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If she does the wrong things, she will suffer without delay. Ifshe does all the right things, she will suffer without delaybecause we get off on seeing her tears and her self-inflictedbloodshed.We affirm that no one she loves will ever love her, and,should she grow desperate enough like we have faith thatshe will, the best she will do is a grey-eyed manic-depressivenarcissist with acute paranoia who will kick the crap out ofher nightly. And when he tires of scourging her, she will flog inplace of him through the remembrance of her peanut buttercolored skin, bushel of sickly serpentine hair, and strange,ambivalent features.In every stage of this emotional decomposition, she haspetitioned for peace in the most downtrodden terms: herrepeated petitions have been answered only by repeatedinjury. A daughter, whose luck is thus marked by every actwhich may define a miscreant, is unfit to lead a normal life ofpleasantries and satisfaction.We, therefore, The Collective Body of all Ashtin’s GloriousFxck-ups and Short-falls, in General Ignorant Faith, Assembled,appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the motionto dismiss her belief that she’ll ever live a meaningful life, do,in the Name, and by Authority of the good patheticism ofAshtin’s very nature, solemnly publish and declare, That ourgoal in creating this declaration is to keep her mind sick andtortured, so that she may never even CONSIDER ATTEMPTINGto rise to her full potential, and that her soul be Absolved fromall Allegiance to the conscious world, and that allpsychologically-disturbed connection between her and theState of Consciousness, is and ought to be totally dissolved;and that as her fetters and spiritual straitjacket, we have fullPower to levy War, eradicate Peace, contract Alliances withexogenous forces and entities who can be of help in endingher more quickly, establish internal Unrest, and to do all otherActs and Things which Causes for an End may of right to do— And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance9

on the decimation of Ashtin Savannah, we mutually pledgeto her and her alone ‘failed attempt’ as the outcome for anyand all of her endeavors, messed up reflections jammed intoevery medium and surface that can cast the image back toher, and a corrosive, undying lust for all the things she cannever be and all the things she can never have.It didn’t have to be this way if I’d just gotten that Gibson formy thirteenth birthday or if I’d never gotten those wisdomteeth pulled at seventeen and kissed a Sumerian or if Kellarhad just freaking loved me and made me beautiful!Forget it. None of that’s real, but this thing I’m doinghere is. This is a stack of papers bound with bent metal that’snothing as it stands, but in a few months’ time.In a fewmonths’ time it might still be nothing since it is, after all, aproduct of me. Whatever. What I wanted to convey was thatby the time my diary hits public library shelves the nation over,I’ll be gone, and here will lie the transcript of all the ‘whos’‘whats’ and ‘whys’, but my entire history is stained with somany fails, it’s not even worth a free read on ProjectGutenberg’s website. One thing is certain: no matter who it’sread by, by the time it’s ready, I’ll be nothing more than a trailof broken-hearts and weathered memories. I will be nothingbut ashes. I will be dead.Here’s why: because I kept putting five dollar bills into aslot machine titled ‘Even Though Things Seem Bad Now,They’ll Get Better’. A lie, in short. So I stood at that machine,pressed the spin button, waiting to see the three windows lineup to spell out the word “HAP-PIN-ESS” and hit my heart’sjackpot. For ten years, I fed the damned thing five after fiveuntil my wallet was empty, then my bank accounts, then mycredit cards. I gave it all until I didn’t have a thing left to bet,and you know what? I still never won. Now, I’m bankrupt,homeless, and depraved because that slot machine was mylife and those fives were my faith, hopes, and endurance. Sowith nothing left to bet, it’s time I make my exit, see what’spast this thick nicotine cloud and façade of flashing lights.10

This will be a short publication as my time behind a penis short, but nonetheless, I’m gonna show these YA authorshow a real tragedy is written: day by day as you live it untilyou just can’t live the damned story anymore. I’m gonnachronicle every single straw that continued to break thiscamel’s back even after little miss camel had no spine intact.How the pestilence never ends, how the parasite of paindoesn’t die until the host does. I’ve already decided when,and anything else that happens now is just another nail in thecoffin—never mind the fact that the damned coffin is alreadymore nails than wood.This will also help the grieving.“Boo hoo, why’d she do it? She was beautiful, she wascreative, she had so much to live for!”Yeah? Well she also had so much to live through, andyou never would have had even a glimpse into my bleachstained existence had I not been so gracious enough to pullmy scarred and weary flesh into compliance enough to keepone last diary before I call it quits. So, say thank you.Anyway, for those who couldn’t read in-the-center-ofthe-parallel-strokes, here’s as many hard and fast facts as Ican spit before they call my name: I’m twenty-one not goingon twenty-two, and I’m going nowhere like it’s nobody’sbusiness. I am the ashamed owner of a personal andexclusive tormentor that happens to call itself ‘My Mind’. MyMind is the overseer of memories that used to keep mehanging on and of actualities that put another knot in thenoose, and together, the two show me that if I stay, the nextten years will decompose just as quickly and as badly as thelast. I hate people who look at me more than once withouthaving a good freaking reason to do so. My parents arefaithful, love-all Christians, and I am a faithful backslider whohates her new surname: ‘backslider’. My faith is either deador on life-support, but either way, it won’t be making a fullrecovery unless miracles didn’t end once the Red Seasplashed back together. I’ve drowned twice as a kid, and stillwonder WHY THE FRICK I had to surface after the blackout if Iwas gonna grow up to be all this. I once was an aspiring11

junkie who managed to strike small-scale success in mychosen job sector, but I’m so fantastic at failing that I couldn’teven make it past superficial psychological addiction andinto the big time of aching bones and bi-weekly overdose.Still, some thousands of dollars in bogus/needless co-pays anda derogatory credit mark later, I’m a broken dream without a‘day job’ to fall back on.“Ashtin Metzler?”And, I ditched class tonight because my bottom lip isfat enough to roll a taquito, no hands. So I’m currently sittingin an urgent care waiting room doing the place’s name-sakeall to most likely lose my lip piercing because my stupid bodyrejects everything.my soul included.I really can’t hold my mouth like this forever. Besides, it’snothing to see, just my body being a douche like usual.He clicks off the hammer light. “It’s possible your systemcould be rejecting the jewelry and not the piercing itself.”I work my jaw back into place. “It’s made of titanium, Ispent like fifteen bucks on it. That’s supposed to be goodmaterial.”“Have you considered letting the piercing go?” Nitrilegloves snap as added punctuation.I hang my head and try to smile through the mostpathetic sentence this physician’s probably ever heard in allhis years of practice given that he’s an MD and not a shrink.“If I lose this piercing I’ll be losing the last fragment of selfesteem I have.”“If it continues to remain infected it will make you veryunwell.”“I’m gonna be very unwell if I look in the mirror and seethat the ring’s not there.” Next, you’re gonna tell me that Icould die from recurrent infection, then I’m gonna tell youthat I’m dead either way because if I keep the piercing, it’sgonna keep getting rejected, and if I let it go, I’m gonnahang myself, so the hand’s a push.“Why? I don’t understand.” He smiles incredulously.12

“’Cause even though it’s artificial and this is extremelyshallow, the lip ring is really the only part of myself that I feelgood about. I got it five months ago on my birthday and Istarted to sorta like myself, but now I’m probably just gonnago back to feeling disgusting since I’m clearly not meant tohave any sort of pride.”“Start by taking your hair out of your face. Show yourface, it’s very beautiful.”He’s a nice enough physician that I wouldn’t want tohorrify him with the admission of my dead-if-I-do-or-don’tideology. I wear that awkward rebuttal-smile all the way. “Ihave hair in my face for the purpose of not sharing it with theworld.”“Just try. Show your eyes, they are beautiful.”I draw my face toward the fluorescent lights and sighbecause it’s genuinely funny how messed up I am. “Ugh, I’lltry tomorrow.”“I’m going to write a prescription for the antibiotic. Onepill, every six hours for ten days. You must finish the entireprescription so you can hopefully keep your piercing.” Hesewing-machines on the computer keys and swivels in hischair. “And give at least one full smile a day, indefinitely, soeven if you end up having to let the piercing go, you still willhave something shining.”I try to show gratitude by pushing my bangs outta mysight and away from my face. S’like coaxing the juice out of adry lime, but I manage a smile. “Thanks, Doctor.” So there it isand so it begins. The hourglass is now flipped and bleedingout my time left with all of this.“Why did I ever come forth from the womb to look on trouble and sorrow,so that my days have been spent in shame?”Jeremiah 20:18 NASB13

Tackier Than 3M BrandWednesday, September 2, 7:16 PMKeyboard ClassAt least it looks like I’ll get to exit stage left with my lip ring.The reason for all of this: I’m sick of people slapping aSpanx on my hurt—minimizing it, telling me that I’m giving uptoo easily or that my life is corroded because I’m not tryinghard enough or because I’m making all the wrong decisionsas if I’m walking out onto a swimming pool covered with atarp. Well, this is me telling all of you that you’ll finally openyour goddamned eyes to the truth once I’m gone and this,this diary, is published. Since yours are so broken, I’m gonnagive you my eyes with which to see. I’m gonna write this, andI’m gonna show you how when the proverbial man in a suitholds up the ink blot, you see a butterfly, but I see my bloodspilling onto wet tar. How perception is everything, and mineis covered with cataracts.I know my life is settled, but if I’m gonna be laid to rest,I’m goin’ out with a brass band: a hedonistic firestorm of selfdestruction before I get with the incinerator. So basically, thisis the plan: you all, who made me out to be a wolf-cryingbrat, are gonna watch me collapse, and then, I’m gonnaimmortalize my demise. I’m gonna make you watch, andthen I’m gonna make you read about it, you know, becausethe printed word is so very permanent! Maybe that way it’llstick to your soul the way all those ‘minor disappointments’did to mine.14

A Bachelor’s in Event PlanningThursday, September 3, 4:15 PM4TH and BroadwayDecember 31st, 2015—Seventeen Thursdays from tonight.Nobody’ll care when it’s New Year’s Eve, and I can dowhat I need to do in peace—under cover of festivity,nightfall, and gunshots.15

The Painter, The Bodybuilder, and The BeastSunday, September 6, 4:09 PMGaragePeople say suicide is selfish.They say it, but their words are empty. They don’t meanit, and I know why. They are now bitter and bleeding. Theyare animals in pain lashing out at their own shadow. Those leftbehind call the departed selfish because they are angry anddesperate for a release. As humans, we find peace andjustice and many other soothing emotions in having someoneto blame for our pain. I should know, I came out the womb asa sad and screaming newborn, pointing fingers for my firstencounter with trauma.Mourners get sick of littering the cemetery grounds withtheir tears and wilted roses. They want justice for their deadeven when the murderer is the buried. So they go aroundwailing about how what we did was so selfish, that we don’tunderstand the pain we’ve caused. Well, I’ll share a secret:trying to keep the ones you love here when you can clearlysee that they’re in pain, a pain YOU don’t understand, isselfish.You wanted your beloved so badly that you’d havethem any kind of way you could, including with a heart andmind that have descended into necrosis. You want them tostay so badly that you’d force them to stay, out of guilt,regardless of the fact that they’re not the same person youwere given, that they’re not the same for the worse. You’drather keep us around with a hundred broken bones, in astate of paralysis, in a state of vegetation, just to be able tosay that you love us, but that’s not love. That’s worse thansaying ‘go to hell’. That’s saying ‘stay there’. Stay therebecause you’re here with us and so that makes everythingokay, but it doesn’t.There are some places you can’t go with me, someplaces where no matter how many loved ones I have, I willALWAYS be alone with my tormentors. That itself could be the16

reason I know that I won’t know peace until I’m R.I.P. It’s notalone though.It, as heavy as it is, is the barbell and I—being my ownignorant spotter—added weights in the form of perfectionism,injurious relationships, truthful confessions to vindictive people,half-cocked career choices, and just generally haphazard,wing-and-a-prayer decisions made far too often. But this isnot one of those kinds of decisions.Mommy, remember when you told me in the middle ofJune that I should consider college and you told it to meexactly three days before the enrollment deadline? All I couldmull over was how wrong it was that I had to cry in the middleof that RadioShack when that split-tongued hiring managertold me—the kid who, at that point, had never even so muchas been caught jaywalking—that I didn’t clear thebackground check. I thought about how I’d just barely madeit through the cut-off filter for the downtown junior college allbecause the beast began to stir and I made it known tosomeone other than myself. I thought how with thatheartbreak and this snap decision combined, there had tobe some destiny intertwined in that year of 2012, and thatwhatever would happen at college would obviously befated. But it didn’t fall into place how I thought it would.It was fated. Fated for the beast to grow more restlessin the fallout of Kellar Iannottoni, and in the successive letdowns of major courses I couldn’t pass or couldn’t tolerate,and in the fact that knowing all of the things I knew about myslapdash existence, my depression was a deepening legionon my flesh and fresh meat for the beast.Today, the beast feeds on my every failure. Whetherthey are gristles or prime cuts, all of my inadequacies,imagined or acclaimed, each of my drunken reaches atdreams unattainable, and the syndicated memories of allthese things, the beast feeds.Now, ask me—malnourished at heart and head—to lieon the bench press and lift that barbell. Now, watch it crushmy throat the instant I get it off the rack. That, all of it, is whatmy life has become. I’ve grown up to be that soon-to-be17

asphyxiated weight-lifter. I tried because I wanted to bestronger, but look what that will to try has gained me.Your life is what you make it, apparently, and I’ve gotthe touch of Midas’ bozo younger brother, so my life is whatI’ve made it. I stood back and studied what I created andrealized that I don’t wanna sign my name to this screwed uppainting. I don’t want this anymore. A second painting hasmore than the potential to come out even harder on theeyes. I don’t wanna make amends, I don’t wanna try again.I’m done lifting the barbell, I’m done painting disasters, and ifyou loved me, you’d let me quit.“I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them fromdeath. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction!Pity is hidden from My eyes.”Hosea 13:14 NKJV18

Martyrdom: Being a Quitter without the Stigma!Monday, September 7, 9:14 PMCampus StairsIf that had been Creative Writing class or Speech class oreven Debate class, I would have nailed that project.Comparing my drum composition to my self-esteem. Statingthat the idea behind it was to express the highs and lows ofmy self-image with the sloppy shifting tempos, that the holesof silence were the emptiness I live with, and explaining thecomposition’s missing requirements—which I flat-out justdidn’t know how or think to do—as the things that otherpeople have that I wished I had but don’t. I also made apoint of saying that if Professor Demopoulos failed my projectit would pretty much be the equivalent of him failing my selfworth. He laughed the whole explanation through—like, real,legit, bottom-of-the-belly laughed, which is good. If I canentertain with my misery, then people won’t know howpathetically painful my existence really is. My project was stillthe flattest, most amateur composition of the lot, but I guess Ipassed.Haylee did hers in the forty-five minutes before classstarted and it was still more melodic than mine. I’m reallyproud of her though. She’s my new best friend for the timebeing, and playing the part of hater never was my thing.***I met Haylee Mendoza the third day of the semester.Truthfully, I had noticed her on the first day in RecordingStudio class when we all had to introduce ourselves and talkabout our musical backgrounds. She had on these cool,grungy, black velvet high-top sneakers, black skinny-legjeans, and a striped sweater the same as the one I had athome. She told the class she didn’t play any instruments, butthat she was trying to learn guitar. I thought she was okay, butI didn’t believe in befriending girls and I hadn’t had anydouble X’s in my social circle since that social circle wentsupernova in grade seven.19

So by the first Wednesday of the semester, I hadKeyboard class, and apparently she did as well. She spokefirst, asked me if I was in her Studio class too. We ended upfinding out that we’d have another class together thatThursday—Business of Music.After that, we talked here and there. I noticed we hadthe same lower lip piercing, just on opposite sides and Ithought that was pretty odd.One day, she was sitting in the quad on her laptop. Icame over to the stone table and sat down across from her. Ihad forgotten what I was wearing until she asked me if I likedThe Dark Veils. I looked down at my tank top andremembered I was wearing a screen-print of their logo andpractically their yearbook photos gone anarchist. I’d told herhow I loved The Dark Veils, how I wished I’d known aboutthem back in high school. She told me how their newestalbum was going to be available for pre-order soon, how shewas awkward and speechless when she met the drummer atWarped, and how she’d never actually met anyone else wholiked them. I realized then that she could be my potential newbest friend since I hadn’t talked to my current ‘best friend’ ina whole summer (befriending stoner boys is both an altruistichumanitarian act and an Olympic sport of emotionalmartyrdom). She was only a year older than me, we hadthree classes together, the same striped cardigan, the samepiercing, no friends that were girls, and a love of the sameoutcasts’ hero band. Why shouldn’t we end up BFFs?Ever since that day, I’ve been cheering on her pursuitof a music career while I watch mine descend into entropybecause that’s what best friends do. Plus, one of us has tomake it, so let the fallen comrade boost the other over thewall and out from behind enemy lines.***Earlier tonight, I called myself a martyr for everyone in theback row who claimed that their project ‘sucked’. Really, Iwas just a flop in my own right. I’ve got a long walk tonight.“All drinks half off! It’s happy hour somewhere!”20

Drunks, booze-mongers, and ethyl bathhouses just litterthis metropolis like pollen on the vernal w

narcissist with acute paranoia who will kick the crap out of her nightly. And when he tires of scourging her, she will flog in place of him through the remembrance of her peanut butter colored skin, bushel of sickly serpentine hair, and strange, ambivalent features. I n every stage of this emotional decomposition, she has