When There's So Much Light, Why Do I Feel So Dark?

If I don't take the time to document my life, it'll all be for naught, and if I die before this is finished or at least near completion, then my death will be worthless. Not even worth the short headline it might produce. Worthless. I have to pace myself. I have to keep myself alive long enough to finish this.
Can you see me yet? Can you feel me taking shape in these entries, starting to become something recognizable, something human, like an old neighbor that you vaguely remember or the lyrics to a song that you can't quite remember the rhyme to?
I don't live in an apartment complex. I live in a prison. With walls and bars made of the shadow filled blinds and I am trapped within these walls, slavery to its orange peel and linoleum. I told my mom today that I've started smoking. She quietly said, "I'm beyond disappointed" and hung up on me. I'm beginning to wonder why I told her at all. Did I feel I owed it to her to tell her myself? Or is it that I know that she's at the brink of something deep and ominous, possibly suicide, and I simply just want to push her over the edge? I'm a terrible human being. What you are reading right now is written by a terrible, horrible person, with no regard for others and only herself.
There are two Josh's in my life. There's Josh Phillips, whom I've known most of my life and there are hundreds of thousands of stories to be told about he and I being raised on the streets and the likes... but those will come later. And then there is Joshua Tobler, who I have known longer than Josh Phillips, and married him when I was five or six. He is my husband. Josh Phillips will from now on be referred to as Josh and Joshua Tobler will be referred to as Joshy. Believe me, as this progresses, they will each develop into the distinctly different personalities that they are, and you will be able to soon distinguish them without needing a name at all.
Josh calls me punk as fuck. He loves to throw his arm around my shoulders as I'm huddled quiet in a corner or leaning up against the wall  at Combo's or when he's introducing me to someone new, and say in his rough, grainy voice with that slightly creepy grin of his, "This girl? This girl right here? She's punk as fuck." And it's not just a statement. There is a huge amount of emphasis on the 'fuck'. "Punk as FUCK." More emphasis on the f than the rest of the entire sentence, so that the rest of the word is like an explosion. I've never understood what that meant, but I've never questioned him about it.
Josh, I have a lot of respect for Josh. Josh and I met in the second grade when we were playing skunk tag (some excuse for children to run around wildly and get all that energy out) in the Larsen Elementary gym where he and I each went to school. The thing about the gym we were playing in, is that it's in the shape of Utah state, but on it's side. So there's a corner in the gym. I came around one corner and he came around the other at the same time and we ran at full speed into each other in a collision of energy, bone, flesh, and shock. We were each literally ricocheted backwards from each other for a good ten feet onto our rears were we sat shocked. The bottom of my eye socket had hit the top of his at full second grader running force. He had a slight cut above his eye, whereas I had a gash deep enough that you could see my cheekbone being exposed. It was terribly deep. The thing about Josh though, is that he has diabetes. Every student and teacher in the entire gym rushed to his side, asking about medications and trying to see what needed to happen as he was the 'sick child'. He kept pushing them away and even kicked one of the teachers in the shin because he couldn't feel the pain and could see me quickly passing out as I realized I was bleeding and no one was helping me. I, obviously, passed out.
I don't remember much of that day. My mother at the time was the general manager of the Arby's in south Orem and this had happened around lunch time so when my school called the business, it took a few tries to begin with. What was worse? One of the employees hadn't completely shut the door to the fryer when they added more oil so during lunch rush of one of the busiest fast food franchises in south Orem, there was 20 gallons of oil on the floor. When they finally got her on the phone, my school told my mother, "We'd like you to come down to your daughter's school please."
My very irate and frustrated (justifiably so) mother: "Well what the hell for?"
"Your daughter has... a small cut."
"Can't you just put a bandaid on it? I'll sign whatever forms you need later!"
"We... really think you should come take a look at it."
Angrily, my mother told them she'd be there as soon as she could.
I remember laying in the nurse's room and slipping in and out of consciousness on that bed. I remember waking up and reaching up to my face and feeling a wet rag and lifting it up and realizing despite it's color, it didn't start out red, and it didn't start out soaked. That was typically about the time I passed back out. Three hours later I remember my mother walking in and saying, "Her face! Her beautiful face!" and her screaming at the secretary "A small cut? My daughter's face has been split in half!" while I gazed dazedly at the white thing protruding from the bloody gash in my face in the reflection of my principal's window that I would later discover was my cheekbone.
I had 37 stitches; I can't remember how many Josh had. Significantly less. 8 I think. The next day at school we found each other and under many pain drugs, we introduced ourselves and told everyone else who hadn't been there that we had been in a knife fight with a couple of kids from a different school and not to mess with either of us because you should have seen the other guys. It kept some people off of our backs for a little while, which was really the best thing for us.
Josh... Josh is a real punk. Josh doesn't give a fuck what people think about him but you know, if you give him the time of day, he's one of the deepest people I know and someone that I consider as more than my best friend, he's my brother. Blood brother even, if you want to count that incident in second grade.
There's a sunset out my window and I wish desperately I could capture it and keep it and wear it in a small marble on a chain around my neck to keep me constantly warm. It's getting cool here, and it's only going to get colder. That's what happens in Utah during the fall. It gets cold, and then it gets colder, and then it gets even colder. Then it becomes winter and the process continues. Like a frozen tundra in the midwest. That's where I live. That's where I've lived for almost my entire life.
I wonder what it's going to be like to die? I'm really not afraid. I'm more excited to embrace it. I don't want to fight what might be the best, and what's more, the last experience I may ever have.
I used to shoplift from the Albertson's in Spanish Fork. I lived in a duplex, the ones on 6th north, just to the right of Albertson's. There's a couple of them that face each other with just a lawn between them. There was a girl who lived right across the lawn from me in the upstairs duplex named Holly Helton. The Helton home is really, I suppose, where I felt most comfortable. My mother was always pushing me to be something great, something magnificent, when she really had no idea what I did at nights. Really, our relationship has never changed. She's still pushing me, and she really has no idea what I accomplish just daily. The Helton home always smelled like ciggerettes and there was always alcohol being passed around the adults, but when I came home with a good grade from a spelling test and my mom would tell me, "Keep it up," Owana (Holly's mom) would kiss the top of my head with her big toothy grin and fix me chicken nuggets and fries; a special meal at the Helton home. DJ was Holly's dad, and he would pat me on the back and ask me to spell things for him whenever I did it and when I would question myself and ask, "Is that right?" he'd start laughing his wheezy laugh that made you think his lungs were cracking but it was always full and rich and he'd say, "How the fuck should I know? That's why I was asking you!"
Holly and I used to go to the Albertson's and steal things like silly putty, gum, lighters, bouncy balls. Nothing big, but it ate me up for years afterwards and eventually I sent Albertson's a letter of apology with 40$ cash in the envelope; more than enough to make up for what we took.
I haven't shoplifted since. It just isn't right. You should always earn what you get, no matter what.
That's something Josh and my mother taught me, each in completely different ways.
I miss the Heltons. They moved when I was ten or eleven, and we lost complete track with them. It breaks my heart. I kind of had a thing for Holly for a little while.
But not nearly as much as I had a thing for Natalie.
Before I begin going into my love life, I should preface it with some essential information. I've known I was gay since I was eight years old. I was raised in the LDS church from birth, a church that preaches against homosexuality, saying "Love the sinner, not the sin," but still preaching that it was a terrible and horrendous and depending on who was speaking, sometimes an unforgivable sin. When I realized I was gay, I began to hate myself. I began to live in constant fear of who I was, and who I was becoming. I became suicidal all over again, (I'll explain my first bout with suicidal thoughts later) and at the tender and precious age of eight, began to hate everything I was. I used to claw at my skin at nights and would wake up with scratches despite me always biting my nails down to little more than nubs. I tried even harder to become the best disciple a little LDS girl could be. I prayed for God to take away my feelings, and if he couldn't do that, to kill me so I wouldn't act upon them. I read the scriptures, trying desperately to divine why God gave people these feelings, if I was sick, had others before had these feelings and how did they get rid of them? Instead I found Sodom and Gommorah, a terrifying tale of a city destroyed for it's homosexual residents (or at least, that is the common interpretation, despite there being many MANY other factors into it). I was even more frightened, and began to hate myself even more until every waking moment of my life was covered by a veil of constant loathing and self-discrimination. I wouldn't let myself play with other children if I had those feelings. I wouldn't let myself eat because I had seen a girl and felt those feelings again. At times I even refused to bathe myself so as to physically manifest the filth that was inside of me for the world to see
Of course, I didn't do any of it with those reasons in mind; I was eight years old. I've realized these things over years of counseling and over a decade of self analyzing and study. I did these things; not bathing myself, not eating, etc. completely subconsciously, without ever realizing why I couldn't eat that day, just that I couldn't. I didn't tell my mother. I didn't tell my bishop. I was too afraid to even write about it. But I was horrendously enamored with my best friend Natalie.
Natalie Hortin was, and still is, the first love of my life. Even after all of the hell she put me through, and the shame she made me feel, and the way she treated me, if she were to walk back into my life tomorrow and say, "Alisa, I think I might have feelings for you." I'd fall for her all over again. It's disgusting, I know, but I already told you:  I'm a terrible person.
I am the epitome of filth in this world, and if you plan on continuing to read this, you had better learn to stomach it because this is just the tip of the ice burg.
Natalie... I can't even think about her without getting nostalgic and dreamy eyed. She had the most beautiful strawberry blonde hair I had ever seen, and it was long too. With green eyes that liked to go gray when she was upset, or emerald when she was ecstatic, she had pale skin with freckles all over, and thing slits for eyes; but not in the creepy glaring way nor in the natural Asian way. Her eyes were slits like she was constantly laughing. Can you blame me for falling in love with her? She was beautiful. The way her lips pouted out, soft and pink and lined, and the way she would wear those jeans that hugged her hips and those shirts that barely covered her stomach... I was entranced. She was intoxicating, everything I could and would never have. She had this scent that made me want to follow her everywhere, and I knew when she was around because I could smell her. It smelled like... musk, mixed in with the sweetness that the Ocean air has. Her jaw line was soft and her nose was small and would come to a cute, smooth round finish at the tip of her profile.
Listen to me, I'm still in love with her. I was in love with her at eight years old and I'm in love with her now at eighteen, a decade later. She grew up to be a beautiful young woman, who, really, in the end, squandered most of what she had. I don't know where she is now, though I literally would give just about anything and everything to find out before I die.
Natalie lived in North Orem, in this huge house with her father and her little brother, and they had the most gourgous home that I can remember. I used to go over as often as I could, and often times, would spend the night in her basement. I remember that first night... rolling over in the middle of the night because I couldn't sleep and my eight year old self propping herself up on my bony elbow (I was a skinny child though you wouldn't know it by looking at me) and watching her sleep. I loved watching how peaceful she was and I remember wanting to reach out and touch her cheek and then kiss her... and then I remember going cold, solid, because I realized I was in love with my best friend. Who was female. Just like I was.
There are epiphanies and then there are disasters. Both will give you lots of information, things like, "We did this right, but we did this wrong and we should do this in the future," but one of them have the ability to devastate everything that one human being has ever held near and dear and to be fact.
That was my first real disaster. I would have many many others after that but for tonight, I have to finish my laundry and probably interact with my roommates. They keep looking at me like wounded animals, like I beat them or abuse them because I don't say, "Hi" when I walk through the door or don't make meals with them.
And they think I'm a freak.