Craig finally said he loves me. I know how hard it is for him to say that, after so many people he's loved have gone away in one tragic way or another. It took a long talk with Paige for me to finally realize that. I know I overreacted when I found out he told Spinner about our post-Paige's-surprise-party plans. Of course he was just really happy. It's kind of difficult to keep things like that a secret. Maybe he could have told Marco instead of Spinner, who was obviously going to make a big deal of it, but it's ok.

Please don't go back and read over my last journal entry! I can't believe what a major over-thinker I can be sometimes about love and intimacy and relationships...I just get so obsessed with these insane questions sometimes.

All that matters now is that he finally said "I love you." I'm so happy he didn't hold my freakout against me. I'm one happy gal!!
: ))))))))

NOBODY cheats on me and gets away with it. When it comes to betraying the trust of a relationship like I had with Craig, there are no second chances. I'll never EVER be one of those "stand by your man" types who lets herself get used and taken advantage of by some dirty dog player of a guy because she's afraid to be single. Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. The cheating liar who was once my boyfriend is officially dead to me. He doesn't exist. Manny can have him with her stupid pink angora sweater and oh-so-precious skate bracelet. Makes me want to retch. I gave him one of my family's most treasured mementos from the past - my grandfather's guitar - and this is how he repays me, by screwing around behind my back. I'm glad I got it back before he could contaminate it too much with his filthy cheating fingers.
gah! I feel so gross thinking about the whole time we were practicing our song for the holiday assembly about how we're everything to one another, meanwhile he was playing the sleazeball with another girl. I hate him!!!
This has been by far the worst Christmas ever. As if I can enjoy it now....thanks for ruining my holiday, Scrooge.

Dear  journal readers...

I have been through so much because of a boy. We were in love, then he broke my heart in the most humiliating way. He got someone else pregnant. I hated him. Maybe I still do...

It sucks that one boy could have such an influence in my life, over my emotions and aspirations. I feel like somehow I got sucked into something with him and I lost a sense of my independence. A boy shouldn't have such an effect on someone who is strong and who does things on her own terms.

But even though someone knows this it doesn't matter when you get involved in the tide of life -- you sometimes have to go where it takes you. (NTS - good topic for a poem...)

I guess this is all why even though my sworn enemy's - that boy's - band won the Hot Sounds T. O. competition at school, and my band Hell Hath No Fury didn't win I don't really feel like life cheated me. I thought my band was way more prepared, but the judges had their say and Craig and the guys won. If I had been one of the judges I might have agreed with them. Craig's song was good. And what he said in it...I know it was just for me. Sometimes when people say they're sorry for doing something I think it's just a way of changing the topic, like, let's not really worry about the actual thing that happened to make someone say he's sorry, because just saying sorry is enough. Well, it isn't. But when I heard Craig sing "everything I touch turns to dust" I felt like finally he got it. And, yeah, his song was good. He's talented.

So, I lost the band competition but Craig finally got why I wouldn't forgive him. Is this a fair trade-off? I doubt it. He should have lost as punishment I guess. But whatever...I don't really have the energy to care any more. I sort of wish that now that this is all over I could just go away for a while. After I get the courage to visit Terri in the hospital I'll have to figure out if I can deal with the faces that surround me.

Ash

I don't think I can stand the way things are any longer. I don't think I can go back to school to resume the existence that is responsible for the hollow feeling I carry with me, somewhere deep inside my emotional core. It's a knot in my stomach. That's why I haven't been going to school so far this week. The knot. The symbol of my deep entanglement in other people's dramas. Slapped from all sides by things that define my screwed-up life. Why couldn't I have been a mere observer? Will it all end? Life doesn't happen in episodes, where you know things will change at some point soon, either for better or worse, but instead you don't know what might happen next. Will you be a hero or a tragic figure? What if you don't like the story, the other characters, the setting? That's kinda how I feel. I think I need a change. I know I need a change. I need to be somewhere else, surrounded by different people, doing different things.

Or at least I have to be here at home, upstairs in my bedroom, surrounded by nobody, writing songs that I hope nobody ever hears. One of my oldest friends is in the hospital, but I haven't even been able to visit her. It's too much. I can't deal. I just want to stay in my room. Forever.
bye
Ash