Critique my draft.

November 6, FridayHello,I am here with an update for you all. For those who are new, I am Noelle. Back to what I was saying. So much has happened that I need to tell you or I swear I will drive myself crazy. Although I am starting to think I am crazy… Anyway, what happened/is happening is all I can think about. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get the thought out of my head and maybe writing about it will help. Hence, why I am here.At the present time, I haven’t been feeling like myself lately and it started off as this feeling of being “out of place.” Like I didn’t belong or I wasn’t where I should be. Then, I began feeling melancholy two days later as if I came from a funeral. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know why I feel this way and I also feel tired. The weariness I feel makes me feel empty. To tell the truth, I have been down playing my emotions so my family doesn’t notice. If they ask me questions, I won’t have any answers. Which is why I am trying to figure it out on my own. I have been trying anything to make me feel better. More exactly, doing my favorite hobbies, drinking tea, eating my favorite food and watching my favorite shows/movies… Only 3 things have helped. No matter how hard I try to motivate myself, I feel uninterested in my hobbies. I’m just sitting there, spacing out and having no motivation to do it. Man, I have even found myself lying on the floor staring at the wall. I need you guys to tell me what to do because I’ve done all I can think of. I hate it. The feeling is a nuisance to me, one that won’t go away.In turn, my emotions at the onset affect my relationships. Following that, the pings of text notifications slowly stopped as I neglected to respond. When I tried to respond, instead of sending the message, I usually deleted it. Not knowing what to say, I would not respond at all. The number of invites became less frequent and I began wondering why. One day, the one friend who still tried to contact me sent a text message that read,“You probably won’t respond, but I am trying again anyway. What is wrong with you? If you need something, just ask!”The message burned into my eyes as I realized just what I was doing to everyone around me. I messaged Oliver (not his real name) and I typed up a whole paragraph of a heart-felt apology and that I hadn’t felt like myself. Luckily, he accepted and another friend of mine reached out to me. We will call her Lucille. (not her real name) Apparently, she had heard from Oliver what was happening to me and decided to check as well. She suggested I apologise to the group and that is what I did.After my (what I feel is a crappy) apology to the group, Lucille began checking up on me outside the group chat. Everyone did, but they stopped a week ago. After 4 days of the check ins, I asked her why she kept asking me about my well-being. She didn’t respond for 10 minutes. Maybe she was trying to figure out what to say. Anyway, this is what she sent:”Remember the last two times we hung out with Oliver and everyone? At Auntie Anne’s, I noticed you looking over your shoulder. It didn’t look like anything was wrong, but you suddenly went silent and when I looked at you… You were staring at something. You did that a lot more the second time and I am just worried something is wrong. Are you sure you’re okay? Is everything alright at home?”I felt naked. She knew something was off and I couldn’t really give her a straight answer without raising suspicion. (Yeah, after typing that, it makes me think of Mariam and how she never directly answers questions about her parents.) I was a little uncomfortable, though I decided to be vague, yet honest. A knot twisted in my stomach as I sent it. She didn’t respond, which makes me think she dropped the subject. However, I know she will start asking more questions again if I take my vague answer into consideration. There isn’t anything I can tell her that sounds normal or that makes legitimately any sense. I am torn because I want to tell her, but I also don't think I should. Telling her would level off my stress, but she may think I am crazy. Or I might somehow get her involved and that is the last thing I want. If you guys could give me some advice on what my next move with her should be, that would be greatly appreciated.There isn’t much to talk about that so I will move on to the thing you guys are probably more interested in. Remember the lady with the black hands? She has been appearing in my house now. Not only in my house, but almost everywhere I go. At the very least, she hasn’t appeared in the bathroom, so I have some kind of escape/privacy from her. Anyway, the lady has been trying very hard to grab my attention, but I wouldn’t give it to her. I’ve ignored the hands that grab me, the whispers that haunt me and her movement that reminds me I can’t stop her. Now, I have taken some of the suggestions in the comments into consideration and decided I had nothing better left to do. My research led me nowhere and now I know as much as I did before about her. The ghost theory is plausible, but I see the world in black and white. Everything has to make sense to me or I won’t know what to do with myself. However, it does make the most sense so I took action. I found the angel statues I got from my grandma and set them up in my room. The lady appears significantly less (in my room.) Although she appears around the house regularly. It has been better. I don’t see her at the end of my bed now.Ignoring her seemed like a good idea. Until last week… I was in the kitchen eating a chicken sandwich I ordered from popeyes. It was around midday so my parents were at work during that time. I heard something screech across the wooden floor. When I looked next to me, a chair was pulled up a few feet away from me. On my “mission” to continue to ignore my strange circumstances, I moved to the living room. I thought if I did, the strange things would stop. Just as I arrived, the silence put me at ease again until the click of the TV brought my attention as it flickered on. My fixation and confusion was interrupted by a hot feeling behind me. I looked in the direction it came from. There was the young lady standing by the entrance. She hung her head and her fists were clenched. The black on her arms was creeping up her arms as I watched in horror. Her fists clenched tighter and the black crept up further, like cracks on a porcelain doll. Immediately, her head shot up and she started screaming. She kept her eyes tightly shut. The screaming was so deafening, my ears rang loudly as I scrambled to cover them. I crouched to the ground and hung my head in between my knees. It was becoming (albeit it should’ve been impossible) louder and I knew I couldn’t take much more of it. In the second, I yelled back, “Shut up! Just shut up and leave!” Sparks flew from the TV as her screaming finally came to an end. The TV shut off and would not turn back on. I desperately tried to fix it before my parents got back, but it wouldn’t turn back on.I cannot stretch this enough of how annoyed I am. If I ignore her, she will bother me. If I don’t ignore her, I will constantly be on edge. Not only that, but my parents think I broke the TV and I told them I was using it when it just shut off. (a blatant lie) They still don’t believe me. No matter what I told them and despite my protests, they wouldn’t listen to me. They called a T.V. repairman and he said the inside was completely fried. I am surprised they haven’t grounded me. However, I am sure a punishment will come soon. Along with this, Mariam is still on her silent hiatus and she keeps sending me these weird messages! Here’s the ones she sent since my last entry:SWdub3JlIG1lIGFsbCB5b3Ugd2FudCwgSSB3aWxsIG5vdCBiZSBpbnN1bHRlZCBieSB5b3VyIHN0dXBpZGl0eS4= (sent a week ago)WW91ciBmZWFyIGlzIGFzIGxvZ2ljYWxseSBleHBsYWluZWQgYXMgSSBhbS4= (Sent two weeks ago)WW91IHRoaW5rIHNoZSBpcyB0aGUgb25seSBvbmUuIEkganVzdCBoYXZlbuKAmXQgbWFkZSBteSBhcHBlYXJhbmNlIHlldC4gSXNu4oCZdCBpdCBleGNpdGluZz8= (sent 4 nights ago)More are coming in but I won’t bother putting them in since there are a lot this time. Here is some food for thought. I have a guy in coding class that I talk to and I asked him if he knew what kind of code it was. He said it looks familiar and that he was sure he could figure it out if I wrote it down. I will edit this post once he updates me and sends the decoded versions. Perhaps I can finally make sense of what Mariam is sending me.Moreover, there is someone else now. I don’t know who he is but I'm assuming he is somewhat like the lady. This happened last night when my parents were home. My parents had gone to bed early that night, leaving me alone downstairs in the living room. Even though I had eaten dinner with them a while ago, I was still hungry. Of course, I didn’t want to feel like I was starving in the middle of the night. I walked through the cold entryway and into the warm air of the living room/open dining room. A young man was standing there, formally dressed. (To give an idea, he was wearing a white button up, black vest) His hair was somewhat darker in spite of mine being black as well. He was looking at the little decoration I had made in kinder-garten. (for those who are interested, it is a chopped, circular log decorated with pinecones, bells, a bow and some cinnamon sticks. It constantly smells like Christmas) The man seemed to be very interested in that one rather than the ones my parents bought. Something was in his hand but I couldn’t get a good look at it. I am surprised I remember that despite how shocked I was.If he saw me…. I don’t know what he’d do. I tried to back away and make my footsteps as quiet as possible. I held my breath and I made it halfway through the entry way when I heard something. It almost made me want to just bolt to my room when I saw him in the living room. A shiny metal golf club rested in his hand loosely. My eyes were fixated, its shine was amazing, how did he keep it so clean? I looked to see his face. It would be an understatement to say I died inside when I saw that his eyes were on me. The man stared me down, his grip tightened around his metal golf club as his mouth curled into a smile.In turn, I saw part of his face that had a small amount of black like scribbles. The circles of his eyes were spirals, looping endlessly. I ran to and up the stairs, desperately trying to get away. Let me tell you, I have never crawled up the stairs like that since I was 6. Once I was halfway down the hallway, his metal golf club shimmered in the light. He stood at the stairs with his golf club over his shoulder. He continued to smile. “Oh my god,” I quietly said as I sped-walked to my room. I closed the door and locked it. His footsteps were quiet and faint, but I could hear them. He was outside my door now and I didn’t know what to do but feel cornered. The shadow of his presence came from under my door in the hallway light. Minutes went by, although it had felt like an hour, someone tried to turn my door knob. Someone knocked on my door. I screamed at them to go away. My dad could be heard from the other side as he said,“Noelle, keep your voice down! Your mother is sleeping. What were you doing at our door?”“I wasn’t at your door.”“Then who was it? I heard you knock and walk down the hall— You know what, it doesn’t matter, you need to go to bed.”Before I could get another word out, the hallway light turned off and I heard his room door close. It was hard to sleep that night.To make this part short, I was spooked the next day no matter what. I went to the basement because I had never seen the lady there. Plus, it was too early to tell if the man would appear there. Finally, I went down. I hung out in the small living room down there. Then, I went to the basement kitchen and I got a snack. When I came back to the living room, the man’s metal golf club was there laying in my spot. I let out some curses before picking it up and taking it to my room. I didn’t want my parents to see it and I still have no idea what to do with it. It is sitting in my closet as I speak. His weird golf club is buried under my stuff so it should be… Less than easy to find. Really, I don’t want it but what choice do I have, I don’t even want the damn thing! Should I throw it down a storm drain or something? via /r/NoSleepAuthors https://ift.tt/3pfoG8G