I�m really pissed off at diaryland. Granted, maybe the vast population of the site writes about nothing more than their lesbian affairs and what they shot up last Friday, (or god forbid, Ashlee Simpson) but there are people here who write about real things. We have real thoughts. We have deaths we have to write about, we have love, heartbreak, coming of age type crap you wouldn�t believe, and it�s being cheaply made into nothing but superficial promotional turds by the links they�re putting into our entries. �plastic surgery, drugs, books, Lord of the Rings�� all taken from beauty and sophistication, feeling, and turning the words into Viagra gobbling whores. It�s disgusting.

Anyway, my summer is coming to a close. Though I�m already in school and suffering terribly, I don�t consider my summer over yet until my friends have gone. The two people I love in the entire world. They are leaving me. Kathy is leaving at like, 4 tomorrow. 5. AM. So I can�t go visit her, though I am dying to. So she is gone to me.

Today, we went to Oakland because I wanted to see the Presidents of the United States play, and I thought this Oakland music festival would be a lot of fun but it turned out really shitty. I was super depressed because I tried dancing but I didn�t impress anyone and Kathy refused to dance with me. I just felt so stupid and I thought that this must be exactly why nobody likes me�cuz I�m weird, I�m so fucking weird. Why dances to My Chemical Romance, who dances at a rock concert widly and crazily, who has fun, all by herself? How weird is that?

I guess I am pretty insane. Maybe I just won�t grow up. Maybe even though by now I should be a bored, jaded individual, I like acting like a kid every once in a while and just letting that little bit of innocence I think I might still have inside out.

But the problem is, I�m not a little kid anymore. If I was, then the people there would have smiled, laughed, clapped for me when I was done. As it were, I got some odd stares, but most people ignored me completely. I vowed to buy all new, boring clothes and blend in to society so completely that nobody will ever see me again.

Anyway, my mood picked up when we went to San Francisco. San Francisco always brightens my day. Maybe I won�t go to Chicago or anything after all. All the black Oakland rudeness and crap really pissed me off. There were two people there who yelled at me for now reason. One asian lady yelled at me cuz I tried to take a picture of some stupid asian figurines in her fob store. And some Cossack tried to yell at me cuz I tried playing with toys he was selling. Well, what the fuck are toys FOR, then? Why are people so uptight about everything? God, I just don�t get it. I swear to god, I could have really went up to that Cossack and cussed him out. I could have punched him right then and there. I wasn�t afraid of him. Only reason I didn�t was Kathy and my dad were walking away. I was so mad.

We went to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SF, which Kathy has been nagging at me to take her since Bob showed us weeks ago. It was pretty cool, we liked watching hot guys skate at the large skate bowl. I was yelled at by a black lady about my camera again (what do people HAVE against pictures? I don�t get it. I just don�t get it.) but I tried to just blow her off. She was really ugly anyway, so maybe she�s suffering enough with her pathetic life. Her and her retarded weave.

Then we walked around a bit, and went to Citizen Cupcake where we had some gourmet cupcakes. I�ve been sooooooo excited to try the pineapple upside down cupcake there, so when I did I wanted to cry, it was so good. It was just as delicious as I thought it would be. Kathy got a carrot cake one, and my dad got a Persian delight, which had this lovely light cream in the middle and saffron flavored icing, with a candied rose petal.

Oh, thank you Merc!

Then Kathy decided she was going to see Garden State if it killed her and I wanted to see it too so we drove all the way back to Mercado and got some sushi while we waited for the next screening. Then we saw it.

It was beautiful and funny, and lovely. I love it. This is life. This is real. This is life.

Have I come of age yet? I want to experience a real life coming of age. Though, I think that even if I did I might not really notice it. Maybe I�ve come of age too many times already. Can you do that? Ugh, god. Maybe I came of age at 3 AM that one morning under the stars. Or maybe�

Ehhh.

Then we dropped Kathy off at her house. I cried. I cried because of selfishness, I cried because I wanted to die, I cried because of loneliness and parents and restrictions and money and the world.

I don�t think Id mind if everybody just fell of the edge of the world and all there was left was me. Me and Kathy and Greg and maybe retarded old poop, and that�s it. I guess I might miss reading Dave Barry columns, but hey.

Then we said goodbye, and that�s that.

All through the summer I�ve been dreading this and it�s just as bad as I thought it would be. I already have an ulcer. Second week of school and I already have an ulcer, I�m so miserable. Every day, with every word that comes out of Mr. Schuttinger�s mouth (I�m most depressed in that class of all) I enter a zone where I�m dead and nobody cares at all about me.

Mr. Crowther is kind of upset, and he goes home and tells his wife, �She could have really been something.� And he lies awake for a little while, just thinking before he goes to sleep. And Krystie cries, she cries because I was her friend and she cries because we had good memories and she cries because I cared about her. And she stores it all up in her, the pain and the resentment and the what ifs and could bes and the kind of crazy person that I was, and she writes. She writes and writes and eventually she�s got a screenplay and she makes millions immortalizing me. And Dustin cries, Dustin cries because there isn�t anything in the world left for him. He is bright, lazy but bright, and between parents and friends and my death and his grandmother there is nothing left for him but tears and sorrow and pain, and he will become hardened. And maybe he kills himself, but if he doesn�t, he loses his innocence completely �he does not feel true joy, nor does he cry until 15 years later, when for the first time, he sees Krystie�s movie about me, and then he bawls like a baby.

Brandon shrugs it off. He writes a song for me, and he locks himself up in his room for a few days listening to emo but eventually he makes some existentialist conclusion about me and he goes on with his life, thinking about me ever so often and wondering if what he said made a difference�just wondering, just a little.

Mr. Dries fingers his Happy Bunny pin and thinks for a couple minutes, just �what a shame.�

And everyone else? They�re shocked of course, there�s an initial sorrow, a what could she have become sort of deal. And then they thank god that it wasn�t them, wasn�t them or anyone they were really too close to, and they go on.

This is the kind of morbid shit that goes on in my brain. This is how bad it is right now. This is how bad school is going to be. I read books, now. That�s my new thing. I read books a lot. All the time. Instead of talking to people. I think maybe I�m going to get a nice pair of headphones, a CD player. It�s not that anyone really talks to me or pays attention to me anyway, so I don�t really need it to ward people off, but maybe I�ll look more intense or something. I don�t know.

I knew it would happen, too. All summer long, as I basked in the sun, as I walked up mountains and laid in grass and ran down stretches of pavement, laughing, this is what I feared and knew would happen. All good things have to end sometime. Nobody can be happy forever. It seemed like it would, though. All summer long, I knew it would come but it didn�t seem like it was so near.

Now I�m trapped in it and what is there left to do? Every night I just want to kill myself but me and Kathy made a pact�no killing, no. And I have so much to live for! Think of all the potential I have. Think of all I can do. I�m just 16, and I have my whole life ahead of me. True, I may be embittered towards the entire world, but if I work hard enough, maybe I can take advantage of all their stupid little minds and use them for world domination, or something like that to make me feel better about myself.

I�ll atleast wait until 27, and if things are still pretty shitty then, then I�ll reconsider.

I�ve been reading the letter too much, cuz that�s what I do. It�s a depression thing. I go into it in the beginning of every school year, except last, so it�s a long overdue phase. It comes in waves, the depression. Anyway, one of the things I�m required by tradition to do is, late at night, to be very very sad, and mope, and tell myself that I am a worthless good for nothing, stupid retarded kid, and that nobody likes me and this is the way it will be always and forever. It�s a masochistic kind of thing. Don�t feel bad if you don�t understand�I don�t, either. So I sit and read the letter, cuz, you know, it�ll hurt me more. And the first times I read through it, I read really fast, just cuz it hurt to read it too deeply, it was so painful. But every time I read it again I come across something I didn�t se before, and I�m becoming�deader and deader?

So bottom line is I think I might be breaking up with him. Just cuz�fuck, he never wrote me anything like that. I�m just convinced. I�m not his real love. He didn�t sign my yearbook. He didn�t write me emails or letters. I�m convinced he doesn�t love me like he loves her. And you know�.that old saying, what was it�if you love them, set them free and if they don�t come back to you they never really loved you in the first place. Yeah well. I love him. So I�m setting him free. His parents are getting divorced, he�s going to college, he�s got ambitions for his future, his whole life is going to change. I think it�s time for Greg to have a coming of age of his own. He can fuck her, do her, maybe they were meant for each other. Maybe he�ll be dreaming unsettling dreams of her 30 years from now when he lies in bed with his wife, maybe she�ll be the love of his life. Who�m I to stand in the way of that? Anyway, I�m insignificant.

He doesn�t love me. No, I need love.

It really is too bad I made that damn pact with Kath