“For what is it to die, but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind?”
Kahlil Gibran

Sunday, December 3:

I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Catherine Oswald; you might not know me. I am one of the invisible girls. Oh, I have friends, most of them fairly close, but there are times when I feel slightly used. On most occasions people talk to me only when they need someone to rant to or some advice. I guess that is just how it is.

I used to think that my only problems were, for example, what to write for an assignment such as this. But my life is slowly falling apart. Cancer is a nasty disease, vile and destructive, eating away at the body. However, does it leave the soul? No! It breaks it! I don’t have cancer myself, but my friend did, at least up until about two months ago. She didn’t even last a year. And I had finally started to settle back into a semi-normal life; my friends were talking to me a little more, I had a boyfriend, well, for a month at least, and now I have nothing.

With an assignment like this how do I write about what I’m feeling? How do I express the anger, the sadness, the loneliness, or the hurt or the emptiness? The school shrink wants me to keep a journal, that’s what this is. But how do I tell her what’s going on with me, when I don’t even understand it? I know I still have my family and friends, but how can I tell them everything when they don’t understand me either? The school psychologist is trying to understand me. To her I’m just another prevention case, just another messed up kid who needs to be studied and understood, so that maybe one day they can actually do other kids some good. I guess you could say I am a bit bitter. I’m just tired of people studying me like I’m some science experiment. It is like I’m hazardous, they are afraid to touch me because they are afraid that they might break me. Do you want to know something? Sometimes that is how I feel.

I am sitting here trying to figure out how to put what I’m feeling into words. I have realized that there’s really no way to do that, so many emotions and thoughts running through my head. Ms Ross is just going to have to get used to disappointment, because I do not think I am going to make any progress today. I do believe that in all of this rambling that I have done in this one entry it has at least made me realize one thing. I am tired of falling asleep to my own sobs, and I’m tired of waking up feeling like my head is stuffed with cotton. Night after night, my pillow is dampened by salty tears, leaving me exhausted so that I may finally fall asleep. I don’t want it to happen anymore.

Reading back over what I have written so far, I realize that it is not very happy material; however, that is what my mood is like lately. Oh, I do realize that I will get over this eventually, that it will take some time, but time hasn’t always been on my side. I guess I am happy for one thing, the fact that I am still alive; the fact that despite all this I’m still one whole being, even though I feel like I’m broken into a million pieces. It has taken a lot for me to get this far, for me to have written this entire thing out. I’m surprised that despite how broken I feel that deep inside of me there is this strength; this necessity to survive despite what happens. In a way it sort of scares me. It means that even if I don’t feel like going on, I will, just because I have to. It is not the happiest of ideas for someone who tends to sulk and wallow in their self proclaimed misery. Yes, I admit that it is not the end of world, but it is an easy way of dealing with things. And for someone like me, that is all you have to hold on to when you are drowning.