"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

I keep losing the battle. I try and keep my cool, take a deep breath, inaudibly so that he won't hear. My mind repeats over and over what he has just said,

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

It's just bouncing off of the inside of my head. Rebounding, and refusing to go away. I try and block it out, and focus on what is important, he is hurt, and he is trying to express that. What he just said was brutally honest, but I can easily forgive his honesty. What I cannot forgive is that I have allowed that to become the truth. I am upset that I have accepted Nat and Natalie as eternally bound. I am sorry for myself, sorry for hurting him, sorry for the sorry truth, all in one deep breath.

I think ahead, to graduation. I suppose I will work my ass off and get myself through Creighton. I thought that there was something here for me, but I was terribly wrong. There is nothing here but the past and my future sits in glistening halls on Creighton's campus inside the Dental School. I am fated to arrive there in August.

Deep breath, and swallow the truth once more. I have given everything for not.

"Looking back on the things I've done,
I was trying to be someone,
trying to play my part,
I kept you in the dark. . .
Now let me show you the shape of my heart."

My greed has gotten ahead of me, and I no longer wish to be this that I am.

I look at my life, and all I want is work. All I want is to be so busy I do not have time to think.

Little to anyone's knowledge, I have not taken my medication in probably three weeks. I have not seen Dr. Davison, and I am no longer talking to my family about personal stuff. I have been dismissed by Dominic, turned out by my Father, accepted by Mr. Penn (the AcaDec coach I loathe), applied for four jobs, studied harder than ever before, gained more fish, and found that I am not at all alive. I survive. It is what I was built to do.

There is no God. I see that now.

There is no hope in love.

There is no place on this lowly green and blue planet for pain-in-the-ass girls like myself.

There is no way I was meant to be a girl. There is no way that I can live as if I should be. The grass will always be greener on the other side, because I am standing in dry dirt. The forsaken land. This empty chest I hold, this empty vessel, this overturned cup of sin. I would give it all away.

It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard as well, but what makes it worse is, I have wanted to say it for a long time, but tonight was the first time I had the chance.

Nat is fighting, by telling you what is going on, but no one can see that. So I twiddle my thumbs, wash my hands a few dozen more times in a row, curl up into fetal position with my clothes on, and sleep in utter paranoia.