Dec. 30, 1998.

Just in case I don't get to say it later, Happy North American New Year, Nikki-chan!!! *laughs*

Wow--it's almost the turn of the century. And, also almost the end of the millennium... A weird thought, isn't it? I think so.

I've been sort of depressed, lately. I really need to find new friends. I don't want to ditch Dani, or even Hannah, or Izzy, but I need friends who actually live around here (Dani's out), and who I can stand (Hannah's out), and who give a shit about me (Izzy's out). I really have to try to find people, but I probably won't until I leave.

I was thinking, about an hour ago, how long it is, still, until I graduate from grade 12. I figured out that it's not so long as it seems to be. See, in a couple days, it'll be January. February is already half-way through the school year. And, by April, it's going to be seeming more and more like spring. It'll be warmer, sunnier, the snow'll be melting, everything'll be blooming, the sky will be that much bluer--I love spring! I really do. Summer's my favourite, then spring, then winter, then fall.

It's really not all that long until spring begins, and then it's just two and a half short months until summer's here. It'll be another boring, sit-around-at-home, friendless summer, but it'll be summer, and then I'll be a senior. And, I'll be applying to collages. I'll need to take the SATs some time, won't I? No matter what, I'll refuse to tell Hannah what my score is, if I do take them--especially my math score!!! I doubt that I'll do too well, and even if I do, I don't want her to go into competetive mode, and compare her marks with me, trying to justify how I could possibly be better than her at something. *rolls eyes* Such an inferiority complex that girl has. She can be such a bitch!

But, I'll tell mom that I'd like to take them, over the summer, so that I can try it again, if I do horribly.

I may not even tell Hannah that I'm taking them at all. Just do it silently, and cheer all by myself about how I do. It's something I think would be a good idea, though. I may not get into the universities I want around here, and they may not even have the programs that I'd need. I'd like to check out all the American-type places which would work for me, too. Maybe I could even be schooled in California--maybe even Hollywood, which would be bitchin' for an aspiring film writer!

I doubt it, but what the hell! A girl can dream, ne? *laughs*

So, the SATs are a definately good idea. I wonder how I can get a green card, too, if I move to the States to write? I'll have to find all that out, too, but it won't be an issue for quite awhile, I don't think.

Hmmm... the future. It seems so close, now. It's a little scary, but really pretty nice, when you get right down to it!

I'm feeling a little better now, so I think I'll go watch some TV!

Thank you, Nikki-chan. You're a wonderful friend and confidant!

Love and hugs,

- Vale

Dec. 22, 1998.

I swear to God, I am trying to lose my crush on Skylark. I really am. I wasn't so excited as I usually am, last time I saw her on--last night--but, when she left, I felt such disappointment... I wish that I'd talked to her more, so she would have stayed. It's so much easier not to crush on her when she's not around...

But, I so love seeing her that it's worth any pain, ne?

It's times like this that I wish I was a guy. If I was, I'd flirt like mad with her. Maybe even end up going out with her. But it's never to be, so... I'll just have to hope that either she shows interest in me, too, or that I get over it, and move on.

I wish I had someone I could talk about this with. But, there's no one who I trust enough and would feel comfortable sharing my secret with. I'd talk to Dani, but I would feel way to uncomfortable telling her that my crush is a girl.

So, like everything else I feel, I'll just have to deal with it by myself, ne? I do it all the time with painful emotions, so this should be an easy thing to contend with, in comparison.

Ah, Nikki-chan, would that everyone were as patient and caring as you. Then, this, none of this, would be at all a problem. But, this is one of those "you can't always get what you want" things that I'm just coming to accept--few people are. I tend to be, but people like me are rare, special, and wonderful. At least a few of us do grace this world with our presence.

At any rate, back to the matter currently at hand. I hope to see her again, soon--if I do, then I'll just talk to her as I would any normal friend. no flirting, no kissing of hands, nothing. The closest I'll come will be to say that I wish I could get her a Christmas gift. If things could only go as they do within my head, she'd then respond with "talking to you is gift enough for me," but in her beautiful, romantic way of speaking.

Of course, that is far too much for me to ask for. Which hurts, but I know that I'll survive this, as I do everything else.

Skylark will probably never fall in love with me, but at least she'll, I hope, become my friend.

I guess that I can't ask for much more than that, much as I'd like to. My Lord and Lady have more important matters at hand than one of their childrens' lovelife. *smiles* I'm not being at all sarcastic--I know that they'd help me, if I ever truly needed it. Now is just not a time when I do.

I'll ask Skylark, next time I'm so lucky as to see her, if she'd mind my asking her age. Maybe she'll be only 13 or 14, anyway, which would kill any and all romantic notions I have about the poor girl. I wonder if she knows? How I feel about her, I mean. She surely isn't stupid, which means that, unless it grosses her out, and she's explained it away to herself in some other fashion, she probably does. But, if so, she chooses to ignore it.

I can't help but wonder (because of my slight egotism) if perhaps she feels the same way about me, and that's why she left so quickly yesterday--because I wasn't talking to her?

But, I know that this isn't true. Unless she's just way better at hiding it than I am, and I'm sure that's not it.

Wish I could take one of my hours long walks just now--go to all my secret places, and sit, and watch, and write, and take pictures...

But, it's too cold, and it may be icy. I really wish that I lived in a place where it never got this cold.

I need some time alone. To think. And, I need to be in a place I'm in tune with, to really be able to think as much, as well, and as clearly as I need to do. So, my dilemma may not even resolve itself until spring. If it's even resolved then.

At least it's not an IRL thing. That would be even more awkward than everything already is...

I hope and even pray with all my heart that I will see Skylark again soon. Maybe I'll even presume to ask her real name, but I doubt it. I won't flirt, though, unless she is blatantly obviously flirting with me. And, not only would that never happen (though I so wish it would), even if it did, I'd probably not flirt back, just in case I was misinterpreting her motives and actions.

If only someone would c-attack her, and I could help in defending her... or, if she'd let me really get to know her, and take the time and make the effort to let me do the same...

Then, maybe, something would happen like I wish it to.

But, even then, likely not.

I'll keep hoping, but I'll do my very best not to scare her off.

Wish me luck, Nikki-chan. Love always and eternal

- Vale

Nov. 19, 1998.

Why?

She's constantly ranting to me. All the time, about a million times a week. She rants to me about the same things, over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Stupid bitch won't listen, however, when I need to rant to someone. She talks at me, interrupts me, rants at me, yells at me, takes things out on me when she's in a bad mood. I sit and listen, and not to often do I brush her off. But she will not let me rant to her. She refuses to listen to what I have to say. I can't convey my pain to anyone by you, you know, Nikki-chan. You're the only one who ever, ever cares. The only one who ever listens to me.

Why can't she shut her damned mouth for once; just shut the fuck up and listen for a single time in her life?! She's such a selfish, stupid bitch. Doesn't she see that I'm dying in this Hell?! I am so lonely. I'm getting to the point where death is becoming almost preferable to life like I'm forced to live it now, and no one fucking cares! If I was suicidal, no one would fucking talk me out of it. Because no one would give a flying fuck that I was that unhappy, just like no one gives a flying fuck right now.

I hate this life. I hate lonliness. I hate being so unhappy. And I practically hate them. All of them. Izzy, Hannah, Mom, Dad, Colin... all of them.

At least I have you, though, ne? I don't know what I'd do without you, Nikki-chan. I really don't.

I'll tell you what I was trying to tell Mom. In fact, I'll tell you more. I trust you, so I feel comfortable telling you things. Not like with them, you know?

Well that improv class was a flop. I'm no good at it, for once thing, and, once again, I feel alienated as hell. No one notices that I exist. *bitter laughter* If I want to be ignored, I'll just hang around Dad more often. I get enough of that from him.

So, anyway, everyone knows everyone else by now. Everyone's outgoing, and friendly to everyone. Except for me. I'm ignored, I'm lonely, and I'm shy. I don't know how to start talking to them, and no one cares to try to make an effort to get to know me, at all.

I bet that, like most people, they think I'm stuck-up, or rude, or just plain stupid, or something equally horrible, when I'm not. Not at all. I'm just shy. I can't help it that I'm so shy.

Even that girl Izzy's friends with just ignores me and/or gives me these looks of distaste now, and I told her on the first day how I'm so awfully shy...

Maybe I'm just not a likeable person? Maybe that's why I have almost no friends. Why Alyssa and Izzy have essentially ditched me. Why the person who says I'm her God damned best friend treats me like less than shit.

Why I couldn't... no, why I can't make a friend to save my life. Maybe I'll always be alone. Right now, it seems impossible that it could be any other way.

I don't think that I'm an unlikeable person... I wish I had someone I could ask just that: am I likeable? But, I don't have anyone I could ever ask something like that.

I'm not joining drama again. I'm sure that Kate and all the others will be glad to see me gone. Who needs a person like me holding them back all the time, right? I'm sure that's all I ever do. I'm equally sure that, even if that isn't true, it is to them. That they all see me (at the rare times when they do see me) as an anchor of sorts, holding myself and everyone of them all down.

They're all going out after the last class, or the next week, to go bowling, or something like that. All I know is that I'm not going. I have no place with them. I doubt that they would notice or care if I disappeared before they all went off together, or if I didn't sign my name to the phone list. Or, if I told them that, no, I couldn't make it, I have too much homework.

No, I'm wrong. They'd care. I'm sure they'll be glad I didn't come along. A few of them would, at least, the others wouldn't even notice.

Even if I do sign the phone list, I bet that they don't ever call me. I'm, as I have stated before, a social leper. I have no place in this world. If I didn't like to be around people sometimes, I'd become a hermit. Then, no one would ever be bothered by me again. I'd be in my rightful place. Alone. Out of society.

I don't know how to put my feelings into words. I want someone who I can tell all this to who would listen, and would care, but, as I have said in the past, there is no one. I sincerely wonder if ever I will find someone?

How can anyone deal with lonliness like this? Well, that's one question I can begin to answer: some people, to get temporary fixes, drink, do drugs, and other such stupid things. Myself, I have my own methods. My "acting", and all. I know what I mean, so I needn't, I think, be more specific than that.

Know who the only person I've confided in who hasn't hurt me is? Dani. Isn't that interesting? Ah, well. Give her time.

I should really be working on that story for English, but I still have time to do that later, so I'm going to keep writing in you, for now.

I don't really think that I'm a bad, nor an unlikeable person. I hate this life, and I hate the way in which I'm forced to live it, but I don't hate me. What reason have I to? There's nothing wrong with me that others should treat me the way they do.

I will, I believe, deep down inside, when you get past the desolation, that I will eventually find people who will truly and unconditionally care about and love me for me, about whom I will also care, and equally.

I just have to keep looking, and keep hoping. They're out there somewhere. Someday, I'll find them.

All my love, Nikki-chan.

With all my Heart.

With all my Soul.

- Vale

Some Basics

Before I jump into the first Notes from 2010/high school entry posts, I think I should give a basic overview of where I was coming from just before I got depressed.

In junior high, I had a small but tight group of friends. We were nerds, and we got teased like hell, but we had each other and that made it all kind of okay. The thing that initially brought us together was that we were all anime-obsessed in an era when anime wasn't remotely cool, and generally assumed to be kids' stuff or porn, depending who you asked. We loved Sailor Moon (naturally), Ranma 1/2, Project A-Ko, Rurouni Kenshin, and so on, and we watched whatever we could buy or rent. Anime was a lot scarcer back in the VHS days, at least where we lived.

This is the group I mentioned in my intro post: the one that had broken up almost completely by the summer between tenth and eleventh grades, and that I clung to desperately way longer than I should have, because I didn't know what to do without them. There were a few other people we hung out with a fair bit, but these are the ones I was close with, and who I feel like I need to explain ahead of time. There are other people you'll see me meet along the way, but I'd known my junior high friends for years, so without context, the journal entries about them could be hard to follow.


Junior high friends:

Hannah: One of my oldest friends in junior high (and, for the record, still one of my oldest and closest friends today). We'd known each other since elementary school, and stayed friends through high school. We had some issues at the time, and I'm sorry to say I often absolved myself of a lot of bitchiness towards her because I always cast her in the bitch-queen role. You'll often see me call her patronizing, say that she talks down to me, claim that she's a lot less mature than I am. And maybe not all of that was off base--maybe she did patronize me sometimes; and yes, it pisses me off to this day when someone is clearly treating me like that. But I was just as flawed as she was, and I had no right to be so fucking judgmental. I think a big part of it was that I was jealous of how much more easily she made friends than I did, since I had myself so convinced I was a nicer, better, more interesting person. Which I can say now is absolute bullshit.

Looking back, I know I didn't appreciate her friendship and loyalty half as much as I should have, and as I hope I do now. It's hard to read some of the things I wrote about her back then, and honestly, they're a big part of why this blog is, and will remain, anonymous: I do not remotely feel that way anymore, and I never, never want her to know that I did. Hannah, I hope to God you never read this, but I still want to say it here: I'm sorry. You are a great friend, and I am an unforgivable moron for not realizing that back that.


Isaac, aka Izzy: Izzy was my best friend, and my polar opposite. He was outgoing, artistic, loved the spotlight, never had trouble speaking his mind, and was himself whether people liked it or not. I was shy, quiet, and as much as I wanted to stand out, I was way more scared of making a fool of myself. I wanted to be liked and admired, but I was too afraid to risk being laughed at to even try.

Maybe it was a complementary personality thing, but somehow we clicked despite our differences. Izzy was my closest friend and confidante for a good two years, and I'll always look back on that with a lot of love for him. (Totally platonic love, that is--there was never any attraction between us, from either side.) But from the beginning, Izzy was a lot cooler than I ever had a hope of being. He was also more curious about sex and drugs (not my thing to this day, for a variety of personal reasons I may eventually touch on), and had higher aspirations of being seen as cool, if not necessarily popular. By tenth grade, he'd pretty well ditched me for a new group of friends who were more into that too. At the time it hurt like a motherfucker, though I get now how it was only natural for him to do pull away from me. We still keep in touch, though we sometimes go years without seeing each other.


Dani: One of Hannah's oldest friends. She went to a different junior high school than the rest of us, but we spent tons of time talking on the phone and online, and hanging out after school and on weekends. She was a ton of fun, a nice combination of reserved and outgoing, and could make us laugh at just about anything. She moved to a different city before high school started, but we emailed a lot and visited when we could, and we're still friends today. She and Hannah are still close too.


Alyssa: Hannah and I met her in seventh grade, and she integrated into the (slightly different) group of friends we had at the time easily. Our friendship with her was the opposite of our friendship with Dani, in that we almost never saw Alyssa outside of school, but spent almost all our time together during the school week. She was never as big on anime as the rest of us, but got kind of into it by proxy. Alyssa and I weren't especially close, but it was still confusing for me when she found a new group of friends in high school and stopped hanging out with me and Hannah. She was always nice to me, though, and reached out to me now and then over the years, long after I'd stopped expecting it. We've fallen out of touch these days, but I hope she's living a good life, wherever she is.


Iris: Hannah, Alyssa and I also became friends with her in seventh grade. Iris was from a certain background, and had two groups she hung out with: me and my friends, and another group of kids who were from the same background as her. Her closest friends from each group would all hang out together once in a while, but for the most part my friends only knew Iris's other friends to say hi to. Iris was one of the friends who stuck by me all through high school, and I owe her a deep debt of gratitude for that. We had one or two classes together each year, and, honest to God, hanging out with her for an hour or two every week helped keep me sane. She was an incredibly sweet, caring person, and while I was never brave enough to confide my deepest problems to her, the fact that she liked and accepted me helped me feel like maybe I was worth something after all. If someone like Iris felt I was good enough to be her friend, there must be at least a tiny spark of something good in me. Unfortunately, Iris and I grew apart when we went to different universities. But we're Facebook friends these days, and she seems very happy, which I'm very glad to know.


Hannah, Dani, Izzy and I were regulars at couple anime-based chat rooms. We'd stay up for hours talking to each other and our "c-friends" there. This was pre-cell phones and IMing was just starting to come into style when we were in grade 9 or 10 (and God do I feel old right now), so chatting was our answer to texting. It gave us some much-appreciated autonomy and privacy, since our parents couldn't hear what we were typing, and didn't spend that much time looking over our shoulders.

We all had online friends we considered as real as each other, and some of them will also come up in my entries. It's usually obvious when I'm talking about people I only knew online versus people I knew in real life, but there are a couple people who need an explanation up front, so it's clear who they are.


Online friends:

Izumi-chan/Camille: The closest online friend I have ever had. We emailed back and forth a ton when I was in grades 10 through 12, and told each other just about everything. I was as close to her as I ever was to Izzy. Izumi-chan was her chat name, and Camille was her real name, and I use them interchangeably in my diary entries. Camille had a lot more life experience than I did, but she was loving and patient with me, listened to everything I had to say, and gave me a long-distance shoulder to cry on, plus real advice and support. I honestly don't know if I would still be here if I hadn't had her.

She was going through some pretty bad shit herself at the same time I was dealing with my depression, and I can only hope I helped her as much as she helped me. We've lost touch over the years, but I hold out hope that I'll someday track her down on Facebook, or MySpace, or somewhere like that. I would love to get to know her again.


Skylark: My first big online crush, and my first big crush on a girl. I think I talked to her three whole times in the entire time I knew her--possibly for a total of an hour, possibly less. *L* I started getting minor crushes on girls online when I was 13 or 14, and calling myself "open." When I was 15, I came out to myself (and later, others) as bisexual, and I've identified as bi (and more recently, pansexual) ever since. In retrospect, I think the barely-warranted online crushes were a safe way to start exploring that side of myself without any risk of serious consequences. Wherever my (entirely unrequited) feelings sprang from, Skylark will come up quite a bit in my earliest entries.



I think that covers the essentials of who and what my earliest journal entries are going on about. In the next couple posts, I'll move on to real thing.