she did it with a boy when she was young

This is what I told myself.

Inhale, and the moment you do you know you're doing the wrong thing. So close your eyes. And let it out. Disappear in the air, float away forever, out of sight and out of mind. So when you open your eyes, there was never anything there.

I wish I was anyone but who I am. I feel like a tiny broken thing, and everything I've been working towards, up to this moment, everything...it just got stolen away. And these people are so cruel. People. I can't feel a thing ever again. You put your heart in it and it's stolen away.

I've been sliding down my slippery slope, but I have to say I'm at the bottom now.

My tattoos don't tell me anything. They do conference in secret, however. One tells the other what it means and where it came from. One weeps and the other smiles. And are they separate, or part of the same? Like those waves that were afraid to crash, unaware they were part of the ocean. They know I'm falling apart.

I was staring at your picture a little while today. I don't know you at all. The person I knew cared about me.

I need an exit. I'm very unhappy. Crying is so trite. I don't know. Sin City was a damn good movie though.

So right when you feel like things can't get worse...

Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't hurt. I'm proud of myself. I smiled and I was as cool as I could manage, even if it wasn't much, I didn't break down into tears. I want to know why they want me though, to pick on, to pull apart, tear down. I...don't deserve this today. I fucking don't. Don't get in my face with your belly all fat with some bastard baby and your entourage of underclassmen talking shit about ME talking shit about YOU. Cause frankly I don't fucking care. You can't touch me. Because I'm smiling in your face and telling you yes, I'm very very afraid now, so could you leave me to eat my lunch? But really...if you have to push it...go fuck yourself. Just. Do it. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT AND I'M NOT AFRAID OF A BUNCH OF INSECURE LITTLE FUCKS SO GO TAKE YOUR CRAP SOMEWHERE ELSE. Oh and I want to thank each and every one of my wonderful friends, sticking up for me. That was fucking noble. Minus Denise cause it's sad when the peanut (no offense) is the only one that can speak up for me.

I wish I was tough and I didn't collapse into tears, didn't have to put up such a front. I wish I wasn't so very see through. I don't want to deal with this Monday and I don't particularly like Mr. Sortisio. In fact, this is...ridiculous...I'm so empty and desperate and hurt. I am.

I put more ink into me today. Don't let anyone tell you it doesn't hurt. Blood drips. Jay and I had a nice night...dinner, movie, he was gentle to me. Jay cares about me.

I saw Kevin all bleary eyed and messy and I wanted more than anything to beg for comfort. He gave me a tissue. It was his very best, it felt gentle on the inside.

I wish I felt stable. I wish you hadn't given me up, abandoned me. It's so hard. It's so, so hard without anything.

Sow a little tenderness...

My heart is a little bit broken. I feel left alone and left out and forced to realize that this is nothing. And I have to let go. But it aches, it truly does. So, so long.

I applied at Target today. Which was kind of a big deal for me, even though I'm pretty sure nothing will come of it. And tomorrow I'm getting another tattoo. Woot.

And Jay bought me shoes ^.^

I would not mind in any way if I just instantaneously died right now.

In a slow descent, every part of me has come to ache with this excruciating pain. I haven't been able to sleep for three nights. I keep choking myself on tears and I wish that was drama but the truth is I'm a living dead thing. I'm snapping and splintering in on myself and everyone around me and I can't take any kind of pressure. And what is this world, anyway, without any tenderness...I have no one. At least I'm not getting sick.

I'm an idiot. I've been centering my life around something that doesn't even exist, wasting time and energy, breaking my own heart time and time again. I hate myself. I'm the most pathetic person I swear. I can't do a single thing right. I give love to people that won't return it and torment the ones that are kind to me. The sleeper sickness I can't escape. Always waiting to swallow me whole and drag me down to it's depths.

I really, really wouldn't care if this house fell down or I got struck by lightening or nuclear war started...I wouldn't.

I'm a wreck. I'm positive that my right eye won't open all the way. I want to rip out all my eyelashes. So right. This is the perfect time to dig through old letters, notes, yearbooks, journals...

When I was eleven, in 1999, I wrote: I don't know why I started thinking of it now but I guess it makes sense. I never understood anything and now my mom thinks that she got everything sorted out. I wanted to ask her questions but I was stuck to the floor, and she was crying. I wanted to ask her one question because she never ever even acted like he existed. That's why I'm sad, but this is the question I always wanted to know: Do you see him when you look at me?

The holes in my heart will never ever be filled, no matter how desperately I try to find love. He's gone forever. We started out in two different directions, and now I'm too far away to ever hope to get back to him. I hate my mom.

I have only really truly loved three people in my life and those people are my grandmother, Brittany Gillespie, and Marissa Dejesus. Swear it. Those are the only people I can say have never brought me grief. Brittany's gone forever. She wrote:

Hey Ashley,
Thanx so much for all of your help! I really appreciate everything, and I also thank you for being such a good friend & understanding person. There will definitely be many obstacles along your path but if you stay smart (and keep your wits about ya) you will go far. You can count on it. I will see you in the future when we are both "famous" for something great and important (not something as impunent as acting) lol. But seriously- Keep in touch & control that attitude (but don't forget to put somebody in their place if they deserve it). Well you're one of the BEST~Luv ya like a sis,
Brittany Eden Gillespie
P.S. Keep Writing you amazing poems. They are quite lovely & very meaningful. Only show them to those who can be mature about reading them because they are not a joke. One day somebody will read them & they will have a great impact on their life & maybe the world.

Other things. Tyler, Sarah (what happened to Sarah?), Jason, a trillion Janet letters, Jessica. Julie. I feel nauseas.

One time I read a story about Ariel and how she had to feel like she was walking on knives all the time, and I have always felt sorry for myself first and foremost, and I felt like we were together in that. When I was younger at least. I've been trying so hard to get something I can never have.

I feel like shit. I have. It feels like there's a hand pushing against my forehead from the inside, and I can't tell if I'm walking straight. Can't really focus. I'm exhausted.

I'm distracted by the grooves in the lock on my locker, by the dead skin cells and grime I hypothesize have settled there. I'm thinking about the sweaty Indian factory the sweater of the girl sitting ahead of me was made in. Patterns in the gym floor have my full attention. I'm tired.

I fucking hurt. And I'm starting to cry a little. I don't know. I feel completely detached from every person I know. There is nothing familiar to me about any of them. I see Jay and I feel like I don't even know the kid sometimes. All this...humanity...and I'm not really a part of it...

I'm very afraid that all of my energies will amount to nothing. I want Alyvia. She makes me feel okay.

Last night was one shitty night. First with the lying in bed for four hours unable to sleep, then with the throwing up, then this morning with it coming around the opposite direction. I'm sick. I think. I don't know. I'm having a complete nervous breakdown.

It's very easy for me to suddenly feel all alone in the world.

I need someone to hold on to and cry for a while, I need someone...eff...maybe I just need to get laid -.-

I've reflected.

When you're trapped inside yourself for hour upon hour you get a lot of thinking done. My life, the big sham it is. I've left a partial map of my palm on every doorknob, seen the wet roses propped up like girls on crutches. A big fucking sham. I've been unwanted since before my birth. Now isn't that a funny thought? I think of my mother, my poor misguided mother holding her womb and wishing I would die. I know she did. I would have. I think of the dog and I know she wished I would die then, too. The entire concept of my mother boggles my mind. Miss happy face, miss prep star, that woman must be hoping for death every day of her life. That woman has ruined me. I'm thinking about myself as a little child, five probably, and the Florida afternoons I spent reading Richard Scary and making construction paper books of my own. It makes me laugh, really fucking hard, to think of my life before Buffalo. If only. I have no memory of my mother before Buffalo, whatsoever. Then I mostly remember the futon that we shared, and the days I spent crying my eyes out, stolen away from my grandmother. Florida is my grandmother's white blonde hair, my grandmother's gentle touch on my forehead, my grandmother holding my hand as we walk through department stores. What will I do without her? What have I been doing without her? I didn't ever, ever want to admit she wasn't my mother then and I don't now.

But they made me. In elementary school I didn't know how to get along with the other kids. I'd spent my mornings, afternoons, and evenings learning about different varieties of conch shells by myself in the waves. But I was generally consumed with reading and writing stories about kids that were kidnapped or ran away. The fifth grade was the beginning of the end. You'd think they'd read the warning signs, you'd think they'd try to save me from my eleven year old self. But all I really recall from my mother during this time is several stinging blows to the face, and a demand to snap out of it already.

In the sixth grade I tried to kill myself. Is any of this making sense? I sent myself down a flight of stairs. Broken fingers, skull, blood, what a mess, what a big accident. No questions asked: accident. I stared up at that ceiling and wondered how in the hell I was ever going to get out. Sixth grade was a big deal. After I got out of that mess I bought three albums: Aqua- Aquarium, Alanis Morrisette- Jagged Little Pill, and Korn- Follow The Leader. I started my double life. Mom wants to think everything's okay so let's let her. Cry yourself to sleep on your own terms. I met Steve Madsen.

This is the beginning of the craziness and the things I can't remember, if they were dreams or real. I know that when I was thirteen I was stoned out of my mind in a swimming pool, and I got naked, and I forced myself on him. I don't remember the first time I ever smoked a cigarette, just teaching myself the most efficient way to flick away ashes. I do remember the first time I ever smoked pot. Dave blowing tendrils of smoke my way, and I was trying to be innocent, I was trying to do homework. I really was. But somehow I succumbed to that, and buried my little girl face in a neon green bong. So I was part of this. It went in a million different directions, criss crossing, and every part of me was dazed and hung over and stupefied but I went home to mommy dearest and she never knew a thing. Not a damn thing. I was staying up all night long watching porn, every night. And drinking rum. Only rum. I was going to eat up the world. After three bowls I laid back on his bed and begged him to tie me to it (I'm thirteen, still). He does so, slaps my cheeks, tells me I'm a bitch as I'm sliding off into nowhere. I can't open my eyes when his cock is choking me, or...I'll wake up to tangled sheets and no circulation in my hands. He tries to put my clothes on me and I laugh hysterically. I'm sucking off his friends when he's not looking and dancing until 10:30 on Friday nights. I'm getting fucked inside out most nights and I can't really feel it anymore when I smoke enough...and I'm a lesbian, did I tell you that? I'm a lesbian until I tell myself I'm not, and Marissa...uff, Marissa...yea, well, I'm a lesbian, right as rain.

One day after I had brought home a boy named Justin and fucked him wearing bunny ears (I had recently obtained Herschel), Alyvia came around out of nowhere. And she stayed and stayed, and I wrote endless volumes of text trying to express my love for her, trying to hold on to her as hard as I could. Because there was no more pot and there was no more anything, just me and Buffalo in the winter. The depression I started on as a twelve year old crept back inside and dominated ninth and tenth grade. AlyviaAlyviaAlyvia, everywhere I looked. I tried killing myself a few more times, without any real passion for death, and found myself better suited as a cutter and coke addict. Oh cocaine, white lady. It really only brought me down some more, those horrible crashes where I bawled myself into oblivion. Alyvia Alyvia, what would my life have been without you leading me, dragging me on. Everything permeated by Alyvia. Everything Alyvia, all the time. Alyvia killing away the sadness, Alyvia killing away the coke, Alyvia taking care of me. Who is that girl?

So now I'm here, Mary Sunshine, my mother silenced by cancer and my mood lightened by the endless attention Jason supplies. A big fucking sham. I have no idea what I'm doing. Everything I've done is just...stupid. I don't do drugs and I'm not depressed and I'm not really anything that I used to be. Nothing's like it used to be. I have no clue, no fucking clue, how I am like this, why I'm not dead. I should be dead right now but I'm alive and cheerful as a chipmunk. I've been telling myself I am, so I am. I don't know what anything is. I love that girl though, I honestly do.

2003-07-08
8:04 AM

I don't sleep naturally anymore. To do that, I must exhaust myself thoroughly. I lie in bed and think over everything for a while. Toss and turn. Reach for my photo album and flip through. Read a chapter of a book. Scribble in my notebooks. By this point it's 3 AM. Close eyes and sleep lightly. Jolt 'awake' at cat jumping on bed. At car door slamming. Any little noise. Wake at 7 AM. Lick envelope and scurry down to the mailbox in my nightgown. Pull up the little red flag. Try, in vain, to go back to sleep before writing it all down.

I sat up in bed somewhere inbetween this all and nearly screamed. I felt like I was suffocating. The walls, in the same position, seemed ever close, much too close. I couldn't close my eyes. I was in this room and I felt I couldn't leave. The physical room. I could not leave. The walls were a coffin. I think I may have whimpered a bit before burying myself under the blanket.

I'm hoooome lovelies.

So, vacation is over. And it began snowing promptly in Erie, PA. But hey, home is home, and I have to say I fucking HATE the South after this trip. Southern Florida is creepy as hell, and the same goes for a good majority of Georgia. Not to mention creepy crawlers and...whatnot. While I'm on the bad of the trip, my cousins are monsters. Absolutely. Haley is a good deal tolerable, and Abby has half seconds where I don't want to pull every strand of her hair out, but they really are just rotten kids. Spoilt and nasty to each other and every one else. I swear to GOD if I had to listen to my uncle explain why he was yelling at them one more time I was going to scream. You wonder why they fight back, why they have such a warped view of 'fair'? He explains everything backwards and forewards to them! Just slap them on the wrist and say no cause no! Jesus Christ, talk about horrendous parenting.

Anyhow, Florida was pleasant. Warm breezes, tanning, my grandparents. I met Clark, squeezed him, he's a real live human being. Funny how the nervousness just fades away...oh, I wish I could have held on to him forever, but these things come and go and I can't turn back the clock now. And my grandma, petting my head and telling me nice things. I showed her my tattoo and she said 'that's nice'. I...uff. My grandma. She cooks me meals, she tells me I'm perfect, she tells me all these things that put my heart back in the right place. My grandma, the woman I wept over daily for months, insisting my mother had taken me away from my mom. Because deep down, she really is.

School. What a bummer. I think I'm going to see Sam tomorrow, though, you know...if her tongue heals and...stuff.

A company (via myspace), a pornography company, has contacted me because I am 'photogenic and glamorous'. Well, I need not say anymore, you know my aspirations.

I want to come home. My kitten misses me.

Today I went back to a familiar place, sunk my feet down in it. The ocean. I am very close with it, the place where I was born. The ocean holds me tight, brushes me over waves, brings me under surf. Glittering fish that flutter across my stomach. My first and only memories are of waves. And diving in to them. I am a swimmer, and I am attached to these places in ways no one else understands. I am home.

Like I am home when I am inside your words. Like I am home inside of you.

Florida night air makes me weep for you. I think of holding your body against mine, and kissing you desperately like I do in dreams. I think of holding your hand. I think about what our lives together would be like, if I could make you happy, if I could take care of you...

You know it's you, and only you. I love you.

When you go to Heaven, dreams and realities merge, until you can no longer discern...and that is where I am. Headphones have quietly crooned, fading and coming back alive. I am in a warm place. I am in a place where sun heats the pavement, the breeze feels like someone gently breathing on your neck. I never want to wake up.

When I got there I was greeted by an angel. This is when I knew that I was lost inbetween the realities I've been living. He was beautiful, really, so...oh. I hugged him as tight as I could, just for a few lingering moments. I had plans on what to say, lots of grandeur, and it was lost on my lips. I don't quite remember what state of being I was in. I don't know now. I am warm.

I love you, Alyvia, I love you more than anything. I love you. Love you.

Tomorrooooow...we're leaving! Yes.

Tomorrooooow...I am so excited...tomorrow.

My body is all hurty. Jay loves me more than anybody ever loved another person. It could kill me. It really could.

ONE MORE DAY IN THE FROZEN WASTELAND OF BUFFALO. Thursday= Clark. I'm packing my shit and I'm shipping out, goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Walking home from school on a brisk March afternoon with a back pack that weighs a thousand pounds, I feel highly unaccomplished in life. I trip. And fall. Hands into asphalt and dusty dirt that mixes in with fresh blood. Boys at the corner playing football will say I'm weird when I've gotten past. I let their ball hit me in the back.

I'm tired now. And very, very alone in this world.

I will be gentle. I will be kind. She is as delicate as I am.

Everything is everything. The more I talk about it, the less I do control. I am tired and now it is time for (once) an untroubled sleep.