Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone who has someone to share it with 💕 Truly. I’m not bitter. I’m sitting on my bedroom floor eating peanut butter cups I bought for myself and I have genuinely never been more at peace. That’s not even sarcasm. Okay it’s a little sarcasm 😅

Not like I could go out and do anything even if I had someone tbh. Everything’s still masks and six feet apart and “limited capacity” which is a fun phrase that also describes my mental state rn. I was supposed to be here last semester. I transferred from community college, got accepted to a PARTY school, was so ready for it, and then the world shut down and I had to defer. So I spent all of fall sitting at home working and waiting while everyone else was at least doing something. And now I’m finally here and I experience most of it through a laptop screen. I have been to the actual campus maybe four times. I know the inside of this apartment better than any building on campus. The college experience!! 🎓

So you know how I mentioned the new apartment? It’s fine. Radiator sounds like it’s possessed but it’s cheap and I don’t have a roommate so I’m not complaining.

ANYWAY. The reason for this post.

When I moved in there was stuff left behind by whoever lived here before me. Papers. A LOT of papers. Like not just a few things in a drawer, papers in the closet, under the bed, stuffed behind the radiator (which explains why it screams), mixed in with old takeout menus in the kitchen. I tried to contact management about forwarding it all to the previous tenant and they were zero help. No forwarding address, no contact info, basically not their problem 🙃

So it’s been sitting in the corner of my room for weeks and tonight, because it’s Valentine’s Day and I have absolutely nothing going on (see above re: peanut butter cups, see also: global pandemic), I finally started going through it.

And I can’t stop??

It’s all handwritten. Pages and pages. No dates, no page numbers, no order. Some of it is nearly illegible like it was written in a frenzy and some of it is this really deliberate careful handwriting. I can’t even tell yet if it’s all by the same person.

Most of it doesn’t make sense to me yet. There are references to things I can’t follow, names and places and what seems like mythology?? Mixed in with what reads like very mundane everyday life stuff. Like one page will be about making food and going to work and then the next page is something about gods and the sun and I genuinely cannot tell if these go together or if I’m shuffling two completely different things.

The psych major in me wants to say something about Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious bc that’s what the mythology stuff FEELS like, but I haven’t read enough of it to go there yet. Slow down Claire lol.

From the real-life stuff I can piece together, this guy was a student here. Like HERE here. Same school. Which is kind of wild to think about?? Like he walked the same streets, probably sat in the same buildings I would be sitting in if any of my classes were actually in person 🙃 There’s references to work and classes and just... a life. In this apartment. In this town. And now I’m here instead and he’s wherever he went and all that’s left is this pile of paper.

Sorry that got weirdly existential for a second lol. I do that. Pandemic brain plus transfer student brain is a great combo let me tell you. You know when you uproot your whole situation bc you think it’s going to be this fresh start and then you get here and you’re retaking stats because apparently the stats you already took and passed doesn’t count here?? And you’re supposed to be building connections and finding a research advisor but you can’t even be on campus half the time and the other half everyone’s behind masks and nobody makes eye contact and you go home and stare at the wall?? Yeah. So maybe I’m projecting a little onto this guy’s abandoned papers. The vibes of someone who lived somewhere and then just left and now there’s nothing to show for it except stuff in a box... idk, it’s hitting different tonight.

OKAY so back to the notes. The real-life stuff is interesting enough on its own, there’s a girlfriend situation that even from scattered pages is clearly a whole thing, and there’s something going on with his job, but what’s really getting to me is the other stuff. The mythology pages. They’re detailed in a way that feels different from the rest. Almost like a different person wrote them? Or like the same person in a completely different state of mind.

My working theory rn is that it might be a dream journal 🤔 That would explain the mix of real life details and fantasy elements. Like he’s documenting his day and also documenting his dreams and they’re all mixed together in the same pile. The dream stuff has that quality to it, vivid, specific in weird ways, jumps around without transitions. If you’ve ever tried to write down a dream right after waking up it reads exactly like this.

Which actually, okay this is going to sound like a reach but hear me out. I had this dream last night that I was in a library except all the books were blank and there was this woman at the front desk who kept stamping pages but there was no ink on the stamp and she looked at me and said “you’re late” and I said “for what” and she said “for everything” and then I woke up. And I wrote it down bc that’s what I do bc I’m a psych major and I’m annoying like that 😂 And reading it back this morning it sounded INSANE. Like if a stranger found that in a box they’d think I was losing it.

So maybe that’s all this is? Someone’s dream life mixed in with their waking life and it only looks strange from the outside because dreams ARE strange and we just don’t think about it because they’re ours.

That’s my clinical analysis for now anyway. Very professional. Very peer-reviewed 😌

OH and there IS a cat. Or there was a cat. Named Kitten Caboodle. Which is honestly the single greatest cat name I’ve ever encountered and I’m a little upset I didn’t think of it first. I love cats sm but I’m super allergic which is honestly one of the great injustices of my life 😭 And actually that explains SO MUCH. I’ve been having to take my allergy meds on top of all my other meds constantly since I moved in even though pollen season isn’t for like two months. I thought it was just dust from the apartment not being cleaned properly before I got here, I had to go buy a humidifier like my second week bc my sinuses were just destroyed. But no. There was a WHOLE CAT living here. The dander is probably in the carpet, the walls, everywhere. Thanks Kitten Caboodle. I already love you and you’re ruining my life 😂

Okay I really need to stop. I have an assignment due Tuesday that I haven’t started and I’m sitting here reading someone else’s problems instead of dealing with my own which honestly tracks for me as a person 😅 But I did just read something that’s sitting weird with me. Not in a scary way, more like... idk how to describe it. Like reading something you almost recognize but can’t place? Like déjà vu but on paper. It’s probably nothing. It’s late and I’m tired and my brain is doing that thing where it makes connections that aren’t there. Occupational hazard of being a psych major lol.

I’m going to bed. For real this time. Goodnight 💀