Drifting off (again)... wow how boring is my life?

Here is more on the book I read by Orsen Scott Card like I promised, as that book fascinated me... I think this is the theme:
Even the most hideous truth is less painful than the lies meant to repress it- when we destroy or try to dominate and suffocate what we cannot understand, and therefor fear, we lose all of the truth and the qualities of authentic civilization.
That's the message I got anyway, and I believe it's true, and I believe that if another race were to rise, humanity would do anything to separate it from us and to, eventually, destroy it. We seem to be like that, as a whole. We are so afraid of what is alien that we would destroy a new species before we would ever consider that we could learn from them, that perhaps the way we do things is not the right way, and surely not the only way.

On another note... Oxytocin, I think it's called, the 'cuddle hormone.' It makes people touch, trust, connect. I must be deficient in it. My pituitary gland must be disabled when it comes to cuddling production. That would explain something.
But it wouldn't explain the psychological hunger I have for all of the things I cannot seem to do: hug, touch, trust.

The more I write the more I uncover within myself, the more I understand the depths of the oceanic world. But the more I write the more I lose sight of the bladelike surface where I get the feeling they want me to live, my parents, my therapist. They call it reality and say I am floating. Maybe I am diving to a place they will not go, not floating- a place I may not be able to return from, if I were to ever want to.

Random Emily Dickenson quotes: (I don't really like her poetry for the most part but she too has her moments)
"Forever is composed of nows." (very true)
"That it will never come again/Is what makes life so sweet."
"The truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind."
"If I can stop one heart from breaking/I shall not live in vain;/If I canease one life the aching/or cool one pain/or help one fainting robin unto his nest again/I shall not live in vain." (This is my favorite bit of poetry of hers, and I believe it thoroughly, and live by it... I seem to have always lived for others. I seem to lack the ability to live for myself at the moment).
"I many times thought peace had come/when peace was far away/as wrecked men deem they sight the land/at center of the sea/and struggling slacker, but to prove/as hopelessly as I/how many fictitious shores/before the harbor lie." (welcome to bipolar, tourists).
And a quote not by Emily Dickenson:
"Man can live his truth, his deepest truth, but he cannot speak it. It is for this reason that love becomes the ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question." (Archibald MacLeish).

With life comes dissociationg and I dissociate more and more. I don't remember driving places. Whole classes are eaten away. This saved me once, when I was three and four and could not handle what was happening. Now, it only serves to cut me off even more completely from the world. Everything is so far away.
How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there *is* no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep... and take hold."-Frodo (J.R.R. Tolkein)
I so wish I didn't believe that quote. I so wish it wasn't the theme song to my life.
I want to believe in myself as a human being, but somehow I can't seem to. Somehow my life seems to only exist in the art I create, and it is all dark... everything I write is about pain, abuse, misery, isolation. Some stories end happy, many end with the same clean-cut nausea I feel every day just at the physical horror of being alive and not being able to truly believe it, or want it, or care. Maybe the only real sense of happiness is in the suspension between heaven and hell, in this gray area I exist in.

Everything is just so numbing. I try to hurt but life is an anesthetic thanks to my dissocative disorder.

Josh told me he had oral sex with his brother again. And I've been having more dreams lately, nightmares I wake up from hot in a cold room, dreams about all of that, all of that stuff I hate, I try to forget.

I'm not unhappy. I've quit eating meat, which is a step up from quitting eating. I figure it's progress.

I drift away... the world is a smear under a coverslip.

rambling rambling all the day

Hopefully this entry will not be as grossly long as I feel it needs to be. But I need to explain things... not to you, but to myself. Nothing becomes real until it is written for me. Real life exists in suspension, and cannot be fixated until I write it down.
I seem to be drifting away again. I noticed this first on Friday when I was obsessing over dualism and Descartes. There is a gap between cells and soul. No fusion can be made. Dualism is undeniable. It is so obvious in the nasty shock I get every time I see myself reflected palely in a display case. Some separate aspects of me refuse to connect.
I have never cared much about my body. It is odd, struggling to recognize it. I have starved it, lacerated it, bruised it, destroyed it, all in some desperate attempt to connect the nerves, to feel physical pain, to validate the phantom emotions. The value of my split nature should be ballanced, equal. But I cannot seem to care much about my body. There are odd surprises, like my teeth. But when I feel so incredibly detached to physical reality then it is not hard to cut, to throw up, to destroy myself. It is almost amusing at times.
I suppose I need to change that.
Friday night I was intending to read but I got distracted by one of my half-finished books, and I got writing. It is about a boy whose dad attempts suicide and gets put in a hospital. I keep trying to write books that are not so close to the truth, but when I write about what has happened to me I feel as if I can control it. I can't seem to help myself anyway... all books start out fiction and end up painfully like an autobiography. So this boy went to visit his dad in the hospital again, and it was a really good session. The boy and the dad really connected, which was fiction because my father and I have never connected like that. It was so easy to write... it had almost happened. It was a mixture of everything. I've had so many family therapy sessions in my life that it wasn't difficult to recreate one. In the end the mother believed the doctor, thought her son had something really wrong with him, like what happened to me in that hospital with that idiot who wore a white shirt and khaki pants. I hated him... why can't my psychiatrist defend me? Or my therapist? Why did they let him tell my mom I was a hypochondriac so she had an excuse for all of the things that are wrong with me that involved her? Anyway, this wasn't supposed to happen but next in the book the boy's teacher sexually abuses him and somehow writing that, trying to explain it, trying to make that pain believable, make that disconnection plausable enough for people to read and understand, really drained me. I didn't mean to write it but I had to. And I realized that in all of these years I have been writing about all of these horrible things it was the first time I've fictionalized the sexual abuse. And that hurt for some reason. It really hurt.
Anyway, the pain and disillusionment from that leads into what happened yesterday. I woke up much earlier than I would have liked but read in bed for a while- Speaker for the Dead by Orsen Scott Card. I finally got up and decided to make myself a casadilla (wow I don't think I'm spelling that right). So I got out part of a pita pocket and started cutting myself some cheese.
I wasn't paying attention I guess. It wasn't intentional. The knife slipped. At first I was only mad at the blood getting on my cheese. It didn't hurt of course. Things never seem to hurt me. This dissociation saves me... and often frustrates me when I need so badly to hurt, to feel the pain but I cannot because of something that happened so long ago.
I finished making the casadilla. I ate half of it before losing my nerve (cheese! I can't eat cheese!) and giving it to my dad, who then asked why my finger was bleeding so much and said I needed to go get stitches.
There are so many ironies about this. One is that although it was a very deep cut it was not as deep as some of the times I have cut myself, most of them lately, and nobody stitched those up... I nursed them with hydrogen peroxide and gauze for weeks, struggling to fight off infection. A second irony is that I NEVER eat cheese. It's way high in calories and fat. I just did yesterday because I knew I was going to take the laxatives (which made me feel even sicker because last week I took them with the wine when I got really sick, or drunk I guess). A third irony is that I was using the same knife I've used before to try to cut my wrist and leg and it was way too dull then to cut when I wanted it to, but now that I'd accidentally slammed it into my finger it was sharp enough to severely cut it (I guess my mother had just sharpened it).
My father wanted to watch a basketball game but he took me to the hospital, and so began a day of incredible disconnection and confusion.
We waited at the actual hospital for three hours. My finger was numb, and eventually quit bleeding. Nobody came for me. I read my book. I watched people in the waiting room. I think one girl was there because she'd attempted suicide and her parents were talking to her in loud, tight voices and she looked angry, and I wondered if I'd looked that angry during those identical conversations I've had with my parents.
Part of the book I was reading (Card): "'When you really know somebody, you can't hate them.' 'Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them.' 'Most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes.' ...'Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart."
This passage represents something I would die to defend: all humans have the capacity to understand each other. We have had the same emotions as the most cold-blooded of murderers at times. And once I have understood this, I have found it impossible not to understand people, love them, and forgive them, even those that have hurt me the most severely. I refused to understand my father's suicide attempt for a long time because I wanted to be angry at him for it, I wanted to hate him for it. But in my heart I understand what happens when you attempt suicide, how nothing else matters. And once I couldn't keep hating him constantly I began to understand, and because of that I could only love and forgive him. Same with my mom hitting me. I tried to hate her, tried to stay mad, but once the anger fades I know that inside of me are all of the emotions that made my mother hit me. And I can't hate her anymore.
I thought about a lot of things in the hospital waiting room as I stared at my father who watched the game. This is truth. We can pretend we exist on a surface of basketball games, but real truth attacks you violently. With all life, with every human breath, comes pain. We can try to run from it and only achieve more. We can consciously understand our fears and consciously embrace misery. But everywhere... it is there. It is life. And I learn that what I am most afraid of is not what I thought it was; it's not the possibility of eternal, perpetual pain. It is the possibility that one day I will hate that pain so much that I will choose death, or, far worse, eternal apathy. Death, nothingness... is far worse than pain. For so long I just wanted to cease existing. Now I fear that desire more than anything.
We went to urgent care after three hours. In one hour they were stitching me up. I don't mind pain at all. I love pain. I won't lie and say I didn't like it, every bit of it. I loved that it was excusable, having this done to me, and that I did not have to deliberately cause it. I loved the anesthesia being pumped into my throbbing finger. I loved the needle going in and out, the scissors tying the four knots in my finger.
I believe God must pay attention to me, because so many times lately when I have felt like I would explode if I did not cut I hurt myself like this. It lacks the control, the charged emotion of deliberate pain, but it is enough to keep me going.

I understand myself. I understand that I fear happiness enough to choose pain. I understand that I have chosen to do unhealthy things instead of be happy, and I am not totally sure why. It seems so much easier for me to fear happiness, to fear things that others enjoy like sex, to fear a world in which I could touch people, a world in which I could be close enough to someone to be willing to have sex with them. Now it is a sick lurch in my chest... I cannot even begin to imagine being that close to a boy. I am myself. I am my isolated island. How can I ever let someone in, and someone who is constantly thinking about sex and girls? Why does it bother me so much? Why does it make me sick and my body tingle?

I worry, sometimes, a lot, that my fear and my need for pain will keep me forever from happiness or any sort of real sexual contact. But I guess that more than that I fear what is infinitely more likely than happiness or contact: that I will accept apathy, that if I do not kill myself I will choose to live while I am dead, dead and numb.

I don't want that! I don't! I want to live! I want to feel! I want to someday not need these little everyday pains to survive... I know I am strong enough, if it takes strength. But I don't want to be happy. How can I ever overcome that simple fact?

My brain was on hyperdrive today even though I was uber tired. I thought about philosophy all day. My life has been a struggle to juxtapose my dual nature (yes Sartre it IS dual), balance physical and psychological. I've destroyed my body, tried to repair it, etc. etc. I've been trying to come up with my own philosophy on the dual nature of humans, how people can be a summation of themselves and also exist in dual dimensions. I need some sort of fusion between soul and body... maybe that's what Descartes lacked. Anyway, I thought about that...
And I thought a lot about politics, and the unbridgable gap between philosophical politics and politics in actuality. There's so many great ideals for societal systems, so many social contracts, so many different theories of government. Monarchy, plutocracy, anarchy, oligarchy, democracy, socialism, theocracy... they are all lovely in theory but they can never work. Take socialism. It's a fantastic idea. But put it into practice and it degrades into communism. Communism as an ideal is great too. But put communism into practice and you achieve 'absolute' corruption of one individual due to an excess of 'absolute' power. I'm pretty sure as well that democracy is pretty much impossible to achieve in reality.

The problem with all social theories, and most theories of any nature, is that they work perfectly well in calculators, on paper, in people's minds, but once you try to enact them they all deteriorate into chaos. I know that different logistics and discrete math can be used to predict chaos, but in my opinion that's a bit of an oxymoron. Chaos is unpredictable. We can make some accurate conjectures on how a society will react to something based on political knowledge and precedent, but in reality chaos controls. We cannot be guaranteed that a system will behave in the predicted way. I guess it's all chaos theory...

I was also thinking today about Darwinism, and how many have manipulated it i.e. Herbert Spencer, and I was wondering if it could possibly be directly applied to psychology. That seems to be implying determinism though, which nobody really wants to believe when it comes to psychology. We can believe that evolution exists on a biological basis, and that due to the berevity of our generation it is difficult to manipulate, and that one generation could never reap the benefits of its own manipulation anyway. But could we accept that evolution occurs on a psychological level, that the evolution of the mind follows set rules, rules that seem like chaos to us now but really dictate psychological development absolutely? Is it even possible?

dissected cats and my theory of relativity

We are dissecting cats in biology and I positively HATE it. I feel like I am destroying something sacred. I really believe in the sanctity of life. I know that probably shouldn't have much to do with this, but those cats were alive once, and I feel like I am, without permission, destroying what little remnant of that life remains. It feels so wrong. I feel sick every time I look at them with those cuts down their bodies... not because I think it's gross, but because I feel horrified at the violence. I know it's carefuly, calculated cuts with a razorblade, but I hate every part of it. I hate the way that our first cut looked just like my arms do when I cut them, except with less blood. I hate probing into their bodies like no spirit was ever in them. I am so morally opposed to it that I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I can't drop the class. I can't refuse to help, or I'll forfeit my grade. I have to help. But how can I?
Right now we are skinning them, and looking at them, holding them open, I always feel tears burning at my eyes. I feel like there's something wrong with me. Nobody else is crying about these cats. Just me. Nobody else is freaking out. Nobody else can't handle it. Just me.
So my lab partner treats me like a fragile child. She does all of the difficult stuff for herself, tells me what to do, supervises all my actions. And I love it. Nobody has treated me like a child in a long, long time. And although I'm not sure my aversion to dissection is childlike, I know that I need guiding through this if I am to mentally survive. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Another thing that has been bothering me lately is how relative everything is. I mean, we've managed to concretely define most nouns, although even those definitions are occasionally subjective, but adjectives have absolutely no basis in anything that is definable isolated of all other experience. What is 'high'? To me the Empire State Building is high. But what about to God, or to some huge alien on another planet? That may be short. It may be tiny. My definition of 'high' is totally relative. All adjectives are. I can't tell you what an adjective means without using it in reference to something. There can only be references, only proportionalities, nothing definite.
Isn't that alarming to you that a huge bulk of our language exists only in a web of words and cannot exist as a single entity? For some reason it really bothers me. I want to believe that my opinions of the world, shaped in adjectives, are true, not just relative or only true in context.

It's all catching up to me...
First of all I think I drank enough wine yesterday to get really sick, and when I get sick off things I usually don't eat/drink them again, so that's a good thing.

Secondly... I went to the dentist today for the first time in a few years because somehow my appointment got messed up. And my teeth are really straight and all that. I got a retainer, but it was just to close a gap, I didn't really NEED it. I brush every morning and every night, and I floss every night. But last year... it did take its toll... I was worried it might, but not worried enough.

I guess my teeth are all broken down and I have a ton of really tiny cavities. And my teeth are really succeptable because they've been eaten away. So I can't eat simple carbs anymore, and I have to brush and floss after everything I eat, and it'll take like ten years before my teeth are okay again, and I have to get like fifty tiny fillings.

WHY?! Because I threw up... I threw up every few days for over a year... and all that acid stripped my poor teeth...

I don't feel good. I still feel sick and it can't be the wine anymore. Why did I do that to myself?!! Now I'll have to change my whole life just to save my teeth from destruction.

Another odd day. I cooked my parents a really fancy dinner (chilled banana rice pudding with cinnamon/other flavors, pasta with caper sauce and olive oil and balsamic vinager, key lime cheese cake with ice cream a la mode, cranberry kiwi punch). I was very proud of myself; it all turned out quite perfectly. I really am okay at cooking when I bother to take the time to be patient.

I found the Chardenay though. And after the dinner when my parents were elsewhere I sat on the counter and drank half a bottle. I don't even know why. I don't believe in that. I don't believe in drinking, ever. I've been really happy lately. I was happy even as I drank it. Drinking it depressed me. I think some part of me is still really holding onto misery. Anyway, I stopped halfway through and dumped it down the drain. I was a bit horrified with myself to tell the truth. It was 14% alcohol. I can't really remember what that means. I thought it was really odd the way it burned in my stomach after I swallowed it. The vodka I drank a few years ago didn't do that. It was a nice sensation. Not worth becoming an alcoholic over though.

I was slightly drunk for a bit, but I didn't really drink enough to really effect me. If I'd drank the whole bottle it would have, and for a second I regretted it as I watched the wine go down the drain, but I'm really glad I did it. I don't want that. I really don't.

On another random note, after talking to my friends/counselor I guess that as abysmal as my PSAT scores were they were good enough to be a national merit scholarship finalist. I was in the 99th percentile, which I guess is really good. That would be nice, getting a scholarship. Even if I don't get the scholarship, being a finalist looks good.

Until they look at my math scores that is.

This may be some unconscious signal or something, but yesterday as I was leaving the house to go to coffee with Charlie my mom said, "Isn't that the sweater Josh gave you for Christmas?" and it seemed really fitting to be wearing that, just one more manifestation of deception.
Coffee (well, non-coffee) was quite fun. We sat and talked for literally over three hours. I really like him I think... I can feel myself relaxing around him. He's not Josh but still. I think somehow what I am doing is wrong, letting myself like a guy when Josh is there and not telling anyone about anyone, but it's what I'm doing, so oh well.

Last night Erin slept over and we watched funny movies and ate ice cream and popcorn and I told her a few things about my past because I thought, nobody really knows me, but then I realized that Erin does know me. My past is important in that it has shaped who I am, but who I am not is just... how I am NOW. If you know me, alive, right now today, you know me. I don't have to become some sexual abuse poster child. There's definitely resdiue of abuse and the things I've done to myself in everything I do (especially in the way I handle boys), but I am more than my past.

I've been reading Sartre. I thought his idea was interesting, about existence. He says that everyone else has a dualistic psychological theme going on, like all philosophers thought that your appearence was some flaky shell that your real being hid behind. He thinks that there's no dualism, that people are simply the sum total of all their manifestations, that people are both finite and infinite and that's where all the dualism goes- you are finite in that you exist right now as an appearance and total of previous manifestations, but you are infinite in that you have infinite aspects and possibilities.

I don't agree with him, but it's interesting. Very interesting.

I hate school. Did I mention that? Once? Twice? A million times? Well it wasn't enough. I hate school.

psychological philosophy

Warning: This is a bit of a rant. But it's important stuff to me... (Also this is not mean to accuse anyone of anything, it's just an observation).

I have come to the conclusion that most people are afraid of being happy. They think they are striving towards what they think of as happiness, that far-off destination, but in reality they sabotage themselves with pain and addiction in order to avoid that frightening concept- happiness. Why? I think maybe because they don't really believe in happiness as an end. They think happines can only be temporary. Maybe happiness means vulnerability. Happiness means insecurity. It could be an illusion. It could be taken away.
So misery, in its consistency, is better than happiness. Misery allows control. It allows a real sense of security. You hurt yourself and no one can hurt you. You create this miserable life and you can count on the companionship of depression in a way you'll never trust that fickle happiness.
Everyone chooses (clinical depression aside) to be depressed. Tehy choose to be addicted to unhealthy things. They choose to feel horrible. But they have convinced themselves that they are fighting, that they are trying to be happy but are incapable of it. And why? Because they fear it! Because they need the pain! Because they don't want to get their hopes up when they know that nothing that good can last! And so they do it to themselves. Some part of them is so scared of being happy that they need to keep hurting themselves. They keep relapsing and they think it is because they don't have the self-control to abstain. They're wrong. It's because, in their quasi search of happiness, they are constantly choosing to be unhappy.
Afraid of happiness? It sounds ludicrous at first. Think about it though. There is a reason you are unhappy, a reason you are incapable of fighting, and it's not becasue you're incapable; it's because some part of you buried very deeply in your subconscious has decided that the safety in misery, the control,, is better than taking a risk.
And all of that... all of those misconceptions... they can be fought. You have to understand yourself. You have to understand why you're afraid of peace and understand why you chose misery. And you have to want to be happy. Not the destination of pseudohappiness, but real happiness.
And what is real happiness? Not a destination, no. People are constantly moving, changing. This destination people are afraid of really is inconsistent, is untrustable. But it isn't happiness.
You plan for the future. YOu do everything you can today to be happy tomorrow. But what about today? NOW is the only time you are alive. Tomorrow never comes. If you don't want to be happy NOW, you will never be happy, no matter how hard you work for it. Happiness simply isn't a destination you work towards. It is a way of life that you choose. It is available to everyone (again, clinical depression aside), always, every second of every day. People only have to choose it, and everyone is capable of making that choice. Nobody has a life that can't facilitate happiness.
Frankl expressed it best in his book, in his philosophy of living in the now. You have to understand that happiness is not a place you can reach. It is a warm coat in a blizzard, and you can choose to ignore it and feel your limbs all freeze and say it is because your life is so uncontrollably miserable, or you can put it on and understand.
Events that you can't control don't need to affect your happiness chronically. Events that you do to yourself to avoid happiness can cease once you understand that you don't need them.
And you DON'T, you don't you don't you don't.
How can you be happy? You can live to be the best you can be and stop trying to be perfect. Stop focusing on destinations and focus on the journey. Understand that failure doesn't come with results; failure comes from fearing hypothetical results so much that you won't even try.
You thought misery was control. Happiness is the ULTIMATE control. You can choose your reaction to every situation. You can choose to be happy because you are living for happiness, not because it seems like a nice place you could go. You can decide to stop being reactive and be proactive- don't just let your mood be something that controls you; control your mood.
You are alive here and now, and now is the only time happiness will ever exist and the only time you will ever exist. Whatever you see on the horizon, whatever perfection you feel like you need... you'll never achieve it. Whatever it is that makes you feel helpless in depression, you are in control of it.
I begain to understand these things last year when I read Man's Search for Meaning. I began to understand how they dictate my world when I went to the seminar. I began to understand that they dictate the whole world a few nights ago when I spilled them to Josh.
People will never tell you they are not happy because they are afraid of it, but they are.
Based on results, they have exactly what they intended, conscious or not.
Your mind is an iceburg; the very tip is conscious; and you don't even use large portions of your mind at all. You have one life to understand yourself- start scuba diving.

I could start a library with all the mail I'm getting from colleges. They all seem to start with, "We know that you are not just the summation of your PSAT scores, but due to your high PSAT scores..."

Yeah, whatever.

Today we went to the humane society and I walked this cute rottweiler-lab mix that was much bigger than me, and I was wearing gloves that were very thin with holes in them, and we were walking in a very windy field. It's slightly cold here. Windchill in that field probably made it about twenty below. By the time we got back inside my hands felt kinda like they did after the Powell trip last year. They hurt SOOOO badly.

I don't like being outside when it's cold. But I like it being cold out and me being inside.

It seems odd, but I'm awake, I'm not dreaming

Things slog on, mucky day after mucky day, sleeping through seminary, failing quizzes, drifting away from the people I loved. It all seems like a revolution of mud after a while. And then there are days like today... days that remind me I am alive, here, now, and only now.

Today my orchestra teacher sat me down and told me there is a man in our community who is very rich and who supports orchestra students who work hard. He comes to all the concerts, watches at the festivals. Every six or seven years he picks a student and he pays for them to go on one of the overseas trips.

I knew all that... she'd told us all that my freshman year. I'd forgotten it, but it began to surface and bloom in my brain...

Apparently this man has been watching. And he's decided to pay for me to go to Australia and New Zealand in 2007, which I really wanted to do but knew I could never come up with the money. It's $3000.

I felt like I had a heart attack. She only told me I could tell Erin, no one else, so I sprinted down the hall and I hugged Erin. What an excitement boiling inside you... I haven't felt that excited in a long time.

I kept waiting to wake up, waiting for it to have been a joke, but it wasn't and I knew it wasn't because she'd told us about it two years ago, and I remember thinking, "I'll never get that, but it would be so nice."

I thought about it maybe being my teacher but she doesn't have that kind of money. Who is it then? I don't know. I won't ask. I will take this gift and make the most of it.

CAN YOU THINK OF ANYTHING MORE EXCITING IN THE UNIVERSE????

Even today at the Humane Society when we got yelled at for letting our dogs walk on the wrong patch of grass I didn't feel depressed. There was this in my head, in there all day, growing bigger and bigger...

I thought things like this only happened to other people, people on TV. Other people win the lottery, never you.

Oh man typed words on the internet cannot do justice to how I feel and how amazing this is to me.

The conversation with my dad went okay. Somewhat along the lines of "I didn't want to have premarital sex and I regret that I did every day." It doesn't matter- I know what I want. There's no way I'm having sex before I'm married. It's going to be too big of a deal for me to throw around. I wanted to have sex with Matt briefly, to keep him, but I don't think anything he could have said or done could have convinced me to really consider doing it. I don't know.

School isn't going so well. I missed so much of it last week, four out of five days, that I have been doing very badly on all these quizzes I think. But debate is over, tennis doesn't start for a month, and I will unfortunately/fortunately be at school every day, so I won't be as behind.

Josh said he's falling apart. I guess he OD'd on ibuprofin twice last week. His addictions are making him feel like dirt. 256 miles away... I feel so helpless.

All the pain seems to coallesce into a dull ache after a while.

SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED :-)

WEIRD weekend. I planned before going to my first round to come home on Saturday and drink hot chocolate made with milk and relax and feel sorry for myself. I never thought I'd say it but I was tired of debating. It's been a really long season. I'm glad it's long, and I love it, but these past few tournaments I haven't had much motivation.

And guess what? I SUCKED!!!! I totally and completely sucked. Out of forty-five people or so I was one of the first four to get out. And you know what? I didn't feel disappointed. I didn't hate myself for it. I was angry or hurt or confused or upset. Not because I didn't care... but because I knew that what I cared about wasn't winning. What I cared about was that I've done well this year. I cared about having fun. I cared about improving my record and breaking consistently. I cared about not getting all upset when I lost. And I have done all of those things. So was it a failure? No, not really. It was hilarious, doing that badly, but I know that it didn't have anything to do with me being bad at debate. I hit some really hard people. My second round I accidentally said that in a hypothetical situation it would be okay to rape children, and I had do defend that. I laughed at myself as I said it, and I didn't care.

I like winning. It's nice. But it's not what's important.

I wanted to go out with a bang. Well, I did. I went out with a spectacular bang of major suckage (word of the round round 1- 'suck'). I wasn't expecting to win anyway. Why should I complain about not having to debate as much? I got to sleep in until nine on Saturday. I got to wear my jeans and sweatshirt. I got all my homework done and I went to a public forum round and two policy rounds and I really enjoyed the policy ones. People say policy is boring but I thought it was amazingly fascinating.

SO say it! Say it loud! I SUCKED!

Nothing to be ashamed of. And by the way my father told me this morning that he wants to talk to me today about me considering having sex with Matt. Now I am very opposed to the abuse of the perfectly legitimate word "awkward" that is occurring in my city, but I can use it correctly applied to this situation. AWKWARD. Why does my mom have to keep reading my journal? I am not really looking forward to this enlightening conversation.

...And to conform with internet manners...

Four jobs I’ve had: (actually I've never had a real job but I've done these things)

1) librarian helper
2) church positions
3) teaching violin lessons
4) Symphony

Four movies I’d watch on repeat:

1) Pay it Forward (no matter how cheesy you insist the ending is)
2) Finding Nemo
3) Shrek
4) X-men, Spiderman, Batman Begins, and other action movies I still enjoy

Four TV shows I love: I don't really watch TV, but I used to love:

1) Lizzie McGuire (yes I'll admit it)
2) anything cool on Discovery channel
3) CSI
4) Growing Pains

Four vacation spots I’d love to frequent:

1) London
2) anywhere in Europe
3) Alaska
4) anywhere exotic like South America

Four websites I visit daily (among many others):

1) LD debate forum
2) thisisawar.com
3) I can't think of another one
4) a bazillion blogs

Four radio talk shows I love:
1) I love making fun of the Savage Nation because he's so agressive and scary
2) I love getting mad at Dr. Laura

Four foods I lust for:

1) smoothies
2) coffee cake
3) mudslides
4) tropical Blizzards

Four changes to my house: (changes I want and don't have)

1) a clean room
2) a self-cleaning bathroom
3) brick
4) carpeting that doesn't show every piece of lint

Four beers I like:

none. don't drink.

Four artists I like:

1) Goo Goo Dolls (music)
2) Deathcab for Cutie (music)
3) e.e. cummings (poet)
4) Magritte (art)

Four tags: (CnB, you already got tagged, he he he)

1)actually i think everyone I know has been tagged... um Shea? if she will conform...

My confidence comes in dizzy spells and waves. I am totally devoid of it for weeks, and then all of a sudden it will appear unexpectedly from some abyss inside of me that has the potential to fill with self-affirming beliefs but keeps having the plug pulled. I've felt pretty confident this week. I'm finally coming out of a long depression. Apathy... I can't believe I wanted it. I'd rather be in agony every day of my life.

I gave Erin some ice cream today, which is kind of a long story, but basically she has become so important to me... she is such an amazing friend. At festival I talked to her about a lot of things, and she talked to me, and there is this definite connection between us that I need so badly, as I have drifted so far away from all of the rest of my friends. High school shoves people apart and builds motes between them. I needed someone to come along and save me from isolation.

Festival was fun. I didn't screw up although this senior girl from my school was a jerk to me all week because I guess she wanted to be first chair. She could have had it for all I cared. Anyway, I roomed with Erin, and it was really fun getting to know her better. She is such an amazing person, and a truly amazing example to me in every way possible.

Today was horrible. I've been bogged down with SO much work, trying to catch up, and I'm missing school on Friday as well for debate. I also had my tutoring tonight at Sylvan Learning Center and that went pretty well. I think it will help.

My mom had to bring me this portfolio thing I left at home (we got back at 2 AM this morning so I was really tired when I went to school) and she said that she had read my journal (for, what, the fiftieth time?), and I was just really too tired to care. I just felt numb and decided whatever happened happened.

Anyway it wasn't too horrible. But it just seems like my life is all about keeping things secret, and controlling the damage that results when my fortress is compromised.

On Friday I went in during lunch to get my violin music and my orchestra teacher said, "Lindsay, you're first chair second violin in the big group [of three schools] next week [at orchestra festival], if that affects how much you practice." And I said, "What?!" and nearly threw up. That means I am not only first chair for our SCHOOL but for that humongous conglomeration of schools. Oh my gosh what a nightmare. I have to go frantically practice right now in fact. Pray to God/whatever agnostic greater power you believe in that I don't screw this up. I really haven't practiced much.

"I did it because I trust you, Lindsay," she said. My gosh why does she have to trust me? There are plenty of trustworthy people in the world! Surely there is someone out there who would do a better job!

Anyway, I got home from Idaho late last night. It was fun. Let's just say we crashed in all this powder in the middle of the trees and stayed there for a while and decided to see if the Spiderman thing worked (if you've seen the movie you probably know what I'm talking about). It was quite interesting. Even though my toes were freezing off and my pole was jabbing into me, I felt like somehow I belonged there with him all buried in snow.

Today... I got three math books so I can cover two years of math in my nine-week, 18-session cram course at Sylvan Learning Center to survive the SAT math II's. I decided I am running for key club president next year, which is a LOT of work, but I can do it. I'm pretty sure I'll be the only one running so I'm guarenteed to win. Only four other juniors regularly come to key club anyway.

I walked dogs with Brittany... no actually the dogs walked me... did homework... thought about my status as a lying deceiver...

SO... I am going to Idaho tomorrow to see Josh. I spend Saturday with him. I'm talking to him on instant message right now, but I just got off the phone with Charlie, and I'm going to go on some sort of date with Charlie next week. Josh knows somewhat about Charlie, but Charlie doesn't know about Josh, and... my gosh this sounds like a soap opera dripping in pathetic teenage angst. I guess I'll take things one day at a time. I've made no committment to Charlie yet.

We had a school assembly the other day, and as usual my friends and I spent the whole time making sarcastic, cynical comments about how pathetic school spirit is and how stupid the cheerleaders are. Some part of me wonders though if we are only cynical because we cannot find it in ourselves to be as involved as them and enjoy it. Maybe we resent them for caring. Do cynical, apathetic people harbor bitterness simply because they are jealous of those that are able to care and benefit from that caring? It sounds almost suspicious enough to be partially true.

So... the slog of life at a superficial level- the volunteer work, the tests, the studying for these bloody SAT's- trudges onward, as an inner life of my struggle towards happiness also continues. Something drastic had better happen to shatter this monotony.

OH I KNOW! They found out our gym is falling apart, and that if it snows more than eight inches it will sink into the ground and maybe collapse or something similarly radically cool. Start praying it snows eight inches tonight! As expensive as it would be, it would definitely be exciting if our gym collapsed. No more pep rallies!

Quotes and such

"When the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it may be that they take better care of it over there." (unknown).

"When the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, it may be that their house is a delapidated piece of crap that nobody can see becasue people only look at the grass." (me).

I think the second one is true. When we envy people, because we think they have it better than us, we often don't know the whole story. We only look at the surface. The first quote is implying a responsibility towards your own "grass," which I would agree with, but I think that my quote better captures people's victimization of themselves (if I may humbly say so myself).

"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?" (John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath). (I am unfortunately being forced to read that book at the moment. Steinbeck is very good with descriptions and character development and even the aura of the book, but it is very slow. And Steinbeck is usually depressing so I'm just waiting for everyone to die).

"In the coming world, the capacity to face the new appropriately is more important than the ability to know and repeat the old." (Carl Rogers).

Those last two are obviously contrasting. I think that (as is usual) the truth is somewhere in the middle.

In English we watched the movie The Scarlet Letter, and it made me think a lot about conformity, and whether the real sins are what society says they are, or if the real sins are accepting what society says and how it molds you without fighting it and trying to discover yourself as an individual seperate from the often corrupted practices of society.

Also, I am finally reading The DaVinci Code and I am really curious as to how much of it is actually proven true (I don't believe most of it, but it's interesting). The Gnostic Bibles I must admit sound nothing like the King James bible or whatever... I must admit it confuses me that people that knew each other would speak and write so incredibly different from each other when the tone of the bible is pretty much consistent. I don't know. You could drown in that skepticism. The simple fact remains that religion can't prove there is a God and that Christ was his son, but science can't prove there isn't, and the negating clash is usually required to have the burden of warrent for their claims.

I don't know. I'm really tired but I'm not depressed this week for some odd reason. I wasn't really depressed this weekend either, which was very good considering the tournament. Debate makes me so stressed out... when I'm at debate I could eat 50,000 calories and I'm pretty sure I'd metabolize it because stress does some really screwy things to my body.