May 28, 1981

I walked out of the house tonight. Well God, I just didn't make it in life. I think I'll never talk to another person again until they can give me all the time in the world.

I think I am going to go to the park every night from now on.

Ali has just got to like me. If not, hopefully I'll meet somebody in the park. A lot has happened in the last couple of days. I finally told my mother that I was sexually abused as a child. I was able by talking to Ray. I felt very good. I've been happy until now. I don't think I'll ever open myself up again to anybody. It's not worth it. Nobody in the world understands me.

I don't want to hurt people in any way.

I don't want to eat.

I want to sit here in the park for a real long time. I'm supposed to have control over myself. Why don't I? I hate myself. I don't hate anybody. I don't want to deny anybody of any pleasures. Tomorrow I think I'll just sit in the park like I'm sitting on the couch.

I'm supposed to start a diary of English. I think I will, and really show people how weird I really am, and how different I am. I will be so extremely honest that she'll tell my mother, we'll get a psychiatrist to read it and they'll all know how weird I am and they'll put me away.

Can't help any of it God. I'm just there and I'm not all there at the same time.

If I were as big as this whole park...

I just realized, Patricia, forget your desire for people to understand you. Instead wait and see if they care first. Aren't you more interested in who cares about you? No one does anyway. Don't let them hurt you. They all hate you. And your mother doesn't want you to have any fun at all. Barbara didn't even ask you what was the matter. There is always something that is on your mind and that you'd like to say.

Dear Notebook, you know I don't know what's right. Barbara thinks you're sick. Ray is homosexual. No one can read this but Ellen. It doesn't matter if I get hurt. It doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with that.

You can run away.

It's Kevin and Pat's fault.

It's getting cold. Hang on. You're strong.

DEATH TIME! Everyone in the world, joy to you all. I loved you once. Don't be sad. Don't be mad. Be glad because no one wants to be bothered with your vision of ugly unhappiness. I know. But I'm still SICK. Pop-Pop please come back. I love you. I miss you. You're my only Pop-Pop. God wasn't nice to take you away from this troubled girl. Bring Nanna. I love you and Nanna more than anything in the wohole wide world. They are mean to me because I'm weird. Nobody understands that my grandma and grandpa are dead.

(Author's note: I was terribly depressed when I wrote this. I had had a terrible fight with my mother which was par for the course at the time, and I would often dramatically storm out of the house, hoping very much to worry my mother that I was about to do something stupid. Unfortunately, the drama never worked. I don't believe that my mother was ever concerned that I wasn't coming home. I went to the park that night, a park I would become very familiar with. I was feeling suicidal and this entry became a sort of suicide note. I really wanted to be dead that night and to be with my grandparents. I wrote in big block letters hoping they would somehow see what I was writing better and come down from heaven and swoop me up, rescuing me from what my life without them turned into. It obviously doesn't work that way though.

I was also depressed because school was coming to an end and school was at least a place I could go each day and see my friends. With school out, I would have been isolated. Also, exams were coming up and since I had messed up so bad during the school year, I wanted to magically do great on my exams to prove to all of my teachers and to my mother and to Kevin and to Barbara that I wasn't a total fuck-up. I had a lot on my mind and I knew being depressed wasn't going to help me accomplish my goals. The following night would get even worse for me.

One other note. I mention for the first time here that I told my mother about my being sexually abused by her boyfriend Mike. I was still in the first week of my acknowledging this even to myself. I had just told my mother about this inconvenient piece of news the previous saturday. She was horrified, but that turned out to be the beginning and the end of the discussion. I did not realize at the time that my mother made a grave mistake not continuing to discuss this with me. I didn't realize at the time that part of my depression was about loneliness. Not only was I lonely that my mother had abandoned me for Kevin, but she abandoned me by not befriending me during my revelation. She left me alone with my sexual abuse so I was left to figure it all out for myself and to heal on my own. I didn't know at the time that I needed to heal. And to make matters even worse than they already were, I revealed this information to my psychiatrist just 2 nights before and his reaction: "Why did you say that to your mother? Were you trying to make her angry?" It is apparent that he did not believe me when I told him I was sexually abused. This hurt too, but the hurt would come much later. I did not know that this professional man was doing me harm by not acknowledging my abuse as well. No wonder I felt so lonely and depressed that night. I didn't have my mother, and I didn't even have the psychiatrist, the man we were paying to help me out of my troubled adolescence).