Currently…not so good.

I’m so tired. My eyes want to close and I want to just drop on the couch and forget.

I love my brother. He used to be my hero. I would go around saying, “yes, that’s my brother!” to everyone. And even when he changed, when he started wanting what everyone else wanted, I still loved him to death. Maybe I still do, but it’s a painful kind of love now.

A few months ago he was suspended from school for bringing cigarettes, and he’d been smoking marijuana in the bathroom but they couldn’t quite prove it. His friends were expelled when they found a bag and airsoft guns in their backpacks. So he was thrown out of school for a while and just this Monday was the end of his sentence. He was allowed to go back, reregister, start again.

I don’t know why I keep believing that people change. They don’t. They find something they like to do, that serves them well, and they chase after it no matter what.

Last Saturday, he was arrested for having a bit of pot and a crack pipe on him; his friends were also drinking and smoking but they put all the evidence on him so they wouldn’t get caught. Two felonies, possession and possession of drug paraphenalia.

Just this Monday, he went back to school and today, Tuesday, he was permanently expelled for having marijuana on campus and arrested yet again. One more felony. And now my parents are on the way to pick him up from Juvie, though lord knows he’d probably do better just staying there. I wish he wasn’t here anymore. He makes everyone worry and my father gets angry at everything and I can’t sleep knowing he’s snuck out his window to do who-knows-what with his friends. I can’t stand it.

I guess the worst part is not having anyone to talk to. I have a few good friends, but the ones I can really talk to aren’t here. They’re busy, and will be until at least seven but it’s not like I can just leave all the words bottled up; they have to go somewhere.

I hate this. And then a few days ago he had these really bad burn marks on his hand, and he said it was from a fire and really he’d burned himself with his cigarette lighter. There were huge chunks of skin missing, where he’d peeled at the blisters, red gaping holes and he said, “those are some pretty big holes, huh?” and I just said, “Yes, they are.”

I don’t get it. None of us get it. I wish my friends would come home. I wish they would call me. My chest hurts.

Ideas and Fake Smiles

Sometimes I’ll get this crazy creative phase where I start to write and can’t stop. That’s over now. It’s erased too, because most of what I write is nonsense only I would understand, and what use would I have for the thoughts already in my head down on paper? Oh dear, the Space bar on my keyboard squeaks. I think I’ll have to stop writing.

No, really. I have this notebook that I only use about once every three weeks. Then suddenly I’ll be doing something and the urge to create will come. And of course, it’ll always be in the middle of church or when I’m busy making cookies or something. By the time I run for the notebook, most of the best ideas have leaked out and I’m left with the crap I write on here. But hey, crap’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

Yeah, no one answer that. I don’t want to hear it.

The other day my dear brother was arrested, and that’s about the time I got my last creative phase. I wrote about seventy pages of babble, stupid ideas and comebacks I thought were witty at the time I wrote them. Looking back on them, they don’t sound so fascinating. I suppose a lot of things are better in the making than the finished product turns out to be.

Easter! The season of eggs and pastel colors and three-hour waits for parking at the grocery store the day before! Lovely.

So the other day I was watching the news, since I like to do that on account of I’m a loser with nothing else to do, and there was a bunch of junk thrown on about Hildog and Obama-rama giving each other the hypothetical finger. I mean, where’s all the world peace talk people used to spew? Why doesn’t one of them go save the whales or something? Isn’t that what most other people do if they want to get famous and popular, not insult everyone who’s black, white, yellow, brown, tan, female, male, unsure, or married?

Sheesh. In my opinion, they need a day job. Sitting around thinking up six different ways to make the same crap stick. Maybe someday the people watching at home will actually believe they’ve fornicated with a goat in Saudi Arabia if the commercials say so over and over.

Oh and there’s another thing. I was watching this Clinton commercial, and it had this clip where in the background some kid was picking his nose. Swear to god, it was like subliminal messaging. With a subtle package. And perhaps a bit of bribery from the enemy going on behind the scenes.

Enough of this. I’m sick of politics. No, that’s not true. I love watching people writhe in verbal mud on television. In fact, it’s even better when the one who rolls in the most gets to lead the country. I love this system. And that isn’t sarcasm, either. I really do. There is absolutely no other way to squeeze every secret out of a person than to have them run for president. Immediately, you’ve got five hundred thousand wannabe heroes and enemies digging up old pastors to rub in the candidate’s face. In five minutes, everyone in the world would know that What’s-His-Face (the Republican guy?) used to eat worms as a child. He had a dog who looked like him even after it was in the ground for twelve years. Scary thought.

I don’t mean to be rude or anything. Well, maybe just a little. Because I think it’s ridiculous that we elect the lesser evil rather than the greatest good. It works, except in the last few cases I must say. It’s just that, why couldn’t we get someone who isn’t controlled by the media and the all-
powerful Middle Eastern oil company leeches? Elect Greenpeace. No, elect someone with a bit of humor. At least so you could assume some of those wide, jaw-cracking smiles are for real.

Elect Jim Carey. Robin Williams. Vote Now So We Don’t Have To Play This Commercial Over And Over Until You Smash In The TV With Your Child’s Barbie Doll.

Now there’s a campaign slogan. Grow Love, Not Weed. Conservative hippies. Can you imagine?

Well, anyway. I like the movies about presidents and president’s daughters, just the older ones not the crappy remakes that grow cornier by the moment. I think it’d be fun to make a dozen people scamble to keep up with you, or give a hundred thousand heart attacks when you choke on a chicken bone during a formal banquet. For the first few months, that is. After that I’d hate having huge hulking black mounds following me, though it’d be interesting what they’d do if I went into Victoria’s Secret. Hide behind the panty liner? That’d be a fun way for Hilary to win over women nationwide. She’d get reelected.

I wish normal people could be president. I hate that you have to have money to get anywhere. It’s such a screwed up system. “Life’s not fair.” Yeah, well, you can keep saying that until you die of heart disease but it’s still going to suck eggs. It’s going to suck after I’m ashes (I want to be cremated. Cold dead flesh? No thanks.).

Before, I said I loved people. I loved every aspect of them. And I still do, but when people get together and form a crowd, it’s a whole other matter. I hate the relationship between politician, media, and audience. It’s like the only reason a politician even talks to the people is because they’ll get him reelected (or her, sorry, not PC.) I wish I lived in an age where there were heros. I don’t know any heros, not like, Martin Luther King Jr. or George Washington (wooden teeth and fancy for barnyard animals?). I wish there were heros on TV, not people with fake smiles and fake handshakes and fake intentions and faker promises.

There are a lot of things I don’t know. I keep repeating that, and I believe it. I even heard it in my English class today. We were learning Vygotsky, the 4 stages of learning. And then you have this huge area that you know nothing about and you won’t ever be able to do on your own. I don’t know very much at all. High school is still so elementary.

What I know comes from what I see. I see a lot, mostly because I hang around a lot of different sorts. There’re the nerds, who watch Halo videos in class. There’re the Unusuals, my usual lunch crowd. The loners, the athletes, the losers, the Latinas, the wannabe-anythings, the skanks.

And even though a lot of these people pretend to be who they aren’t, they’re never really fake. Not like the ones I see on TV. At least the skanks dress like they do it. At least the wannabe-gangsters try to be gangster.

I’m going to sleep now. It’s eleven-something and there’s school tomorrow and I hate being tired. I hate a lot of things lately. But I still love people. People make me smile. Politicians make me frown. I don’t like politicians very much. Obviously.

Later. Argh I hate this Space bar!

What’s Next?

Watching the news, it’s hard to imagine that someday, this will all be the past. It seems so cynical, to think that this will not matter, given time. Or maybe, in the future there is no future at all. It’s a hard thing to imagine.

I was reading the newspaper today and the headlines scream death, cry downfall, collapse. Just reading those headlines and the articles beneath, it’s hard to imagine there will be a future. Health care systems failing, the crime rate doubling from last year, the city has a multimillion-dollar budget deficit while others are comfortable in houses twice that expensive. I think democracy’s a great idea, in theory, but not so great in practice. It requires people and organizations to be self-centered because if they aren’t, they’ll lose profit and fail, and there’s nothing to make them reach out and help anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll wake the next morning. What will happen if I don’t, if I step out into the street and get hit by a car, suffer brain trauma and die. If I’m taken to the emergency room bleeding to death and told to wait because there are just too many people in line, all waiting for one of the few doctors available. What if I go insane, what if I wake up and decide I don’t like waking up anymore because there’s nothing to get up for? I wonder, what if the Sun exploded, and a wave of fire came down on us, would it be a good thing?

Then, if that happened, would humanity like itself better for not waiting around to see what it’s boundless destruction results in? Would it be better to die early on, when there is still hope, or later, when the Earth is dead and unforgiving and it is the fault of me, of my family, of my country?

I wish I knew what happened next. It’s like when you read a book and the last chapter is blank, right when the action gets good. You plead and beg and try to write your own ending, but none of it seems right because none of it’s real. Would it be better to just stop, to just stop there and not know the ending if the ending is terrible?

My Theory About Death

I know at heart people never change. Either that, or it’s nearly impossible to change who you are, who you grew up being. So when you do make a drastic turnaround, it isn’t that you changed who you are so much as it changed what you make of who you are.

A lot of the people I know are fascinated with death. In fact, I think most individuals would be. After all, it is the biggest unknown of all–or, perhaps, the only thing we can rely on in life is that we will die. I mean, we watch the news and they play features about kids getting killed and a new disease emerging, and ratings soar. You drive by a car accident and can’t look away from the flashing lights. At a funeral, the coffin is prominently displayed and sometimes the dead body is shown, as if the person would someday regain use of those limbs.

I guess a big part of it is that people just don’t want to accept that there is an end. We’re so used to being able to get back up, being able to keep breathing–and heck, why not? If we’d just stopped, we’d be dead and no one can say they’ve ended before because they wouldn’t be able to speak if they had. So whenever we’re faced with the final page, the back cover, we think of dead end roads and how there is still land beyond it.

When people thought the world was flat, they imagined it as simply ending along its edges. That should they sail far enough, walk long enough, they would fall off–into what? Even then, there was no clear understanding of ending.

It’s a big thing to try and wrap your head around. I can only get it in the rare moments, and it’s not so much a matter of understanding death than it is of letting death alone. Of just accepting that the end is the end, that we don’t stay behind as ghosts or souls, that we simply disintegrate and become ashes on the breeze. This, too, does not signify end as we’d still be continuing, if in a different form.

That’s my favorite theory about death. I like the idea of the half-circle, where we come into being and then die and become something else. Not that we’re born again, or we go into paradise (wishful thinking, if you ask me), but that we simply change and humans weren’t meant to understand any other life than the life we can detect. I really don’t think we are reborn as humans, or animals, or anything like that–but neither do I think we just stop.

For a long time, my science teacher has been talking about what scientists believe is required for life to exist. They have lists, and with each extremophile found (life without sunlight, without heat, etc.) they cross off necessities until there are very few logical requirements left. We need oxygen. So what? If there is oxygen, there will always be life?

No, I think there’s something more. I don’t know what it is; perhaps it is some divine being that breathes life into each person as they are born, perhaps it is simply something that can be measured in quantities and defined by variables. I don’t know what it is that makes people able to think and move and love, but I do believe it cannot be explained. Not in such a way that words would accomodate it.

I like to go around saying the reason humanity moves forward is because people like to have clear explanations. But more than that, what moves people forward is the need to explain what can’t be explained, which makes it the eternal motivation and neverending frustration. I do hope that if the spirit that creates life, that allows for life, can be explained, that there will still always be parts that can’t.

My theory about death? It’s not an ending. It’s not a beginning, either, because you’ve already gone through this entire phase, and no matter how insignificant life might seem later on, it will always have been the beginning. My theory is that people don’t die; not really. They might stop thinking and breathing and all those things that scientists like to say are necessary for something to live, but in some ways they are still there. Even when they decompose and are nothing but rotted bones in the ground, grains of dust in a field, they’re still there.

Thinking like that is what lets me accept the ultimate reality that yes, I am going to die. I am going to fade out, I am going to lie down to rest for the final time, and after that is such complete nothingness that even when I try to accept it, it still scares the crap out of me. I am going to die, and when I imagine it, I think of what I become after, how I go back to the earth and the earth takes me neutrally because emotion is for animals.

Sometimes, that isn’t enough to help me sleep at night and sometimes it’s just right.

Change, choice, good and evil

I’ve been thinking a lot about people and what makes them do what they do. I mean, I think about things like this all the time, even when I don’t mean to. It’s just that there’s so much to wonder about.

I’ve been wondering about the concept of good and evil, too. Like, why do people like to put labels on things? Hitler was evil. Well, I can understand that. George Bush is evil. Well, not everyone thinks that. So maybe when a serial killer murders someone, everyone else thinks it’s so bad (especially the victim, I’m sure), but what if the killer doesn’t think so?

What is evil, anyway? When someone takes a life? Are they evil no matter what?

I think evil is when the heaven of one person becomes the hell of another. But sometimes I think, is that even right? That’d be like saying it’s evil to want to be happy. So maybe the serial killer is happy when he’s chopping up bodies. Disgusting, yes. And maybe he/she enjoys the pain of their victims, yes. Not a good thing. But evil?

I don’t know. It’s just that, people like to put things in nice, neat categories. They like to watch the news and hear about a kidnapper and immediately they make him or her out to be a monster. That person abducted a child, he/she must be evil, they must be bad. And then you get a story about a firefighter who died saving some baby’s life. Oh, that man/woman must be a hero, they must be the embodiment of all that is righteous and good.

Maybe I’m just generalizing. I have a bad habit of doing that, making statements that are supposed to occur for everyone but rarely do. But I think it’s safe to say people like their thoughts in nice neat packages. Even if they know there’s more they haven’t heard.

Right now I won’t bother myself with putting people and events in categories, mostly because I haven’t got a grip on this whole one-way-or-the-other mindset.

I’m so full of complaints today. Yesterday was worse, but today the residue is still hanging around. So instead of complaining, I think I’ll talk about the people I know.

A lot of my friends don’t know much about me. That’s not such a bad thing all the time because it lets me be surprising once in a while–keep ‘um on their toes–and they never really know I’m listening unless I do something. I’ve gotten good at being invisible. People forget you’re there if you pretend to ignore them.

I know this girl who is in my science class. She sits next to me most days, and we’re what I’d call semi-friends; we’ll talk to each other and laugh together but we hang with different crowds. She’s nice enough, with the occasional me-me-me period that everyone is allowed every once in a while. She doesn’t smoke or do drugs (at least, I don’t think she does); she has another problem entirely. It’s more of a psychological one, too. On the outside she’s this cynical, jaded kid. Her topic for our Romeo and Juliet essay was “love always hurts,” like she knows or something (so maybe she does?) But then the next day we’ll be watching the movie and she’ll sigh over a hot character and I’ll know she isn’t as uncaring as she seems. Truthfully, she’s a romantic at heart.

I’ve come to find a lot of romantics are in hiding until the opportune moment.

One of my best friends is a romantic also. She likes to pretend she’s this tough-loving bitch, calling her friends hos and dissing anything having to do with love and romance. But then I look at her and I know she’s dreadfully lonely. I think she might even be more lonely than me, especially considering her latest escapades with the law and how sometimes at lunch she’ll get up and go sit alone in the gym until the bell rings. Saying nothing to anyone. And I know she thinks she’s alone and I wish I could tell her different, but every time I try it’s like there’s this clog in my throat and I just can’t get the words out. They all seem wrong in my head. So I don’t say anything at all.

I know a guy who fills his life with what other people want because he thinks that’s what will make people want him. He thinks that’s what will make people like him.

This is my sob story for the night. Enjoy.

So this guy, he was a middle child. As a kid him and his older brother would always get into fights and he’d step on his younger sister because it got him farther. But he could never add up to his older brother, at least in his parents’ eyes. Up until fifth grade, he was the perfect student. Even after his family put him and his siblings in a public school, he wore collared shirts tucked in neatly, hair trimmed and smiling all the time. He would laugh with his sister and he stopped getting into fights with his brother because his parents disapproved, and everything was always about his parents.

Then something changed. It was like a complete reversal; one day he was doing his homework and making his bed in the morning and talking to his parents and the next he was wearing “gangster clothes” and swaggering around. He grew his hair out and the best grade on his report card was a C, in PE.

It wasn’t until a lot later that I figured out what made him change. It was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before and even now I partially blame myself. I have a habit of getting caught up in myself and what I want, and it’s the rare moment when I can look at a person and see them–not what I want to see, but them.

It was his parents, and his siblings. He would come home and never feel adequate because his older brother got better grades and his parents loved his older brother because he was the first. And his parents loved his younger sister too, because she was who they’d wanted as a second child. This guy, he was a mistake. His parents wanted a girl. And when they had one, she was the favorite.

It was the kids at school, too. This was about the time when everyone wanted to look cool and it didn’t matter anymore if you could spell “turbulent.” All that mattered was dressing the best and looking the hottest. And because this guy wasn’t the hottest or most fashionable, in his button-down shirts and collars, they weren’t friends with him. He would read books at lunch and at home to get away from it all.

Maybe he just snapped. Maybe there gets to be a point, growing up, when you just can’t refuse to want what other people want anymore. Where you’re so different, no one can see or understand you and no one wants to be alone. No one, no matter how much you love collared shirts and good grades. Eventually you’ll sacrifice everything so you don’t have to be alone anymore.

The price?

When it first began, this change, it was his clothing. He started dressing different. He started listening to different music and having a different hairstyle. His grades plummeted, parents got concerned, and he didn’t really care because they’d never really seen him before then.

It got so much worse. I talk about this guy a lot because we used to be the best of friends. We used to talk to each other and share everything, and now it’s like I don’t even know him. I’m starting to realize I never knew him, if I didn’t guess what would happen.

Drugs started taking precedence over anything else. Coming home in time to get to bed was not a priority–in fact, coming home at all was not required. He’d sneak out his bedroom window to hang out with girls that lied the moment they opened their mouth to speak. Snakes. And then he fell in love and his girlfriend had a pregnancy scare. She swore she’d never leave him and a month later she was sleeping in her car a hundred miles away.

When I look at him now, I wonder if I’ll ever be like that. And then I realize, no, I won’t, because I’ve never been so alone that I started to compromise what makes me happy.

It’s still sort of sad to see him, though. I know what made him do this. I know why he has five friends over every night and sneaks away to be with them–because he can’t be with his family anymore.

He doesn’t read. Once, I was reading in front of him and he said, “Reading’s for losers.” And I wanted to say, “Which of your friends told you that?” but I didn’t.

I don’t know. I guess there are a lot of things a person is willing to give up without even realizing it. And sometimes I wonder if my friend even realizes what he’s done. Maybe he does. I just don’t know.

Is it wrong to love a person and hate who they are? Can you still love them without loving what they do?

Because even though I love that kid with all my heart, I hate him for getting even with his parents because I know his parents never wanted this for him. I love him even when he comes by smelling to high heaven, and I know who he’s been with and what they’ve been doing. But I hate him for doing it and damning how it effects other people.

I guess it’s true, that love and hate are two sides of the same coin.

All this makes me want to find out more. I’d love working if I could make a living learning what makes people do what they do. Some 80% of people work only for money. I don’t want to work for money.

I wish I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I know a girl who has her whole career picked out, down to how many kids she wants and what their names are. I wonder if she’ll have a middle child, an unwanted child. I wonder if he’ll end up like my friend, and I wish I could tell her what happens if he does.

Oh, well. I’ve spent too much time wondering about what I want to do with my life. Too much time entirely, and now that I’m on vacation, it’s even more reason to just stop thinking. Unfortunately, I have projects to do, which really doesn’t make sense because isn’t the point of a vacation to get you away from schoolwork? I don’t get it.

I think that’s pretty much all I wanted to say. That, and I haven’t found a way to be a hero yet. And I’m starting to wonder if I want to be anymore. But that’s not a feeling I want to explain–not ever.

My slogan should be “Grow love, not weed.”

Sigh. I wonder if I’ll sleep tonight.

Change [either long in coming or not coming at all.]

A curious thing happened just now. I was looking over my blog, thinking it looked pretty darn spiffy (if not exactly like a thousand others), and noticed the search terms people put in to find my blog.

And one of them was, “How to fake happiness…” which of course led you to a blog about drugs in schools and people I know on them and why I don’t do them…

Which ultimately has nothing to do with the search term. But still the person clicked on my link…so either they were curious (like me) or didn’t know what pile they were stepping into.

The other ones aren’t much better. They’re things like “romeo and juliet love that dies” and “there is no unknown,” or something to that effect.

I’m not sure if I like that. I mean, yay! people read what I write (well, they probably just read a paragraph and then click the back button), but still: a click’s a click. Though really, people need to talk to me. I get no comments, despite dissing Hildog or talking up Ecstasy. How much worse can it get? Someone argue with me. Really.

Okay now I’ll put a real post.

Something I’ve been wondering about for a few days.

So a while ago I was wondering if it was worth finishing high school with A’s and going to college and all that high-strung nonsense. I was wondering if when I was dying, it’d make me die easier (or if I just won’t give a damn). But then I got a good grade on a hard project from a hard teacher and it was like…wham! There ya go. Satisfaction guarenteed.

But that’s not what I wanted to say (yet somehow I always end up saying these things anyway.)

What I wanted to say was that I’m in Student Council this year. Likely, I won’t be in it next because the one at our school is a complete and utter waste of time. All we do is sit around discussing fundraisers and the ones we do go through with, we never see the results of them.

I swear, the government needs to give schools some freaking money. Our buses suck, the seats all torn up and no air conditioning (and in summer here, that’s a pretty big deal), and then when the board gets some funds, they spend it on fancy new security cameras every two seats. I mean, really. I’d love to see some sense here.

And then there’s the thing with the field trips. And the wellness policy. Which has nothing to do with money (well, sort of), but is an issue anyway.

The field trips thing is big because it’s so important. I’m in high school and the last trip I took out of the city was up to Phoenix a year ago with my family. And the last trip I took with my classmates was up to Mesa, and the only reason we were able to do that was because our teacher personally paid for rooms and gas and food.

I don’t get what the point of learning is if you don’t ever experience it firsthand. It’s like you memorize textbooks and they never really help you when you’re kicked out of the house. You can’t use the area of a circle to get through airport security (though that would be an interesting idea, I must say.)

It’s all so flat, so bland. Go to school, read and memorize structures and layouts, go home, do it again. I mean, I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining but whatever happened to the joy of learning? The last time I enjoyed going to school was back in kindergarten when we did macaroni shapes.

I guess in the long run field trips aren’t considered important because they don’t raise grades or feed you. Maybe you have to be in school to see why they’re so crucial. Maybe you have to be a kid to appreciate the severe irritation provided by the wellness policy. That, too.

I’ll stop complaining now. But I do want to say, all this adds up. It all adds up to make getting up in the morning a hardship to endure. And at lunch, the cafeteria food clogs your throat as it goes down, and your friends start bringing whiskey to school and getting drunk in second period by taking sips when the teacher isn’t looking. And your long-time friend gets high in the bathroom and kicked out of school, another friend gets charged with shoplifting and you go home exhausted and pressured to just give it up, too. You look at what’s happening to the people you love and you realize there is nothing about school that makes them jump for joy, nothing that makes them happy and eventually you don’t expect to see anyone smiling when you walk onto campus. Except if they’re making out with their bf/gf in a dark corner, or secretly smoking cigarettes in the parking lot while the heavy redneck sixty-year-old security guard watches the yellow Camaro drive by.

It’s all the small things that add up to equal a lot more. A lot more than you’d ever expect.

It’s just listening as the black girl with the skinny jeans and midriff-tee gets into a cussing match with her so-called best friend. Then you watch as another girl goes over to this girl and pounds her head into the table (I swear–true story. Then they got up, put their arms around each other and walked off laughing with a black eye and bumps on their forehead.)

My bus driver hears the cussing matches and watches some kid throw rocks at the window. Then she’ll call security on the radio and get run over by the special needs buses wondering who’s picking up little Jimmy today. Security never comes (heck, you never see teachers and guards out there–where were they when two guys I know started pounding each other into the pavement? The bus drivers had to restrain them, and it took thirty minutes for anyone to come!).

Kids shoot paintballs at the buses–kid stuff, sure sure–I end up staring drugs in the face in PE when this girl begs her pregnant friend for some shrooms. There isn’t a lot of violence. Not like at our neighboring school, which has an average of three major fights a day. The violence here is usually outside school, where kids can’t get in trouble because there’s no one else around.

Sometimes I can’t stand school. It’s just going there and knowing nothing has changed, and nothing I can ever say or do will change anything. The government won’t give the school more money if one little high schooler asked. My friends wouldn’t stop drinking if I told them to because it’s stopped being a matter of choice a long time ago. Now it’s all fun and games, to counter the hopelessness they instill in you when you go to school.

I’ll even quote my English teacher: “Most people here will never make a difference.”

I wish I could, but I don’t think I will. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Pro-sanity

“Whenever getting up in the morning and dealing with life seems too much, I remember that I always have the option of going screaming, barking mad. It makes staying sane a much lighter burden.”

Way to live, eh?

Even Worse?

So I wrote some blog about drugs and how they’re ruining a lot of kids I know. But then a few days ago I stumbled across another problem I think it’ll be harder for people to get.

I haven’t had a chance to write until now. It’s sort of hard, when you come home exhausted and can think of nothing more than eating, showering, and sleeping. Like now. Right now I’m exhausted but I thought I’d put some of this clutter down so maybe it’d make a bit more sense. You forget what you don’t write down, eh?

More than anything, I think people are losing their creativity.

I have English H., and it being a high school course, we study research papers and formats like MLA. And also of course, I learn every one because I’m still trying to prove to myself I’m good enough…so I learn them all but they never really help anything.

When do you use this? My teacher would say, “All the time. You write essays in college, at your job, when you want to appeal something. You use this in everyday life.” Argh. Since when does knowing how to do in-text citations help me deal with myself? How does it help me deal with other people?

A lot of it is that people have this habit. They are taught the rules and regulations and that’s all they ever learn. And then the rules are passed on, and eventually it’s some sort of taboo to venture outside of the realm of law and order.

It’s like people don’t know there has to be some chaos or nothing works right.

I wish so much that we could learn how to think in school. That’s all I want, but I know if I ever asked, I would just get the “it’s important, learn it” routine and that’s all that’d ever come my way. That and an odd look or two.

There was a perfect example of this the other day. My history teacher went up to the front of the class and told us how bad our research papers were and I was like, “What?” Because I’d followed the format. Crossed every T and dotted every I. She goes on to say, “You guys can be creative. Do something original.”

And I realized I didn’t have anything original in me to do. It took me a week to think of anything even remotely different, mostly because when I thought about the possibilities, there just weren’t any possibilities at all. All I could think about was that stupid MLA format and how to make the title page.

It feels like school is sucking the creativity out of everything. Every corner, every surface has been planned to perfection. In art, there are no unicorns or dragons allowed (no joke!), and ceramics is making people create carbon copies. We study gene cloning and structure writing in science and english. Every day, you know what there is for lunch before you get there. Every assignment thrown your way has strict guidelines.

And then you get one that makes you think and you go, “I don’t get it” because you’ve forgotten how to be yourself.

I think that’s the biggest problem. Being yourself. Not like, everyone wants to be cool and wear black and listen to popular bands kind of being yourself. That isn’t so bad as people make it out to be.

What I mean is the kind of being yourself that you don’t ever see in a classroom. The kind of being yourself that isn’t allowed in things like science competitions where you get marked off for a smiley face at the end (and what does it matter if it isn’t professional? You can’t expect kids to be professionals yet. It just isn’t right.)

You have multiple choice answers and there is no E, even if you write it in with pen and circle the letter. Even if you thank the teacher (without sarcasm) for helping you to learn. No matter what, the answer’s still B.

I’m losing it. It, as in everything. I’m wondering what the point of keeping all A’s is anyway. I’m wondering if it will matter to me so much when I come down with a three-months-to-live disease. If it will matter when I’m on my deathbed, and my granddaughter is standing next to me holding my hand and I realize the wrinkles weren’t made from a format or structure. They were made from living beyond the structure, even if all the rest of you is bent on buying in.

I’m starting to wonder if that’s why I can’t seem to find those perfect moments anymore. It’s like whenever I do, I remember something else needing to be done or that there’s a meeting in five minutes or I have to go home early. Or I forgot the page numbers on the essay and that’s what I worry about the rest of the day and that night.

Not if I’m happy. I wonder if I did it right, if I’m doing it right now. If writing this down is a waste of time because it has no format, and how can anything without a format ever amount to something important?

People don’t care about thinking anymore. Not in high school. Maybe not even in the real world, where there are specific laws designed to keep people safe from the dangerous stuff, when really they keep people safe from everything. The good and the bad.

So to that, most of the kids I know would be like, “You want to think? Go study philosophy.” But I haven’t ever heard of a famous modern-day philosopher. Name one and I won’t recognize them. We don’t study about modern day thinkers, not unless they’re architects or engineers. People who have their own sets of rules to follow.

I despise the fact that everything has to have rules nowadays. I hate that I can never make a difference without doing what a million other people have done and the only thing that makes me go up is when I make it prettier or faster. I hate that I can’t just be myself on the papers that matter, in the places that matter most to me (where I’m still trying to prove who I am and find out if it’s worth it).

What if I decide it isn’t? Do I get sucked into the drugs like my…friend? Do I just quit and live my life in some dump working night shifts at Walgreens?

Follow the rules and have a slim shot at making a difference, or don’t follow the rules and become the failure no one wants to know and everyone pities.

It’s like the only use for imagination these days is making something that only extends those same few rules and that’s that. Why can’t there be something that doesn’t follow that path?

You try to stick all of humanity into the mold and some will pour over the edges. The people who just don’t fit that mold, who will be forced to the bottom to live there (if you can call it living), because there’s no room for the likes of them.

I wish we learned how to write with our minds. I love writing with my mind, working my thoughts out on paper. I’m not good at it, but I try and it feels a thousand times better than when I do a research paper correctly. A million times better then when I cite a source with MLA.

What is so wrong with wanting to think?