Dear Diary,

Yesterday was not an overall good day. After my thoughts yesterday about dropping out of school I decided to talk to my high school guidance counselor about what choices I had. She thought I was absolutely crazy and that I should just suck it up for the next three years and just finish school. She told me that she thinks it has all to do with my mother and that I wouldn't be feeling like this if she hadn't have died. The thing is I was feeling like this before she died. I stopped wanting to go to class in October of last year and she didn't die until November. I'm sure that it pushed it further into the realm of possibility but the seeds had started long before.

But none the less she told me what I would need to do. I have less than six months to get a drivers license, buy a car, get a job and find a place to live if I want to be able to not go to school next year. And I need to do it all without my grandmother finding out what I'm doing.

If I work from May-August I can accumulate $4,640. I can find a cheep car in the paper for under $3,000 dollars. There were several last night as I was scanning through the For Sale ads. That is working 40 hours a week for minimum wage of course. Also, I would make $1,160 per month if I worked 40 hours a week for minimum wage. So if I can find an apartment for $500 dollars that would leave me just under $600 a month for food, Internet, and gas.

The hardest part of all of this is convincing my grandmother to let me do any of these things. She is hell bent on not letting me get my Driver's License until after I do Driver's Ed through my high school in the summer. And I would not be able to get my license then until late July early August. And she already said that she doesn't want me getting a job because that would mean she would have to drive me back and forth all the time. So she doesn't want me getting a job until I get a car and a Driver's License but I can't get a car without a job. So it's like a ridiculous cycle that she has me pretty much trapped in. But I am going to do this.

And then to top everything off about three more things happened. The first is I had a huge panic attack in my room after I got home. I tried talking to my gram about me getting my License through a state program instead of my high school and she flat out told me no. I asked about maybe getting a job and she laughs at me because she thinks I'm kidding. So I just got into my room where it was dark and quiet and I just couldn't breathe. I tried to take in deep breaths but it just felt as though there was something closing around my lungs and just squeezing the life out of me.

It turns out that Bob, my Moms boyfriend, has a date tonight and we have to take care of my little brother. He has been losing a lot of money lately and we keep having to give him more and more. And now all of a sudden he is having my little brother stay with us but he isn't really giving us any specific reasons why. My Mom has only been dead for about 4 months and they were together for almost ten years. So why he is dating so suddenly is kind of scary to me. It's not confirmed that he is but it is super suspicious that he has gone out to dinner with one of my Moms friends twice in the last month or so.

And lastly... I saw Him. I was walking out of the high school after my appointment with the guidance counselor, almost wanting to cry, and all of a sudden I hear "Oh boy, looks like I'm in trouble". And I look beside me to see Him walking into the building, waving and smiling at me. I just waved back and He continued on His way. I wanted to just run up and hug Him, run my hands across the skin and just cling to him like the world was ending. But I didn't, I just let Him walk away.

- <3 Eraina