A long long time ago, I don't remember when right now, but not so long that I've forgotten it entirely, I gave Caleb ten vicodin and he lost them. I wish I had them now.

It's late at night and I hurt... not just physical pain, gods know I have enough of that, but it hurts to exist tonight. Everything feels dark, and all I want to do is hide, to send all of the horrible creeping fear away, shove it into a closet again.

I can't.

I hide it so well, sometimes, some days, I can walk the walk and talk the talk, and then at two in the morning it all falls apart. I've tried antidepressants. They made me hallucinate, and not the fun hallucinations either. I've tried counselling and that didn't seem to do shit. I've tried prayer and magic and everything in between... Angel, where the hell are you? Nights like this, I could dream of you and it would all go away, all the darkness would... not lessen, not lighten, but you made it good, thinking of you made it all feel good... you were a drug, Angel.

I miss you.

I want to see you again, I remember how hard I cried, how much it hurt, when I first thought I had lost any chance of seeing you again. I cried a lot... my parents thought I was crying because of - well, never mind why, but I fed them a story and of course they believed it... but I was crying for you, missing you, needing you.

Then I came here... Portland, city of roses, and sometimes I missed you. Sometimes I dreamed of you, remembered you... sometimes I thought you were still calling me. Are you? I can't hear you tonight, the world is dead, are you dead, Angel? Is everything you showed me, everything you were... is it dead too?

I don't understand...

Why does it hurt so much? Why can't you be here, why can't I be there, why do I just want to bury myself? Ten vicodin... ten, then twenty, then thirty... oh, for a bottle of pills...

One of my favorite songs right now, Horse Dreamer's Blues... excuse me a moment. I need to put it on Winamp.

...done... now the music is spinning, sound... I needed sound. Music so often drives away the ghosts of you, Angel... you, and Alex, and Slash, and Michael, and a few faceless demons... music is so sweet. You were sweeter, you know... I miss you so much, why do I still miss you?

They... f'ing They... say you were poison. Evil. I don't care, and don't believe it... you were just another teen-ager, just another girl, sometimes... you were just like me. You were just like everything I wanted to be.

"Margie doesn't say anything all the way home / So afraid she'll find she's all alone"

I am afraid. I don't want to be alone tonight, this is one of the bad nights, one of the nights when I start wondering where I put the razors, where I look for candles and pins and anything to bring back the pain that reminds me I'm still alive... that brings me so close to death... I don't want to die, I just want all this horror to stop...

"Margerie's wingspans are feathers and coke cans / TV dinners and letters she won't send / Every race night is shot through with sunlight / Trying to hit the big one, one last time tonight for / Drunken fathers and stupid mothers and / Boys who can't tell one girl from another..."

This is where it starts getting good...

"...so she takes her pills / Careful and round / One of these days she's gonna throw the whole bottle down / But she's trying to be a good girl / Give 'em what they want..."

See? So sweet... trying, I AM trying, I swear it, I haven't stopped, except maybe... maybe I have and I just don't know it yet... is that it?

Have I stopped trying? Is that what makes me so afraid, that someone is going to come out of the darkness and tell me that because I didn't do my best, because I didn't try enough, because of all of this, that everything will go wrong, and THEN I die, slow, alone?

I...

Did you ever know I loved you, Angel? Did I ever once say it? I don't think I did... I kissed your hand, I touched you, I knelt at your feet and slept in your shadow, I would have given my universe for you... but I never told you. I still haven't. I wouldn't dare... couldn't face the laughter, the scorn. I think you knew, think maybe you still know... please, call me back.

I want to have some purpose again.

I think that's why I so often sink into submission... it's a purpose. No, being Domme isn't... it's just a job, just a fantasy, it's... different. But if I belong to someone, then I belong, period... I have something to do, something to be, some reason to keep going, I can't die then, you/they/she/he wouldn't let it happen.

I don't belong to anyone right now.

I... I use that word. I. Me. Mine. But that's only fair, here... this is the one place I shouldn't have to be ashamed about thinking of myself. An online diary... goddess, you'd think I could get rid of the guilt here, at least, but I can't, apparently.

I should make this an actual update... there are people who read this, people who don't care about the... I almost wrote trauma. I don't think it's the right word. I had four teeth pulled Friday... I've not done much since then. Just hurt... and eat soft foods and chewed with my front teeth only 'cos my wisdom teeth are gone.

The dentist fucked up, I have to go back this coming friday to get the damage repaired and two more teeth pulled. I don't know what he did. I don't care. I only know it hurts like hell and I can't seem to make it stop, one more thing I can't fix, one more pain to add to the list.

It's a long list now... do you want to hear it all? No? Ah, then I'll keep silent, as I do so often now anyway... not silent enough, I bitch to friends, to strangers, to people in Furc and to housemates... I bitch and complain... but have I said this?

I want to stop existing.

Have I said that to them? I have now... I know some of them read this. I don't care, not tonight, tonight if I am still breathing in six hours I will be happy indeed... I think... No, fuck it all, this is NOT a cry for help or some sort of plea for something, this is just me REALLY hurting and not knowing any other way to make it stop. I know no one will see this in time to do anything useful, not anyone who knows me. That's all that matters.

I can rant here... I can talk here... and sure, if I leave this entry up, sooner or later they'll know that tonight was hard.

Maybe they'll read it after I'm gone.

Maybe they'll read it, and come to check... and I'll just be sleeping, or half-drunk, or whatever.

Maybe I'll erase it in ten minutes.

It doesn't make any difference, you see? I don't WANT it to make a difference. If (when) I go, I don't want it to be interrupted. I don't want to go slow. I don't want to recover. I don't want sympathy and pity and what-have-you, I just want it to be quiet and dark and still, just once...

Angel, I remember creeping in the door to curl up at your feet... do you know that's the best sleep I have had in forever? You woke up... so beautiful, even half-asleep, looked down at me... and we talked, for a little while... and I fell asleep again, slept at your feet, it was so... so fucking perfect. I want that back.

I just want to have that kind of peace again.

The music has changed, several times... now it's on the Last of the Mohicans, specifically the bit from Clannad - "I will find you". Angel...

You know, he keeps saying that kitten=Alex in my mind. Maybe he does. Alex... do you know how terrified I was, that she would decide she didn't like Alex, or that she wanted him, or that she just wanted to hurt him to hurt me? I nearly had a breakdown when she came into the Philo room. Philo room - the chatroom I met Alex in. Yep, I met the boy in a chatroom... and I still miss him, I miss... I miss him almost the way I miss Kadin, I miss him deep, I miss words and spirit, not a body, not flesh, just the soul... the void he briefly filled, no one else ever will. Kitten... yeah, he fills a PART of it, and he fills things Alex couldn't... but like Angel, like Mike, like so many, many people, every one is different, Alex was different... he was himself. Nobody else matches.

And my mind keeps coming back to Angel... 2:19, and all I can think of is watching her, looking up at her, moonlight in her eyes and gleaming off her skin, and thinking that I was blessed, that I must have done something RIGHT, no matter how bad things seemed, no matter how much everyone else hurt me, that I did something right, if I was with her.

Well, I'm not with her now.

What does that say about me?

For that matter, what am I? I want to know... I'm no Mistress, no matter how well I play the role. Same for slave... much as I'd love to be a kajira, or servant, or bound girl, or slave, or collar meat, or ANY other term, I'm not, I'm so very not... right? I'm not an artist. I'm not an author. I create images, and I write, but that doesn't really make me GOOD enough. Nothing makes me good enough.

That's another level of this wonderful guilt... my, isn't this a long entry? I just noticed the little bar, and it's gotten tiny... I've written more than I should. But I don't intend to stop until I'm done.

Guilt is what's chasing me around. That I didn't do enough, that I'm not good enough, that I've hurt people, that I WILL hurt people, that somehow I'm bad, or wrong, or evil, and the people around me just haven't seen it yet... I keep thinking they will chase me away, drive me away when they do.

How honest can I afford to be here? How much can I actually say?

If I can't say it here, I can't say it anywhere, I guess... and I don't like the idea that I can't say things, that I can't show parts of myself. My mother told me over and over again (I hate my mother) 'if you feel you have to hide something, it must be evil, must be a sin, and you shouldn't do it, shouldn't think it'. Gods, do you know what a horrible thing that is to do to someone, to drill that into them? Now every time I think something even slightly out of the ordinary, I feel like a criminal.

Take movies. I love watching them. But always, always, I try to leave before the movie's over. Why? Because my opinions of them are never the same as those around me. Because I cry at the wrong moments, laugh too loud, because I feel things I shouldn't... I sin, because I am different. I hate my mother. I hate myself, too, for listening to it, for not getting it out of my head.

It's there right now, all that guilt, rattling round... do you know why? "Plunkett and McClain"... fuck spelling. It's a GOOD movie. I like it, it's funny, it made me cry at the end and it made me so very happy... I wished I'd watched it with Angel. With Kitten. With Alex, or Scott, or Grr... someone who would just let me bawl, and laugh, and understand that it was just me, that it was ok... I remember watching "Stargate" with Angel, and how the two of us laughed about it, and told about our fantasies that matched it, and drooled over the alien-god-thing... I remember how I never felt bad talking about anything to her, except how I felt about her... somehow, I could never say that part.

She never made fun of me.

Ever.

I don't know why I was so afraid... I still don't understand it... she wouldn't throw me away, she never did, I left, I hid, I ran... it was never her. She stood up... she was...

...gods, she was beautiful. In my mind, my thoughts, she's a Goddess... I don't know, any more, how much of what I remember is just the dreams and fantasies I wove around her, and how much is real. I DO remember that I started smoking Marbs because she did, because I wanted to see what it was like, to be so fearless... I switched to Camels - thank you Scott - but still, every time I touch a Marlbourough (fuck spelling again, fuck it HARD, sideways) I remember carrying a full pack down third street, down the long walk to the park and past, up along the golf course... then knocking on her window, helping her out... and watching as she lit that first one.

Her eyes glowed... light from the cigarette, from the moon... but sometimes even in the dark. I remember that quite clearly, the couple times when I KNOW, no dreaming, no fantasy, that on a new-moon night, with no light, I saw her eyes as clear as day... because this odd glow was there. Beautiful.

I was frightened, sometimes... she taught me things, I taught her things, we invented a universe... but she always saw it more clearly, always she took the lead... I couldn't help but follow.

I think this is starting to turn into a confession... should I tell about how it felt to kill the little mouse I'd kept with me in a bucket, that I'd bought at a pet store, that I licked blood off one finger and tasted death and sand and the sea? Should I tell about lying on the green grass, staring up at the stars, telling her that I'd kill for her or die for her, that to me they were the same, but saying it in a hushed whisper? Should I tell about sneaking into someone's house, watching her drink, thinking that even drunk she was beautiful? She was... no, not supermodel, not movie star, the sort of beauty that only hits you when you se her move just right... she could kill. She did. It made me so happy...

...yes, you heard that right. It made me happy to realize that she could kill. Do you want to know why? Too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway. It made me happy because somewhere deep down I hoped that in the end, it would be her hand on the knife, the gun, the candle, whatever... that I wouldn't die alone, that I wouldn't die in vain, that at least she would take some pleasure from my death... that it would be worth something to die, if it was for her, with her, because of her.

Yeah.

Pathetic.

I was 14... 15... up until 18, when I left home, pregnant and scared and halfway in love with a 17-year-old, living in an attic above a couple of oddball hippies, a pagan stripper, and a fellow named Forrest who really can't be categorized.

I lived there... no, I existed there.

I existed, later, on 40th street in a second-floor apartment, with Rie the stripper... that's where I met Rhett, that's where Slash came, when he came... from there, I went with Slash. First to 188th, a crummy controlled-housing place that wasn't TOO bad, where he was assistant manager. Ellensburg happened then, and almost sleeping with Joe Martin, and waking to a knife at my throat, but it was Slash's hand on the blade, not mine, not Angel's, and I decided I wanted to live. I followed him for a little while longer... Gateway, trash apartments... and from there I jumped ship to where I am now. I live here with Caleb, and sometimes I think I'm happy.

Then it gets to be 2-ish, on nights like this... and it takes music, and writing, to even keep me breathing. Sometimes, even that's not enough. Some nights it takes pain. And further... I have to get to the edge of death itself before I shudder and turn back, before I decide again that I kinda want to live.

Nights like this...

...nights like this, I wish I had those vicodin. I want to sleep. I want to stop hurting. I want to stop CARING. I want it all to go away... but it hasn't. It can't. It won't.

It exists.

I exist.

Can I stop now, please?