I understand the loneliness. I've not one living friend. Not one. The majority abandoned me first and then I abandoned the remainder. I didn't cry for over 10 years and now I can't stop.

Just a moment ago I thought of how I dealt with pain and bleeding when I was young. If I fell off my bike and skinned my knees I would use my hands and put pressure on one knee at a time so that I could 'get the hurt out.' The relief was psychological but it was real.

I also just realized that I completely understand cutting if I think of it that way. It's a way to get the hurt out. Does that sound right? I didn't cry like most kids when I had a bike accident. I made myself hurt more so that I would hurt less. I thought of pain as something with a fixed duration that could only be shortened by hurting more. I don't recall why I thought this way, it's nothing that I told anyone. I must have stopped thinking that way between 8-10 because I remember having a bad skateboard accident and rolling around and crying.

I'm forgetting more and more. Losing time is just part of my life. I don't remember your age? I want to write a message to those girls. I want to try to use words, trite and repetitive as they are, to try to explain one single thing in life that is so rich, so good, so rare, so awesome and astounding that's worth waiting for. Something that goes beyond any expectation. Something beyond anticipation. I'm just not smart enough to do it. And too old to have any hope that I could feel anything like that again.

It's becoming increasingly likely that I'll spend several hours a day in an intense maudlin fog. The self-pity is constant but when I can't stop crying it's – I don't know what to do. And I've started, once again, playing old music that triggers memories of happiness and that is an assurance of making me cry more.

There was a saviour
Rarer than radium,
Commoner than water, crueller than truth...

If I could write like that. Or just string together the words that others have written, no matter how trite. I want to be a Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke or T.S. Elliot but I'm too damned stupid to write a Hallmark card. How do you get to the point of being able to put three words together – "rarer than radium," "crueler than truth" – that can be so achingly beautiful?

All that I can do is cry. My parents aren't around as frequently lately. I know that they wouldn't do it if they knew that it felt like punishment.

I want my three wishes.