Eight Hours for What

Let it be duly noted that it's actually the 28th of April. I hate blogger.

So my kidneys definitely suck. And the phrase "sleep fights cancer" is stuck in my head. And while the original is, of course, better, the new Footloose was quite satisfactory, especially the new Ren with his adorable Bostonian accent and Willard. That's all that needs to be said. Willard.

Just to make sure, I don't have cancer, I've just been reading TFIOS, and there is absolutely no "t" sound in the word "across." Please don't give me reason to have murderous thoughts toward you.

Started watching Lost (oh dear). Sierra is gosh darn lovely, and tumblr also sucks.

High School Never Ends

It's actually 9:28.

College can go die. As can my dad's mocking tone when he talks about my want to go to Baylor. Jeez Louise, it's not like I'm picking a $50000 a year university on purpose. Sheesh.

Also, Mr. McDouche, was that really necessary? Just because some girl in your class got sent to the office for "short" shorts, doesn't mean I have to stand up in front of the whole class so you can see how short mine are. You said so yourself that mine were significantly shorter than hers, so why do you need me to stand up and show you? Perv. Cankerblossom. And you thought I wouldn't know the longest word in the English language. Fool.

On a related note but coming for a completely different story, you shouldn't judge people on how immodest their clothes are. Lots of beautiful, smart, chaste girls wear short shorts and tank tops. Maybe they're not Mormon. Maybe they are and that's their thing they need to work on or they have just chosen to not follow that rule. If you have a concern, share it with them kindly, politely, and lovingly. You shouldn't talk about them as if they're a slut or an idiot or a poor naked heathen child. Just be nice, please and thank you.

In another news, I was able to use almost the exact same paper for both English and online Health. Heck yes and hallelujah.

I'm so terribly excited for next year: marching band, AP Language, Wind Symphony, not being the new kid, Latin! Not to mention class with Janellie and the fact that the DM trip to Indiana is only two months away! Praise the Lord, for it's gonna be a good year.

Who is August(insert interrobang)

It's 10:34, blogger is still stupid, Once Upon A Time is freaking me out in the best way possible, and college is coming.

I'm really quite terribly excited for college, the acquiring of knowledge and forming of strong, founded opinions and becoming everything I've dreamed of being. Rather, it's the questions with nebulous answers and no easy solutions that scare me. Where will I go? How will I pay for it? Could I get a better ACT score? Should I take the SAT too? Why did I have to let my personal life screw up my tenth grade academics, giving me a buttload of B's and, good heavens, a D in the second semester of darn Pre-AP Chemistry? Why don't schools count Pre-AP classes as honors classes? English or Linguistics? Both? And what about music? And colorguard? And when and how will I get that teaching certificate? What if I don't want to go to the school I'm destined to simply because I have no strong desire to? What if the school I do yearn to go to is a freaking expensive one? How the heck am I supposed to get a full ride? How am I supposed to fill out those online financial aid calculators when I don't know all our assets and taxes from five years ago and when I can't ask my parents? How am I supposed to have any hair by the end of this process?

Let's not even talk about the fact that I still have to apply.

Blogger is Stupid

I am stupid. It's 12:34 am, contrary to popular belief, and I'm screwed. That is all.

Some things are trichy...

I hate my hair. I hate hate hate hate hate it. Sometimes i want to shave it all off so there is nothing left to pull or break, no more headaches or sore spots on my skull. no more people looking at me funny or telling me to stop. I want people to be gentle, to understand that I really can't stop. Don't you think I would if I could? I ask for people to help me stop and they give my pitying looks and their voices steadily grow more nagging. At least it's not like seventh grade, when I asked people to hit me if I started twisting. Trich is a form of self-injury, like cutting and burning and poisoning. Not as serious, of course, I'll be the first to admit that this is absolutely silly. But I don't cut or burn or poison myself, those aren't my personal battles. Ripping out my hair is. That's what's difficult, that's what's hard, that is what hurts me everyday. I'm wearing a hat to bed to keep me from twisting tonight, but laying here, I feel so unresolved, my hands are practically twitching. I want to cry. I know no relief will come from twisting (rather the opposite, I will feel worse about myself) but I'm certainly not happy here. If you see me twisting, please don't chastise me. Give me an alternative, a note to write, a song to dance to, a hand to hold. Please help me. I just need this to end. Nearly ten years and counting... I don't want it to be eleven.

Here Comes the Sun

Sometimes I'm terribly vain, and I like to imagine what people think when they're driving by and they see a teenaged girl, dressed in a white Beatles sweatshirt and short shorts, with her hair pinned to look like one side's been shaved, carrying a "bombin'" houndstooth umbrella, walking in the rain as she sings "Oh! Darling" at the top of her lungs. I like to think that they'll say I'm poetic or free-spirited or a golden-orange leaf, floating on the winds of hope and happiness like nobody's business. But of course, that's not what they're thinking. Rather, it's what I'm thinking, or at the least what I what to think about myself. I want to be that free spirit I claimed to be when I stood wearing Stupid Jessica's fancy dress in the parking lot of the Cheesecake Factory in the middle of the night, An Abundance of Katherines in one hand and my highest heels in the other, and shouted for Kristian and all the world to hear that I was going to climb on top of a car. I want to be the girl who would (and could) spend the passing period laying on the concrete, soaking up the delicious sunlight, as the rest of the world carried on. I want to be beautiful. I want to be happy.

Taylor, why do you have to be so much like him? It doesn't improve anyone's situation, and yet, I am still grateful that you will stop and talk to me about the disaster that is prom and money problems and DCI and happy things. It brightens my day, despite the fact that it causes my night to be full of fretting. Really, you're cool.

Mr. Lind, you make me yearn to be a teacher, like passionately. To spend my days making kids laugh and smile and not notice or care that we ended class five minutes late since we were so caught up in your lesson on how to write a good introductory sentence for an AP essay. Thank you for coming back to us.

Still scheduled to take two Latin I classes next year. Still have five and twenty things to pay for. Still have to struggle through wood shop. But as "Here Comes the Sun" came on and the rain instantly fell harder and more rapidly, and to drive the song out and prove it wrong, I smiled. Hearing the song again after school while trying to tan my legs at the bus stop, I smiled again, for I had discovered the kind of person I know I am...

A nerd who appreciates The Beatles, real life examples of irony, and happyesque endings.

Perhaps it IS Spring

Let's try to stay positive: Preethi is an absolute darling. I have a new phone (that nobody's texting me on). I added three dresses to my band practice collection. I wasn't completely alone, thanks to my playdate with Sam and Arianna and my scavenger hunt with Taylr and Nolle. Oh yeah, I turned seventeen. I have a new glorious book series to be extremely in love with. The lady at the glasses counter at Costco told me to stay in school even if I got married the day after graduation and date the brains and not the lookers. I went on a walk with Abram in the rain and he chose to listen to Kira and Danny's duet so we could sing it together and he asked to hold the umbrella for me so he could be a gentleman and he smiled and said, "I like you."

School starts tomorrow and to address it directly, "Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over..." Best of all, I get to wake up at 5 after a week and a half of waking up no earlier than 9.

Silver lining...

I Used to Know You

Can I tell you how beautiful it is to finally be reading again? To stay up late multiple nights in a row, unable to put the book down? How it feels to stare at the wall as you ponder the philosophical implications of the line you just read or to feel the air catch in your throat, unable to escape, as you stumble upon a dramatic heart wrenching turn of events? Well, I could, but you should really be experiencing that yourself.

One beautifully sucky thing about humans is that they have this common thread connecting their experiences. Like Q and Margo notice from Whitman's grass, we are all connected at our roots. We all feel similar shades of happiness and anguish, sorrow and glee. We all have our own versions of love, but we all pretty much know what it feels to have an elementary school crush or to see a beautiful stranger walking down the street. That's how we relate to main characters in books. That's how we feel like a song was written for us. That's how I read about the electricity that traveled through Ethan's skin the first time he kissed Lena and hear "you didn't have to cut me off" and end up with a crooked half smile and a pile of limp, worn out memories.

State

I just want to say, I love you. I love my dear Janelle who is making hard decisions in order to have a better future. I love Chase, who cried while he read us a book and flipped his hair when he caught his solo and told me how to be him for Halloween again. I love the bright smile Taylor gave me when I told him I caught the quad and when he danced in the stands and I danced back. They're all leaving, all gone in their own different ways down their own different paths (I. Will. Miss. Hanging. Out. With. You.), and I love them for it. I love them. I love you.

Lots of crying today. We got second, but really, the only people who ever read this are A Guard people, so, ya know, whatever.

Is it better to know when your final show, your final year, your final breath is going to be? Or is not knowing what keeps us alive?

"That means you are doing it right."

Just now going to bed since tonight I had a pretty great last practice, went to Walmart with my mom, decorated my bathroom, drove my mom all around town so we could end up shopping at Macey's, baking a cassava root cake thing for my sister's project, taking care of my sick brother, and waiting up for another hour for the treat to finish baking so my mom could sleep in a chair. I'm going to be so dead tomorrow (as if being sore all over weren't bad enough). I am quite excited for the day's endeavors, consisting of the return of Mr. Lind, drum major sectionals, and Allison's birthday party.

Wish my eyes and legs luck.

Streetlights Continued

I hate when you have a semi-beautiful day, a day where you can lay on the floor all of band class and talk with Sam wistfully about sad memories and listen to the epitome of sex (Maroon 5) and spend the last class period with Ms. Barnhart and attempt to march in bare feet in the warm sun and get ice cream with Sam and Caitlin and the other flutes and then practice rifle and mace and read Paper Towns while you listen to them at flute choir and have Sam say she loves John Green. You have this nice day, and then your family enters the picture.

Your grandma won't stop messing around with your mace and looking like an idiot and then realizing that her pants were unzipped and unbuttoned. Your mom turns the car around to drive past Sam Bateman since I talk about him sometimes and she actually says she wants to stalk him and that I can just slump in my seat if I want. Then my grandma says that he's attractive. I feel completely sick since I haven't eaten anything except the ice cream in 6-7 hours an had hardly eaten anything at all the whole day. We pick up the kids and everyone's screaming and shouting and it takes us 10 minutes just to order dinner cuz everyone's too loud. Some organization of college boys walks past and my grandma tells me to control myself. We get home and my brother fights with my mom for an hour. My grandma is still here, meaning I can't get anything out of my room. I can't focus, and I'm fairly certain I got sunburned today.

I hate my family, and I hate myself for hating my family. Nathan's still dead, and Micaiah will never be mine, no matter how many stories I tell Sam or anyone else about him. I really want to just go curl up under a street light and fall asleep and not have to be around any more people. People just make me sad or mad and hurt, or I make them feel that way. The only people, person even, is thousands of miles away, doing her homework and being beautiful.

I want to be Margo. I want to be able to run away and still take care of myself. But I could never do that. I am drum major. I am Emma. There is a whole world counting on me and I'll never be able to hide.

Nobody cares, surely. I certainly hope they don't. That would make things easier.

Gosh darnit, I just want to smile. I want him to be alive. I want to have never heard this song. I want to kiss someone, but not actually someone, just anyone who my soul would want to kiss. I want my daddy to be home and I want my birthday to be over and done with and I don't want any presents from my family. I just want Sam to always be okay.

I just want a streetlight of my own.

Streetlights

I found out at one in the morning that I boy I was friends with in middle school killed himself. I cried and listened to his guitar videos on youtube, then went to sleep until ten. Stayed home from school because being around people would make me cry and did chores for hours and listened to his original composition some more. Cried. Stopped crying. Texted Micaiah about it and was glad he had already heard about it. He's friends with the boy's sister. Thought about her. Cried some more.

Band festival came and went. I want to give Sam and Dayel and Miller and everyone ice cream. Wind Symphony made me smile.

I called Preethi, and she is beautiful. She let me talk and then cry and then told me about Schaack's kind-heartedness. She made me laugh and I her. She told me we needed to find the new normal, a world where his memory could live on as our lives moved on. She's so dear to me. I hope she's right about next April. I'm going to listen to his dear song again, but with a sad smile.