hey, you there..

I write in the second person too much.  Gross.  It's a bad habit.  I kind of go back and forth between the first and second person, and who the fuck would think that that isn't annoying?  I'll try to stick to the first person right now. I I I.  I.  Yes.  Okay.  I can do this, for sure. 

I think I like writing in second person because it feels more like I'm telling someone something [resist urge to add "you know what I mean?"].  I probably do it because I feel weird saying "I" so much.  As if anything I have to say is super important.  I'd like to think that I'm super deep and stuff, which also involves less use of "I". But honestly, I'm probably as introspective as some photography chick, the kind with arty photos and cool hair.  If I were speaking to someone right now, I would tell him or her that he or she knows the kind of person I am talking about. 

The thing is, I generally write how I speak, or as Cypress has said, "good, clean prose".  It's so clearly prose, nothing vaguely poetic or funky about it.  But because I write how I speak, and because I generally speak to people other than myself, I start to accidentally write to someone.  Not usually anyone in particular, but to the vague misty wall of You.  So.  Um.  I guess that's it.  Okay.    

struck by lightning

That's the literal translation of "love at first sight" in French.  I like when these things happen, things that translate into something completely different that captures the same idea so perfectly.  Not that I've ever experienced love at first sight or anything.  But don't we imagine it as something that is so instant and powerful that it causes you to feel as though you already know the person you've supposedly fallen in love with?  I'm not a romantic, and I don't really believe that it is love that happens at first sight, but it's nice to think about that.  It kind of goes along with the whole idea that we each have a soul mate, someone we were destined to be with since the day we were born.  Soul mate in French is literally soul sister.  Just saying.  


Things are going to start changing soon.  The thought has been buzzing behind my eyes for the past couple of weeks now, lurking behind the normal.  It's like Chronicle of a Death Foretold; I know that Santiago Nasar dies from the very beginning, but I don't know how or why, or what happens in between.

I am sunburned on only one of my shoulders, because I cut up my gay-straight alliance shirt to look cool.  There is a thin white line where my skin was protected by the strap of my bra, and all around it is red with freckles.  It doesn't look like my skin anymore, it looks older and a little leathery, and then I worry about skin cancer and what my skin will be like when I am old.    

analyze this, sucka

What's so wrong with telling stories?  Our lives are just stories.  Maybe they have deeper meaning, but we can't find out until the end.  When we're dead.  And can't find out anything anyway.  Because of that whole being dead thing.  Seriously though, try to analyze the themes of my childhood.  Really, I dare you.  


I like to write things that don't need to have any sort of deeper meaning.  Maybe I want to tell the story about the girl waiting for the bus in the hot sun with four freckles under her eyebrow. Isabel Allende wrote The House of the Spirits to tell a story about her family, and she laughs whenever people try to analyze her work.  I saw her speak a couple of years ago, and she talked about a student who wrote some epic paper about why the dog in The House of the Spirits is so big, and what it represents.  She laughed, saying, "I just wanted him to be a giant dog! There was nothing behind it!"  As much as I love when writers plan their themes, motifs, symbols, whatever, I love stories.


My blog is my story.  It may not be interesting, or eventful, or funny or tender.  It probably won't change the way you think about the world.  It's just me.  


This is actually most likely inspired by my lack of enthusiasm for Paper 2 of the IB Lit exam tomorrow.  Ughhhh.  I can't believe I haven't complained about them yet.  Physics will kill me. 

headache

Literally.  I have a headache.  Think ax blade cleaving into the left side of my skull.  I feel empty or something, and a little sad.  My last week of high school, most of which will be spent taking exams, starts tomorrow.  This is not an "Omg, I'm going to miss you all so much!!!!" post.  This is different.  I don't know how to distinguish it from that.  I'm excited to leave school.  I probably will not miss a lot of people.  But I will miss the ones I love.  I don't know what is going to happen.  I don't even know where I will be this summer.  I need money for school, but I want to see my mom, and let's face it; how can I get a job in rural Virginia? I don't know what to do.  I'm writing like an emotional Meursault.  I wish I could write poetry.  I wish I knew the closest amtrak station to where you will be.


I have a headache and I'm missing you already. 

sermon

I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, and today, we had a youth service.  Long story short, it involved me writing a sermon.  Here it is:

My family first came to this church at the suggestion of my younger brother.  Both of our best friends went, and I think at the time, my mother wanted us to have some religion in our lives.  It was a month into my freshman year of high school.  On my first day, I nervously approached the door to the youth group room after following someone’s directions, and sort of peered in before I entered.  I was glad and kind of surprised to see so many people from my school in the room, and it definitely helped that my best friend was there.  The meeting that day was a week before a con in Rochester, and I remember being very confused and slightly embarrassed when everybody was talking about it.  I didn’t know what a con was, and I was too afraid to ask.  To this day, it is very difficult for me to make new friends, and even talk to people I don’t know, and back then, I felt nearly paralyzed with fear.  Even though I was really scared, slightly uncomfortable, and didn’t actually say anything on that first day, I wanted to come back, and I did, for the next three years.

My first day might sound like it a negative experience, but it really wasn’t.  I think I sensed a camaraderie and openness among the kids in the youth group.  It was something I was attracted to, something I wanted to be a part of.  I’ve come to realize that I didn’t join the youth group solely for the religious aspect of Unitarian Universalism.  If I had, I think I would have just gone to service.  I joined the youth group so that I could feel like I was part of a community, so that I could feel like I had friends.  And I got what I came for.  I am a part of a community, and I do have friends.  But I also have a place that actually allowed me to think about and develop what I truly believe. And though I wasn’t intending to examine what exactly it is that I believe, youth group gave me a reason to do just that. 

I don’t know whether I will continue to go to a Unitarian Universalist church, but I’m glad that I spent my high school years here.  It provided me with what I needed at the time, which I can’t exactly verbalize.  It’s the feeling you get when you’re sitting in church during the Christmas Eve service, when the sanctuary is lit entirely by candles.  I think what I’m trying to describe might be love.  

swedish fish: kathryn::hubris: oedipus

I love Swedish Fish.  The candies, I mean, not actual fish from Sweden.  I actually can't stop eating them at the moment.  I mean, I could if I wanted to, but I don't want to.  Thinking about it has actually brought up some worries about next year for me.


I might have forgotten to say, but I'm going to Bennington College next fall [insert super-excited dance here].  I visited and loved it, and it may sound stupid, but lately I've been thinking about the whole freshman 15 thing.  And I know that we're supposed to love our bodies or whatever, but I'm pretty sure that a step towards loving my body includes not gaining fifteen pounds.  Which brings me back to the Swedish Fish.  What if I can't control myself, and end up with cavities, and...and...obesity? I would not know what to do.  Colleges usually have gyms (Bennington included), but I really hate exercising, for the most part.  I love to walk (which doesn't count as exercise, because it's easy) and ride my bike, but that's about it, I think.  In any case, I really hate running. So much.  I don't run unless I'm trying to catch a bus.


I've already spent so much time hating the way that I look, and I'm kind of sick of it.  I'm just not sick of it enough to run.  Running actually makes me miserable.  But someday, I want to look in the mirror and like what I see for a change.  Which means no more Swedish Fish next year.