Anger, Then Joy

This was originally just going to be a post about North Carolina's really not-nice amendment. Last night they voted in favor of Amendment One, an addition to their state constitution which defines marriage as between "one man and one woman" and effectively bans both civil unions and domestic partnerships.

So basically it's an entire clump of suck. I can't believe there are people in this world who still think that there should be limits to love. There aren't. You love who you love, and if you decide that you want to spend the rest of your life being loyal to and having babies with them, then you should be able to get married! Is that too much for people to understand? Honestly, if they were so concerned about destroying the sanctity of marriage or whatever, they should have made it illegal to get a divorce or cheat on your spouse or marry your first cousin. Apparently all that is still allowed. Yuck.

After reading about the injustice and yelling and being sick over it, I made a decision. I'm not getting married until everyone can.

But not five minutes ago, I learned that there is hope. President Obama has just come out in support of same-sex marriage. I love, love, love this man. Go watch this video. It will make you fist pump for joy. Maybe things are changing faster than we thought.

Hush

My willingness to interact with any human being is at an all-time low.

It's better in the mornings and early afternoons. From the time I wake up to about 2 p.m., I am fully functioning and amicable. But between the hours of three and eight in the afternoon and evening, I just fall apart. I start to panic and shiver and after only saying a few (very forced) words to someone I start to tear up. I sprint straight to my bed, curl up into as tight a ball as I possibly can under as many blankets as I can find, and rock myself back and forth.

I'm developing awful, awful antisocial tendencies. I've spent more time alone in the past year than I have at any other point in my life. And I do love people, I do like to spend time with friends. I still love hugs and holding people's hands and all of that. But during those five hours of the day I just don't want anything to do with humans or other things with a pulse.

I don't know why this is happening. But I do know that I feel lost, like I'm just bobbing up and down in the waves without anything to keep my tied to shore. I need someone to be my anchor. Right now I'm just kind of empty.

Waiting Game

I haven't been to a funeral since the sixth grade. I haven't cried at a funeral since the fourth grade. I have only ever been to wakes and funerals; I have never seen someone just inches from death. But my Gram is there now, and I went to see her today. We thought for awhile that today was it, that she was going to be done. She is ready to be done. But the hospice nurse says she has at least two more days in her.

I am angry at my grandfather. We could not get a hold of him at all today. I don't know where he was or if someone was finally able to contact him, but we tried and tried and he didn't pick up his phone. Gram is holding out for him. And I know it wasn't his fault, but I am new to this and confused and scared and people who feel these things always look for people to blame for their emotions.

Maybe I am scared and confused about the process that is dying, but I do know that grieving is a big part of it. And I will go through my own cycle of grief, but I don't believe that a huge part of it will be tears. I love Gram. I always will. But she is ready, and I want for her to be at peace.

This Day.

Mentally exhausted after sitting through a fairly uncomfortable but generally alright National Honors Society induction ceremony.

Also mentally exhausted from studying for a giant PreCalc test that I'm extreeeeemely worried about.

Also fangirling really hard because Kait Rokowski told me that I am one million shades of adorable. She's my favorite slam poet and I've gotten to see her perform multiple times and she recently took third place at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Denver. Besides her poetic prowess, she's a super great human. AND SHE THINKS OF ME AS AN ACCEPTABLE HUMAN BEING. Will wonders never cease?

"Kait Rokowski is the kind of writer I completely trust, rooted in the kind of muddy honesty that makes her readers/listeners want to become better humans. Her poems are sly and full of blood, she is going to dismantle everything wrong with poetry. She is one of the women who will save the poetry slam scene from itself."
-Rachel McKibbens

It's the truth, y'all. Here's to PreCalc and Poetry.

Lonely Girl

I’ve always thought that I've been so fiercely independent my entire life. That I live in my own little world where no one has the right to tell me what to wear or how to live or what to say and how to say it. I take care of myself. I am the guardian of my emotions. I am my own keeper. I need no one else.

Maybe I deluded myself into thinking I was invincible. If that’s the case, then the illusion is up. I find myself clinging tighter to the relationships I have not yet ruined, holding with a vice grip to the ones I’ve come to love so deeply, so dearly that it hurts. I will not let them go. They’ve taught me how to love people in ways I never knew; from them I have gained friendships so deep and beautiful that it’s hard to imagine living without them.

With that learning to love comes an irrepressible desire to be loved. I want someone to dance with me, to trace my freckles. Yes, I want those things.

But I need to be held. Just rocked to sleep and kept away from the world. Despite all my attempts to convince myself of my strength, I crave feeling breakable. My greatest wish is for someone to recognize that no matter the front I put up, I am not always strong.

It disgusts me to feel this way, to have this overwhelming need to be taken care of. But we all need to feel fragile sometimes, I think.

What My Father Doesn't Say

Tonight I finally got to watch Father Steinbecker onstage and in his element. He was playing a blind and very drunk Irishman. I've seen this particular play four times now, the first three times being four years ago when he played the same role. This is a revival. And good lord, is it great. I'm going to gush about him now.

The stage is his tool, and he is an expert craftsman. Sorry, that last sentence sounds a bit stuffy and pompous, but it is the honest-to-goodness truth. He is the best. I am in awe every time I see him onstage. His acting actually makes me emotional. I don't cry or anything-I rarely cry in the theatre-but when I watch my father act I get an overwhelming feeling of "oh wow, that is beautiful." Yes, he's my dad and I love him, but I also respect him as an actor.

What I find the most interesting about going to the theatre to watch my father perform is his biography in the program. I have learned more about his educational and professional backgrounds by piecing together information from various playbills than I have from actually talking to him. This isn't because he is inclined to keep his past a secret, it's just because we never talk about that. Mostly we exchange cynical comments about the state of the nation. Honestly, I think we need to host our own talk show.

I'm going to have my father as a teacher next year. I will be in his American Literature Honors class. The curriculum is going to be tough, but that is not what I am concerned about at this point. I am worried as to what he will say (or refrain from saying) when I am in his classroom. The juniors taking his class right now tell me that he says the most profound things and gives the greatest life advice. They've provided examples that shake me.

"At one point or another in your life, you will fall in love with someone who cannot love you back."
"We continually return to the places, the people, that hurt us the most. I suppose you could say we haunt them."

I worry that I am not ready to hear these words come out of my father's mouth. They are words of pain that I am sure have a story to them. But whatever the story is, I will never know it.

After all, that is not the kind of thing you publish in a playbill.

My father is a good man. He is a talented, literary, educated, well-dressed man. He is a man who understands. He is a man who does not say everything, but he is a man who does not lie.

My father is an actor.

Friday Eve

This is another Thursday Hatred Post. I'm pretty sure I've got quite a few of them on this blog. Oh well. Bear with me.

Thursdays suck for a variety of reasons. I have eighty minutes each of my four most challenging and/or demanding classes. My morning consists of trying to stay afloat in Chemistry and attempting to wrap my head around Inverse Trig Functions in PreCalc. Interestingly enough, I completely adore everything about Trigonometry save for the inverse functions. Those are stupid, and unfortunately for me I've been stuck with them for two weeks.

Thursday drags. It is the slovenly twenty-something wearing a stained white T-shirt, playing Pokemon in his mother's wood-paneled basement that he keeps full of empty beer cans and napkins covered in pizza grease. I apologize for what could be seen as mildly disturbing imagery, but that's honestly what comes to mind. My head is funny.

Thursdays, however, are decidedly not funny.

Yeah...I Guess I'm Back...

I've decided for now that maybe it's time for me to come back. My brain is getting angry at the rest of me for not posting new things.

Oh, who am I kidding. It was a big step for me just to go to this page. I am pushing myself really, really hard right now to write anything down.

I feel like I owe you all an explanation of what exactly is going on with me. I'm having some emotional issues which began about a month ago and grew much worse last week. Looking back at my journal entries, I am able pinpoint just exactly when this all started-it's funny that I didn't realize what it was at first. I'm not a particularly observant person when it comes to myself. But I'm really, really good at picking up these kinds of things in other people. I pick changes in speech patterns and respond to body language in a way that I don't think a lot of people can. I wonder why that is. I just love listening to people, I guess.

You have no idea how weird it is to be back here. Well, maybe you do. Maybe you can read into all the reluctance and the caution and the lack of motivation that I think is taking a leisurely stroll through my brain right now. Actually, that is happening all the time now. I just don't want to do anything.

People keep reading this and telling me it makes them sad. And I'm sorry that you're sad and everything, but please please please don't tell me of all people. I don't want to sound mean right now, so I am going to leave it at that. Ugh, but there are so many things I want to say about this.

Shaking My Fists At The Sky

The world is sort of crashing down around us. It seems as if everything that could possibly go wrong, has. Like Murphy's Law woke up this morning and took a giant dump on today.

But seriously, people. It's days like this that make me throw my hands into the air screaming WHY? over and over.

Who decided that it was ever okay for the young to die? That poor, poor girl from Bennington-she could have done so much. She could have solved the water crisis, or come up with the cure for cancer, or any number of world-changing things. She could have been a mother if she wanted to. I didn't know her. And now I never will. But I know people who did know her. They have lost a friend. My heart breaks for her, for them, and for her family.

She had two friends in the car with her. They are alive. They will deal with that in their own way for the rest of their lives.

I wish I could take all of the pain and the grief from this world and keep it to myself.

When these things happen, I tell myself that if there is a god (and I want to believe there is one-I want to, so badly), said god must surely be a man. No woman would want this.

I want to believe that one day we will see all the people we have lost. That maybe there is a heaven, or something along those lines. But my mind is far too small to wrap my head around the concept of an afterlife. So for now, I just...I just don't know.

There are so many things that I don't know. There are so many questions I haven't answered, so many times I have screamed WHY? and gotten no response. I am going to keep asking until I know.

Maybe I'll never know.

Something's Wrong Here...

I've noticed that my writing isn't coming as easily to me as it used to. I don't know when things started getting harder for me, but the words no longer flow steadily and easily and beautifully. No, when I read back over something I have written, the sentences seem choppy and disconnected. They jump from place to place too quickly.

Something's wrong. I have to push myself to write in my journal, to blog, to do homework, to swim, to wake up, to go to school, to sit with my friends at lunch and not just curl up into a little ball in the study lounge and go to sleep. I feel a sinister sort of lazy. Somehow or another I am aware of the fact that this feeling that I'm feeling right now is truly and deeply negative. But I don't know when it started, where it's coming from, or how to rid myself of it.

Ms. Clavel turned on her light and said, "something is not right."

It's Been Awhile

I haven't blogged for a long time. I'm sorry. Then again, maybe I'm not. I guess I just haven't been feeling it. Uggh, I am such a diva.

Last night I partied it up with my girls from Hogwarts. We went to pizza and a musical chemistry show. Baby Carrot drove me around the city; we had some great quality bonding time. I was surprised about both how little I knew about her and how similar we actually are. We're going to be really good friends, I think.

I've been getting surprised a lot lately. It's made me realize that I never really used to like surprises. People were as I saw them initially; nobody changed in my eyes. I'm a lot like Lizzie Bennett from Pride and Prejudice in that respect. For my perceptions of those around me to change, I had to admit that I was wrong in the first place. I don't like to do that. But now, I am really really truly ashamed of that part of myself. I am making an effort to believe the best of all people, no matter what they look like or what I've heard about them or anything else that people use to pass judgement on others.

So now, I really do like the unexpected. When someone surprises me, I gain a friend.

I am trying so hard. So very very hard.

I just realized something really important.

There's something in me that wants to protect the people I love from everything bad. I don't want them to be in pain, or be hurt by others, or have bad things said about them. When I hear people bad mouthing my dearest of dear friends, it makes me sick. I go somewhere and cry.

But today I realized that I can't shield them from everything. And sometimes, I don't even have to. I am fiercely loyal to those that I love and I will do absolutely anything for them...but I need to remember that sometimes I have to sit back. I hate sitting back and doing nothing. I want to defend my friends against anything that could possibly hurt them. Knowing that I can't do that all the time kills me inside.

I hate crying like this. But the glitter that is running down my face makes things a little prettier looking.

The Final Countdown

I've never gotten overly excited for Halloween. In the past couple of years it's just been an occasion for me to dig out some weird clothes and take candy from strangers. But tomorrow- tomorrow I am going all out.

I found a very old My Little Pony costume in the basement today. Skinny Me wore it seven or eight years ago, I think. To celebrate my love for the series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I'll be going to school in full pony gear. It's amazing what The Management can do with a sweatsuit and a hot glue gun. This thing is magnificent, and it's stayed in great shape.

Tomorrow also kicks of the dreaded Tech Week. Personally, I've always loved the craziness of dress rehearsals and Tech Day and all that. I love nothing more than sitting in a dark, cold theater for hours and hours with people I love. Especially when there's food involved- everyone seems to make their best baked goods during Tech week. I love that.

But there are some down sides, too. No homework will be done. No sleep will be gotten. No sanity will remain. That's what happens when it's Theater Magic season, though. It comes with the territory.

Just a thought: I haven't done any "professional" theater for two years. Most of the other area actors who are my age do nothing but Omaha theater year-round. They get awards for that kind of stuff. I can't do theater outside of school- all of the good shows are at the same time as school shows. And you know what? I would much rather be making Theater Magic on the best high school stage in the city with the people I love than in some big-shot theater where no one sings Madonna songs.

And that's the daily rant.

Happy Halloween, y'all.

Two Days of Women:Day One

Today and tomorrow will be spent writing about women. Two specific women. Since tomorrow is a rather special day for the girls of Hogwarts (it celebrates the women who gave us life), I'll save my long list of why The Management is the most wonderful lady in the world for then. Today I am attempting to sing the praises of a woman known to me only as Ms. Moon.

When I first started this little site of mine (about seven months ago, I think), I came across a blog called Bless Our Hearts. I started reading...and read....and read...and I almost didn't stop. This woman, this writer, this blesser of hearts writes TWICE A DAY. I would love to get to the point where I had something wonderful to say even ONCE each day.

And the things Ms. Moon says are, indeed, wonderful. One day she is funny, the next serious; some days are spent blogging about her chickens, others about days gone by. And you know what? No matter what it is she feels like writing, when I read I am brought into that little Florida town and all of the sudden I am feeding those chickens and playing with that adorable little grandbaby of hers and I am looking at the human mind and asking Why? about so many things.

And yes, sometimes I cry.

Ms. Moon makes you think.

This woman is something else entirely. She is one of those people that I would love to sit down with, have tea or coffee or whatever, and just talk. Talk with her forever about the darndest things.

The funny thing is, I don't think she knows how cool she is. Oh well, the rest of us know.

So thanks, Ms. Moon, if you're reading this, for sharing so much of your life with us. Bless YOUR heart, my dear.

This Will Sound Insane

There are multiple people from Russia who repeatedly view this blog.

I find this wonderfully exciting.

Who are you, mysterious Russians? Do you have to translate these posts, or does the magical Interwebs do it for you? I am extremely curious about this subject.

In the words of Wilbur, "Please tell me where you are and if you are my friend". That's right, folks, at least I have ONE line memorized.

Cleaning Out The Closet Of My Mind

I'm pretty sure that's the title of a self-help book somewhere. But today I am using it to mark my "stream of consciousness" post. That might be the wrong phrase- all I'm doing is sharing all the miscellaneous bits of wonder that have happened over the course of the past few days.

I have worn two pairs of overalls, a mustache, a set of elephant ears, and one wedding dress.

I have successfully grasped the concept of The Mole.

I have spoken to people that I normally do not speak with. They are fantastically nice!

I have volunteered at a place that I love going back to every week.

I have seen old friends and laughed a lot.

I have experienced uncomfortable awkwardness around quite a few people.

I have sensed change.

I have heard music. (Congrats to Big Funny Kid, The Cat, Quiet Guy, and Musical Mastermind on an indescribably wonderful performance. They really are great.)

I have thought with anxiety about a lot of things.

I have thought with happiness about a few.

Letters from Trish

Hogwarts gave us girls a much-needed day off today. Most of my fellow sophomores probably used it to get our many-faceted Renaissance Project finished. That class is a menace, but I'm sure that I've already blogged about that...somewhere...I wish I could spend a day off doing things that other people (as in those who don't take home backpacks the size of small elephants every weekend) spend their days off. When that happens, I will probably cry. But I cry a lot, so that doesn't mean much, I guess.

I was extremely and stupendously excited to find a letter from Trish waiting for me when I came home today. She is in Minnesota now- her current plan is to be a Crazy Drama Teacher. Maybe she will have Father Steinbecker's job when he retires. I know that Trish has to go out into The World and do all those things that one is supposed to do in Life.

Side note: why do people tell us "these are the things you must do"? I didn't think there was a perfect plan for all life forms. If there is, let me know. I'll try and avoid it.

But good gracious, do I miss my Trish. I had to read the first letter I got from her twice- when I opened it I cried so much that I couldn't read. It's so good to hear from her. One day, when I don't have three million things going at once, I am going to finish that scarf I've been knitting her.

What is it in the world that makes someone pop up just when you are thinking about them?

Alrighty, dears. I am going to go worry about more things. I know I should stop that, but I really do like to worry. Especially about other people. It makes me worry about myself less.