Fake Happiness

A lot of things these days all seem to lead to drugs. It seems like wherever I turn, I can’t escape them because something new will come up and I’ll be staring them in the face yet again.

And it all started when I got into high school.

I don’t mean when I got there, some senior came up and offered me a joint. No, a lot of things aren’t the way they’re made out to be. A lot of them come gradually, and before you know it, you’ll be living your life with it right under your nose and you’ll realize that curious smell isn’t what you thought it was.

I won’t name names. I’m not that kind of person, you know? But it needs to go somewhere and why not here? The Internet isn’t as anonymous as I’d like, but it’s better than putting this on paper so my hand hurts and no one ever reads it so I feel like I’ve wasted my time. Maybe no one will read this anyway, but it feels good to know there’s that possibility. All I want is to know that.

It seems like everyone I know is involved in drugs in some way. My best friend, who got arrested for ‘lifting a while back, has parents who work with drug dealers and the other scum of the earth (not with, exactly, but that’s all I’ll say.)

On the subject, the most she’ll ever say is, “People who do drugs are stupid,” and I know it won’t be her talking. It’ll be her parents and the school.

My biggest pet peeve: censorship. Not about like, cussing, because sometimes even I can’t stand to listen to it because of my society-trained sensitive ears (yes, I too am a conformist), despite hanging around some people who use words like mo-fo every other thing they say.

I’m talking mostly about drugs. How you can’t talk in school about them, not where staff are listening and not to your friends. You can’t joke about them because apparently drugs aren’t a laughing matter, something I find rather ironic considering the side effect a lot of my friends have from drugs is laughter. And you can’t talk about pills or powder, not even in Health.

That brings me to my next victim. She’s new to my school, a real spoiled kid by the look of it. She said she used to be real rebellious in middle school but now she’s straightened up except for the occasional smoke. She’s taking Health, and this is basically how she describes the class, with me summarizing what she said because I can’t remember it exactly:

“I have an essay due tomorrow about the side effects of marijuana, and if I like it and why, or if I don’t like it and why. My brother’s in the class with me. And when the teacher started listing things that were bad about it, I asked why he thought it was so bad. He came over and asked if I’d tried it and I said yeah, so what? Who hasn’t tried it? And the teacher asks the class who has tried it and everyone sits there and the only one who raises their hand besides mine is my brother. But I know for a fact most of the kids in that class hang out afterschool just to pop a few or smoke, but none of them raised their hands. And the teacher glares at both of us, and I know then that he’s going to remember what we’ve said and even though I haven’t smoked a joint in nearly two years, he’ll assume that I still do it just because I’ve tried it. I mean, I’ve tried Ecstasy too and that makes you totally trip out, and once I ran into a parked car on it with my boyfriend. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it again. I mean, my dad even knows I’ve done it and all he did was get out the video camera and watch us make idiots of ourselves and show it to us later. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. Not because of some list on the board and a teacher who gives me a C because I admit I tried it. If you ask me, he has too.”

So it’s kind of long, but we were talking for a while. Mostly it was about how addicting some of the stuff can be. And a lot was about how ridiculous it is that schools tell kids not to smoke weed.

And it doesn’t work. I can say that right now. At least 70% of my friends have tried it, and at least 20% have done worse. Sometimes I’m not sure how many still are, and it makes me sort of sad.

This is a lot like the abstinence program. I heard about these studies that showed schools that provided birth control to students had an exponentially lower teen pregnancy rate. (Well, dur.) But then all these other districts and organizations were saying that this only compounded the problem because it encouraged kids.

Um, what? I’m sorry, but can you say that again?

I’m just saying, telling kids not to do something just makes them want to try it more because they wonder why it’s so important, to have all these adults tripping over themselves trying to stop it. Why don’t we do what those East-coast schools did and teach kids to do it safely?

Well sure, that could be considering encouraging them, but if it saves lives, why is there all this arguing?

I don’t get it.

For me, it’s not facts and statistics that keep me from trying drugs. I could get them in a snap. In fact, I could get them within the next half hour but there’s more stopping me than some figure on gateway drugs and side effects. No one has ever died from smoking marijuana. Even if nothing else is true, I’m pretty darn certain that is.

So why don’t I? Because the way a close friend of mine describes the high, it’s like finding peace with yourself. Nothing is worrying you because you live in the moment, for every breath and every second.

That sounds lovely. In fact, I’d go seek out some of the green but for my own preferances, which have nothing to do with what the school teaches me. They have nothing to do with what we learn in Health class, having bad things shoved down our throats and we’re not allowed to talk about the good.

If I find that peace, I want it to be real. I want to be able to keep it forever, make it last. I don’t want to have it for a few hours because even going in, I’d know that it wouldn’t last. Nothing good that you don’t fight for ever lasts.

Also, I see what it does to the people who don’t do drugs. And what it does to the people who do, without their knowledge.

I know this kid, who may or may not be considered my friend, who goes to his house every night smelling like marijuana smoke. And his parents notice it but they don’t do anything because they don’t think there’s anything they can do. So they just let it be and watch in horror as he flushes his life down the toilet for three hours of glory. And then three more. And three more. And eventually he’s living the glory, but not much else.

And then he’ll wake up off the high and realize what he’s done. And he’ll get back on because he knows what he’s done is not good and the road he’s on can lead nowhere but to that dead end.

He’s tried just about everything, I believe. No, not everything. I heard about this new drug…I don’t think he’s tried it yet. But he will. Meth, heroin, coke, ecstasy–I mean, you’d think he’d be completely hooked, right? But that’s just the thing. The only drug he stays on for a while is weed.

I guess he’s just one of those people who don’t get addicted. At least, not to the things everyone else does.

But even then, it makes me sad. It makes me sad that people are so fake these days that they have to find happiness in burning grass. It makes me sad to think there’s nothing else they like better, and that the only reason some people get hooked is because they tell you at school not to do something and then you go out and do it.

Plus it makes people look and act like retards. And maybe that’s a good thing because it means that for a while they don’t care about what the world thinks about them, but what they think about themselves, but what kind of life is that? I know people shouldn’t worry about how they look and how the world sees them, but drugs make people alienate themselves from everyone else. No matter who you smoke with, the high is still your own and nothing’s ever going to change that.

I’ve lost touch with my friend. He’s doing better then he was before, when he was failing his classes and he was so depressed it hurt to look him in the eyes. And now he has drugs and what does it say about the world that the only way he can be happy with himself is through something that doesn’t last?

Maybe it’s better to have fake happiness than to be depressed all the time. I know it’s not, in some ways, as big a deal as the school makes it out to be. In some ways I know it can kill, but it kills because it releases a person’s inhibitions. It’s like nowadays, we need inhibitions to survive. And when we don’t have any, we get into accidents and people die and the way we live has allowed for that. People are built up on law and order. I don’t think they’re ever built on happiness or peace like they’re supposed to.

So that’s the biggest reason I don’t think I’ll ever do drugs. Because I see how it makes your family sad and it makes you not care about life. And when you stop caring about life you stop getting further and eventually you just stop. And while you might have the high, it lasts only for a time and then it dies and you’re left with the consequences of your neglect. You wake up and find yourself failing and you drop out. Then you fall into the glory again and the next time you wake up, you’re in a jail cell with a roomie named Bubba.

Then what?

Well, this has got to be the longest post I’ve ever written. But there was a lot to say and maybe someone will actually read it, and if they do I hope they don’t think I’m callous for saying there are some pretty darn good things about drugs, and that the way schools deal with drugs just plain ‘ol sucks. Because it does. It completely does and it just doesn’t work. I could think up alternatives but they wouldn’t be considered because I’m only a kid and what do I know? Except in this case, don’t I know at least a little?

I just wonder if this really is how high school was like when my parents were growing up. I’m sure they could get drugs as easily, but was the system so inefficient? Were there as many useless ideals and denial? Was everything so fake?

~

Update: 29 August 2008

The drugs have died down. I think it was worse my freshman year because it was so noticable when someone came to class smelling like pot. Is it a sad thing to say a person eventually gets used to those sorts of things?

When I say, “Pot smells disgusting,” some people give me strange looks and others just accept it as is. I can always tell the people who’ve never seen grass in their life by the way they react. I can also tell the people who’ve done it, like it, and/or are still doing it.

Sometimes all that fakeness turns out to be pretty darn transparent.

Love & Essays

I have an essay due in English on Thursday. It’s supposed to be about a theme from Romeo and Juliet; explained and analyzed with examples and the like.

I seriously need to get organized because the work is piling up and I’m drowning.

So I was thinking about several themes I could choose. Most of them have to do with love in some way; love or violence begetting violence.

I asked some of my friends what they were choosing, and there were some interesting answers, I must say.

One of my friends is a reader, like myself. She’s the kind to read autobiographies and a lot of times, you’ll hear her spout opinions having to do with people being cruel and the world being completely unfair. Of course, her theme is, “Love sucks.” Or something along those lines.

Her friend, this bright, typical happy-girl sort, chose the topic, “Love never dies.”

I couldn’t disagree more with both. In fact, my opinion is probably the exact opposite. I think love is gorgeous, but it doesn’t last. And sometimes, it’s a bitter kind of love and what’s the fun of that? I don’t think people can help who or what they love. They just do, even when they can’t explain it and I’d give a hundred bucks to meet someone who can.

Maybe once in a while love sucks. Maybe it sucks because it keeps you alive. Do you want to die when you know there is still something or someone out there that you love? Is that the reason some people want to die?

As for the other opinion, about love never dying…well, here’s my theory:

I believe that when we die we don’t cease to exist. I read once that we’re a cycle, that while once we die we may stop living but we don’t just stop existing. We change. We become something else, and how different is that from what we do in life?

While we may not enjoy the finer things, we’re still there in some form or another. Ashes without awareness. Or maybe, when we die we are aware and if we could communicate, we would only choose not to because when we die nothing matters so much.

I don’t really like that theory. That when we die things cease to matter. I want life to matter. Life and death. I always want it to matter, because it does. More than anything.

So my simple rebuke of the opinion that love never dies: people die. People die all the time. And after they’re dead, there is no special connection or lifeline linking you together. It makes no matter who you are buried next to or who you speak to before death. Or whether you’re annointed with some ritual. I think you change and that change goes beyond emotion. Love really doesn’t run that deep.

Funerals are for the living.

So I was thinking, if I don’t talk about how great love is, how much it sucks, how violent people are, or how people are really good at heart (they aren’t: there is no good and evil when it comes to the heart. People are simply people)…what do I write about?

First, I chose sacrifice. How far people are willing to go for those they love. But that just seemed so complicated, so incomplete.

And on the ride home from school, I was thinking about people putting their dogs to sleep and how destructive people can be because that line isn’t perfect and they want it to be perfect more than anything. Because they love it.

Supposedly, as the story goes, Juliet pretends to die with the help of some drugs. Romeo, thinking she’s dead (in a spurt of rather rash unreasoning), kills himself. Juliet wakes up, sees Romeo dead, and USES HIS DAGGER to kill herself. She uses HIS dagger. Because HE is dead.

My idea on the theme: we kill what we love the most.

Of course, my English teacher would totally destroy my paper if I wrote it like that. No, my thesis will probably be along the lines of, “In the play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare reveals how a person kills what he or she loves the most with his depiction of Juliet’s death.”

It might be too wordy. But I was supposed to go “above and beyond” by putting in the thesis how I would support the arguement. In a relative way, of course, because you don’t want it to drag on.

Now I need a broad subject. I need something pretty much unrelated, or extremely general…mmm…sacrifice again? Something that leads to love. Hate? Demise. Death.

Perfection! It’s like before, what I said about the artist. She tries to hard to get it right because she wants it to be perfect. That’s how much she loves her art. That’s why she can never get it right, because she’s so afraid of getting it wrong.

I need an order of sentences.

1. Since the beginning of time, humanity has strived toward a goal always just out of reach.

“Since the beginning of time”? Since when does time have a beginning. Scrap it.

1. In the years since the birth of intelligent thought, a single, instinctive need has driven humanity forward.

Not too bad. It’s sort of too wordy for the first sentence, but I’ll overlook it for the sake of time saving. Next sentence: an additional bit of info.

2. The yearning for perfection and fulfillment gives living a previously missing motivation; perhaps the most important component of all.

“Yearning.” Boy, howdy, now that’s a funky word. Yes?

3. It is what moves architects to find that unique curve, artists to paint a glorious picture, and philosophers to find answers in explanation.

Now…the start of the change. Lemme see. (Which would get me a 2 on word choice.)

How do I connect perfection to killing what we love the most? Well, obvious! Since in the quest for perfection, for wanting perfection for something/someone else, we kill what we love.

Stories tell of the quest for perfection through the eyes of man, but what of the consequence? In looking for that paradise and wanting it for someone else, it is a common result to fail those closest to the heart. It is the nature of love to want the absolute best for a beloved one. During the course of loving someone, a person often unwittingly sets the course of his or her demise. In fair Verona, the story of two young lovers can be found; their only crime striving to achieve the best for the other. In the play Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare reveals how a person kills what he or she loves the most with his depiction of Juliet’s death.

I like it. I think I’ll title it “Killing Love.” I started with “The Death of Love,” but I’m not talking about how love dies. I’m talking about how love kills.

Occupational Babble (Ramble?)(At End)

The last four days have been heaven. No school. I love when I don’t have school, probably because I have it so much that I’d give anything for a break by the time one does come. I think the school plans it so we’re on the verge of a breakdown before they give us a vacation. I know I was ready to go insane at the beginning of the week.

Maybe I already am. It sort of feels like it, with all this homework.

So I was watching the Academy Awards, and they just ended. I think they’re hilarious, because almost without fail, someone gets up there and goes on and on about who they couldn’t have done it without. “And I want to thank my mom and my dad, for supporting me throughout my whole life. and I want to thank my best friend, and my dog, for always being there for me. And I want to thank my insurance company, for giving me a good price on my car insurance after I ran it off a cliff…”

That was a little Me humor.

I wish people would talk to me, most of all. No one ever talks to me, on here or on myspace, msn, yahoo, gmail, neopets (oh my gosh! the nerdiness), or facebook.

This is kind of rambly because I haven’t had much time to organize my thoughts lately. I’ve been busy being me, going to church with my mom (under protest), working on an iMovie (despite having no clue how to work it), and playing Cleopatra on my PC (this being written on a Mac laptop.) BTW: my PC is better. Faster. This Mac gives me a rainbow of doom every time I try to open an application. Probably because it isn’t as good of quality as my PC.

Boy, am i spoiled.

So sometimes for fun, I think up strategies. That’s my thing. Not like, chess game strategies because I think chess might be the most unrelevant game ever invented. I can’t think logic when all the pieces look the same and I can never remember what piece does what.

But other times, when I have nothing better to do, I’ll read about war tactics and how this-or-this general did this-or-this to outwit so-and-so. And then I’ll be like, “well, couldn’t he have…?”

Has there ever been a female general? I’m just wondering.

Also, I’ve been thinking about possible occupations I may or may not be interested in. It’s really hard because nothing jumps out at me. I mean, you think about your friends who have always known what they wanted to be and are going to do exactly that when they graduate, and it makes you feel a little down because you have no idea what you want.

The only thing I know about what I want to do is that it has to effect people in a positive way. Like I don’t want to be a marketing executive for junk food.

I love people. Sometimes I hate them, but I think that just comes with the package. So whatever I do, I have to interact with people.

So I’ve come up with a list, and maybe a reason or two, in no particular order:

1. Politician. Because even though I’d probably get laughed out of everywhere, it’d be interesting to see if I could really make a difference. It doesn’t seem like it now.

2. FBI. Or some other acronym. There are just so many. Why? Because I like figuring things out. And I don’t mind paperwork so much. I mean, all the glory-stealing would get old after a while (if what I know about any of those agencies is true), but hey! Everything has its flaws.

3. Judge. I also like hearing people’s stories. I’m good at listening (I think), and I try not to jump to conclusions too fast. I’d want to help make that difference, even if it only is for one person, and I could never be a lawyer because they have to be ready with quick answers and I like to stop and think about what I do before I do it.

4. Psychologist. This one’s kind of shaky. I’ve debated getting a degree in psychology for a while. On one hand, I would love learning about people and what makes people do what, but I don’t see a future in it. I definitely don’t want to be a shrink. Ugh. I can listen to people tell their life story, but listening to them complain? Yeah right.

5. Cop. Only because it’s a neat idea if you have no immediate plans for fame or respect. Plus my family would disown me. No, they wouldn’t, but they wouldn’t like it. My oldest brother might become a cop. I’d just want to be one so I could shove people on the ground and sit on them and it’d be legal.

6. Biologist. Alright, so maybe this is a bit unrealistic. For one, I am leary of science because it’s so dang arrogant. For another, wouldn’t this be so boring? Wouldn’t it be better to be like, a forensic scientist? But then there’s all the blame that goes around when you screw something up.

I would hate having to watch myself every moment of every day for fear of making a mistake. That’s why I don’t like the idea of becoming a cop or a politician or anything like that so much. Because in the end you can’t really be yourself because there’re all these standards you have to apply to.

Meh. I don’t know. Right now I’m getting an eye twitch just thinking about having to earn degrees in certain subjects. Why can’t I get a degree in life? Or philosophy? I wouldn’t mind a degree in philosophy, or history (namely, wars), but what can you do with those? Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Sigh. It seems the only jobs that make money these days are the ones where you have to produce something tangible. Unfortunately, there’s so much thinking going on in the world that people laugh when you suggest you should be paid for it.

I can’t say I blame them.

But I sort of do.

Daydreaming

A lot of times I can’t figure out where to start. You know when I was talking about accepting that writing means knowing you could put anything next? Well, sometimes all those thoughts and ideas get clogged up and I have no clue what to put first.

I still don’t. I have flashes of images and concepts that would look great on paper, but there are just so many of them…how does one sort through them all?

So I was thinking about quite a few things. Lately, it’s been all about daydreaming because let’s face it, when you go to the same place and do the same things every day, things get a little boring. To keep from shriveling up, I retreat inside that dark and inexplicable thing called a mind and set up camp. Maybe that’s why I’m absentminded sometimes. Because while I might be there, I’m not really.

First: happy endings. We’re reading Romeo and Juliet and we’re just about finished. There’s one happy ending, right? Right? Well, I thought it was pretty good. You know, hero says a few words, drinks poison. Heroine wakes up and realizes what a dumbass the hero is, kills herself. Good plot. Bad ending. I mean, who wants to hear about how they died? No one likes hearing about how things they grow attached to die. It’s all well and good when the victim is on the television screen and halfway across the country. But when you spend three hours getting to know them, it makes it harder to accept that they’re no longer there.

Alright, alright, so fictional characters aren’t ever there to begin with. So what? That doesn’t mean they aren’t real. They can still make you cry and laugh and ask, “I paid ten bucks for this?!” How many things in the world can do that?

So I’ve decided that even while my cynical side is screaming for the unhappy ending, in the end (ha, ha) the best ones are the ones where you never really reach the back cover. (And I don’t mean the ones where you put down the story because you can’t stand the detail or grammar.) I mean the ones where you can almost see the words on the few blank pages after the last saying has been said and stance has been stood.

Happy endings are good things.

There’s a lot more. Too much more. It’s all racing by and it feels like every time I go to pick another topic, I’m casting a hook into the stream. The only problem being, I forgot the bait. So I have to just wait until a thought big enough comes rushing past and gets itself stuck.

Second: school. There are a lot of things I could say about school. In fact, I have a habit of ranting about it and no one likes to read rants unless they’re angry, too. But I do think there are some logical points to be made about the current system. The one I’m thinking about now is the guidance counselors. I hate how kids have to set up appointments for a couple weeks later in order to just glimpse one for five minutes. I mean, the name implies a lot more. At least, if they aren’t going to help you out, maybe “guide” you a bit, they should have a different name.

I champion the cause of different names for guidance counselors. Hooah! And all that fun yelling crap.

That’s all I feel like saying. Now I have to go lie in bed and wait for an idea as to where to start again. That’s what I hate the most about nights. They mean you have to start again in a few hours.

I think if I made the universe, I’d change it so people didn’t have to sleep. Or at least selective people didn’t have to. Sometimes sleep is fun. But most of the times it’s just annoying.

But I need it. So sleep it is.

Life Goals:

8. I’m not even to ten and I’m running out. What is the world coming to.

REAL 8. Organize daydreams efficiently.

High-Class

Today is windy. I like it sometimes and other times it seems like such a nuisance because it feels like the wind could sweep everything away and even though that’d be good in the end it’d be a bad thing because we’d just have to start all over again. From the bottom. And build our way up. But maybe we’d learn something. Maybe something would learn from us.

I wonder sometimes. About a lot of things. Mostly, it’s on the bus on the ride home, or sitting there waiting to fall asleep at night even when I’m not tired. And the only reason I finally do drift off is because it’s three in the morning and I know I should sleep.

I have a lot of time on my hands. To wonder about the things a lot of people never even stop to notice. Or maybe they notice these things but they never stop anyway because they’re always going somewhere, doing something more important and more important and they promise themselves they’ll stop the next time. But when the next time comes around we all know what happens. And they never stop. It never stops.

There are times when I wonder why people are the way they are. I watch a lot of war movies. I watch a lot of movies, period, but mostly the sad ones where a lot of people die and in the end there is no end because there’s never any happiness. The real ones.

Those make me wonder about why people can only see from two eyes. Why can’t we see from four? From six? Why can we only see out of the obvious two? Sometimes I think the blind see more than most people because they don’t have eyes. They know where to look.

It seems like a lot of life is pushing and crawling and climbing. Like a lot of life is working your way to the top but in the end you never really get there because you run out of time and nothing ever changes. You wouldn’t think I see so much of this, me being in high school, but I do. I see it all the time.

A lot of older people think kids these days are slackers. We’re lazy, we have no discipline and maybe that’s all true but for some people it’s not for a lack of trying.

Sometimes I wonder if the president even knows what he’s talking about when he gives speeches on education and the greater good and not letting anyone get left behind. Sometimes it seems like all that’s ever done is based on ideals and an endless race to perfection. It seems like because people can’t accept that no one’s equal, everyone gets held back. They pass laws dictating how schools should be run and how kids should act when they don’t really know.

If there’s one thing I hate the most about politicians and the political system, is that it only allows for people with money to get elected. I hate that it takes five million for people to even start recognizing your name. How if you don’t come from some high-class family, you’re nothing because only 1% of the population is considered smart enough to ever really be anyone important. I hate how many assumptions are made about kids, how we can’t do this or we can’t do that simply because we’re kids.

The biggest is that we don’t know better. And for many, maybe that’s true. But who does know better? The president? The one who grew up in a big house with maids and a cook and went to a private school growing up? Did he ever go to those schools that he’s changing? Did he ever go through high school now?

I think it’s safe to say he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be just that much off. To get arrested for shoplifting or to make a mistake and have to pay for it the rest of your life. To be held back because for a moment, you were human and the world hates to be faced with its own humanity. And the mistake makes people judge you for the rest of your life.

He doesn’t know what it’s like to wake up in the morning and realize you’ve missed the bus and walk ten miles to school. What it’s like to ditch because you didn’t do this assignment and you’re going to fail. What it’s like to work so hard for something and be overrun by someone who’s smarter than you, quicker than you, more ruthless than you.

To know that no matter how intelligent you are, you’ll never really be anything on the large scale no matter how hard you work. So you settle for something less because it breaks your heart to even try and that’s what makes the older generations think kids are slackers. Because they’re afraid to try when there are so many others better at it then them.

I wish politicians weren’t so fake. Everyone knows how they are, how politics are, what goes on under the table. I just wish they’d stop with the posturing because everyone knows they’re not working for the best for the people but the best for themselves.

The worst is when they go to schools and you never see them at high schools, only elementaries because the little kids don’t know what fakes they are yet. They don’t go to high schools because then they’ll have to see the effects of their rules in action. They’ll have to face that they’ll never fit in there, where people don’t grow up with money to waste on campaign ads and pretty jewelry. I wish they’d visit my high school. I wish they could see us as more than the other 99%.

I wish it wasn’t such a waste.

Ugh. I’m complaining. I hate whiners and here I am being the biggest one of them all. I hate this, I hate that, and really it doesn’t matter what I hate because no one cares. So I’ll stop. I’ll stop wasting space and time. I just wish…

No. Doesn’t matter.

Life Goals:

7. Stop wishing.

The Room

There’s a lot I don’t notice. And if that’s not bad enough, the only time I notice it is when I have nothing else to do. Like right now. Right now I’m bored.

The best place to notice things is in my room. I love how everything in here has a story to tell. It’s like wading through a crowd and even as you’re annoyed at the holdup, you can’t help but think of how everyone else is going somewhere too. Everyone else has a story and a reason and it’s the rare person who stops to find out what that reason is.

First there’s the washcloth on my dresser. Remnant of my sick days last week, when I was scorching hot one moment and freezing my ass off the next. There’s the bubbles, kindergarten stuff, from the bottom of the pantry. I hauled those out as a last-minute Christmas gift for someone I don’t like but am required to exchange trinkets with anyway. I don’t think the bubbles are very bubbly anymore. It’s been six years.

Then there’s the package of DumDum candy canes, from when my friends came over at New Year’s and left it behind. They also left behind a splash of lime green silly string on my closet door. One of my friends and I have a bet that I can’t keep the silly string on the door for a year. Sounds stupid, right? Well, it’s an easy ten dollars!

A big hulk of fabric sits on one of my shelves. It’s left over from Science Fair, and I only used about a twentieth of the fabric so now I feel bad that it cost so much and I didn’t even use much of it. Next to that is my collection of CDs, mostly ones from two years ago, like Avril Lavigne and New Found Glory and the old my Chemical Romance. There’s a whitish-tan teddy bear that this Indian girl gave me in second grade. It’s velvety and soft so I’ve kept it stuffed away in a corner rather than stuffed away in a drawer.

Three cans of chili are next to my backpack. I need to remember to take them tomorrow. The Chili Drive at my school ends 3:20 pm on Wednesday. Also for school is an empty lock box with my combination on the inside and a warning to lock up my crap if I don’t want it stolen. Good advice, I say.

Most of the shelves on my dresser are lined with the staple of life…books! Mostly paperbacks, ones I ordered online or went to Border’s and paid about ten bucks extra for each. I have them arranged into favorites. The first shelf is all the Best. Ones I would marry if I could, you know? Mostly fantasy and vampire and horror fiction. Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong, Richelle Mead. My favorites. Then there’s the second shelf, or the “almost theres.” This is comprised of the hardcore fantasies, Gail Dayton, Shannon Hale. I would’ve put Janet Evanovich on the first shelf except there wasn’t enough room for all her books. I like how colorful they are. Lastly, there’s the “uh, I can’t remember what this is abouts,” randomly organized and thrown on the shelf. They’re separate from the “kids’ books,” mostly Scholastic and thin paperbacks I used to like in fourth and fifth grade. Now that I read them again they’re pretty dull.

I have two piggybanks, one a porcelain pig with purple flowers and a curious purple mouth. A gift from my mother. The other pig is clear green plastic with the name of an insurance agency on the side. I got that in eighth grade when Edward Jones thought it would be smart to give a kid seven bucks in quarters and dimes because they have straight A’s. It was supposed to be the start of my college fund. Well, I got something just as rewarding, if not as long-lasting, out of the quarters. Sorry, Edward Jones.

There’s a Tweety Bird jewelry box I got from my mom, a pretty ballerina one with a picture of a guy in Spandex and a skinny tutu lady on the top. Both are empty. I put the goods in the wood box my grandmother gave me this Christmas. It looks like something I’d enjoy putting my Barbies in as a little girl.

On the wall are awards framed in Dollar Store frames, nine in all. It’s supposed to be ten, to be even, but one of them fell off and I haven’t replaced it yet. I sort of like it better when it isn’t perfect. A lot of things are made better for their flaws.

There’s a “professional” silver camera my dad bought my in the hopes that I’d learn how to use it. I would, but I forgot where I put the inch-thick owner’s manuel. Oops.

There’s a magic set and a big-piece rabbit puzzle in a purple box that my half-Japanese, half-French friend gave me for my birthday. It went with the cute little blue owl (made in Beijing?) on a stand. It came in a clear green bag with black velvet designs that now hangs on one post of my bed.

A little collection of photo albums has been started in one bottom corner of the shelves. Stickers of Shrek, winter kitties, and Spongebob decorate the outside. Next to it, the handle to the computer case my school gave me sits folded neat and tidy. Various delicate, on-sale unicorns, horses, rabbits holding hearts, paint-yourself ponies, a little farm girl statues sit (most on their sides.)

A fan of blue material lies open on one of the top shelves. Next to it is a round mirror, the last present my now-dead aunt gave me (at the time, I liked the $20 that came with it more). I made a collage and stuck it inside the frame because none of my pictures would fit.

There’s a bunch of candles, a green cinnamon one and a French vanilla one in a Halloween tealight holder that I got at a yardsale with my part-Korean friend. Across the room are three tealights, a red one, yellow one, and white one that have been collected from other odds and ends for a while.

Stuffed animals scatter across the floor. They are threats to my dog, who likes to sleep in the doorway and growl at the other dogs if they try to come in. She’s not the friendliest beast in the world. She has a story, too, I think. We haven’t had her forever.

I don’t know how my backpack came to be littered in penguins. I mean, I don’t even LOVE penguins. They’re cute and all, but really? I must have seven of the things that travel with the backpack, hanging off and raising hell in the form of noise. I’m not sure why people think I like penguins. It’s like they just keep getting me them, and who am I to argue? I don’t have anything I like better. I haven’t found anything I like better yet.

So then there’s the computer sleeve. I go to an all-computer public school, first in the nation, where we use these chunky white Apple laptops that freeze up if you look at them funny. (I swear; I’d go with PCs if only for the smoothness factor. At least the spinning rainbow “of death” doesn’t pop up every time you try to do two things at once.) And the school got us these huge computer bags, one of which I actually hauled around for the better part of the last semester. Then I got smart and bought my own bag, a sleeve of foam, that fits right into my backpack. Problem solved!

My closet’s open but I won’t even go there. Beach towel i got for X-Mas. Radio I’ve had for years. Old school stuff I gave up on after middle school was over. More stuffed animals. A little lamb and a wrinkled dog I won at the fair (it was a consolation prize, sadly.)

Library books stacked up on my nightstand. A cell phone plugged into the charger. A Wal-Mart special tiny fake-authentic tan lamp. A pair of itchy striped gloves. A blue pencil. Nail clippers. Scraps of paper. A reindeer beanie baby.

I have so much stuff in my room. Most of it is pointless, I know, but I like it. I have a friend whose room is stacked halfway to the ceiling with STUFF. Books and papers and trading cards and knicknacks and things I’d never known existed. She says, “I always thought my friends’ rooms were empty, growing up. Then I realized mine was just really full.”

I think I’ve picked up her habit of keeping anything and everything. The junk is starting to pile up to the point where I can’t find the dustbunnies under the mess anymore. My mom has trouble not saying anything. I tell her not to worry; I like it full.

Maybe I’ll post this in a new category. I have Curiosities, for things like Serial Killers and Politics. And then I have General, for all my ramblings on philosophy and life. Maybe I’ll have a new category, one about me. To stoke the egocentric part of my mind.

This should fly.

Death

I heard this theory that I just have to share. There’s no stopping it. The words will find a way to come out no matter what.

I read it in a book, of course. It was called Shadows in the Darkness by Elaine Cunningham.

The theory is that there is no such thing as a recovered alcoholic. That, if the person didn’t die, they would eventually take that sip that reopens the gates. In theory, that people never change…or perhaps, that people change too much while attempting to stay the same.

That’s the problem with immortality, I think. Never dying might sound fine and dandy…until you look at everything it would turn you into.

There was another book. I forget it’s name now…Greywalker? Something like that. It said, “I like celluloid people…they don’t grow old and die or stay young and become monsters.”

It’s a sad way to look at life, if you ask me. But it’s also reasonable. It figures, logically, that if you live long enough you’ll become twisted and as corrupt as anyone else. That eventually you’ll make a mistake you regret forever and it changes you. That eventually all those careful walls of values and morals and promises will come crashing down and the only thing you’lll be able to do is get out of the way.

There’s a good reason for death. Hell, a great reason! People get old. Not in the physical sense alone. People, by the time they die, have usually seen so much of the world that they know it’s time to get out while there’s still something to take with you. The world kind of sucks the joy out of living, one drop at a time. One day you wake up and you realize how pointless it’s all been, going to work to please other people, writing report after report and all for what? A place in the history books? No, a flat grey gravestone in a weedy cemetery where no one visits you but your dear daughter. And then when she dies, no one knows who Jacob Patcher or Amy Williams is and all their accomplishments are hewn down to a few words carved in stone. And that’s their heart and their hopes and dreams and life and death all summed up in numbers and dates like the statistics of death. I told you statistics are killer.

So yes, there’s a very good reason for death because by the time most people get to that point the world’s gone grey. No one wants to live in a grey world. Why not see what’s beyond instead?

No matter how scary that beyond might be, at least it’ll always be there and you can count on that, when all else fails. You can always count on dying. That’s another reason for it.

Sometimes I’ll think about the concept of death and it’ll strike me, all at once: no thinking. No awareness. I would just simply…not BE. It’s so big. I can’t describe it. It’s so much bigger than me. So much bigger than the stars and the planets all put together and all the weight of every dream ever dreamt and every word ever spoken all bundled up and put on a scale. That much bigger.

So I won’t think about it anymore. That’s how most people live with death. By pretending it’s not there. The elephant in the room. The one that’s always present, from the moment of birth to the moment you’re forced to look the creature in the eye. Always there.

It’s a good thing.

Life Goals:

6. Go out with a bang!

Physiognomy

The main thing on my mind today is that it takes a lot to make a person.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons why you’d want to create a fictional being. For fun. You’re writing a book. You want their character to shine through when you draw them. For grimmer purposes. You have a profile and no criminal. Nowhere to start looking.

It’s a useful thing, being able to make people. But it’s also sort of hopeless, seeing as how there are all those millions and millions of little defections and angles you never really think about. Some of them are just there, just another part of the whole, and you’re so used to them it’s like breathing to see and feel them. And when you go to make up someone else, those tiny influences are missing and thus there’s always something off about your character.

Useful, yes. Impossible, mostly.

The thing that keeps me on my toes is the knowledge that people aren’t predictable. Some might seem like it. You meet a good ol’ Southern farm girl who does the same thing every day, says the same things and thinks the same things. Predictable, right? Wrong. You never know what she’ll do when you stick a gun in her hand and her duct-taped ex-husband in front of her. Take the shot? No one will know. You can bury him out back. No one will ever suspect because no one saw him with you. Pull the trigger. Sound like the same farm girl?

No, there are a lot of things not accounted for when making up a person. Because everyone is so unique, it’s downright impossible what they’ll do in any given situation and sometimes what your fictional person does isn’t what they’d do if they were alive. Like Pinocchio. If he was real, how do you know he wouldn’t become just another beggar in the streets or grow up to be a druggie?

People surprise. People were born to surprise. There’s no avoiding, because when you change the situation the person never changes but how they think might. Sometime about action and reaction. Balance.

So even when I find it hard to know, logically, that people aren’t who I think they are, it’s a tough thing to keep hold of. You’d think after fifteen years of friendship, or two married decades, or a hundred ninety phone conversations, you know someone.

Well, maybe you do, but not the nuances. Not the things that make them react when something happens, when something changes.

I think that’s why it’s so hard to make someone up. Because even when you base them off a real human, a person you know in life, you don’t really get them so you can’t really describe every part of them.

It’s sort of frustrating.

And in a way, I suppose it’s a good thing you can never really know someone and it’s a bad thing. Good because that’s another mystery no one’s ever going to be able to write about in the science textbooks, not in detail and not accurately. So even when everything else is polished to perfection, there’s always going to be that error. That’s good.

The bad thing is that it requires you to trust more than you otherwise would have. And a lot of times the people you trust are thrown into the cornfield with the shotgun and the tied-up ex-husband and you find out how much you really know about them. So the whole trust thing isn’t so great. People weren’t really meant to be relied on because of the quirks that make them people.

It’s too bad, I guess. I’ve always wanted to put my best friends down on paper, but I suppose even if I could, they’d defy the laws of the keyboard and fly off the page.

Life Goals:

5. Try harder.

Listen

I’m sick today. And yesterday, and probably tomorrow too.

There are a lot of things you learn when you’re spacey, much as I hate to admit it. For one, you realize that sleeping medicine really does work because I’m about to fall unconscious at any moment…I think. Hopefully not before I get to say all I want to. I hate not being able to speak.

A lot of people get caught up in themselves. Like they’ll go to school or work and they’ll laugh but it isn’t really them laughing. They’re just going about the usual and doing what they think will get them somewhere when really, if you do the same thing over and over you’ll always be in the same place with the same people just like you.

I couldn’t talk too much today because I have this fever that just doesn’t quit. But even though it kept me up last night and I had to drag myself off to school, a bit of good came out of it.

For one, I realized there are a lot of things I don’t hear. Like the words are there and the people are there but not to me. To me they’re routine, ordinary, kids just trying to stick out just like everyone else. That’s what makes it hard for me to listen, sometimes. I have this mindset where I think I know who I am and what I am and no one else is any different.

There are two remedies to my malady that I see.

1. Have someone completely surprise you. The boring, nerdy girl with glasses in the corner? She ends up having a taste for salsa and bright colors. The kid in black with the piercings and attitude? Turns out he’d give you back your wallet if it had five hundred in it. How many people expect that?

2. Get sick. Get a raging cold and fever and then go out to the mall and sit on a bench and just listen to everyone talking around you. That’s when you realize there’s a lot of things you don’t hear because you think you’ve heard it all already. When you can’t talk, and you can’t sleep, so you just sit there with your eyes closed and listen.

It’s so easy to get caught up in work and routine. My friend, a certain redhead, has a quote on her blog that says, ‘Quit killing monsters, and look up at the stars every once in a while.’ Muah! I salute her.

Life Goals:

4. Don’t get lost.

The New Politics?

There are a lot of things I think I understand. A lot of things I have no clue about and pretend to understand and then something will happen that shoves all that assumption right back into my face. I think I have people all figured out and wham! Someone does something so surprising I flounder for a long time after.

The only things I really know, I think are the things I can see for myself. A lot of times, I’ll consider an issue for a week and then move on, like a train on its course and when it gets to the end of the track it continues on a different route. (And those surprises could be signs of derailment, perhaps.)

This week my obsession is politics. Politics and what they were originally meant to be and how that compares to what they are now.

I know in the beginning of the US, there was no real freedom. Not for women, not for black or indians, not for just about anyone. I know we have a history of gluttony, that we produce 50% of the world’s waste, but in theory, America was a good idea. It was supposed to be strong (check!), equal (half-check), just (quarter-check), and the people who ran it were supposed to be trusted (no check).

Doesn’t it say something that when people go to vote, they don’t vote FOR someone. They don’t vote for the candidate they think will make the most improvements…they vote for the candidate that will screw up the least. They pick the lesser evil over the great one. To me, that’s like only living halfway because while we might have a president who cares enough for the country to keep his job, that’s about it. A president who cares more for looking good in the history books and living in comfort than anyone else…and they’re even considered the lesser evil!

I know people aren’t perfect. I don’t even have a good concept of perfect because the only image that comes to mind when I think of it is something I’ve never seen and can never understand. I know most people, when given the chance to be president or VP or, hell, just some lowly assistant executive, they’d do the exact same thing that most political candidates would. They’s scramble to the top and spout things the public wants to hear and never really go through with anything. They’d make radical decisions to keep their position, do deals that aren’t, necessarily, for the good of ALL the people (or even the majority!) I know most people would look after themselves first…I mean, it’s self preservation, and who wouldn’t do anything to dodge the bullet coming right for their head?

I’d want to see someone who wouldn’t dodge if it meant that bullet would kill the person standing behind them.

I’m young. Too young to have seen very much or know very much…I’ve never been out of my state but for a short trip…I’ve never had someone I loved more than anything die, I’ve never been hurt because I’m not ruthless enough…I’ve never felt so desperate to keep things from changing that I made a radical decision that wounded more than it healed. I’ve never been in that position before.

And I’m sure there are very, very few people who would take the bullet, who would risk their career and their life for the position to which they’ve been elected…but out of a country of what? Three hundred million? You’d think there would be just one. Just one who wouldn’t make a deal with an oil company or put stock in a company when it uses slave labor in third world countries. You’d think there would be one who cared more about what would work in the long run than what works for this moment, this term. That even if they were impeached, it would mean they lost their job changing something that needed to be changed.

People are picky. That’s such a massive understatement. I see it every day. My dad’s a conservative republican and he’s always saying things like, “Yeah, raise my taxes why don’t you?”

The thing I don’t get about that is why people believe change can happen without sacrifice. It’s that whole balance theory, that nothing good can happen without a little effort. And it makes me wonder if people have grown so lazy and used to only taking care of themselves that they wouldn’t give just a bit more for the overall good.

I’m not democrat. I know that, because there are a lot of things I disagree with when people talk about what it means to be a liberal and the like. I’m not a republican. I’m not conservative because I know that even if paying more means I go without the name brand cereal for a month, what does it matter if it helps someone else?

A lot of people have lost faith in the government. They’ve lost faith in anything federal because there have been so many misuses of the law, so many delays and put-offs and consequences that no one really believes in the best of politicians. And you know what? Neither do I. I see all these subtle aggressions, all these commercials dissing other candidates and I know the system’s gone to hell.

So what? So the candidates suck and the system has loopholes. So what?

You change it. You change politics. Not the people, but the way everything’s run, the way things are done. You make a new party, some kind of open party that doesn’t make underground deals or shave some tax money off for their sponsers. You make a party and find a candidate that cares more for the lonely twelve-year-old immigrant running from slave traders than the high-class marketing executive who sends you vintage wines with your breakfast.

I’m starting to think I might be somewhat liberal.

But also, you’d let citizens keep who they are. You’d let them keep paying the same thing every year and doing the same thing but you’d change what comes out of it. You’d change where the taxes go, you’d change the setup of the government and get rid of all the draining, useless jobs and get rid of national debt before you get rid of your own debt.

I see what politics are. I see how much they’re hated because everyone knows that not one of the candidates presented wants good for the people more then they want good for themselves or their family. I see how people contest issues about taking away rights and who should have what and in the end there is no fairness or equality, just who can raise the most bribe money and who can kill the other’s support system the fastest.

I might not understand very much about politics, but I see what they are and what they do to people. What they make people do. And I completely disagree with every aspect of it, from the campaigning to the sponsoring…all of it.

So I’m just a kid and I don’t have experience. I just see what people do and I see the consequences. And I see how no one ever learns from what those people do, and the voters keep voting for oil companies and the oil companies keep voting for themselves.

Maybe people who really do want to make things better, maybe they do try but they always fail. And how do you know those people want the best? You don’t, really. That’s what sucks about it all. How everyone lies and then those people lie again and again and nothing ever changes and no one ever learns.

It’s sort of sad. And maybe I’m not seeing the whole picture, but I’m seeing every part of it that I can receive on the internet and on the news and in the newspaper. If that doesn’t show me the whole picture, what does? Where do I find this politician who does the best for the majority, who sacrifices everything for the majority?

I don’t know. Don’t ask me, I’m just a kid, and I’ve still got three more years before I can vote. Legally.