The Diary of an Angel

May 4

Darkness holds sway over my life,
Nothing can replace my shining knife,
Nobody knows my internal strife,
Nobody knows how I hate my life.

         Those are the first lyrics in my new song—“Life Is Hopeless.”  I think they’ll be quite a hit with my band members.  I hope so, anyway.  Tortured Meanderings is one of the only things that make sense in my life right now.  Really, the only thing.  Jonathan and Trey are my life-savers, though I doubt they know it.

         I hate college.  My music classes pile me with homework, until I drown under the avalanche, and my creative writing classes do likewise.  Besides, my professor also looks at me strangely when I submit my song lyrics for assignments.  She seems to think I’m like a serial killer or something.  Ha.  Yeah, right.  I’m the farthest thing from it—unless you count it as wanting to hurt yourself.

College sucks, that is no lie,
My homework makes me want to cry.
Papers and pencils and too-big books
And all of my classmates worrying about their looks.

         Maybe that could be a new song.  “College Sucks.”  I think it could be a big hit.  Well, at least on campus.  With the students.  The professors might have a different take.  I still want Tortured Meanderings to be able to perform on campus.  So maybe not that song—not, at least, until I graduate. 

         I wish I could disappear.  Nobody really likes me, anyway, except for Johnny and Trey.  I guess my adoptive family does, but that’s about it.  Still, I’d rather be with them than my drunken SOB of a father.  I still have nightmares about him hitting me, which sucks.

         On to something happy!  My birthday’s in two weeks.  I’ll turn twenty.  Oh, the excitement is killing me.

         I have to go, Dear Diary (God, that sounds so childish!).  My homework awaits me.

May 5

Take the pressure off of me,
I’m not going the way you want me to be,
I’m not going to see what you want me to see,
Why can’t you see I just want to be me?

         Ah, scholarly expectations!  Professor Vanier gave me back my “emotional writing” assignment.  It was the lyrics for “Life Sucks Then You Die.”  She gave it a B plus.  Said it was too “angsty.”  Well, hello!  That’s what you wanted it to be, you stupid cow!  Emotional!  What do you think angst is?  Freaking emotion!

         I think that if it wasn’t for the fact I need that class to graduate, I would drop it in a second.  How I despise Creative Writing.  And then that smarmy know-it-all bastard “Lucas Willmore,” like he’s oh-so-special got an A plus for his “wonderful poetry.”  Yeah, right.  I know for a fact the guy copies stuff off the Internet.  So somebody else had wonderful poetry.  For all I know, it might have been me!  I have poems and lyrics posted on the Web.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.  I tripped him in the hallway after class, and he didn’t figure out it was me.  He blamed some other guy, some other preppy freak, and they got into a fist-fight right in the hall.  It was kind of funny.  But Prof. Vanier broke it up.  And called Campus Security.  And yelled at me for “looking so inappropriate to the situation.”  What am I supposed to look like?  Miss Gloomy “Oh My God They’re Fighting What a Horrible Thing Woe Is Me?”  Yeah, right.

         Our next assignment is something “happy.”  I know just how to fool her.  The bliss, the sheer exultant joy…of somebody who’s dying.  I bet that will work.  She’ll never know what hit her.  (Wicked Evil Grin).

May 6

I can’t believe I’m feeling this,
This feels like heavenly bliss,
No more pain, no more sorrow
No more sadness today or tomorrow.

I can’t believe how I feel,
I never knew this could be real,
I didn’t know the pain of living,
Or how much horror people are giving.

Happiness is filling me,
Clears my eyes, helps me to see.
Erase the joyous misery,
This, I know, is the key.

         That’s what I turned into Prof. Vanier for my “happy” poem.  If I post it anywhere, I’m going to change “This, I know, is the key,” to “Death, I know, is the key.” I wonder if she’ll figure it out.  I mean, there is no way somebody alive is going to think “no more pain, no more sorrow.”  That’s just not how the world works.  Is she smart enough to grasp that?  I honestly don’t know.

         I do know Mr. Preppy “Lucas Willmore” copied his off a Robert Browning poem.  Idiot.  Like Prof. Vanier isn’t going to catch him.  She specialized in Robert Browning.  If she doesn’t figure it out, she’s an even bigger moron than I credited her to be.

         At least Tortured Meanderings had a good practice today.  Being the lead singer rocks when your band mates are awesome, too.  Johnny and Trey worked their asses off, and really inspired me.  Trey said I sounded “tortured.”  Which is good, since the name of the band is “Tortured Meanderings.”  (Silly grin).

         It’s really fun to listen to Disturbed when you’re doing your homework.  Everything I write is starting to get a very heavy rock beat.

         Speaking of homework, I better finish doing it, or I’ll flunk the music quiz tomorrow about telling a major from a minor! 

May 7

         I’m writing a new song.  It’s called “Can You Love Me?”  The first verse goes like this:

My heart is scarred and very wary,
I don’t know if you can heal very
Well, or if you can heal at all,
But if you can love me, it’s you I’ll call.

         I like it pretty well.  It’s not bad, anyway.  Maybe then Jonathan will get the hint…sorry, but I’m pretty sure I love him.  He’s so cute, for one thing, with that short black spiky hair and those serious gray eyes.  And he’s very intelligent, loves Crime and Punishment like I do, has a very dry sense of humor, and he’s also so sweet to me.  He’s a great guitarist, too.  And he sings backup vocals.  He can sing any part, like me, which makes him all the more special.  In my eyes, anyway.

         Who am I kidding?  Johnny will never like me.  He has an on-again, off-again girlfriend.  Lucinda “Cheap Whore” Faraway.  “Cheap Whore” is her secret nickname among a select group of Johnny’s friends, including me.  I’m sorry, but she keeps cheating on him, and like doing it with half the football team in one night, and then going back to Johnny and telling him she’s “so sorry, never do it again, I promise.”  And he takes her back.  She’s got him wrapped around her pinky finger like taffy.  It’s sickening. 

         I guess she’s pretty—if you like blondes with big blue eyes and big boobs (which, I know for a fact, are fake).  She wears slutty clothes, blouses that show half her bra, and skirts that show the edges of her panties—if she wears any underwear, that is.  She’s an idiot, too—flunked Pre-Algebra two times.  And that was with a tutor.  So I really don’t know what Johnny sees in Lucy the Whore.

         This is depressing me.  I’ll go cry my makeup off—Goth makeup smudges so easily.  I’ve gone through two eyeliner pencils this month.  Oh, well.  The smudges kind of contribute to the look, too, so it’s not that bad.  Not if I was a preppy bubblegum girl like Lucy the Cheap Whore.  That’s something.

May 8

         Well, Prof. Vanier saw through my “happy poem” and ordered me to write another one.  So I wrote some tripe about bunnies and fluffy clouds.  I’m not going to desecrate this journal by writing it in here.  It was horrendous.  But I have no doubt she’ll lap it up just like she always does boring, unimaginative pap.  Lucas Cheater-Pants got an A, I was so unsurprised to see.  She didn’t even realize it was a poem from the subject of her doctoral thesis.  How stupid can you be?  Oh, well.  Thankfully, there’s only a week to go until the semester ends.  I just have to get through finals week.  God, that will be hell.  I haven’t been studying very much—too depressed.  On the other hand, my songwriting career has grown by leaps and bounds.  Dark emotions are great for inspiration.

         I wish that I could be happy again.  I know I was happy once—at least when my mom was alive.  Too bad my dad’s a total jerk-off.  I don’t really like being a “foster kid”, still living with my adoptive family even though I’m 19, but I’m going to move out when I’m 21, anyway, so that doesn’t matter as much.  It still sucks, though.

         A lot.

Mother, how I miss you here
When you hugged me, there was no more fear
No more frightening drunken rages,
No more torn pencil-stabbed pages.

I was happy being with you,
You told me to “be true to you.”
I wonder what you’d say if you could see me
And how I’m trapped, never to be free.

(Chorus) I don’t fit in wherever I go,
I find it so hard to just say “so?”
I always want just to belong,
I’m even shouting it out in this song.

Daddy used to hurt and beat me,
Yet the one who really hurt was me.
I’d rail at myself in my mind,
About how my worth was so hard to find.

(Chorus)

So now I sit and rail against fate,
And wonder if it’s just too late.
Mother, how I loved you so,
I find it so damn hard to let go.

May 9

         I’m writing this from a sterile white hospital bed tucked away in a corner of the psych ward, an IV taped firmly in my arm, and leather restraints ostentatiously obvious in the corner of the room.  I had to beg my adoptive mom to let me have my journal, but she smuggled it past the nurses.  The head nurse is like Godzilla, I swear.

         So I tried to kill myself last night.  I don’t know why—honest to God, I don’t.  I just came home, drew a bath, grabbed my razor, and slit open my wrists.  My adoptive mom, my mother now, saved me.  She called 911, put pressure on my wrists, soaked through two towels, and stayed with me the whole time in the ambulance.  She never once left my side.  I’m still amazed.  I thought I wasn’t as important as her other children because I’m just a skinny little brown-haired girl with nothing but intelligence and rebellion, who had to leave her family because her dad beat her up, but I was wrong.  I am important.

         It’s so weird thinking that, writing that.  I never used to think that way.  I really did think Mom (how strange to write that!) just cared about her precious real children, the ones she gave birth to.  But no, she cares about me, too.  She told me that when I woke up this morning, stroking the hair back from my face, tears glistening in her eyes.

         “I love you, Angel,” she told me, her voice husky from crying too much.  Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, too.  It made me feel guilty as hell inside, because it was my fault she’d been crying.  “You’re an angel from heaven, honey.  You’re my angel.  Why would you ever want to hurt yourself?”

         I couldn’t answer her.  I just stared at her and tears welled up in my eyes—my big brown eyes that were so unlike her blue ones—and then she hugged me, careful not to dislodge the IV or disturb the pristine white bandages around my wrists. 

         I was in a hospital gown, my hair was stringy and unwashed, I had an IV in my arm, my wrists felt tight and achy, I hadn’t eaten since yesterday…but I have never felt more loved.

         I’ll never feel unloved again.