Entry 4

Apparently, I'm finally taking this seriously enough. My psychiatrist was very impressed by my last post in its "honesty" and "raw emotion". He says I should try and bring more of that to my journal and that only through that process can I truly work out my "problems". I then shared with him the raw emotion I was having at the time. He didn't seem as bothered as I thought he would be at the image of my scooping out his eyeballs and feeding them to him. I think he's been threatened before.

So, today I am supposed to write about my father. Not Esau, who is my adopted father, but my real father. I don't know exactly what he wants me to say, but I have to start somewhere.

My father was a scumbag. He was a thief, a liar, and a con-man. After I was born and he was forced to marry my mother, he had the bright idea that America was the land of opportunity. He made my mother pack up and leave her life in Port-au-Prince to enter the states illegally. At that point, the fires in the west were at their worst and with all the people fleeing from the Midwest he was sure that no one would ever know that we weren't locals.

I suppose it worked for a few years, until they started rounding up all the immigrants and putting them into camps. That camp in Florida was the last place I saw him. I figure he died with the rest of them, not that he ever meant anything to me. His last great act as my father was to sell my mother to the guards for extra rations.

Do I hate my father? Yes, but not nearly as much as I hate my mother. That man at least gave me something useful, the skill of survival. Had death come for him in any other form, he would have dodged it no doubt. Meanwhile, my mother was one of those helpless wives that just let herself and her daughter get dragged into the abyss.

Entry 3

You want to see some fucking anger, I'll show you fucking anger. I'm and sick and fucking tired of people assuming that the fact that I'm angry has something to do with the fact that I'm a lesbian.

I like women, love them, have since middle school and that is that. I'm a lesbian because I like women. That's how that works. Suddenly some asshole wants to call me a "bulldyke" behind my back because I make him do laps. If he had the intelligence to do what he was supposed to in the first goddamn place he wouldn't be running laps. The fact that I then have to discipline him for fucking around has absolutely nothing to do with whether I like dick or pussy. I'm tired of it.

Yes, I broke his fucking arm, serves the son of a bitch right.

Of course that earned me a second trip for the week to the psychiatrist, who naturally noted that I hadn't written in my journal the night before, so that must be why I had so much pent up frustration. Yeah, that must be it. It's not the fact that the motherfucker was talking about me, he superior officer, behind my back. It's not that somehow when people know you're gay they think that's grounds to disrespect you. It certainly has nothing to do with being an orphan since I was six years old who got to watch my mother raped in front of me. NO IT'S CLEARLY BECAUSE I DIDN'T WRITE IN MY FUCKING JOURNAL.

Doctor, I know you're reading this. Don't you sleep too fucking deep tonight, cause one of these nights I'm going to come into your house while you're asleep and I'm going to slit your fucking throat. Did you lock your door when you came in tonight? Better go check again.

Fuck it, I'm going to the gym.

Entry 1

My psychiatrist has recommended that I keep a journal. My father wants it somewhere he can access it, so here it is. This is the journal of Altsoba Shepherd.

Entry 1
I've been told that I have anger issues. The psychiatrist said so on my visit this morning, but it's not the first time that I've heard it. In military school I broke a lot of noses and put a lot of lesser cadets in the hospital. Some times I got in trouble. Some times I was applauded. I'm not sure that I preferred one over the other. Military school ought to work the same way the military does. If you're strong and smart, you survive to fight on. Teaching cadets any less than that is doing them and the soldiers they fight beside a disservice. I know that better than anyone, I am a child of war.

My parents were immigrants in the early days of the camps. We had to fight just to stay alive. Those experiences are the basis for everything I have become from there one out. I am the one who survived. I am always the one who survives. For it to happen this many times is not luck. I am talented at survival. I have little patience for those who believe they are owed something from the world. I believe I am owed nothing and have received just that.

Am I angry? Why wouldn't I be? Anger, suspicion, strength-- these are the reasons I'm still alive.