.sweet.tangerine.

My mom knows. She has to.

So I was emailing Lizzie and I had just hung up on the phone with Jake. She came in and was all, “I saw scratches on your arm today when you were wearing that teeshirt. Are you hurting yourself?” And I (effectively, thank God) faked confusion, going, “What? Oh, God, no!” And she said, “So…you didn’t tell Meredith you hurt yourself? Because I know you’ve said you’ve been feeling bad lately.” Fuck. “…Mom, hurting yourself is what emos do. I make fun of emos. Don’t you know that song Emo Kid?” And I go off on a rant about how pathetic emos are. I think I stopped her from thinking I hurt myself. For now.

Great.

I cannot fucking believe myself. I told my sister. I actually told her. What the fuck is wrong with me?

We were randomly going to McDonald’s to get ice cream, and on the way home I asked her, “Meredith, would you take me seriously if I told you something?” and she, of course, said yes, but was smiling. I took this as her meaning she wouldn’t, and took back the offer. She said she’d drive around the neighborhood until I told her.

Finally, she just started guessing. Depression was her first guess. I said no. She guessed, “Bulimia.” I said no, again. She continued going through other things, until I started crying. She stopped, and went silent. Finally, I just said that it was the first thing she had said. She asked me if I was hurting myself, too, and I said yes. What kind of fucking idiot do I think I am?

She “promised” not to tell Mom and Dad, but I know she will. She said that if she sees me cutting over the next week, she’s telling them, but I don’t trust her at all. In fact, she’s on AIM right now. She’s probably telling all of her friends right now.

Perfect. My life is officially over.

I cried today. Again.

It was after the in-school musical practice (I hate it…a lot) and we were all sitting outside for lunch. It was like, all of a sudden, something hit me. There are these two awards for the eighth graders for choral singing and acting ability. Ever since I found out about these (probably, like, four years ago), I’ve been working my hardest to fit the qualifications for both. Here’s what I found out - only the leads of the musical ever win those. Courtney B. is going to win the acting, no doubt, and Linnea (still a bitch, hate her) is going to win the damn choral one.

And, to make it worse, I also just happened to realize that the whole ceremonial-giving-of-the-flowers-to-Mrs.-O’Reilly thing that I’ve dreamed of doing for six and years, I won’t be able to do that, either. You know why? Because only the leads can do that. And since I’m only a supporting role, I’m just going to kill myself. I’m not sure when to, though. I’d feel kind of bad if I did it before the musical, but then again, hey - what the fuck do I care?

I seriously want to kill myself. Soon.

So, where was I crying during this? Easy. I get to lunch, realize this, and before I know it am blurting it out to Jenna and Brigid, who act shocked to hear this. Before I know it, I’m crying, yelling at myself to stop being so spoiled and how much I want to kill myself. Luckily, I didn’t say this so loud, so neither Jenna nor Brigid heard me clearly. I quickly laughed and came up with an excuse, joking, “Hey, I sound like I’m congested,” and continued laughing. I don’t think it worked that well. 

On Monday morning, my mom dropped me off at school and then headed to the airport to go to Florida and spend the week with my grandma for chemotherapy. I don’t know why, but for the first time, it really got to me that she did that. She’s gone down to spend time with her once a month since Thanksgiving, when my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. I was fine until now…but on Monday, I just let myself be as depressed as I wanted to be, despite the fake concern everyone was pretending for me.

That morning at school, I’m at my locker, unpacking my backpack, and Brigid comes up to me. She sees that I’m upset almost immediately and asks what’s wrong, and I just suddenly snap. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “My mom is on a plane to Florida to be with my grandma while she gets chemo, and I’ve been fighting with her the whole morning. I didn’t even tell her I loved her when she dropped me off. I ignored her. And I have musical practice every-fucking-day after school this week until five, and Meredith has to pick me up, and she doesn’t know about the practice, so she’ll be pissed at me, and I’m going to kill myself.”

Needless to say, once I had finished, I was disgusted with myself. For the first time, though, Brigid actually seemed to worry about me, but I said I was fine and went to Social Studies. I apologized for snapping later on during the day, but she just shrugged it off.

Later on still, in P.E., I was still in an awful mood, and oddly enough, Jenna must’ve been, too, because after a while she turned to me with a weird expression on her face and went, “You know, you have no right to be so upset. There are millions of people in the world who are much worse off than you.” Then, after the five awkward minutes of silence that stretched between us, she cleared her throat and said, “I probably shouldn’t have said that.” And the subject was dropped at that.

The oddest thing happened today, though. On the way to musical practice, Brigid suddenly looked at me and said, “I was thinking today, remembering back when we were fighting. Remember?” I nodded, fighting back the urge to correct her, saying she had fought the most. “Well, I felt really bad about that. And I still do. I’m sorry.” Wow. I never expected her to even admit we had fought…but, okay. I’ll take it.

I hate my sister. She is so fucking thick-headed. She can’t ever tell when she’s done enough, when it’s time for her to tone it down and be serious for once. She just came into my room when I was playing Gone Forever by Three Days Grace, and she actually started laughing, mimicking shooting up with heroin. I kept myself from retorting then, instead calmly asking why she was there. When she then mocked the song further, with a ridiculous dance, I asked her to leave.

I changed the song to Never Too Late, turning up the volume as high as it would go. Meredith just started tap-dancing to it. Bitch.

I avoided her eye contact, looking pointedly at the ground, letting my anger show for one of the first times today, and still she didn’t do anything. I didn’t want to yell, so I didn’t, luckily. Surprisingly, I was able to contain myself. Finally, she finished up with her special presentation of “How Big of a Bitch Can I Be Tonight?” and left the room.

I want to kill myself. I’m already planning on cutting myself once everyone goes to sleep tonight. Not cutting to the point of killing, of course. I’m way too much of a coward for that, even. But I wish I could. I wish for once in my life I could be brave, that I had the courage for even a second to try to kill myself again. It would just be so much of a relief. No one would miss me, anyway.

God, I’m so overweight. This morning I woke up and I was visibly thinner. You know what I ate today? Five chocolate chip muffins, one bag of buttered and salted popcorn, an ice cream drumstick, macaroni and cheese, and two Diet Pepsis. I want to purge so bad, but like I’ve done before, first I have to act sick for a while, and no one would believe me at the moment.

Yesterday I went to a “downtown” shopping center near Burr Ridge (what’s the use? You all were going to find out the area where I lived in eventually) with Lizzie, and one of the first things we did was go into the Claire’s. I bought a Hannah Montana wig as a joke (more as a precaution, since I knew I was in an awful mood yesterday, and I didn’t want Lizzie catching on) and put it on immediately. Of course, having almost black hair naturally, it looked ridiculous on me, but after a while of wearing it in public, it wasn’t that bad.

Lizzie told me to take a picture of it on my cell phone and send it to Jacob, so I did. He texted back, amused, and Lizzie asked if we could call him. We did, and randomly Lizzie asks, “Hey, Jakey, do you think I’m cute?” and then went on to explain why she asked so. He said he had to look at the picture again, called us back a few minutes later, and said yes. Whenever he talked to me, he called me ‘Blondie,’ which I pretended to enjoy. It makes me wonder if me pretending to be happy is making him think I’m more…not depressed now. Or I wonder if he can see through it all and knows I’m acting.

Anyway, when we were eating at a restaurant for dinner afterward, Lizzie let me in a secret. She said the question to Jake asking if she was cute had been a test - and he had passed by saying he had to check the picture again. She said it meant that he was too busy looking at me to notice her, which I honestly didn’t believe at all and still don’t but pretended to at the time.

Honestly, do I think Jake likes me at all right now, even as a friend? Absolutely not. He probably thinks I’m this complete nut-case ready to explode, and he’s probably right. That’s probably the only reason why he puts up with talking to me on the rare occasion that he does now. Either way, I think he likes one of the Jessicas in my grade now, seeing as I overheard (by accident, honestly - I wouldn’t eavesdrop, that’s rude) his friends teasing him about it, and he gave in. He hates me.

Also, I mean, I’ve reached out to him before, asking him if he could please at least attempt to forget everything I had told him before about my being depressed (and about how I felt towards him), and he just responded, “As I said before, what’s happened, happened. There’s no way to change it and I can’t just forget and have things be better. I don’t know what’s going on, and I need a while to think.”

That, by itself, made me have one of the more…stronger urges to kill myself. And am I supposed to blame myself? He could’ve at least lied. He’s just so damn honest, I hate it. Just remembering it, I feel like thinking, “Oh, I’m going to cut myself tonight anyway, why not just push myself a little farther?” It’s these short, glimpses of courage that makes me even more afraid of myself than usual, and they’ve been coming more and more often.

Meredith’s trying to get in - I locked my door. Night.