Let's rewrite your history...

I've always been the kid that no one realizes is even there.  I've had this ability to disapear since I was a small child.  I don't know quite how or when I developed it, but people always used to say things like "I didn't even realize you were there." or "you're so quiet, I almost forgot you were here."  I had a loud, noisy, little brother that had ADD.  He got in trouble so much, it seemed that not even one day could go buy with out him being the focus of some conversation or argument my parents had.  His teachers would always call home.  When he was in third grade he started staying out well past midnight and my parents would freak out.  He'd come home around midnight or one in the morning and act like everything was fine, that he just lost track of time.  At this point I went into hiding.  I was in sixth grade  I'd stay in my room for hours listening to my radio, tapes and records I owned, usually acting out on my own.  I started stealing, shoplifting from the grocery store.  I stole cigarettes and started smoking.  They weren't locked up back then, and were right near the exit.  I used to cut myself a lot. I liked to watch myself bleed.  It wasn't really for the same reasons you usually read about.  It wasn't taking away any pain, I wasn't really using it as a release for anything other than, it made me feel real.  It made me feel like I existed.  I never cut my arms or legs. I'd usually just cut my palms or the bottom of my feet.  Places that scars don't really form because the skin renews faster there.  I'd stick myself with needles or use an exacto knife.  It would be tiny cuts but deep enough for drops and sometimes streams of dark red blood.  I liked the way it looked running down my skin.  I'd clean myself up, put on a bandaid and then go back to doing what all 11 year old girls do.  Talk on the phone.  Read my stupid girl books like "the babysitters club", Think about the boy I liked, which at the time was a boy named Andrew Jensen or Brendan Rector whom I used to spend every summer day with swimming in his pool.  I didn't tell anyone about my crushes or my cutting.  I guess sometimes secretely I wished I'd just bleed to death.  Then I'd never have to hear my parents fight or worry about my brother and even worse I thought that if I did, they'd all really miss me.  I used to wonder who'd come to my funeral, who would find me. Stuff like that.  I've always been a "dark" kind of kid I guess.  But I'd always think it would be the stupidest thing ever to do because then I'd be dead and it wouldn't really matter.  I wasn't a complete idiot.  I just never got the attention I wanted. 
 
and it gets worse.
 
A few years before all of that started I was eight years old.   I had long brown hair down to my lower back, big brown eyes with enormously long black eye lashes.  I was skinny and tan and used to run around in my bathing suit all summer long.  I'd roller skate in my short jean mini-skirt that was SO popular then.  It was the summer of 1987.  My cousins boyfriend lived in the same neighborhood as I did.  He was sixteen.  He wasn't particularly cute or anything but he was a pervert.  He used to chase us kids around and then one day I was walking down this path that all of us kids used to play on and he came up to me and said I had pretty eyes.  I just kind of looked at him like he was stupid.  I was eight.  I just wanted to play with my toys, except I knew I wasn't going to be able too.  I knew something wasn't right.  The horrible part is that I knew and I didn't do anything.  I was like a deer in headlights.  I froze.  Everything we had just been shown in school to run, to tell someone you trust if someone does something to you inappropriately seemed to not fit into this equation.  I stood there just staring at him while he said that I was always making him hard by running around in my bathing suit.  He said I was sexy and then proceeded to shove his tongue down my throat.  I nearly gagged.  I thought it was so gross, but I couldn't move.  I just kept thinking, this is so gross I never want to kiss anyone like this EVER!  And then he tried to grab me in other areas and I pushed him off of me and glared at him.  Every day after that I'd purposely roller skate on by him in my bathing suit and smile at him with this look of hatred on my face.  He kept his distance from then on.  I hated him, and I also told myself I'd never let any stupid boy do anything to me that I didn't want.  I never told anyone though.  I'd just think about it at night.  Then I'd think about this boy I used to like, that I'd play with at recess...
 
Years went on.  7th and 8th grade rolled around.  I stopped cutting, started smoking more, cutting class, failing classes, but I never got in trouble.  Nothing I could do was wrong in my parents eyes.  I was never AS BAD as my brother.  I got away with murder.  This worked to my advantage the older I got.  High School was a blur.  I was a late bloomer, small and too skinny, but mildly popular.  Summer nights were the best though.  One of my best friends Ericka and I would stay up late,  wearing bikinis and short jean shorts riding our bikes downtown in the middle of the night.  rolling joints, drinking whatever we could steal from our parents house, being dumb.    Then I met Beth.  I met her my junior year of high school and we became instant best friends.  Beth and I were trouble from the begining.  We did everything together and got into plenty of trouble for it too.  She would always try to hang out at my house because I had the cool young parents that trusted me and let me go out whenever with out a curfew.  Her mom was the exact opposite.  I'd stay at her house and we'd have to sneak out.  We'd call this guy George who was MUCH OLDER than us to come pick us up and take us out.  We'd go out.  We'd drink and use him for his money and his car and then we'd make him take us back home.  He liked Beth a lot, and she knew this and we used him.  It was mean, but there was no way in hell she was ever going to be attracted to him.  Not like that.  His family owned this little french pastry shop in our neighborhood.  Beth and I started to become master theives.  We'd blatently steal shit from stores left and right.  The more obnoxious and obvious you were the more you could get away with.  It was fun to test the limits of places.  I got an entire new wardrobe in a month!  STILL my parents never even asked where I got the clothes from, or where I was, or anything.  We got arrested though after about sixth months of massive shoplifting sprees.  We'd joke about it all the time.  Thankfully we got caught with just one shirt between the two of us.  If they ever caught us on a good day we'd probably be thrown in jail for grand theft!  I remember sitting in my room with her adding up all the price tags and on more than one occasion I'd have over two thousand dollars worth of merchandise just sitting in a pile on my bedroom floor, and all that not including what she took.  I was a bad kid.  I just couldn't get in trouble though, and the rush was amazing. We got a job working at a water park for the summer that year.  We got interviewed together and worked together and then one day she disapeared.  I ran into her a few years later and she became my drug buddy.   I didn't become a junkie or anything but I started doing more drugs than just pot.  I remember being extremely high one night and thinking outloud that it was poly-drug use.  I was on MULTIPLE DRUGS. Saying it all slow like and laughing.  God I had fun.  It went on for years, and then she disapeared again.  I think of her often. I hope she is okay.
 
College I got more normal until I dropped out... and now I'm just somewhere floating in between being the saddest girl in the world who feels like she doesn't even really exist and feeling like the luckiest person because I didn't turn out all sorts of fucked up.  I have my own problems and issues and each day is it's own day filled with highs and lows.  Today wasn't a very high one though.  I know I have attention problems.  I crave it.  Not all the time, but sometimes, a little and lately I don't have it and I want it. 
 
I also feel like there is nothing left here for me.  I often ask myself what kind of changes I need to do or make to help me feel alive again, so I'm not just stumbling along from one day to the next but either the answers are alluding me or I just am refusing to see or acknowledge them.  I'm wondering if I want to stay here, if I want to sign another year lease, if I want to find a shorter 6 month lease when I move.  Do I want to stay in this city?   All sorts of questions keep coming up and I wish I had the answers.  I get scared though.  I always feel that any ideas I have or things I say are permanent that I can't change my mind and take them back. Like that is what I will be held to forever. 
 
I am so wierd :(