The sun beat down on me so hard, I could feel my paper white skin burning through my school uniform. Did I care? No. It was Louisiana, and I was bound and determined to make this dead tree branch fall and at least severely injure me before my mom was through grading papers. This was my goal everyday in second grade. I’d hang and pull on that branch until the sun went down on days she had teacher conferences. I was one severely depressed six year old when that tree was cut down. By the time third grade rolled around, I found myself spending my school days thinking of ways I’d physically and emotionally torture my teacher and any students that she liked. I hated her. She hated me. She taught me math. I’ve hated math, and have been developing an odd attraction to the number six ever since. Fourth grade was the first year I “crushed on” boys. It was also the first time I realized that I needed to hide part of who I was, and taught myself how to do it over the next couple years. A girl about a year younger than me pushed me out of the way to go down the slide so she could be the “engine” of the human train we were going to make for the third time. I stopped us both halfway down and kicked her in the stomach and sides full-force what seemed like ten times, then ran up the slide and out of the other side of the play structure to “cover my tracks”. It worked. She got a spanking for lying. Unfortunately, I got a spanking for laughing at her the whole time she got hers. Over the years it just became normal to lie about every thought that went through my mind. I’d come up with different personalities to test around people my mind deemed too stupid to notice. If it went well, the personality went into a sort of “vault” in my mind in case I needed it later. If it failed, I’d just keep trying until the personailty worked to gain myself something of value (someones approval, for example), and add it the vault later. But one thing was sure, I could NEVER be my true self around anyone. Even at a young age, something told me that people just wouldn’t understand.

There was a time when I felt normal. Like I fit in. Like people liked me. Like I liked them. Like I wasn’t completely crazy. Unfortunately, I was in first grade, then. The older I got, the more things changed. The more I changed. The more my friends changed. The more I hated people. The more they hated who they thought I was. And the more I didn’t feel accepted any longer. Was it because I was already going crazy all on my own in the second grade? Or was everyone secretly this way? Needless to say, by the age of nineteen, i’m quite unwell.

Prolouge of sorts?

More after questions.

beg school

mid 2011

end

Staring at these walls, reading these journals, I can’t help but wonder if it was all just a dream to her. All these things i’m reading feel real, like they belong to me. But I feel so much better here. Maybe that’s why I was brought here. So they can make me feel this way. Calm. Not happy. Just content. Or was I like that before, too? Have I been here a week? a year? an eternity? I don’t know. I don’t care. I just think it’s strange that these… memories… dreams… whatever they are… are all in my handwriting.