A well-meaning acquaintance sent me a picture of myself today, taken while I was out in the sun, working on a project, covered with paint and with my hair pulled into an unflattering pony-tail. It is so hideous that it makes me want to cry, and my first thought was: "Hideous!" and that I should never leave the house again, followed by the hope that she didn't send it to anyone else. And then, the understanding that I can't ask her not to send it to anyone, because the level of my reaction would make her think I'm deranged. And she would be correct. (I think. It's pretty hideous.)

Looking at the picture, I find it hard to argue a case for me being let outside again, but perhaps others might find that opinion extreme. I mean, they even let Jojo the Dogface Boy outside, and he's not doing any photo shoots for GQ. (He's also dead, but that is beside the point.)

I really wish I knew where this horror of my own self comes from. Wait. Scratch that. I don't care where it comes from. I want it to go away. Because it happens from time to time, where I become convinced that I am too ugly to interact with other people, and every time, on some level, I recognize that really, there's a deeper problem at work. It's a troubling realization, and each time I realize it anew, changing my mindset seems impossible without a team of skilled psychiatrists and perhaps years of incarceration in some far-off antiseptic locked ward. And after ten years, the psychiatrists would say, "Well, Violet, you've made tremendous strides! You've overcome your anxiety, your writer's block, and your fear of abandonment. You're ready to go home! Uh... if you don't mind, could you take the back way? We need to keep the really physically hideous patients out of the main lobby."

Tonight, my self-loathing has manifested as acute writer's block bordering on panic, which is unfortunate, as I have an article due tomorrow and can't seem to write it. My writing here is the equivalent of scratching loops on a page with a pen, to get the ink to flow. Every time I have a shred of an idea, my brain reminds me how desperately ugly I am, and the idea halts. It's an irritating form of narcissism, I think, and I don't want to focus on myself all the time, but I don't know how to switch the train to another track. (Mixed metaphor. Sorry.)

I tried to explain to the Keelhauler that I was feeling this way, but my neuroses are beyond his capacity of coping, and so he didn't. He went for a drive, after telling me that he didn't know how to "fix" me. It's unfair for me to expect him to, and I guess I don't really want him to "fix" me, as to tell me that what I perceive is not reality. His unwillingness to just reinforces that my feelings are justified, and I can rationalize it all I want, but in the end, I know I can never have a normal relationship, because my self-perception is warped. Or, depending on which picture you're looking at, accurate.

I want a drink and a cigarette and a really, really long vacation. Make that ten cigarettes.

Star of the day. . .JoJo the Dogface Boy