The pressure in my brain is almost too much.

Which isn't true. I can handle it well enough, but the constant thunder wears me away.

I'm pretty stressed out now. I want to cry, because that's the only way I know how to relieve stress.

My job sucks. I get nine hours a week. HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE ON THAT, HUH?!

Things with Mike have been tense lately, and the more I try to make things better, the worse it gets and the worse I get, but being completely slack makes me feel edgy.

The more I stay home the more my parents nag about everything and because my mother is so stressed out she gets angry over tiny things and will just suddenly turn on me without and provocation and say really hurtful things.

Sometimes I think I should let Mike read my diary. Sometimes I think he'd benefit from it, but sometimes I think it would destroy us.

I had a dream last night I was raped unintentionally. I was rehursing a riske play with some cast or another, and part of the play was my co-star was supposed to 'have sex' with me, but in rehursel he actually did, not realizing I was a virgin.

I remember running to the costume room and hiding in the costumes, sitting on one of the short ladders there (it was the Capitol's costume room, after all; I was sitting on the red one) and crying and crying and crying. I remember he followed me, not knowing why I was crying, but on the way someone told him and he was shocked and I remember he was kneeling before me, holding my hands and apologizing over and over again.

I don't really know why I was crying. I remember it didn't hurt at all. Maybe I was crying for my lost innocence.

And I don't want to tell Mike how stressed out and miserable I am because I'm afraid it will make things tenser than they already are.

My parents continually nag me about getting my course done and getting a new job and making more money and going to school and etc. etc. etc.

The only way I can escape is if I lose myself in a book or go on the computer, and even then I'm still in the same house as them and they don't think twice about breaking concentration.

The only real way I can escape is staying up all night and sleeping all day, or staying out of the house.

Fortunately they seem to think if I'm not at home I'm doing something productive.

And when I start crying they want to know why I'm crying. What am I supposed to tell them? Their well-meaning nagging is wearing me out and I'm breaking down?

What the hell am I supposed to say?

So I usually just cry down here or in my room, when I can get there.

I want to go see Mike, but he's at work and doesn't like it when I drop by too often.

I feel bad. I feel bad about so many, many things. I wish I was back in high school. Life was so much simpler then, and I didn't get nearly as many headaches.

Don't get me wrong, high school is hard and a social living hell, but it's nothing like real life.

I wish I had passion and motivation and dedication.

But I don't.

Not for anything but theatre.

I wish I had Colleen's organizational skills and lack of fear for trying something she's not absoloutely perfect in.

I don't feel ready to teach unless I'm absoloutely sure I know more than the pupal. And the only way I can be sure of that is if I'm perfect. And I'm not. And I doubt I ever will be.

Life sucks. I need a hug.

.

Rosie.

Before&After