Well, it looks like i'm stuck at 2mg of Valium for life. I tried to withdraw one other time and the same thing happened. I don't know what it is but when i try to go below 2mg of Valium i feel fear. Yesterday was the fourth day of fear and i couldn't take it anymore and took a 10mg Valium pill with alcohol. The fear went away nicely and today i don't feel it either. I just can't go back there. Fear is intolerable for me.

Feeling really indulgent with substances, thinking of buying a pack of cigarettes even. It's madness, i know. I hope i won't, my building has gone non-smoking, so i'd have to go outside and i live in Canada where the Winters are brutal and my mom died of COPD. So i hope i won't but maybe it could be a stop-gap measure until i even out a bit more. I've bought a pack before and just puffed on it, not inhaling, just comforted to hold a bit of fire in my fingertips and not gotten addicted. So maybe that's some minor harmless indulgence with substances i can enjoy today. It makes me nauseous if i "smoke" more than ten in a day tho so there are a lot of obstacles to becoming addicted, enough so i think it'll be harmless fun for this dicey moment in my life.

Pat and i have been joking back and forth about how i am in an online one-sided marriage with the actor Benicio de Toro of the "Sicario" movie and sequel (trés fantastique!!!). I'm married to him online but he's not married to me. Our sexting is all one-sided and so is our naughtiness on ZOOM. He doesn't know about our marriage and we've never met and never will and i just email him everyday about my day and how much i love him. I never have to pick up his dirty socks or have sex with him when i don't want.

It's Pat's birthday today so i wished her Happy Birthday from Benicio and i on Facebook and made her a card which turned out child-like and vaguely sh_!!y but compelling nonetheless, with fun kinked yarn of varying color and my stiff sketching paper stock and rainbow wrapping paper and edges cut with pinking shears and crayons and marker and a stick-person drawing in ink of a private joke we have from when we sat in the sun on the lawn in the Summer.

I hope she will like it, but if she's embarrassed at the amateurishness of it, whatever. *I* like it and think it's cool and ironic and charming. I did it in "one-take" like the director's say about their films and musicians say about their songs, to capture the spontaneity and passion and urgency of it. I'll probably get "gifter's remorse," but Pat is really warm and compassionate, i don't think she will be insulting about it even if she truly thinks it's vaguely sh_!!y.

Really enjoying "INSIDE," the new one-hour comedy special from Bo Burnham on Netflix. It's about his experience in isolation during lockdown and is very funny but also poignant and a bit disturbing even as he deteriorates over the year of filming. There's lots of stuff about mental illness and even in it so don't watch it if you're teetering on the edge but if you feel stable you'll probably laugh and enjoy it.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg, i wrote too much again. Will stop.

@Soupe du jour:

Your pictures are lovely! So happy your move to CZ has been a relative success (even tho you don't think you'll stay there permanently) and are enjoying life being a stranger in a strange land.