*Ellie*

I actually almost forgot about this notebook. I found it trapped in a dusty corner under my bed this morning and I felt the unstoppable urge to page through it. It seems like it has suffered the same fate as myself. As I look at my previous…well…entries, for lack of a better word, I can't help but see the huge distance between Ellie now and Ellie four years ago. Not much can really describe me then and I guess the same goes for now, but I used to let my surroundings control my emotions and now nothing can touch it.

My life doesn't read like an angsty teenager pressing emo poems into their diary. You won't find naive scribbling of EN+CM in the margins surrounded by hearts and daisies. You won't find out about what Heather Sinclair did at the ravine last Friday night. All you will find is life. Unimportant, insignificant, uneventful life. I suppose that is why I let this thing get shoved away so carelessly .It doesn't mean anything to me other that the fact that it allowed me to practice my writing techniques and view my thoughts in a different perspective.

What do I have to write about now? What is so all inspiring that possessed my hand to grab a pen and scratch away at this wrinkling paper? Nothing. I live each day as it passes with the same routine as always. It's like my brain won't let me have any free will. My brain is programmed to fulfill the human lifecycle without any glitches. Eat, sleep, mate, reproduce, survive predator attacks. I will be forced to meet those goals successfully until my body finally gives up and dies. Sometimes I wish that I could just end the cycle all together, but what would that solve. It would just prove the littleness of myself and the fact that I don't matter. I haven't done anything.

I could go on a tedious rant about how depressed that makes me, but quite honestly, I don't even really care. I haven't really gotten the opportunity to feel for anything lately. No emotion, just still and quiet emptyness. Everything remains to be seen in anything besides black and white and I can't escape this one dimensional world. It just proves that when things remain the same for so long, inside emotions seem to be dulled over and therefore left to be ignored.

I often wonder what it would take to get me out of this weird neutral funk. What has to happen in my life that will have a strong enough hold on me and pull me out of limbo to see the world for what it really is? It remains to be a scary thought.

Today's word of the day:

Nothing; no thing; not anything; naught: to say nothing.

*Craig*

Nothing. Here I sit in my plain nothing of a room alone and I sense that there isn't anything outside these walls that are meant for me anymore. Who would want to associate themselves with me after everything I let happen, after how many people's lives I have disrupted and hurt. Joey, Angie, Manny,…Ellie, if only to name a few from my most recent screw up. They will all be gone when I get out of this prison. Sure, Joey and Angie will still try and see me the way they used to, but I am afraid that I really wrecked things to the point where this stuff will be beyond repair.

I really have so many people that I have to make up to. I should be lucky if I am not shunned for eternity. That's probably all I am going to be doing as soon as I get clean. Nothing can REALLY make up for all the hurt I caused, and I know I don't deserve the right to hope that I don't have to go to the ends of the earth to get forgiveness. That would suck, but I would do it if that's what it took.

All in all I think the one thing I need that I never let myself fully embrace was to connect with someone that truly knows every side of me. For years I have always instinctively separated the people I know into two different groups. Friends and family who saw me as the jerk-to-women guy pal musician in one group and the others who knew the bi-polar, drug addict, physically abused, all around crazy Craig in another. But only once did someone ever sneak their way into both.

Ellie started out as just a girl I knew from school. The only thing I knew about her was the rumors going around school that she was some freaky goth kid who cut herself. The only times when I ever really saw or talked to her was when I saw her hanging around my ex-girlfriend, Ashley. But then it all changed when I was shoved into those group therapy sessions and she came walking into that part of my life, entering the circle of sickos.

I think that out of all the things I had and loved in my life she was the one thing I could call my anchor when I thought that I was going to lose my mind entirely. She was the only one who wouldn't stand guard whenever I would walk into a room. She didn't watch what she said and treat me like a ticking time bomb while I was with her. She didn't force me to get better, but offered me the desire to help myself. She didn't flinch, nor had she ever gasped when I would occasionally have a mental slip. I wasn't a psycho lunatic. I was a human man to her and that is more than I can say for a lot of people.

But now I screwed that up as well. Addict Craig and jerk-to-women Craig appeared at the same time and destroyed any good vision she had of me. And it is all because of this stupid stuff. This stupid white powder that can easily sift through my fingers crushed the soul of a man she could have been proud to love and then beat it with a stick.

I think that that is what kept me strong these past few months. Seeing what that Craig can do to people he cares about sickens me to no end and all I want is to make his image disappear all together. I just wish that once I fix myself up and get out of here she would just be sitting there waiting for me. I guess that that is too much to ask for. I don't think that she will be able to keep her word that she will always be there, that she would always be the same no matter what I've done to mess with everyone's lives.