"Dear diary,

we moved again. Let's call this town with the nickname I gave to my grandmother, where we are living now - Creeper 1's city. It's the name of a creature from a movie, eating people's organs to get whatever organ is damaged or lost. It is perfect for the evil mother of my father. I hate that we had to move again. We used to live with my mom's mother in let's say Creeper 2's city. She is not mean but really knows how to create a scandal or how to act like she is fainting...to get what she wants or just prove a point.

Both my grandmothers did everything in their power to separate my parents and to make our life harder. But, dear Diary, you already know that. I am writing to you like you are my only friend since I was ten years old. Of course, you missed my first ten years of this...let's call it life. I can tell you the short story now.

I was born in Creeper 2's city, but it was a mistake. You see, I was a mistake...from the beginning. My mother met my father when she was at school, and he was at university. She gave birth to me a year later at the young age of 17. I wasn't planned and who knows if my parents would be together now if it wasn't for this surprise baby they decided to keep. I was loved by them, but they were so young and naive. Sooo not ready to be parents.

Sometime after I was born, my mother had to go and live with my dad in his parents apartment in Creeper 1's city. Mom was miserable there. Unwanted and blamed by his mother and father, she was somehow able to raise a baby almost alone. My father used to work most of my life, so he wasn't much at home...and with that said I need to say that he never knew the real me and no matter how much work he had - we were very poor. There was a time that I thought that soon we will start rummaging in the trash on the streets to be able to eat.

When things got unbearable, mom decided to go to her mother's town and I and dad followed her. So I was in Creeper 2's city again for a while. Then we moved to a small village near the sea where both of my parents were working, and I was left alone in the house we were still paying for at the young age of 5. But it's ok, I was a calm, polite kid and never disobeyed.

Of course, things went bad again, and we lost the place we considered our home for a few years, but not before a teen neighbor boy tried to rape me... Yeah...one of my early memories is how he made me undress myself behind the old school and told me to listen to him, or he will kill my mother. For small kids things like that seem real, and so I did what he wanted. It's like a bad dream now, except...it wasn't a nightmare. Mom told me there was no damage done to me, but there is...in my head. At the same place, the dog of a friendly family chewed my head while I was fighting for my doll, and I was all alone when it happened. Had to walk the stairs with a bleeding head to find my parents upstairs in the building. I have the scars to prove it, buried in my hair, but nooo... no damage is done, I am just fine! Peachy!

Here we were again for the next few years living a while in Creeper 1's city and again in Creeper 2's city. At age 9 I got a brother. I was asking for a sibling since I was little, so I was thrilled. I wasn't thinking from an adult point of view. See with two smoking parents with no money and no real home, a second child to feed should be a bad idea. Anyway, Dexter was born, and we all loved him...later on, after someone pointed me the stuff I was blind to, I realized that my parents loved him even more than me. It would not be a problem if they did for me what they were doing for him. Instead, I have a clear memory of how my mother is waking me up most mornings to go and buy a croissant for my brother for breakfast...see, there was not enough money for two. I just ignored that this is something I could eat and avoided getting a bite, afraid that I might want more.

Four of us were living in Creeper 1's city, stuffed in one room in my father's mother's apartment. She was a widow since I was 2 years old. As you can guess, I do not remember my grandfather, and with no other alive grandfather... I do not know what it is like to have such a grandparent. The proud owner of the home was making our life worse with her daily nagging about cleaning and doing stuff her way. Sometimes she had nothing to say to us, so she would just create stuff, but I will tell you such things later.

My mother was waiting tables and my father had some stupid job with no contract for a man who cut wood in the forest. I had to go to school and when I get home, I was taking care of my brother. We were so close since he was born. People called me his second mother...we were inseparable, and I liked that if you skip the fact that I had to go play with him and do everything with him on his terms...because as you see...he was a baby and later a small kid.

So here we are at today's date. I am twelve years old and writing here again to spill my emotions to someone, because the kids I play with on the street, will never get how I feel. I am having problems that they will never experience at my age... I am more mature than most. To be honest, I better hide my thoughts of myself from them, or I will lose them like I lost every other friend I made. I lost them all! When I made a friend, they said that I am special, different, and they appreciate me...then we moved again to another town and I lost them.

I am always the new girl, always the outsider, and always alone!

So I am excited and a bit scared for tomorrow. It will be the first day of the new school year and I will be back at this school where my father went as a child. I studied there when I was in 1st and 2nd grade. Then we moved. After time, I was here again for a while at the same school, but we moved again. Here I am for a third time. I will be part of a class for which teacher Nicholaeva will be responsible. I will meet her tomorrow at the school opening celebration. I hate those things. Mom is feeling like a young girl, filled with respect and all that... I get some of it from her, but mostly I feel uncomfortable and not in my place.

Anyway, tomorrow I will tell you how it was. Bye, diary!

I closed the giant notebook that was my only real friend since my mom gave it to me as a gift. I must say that it was a brilliant idea and I love to write there every day. Sometimes I do it more than once if I have things to share. I keep my life story within its pages, and sometimes I look back and see how lame my thoughts were or what grammar mistakes I used to make when I was younger.

I inhaled deeply and exhaled with closed eyes, feeling the pressure trying to smash my lungs again. What would tomorrow look like in my head when it's bedtime and I open my diary again to spill my thoughts? I opened the drawer on the desk near my small bed and left the notebook inside. No one wanted to read it by now no matter that I was writing in front of whoever was in the room. I could not afford to have my own room and had to do it all in the same room as my family. No personal space or anything really mine. Even my clothes are not mine. We can't buy new clothes, there is no money for such things. I use my mom's old clothes that she used to wear when she was my age. Good that they fit!

I closed the drawer and covered myself with my blanket. I should get some sleep to gather strength for whatever tomorrow will bring. I developed a skill to control my dreams a bit. If I wake up from a dream and I want it to continue, I just think hard about it and when I drift away the dream comes back and the story goes on. Somewhere I heard that if you fall asleep with a happy thought, you will have good dreams. So I closed my eyes, ignoring the television that my mom was watching, and forced a smile. Here goes nothing...