August 19th, 1982

I woke up this morning wringing my hands. I am alone in the apartment; John and Wendy have gone to do laundry. Despair floats about the empty apartment like fog. I am about to be depressed. I know it. I feel its approach the way an epileptic must sense seizure.

Providence has the same unnerving effect upon me as Beach Haven. Being surrounded by a world of stability— houses and yards and families— seems to magnify my own sense of rootlessness and insecurity. Stability: financial, emotional, seems like such an impossibility to me. I realize with a certain horror that in my entire life I have never lived in the same place for two consecutive autumns.

Simply, there are days when I wake up and do not want to be alive. When the helplessness and aimlessness of life is overwhelming. I would like to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. Or a bottle of gin would do quite nicely.