April 05, 2002 | 10:31 AM

I don�t think I�m going to write a SAGA entry today, or this weekend for that matter. I think it�s going to wait a couple days.

When I write these entries I use the method actor trick of sense memory, and I allow myself to be overcome and completely absorbed by the situation I�m describing. It�s almost like I�m there. If I can�t remember the way a room smelled or looked or what I was wearing at the time or what music I was listening to, I don�t bother to write about the situation, because it�s gotta be really close to me. I have to actually relive it very honestly.

And I am getting so scared of writing about the last two years because I really haven�t come to terms with so much of it, and I know that if I force myself to really look at what happened, I�m going to have to start making some decisions and I�m so fucking afraid of what that entails. And up until pretty recently (July 2001) things were very very scary�I honestly didn�t think that I would be alive right now. I can�t believe I didn�t wind up in a mental hospital or dead. I was holding my psyche together with safety pins and scotch tape. I had a stack of suicide notes that I wrote daily and only just recently threw away. If I didn�t have Jenn or Angus or my Mom during that period I don�t know what I would have done.

Especially Jenn. I can�t tell you how much I love her and that she is the best, best friend in the whole world. I will be grateful for the rest of my life for how selfless and kind and caring she was towards me during this whole insane period. Being a real friend to someone is very very hard. She was always genuinely concerned about me, told me when I was being an asshole and said it in a nice but firm way, made me dinners and emailed me poems, and she listened to me, which is a very underrated and difficult skill. I have learned so much from her about what it really means to love someone. She is the best truest friend I have ever had and the one person in my life besides my grandparents and siblings who has ever loved me with no strings attached.

I am not overstating this when I say that if she hadn�t been such an important part of my life during this time period, I would be dead now.

It�s not that anything that happens in the next part of the saga (Jesus�the saga�it sounds like I�m discussing the fucking Oedipus trilogy or something) is so outrageously awful when compared with anything that happened previously. I mean, most of what happened in the earlier stages of the story�the abortions, and the homelessness, and scary abusive Alex, and Willie dying, and my own apartment building burning down�was far worse than what happens between the autumn of 2000 and the summer of 2001.

But what happens between the Autumn of 2000 and the summer of 2001 is me reaching my own personal breaking point. The house of cards type coping mechanism I had built to shield myself from all of the trauma just collapses, and I am defenseless.

It is a very scary thing to have to completely rebuild your own identity from scratch. It�s almost like I became a different person when I emerged. Things that held meaning previously became absolutely irrelevant. I�m still in the process of working all of this out for myself, and it�s frightening, but much less frightening than existing in a dream world where everything is counterfeit and you�re living this false life based on fear and the desire to meet expectations placed on you by society and other people.

Anyway, I think that writing this all out is going to be a good and positive experience�it definitely has been so far. But that doesn�t mean I�m not scared shitless.

Susanna Kaysen said that art is art and therapy is therapy and that they�re separate. I agree to a certain extent, but I can safely say that writing about all of this has given me more insight into myself than any shrink ever did. Sometimes I�ll be in the middle of writing something and I�ll see the situation form a totally different perspective. I love it when I can surprise myself that way. The unexamined life really isn�t worth living.

Ok, this entry is lackluster and you�re all probably bored out of your tree.

So I�ll end this rambling now.

As this girl likes to say (even though her diary entries are always funny and intelligent),

WORST ENTRY EVER!