Tender Years

April 14

Soooooo Cody kept me up all last night practically.  When I left him at the end of TSA yesterday evening he said he wasn’t mad but he said it in that one way that made me sure he was just gonna let it fuckin marinate and turn over and over in his head until he texted me at like 12:30 with something like “Okay I’ve been thinking about this, I just gotta get this off my chest…” da da da big block of text.  The DreeeeEeeEeaded Big Block Of Text.  That’s a deliberate strategy of his it seems like, to spend an hour tap tap tapping and drop everything he’s thinking into one text that you basically have to read and respond to all at once because if you try to respond to every point he’s making individually, he’s just gonna say “that’s what you have to say? Nothing about thisandthisandthis” and you have to be like no Jesus Christ I’m fucking getting to that.  Completely derails everything and any chance of a productive convo out the windo but I take the bait Every. Time. 

I didn’t get to sleep until around 5 in the morning and I got up and I felt like shit.  The danger feeling came again, head swimming, all equilibrium lost, like there was a pole riveted to the top of my head with a big weight on a string attached to the end, and I have to hold my head perfectly still or else it’ll sway all over the place, get pulled this way and that, swing swang crash.  I went over to check how bloodshot my eyes were in the mirror and I couldn’t look in there but a couple seconds before it started to smolder.  I looked away right away but I still managed to melt a warped little circle in it.  

It was really bad.  It’s almost never been this bad before I don’t think.  Maybe when I was a baby.  Mom says it started to happen when I was about…almost 3? 

So I’m tapping this one out, doing my best, can’t really see half of what I’m typing through the glasses.    I’m super tired and getting nauseous already.  Whatever. It’s either type everything looking in a funhouse mirror or barbecue my computer.   

***Later

Sooooo today was a nightmare.  I was having a serious bitch of a morning.  Between being sleep deprivation and having those bitchly glasses on I was tripping all over my feet everywhere I went.  On my way from homeroom to comp I stepped on my shoelace and ate shit against a row of lockers.  Knocked the glasses off, why don’t I have an elastic band for these again??? I got up off the floor and I was rolling my eyes all around like I’m supposed to, blinking a lot, tilting my head like a whirlybird – not that hard to do, my head already felt like it was on a cooked noodle – and that fucking cunt rag Allie Matazza said something smartass, “way to walk, lard tard,” something like that, showing off that sparkling wit she’s known for.  Well I was so stressed and tired and rolling around like a bumble ball that I just snapped, stopped there in my tracks and looked right at her.  Well not right at her,  I focused it on the seat of those expensive jeans she wears.  In that moment I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than singe that tight little ass of hers.  

I got ahold of myself, though, and closed my eyes before her pants caught fire.  There was a little smoke is all.  But she noticed and I know she noticed because while my eyes were still closed she grabbed the back of my head and slammed, no maybe slammed is overdramatic but she definitely pressed my face back into the lockers.  “Try that freak shit on me and I’ll make sure you get locked in a hole.” Then she trailed one of her long acrylics along my cheekbone and said “maybe I should just poke those eyes out and save everyone a lot of trouble.”  People must have seen her do that.  

That was my mental state all through the morning.  In AP Spanish there was one of those conjugation exercises on a sheet of paper. Imperfect subjunctive, groooooan.  My stress headache was raging.  I squinted and squinted and still couldn’t tell caber from conocer.  I had the brilliant idea to take off my glasses for a little bit and just close my eyes.  That felt good so I kept closing them.  Soon I’m snoring away and drooling all over the place, just embarrassing, and then Senora Neubauer gets a big heavy book out and goes WHAP right at the head of my desk and I wake up and I’m so startled and she’s yelling at me to get my glasses back on and I don’t know what the fuck is going on and before I know it my exercise paper is in flames.  It was still stuck partially to my face thanks to that bucket of drool I poured all over it and it went up in flames and I panicked, I got up out of my desk and ran around and tripped over somebody, still don’t know who, and the flames were getting bigger, and my fucking bangs caught on fire.  I had to smother the flames with the heels of my hands, burned em of course and then without even saying anything I ran to the bathroom and soaked my entire head in the sink and then got out a pair of scissors and hacked them off.  A hairstylist am I not and they turned out too short and uneven.  Might just shave my head later. Fuck it.  

I skipped the rest of Spanish. Couldn’t go back there, couldn’t.  I went straight to lunch although it was a little bit early and just sat and rested my head on an empty table, enjoying the quiet for a few minutes (made sure my glasses were SECURELY ON this time) and Cody came in to lunch quick quick like he always does and found me there before I could drift off again.  He saw my glasses on and asked “Is it really bad today?”

 Well what was I supposed to say to that besides “No fucking shit it’s bad today what did you expect with all your late night textual harassment” perhaps I could have been a little nicer but I really didn’t have it in me just then.  Cody puffs up and goes on this rant that’s like “you always do this, you always play this card when it’s time to have a serious talk about anything between us” like I WANT this!!!! How dare he!!!!!  He thinks it’s a cool fun thing about me that I “get” to be able to set people on fire if I get too upset!  That I exploit for personal advantage all the time!!!! Sure buddy I love it I love worrying all day whether I’m going to kill my family today!!!  I love that my family is poor because I have to see special doctors and everywhere I live needs sky high insurance premiums!!!!! I love that I have personally cost my parents hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage!!!!!! To say nothing of the lawsuit from that girl I killed when I was 6, that’s they’re still paying off!!!!!! Yeah that’s real cool!!!!!! I fucking killed a little girl, my age, when I was barely out of diapers!!!!!  I have to live that and this BITCH ASS HOLE FUCK thinks that all this is just an excuse, a crutch, whatever!!!! 

I’m really genuinely confused by his thought process here like if I’m reading his implication correctly he thinks that my condition isn’t real, or not as severe as I make it out to be or like, idk I could really control it if I really wanted to but I don’t because I like being able to say “this is making me upset, please stop talking about it so you don’t die!!!” Of course he denied it up and down once I said that to him but really how the fuck else am I supposed to take that!!!!!  

I couldn’t do any more school after that.  I had to go home.  I didn’t even sign out with the nurse or the front office like I’m supposed to, I just went home what the fuck are they gonna do??  Oooooh don’t stop me, I’ll roast you!!!!  Went home.  Went to bed.  Blocked Cody’s number.  I’ll have to have a long talk with my folks I expect when I wake up. 

April 15tb 

Well I got OK sleep last night.  OK not great.  Couldn’t fall asleep for a while despite how hard I conked out in Spanish.  Plus I didn’t eat anything or drink any water.  So I woke up with a headache and shaky from low blood sugar.  Bleh.  

Mom and Dad were curious of course.  They’ve been ever so curious lately.  Trying to be Involv-uh-d.  Code for trying to head off any Incidents.  Can’t blame them I suppose.  It is my understanding that most teens resent their parents for prying into their lives even when their teens aren’t walking weapons.  There’s always a certain element of self-interest there isn’t there?  Even if you’re just trying to help, you keep the knowledge in the back of your mind that your kid reflects on you, & you’re going to be judged by them. 

I wonder how people judge my folks.  What kind of shit do they think Mom&Dad did to be karmically saddled with me.  

So after gluggling down some orange juice I feel basically fine but still a little “off” a little lightheaded or twitchy or just idk something not moving into alignment.  I think everything’s OK. I told Cody at the end of our little discussion yesterday that I would contact him when I was ready and while Cody defffffffffo does not always obey when you tell him that kind of thing, either because he has an actual reason not to or just to be difficult, today he doesn’t have much opportunity to do anything different.  I don’t have any classes with Cody today, shouldn’t pass him in the halls unless he really goes out of his way to be a cock, I can sign out to take lunch off campus, everything good, everything good.  All good.  

Honestly I should just dump the guy once and for all.  He is for sure not cute enough to be getting away with half the shit he pulls.  But I don’t want him to pull on me that we broke up while I was still in a flame-y headspace.  It sucks that I gotta wait for the fucking stars to align, and by the time they do I may have changed my mind about the whole thing because he is weirdly persuasive when I’m not hopping mad at him.  Am I ever going to be able to have healthy relationships?  Am I ever going to meet a guy who isn’t either scared off by my condition or uses it to manipulate me?  And we haven’t even gotten into the potential sexual problems yet.  That one doctor theorized that sexual excitement could make it happen.  I seem to be able to masturbate OK but with another person who knows??? There is just simply no way to tell!!!! And I can’t exactly ask Cody to fuck in a doctor’s office so we can keep an eye on everything!!! 

April 16th

Made it to the weekend and that’s the good news.  Bad news is Cody’s around.  Celia told Dad that “that little boyfriend” of mine has been circling the block since before the garbage truck came.  What the fuck.  I was finally on my way to feeling good and he’s just dumped me back down into the shitter.  

The swaying off-balance feeling in my head is back again.  Room sways and I had to grab my glasses just as a precaution.  It’s a good thing I didn’t feel like doing much today. I told Dad and Mom to ignore Cody.  They may be dinks but at least I can trust them to do something I ask.  I’m going to ignore him too. Not gonna text. Not gonna give him any indication I know he’s out there. I’m not even going to go outside, not going to give anybody the chance to do anything.    Stayyyyyyyin in babeeeeey. Think I’ll dial up some ASMR videos.  Binaural beats.  Haven’t tried those.  Ramona swears by em.  Says they make her feel like fingers made of pure electricity are going ham on her brain’s G-spot.  A pungent metaphor but if anyone is entitled to use it it’s Ramona the Squelch Queen.  

April 17th  

Well that went nicely.  Good lazy Saturday.  Ramona was really right and I should’ve tried that shit out sooner.  I thought it was all woo woo.  And speaking of that metaphor she used, I had kind of a marathon yesterday.  Six!  New record.  You know you’re lying in bed with nothing to do, you’re like…aw fuck it who cares if I just did it, who’m I trying to impress here, and that just happens all day.  Chinese food orgasms, ready again an hour later.  Could not get enough.  

It’s days like yesterday make me think maybe I do need to sleep with Cody. He may be a cock but…he’s got nice lanky limbs, that tummy…I mean we’re together in the first place for a reason!!! Would it be that bad?? Just get it out of the way. Or if not Cody, just somebody.  It’s gonna be weighing on my mind until I do.  It’ll probably be fine and once it’s over and done with that’s one less thing I need to worry about.  

Yeah, on further consideration I think I will dump Cody.  He’s hot but…there’s just been too much shit between us, I mean if we did it then there’s zero chance we could make any kind of clean break afterward.  He’s way too obsesso for that.  One cool thing about high school…in elementary kids were all scared of me, boys especially, but now of course there are still boys like that but surprisingly a lot are fascinated by me!  Ask me to like do it on command, and shit, course I can’t but it’s nice to be asked.  If I do end up going to college but I bet I could get a guy to fuck me for that alone.  

I’ll make the guy sign a waiver or something.  

Later

Jesus Christ, he came up to my window!!!!!! I just about had a shitting conniption fit glancing over at the window and seeing him dangle off the gutter like a monkey!!!! Fuck!!!! It is nowhere near a trellis or any sort of footholds or anything, he must’ve scaled the downspout!!! I asked him why he did it and he said he “couldn’t let things end like this.”  What a fucker.  What a pustulent boil of a fucker of a cunt. I wasn’t thinking about dumping him!!! I mean, I totally was, entertaining the idea at least, but he doesn’t know that, never made a single communication to him in that regard!!! He can’t even say that me blocking him means I was thinking about dumping him cause I’ve done that before!!!! So I said fuck it, you know what, yes I am dumping you, now go please, but of course that didn’t put an end to things. 

Cody said we never talked about the other day.  I don’t even remember what we fought about the other day and I told him so and that wasn’t the point, the point was that he was pushy and had no respect for boundaries and continually disrespected my explicit wishes.  And he starts into this pity party about what was he supposed to do if I never let him explain himself, I never sit down and talk and he just cares too much to let it go like that.  CARES!!! TOO MUCH!!! 

Cody did a bunch of blee bloo hoo durr in that vein for a while and the feeling whooshed back, I could feel the pressure building behind my eyes and those creepy fingers cradling the back of my skull and I knew soon it was gonna happen and my glasses were sitting on the table and Cody was standing between me and them and I couldn’t see any other way out of it so I shouted for Mom and Dad.  And Mom and Dad came running in and Cody wasn’t able to get himself out the window in time, they spotted him but he just kept inching out the window anyway and he wasn’t so monkeyish this time around, he fell from the window and his leg crumpled up under him.  You should have heard him holler.  Dad ended up having to drive him to the hospital. Urrrrrrrrrrgh.   

It ended up not being a very bad break, leave it to Cody to wring it out, and Mom and Dad asked me if I wanted to see him.  I said no.  Dad said we’re going to have a talk about this, you know.  What is there to talk about, I asked, he fucking broke in.  But he seemed to think I invited him in and I just couldn’t admit it, and the feeling was gathering steam even with my glasses firmly on so I just went along with it, I said yeah for sure that’s exactly what happened.  Now can we like install bars on the fucking windows or something? Mom said she didn’t want the house “defaced” like that, it wasn’t even necessary.  You could they thought I somehow brought it all on myself.  

Mom insisted she didn’t blame me but I should really try to pick guys better.  It’s dangerous for me to get too upset after all.  And you know what I don’t disagree with her in theory but look at the position I’m in.  Normal teens get entangled with hot fuckboys because they’re horny and lack judgment and they fight and get into all sorts of shenanigans and everything blows up spectacularly and no one says shit about it because that’s SUPPOSED to happen and they can afford to make mistakes!!!!! No one expects immature children to have perfect taste in men right away it’s a PROCESS but it’s a process I’m not allowed to go through like SORRY!!! I’ll just concentrate really hard and make my frontal lobe develop early I guess!!! Either that or everyone might die!!!!!! 

Like just thinking about it is making me want to rip these glasses off and let my laptop go up in flames.  I’m just so angry lately.  AN-GA-RY.  I see less and less sense in taking any of these precautions.  Like why should I fucking spend every. fucking. minute of the day thinking about my condition when no one around me gives a moment’s thought to how I might feel living with it.  Why is keeping the whole world around me from exploding into fire no one’s responsibility but mine.  No one really cares about me, they just don’t want to burn up.  They’re covering their asses.  They do the bare minimum to haul their asses out of the fire and a little bit more to soothe their consciences and they want all the credit in the world.  SORRY it doesn’t work that way!!!!  

April 18th  

Well the whole school knows!!!! Hyuck hyuck!!!!! I don’t know if Cody told everyone or whether someone was at the hospital but it’s allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll over.  At least Cody or whoever it was who blabbed could’ve gotten some details right!!!!!!!  Apparently I was giving him dome so crazy that he fell backward out the window when he nutted, but also I turned into a psycho and pushed him out but AL SO my dad burst into my room with a shotgun and made him jump out! I’ve heard all these stories, and 2 from the same person are you STUPID I cannot HANDLE this even Ramona tried to chuckle and make some fucking offhand comment about me and Cody getting caught fucking or w/e and I just lost my shit and everything got so bad that even a little bit of eye beam straying out from underneath my glasses for the split second just set a huge stretch of tile floor on fire, like seriously I just lit up a long stretch of it when I was storming away from the lunch room and would have kept going out the door but the office lady stopped me.  It was nothing dangerous, just a couple inch wide strip that a fire extinguisher can get on one pass but someone pulled the fire alarm and I KNOW the office lady knows about my condition but she still tried to hold me there, mumbled something about the authorities and I just lost it and I busted out, I whipped my glasses off and heated the glass pane in the front door till it popped out and shattered and I reached through and I opened the front door from the outside and I left and I don’t know if I’m ever gonna go back.  

I’m taking off for a minute.  It’s just too hairy around here.  I don’t want to put where I’m going in here in case it’s discovered.  Mom, Dad, I’ll be fine.  See ya around.  

April 26th 

I’m back and well let’s just say that little sojourn had uh mixed results.  

I knew where I was going to go the minute I decided to go.  Uncle Arnie’s hunting cabin.  I knew the way there by heart because I was designated driver that one time that Ramona tried to make me party like a normal teen.  It was 47 miles away.  I took my bike there.  Still kind of out of shape from the winter but I made it in a little under six hours.  All backroads once I was out of town, I barely saw another soul the whole way there.  Got there after dark and the thing was all locked up. I could’ve gotten the key from Ramona before I left but I didn’t want anyone to know where I was going.   I remembered there was a window in the bathroom with a screen that was busted partway out of the frame from when two kids had a fight.  So that’s how I got in.  

I had my phone and charger for emergency purposes but I didn’t want to turn it on in case they could GPS me or triangulate the battery like on Criminal Minds.   I sold a couple pictures of my ass on the internet before I left and made enough to get a backpack full of convenience store groceries, mostly canned cause I didn’t know whether the power would be on at Uncle Arnie’s.  It was, luckily, and also there were some propane tanks to heat the place at night and cook & shit. 

All in all getting to Arnie’s cabin went off without a hitch.  I had a parfect plan for that but what I DIDN’T have a plan for was how long I would stay there.  Or what I would do during.  Or afterward.  I assumed I would have lots of quiet time to think and that everything would fall into place.  It didn’t.  The longer I stayed out there the more lost I felt.  Didn’t do much of anything but lie on the scratchy carpet and read the magazines on the end tables.  

That overstuffed backpack full of canned food that I practically broke my back hoofing out here?  Thought it’d last me a month.  Lasted 5 and a half days.  I found some flour in the pantry and tried to make biscuits with it but they turned out little &hard as charcoal briquettes.  I found a bottle of ketchup in the fridge with promo copy on it from the Pyeongchang Olympics and I soaked the biscuits in the ketchup to make them edible.  That got me through another day.  After that I found a kayak and a kids’ fishing pole and thought I’d catch some fish. There were some.  I lost the first few because I had a spell coming on and didn’t get my and before I knew it I’d started a knot of dry grass on the other side of the lake on fire, and I had to put it out with the minnow bucket I was keeping my fish in.  I filled it back up again.  Couldn’t tell you what I caught.  Didn’t know how to fillet them so I just sort of hacked pieces off and fried them in flour and oil.  They mostly tasted like oil and they gave me stomach cramps so bad I felt like a hot wire was wrapped around my organs.  

Spent most of that night on the shitter and I got woken up in the morning by the cabin’s land line ringing. I had to answer it I reasoned or someone was going to come right away.  It was a neighbor and he said something about how he saw the smoke last night and he didn’t know anyone was supposed to be out here.  I made up some bullshit about how “Arn” as he called him had hired me and my “husband” to clear some brush.  He said OK but his tone made me uneasy.  I cleaned up the cabin and put all my empty cans in a trash bag and sunk them in the lake and I was out of there.  

So I’m home now.  I didn’t want to get Ramona in trouble so I just told the parentals I slept under bridges and stuff.  Luckily I’d fallen into the lake a couple of times in the clothes I was wearing so that wasn’t too hard to sell.  They were upset certainly but less freakoutasaurus than I had anticipated.  Probably didn’t want to get me in that zone.  Understandable but I don’t think I really could have gotten there.  I didn’t feel it.  All I felt was tired and depressed.  

They did mention a couple of things. I’m gonna have to talk to the cops cause there’s a missing persons report that needs followup.  They’re talking about pulling me out of school.  Sure fuck it why not.  As far as how things are gonna look like at home it’s a tossup if Dad gets his way I wouldn’t be surprised if I got those bars on the window that I asked for.  Lol jk jk but seriously he’s on the warpath.  Apparently he was trying to find me by checking the police leger for fires.  That’s so funny that he thought I was gonna be on a rampage or something.  What like some movie villain?? I’vE bEeN pUsHeD tOo FaR aNd tHe WoRlD’s GoInG tO pAyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Eliminate all my enemies.  That’s a laugh.  I don’t have enemies.  I’m my enemy.  

One thing they’re sure about is I need to go back to therapy.  Start doing my breathing exercises again.  I told them over and over the first time that shit wasn’t helping but it looks like I’ll have to do it as a show of good faith that I want things to get better.  It’ll be a funnnnnnn time finding a therapist who’ll see me after I set fire to Mr. Crapington’s stupid print on his office wall.  Like what did he actually expect there??? This is going to be emotionally challenging,  we’ve got to confront the things that are causing dadadadadada blow me you bald retard.  

I’ve got the day off tomorrow to go to the police station and for now I’m just going to dial up some of those ASMRs again.  It didn’t take me long to get used to those.  That was the only thing I really missed not getting on my phone for a week.  I’d try to get to sleep on one of those steel bunk beds in the cabin that I couldn’t make the slightest movement on without it going skreek-skrick and I’d stare right up on the glinting steel coils on the bunk above of me and I’d look right through the middle of the coils and sort of zoom in, and I’d get an incredibly clear picture of the girl I killed. 

 I don’t remember her name.  I’ve blocked all that out.  I used to not be able to remember her face either but lately it’s been coming to me, very clearly, and I don’t know if its her real face or something I’ve patched together out of a dream.  But the image comes up totally by itself and it feels like her.  Every time I looked through those bare coils I’d see her.  And it doesn’t make me scared or guilty to look at her either, it actually makes me feel calm and at peace.  I wouldn’t have been able to get to sleep at that cabin if I hadn’t seen her.    

April 28th 

Last night I listened to ASMR videos.  I started with one that’s my favorite and that for that reason I usually do other videos first to look up to it.  It’s one where there’s a door stopper, one of those one’s that’s a tightly coiled spring attached to a baseboard, with a little rubber cap on the end, kids are supposed to be fascinated by them  I was never fascinated by them as a kid, I never did any of that stuff.  But this video fascinates me.  First of all the sound is very satisfying, drrrrrrrr, drrrrrrrrrrr,  but the effect isn’t there without the image of the spring widening from skinny and sharp to a bright wedge-shaped blur of motion. I really like how the sound changes with how hard the spring is flicked and how wide the blur is.  If you just flick it a little drr drr then there’s hardly a blur at all, you can see the rubber cap wiggling clearly still, but if you pull it back all the way to the baseboard there’s a long drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr with a little rattle at the beginning from when the rubber cap is hitting the baseboard, and the blur is just a bigggg copper stripe that moves in a perfect rainbow arc and you can watch it shrink as it loses momentum and become a smaller arc and a wedge and a sliver shrink shrink shrink while not losing a bit of its blurry ghost quality. It’s amazing.  I wish we had one in our house.  I’d never leave it. And the maker of this video knew just how to show it off too, a lesser artist would have just flipped it drrrrrrr drrrrrr drrrrrr rhythmically but this genius gives it a few quick flicks and then a long one, varies up the pattern, wide stripe, little sliver, all the way to the baseboard, no way to predict what’s coming, keep you on your toes.  I love it.    

I put this video on and with great difficulty tore my eyes away from the screen so I could just focus on the noise and try to picture the girl in a more conscious way than I’ve been doing.  I thought she would be out of my reach but she came right up to me.  And her image stuck in my mind’s eye for long enough that I can actually describe her right now.  She’s 6 years old, still. But her eyes are old.  I wonder if she had those eyes already or if my mind is making them up.  She’s little.  White. Brunette.  She’s got on a pink hoodie with little pale green strings.  She doesn’t smile but not because she’s upset at me. She’s just on such an even keel she doesn’t need to.  Nothing moves her.  She lives in a little pocket of rolled-up time, unchanging.  And sometimes she’s wreathed in flame.  There’s bright yellow almost white flame crawling up the outline of her body, but not burning, just flapping its tongues up to heaven.  Her hoodie and all of her features and even every individual hair is wrapped and cocooned by fire, fire hotter than I’ve ever been able to conjure up, fire so hot it’s like sunlight, the sun itself, and I can feel it like I’m on fire too and it’s not painful but like the comforting feeling of a fireplace cranked up 1000x.  And this girl just sits here while on fire and looks at me not saying a word but radiating serenity.  

May 1

Haven’t been back to school yet.  So close to the end of the year no one sees much point in it.  Teachers have been good about emailing me assignments but who knows whether we’re going to be able to keep doing that in the fall, no reason why they wouldn’t, after all they did that with everybody in 2020 but the school admin is being a bunch of cunts about it, they don’t want anyone getting special treatment.  If one kid wants to stay away from school because it sucks ass and retraumatizes her every day then they’ll all wanna do that and then where would the school as we know it disappear to?  Ha ha. SoooooooOOoo whoknows.  Transferring is always an option.  Gross.  Have to do that whole introduction to the school, here’s this new girl, here’s the horrible shit that her eyes can do when I’m stressed out, please you horrible selfish worms be extra nice to her!!! That hasn’t worked out well so far.  Tutor?  Not likely.  Not on my folks’ pay.  Maybe I can graduate early.  With all this peace and quiet all the work I’d have to do would be a piece of piss.  But then what?? Not looking like any college in my future.  If any’d have me.  

I’m taking a break from it.  Staying in my room a bunch.  Downstairs is pretty awkward.  Talking to Ramona on Discord on account of I still haven’t turned my phone back on and I don’t think I ever want to again.  She says You-Know-Who’s back at school. I didn’t ask any followup qs and she didn’t supply any.  She’s a good kid when she puts her mind to it.  

Oh yeah, the cops, that was a whole fuckin thing.  As big as young female runaways are in the media these days you’d think they’d know what the fuck page they were on.  They didn’t seem to understand my condition but they wouldn’t let me describe it or tell them which doctors they can call.  They didn’t seem to believe my story that I’d been sleeping under bridges but they didn’t really want to get to the truth either.  They asked a lot of questions about who I met up with while I was away and what we did, I told them and nothing no one and that was at least the truth, I didn’t see a whole living human being the whole week.  The girl was my only companion but I couldn’t exactly tell them about her.  Apparently they’re with one mind with my dad that I went on a murder spree or some retarded shit like that.  Mostly they just wanted to make sure I knew what a bad bad little girl I’ve been, say stuff like “Now you know you can’t leave like that, you worried your parents sick bee boo bah borp” like I didn’t already know that, like I just ran away for the sake of being naughty.  Complete waste of time.  

The girl understands, though.  I know it.  I look at her and into her eyes and I know she knows who I am and everything about me and she’s been watching my whole life with that untroubled gaze of hers and  think that she’s real and she’s here in front of me right now and I want to be like her, I want to be where she is and how she is and watch people with that steady look and not worry about a thing while doing it.  She’s the only person in years that I’ve been able to look steady in the eye.  

I asked my folks about her.  What her name was.  Tricia Bock.  She went to the same day care as I did. Tricia had a sister that was apparently a lot older, five years at least, and her parents had divorced at some point and the mom had remarried.  Beyond that they didn’t know much.  “It’s not like we exchange Christmas cards” as Mom put it. 

 I asked them what exactly what happened that got me so mad.  Mom and Dad said no one ever found out.  According to the day care employees we weren’t regular playmates but we didn’t hate each other either. We were by ourselves in a corner of the playground where no one happened to catch exactly what we were doing, everyone assumed we were just arguing over some stupid shit like a ball we both wanted.  

Not that I really want to know about the girl that badly, I was just looking for something that might help me understand her better or maybe even communicate with her.  If I could.  But our one connection is me burning her to death by accident when I was 6 and I don’t remember anything about that.  I’ve racked and racked my brain but it’s just as big a blank as it’s been for ten years. 

Every evening I’ve been putting the doorstop ASMR on repeat and looking at her, sometimes for hours.  I’ve asked her out loud, I’ve thought questions in my internal monologue, I’ve asked the questions straight out and in time with the irregular bumping of the ASMR, I’ve tried signing, writing.  She never responds.  

In fact she’s never done a single thing other than watch me back until last night.  She reached out and took my hand and I stretched it outright and she stared into my eyes and all of a sudden my hairbrush lying on the dresser caught fire.  I yelped and I tried to jump up to smother the flame before it set off the smoke alarms but my limbs were heavy and I couldn’t move a millimeter.  It was scary and I whispered begs and pleas to the girl to let me go.  She stared like she didn’t understand what I was talking about.  She just took my hand and held onto it and she seemed to be using some force that traveled through her fingers and paralyzed me.  I wanted to panic but she made sure my eyes were locked on mine and little by little I calmed down and then she let me go. 

I ran over to the hairbrush but it wasn’t on fire anymore.  There was no sign it had ever been on fire.  It was in one piece, no scorch marks, no ash, no smell of smoke in the air.  Nothing for the smoke alarms to pick up.  And that wasn’t the weirdest part of the whole thing, but the fact that I managed to set fire to something I wasn’t looking at.  I’ve never done that before but I was looking dead-on-balls into the girl’s eyes the whole time. Was it even real? Also, I was in a calm mood when I did it.    

May 8

I’ve barely left my room in days.  I’ve been skipping dinner, eating fistfuls of nuts out of the pantry, not showering, the whole nine. Mom and Dad are worried but as long as I’m not trying to leave again I think they’re just trying to let me work through shit.  Bless em. 

 I won’t be like this for long though. Everything’s changed for me.  I get it now.  

I still don’t know anything about her.  I don’t know what she did or what I did or what exactly happened.  I don’t know whether she really exists or if she’s some part of my mind like some guilt or trauma or something I’ve suppressed. I don’t want to.  None of that stuff is the teensiest bit relevant. It’s the furthest thing from relevant.  

The diary thing is hard to do right now because what I’m feeling is just that, a feeling, an overpowering feeling or rather many many overpowerfing feelings that I’m having real trouble translating into something I can write down.  What I can say is I see now that what happened in my life couldn’t have happened any other way.  Everything had to happen like this.  I couldn’t not have been born like this.  I couldn’t have had that accident and burned that girl up.  It was all necessary and everything I thought was just random shit luck was in fact leading to something spectacular.  

Most of what I’m learning has to do with the real nature of fire.  In school they will tell you fire is an oxidation reaction, something to do with atoms losing electrons, matter releasing energy and a bunch of fake gay shit. What’s real is this.  Fire exists by itself.  There are lots of different kinds of fire and a lot of them we can’t even see or detect.  It’s everywhere, it’s a kind of flowing energy that helps build all the things we can see and touch, one of the pillars the universe is built on. It’s a thread that’s woven through us, it builds things and binds them all together.  And when we actually set something on fire, when we light a match, or a lighter, or build a fire in the fireplace, crack on a torch, burn gasoline vapor inside an engine, that’s just the outward expression of fire, its flower, like we’re punching a hole in reality and letting a tiny bit of the fire come out.  It’s kind of like how the part of the mushroom that we can see is just the fruiting body, and there’s much much more of it twisting and curling and rooting underneath the surface.  That’s what the girl is teaching me.

I’m training my brain.  I don’t need the videos anymore, I can just imagine that noise drrrrrrrrrr drrrrrrrrrrr drrrrrrrrrrr and conjure her up whenever I want to and she sticks around, I’m confident I can get her to stay around me permanently.  And when she’s around she helps me tap into the fire that’s inside everything.  I can start fires with the snap of a finger now.  I can start fires through the glasses.  I can start fires in places I’m not even looking at, places behind me, in other rooms.  

May 12

My eyes are changing.  My vision is adapting.  There is no part of the Earth I can go that’s dark anymore.  I see the fire in everything.  At first it was just tiny golden threads but they’ve thickened and blossomed into great hardy pipes that crisscross and outline everything I see and stretch across apparently empty air, how do I describe how they look, they’re bright like staring straight into the sun but I can still see everything clearly through them, and people, people they appear to me surrounded with fire like an oil-dipped torch, just like the girl appears to me all the time now and I see the fire radiating off their bodies and I see it shuffling around in their veins and I see it blooming under their skin.  

But it’s a mistake to think my “condition” (what a hilarious term for it) was ever localized to my eyes.  It circulates through my whole body, through every cell.  And I’m stretching it out, testing my limbs like a baby.  The girl’s helping me. She just points at something and I can move the fire there, I can make it gather like it’s drawn by a magnet. I stare at my own hands and there’s fire on them and in them, and the girl touches them and shows me how the fire flickers, swirls, bursts.  I can move the different kinds of fire around my own body, stoke it, make it burn bright where it’s needed.  I don’t need to sleep anymore, sleep is just the feeding of one of our life’s fires and I can do whatever I want with that, I barely need to eat for the same reason.  And I can make all different kinds of fire, invisible fire, heatless fire, fire that floats in midair.  Every time I learn about a new kind of fire I learn of dozens more.  There is no end to the fire.  All is fire.  

May 19

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May 22

I read through some old diary entries on a whim.  I barely remember anything they talk about.  Has it really only been a handful of weeks?  I feel like it’s been years since the girl came and brought the fire with her, wielding it in both fists like bouquets.

  A lifetime has passed since I stepped into the fire.  I look at the time before as I do the time before I learned to talk, a cloudy time full of inarticulate yearnings and urges.  

I try to picture the people I wrote about.  I try to remember things we did together.  It’s like remembering dreams I had.  Their faces are smooth and blank.  Their bodies move herky-jerky like marionettes.  I try to recapture the intense feelings they inspired in me but I might as well get worked up over an anecdote someone else told me.  The things I wanted are nonsense.  

I’m changing, I know.  I don’t know whether it’s good or bad because I don’t know what good or bad are supposed to mean anymore.  I’ve broken off orbit around this planet and I’m drifting toward the girl.  

May 29th

Last day of school.  I’m going to go back to school today for the last time.  I don’t belong there anymore.  But everyone needs to see.  This stuff is too valuable to keep to myself. I need to bring it to them while I still remember who they are, or even what they are.  

When I get to school I’m going to going to cover the whole edifice with fire.  Keep everybody from going out.  It’ll scare them certainly but they need to see.  This.  

I’ll drape myself in fire and walk through the hallways.  Draw them into the auditorium.  Make them all gather to watch me.  I’ll wrap myself in swirls of fire.  I’ll make the fire rise out of their own skins.  Help them see what’s inside me is inside them too.  I’ll twirl.  I’ll shine bright like the splitting of an atom. I’ll disappear.  And after that I’ll be…elsewhere.  I don’t know where that is yet but I’ll be magnet-pulled to it.  

I’m printing this out and leaving it behind to everyone I loved and everyone I hated because you’re all the same to me now. That sounds very heartless, I’m aware, but I don’t mean it that way.  My stupid little loves and hates aren’t worth a grain of sand compared to what I’ve got to share.  

In particular I’m leaving this behind to Mom and Dad.  I don’t really feel any kinship with you anymore but I know I owe you a lot and you’ve suffered a lot for me and it’s only right to let you know some things.  No one feels comfortable reading their teen daughter’s diary but you need to know what my state of mind was. It’ll help you appreciate how much better off I am now.  This sounds like I’m committing suicide but I’m not.  I won’t be dead.  I’ll be the opposite of dead.  I’ll be everywhere. I’m going to see if I can join the fire burning in the center of the universe, and if I could put it into words I’d tell you how to do it too, but I can’t.  I can only hope that this big show I’m making will make its mark on the world, start people talking, start a fire, and hopefully you can study as I have and meet me here.  

The girl is tugging my hand and leading me outdoors. Her eyes are so imploring, I can’t ignore them. Goodbye