April 30, 2002 | 10:06 AM

I can�t concentrate today. I tried to write a Saga entry and it felt forced and not right so for the moment I�m leaving it alone and maybe later on today it will come to me more organically.

Some days (many days lately it seems) I feel like my soul needs surgery. Like I have this defect and I need to go under the knife, only I�m scared to do it because there might be horrible complications if I do and I might not survive.

Things have to be very very different. This era in my life has gone on far too long.

I always have a sneaking feeling that this life just isn�t mine. That I don�t own it. That I have stumbled into some alternate future that wasn�t supposed to happen, and in a way I have.

I really don�t want to be sad anymore. I don�t think that most of the people I have in my life are very good for me. I feel drained and alone and depressed so much of the time. I feel like I�m just barely holding it together. I feel betrayed and resentful and unloved. I am self pitying and narcissistic and I don�t want to be.

Here are the things I need to do to be healthy:

 I need to keep eating right and exercising

 I need to lay off the alcohol for the most part

 I need to keep writing

 I need to surround myself with people who are excited and happy and doing well and who care about me who aren�t just using me or around me because they don�t know what else to do with themselves

 I need to stay away from people who fuck with me and people who don�t treat me the way I want to be treated

 I think I need to go back on medication as much as I would prefer not to do that. I think I need to go on antidepressants again

 I need to talk myself out of feeling this way

 I need to grow up and stop wishing things were different and instead make them different

I�ve been hanging on to things that for all practical purposes have been over for a long long time.

I have to face the facts. None of this is working and it�s time to let it go.