So, another lovely day in the State Hospital. The self proclaimed hermaphrodite guy is now calling me J. Lo. He follows me around smearing lipstick all over his face and asking me invasive questions about what it must be like to be J.Lo. I keep telling him I wouldn’t be in this shit hole if I were in fact J. Lo. He just laughs and continues to taunt me. Never a dull moment in this place I guess. I think the girl who is close to my age is leaving soon. At least it sounds that way based on what she has been saying in groups. But you never know, could just be wishful thinking on her part. I think my roommate is getting to go home soon at least though. Must be nice that they get that option. I get to just be stuck here until mom and the step monster deem me fit to rejoin the land of the living. All they keep telling me how disappointed they are in me and what I did. Zero fucks are given about why I tried to off myself. They actually thing this is the first time I have tried to kill myself too. Jokes on them, this makes number 4 by my count. And with that, lets jump on into our next entry into the next installment of my story. We will cover the brushes with death, don’t you worry...

Parties and Paraphernalia – I started 1st grade in a new school. The only kids I knew at the new school were my cousins on my dad’s side of the family but because of my mom’s boyfriend drama, they were no longer allowed to talk to my sister and I. I was a coke bottle glasses book worm. I was not athletic, I had allergies and was your typical awkward nerd. I quickly became friends with the school librarian and soon invited myself to be her aided. This gave me an excuse to skip recess and read book. I helped her check in books, shelf them and learn how to use all the AV equipment. The next year I did the same with the art teacher and started oil painting and had started entering into the school’s annual young authors short story contest and art shows. I read so many books that I would fill up the book-it badges every few weeks. My siblings like this because it meant we could get free pizza thanks to my obsession with reading. It was really the only thing that got me out of my reality at home. I read everything I could get my hands on. Library books, even the encyclopedias and the phone book. I think it was around this point that I had my first suicide attempt. I don’t remember exactly why I wanted to do it but I remember feeling like they all ignored me anyways so why not just take myself out of the equation. I was still pretty young and didn’t understand the logistics of death super well yet so this is by far one of the weakest attempts. I found every blanket I could and put them on my bed. In my little 2nd grader head, I was going to suffocate myself under the blankets. Clearly, not a great plan, but I was work with what I thought would work at the time. I remember thinking that I would just stop breathing at some point. All it did was make me super sweaty. I gave up after about half an hour and snuck all the blankets back into the hallway closet. No one noticed, no one even realized I had been locked up in my room plotting this for hours. But, that was typical. No one ever noticed me. I just went on about my life like it was no biggie and no one ever knew it happened. By third grade, I had started to make a few friends. Mostly the kids who lived on our street, but it was a start. I filled my time with video games and reading in the absence of having any real friends at that time. It was pretty lonely at that time. I missed my dad a lot. My sister had friends, but I didn’t and mom was too busy partying and going back to school to become a hairdresser to really bother spending time with us. I spent a lot of time at a babysitter’s house after school and I would just hide with my books. Around this time my older cousin started babysitting us more. One week while my mom and her boyfriend were on a skiing trip, he was with us. I got sent home with the flu. He was all set for a day of pizza and horror movies with he got the call to come pick me up from school. This was the day I was introduced to my new childhood obsession. Before we started my very first horror movie, Nightmare on Elm Street 4, he explained to me that this was just make believe. Just like my books. He even told me how the special effects worked in each scene. Later that week, he took me to the library and helped me find books on how to do special effect make. My love for horror moves was born. Freddy was my imaginary friend for a while after that. I guess Freddy really is my spirit animal now, we have matching skins. I wanted the series so much I memorized every death, every character, every actor, every detail of the movies. I would pretend he was my protector. He would take out the kids and sometimes my family members who messed with me and all would be well. Me and Freddy chillin at the park. Yes, not normal, but I guess that ship sailed ages ago for me. It gave me someone, even though he was just in my imagination, to feel connect with. The next school year I met my first real, living, human, best friend. We had sleep overs and told ghost stories, she also was into horror movies, so we hit it off right away. Things were good for a while. When her parents divorced, she moved away though and I entered into the fifth grade as a loner again. That was also the year were started the D.A.R.E program at school. Oddly enough, the local officer that came to our school lived up the street from my family. As I learned about the scary and terrible world of drugs, I sat in a room of my peers and was flabbergasted that all of the things they were telling me were so bad were things that I had seen in my own home since my dad has passed away. I sat at my D.A.R.E graduation and felt like a fraud because I knew that when I went home that I was living inside the pages of those stories they had told us about the big bad drug dealers. I felt more alone than ever, and it was at this point that I was convinced the only way to make things better was to follow in my dad’s footsteps. Again, I was going to attempt to kill myself. Now, my idea of what would kill you at the ripe age of 10 was not exactly accurate still. I tried a few things this go around. None of them worked. Not even close. I drank nail polish remover, no clue what I thought that would do. I guess I imagined something like on Heathers when the girl drinks draino or something. I mean, it dissolves paint off your nails right? I didn’t even get sick. It just tasted gross. To this day I still feel weird when I use nail polish remover. Like I will get tempted to try it again or something. When that didn’t work I figured I would try something I had seen in this horror movie my step dad had let us watch called the Shining. I didn’t remember most of the movie, just that the guy freezes to death in a maze or something. We got tons of snow so I figured this was a sure thing. I decided to sneaking out of the house sleep on the porch. I figured, it would just happen as a laid out there. Clearly, my understanding of hypothermia lethality progression was super not accurate. I sat out there crying and just waiting for something to happen. I just wanted it to stop hurting. I wanted to not wake up. After being out there for what seemed like forever, I went back inside. I cried myself to sleep feeling once again defeated and stuck in the hell that was my life. I kind of gave up after that one. I had a lot of thoughts about doing it again but never acted on them until the grand one that lead to my stay in this lovely place. A few weeks after my attempt mom’s boyfriend had a coke heart attack. I remember thinking coke…like the soda when I overheard the adults talking about it. And the idea that someone who wasn’t super old like my grandparents having a heart attack also made no sense to me. Only old sick people had those things. Not someone in their mid-30’s. My dad’s little sister, who was one of the only remaining of his family members still acknowledging our existence took care of us while my mom as at the hospital with him. She had just moved into townhouses a few block away from our new house. She would become a big part of me learning more about my dad’s past as I got older. But at least with her around I now had a connection to my dad again and a safe place nearby that I could escape to again. I remember feeling kind of relieved at first because I didn’t know that people could survive a heart attack. But he got better and went home. Over the next few weeks my godmother started to question the safety of our living arrangement. I had become the stinky kid in my class because I was not sleeping at home so I would fall asleep in class. I wasn’t eating so that didn’t help. I was wearing the same clothes to school for several days straight and not bathing. The teachers started to worry too I guess. I remember being called to the office one day and being asked who things were at home. I knew that I was not allowed to talk about that the grown ups did in the house so I lied and said everything was fine. I remember that my godmother was not allowed to see us for a while after that. My mom said she was being a nosey bitch and wouldn’t let me go to her house anymore. A few months after that she moved in with a cousin of mine out of state because her health was going down hill. By my birthday the next year she had died from complications related to a stroke. She was the closet think I had to a grandma for most of my early childhood and one of the only adults that wanted to protect me from my family and she was now gone.

Next Chapter: Entry Six