i came home today a wreck. ill, pathetic, depressed. i sat on the sofa with my big fluffy jumper feeling well and truly sorry for myself, and annoyed that my trousers were too baggy to be fun anymore, and just hurting generally, because i'm pathetic. my sister sat next to me. i told mum how i'd been feeling ill and how fee had woken up this morning with a cold that could kill people. my sister immediately turned on me and called me selfish and asked how the hell i could stay around someone who had an infection when it was obviously going to catch on to me and then do the rounds, putting her in danger of... catching a cold... and why didn't i think of the consequences of my actions?

now you know me. fiery bitchy little ball of fluff.
not today. guess whose lip quivered and eyes immediately overspilled.
before i knew it, i was sobbing away to myself, a little snivelling wreck. and to my surprise, as my sister - satisfied with spreading enough evil for one night - left to change out of her business suit, my mother came and sat beside me on the couch and pulled me into her arms, so i could quite freely sob and cough and choke into her sweater. which i did. sniff sniff. she stroked my hair and told me i'd be okay, and said 'shhhh' when i hicupped. and of course, it meant so much to me that she'd hold me like that that i just started crying all over again, and the cat decided to jump on my lap and purr inanely, and it was a nice little scene of tears and cuteness when my sleeve fell down and revealed the slash marks on my right wrist that i've managed to hide from my mother for three months.
she didn't yell.
she hugged me.

then she served dinner, and i saw the three potatoes she'd put on my plate with the veggie mince and i started crying again, crying and crying. i said i wasn't hungry, and my mum said 'aw honey' and my sister said 'you need your carbohydrates to fight this thing so i don't get it!' and i tipped the whole lot in the bin.

then i had an hour-long bath, and snivelled to myself.

mum just came up to see if i was alright - damn my father, he'd seen a fresh cut on my arm and told my mother that i was cutting again [no kidding, when did i stop, you great big overblown sprout-wielding carrot-pincher? - eek ] - and we had a long talk about my future, cutting, all sorts. she made me so... well.. happy. she said she knows i want to be a writer, so i might as well kill off the theory that i'm going to be happy studying psychology at uni, because i'm not going to be - she says i should send off some of my teen-angst short-stories to a publisher.

and... you know what?

i might just do that.

2002-09-24 - 9:10 p.m.
next and last