Somewhere deep inside of these bones, an emptiness began to grow. . .

[[ Thank you Tim for suggesting the idea of using songs for blog titles, and thank you Nightmare Revisited for renewing my love of The Nightmare Before Christmas. ]]

My happiness, my peace of mind, my appreciation of life -- it's amazing how one Tuesday night managed to take that all away from me. I feel empty inside now; sickeningly hollow.

All I've done in life was ignore my issues and try to be optimisitic about everything. That's basically all I'm good for -- limitless optimism. Yet lately, I can't even do that right. I can flash a few half-hearted smiles, fake a laugh now a then, but I'm becoming so terrible at that all I've done was remain silent and nod occasionally to pretend that I'm paying attention to what's going on.

As the days drift by (and as I sustain more and more injuries as a result of lack of sleep and absent-mindedness), all I've found myself wanting to do was just sit in a dark corner and wait until I eventually wither away. I still try to cheer my friends up when they're gloomy, but it's so much harder when I can't even make myself happy anymore. But I keep trying regardless, because if I can't keep my peace of mind or my once-limitless amount of happiness, then I at least want to keep the image of my friends' smiles embedded in my mind. The constantly increasing amount physical injuries and the worsening of my previous ones don't help my mood any either. (Seriously, one day I know I'm gonna get hurt BADLY, but what scares me more is how nonchalant I feel when I think about it).

Here I come back to the lack of happiness issue. If I can't even do the one thing I'm good at, then what does that make me?

Useless, worthless. Just a waste of space. What's the point in continuing on with my life if things are going to go on like this? I want more reason to be grateful for being alive right now besides 'it's better than being dead'. I wish I could see things the way I did before, where nothing is truly bad because there's always something far worse that could've happened instead. It feels like everything I knew before was a lie, and now I'm finally seeing how cruel the world is. . .

I'm not sure if this is just the post-rape depression speaking or not (hehe, I wonder how many of you will go "YOU WERE DEPRESSED?! :O"), but all I know is that optimism is a pipe dream. Or at the very least, for people who truly have had an easy life. . .

A rant or a stroke of realization?

I've been VERY stressed out lately, more so than I have been in a very long time. As for my reason why, well it's a long story and it only makes sense if you knew what my past was like.

You see, for the vast majority of my childhood (since the day I was born to when I was in sixth grade), my family and I were homeless. Literally, homeless. Merely going from shelter to shelter while my parents searched desperately for jobs. At one point, sometime when I was around nine or ten years old, my mother's uncle offered to let us stay with him. That was where my life went downhill. Whenever he caught me alone, he molested me. He'd always threaten me and say that if I ever told anyone, he'd grab one of his guns and shoot my parents. And so, I never said a word, but when I went to school, I finally managed to muster up the courage to tell a counselor about it, and she called the police. He then went to prison and I never saw him since then.

Here's where my current problem comes in. A couple of months ago, his friend recently bailed him out. On the eighteenth through the twenty-third, my parents will be going to New Mexico. Much to my dismay, he opted to watch after me and my brother while they were away. (And knowing my brother, he's gonna take advantage of the moment and extend his curfew to midnight for the time being, so it's not really me and my brother, but rather me). My mother accepted her uncle's offer, since she believes that prison changed him and that nothing will happen. Even so, I can't help but be totally terrified. I kept begging my parents to find someone else to watch over me, but everybody is too busy to come down here to Sacramento.

So here I am, praying for time to go slowly so that I don't have to see the [hopefully former] pedophile anytime soon. It's inevitable, at this point I know, but still, I wish I could stall it somehow.

I've been upset about this for a while, a couple of weeks to be precise. With this being said, I came to a bit of realization. Every time I tried to talk someone about this, I somehow ended up comforting them instead. Things have been like that for a while, but this is the first time it's bothered me that badly. I've always been the person who most came to when they needed to talk about something, yet whenever I need to vent, I never seem to get the chance to do so. It feels like no one truly cares about me, but merely see me as a way to vent out their anger and sadness.

Given the circumstances of how I grew up, I was constantly told to "watch out for myself" because "no one else in the world cares about me, except my family and myself". I never believed the statement to be true, because I knew so many people who I thought did care about me, but honestly it's starting to seem right now. Honestly, there are times where I wonder how everyone would react if I suddenly died. My family, obviously, would grieve, but those are the only people who I can honestly say that for. My friends are sweet people, but they're terribly uncaring (whether they actually notice it or not). If I died, they would miss me, but not for very long. In fact, I'd probably be forgotten within a month. They act like they care about me, but I know that my presence is invisible. I'm not really important to them, I'm just there. Like a spot of gray on a colorful canvas, I clearly don't belong, but I'm still there, whether anyone notices or not. . .