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.

Notes from 2010: September 30, 1998.

The September 30 entry is prefaced by a two-line entry from August 30, which for some reason I never had a chance to write more of.

I have no idea now who this millionaire friend of Izzy's was supposed to be. For the record, he never ran away with her either, since from the sound of my entry he'd apparently been considering it.

The parenthesis where I clarify that I don't hate living, just how my life is, are my words at that time. I was trying to keep those things separate in my mind because I hadn't yet given in quite enough to self-loathing to actively consider suicide, and I was afraid of getting to that point if I started thinking that it was, in fact, myself I hated.

I talk in this entry about wanting to go somewhere else and start over completely new, by which I meant, be someone completely other than who I was. I hadn't yet learned that it doesn't necessarily work out that way--at least, not if what you're running away from is, like my shyness, and intrinsic part of yourself. A few years down the road, I did have an opportunity to start over fresh as a university student, in a city where I barely knew anyone, and it didn't exactly go as I'd hoped. I did manage to work through a lot of my issues around being shy eventually--seeing a psychologist worked very well for me, with that--but it wasn't until I started therapy that I started making the changes I wanted so badly. Before that, it was like Social Distortion says in "Ball and Chain": "But wherever I have gone/I was sure to find myself there/You can run all your life/But not go anywhere". Sometimes it still feels that way. But I do like myself a lot more than I used to these days, and I have a lot more confidence that I am able to change the parts I don't like, if I put my mind to it.

The sign-off I use, "jya-ne", means "bye" or "see you later" in Japanese. I was all about boosting my otaku cred. At least in my own mind, since by this point no one else much gave a crap. *L*

Aug. 25, 1998.

I drink too much pop.

I don't know, it just seemed like a good way to start off an entry. I do, anyway. I drink at least two, often three cans a day.

You know, I'm thinking of getting another diary. I don't know why too well... I just... A lot of things have been recorded in here, which some would call bizarre; things which would have people deem me insane. I'm not.

I still believe in the things I wrote about in here, still believe in Magick. I guess I always have.

I'm naïve. I trust and believe in what people say too easily. In some cases, at any rate.

I don't trust and believe in people easily, though. Every person I've ever really, truely believed in (and, there have been precious few) has hurt me. Mom, Dad, Izzy, Hannah... all of them. It's still a struggle, at times, not to believe... in both them and others.

Why do they always hurt me? Why can't I trust, love, believe in those I ought to be able to believe in without the constant, overlying fear that they will suddenly change?

My parents shouldn't hurt me, should they?

Not physically, of course, but the wounds are still there. Some are slowly healing, most are raw and open.

It hurts so bad.

Pain.

Pain.

I know it so well.

Apparently, I "owe" Mom two hours' worth of work on my room. I always have a drawing to finish.

I feel like I have to scream and cry, but even if I do, no one will ever listen. Even when they do, they never, ever, ever hear.

"Please let me start screaming.
Please let me start screaming.
Please let me start screaming.
Please let me start screaming."

Those lines from Invisible Man by Lush, I believe?

Dad was in another of his moods today. I can't believe I got my hopes up when he joked with me like he used to, when he came to pick me up.

Is it normal to feel like crying every time you spend time with your father? Is it okay if he acts as though he doesn't like you, and ignores you when you try to start a conversation?

No. No, I really don't think it is.

It's good that he talks to Colin, at least, like he used to talk to me. Colin, I think, needs love and compassion more than I do, right now.

I guess that it was a choice of one of us or the other, huh?

Dad does what Mom does, now. Only, in some ways, he's worse. He makes me feel guilty, like I should apologize, then he gets upset with me when I do.

What the hell does he want of me? What does he expect?!

Bitter irony. He's quite a hypocrite. He condemns Mom for doing things he now does himself.

If all his talks about looking out for you and never helping others out of pure kindness lead to such emotionlessness, heartlessness, well, then, so be it. Let me be screwed, over and over, by those whom I help out of love and kindness. I will never be so cold. Never.

I will be me, not whomever he expects me to be, expects me to become.

I am me. If you don't love me for who I am--and this goes for all of you, present and future--stay the hell out of my life.

These pages are so small, it's hard to write. But bigger books don't come with locks. As flimsy as the locks on diaries are, I will not use one which is without.

As little protection as they may provide, it's better than nothing.

I haven't felt so bleak, so desolate, in a long, long time. I don't even have anyone to confide in, to whom I could speak freely of my pain. I hate my life.

I don't hate me, but I hate my life.

I need to get out of here, to start over somewhere new. Unfortunately, it'll be three or so more years until I can. Doesn't that suck?

This is one of those rare, lowest of low moments when even death seems preferable than this continued existence.

But I don't truely want to die. I want to escape. And I want people to be friends with, and people to love.

How many, I wonder, people will I be able to find who are not scared of my being Wiccan, and who like anime?

Few, I'm sure.

When I got home, I hoped to find solace from pain. But Mom was tired, and so I went to hide in her room and watch T.V. I sat there and cried almost silently, for a few minutes. Living like this is more than I can bear.

When she took me to get my supper, later, I was so tense. I didn't know if I would say the wrong thing, or too little, or too much, or what I would do to set her off at me.

Thank the God and Goddess, I managed not to set her off. She asked me if I was alright, and I said yes. She believed me. Good. I don't want to have to explain. Not now, maybe not ever.

She didn't listen. The one time I tried to, she refused to listen, and she yelled at me. She won't even try to stop hurting me.

Won't hardly even consider it.

I wish I had someone to look out for me.

I mean, and older brother or sister, or one of my parents, or a grandparent, or someone. Anyone.

But, I don't have anyone.

I have no one. I have no friends, and I have no family I can trust in.

I'm all alone.

And I'm so, so lonely...

- Vale