August 7, 1999

It was hot and balmy today, the kind of heat that only New York brings in, enveloping you with the memory of a thousand words and feelings, a million smells and sounds.

The best days of my life were that summer, Kenny. Somedays, I'll be driving by and look over, as if you're still there, waiting for me. I can't explain how or why but since you've gone far far far away, I've always had this in me, waiiting. I have so many things I want to know, to say to you. Seeing you would be enough. I do remember the night you died. I never felt so safe going to sleep... when the glitter faded in the morning.

Could you help me figure me out? You always had this way... everyone said it at your wake, and there you lie, looking peaceful. I don't remember the funeral, but the wake, that image of you lying there, that picture never left me. If I could have stopped the car that evening I would; but I was a kid. I knew what was going to happen, even before you did, I can't explain how, but I felt it, like a much dreaded departure. Only you left, and I've stayed in that summer all this time. I need you now more than ever.

Kenny, I've fucked up again.

I don't blame anyone. It wasn't his fault he couldn't speak up. It wasn't his fault he moved to Shanghai. It wasn't his fault he didn't know me. It isn't their fault the doves all turned out to be paper bags. And now here I am, the child nobody wanted to begin with, alone in a world where everything real is out of my reach and I sit with my pretty distractions; content because I don't know any better. Sometimes I feel like I'm a child again, standing at a counter with only 75 cents in my hand, admiring all the items for a dollar. I know I'm never going to get it, Kenny, but you just can't help wanting.

There are things in my life that I can't change. I can't bring Jags back from Shanghai. I can't undo all the things I said, the things I did to make that happen. I can't undo the things I said to Chris. I can't make Crimson forgive me; I can't change that I won't be seventeen forever. I can't bring myself to call Derek again, and agree, you're right, Der, I'm only human. I can't undo the things I did to my housemates because closeness, it scares me. I can't change all the times I've spent, hating everyone who's left me... hating every last thing that represented any form of feeling. I can't change the fact that my entire life I've never felt as if the people around me really knew me, that I was really a part of everything around me and that nothing was going to change that. I can't undo the night you died, and this feeling of abandonment that I've lived with since. I feel sometimes I've relived that funeral more times than necessary. I feel sometimes, I did this to myself. I've never stopped feeling that the bottom would fall out from beneath me, time and time again.

Kenny, it always had. Am I pulling it, I wonder? I want to be happy for them, I really want to say,... but the words never form because the music starts playing and there I am again, fourteen years old with the world slipping away; right out from underneath me.

I'm quite fragile, really.

Realise that. See me, see past the lipgloss that I am who I am and I can't change it until I know how. Look at me like you never really did and tell me, tell me you see her, the little girl beaten down, the fourteen year old who had everything she knew yanked from her grasp in one evening, the woman who's engagement broke up over a fight about a cat scratch, the American mindless plaything of a man who never knew her worth, the person trying to get out of this fight alive.




I want everyone to know I'm going to be okay because I have to be. I can't let the things that will never change hold me down. Someday, I'm sure, I'll understand it all. I'm going to keep moving. I'm going to succeed in everything I desire and you can watch me while I rise, up and away from this house, from this city, from all the people who let me down... I'm going to do this even if it hurts every step. I can't give up due to dissappointments reverberating throughout my brief history. I've got do it, for me, for Seamus, for whoever I am and was meant to be. I learned to be strong because I had to; even alone I can't stop laughing. Reliving this heartbreak, I've got to get over it, no matter how much it hurts, I've got to finish this and do it the best I can. You have to stand up straighter when you feel need to collapse. I'm not happy and I can't mask that, but changing it is up to me.

So promise me, I'm not alone...