I am a terrorist.
I'm trying to take myself over.
No veni vidi vici kinda deal, 'cos I'm too scared to blow myself up.

I feel like I'm backing in high school. As pathetic as it is, there's the crush that'll go nowhere. There's the shrink who'll let me sit in silence for an hour a week, then offering me whatever I want and not say anything when I tell him I'd rather drop acid. There's my mom watching my every move with aching eyes, but too scared to say anything; afraid of pushing me off the edge and having to live with the guilt forever and ever. There's my face grinning into every picture frame, only to disappear once the flash is dead and gone...

I work from 9-5 every week day. I walk. I can't stand the sweat of strangers stuck inside the buses. Then I come home. Pretend to watch tv or read and then go to bed. On weekends I usually go hunting, hunting for someone who'll take me when my eyes are closed so I can pretend it's him. There's always booze and drugs and broken hearts, and we all think we understand one another, at least when we're high, but we don't. We're just in a pissing race, trying to figure out who's more convincing when they're pretending.

I hang out with strangers. Do drugs with strangers. Whatever they give me, I swallow with my eyes closed and let myself go. I start going down on a stranger, but in the middle of it, HE calls, so I leave. Being in his presence makes me feel way much better than fucking someone's brains out, but the person I leave lying there doesn't get it, so I just smile and wave when they call me things like fucking bitch, ignorant whore or dumbass asshole.

He usually picks me up wherever I am, laughs at how stupid drugs have made me, but then he catches up with me and we save the whales with words until 6am. We call the numbers on the infomercials and yell at them for taking up so much time between movie segments. Then he falls asleep next to me on the couch, and I stick my nose into his neck and breathe and breathe and breathe him in, and I ache all over the whole time. When I fall asleep I see my father in my dream; he saves the world and leaves me behind, and once they've all moved to a different planet, I realize I'm alive so I send them hateful letters and they blow up the world to make sure I die. I wake up with a choking gasp, my father's laughter still blowing inside my ears. I turn around and see he's still asleep, so I pack and leave, hoping he won't remember I was even there, won't remember my face or my hair or my hands or my smell or the way my legs shake the whole time.

This weekend he said he wanted to read what I write, so I gave him the sad little notebook I carry with me all the time. He reads in silence, and the more he reads, the more I want to pull my hair out, and he doesn't stop reading so I go out to get more booze and cry and cry and cry on the way to the store. I open one of the bottles on the way and start drinking and my already drunk brain makes the street lights dance dance dance all around me and I dance too until some old lady grabs my arm and says, ''Oh, child! What have you done to yourself?'' She sits me on a bench, ignores the alcohol bottles I have inside the plastic bag clutched in my hand, and tells and tells and tells me about her husband and kids and how she was 19 when she got married and how she's been a mess when her husband died. ''I've never been alone,'' she says, ''I wouldn't even know how,'' and then goes on to tell me how lucky I am for I'm standing on my 2 feet and not stuck with a man who drinks all the time and doesn't have time to even touch his wife. The booze starts burning my stomach, so I stand up with a sudden urge and turn to her, and I scream and scream and scream in her face: IS THIS HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO STAND, YOU OLD FART, I scream, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE AND GO BACK TO YOUR LOVELESS HOUSE.

I try to hold onto the street lights as I try to make my way back, then I see someone running towards me and it's him. I throw myself onto the sidewalk with my legs crossed, and he kneels down next to me, presses his fingers into the back of my head and presses my face into his chest: ''Whomever's making you ache this much,'' he says, ''deserves to just die.''

No, he doesn't.