Remember Me?

Dear Kandace, It's May 1st 2010 today. You, I, we, have turned sixteen. I just got that email you, I, we wrote in November. It's lovely, thank you. I don't know why I'm thanking you though, the Kandace who reads this email won't be the same Kandace who wrote me the last one. The Kandace who wrote me the last email, the one entitled "You've Made It.", was Kandace Walker from November 2009. The 18th in case you don't remember the exact date. She was a very different Kandace from me. She gave me some good advice though. Things like, stay in touch with the people you love - the girls from Christ College and Sara etc - and remember to do the things you love daily, if you practice you'll improve. I'm not going to give you the same advice though, if you wanted the same old advice year after year you'd just scroll back through your GoogleMail inbox, wouldn't you? No. How about I tell you how I am? You probably don't remember so hopefully you'll be grateful for this. In the morning I'm depressed and I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to go to school because I can't be fucked but I have to or else I won't get any GCSEs and then I'll be fucked. So I drag myself out of bed and I put on my uniform, brush my teeth, usually I skip out on breakfast because I want to weigh, like, 105 pounds and then I haul my fucking heavy school bag to Mom's car. I spend the ten-minute drive to school wishing I was in the hospital, it was nice there, I felt calm there, depressed but calm. When I'm at school I have to suppress the depression because otherwise everyone just freaks out and then I get pissed and end up kicking a bitch in the face. They'd probably deserve it but society says that you're not allowed to decide what someone deserves unless you're a court or something and even they manage to fuck that up. Sorry I'm swearing so much, I'm in a crappy mood. So I'm at school and I'm acting like NormalKandace. It's easy enough because NormalKandace is not a fictional character, she once existed and she still does exist in the back of my mind so it's easy enough to conjure her up. When I get back home again I usually take a nap and go on Tumblr. Tumblr is a distraction from real life which is why it usually makes me happy. I am not RealKandace on there. I am InternetKandace who is witty and beautiful and whose words are actually somewhat valued. The only time Tumblr makes me sad is when people talk about friends or boyfriends or real life things that I am missing out on. Usually I go to bed feeling really low, it's the kind of low that pushes people off high-rise apartment buildings and bridges but this is Wales and there aren't any bridges or skyscrapers and I couldn't do that to Mom anyway so I stay put and I just cry myself to sleep. That's me on a bad or a normal day. On a good day, life is great. On good days the sun is usually shining and I do my hair and my make-up and make sure to shower and wear deodorant. I laugh on good days and I don't even give the bad ones a single thought for the majority of the day. But I always go to bed sad on good days because they're ending and tomorrow I will wake up miserable because I am not the type of lucky motherfucker who gets two good days in a row. I want to die. I think about it all the time. I don't fancy hanging and I can't even stomach pills anymore (remember attempts one and two, eh?) so I reckon I'd jump off a building because I don't own a gun. No, no, I got it wrong. I don't want to die. I just don't want to live. Or I do. That's the problem. I don't know how. I don't know how I will make it. I don't know if I will make it. Oops, got it wrong again. "I don't know how" was wrong. What I really meant was, "I don't know". I don't know if I'll achieve everything I want to or if I'll just piss my life away and end up disappointing everyone I love and myself. I simply don't know and it doesn't really look good from here. As far as I can see I can't possibly do anything of the things I want to do, not successfully at least. I'm not 5'10" and beautiful and skinny so I can't model. I'm not a talented artist who is able to translate visual inspirations into amazing garments of clothing so I can't be a fashion designer. I can write fabulously well but no one seems to think I'm any good so I can't be a journalist of any sort. I can't commit to writing a book so I can't be an author. I can't, I can't, I can't. That's the problem you see. I'm pretty sure I can't but I don't know. Maybe I acquire all the skills and requirements I need to do all of these things but I'm no time traveller so I don't know what is going to happen. It's maddening. Remember Five-Year-OldKandace? Remember how she thought she could be anything? I don't want to disappoint her. She's still inside me somewhere, she's still inside you. If I off myself, top myself, blow my brains out against a wall, she'll never know, will she? She'll never know if she failed or succeeded. It will always be a mystery but at least it'll be better than knowing she, we, I, you, failed. People keep saying, "Lots of teenagers feel this way." But I guess my, our, parents picked a really crap place to raise me because none of the teenagers here feel anything. Wales is so fucking disconnected that the kids here aren't even properly aware of the world outside. The adults, they went through wars and all sorts of awful catastrophes. They know things like pain and loss and love. Teenagers here don't read books, they never lived, they don't listens to their parents' stories about "in their day". They're so fucking uneducated, how could they feel this way? How could they want to die? They don't cry when they think of the people who died in wars hundreds of years ago. They don't cry when they think of children playing in 1157AD. They don't cry when they think of ghosts in limbo. They don't feel and I hate them for it. I know I sound all high and mighty but I guess it's because I am. I really hate them. I'm worse than that kid from Virginia Tech. If I could I'd slaughter the lot of them and do the world a bunch of good. I wouldn't fuck it up either, I'd lock the doors and burn the lot of them to the ground. That's sound harsh, I don't mean it really. I don't. This email is a bit of a mess, isn't it? Well here's what I want to say, here's my advice: I feel shit right now but I think I won't feel like this forever. If you're reading this then fucking congrats and I hope you're doing well. I hope you're sewing and writing and showing the world and all those bloody English teachers that you're better than they'll ever be and you're going to kick up a fucking storm and bring the world down around you with your awesome powers. If you feel shit, chin up, love. You'll get better, I promise. The sun will come out and you'll marvel at the sky like you always do. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't know, no, you don't. But if you hang yourself or jump off a bridge or shove a pot of pills down your throat then you'll never know. And you know what? I rekcon you can do it all. There's a world out there, just waiting for you to set it alight, so fucking go and watch it burn. Lots of love, Kandace S. Walker