5:49 PM

This is the earliest I’ve written one of these blurbs on life. I don’t even know why I write these, really, considering they border on journal entries. Speaking of which, I have space for about one more entry and then I can start using my new leather-bound journal. I’ve found myself writing on odd little surfaces recently. During church on Sunday I wrote notes on two offering/tithe envelopes.


I feel like curling up with a good book—or maybe with that leather-bound journal and a pen. I had my last Government 1 class today, all I have left is studying and the final. I just finished a peanut butter and nutella fold-over/mini sandwich (the bread was crumbly and not conducive to spreading or folding). I have a cup of hot chocolate. It’s snowing with the consistency of a good rain; the ground and sky are nearly indiscernible, like a herd of zebras. I’m wearing two sweaters and a pair socks made with love and great care that are three sizes too big. I’m beginning to feel like I belong here. The greens and whites, browns and grays are enveloping me like an old quilt that used to belong to your great-grandmother. It’s foreign because it’s from before my time and yours, but it smells familiar, like a kitchen full of freshly baked cookies and bread, your mother’s perfume, cut grass in the summertime, the chlorine that sticks in your hair after a swim, or the feel of the worn binding of your favorite book in your hands. That’s how I’m beginning to feel, like I’m comfortable and worn-in. Sometimes I’m stiff like a new pair of shoes that you’ve worn for an hour too long. Sometimes I can feel blisters forming when I’ve worn the shoes for several hours past when I should’ve taken them off. But I’m beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin like a pair of old, worn jeans. We all have our good and bad days, after all.


Today is a good day. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be good.

11:30 PM

He is the ghost in my mind. The monster in my closet, so-to-speak, because I never would have described him as a monster, except for the fact that he’s just lurking on the edges of my consciousness.


A word to the wise, or maybe just a word to myself: love is good and it probably shouldn’t be tucked away permanently, but being open to love means being vulnerable and open to hurt. So watch who you love and how you love. Remember how easy it can be to give parts of yourself away but how hard it can be to get them back.

11:04 PM

"You're getting sadder, sadder, getting sadder, getting sadder. And I don't understand, and I don't understand."

-Better, Regina Spektor 

Maybe this is why I've been distancing myself from everyone. It hurts like all heck when people decide that they don't want you anymore, when they hand you your trust back packaged all nicely in rejection. It's easier to never make connections, to never entangle your heart so it can't be wrung out and hung up to dry. You never have to worry about rejection, sorrow, or feeling lonely--you won't have anyone to reject you, to make you feel sorry, or to give a contrast to loneliness.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

-C. S. Lewis

 I'm tired of being lonely, of wanting someone to write letters to, to hold hands with, to snuggle, to talk to, to be close to. I'm tired of remembering. I'm tired of feeling like crying. I'm tired of everything.

I'm tired of resolving to be better, tougher, smarter, just overall more desirable. I'm tired of telling myself, "You'll show him, you'll make him sorry. You're ten steps ahead of him, maybe even a hundred."

All of this belly-aching, self-pity, loneliness will be the death of me if I let it get the best of me. This stops now, because I don't need it.

1:30 AM

I seem to be exceptionally good at forming bad habits. Especially when it comes to sleep. Especially when it comes to everything.
I feel like I’ve turned my life completely upside down. I’ve shaken myself to empty all my pockets of all my securities. Everything is backwards, twisted, tied, knotted, reversed—you name it.
I have no sense of normalcy now. My mind feels like the world’s biggest knot, I can’t even grasp what’s going on half the time it seems. There’s always something lurking at the edge.
I kind of want someone to force normalcy down my throat. I want someone to make me go to bed at a decent hour and get up at a reasonable time. I want someone to make sure I get everything done. I want someone to make me three meals a day. What happened to my self-motivation?
I could break down and cry right now.
What’s wrong with me?
Why does everything crash on me at night when I’m alone? Why couldn’t I share all this twisted feeling with my counselor?
I have an automatic go-to response to people: I laugh, I smile, I act “normal”. What is normal, though? No one would ever know that something is wrong. I hide it all. I always have. I always will.
I am broken. I am screwed-up. I am scared. I am lonely. I am angry. I am sad. I am lazy. I am stressed. I am disorganized. I am growing up. I am alone. I am everything I don’t want to be. I am everything I don’t want people to see.
I am my own bad habit.

12:39 AM

I have two French tests in less than 12 hours. One is a chapter test, the other is a midterm. I haven't really studied--I never really study. I'm nervous about this midterm, though. I really need to learn to sleep. Actually, I just need to learn to get things done in a timely manner. I stay up until 2 AM drawing quick little sketches instead of sleeping. I read books for fun instead of getting that homework done. I do every little thing I don't need to do before the things that I have to do. It's going to ruin me one of these days.

But how did I get here? How did I go from being uptight and organized to being forgetful and lazy? I don't understand it, I don't know what started this chain of events. Why can't I strike a happy balance? I'm not happy where I'm at. Sure, there are things here and there that make me happy--like lunch today--but at the end of the day, when I'm sitting up while everyone else is asleep, I'm not happy at all. What is wrong with me?

1:45 AM

Late nights are good for remembering what I've forgotten. They're good for reading and writing, re-discovering parts of myself I've lost touch with, or suddenly recalling that thing I wish to forget.

I often sit here and unexpectedly find myself in the company of memories of warm nights I thought--or maybe hoped--would never end. I wish, again, that he were at my fingertips once more, that my eyes could memorize the way he smiles, and my ears could hear his heartbeat. Then I realize how empty those memories feel now, like shells of the actual moments, with no hope of ever having even the faintest echo of what I thought the moments meant. Then I remember why they're memories and not live moments anymore. Suddenly, all of that world feels cold, grey, and dead. It's almost like it was all just pretend--make-believe we fooled ourselves into thinking had a chance. I just didn't want to let go. Maybe neither of us wanted to let go, because letting go sometimes feels like admitting defeat and we both know we're too stubborn to admit we're wrong.

So here I am now, after the moments were wrenched from me, after I realized we were defeated, after I realized a white flag was the only option. I've realized now that a white flag isn't even an option. It's come down to amputation, to cutting out the unhealthy parts. It wasn't really him that was unhealthy, or even "us." The sickly part was my secret priorities. I'd somehow managed to adjust my magnetization so that my orbit sent me around him instead of anything else. For the better part of high school, he was a priority. Not that guys shouldn't be priorities, but they shouldn't be that forefront when you're still in school. He was, basically, my world.

Habits die hard. I'm still here, fighting old urges to think like life still tilts his direction. It's a hard battle sometimes. It's most difficult when I'm sitting here, at night, remembering what I've forgotten.

12:58 AM

It's fifty-eight minutes past the end of the 11th. I missed it. I keep feeling like I'm missing things. I miss bedtimes and wake-up alarms, familiar faces and places, deadlines and assignments, parts of myself I've outgrown or forgotten, times that have passed, and especially the world that I haven't seen. I wait a moment or an hour too late. I have good intentions, really, I do, I just miss things all the time.

I have a bookshelf full of books I'm meaning to read but I keep missing the opportunities to carve out time to read. I have a list full of things to do but I keep missing the chances to get them done. I have arms full of people that I miss and I keep missing the moments to say so. I never seem to do things at the right time, at least not the things I want or mean to do. I don't want to go through life just missing things. I don't want to stand on the sidelines and just watch life go by.

I need to start hitting targets.

Comfortable

I use lowercase letters to start items in a list because it feels more comfortable, a little less official, a little more spontaneous. Can a list really be spontaneous?

I wear socks for a couple days to make them a little loose and a little more comfortable, a little less restraining.

I take hot showers so that when I step under the water a thousand little points on my skin sting for a minute then relax to be a little more comfortable, a lot less cold, a little more alive.

I buy sweaters a size or two too big to make myself comfortable, to have a little more room, to make others a little more comfortable.

9:33 PM

I have 27 minutes until my proposed bedtime goal for this week. It's funny how time sneaks up on you, isn't it? I'm almost into my second semester of senior year and consequently the last semester of my high school career. Around me is the clutter of nearly 18 years of existence--it will truly be 18 a month from tomorrow. That's crazy, isn't it? To think, this is only the beginning. We think it's an end--an end to high school, and end to familiarity and comfort in our parents' home, a slow end to our financial dependence on our parents (for some, maybe for others that's over and done in an instant); the point is, it always feels like an end. It's only the beginning. On average we have about 60.4 more years; we've only lived about a quarter of our lives. I've only lived about a quarter of my life. Yet I think it's an end. Is there ever an end? The world doesn't end (there is no edge), you know.

11:58 PM

My biggest struggle in life is meaning. I want everything to mean something.

What happened to just living life and being happy? Not everything can be thought-out with an impact crater the size of the moon. I don't think great people try to be great people, they just try to be people. Mother Teresa said, "We cannot do great things, only small things with great love."

Maybe it's not all about making every stomach full, or curing cancer, or making the government work how it's supposed to. Yes, those are great goals, but great goals aren't fulfilled overnight. It takes many drops to fill and ocean, moving multiple pebbles to move a mountain. It's doing something small--teaching a classroom of oblivious students, inviting the lonely kid to hang out, making a meal for someone incapable of doing so for themselves--that makes a difference.

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." - Mother Teresa

A quick note

In case anyone reads this or cares:

The counselor thinks I'm fine, frustratingly so, because I'm not sure I am. Maybe I'll keep that supposed last appointment and finally pull the cork off of all the things I've been bottling up inside.
I can't easily help that I make it so that to all the world--all unsuspecting eyes--I'm fine. It's easy to put on a smile and be happy when I'm around people that I don't trust enough, who simply don't know, or who aren't close enough to know better.

I should sleep before I make everything I've built up, cave in.

1:04 AM

It's my cue to quit procrastinating and just go to bed. I have an ever-growing to-do list and a never-ending debt of sleep.

I'm proud of the photos I took today and though my fingers were stinging by the end of the shoot, I was warm and glowing from my pride and contentment. I wish that happened more often. I wish I took the time to make the art I want to. I'm letting it all go, bit by bit, and it propels me further into a "practical" world, where the jobs to have (read: the "real" jobs) aren't the things I'm necessarily passionate about. I find them interesting, yes, like seeing a person's innards is interesting, or knowing how our government should work is interesting, but interesting doesn't equate to passion-inducing. I love to create, yet I'm afraid that if I do that too much I'll burn out. What if I'm not noticed, anyways? I know that not the point, but that makes it harder to make a living.

Everything I've ever loved to do since the age of 8 has been easily categorized as a "starving artist" field. No, my biggest passion is drawing bits and pieces from everywhere and putting two and two together to see the big picture. It's painting and writing and photographing and hearing and watching and making and destroying and thinking and loving and living. I'm passionate about living. Yet herre I am, every night, sitting in my room alone while the rest of the house sleeps. I don't talk to many people, not even my friends from "back home". What I'm doing is the farthest thing from being passionate about living.

My counselor asked me what I want to do with my life. I answered, "Everything." Do you hear me? Everything. That's daunting and exhilarating. I can't think of a better way to spend my life than doing everything. Do they have a degree for that? No, of course not. To do "everything" you have to become a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, an artist, a businessman, a banker, a teacher...you have to be specific, you have to narrow it down, you have to say, "I will do everything, right here." I don't want to. I want to do everything there is to do in every field possible. I want to travel, I want to teach, I want to open a bakery, I want to be an artist, I want to make a difference in the political/government sphere (beyond just voting), I want to be a mother, I want to make a movie, I want to write a book, I want to release an album, I want to play with an orchestra, I want to take pictures of everything. I want, I want, I want.

Everything.