"Well, it's the end, isn't it?"

I stared at her through tear-wet eyes. She was hurt by my bold and unrelenting expression, I could see it in her face.

My cell phone rang from the table across the room. We both ignored it. I opened my mouth to let a cry escape, but the words "I think this is the end, Nancy" replaced it.

"You'll stay in touch?" Her eyes were glassy as she raised a delicate hand to her cheek. A tear was inching its way across her skin. "Please tell me you'll call as much as possible."

The first tingle of remorse pulsed through me. I spared a weak smile.

"Of course."

I didn't mean it. I wouldn't have enough time to call. And even if I did, I doubt the new family would let me call her. She's a detriment to my health. Ask her to teach me about the Spanish Inquisition, and you'll have no problem; but tell her to coach me on life, and I'll end up in a speeding car off a cliff.

I looked at her, the miserable and lonely person who was not my Nancy, and I turned away. I could hear her crying behind me as I retreated from my house. The door suppressed a soft thunk as she threw something against it.

"Kristen, please don't go," she called from inside. "Please don't go."

It's for the better, I thought wistfully. I love you, Nancy. But I can't live like this.

She was still screaming inside; I could hear her from the top step of the porch. "What about me?" she was shrieking. "What about me?"

I made my way down the front steps and into the darkness that unfolded before me. I was going home.

This is for you.

So, basically, everything I know and everything I have come to terms with is down the drain. Everything I've grown to appreciate and respect and cherish: it's all gone. I'm living with my dad now. I probably won't see any of you ever again.

Yeah. Be sad, be unhappy. I am. It's the death of a saleswoman. Things I know and are familiar with have been turned upside-down. As of Sunday, the 8th of November, in the year 2008, I am no longer Kristen the weird girl who goes to your high school. I am Kristen the weird girl who goes to a high school an hour and a half away from you. So, basically, you all got your wish. I'm gone. See you later -- but probably not.

I've been told by people that this world would be a better place if I wasn't in it anymore. Well, you got half of your wish. I'm not in your world anymore. I am now part of a six-person family residing in rural New Jersey. I am sorry to all the people I hurt in this process. Take it up with the mother that threw me out, if you have serious issues with this. None of this was my fault. All I did was tell her I didn't think the greeting card she was looking for existed. And this happened.

Call it defeat, call it a white flag, call it giving up. I call it change, and change isn't always a bad thing.

This post is the first of several that will merely keep you updated. I can't write in my free time anymore, due to my father's inability to update his home internet connection to DSL, and his wife's restrictions. I can't write in this anymore unless I'm with my mother, and since she kicked me out, that probably won't be for a while.

I'm in my dad's work office right now, which is the only reason I'm posting. I wish you all the best of luck in whatever you do.

Expect to see my name in print sometime in the next year, with the dedication that is meant for you. Yeah, you. The person who denied me of happiness. The person who told me I'd never be who I am today. The person who broke me down, beat me up, and left me in the middle of nowhere with no cash and no hope. Yeah, you: the person who brought me to tears with inspiration and glory; you who told me I could be something more. You who told me to keep going, to keep living, to keep thriving. This is to the person who loved me so much that she couldn't handle living in my grief. She's me, but she isn't me anymore. I needed to escape. I needed to break free from the chokehold that was my old town.

Expect to see my name in the news sometime soon. I'll be doing what I always wanted to: I'll be living, sure as hell I will.

Expect to see me flourish and thrive. I will most certainly not care about the past, nor the future. I'm living for Tuesday, November 18th, 2008, in my dad's office writing a blog entry, probably the last one for a while.

Expect me to be your memory. I probably won't visit much. I live an hour and half away from you now. If this hurts you, if it damages our relationship, I'm terribly sorry; people like you make me reconsider while I'm awake at night, lying in a foreign bed in a foreign room that will soon be called mine.

Expect to see me cry. Oh, yes, there will be sadness. There will be anger. I will have second thoughts more than once. But the instability and lack of structure at my old house made it just that: not a home. I can't live with myself anymore. So I reconstructed "me." My name is Kristen, & you better believe you're not going to bring me down.

I start the local high school tomorrow. Wish me luck: hopefully I won't get lost on my first day and be late to class. Although, knowing me...

"Until you get that kid out of her environment, nothing will change." My old friend said this. I love you, Nancy. The next post is dedicated to you.

This is to everyone who never believed in me. Thank you, and keep in touch.

SHE RETURNS.

I'm fine. I promise. I really am. I'm with my dad, at his house.

I start school here on Wednesday.

Wish me luck.

I miss you all terribly.

To hell with pain.

Share with me the joy of being a lost teenager. Share with me the agony of walking through a crowd of people and wishing every single one of them would stop looking at you like you like you're a walking plague. Share with me the tense silence of being given up on, the loneliness of being the odd one out.

I want to be the girl who I pretend to be. The girl who laughs loudly and giggles quietly and smiles broadly, and doesn't mind when people talk about her as if she isn't a beating heart. The girl who doesn't care about love, or being loved, or lack of love. She doesn't care how she looks, though she always looks perfect.

My best friend is the enemy I've concocted. She's beautiful and carefree, and easily manipulated and easily manipulates. I thought she'd be gone by now, but she's still standing beside me, hearing me talk badly about her. She's mad at me today, I'll be paying for this later. But I don't care if she knows whether I like her or not. Her sister is the one I like more. She's the real person who struggles to keep her head above the water. She can't swim. She can't swim.

May my downfall be the moments I let reality slip. May this neverending current of flowing pain that I call my game rip people away from their lovers, rip people's purity from their fingers and their necks, rip the coths of people's decency, and turn their lives upside-down.

He's the magician who coaxes me out from beneath the bed. I'm hiding in fear of the truth, and yet he still lures me out of hiding with just that. I feel so small, so miniscule, in comparison to his power. He's not the person you want to be. He's the person you used to be.

My mom gave up on me. She said so herself. "I've given up, Kristen," she said to me a week ago. "I don't know what you want me to do anymore." I want you to listen, Mom. I want someone to just sit down and listen to me, to look past me and see the lonely three-year-old who crawls into her corner of the universe and stays there for months. I want someone to coax this girl out. She just needs to be loved.

I want to be loved. That's all I want. I want to love and be loved and not have people tell stories about me in locker rooms, because I know they aren't true Sally, they're never true. All you wanted was to love and love and love. All you want is to be loved and loved and loved.

She wears blue eyeshadow and smoky stockings. She used to laugh with her best friend against the fence of the schoolyard, but ever since the friend stopped calling, she just leans against it alone with her head tilted to the sky. Her eyes are as green as envy, and her father says it's dangerous to be so pretty. Her father says it's dangerous to be so flighty. Her father says it's dangerous to stay in her life. Her father thinks it's too dangerous to help her.

To hell with this. To hell with the hushed voices of parents looking at me in disgust, to hell with the loud calls of hatred from across the cafeteria. To hell with the people who don't care why I do the things I do. To hell with hell. To hell with pain.

I'm in a corner of my universe, I'm in a corner of my mind.

I squint as the bright lights burn into my skin. It's the difference between myself and my actions that separates me from the girl sitting in the seat across the room: I know this.

The girl stretches and sighs. The pencil is in her hand again, she's scrawling down her thoughts; they seem to flow so easily. Her hand must grow tired, I wonder, from moving so quickly. How does she do it? Her handwriting is thin and beautiful. I search through the files in my brain to remember her name. Kristen, I think; yes, definitely Kristen. She looks up, almost as if she heard her name in my head, and stares at me. I feel the urge to look away, but something prevents me from doing so. She looks so friendly, her smile brightly burning a hole through my wicked conscience. She looks so worn down; I can see the strain in her muscles as she turns back to her paper.

It all comes back to me with a jolt of electricity. She's the one Stacy was talking about, I remember. It's so strange how this girl, this Kristen, sitting in front of the teacher's desk with her head bent parallel to the paper on that table, is the evil witch that Stacy despises so much. She looks so friendly.

It's been a while since she's been in school; that's why I have such difficulty remembering her name. Something happened with her brother, I think. He was that kid who was expelled for--what was it? Gang involvement, I think that was it. He was hit by a car, or something like that. She's tutored at home now. Wait; what's she doing in school then?

She shifts her weight uncomfortably in her seat. She can feel my eyes on her, it's evident. Looking up, clearly flustered, she stares back at me. I can't break the gaze. God, her eyes are so sad. Sad and green, they're boring a hole right through me.

I feel a small tingle of something I can't describe, it slides through my spine, it's thick and it hurts. I want to shove myself up from my chair and run to her side, tell her to explain. I need to take her in my arms and stroke her auburn hair, tell her things will be okay in the end. Her eyes harden and her gaze turns to fire. She rejects my help, she wants nothing to do with me or my affection. 

I feel your pain, Kristen. I am human too. What happens to you happens to the world; you are one significant grain of sand in a desert of pain. We all have our stories, Kristen. We are our stories.

Kristen's shoulders lose their edges and hardness. She draws her leg up to her chest and gently drops her head to her knee. When she looks up after several seconds, I see that her tears have left a gentle patch of moisture on her jeans. The eyes that once bore a hole into me are now soft and tired. I watch her hand hastily wipe away the ever-present stream of conscious pouring from the green creeks in her eyes. Her lips part. My lungs tighten.

"I have no story," she screams, so quietly I almost don't hear. "I am not a sob story."

The music is so loud.

I can't hear myself think. Nancy is staring at me again.

"He left me, Nancy."

"Well?" she asks, her voice loud over the music. She slides the pencil behind her ear. A smug look of appreciation on her lips alerts me that she isn't joking around.

"You were right," I admit.

"Yes, I was, Kristen." She folds her arms across her chest and looks at me for a few lyrics.

The ball's in my court. I take time with my response, look at her cropped, wavy, brown hair; her dark-coffee eyes, her tattoos, her eyebrow piercing. She's everything I wish I was. Her lips are being pinched by her sharp incisor teeth. The same teeth that bite me in the ass day after day.

The music grows softer with the ending of the song. I wish I could express to her the agony I feel, that these men express in their lyrics. Their voices howl the words that won't surface in my throat. I can write everything down flawlessly with a pen and a notebook, but ask me to speak out loud, and I stutter.

Nancy raises one eyebrow. She wants an answer.

I wish I could melt into a puddle of remorse.

I light up a cigarette. "What now?" I reply coolly. I inhale deeply, let the smoke roll from my lungs. Mom's gonna kill me for smoking in the house again, I think. Oh well.

"Nothing now. Now we wait and we see. We observe the mess that occurs, and the happiness that divides. We listen to the rain pouring on our rooftops, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and we love as if we've never been through it all. We forget the "what if" sequences and we breathe through baby lungs. We look to the sky and think, 'dear god, I'm alive.' That's what we do next."

I stamp out the cigarette, watch the ashes smother themselves against the concrete, watch the smoke swirl above the little dead body that was once alive and dancing between my lips. I look back at Nancy. She is staring at me.

"Maybe I'm not meant to wait, Nancy. Maybe this isn't for me. Maybe this entire life isn't for me. Maybe I was dealt the wrong hand. God or whoever's up there, he's smacking himself on the forehead and thinking, 'whoops, I screwed up on that one.' Nancy, you don't know how difficult it is to be me. Don't look at me like that, it's not like I'm going to go run off and do something stupid. In reality, I'm stupid. How could I possibly still be here, living through this stupidity?"

She keeps looking at me.

"I think we've made major progress today," she says finally.

I roll my eyes. "Can we please get back to my math project?"

A soft chuckle, and she's got the pen down from behind her ear, scribbling corrections on my paper. Her handwriting is so soft, so feminine, preaching but still modest.

Thanks for making me start all over, Nancy, I think.

Her head, bent downward to the paper, lifts slightly. Her smile is wide.

Not again.

"Love isn't something you say. Love is something you feel."

I'm sitting on my bedroom floor, the middle of the world, a corner of my universe. I am a being. I am a being.


I'm thinking about today in a retrospective truth. Did today even happen? Was yesterday in my past? I am the beginning. I am the end.


I'm thinking about yesterday in disbelief. I'm unwinding before I can build myself back up. I'm the little girl in the corner of her universe, insignificant to all except herself. I'm the little girl in the corner of her house, the corner of her room, the corner of her mind. I'm unwinding before I can build myself back up.

My throat is sore with the acidic burning of recurring vomit, and my stomach is churning, and my head is spinning in time with the music. It's pouring out of the speakers, it's going to explode, I'm going to explode.

It's been made fairly clear to me by now that screaming and crying does nothing. The most I can do is keep living through this, living through all of the mishaps and mistakes. "It'll pay off one day," they always told me. "It'll pay off when I'm gone," I'd always think.

It paid off.

Waiting a year to find someone better, someone who would care as much, someone who would nurture. Waiting a year for the tears and sadness to end. I'm so thankful. I'm so lost. I'm so helpful. I'm so angry.

I'm shivering in a frenzy of excitement. I am a being. I am a being.


I'm shivering in a frenzy of enlightenment. I am his being. I am his being.