Free writing is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism.

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9:12 PM. My eyes ache. I’m tired of watching things fall apart. I’m tired of watching castles crumble in disuse and disrepair. I am sorry, I am sorry, I’m so sorry. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. The song I’m listening to reminds me of waves — not the ocean, but waves, just water. I love the feeling of drowning — not the suffocation, but the surrender — I like the rush of water over my ears, I love the cool exhilaration of its touch. When I’m tired, all I want to do is shower. Last year, I started this thing, this mantra — whenever the water rushed down over my head I would think to myself, All the sadness of today is being washed away. Everything is coming off. 9:16 PM. I used to have nightmares of drowning (the suffocation, not the surrender). I used to see this blue light, the surface — and my fingertips would reach towards it, and then I’d wake up. All my dreams have water — rivers, streams, leaky faucet taps. I’m always surrounded by water. As a joke, I once let someone interpret my dream — they said, Water in dreams mean emotion. You are a person who is overrun by emotion. I don’t deny that. I wonder if it’s bad or not. 9:19 PM. There’s nothing to say. I’m bothered by a lot of things, but I don’t want to talk about them. It annoys me that no one I know really seems to worry about the things I worry about. I look around me and everyone is so preoccupied with love and being loved and I care about those things too, sometimes — passingly — but more than anything, I’m haunted by other demons. 9:21 PM. The funny thing about this song is that I find the end of it eerie, and yet I can’t stop listening to it. Truthfully, I’m obsessed with things that are broken, things that are wrong, things that are off. I can’t get enough of them. I like to be scared, but not simple danger-scared, but actual uncanny-scared. There’s something pleasurable in that kind of fear. I like the adrenaline rush. Do you know that I’m afraid of dolls? Not Barbie dolls, but things that are life-like, things that look human, like that Japanese robot who can cry. They frighten me for the same reason that people with fake smiles startle me — they aren’t how they should be. But I can’t explain this right — go read Freud’s “The Uncanny”. It’ll make sense then. 9:30 PM. My head still hurts. I don’t know what else to say. I feel most secure in high places. It bothers me when I’m seated with my back towards a door. If possible, I always want to have my back against a wall. Lisa told me that if you sleep in front of a mirror, your spirit will get trapped while you sleep. I used to think that my mirror image had a life of her own — I imagined that her house was bigger, that she was prettier, and that she had a more exciting life than mine. I think she must have been happy. I think she must have been able to walk through other mirrors, to walk all the way to France. She must have lived in Paris. 9:34 PM. I broke the rule. I deleted something. That’s how most things go — I start to talk about a problem, but then I delete it. I don’t know why I can’t just open up —

I just —

don’t

want to.