I still almost can’t believe he’s dead; it’s like I keep waiting for someone to get on the news and announce that it was all a cruel publicity stunt. It would almost fit wis his raging crazy. I cried nonstop for about five hours on Thursday, mostly at work; customers all looked at me funny. You know I just started drawing a poster of him on Wednesday? After I was mostly finished crying, I wrote a little poem about him, which I will put on my poster.

I was not the happiest person in the world during the period of time when I discovered him. Not that I was severely depressed or suicidal or anything, but my situation was not wonderful, and he helped make it better. Sometimes when you’re a fan of someone, especially when you discovered them during a time of unhappiness like that, even though you’ve never met them and probably never will, you start to feel like that person is your friend. I feel that way about Watsuki, for instance, and I definitely felt that way about Michael. Beyond that, it’s easy for me to become very attached to the artistic side of a person without really knowing much about the rest of their personality or character. Listening to his music now, there’s still this void of impossibility between the sound of his voice and the thought that he’s dead.

Another aspect of the situation that makes it a little more disturbing is that his birthday is the same as my dad’s — day and year. And if one man his age can go into unexpected cardiac arrest and die…

Mom’s reaction has varied from indifferent to sneering to almost angry that I’ve been so upset about this. It’s not so much Michael himself, I believe, as that she seems to disapprove of my being a fan of anything. Seriously. She’s so weird. Anyway, I’ve tried not to mention it in her hearing. And this brings me effortlessly to my next topic.

Once upon a time, I forget how long ago (a year and a half? two years? something like that), my mom met this really amazing singer online. He and his wife (they’re in their early twenties) flew out from England for a week sometime last year so he could record some of her songs, and they hit it off really well wis my mom. Since then they’ve exchanged lots of emails and phone calls, and my mom talks about them all the time: how fun and nice they are, how rich and successful they are, what a spectacular singer he is, and how quickly they all became such good friends. Then she’ll inevitably add something to the purpose of, “I wish they were my children.”

Now, I’m not a parent, but this strikes me as something you shouldn’t really say to your daughter. Especially when she already feels horrible about living wis her parents at twenty-eight in the first place. I know she’s not deliberately trying to emphasize what a disappointment I am, but it sure as hell feels like it every time she brings it up.

Well, at the moment they’re staying here wis us for a month. And they really are fun, nice people. They remembered a conversation we had last time they were here a year ago or whenever where I mentioned how frustrating it is to be allergic to almonds and how I wish Mounds came in milk chocolate instead of dark; they actually brought me a couple of candy bars that are the British equivalent of Mounds wis milk chocolate. I felt special. I don’t mind at all that they’re in the house, per se…

Except that mom is being even worse than usual, presumably in response to their presence. At the best of times she has this obnoxious habit of brushing off whatever I say and/or just suddenly changing the subject whenever I try to start a conversation… but lately she barely acknowledges that I’ve even spoken if she’s not interested in discussing whatever I bring up. For some reason, the topic of school in particular seems to be gratingly uninteresting to her. I’m hoping she’ll stop this, because it’s really annoying.

On a less depressing topic (for what that’s worth), from one of Alexx’s PowerPoints the other day: “Health problem in 1900’s to 1960– no have test and vaccine pretreatment inoculation and wipe out disease.” And something about “dental assistant ants,” which cracked me up. If she could make me laugh as often as she irritates the hell out of me, I would be happier in general.

And that’s all I have to say at the moment.