I've always been told that I am a freak. Never anything else until my friends and my love showed up out of the blue. I am not perfect. I don't know why they care, but apparently they do. They are the ones who know most about the things I've done. My attempts, my pains, and my only therapy.

And everyone else that surrounds me claims they know me. Strong, independent, weird, a lover of poetry, and some say I am nice. Others call me a *****. That's not a bad thing... Ever heard of the golden rule? I act a ***** if you treat me as such. But those other things...
Strong... I am a ******* *****. I cried myself to sleep every night wishing, hoping that something, someone would **** me.
Independent... If I was I would be dead right now.
Weird... True, but only to mask the darkness I wish would shine through. My freakish nature is now just a bad habit.
Yes, I love poetry, but only because it is my escape, my diary. Reading it is my distraction. The words seep into me and give me a feeling other than my own.
Nice... I wish. I don't think I have the capability.

And some... Call me a liar. Well, this next chapter is for you.

How the hell do you know? The things that have happened to me, the things I believe, the things I have done, the things I almost accomplished. Why the **** would you care? Why in this "God's ****" world would I lie about trying to **** myself?
I came out because I am sick, I need help. That is soooooo hard to admit. I need help! I should have been hospitalized, but no. I kept everything hidden for months. I was scared specifically because I didn't want to be judged, sent away to a loony bin. I was scared that it would ruin my life, my work, my thoughts. Rob me of inspiration, stress would take over, I would be a ******* wreck! And it did. And I am.

I have taken a turn for the worst. I am trying, but if I need guidance, I don't know how.

I have started burning again. I am sorry.
I have started scratching again, I am sorry.
I have started biting the inside of my mouth again, tearing my cheeks apart. Love, you have probably noticed by now that I taste of iron. I am sorry.

Not sorry that I did it... No. Sorry that I ever stopped.
It doesn't heal me. It doesn't make things better, but there is something about pain that is seductive. Not as much as my lover is, no, but it calls to me still. Tells me I can confide in it. Tells me that I can show it my pain and hurt and will not be judged. Tells me that it will accept me because no one else will.

And that brings me back to you ******* who don't know jack.
You don't know me.
So why the judgement? Because I was ignored most of my life, so I don't know how to be social? Because I was bullied constantly for my hand-me-down clothes from an overweight cousin? Because I love literature from a time that I feel more connected to than now?
My friends know. They know because they get it, at least somewhat. They know my faults, predict my actions, offer solace. They saved me numerous times from falling down a well, gasoline burning at the bottom.
You haven't. Don't talk to me, don't give me that look, don't gossip about me, don't insult me.

You know why I did it? My parents ignored me, preferred my brother. My former friends were horrible people, using me. Rumors were constant because of people like you. Chemicals rotted, corroded, took over the place in my brain that made me happy. Stupid ******* diseases riddled my very being. I wanted it gone, over, done.
That was my last thought before suffocating and falling asleep. My last thought before I was about to finish my masterpiece and tie the final knot. My last thought before the buzz. My last thought before I read the name and lowered my hands.
The knots untied themselves. And I didn't even read the message before I let more of the acid tears escape. I survived, but I didn't know that I wanted to.

One thing in my life is actually good, but I can not get out yet. I can not move onto our island and buy a Tibetan mastiff. I can not fulfill the prophecy I have had many times throughout these past few months. Olivia, my daughter, won't come into the world yet.

I think it is happening again. my parents, the stupid, nasally voices blabbing about things they know nothing about. The chemicals inside my mind corroding me even more. And it has hardly gotten better. Help me escape or I will go insane. Or, at least, more than I already am.

Why
Why
Why
Why
Can't
I
Ever
Just
Be
Happy?

Silent crackle, tingle,
The smell of a sticky must. Floating dust in
An abandoned attic, where the rats roam and the dead skeleton of a fish
Still lies in an empty bowl of moldy rocks and plastic plants.
Yet, despite the emptiness, a girl curls up in the corner, black
Running down her face as she weeps for the things she longs for most.
She looks out the *****, broken window at the cloudy sky and imagines it
Blue. The brightest of skies with only few hints of cirrus.
A blanket on the ground and the man she loves, nothing else in sight.
The expanse of green in her head is contrasted to the rotting floorboards she lays
On, dreaming. The steady beat of Boy in Static thrumming through her headset
As she struggles not to scream and jump, finishing the job on the window
From troubled teens years before. The sound reminds her of VHS tapes,
Press rewind, take a turn and start over. But she can't, when something has changed.
The boy she knew, looking down with his hood not up, but covering his face, shielding
Himself from her. She knew he had a ***** in his head, but she just looked away. He never answered anything she asked. He was unable.
But her heart still dropped, she smiled her best. An amazing actress, fooling everyone, makeup allergy keeping her eyes dry. She just read Huck Finn as though nothing was wrong.
Now she sits in her room, writing and shaking her head. This line is not right.
Her walls were full of color and poetry, but her mind kept wandering to that attic.

She was there again. Blankly staring at her star charm anklet. A simple blue ribbon.
And the throbbing of her heartbeat through that one spot on her thumb,
That pressure point that hurts more than anything. But one thing could be worse.
Being left. Just like the broken rocking horse in the corner and the baby's cradle
Lined with blue silk that was shoved into a box. That baby is probably dead. Just like all
Of the others who lived there, burned by the fire. Goose flesh raises, prickly
Hairs on her legs from a week of no shaving. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Bleed.
Change the song. Bleed Like Me. Perfect. She draws on the peeling walls, two hundred
Years of wallpaper and lead paint, chalk barely leaving a mark. She sketches a masterpiece.
A child that she wishes she could have. Impossibly too young, but still...
A daughter she could raise better than her mother raised her. A chance to do something right.
More than the mechanic life she has lead, empty and useless.
Confused and pathetic. Like the broken grandfather clock that ticks backwards.
Three, two, one.
Ding-****, ****-ding. Grandfather never taught me anything. He was not a wise man.
He was a fool. Knew too much and too little, no room to know what was right.
She let another raindrop escape and suddenly it began to pour. Lightning crashes as a glass
Slipper collides with the picture drawn of her dream. Thunder as she releases a
Bloodcurdling scream. "Why!?"
Why her? The pain in her back is unbearable. She slouches too much, and her eyes burn.
She is not Cinderella; her ball gown does not glitter.
Piano is her least favorite instrument, but it somehow gets to her. Small hammers
Striking her heart strings, low notes reminding her of his voice and the soft, feminine
Voices radiating, remind her of when she was young... Immortal. She has aged since then.
Too quickly. Her entire life has been a masquerade ball. Unskilled idiots dancing
Around her and stepping on her toes. Shouldering her in the stomach,
Breaking her ribs. Beats of music guide her skilled toes, swerve around falling raindrops that
Her own eyes emit. And she crashes through the floor of that dismal attic. Broken free,
But she is still trapped. The walls are charred down here.

But the walls are not painted black. They were once a mint color, green and cheerful, healthy.
Until a psychopath lit a match.
"I didn't mean to do it." It was all in her head. The house.
She set it aflame.

She sits in her room, writing and shaking her head. This line is not right.
Her walls were full of color and poetry. It isn't worth it to stare. Nothing will change.
She is still just a girl in a glass box, being stared at and judged. Trapped and ridiculed because her eyes bleed and bless the onlookers with bad luck. It's amazing the things
That people don't know. Drifting deeper into a pit of endless darkness. A candle won't
Live down here. No oxygen to let it breathe. But one lit self portrait hangs in the air.
Years ago, drawn in pencil. Symbolic, it wants to be erased. To die.
And the ******* the page is wearing a mask. The girl in the parchment is me.
Medium length hair and a tear painted, permanent. A Parasite. Capitalized for its meaning.

A demon is running through me, singeing
My tissues, blisters on the insides of my bones. Swelled up, show through
My skin. Waves on a shore. But I am not a beach. A ***** maybe...
Still, I hate it. The hate killed whatever flowers I had left planted in my mind.
Tainted me with the horrible visions of a tear streaked face of paper mâché.
She was the one in the attic. Her whole persona
Wilted and ashen, grey. A silent movie might mask it; the hurt, I mean.
The grey lines on the screen hiding the bags under her eyes and the redness of her nose,
Get rid of the twinkling shards of glass frozen on her cheek from crying in the dead of winter.
Slip up once, and everything goes to hell. Well, I must have slipped years before I was born.
Few smiles are left on this dismal timeline. And I shall use them wisely. But, for now,
I think I will just weep, sleep forever and hope that you don't give up on me and pull the plug.
I am still here somewhere, just dormant. Please wake me up. Get me out of this charred cabin,
This glass box. Pull me out of my warped sense of everything, teach me again what
Love feels like. I have forgotten amidst everything that I have felt and remembered.
There is no more room for things to be learned. Only for things to be repaired.
I will give you a hammer. Come inside and fix me; that ***** in your head couldn't have taken your knowledge away. You are the only one that knows.

Use this never ending lightning and bring your bride to life.