How long? Until we find our way In the dark and out of harm You can run away with me Anytime you want

So I'm supposed to be working on my personal narrative rough draft right now. . .but I've got to share something first. Last night Collins and I hung out. And by hang out I mean we sat at McConn for four hours and talked about pretty much everything. I'm not exaggerating either. Collins unknowingly answered a lot of questions I'd had about him. It was refreshing really. And did I mention that I told him I like him? And you know what. . .I'd venture to say that we are better friends now. Not just because of that, but last night we talked about everything. It's kind of weird really that you can learn so much about someone in such a short space of time. I think the weirdest part is I feel like I know his whole family too. . .If I'm being completely honest with myself, yes I do think that I like Collins a little bit more now that we've talked about so many things. . .but in reality it's okay because I don't see Collins and I getting together. . .ever really. And that's okay with me. Because I've come to the conclusion that I don't need someone to be happy. I don't need a relationship. But I'm human right? So of course I'm going to be attracted to guys every now and then. Give me a break will you? I'm only 18. . .

Okay I really have to keep working on this personal narrative. . .

Something New That I've Discovered.

1. Being Friends Is Actually Pretty Awesome.

Because it turns out that guys actually text their friends back.

And they say hi to their friends when they see them.

They make fun of their friends. And expect the same from them.

Oh and did I mention that guys talk to their friends? Like actually have real conversations with them. . .

2. Patience Works.

Because it turns out if I'm not texting a guy everyday. . .or everytime I see him. . .well sooner or later. . .he actually texts me. . .Yeah it might take forever. . .but sooner or later you get a text that says "Have you been to the art show yet?"

And you know what. . .when you hang out on HIS terms. . .things just seem to go better. . .

3. Studying=Good For Grades.

Okay. . .I don't know why it took me so long to figure this out but I think that's pretty self-explanatory. . .

4. Sleep is IMPORTANT!

So I've got a 7:50 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. . .and an 8:55 on MWF. . .so this whole being up at 2AM like I am now? Not happening any more. . .I only stay up on Friday nights.

So bed by midnight. . . .yes. Up by 7 or 8. . .unfortunately yes. . .

5. Finances Suck/Phone's Really Aren't That Important

Yeah money is disgusting. I hate it. And the lack of it. In fact because of the lack of it. . .I'll not have a phone for two weeks. . .but I mean I've been without my phone for longer than that. . .it's just a difficult adjustment. . .ya know?

Untitled.

I’m lkying here on omy beed and to be completely honest. I’m scared to death. I was just struck with an overwhelming sense to kill myself. I don’t know where it came from and I don’t know how to get rid of it. I’m panicking I’m freaking out. I’m hyperventilating. I don’t know what ot do Im scaring myself. The adrenaline rush is making my lip quiver and my hands are going numb and I n//fajhh;afjhg’j my back is starting to shurst and I can’t type riwkrite an I dcna’t control my legs and it’s freaking my out and I don’t knwlalkdhtod do I dontk kwhat to do I don’ know what do tod. Byug I jhave to keep ytpeing abecause if I don’t know I don’t know whats gonna happen. I really don’t . I don’t what else to do. Jesus please help me I’m almost imbobalized. I’m shaking so bad. I’vbre never felt like wretch like me I once lost but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see. I just wanna see, I’m the type of person who lets fear drive. I’m the type of guy lets it drive it. Cuz I’m addicted. I’m needy I’m lost without you. I need you. I need you. Amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see. Amazing grace how sweet. It saved a wretch like me. You know I’m found. You’re amazing. You’re amazing. You are. It feels so bad when your lost. It’s amazing how God works. Shaking is down to a minimum. My face has quit vibrating. My breathing is normal. The tears are starting to subside. I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before in my life. Never. Not even when I was 14 and considered suicide. Yeah I had my share of crying sessions but NOTHING like that. I should explain. I’ve been working on Christmas presents all day and after Annie got home she started to work on her homework at the table with me. Well she’s doing like long division and long multiplication and well about an hour and a half later she’s got one PACE done and has got like 6 math problems done. Well mom and dad told her she couldn’t go to church until her homework was done and she got upset. And dad started going off on her about how if she had been doing her homework the whole time she wouldn’t be in this situation. I got pissed. Because truthfully Annie HAD been doing her homework the entire time and when she wasn’t it was MY fault because I was distracting her. And the more dad went off on her the more she protested and dad got off on her for protesting. My little sister was sitting there curled up in the chair crying her eyes out! It killed me that dad didn’t care! That she was getting in trouble for it! Who the fuck continues to berate their child while they are curled up in a ball crying? Who the fuck does that? It’s an honest question. He didn’t even get off his ass to look her face when he was doing it either. He just sat in the living room and yelled at her to stop crying and to do her homework because it was her fault she had to do in the first place. No sense of pity. Nothing. I wanted to scream. But I knew that would work. So I said to Annie in a quiet voice to ignore him and just work on her homework. And dad heard me. WHAT THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO SAY TO HER!? WAS I SUPPOSED TO IGNORE HER? I HAD TO COMFORT HER IN SOMEWAY OR ANOTHER. And my dad says. Do NOT tell my child to ignore me. And then starts mumbling about things he has to do because of me but he doesn’t actually mention they are all indirect jabs. And you know what. I told Annie to ignore him because in all honesty, it works. If you just tune out what he is saying. Just tune it out and focus on anything else. ANYTHING ELSE. Sooner or later he’ll shut up. He’ll stop. I know it’s an awful thing to say to someone. But it works. If you just don’t focus on what he’s saying then you don’t talk back to him. And then he runs out of things to say. I didn’t mean for her to ignore him all the time. Just in that instant. When she was so distraught at the accusations that he was throwing at her. Dad let her go to church. And it got me thinking of all the things I’d like to say. And the next thought in my mind was. You can write them all a letter. A separate one for dad. A separate one for mom. And a separate one for the chillens. And when you die. You can leave them there to find along with your body. My immediate reaction to these thoughts was I don’t want to kill myself. Look at what I have. Do you know what that voice said? You’re telling me to look at what you have. Honey I’ve looked at what you have. And it ain’t worth it. You’ve got parents who don’t know how to show their love to you or your siblings, they treat their other kids better than they treat you. You’re failing at college and if you don’t fail out then you’ll probably drop out because you can’t pay for it. Your parents aren’t helping you. You’ve been crushing on Caleb for the past 4 or 5 months. And you’re STILL holding out hope? You don’t even know what friend to call because lets face it. You don’t think any of them could handle it. You don’t think they could deal with it. You have to deal with everything yourself. You can’t honestly tell me that living till God knows when doing things entirely on your own is WORTH IT? Just end it now. Trust me it’ll be so much easier than this. So much easier. I flipped out. I started hyperventilating. I turned on my computer and I started playing The Almost. And then I started typing this. Abbey came down and told me mom said that it was my turn to do dishes. I asked her to tell mom that I would do them, but right now, I couldn’t. I need to change. I can’t ever let that happen again. This is the first thing I’m talking to Brandon about. Because I need help. I need to know how to change it. I’m going to start by asking for prayer. Then I’m going to do the dishes. And then I’m probably going to write some more.

I’m going to work through this.

I sent 10 people this message at 6:33pm

“I need you to pray for me. Pray really hard. I really need it. It has nothing to do with my Grandpa. And I can’t explain it right now. Just please. Pray for me.”

In less than 30 minutes I got 9 replies:

Aleshia 6:34pm—Will do. Love ya hun.

Stephanie 6:35pm—Okay, im praying. Right now L I hope youre okay. I love you!

Faith 6:35pm—Ok Lydia, I will!

Jessica 6:36pm—Are you ok baby?

Ana 6:40pm—Praying! And whatever is going on just focus. Focus on Christ and remain in constant prayer. Do this with faith! James 1:6! And remove yourself from any potentially sinful situation. I love you very much J

Liz 6:44pm—Are you alright?

Caleb 6:47pm—Ya sure no problem.

Bailey 6:56pm—I will darling. Love you

Ellen 6:57pm—Of course dear! Praying praying! Let me know if I can do anything for you!!

That voice is wrong. I quit doing things on my own a while ago. Yeah sometimes I think that I can do things alone but quite quickly I realize that I can’t do it. Those are only 9 of the numerous people I could have texted. I am not alone. And I know that those 9 people would be only a fraction of the people I would affect if I killed myself. It’s not even an option and I have no idea where it came from. But I’m not going to let it happen again. I’m not ever going to let myself get that low. STUPID VOICE IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!? It’s just sitting back there. Repeating it over and over and over again Just kill yourself JustkillyourselfJustkillyourselfjustkillyourselfjustkillyourself. AND IT WON’T SHUT UP. I’m not going to fucking kill myself! First things first. I really am going to write those letters. I’m going to get everything out there, but I’m not going to give the letters to them. So here goes the first one:

Dear Dad,

I don’t even know what to say to you right now. So I’m just going to say everything that I’ve wanted to say for a while. Just stop it. Stop with your little mumblings about how we never listen to you and how “you just live here” Shut up. Okay. We love you. I don’t know why. Honestly with the way you act sometimes I really don’t know why we love you. But we do. Can’t you just remember that? Do you have to guilt us all the time? Oh and stop with your bipolarness. REALLY. You don’t flip-flop that fast? You do too! One second your yelling at your kids at the top of your lungs and two seconds later your trying to get on our good side. I know the little kids don’t realize it. But I do. You’re not teaching us anything good. Go ahead and blame your mom and your many father figures. I don’t care who you blame you still do it. You act on impulse and once you’ve had time to think you try to do nice things to help us forget. I know you think that I’m just some teenager spouting off about stuff I don’t understand. But here are the facts. What you are doing to use. It’s abuse. It’s verbal. It’s emotional. And I don’t think you realize it. The way you sat there and refused to believe. Literally refused to believe. Like you said the words “I refuse to believe” that Annie sat there and did her homework and proceeded to yell at her when she was crying her eyes out. Don’t tell me that’s right and that its just parenting. I don’t need to be a parent to know that you have to at least LISTEN to your children before passing judgment on them. . .or is that just how you’re supposed to treat everyone else? Are you supposed to treat your children like crap? And do you know how emotionally scarring it is for us to say “I love you Dad” and you to say “You do not.” Seriously? You talk about impressionable. How impressionable we all are. What the hell is that going to impress on us. That we don’t know what we feel? Forgive me if I’m seeing a trend. You yell at the kids. You take a second to think. Then you be extra nice to them. Sound right? Don’t deny it. It’s true. Okay so the kids yell at you or mom. They take a second to think. Then they say I Love You. Do you see it or am I being crazy. Because what I see is that you taught them that. They followed your example. Don’t EVER tell a child that they don’t love you. EVER. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done for us. NEVER. EVER. EVER. Tell a child in a condescending tone “you do not” after they say “I love you” it is probably the lowest you could get. I’d honestly rather you hit us. I know that sounds terrible but it’s true. I walk around claiming that while, I’m sure my parents love me, I get the feeling that they don’t like me. And you know what. I STICK UP FOR YOU. You and all the shit that you do and say that makes us kids feel like crap. I STICK UP FOR YOU. It’s a case of battered child if I ever saw one. Do you know why I stick up for you? Because I Love You Daddy. I still freaking call you daddy. I stick up for you because I love you. I ignore you because I love you. I tell you these things because I love you. I want you to know how I feel. I want you to know that while, yeah your parenting sucks balls sometimes, if I could go back and tell my younger self yes or no to this family. I would tell them yes. I’d do this all over again. Maybe the second time around I’d stick up for my sibling more than I already do. You’d love that wouldn’t you? I understand that you had a really bad childhood growing up. I do. I’m living my life with rejection and abandonment issues that you couldn’t imagine. I know what it’s like to think “If only I would just die, then everything would be okay” do you remember when you told me about that? That on the way home from work you saw all those trees and thought about hitting each and every one of them. You said you thought if you died then we could pay the bills off and we would all be okay. Do you remember what I said? Because I remember it as clear as day. I said four words. “But we wouldn’t be” and you didn’t say anything back. We love you dad. No matter what we do that tells you we don’t. Even if we actually say the words “I don’t love you” we do. We really do. I wish you’d remember that. I wish you’d be aware of that. I wish you’d realize how the things you say and do affect us. I wish you’d think before you act. I know that I sound like an ornery teenager but please, for like the 5^th time actually LISTEN and COMPREHEND something SERIOUS that I’M telling YOU. Please.

Well there we have it. My letter to my father. And now onto mom. . .this is gonna be. . .interesting.

Dear Mom,

I think you love Nathan more than me. There I said it. Go ahead and deny it. I know you want to so go ahead and do it to make yourself feel better. Are you ready? Okay I think you love Abbey, Raymond and Annie more than me. Not as much as Nathan, but more than me. You can deny this too. But I’m just telling you now, it’s not just me that thinks it. Dad has even noticed your favoritism towards Nathan and all your brothers and sister and their kids have noticed it too. So you can live in denial for as long as you want but that is what everyone says or thinks about you. I have a few regrets in our relationship. I wish that you’d actually ask me questions. Instead of just assuming because in all honesty every single time you voiced an assumption about me it was usually wrong. You may have been on the right track but your initial statement was wrong. And I used to fight you on it. Your assumptions really did make an ass out of you and me. I think we would have fought a lot less if instead of saying “Lydia is mad because of. . . .” you had waited a couple minutes and came to me and asked “What was wrong just then?” You could even ask “Lydia, are you mad?” I feel like if you had just made the effort to actually talk to me that I wouldn’t have to tell you the truth: I can’t talk to you. I can’t talk to you because I’m afraid of how you’ll take it. I’m afraid of your reactions. And quite frankly I don’t think I can deal with your assumptions. And please don’t say that you don’t make assumptions. Because I’m going to be completely honest, the majority of the times that you said “Lydia is mad because. . .” I wasn’t mad. I really wasn’t. Or if I was, it wasn’t for that reason. And many times I said “I am not mad” or “That’s not why I’m mad” do you know what you did? You argued with me. And THAT made me mad. It still does. Whenever anyone TELLS me how I’m feeling it pisses me off. Because you really don’t know me. You don’t know what goes on inside of my head. And maybe that’s my fault but it’s the truth. As much as you think you know what goes on in my head you have no fucking clue. Because let’s face it, you’re first memory is not your mother stomping on your stomach. You don’t have recollections of a shitty foster home. You don’t have a little black box in the back of your head with a little TV inside that is permanently tuned to the Sexual Abuse channel. I appreciate the fact that when I was older you tried to empathize with me but being almost raped on the way from school by your brother’s friend that one time is NOT the same as being consistently molested by your brother. And you need to realize something. What Jim did to me, it’s not your fault. I know that thought has crossed your mind at least once. I don’t blame you. I’ve never blamed you for that. But it’s hard to talk about it, especially to you. I’m sorry. It’s the truth. I don’t want to talk about it with you because I’m afraid you’ll tell me I’m wrong. That that’s not what really happened. I wish you’d stop doing that. Telling me that I don’t really feel something. It taught me something that has seriously hurt me. It taught me that with enough denial, things appear to go away. My fear of talking to you because I feared your reaction is what drove me to push down every emotional problem I ever had. Those came exploding out my freshman year. And you know what. When I was sitting in Brandon’s office and he explained to me that because I was underage he was obligated to tell my parents if anything seriously concerned him I BEGGED him not to. Because you and dad where the source of a lot of problems. And I’m not trying to put all the blame on you, I absolutely could have handled myself way differently, but here we are in the now. And we have to deal with it. I don’t know how how but we need to. I just have a few more things to say. First off, you’ll never got all your scrapbooking projects done so quit saving stuff for that one page that you were going to do with those pictures from 75 years ago. Oh and no matter how much I stick up for you and dad. A lot of my friends are convinced that you don’t love me based on your actions. I had a lot of offers to go to my friends’ houses. And please, don’t ever do anything to make me apologize for you again. It was not Aaron’s fault. If you had decided to put YOUR DAUGHTER over PLAY PRACTICE you would have saved a lot of people a lot of stress. It wasn’t fair to me and it wasn’t fair to Aaron and Aleshia. But I still love you. I do. And I’ll stick up for you until the day I die. Because I love you. I know that I don’t act like it sometimes, but I really do.

I don’t think I need to write a letter to my siblings. That was enough therapy for now. Tomorrow I’m going to look into more. And dive into Word. And thank some friends.