I haven't talked to Dad since Father's Day. I don't know how I feel about it, so...how can I write about it?

I haven't been writing much here at all, lately. In my dayplanner, I have a section for daily notes, and I guess I've been using that as a diary, but...I mean, one of the things that shattered my heart after the fire was losing years worth of diaries, and here I am, in one of the most important times of my life, living in New York, and...I'm not documenting every day here, dissecting every move.

Instead of writing them down...I'm seeing them all. With my new eyes. I feel like I'm seeing the world for the first time.

Stacey's stepmother called me today: I guess Stacey showed her some of the portraits from my photography project...and she thought they were good, really good. So good that she offered me a job this summer, an internship: I'd be an assistant on her photoshoots and her castings, help her with her equiptment and her studio...I'd be working for a real live well-known photographer! I'd have to move to New York for the summer, though Kevin and Shoshannah said that I could stay at the brownstone in the city with David; it didn't even hit me until after we three had talked it out that I had no intentions of asking for Dad's permission.

Not after what happened on Father's Day. No.

I don't want to leave here, my new home, Bee and all of my friends. Dawn. Loes. But if I told Samantha no, wouldn't I be doing what I've done all year? Putting everybody ahead of myself and nearly breaking apart over and over. It's like I have to give all I can because back in December, I took all of those pills and this is my penance. Have I done enough? I feel like I've been lying still on the bathroom floor, drowning in all of that water. Can I stand now? Can I walk into something new, something that's mine, and not be guilty?

In group today, our therapist Alicia spread out art supplies on the conference table, this cornucopia of creativity. I hesitated, of course, because I'm not Claudia. I'm not...much of anything when it comes to art. I can knit, though, and I asked Alicia if I could knit something instead. She studied me for a while and then reached to the table and grabbed a digital Nikon camera and gently set it in my hands.

She told us that we talk so much about our bodies, how we feel about our skin and all that roils underneath it to make us see ourselves the way we do. A warped, sick way that...destroys us. So, we were going to use these art materials to represent how we see ourselves in more than words.

Here I was, still stinging from what Ashley said on the boards. I talked to Logan about it...I told him that a part of me wondered if she was right. Or if maybe that's how everyone sees me back at SHS: still meek and weak and a nice and quiet shadow of someone else. He said that I'm clearly not the same. I am stronger. It's partly why he thinks that the two of us feel so right together now, because I'm more sure of myself and what I want...and saying what I want as opposed to hoping that someone would magically know what was in my head, so that I wouldn't impose or be a bother. I have a spine.

I just...forget about it sometimes.

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