I have already posted three times since yesterday at noon. This is the fourth. Now it is getting late. And this is getting ridiculous. I promised myself that I would sleep before tomorrow. I have the SAT. I have been preparing for a year, and now, to culminate my efforts, I am not going to sleep the night before and I will go into the test exhausted. The test is at 8:00 a.m. today. It is about 2:30 now. Five and a half hours.

On nights when I decide to stay up late, my convictions usually hold until sometime between about right now and 3:30 a.m. and I already feel the aches creeping into my neck and my eyes. At three thirty I will shower. I will use the most fragrant products that I have and I will convince myself that I have just woken up feeling refreshed after a good night's rest.

Or, should I shower only a little before the test, to make sure that that feeling lasts through?

No, I will not make it through the tough hour without cascading waters and fragrant shampoo.

My boyfriend Josh may be angry. Josh lives and attends school in another state, so he cannot directly enforce his admonitions, but he did speak them.

But I am addicted. I feel as fervent about creating now as I felt about sleep a month ago, when I slept so much that I missed lots of school. I slept so much that I had twenty-seven absences. Now, mind that each of those absences is a single class, so I actually only had almost seven days... about a weeks worth. But a weeks worth of morning classes can really create a stumbling block.

My class schedule was as follows:

English 4 : Dual credit (college and HS)
Latin I : After 3 years of French, just for fun.
Government : Dual credit
Pre-Calculus
AP Biology
AP Chemistry
Anatomy and Physiology
Physics

Believe it or not, this was my dream schedule for Senior year. No holes, no free periods, no bullshit courses. Real, substantial, upper-level learning.

Well, at least in the sciences.

And all at once, I agitated my father's sensitive temper.

It had been quite awhile since I had upset him to his breaking point. In the past, I felt that his actions were almost justifiable. I did provoke him. I questioned him, and was frequently right - a very serious mistake to make when contradicting someone with a temper. And I knew better. I fucking knew better.

In this case, however, I did not. And I could not have done anything to prevent it.

My crime : Eating cheeri-os on the couch.

Not a household rule, but rather that one applied only to me. I do not spill on the couch or make messes, but I was about to discover that this was not the issue. The issue was control.

My punishment : I had the couch flipped on top of me, spilling cheeri-os everywhere. Obviously, making a mess was not the issue.

While I am still under the couch - my father picks up my stack of SAT study books and Biology notes and Sketchbook and hurdles them across the room.

This, to me, was the ultimate insult. This broke my heart.

I had been working so hard.

I am a National Merit Scholar. I study for the SAT all the time, so that my family is not financially strained when I attend a University, so that my grandmother can have something nice to tell her friends.

I elected to take the most difficult array of courses possible, and spare the senile escapades of my 83 year old English professor and a particulary malignant Government instructor, I was making it. I was loving it.

Biology became my favorite subject, I got to know my teacher so well that she and I ate lunch together and when I transfered schools, she gave me an old textbook of hers. I was on the Engineering Team, and in the National Honor Society. All of this work, all of this achievment, and one little bowl of cheeri-os was to be my undoing. He threw my books, my tickets to paradise, my pride, like trash. It broke my heart.

That night, I called my boyfriend Josh, who was naturally horrified. Only this time, I was going to listen when he told me to call someone, anyone to help, and to get out of the house.

So that is exactly what I tried to do. I have known my friend Megan Murphy since junior high. She and I passed college U.S. History because of each other. We were the only people of our sex and persuasion who could discuss those two matters in perfect earnest, trust, and friendship.

Megan had been asleep, and when I woke her and told her my story, she was not unsympathetic. She was, however, very exhausted, and also unable to do anything.

Oh, I know, I knew... I don't know why I called, I really apologise, I have to go... I am so sorry... I know.

The story was the same from my ex-boyfriend, Drew Spiegel. Drew to me had been the definition of a good friend after we broke up. He was very sensible, generous, and available. He also had some necessary perspective. But Drew, who had rescued me when rides ditched me at certain unsafe punkish shows, fed me lots of times in exchange for homework help, and called me first when he had an extra ticket to anything, he was also exhausted. This one was beyond his capabilities.

Two things struck me in that moment:

1. I had only three people to turn to if I ever really needed help, and

2. None of them could do much, for one reason or another.

The most potent sense of isolation and desparation overwhelmed me then. I wasn't into solutions at that time. From then until about a month later, I was into sleep. I slept late and went to bed early. I read a lot of the wrong thing, namely Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. My room was a disaster. I was always clean, but always unkempt. And homework was piling up on me but I couldn't cycle it through. I didn't talk to anyone, spare Josh.

Josh came down from school in Soccorro, New Mexico, to visit me once while I was trying to figure out what I could do. We had a flawless weekend, absolutely pristine. With good books and sweet sex and a day of consistently breathtaking kisses. Then he dropped me back off at my house. And I had to walk through the door. And I had to stay. At that time, I thought I would have to stay here until June. I was never sure I could survive that long. I was malodramatic and I had an active imagination that included my daddy's German mouser and the fact that he controlled the locks on my door. Nothing of this sort was ever going to happen, of course. I was to become invisible, and my father is just a sad, confused person with a temper.

But this all proved one important thing to me: I did not feel safe in my own home.