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Once every month or so I have to contemplate suicide. It�s not a part of an established tradition or anything, it�s just a habit. My worthlessness just creeps up on me and I think about ending it. It all makes perfect sense to me. I�ve accomplished nothing in my relatively short life. I�ve changed no one else�s life. I�ve made no great impact on society. No one would miss me. I have no children. My husband could take or leave me. (And we�ve only been married 1 month.) This place would go on without me. My cat would have a new owner. My husband would be happier. No one would be troubled by my emotional outbursts. I�m just taking up valuable space and air and time and money that could go to someone else who would actually do something useful with it. I�m the proverbial schmuck. My whole life I�ve been a nuisance. My parents love me, but they know I�m useless too. I can�t hold down a job. I can�t keep organized. I can�t stick to a plan once I�ve made one. Like I said, I�m just a waste. I think about all those people in third world countries who have nothing and I think, oh god, why can�t all this shit I have go to one of them. Because I don�t need it. I do nothing with it. It does me no good. I don�t care about it. So it should belong to one of them and I wouldn�t have to waste space any more. I feel bad for putting people through my bullshit. They are poor souls. Trying to keep me from killing myself. It must be exhausting. I am looking at all the things around me and none of them seem to matter. Pictures of people who don�t care. Work I haven�t finished. Food I�ve eaten too much of. Trash I haven�t picked up. Papers I�ve kept for no reason. Pens I�ve wasted money on for no specific or reasonable purpose. Shit that belongs to me and I don�t know why. Today I�m going to get rid of it all. It�s all going out in the dumpster or to Salvation Army. Let it benefit someone else. I haven�t succeeded with all of this crap, so let someone else have a go at it.

I absolutely hate being away from my computer. It�s the times I�m somewhere else that I get a great idea for something to write about. But when I�m sitting here, I think, �Uh, duuuuuuuhhhhh� My cat sneezed in my face today. It was funny.� Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, here, I tell ya.

The amount of shit I have accumulated in my life is truly amazing. What did people do with this crap in the old days? Every holiday, someone gives me another useless item I don�t need. So many little porcelain bears, rabbits, mice, angels, that I just don�t need. I keep them, because they remind me of the giver. But when my memory starts to falter and I can�t actually remember who gave it to me, or that person�s memory has been tainted by some happening or such, I throw the item away. A bear I found with its little foot in its mouth. I remember thinking when I got it that it was an adorable creation, and I kept it for its true-to-life-ness. But when I found it tucked away in a box this morning, the magic of its cuteness was mystifyingly gone. All sorts of nicks had developed, and it looked like a piece of painted clay. Poor little bear! It did have a good run, however. A little dog that my brother gave me when I moved away was also unearthed. It was a drab little piece when I got it. I think he said my mom made it before any of us was born. Why anyone had kept it I really couldn�t� tell you. The color was faded, and it looked like it had repeatedly been exposed to animal urine. In this case, I am very fond of my brother, so I kept this item, but when I found it this morning, I was disgusted at the sight of it, and I felt that it reflected poorly upon the memory of my wonderful brother. In the garbage it went. And finally, a white polished bear with gold trim was given to me by a pen pal in the Czech Republic when we first met. I thought it was adorable at the time, and I absolutely treasured it. When I took a good look at it, I noticed all the flaws it had � the smudged paint, the little nick in the bottom that made it sit funny, the way the paint made the bear look like it had a nipple. I instantly thought back to all the unanswered letters, the misunderstandings, and all the negativity from the pen pal. But things had gotten better, so I didn�t want to keep this little trinket to risk a regression of our relationship. Could a figurine really do that to our friendship? I do not want to find out. It�s out in the dumpster. There are some figurines that I treasure now. All the items that I have received within the last two years or so. I must have put out an APB a few years ago that said, �GIVE ME LITTLE ICONS TO WORSHIP� because they are plentiful in my abode. The fairy is cute. The Hummel is a family tradition. The wedding cake topper has to stay in my possession. The wolf belonged to my husband and I have no right to throw that awfully hideous thing away. (Damn.) But the little bunnies-having-tea-in-a-mushroom-shaped-house-with-flowers-all-about-thing my mother-in-law gave me is gonna go in a few more months. I have to keep it for a little while in case she comes over. What possesses people to give these things as gifts? Sure, they are cute, but do they serve any function or purpose in my world? No. If I had my choice, I�d rather get the money that these people paid for the gifts. They would do me a much better service.

It has come to my attention that generally a novel has a plot, characters, development, the whole nine yards. I know I�m not really providing that for my readers, so I will have to start somewhere. This is going to be fragmented quite a bit. This kind of stuff is cleaned up in the editing portion of writing. I doubt that I will edit this, as I am only trying to WRITE WRITE WRITE.

I was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. I am the third child for my parents. My brother and sister were adopted a decade before I was born. My parents believed they couldn�t have children, as they had tried for four or five years without luck. Then they got a surprise. By the time I came around, my parents were pretty relaxed about childrearing. I had free reign of the house and yard � the entire neighborhood, in fact. There were times I would spend hours in the kitchen, concocting �brews� of mustard seed, cinnamon, paprika, anything I could get my hands on. I thought that was cooking. I wonder if I ever worked with the stove? My first burn was sustained with an iron, not the stove. I was helping my mom and the iron fell off the ironing board. Hmmm, I�m already getting off the subject. I don�t really like starting from the beginning, because that�s not how it goes in my memory. My first memory is getting lost in a hospital. My sister had all these medical problems when I was young. I think the instance I�m thinking of occurred when she was getting major surgery done on her ears. She�s partly deaf nowadays. Anyway, I was in an elevator, and I felt so scared. I couldn�t tell you if I was actually lost or if I just felt scared being in a cramped elevator with strangers in a hospital. I do remember liking the hospital food, though. Some other random memories: walking down the street with my sister and her friend and getting knocked over by our neighbor�s humungous dog. I was so bloody. Getting a ride on the back of my brother�s bike, walking back inside through the garage and seeing blood all over my legs. I still don�t remember feeling pain. It only occurred to me a month or two ago that perhaps I had pierced my hymen. Coming home from gymnastics, and falling down in the bushes next to my driveway and getting covered in red ants. My parents were getting ready for an Amway meeting, and I wanted to get ready too, so I took my father�s razor and �shaved,� then ran out into the living room all proud of myself and yelled, �I�m ready!� They shrieked with horror, dragged me kicking and screaming back into the bathroom and poked at my face with witch hazel-soaked toilet paper. Licking my sister�s face because that�s what I had seen the people on soap operas do when two people cared about each other. Getting the flu while I was staying with my babysitters. I had eaten bowl after bowl of cereal because I had this strange feeling in my belly that I didn�t understand. I figured it had to be hunger. We must have gone to a church youth group outing or something, and I ended up going inside this familiar person�s house, laying down on the couch, and puking all over his carpet. Then I got yelled at because I hadn�t called out to anyone. I was too weak to do anything of the sort. I was so embarrassed because my babysitter had to bring me home and sit there and hold a bucket for me to barf in while I was sitting on the toilet with diarrhea. The memory still makes me tear up. I was so scared and all I wanted was my mommy. Aside from that, I really didn�t like my babysitters. They scared me. They manipulated me. They had fun on my account. I was also a very panic-stricken little girl. I would cry at the drop of a hat. I was often heard to say, �You�re (sob) making (sob) fun (sob) of meeeeeeeeee!!!!� And very often they were. But my accusation always sent them into rolling hysterics. Which just compounded the problem. For a long time I was very angry with my sister because she was always the first to start laughing at me. One time she even spit Coke in my face because I made her laugh. The sound of her laugh now makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight. That�s the sound of someone poking fun at me. That�s the sound of being a joke. I looked up to her, my big sister, and she just laughed back. Kids do say the darnedest things, but I know better than to laugh. And if I do laugh, I always explain why. Little girls� feelings are like eggs; they can be broken, and they can�t be put back together. My anxiety disorder has never made any of this stuff easy. I wonder if I would have stood up to the test better if I didn�t have this problem. Would I have reacted the same way to my sister�s odd sense of humor if I didn�t have panic attacks? I am guessing yes. Once I went on medication, I felt so much more lighthearted. I was finally able to shrug things off and not take things personally. Before, that was never an option. �Relax,� had no meaning. How did one relax after all? Let other people walk all over oneself? Never! But now I just don�t let anything get on my nerves. I don�t sink down to other people�s levels. If they make fun of me, I say whatever. I�m sure they have some problem they are trying to cover up by pointing out my misfortunes. I�m over it. The first time I ever felt that way was when I was taking a semester off from college and was living with my best friend. My parents had introduced me to St. John�s Wort. I don�t remember how much I took per day, I think it was only one pill. I felt relaxed and in control of my emotions and my life! I started to exercise, didn�t cry as often, and was generally happy and cheery. Now, people who know me know that this would be an irregularity. When I went on the pill, I had heard that people shouldn�t mix the pill and St. John�s Wort, so I went off the stuff. My troubles started back up again. I don�t think I had come to the conclusion that the improvements in my life were partly due to St. John�s Wort. I was back in school, so I just figured the stress was getting to me all over again. About two years later, I realized what was going on. I had problems far more serious than basic stress. I had a good job, I lived with my boyfriend, I had a friendly kitty, and life was good! But I couldn�t sleep. I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I would think someone was in the apartment. Every night my heart would start to beat wildly as I search the apartment for potential rapists. I would take a shot or two of vodka hoping that it would relax me. I would be really tired for a few days at work, and then I would get one or two nights sleep and feel better again. But the night problems didn�t go away. I think I realized I truly had a problem when my boyfriend went on a skiing trip. Every night, I came home from work, drank a bottle of wine or a few shots of vodka, watched movies, and cried myself to sleep. Then I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would have to perform my ritual. Not to mention that I had to sleep with a night light and a fan on, because every little sound and every little shadow was a threat. Better to drown out the noise and scare away the shadows. The next time my boyfriend went away on a business trip, right before he left, I curled up in the closet and cried. What I didn�t tell him was that I was scared of myself and didn�t want to be alone. He thought we were just fighting over some little thing. It was far more serious than that. That week was just the same as the previous one. Even though these things seem so obvious now, I just accepted them as the norm. I was more aware of the world and how dangerous it was. This had to be how people protected themselves and worried about being attacked or raped or mugged. But then these thoughts crept into my mind. I desperately wanted to cut myself. From out of nowhere, I just wanted to take a knife and draw my own blood. That feeling scared me more than anything. I spent more afternoons coming home from work and soaking in the tub because I knew I needed to calm down. I would just lie in the water and cry. I hated myself and wanted the pain to go away. I wanted to externalize the pain, as if cutting would somehow purge the self-loathing. The wish to cut became more violent. I wanted to down sleeping pills or just slit my wrists. I would go into hysterics and cry myself to sleep on the couch because I wanted to cause myself pain and I knew that it wasn�t right. I knew that there had been a time when things had felt good and normal, and I felt right with myself. Everything in my life was good, and I had absolutely no reason to feel like killing myself, so I knew I had to do something. My boyfriend kept on encouraging me to see someone, but I had no idea how. But I was losing more and more sleep at night and cried far too often. My emotions were already interfering with my work and I would cry at my desk pretty regularly. It was time to stop this. It was either kill myself or kill the problems. I knew killing myself wasn�t really an option. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the mental image of my parents crying because of my death. I love them so much, and suicide would be so selfish, especially after everything that they have given to me and done for me. I had no idea how my insurance worked or if psychiatrists needed referrals, or even if I had a problem � maybe I WAS just being dramatic. I made an appointment with a family practitioner. The appointment had to be for something like three weeks down the road, so I bided my time. I remember how still and quiet the examining room was, all except the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. The doctor walked in, looking bored, and asked me if I minded if this intern came in to observe. Whatever, the more the merrier, I figured. Might as well get some witnesses here. So the doctor asked me what the trouble was and why I was there. Well, I have these problems with my feet, I think I need new orthodics, and I have this little irritation on my arm, I�ve had it for almost a year and it won�t go away with simple antibiotics, hmm, did I forget anything, oh yeah, I�m suicidal. Silence. The intern�s eyes popped out of his head. Boing. Symptoms? Well, I have an overwhelming urge to do myself in. Have I cut in the past? Have I tried to take my life before? Yes and yes, years ago. The cutting urge has resurfaced and I have tried, but I haven�t been able to draw blood. (Almost consider asking for advice on how to draw my own blood.) Anyway, the staff wouldn�t let me leave the office until they knew I had an appointment with a psychiatrist. Granted, the appointment was for a month down the line. But I knew that if I made it to the appointment that I would be fine. There were some really tough times in that month. For example, September 11th, 2001. I still had two weeks to go until my appointment. That night I got up in the middle of the night, not because I thought rapists would break into my apartment, but because I was afraid more planes had been hijacked. Truly, that was the safest I had felt in a long time, because there were no planes in the sky, and everyone in the country was so numb that I didn�t fear someone would have the heart to break into my apartment that night. If anything, September 11th gave me a reason to live. I don�t want to turn this dialogue into a patriotic rant or anything, but the attacks were a wake up call. The episodes didn�t stop because of them, but I knew I would make it. I had lived through September 11th, I would be fine. My appointment was on the 29th. I was late to the appointment because I got so fucking lost on the way. I even called the office for directions, but the secretary thought I was somewhere else, and I got more lost. I started taking random turns and suddenly wound up in the right place. I rushed in, half an hour late, desperately afraid that the doctor wouldn�t see me. I almost cried with relief when they invited me into his office. As most psychiatrists do, he picked my brain for 45 minutes. He asked me if I had any OCDs. Like what? Rituals you perform without reason. An alarm went off somewhere in my brain. I explained my night rituals to him. I had never thought of them as an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but that just made so much sense. I had never even thought of those episodes as part of my problem! The suicidal thoughts were the first and foremost thing on my list of complaints, but not the adrenaline rushes at 3 AM thinking a rapist was in my doorway. Do you know I almost didn�t go to the appointment with the psychiatrist because two days before the appointment I was feeling absolutely ducky? I was so happy and the sun was shining and everything seemed RIGHT. I almost cancelled the appointment because obviously nothing was wrong and it was all in my head. But then the next day I was down again and sitting in the bathtub crying. I explained this to him and asked how I could be depressed if I felt fine two days ago. �It sounds to me,� he said, �like you suffer from Anxiety Disorder.� (Big sigh of relief.) I was relieved to have a diagnosis. I was almost happy to know that I had a genuine problem. It was NOT all in my head and I was not being fucking dramatic. My world made sense. I was justified. I was so fucking happy to know that I, in fact, had an Anxiety Disorder. I won�t say my life has been peaches and cream since I went on Zoloft, but DAMN, I feel so much better. I can now sleep through an entire night. I might wake up, but I go to the bathroom and fall right back asleep. I can function when I am home alone and no longer drink any type of alcohol. I am not self destructive. There are days when I am down and lonely, maybe I cry and say how pointless my life is, but I can EASILY talk myself out of it and move on. My problems are not entirely gone, but my life is so dramatically improved now that I know what the matter is and I can deal with it. I suffer from Panic Attacks. I have an Anxiety Disorder. I have OCDs. But I feel better.

I don�t think I could possibly do as well as I did last night on this thing, and I�m only 7.5% through. Will I ever make it? I got an updated email today talking about 30,000 words. Yeah, right. I get so many ideas of things to talk about, and then I lose them ALL. I have to start keeping that little book in my back pocket like I used to. I considered talking about my experiences in Germany. What a depressing time that was. I had no interest in the place, but it changed my life. I was so convinced that I was miserable there that I couldn�t see all the opportunities. When I came back to Chelmsford, nothing was the same. My home had changed. I expected it to be exactly the same, and it wasn�t, and I was so disappointed. I was so depressed while I was in Germany. What was my problem, any way? Was I convinced that I would have been happier somewhere else? Let�s face it, I was already suffering from panic attacks, so no matter what I did, I was going to be unhappy. Sometimes my bus would get to school early. At first, I didn�t know what to do, so I would lock myself in one of the stalls in the girls� room so I didn�t have to talk to anyone. Later on, I would sit myself in front of my first period class, French, and read. I became extremely organized while I lived in Germany. I kept a planner and always did all my homework. That was a first. I wrote several letters every day. I actually practiced piano. But I was sad every night. Every night I would think about my home, six hours behind me. As I was getting out of school, my friends were starting third period. As I was going to bed, my friends were doing their after school activities. As I was getting up, they were going to bed. I kept my watch set on Eastern Standard Time for about the first 5 months. I hated myself and was so angry with my parents for making me move. I think about it now and realize how much stress I must have put on them. They were unhappy themselves. My dad had been lied to about the job. He was doing the work of several people and was extremely unhappy. My mom couldn�t get a job. All jobs at the bases were first given to the dependents of active military = not my father. So she had nothing to do all day. She was unhappy, my dad was unhappy, I was unhappy. What an unhappy little family we were. Under those conditions, it�s amazing none of us took on drug or alcohol addictions. My mom smoked an unusual amount of cigarettes. When they moved out of their apartment after two years and took the paintings off the wall, a think layer or soot was revealed from the cigarette smoke. I had my own vices. First it started as not eating lunch. My mom would give me some money every day for lunch. The first couple of days I tried to go into the lunch room to procure some food. To my dismay, the entire high school had lunch at the same time, along with the middle school. The lunch room was filled with middle school kids. I was so filled with anxiety about sitting alone among a throng of middle-schoolers that I just left. We had an open campus, so I went over to the commissary very often. I never bought anything. I just walked over there and back. Or around the school grounds. After a few months, I started to get to know the teachers and I would stay in their classrooms during lunch. I still didn�t eat anything. I was too unhappy to eat. The knot in my stomach was so big that it wouldn�t let me digest food. Then I stopped eating breakfast. I think I was trying to punish myself. I felt that I didn�t deserve food because I was such a miserable human being. My mom bought me yummy yogurts for breakfast. I knew she was keeping track of how many she bought and how many were left before she had to buy more, so I would scoop them out of the containers and flush them down the sink. How mad she would have been if she had found out, not so much because I wasn�t eating, but because I was wasting money! I still feel guilty about that. So, I was onto no breakfast, no lunch. Sometimes the hunger would really get to me by the end of the day. My last period teacher, Ms. Clavenna, was my computer science teacher, and she was also the sponsor for the National Honor Society. For the NHS, she sold soft pretzels every day, all day. I think they were a dollar. During the last five or ten minutes of school, she would sell the pretzels for 25 cents. Those pretzels were my only weakness. Then came Christmas. I hadn�t been eating very much and I was becoming forgetful and even more angry and depressed. About this time, a choral group I had gotten involved in hosted a dinner concert. We all had to make a dish to bring to the function and perform in the show in one facet or another. My memory doesn�t serve me too well, but I think I sang a solo. All the food was sitting out in the hallway. At the end of the performances, I walked out into the hallway with one or two other people and just started gorging myself. I ate a couple pieces of cake, some cookies, and all desserts. I ate until my stomach started to hurt. I lay in bed that night, trying to fall asleep, crying because of the pain in my abdomen. I hadn�t been eating, so my body didn�t know how to deal with all the food. My intestines were churning and gurgling, and I swore I wouldn�t do that again. And then, another episode � my parents had gone out and left me alone. There were these Christmas cookies lying around. They were calling my name. I hadn�t eaten well in several days, and I was so hungry. I ate two, four, six, maybe a dozen or so. Suddenly it hit me that I was going to be in pain, so I dashed to the bathroom and stuck my fingers down my throat. All the food came up quickly and painfully. There I was, sitting over the toilet, puffy eyes, slimy hand, dripping mouth, balling my eyes out because of what I had done and what a miserable ingrate I was. That wasn�t the only time I made myself puke. There were several other instances, just like that one. But I was home alone so rarely, and my grandmother lived right downstairs and could hear just about everything that went on in our apartment. I calculated the risk of getting caught versus the absolute need, and stopped making myself vomit. It just wasn�t worth it. It was some time around Christmas break that my head snapped back on. Right now I can�t remember exactly what the reason was � I think it was a boy? I had this awful crush on a senior. My friend Annessa was trying to get us together, but to no avail. We wrote notes to each other, and he made me smile. He even brought me to the movies, but he made it painfully clear that he wasn�t interested in me and thought I was a head case. (But wasn�t I though?) I think flirting with him and just being �in love� made me happier. It gave me hope that life would go on. He gave me a Christmas card with a reindeer wearing sunglasses that said, �Have a cool Yule,� and he wrote a message to me in French, something about how I was such a good friend�. How he broke my heart! I started to make friends, and had a really good friend, Genevieve, who lived in the next village over. I could walk over and visit her so easily, which was rare living off base. Our school bussed in kids from over an hour away. She was independent and didn�t hang out with a clique. I appreciated her so much for her independence and conviction. She did aerobics and listened to NKOTB, and she didn�t care what anybody thought about that. I spent New Years Eve over her house. We built (or tried to, anyway) a paper clock and watched movie after movie after movie on tape. Eventually we fell asleep, sometime around 7 AM. The next six months seemed to fly by. So much so that I can�t remember those months as well as the first four. Those months weren�t nearly as painful. It was like the down side of a hill. I knew I was leaving at some point, and I didn�t care as much. I started to feel comfortable in my surroundings. At no point did I feel that K-Town was my home. It was a nice place to visit and waste a year. But it was not my life. I wonder how much damage that year did to my social growth. One of my doctors told me that anxiety disorder is usually triggered by a single traumatic experience. My first �traumatic experience� was breaking up with my first boyfriend. I was diagnosed as suicidal. I had, after all, slit my left wrist and cut up my right thigh. But I specifically remember thinking that I wanted to cut myself because if I took sleeping pills, I would die � SOMETHING I DIDN�T WANT. But anyway, I could convince my counselor or the doctors or anything, so they said I tried to commit suicide. It was the first time I was ever truly depressed and suicidal. Something in me snapped and I started to hit myself and bang my head against walls and truly believe all the nasty things I was saying about myself. This was the end of freshman year, right before I moved to Germany. I think all of this was setup for a miserable year, a miserable lifetime, full of anxiety, depression, and woe. It would have happened sooner or later, but it decided to happen then. After that, I never felt as confident, I never spoke out, I never really �chatted� with the girls and gossiped anymore. I was always biting my tongue, thinking that no one would want to hear what I had to say, because I was nobody. I thought of myself as a royal nuisance. And the truth is that in eighth grad and prior, I had been quite the opposite. I had thought of myself as really close to my friends and very social. During and after Germany, I wasn�t like that. I was angry, suspicious, accusatory, violent, and moody. I took everything people said very seriously and had little sense of humor. I took myself entirely too seriously. It�s amazing what a little medication can do to change one�s outlook on life.

Lost. Angry. Bewildered. Just cried to R for half an hour about how I want to kill myself. Frustration. It seems that every time I try to succeed in life, I fail. And I just keep on sinking lower. Why can�t I win just once? It would be a really nice change. I�ve been itching to go to Adam�s pharmacy and buy a bottle of sleeping pills and wash the whole thing down with some Absolut. A perfect end to a perfect day. When things aren�t going well at all, I think of this song from Trainspotting:

�Perfect Day� by Lou Reed

Just a perfect day,
Drink Sangria in the park,
And then later, when it gets dark,
We go home.
Just a perfect day,
Feed animals in the zoo
Then later, a movie, too,
And then home.

Oh it's such a perfect day,
I'm glad I spent it with you.
Oh such a perfect day,
You just keep me hanging on,
You just keep me hanging on.

Just a perfect day,
Problems all left alone,
Weekenders on our own.
It's such fun.
Just a perfect day,
You made me forget myself.
I thought I was someone else,
Someone good.

Oh it's such a perfect day,
I'm glad I spent it with you.
Oh such a perfect day,
You just keep me hanging on,
You just keep me hanging on.

You' re going to reap just what you sow,
You're going to reap just what you sow,
You're going to reap just what you sow,
You're going to reap just what you sow.

Rob is the only thing that keeps me going on. R and Melissa. And even then, they don�t need me, I need them. I rely on them to dig me out every time I fall in. I almost wish I was a heroine addict, and then I could lose myself in something. Blame it on the drugs. At least I�d have an excuse. I don�t have an excuse now. I�m just a borne loser. And to top it all off, I can�t concentrate. Another song I keep thinking about:

�How to Disappear Completely� by Radiohead

That there, that's not me
I go where I please
I walk through walls

And float down the Liffey

I'm not here
This isn't happening
I'm not here, I'm not here

In a little while I'll be gone
The moment's already passed
Yeah it's gone

And I'm not here
This isn't happening
I'm not here, I'm not here

Strobe lights and blown speakers
Fireworks and hurricanes

I'm not here
This isn't happening

I'm not here, I'm not here

I�m really considering doing something drastic. Not as in killing myself, which although is tempting, is not realistic. I have been wanting more and more to pierce all sorts of things, the most conservative of which are my nose and lower lip. I want to dye my hair red, sort of like it used to be, but BRIGHT audacious red, with blond chunk highlights. I want to wear black eyeliner, because that�s how I feel � black. I feel � wrong. That�s the only way I can describe it. Just wrong. I keep on screwing up. I�m never happy. Why can�t I just be fucking happy already? I had an incredibly bizarre but vivid dream last night. It had to do with a house that R and I had bought. We had taken it off the hands of some old lady, and it was partially furnished. I guess she just packed up quickly and left. We were walking around the house and looking at the plans. It had doors to the outside everywhere. On the main floor was the master bedroom and a swimming pool. There was a downstairs, which DID take into consideration the space the pool took up. Down there, there were dressing rooms like at the Y. There were also other rooms and a big window leading to the back yard. At one end, there was a tiny, narrow staircase that led upstairs into the hallway next to the master bedroom. I seem to remember there were three such staircases scattered about. Another was actually in the bedroom. I can�t remember exactly where the third one was. Maybe in the main hallway. I know I�m basing this dream on Nate�s sister�s house, which is a million dollar house and has, strangely enough, three staircases. Such a beautiful house! Anyway, I must have woken up and fallen back asleep because the dream takes bizarre twists. The dream is still based on the house, but the point changes. After I take this tour, I go back into the main entryway, next to the living room, and we discover the previous owner has left her pets, some snakes and rodents and such. I realize they haven�t eaten (this is part of a recurring nightmare I have where I forget to feed my hamsters and rabbits and guinea pig) and so I go to the man selling pet food (in the house, right next to the animals, for some reason) and he sells me some food, but he overcharges me. I leave him with the food and some money, and tell him to figure it out and feed the animals. Then (wake up, fall back asleep) Rob�s family is in the pool with us. Megan, our niece, comes over to us really excited, and we go see what she has found. It�s a ghost or maybe a poltergeist. He�s floating around in the pool, and he wants us to stay out. Megan is absolutely entranced by this ghost, but I consider it a threat, and I�m trying to scare it away. Then (wake up, fall back asleep) we�re back in the main entranceway, which looks like this run down old house I used to live in in Bedford. The previous owner has just called us to tell us that she is coming back to pick up some paintings she left, and we don�t seem to care much. Then I leave to go shopping, but I�m in a car or a smaller vehicle, and I get caught in a busy street with people. I get out and walk into a street display of clothing and get stuck and feel trapped, and� that�s all she wrote. I guess I woke up for good then. Such bizarre dreams. I took a melatonin before I went to sleep last night because I thought I wouldn�t be able to without it. I was extremely stressed because of some woman I sold a Globe Theatre kit to. It triggered a whole panic attack, and another one this evening. Bitch. Fucking whore. It�s not my problem you�re a control freak and expect the world. I am not Burger King, and you cannot have it your way. I�m just a person trying to help other people build models. You thought I was god? Wrong. Anyway, so that�s why I didn�t write last night. I tried to relax by watching two episodes from the second season of the Sopranos. It worked a little. Very little. I know I only slept because of the melatonin. Just want to do it. End it. Fuck. This is not going the way I had hoped. I feel so empty. I keep wondering if I should be committed. Just want to go. Want to go. Want to go. Want to go. LET ME GO. Fuck the world. Where is the order that�s supposed to exist? There�s supposed to be a reason for it all. What�s my reason? I keep on preparing myself for success and it never comes. I always fail. R said to me tonight, you just haven�t found something you like yet. I doubt I ever will. I want to do nothing. I want to be nothing. I can succeed at that. It�s easy! It�s just all so much work and I don�t enjoy it at all. I�m a waste of space, a waste of air, a waste of money. Do I really belong in an institution? I�m so full of rage toward myself. I�ve been compulsively overeating. It really gets in the way of losing weight. I�m miserable, so I eat a bowl of cereal. I�m sad, so I have some cookies. It doesn�t have to be a special occasion. As long as the food�s there, it goes down my throat. We watched the end of the VS fashion show and I sat there with my eyes glazed over at how skinny those girls are. It�s just not fair. Sometimes I wish I could fast. I have considered locking up all the food we had in the shed over Thanksgiving. R is going away, and I�ll be all by myself. I could just cross stitch and watch movies for a few days. Or just sleep. No one would care. That would be nice. I don�t have to work Thursday or Friday, but I volunteered to work Saturday. I need the hours. I need the money. If I could just lose weight, I could work at the strip club, too. But we know where that dream�s going. Down the drains. Not quite literally enough. I can�t let myself go to the gym, I have a real psychological block there when I try to go and I have things I need to do. Like I have one more kit to put together before week�s end. I should have finished it tonight. Still need to cut dowels and straws and it will be fine. I can cut the straws now but I can�t do the dowels because Rob�s asleep and the sawing is loud. I always have an excuse. I really should try to write about something useful. The first time I tried to commit suicide. More like a cry for help, really. I was so desperately in love with my boyfriend. We would talk on the phone for hours at a time and talk about the future and make plans. I must have been na�ve. We were together for nine months. My dad got the news that he had gotten a job with the Air Force in Germany. We were leaving in August and it was supposed to be a three year assignment. That meant I would graduate there. I was absolutely crushed. I had just started high school and started to get a feeling of who I was and what I wanted, and now it was all going to change. My world started to fall apart. The boyfriend started to get quiet. We were working on lighting for the school musical. The second night of the show, he told me he didn�t think he wanted to be with me anymore. His dad had taken him out for dinner the previous weekend and told him that he should date other people, and he just decided that was a good idea. So much for loving me. The next morning, Saturday, I had to go to a retreat with my friends. We went to some monastery and prayed and stuff, and I felt so empty, like I was walking in a dream. I thought that maybe we could work things out. We had talked about staying together while I was in Germany. I thought maybe our love was strong enough. Like I said, I must have been na�ve. After the retreat, I went to set up for the closing night of the show. He sent his best friend, Evan, to tell me that he wasn�t interested in getting back together with me because this girl Tracy had taken him home the night before and they had decided to �be more than friends.� Asshole. Moved on quickly, right? I went into the girls� bathroom up on the second floor and locked myself in a stall and just bawled. I guess his friend told him and he felt obligated to come up and see me. I exploded in rage at him. He flinched when I threw my sweatshirt at him. He thought I was going to attack him. (I should have.) I felt so hurt and I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. (The story of my life.) I was doing the spotlight by myself, so I was up above the auditorium in a dark space, lonely, crying. Before the show even started, I was crying in the dark above people. I kept hitting my head against the cement wall and clawing at my skin, sobbing violently but quietly. I was truly in the midst of one of my first major anxiety attacks. At intermission, I asked my friend Amity to come up there with me because I didn�t want to be alone. This was totally against regulation. I didn�t care. We almost got caught. It would have been worth it, I should not have been alone. But anyway. After the show, I sat on the curb waiting for my parents to pick me up. Another of his friends, Adam, sat on the curb next to me trying to cheer me up. I wasn�t having any of it. I can�t remember what I said exactly, but he described it later as �totally suicidal.� I really scared the shit out of him. My parents went to bed, and I didn�t. I locked myself in the bathroom and took the blade out of my mother�s razor. It was old and dull. I didn�t realize that, and I probably wouldn�t have cared anyway. I tried to cut my left wrist with it. I pushed harder and harder and harder. Only a little blood came out. I ran the water and tried to cut again, hoping that the water would speed up the bleeding. Only a little bit more. Was the razor no good or was it that I had no guts? I tried to cut my thigh. That seemed to be no problem. I made several lines on my right thigh with a pleasing result. The little beads of blood bubbled up and I finally felt I had accomplished something. I tried the wrist again. I was starting to shake and feel even more hopeless, like, �Great, I can�t even do this right.� Then suddenly a thought flashed through my mind. What if I really do die? My parents will find me, but not in time, and I will die. I don�t want to die. And like that, I stopped. I blotted the blood with some toilet paper until the bleeding had slowed down, and I dabbed it all with Desitin so it would heal. So I would live. I left the bathroom and went back into my room. I needed to cheer myself up, so I though maybe some Monty Python would do the trick. I listened for about a minute, but it just annoyed me. I went into the kitchen to have something to eat. I poured myself a bowl of Honey Clusters of Oats � I remember it very specifically � and added the milk. Suddenly the doorbell rang. It was 12:30 AM. I poked my head out the door, and there were Adam and Evan. They were so worried about me that they got their parents to bring them over to my house to check on me. I was so lucky that my parents didn�t wake up. Well, lucky, I thought. I invited them in and they sat down with me to talk. Both Adam and Evan had tried to call me, but I had left the phone off the hook, somehow knowing that someone would try to call. Adam had called the Samaritans to find out what to do with a suicidal friend. He said they were no help at all. But they did say that if the phone was off the hook, that was a good indication that something was seriously wrong and they should take action. I told them what I had done and even showed them (it was hard to miss seeing as how the blood had soaked through my shorts), but I told them I had talked myself out of it and that it wasn�t as bad as it looked. I was going to live. They both agreed that my ex was an ass, and they both doubted his integrity (but they forgot about that within a week or so), and tried to cheer me up. My brother came home in the midst of this. He was obviously buzzed and disoriented. He seemed a little surprised that there were two guys in the living room with me, but not all that surprised. He just went to bed. The guys left at 2, pretty confident that I wasn�t going to try again. The next day was Mother�s Day. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and it was warm that day. My brother was looking at me funny. I got through the day. I cried myself to sleep. Monday morning I got ready for school, still walking in a cloud. It was my ex�s birthday. My eyes were incredibly puffy. I had tried to get rid of the puffiness with ice, but to no avail. I made it through the morning and even English with the ex, but then during lunch I looked out the window to the front of the school and there was my ex�s mom, coming into the school. I went to my next class, thinking, �Huh, that was odd.� I got called out of my class by my counselor. I went to see her, and she told me that she had heard from a source that I had tried to commit suicide. Again, I was na�ve, and I instantly started sobbing and told her my whole swan song. I thought I was absolved, like when you confess to a priest. Then she hit me with a curve: she had to call my parents. I pleaded with her not to do it! She said she was required by law to report an attempt of suicide to the parents. She made me a deal though. She said that I could call and tell my mother, but I had to do it from her office, and my mom had to come pick me up after school. I believe all I told my mom was that I had tried to hurt myself, and the counselor advised that I stay out of school for the rest of the week and see a therapist. All my mom asked when she picked me up was what I had done (�Cut myself,�) with what (�A razor,�) and where (�My wrist and thigh,� and I showed her the bandage on my wrist.) That night I called my ex. He really didn�t want to talk to me. I said, �It�s your birthday and I wanted to say Happy Birthday.� �OK.� �Why did your mom come in today?� �She had to bring something in for me.� �Oh�. Why did you do it?� �Because I care about you,� he said angrily. It sure didn�t sound like he cared. I didn�t even know that he knew what I had tried to do. Later I found out that Adam and Evan had talked to him on Sunday and told him what happened. He was pretty shook up. His mom came in to support him in talking to his counselor about me. His counselor told my counselor, and the rest was history. I never called him again. I did indeed stay home the rest of the week. I watched Hook again and again and again. I wore my PJs all day. I slept a lot. I cried a lot. When I felt like doing it again, I would find my mom, rested my head against her leg or her shoulder, and cried. She never said anything, just held me. Such a good mommy. My brother told me that that night he had thought it was strange a car was idling in our driveway, so he went over to see what was up, and Evan�s dad and Adam�s mom had told him about me. So he knew on Mother�s Day. Rumors circulated about me in school. Whatever. I took them in stride. After all, I was still alive. I made new friends. I grew up. I moved on. It took a long time, though. I tried to make my peace with him, in fact, and he wanted nothing to do with me or my peace. The truth was he had been a good friend. But that ended quite abruptly. He blamed me for screwing him up. I�m sorry? Wasn�t he the one who dumped me? So that�s my sorry little story about breaking up and trying to commit suicide. It�s not good. I�m not proud of it. But it�s my story.

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