, into the molten core to melt and burn and dissolve into nothing, but they did not seek to destroy me -- merely to help me become what I already am. Nothing; dead; lost and gone forever.

I rose for a time and ventured to take a GRE practice test online. Within questions I closed the window bitterly and with frustration. I have always been somewhat good at taking standardized tests, but never because I actually knew the answers -- I was just skilled at guessing. But I no longer care for guesses. Maybe I never did. I just know that when the word "vexillology" flashed across my monitor I wanted to drive my fist into it. The study of flags, I know that now, but did I ever care what that word meant? No. How often will I speak of vexillology or the Union Jack or any of those other words that appeared on my screen and beckoned me to discern their relationship and choose two other words that shared it? And they always want you to choose the best answer, and to confuse you in this they deliberately place words there that have a similar relationship. The thing is, the relationships are often similar enough to make a good case for that pair being the best answer -- although, quite frankly, one could make a case for any of the pairs being the best answer, depending upon what one means by "best". Rarely do standardized tests offer comprehensive and exhaustive definitions of the terminology used in their directions.

I was thinking that perhaps, instead of dying -- no, I won't die tomorrow, but I don't expect to survive the year, perhaps even the summer (but then, bear in mind that I never expect to survive very long; I have been resolved to end my own life since I wrote of drawing sticky red streams from my arms in black-and-white marble composition books back in middle school) -- I should perhaps consider preparing for graduate school. Now I see that not only do I not have the slightest idea how to go about it, but that -- if it includes taking the GRE, writing this or that essay by this date for this purpose that I don't ultimately give a bloody fuck about and that will, in the end, make no difference whatsoever to me or benefit me in the least (just as my experience at Yale did nothing for me and has had no beneficial effects on my life -- and some quite negative ones, actually) -- I think death would be the preferable choice. I wonder what drives other people -- what they feel they have to live for, what things excite them, where they see themselves in several years, what would make them happy.

Ask me these questions and I'll say, "Nothing, nothing," and perhaps even chuckle and look away as I envision the life being crushed out of me beneath the wheels of an SUV.