My body is falling apart more alarmingly than last summer. In particular, my skin burns--it itches, and peels, and generally looks twice as red as it normally should. I am doing everything I can to fight it, and nothing seems to work to win anything but moderate sustainability.

The best salve seems to be to distract myself such that I am no longer aware of my immediate existence--to lose myself in escapisms that encapsulate fully. Otherwise, my plight annoys--it hurts, but not nearly enough to warrant medical investigation. It is a droning pain, a recurring reminder that I am quite imperfect and that I will probably never be able to live further than thirty or so minutes from a hospital if I really want to best ensure my survival.

Also, that I will have to always maintain enough of an income such that said hospital would let me in . . . this is a much bigger problem, but is not as immediate. The handful of people that have been willing to give me a chance in the last month I think have been impressed, but they are so few that I continue feeling emotionally devastated, acknowledging the lack of success to do with my creative efforts.

I want more people to give me a chance . . . without me having to ask for it. I want people to live with open eyes, like mine, and to delight in what perhaps shouldn't be but isn't causing any harm. I want people to shudder away from their paths of most convenience, if just for a few moments, to show me that this life is worth putting up with--because if I am the only one with my talents, and if there are less than a dozen people even capable of understanding and appreciating my talents, then I am starting to think my struggle is worthless.

I suffer for myself . . . but I want to lead people to visions and to help them realize things fantastic. I believe that my creative work certainly has a spark that is uncommon such that it demands to be set apart--just that, thus far, no one seems to be willing to elevate it above what's common.

And so I once again tread thickly in the boggish depths of indelible cynicism. *They* would *all* rather watch a NASCAR race than listen to a New Music ensemble. They would all revile my every attempt to shake them from their comfortable illusions, agreeing in unison that their happiness is precisely what they want. At this rate, they will leave me to die--

I think, in fact, they have already left me in death's grip, yet somehow I simply cannot perish. Instead, I seem to draw strength from what would be, for countless others, multifaceted annihilation: spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual. It is the fount that enriches my every creation--a touch of death, a mixture of complete chaos. Yet, it's never exactly morbid, nor macabre.

I felt like I had figured out myself back in high school--surely, I have learned a lot more about myself since then, but my annoyance is that I have been ready to embrace learning about others ever since, and, as a summary of the force that led my writing above, I feel, immensely, like far too few (acknowledging foremost family, then about a dozen friends) are giving me a chance.

I have intelligence, I have creativity, I have willpower, I have vision--

yet it all seems like it's invisible, as if it's fully ignored, for everyone who could actually benefit from it.