Last night, even though it was past 4:30, it took a while for me to fall asleep. While I was drifting off, I experienced one of those horrific feelings I occasionally get when I imagine dying and feeling that I don't want to die.

In the warmth and comfort of my bed, I think of how lucky I am to have a warm and comfortable bed. I think of sunlight on my face and air on my skin and being in this world, and I don't want to leave it.

It's alright. I don't mind having those feelings occasionally to keep things in perspective. It's good to be simplistic about existence every once in a while.

The surreality of having uploaded my previous journals since 1989 and the supposition of who would be interested in them hit me today.

I've always referred to my journals as my "suicide note", because they were to explain how I got to where I did to people who would be affected. But back then, there were people, special people, who I thought I would owe an explanation. None of those people are in my life anymore. And no one I currently know would be haunted for an explanation and peruse the record.

How things change. Back then, the hardest part of leaving was the people I knew and thought loved me. My friends now are perfect. No one is too close to me to really be affected by my leaving. Everyone I know now will treat my leaving the way I treated Ritu's death. There is an impact, disbelief, temporary emptiness, but it wears off, and the long term effect is more of reflection than a visceral, deep feeling of loss.

The cruel irony of all this is that if I had left way back when, they probably would have treated my leaving the same way, they wouldn't have been fundamentally bothered by my leaving, as I thought. I should have left back then.

So why bother with all this? The paradigm has completely changed. I guess I'm just doing it for myself, to follow through with the original concept.

Really, I don't feel a need to explain anything. But if this record can somehow be preserved in family archives and be of interest to a descendent 200 years from now, it's worth it. Whatever.