Seven months, three weeks, nineteen hours, and thirty-two minutes. That’s how long I’ve been here, stuck in the facility. My memories before this are messed up and blurry. All I can remember is just having a good time, which led me here. Now you might be wondering how exactly I got here, well don’t worry about that now you’ll find out…eventually. Let me think what exactly brought me here. Was it the drinking? Maybe it was all the pot I smoked? Actually it was all of that controlled me to do something, but don’t worry you will find out about that later. Both way, I have screwed up my life and now I’m stuck here

I am Lizzie Rose, seventeen years old; I USED to have friends and a life. But now I have landed myself in the Women’s Correctional Facility of California, aka jail. If it wasn’t for some cop and psychologist who thought I was mentally corrupted, I would be still out there ruining my body and life. Ya know, my friends call me the “Red Rocket”. I have extremely fiery red hair, and when I blast off so high, I never come down. I’m slightly outrageous, but I just think of it as me wanting to have a good time while I’m still young. Honestly, if I live after forty, considering all the s*** I’ve done, then God must think I’m a saint for some ridiculous reason or maybe he is a little high on the day I die. Either way as the great The Who said “I hope I die before get old”, or else you got nothing to do except just hang around and do nothing.

Speaking about me getting so old, I actually want to do something with my life. I have a huge love for music, I’m a guitarist. I’m such a music junkie I’ve tried to attempt something my idols have done, stupid idea. Like when I found out Ozzy Osbourne snorted ants, guess who else “attempted” to do so a few days later? I must admit the burning sensation in my nose is what really got me; I have never felt so much pain in the inner parts of my nose before.
There is a reason why I have been declared “homicidal” when I’m on some stuff and I am not exactly in the best mood. It all happened this one time when I was incredibly high or drunk, not sure what I was on, but I was in a huge fight with my boyfriend. His name was Tommy. He had long dark hair, deep brown eyes. He kind of looked like Johnny Ramone, which I liked very much. The only problem was that he was three years older than me, which meant it was pretty much illegal for me to do anything with him, but the details of that is not something you have to worry about.
Anyways back to the point, we got in a fight over my drug abuse and whatever stupid stuff I was doing at the time. I started screaming at him with something along the lines of “I no drugs with problem”. He tried to tell me that if I didn’t stop that he was gonna leave me, and he meant everything to me. I told him “NONONONONONONO” once again in extremely drunken rage, and he started to walk off. Soon I tackled him to the ground. Which is slightly amazing considering I’m not the biggest thing. I guess it was an adrenaline rush, like on the news you see soccer moms lifting cars to save their kids.
After I tackled him, I found my beer bottle, one of many, and placed it over his head, and begged him not to leave. I will never forget the chill that seemed to go down his shaking body, like someone put ice cubes down his shirt. Then I did it. I started smashing the bottle over his head, again and again, with every sharp shard of glass I could find. I did this until some girl came up and took me off of him.
Tommy didn’t look too good. His sleek black hair was dampened with blood. It looked like licorice strings were flowing out his head. His deep brown eyes stood still and open, it might have been the most chilling thing I have ever seen in my life. Though for some bizarre, drunken, reason I started laughing my a** off. I started screaming “He deserved it! If he didn’t want me he didn’t want anything”. The ambulance arrived, so did the cops. They had to literally push me down on their car to handcuff me, for murder.

By the time I woke up, with the worst hangover ever may I mention, I was in a tiny room. Everything was grey, the bed, the sink, and the walls, all a muted grey tone. I felt like I was colorblind with no where to go. Then I saw little flashes of police lights going off in my mind. I could hear someone saying “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say or do will be used against you in the court of law”. Then the final image came to me, it looked like a corpse. I tried to understand what the hell is that, why am I thinking of this. Then I looked at myself in the mirror, cut up hands, ripped clothing, and black make up surrounding my eyelids. I looked like a confused raccoon. Then just looking at myself I realized that I am not just a confused raccoon, but one who just killed the only thing worth living to them.

Soon a cop came in to my little grey room. He said that even though I’m 17, I’m going to be charged as an adult with murder in the third degree. Which made me almost faint, but that didn’t last for long because then this old, foreign, psychologist came in and wanted to talk to me. I can’t remember his name so I’ll just call him Hans, short, simple, and foreign. So Hans said in an incredibly thick accent “Ello Elizabeth, I am here to talk to you about something that happened last night. Now please ehhh tell me why you did this?” I thought about what Hans just said, and just sat there for a minute thinking. Thinking about Tommy, how he smiled, the way his eyes drooped when he was sad. Then I cracked again, I began to sob. Between my deep gasps of air I managed to say “I. Don’t. Know. All I know is that he’s gone, FOREVER, and its all because of me.”

Hans’ eyes started to droop, just like Tommy’s; I knew he could feel my pain. He began to explain how he knows that this is hard for me, but we gotta get this s*** sorted out, well that’s how I interpreted it. I told Hans about my drug issues, how it takes over me and my personality is crazy. Hans said that I have to go to jail; he wished he could help, I could see it in the way he smiled at me, but I knew there was nothing Hans could do.

Well that is pretty much what happened on that night. There isn’t that much to do in here so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking; I tried to go back in time in my head to where all my drug use started. Of course it all led back to the most promiscuous woman in the whole world, my mom.
I was one of the mistakes she decided to keep for once. After all the bad jobs she has had or the horrible guys she has dated, I’m the only thing that stayed around in her life. She thinks my father is one of many guys, this guy usually changed as many times as her hair goes from bleach blonde to dirty brunette, amazingly. The first memories I have of my mom is smoking a cigarette, nearly passed out on her bed. I happened to look in on her after one of her many nights of badass partying. A great role model for me to look up to of course.


I think it all started when I was about twelve that I started heavily getting into drugs. I stole a pack of her cigarettes one day, just to see why she finds them so amazing and addictive. As soon as I smoked a few, I began to understand why. I could finally understand how it is to feel “comfortably numb.” From there I found her tequila and whisky stash, which is where the real s*** began. I started buying some marijuana from some guy a couple grades ahead of me. To be honest he almost looked worse then I ended up. He had long greasy hair, a really devilish smile, and just hard to communicate with in general, but I got what I needed. The best thing was that, my mom was so out of it to notice what was going on; I wonder if she even realizes I’m gone. If she did actually care about me, then maybe she wouldn’t leave me alone when I was six as she was partying her twenty-four a** off.

Actually what came out of that experience is that I started playing guitar. Like me, my mom wanted to be a guitarist and a songwriter, which obviously didn’t work out too well. I found some of her books on guitar and I taught myself. Guitar was the only thing my mom and I could talk about no matter what condition she was in that day; it was the ONLY thing that kept us connected. It’s kind of funny; we would fight over who we think was a better lead guitarist. She would always choose Jimi Hendrix, and I would always choose Jimmy Page. Either way we always laughed at the end by saying the entire Jimmy’s/ Jimi’s have the guitar skills.


Getting back to the point of me being in jail, I have been here for less than eight months but I am actually starting to feel a change. I haven’t been doing any drugs or anything, which was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. They made me go cold turkey; I was so incredibly tired all the time, and always p***ed off at anyone within a 3 foot radius of me. Which is why some of the girls started calling me “Red Rocket” again, I had red hair and an incredibly high temper, so at least the name will live on.
By the time I calmed down I started thinking about the short time I can remember when I was, believe it or not, completely sober. My favorite memory was one time a few of my friends and I drove down to Laguna Beach, in California, where I live, and we just chilled there the whole day. I accidentally forget to put on sunscreen, which might be the worst thing for a redhead, like me, to do. Also the fact that I was wearing a white t-shirt over my bathing suit, made the redness of my hair and sunburn even more noticeable then I thought, almost lobster like.

Times like those I miss so much now. I was free then and it was before I lost thought of everything and everyone that meant something to me. Being isolated here I really can understand the things that mean so much to me. At the age I am, I wanted to go to college or something, but I highly doubt I could get into one. I had horrible grades from not concentrating and I didn’t have any money to pay for it anyway. Now the only thing I am looking forward to everyday is my sweet thirty minutes of “exercise” time. Otherwise known as the only time I breathe in sweet, fresh, air into my lungs that have been filled with the air of sweaty women and their hidden cigarettes.

They say that I might have to spend my WHOLE life here, though I do have a possibility of parole after 10 years. Unless I make a huge change from the Lizzie before I got locked up here, I have a chance of never seeing any of the people that hold an ounce of significance to me. What will happen to my mom, will she overdose? Will I ever be able to hold my guitar again? I can’t stand all these questions…but the only thing I can do to answer these questions is change.


I’m probably gonna be here for a good amount of years, which is hell. But I am so determined to the heaven outside of this “hell”. I have been to heaven and hell so far, I really hate hell. I hate the smell of hell, the creepy women of hell, and most importantly the NO MUSIC of hell. It’s amazing I am not eating my foot off yet with complete boredom and pure emotional pain I am feeling. I remember how it was to feel so comfortably numb, and the feeling that I could just be anywhere and happy when I was high. The higher I got, the more it seemed to drag me down the harsh, cruel, road to the highway to hell. I will do anything to get out of this hell. I know the world is hectic out of here but at least there is a chance for happiness, and happiness I don’t need to find with a needle, pipe, or plastic baggie.

I think I’m going to make a little oath to myself now, and maybe it will help me get out of here sooner than planned. So I swear over the grave of every musician of the twenty-seven club, that I will never do drugs again, and end up like the members of the twenty seven club, ya know the musicians that died at twenty-seven because of drug overdoes.
It will be a hard road if I ever get out of here, but I am not gonna end up young and dead, I will not die of something I could have definitely prevented. This is for Tommy, the person that I have affected the most and that is no longer with me, and for my mother who I hope will notice I am gone and do something about it. I promise to be clean and act “good”, or better than all the other women here, as I stay in this facility. Finally I promise that I will try to change, and I will try to be golden.