Happy New Year, guys! Sorry, I know that it's technically the 2nd of January, since it's 2:46 am, but whatever. I'm too tired to care. And I have to be up and eight tomorrow morning. Yay! Did anyone actually watch the London fireworks, by the way? We used to go when we lived there-- the ones for the millennium are particularly vivid in my memory, even though I was only seven at the time. I watched the 2009 display on Youtube this afternoon. Pretty cool, huh?

Date: 1st January, 2009!!

Character: Bella

Stimulus: Fireworks.

Christmas was a failure. New Year was a disappointment.

In fact, both went out with a sort of attempt at a bang. Like a bad, wet firework. But it ended up as more of a dying fizzle.

I watched the real fireworks in London on Charlie's tv. I didn't really pay much attention, but he insisted I stay. He didn't protest when I disappeared after it was finished, though. I guess he understood that ten minutes of sitting in awkward silence, watching pretty lights flash, as hundreds of thousands of people celebrate, is enough for one day. Enough for one year, really.

When I reached the solitude of my room, I knelt on the floor. Like the night that I couldn't bear to think about, I fell forward so that my cheek rested against the hard wooden floor, and succumbed to weary sobs.

Would this ever get any easier? Was I doomed to be in agony for the rest of my oh-so-very mortal life?

It had to end. It had to end, sometime. It had to be different, this year… it just had to be.

I did not know how much more of this I could stand.

P.S-- 500 reviews would be AMAZING! Can you manage it? That's only eight...