Hi.
I know I'm bad at updating this from the point of view of anyone reading. But I don't remember. Not as in I don't remember to update, as in I don't remember inbetweens. That's what I call them now. The times I don't remember in between events. It's like I'm asleep but I don't remember going down or waking up. I can't remember the last time I slept, now that I think about it.
I'm still in the cold damp room. I want to leave. I feel a pressure on my head all the time. I'm cold. I can't think straight.
I think I "woke up" today so I could look out the window. Because suddenly I Was and I looked out the window for a few minutes (I think) before I could get a thought other than trying to remember cloud names in.
The pressure stops me from thinking about the big picture.
I haven't seen anyone since the day I got my notebook. It was in one of my bags that are now gone.
I can't think enough to write anything else but I feel whenever I stop is when I'll go under again and I want to be here. If I stop writing I don't know when I'll come back.
Cloud names. Nimbus, like something from a book I've read before all this. It's fuzzy but I think it was important. I don't remember other cloud names. Nimbus- I've been staring at this word for a moment and still nothing. I think the pressure is getting worse. It doesn't want me remembering. I can't think. I can't

Today I "woke up" again. It's getting less frequent I think. I'm just gonna ignore that because whenever I have the strength to remember, it scares me, and being afraid makes me weak again and when I'm weak I sleep and forget.
When I woke up today I was at the desk in this room, with my journal that I got at the school store open in front of me. I flipped through it. Inside were some poems. I think I read them. I remember crying. I think something in the book made me afraid. Hopeless.
Gradually I was back at the window. I say gradually because nothing here completely ends at once. It takes a while to forget completely, and while the forgetting is happening it's like I'm stretched too thin. My consciousness is in too many places and I can't think enough until it's over.
There are no clouds today. Just blue sky. My shirt is wet. I cried a lot. My eyes still sting.

I woke up again.
It's really scary when I do. I usually do something normal-ish (reading, looking out the window, spinning in a circle till I get dizzy), but then I remember the Cold Wet Thing and feel like I just drove up a mountain really fast. A pressure in my head. But also kinda like I'm being squeezed on my forehead? It's an odd sensation.
Today I was spinning. But really slowly. I don't know why, and I couldn't stop. I was spinning towards the door. I was getting closer. As my eyes got nearer my vision started getting darker like I was going to pass out, and my ears rang. Under the door oozed something that emitted cold, like you stood in front of an air conditioner, and my toes touched it, and my ankles, and I'm going in, and I wish I could say goodbye to-
It all stopped.
I looked around.
Something in blocking the window from the outside, radiating a breeze that chills you to the bone.
The door is gone.

Something happened, finally.
I woke up again today. I think it's closer to last time than it has been the past few times.
I didn't remember what was happening at first, like usual. It was still dark and warm but the Cold Wet Thing was casting a breeze, but I didn't notice that for a while. It was like I was brain dead. My mind had fogged over and I couldn't process anything for a few minutes (maybe longer, who knows).
When I remembered the darkness covering the window, I thought back to last time. Still no door. I traced my hands over the walls, tactfully avoiding the window.
I was halfway through the second wall when the Cold Wet Thing started oozing through again. I was an island, the floor around me starting to accumulate plasma-ish stuff. I took a few deep breaths and kept going.
It was not very hard to move through the ooze. Like a ball pit. It was definitely there but not so much of a struggle.
As it climbed up my calves I finished feeling up the walls. Nothing. I closed my eyes and tried to focus. What did I know? I'm trapped here, for one. Something is trying to keep me here. I'm not hurt, at least physically. I'm relaxed. I need to stop being relaxed, I need to focus. I started doing jumping jacks, which, as any small energetic child will tell you, was not easy with the plasma-that-feels-like-a-ball-pit slowly surrounding me.
Doing the jumping jacks helped a little. I remembered the clouds. They looked nice. My eyes stung. The clouds were important somehow. But the goop had reached my neck by then. It felt cold, obviously.
I couldn't swim. It wouldn't work. I knew it wouldn't. I looked right at the ceiling. The goop slinked over my mouth, my nose, my eyes... I was covered in the cold. But it wasn't cold anymore. It was... room temperature? How do you say room temperature when the room is probably colder than what you're referring to? Let's just say it was comfortable.
I couldn't see anything. I was... peaceful. Approximately. Everything is approximate nowadays. I wasn't happy. But I wasn't feeling horrible either. My nose and eyes still stung from something I couldn't remember.
I think I could've stayed there for a while. If I wanted to. I think it would've let me exist, hibernating till my memories became forgotten, my past became obsolete. Till the library of my mind was burned like Alexandria, future historians wondering, who was this girl? Why would she rather a life in a cocoon to a real chance? Why? That's the million dollar question folks. Why don't I fight harder to leave? What do I have outside? That's when I decided. Even if I have nothing outside, less than starting over, less than anyone else, at least I'll have a chance to really live.
I looked up. Or down, possibly. I was disoriented from floating too long.
There were clouds.
I reached out to them, and pulled.

You know in gym class when you have to do a chin-up but can't get yourself above the bar because you're too short and have the upper arm strength of parchment paper so the teacher takes pity on you and gives you a time of 0.01 seconds? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, to continue my last post, I tried pulling myself up by the clouds. As soon as I got my chin above the goop surrounding me, I blacked out, just like in gym class, which is why I made the comparison. When I opened my eyes again I was surrounded by something like warm. Like that cornstarch and water mixture that is solid when you punch it but liquid when you stick your fingers in. It was dark and I was (understandably) terrified. So I slowly pulled myself out of the stuff.

When I finally got myself out, I took a look around. I had been laying in a barrel full of the aforementioned stuff. All around there were other barrels, I can only assume were full of the gunk as well.

To my left I saw a door, so I got up, trailing footprints behind me. When I opened the door, I there was a familiar sight. The PsyHigh cafeteria kitchen. Back a couple months ago, before I was trapped, I had gone here to get food sometimes, although I can't remember what I ate or when. As I wandered around trying to remember where the exit was, I heard some raspy noises. Like someone was breathing through a kazoo behind a closed door. Naturally, I decided to look for the thing emitting those funky tunes.

I searched the ovens, the sinks, under the sinks, under the spider eggs under the sinks, under the goop that made my hands swell when I touched it that seemed to be coming from the spider eggs under the sinks, but no dice. Even if there were dice, I couldn't roll them with all the swelling :o(.

Finally, I saw a little doggy door in the wall. It was like at stores where there's plastic strips employees walk under to get to the back, but very small. My time has come. At last, a benefit to being short! All those books I couldn't reach, bars I couldn't get my chin over...

In short, I crawled through the door.

Inside I found something startling. There were hundreds, probably thousands, of students there. But they weren't really students. They were small and had blue hair and red backpacks. I remember a rumor that was going around a while back about the PsyHigh cafeteria that @Ms. Hazeltine rebutted. They use vegetable babies that look like students in the meat surprise, except they're all 5'3" with blue hair and red backpacks. Except, these "vegetable" babies didn't look like vegetables. They were moving around!! The noise I had heard was the sound of them playing music. It was pretty good. Many of them looked injured. I went up to the nearest one. Here is what I remember of our conversation.

"Hi there, can I ask what this place is?" I asked one with cyan hair.

"You aren't from around here, are you? How did you get in?" The "vegetable" student was looking at my decidedly not-blue hair and lack of a red backpack.

"I'm Annie. I woke up in a vat of goop for probably unrelated reasons and heard the music. I climbed through the door and found you guys. I'm probably a student here."

"We'll need to seal up that door, if a human could get in. Do you know any first aid?" The cyan-haired kid adjusted their backpack.

"I don't remember much, but I think I know a little. And I did garden a bit, I remember that." What? I don't tell my journal every little thing.

"Then you're in. You can stay here and help us, or you can stay here as a prisoner. Either way, you can't go blabbing to your school about us. So, you gonna help or go?" This was a hard choice. On one hand, I could probably escape somehow. On the other, I felt bad for these people and wanted to help. I don't remember much about PsyHigh, but I remember the past few months, and I have a feeling if I go back my life will be like that forever.

I stayed. I'm a nurse now, and I like it here. I get to help people all day and these vegetable people are very interesting. I feel like I'm in Golden Girls all the time. I might leave eventually, when I'm ready. But for now I'm happy.

Oh, and don't go looking for that door. We sealed it up already.

I'm going to poke around and see what I can find out about why these vegetables are here, but I feel like the faculty won't like what I find out...

So today has been fun so far.

I woke up in my friend Cornelia's home as usual. I'm living with them now until I can be trusted to not run away from the city. I don't mind, they're wonderful. They're also a nurse, so we go to work together. After work we explore the city and goof around in the walls of the school.

When you live in a secret room adjacent to the cafeteria of a high school for psychic people, non-entities, and others, you eventually learn how to travel through the walls. I don't want to paint with a broad brush, but I'm pretty sure everyone here has at least heard of someone finding shortcuts to their Transdimensional Geocaching elective in the walls, if not actually slithering down the pipes themselves.

Now, when you're traveling by wall, you have to be careful. For one, you don't know where these walls have been. I mean, you'd assume they'd stay in one place, but that's kind of wallist. Walls have lives of their own that don't rely on others y'know.

Another reason to be careful is that it's very easy to get lost. If the iron supporting the buildings doesn't like you, I hear you can end up somewhere in the Paris catacombs. So you have to be nice to them. Leave the walls in better condition than they were in when you got there. Cornelia always brings a backpack with various cleaning and repair supplies. It's not just about keeping in their good books; the walls have feelings too.

I don't really like to think about this, but the last reason I can remember that makes it dangerous to travel by wall is that you don't know who else is in there too. It creeps me out to think about it, but the walls don't transport bad people to the catacombs or other annoying places to end up. They transport people they don't like to those places. It has nothing to do with character. So if you're travelling in the walls, you have to be alert. If you hear a sound you don't recognize, you go the other way. I'm all for making new friends, and I'm not saying beings or nonbeings that emit unfamiliar noises can't be wonderful, but when you're in the walls, better safe than sorry.

Anyway, today was a day off for us, so Cornelia decided to bring me to a lecture. They're bugging me to get off their phone so we can go. They won't tell me who or what it's on, but I have a feeling we'll be needing the mortar and pestle. Bon voyage!

Not much has happened since my last post. Only the lecture, which was fun, so I'll talk about what happened here.

So, Cornelia and I went through the walls and arrived in a very green room. It was obviously a classroom; we could plainly see the replica Greek statues labeled with psychic energy. I think it was an exercise in identifying body parts in Ancient Greek through sheer willpower, but I wouldn't know. I'm probably a dropout. Now that I think about it, though, nobody said those were replicas.

Anyway, the class turned out to be on mixing spice blends for all occasions. These included banishing unwanted sentient radiation, first day of middle school (which would probably have been helpful if this wasn't a high school course, but I shouldn't assume. Merlin goes to school too I guess.), and tricking your companions into watching the movie you want instead of whatever brainless action movie they somehow enjoy.

The class was really fun. I think I learned a lot. Cornelia doesn't want to keep going, something about being bored, but I think I'll stay for the semester.

In related news, guess who got to watch Legally Blonde again instead of dumb James Bourne or whatever. Cornelia is wonderful, but there's more to life than wrecking civilians' cars and somehow knowing how to fly any plane you get your hands on. Don't tell them I said that. They are very serious about their action movies.

More tomfoolery today.

I've been working very hard all week, treating vegetable babies. I do home visits now, too. The longer I work the more things I see, the better I get at treating all sorts of things.

For example, yesterday I tried to make a home visit. Now, when I get a call to visit, they usually leave a message with what's wrong and their location. Scratch that, not usually, always. You have to. The machine that answers asks for it, then it sends me a notification on my pager thing so I can gather any supplies I might need.

But yesterday, when my pager buzzed, the only thing under the "Reason for call" column was screaming. And when I say screaming, I don't mean like a like of letter A's, like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA". I mean somebody psychically charged the message so that the screams reverberated in my head. But it wasn't just a loud scream either. The scream was charged with so much sad-pain. Emotional. I cried for a few minutes after. It was trippy.

I'm usually patient with my... patients. That was unintended. Anyway, I'm usually patient, because they are probably in a lot of pain and/or distress. They can't help screaming in my face. But this was crossing a line, in my opinion. You can't just mess around in my brain without my permission. Privacy, people.

The location the screamer put down was Room 6̶̧̢͖̮̈́̅̓͛͋̆̿̉̚̕̕7̴̨̺̣̱͈̜̮̬̖̈́̑̂̇̃͝͠ͅ5̸̢̛͙̘̅̕͝8̵̨̨̛͓̞̣̭̯̳͚̝̰͇̯͑̆̇͗̽̈͆̋̓̌̅́9̴̛͇̝̣͓̀̊͆̍̄̂͠͠7̵̢̪͍̰̫̮̲͈͈̍̿̆̔̀͌̈́͐̿̐͗̏̈́͝6̵̧̘̝̫̰̗̰̫̺͖̹͖͉̈̒̀̏́͑̌̓̈̍́̇ͅ5̶̡̘̤̃͂͗ͅ4̵͎̺̓3̸̯̤̆́͗̊̿́ across campus. That in itself was weird, since most of my patients are from the city in the walls by the cafeteria. I've had a few outside calls, though, so I just grabbed my wall adventure bag I made last Friday and got moving.

I entered the walls. I won't say how, because then anyone could try it, and that would mean more traffic. It's not just for my benefit; the walls are very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. So there I am, travelling the walls, when all of a sudden, a grate falls from beneath me, and I land in a bed of grass.

I try to get up. The grass moves around me. It's like a huge beanbag chair that flows around me as I try to move. So. TL;DR: I'm stuck here and can't get up. I called Cornelia but they're busy at work. They'll come get me after their shift, which ends in about an hour. My phone is going to die soon. I just hope my patient will be alright.

I've been researching a bit but haven't found anything helpful about why someone would psychic scream at me from across campus. But that's the end of anything interesting. Bye.

I have to get better about updating this. Problem is, whenever I set an alarm for anything on my phone, it doesn't go off. I think that's because I have my phone muted to avoid things like calls and alarms. If someone calls me without texting first, I don't want to talk to them. And alarms get annoying after a few minutes of procrastinating. I set myself up for failure constantly in my personal life. I'm also trying to get better at not doing that.

So, last time I updated I was stuck in a bed of grass that behaved like a waterbed or beanbag chair. I ended up getting out thanks to Cornelia. They wouldn't let me hear the end of it. Action movies every night this week. I could write an essay on how problematic those movies are, especially the old ones. But if I did I would probably die from boredom halfway through.

Anyway, as you may recall, the whole reason I was stuck there was because one of my patients contacted me by screaming into my brain via a psychic message, which was rude on so many levels. So when I got back into the vent (Cornelia threw a rope down which I tied around my waist and they pulled me up. I would've climbed but I can't support my own weight.) I was even more ticked off. The vents had even changed while I was down there. So now it would take longer to get to the patient. Cornelia offered to come with me, but I said no. I wouldn't wish meeting whoever had the gall to psychically scream at a medical professional onto my worst enemy, Gave.

It took 13 minutes to climb through the walls to the screaming patient. I was ready to cry when I got there. Maybe a bit before too. Maybe I did cry in the vents. I was having a bad day, okay? Anywho, I got there in one physical piece, but my resolve was shattered. I dropped down the vent next to the classroom door. It smelled damp. Like damp wood, or The Outdoors after it rained. As I knocked on the door, I heard a loud sigh from inside. "Hello? This is the Plant People Fighting Diseases representative you called for." I said warily.

I heard a cough. "Yes, yes, come in. Took you long enough." I jiggled the knob, but the door was locked.

"Excuse me, the door is locked. Would you unlock it for me, please?"

The voice sounded exasperated, like they were talking to a baby who couldn't understand. "No, of course not. Why would I unlock the door? Just come in through the window." Then, under their breath, "Entitled brat... come in through the door..." then something about me not being the queen.

Now, I was REALLY ticked off. If they didn't want to bother opening the door, fine. Maybe where they grew up that was normal. But they berated me for even asking? So I may have jiggled the window pane a bit harder than I should've. It didn't break or anything, but it made a lot of noise. Sure enough it came loose, and I took it out and dropped it on the ground next to the door.

"I'm coming in." I said as I reached my leg over the door to hop in through the window. When I got in, I couldn't see the patient at first. The whole room looked like a terrarium. I think it was a lecture hall, but I could barely see the chairs under a thick layer of moss and dirt. The floor was covered in mushrooms. Hanging from the ceiling was some kind of purple vine, seemingly extending from the large light in the center. Don't even get me started on the humidity. My hair will probably never be the same again.

"You waiting for an invitation? Get over here!" Yelled the voice. I ran over to the back of the room, where the whiteboard should have been. Sitting there at a desk was a humanoid figure with little white hairs poking out here and there. Upon further examination, the hairs were actually fungus. Their skin was a nice brown color, and seemed to have a pattern like tree bark. Where on a human there would be hair, there were sheets of moss running down into a sort of pageboy "hair"do. Some sticky white stuff that looked like cobwebs were scattered along their skin.

"How can I help you?" I asked in my best customer service voice.

"Fix me." They said back grumpily.

"Uhh," I stammered, "what do you want me to fix?"

"Isn't it OBVIOUS?" They hollered.

"I'm new at this job." That's not exactly a lie. Not exactly a truth either.

I heard them grumbling under their breath. Then, to me, "Well, I don't want a newbie fixing me up. Bring me to someone better."

I decided not to argue. I didn't particularly want to fix them up either. So I said alright, and I called a replacement. In a few minutes a team arrived and carried the grumbling figure away. But something didn't sit right. The scream I heard was so... powerful. I have elected to ignore this discrepancy. I was really tired at the time. Maybe some other day I'll investigate, but for now, I'm really busy.

That's all this week folks. Tune in next week to... uh... see what I get up to? Yeah that's manageable. Bon voyage.

I'm starting to remember more. It's scary. Sometimes when I think of something, I already have an opinion on it, or I remember what it is, although I don't remember why or how. It's like there's a bowl on a high shelf that I can clearly see, and I know that it's a bowl, and I know that I like the bowl and want it right now. But I can't reach it, I don't know where it came from, or what's inside.

The thing I have in mind right now is a song I heard a couple days ago. Ever since I heard it I can't stop thinking about it. Not because it was any good, but because I knew the words. When it started playing I had the most vivid former-thought (not quite a memory, more like my internal monologue from long ago) yet.

It was one of those songs that makes you happy, but reminds you of yourself too much, or of bittersweet times. Except I don't remember the person who related to it. We must be similar, I know, because these former-thoughts are coming from somewhere, and I mostly like them. But it can't truly be who I am right now, since so much happened back then that I don't know and so much has happened since I forgot.

I cried when I heard that song. I was at a store, looking for a good pickling jar. I still don't know who played it. I got a lot of weird looks for crying in the middle of the jar aisle of a homegoods store. When I got home I laid down on my bed and stared at the ceiling for a good few minutes, concentrating on the psychic chatter. It's calming to concentrate on one sense. When I finally got up, I felt better.

I came to the conclusion that I'm not ready for a self-discovery journey. It feels cliché. I am who I am, weird pseudo-memories and all. It's part of me now, no matter what was. I am in the present. Someone else was in the past. Someone new will be in the future. And I'm alright with that. I don't need to know what happened. It'll hurt whenever I think of what I forgot, whenever I hear an old song, get deja vu for another life. But that's fine.

Now, I'm going to try to stop posting things like this. Sad things. My life is primarily happy, anyway. So tune in some other time (to be decided) for a list of good things that happen.