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

Notes from 2010: November 19, 1998.

Minor Trigger Alert: The "acting" I refer to is, I'm pretty sure, cutting. I don't know why I still got skittish about saying it outright, after I'd mentioned it in at least one other entry. Notice how I separate it as somehow less fucked up than chemical addictions. I was still in the "I can stop when I choose to" mindset at this point. If only.

From the context, this entry is talking about my mother, and how I felt like she shut me down whenever I would try to tell her how bad I was feeling. From present tense, I can't say how much those feelings were legitimate, and how much I was overreacting. I do think it was a mix of the two. My mother does tend to shy away from conflict. And while I probably took her unwillingness to discuss how depressed I was feeling a bit too much to heart, to this day she does tend to forget that I was once suicidal--in part because I never told her much about it until after the feelings had passed, and in part because she simply can't stand to know that I considered killing myself. And I think that her need to not know, understandable as it is, played into her reaction at the time, when I would try to tell her how shitty I was feeling.

This is the first post where I say outright that I'm starting to feel like I'd rather not be alive, though I don't totally go there yet. But by this point it's on my mind, despite the fact that I claim later on that I don't hate myself. I was already more than halfway to full-blown self-loathing, if I wasn't already there.

"Ne" means "right" in Japanese. I use that in multiple entries.

The improv class I reference was an after-school thing I was trying at the time, run by a local theatre group, and I was feeling like epic fail. Instead of managing to be a whole different (read: super-outgoing) person and make friends in a group where I didn't know anyone--as I always hoped would happen--I was, as always, left feeling like the weird, shy, excessively quiet one who no one liked, and who everyone wished would just go away. I still suck ass at improv--not the most fun for someone who naturally needs time to think before they speak--so it probably wasn't the best choice of extracurricular, especially since I felt acutely uncomfortable and like an outcast in my day-to-day life. Sad to say, the improv class only exacerbated those feelings, and I didn't manage to make a real connection with anyone there, which made me feel all the more like a loser who would never "make a friend to save my life."

For the record, I have actually had people (to my face) interpret my shyness as me being stuck up, stupid, rude or aloof, all of which killed me when I was trying so, so hard to please and to be what I thought other people wanted me to be. I've also been called laid back, which never fails to amaze me, since it's the polar opposite of how I feel inside. I'm pretty much cool with the misinterpretations these days. It can still be irritating sometimes, in an eye-roll kind of way, but it doesn't fuck with my sense of self anymore. I'm mostly comfortable with being a shy person, and it's interesting how different people read that trait. Sometimes people even get it right.

One trait that has stuck with me is the tendency to read others' interpretations of me more negatively than they actually are. This isn't unusual for very shy people. Even today, I assume too easily that someone's had a negative reaction to me when they haven't, or a stronger negative reaction than they realistically have. Knowing that I tend to think that way helps me mitigate my negative mind-reading. But since I can't exactly ask most people "so, how much of a loser do you really think I am?" it can still sometimes be hard to gauge how much is misinterpretation on my part, and how much is real negative reaction on theirs. But at least I don't assume most people can't stand me anymore. That makes it a lot easier not to hate myself.

Near the end of the entry, I talk about finding a group of friends I fit in with, who care deeply about me. I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there was nothing I wanted more than a family of friends like the Buffy/Xander/Willow/Giles quartet on the show. And if I'm completely honest, that's still something I want more than almost anything else--and have yet to find. I'd love to think it's still possible, but part of me thinks it's my version of the "one true love" myth: something that pop culture assures me can exist, is attainable, but that almost never happens in the real world.

July 8, 1998.

You know what? I wish that everyone would just stop lying to me. Everyone seems to be a hypocrite, and a liar. Of course, I lie, too, but I lie about my feelings and such, and rarely about what I think of another person, unless out of curtosy or not wanting to hurt them. People lie about how they feel about me all the time. I'm sick of it.

Know what else? I'm utterly alone. I've felt like this for a week or two, now. Normally, when I've felt like this in the past, something happens within a few days of my belief taking full force to change my mind. Not this time. Even if people knew I hurt, they wouldn't care.

Mom thinks that perhaps I don't let myself feel pain. She's a fool. Of course I do, how could I not? I believe I am very empathic, so how could I possibly not feel my own pain? In any case, yes, I feel pain. I feel it strongly. I don't want to be alone. Perhaps there are people out there, somewhere, who I can believe in. I'll find out, one day. When I finally escape my living Hell.

Now, let's see, how about those liars and hypocrites? First of all, the majority just don't really care very much, such as Brodie, Dani, Teddy, Izumi-chan, Kerry, Alex, and even Izzy, though he still gets a special place in here. They just don't give a shit. Well, hey, that's fine, whatever. I don't need them, anyway. I don't need anyone but myself.

As for the others, they are the ones who have hurt me. I'll talk about each of them, now.

Mom--obvious. She made me feel guilty all the time, when I was younger. It doesn't work, anymore, now it makes me angry. But, she was the main cause of my lack of self-esteem, and why I blamed myself for many things which were not my fault. When she's in a mean mood, which is not infrequent, she still tries to hurt me. For example, the other day, Hannah and I made some cakes. One was left at Hannah's. The other I got to bring home. Izzy and I "iced" it with whipped cream and strawberries, and I was rather proud that it had turned out.

I could tell, when I came through the door, that she was overtired. Now, earlier in the day, she'd asked me if I would like her to make a pound cake or a cheese cake. I said pound cake, and that's what she made. When she came into the kitchen, when we were "icing", the first thing she did was complain that we were "icing" it like that at all. She went on to say that if she had known that I was going to bring it home, she wouldn't have made pound cake, and complain that she'd wanted cheese cake. When I said she ought to have just made cheese cake, then, she said she didn't know I was bringing mine home. For Lady's sake, neither did I!!!

She also went on about how I'd said that it tasted bad, before, so why did I bring it home? I told her that it tasted good now, but this was apparently unacceptable, because she continued to point out how awful it was supposed to taste. The hypocrite herself had told me that it was supposed to set for a while before it tasted good!! She sulkily said that she would freeze the pound cake. With a little bit of bitter, angry laugher, I said that from now on I wouldn't bring home anything I baked, and asked "will that make you happy?" She said "yes" in this oh-so-hurt voice, and went to freeze the pound cake. Trying to make me feel like I had mortally wounded her, the selfish, closed-minded, short-sighted, hypocritical, heartless BITCH!!!!

And she wonders why I get upset when she mentions the cake today? Saying how it's good, that's supposed to magically make the hurt that I felt that my own mother didn't give a shit about something I was proud of, nor anything other than her own fucking self?! It can't and doesn't. I could go on, but I'll save it. There's too much to say it all right now.

Dad--He used to be so kind to me... he used to care. Not anymore. His total and utter nonchalance strikes me like daggers. He used to care if I hurt. Now he lays guilt trips, like Mom, and doesn't give a damn about anything I'd like to say, nor what I feel. I've essentially lost my father.

Izzy--I've also lost my best friend. This is no one's fault, I'm just unimportant to him. He has tons of other friends, so he rarely sees, calls, talks to, etc., me. He doesn't need me.

Hannah--much like mom. Lashes out at me for no reason, when she's unhappy. Patronizes me, treats me like an idiot. If I ask her a question, I never know when she's going to use her "you're an idiot if you don't know that" voice and talk to me as though I were a small child who needs each specific detail simplified and explained.

I guess that's all of them. God and Goddess, I feel like I'm going to scream; like something inside is pulled taught and ready to snap.

Believe me, I do feel pain. I feel little else.

When I finally escape, I will run, run, run, and never look back. I've nothing by pain, anger, hurt to look back to.

"The life that I've left behind me/is a cold room"

Jya-ne.

- Vale