Hello, I Dislike You Intensely. Have a Nice Day.

Dear Diary, (keep your mouth shut, I'm in no mood to make up silly names today)

Ugh, I'm so pissed off. No, scratch that. I'm not "pissed off". Pissed off is what people are when they find out their boyfriend's been cheating on them. Pissed off is what people are when a bird flies by and craps on their head. I must be in some other dimension, because I'm not pissed off. I'm livid.

Look, I was fine this morning. Fit as a fucking fiddle, alright? So what the hell happened? I come home and bam. My mood crashes through the floor so hard it probably would have caused a sonic boom if we were living in some sci-fi show.

I'm trying my best to form coherent thoughts, to stay angry. I can't, so forgive me. I need to let that void take me, need to come through to the other side. I walk on land, but I will always come back to the black water if I want to move on.

It's days like this that make me want to crawl into a hole and stay there til the sun explodes. That make me want to burrow deep into the earth, past the worms and drainage pipes, past the pools of magma, into some dark and cold and secret place. Into a quiet place, and the quiet there is the most beautiful music anyone has ever heard.

Why don't I just die already? Look at me. I'm a pathetic, mentally unstable wreck and a social parasite. Why doesn't God just reach down and fry me on the spot? Why do I not just create my own vortex of pathetic-ness and swallow myself up? Seriously, why?

Let's face it. Something's wrong with me. A sickness, malady, affliction, however you choose to say it, it all boils down to the same thing - something went wrong inside me, unraveled, and now the universe needs a refund of Dani.

I think a sizable part of the problem is the black hole that is my social life. Oh, right. Another teenager complaining about how much their life sucks, boo hoo. Well, maybe I am like the rest of them; some whiny, histrionic no-face that bitches about their life just to bitch about their life. You don't know me. You don't know me. You don't know me. So you don't know. Listen, then judge.

Sat with the same people at lunch today. I didn't know their names, they didn't know mine. Nothing to add but vapid smiles and hollow laughs at the clever or funny parts of the conversation. I've never been to anyone's birthday party. Never gone to see a movie with friends. Never gone to anyone's house except for school projects. It's bad. All of the friends I had before went whoosh outta my life, and I constantly fall into the empty spaces they left behind.

I'm tired.

Lay me down and drape me with flowers. Place those beautiful, vibrant heads atop me until I suffocate until their weight.

And please, please don't worry about me so much.

--

Dear - Oh, fuck the greeting.

Fuck the formalities. Just write.

Ah, the morning after. The sun is too bright, the noises are too obnoxious, yet my senses are all gummed up at the same time with the dregs of last night's low. Fantastic. The morning never fails to make me question my sanity. Like, what happened yesterday. Did I really almost get killed by a wall of people skipping? Or had I just hallucinated that? What was that sound they'd been making, anyway? Screaming. No, chanting. No, the refrain from Wake Up by The Arcade Fire. No, another hallucination. The possibilities fly at me like darts or little knives, severing me further each time from the world of the sane and orderly.

And what about Alex? Our conversation had been so strange - what if that had never happened as well? What if the entirety of yesterday hadn't happened? What if I'd inadvertently stumbled through some kind of wormhole into another universe andthat was where everything had happened?

Snap out of it.

It says on this paper they gave us that I have to write about a childhood memory.

Technically, I don't have memories. I don't have little reels of film lined up in neat rows in my brain, labeled Summer Vacation '02' or First time watching a Harry Potter movie, if that's your definition of memory. I remember in pictures, pictures scattered all over the floor, crumpled and ripped and blurry. Moments trapped in time like flies in amber. When I see a picture, I can tag it with sound, movement, and context. Usually.

I rummage through the images. A one-eyed teddy bear. I'd named it Antonia, being the nerd I was, and it'd eventually gotten decapitated by a lawnmower. A book of Shel Silverstein's poetry. I'd had nightmares all through fifth and sixth grade and would always keep a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends on my nightstand. Something about those whimsical verses would never fail to make me warm again.

Perhaps the strongest image is the one of a boy with messy hair and an old guitar, wearing jeans and a jacket even in summer. An image that radiates light in the darkness, calling out to me. An image begging not to be forgotten. Those summers come back to me when I gaze upon him, he whose face is fading even now. Summers that stretched on and on like the homemade taffy being pulled at the farmer's market. Summer like a flipbook of days, scraps of voices and music and light all coming back to me. Constructing a movie of two children running through fields, laughing over nothing and everything. Summers where I burned and blazed and buzzed. Not always on the outside, but always on the inside. Always for him.

If I were a critic watching that movie, I'd peg it as the saddest, most awful excuse of a movie I'd ever seen. Movies are supposed to have a happy ending, or at least a resolution. The movie of me and Roger was never resolved, the loose ends hanging before my eyes and getting into the most terrible knots. One morning, I woke up and he simply wasn't there anymore. No goodbyes, just a sudden frightening emptiness inside me and everything I laid my eyes upon. Was it all a dream?

I called him and called him. No answer. I went to his house. Still no answer when I knocked, so I looked through the windows. The furniture was still there. Dishes left in the sink. Abandoned cardboard boxes littered the floor, spilling out old toys and clothes, dining sets, electronics. Fragments of a life left behind. I double-checked the address; it was his house. He will come back, I told myself. It's all a mistake.

That word sifted down through the days, gliding through calendar boxes. It's a mistake, mistake...mistake...mistake... I waited for him to come back, my hope diluting as the days went on. A paintbrush dipped in water again and again. That hope was eventually replaced with hard bitterness like the brown stuff left at the bottoms of coffee mugs. I continued existing. Living seemed like an impossible riddle.

I examine all the memories I have of him before that day, looking for anything that would be a clue. The closest I ever come are flashes and flickers - a troubled smile, a tremulous plea for mercy in the darkness, long sleeves pulled defensively over arms and hands.

Someday, his form will disappear completely. A shadowless gray contour will be all that is left, those faint lines. But the emotions will be stronger than ever, scattered to the winds without a face to pin them down to.