I never write to entertain. Sure, sometimes what I write is entertaining, and sometimes what I write is absolute garbage, but I put it out there anyway. I’m really writing to study my mind; I don’t understand it, and most certainly don’t trust it.

I’ve been through and done some terrible things. I’ve learned to live without shame, a coping mechanism at best. But when I reread my books, like a timeline of a mental breakdown, I realize something: I’m an extremely odd girl.

I’m alive by some extreme gift of the universe, one I still don’t understand. So far in life, I’ve credited my health to luck, even after treating my body so poorly at such a young age. I’m granted peace in a life previously filled with such chaos. What makes me deserving of it?

Maybe one day I’ll look back on this entry and realize what made me so angry with those who brought me here. Why it was that I couldn’t let go of feeling ripped open by the ones I counted on, turning their back at every cry for help since birth.

Was I loud enough? Barnes and Noble seems to think so, yet still there’s a lingering scent of that same weaponized ignorance and sickness that reeks at the family table. I only hope it doesn’t stick on the skins of the next generation as they leave the house.