this bites.

 I feel this isolation starting -
and i know that it is going to be trying,
rough, even, and that i am going to be tested,
in a lot of different ways & i am not thrilled.

i wish i had friends, like, people i could talk to. i just feel so ... detached.

not to mention bored.

there's so much to write about - about life, about trying to find a job, about politics & what a joke i sometimes feel it is, about interacting with my family, about watching movies & tv alone, about a lot of things.

I need to be busy. everyone else has started school, its fall and i am...
wasting away in my bedroom again.

i started emailing wim again, i guess because i miss him, and he is only words & he knows the real me, whoever that is - he knows me as a person, through the words that i write, and he is one of the few males in the world that i trust to tell me the truth, a person who won't feed me a line of shit. i miss our friendship. i wish he was more of a dreamer like me, but i like his being logical and slow and steady. he is who he is, i am who i am, and there will never be anything again, but i miss the idea. maybe that's it. i miss the idea of him. and i like our letters. maybe one day we will see one another again.

i am sitting here watching this lame wedding show feeling lame... great choice of wording. I can't sleep because i slept all day. wedding shows make me feel inept & behind in life. Like - these people, who are totally socially retarded - found someone to marry them... and i.... i can't find a person who is even remotely worth spending a month of my time with. No, seriously. I keep getting liars & thieves & instead of seeing it for what it is, i am oblivious. just wanting to believe that there's good in people.... but, no seriously - it's like when i go on facebook & i see that someone i know who is totally socially retarded & just... not someone i would expect to be in a functional relationship - is getting married;

and it makes me feel really fucking inept - socially, relationship wise, personally. i don't think that the things that i want in life are all that different from most people, and while i don't necessarily see myself married - i can envision myself in a functional relationship. i don't think that is asking too much. it really isn't.

instead,
i get an obsessive drug addict. who lies. because that is what they do. and when i try to date -
well that is a disaster. my god!

i just don't know what guys want. the ones that want me i sure as hell don't want.
the ones i am interested in, are briefly interested in me & then it's like.... over & i never know what the hell it was that i did that turned them off. this time i didn't even mention my actual life! i was late.. but i am always late.

i don't know.
i feel so lonely.
and i know i have to go through this, but god, i want to fast forward & be done already.
i want to move.
i want out.

i am so ready to be out.
and i feel like an asshole when i talk about other people, wanting what they have... or wondering point blank why the hell they have it.

ugh life is so hard.
it sucks.

dreaming.

 They tell me to listen to my dreams. And when I dream, I am usually a person watching in on myself, consious that I am dreaming, fully aware, wondering what it all means. Because I dream, I am. I wonder who I am becoming. I know a shift is arriving. I know I must take these steps, these very painful steps & I do not want to. I am fighting it, but I know that I have to. I know I will be in another hallow period, another desert period, so alone, so very alone. I know I must do this to get to where I need to be. That this will be like it was after the accidents, but different. That, I must in some way or another, go away. But I do not know where. I do not know what is in store. I only know that it is going to be difficult & that I must listen to all of the clues that are available to me.

& so i dream, and when i do, it is intense. it is intense & full on & like a movie. like many movies. what can i tell? bits and pieces, because it has been a good 12 hours since i woke up. but I will try.

I am living in Chicago. I am not thrilled about the fact that I live here, but I know that I must do it, that it is something that I need to resolve, almost prove - even. It is the fall, closer to winter and I am bundled up. In my head as I am dreaming I take note of this fact. That it is cold. I also take note of the fact that I am wearing very nice clothes. That, apparently, I am able to afford nice clothing - the type of clothing I have always wanted to have to express 'myself' - but have never been able to because I have never had the means to, the money. Inner me says (yes you have succeeded - yet, i am doubting it.) I am wearing a very expensive black coat, and black boots. Professional. I know already in the dream who I am working for.  Inner me is doubting this has happened. A voice, my guides, it must be, tell me that I have earned this. That I have worked for it, and that I am smart enough & intelligent enough. Yet I still doubt.

I rush across to a store - It's an expensive one. I need a new dress or something. I am not paying attention, but I sense him immediately. I have been dreading this since I have moved here. I look up. Our eyes meet. He can't believe what he sees. Which is that (and i am able to read his mind in the dream - I am successful, not a drug addict, that i am doing so well for myself, that i look so good.) I don't say anything, just continue to do my shopping. Apparently he works there. I find this odd, and also sad. I collect my things - the things I want to try on. His eyes follow me. I pay him no mind. I have a lot to do, a lot to do back at the office. I need to get this done quickly. I go to the dressing room, where I meet this woman -

she has black hair, curly black hair & very bright red lipstick. she fawns over me like i am someone special (and maybe i am?) but i know that she is not a good person. I get a bad vibe off of her immediately. I play the game however. I go to the dressing room & try on my clothes. I am not really into anything. There is something about a red dress. 

I loose my boots, or i go to buy boots. I don't remember. there are a lot of parts of the dream that involve the location of the store, because i think at some point i ended up back there. the woman becomes important later on.

I end up buying the dress & he waits on me. our eyes meet. i don't say anything. he doesn't either. I buy the dress. a simple transaction. I want to cry, at how cold it all is. at how cold and shallow the relationship has become. at how much fucking hurt exists. how could two people love & hate so much? and have so many years go on in between? I take my things & I tear up. I walk out. 

It is starting to snow, and I am walking up to a building, a very old one, almost like union station but not. It is where I work. I can hear him in my head. I know he is following me, but I am ignoring it. In my head in my dream I am wondering why i am ignoring him. In life i would never do that. I'd never be so cold.

We are having a press conference & I run inside. The dream doesn't show nor tell me what i do, but i know who i work for. It is all politics & it is hard, but i love my job. I am good at it. Something reassures me that this is what i need to do. I see marletta at the confrence. She nods her approval at me, silently. Marletta the silent judge. I know that whatever i have done is a good thing. The dream skips & I am watching the press & I am standing shivering. I see him watching me work.

He comes up to me. Finally. We talk. But it isn't all forgiveness and roses. There is much more snow. Something about the football stadium. Small talk. What has gone on in our lives. He asks if I want to come to his place. I say okay. 

We stop by the store, and that is when i learn that he is basically an owner. He runs it, but that, in some way, he is not a good person. It is hard to describe. He has a vibe to him that is like that of a wall street banker. at the store the woman with the hair & the lips flips out. she flips out on him and me. prior, it is revealed in some sort of flash back that she had offered me a job. I had said no. There is also some sort of other flash back -

the dream diverges for a bit -
I am looking for these guys in a hispanic part of town. I am in some sort of teen center, a rehab or something. Matt Davis is there. I am now 17 again. We are so deeply in love. In the dream i can feel that joy, that emotion, that i haven't felt since i was that young - what it was like to truly love someone in a way that is so pure & naive because you don't know what it will feel like to experience heart break so you don't put up a wall, you don't also protect yourself. Matt & I hold one another a lot. We kiss. Sometimes we are at work, at Tower Records instead of Record Town. And then, one day, Matt is gone. I am at a loss. I feel such pain in the dream. It is a kind of pain that is like death. (inner me is trying to tell me something, but i have no clue what it is)

And then suddenly I am with him again. We are at his house. It is this weird mosoluem thing. A fortress. It is like a church, but also a masonic temple thing, something he had to do to join, and you wouldn't know that people lived there. He lives in number 6. It opens when he walks up to it. It is then that i understand how powerful he has become, spiritually. Inside his house, there are all of these luxiourious things. I am facinated but i can't figure it out. I don't get a feeling that he is bad, but there is something not right.

There is some sort of weird sex thing going on too, but not with me... just other people that are there.

He & I, and his boyfriend go out to eat at some weird thai place. It turns into a strange meal. I end up following him in a car. There is something about how we can't get back to the house because they are filming in the downtown. What are they filming? The walking dead. Zombies. (there is symbolism here, not to be missed)  We are stopped in traffic. At some point I actually get out of the car to watch the shoot. I tell him about Ray and the now hilarious story of his "directing an episode of the walking dead" & we actually both laugh. 

Our eyes meet & then, all of a sudden - it's back. That... ability that we had in our real life, in real waking life, to communicate, telepathically. that ability that i have never had with anyone else & that i suspect i will never have again. In the dream, i can't tell what we are saying to one another, i only know that we are having a whole conversation.

And then, instead of being at his house, i end up in a car, with this jewish family. And i am on the way to their house in skokie. It takes forever. They are complaining about whether or not to go to Isreal or Turkey for thanksgiving. I tell them they are so very lucky to have the options. That i would like to be able to go to either. They don't understand that I am poor. In this dream I am not the same person. I arrive at their house, finally, and it is a castle. there are two girls who live there. an evevator. it is dectorated like a serious medevil castle, and the evvator keeps not working. the girls keep judging me & i am uncomfortable. finally we get out, to find their mom. There is a woman with a baby there. It is Milena. she hands me the baby & walks away. The girls find me, and the mother comes & talks to me. We talk about goth kids of all things, and I play dress up & put feathers in my hair. I do not get the feeling that this dream was trying to tell me much of anything.


And then, I am in a car. Devyn, is there. And a whole other family, And we are in a plane too. The plane is huge, and you have to go row by row and it is like a zig zag. Karin is there & Fab & they aren't talking & so is my family & each person has a private tv. I loose my luggage. I loose Karin. And My family. I don't really care. I am just crying (and inner me is emotional) because my family has given me the gift of a plane ticket to Paris. For some reason this is very important to me. I find Fab, and also Wim. Only, the plane ride isn't safe. Something is wrong. I am very afraid.
Then I am looking for Daire but can't find her, I am in france or something.

Only I am back in the united states, and I am in a car, but i can't fall asleep. I know that if i do i will die. I am sitting on a park bench but this bench is the car. A semi truck is driving all crazy, and i am in between the two. I have to hold on for my life & I am pretty sure I will be crushed to death (but yet inside i know it will be okay, death will be okay) and somehow i am not.

And instead, I am somewhere, on a highway, walking
and i have my period and it is gushing between my legs. It is embarassing because there are guys who are with me who i guess i want to impress but in the dream i also know that i could give a shit. I only have one tampon. I am on a highway, it's like the apocolypse happened & what the fuck am i supposed to do about being on the rag? so i bleed, as nature intended. But the bleeding is intense & it hurts. I am walking down the road, and then, i am picked up by a really expensive car, with these big time rappers. We are being shot at. The highway is all torn up & there are airplanes that have crashed that are all over. 

I wake up.
My dad is yelling at me to get up because I have to take him to the hospital.



There are some other random things that i can't place but remember -
like
-greer's film being done, in black & white & something about a red rose being in it.
-walking in a bad part of chicago & having a guy pull up in a shitty car (he is african american) & ask me if i have change for a dollar while he leers at me. I don't have change for a dollar. I get the feeling he thinks I am a hooker. I walk away in the snow. As i walk further down, another woman, also african american, tells me "girl, you just fucked up, that was (blah blah blah - i dont remember his name now, in the dream he had a name) & (blah blah). I don't know who these men are. I give her a blank look. She says "the biggest rappers in chicago? since Kanye?" I shrug. They picked up another girl further down the street. apparently they were recording what they were doing & it was live on the air on the radio and the girl that gave them change got to go out for a night on the town & was treated like a queen & all of that. In this dream, also, I am not white. I am also poor.

and those were my intense dreams.


i am wondering what they all mean. 
I wanted to write him a letter, against my better judgement.
but i didn't. there is no use. they told me not to do it. they told me he has served his purpose in my life & that now he is only a representation of something else. like matt. but what? what does he mean...?

the never ending battle for my heart

so i am wandering the maze that is the Scandinavian furniture shopping mall that is more or less 5 miles long looking for storage shit, wasting time and trying not to think about how my life has gone to shit (because it has, its pretty bad right now) and my shopping cart runs into this guy, and he looks like you, god, he looks so much like you, and our eyes meet and i wanted to run up and hug him, tell him how much i have missed him & tell him how fucking shitty everything is right now & how the week before everything seemed so damn great & then i fell off the cliff... my eyes look down.

he's not you, of course. but, god, he looks so much like you & his cart is all full of the same sort of things i have picked out, and then, i hear him speak, and he has an accent like yours, i am not even joking, and the hairs on my arm stand on end, and i just stand there in a time warp, because it's like,

all of these parallel moments, quantum physics and what have you and if choice a had led to d instead of c & could that have ever been you & i shopping for furniture or am i just being all stupid in my head and wishing for things i just know i can never have. i am paused, thinking about this and trying to not cry, because it's been an emotional week for me & i am holding this fucking candle holder, staring at it, when his asian girlfriend comes up to him all dressed like me, and i think to myself;

god, life has a way of torturing me.

i take my cart, and i move around the maze, because ikea is just this rat maze of cheap furniture, you know, cheap furniture for all of these women who are pregnant, i am one of the few who is not, who is single, bitterly single & angry & wondering what the fuck i am doing in the middle of suburban Illinois on a sunday with only fifty bucks at this place.... trying to ignore my fate, i guess. i was invited by a guy who is a photographer, a recent friend of mine, who didn't want to go alone, who i am going to, at some point, do a photoshoot with, but he is of course, on his own ikea mission for his furniture for his apartment. i am still living at home in my parents house. not a lot has changed, but everything has changed. i am so different as a person. very much ready to move on.

i find myself in the children's department, my original goal for being there to get my brother a nightlight for his birthday, like one of the little toys you and i both like. it lights up and changes colors and mood & it reminded me of his house which i have finally visited & my brother is angry and not doing well either so i figured a goofy toy that lights up would make a good birthday present because i always give him useless toys that i don't think he quite understands. i look at the stuffed animals, and as i am staring at them, i find, of all things, a stuffed rat.

ratty rat rat. the rat race. aren't we all living in it? i think. ironic that its a children's toy. i pick up a medium sized black one for $2.99. it is sitting on my bed right now as i type this. he doesn't have a name. i move my cart and who do i run into, but doppleganger you. our eyes meet again. shift down. pretend we don't see one another. keep on going with the maze. he with his girlfriend, and me with my haunted thoughts of you.

Paging Patrick Bateman....

I just finished going through the majority of photographs I have that Ray Holycross left on my computer. It's hard to not feel horrible about myself & my own stupidity after going through such blatant evidence of disrespect towards me as a human being. I saw so many girls & yet - not a single picture of me existed. There were pictures of things we had done together but me, I don't exist. I shouldn't feel like shit over this, but it is hurtful none the less.

How does a person nullify the feelings that are left after a sociopath has tormented them? After the sociopath has torn a part of who they are apart....? I fear I may need to go into therapy to try to figure out why I let someone like him into my life. He was not the first time I have danced with the devil. And all this time, I thought that I was getting better. That I am a better person than I used to be. I know this is true, that I am a better person, a kinder person - but... It doesn't do much to help how my ego feels. My ego feels bruised and broken & I feel like I can never be enough for anyone. And was it so wrong, of me, to want to have a lover who was successful in life? To want a better life than I have & to expect that maybe, somehow, i could attract someone who wasn't a drug addict or a loser or lazy or a total piece of shit? I thought that I had found that in him. Instead, it turned out that he is, by far, the worst person I have ever come across in my life. Well, No, He's the second worst, perhaps even the third. There is also nicholas & a.j. - two other beings that should be wiped off the face of the earth.

I'm not sure why looking at all of those photos upset me so much. I didn't love Ray. I was to an extent, in love with the idea of him - the idea he had created, but, him as a person - not at all. We didn't even have a relationship. He took from me like a parasite & I allowed it because I am weak. I am too nice. I need to learn to have a backbone.

He scares me though. I am always double checking where I am and who is around me & I am always looking to make sure I have an exit. He has brought back a lot of the PTSD i can't seem to get rid of. Anxiety attacks happen a lot now. For no reason. Just out of the blue. I do, worry that he will come out here & harm me, or one of the other girls. He has no morals, no conscience. We are all just pawns in his little game that he plays to keep himself amused. The worst part is - there is no recourse for someone like him. None of us will ever get justice, or our money back, or our stolen items. He will continue to do what he has done to others (that i haven't found out about yet) & he will get away with it. Lets say, though, hypothetically that we are able to put a stop to him... then what? he goes away to jail or something for a little bit & then he gets out & god only knows how much he will hate us. He ruined B's life for far less. He's managed to fuck up my life pretty good.... & for what? I was nice & kind & generous & so was my family.

But that's the thing - you can not use logic or the normal human rules when you are dealing with a sociopath. Everything you know is false. These people are defective. We should honestly throw them on a horrible island & let them kill each other for sport.

4% of humans are sociopaths. It averages out to 1 in 25 Americans. This is far more than schizophrenics (ha & i've run across three of those in my life), anorexics (& i was one of those forever... & now i am fat), far more than we would ever think to imagine. When I read the statistics on sociopaths I flipped out. No wonder I have encountered two of them. Apparently they are everywhere!

I've been reading this book "the sociopath next door" which has proven to be really amazing & useful. It describes Ray Holycross to the T. I have so many sticky notes in the damn book that you would think that I am going to write a thesis. Hell, maybe i should. I don't think there is a memoir out yet about what all of us have gone through. Maybe I should write about him. Although i have no idea where I would start. But... i want to start writing again.... i used to be so great at it. Maybe there's a memoir workshop i can take or something. I need to earn back that 4 grand that Ray took from me... so i can go back to school.

sigh. i wish i had kept an accurate diary during this period. thankfully i was mostly sober nearly all of the time & not abusing pills or doing anything stupid so what is left of my memory is still in tact.

Maybe I should just continue to write in here... and say fuck it about privacy & the secrets I shouldn't tell. Who cares. Ray helped ruin what good things I had going for me by stealing from people I know. God, I feel so trapped. I want to flee this area so desperately but I can't even get a job. The one i had i lost once she found out about what happened with ray. I think she thought I would steal from her too. Or, at the very least that I am nuts & have too much baggage. Regardless, it sucks.

I spoke to my family about returning to school... but again, to pull this off i need to have a job. to leave this hell hole i need to go to school. i can't find a job & my student loan is defaulting and so i can't get any loans to go to school. the money my mother shelled out to ray was supposed to go to pay off my loan. Instead she handed him money like he was her kid & i was the one who was sucking off of the family like a goddamn leech. That is a whole other thing - what went down with my mom. I am still so upset about all of that.

Ugh.... it appears like the more i write what i am thinking the more i realize that i seriously need to see a therapist to heal from this mess. i am so unhappy right now. my work quit.... & i was scammed.... & taken advantage of because I am nice.... so many people have done that to me in these past few months. If i am honest with myself - I feel somewhat suicidal & that is scary. Not because of anyone or anything - I just don't feel like I have much left in me to fight against everything. If i am feeling this way already, during the summer, i can only imagine how bad it is going to be when winter hits. It doesn't help that i am dating someone who is more like my child than my boyfriend... things were great for a few weeks & then everything went right back to how it was when i broke up with him. I always feel like i am responsible for his entertainment. And i have to constantly ask for help. He will just watch me instead of actually helping me. At first, i was just hooking up with him because I wanted to get laid. After 7 months of no physical affection - & somehow Ray tried to tell me that he loved me & we were in a great relationship! ha - anyhow, after 7 months of no physical affection, no touching, no love, no FUCKING sex... (redundant i know) I needed to take care of some business. He was around & I had an itch that needed to be scratched & he knows how to scratch that itch particularly well. But - I didn't expect to end up back in a relationship with him. especially after.... well, after the fact that he has yet to do anything as far as the rules go - that i asked of him. But - if i break up with him, i will have basically no friends at all - because he is my best friend, my only friend here really. I don't count the people i work with when it comes to politics although some of them are my friends & i care for them - but what i mean to say is - they aren't my peers. They are all adults who have had kids - many who have children my age. There will always be this weird thing where i won't feel like an equal & they will parent me. And i don't mind being parented by those that i like - it's just... it makes me feel like the eternal child.

There are things I want to do, art wise.. and things I want to explore... emotionally. There are so many things I want to learn. Right now I feel so stagnant. Even if i get the internship with Obama - I still will need to figure out a way to pay for what i will be doing. And... i find that with all of this bullshit - republicans not being able to tolerate democrats and democrats not tolerating republicans & this fake outrage all of the time - I find that my passion for politics has gone down. Just in my experience alone it has been a place filled with really amazing, wonderful people & then also, horrible people, horrible icky icky people who are power hungry & in love with themselves. I want to help make the world a better place & i don't know if politics is the way to do that. But if i go to school i will major in political science & minor in social work.... and maybe, maybe do a double major or something. I'd like to do that. I'd like to learn a foreign language. I would like to travel. I would love to learn how to play an instrument. Marnie said she would give me a violin to learn on but then she got sick. I'd like to learn how to use a decent synth so that i can make music. I'd like to design my own clothing & learn how to sew. I'd like to write a book. I'd like to learn how to paint. I need a creative outlet. I don't have one & it is stifling. I'd like to go back to reading poetry on open mic night. Id like to put to words what i have been feeling inside lately. i'd like to paint that, too. And make music of it.

I don't know... going through those photographs, i could trace all of my past mistakes with Ray Holycross. I was able to make a rough time line. & the thing is - there are some girls that he appears to care about or be more fond of than others. Those are the girls who show up in the pictures. I wonder why he ever even bothered with me. I don't mean that in a self deprecating way, i just wonder what he wanted to get from me. If my mom hadn't gotten her inheritance there wouldn't have been any money so i am sure he would have bounced by the middle of january. But for two months or so he stayed here, with me, in my bed & we watched battlestar & we laughed & we watched politics & we went to my political events together & he got to know everyone who is important to me. During those two months he said he was "healing" from his heart attack (which never happened btw.. there is no scar & i don't know what the motivation was for making up that story) he slept a lot - i mean a lot & he ended up smoking a lot - i mean A LOT of pot. I questioned all of this, you know, since he supposedly was on death's door. When I asked him what happened, when he technically "died" he told me nothing. That,btw, is not what happens when you technically die. At least that wasn't what happened to me. I actually remember very vividly my experiences. That however, is another entry. Anyway, he really milked that heart attack story. He needed to appear vulnerable & worthy of pity. When i asked him, as time went on, for more details - he couldn't give me any. Then Mikey had his graduation... & supposedly this was a big deal because he could drink again (except you know, that he had been drinking the whole time when he went into chicago.. but i didn't know that) so he gets so wasted that he can't walk really & he pukes all over my brother's spare bedroom floor. It was disgusting. I was already in bed asleep because the drinks were really strong & i am a lightweight who knows when to call it quits. He got into bed with me & he kept asking me if I loved him, If i would be with him forever, If I really loved him... He didn't say anything about how he loved me - nothing of the sort. It was as is typical for Ray holycross - all about him. Then he tried to touch me - or whatever, and well... he had limp dick. I remember touching it and holding it in my hands and being revolted. So, there I am with my hand around his squishy cock & all of a sudden i hear him snoring. I was like.... "youve got to be kidding me..." but no, it was really happening. He had taken off his shirt though, which he never did around me & i knew - I knew there was a reason, which was that you know, his big massive heart attack wasn't real. I knew he was out so i took my phone & used the illumination to look at Ray's chest.

There was... no fucking scar. I remember flipping out. I remember my chest pounding & feeling like i was going to throw up. That...the suspicion i had, along with my mother & Daire (good ol daire fucking calls all of these guys out as soon as she meets them....) was actually true. That was a mindfuck.

I laid in the bed, with him taking up most of it, i should add, listening to him snoring... thinking about how i had been lied to. I thought about the sheer audacity of it. I thought about how, next to me, there was this person who had been totally lying to me for months. And how, he refused to have sex with me - citing his heart attack... only to find out that he was sleeping with more girls than i can keep track of while we were together.... anyway, i laid there & i thought about how I should just leave him stranded in Detroit. How great that would feel. Fuck you later... but i didn't want to cause a scene the very first time i was at my brother's house. I remember how i was already getting my hangover (because i have one kidney, i get the hangover midway through being drunk & i become miserable) & my head was pounding. I watched the sun come up in my brother's suburban neighborhood trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. I was in disbelief but inside of me, i knew he was full of shit. he couldn't give me details about his surgery. he couldn't tell me who the doctor even was, or what hospital it had been done in. He also told me that the hospital had a dvd rental thing while he was there so he rented dexter while he was 'healing.' I've never heard of any hospital having an inner system dvd rental place & i have been in some really nice hospitals. Again, i would just let it slide because... whenever i asked a question or stood up for myself or even got a bit close to the truth & calling him on it, he would insult me & tell me i was being a bitch or paranoid or that i was a drama queen. he would tell me that he hates fights but that i made him get into them. yes, i started the fights by asking him real questions - which came from a place of love & concern - and the thanks i got was being told that i was, more or less worthless, stupid, annoying & a drama queen. When i brought up the fact that if he had had a heart attack he should have nitro pills on him - everyone gets them, it's standard medicine he just looked at me like i was speaking in an alien tongue. When I asked if i could come with to his 'check up' he balked. When i would rag on him for smoking cigarettes constantly he would tell me that i needed to quit being such a nag. But seriously, who has a heart attack & then chain smokes every day afterwards?

do you have a guess?

DING DING
RAY HOLYCROSS does. because there was no heart attack.
so, i asked my brother if he would go out with me to lunch/dinner so we could hangout & talk. we left & while eating thai at my favorite thai place in ann arbor, i told my brother what i saw. my brother looked up the surgery online (he told me he had a defibrillator put in... others he told that he had open heart surgery) & it turns out that the procedure doesn't leave huge scars because they just put the defib into your heart via your arteries or veins ( i forget which it is) and so, that had to be the explanation... & it was dark & so i couldn't get a great look but.... anyway, my brother calmed me down & tried to tell me that i was being paranoid.

that was the first & last time i would get to see ray's chest... unless you count the photos he took of himself while beating off in my bathroom & in my brother's room. I wonder if, had i asked to see his scars - because when i would ask about his heart & when i got that look on my face (my facial expressions are very transparent - you can read what i am thinking by looking at my face) he would say "what, do you want to see my scar?" and i would say... yes. or sometimes no, that is quite alright. But, i wonder if i had pushed the subject further if he would have actually cut himself up & sewed himself shut for the sake of the story. what do you think?

My brother did his best to reassure me that Ray was not lying to me, nor was he a piece of shit. We both bonded over the fact that we weren't getting laid, amongst other things. My brother really liked Ray... until he didn't. when all of the shit hit the fan, my brother wasn't the least bit surprised. i wonder if that is because mikey was already looking into him.

The way home was horrible because there was a really bad snowstorm & to top it off i had to pretend like i didn't know that he was a liar. I did good though - i mean, he didn't notice that i was unhappy & contemplating what to do.

And then I got home & he was all affectionate (he had to be, i suspect he knew what i was thinking & how close he was to being thrown out) and we resumed our routine. The truth is also that i didn't want to be left alone in my room with no one to talk to. Did i mention how hard it is for me to find real friends? yeah, its pretty impossible.

I want to make one thing clear though - which is that Ray holycross is good. he will have you believing that you are whatever he says you are.... a bitch, oversensitive, unappreciative - whatever it is, he can manipulate you into believing that you are the one who is in the wrong. He is that good. But his eyes, those eyes are cold. The other thing i want to state is that, Ray has not broken me or destroyed me. I do, however, feel like it would be a good idea to see a professional about what happened because they would be best equipped to help me understand why i let someone like him into my life & why i continued to tolerate everything even though i knew in my heart of hearts that he was cheating on me & that he was mearly using me. I want to know why his not feeling affectionate towards me - why he never took pictures of me - like i am... someone to be shunned - i want to know why it upsets me as much as it does. why does it make me feel gross & ugly & ugh all of the shit that my brain will yammer out when i don't feel too awesome about myself. i need to know where this comes from. because logically - i should not give a fuck! but emotionally.... it hurts.

& all of this hurt - I have no one i can talk to about it. I can talk to Rachel because we are pretty much in the same boat - but i mean, i can't talk to anyone who is physically in my life. If i try to talk about it with wynn his eyes just glaze over like they do when i am talking about politics. that says a lot about our future, doesn't it? I want to know why i feel so hurt by all of this & why there is some part of me that still cares or is somehow trapped into thinking that my worth is somehow connected with how he sees me. and that maybe, he sees me as all of the things i see in myself when i am in my shadow self mode.

The upside is, however, that i am in very good company. So far i have liked all of the girls & guys that i have met because of this mess. At least he can pick cool people to hang out with. I do hope that I will be able to make lasting friendships with everyone. I would love to have some sort of "ray holycross fucked us over" kind of outing/gathering. like a family reunion for people who are all victims of the same smelly fat faced sociopath.

my god, did he smell. i told him he needed to wash his clothes & bathe himself & it was like... he enjoyed the funk. I think, partly that he enjoyed making my room smell like him - leaving his scent like a mammal does to declare territory.

Right so...another thing - he was obsessed with Dexter. thinking about how he has the capability to totally flip the fuck out - & kill someone - all of those late night viewings of Dexter put me at unease. Really... really uneasy.

If you are a victim of Ray Holycross & you are reading this - The entry you want where i explain what he does & who he really is - is the entry that is in June. When confronted about that entry that entry & its accusations - he said that i was just another jealous butthurt xgirlfriend. Right. Honey I am more than hurt, i am full of rage.

I should also state that that entry - which liz has been referring people to (hi!) is a copy of a letter i wrote & sent to his email a few days after our final fight - which wasn't so much a fight as it was me saying dont ever come back & don't you dare think you will get anymore money from us... I sent that letter. I didn't get a response, of course.
It should be noted though that i know for a fact he has read the entry below. That is the one that isn't pages long ramblings.

letter for prosperity

Take down the photos of my brother & grandmother & doopa. Now.

Your undead x or whatever the fuck she is Julie if that is even her name is so not a model. The world's best lighting couldn't make that "photoshoot" look professional. But hey, some of us can take good photos & some of us can't.

I feel sorry for the girl who got suckered into taking your photo at the planetarium. BTW, you brought home two tickets from the aquarium. Pretty sloppy.

Remember how you said that I don't get angry often enough?
I am angry.
Not that you were "cheating" on me - sociopaths aren't capable of love, so it's not like we had a relationship - it's disgusting how you made me throw Wynn to the dogs like that, how you would get all mad when I would spend time with him while you were gone - It was tit for tat you fucking fool. I knew there was something going on. There was some girl somewhere. I just needed the evidence. Thanks for leaving me a used condom. That was disgusting. But hey, I've got your DNA. Not sure what i would do with it, but I've got it none the less. I just find it beyond amusing, and sickening really - You didn't want the gravy train to run out, did you? Couldn't let me have my cake.
It's okay though, because I've never in my life been more happy to have not had sex for so long. Jesus, you did me one favor. I never thought you could have had a heart in that way.

I just wanted to let you know though, that this won't be the last of me. When you are snuggling up next to whatever poor girl you have suckered into believing your lies, think of me. Think of my black hair - I know you go for blondes. Think of me & think of your own selfish need to survive. This isn't the last time you will hear from me. You can tell whatever girl whatever story you want, but I know there are many more girls like me that are out there. I'll find those women. & I'll put a stop to you.

Also, please don't forget to think about how much of an utter failure you are in life. God, you couldn't even edit the videos that HCP & John needed. Professional? You? Ha! Black listing people? That's even better when you can't get anything done. All those skype meetings with chicks you need to swindle out of dough, 50 some odd emails a day you have to answer for "work" - work being finding new targets. How dare you have ever gotten mad at me for making you late to a train. How dare you have ever tried to treat me like I was less than you. I am actually doing something with my life. I'm actually going somewhere. Where are you going? Tippencanoe? Oh, right, no, not even your family of origin will have anything to do with you. You tried to ruin my self esteem. That was funny. I just want to let you know I found that to be a laugh riot. You've got nothing. NOTHING!

ME? I might be out some money, but I've got a whole career ahead of me, wonderful people who love me & will look out for me, a family that loves me & would never pretend I don't exist, a brother I am proud of, a personal story that is inspiring & I am a nice person. Good things will happen to me. To you? Not so much. You are a failure. A failure who craves attention. A smooth talker, 110% good at your grifting. You need to feel important. Special. You are special in the fact that you are a defective human being. That heart attack you had? What was that really? Did you get out of the psych-ward? You knew an awful lot about records not being made open to the public. Too much, actually.

I just want to say one other thing. You smell really bad. I mean, really really bad. I would hate for you to inflict that on the girl that you are vampire squiding off of right now. Shower more often. For her sake. Because I couldn't take it. And oh, Jesus christ - Brush your teeth more than once a week. Your breath was as bad as hoey's. It's interesting how phermones work & how you repulsed me in that way. I just didn't want to be mean. As things progressed, I really couldn't take it. I said snide comments, but I don't think you ever heard it. You blocked it out. Your ego & all of that. But honestly its the least you can do for whatever poor girl you are fucking over right now.

Ah, I think that's all for now. It's been a busy day. The rally went off & I now have to go see some bands to see if they are worth booking. You know, because I have a life.

I know that none of this will affect you - You don't have feelings, & you will block this account & take down your flicker. Just like you took down your twitter (so sad! how will i hear about your exploits in fake places & your fake jobs?!) & how you blocked me from facebook (I had a laughing fit over that one. you truly are pathetic) but it's okay.
Seriously you didn't know how long it takes for a woman's period to come back after she quits the pill? Shows how much you know. Google is a bitch. You.... you make me laugh.

Thanks for that.
You'll be hearing from me.
Trust in that.
Corinne.

time's a goon.

its the first real thunderstorm of our somewhat summer and i am sitting here in bed. I wish i wrote more in this stupid thing, but isn't that what i say every single time i write? the problem, as of late, is that i cant write about what i want to write about because its all political - its all people's secrets and dramas, all so stupid, everyone not getting along or getting along, and me attempting to build a career around all of this while also learning and dealing with backstabbing.

its politics, and i must be stupid for thinking that getting involved in politics was a good idea, i am sensitive and i just want everyone to get along - i want what is best for the people who have no voices - i want to be an advocate for them, not the rich, not the people in the party, and i don't like to play games - i am straight and honest about how i feel, i say what i think & mean what i say. If i like you, i like you. if i don't - i don't. There are no hidden meanings with me.

benton harbor is now a national - what is going on is national. this is our time to shine. and yet - there are so many things that are just... frustrating. but, oh well, it is a learning experience. the koch brothers are here - they want the lakes, they want the lakes & there are billions of dollars involved. i am one of six people, who have been organizing the protests & attempting to fight the EFM as well as understand just what exactly is going on & how far it goes. I have to learn urban planning, green renewal, how businesses work, all about water (because why do they want the fresh water - the more i know the better), cultural things that i simply do not understand, how to keep my mouth shut, how to wait in the grass like a tiger & strike when it is time, and everything is like chess but it is  - on such a large scale & it involves peoples homes (they will be stolen), people's land, their rights, food, so many things. There is so much ego, too. And i know - it's politics.... but.... it just....

its frustrating. I wish i could openly talk about the bullshit i deal with.

Thankfully i have a group of great people who support me, and i have such an amazing boyfriend. I swear if i didn't have him i wouldn't be able to do all of this stuff. he is 110%, 120% supportive of my goals & he pushes me to do better, to be better, and believes in me. That belief translates into me believing in myself. He listens to me and lets me bounce ideas off of him. He is truly my other half and i love him. I can't imagine my life without him. Everything makes sense now.

I am on my path,
while it is frustrating sometimes,
i am so proud of myself - of where i have
come from to where i am now -
if you would have asked me a year ago, i never
ever ever would have believed i would be here.

i am happy, i am comfortable with who i am,
i believe in myself & know that i am capable of great things,
i am no longer afraid to be alive.

all of this -

it feels good. it feels really really good.

dream.

i have a vague memory of my dreams from last night. ray and i, living together and laughing, his arms around me in a kitchen, not unlike balter's house. i got the sense that i was out west. there was a mountain there. and then, i am at school, carrying books. i am wearing a pencil skirt and a nice sweater and i am having a discussion with my teacher about something political. its important. i have written a paper that is really good... or a book or something? i walk outside, i am happy.

ray is gone, he's working in chicago. i left him the other day, he got on the train. i miss taking trains to the city. he goes to work and i stay here, and while he's gone i always deal with wynn and i can hear the anger and disappointment in his voice when i tell him that i've done it. i don't want him to be upset with me, i want him to understand that i deal with wynn because of my fear of death, and to remind myself of how strong i am. i deal with wynn because he needs a friend. i deal with wynn also because i am weak and i don't know how to cut ties from a person who is bad for me. that is also true.

.....and.... i guess i shouldn't have just left this entry. prolly should have finished it.

darkness visible.

 I first saw a review for the book "history of a suicide - my sister's unfinished life" in what must have been time magazine, or maybe perhaps it was the nation. it must have been time, the nation's review of books is always very wordy - sometimes so much so that i feel like i need to have a phd in order to understand just what the hell the author of the essay is talking about.

"history of a suicide" interested me, in part because i am still not over greg's death & i want to understand more why he did what he did, and partly because i myself, have been suicidal. it sounds illogical, to write that sentence, when i read it over again. like i do not understand why a person would want to die - when i understand, all too well, why life would make a person want to die. i understand all too well how life can batter a person down, how it can make you just want for it to fucking stop. and, in fact, up until greg's death, i believed that suicide was a viable option for me. a last ditch effort when life got too shitty and i just couldn't deal with it any more. when, in the throes of my depression - which, often gets unbearable, in the worst moments of my self hatred, ending it all by my own hand had always seemed like a decent way to go. in fact, i recall that those who had known me (i do not speak to them anymore) believed very strongly that if i did not die from an accidental or mostly intentional drug overdose, then, it would most definitely be by suicide by age 27.

perhaps this notion would have become true if not for a few factors -

1. i moved back home & in doing so, watched my father, a once brilliant man turn into the simple minded never without morphine always high man that he is now. i do not blame him because he is in pain, but it became obvious that his pain medications were doing more than just getting rid of his pain, they were also obliterating his mental capacity for conversation, high minded dialog, and in general participation with the world & his family. he was and is content to sit or lay in bed & have the world pass him by. i realized that, i too, was on a rather fast path to becoming like this - a zombie in my bed, numbed out and high most of the time.
2. i watched my then best friend's little brother die from cancer. it was horrible, and what was not lost on me was that a person who so desperately wanted to live, was not going to get that chance, and i, at the time, did not, at all want to be on this planet. i regret a lot of the choices i made during this period of time. i feel a lot of shame, a lot of regret, and a lot of anger towards myself because i should have known better. i know that my friend is so phenomenally fucked up from that experience, and instead of being a better friend & kicking her ass for being stupid, i let her make stupid choices, and i made stupid choices with her. while i quit making those dumb choices, i don't think she did - i suspect she continued to fuck up and hid it from me. we never talked about it, and when i did try to get her to be honest with me, it was met with an uncomfortable silence. i wasn't the person she wanted to talk to about any of that. i hope one day that she is able to forgive me for participating in ... being such a huge mess, with her. i wish i had known then what i know now.
3. i did not die, from the huge amount of drug use that went on during the five years that i attempted to numb my pain. the fact that i didn't, although i came close a few times, is still a mystery to me. the fact that i never ended up in a rehab, that i was able to come out of all of it, and quit my destructive habits on my own, with simply my own force of will, is something i still don't understand. why is it that i can regulate the amount of pills i take? how is it that i can keep from being tempted and not want to get high anymore? perhaps it is because i finally stopped running. i finally took a good look in the mirror and i worked out what was wrong with me. i forgave myself as much as i could for everything i hated about who i had become, and i slowly worked on changing into the person i am now. at the time it really didn't seem like i would ever make it - i figured quite honestly, that i would fail, and more than likely, that i would end up like a lot of the people i know - on the streets, involved in some shady relationship where i trade my body for drugs, and in order to deal with the fact that i have sunk that low, i would do more drugs and the cycle would repeat until i finally died. and when i died i would be lucky. truly, this was how i saw my life. it is not lost on me that i must be a strong person, to be able to look at wynn, to be near him, and know i can ask for heroin, to know that he wanted me to - that he was hoping & praying i would just ask him, just please ask him for it because he would have given it to me, and we could have had a glorious downfall together. that a big part of him was banking on that, was banking on my will power not being strong enough to say no. but, it was. it is and it was and all i saw was what i used to be and god, it was pathetic and i felt sad for her, i felt so sad for her.
4. but most important - i lost greg. greg's death has had as much of a profound impact on me as robb's did, if not more. because robb's was, in some ways, expected. when you play with fire, you expect to get burned.

but i never, in my wildest dreams expected that greg, my best friend, my quirky socially anxious little brother that i wasn't born with but thank the gods i got to have, would, kill himself.

and so, i picked up this book, in some ways, because, i want, and will always want to know, why he did it. why did he decide that life was so unbearable? why didn't he tell me? he told me everything. i was the person he came to with his problems. if he couldn't tell me he felt like dying - then, i failed him as a friend, as a sister. i miss him so much. with ray in my life, that sting just hurts all the more, because greg would have loved ray & they would have become such good friends. greg would be proud of me too, for finally being with someone who i am equal with, for dating someone i deserve. i always wanted greg to be part of my wedding, and, when ray and i talk about marriage and kids, which we do, talk about - more often than ive ever talked about it with anyone else - it becomes bittersweet because there are so many people that won't be there, but most of all, greg won't be there, and it sucks.

and so i am reading this book, and i keep writing down other books it references, all about suicide - as if i can somehow understand and connect the dots. i used to think that greg had just lost it - that it was this momentary lapse of insanity, but, i know that isn't true. because when he came over to my house, the day before he died, he looked at my mother & i, in a way, that said he was saying goodbye. in the book, it said that most suicides privately say goodbye to those they love & care about before they commit the act. it was only in retrospect that the look he gave both of us made sense. i tell myself it was a momentary lapse of insanity, but i know it wasn't. there was no note. i used to think it was because of nina & he had broken up, that she had left him for matthew. but i don't really even know the full story of that. all i know is that the last place he went was to her work, that he watched her or something before he went into his car, shut the garage door, ran the engine, and died. the next door neighbor found him, and it was too late.

the book has now become highlighted, sticky tabbed, marked up. i keep looking for answers in it.
but i know even when i reach the last pages, the answers i am looking for, aren't going to be there.

my righteous anger

Perhaps as a way to distract myself from what i have actually been feeling, that listless feeling of depression, i have been reading a lot lately. i have been doing things, being active in my community, politically active, always, wanting to make a change for the better - as much as i can, attempting to stay engaged.

i read koren zalankas' book on anger, titled 'fury' in the span of two days. i devoured it. i didn't relate that much to her, i have never had a problem with being angry. if anything, i have always shown my anger. she came from a house where it wasn't okay to show her anger - she shoved it down. she was alienated from her emotions. i remember what zak once said to me on a summer day, when i was fired up about something political, he told me that he wished he had what he called my 'righteous anger' - that i get angry and seem to believe i have that right to be angry. and once i am, i believe i have to do something about it. and i go about finding ways to fix it. whatever indignation it is - whoever has slighted me, or the individual i care for - i usually don't stop until i feel that i have gotten justice. it's fitting that my tarot card is justice. i seek it for those who don't have a voice. it is important to me. i don't understand how people can become so apathetic. how they can just sit there and take it. it astonishes me every day that americans just let their government treat them like shit. that they don't want the systems that beat them up to be fixed, punished, changed. because i sure as hell do. and i won't stop until they are. zak, got that much about me right. i do have 'righteous anger' - i also just get pissed off. i sometimes hold it in. and then i explode. usually at someone who doesn't deserve it. and i tend to keep track of every little thing someone has done to slight me, i don't always hold it against them, but i never forget. so, i read this memoir on anger - by this girl who was this break out author, who had written the book 'smashed' about binge drinking - which, i couldn't relate to, binge drinking, because i can't drink much, it makes me sick. but i could relate to binging on drugs, so i replaced the drinking with drugs and it was like i had written the book. i wish i had written a memoir but i don't even know where to start with my fucked up life, so i just keep reading them, hoping one day i will know what story i want to tell.

i wish i wrote more in here. i keep telling myself that every day i will write, and every day i tend to fail at this miserably, and then i get angry and upset with myself. ray uses my laptop a lot, and i use that as an excuse to not write. it's not that i lack material or things to write about either. i have a lot going on, a lot of things to keep track of, to talk about, that i want to have written down. i am afraid to show this blog to those who want to read it, because i don't want everyone to know my inner thoughts - i learned from the myspace debacle but, i also want to open myself up to those who want to know me better. i have become so closed off and i don't like that. it is as if i don't even know myself half of the time. i used to be such an extrovert. and now i am so quiet, when in the company of others. i watch and i listen more than i talk. i think this has a lot more to do with the fact that i am older now, and i don't need to show off who i am, or tell stories to get attention, but also i wonder if, loosing so many friends hasn't had some big affect on me. i am sure that it has.

i finally cut off all contact with wynn, it took me forever - but i did it. how many months did it take? 4. i am surprised by the fact that ray let me ride that roller coaster and never got angry with me for trying to work it out on my own, trying to be his friend. i am also surprised by the fact that wynn in the end, turned out to be way more manipulative than i ever, ever gave him credit for. i guess i always saw him as a dumb, lovable guy. i could never see him as a person who would want to hurt me, stab me because i had found love with someone else, someone who was not him, and that i was happy with that person. so wynn did what wynn knows how to do, he hit me where it hurt the most - he self destructed and started to shoot up heroin, and in doing so, i got to re-live what happened with robb, but differently. i can not begin to explain, how robb's death has altered me as a person. it has fundamentally changed me. in some ways, robb's death allowed me to live. because after i got over his dying - after i got over the 5 years of nonstop drug use - which was how i dealt with both him and his brother dying - and i came out of that fog - i realized how lucky i was to be alive. in avoiding his death, i went through hell - i lost a huge group of friends - i put myself in horrible, dangerous situations, i was trying to kill myself because i didnt want to be alive anymore - and i was doing a damn good job of it - but, afterwards, i learned so much, much more than i think most people will ever learn in a whole lifetime. i am grateful for that experience.
when i told wynn about all of these experiences, and of course it didn't make a dent in his thinking. so i spent the past four months trying to get him to stop shooting up heroin, fearing that he would accidentally overdose, like robb did. i rarely slept. i pulled out my hair. i was anxious all the time. i had headaches. i looked like shit. i was crying constantly.  he would say he was quitting, and i would believe him. then days later, i would go over and find him fucked up, nodding out, and drinking on top of it. i drove in epic snowstorms trying to take care of him, trying to right some wrong that i felt i had done by leaving him. of course, i had completely forgotten that i was beyond miserable while i was with him - that he had done nothing to help me as a person, that he weighed me down. that he was life sucking, like a leech. that our relationship was always about him, about me taking care of him, about his needs over mine. he reminded me a lot of my father. someone who was always high, who required me to babysit him, someone who couldn't take care of himself at all - someone who when left to his own devices would steal from me, would drink himself into a vomit induced stupor, who would harm himself in order to harm me. who had no motivation to make a better life for himself.

i had given him suboxine after i had talked to his mom, after i had told his family how bad things had gotten. he was angry with me, for telling them, he told his friends & anyone who would listen about how i had betrayed him by telling his parents that he was shooting up - i am such a horrible person because i wanted him to get help, but i could not, and i would not, just sit there and idly watch him self distruct in his parents home without them knowing. a vision kept returning to my head, where he would be dead, pale, all life gone, with a needle lying next to him, on the couch in the basement. it would come into my head at the most random moments, when i least expected it. i don't know if this was a premonition or if i was just sick with worry, but i knew i couldn't do that to his mother - couldn't let her find him like that. i wouldn't let him end up like robb. so i met with her, and i told her what was going on. i do not regret it. i do know that he tried to shift the blame onto me, like a child, a teenager, what a joke. i learned later that he had taken the liquid morphine that i give my dad at night when he can not sleep. we had noticed that it was going down a lot quicker. i swore that he would never steal from us. how wrong i was.

the last time i saw wynn, he had told me he wasn't using. i had met with him while ray was out of town, to see if he was okay, to see if he was lying to me, to check up on him. i met him at his work. he told me this story about a girl we both know, and how he saw her in a crack house, and how she was sucking dick for crack, how she has been doing this since our friend shannon had died. he told me how he wanted to take her with him, how she shouldn't have been with such awful people. i said that sometimes, its what happens when someone you love dies, and you are a girl. you become exploited. you are exploited, in the name of drugs, in the name of numbing your pain, and those who exploit you will pass you around. i could hear what they say about her in my head. it disgusted me. i asked what he was doing there. he looked at me and he said without a beat 'smoking crack.' i hit him. hard. he tried to tell me that he hated it, but it didn't look like he did. he didn't see the connection, that he could and would become just like the girl he was telling the story about. the one he wanted to save. i should have left then, but i didn't. we went to eat and had a really good conversation. it was only later that i found out he was high the whole time on heroin. i honestly didn't notice. he didn't seem any different. i should have checked his eyes. was i supposed to check his arms?

days later and i am off in south bend, desperately needing some alone time. my parents had been fighting, and ray was working on my computer. i just needed to get the fuck out. wynn calls me on my phone, and somehow, our conversation turns to his drug use, and i find out he had never stopped using. oh, right - he had gotten kicked out of his house. perminately. he had called me wanting sympathy, or help, or something. he had sent me messages saying that he is still in love with me, that, all he needs is my love. you see, he will stop using heroin, stop destroying himself if i just get back together with him. we can start a family then, get married, buy a house. live an ordinary life. these are his words, not mine. he is living in a delusional world. the terror those words fill me with is overwhelming. i answer the phone, and, for once, finally, after dealing with all of wynn's childishness and bullshit in a relationship that lasted 5 months and god knows what for 9 months, i start to scream. i start yelling. i am filled with a fury i didn't know i could have. it has become all too clear to me how he has been manipulating me, manipulating my fear of death, manipulating my emotions & what has happened to me and my scars, in order to fuck with me, in order to get back at me, for not loving him in the way he wanted me to. all those nights of crying. i only wanted him to be okay. i only wanted the best for him, i really did. but i couldn't love him because he was not what i wanted, nor needed. i lash out. i tell him he is sick, that he is fucked up, that i can not believe he would manipulate me in this way. i tell him that all i wanted to do was to help him, was to be his friend, was to be a part of his life in a positive way. i tell him that he has fucked up, and fucked up good, and when he wakes up and realizes what he has done, it will be too late, and no matter what, no amount of begging will help him. he has crossed the line - he has pushed me too far. and when i have been pushed too far,

when,
you finally cross the line with me, when, in my personal relationships, you finally anger me to the point where i yell at you (i do not, anger easily in my personal life. i used to get angry easily, i used to eviscerate people to no end. i used to be such a ruthless bitch. i thought this was a good thing about me. i would find the weakest part of a person, and then i would prod it, relentlessly, and then, in front of people, i would tell everyone what said person's weakness was. i told myself i was being 'truthful,' i told myself i was being 'honest,' i told myself that it was a good quality. it wasn't a good quality at all. it was mean, it was being a bully, and i did it as a defense - i struck before anyone could strike me. i did it because i hated myself and who i was, although i didn't know this at the time. when i quit using drugs massively, when i came back home & worked on myself as a person & really went about changing all of the qualities about myself that i hated, this was one of the ones i changed first. so, i rarely, if ever, get angry at my friends, get angry with people in my personal life. i get angry about principles, but rarely do i get angry with people) - where, i see red, where my voice raises and i actually want to harm you, where, i know and you know that i am beyond pissed - then, chances are we won't be talking ever again.
because i will take a lot of shit. humans are flawed. we have so many things that fuck with us, moods affect us, and i give people the benefit of the doubt, but cross the line, and

i cross you off.

he crossed the line.
he actually got a kick out of it. saying that he had been lying to me for weeks on end, knowing that it would hurt me. and, he thought i would be okay with this. that's what i am baffled about. he told me that he knew he couldn't hurt me by dating someone else so he decided to hurt me by destroying himself. what a brilliant guy. i told him i didn't ever want to talk to him again. that, if he could lie to my face again and again, i didn't think he was worth a shit. later that night he sent me a text message saying he 'felt it was for the best that he didn't talk to me because he would only hurt me later.' ok, whatever. the next day i received a message saying that he 'needed to be in my life, but that, he would, always lie to me.' um, wtf. i have received messages off and on since then, but i have ignored all of them.


i can say that i am relieved by all of this. that, once i finally made up my mind to get the fuck off the roller coaster, i feel so much better. i don't feel confused, i don't feel like my loyalties are being tested, and  i feel like my relationship with ray is much better. i only wish that i had made up my mind about all of this sooner.

i need a life.

its one of those days where i begin to question what little is left of the sanity that i do have. i found myself staring at my face in the mirror. for the last five days or so i have been under an insane amount of stress. i used to handle stress ok. i say used to, because i was on a decent amount of drugs. i handled stress by getting wasted. i handled it by sleeping until whatever problem that had arisen had taken care of itself. i checked out mentally & physically. i wasn't ever really aware that i was doing this on purpose, i don't think i ever really thought about it. i don't think i put two & two together. i just simply didn't fucking deal with my life because i didn't want to.

my father has been in the hospital for the past week. i spent that past week picking at my face, and pulling out my hair. i rarely pick at my face, and i hardly ever pull out my hair. i realized i was having severe stress issues when i woke up one morning to find masses of hair strewn about my pillow. i was totally unaware that i had pulled out my hair. i did this while i was asleep. i did this after taking a rather large dose of atavan & flexerol so i could sleep. by all means, i should have been calm enough that i shouldn't have pulled my hair out. i should have been stable. there are a lot of should's in this equation. 

about two days later, after this episode, i got up in a fog to notice that i had REALLY pulled out a ton of hair. that i had significant bald spots on my head. no one would be able to tell other than me, i do a pretty decent job of hiding my trich affliction, but i was none the less mortified that my father's stint in the hospital was causing me to loose it this much. it wasn't just my father, it was also what was going on with wynn, and worrying about whether or not i should tell his family that he has been using & when and where i should do that. it was ray leaving & my wondering if he was ever even going to come back. it was my mother taking every chance she had to belittle me and remind me that i am a rotten horrible person and an epic failure in her book.

all of this came to a head as i stared at myself this morning in the mirror. my face has those marks that people on meth get from picking at their skin incessantly. my eyes are sunken in & have circles under them. i had perviously been up for four days straight with no sleep due to mania (to which i got the usual from my family "well if you are going to be up at all hours of the night why the fuck can't you do something useful?" my mother can admit that i am depressed & crazy but not bipolar and crazy). my roots are showing & i need to dye my hair. put simply, i look like i fucking feel -

like shit.

staring at the mirror, i started to get the image in my head of what it would be like to put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. i stared back at my eye balls as i thought about this. i didn't feel even remotely bad for thinking the thought. i felt, to be honest, relief. relief because it would all be fucking over. but such a violent and final way to die. and not, by any means, my preferred method of death. i wondered why on earth that had come into my mind at that moment, but i didn't really wonder. i have been struggling with suicidal thoughts for months now, as i often do every winter. i don't talk about it with anyone, i don't say anything, because there is no point. i thought about what i would do if i did, actually start to plan my own suicide.

because the truth is, not all that much has changed since the last time i attempted to get help. since the last time i spent a week staring obsessively at the pills i wanted to eat to end my life. if i am honest with myself, nothing has changed. i am pretty much in the same fucking position. my life hasn't gone anywhere, my depression is just as dismal as it was back then, and i am about as motivated as a fucking corpse. i am still making crappy choices. i still don't have a fucking job. i know i need one. but i so sucked in by my dismal family life, so sucked in by my father and his guilt trips, that i just... i don't even try. i haven't even bothered to try to fix the situation with school because frankly it is a disaster and a loosing battle. the only way to save my situation there is to move & go somewhere else. and i am fucking up the chances of getting a loan monthly because i can't pay off my other loan. 

i don't even know who i am anymore. i don't even know what it is i want. if i am truthfully honest with myself, i am somewhat jealous of wynn & his fuck it attitude & the fact that he just gave up and decided to do drugs. for some dumbass reason, i have this thing inside me - self preservation or guilt, which one i am not sure - that won't let me go that far. i do not believe i could ever get to that point, get to that point where i would ever use again, ever go back down that road that i was once on. i am just over it. but there are days, days like today, where i really want to kick back & fucking destroy myself.

if a person is a culmination of all of their life experiences, then who does that make me? i have a lot of stories, and i never lack for something to write about. but i am serious when i say that i have no idea who i am anymore. one day i just woke up and i was no longer angry. it took so much effort to be mean, to be upset with the world. to dislike everyone who ever disliked me. to hold a grudge against the friends who hurt my feelings. i had to get the fuck over it. so i did. and in the process of doing that, i mellowed out, and i grew up. i found that i valued my family a lot more than i ever thought i did. i valued them because through everything, they stood by me. i also realized that a lot of the reason why i am so damaged has to do with them. they did the best they could, and it is only me who can fix me, but it's going to take years to undo that damage. and its also going to take leaving them, cutting the cord, distance, if you will.

how do i even begin to figure out who i am? i am 30 years old and i don't have a clue as to how to begin the self actualization process. most people do this at 19 years of age when they go away to college. i started that process when i left home for the first time, but, i had to come back. i started it again when i left again, but i came back. and i needed to come back. i needed to get my shit together. but in the process of getting my shit together, i have also become a glorified teenager who never has to worry about anything because mommy & daddy will take care of it. i have no idea what it is like to be independent. i desperately need to learn this. 

what i am afraid of, is that, if i leave, i will feel guilty that everything with my dad & grandmother will get shifted onto my mother. i am afraid my dad will want to die because he will be left alone. i am afraid my dad will die & i will feel an enormous amount of guilt because of that. i am afraid that if i leave, i won't know what to do when i am by myself. i am afraid that if i leave with ray (and thats a big fucking if) he will proceed to destroy what little self esteem i do have (which i am coming to find out i don't have all that much to begin with.) I am afraid that if i stay here, i will kill myself, because there is nothing here for me. even on good days i know there is nothing here for me. i am afraid that if i leave, change won't do me any good & i will still flip out and want to kill myself & i will still be as lonely as i have ever been and because i will be away from my family, it will be easier because i won't feel the guilt. what it comes down to, seriously, is that the older i get, the worse my disease gets, and the more crazy i feel. the more i find myself wanting to die because i can't live up to my own expectations & i don't even know how to fucking begin to love myself & forgive myself. i can't live up to my own expectations because i can't get a goddamn do-over card. there are no do-overs. i fucked up, and i fucked up epically, royally, really goddamn good, and i have to live with that, and so now i am a 30 year old fuck up without a college degree who has an interesting life story and nothing to show for the fact that she knows a ton of people who also fucked up their lives and who are all dead. and, you don't get a pat on the fucking back or a congratulations for knowing that information. the world doesn't reward people who have made epic mistakes. 

i am my own worst enemy. 

i don't even know how to begin to fucking fix that.

twitter is made for vultures

when you took to the skies
leaving on a jet plane
you promised to be back,
within the blink of an eye

before i knew it,
before my heart could
ever begin to miss you
you promised to be back

so i wouldn't have to
contemplate the thought of loss
or how i would begin to live
without you -

but our plans for a life came undone,
and you never dialed my phone
i found myself sleeping all alone
with a broken heart i couldn't mend





the last time things went to shit with ray, i remember it all crystal clear. he went to boston. he said he would be back. he said, 'don't worry, babe, i'll be back soon.' the plan was to go to vancouver to see muse and spend the weekend there, because he really liked the city & wanted me to experience it. although i am not a huge fan of muse's new music, i liked their old stuff and i was game to go along. i have always wanted to go to vancouver - i had heard great things about the city, and about it's weed alone. a little get away for the two of us sounded really awesome. i was excited. i really was. i downplayed how much i was looking forward to it, because i didn't want to get my hopes up & have them crushed. i also knew that with ray, nothing is as it seems. he had told me that he didn't know what would happen between us, because of what was going on with his career - blah fucking blah - and i understood, it involved being god knows where, and working 15 hour days, sometimes longer. i knew that ray's ambition & drive would always be the first priority. that his career would take precident over me, and that i would never be the most important thing in his life. i understood that, and to a certain extent, i envied that - to be so passionate about something - to know -

to know what one wants... so badly that, you are willing to sacrifice love, friendship, relationships of all sorts in order for greatness - i respect that. i am jealous of that. i can not think of one thing i really want badly enough that i would sacrifice everything for. perhaps, love. but, i mean, not a career. i am not that driven. i love politics, it's a passion, but, it's not THAT much of a passion.

so, when he said that, i guess i understood, and i respected that. i didn't expect, at that point in time, to become his girlfriend. but the problem, the huge motherfucking problem with ray holycross was that he had me the minute he said hello. i was clay in his hands. weak in the knees. i knew i loved from that first date on. and, god save me, i never gave up on him.

did i ever really know him? i don't know if i did. all i know is that, after a few weeks of staying with me, and sleeping in my bed, he started to refer to me as his girlfriend. i found this to be strange, but i also thought that it was flattering, so i took it to heart. i more than likely shouldn't have. he could charm the skin off of a fucking snake, ray, could. and so, when he left, saying, 'ill be back, i promise, we'll go to vancouver, it'll be fine...' i should have just shut down internally. my insides were ringing alarm bells. they were screaming. i knew something wasn't right. i knew i was being lied to. somewhere, in there, was a lie, but i just wasn't sure where.

so what happened? he never called. he never called like he said he would. he never wrote me, he never text messaged me. he got angry at me for even asking if he was okay. he had this amazing ability to make me feel insane & insecure. mostly because before he left he rarely touched me physically, which led me to feel like i was undesirable & disgusting. i have issues, ok. a lot of issues. issues which i never ever told him about. it didn't seem like there was much of a point in opening up to him about how deeply fucked up i was, because, he had abandoned me once. i had learned the hard way.

i don't even remember what our fight was about. when pressed, he says he doesn't remember either, but i suspect that he remembers all too well. he's not the type to forget. i just know that he was supposed to come pick me up. i was waiting. he said he would be there at my house. and he never showed up. he just flat out stood me up. i had bought a new dress & everything. i was so looking forward to leaving town & going somewhere nice with him. why? because i loved him. why? because i wanted to spend time with him. i called him. he refused to answer. i left voice mails. i cried. i left emails. i asked what it was that i did that was so horrible. i asked if there was someone else. i asked for him to at the very least, be honest with me.

what i got in return was nothing. nothing but white, blank, utter deafening silence. do you know how loud silence can be? silence can be the loudest sound in the world when someone refuses to acknowledge your existence. it can be the cruelest sound in the world, too.

during this time, i had turned to his twitter to try to figure out just what the hell was going on with him. let me begin to say that i can not, can not, put into words how much i hate twitter. let me also say that, when in a 'relationship' with someone where that person is actively not telling you the whole truth but also keeping up a whole online persona, it makes it really really fucking hard to figure out just who the hell it is who you actually know. i mean, what person you actually know. i began to suspect that every single person he talked to on twitter was someone he was also seeing behind my back. and the worst part is, i am not this suspicious jealous person. i have come to realize i have some serious self esteem issues, but, i've never had issues so bad that i get jealous of what my significant other does over the damned internet. why? because that would be goddamned insane of me. but there i was, basically being froze out of my supposed boyfriend's life, all the while watching his life go by on his goddamn twitter account, wondering what the hell was so wrong with me that i couldn't even warrant a text message.

i never found out what was actually going on, why he did what he did, if he had been cheating on me or what. i suppose i should more than likely ask for my own sanity, if i am going to continue to be with him. my major problem with my relationship with him, back then, was that there was no foundation of trust. i didn't trust him what so ever. sure, he told me all these facts about his life, and i suppose i believed him, more or less, but i never really knew if i did or not. he seemed like a moral upstanding person, but my judgement in people is pretty, uh... well, its pretty shitty. i'm a pretty shit judge of character.

in the end we quit talking. he went his way, i went mine. i never asked why, he never explained why.

& then,

then we started talking again. its my fault. it's always my fault. because.... he got under my skin. and once he got under there, he has stayed there. and i was curious. i wanted to know how he was doing. so when i saw him online, i would ask. i would ask and i would wonder & i would talk to him. the conversations were usually short at best. i had a boyfriend & i didn't want to get emotionally involved with an x while being in a relationship. i just, i couldn't do that. at one point he had messaged me about a vacation - thats what we did together, he & i - we were vacations from each other's reality. i ignored him. admittedly, i was still pissed. hell, to this day i am still pissed. but, you have to forgive. the short of it is we began talking. and we talked every night. he was in a bad situation. i was in a loveless crappy relationship. it was nice to just talk to someone about the things i am passionate about. in the end, i helped him out of his situation. he came up here. he said he loves me. i said i love him. we've been together since.

well, today he went into chicago for a job interview. i don't know if he actually had a job interview or not. i really hope he did, seeing as my mother paid for him to go into the city. he was supposed to get in touch with me to tell me he made it there okay. it was 11 at night and i still hadn't heard from him. he said he would call or email me. i had heard nothing. so, i made the mistake of going on his twitter. now, i know better. i know that going to his twitter feed is opening a can of worms that i do not want to see. i know that it will only make me unhappy, make me feel insecure, and more than likely make me dislike him. but i did it before i had thought about all of that. it was too late. and, it was there that i found him talking to a girl from la. talking to a girl from la who had just moved to chicago. who had just moved to chicago yesterday or the day before. talking to her about how he wanted her to move to chicago. talking about the two of them seeing one another. in chicago. she 'makes' movies. they talked about seeing muse. strange, because, you know he & i were supposed to go, and well, he just bailed. i don't know. he spends so much time on his phone, on the goddamn twitter and doing whatever else & i don't ask to read or see what he does because like, im supposed to trust him.

the thing is....

i sent him a letter a while ago, a few days ago, saying that i loved him and i gave him all the reasons why i loved him. he read it & after wards, he said, 'i read your letter, its cute.' that was hardly the response i was looking for.

i don't know. sometimes i fear that i love him far more than he loves me. so i've cut back on telling him that i love him. i don't try to kiss him. its not like we have sex, we can't because of his heart. which is like, well it sucks.

and i don't want to think that i can't trust him, that, he doesn't love me, and that worst of all he is taking advantage of me, and worst of all of that taking advantage of my family. he prides himself on his morals and i really thought he had/has them. but i don't know. it looks fishy, and it feels fishy. if it looks fishy & it smells fishy, and it feels scaly,

its prolly because it's a goddamn fish.



& i don't,

i so don't want

my goddamn heart
to be broken.

i don't want to go back to being alone
all alone, in this shit hole town
with my crazy family
and my x boyfriend who has taken to shooting up heroin
and blaming it all on me

i want my boyfriend to fucking love me
not someone else
i want him to love me

is that so much to ask?
is it?

fuck you blogger for eating my whole fucking entry.
fuck you fuck you fuck you

we'll start a war (needs to be edited)

she was a way for me to do penance for my every horrible thing. a way for me to punish myself - continually, for being, what i thought, was a bad person.

she was all too happy to play along in this, all too happy to assign me the blame for her mistakes, all to happy to shove the guilt my way for when she couldn't deal with the actions that she had made. it was easier to blame it all on me, the perpetual 'bad friend, bad influence' because, well everyone in chicago had blamed her downfall on me. they made it easy for her. all she had to do was play along.

the problem with this whole thesis was that often, i wasn't even around for when she made her catastrophic life altering mistakes. i was usually the one who bailed her out of trouble, as i am wont to do for everyone i know, but i was never the one who was right next to her encouraging her to become the laundry list of mistakes that i now think of when i think of her. i participated in those mistakes early in the game when i was busy trying to obliterate myself off of the face of the earth in anyway possible, but once i came to my senses, i tried rather hard to not be around when she did these things. the problem was, she was always, always doing these things. 

female friendships are hard - they are complex and strange things. i often do not understand them. my friendships with my male friends have never been complicated. they have always been friendships that are not full of mixed messages. they are straight and to the point for the most part. female friendships, on the other hand, are not. 

i was raised by a feminist mother. i was taught to value other females, to respect them, and most importantly; i have never viewed my female friends as competition. i have never understood why it is that we, as girls are forced, more or less, to view one another not as sisters, but as road blocks and speed traps on the highway to catching the most important thing in life - a man. my eyes are rolling as i type this, just so you know. i have always desired close female friends, i suppose because i have always wanted a sister, an older sister, a younger one. i have grown up watching my mother's extremely close relationship with her sister, and have longed for that myself. i have watched my friends who have sisters grow closer as they have grown older. and i am jealous. i wish i had that. i have female friends but they are few and far between - i love them all, and they are all very important to me, they are all sisters to me, but they all live very far from me. i rarely get to see them, and if i do spend time with them, it is for a few days at most. 

she was someone i considered a sister. more than that, even. i loved her and i would have done anything for her. over and over i did what she needed me to do. and over and over she took advantage of that. somehow, the friendship became one that was not about supporting one another, and instead became one where the modus operandi was to make each other feel bad. this was never discussed outright. we both had been through so much together that it was impossible to let go of the other one. it was impossible to break up. i don't know if i ever purposefully set out to make her feel bad about herself, that was never my intention. i never wanted her to feel bad about who she was - that is not who i am as a person. but she had been my friend when who i was as a person was, well, to put it mildly, pretty rotten. i was a selfish, angry, miserable, dark, black hole of depression and everyone who came into contact with me during that time can agree with that statement. i wasn't always like that - and, i had some pretty good reasons for why i was that way, but none the less it is an accurate statement regarding who i was. during that period of time, she defended me like a good trial lawyer & she didn't have to. i didn't hire her. i didn't even know she was defending me, half the time. that's what a good friend does. and i felt indebted to her for that, for years. so, when we switched places, when she became the angry, miserable, selfish, dark suck hole of depression who only wanted to drag people down with her i felt like i should stay by her side. and i dutifully stayed. i forgave her, and i forgave her, and i FORGAVE her. over things that, looking back, i truly should have ended the friendship over. things that a therapist would have given me the okay over, over things any normal person would have freaked over.

and yet - i remained friends with her. because i loved her. because our friendship was dysfunctional, yes, but who's wasn't? what i had failed to see was that while i had grown and changed as a person, she had, too, and neither of us could meet in the middle. the person that i had known her as was no longer there, and while i feel i have grown & come out of everything as a better person and have to thank because of it, i can't say she has come out of everything to be a better person. i don't even know who she is anymore. she never believed in sisterhood, she never believed in 'girl code.' she believed that it's every girl for herself. she takes what she wants from whomever she wants without regard for what it does to others. i didn't realize until the other day, when i was standing in the kitchen doing the dishes while listening to underworld that in some fucked up way, she was my penance. she was my penance for being  such a horrible person when i lived in chicago. and i don't even know if i was all that horrible of a person when i lived there. i only have a mild recollection of who i was back then, i don't really remember because the memories are gone, they went away when i was in my last car accident. i just hear the echo of the pumpkin's voice calling me names, saying that i more or less didn't deserve to be living at the walton house, then at the other apartment, basically that i didn't deserve to breathe. and if someone who i unconditionally loved as much as i loved that kid, could turn around and hate me as much as he ended up hating me & do it while making most of my friends dislike me too, i am going to assume i wasn't all that great to be around. i'm going to go out on a limb and say we all were a bit hard to be around. the point, however, is that she was my way of doing penance for both being a horrible person & a way to make myself feel horrible. she had a wonderful ability to make me feel like shit about myself. your best friend should not, i repeat, should not, make you feel horrible about yourself. towards the end there, she made me feel just god fucking awful about who i am. she would say, too, i should add, that SHE didn't make me feel anything, that i felt that all on my own & she is innocent of whatever she did or didn't do. i remember bringing up the fact that i felt horrible about myself & that she was playing a big part in that, and, as my friend, why the hell would she want to make me feel like shit? she dodged the question & answered that i am the one who is in control of my emotions & that she did not, and does not, make me feel anything. 

i have this problem, i do, with keeping people around who are bad for me, who make me feel horrible about myself, because i feel like i need to be punished. i never figured it out until this past summer, that i had this, complex about how i need to be punished for being a bad person. once i figured out that i kept bad people around me, as a form of punishment, well - i ditched the bad people. it wasn't hard, they gave me a multitude of reasons for why i shouldn't have them around. and once i realized that i am way too understanding, way too apt to give people 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances because in my past i wasn't given a second chance nor any understanding, so i give everyone the benefit of the doubt and much more, well, it was much easier to see how i was being manipulated. 

when i was younger, my mother once told me that i would be lucky, if i had three or four good friends when i turned 30. i remember recoiling in horror, thinking she was insane. 3? 4? good friends? I am now 30, and i find myself with just about that. My best friend inevitably ends up being whomever i am dating at the time, because that is the person i spend all of my time with. My other good friends are friends from childhood, and a few scattered from other periods of my life, all of them are girls, but none of them are people i see regularly. it is amazing though how quickly you loose friends in your late 20's. they scatter like ashes. people who you swore you would never loose touch with you can't bare to talk to now. people who you never thought would be different from you rapidly morph from your buddies into friends that are married, into the dreaded married 'with kids.' if you are not part of the married & with kids bubble, suddenly you find yourself unable to relate to two thirds of your age group. and where the hell does one go to find new friends? do i put an ad on craigslist? seriously, i am involved in a decent amount of things in my little area & still.... i have yet to find anyone who is friend material.

its a daunting prospect. and i guess that's another reason why i didn't want to let her go. and why, if i am perfectly honest with myself - i miss her. i will always miss her, and i will always love her. and, when, you love someone you will always want the best for them, despite all that has happened between you. i do hope & want the best for her, even if i have no idea who the hell she is anymore.