I was talking to two very nice japanese tourists in the city today, just relaxing the Kelvingrove park as I like to do. After about half an hour of conversation they decied my name didn't suit me, and gave me a long list of alternatives, the only two I can remember being 'Aika' and 'Ouka' (please note i don't know the japanese spelling for the names and there was also the problem of a heavy accent which means I could have misheard them in the first place). Funny thing is, my drama friends told me the same thing. Hmm, I just think it's strange people want me to have a new name, I've sort of grown attack to my original one over the years.

I am suddenly very powerful, and let me tell you, it's fucking great! I now have complete control as far as my art class is concerned. The SQA really shouldn't leave confidential information lying around. You see, teachers get paid for each class they do. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that I, an Advanced Higher Student, share class time with the higher class. Thus, my teacher gets paid for two classes for using the time for only one class. However, that could all change. Art schools hate AH. It's only good for people like me who want a degree in the arts that does not involve and Art School (for me it's journalism and creative writing, for others it could be drama and so on). This means that a lot of people wanting to go to art school drop the course before finishing it. However, if less than 50 complete the course next year, it will be scrapped. Bye bye to the pay for AH classes. Now, art teachers are being told to inforce what students are directed to believe the course is (for example, freedom of a candidate to hold complete creative control of their folio). They have been instructed to inforce the curriculum, meaning, they did not do so before. After the shit I had to put up this year, I know that the course outline is different from what perspective candidates are lead to believe. After being lied to and jerked around and stressed and having my artistic freedom taken away, finding out that I am not the only candidate being force fed their bullshit PISSED ME OFF. So, I informed my teacher of the information I had. Having power over someone who's treated you like shit for a year feels good - really good. Now, I have ten days extra to have my folio finished, and she hasn't been calling my house trying to get me in (to do nothing) during exam leave I need for drama preperation. I wonder though, how next years AH class will react if I gifted them with this information? If they knew THEY had the power? If they quit, no more AH, and there's no pay for subject that doesn't exist. Ha! Having power is great!

Is it wrong to want to live my own life? My mother seemes to think so. I hate where I stand in my family, I love them but I'm not close to any of them. I can't name their favourite song, or the things they did in their youth that made them happy. They know nothing of me, giving me money whenever someone like the school or a writers group tell me my work is worthy of merit. Why does someone have to tell them that I can write? I want to be close to them, but every time I try they always find a way to avoid it, I'm not sure whether or not it's intentional. Tonight, we had my relatives over. However, every friday I meet up with my friends who I don't see that much any more, just to keep in touch and remind ourselves of why we are such good friends. I helped with the dinner, tidied the house, finished all my homework for the weekend, and asked to go over to Heathers. After just telling my brother he could do whatever he wanted, my mother told me I had to stay in because of my uncle and aunts' visit. For the whole night, I was never asked to say a word to them. I was upset as the night went on, because I won't see my friends for a few weeks during exams. My mother asked what was wrong, and I told her. She told me that we no longer had the mother-daughter relationship she thought I had because I was being so selfish. I drop anything and everything I'm doing to help my mother, and she turns against me for wanting one night of relaxation when I wasn't wanted in my house anyway. How does wanting a little time with my friends, who at least know me well enough to read my work and support me in what I do destroy nearly eighteen years of love between a mother and child? I can't see how I am the over-dramtic one just because I enjoy acting (which of course, I must give up for my family and become the university daughter they can boast about), when my mother is willing to cast me aside over something so trivial. How can she praise my writing awards I get for expressing myself, when she punishes me for telling me how I feel? My family don't read my writing, have never seen me act, reduced me to singing only when I am sure I am alone (when I was once an accomplished singer), and see no connection between me and my art work. I suppose it should come as no surprise that they know so little about me. I just wish I didn't have to choose between my own life and living the way that is acceptable to the family. Whenever I feel torn like this, all I want to do is write, paint, do something creative. But the muse is always strangled when I feel like this. Am I bad for even wanting to express myself at all. I guess I'll never know so long as I have to choose between the family I love, and the life I want so desperately.

I though I saw the woman I depised above all else today. It turned out to be a very unfortunate conicidence, but I can't think about anything else now. I was out walking to try and clear my head so I could study for my prelim exams. I saw a woman walking along the cycle track who looked (from behind) exactly like the headmistress of my first primary school. I couldn't make myself move, but I wanted to run home and never step outside again. I felt like I was 6 years old all over again, and I hated it. I couldn't breathe with fear, and I was filled with self-disgust for being so weak. The headmistress is in fact in jail, and will be for four more years at least. She was convicted of violent assault against students and teachers alike. She never smacked me around, that apparently began after I left, so I guess I should consider myself lucky. She had some sort of personal vendetta against my brother and I. Though she never physically hurt us, she was happy to leave me tangled in a barb-wire fence that the other kids pushed me into. Happy to leave me bleeding there until I couldn't even cry for lack of energy. To this day I have the scars on my arms and legs, and still suffer from anemia beacuse of it. The worst part was the mental abuse. She couldn't stand intelligence in children, so the fact I was reading Primary Seven books before I started school was definately not a good thing. I remember she used to always blame me for anything that went wrong in the class - paint spilled, books missing, chalk trampled in the carpet, anything slightly messed up. She would never call me by name, only 'the bad element'. Despite the fact I could read and write, I was of course a stupid and useless creature, who had to have a nanny because my parents went to work to avoid having to be around me. I remember very clearly the time she tore up a painting I had spent days on, saying I was possessed by the devil for daring to draw anything supernatural - it was a unicorn, a pure creature, a creature the devil would burn if he were to touch, a creature she would burn if she were to touch. to this day I fly into a rage if anyone even touches a painting, or something I've writtten without my permission. When I thought I saw her, I passed out for lack of oxygen. The poor lady whom I'd wrongly identified actually helped me, and was all for calling an ambulance until I explain my home was just down the road. I hate myself for being so damn weak. I stand up for anyone in need. The children I've been assigned in the School Buddy System all say they look up to me for being so weak. I'm the one voted "most likely to change the world" and "bravest/idiotic" in the school yearbook and I still can't lay this demon to rest. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?!?!?!?!?! She's in jail, paying for her crimes. Why do I still let her effect me? I wasn't even the worst of her victems, so why do I get so scared at the thought that she might be lurking round the corner, ready to pounce and destroy me? I simply don't understand. I've stood up to groups of neds with knives who want me dead just for wearing a black coat, I've survived a near death experiance, I've been trample by horses, and almost choked to death in judo, I'm always wanting to take risks and would die to be heroic. What a hypocrite I am if I can't even stand up to one pathetic, shriveled cantankerous old witch. God, I just wish she would die, or fell the pain she put so many innocent children through. It's the damn catholic school system. they only take catholics to run the schools, so a vast number of good people don't even get a chance. We get stuck with people unfit for their posisition just because of a damn religion! How is destroying children, whom God is supposed to love best of all, serving God? I can't stand catholic stupidity, I can't stand her, I can't stand people like her, and I can't stand my own damn weakness!

I've decided to go against my parents wishes and persue my dreams of writing despite all obsticles. I've been recognised in Nation Compitions and have a never ending passion for writing, so why shouldn't I fight for my dream?

I am loseing control over my life again. I am sick of people telling me whats best for me without even knowing me. I am sick of people dashing my dreams of being a writer, condemning me to work in an office before I've even left school. Sentencing me (with no crime having been commmitted) to fade away behind cold grey walls. My worst nightmare. I hope other artistically minded people can understand how it feels to be denied all creative avenues. I feel suffocated, choaking and spluttering through an endless darkness. Music can stir nothing in me, my books lie collecting dust and my writing calls out to me, begging to be finished, but I cannot bear to even look at it. It would be better if I was not talented. I say this not to boast, it's a simple fact that people enjoy reading my work (when I've completetly finshed it, unfortunately my wyvrens page is full of uncorrected stories) and I feel truly alive when I create my tales. I wish I'd never found out the joy of it, then losing it wouldn't hurt so much. I just wish I could do what I want with my life, instead of living up to everyones expectations of me. Why is it always me who has to make everyone else happy? Why can I never be trusted to look after myself as I do for everyone else? Why do I have to be the stable one when all I want is my freedom? Why can't I just be myself again? Why....why won't I let myself fight back, as I fight for everyone I care about?

Three days, that's all it's been but it feels like so much longer. I promised that this time I wouldn't let myself become so miserable. Granted, school isn't enjoyable for many people, but now I'm in a pit of depression I'm sure others don't suffer. When I say depression I don't refer to the kind of false heartbreak that seems to be the current fashion. I feel empty, cold. It's as if the world is suddenly a dead place, where the blaring noise of clattering dance music and cruel sunlight bombard my dulled senses. I have been shattered and my parents have betrayed me. Art is one of the most important things in my life and now it has been renched beyond my reach. I HATE my art teacher, I loathe her narrow-minded hypocritical views on art. I despise the way she condemns any idea she cannot understand and disregards all of my concepts are non-sensical rubbish. She is a sly and cruel woman to me, not to the others. Last year it was poor Heather who bore the brunt of this suffering, now she is free of it and I am the wonded one. She never berates me when others are there, always there are the little 'heart to hearts' in her office, or catching me at lunch while I work in my free periods. She takes stinging jabs that she knows will hurt me alone, insulting artists I love (Dali, Watts and of course the masters of elfwood), condemning them as untalented hacks. She even went so far as to condemn Dali's character, bismirching the name of a dead master who cannot fight back, while knowing I am in no position to stand up for him. I see in her eyes and hear in the tone of her voice a loathing of me and my friends Heather and god knows how many other students. I miss my old art teacher terribly, at least she understood the nessicity for creative freedom in art, at least she treated everyone in the same way, never being all sweetness and light to some while poison to others. I just wish she would leave me alone, rather than taking every chance to destroy my love of art. My parents will do nothing without hard evidence, which of course she carefully avoids. My father had a similar problem when he was in school, with English rather than art. He rebelled, did what he wanted and attained an A band 1, the highest award for Higher, yet he has forbidden me to do the same. I cannot even voice my misery without being repremanded, both at school and at home. If this continues I will not emerge unscathed, already I feel sick with stress and abject saddness. I would give all of it up if I only could, but I cannot, because of both university requirements and my own selfish pride and determination to never admit defeat to a bully. That's what she is, a bully, who cannot stand anyone straying from her rigid little system of art. I will continue, but I fear that this ordeal will cause me to lose the love and desired to do any art ever again. I will be too empty to create anything.

I've come to the conclusion that I only stay connected to the real world by fantasy and other wonderful unrealities and stay sane by total submission to all that is insane.
I've been dead, and so know what life is more than those around me.
I see beauty everywhere, even in the shapes the rain makes on crumbling council houses or the creatures born in the air from sickening tobacco smoke.
I love everything I see with a breaking heart.
No truth can ever come from hate, but people have heard the same lies so often that they believe it to be the truth. When a lie is the truth what does that make all of us?
Art is what makes humaity. There is always truth when free from the constraits of logic and rules.
The stars are beautiful.

I've finally finished my first novel, it's all redraughted now... it's so wierd. I've been working on my book for over three years (well writing it anyway, I've ben working on the story since I was 6)? Now what am I supposed to do. Do all writers feel this empty and confused when they finish a long term project? When I had my book to work on I could use it to block out the outside world, now what can I use? Without the anchor my story has become over the years I feel so lost, and now what am I to do with it? Should I go ahead and try for publication, will anyone take a seventeen year old seriously? What will I do if I face continual rejection? What if I actually succeed in getting published but then no one buys the book? What if once it's printed I realise something that would make the story a million times better? What should I do?

Several thing occur to me. One - I have never written a love letter, which seems incredibly sad, but I can't write one as the only guy I actually have feelings for is happily taken. Two - My art teacher is a hypocrite. She spends so much time teeling me about how the best artists rebelled, and then tries to suck all my creativity out of me in a painful and mentally warping extraction. Three - Seventeen is a bad age, I should just skip to Eighteen. Four - Love really sucks when it's unrequited love. Five - I have to get over my childhood tramuas (demented grandmother, bullying both from children and evil headteacher with vendetta against my family, absent parents ect) or they will plague me forever. Five - I cling fantasy because it's better to hold on to something that never really existed because you can have it taken away. Six - It doesn't matter what people are told, people will find the truth they need the most ans stick to it no matter what, and finally Seven - In spite of everything that has ever happened to me, everything I have ever done I still want to be a hero more than anything in the world. And whether it's because of or in spite of everything that's happened to me, that is one thing that will never change.

I HATE SECOND YEARS! THEY MUST DIE!


ARRRGGGHH! It sucks being in my school, apart from the infestations of rodants and insects the art department has been ransacked by second year midgets! They totally fucked up the computer, smashed the CD collection our class have collected for lessons, tore up most of the paper in the resource cuboard, mixed up all the acrilic paint into a horrible brown sludge and have completely destroyed all the Higher and Advance higher design work, half of the expressive and broken things people brough in to use as references. This includes, B's charm bracelet that her gran gave her, Heather's necklace her boyfriend bought her for her birthday, several of my unicorn ornanaments, Scott's photos of comets and lightning that he's spent years taking and collecting, Andrea's judo trophies, Lorriane's pictures of her family and Susannes first ballet shoes! Those brats had no right to be in there and have set our entire class back at least 10 weeks in work! They haven't even been punished yet because they're "mummy's and daddy's perfect little fucking angels'! It took all my self control to stop me from beating the living crap out of them, filthy littel neds! How will I ever pass art this year if nearly all of my work has been destroyed and we don't have the materials to replace it or the money for new materials. Our school can even afford to get the rats out of the ceiling! What am I going to do?

Good news is, today I got a day off from school. Bad news is I fainted in the middle of SE yesterday. To make matters worse it was in the middle of the Doner Card talk we all get in fifth year. My mum's a nurse for god's sake and now everyone's gonna think I'm a huge wimp. It wasn't the especially gory slide show, or the fact we spent ten minutes listening to how many of us will die in road accidents, heart attacks, cancer, or suddenly dropping dead in the street for no apparent reason. I've been off colour for days and the hall was so crowded and hot, I felt like I couldn't breath, my vision blurred, blacked out and the next thing I knew I was on the ground with everyone around me panicing. Perhaps I shouldn't have fainted a little while after the woman said "and some of you will drop dead for no apparent reason"? It was quite a surreal experiance, cause I couldn't remember what had happened and I couldn't see without my glasses, which had been taken off me for fear of smashing in my eyes. Apparently I had been viloently shaking and some of my friends were actually crying, thinking something had gone horribly wrong. Even stranger was the panic looks on the faces of people I was sure had some sort of vendetta against me since primary school. Could it be they actually like me? To make matters worse I threw up, and had had a curry the night before, and as it had red sauce everyone though I was coughing up blood which made things about a hundred times worse. If I hadn't been able to convince them I was alright I would have been carted off in an ambulance. Now I missed the gig I was invited to, the MIA gig tonight and the ghost tour tommorow. I'm going to be stuck INSIDE on halloween. I can't even help the kids trick or treating. It's utterly devestating! I will NEVER live this down!

Pissed off with my RE teacher. He's suck a prick. Today he told us free speech was a bad idea. Good news today though! Go Clinton WHOO! Ah well, I've always hated my RE teacher, such an asshole. Well, all who do not know what neds are, other than they are something I have a burning hatred of, must check out http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk. All questions will be answered an laughter will follow. Hee hee hee... nedagotchi... HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

I HATE NEDS! They are scum. Lower than scum, scum would probably look at them and feel sick. Stupid filthy smack head bastards! How the fuck did they have a knife on a fucking bus with a police officer on it!? Honestly, now I have twenty six stitches in my arm, and if that black kid hadn't yelled out it could have been my spine. I just thank god that my friends managed to get her away before those racists fucks coudl get thier hands on her, She was so brave. It must be hard being in the only blck family in this white inbred hell hole! If humans evolved from a fish neds evolved from a stupid fish with bad teeth and some horrific fucking skin disorder. I just got over being sick and now I have to wear a huge god damned bandage on my arm for weeks and get laughed at by the bastards in school. Arrgh! HATE NEDS!

Oh hideous injustice that returns to torment me. Of all the times to get sick! I'm on holiday, no school for nine days and for the past four I've been in bed barely able to move and not eating anything! And, to make matters worse, I miss Andy's gig. I like his band, they're good. And as Andy is my brother Owen's best friend he said I could request a song. They promised to play Nightmares dammit! And now I have to stay in bed and drink nothing but water and the occasional sugery water to keep my energy up. Damn it, my stomach better get back into eating soon. Everyone at the D&D night (which I also missed GRRRRR) got to eat chinese food. My favourite, *growls* My friends are so insensitive! I'd probably recover quicker if my mum stopped nagging me about not eating anything, she thinks I'm going to become anorexic. She's been paranoid since I started losing wieght, but all I've done is cut out the sweets and Irn Bru (well, except at gigs, partues and whenever me and my friends find some crazy excuse to invade our parents homes en masse and stay until the early hours and keep them awake with encessent caffine fueled giggling), and exercised more. Well, she's a nurse, I guess it's her job to be concerned. She should just be thankful I'm not on that stupid Atkins diet. That is so stupid, not to mention bad for your health. Ah well, I'm going back to bed. Ugg, ill and I don't get to miss class, just fun stuff. Soooooo unfair!

What do you do if your love someone, they notice you, but have no feelings for you? Ohh my tormented teenage soul!

Had to do twelve A4 pages of histiry homework (front and back) over the weekend. God it was awful! I've not had time for anything else. I have to draw a birthday card for Roisin's birthday on the 26th. I have an idea, so I hope she'll like it. Can't afford a normal card, or a present, so if she doesn't like it I'll apolgise profuesly and get her a brilliant Christmas present, something to do with Buffy, but then she has everything to do with that show. It was school photo day today, and I bet I'll ruin it by blinking or something, I always do. Ah well, school sucks anyway so I don't really care. Well, gotta do MORE homework, how do my poor friends cope without free periods?

Quote for today "It's a very rare person who's taken for who he truely is" Schmendrick The Magician from ''The Last Unicorn'

Doing a self portrait in art today. Took me and hour to get the eye's right, lot's of careful shading you understand. All my higher art stuff takes at least a week to do. Finnaly finshed the close up of the bark. It was so damn detailed. But I suppose it's all good practice and the sooner I get the investigation done, the sooner I get to do the development, which will be better since I can make stuuf up rather than sticking one hundred percent to real photo's and objects. All my friends are cool, which is good, but Philip's stuck in a rut. After being told by his dad he can't go to the Iron Maiden Concert I can't blame him. Ah well, still no new comments on my humble little gallery. Sigh, no one notices me. Still, it could be worse,I could be in one of my melodramic states of depression, and I'm finnaly not swamped with homework. I did all the English at break, except the great Gatsby stuff, God I hate that book, I've just had to read it so many times! And my history may be lengthly, but it's really easy so I can get through it quickly and I finnished my maths work in class. I have school photo's next tuesday. Dreading it, in my whole life there is only three photo's of myself I actually like. I'll just mess up the group shot for everyone by sneezing or something. Well, I warned them, so it's their fault if they make me go ahead with it. Well, I'm in desperate need of some caffine before I finish my homework so it's coffee time. Bye

Quote for today "Tell me how bad I am. It makes me feel so good." Lestat....mmm Lestat.....*drools on keyboard which isn't a good thing*

Back at school. Damn I hate school. But the Irn Bru machines working again and I get to see my really super cool friends. Philip has low self esteem. WELL DON'T DAMN IT. Geez Philip you know you rock. Pauline and I are already working on our halloween costumes. I know we have loads of time but we take it very seriously. This year we're going to an Edinburgh ghost tour. Hope it's nice and scary. the only thing like that that's ever actually scared me is the Dracula experiance in Whitby, but I was 7 at the time. Damn, why can't I get scared anymore? Thought I'd get ahead with my work but it keeps on coming. I'll never get my picture done, and it's running around my head hurting my brain. And I need my brain for thinking dammit! Ah well, did well in maths today which makes a nice bloody change! God I HATE maths! It's so dumb. I like subjects where there's no wrong answers as long as you can prove it, like english and art. But maths....it has to be either right, or wrong. Soooo stupid. And our teacher never really teaches us anything. Shit, I hope I pass the damn thing, I'll even settle for a C as long as I don't fail. How Pauline understands, and even likes that stuff I don't know, neither does anyone else in the class for that matter. Well, I'll just have to steal her brain, no biggy. And if that fails I'll just unwind by hitting the elfwood random button for a few hours.

Quote for today "I will go insane, and I will take you with me!" Delia from Bettle Juice. Such a cool movie.

I'm ill today... cough... On the very very VERY bright side no stupid catholic school. I hate school, except english, history and now art (still despise maths but ego won't let me quit, stupid ego). I get to do fantasy art this year! Yay, no more standard grade crap. But shock horror... the SQA will destroy my beautiful standard grade exam piece. NOOOOO! They can't do it. I managed to trick them and fill my pic with manga, and unicorns and fairies and dragons and witches and loads of wierd creatures I made up off the top of my head! It's the only picture I've ever liked that i did for school and they're going to burn it! I HATE the SQA! Nasty twixy SQA! Highers really suck! I have no time to draw anything for myself, but when I wasn't shivering under my nice comfy dovet I was catching up on all my homework for the next two weeks, now I should have time to draw the picture that's been floating around my brain for a month.

    There are some good things about being a fith year though. For some reason everybody likes me, even the people who've hated me since nursery school, wierd or what? I get to drink Irn Bru (Scotland's best soft drink. Orange, full of sugar and caffine and tastes way better than coffee and cures hangovers. Wouldn't have passed any exams without it) in class. Teachers stop treating us like three year olds. We get to boss around the very short and annoying first years. We get first pic of lockers (bare in mind in my crappy school there aren't enough for everyone). We get a bathroom with seats to sit on while desperately copying someone elses homework. We get free periods, some of which I'm unsupervised and can listen to my wonderful rock music. I wear trousers despite the sexist headmaster Mr Quinn banning girls from doing so. Git! My history teacher finally like us and lets us see her coffee mug with the naughty words on it. We get to write bad words in stories for english without being punished. I get to read The Vampire Lestat as part of my english course...mmmm Lestat... oh sorry... I have somewhat of an obssetion. Me and my friends are in class with the sexy sixth years boys, including the blonde one I like. Not fair, it's my best friend who sits next to him.. ah well, she's my bestest best friend so I'll let her off. Thanks to my free periods I can leave school early if I want, but I always end up waiting for my friends in the library, where I'm aloud to read the.... adult selection. Oh and the school's going to be demolished in a year and a half, cool or what, I can watch the implosion!

Other good thingshave happened since my sixteenth. Yes there's more. Before my exams I looked like a human shaped balloon with too much air inside, over summer I lost a LOT of weight. Now I can go into any of the goth shops in Glasgow and everything fits me. That is so firggin' cool. *big smile* There is plentiful supplies of wonderous Irn Bru! I got a twenty pound per month increase on pocket money so I can actually start saving money for my wonderful gap year! I like travelling, beats the crap out of school!(p.s kids stay in school ;-), so you can play a really great prank on your headmaster at the end of it as revenge. Mine involves Monty Python routines, a large block of multi coloured ice and a diving helmet.. I'm really evil somethimes. it's so much fun) My parents leave me and my brother on our own while they go away for a few days. PARTY!!! It's great fun. Damn, I should have been 16 sooner! My brother is not a constant pain in the arse anymore, only part time. And, of course, I'm on elfwood. Wish the search engine was working though. Hardly anyone see's my work. Sigh. Well my fingers hurt so see ya.


Quote for today "Perhaps I'm unique because people are so dull. I'm not ver good at being dull"