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ok some of you might have read this somewhere before. It was probably on my old online diary on my now-defunct webpage. or you read it when it was posted to one of the many nirvana mailing lists I've belonged to. anyway I can't find the saved version so I'm going to retell it:

April 8, 1994: it was a very eerie day in school. The kind of weather in Ohio that produces tornados. It was one of the first really humid days I'd experienced since my leg/knee surgeries and the pain was incredible. I thought that my gramma just needed an excuse to complain about her knee pain, I didn't think humidity really caused joints to swell... well my friends it definitly does.... The months after my surgeries hadn't been going so well. I was addicted to my pain pills, I'd gained 80 pounds, I couldnt drum anymore, my grades, which were close to 4.0, were now horrible. I had NEVER gotten below a B on anything in my whole life except for math. My mom was pressuring me to get a job but I'd have to walk there and back and it would all be for nothing because it would all go to paying rent and if I was lucky enough to have anything leftover I would get lunch money for school (my mom has a *slight* gambling problem). After months of looking I was hired by Subway. I'm in the same situation right now, trying to find a job. It's very disheartening being turned down so many times when I know I'm smarter than anyone else there, that I could do even the boss's job if shown a ten minute how-to video, that I have the skills but not the looks and I know thats what's keeping me from getting hired and the only reason Subway hired me is because my cousin (mom's side) in Florida has worked at a Subway since high school (she's now the manager, ooooh) and I made it seem like I had worked there under the table and they wouldnt have to train me, but really I just hung out with my cousin one afternoon while she worked.... so anyway I was super-suicidal these days. I'm pretty sure my clinical depression kicked in earlier than this but this is when my suicide attempts became "serious" and frequent. If you've read my other entries you'd know that I have a problem staying dead. Well it actually takes a lot to get me dead, too. Drowning and the h od's have been the only "successes". I had tried od'ing on everything, I took a weeks worth of pain pills washed them down with windex... I "fell off" the tracks before getting hit by the train, got hit by the train and it thrw me, like I bounced off it and only managed to get very hurt falling down the hill of those big railroad track rocks, I walked in front of a car, put my hand into a wasp nest... all things that should have killed me but didnt. My mind was all over the place at this time in my life. I was having arguments with god, I thought there was a demon watching over me at night. Most of the time at home I spent stapling pictures to my bedroom wall, eventually covering every part of the walls and started the ceiling, or when I had no more magazines to cut up I'd make myself a Kurt sandwich, I'd put the stereo speaker on the floor, lay on it, put the other speaker face down on me and blare selected tracks from In Utero on neverending repeat (1,2,4,6,10) or only my fave track at the time, Radio Friendly. weird things kept happening to me, I'd go for walks and then "wake up" hours and miles later, street lights would turn off when I'd walk under them, this is documented on film, it happened for a long time too. I read the unabridged copy of the Stand three times while I was out of school, and I get super-into Anne Rice's vampire world. I would still give more than my soul to be a vamp (not that there is such a thing as a soul...). Back then I used to fantasize that they'd be watching me, waiting for me to mature enough before they turned me into a vamp, it was like a goal of mine, something to work towards, getting myself ready so that they'd make me a vampire.... my mom and brother went on a vacation and I had to work so I stayed home only she locked me out of the house by accident of course and I was too scared to break a window to get in, I knew at the least I'd be paying for it and I was only making $4.25 an hour. so that week I stayed with a few different friends, then their parents started to get suspicious and so I slept at the park. This park, Blue Limestone, is two parks. There's the front regular park with the pavilions and playground etc then you cross the crick and go through a tunnel and there's the second park, which is woods with trails and some ponds and a small waterfall etc, the "party" spot... so I tried to sleep in the tunnel but I kept getting freaked out cuz of the Lincoln Tunnel part of the Stand, the movie doesnt do my imagination justice, movies never do.... then I woke up covered in milipedes, which wouldnt be so bad except that it must have been milipede mating season and I was covered in a milipede orgy.... so thats when I got a ride to columbus and stayed at a coffehouse called idiot boy and bummed enough money to get a coffee and live off of the refills for a few days. I wrote some unbelievably good poetry and decided to kill myself. I really was fed up with people and life and who I was. I still am, by the way, but now I have a different approach to my life. Anyway, this time (in 94) I wouldn't try anything that could go wrong, I wanted it fool proof, and the only fool proof way of killing yourself is with a gun, and I know even that's not 100% (see footnote on Pike) but it's the best I've got.... I knew people with guns, lots of people actually cuz it was small town Ohio and boys are taught to shoot before they're taught to walk... getting someone I knew to lend me a gun, that was the tricky part. Even with my lying and manipulative skills I couldn't come up with a scenerio that would place me needing a gun for any good reason so I ended up "stealing" this guy's handgun. I cant remember what kind it was, it was smaller than my Walther, that was the .357 I got in myrtle beach my first year of college, but I picked that gun for its size, its meatiness... anyway this wasnt as "manly" as a gun as I hoped but it was small enough to hide, and my friend had been hiding it from his parents and he really didnt need to have a gun so I rationalized it like that. yeah he'd be pissed that I killed myself with his gun but whatever, I'd be dead and I wouldn't care.... I was REALLY looking forward to killing myself, it was a good feeling, like finally I'm gonna do it right. I had it all planned out, later that week the youth group I "belonged" to (not a church youth group but about 100 kids, on a good day, hippie type kids sorta, we did good things like our own habitat for humanity-type builds around the midwest and good samaritan stuff in our own town, sunday night meetings were all about promoting PC stuff, gender equality etc it was one of the only positive influences in my childhood/life) the youth group was going on a retreat, the first one Id be going to since I'd joined. the retreat was to Camp Agape (nice coincidence when you see where this is going) a campground thats even more out in bumfuck than the town I lived in. the camp had a caretaker house, a main lodge, 4 or 5 other cabins and two mini-cabins. there's just hundred of acres of wilderness surrounding it and someone had told me that they'd found a cave the year before and although it was a long fucking walk, it was easy to find. I didn't pack much for this weekend, just enough to get me to that cave. I didn't think I'd shoot myself right when I got there, so I thought to bring my pillow. I packed my notebook that I'd written all that great poetry in the week before, I didnt plan on writing a note, in fact whenever I do kill myself (cuz its not a question of if, but I'll write on this sometime later) there wont be a note. I figure if you're dumb enough not to know why I killed myself then you dont deserve a note, and people dont deserve notes anyway, and they dont do anyone any good and they never explain anything anyway so fuck you, figure it out yourself... anyway I wasn't so anti-note at the time and thought who knows maybe another poem will happen or maybe I should explain to people why I did what I did and why I was like what I'm like cuz back then I wasn't open about my childhood and all the bad shit thats happened to me and all my "mental problems" etc so it would have been nice to explain to people oh she was way fucked up to be of any use to society, no fixing that, call it a total loss and issue a salvage title, too bad she didnt have insurance.... so anyway I had it all fucking planned, this cave in the middle of nofuckingwhere no one would hear, no one would find me, a bear or wolf would eat my remains, even if I fucked up and only wounded myself I'd still be too far away to get help, or would bleed to death before help found me. and it was so far away that once I got there my laziness and knee pain would be encouragement to shoot myself, that if I chickened out then I'd have to worry about getting my ass back to civilization, explaining where I was the whole time, getting the gun and bullet box back under my friend's dresser.... and so it was ready, everything was packed thursday night because friday after school was my last day of driver's ed training and that was from 5-7 and the caravan was leaving for Agape at 7 so it was really tight, I'd have to take my stuff to driver's ed at the high school, get my instructor to let me put it in the trunk, talking him into dropping me off where the youth group was meeting... then trying to find someone to carpool out to the camp with and thats always fun cuz none of the people I was friends with in youth group drove so in school, April 8, 1994 it was one of those eerie days, the kind of weather that produces tornados in Ohio. the sky was a grayish-brown color and I was in Algebra II, and Erica, who's in youth group with me, who was the reason I started goin to youth group in the first place, Erica's sitting next to me and we're passing a note back n forth and I mention the weather and how freaky it is and that its a bad omen that it feels like someones gonna die and erica freaks out, I didnt know this but her mom was having brain surgery that day, I knew that there was a tumor and her mom had been sick but didnt know about the surgery so I apologized and she said something about the camping trip, was I looking forward to it and I said more than you could ever know... and then I said something about the feeling again cuz I really could feel death in the air and if I wasnt going to die that night I would have been worried, I commented about how thick the air was, heavy and that I kept getting the feeling that something close to me was dead, like I would get home from school and my dog (best friend) would be dead... she yelled at me again about her mom and I said that the feeling had nothing to do with her so not to worry but then she wrote back "but it does, I can feel it too" so later, after school my friend janet (I say friend in that Igor to Dr. Frankenstein kind of way, I really need to define my relationships in here) is talking to me about how she talked her boyfriend into going on the camping thing. I had wanted her to go to youth group so she could meet new friends but yet I didnt want her to go to this retreat for obvious reasons, hearing that her bf was going was a blessing cuz then she'd be occupied and I would be able to get away from her. I was talking to her and going through my bag one last time. I was hiding stuff in my room, thinking whether or not I should burn my journals and poetry books so my mom wouldnt read them, or hide them herself, I was thinking a lot and not listening to Janet. maybe I should shoot my mom, but then I'd have to wait until she gets home from work, and she'll probably go straight to bingo cuz its friday afterall... and the neighbors would hear and then I'd have to shoot them too and then other neighbors would hear etc ok that wont work... and then Danzig comes on, the live version of Mother that I really like and I turned up the stereo, and it got a little bit into the song and the line "Mother tell your children not to hear my words what they mean what they say" then there's this scratching sound effect like a record being pulled off and the dj Susie Wadd fucking bitch comes on and says "I just received confirmation of the rumors that have been circulating for some time today, Kurt Cobain is in fact dead, of a self-infliced gunshot wound. (she laughs) Here's to you, Kurt! (and she plays Pearl Jam's Jeremy)" I say something to Janet, I dont remember what, she says "huh?" and I hang up on her. Immediately I dial my friend Randy's number. I'm still not thinking, still on autopilot here, it still hasnt sunk in that I was planning on killing myself that night, so Randy, who's just as big of a Nirvana fan as me, but in a different way, cuz Nirvana is something different to everyone.... and Randy's best friend happens to be named Curt. So Randy answers and I say "Randy, Kurt's dead" and he says "Who the hell is this??" and I say "Randy, It's Joey, Kurt's dead." and he says "Fuck you, Curt's not dead, what the fuck are you talking about??!!" and I say "I just heard it on the radio, he shot himself..." and Randy says "I just fucking left his house, what do you mean he shot himself...!?!?!" and I'm like oh duh... "Kurt Cobain, Randy, not Curt Corwin... Kurt's dead, he shot himself." "Fuck you, you're a bitch, this isn't funny..." "turn on the radio, hell I bet it's all over MTV, you got cable, turn it on..." I hear the tv turn on and then Kurt Loder talking about Cobain... then I hear Randy mumble "god dammit!" and hang up the phone so then I slump down on the floor and look around my room and its half covered with pictures of Kurt and Nirvana and I look at my bookbag that has everything packed in it and I think well I'm glad I have his gun so he cant do anything stupid with it and then it dawns on me that I cant possibly kill myself now and I was so fucking pissed off and I started swearing at Kurt, that fucker, that asshole, it was MY turn... he stole my death... how could I kill myself now? everyone knew I was a Nirvana fan, hell earlier that week I'd worn not one, but both versions of the "fudge packin" t- shirt. I got the "explicit" tee confiscated and wore the "edited" one the next day... theres no way I could have killed myself and not looked like a dumbass poser copy cat... everything I'd be killing myself for, all the wrongs done to me, all my pain, all my revenge and vengence would be wasted, nothing, no one would bother to question why, they'd just blame Kurt and think nothing of my life and my reasons..... so all this happened about 4pm. I didnt know what the fuck I was going to do, I just knew that I couldnt fucking kill myself. I walked to driver's ed, finished that while listening to dumb fucks laugh about Kurt. I thought about crashing the car, that way it wouldnt be a suicide but it wasn't a guarentee that the assholes in the car would be hurt. I got to the carpool spot somehow and got a ride with a decent fellow named Tim. (We ended up becoming sorta friends after this weekend but that's another tale). Janet and her boyfriend rode along, the four of us (Erica was wih us) sat in the wayback of the van, Tim and his two friends were up front ignoring us, except they passed me the pipe a couple times so that was nice. Erica and I talked about what we wrote about in Algebra, I showed the note to Janet and Tony, they seemed unamuzed. This is a point where our friendship hit some rapids. I was too busy with my own "petty problems" to see that Tony was abusing her and she was spending all her free time with him so I thought everything was ok and I'd never had a boyfriend or been in a relationship so I didnt know what to look for, what was normal or not normal, and I'd known Tony before I knew her so I didnt think he was like that and who the fuck knows what was going on cuz she doesnt talk about it still and it took a whole year of her hating me and blaming me before she finally told someone what was going on and that person wasnt me and the only reason I found out what was going on was because I have good hearing but she says she didnt want me to find out cuz first I'd kill him and I'd get in trouble and besides, she loves him and blah blah battered women excuses piss me off... so anyway thats how Kurt's death kept me alive. I was still really suicidal for a while but luckily I ended up geting fired from Subway and I got close to this girl Lacy, who had friends who grew their own weed and the summer of 94 was a blur of Marathon Toke Days and endless coffee refills at Idiot Boy. and I wrote some more damn good poetry....

Always remember to quit while you're ahead.

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