Halloween

Who said sixteen's too old for trick-or-treating? It also helps that I'm 5"1.7' (only short people care about that extra 7/10 of an inch), but my best friend, Olivia, who I went with is like five foot a billion. So we devised this plan where I was her younger sixth grade sister who dragged her along.
Nobody really challenged our age though because we had costumes. I was a Russian army general (go Stalin) and she was a witch. We've gone trick-or-treating for years together except last year (which was a Sunday), ever since the days when we went with Kristin and got in life-shattering arguments about whose turn it was to ring the doorbell.

It was really good talking to her. She doesn't go to my school so it's hard sometimes to stay in touch, and I miss her a lot. We grew up together. There's this sort of special tie you have with the people that knew you when you were young... like Kristin... I miss her a lot. I wish I could sit down and talk to her. The last time I really talked to her was the night my father attempted suicide. I called her later, from outside the hospital, and Olivia, who was there as well. We've been through a lot together, me and Kristin, her father, my mom, eating stuff. And now I have drifted away from her and I hate that. I want to know her again. To talk to her.

Abrupt change of subjects... I live in a house of people obsessed about weight (the eating disorder makes a lot of sense when you live with my family for a day). Everyone (my mom, dad, and aunt) weighs themselves daily. Everyone talks constantly about food and weight and their frustrations with losing weight and how to lose more weight and how much to lose and how much more exercising they need to do and what foods they can't eat and what foods they can... I think that the biggest factors pushing me back towards my eating disorder are my parents. In my mother's struggle to help me, she has become more obsessed than I am with calories and weight and what I should eat and how much I should lose. It's... suffocating. Every morning when we begin the day with our talks about pounds and calories I feel like someone is holding a pillow over my mouth and nose. I feel like screaming. The biggest challenges I will ever face in terms of returning to that disorder are here in my own house, I think.

Today I ate a lot of candy and a homemade donut. I still weighed 111 tonight. I don't care. (Too much! I need to lose weight!) SHUT UP I DON'T CARE! (I need to stop eating so much) SHUT UP I DON'T CARE! BRING ON THE RICE PUDDING! SHUT UP FAMILY SHUT UP BRAIN I CAN EAT WHAT I WANT I DON'T CARE!
(Of course I care. But all I can do is keep telling myself that I don't...)

One year ago today my father wanted me to help him carve the pumpkin so I did, but in between, about every ten minutes, I would run to the bathroom and throw up the pills that I gagged down in handfulls before that.

I REFUSE TO GO BACK TO THAT.

I DON'T NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT, mom. I'M FINE THE WAY I AM.

I'm addicted to my computer...
Why does it feel like this, floating away?
We sat on the couch yesterday in Po's room and Shauna said, "I never used to understand how anyone could feel like that, like cutting their wrist. But then this summer I was so angry with myself, and I remembered everything you said, and it made sense."
That was quite possibly the saddest thing I've ever heard.
That was maybe the worst moment of all... knowing that no matter how happy I am, that desire to hurt myself will probably never go away. It will always be there, every day, something to fight...

Where did it all go wrong with my friends? Why don't I know them anymore? I disconnected myself so I wouldn't have to feel... now I have no one and I'm all alone. D*mned independence I didn't want it this much.

I saw a film once
Where all the airholes froze up
A killer whale swam
Under the blue ice
Until her heart stopped

*"From Here You Can Almost See the Sea," David Gray

I sucked- we sucked- and life goes on

Not a good tournament for my school's varsity LD team. Nobody broke and we all had dismal records. I went 2-3, but one of those is a bye and can hardly count.
I was at first a little bothered by this, but I had some time during my BYE to think about it, and I realized that whether or not I am just being a cocky idiot in saying this I believe in myself, and I believe I am better than a 2-3 record, and better than a lot of the kids out there. There are some amazing speakers in varsity, but my argumentation can match them all. If I can only get my speaking up to par I know I have a chance.
The girl who won today should not have won. I watched the final round. She didn't uphold her burden at all. She didn't understand her opponants case. She didn't argue it. There was no clash. Her opponant, though, did uphold her burden, and therefore it was pretty obvious to any debaters in there that she won. But she lost. Why? Because the girl that won is a freaking amazing speaker. She never says um. She never falters. And actually to be honest I lost a lot of respect for her watching that round, not because she had crappy arguments (which she did) but because she was being such an aggresive bitch going on about how the other girl didn't know what she was talking about when it was her that wasn't upholding the resolution. It really, really pissed me off. But did the judges understand the resolution, or burdens, or why the neg clearly won? No. They understand convincing speaking. They understand aggression and short skirts on skinny girls. The girl that won tied their heads in knots even though she wasn't right. She... always looked like she was winning, like she was right, even though to me it was obvoius that was the crappiest debate I've ever seen a varsity debater debate. But that didn't matter.
And I realized that my arguments are there. I'm missing the speaking/convincing junk that allows you to be able to convince the judges you're right even when your obviously (to other debaters) wrong. In varsity LD, unfortunately for me, logical arguments do not win nearly as many debates as convincing speakers who can make their crappy arguments look logical and can convince judges with speaking abilities.
Although I will never be as much of a bitch as this girl was during cross ex. I just wanted to kill her. She kept asking questions, but would cut off the other girl without answering and basically said she knew nothing about the resolution. If it was me being cross-exed, it would have been hard to not feel like crying. Although being confident wins rounds, I don't think it's ever appropriate to be downright catty like this girl was.
My point being with all this mumbo jumbo that I'm okay with doing badly at this tournament because (whether this is right or wrong) I believe in myself and my ability as a debater, and I know I am better than this.
Brittany, my debate friend who did badly as well, actually felt worse than I did, and I had to boost her confidence again, go back to our LD paper we wrote last year (I think I posted it on here in like January) about not letting judges get us down.
To look at it fairly, it wasn't just bad judging. It's important to be convincing, and I sometimes have trouble with this, especially if someone throws of my groove (funny expression). But I know I can fix that.
My coach said to me today that the most important thing is that I reacted 180 degrees differently to doing this badly than I would have last year. She said that matters more than debate. I was thinking about that, and it's true. I would give up nearly everything for debate. But I would not give up this progress I've made in a year and go back to the bulimia and self-hatred and self-injury. I would not going back to that misery, even if it meant I could never debate again.
Thankfully for me, although I resented it at the time, people saved me last year. Now I am angry with all the people that knew long ago and could have stopped my eating disorder or self injury before it got to be such a big issue but didn't. My friends, a few adults... at the time I sure was glad they didn't take action to get me to stop. Now, I resent them. Now, I realize I owe everything to the people I was so angry with last year for upending my life. Now I realize that if nothing had changed, I would still be miserable right now and would probably be having a breakdown over this tournament.
Amanda (my coach) is right. What matters most today is how differently I reacted. No matter how mad- I'll admit I was mad at the time, and scared and frustrated- I was last year when I felt helpless when people (including that coach and another coach) finally took action against what I was doing, I am very ready to admit now that they saved my life. And right now it's a good thing they're good people, because they are in the position where they could ask me to do anything, literally almost anything, for them and I would do it, because they mean that much to me.
I know that when people hear about bad things their friends/people they know are doing, it's easier not to do anything and let it go, because that is, after all, what the people think they want. But that is never the right thing to do. I've done it with my friends, my friends with eating disorders and stuff. I haven't known what to do so I did nothing. I regret that now. It takes a strong kind of person to stick with someone who is as screwed up as I was. Everyone else that had helped me had helped me briefly, and then found me too much to handle. It's an amazing person that sticks through that.

Matt (my ex-boyfriend) cut out an article from the paper for me, proving he still sadly understands me better than most of my friends do (he was always so understanding). It's an article about these coaches heading their college debate team. It made me so happy, just to read their names in that little article. It made my day. Everyone was trying to figure out what in the world I was so excited about, they read the article and didn't get it. Nobody got it. But when I showed it to Brittany she got really excited too. Because... we would do anything for Amanda, and I would do anything for Shea (if you read this, I mean it). It's not codependency. It's not pathetic obsession. It's an absolute devotion to the goodness of these people. I have never met and doubt I will ever meet anyone as... as just perfectly pure as they are. They are what I want to become. They are everything I value in a human being. They are the first people I have ever met that I believe in totally as... people, for lack of a better way to explain it. I try to talk about it with Brittany... how the h*ll are we ever supposed to thank someone for doing what Amanda has done for us? (Or in my case Shea?). It's so impossible it's actually disheartening. At the tournament two weeks ago Marcus, this guy who might be our coach next year and might not, said he didn't think we understood how much time etc. these two people put into their teams. And I realized how absolutely right he was... we have no freaking clue. Being the selfish people we are, and loving someone very much, we want to have them with us. I think that we feel safe when Amanda's at the tournaments. It seems like no matter how horrible the world gets, her presence makes things okay. But I understand that that's selfish of us, and that they give up more for us (especially me) than I could ever imagine. And that feels hopeless.
Anyway, the best thing I could give Amanda today was to react the way I did to what happened. In some small way maybe I am showing her what she has done for me, but in the same way that I will never understand how much she puts into our team, she will never really understand how much she gave me last year/this year just by caring. There are really only two people I trust in the whole world: those two coaches. And they are the first people I have trusted in a very long time.
So for now, before I can think of some miraculous way to explain to my coach how much she means to me, until I somehow become articulate enough to convey how much she's given me, I guess all I can do is to be happy, and to live with a purpose, and to exercise everything she fought for me to have.
It still feels hopeless, the prospect of thanking them.

Debate

What else? Anyway, the tournament is going alright. I won my first debate, am not sure about my third one, and lost my second one. The resolution right now is something like: in matters of US immigration policy, restrictions on the rights of non-citizens are consistent with democratic ideals. So my affirmative case is about increased crime rates in non-citizens and the money they cost the US economy. In my second debate, during my cross-ex's and every speech of mine, my judge was rolling her eyes, shaking her head, pounding her forehead with her fist, burying her face in her hands, and glaring at me. She wasn't doing this to my opponant. This was rather disconcerting, and definitely threw me off in my cross-ex, because I thought she was doing it because my arguments didn't make sense or were stupid, which just made my arguments make less sense because I was flustered. So after the cross-ex I decided that cross-ex didn't matter, and I was going to get it together and win the debate. I did a bit better after that. It was difficult though because I knew I had to maintain eye-contact with her, but every time I looked at her she was making some rude gesture, and it would make me stumble and lose my thoughts.
In the end, the debate if looked at objectively was probably close. My opponant dropped a ton of my arguments, but I said some confusing things about his which he exploited. I'm not sure who would have one (my opponant, this kid named Nick, was also very arrogant but that's irrelevant to what I'm saying).
At the end of the debate the judge told me that I was being racist, and that none of the figures in my case were true, and that I was putting this horrible blanket-statement lie on the resolution about how illegal citizens don't pay taxes and that wasn't true (I'm not sure how her logic was working for her to totally deny all the concrete figures I had of costs to the states and ways the non-citizens were not paying taxes). She said that my examples of high crime rates were irrelevent because it just mean that the courts in the US were also biased, elitist, and racist; it didn't mean there was more crime in non-citizens, just more convictions. She said that as a white teenager in Montana I probably didn't understand how racist and elitist I was being, but it was extremely offensive to her.
Anyway, she went on for five or ten minutes about how horribly racist my case was, and how she didn't agree with any of it and it was all giving her heartburn.

It kind of bothered me at the time. It kind of chipped at my confidence. I felt... shaken. But I realized a few minutes later after I had calmed down that 1. the resolution demands some form of racism to adequately affirm it 2. I agree way more with my neg case anyway and am definitely not racist 3. what the judge did was inappropriate and ultimately not my problem. I had to suffer in that she judged the round subjectively based on her own political opinions and not the actual skill with which we debated, but in the end it's her that's all worked up, not me, and I know that the things she said were not true.

Last year, a judge in Powell, Wyoming, spent ten minutes similarly abusing me, telling me all of the horrible things I had done wrong and horrible ways a debater. Right as I was starting to cry my coach came and rescued me because the bus was waiting for me. I was shaken severely though. My confidence was shattered. I was depressed and miserable.

A lot has changed in a year. Today, something like that happened and I was able to recover quickly, and now I really don't care. It's her problem if she's so opinionated about something that she won't even recognize I had no choice but to affirm the resolution, and semi-racist arguments were necessary. A year ago, I assumed the judge was right about all the things he said. Today, I assumed the judge was crazy. I can tell how much I've changed by just this one incident.

I called my coach and left her a message and then she left me a message, saying amidst a lot of supportive stuff about me not being racist that it was "just debate."
Just and debate should never be placed next to each other in any sort of sentence.
Just debate? What was she thinking? Debate is life!

What's weird is how they call it "word verification" when the letters never spell a word.

It brings me back to this argument I had with this kid Kai who is sort of on my debate team about whether some random noise you make can be onomatopea. He was being obnoxious and arguing that every sound you make is technically a word, just by the vocal nature of it, and that word doesn't necesarily have to be societally accepted. It was really annoying me but it was an interesting conversation.

ANYWAY... the word verifications are not words by my book.

Hurricane

So my brother got hit head-on by some hurricane a few days ago, like the eyewall went over his house, and he hadn't called for a few days. Now it occurs to me that I should have been concerned about that, but for some reason my parents and I just assumed he was okay. Anyway he called today and apparently him and his wife are sort of stranded. They won't get power for three weeks I think, and there is no gas available. Their house is damaged but okay, and all of the trees in the parking lot in front of it got knocked over. If you think about it, it's an amazing thing to be a tall tree in Florida. The trees in front of their apartment were tall. It makes me sad to think that after all these years a hurricane has finally killed them.
I guess they're not getting mail either.
It's not nearly as bad as New Orleans, but still it is interesting that my brother has been stranded for days and I didn't even think about it or care or know.
Interesante.

Brief political rant:
Today in history my teacher said, "Jackson and his followers demonized the Indians, and that was was how they were able to justify all of the violent things they did to them. That's still going on in the government today. We are demonizing Sadaam Hussein (sp?) and Osama Bin Laden (sp?) and we are demonizing the Iraqi citizens to justify the killing. The kids fighting over there are only a few years older than you. Look at you. You play soccer, you play violin. You have boyfriends and girlfriends. You're not killers! But you join the army and you justify that killing by demonizing the people you kill."
That thoroughly pissed me off. First of all, there is a big difference between demonizing terrorist/dictator leaders responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents and demonizing innocent citizens. I don't think there's anything wron with demonizing murderers. I do believe there's something wrong with demonizing citizens. But I really don't agree with him. I don't think the kids in Iraq are justifying killing innocent citizens by telling themselves those citizens are evil and subhuman and deserve to die. I think they are justifying it because they have a cause, because they want to fight for their country, because they want a better economy. Now I don't agree with some of those reasons. I hate violence. I hate war. I think it should be avoided. But the situation we are in now... there really is no alternative to violence. My history teacher said those soldiers are murderers because of some sick mind game (that does exist, I know it does, people can justify horrible things with psychological bull crap) but I don't think that's what's happening. I don't think our soldiers are fighting to kill the evil Iraqi citizens. They're fighting, a lot (not all), I think, because they believe in it. There's a big difference.

Anyway, I really felt like saying all that to my teacher but I knew the liberal piranhas would attack me for being so moderate. In all actuality though the real demonizing in that class room wasn't of the Iraqi citizens; it was of the soldiers. My teacher was demonizing the soldiers by saying they were justifying killing with demonization.

It's all so corrupted. I am reminded of how much I truly HATE violence and anger and hatred. That is why I so thoroughly hate it when I feel these emotions. I don't act on them. I'm rarely violent, or racist, or hateful. But if there's one thing I'm okay with hating it is hatred (that's a paradoxical statement).

Today was semi-good semi-bad. I apologized to that girl. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It's easy to say sorry to someone for something you said to their face. Somehow it's way worse when you said it behind their back. My breathing was really irregular and I was really shaky for an hour before and after.
She hadn't heard me. But I'm glad I apologized. I couldn't have done anything else. I hope she doesn't dislike me now becuase she knows I said something mean about her, but at least I know I did the right thing. That really matters to me... doing the right thing. I really, really try to.

Yesterday I told my friend Emma about what happened and how badly I felt because I knew it would hurt me to hear something mean about myself and she said, "I wouldn't feel bad, I'd just think at least I'm not the only bitch who talks about people behind their backs." And I love Emma to bits, but that's where we're really different.

Today also my good friend Siobhan was getting mad at me about everything I said and it was really frustrating and hurtful because I didn't do anything to provoke her anger. I think it's funny when she gets really mad over stupid little things, but I did feel badly when she was being mean to me and I felt bad that she was angry with me. I really want to do something, act differently somehow, so that doesn't happen. I feel like I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is. It isn't fun to be around someone you know loves you dearly but who is acting like she hates you.

I don't know...

I thought a lot today about sex, and whether I have really lost my virginity. I don't think so. I know I did physically, but it seems to me that losing your virginity is different. Losing your virginity is losing your innocense, and I don't believe I lost my innocence because of abuse. I believe I lost my innocence the first day I started abusing. Myself, mainly. Some poor little abused kid is still innocent. A self-injuring twelve year old is not. So I'm angry now about what I did. I started hurting myself partly because I thought I'd lost my innocence, but now I've realized that only hurting myself did that.

It feels good to be able to eat now, but I still feel slightly out of control and I really would like to lose five pounds but I'm not going to revert to bulimia to do it. I'm going to try to do it the healthy way. I know I'm not totally done with bulimia though because three years ago we had these bracelets with wax in them burned onto our arms at church, and we were supposed to make a goal and only take them off when we'd accomplished it. Well, back then I was really into the eating disorder, so I made a goal to beat it. And right now part of me wants to get some scissors and cut it off. But part of me won't let go and still needs it.

I also decided today that I hope I don't go to heaven. My religion talks about heaven being this perfect place where there is no sadness and everything is beautiful. And sure I want to be happy. But how will I understand how wonderful being happy feels if I never feel sadness? How will I ever appreciate my ability to heal if I never scrape my knees or get hurt? What is absolute, what one has invariably, one takes for granted. Beauty is nothing without contrast. I've believed for years that heaven will be a wonderful place. I'm starting to realize that my heaven is all around me... that the world I live in is the best heaven there is, because of extremes, because of contrast, because the only way to truly appreciate anything is to have lost it at some point. So I am slightly nervous that this is sacrilige, but I don't want to die or go to heaven or hell. Everything I value is rooted in life.

It's horrible days like these when everything seems to go wrong that remind me of how right things usually go, no matter how put-upon I feel.

First off, I was supposed to be at the school at 6:02 a.m for our belated mole day, to get extra credit which I very much need in chemistry. I totally forgot. I slept until my usual time of 5:45. And I need that extra credit! I keep doing well on the tests but it's frustrating because I don't really understand what I'm doing.

Then, after orchestra, I was talking to my friend Erin. I was really mad about being put in the very back of the cello section, and anger drives me to do stupid things. I don't usually say bad things about people behind their back, I think it is a lowly form of cowardice, but I resorted to it today. I told my friend that I was definitely better than the first chair cello player and that I didn't like her. And then we turned the corner and realized she was right behind us. We weren't sure for how long... we'd gone on to talk about some meaningless junk, but she might have heard me, and I can't live with that possibility. So I beat myself up about it all day. It was a cowardly thing of me to do. I don't really dislike the girl either, and I'm not sure if she's better than me. I just spoke out of anger, without thinking. And now I am paying for it. I rarely gossip (well at least bad things) about people, but when I do I am always reminded of how pathetic a thing it is to do.
So I am going to do the only thing I can do, what I know I have to do. It is going to really suck and being really hard to do, but I like to think I have some sort of honor and compassion still intact even if I did do something horrible like I did. So tomorrow I will go to the girl and tell her that whether she heard me or not, I said some things about her that weren't true and that I didn't mean, and I really regret it, and I'm going to apologize profusely to her. And maybe she will still be hurt and hate me (I deserve it), but she deserves an explanation and an apology. It's going to be so hard though... and if she didn't hear me it will make things worse, but I just can't live with the possibility that she did hear me and I did nothing.

Then I found out that Matt is going on a date tomorrow with the x-girlfriend of my x-boyfriend, this boy I went out with a few years ago who is still my friend, and I already didn't like her because she stole Christian, my x-boyfriend from a few years ago, from my friend Anne, who was very in love last year. So I already don't like her and now I have to deal with these odd pangs of jealousy. It's weird, how I have moved on and have another boyfriend, but I don't want Matt to move on. It's very selfish of me. Anyway, I hope she screws him so he gets what he wants. Or maybe I hope she doesn't so their relationship will shatter too.

I don't understand why I'm so bitter today. I suppose I can just hope for a different mindset tomorrow.

I accidentally left my cell phone off today, and now I have all these nice messages from people who knew I was sick asking if I'm okay, which made me smile. And also Shauna begging for chemistry help (my gosh she's asking the WRONG person) and Brittany wondering if I was desperate enough to put up fliers at Carroll College to somehow come up with judging hours for our tournament (I'm not... I'm proud to say I have found 14 hours of judging which is nice).

Anyway... we just watched this show on TV about this lady (J-lo actually) who's husband beat her who was impossible to get away from... he was tracking her everywhere and was going to gain custody of their daughter because he'd never done anything to her and he said she was a drug addict. My aunt was in a position like that for a long time until her husband committed suicide last year I think. He would moniter her everywhere she went, and told the police etc. she was crazy so she was really scared of losing custody etc. He used to call her cell phone about thirty times a day.

So J-lo ends up killing her husband. And my mother said she would do that if she were in her position. But I'm not sure. I don't think I could kill someone. My mom said she'd do it for her kids, not for herself. And that's a hard position to think about, knowing that while your husband was alive your kids weren't safe, and there really wasn't any way of escaping him. I don't know what I would do. At this point, sadly, I wouldn't mind if my husband hit me, but if my husband hurt my kids...

I still don't think I could kill someone. I still don't think I have it in me. No matter how much I hated them, no matter how much they hurt me or the people I love. I just don't think I could do it.

Today at church my young women's group got into a discussion about abortion. Everyone there agreed that it wasn't okay, we're all pro-life, and that it was murder. But then we were talking about rape, and they all said that abortion was okay if you had been raped.

I don't get it. How does murder stop being murder for them just because it wasn't your choice to be pregnant? How is murder suddenly justifiable when it's because the baby is partly the product of someone you hate?

I'm really, really pro-life. Not to the extent that I would do anything crazy like blow up abortion clinics, because that's just really stupid, to murder people in opposition to murder. Blowing people up definitely isn't pro-life. And I'm not going to tell other people that they can't have abortions just because I think it's wrong. Or tell them they're horrible people for getting abortions. But I would never, ever, EVER have one, and I think there is only one instance in which I could justifiably even dream of having one: if it would kill me to have the baby. Rape? No... I believe abortion is murder. Rape doesn't change that it's murder.

I'm pro-choice in that I think people should choose to have sex or not based on whether they can deal with a baby. Not choose whether or not to kill the product of that sex. But I don't want to rant my own pro-life views... that wasn't the point of this post. The point is that I find it odd, how scared people are of rape, how horribly they view it. Rape is so horrible that it is enough to justify murder to most of my friends that are normally pro-life. There is no doubt in my mind that I would have that baby and give it up for adoption if I was raped. I have a hard time understanding how my friends don't feel this way too (my pro-life friends). I was wondering if maybe my lack of fear or repulsion of rape is caused by my having been raped.

The psychology of it is weird.

Another psychological question I have been pondering... no I'm not suicidal... why do you think more people cut their wrists when they attempt/commit suicide than their necks? Cutting your neck is probably the more painful but surefire way to do it. I asked someone about this this weekend and she said because most people that attempt suicide don't really want to go through with it and kill themselves. I don't really agree with this. I believe a lot of the people that attempt suicide have truly made up their minds to do it.
My shaky verdict is this: because they can't see their own necks. I was wondering why I would never cut my neck if I were to commit suicide, and I decided it is because if I were ever to commit suicide it would be because of a horrible lack of control in my life. And to cut my neck would be another lack of control. Your wrist is something you can see, a wound there is something you feel like you are controlling. Not your neck.

Wow that was really morbid... I'm not asking it becuase I'm thinking about suicide. I'm asking it because I'm thinking about the way people think and I love psychology and would be a psychiatrist if I thought I could handle it.

learning to deal with my mother...

I've been at all-state orchestra. I think that somehow I am a magnet for weakness and humiliating experiences. They follow me like iron shavings.
The first night I fainted in my hotel room twice, and I called my dad and told him how every time I stood up I was dizzy and couldn't walk straight, and he wasn't sure what it was, so I didn't really do anything. The rehearsals were long, and I had to drag my bass back and forth across Bozeman High School about eight times, and that thing is heavy, and I was exhausted. We were getting an okay amount of sleep, but for some reason I just couldn't get enough, I was so tired (I know now that was because I was sick).
Then yesterday things were getting worse. Everything was spinning around me every time I stood up or walked, and my stomach hurt worse than anything has hurt me in quite a long while. There were spasms going through it every few seconds. I had to walk doubled over. I didn't really want to tell anyone though, and I knew I'd be okay if I made it through the concert and went home.
Right before the concert I was waiting in line for the bathroom because I really didn't feel well, and the line was sort of long, and this lady came in front of me and started pounding on the bathroom doors but no one would let her in, and a few seconds she vomited explosively all over the floor about a foot away from me and the wall, and it stunk horribly. My stomach clenched really hard then. And so she had to go in a bathroom and then two disabled people cut in front of me so I had to stand there for ten or fifteen minutes waiting for the bathroom staring at the puke on the floor right at my feet and smelling it, feeling even more sick than I was.
Right before the concert I could barely walk or move my stomach hurt so badly. Once I finally got on stage and was sitting on my stool, nothing would stay still. The stool was a little tippy and I felt so hot and so thirsty and so sick. Everything was whirling around me like I was on a carousel. I was positive I was going to faint or throw up right in front of everyone, throw up all over my bass and the two hot guys on either side of me, or go topping off of my stool and drop my bass. I was praying really hard to make it through the concert. Our conducter talked for a long time between songs and I really didn't think I was going to make it. I kept swaying and falling halfway off my stool.
I did, thank God, make it through the concert. I just left my bass in the hallway and ran for the bathroom and had to wait in line again, but I couldn't throw up, so I went and drug my bass back to the gym and collapsed against the wall. My stomach hurt so badly I was crying. Not really hard but I felt so frustrated and alone because nobody understood how sick I was and I really, really didn't want to throw up in front of everyone but I was sure I would if I had to sit or stand but I had to keep moving because the spasms in my stomach hurt so badly. Everything is really fuzzy from here on out. I don't really remember it. I'm pretty sure I was barely conscious. I had a fever and I was SO hot. Finally I begged Siobhan to go find my orchestra teacher, and my orchestra teacher came and they paged my parents. It was so humiliating, crying there on the floor with all of these people huddling around me whom I didn't want to see me so weak, so pathetic. It was the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me in a really long time.
I managed to get out into the car. My father was sympathetic but my mom was saying I was a hypochondriac and was exaggerating and doing it for attention. She didn't seem to realize that when you're in high school you don't do something horribly embarrassing for attention. You feel like sinking into the ground and no one seeing you when something that embarrassing happens. But I am starting, slowly, to deal with the fact that she believes I'm a hypochondriac and make things up and will probably always believe that.
My parents got some McDonald's and the hamburgers just smelled so disgusting that I couldn't take it anymore. I threw up in a plastic bag I'd found in the car and kept throwing up all the way home. My mom still doesn't believe I was as sick as I was acting. I'm just really, really grateful I started throwing up when I did because if I'd thrown up an hour earlier it would have been in the middle of the concert.
This is how sick I was though: the last time I have thrown up from the flu or anything, without doing it on purpose or overdosing, was fifth grade. I have only thrown up from the flu a total of five occasions now in my life. My immune system is very good and although in ninth grade I got strep, mono, and pneuomonia all at the same time, I rarely EVER get sick. And I NEVER throw up, well, almost never, because no matter how sick I feel I just don't seem to.
Last night I was in total and complete agony. I made and idiot out of myself in front of everyone. I almost lost consciousness. I threw up four times. And my mother still believes I was making it up.

All the pain I can possibly pour out right now...

I want to write the poems down. It might help, right now. So here are the poems I have written about the abuse, from ones I wrote longest ago to most recent.

IGNORANCE (seventh grade)
It is dark.
I am hurting.
Someone is cutting a deep
Bleeding gash into my soul.
I ignore it.

It is late at night.
I am crying.
The gash is infected.
It hurts.
I ignore it.

I am alone.
My past is creeping back.
It slices my wound open again.
I am bleeding.
I ignore it.

I am sinking.
Sinking into a black hole.
My heart is raw.
It is dying.
I ignore it.

Nine years later.
I am dying.
I am drowning.
It is still there.
I ignore it.

I am nearly drowned.
I can hardly breathe.
The sun is gone.
The world is black. I hurt.
I need help.

I am no longer alone.
Someone holds my hand.
They warm my frozen soul.
“Here,” they say, “let me fix that.”
They put on a band-aid.

It still has an empty ache.
But I have healed.
A whining voice comes.
It pleads with me to hurt again.
I ignore it.

ETERNITY'S DAUGHTER (written 9th grade)
How fragile the skin of a china doll
who shatters with the breath of the wind.
I can spill forever into the cherry lips
of the messy convergence of innocence.

He splintered the lightning in a porcelain soul
with his hands shaped from plywood excess.
The dark angels burst through the door
ten seconds too late to save the life
of Eternity’s daughter.

CONFRONTING PASSION (ninth grade)
You laid me on the floor
and used me as a matress for your lust.
Blood meant nothing when it painted
our connection.
Tears were useless
when you fed on my fear.

For years you lived with hard eyes,
not caring about some broken bed-springs.
Your sweat tattooed guilt into me.
Your spit drowned me in its apathy.

Confronting you...
never.
I'm healing now.
Good bye.

I hope you never break another little girl.
I hope you hate yourself for what you've done.

(This poem is about confronting my cousin... ironic that it was written last year, and now I am faced with its reality)

YOUR HANDS (ninth grade)
You will forgive me
for not trusting fingers nor lips
when it was a nightmare
of hands and spit
that took the moon
on an August day
and carefully on rifts of frailty
cracked it shamelessly
in half.

MAKEUP (9th grade)
I stand
quietly beside myself
in the doorway,
smearing yellow lipstick
in my eyes.

You wonder
where I've gone.
Your pupils look right through me
at the future
that blares brightly
in my hair.

"It was only an affair
of the innocent,"
you tell yourself
as you try to move on.
But every time you start to forget
you see a yellow face
lingering in the doorway.

Sex is a lipstick
you can never wash off.

TAR (9th)
He blows glass on the seashore,
makes something beautiful out of the sand
that cuts into my feet like a million
grains of blush.

He'd never tell you
that he once made something ugly
out of the glass
of innocent childhood.
He'd never tell you that one day
he left the blowtorch on too long,
let the flames lingering lick,
and what should have remained unbroken
melted into the shallow pools
of his anger.

You'll smile at him and walk on
with the children on your arms.
You'd never guess that on a day
when the sun was hotter than the grass
he left me hollow,
black inside.

(This is a metaphor... blowing glass is a blow job... the person blowing glass is my brother... it's about how charming he is to everyone, but I know what he did to me).

CONVENTION OF THE ABUSED (ninth)
Ten thousand hungry eyes
make young faces
look one million years older.
This is what happens when pain
skips a beat.

We will sit in rapt attention
and wait for the photographers
to carve into us
the explanations of our pain.

Outcasted into Greenpeace
we are planted again as seeds.
We are older than we should be,
we are sadder than we look.
We are the generation
that caught the raindrops
of your confused abuse
and sucked them in like oxygen.

We never knew
there was anything else in life,
and you laughed
because at ten million years old,
we were still innocent,
still young.

WE ARE THE ABUSED (10th)
The fact that you ignore us
doesn't change the fact that we exist,
quietly, in the corners,
black widows despised and forced into the edges
of cold garages.

We are another page in your psychology textbook
complete with a collage of glossy pictures,
mostly children with big brown eyes
who have probably never cried at night
or hated the texture of the human palm or lip.

You can eat your hamburgers
and look great in your miniskirts
and make out with your boyfriends
at the football games with floodlights
dimmed down low
and the stars shining
like the tears you'll never cry,
but still we sit dry-eyed
home alone in the basement,
and cringe at the touch
of a stranger.

What is socially unacceptable
is normal to us,
the suffocating caress of a father,
a brother, a mother, a cousin,
in the places you let no one explore.
Incest is another definition on your
vocabulary test-
to us it is oxygen we hate but require.

We represent all you despise:
that for all you do right,
for all the compassion of your childhood,
somewhere in a dark house
evil still exists: pure, incarnate,
undeniable.

We are the abused and we will no longer be ignored,
no longer be detested,
no longer be untouchable.
We are more human
than you'll ever be.

LEARNED SEXUALITY (10th)
1. I learned my sexuality
on the floor with you,
and the hard erection
of your desire
was the word for a
hatred of sex hormones and pain.
I learned my sexuality before
even there was the word:
sex.

Something salty I could
cup like a globe in my hands,
shame and guilt.
I felt so dirty I washed and washed
my hands but there was no
baptism from the sweat your body
left on mine.

Because you were my hero and my brother
all things carnal twisted into my emotions
until I could no longer separate the two,
or separated them too much,
and the softness of carpet or gray sky
made me sad.
**
2. My friends learned their sexuality
out of the books their mothers gave them
with organic pictures of naked bodies.
The drawings didn't
turn them on like they did me,
a fire deep within me I've grown to hate.
They dream about sex and
I dream about rape
and taut muscles and firm lines
and (all-consuming) the guilt.

I am left distinctly
with the knowledge that you broke me
in some way
because I am not like my friends,
lusting after the carnal.
I am torn in the emotions,
apathetically recounting the details
that for them mean a new degree
of glory and to me mean
a deeper depth to hell.

You taught me my sexuality
and now there is no fixing the lies
your body spoke long ago.

DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY (10th)
The San Francisco bridge
(no visible from this
perspective on the floor
but far off in the distance)
doesn't taste of salt but of
metal, corrosive and as bright
as the red of a siren
in the morning when I should be asleep
but instead am tasting sald,
sodium chloride.

We drove across it
(you held me down with
shaking hands the color of
frostbite in early May)
as ants crawling cautiously on
(it's a game)
a blade of grass.
It is the way the sky and the sea
connect in a thin blade of fission
that allows me to split myself
now into the bridge and
the taste (like a lollypop, you say,
just like it).

In the movies men swing
like spiders off the threaded suspension,
to escape the dirt
(I'm crying, gagging, held down), men are,
by the bridge, liberated from conformity.

Red was our mother's favorite color
(you tell Mom and I will kill you),
splashes of the stuff that
makes the bridge and human orifice
unkosher, life-blood, like meat,
not salted or dried
(I will hate this taste forever,
this taste of salt and our mother's
ignorance).

It is two lives in one moment, one real-
a bridge, the sky, the sea-
and one of horror only containable
by mechanics of grammer (the taste, the tears,
the oxygen starvation,
and your words-
a game, I'll kill you if
you tell.)

INSTANT OF COMBUSTION (10th)
I took so many pills to make it go away
to let your tongue dissolve the pain
to let your hands massage the ache
to let the crime scene not be drawn
in chalk on a living room floor.

If a body could be punctured
it would be mine and my life bleeding out
if a boy could be broken
it would be an alleyway of tears.

If a life could be saved with one instant
it would have been ours and us naked
in Oakland in September
the second you touched me
the second I cried
the second I cracked in two.

It was my fault, you said.
It was my fault, I knew.

I took so many pills
to never forget that day.

I WANT TO PROTECT YOU (11th)
It's too hot for June
and you mean too much to me
to be sitting there now.

I want this angry lake of ink from my pen
to never touch you.
I am your definition of rape,
a huddled mass of tension
as they talk about
penetration and the need to feel clean.

You can still smile at this.
I want you to be this clean at fifty,
your mother never having to wash your mouth with soap.
I think that if you die without being kissed
or crushed with the pain of that word
R A P E
then there is still hope in the world.

You laugh right now
as my pen digs into paper.

I want so badly to protect you from life.

REGRETS (11th)
How do we take
the remnants of our childhood-
our past together-
and arrange them into something
we don't have to be ashamed of?

I want to take the awkwardness
out of the days
you pressed your hands
your lips your tongue
to all the parts of us I've grown to hate.

Are the echos of bruises
from Mom's angry hands
enough to justify what you did?

I want to hear those words-
molestation, rape-
and quench the nausea that sweeps through me
every time I hear them.
Is that enough?

How can we live with the guilt of him,
remembering the way his body entered mine
in a halo of blood,
and the knowledge that he never changed,
and he has kids now?
How can we live with ourselves
knowing he's out there
doing to them what he did to me?

Are all these years-
the meth, the crack,
Mom's hits, my razors-
enough to nullify what we've done?

I should be mad, they say,
I should hate you.

But what is strong enough
to allow us
to look back on our lives
and see anything but pain?

ART (11th)
You must be
past perfect skin
and teeth and smile
made of webs of broken glass
and shots of dated morphine.

I keep remembering
your hands inside me
stretching me open
like the door to the cistine chapel,
somewhere to pain
with your misguided childhood,
somewhere to depict
what you see in your mind...

Naked angels, all in pastel colors,
me, bare as a peach without fuzz
on that living room floor.
You taught me with that thrust and pain
what life is
when you let go
of anything beautiful.

But isn't it its own kind of beauty,
what you did to me years ago?
We were always artistic,
you and I.

Someday
(not today or yesterday
not tomorrow)
I will learn
to hate you.

I'm doubting anyone will read all of these poems, but now they are here, and maybe someday they will help someone the way they've helped me.

I have been thinking a lot. Everything seems convex... I don't know why that makes so much sense to me as reading it it seems abstract, but it does.

I will probably have a choice of whether or not to talk to my cousin. My mother I'm sure will want me to talk to him, as she has already basically told him I would. But I don't know. Would it help me? I suppose in the longrun. But I just don't know.

Random poem I wrote a long time ago that currently expresses my thoughts:
(TOO YOUNG)
I was too young to remember
that dark day in heaven
when the clouds of dandylion floss
wept their first tear of spring
and a little girl with brown eyes
fell through a hold and down
to Hell
I was too young to remember
but I'll never forget
how hot that fire burned
when the rain stopped.

I wasn't too young to remember.
I was just too young.

The "rain" is abuse, yeah, so it's basically about my hazy years of sexual abuse. And how everyone who was ever sexually abused was too young.

why do these phantoms reappear?

My mom has been in Utah, and she swore she wouldn't see my cousin, but apparetnly she did (the one who randomly reappeared). Apparently they talked about me (something inside of me is dying right now). Apparently he told my mom I wasn't the only one he'd done it to, and that it had haunted him, and that he's sorry.
My gosh how much to take in at once. For years they told me he never showed any remorse over what he did. And suddenly he reappears saying sorry.
My mom and him talked about "working through it," or him getting some counseling, talking to my counselor, and eventually seeing me and talking to me.
Wow, something inside of me is blowing up at that thought. How can I see him? How can I when for twelve years I've lived with that last image of him in my bedroom, with him not being sorry? How can I look at him without throwing up? It's not that I don't forgive him. I've been pretty screwed up myself (partly thanks to him), so I know what it feels like to want to hurt someone sometimes. I would never do it, but I can't hate him for doing what he did, for being angry and confused like I have been. So that's not why I don't want to see him. I guess it's that... I've come to terms with it. I've moved on, essentially. And suddenly he has reappeared and is dragging me back into the abyss that those years create in my mind. And I don't want to fall in again. I don't I don't!
Please somebody help me, please save me, I can't handle this. Nobody's thinking about what this must mean to me, so many years later. It's like having someone murder your father, and you think the murderer is dead, but then ten years later you learn he's not. And over those ten years you've forgiven him, come to terms with him being dead and what he did, and suddenly he is back and disrupting all of that work you did.

I feel like... something vital is falling apart inside me as I type this. And I don't know how I will ever be able to handle sitting in a room with him and talking about it. Maybe that is part of moving on, but I thought I had moved on okay on my own. I don't know how I can do this.

I feel sick.

"I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them."
- George Bush, former U.S. President
"If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight."
- George Gobel
"I do not like this word "bomb." It is not a bomb. It is a device that is exploding."
- Jacques le Blanc, French ambassador on nuclear weapons
"I have a God-given talent. I got it from my dad."
- Julian Wakefield, Missouri basketball player
"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."
- Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery
"If we deny the rights of the unnoncitizens it is detrimental to non-democratic views"
-Lindsay in one of her debate rounds (definitely not what I meant to say)
"In this final speech I will lay down some primary arguments to my opponants case"
-Lindsay in every single affirmative rebuttal saturday, which is definitely not the final speech
"My opponant's argument on domestic terrorism makes no sense. If terrorists are going to blow American up they're going to blow all of it up, and the government doesn't care"
-me again (also definitely not what I meant... good thing her argument really didn't make sense and I won by a lot)

I tend to be very good at making things up and saying really stupid things when debating, even though I know what I mean. I have decided that saying stupid things (hopefully) is no indicator of intelligence, as I like to think I'm not stupid, but I sure do say more stupid things than most of my friends combined.
My main goal this year is to stop contradicting myself in all of my speeches.

Having five unit tests in one week= not cool.
Related rates=awesome
tests on related rates=unconstitutional human torture (I guess all torture it unconstitutional)

Rewards, Recognition, Etc.

1) Motivational posters for recognition
2) Engraved articles for excellence and teamwork
3) Thank you gifts to please individual tastes
4) Gift baskets and rewards
5) More gift basket and container ideas
6) Chocolate Pleases almost everyone
7) If you don't do chocolate, how about desert?
8) Thank you cards for recognition
9) Organization Logo Merchandise
10) Gift Certificates

NO. NOT ENOUGH. NEVER ENOUGH. It's so frustrating. We've been talking for a while now. How do you say thank you for hours and hours, probably psychological trauma, and your life? How do you say thank you to someone who's given that to you? We've searched the web. Nothing. Ten freaking ways to say thank you that mean nothing. Throwing myself in front of a bus isn't enough.

How do you say thank you to someone who has given you everything? How can you possibly ever hope to give even a fraction of that back to them?

SO... I went 2-1, which is okay. I lost the debate by one point, and the ballot said I was winning the entire time but the affirmative swayed him in her final summary. Why? It doesn't say. Apparently as high school debaters we are also expected to be psychic and read the judge's mind. Oh well, I know it was a really close debate because the ballot says it was.

Anyway, it was just some big topicality argument so who cares? The tournament was fun... I think I was stressed though because my stomach hurt really badly all day.

I am apparently still a strong contendor in a very unusual contest: that of who can lose the most things at debate tournaments during their high school career. Continuing my record of leaving something at every single tournament, I left my binder and flow pad and pen/pencils, the binder including all of my cases and all of my papers on this resolution etc. Most of it is saved on my computer, but not all of it, and I lost the handbook. Oh well, maybe I will get it back at the next tournament like my shoes last year. And the truth is, after losing shoes and articles of clothing and finally at NFL's half of my school notebooks/homework, just leaving my debate stuff is an improvement.

Today was so totally confusing because there were a lot of really awkward romantic moments with Matt. There is nothing more frustrating than flirting with someone, and having someone flirt with you, who you let go and know you can't have back even though you like them. It was really depressing and I feel miserable and confused about this whole stupid mess, and really angry at religion and my past at the moment.

Well, I'm going to go to bed now as I'm exhausted, and tomorrow's going to be long because I did absolutely no homework today. I always need to do homework at tournaments, but it's hard to read something mundane with all that adreniline-rushing exciting stuff going on.

OH, watching the outrounds was fun... they all turned into topicality debates as well. This resolution is so freaking confusing; I hate it.

validation

I need to work through this because tomorrow is the debate tournament and I refuse to be all messed up with this crap while I'm trying to debate. As I learned last year, it doesn't work very well.

I talked to my mom today. It was frustrating, and now I'm all mixed up and upside-down and confused. I confronted her about her still being angry about the social services thing. My mother says that she thinks my counselor was/is wrong, and that what she did wasn't physically abusive. She said she was listening to the radio when they were asking people about whether it was okay to spank your kids, and everyone who called in said it was. She said that she stopped because she knew she needed to and that it bothered me, but she didn't really see anything wrong with it.

I'm so mixed up inside. Half of me believes her. Half of me doesn't understand why my counselor would be legally obligated to report something that is okay, and why I am way, way more screwed up from what she did than my friends are from their parents spanking them when they were younger.

And so I'm going to try to do the only thing I know how to do when things get tangled up like this: analytically work through it.

There is no doubt, in the long run, that the sexual, emotional, and verbal abuse that I endured were far more severe than the physical abuse. My mother agrees that she was extremely verbally and emotoinally abusive, and that the sexual abuse is what caused the dissociative problems I now struggle with. The physical abuse was not nearly as horrible as so many cases are out there. I never fought back, also. It would have been much worse if I had. But is it really physical abuse, what happened to me? Or is it normal, and okay? I so need validation that what she did was wrong... because sometimes, like now, it seems like she's probably right, and it wasn't that bad. So here is exactly what happened:

1. When I was very young- one, two, three, and four- when I would wet my pants or start crying or throw a temper tantrum my mother would hit me repeateadly on the butt, quite hard (my dad agrees that it was hard, so that must be true). She used the flat of her hand and it never left bruises, rather only red lines/white handprints that eventually faded. My mother was very angry at those times, and agrees she did it more out of her own anger than out of a rational desire to punish me. She was pretty out of control. Also, my mother hit me on the arms and legs and pinched me. When we were in church for example and I would not sit still she would pinch my arms or slap me hard on the leg. When she was angry with me she would grab my arm so tightly that it left red marks and wrench it, dragging me away somewhere. She would force me into positions very roughly.

2. When I was older- five through 10- she would hit me when I was being rude or argumentative. She hit me still with an open hand, when she was very angry and out of control. She always screamed when she was hitting me. She screamed louder than anyone else I knew, sometimes in front of my friends and it embarrassed me. But the screaming/name calling we both know was verbal abuse. As for the physical abuse... she hit me across the face, often across my thighs. She would still often grab me so tightly it left marks, and sometimes shoved me back into walls and such. She usually just hit whatever part of me was closest when she was angry. If I fought back it was worse, so I never did.

3. When I was ten-fourteen she did everything she had done before, hitting me all over, never with a fist, never leaving bruises, always leaving red and white hand-prints, sometimes stayring red for a long time. She on occasion grabbed me and shoved me against things and held me there. One time she grabbed me and was choking me, whether she meant to or not, and I was very sure she would kill me she was so mad that I thought she could never have the control to stop. My mom is very strong, so everything she did hurt really bad. She sometimes would pull my hair a little too.

So these are the things she DID do. But she never really punched me, and never left an actual "bruise," only those handprints on me. She always did it out of anger, but she never hurt me seriously enough for others notice more than just the red, sore marks.

I DON'T KNOW. Maybe it wasn't abuse. Maybe it's normal. I can't think it would be though. That's why I told my counselor in eigth grade. Because my friends all said it wasn't normal, and their parents didn't do that. Some of my friends' parents had spanked them when they were younger, but always deliberately and calmly out of punishment, not out of the wild anger my mom's violence came from. And none of my friends shrink away when people move quickly.

I want desperately someone who totally understands what's abusive and what's not to tell me if what my mom did was normal. I can't stand this ambivalence. I can't stand not knowing. I know she thinks what she did was fine. I dont' know I don't know I don't know.

Things have been dissolving around the homefront lately. My mother is still extremely mad at me for telling my counselor about her hitting me, and she's still extremely mad at my counselor for calling social services, and it's all coming up again, and she's beeing horrible to me... I feel so guilty and angry and frustrated all at the same time.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HECK TO DO! I WANT TO BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER! I WANT TO MAKE HER HAPPY! I WANT TO BE THE THINGS THAT HOLDS US TOGETHER!

I can't handle this. I feel like such a failure. She hates me for what I did, and I have to face the reality that she may be mad at me for the rest of her life, may never get over that bitterness.

I'm so tired of never being good enough for anyone... I'm so tired of being told by my parents to stop being angry, but I am angry, I am angry because they won't forgive me for saving myself.

FOR GOD'S FREAKING SAKE WHAT DO I DO TO MAKE YOU HAPPY????????? HOW CAN I EVER BE THE DAUGHTER YOU WANT???????? HOW CAN I EVER MAKE YOU REALIZE I'M SORRY I TURNED YOU IN? I'M SORRY BUT I WILL NOT REGRET IT, NOT FOR A SECOND, NOT FOR AN INSTANT BECAUSE IT MEANS MY CHILDREN WILL HAVE SOMETHING BETTER THAN I HAD AND YOU HAD AND GRANDMA HAD AND HER MOM HAD!!!

I REFUSE TO REGRET WHAT I DID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FOR HEAVEN'S SAKES LOOK WHAT I'VE DONE TO MYSELF FOR YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME, AND I STILL CAN'T LIVE UP TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS! WHY CAN'T YOU LET THE PAST GO? WHY CAN'T YOU FORGIVE ME? WHY CAN'T YOU LOVE ME UNCONDITIONALLY AND NOT EXPECT THE IMPOSSIBLE FROM ME????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH GOSH WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LET ME BE!!!!!

I'm so angry... there is always something unger anger. I'm so hurt. All this pain inside me... I just wanted to be good enough... oh gosh I failed.

CRAPPY day.

I was depressed all day for some reason. Tonight my puppy peed on our couch because my dad hadn't picked her up yet and I'd just gone downstairs, and my mother yelled at me, and I yelled back. Once upon a time that would have meant getting hit. Now it just means getting grounded.

I finally cried about Matt today.

After the orchestra concert I went to ice cream with some friends (Mallory, Josh, Kara, Matt, Jill, Shauna, Ellie). Matt, who I still love, and miss so much, was drooling over my friend Mallory the whole time.

Don't tell me that doesn't hurt like hell.

Then I remembered I was grounded and came home and got yelled at some more for going to ice cream even though I was grounded.

I drove home with the heat in the car on really high and the music on really loud... songs I could cry to...

It still hurts so badly to look at him. I wish so much that I didn't have to break up with him. I still love him. I think he still loves me, too, even if he thinks Mallory is hot.

I think I will just go out with Josh P., from Idaho, who I have always loved more than Matt.

It sucks that relationships, that come with so much love, usually end in hurt. I felt like something was clawing out my chest tonight.

I'm angry and depressed right now... crying for the first time in a while.

I was playing cello... playing cello is the best release, the best way to let go of the world, even better than violin because cellos sound so powerful and sad... and I love the song I was playing, and I thought I played it well, but all my mother told me was the things that were wrong with it, and after years and years of my parents pointing out every wrong note and every wrong pitch it is so frustrating.

I wanted to light the music on fire. I was so angry because I love that song, I really do...

Then my mom started complaining because she spends all this money on my music for no reason, and it made me mad because she was saying music wasn't worth it unless you go into it for a living, and that's such crap, music is the best emotional release in the universe that is healthy.

And she was talking about money... saying I shouldn't go to MIT. Screw her. I'll go to MIT and get a scholarship. She was saying I never say thank you... thankfully my dad did come to my defense on that one, as I do say thank you quite frequently.

I was practicing too... practicing so her money didn't go to waste... my mom was saying that with my mental illness I won't be able to handle MIT. That's not true either. I'm not giving up on my freaking dream because my mom says I can't handle it. I know what I can and can't handle.

I couldn't believe she was saying I shouldn't play tennis and do debate and play music because I'm not going to do them for a living... they are why I survive. I can't believe she wants to take away my dreams and the things that really matter to me.

Then she said, "it's just that I give and give and give to other people and I never get any time to myself." And it's true, because she always has to be with my aunt, who is still totally dependent on her. I don't know how she does it, I would have had a major mental breakdown by now.

But I guess that's what it all came down to. She gave herself away in that sentence. She's jealous. She resents me because my life revolves around myself. Am I selfish? No. I've just spent my whole life trying to make her happy. Now, I am finally learning to take care of myself, something I guess she never learned.

I don't know what to do. In the old days, I would go hate myself for failing to make her happy. Now, I recognize there's nothing I can do to make her happy, and really nothing I can do to show her that she's the one that's not giving enough to herself. There's no way I am responsible for her jealousy and resentment. So I don't want to just stop trying to help myself and drop everything and try to make her happy, because I'm always a failure, and that only results in pain.

I don't know. I'm just happy I'm finally making myself happy. I don't know what to do about her. I need to stop letting her get to me. I feel miserable right now, like she's taken my whole life and told me it's useless and pointless and selfish.

reminiscing (and procrastinating)

Well I have been procrastinating writing an essay all afternoon, and continue to do so, but when I finish typing this all my attention is focused on the hypocrisy of Jefferson and the contradiction of his philosophies. Oh, man, that's what I LOVE spending my Sundays thinking about. Well, to give it justice, it is more interesting than a few of our essay topics have been.

Anyway, I decided randomly today to get my journals all organized chronologically in one place so they weren't scattered all over my room. I have 27 and a half notebooks of varying sizes filled up with words, mostly from the past five years, although one of them is my sporadically kept journal from age five on (the earliest entries consist mainly of: tuday was gud I got to ply with Crig, Crig being my brother Craig). Needless to say, I got distracted on the earlier ones. I wanted to pinpoint exactly where the bipolar became obvious. It was mainly in my journal from the summer before seventh grade, and seventh grade. I had a lovely manic summer during which I was excessively happy and didn't sleep, writing a journey full of shallow things like, man I'm glad I'm finally popular because that's all that matters in life, but my first journal from seventh grade I was suicidal and very angry at my mother and writing all of these philosophical journal entries about the meaning of life, despairing that I had ever cared about something as trivial as being popular. During seventh grade I left all my popular friends, not caring about popularity anymore, to make the friends I still have today, mainly kids with 4.0GPA's who in middle school didn't swear (they all do but me now basically), and still don't drink or do drugs. The friends I had during sixth grade are now pregnant or in jail or the like (well, not all of them are that extreme, but they are very different from me).

I thought it was really interesting that I could point, down to essentially a few months, to the time when I first began to notice my bipolar. I had been bipolar since I was probably about seven, which is when my parents and counselor say they remember it starting, but I was sort of oblivious to it until I was 12. It is weird to read in my journal my confusions about how I felt like I had "two different people" inside of me and the like (oh, joy, the irony of looking back knowing that although I was talking about bipolar there, a year and a half later the DID would come, making my realize I had more than just two people within me).

I am SO SO glad I kept journals throughout middle and high school. They help me a lot when I'm writing in them, to organize my thoughts, and they help me looking back to make connections about changes that occurred inside me.

On another tangent, man I was an amazing writer when I was eleven, no matter how shallow I was.

I also found this book I wrote in seventh grade that I totally forgot about, and am shocked to realize it's probably better than a lot of what I'm writing now.

I am exhausted and planning on going to bed very soon... but I thought I would write something, as I never seem to write in my notebook journal anymore, so I need to keep track of things somehow.

Today I went to Missoula for this all-state orchestra rehearsal. It was fun. The best part was there were only two bass players there, me and this really hot, nice guy from Ennis. That made the trip worth while. :-)

Also, my English teacher, at the bottom of my essay, wrote, "Are you familiar with the writings of Ayn Rand? There are essay contests that award substantial scholarships. See me if interested." I thought it was rather sad that my essay was so objectivist that he immediately thought of Ayn Rand. Also, reading over it upon return, I am amazed at how much my opinions have changed just since a month ago when I wrote it. I totally don't agree with it now. Except when I'm writing it. I guess I have this thing, in debate mainly, where I totally believe whatever side I am debating, and when I am not debating, I am somewhere in the middle, which is good I guess for debate.

The world is so dramatic. My friends. I wish I could help them, a lot of them are very depressed. High school seems to do that to people. But I don't know what I can do except be there to talk to them. The most important people to me are the ones that have been there to talk with me.

One more thing about my counseling session I didn't mention... we talked about how unbelievable it was that my mom could just STOP hitting me, that it wasn't a really hard, long process. My counselor can't figure it out and neither can I. The only thing I can think of is if she internalized the abuse like I did, but I really don't think she did that, she's the type to project emotion, not internalize it. So I don't know. Maybe it's all still there inside of her, waiting. My counselor said she's never seen a person who has been abusive that long (probably like 30 years for my mother) just stop all of a sudden. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Well, off to bed...

Today I told my counselor about the whole eating disorder. About the three-four years of it, about the overdosing and the throwing up, and being high every day after an overdose. Nobody really knew it was happening, and still my parents don't know the extent of how bad it was. So it felt really, really nice to tell her.

I've felt sort of suspended lately, it's odd. I was up really late again, trying to study for AP history. At least all my school work is paying off, as I have a 103% in math, 95% in AP US history (which is a feat). I have A's in the rest of my classes too, I won't go through them.

My English teacher continues to embarrass me... apparently my friend and I were the only people to get A+'s on our essays, and he totally singled us out in front of everyone (AWKWARD).

My counselor and I talked today about what happened in eigth grade some more, when my mom wasn't living with us and I had to go to the psych hospital, and how this one doctor (despite several other doctors disagreeing) decided I was a hypochondriac and making it up (my mom told him I was a hypochondriac). He confirmed for her all she needed to hear.

manic at 2 AM

This year I have noticed I need way less sleep, as I am not depressed all the time, which is really, really nice, as this is the first year since fifth grade (when I could sleep in a bit more) that I have not been exhausted every second of every day.

Anyway, last night I was actually manic... I would say hypomanic, but some of the symptoms seemed to be more like mania. I didn't think so at the time, of course (I never think I'm manic when I'm manic). But I was up really late, like 2 AM, having these epiphanies about astrophysics that I thought were brilliant. In the morning, I just laughed, and wondered how I could have not realized I was manic, up at 2 AM, bouncing off the walls, coming up with brilliant discoveries about the universe, and having grandiose ideas about myself. That's like the definition of mania.

But the things I thought about actually were pretty cool...

Like the universe is 20 billion (at the most, it is predicted right now) years old. This is because the furthest star we can trace is like 20 billion lightyears away. Okay, well let's assume the universe is actually 20 billion years old. So of course no star can be more than 20 billion lightyears away from us. So if we view time as linear (which of course it's not) and the expansion of the universe as an exponential or logarithmic or something like that function, then (and this will never happen of course as I will explain) there could potentially be a point when the rate of the expansion of the universe exceeded the rate of time, and the furthest stars would be more lightyears away than the universe was old, meaning they existed before the big bang. WOW, not possible I know. Which is why I concluded last night that time and the rate of expansion must be closely related functions that never cross eachother, but rather are sort of parallel (not in actuality, but for the purpose of explaining this).

Also, if we think about E=mc^2, for an object/objects to reach the speed of light the energy must be infinite and the mass must be zero. Well, at the moment of the big bang, the energy was infinite, so comparitively the mass was (to use calculus) a limit approaching zero. Therefore, the universe (condensed in that pinpoint) had the capability of going (or exceeding) the speed of light.
If the universe approached or achieved the speed of light, then for a star or solar system or perhaps entire galaxy, time would have either slowed to a very, very slow crawl, or stopped. That means that there were some galaxies/stars that could have lived WAY longer than the normal star lives. Those systems though would live out normal lives, because time is relative. Of course, as matter grew farther away from the pinpoint where the big bang occurred, the speed would have slowed down. Meaning that when we look at the sky and see (see being figurative, it would take a massive radio telescope) that star 20 billion lightyears from us, we could be seeing time at a dead stop.

Time is obviously not linear as well because of this- if you imagine humans as experiencing time as a river, events flowing in a certain order, and God (just imagine a God) experiencing time as an ocean, all visible and occurring at once, then when we look at the sky, we are seeing a fraction (only a fraction because God would see infinite time, unless the universe has a defined beginning and ending) of what God sees. When we go outside and look at the stars at night, we are essentially looking at every instant in the last 20 billion years all occuring at once in the sky above us.

Now, let's go back to the E=mc^2 thing. If the matter right after the big bang were to go faster than the speed of light, theoretically time would have gone backwards. If that happened, then time would fold in on itself and then out again (a theory of Stephen Hawking's), which would mean that what I am doing right now was doing billions and billions of years ago by someone that was a clone of me... no, WAS me... and potentially that person was the clone of (WAS) a me billions and billions of years before that...
But I don't want to believe that because that means that although I am choosing my actions right now, their outcomes are already decided. I guess it's a bit like the God thing, looking at time as an ocean, everything occurring at once (which is difficult to imagine).

One final thing... I've been reading about string theory, the idea that the universe is made of time subatomic strings that vibrate in ten dimensions (they have some tests set up to test this, like smashing protons and such in a particle accelerator, and if sparticles result, it is proven, or sending three satellites up around the sun with lasers in between to test the displacement of gravity that Einstein says surrounds every object). The theory says that the intensity/rate of the vibrations determines what kind of particle it will form (ex. something vibrating xxtimes/minute is a proton, yytimes/minute is a neutron, etc.).
So think about ten dimensions... they are things like acceleration, velocity... scalar things. They are basically all just derivatives of the first dimension. So we are the third derivative... or rather the way we experience things is.

Sorry, just ONE more thing... if dark matter (in spherical shape) were to exist between the earth and the sun, then the light that hits the earth would curve around the dark matter, distorting our view of the universe. So say Hubble's up there in space, taking pictures of galaxies, saying there in certain coordinates, when actually they are lightyears away from that, just distorted due to dark matter. So if we were ever going to try to set coordinates in a satellite to go somewhere a long ways away, we'd need to figure that out.

Okay, I'm done now. Anyway, that's why I was awake at 2AM.

On one note, I have decided for now to keep taking the meds. If I need that creativity back, like in the summer when I write a lot in books and such, I might stop taking them. But right now my life is a bit to hectic for me to be able to cope with even one less pill than usual. In fact, although I took my meds today, it wasn't quite enough to recover from yesterday, and I had this really counterproductive panic-attack during my calculus test. I spent 15 minutes so panicked that I wouldn't finish that I got absolutely nothing done (and consequently, had to stay five minutes after the bell frantically scribbling answers). And I remembered what I would go back, if I were to stop... and that was the best of it.

I was thinking more about art though (it is an intriguing subject to me), and I realized a lot of people who are good artists (NOT ALL) are a bit disconnected from the world, and see everything as if they are holding it at arms length (I realize I am making assumptions here, but I can because it's my blog and nobody told me I had to be politically correct). That's an interesting thought... that maybe, part of producting art is actually detatching and focusing emotion. That maybe you have to separate yourself completely from passion to create something passionate.

Interesting thought anyway.

Well I must go finish my very much neglected homework now.

So, I didn't take my meds this morning (DON'T WORRY IT WAS JUST AN EXPERIMENT) and now I remember why I hate being half-medicated. I was really depressed for the first three periods, and then all of a sudden (why can I never isolate the moment?) I was really, really, really hyper and agitated and school was suddenly really, really boring and I couldn't sit still, I really wanted to go home and get something done.
Okay, so I remain undecided on what to do. I don't want to compromise happiness or art. It sucks. (Yes, I know art doesn't have to be depressing, but being extrememly depressed is really, really conducive to good art).

Today I was so excited telling everyone I was going to MIT, and I expected resistance, people to tell me I wouldn't get in, people to be surprised with me that my test scores are actually high enough, but sadly no one was surprised at all. My math teacher, when I asked him about the SAT math 2 test, even said, "You'll like it at MIT." Not "You would like it at MIT." Will.

So I finally have a plan, for college. I don't want to go to BYU. I've worked so hard for all these years, I want it to pay off. I think maybe I'll go to MIT for undergrad and cal-tech for graduate school, or maybe the other way around.

On another tangent (oh dear that reminds me, I really need to review trig for the PSAT's next week) I have started to panic about what I will do next year when the only two people I trust in this world will be gone, and I will have no one to talk to, and I will lose the two people I value and probably love most. I've been in denial, but it's going to happen, and I don't know what I'm going to do.

medication

I think I'm going to stop taking my pills. Now before you all start telling me how stupid that is, I do have a reason.
They warned me the pills might take away my creativity, my imagination, the abstract world I'd created for myself. I used to write, write all day every day, short stories, books, letters to God... and man I was good at it. I'm starting to work on trying to get some of those books published.

I WANT THAT BACK. I feel so hollow without it. Sure, I'm happy. But what about the rest of it? What about my writing? What about the beautiful way I saw the world? If it comes to a choice, between happiness and art, how can I not choose art? And it seems to have come to this choice. I really don't know what to do. I know that without the pills, I'll lose this calm control I've gained over my life and everything will spin out of control again. But to be able to write... I miss it so much, I miss it...

I think there's only one way. I think I have to stop taking them.

I AM GOING TO MIT

As we are being forced currently to think about college, I have decided I am going to go to MIT. My ACT score is already high enough, but I'm going to try to get better, and I'm taking the SAT, and for a subject test I've decided to take biology, as I won't be far enough in physics. I know they only accept 20% of admissions, and that it is the 2nd (Caltech I think is the first) hardest school to get into in the US, and I've been letting that discourage me for years, and assuming I could never get in, but you know what? I reckon I have a chance. My standardized test scores are very good, I have had a 4.0 all through high school (and still have one), and am taking the hardest possible classes. I will have, by college, college credit in math (quite a bit), some in biology, some in American history, some in English, and some in American government. If I can get 4's and 5's on those tests, I've got it made.

It really is possible, I think. I've always wanted to go there, but I thought I wasn't smart enough. It's just beginning to dawn on me as we are thinking about college that I do have everything it takes to get in, not to mention an awesome math background as I will have already taken 3 years of calculus by the time I graduate from high school.

It's not just a dream anymore. It's a possibility. And I can do it. I know I can!

being a normal teenager (whatever that is)

I've been reading so much philosophy lately it's all getting mixed up in my head... I enjoy reading about empirical vs. rational (empirical was senses, rational thought, right?), anyway, I'd have to agree more with the rational people. But senses are important too... I think I just believe more in what I can deduce with my mind than what I can sense.
I hate Spinoza. I certainly hope he is wrong.
Kant is interesting. His thoughts about morality. There's some aspect to them... some naive optimism. I didn't like him before, but he is growing on me. And I like Descartes ideas about two very separate realities (I can't remember them right now... extending something or other and substance or something), just about your spirit being totally disconnected. I think therefor I am... he said that, right?
I like thinking about these things, what makes us human, how things work. Hume was interesting too... was he the one that totally rejected everything and built his philosophy from scratch? They all run together after a while.

Anyway... today I actually got a life and did something, volunteered at the humane society (as I do every Saturday now), went to lunch with some friends and then the homecoming football game. I didn't go to the dance as my date was sick. But it was really fun... the game was exciting. Well, no, the first three quarters were really boring as nobody scored or anything, but then Flathead gained fifty yards or so on one play in the fourth quarter and scored, and the Bengals so nearly caught up in the last thirty seconds of the game, but not quite. I guess the boring two and a half hours was worth that ten minutes of excitement. Anyway, then we hung out and played games, like Cranium... I love Cranium, I totally kick butt at it, people fear my Cranium skills (except for when it comes to humming... they still fear me then, but not for my skills...).

My friend Siobhan just stayed at home and did homework all day, as I was tempted to, but then I realized that when I look back at high school I want to have had some fun, to have had a social life and everything. Fifty years from now whether I get a 110% or 100% on some quiz won't matter, but hanging out with my friends and going to football games and volunteering at the humane society will.

I've decided I really like Josh K. (from here). It was sad that he was sick this week, but we're going to do something next weekend. I really like Josh P. from Idaho too, I'm in love with him, but he makes me feel suffocated and scared sometimes, talking about marriage and stuff. With Josh K., I don't want a serious relationship, I just want to have fun.

I don't get myself. When I broke up with Matt, I decided to be single for a long time. Wow. Two weeks. What a long time. Go me. :-)