school

There's a lot whirling around in my mind, but I will ignore it for now and write on less controversial topics.
Today was the first day of school. I woke up really late, and I was really tired. I thought about the fact that next week I will have to get up for seminary at 5:45 every morning, but the thought of it was just so depressing that I blocked it out of my mind.
First period was chemistry two. By the end of the period I was ready to go home. But I really love Mr. Shenkle. He's a horrible teacher, no one will deny that, but he's such an amazing guy that it almost makes up for it. I have heard, however, that chem 2 is really, really hard. I have Shauna, though. Although Mr. Shenkle made it a point today that he won't just "not notice" if Shauna and I somehow manage sitting together all year again. So my lab partner is Ty, who did math counts with me in middle school. He's nice. It could have been someone much worse, like Will or something.
I had to leave after ten minutes of AP government to go to math. Mrs. Lynd seems rather frightening. I've heard bad stories about her making students cry and such. The class is apparently very difficult as well, but I'll survive. I'm extremely interested in politics and government, whereas I was not that interested in US history, so I think that I'll be fine. I'll work hard. Teachers like that. Mrs. Lynd has a very dry sense of humor. We started out the class period talking about the comforting fact that cigarettes have 10% more nicotine in them now than they did when they first came out, and we debated whether that would make you want more cigarettes, or make you smoke 10% fewer.
I ran off to math and tried to get the lab done with Katie, but we didn't finish it in time, so she's going to have to finish it up for me. I really should probably be more concerned about whether Sarah turned in our lab last week or whether Katie has turned ours in today, but I'm not. I just had to rush off to get back to fourth period. While I was at math, I missed physics, but I talked to Mr. McCarthy before school and he gave me the papers. A physics teacher can't really complain about me missing Thursdays for multi-variable calc, which I am taking so I can be a physicist.
Fourth period was creative writing. It was an odd mixture of people, from Emily A., who is the cheerleader-student-council-preppy-type, to a bunch of emo kids, to a girl with a green mohawk and several body piercings whose jeans were covered in anarchy symbols. She also kept changing her name. Anyway, it should be an interesting class. Mr. Proctor is a bit frightening. He went on for a while about how he hated finding pubic hairs in bedsheets at hotels.
I ate lunch outside with Erin and Sean and the crowd, but it was really cold. It feels like fall out. I'm not looking forward to running tonight.
Fifth period was English. Mr. Pogreba is the raging liberal type who hates students that care too much about school and whose secret ambition is to knock out four point students from being valedictorian by giving them a B this semester, the last semester that counts. The only other person in the class besides me who is in the running is Laura. Hopefully Pogreba will focus his evil energy on her. Anyway, I kick at English. It's my best subject, so how can he give me a B? Also, Nick C. sat in front of me and informed me he's become an anarchist. He was reading The Federalist Papers. Sometimes that boy scares me. I honestly can't imagine why I went out on dates with him in ninth grade, as he is the 'all-theory-no-action' type that drives me crazy.
Sixth period was orchestra with all the freshmen, but Sean is also in it so I'll be okay. I'm playing viola. I also found out that I MADE ALL-STATE ORCHESTRA!! On cello! I didn't think I was going to make it. Cello is very competitive; it's hard to get in on cello. I'm rather amazed at myself if I must say so. In fact, because at that audition I played nowhere near how well I usually play, I would even venture to say I'm proud. Hopefully I won't get really sick and throw up like last year. I'm sad that I have to lose my vacation in October, but it will be fun with Siobhan and Erin and Shauna (Jo didn't make it...)
Seventh period was music theory. The green-mohawk-face-piercing girl from creative writing was back. Jill and Erin are in there with me too. It was actually the best class of the day. We had the same debate we had two years ago on the first day, about what music is. It was just as interesting now as then, and I felt more comfortable because the people were much easier to talk to than two years ago. I think if I work hard I can handle the AP test.

The problem with all of this was that the day was really LONG, and at the end of the day I felt like that was enough school for me, I'm done. I can't believe I have to do it over and over again for nine more months! I don't want to go back to anxiety and constant obsessing over my grades! People have no idea how hard school is with OCD/anxiety. Anyway, my classes seem like they will be alright, and I'm interested in all of them, I just don't want to go through another school year. I still haven't recovered from the last one.

I'm also emotionally extremely drained right now. My mind is going crazy. I don't want to write about it, but I'm so confused.

Well I need to go write "the first 200 words of my autobiography" for creative writing. I have no clue what I'll write. Maybe I'll find the autobiography I wrote a few years ago and use that.

this is why i don't watch TV (again, yes, again and again)

I will sound like a broken record. I always do, I always repeat it. But you know why? Because it doesn't go away, no matter what I do. No matter what I do it comes back and it gets me, usually when I'm stressed and vulnerable about something else.
My parents watch TV. I was trying to get my application to the National Honor Roll scholarship done. They watch shows that I find interesting, but every once in a while there is a show on sexual abuse. It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't now.
It always matters.
Suddenly, I was in an uber-anxious angry, scared, lost mood.
This blurry picture is my brother and I. It's my third or my fourth birthday. Anyway, right about the time he hurt me. We look happy, don't we? We weren't. It wasn't his fault, really. He was eleven. That's not very old. He was so angry at my mom. I can't count one ten million hands how many times I have been very angry with my mom.
They argued every night, my mom and my brother. My brother was into marijuana, I think, and not into homework. He was starting to get into a lot of trouble. Meanwhile, my mom was still hitting him. You reach rock bottom, hit hard. I remember how angry I was. I remember not eating and the dramatic fainting in school to get my mom's attention. My brother's not really that different. I hurt myself, he hurt me. We both did it to my mom.
I understand all of this. I understand it in my head and my heart, that my brother was really just as confused then as I have ever been. But it still hurts the same. It's still those same hands that force you down, force your legs apart. It doesn't make a difference if it's a fifty-year-old pervert or an eleven-year-old drug addict you idolize.
I trust him, you know? And he was doing this to me. I loved him more than anyone else. He was everything to me. He wasn't supposed to leave me. He played rubberband wars with me, played water gun games with me, sucked his thumb with me, played nintendo with me, wrestled with me, hugged me, held me, loved me...
It was him whose arms were forcing me down. HOW DO I RECONCILE THIS?! When he left, when he got sent away, I had nightmares every night. I cried and I yelled and I kept my parents awake. I screamed and I kicked my legs and my life at school went to hell. I've never been as happy as I was when I saw him in Samoa after a year of that screaming.
But I can't touch people. I can't say words. I can't stop remembering, remembering it all... I loved him so much. It can't have been him that did that to me. How can I look at him and see that boy, see the boy who forced those things on me, and not the boy that played rubberband wars and wrestled with me?
Shouldn't the years wipe away all of this? Why does a TV show suddenly force me as back into the past as effectively as my brother forced me into positions on the floor?!
I can't stand not being able to reconcile. It is the same with the rest of them. It is the same with my cousin. I know I wasn't the only one he hurt. Apparently I was the last. But why? How can I make sense of anything when he is across the country? I need him to talk to me. I need him to explain. I need to understand why he hurt so many little kids. I need to reconcile the pictures I have of him with the truths I remember. I need him to write me a letter that explains it all.
I need them all, I need them all to sit before me- my brother, my cousin, whatever babysitters there were, if the memories can be trusted- and explain themselves. I am like the judges that cannot judge the crime; they must know the psychology of the criminal.

I think there's something wrong with me, because I am a broken record, because it keeps coming back. Everything in my life seems like this, with this bipolar. Things seem okay and then they come back and they break.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN TO PEOPLE?! I don't care what Foucault says. It hurts. He can say it's okay to hurt kids all day, but he hasn't lived through it. IT HURTS!

Why does this happen to people? Why doesn't it go away? Why did my brother do that to me, and say it was another game like rubberbands or wrestling? Why did my cousin hurt me? Why did my babysitters? Why can't I move on why can't everything be fixed why does it hurt as badly now as it did then why can't I believe it's not my fault why do people think it's okay to do this to other human beings why am I a broken record why can't I remember everything why can't I be sure of the memories I have why do I keep remembering more

why after one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen years does it hurt this bad?
why why why why why why why why why why why why why...

melancholy

I shouldn't write when I feel like this. I know that this post will conclude in a frenzy of angst and depression. I can almost imagine the flow of it. But still I write. What else can be done?

I'm feeling inadequate. That word could just sum it all up, I think. I feel like my whole life is a facade. I know that I have friends, but I don't feel like it. I feel like everything I do is a deception, another act to try to conceal what and who I really am. Really, I don't have the energy for friends or relationships. I feel like I should. it's a horrible place. I want relationships, but I can't be adequate in them.

I keep thinking about what Josh said. I try to forget but I can't. I keep thinking about how I can't make someone feel loved when I kiss them. Maybe I just can't be close to anyone. Maybe I'll never have sex, or if I do I won't feel anything.

I'm seventeen years old. It didn't matter as much before, but it matters now. I should feel something, anything! I should be something! I should make people feel like I care!

I do care. I care unbearably much.

I want to touch someone and not be afraid. I want to kiss someone and have my brain turn off just for a while, just be flooded with something other than bored logic.

I can't make people feel loved.

I'm such a failure, in the end. I'm a failure at it all. I've tried and tried and tried to be something, to accomplish something, and in the end I've accomplished nothing. I've failed at music and sports and everything else that I do, and now I have failed in my own intimate life. It's all a facsimile. I'm just a sham, I really am. Why do you read this? I'm not real.

Why can't I feel like other people do? Why can't I get excited and just talk to people without thinking about all the words first? Why can't I just hug someone with feeling scared or awkward or afraid? I love being hugged. I love it so much. But I can't hug people very easily because I'm afraid. I don't know what I'm afraid of. I don't know why it should matter, but it does.

My parents told me tonight that I've failed at being a good sister to my dog.

I keep thinking about how much of a failure I am. I keep thinking about how I want people to call me (but people do call me!) and ask me to hang out with them (but people do ask me that, I just never have the energy to do it!), but it's really just me, because I could be with friends every day if I wanted to.

I miss Josh a lot. I miss him so much. I'm not good enough, though, for him. He deserves someone that can make him feel special and loved and everything like that.

I'm just so inadequate.

the world splits like an orange

I have a hard time with oranges. First, the outside has to curl off in tilted tectonic plates (I could give you the three variable equation if you wanted it). Then one is left with a round ball full of water. It can hold itself together for a while, it can pretend to be whole and fool you with its semblance of a whole object, but as soon as you start prying at the top or the bottom the fault lines appear and the orange splits. Sometimes it splits cleanly, without shedding suculent juice; sometimes it splits in a messy tear of fibrous bundles of liquid, splashing all over everything.

So, too, is the world.

I'd like to first remark that bourgeoisification is in fact a word. I have Foucault to thank for that discovery. I am delighted. Usually when I add "isification" to the end of nouns in English essays and such I get little red lines drawn on my papers, or when I try to incorporate a noun-turned-verb in my conversation, I get awkward silences. I'm glad someone has gotten away with it.

I haven't been sleeping lately, not really. I'm addicted to Xanax, but I refuse to take it. People keep assuring me that life is better when you are not addicted to things. I have been addicted to various things since... um... forever, so I wouldn't know, but I'm willing to trust these people despite my fear. Anyway, I can fall asleep all right but then my dreams are really restless and I'm only sort of half-asleep; I wake up after like four hours. I have dreampt about the people I loved getting murdered, all of this in a sort of half-haze, that horrible place where it is too real to be a nightmare and maybe not too nightmarish to be real. These past two nights I have dreampt about math; the night before last I dreampt that I was existing on a plane of the equation f(x,y,z)=5+2x+4y or something like that. I kept trying to tell people that it wasn't right, I couldn't exist on a flat plane like that, but they kept telling me it was the philosophical plane and I should just accept it. This morning as I was half asleep and my dog was barking I dreampt that I was being spun around in a computer graphing program, that I was really four-dimensional and the only way to see me was the contour I could make on a 3D graph. Mostly these dreams are incredibly agitated; I wake up tired.

I suppose most people go through their periodic religious doubts, but this is the first time I have really considered all of my subconscious naggings. It has split everything open like an orange, like an unclean orange trailing jagged translucent pockets of flesh dripping sticky juice all over the place.
I can't drink orange juice anymore, because of my teeth. You know what's funny is that when I used to OD on lithium to make myself throw up (which caused this teeth problem in the first place), I usually swallowed the pills with orange juice.

If I didn't feel somewhat awake, I would believe I am sleeping in that agitated state of restlessness. I feel restless. I have been so anxious this month. It doesn't help that school is starting. I am worried about everything. I can't stop worrying. The medication helps, but I don't take it during the day. I should and I will, but it makes me tired. Not tired enough to sleep.

I want to find the bit of me that triggers chain reactions and kill it. Why are there wires connecting all of the vulnerable areas of my mind? Now that the religious globe has blown up in plumes of flame like the friendly analogous orange, everything else follows. I can't quarantine myself anymore. One part of the castle goes and they all go. Where are my walls? Oh right. I've been trying to tear them down for two years. I'm starting to succeed, but am only experiencing the detrimental consequences of a relatively naked psyche.

I was reading my sixth and early-seventh grade journals today. That was before the first explosion. I wasn't really bipolar back then. I was depressed in elementary school, but although in middle school I was angry at my mom for hitting me and yelling at me, my mood was somewhat in the middle, until november of seventh grade at least. I worried a lot about being liked, about being popular. Now I read it and I'm glad I've changed, but I wish sometimes that just once I could try another week without the bipolar. I can't remember what it felt like to be somewhere in the middle. All I know are these poles of the orange where I pry, pry, pry and crack the world into sections.

I used to be a lot more sociable too. I used to do a lot more things with people. I had a lot of friends. They weren't all really good friends at all the way my friends are now, but there were lots of them. I still felt alone, though. I always felt alone.

I remember that in elementary school my friends would ask me to play during recess. The boys always asked me to play kickball with them; the girls wanted to play our imaginary animals game. I was very involved in both. I had a lot of friends then, too. But there were some days when I sat against the building and watched them play while I read. I remember reading those books about the mouse that had a motorcycle. They were always easy for me to read. I remember reading the book and watching my friends play kickball or imaginary animals. I remember feeling very far away.

I remember reading The Devil's Arithmetic in fourth grade. I remember writing about this too. Maybe in this blog. Oh well. It is proof that my past never really recedes for me; it is on a conveyer belt going so fast that centrifugal force holds things to it. Even at the end of the belt, the memories stayed glued as the fall off the edge of the world. Inevitably, they all come up again to repeat it all over and over. It is like Nietzsche's idea of reocurring life (I seem to be referencing him a lot lately), except that the lives are all superimposed, occuring within eachother. Anyway, in fourth grade when I read that book I remember sitting outside and carving UIKI1 into a metal plate on the playground all alone, watching people. I can't remember what all of the letters stood for. It was akin to the holocaust numbers people got burned in their arms (which I was thinking about because of the book). I remember what the 1 stood for though. It stood for me, just me, all alone. Even when I was playing kickball or imaginary animals (of course we grew out of imaginary animals in fifth grade). Even then I was all alone.
Whenever we did play imaginary animals I was secretly afraid. I knew that I didn't really believe in our animals or our alien games or anything we made up; I also knew I couldn't tell anyone that, in case they all believed in it but me, and I was the wrong one. But I felt left out, then, then as we talked about the animals that were sitting in our laps. I couldn't understand where the line was between make-believe and real. It was so horribly blurred for me.

It's not that I didn't have friends. I've always had a lot of friends. It's not that I wasn't good at kickball or imaginary animals. It's that I didn't ever believe in them. I was never a part of my peers' world. I always felt alone, until pretty much a year or two ago.

My problem is that I'm just so nostalgic, and I'm so circuited; the conveyor belt loops and loops; the explosions trigger more and more explosions.

I don't know what to do anymore. I'm very afraid right now. I haven't self-injured in three months. I haven't binged or purged in three months. I feel very lost without these things, and now I have lost my religion as well. I feel so vulnerable and empty out in vacant space. I want to find somewhere where I belong. That's what I've really always wanted: to belong somewhere.

and the dam bursts

"But [God] had to die: he saw with eyes that saw everything; he saw man's depths and ultimate grounds, all his concealed disgrace and ugliness. His pity knew no shame: he crawled into my dirtiest nooks.... The god who saw everything, even man- this god had to die! Man cannot bear it that such a witness should live." -Nietzsche (who else?)

One of the most powerfully spiritual passages I have read is Nietzsche's description of the old crazy man telling everyone they've killed God and then realizing he's come too early. Nietzsche would likely hit me with a lightning bolt if he heard that I took this to in some way affirm theology, but there you go. He was the ambiguous type. I found it fascinating that Nietzsche portrayed man as the killer. I did think, anyway, that although Nietzsche seems a bit of an athiest, the passage was compatible with Christian thought. Even if there is a God up there, we may be effectively eliminating him on this earth just with our apathy towards each other. I don't know.

The title of this post is somewhat a misnomer. The dam has been bursting and repairing itself for years and years. This time it's going to take some major bandaids. If there is a God up there, and I am not killing Him, then maybe He will help me. I don't know.

When I was in seventh grade I watched a movie called The Body. I thought it was an amazing movie idea. In it, archaeologists think they have unearthed the body of Christ, disproving Christianity. It is about how the world reacts to such a debunking of a thorough way of life. There was this one part where they were talking about people committing suicide because they no longer had a religion when one man said something like "even if religion isn't true, it is a good thing, because it gives people morals and a good way of life." I believe in this strongly. I think that religion can provide people with a meaningful life, and aid in the instillment of morals that help society and humanity. However, I also read the news. I know what people do to each other over religion. I know how they kill in the name of their God. I know that religion can be a horrible thing, promoting bias and perversion and morals that are not conducive to society and humanity.

I have grown up Mormon. We've been going to church since I can remember, although when I was young my dad wasn't really into it. I have experienced, I think, both of the amazing benefits of religion and the horrible things that make me doubt it. I have seen our church do wonderful things for others. My church is really into service. 10% of my money my whole life has gone to causes I thought were greater than myself. My church's doctrine preaches love and tolerance. However, I have also seen the arrogance of the concentrations of my religion. I have seen the discrimination against non-Mormons in intensely Mormon areas. I have seen my friends that have rebelled been kicked out of their families. I have seen my church do service projects just because of the church image. I read philosophers, and I get confused here. Is it still good to help people if your motive is selfish? Nietzsche, I think, would say no. One gains something, yes, but one loses much more. (Not that Nietzsche advocates the idea of purely 'selfish' or 'selfless' actions.)

It never occurred to me until this year that morals could be derived from something other than religion. To me, religion was why I did and didn't do certain things. I was told by my church to follow a code of ethics, and to me my church produced that code. I didn't even think about the possibility that morals could be self-created the way Nietzsche argues. Every moral instinct within me, from my aversion to murder to my idea that it's wrong to hurt myself, comes from scriptures.

Let me tell you how I feel right now, now that I am realizing perhaps my morals didn't come from God: LOST.

My religion is very strong. It doesn't really, in many ways, make itself easy to question. One accepts, that is all. You can ask the missionaries questions, sure, but in the end you are converted to every single bit of it or you deny it all. It is the one church that is 100% true. If you disagree with one tiny tenant, you disagree with the foundation of the entire church. It creates a strong incentive to not disagree, I think.

There are a few questions I have always received, like why couldn't African Americans have the priesthood until all of the segregation problems started coming up? Isn't it convenient that during the 70's (or whenever my church lifted that ban) is when they were allowed it? I have always told people what I have been taught- we don't know. It's God's plan, not ours.

But we are people, 100% fallible. I know that our prophet is supposed to be pretty good, but even he can make mistakes. What makes our church any less succeptable to corruption than all of the others? I know that the Catholic church's doctrines were created mostly be a vote that occured at the meeting in Nicaea (sp?). I always thought, how can they believe their church, when their mode of baptism was decided by a bunch of old guys voting? How can they believe it is the truth?

But how can I believe my church is the truth when the answer to every difficult question is that I just must have faith? I have many problems with my religion, but my whole life I have been encouraged to just swallow them, to have faith, to not question. However, I am going to stop following that doctrine and tell you the truth: I believe that most religious corruption comes from the tradition of not questioning doctrine.

My church creates a huge incentive to never question it. If it is the only true church, and the temple is the only place to get married, and if those that have heard the truth will be responsible for having accepted it or not once they die, then we're totally screwed if we leave it. We won't get to be with the people we love after we die. We won't be able to ever reach the highest tier of heaven until we accept it. Therefore, if you're going to leave my church, you had better be pretty dang sure it isn't true.
Isn't that convenient?

Let me tell you what problems I have. First off, with God. How can God know everything that ever has happened and will happen and yet still be able to interact with the world to change it? That doesn't make sense at all. If God has free agency to act on the world, then he can't possibly know the fate of the world unless he himself has no free agency and is acting according to some even higher plan. My Book of Mormon (and the Bible I think) says that in the end, Satan will be defeated, for sure, no doubts. It says, in the part that was written 600 something BC, that Joseph Smith would come along and someone would lose part of the sealed plates. And yet it also says that if we pray and follow the commandments our lives will be blessed. Well, if I have free agency to pray and follow commandments, and God has promised he will change my life if I follow them, then I determine my future, and unless I don't have free agency, God has no clue what's going to happen. The best he can do is take a statistical guess. Statistics usually work. One can be sure of a mold of probability. But one, believing in free agency, can never be sure that one individual in all of time will fit into that probability. Chaos theory galore.

Second off, as Kierkegaard so kindly pointed out to me, why in the world would God require Abraham to kill Isaac as a test? To me, if the commandment is that 'thou shalt not kill,' and I am told to kill my son, I'm in a pretty big conundrum. Either God is testing whether I will follow his commandment not to kill people, or he really wants me to kill my son for him. But why would God deliberately ask me to break one of his unbreakable rules? That's not very consistent. However, in doing so, God sets up a very convenient imperative: these things are wrong, but if I tell you to do them, then they are okay. No wonder people in the middle east are killing each other.

Third, why does our salvation require one man to suffer and die? And if he didn't have a choice, what makes his sacrifice meaningful? What makes his action any different than all of the other martyrs that died for God, like the suicide bombers that smashed into the World Trade Centers- weren't they truly convinced that they were dying for God? (Hopefully I will not be smitten for comparing Jesus to suicide bombers...) If Christ did have a choice, how could prophets predict way before hand that he would die for us? As I mentioned earlier, God can only be sure of probabilities. No matter how well you know someone, there is a chance that they will do something you could have never predicted. Jesus, if he had choice, could have just as logically quit. He could have killed someone, done something wrong. Again, we have a problem here with free agency.

Fourth, why is wrath and anger usually wrong, but not wrong when Christ starts throwing things at the temple? It again sets up the Abraham-like deal where we are only to follow God's commandments unless such-and-such happens. Here, such-and-such is blasphemy against God. So if violence is justifiable in the name of defending the sanctity of God, what makes those people that are trying to kill Jews or gays or anything wrong, if they are just following their interpretation of this action? Religion can, in this case, prompt men to do things against the morals of their society, or even to do things that change the morals of their entire society (like with anti-semitism and the holocaust). This doesn't seem right to me.

Look at all the religions in the world. What is the probability that one, just one, is right, when they are all claiming their validity? How can I allow my morals to be taken from purely a religion when religion can do horrible things to morals?

When I read my Book of Mormon or the Bible and I am believing in my church, I feel comforted. The books tell me that because I am being righteous, I will be rewarded forever. However, when I read them last night all I read about was how I am going to burn in Hell forever. It feels like coercion to me. It seems wrong. I believe in a God of love. Why would God want me to burn in hell just for having a hard time believing in him? Doesn't it make sense that I'd have a hard time, with all of this confusion going on down here? Why should I believe in my religion just because I am afraid of the consequences it preaches if it is true and I don't believe in it? Shouldn't I believe in it because it feels right to me, and because it is the conclusion I come to in my heart? The only few books in all of our scriptures that I see as purely preaching love and peace are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with the exception of the temple incident. However, even those books go on about the horrible consequences to people that do not follow that doctrine of love. If I condemn all murderers to everlasting Hell, what makes me better than those murderers?

We are told in our church that experiencing the spirit is a tingling sensation, a sort of feeling of passion. It makes people cry. However, psychotic people that believe they are seeing demons or angels or God can cry too. Our minds can make us do anything. If I am expecting to feel a certain way at a religious function, can't I easily create that feeling with my mind? The first time I went to EFY (a church camp) a few years ago I really believed in my church, and the last few days I had a very passionate, spiritual experience. However, this year when I went I was doubting majorly. I kept praying to have those same feelings, but I didn't have them. God knew I was extremely vulnerable during that week- why couldn't he make me feel what I desperately needed to feel? When I eat a donut, I can make myself physically sick just by thinking about all of the calories dispersing. I don't try to make myself feel sick consciously; it just happens because of what I am thinking about. Why couldn't I make myself feel as if there was a tingling within me?

Could it be, then, that all of religion is really just created from some expectation? Ah, yes, but there must be a primary mover (thank you Aristotle). What if someone, one day, started to think about it, and realize how meaningless one life is if there is nothing greater than oneself, or even the human race? What if they got lost in that chaos, and determined there must be a God, there must be a God just to maintain sanity? What if that was the only way that they could live with themselves and life? Suddenly we have this concept, this concept of religion...

I think everything mentioned above makes a good case against religion. My whole life I have been told, in my religion, not to question, and that if I questioned I would be punished. This gave me a great incentive to just try to blindly believe. However, now that the questions have opened themselves, that admonition not to question just makes me question all the more.

This dam has burst before in my life, and I have patched it with spiritual tingling feelings and a complete fear of what a life without my religion would be like. Right now, I'm trying very hard to keep myself from doing this.

Not that I don't believe in God. I do. I believe that if spirituality arose with civilizations all over the world that weren't connected to each other, there must be some element of truth in it. But I think that the truth isn't derived through society or religion at all; the truth is just in the individual feeling- spirituality, not religion.

Religion, as I mentioned, can cause people to do very good things. But do these things really matter if they are only doing them to help themselves, here or in some after life (this was my main argument with the Homeric hero when I started writing in this blog 1.5 years ago)? If we are to do things out of selfishness, where is the virtue in that? Should we not do things out of love?

If there is a God up there, he is the champion of spirituality, of love, of humanitarian feelings. He isn't limited to those that acknowledge him; he exists in everyone. The only real way to get to him is through the self. All of the good things that religion has doon, the genuinely good things based on a real love for other human beings, I believe are really the products of spirituality, not religion. I don't believe that I should derive my morals from my religion; I believe that I should derive them from myself, and then, if I must, I should find a group of people with similar self-derived morals and belong to that. I should try to get people to believe in their own values, not try to impose my own values or beliefs on them. I should care more about others and love than anything else; peace comes from this. If I am a part of society, I should belong to it more for a love of others than for a need to aquire benefits for myself. God is about love; he isn't about who is right and who is wrong when it comes to semantics. The only commandment that we really need is love; all of the other commandments fall into place after that. Therefore, God only needs to be a God of love to produce spirituality that causes peaceful societies to spring up.

If all of the good things about religion are really just residual effects from spirituality, then what do we get from religion? I tell you what we get, if we forget that it is about the individual, not the institution- we get fear, we get stories created to coerce us, we get corruption, we get murder, we get confused values, we get disfunctional societies, we get biases, we get hatred, we get discrimination, we get anger, we get superiority complexes. All of that, from an institution that forgets itself.

I know that my religion preaches a God of love, and above all else it preaches love. I see the wonderful things the spirituality in my religion accomplishes. In this sense I am very much a Mormon. But I also see what people have done to this church, and to every church, and left with the doctrine of love that my religion preaches and the actuality of fear and corruption that religion embodies, I can only turn away from the institution and back to the spirituality.

I DO BELIEVE IN MORALS. I am not amoral at all. I thought that to believe in morals I had to believe in my religion, but I don't. I have started to question all of these things, and now, because of the lovely system my religion built in my mind, I feel lost in a chaos. I want to run back to the institution; I want to cling to it, to a place where there was clarity and control. But there were so many contradictions there. I guess I can live with a lot of contradictions. But I cannot live with something that contradicts a God of love.

Through this God that I believe in, I believe in real human nature, uncorrupted by society (I suppose I am turning into Rousseau). More than anything in the world, more than any commandment, more than any church sermon, more than chaos theory or string theory, more than the quadratic equation, more than the proteins on the surface of red blood cells, more than my own hands that are typing this, more than my own consciousness that is dictating this, more than EVERYTHING, I believe in love. I believe in caring about other human beings. If that view is not compatible with certain parts of my religion, so be it. In my heart I know that I can't believe that my church, as it exists now, is 100% true. I believe perhaps that it is 80 or 90% true, but the real truth I get from love cannot be found in human corruption.

I know that even my own views inherently carry contradictions. But if you get anything from this dam-burst, let it be that I believe in love, and all of my morals are aligned with that belief. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in the liberation that all of this brings me. I believe in the morals that my church teaches, in not swearing and not having sex until I'm married and such, but not because my church preaches them- because I believe them, first, without the church.

But let me tell you what else is the problem. I will also keep going to church. I will get married in the temple. I will try to believe, because I am afraid. I am afraid of going to Hell. I am afraid of not following my church, just in case it is 100% true. Because I'm sure in trouble if it is, and I haven't acted in accordance to it.

If there is a God up there, though, and I believe there is, then he will know all along what I really believe in, because like Nietzsche said, he is the first and last witness.

I'm scared. I'm really, really scared to type all of this. It is so against everything I have been taught. But if it is my conclusion, doesn't that make it's truth even more likely, if it denies my education?

*Waiting for the lightning bolt to strike me down to Hell*

Hopeless

It is hopeless; I cannot pay for college. My parents' expected yearly contribution is $40,000, yet they are on the verge of bankruptcy and have a very low net worth. Even still, the financial aid calculator the colleges use has told me that I will have to come up with $40,000.

I will apply for scholarships galore, but there really is no hope. We have no money, but it looks like we have money.

STUPID BROTHER!!!!!!!! Perhaps I am just siphoning off my anger on him. I don't care. It is mostly his fault. And my mom's, for buying so much stuff.

Even if I do get like $10,000 in scholarships per year, which is doubtful, there is still $30,000 unaccounted for...

I must go douse myself in Final Fantasy and sugar-free juice...

No, I'm actually really stressed. I don't know what I'm going to do.

happenings

Yesterday I walked into my math class and saw to my horror the nightmare of my life: Will A., my fellow debater who I thought I had finally escaped by signing up for math earlier and confirming a place in a quickly-filling class. Oh, the naivete! I will never escape him! He will probably follow me to college!

The combination of Will and multivariable calculus was quite akin to electric shock treatments. We are so ignorant! So many years of two dimensional graphing, fomented by Descartes' cartesian plane! Two variables, x and y, and oh-so-managable. Why did it not occur to me that physics, which describes math in a three-dimensional world, requires a multi-dimensional system, rather then the cartesian plane? Suddenly our graph is a chimera, with x's, y's, and z's sticking out all over the place and extending into all eternity. Why we could graph 11 dimensions if our minds could understand it! Welcome home, string theory. Anyway, it was a bit of a shock to me (a bit, ha) after all of these years to realize that the world is indeed three dimensional. That's what multi-variable calculus is. It's describing relationships with multiple inputs.

Our teacher (who was bouncing around and looked like a miniature version of Marcus)... er professor... did not waste time explaining test grading procedures and attendence policies. No, he thrust these Who-wants-to-be-a-millionar-esque buzzers into our hands and forced us into 3D graphing. I was very confused at first, as my planes were mixed up from the norm.

No one has found out we're in high school yet. Hopefully it will stay that way. In this math class, due to the fact that it includes people that want to go into things like engineering, actually has some kids in it that are quite good at math. I will just sit back and let them run the class happily.

I probably should have gone to class this morning, although I spent hours fighting with the tyrannical 3D homework last night, to ask questions, but I slept through it. Good thing Tuesday's are not required.

Last night after class I was consumed by bookstores. First I went to Aunt Bonnie's used bookstore where I found a Descartes book, a Sartre book, a Camus book, and a book entitled The Tao of Physics (take that for uniting the two cultures). In my car I opened the Descartes book and found that it was owned by the rival school's previous head debate coach. That made me laugh and laugh a lot. We are just recycling knowledge. My math professor threw Descartes out the window anyway.
Then I went to Waldenbooks and was attracted to a sale on books so I bought Crime and Punishment and Leaves of Grass. I have realized that I literally spend 99% of my money on books.

Then my mom took me shopping and I bought this awesome DC comics shirt, whose awesomeness speaks for itself:
I saw several shirts that I loved. The whole time my mom was saying, "But Trista said this is in style!" (Trista is my sister-in-law who could have walked out of some fashion magazine), and I realized that I like what I like, and I don't give a care what's 'in style.' I also told my mom I would buy clothes that I liked, not her or Trista, or it would be a waste of money. My mom got very upset at this, which I think is very irrational. It all made me relaize how far I have come. In middle school I was so desperate to fit in (mostly in sixth grade) that I bought clothes just because of the brandname on them. I tried to do everything that I thought was socially right. Now I really don't care at all what everyone else thinks; this is my awesome DC shirt and they'll deal with it whether they like it or not.
Anyway, after buying this awesome shirt I got these way cool shoes (I'm running out of adoring adjectives):
Then, to top it al off, we went to the sporting goods store and bought me a backpack that will hopefully survive through college and go where no backpack of mine has ever gone before (in surviving more than a year, it will already have achieved this):

And today, after sleeping through my math class (which will never happen again), I had to go to the school to pick up my schedule. It was really messed up at first, but we finally got it worked out so I can take all of the classes I wanted to, even creative writing! It's going to be hard for the first semester though because I will be missing large chunks of physics and AP government every other day. But I can go to orchestra for a half an hour every day, and I can go to music theory on tuesdays and thursdays because I'm taking the music theory AP test this year.

And if that wasn't the best news in the world (although it did require waiting in lines for over an hour to get that all fixed), my counselor told me that if when I finished all my homework for the Spanish class and I really wasn't doing well, or couldn't do well on the final, she would somehow 'lose' my records and it would mysteriously 'vanish' from my transcript.

YES! Creative writing, philosophy books, backpacks, plaid shoes, comic hero t-shirts, stress-free Spanish courses, and the painful return to calculus...

What more could I ask for?

Morgan

I could write about the trip to Tacoma. It was fun, exhausting, and spine-wrenching, though I'm sure moreso for Morgan and Shea than for me. I could write about the anxieties I had moving in and how bad I felt about Morgan's pirate trashcan getting squashed and scratched. There's a lot I could write about, but I will write about it later, because this post is about Morgan. I doubt she will like it, or believe it, or care, but she can't deny it, because if she believes in subjective truth, then there is no doubt that this is the truth for me.

I remember the first time I really met Morgan. I'd seen her before, but the first time I really met her was in my school. I remember that the first thing I noticed was her suitcoat. She always seemed too old to be in high school from the moment I met her. She seemed too smart to be subjected to such constant indoctrination. I have a very distinct memory of talking to her in the parking lot at my school in the dark on the friday night of a tournament. I don't know what we talked about, but I remember thinking that I would have to try to pretend I was smart or I could never be good enough for her to like me. There was always some essence so attractive about her, and it screamed transcendence. She had transcended the world to me. She seemed like some impossibly strong substance. She was so much better than human. I think that I gave up a lot of my hope then of knowing her. I simply wasn't good enough. Most of the debate season I watched her from afar in a constant fascination. I was too afraid of breaking some fragile connection to really try to talk to her.

There are a lot of people at my school that try to be hippies and to belong to the counterculture and to be vegan and to plaster liberal bumperstickers all over the back of their car and smoke pot and work at the real food store and talk about how the government should just get out of Iraq. They seem to be opinionated about everything, but it is an entirely hollow form of opinion because it is just an adopted mask they have glued to themselves to be cool. They fit the form too carefully. Their calculated movements give them away. They are fake. They are just like I was in middle school, adopting any identity to fit into a group of people. They have no self, really; they only act according to their stereotype. They are completely intolerant of intolerance. They squash themselves into the mold.

Morgan is like the consummation of this fakeness. She really is the mold. She's not doing it to be cool, or to fit in, or anything. She's doing it because it's who she really is. She really does care about the environment and the government and being a vegetarian. She's not trying to fit into a stereotype; she is the authentic being that created the stereotype. There is no aura of fakeness about her. Her only aura is raw honesty. Like I said, she totally transcended the idiotic social politics of high school that I was still somewhat prey to. She existed in a complete way that I had not ever found before in my insecure peers. It made me want so badly to know her, but I was too scared that I just wasn't transcended enough to belong to her sphere. I worried about annoying her.

In our poetry workshop I was fascinated with another aspect of Morgan: her poetry. Any kind of good poetry is, in my opinion, rather self-revealing. I sensed my own emotions in Morgan's poetry. I tried to talk to her but I didn't want to be bothersome. I mostly listened to her poetry and the passion she put into it. If I had to describe Morgan with two words I would say passionate and loving. The loving is enhanced by the passion. I loved her poetry. I loved the emotion in it. I loved the way it made me feel. I loved the way it was the kind of poetry I wanted to write but couldn't write. Most of all I was struck by her honesty. I wrote poems that were highly symbolic. They were extremely self-revealing, but nobody in that workshop except Siobhan knew me anywhere near well enough to decipher the symbolism. Morgan didn't try to hide anything in her poetry. She was honest in a way I couldn't be. She's always been honest in a way that I can't be, ever since I met her. Everything she did that I did too we did very similarly in our minds, but my mental processes state in the safe confines of her mind while she wasn't afraid to express hers. It was never to get attention or anything either; it was just that she is honest.

I got to know her better my second year in debate. I watched her debate against the devil (aka Malaina) and win because she actually knew what Locke was talking about while Malaina was running on quick scans of Wikipedia. The passion in Morgan's debating surprised me too. There was nothing fake about it. Usually I can be passionate about something that I don't believe in in order to win a debate round, but when Morgan debated she really believed in what she was saying for both sides of the issue. None of the other people I debated had that passion.

Morgan always made me feel better when I talked to her. No matter how much I sucked in a debate round, she validated me. She told me what I needed to hear to keep debating. She agreed with me when I placed blame on my opponant rather than myself. Sometimes the only way to continue surviving in a tournament is to momentarily discard some amount of accountability. You have to be confident. You cannot doubt in yourself. Morgan gave me that confidence. She also had dread-locks, which was awesome, because the other people I knew that had dreadlocks had just done it to fit into the liberal hippie stereotype, but Morgan's weren't for that reason. She looks beautiful with them. She just is beautiful in general.

When I found out she was having a hard time from Kristin (and later when I found out she OD'd) I was in a sort of shock. I had never really conceived Morgan as human before that. She seemed so much more to me. Even when I knew that she had OD'd thought it didn't seem like a weakness, but rather some side effect of genius. Even so, it was hard for me to look at her after that and imagine her in pain. I began to see the more tender side of her, the side easily deceived by ridiculous notions about herself. I began to feel more careful in my conversation. It began to hurt to look at her. I knew from Kristin that she wasn't doing well, but I could never really confront her on it. Even in her intense depression she just seemed so strong to me. She was always so willing to help me. I was angry with the world for hurting her because she was so pure and honest in everything she did. It is like when teenage boys throw rocks to kill squirrels. How can they do that? How can they injure something that really doesn't belong to their world of hate?

Meanwhile, I still wasn't really her friend. She was an amazing mentor to me, but we mostly talked about philosophy and debate. I didn't know much about her. Just what I'd heard from other people that knew her, mostly about how amazing she was.

When she quit debate I knew something was really wrong. I remember at the Powell tournament when I was looking at her poetry how I could know vague bits about her and not know her when I wanted so badly to be a part of her life somehow. Amanda had told me a few things that made me really want to know her rather than just her carona.

Much later when I found out she had been in the hospital I felt sick. I remember that hospital. I remember the beds. I cried myself to sleep every night. I remember the game therapy and the group therapy and the movies and the breakfastlunchdinner on those plastic trays and that idiotic psychologist named Karl whom I hated. I remembered the bolts on the windows and all of the contraband and the precautions to keep things like pencils outside of the room and the nightly fifteen-minute checks with the flashlights and the way all of my journal entries from that week are written in terribly disjointed and emotional poetry. I remembered all of that and I tried to imagine her there and I couldn't. It was the beginnings of me realizing that even if she was way too smart and way too good for high school, even if she was made out of this strong substance I couldn't fathom, she was human, and she was terribly much like me. It seemed so wrong that the world could somehow accost her. It made me angry at everything. I wanted to protect her somehow. I wanted to make her see how important she was to me and how amazing she was, but I couldn't. I still didn't really know her. I knew the rumors, the bits, the pieces. I wrote about her a lot in my journal. When I saw her she told me that she'd moved out of her house and that made me know something was wrong too, but I was always too afraid to ask what. I didn't want to shatter her somehow. Even in her strength there was something so tense in her.

When she found my blog I didn't know what to think. It was at the height of my concern for her but she knew nothing of my concerns. She had no idea that I thought about her all of the time. I was finally beginning to understand that her mind worked like mine, and her depression and lack of self-esteem worked like mine, even if her intellect was above anyone her age. I didn't want her to realize how messed up I was and to quit talking to me or something. But it was exhilerating, in a way, because it forced the honesty that Morgan has that I don't. I can't tell people about my life; I can't live honestly; I can't act how I feel; I can't wear my pain on my sleeves; I can't tell people 'I'm not okay.' I can write it all in this blog that's hidden away from most people in my life on this lovely internet, but I can't live it the way Morgan can. I have been taught my entire life to hide things. If something was wrong it got swept into me; I had the more important job of being the glue that tried desperately to hold my broken family together. Morgan had done the thing that I couldn't do- she had allowed herself to break. I don't know why I can't do that. The closest I've ever gotten was when I got sent to the hospital. But in the end, I still feel like I have to take care of everyone and not talk about myself and not be real. I feel like I can't be myself or everyone will leave me because I'm too messed up. I know they need me, and I can't bother them with all of this from my blog. They can't know it. So really, it would have been impossible for me to ever find the courage to try to tell Morgan anything I write on here. When she found this, I was alleviated from that pressure I could never fulfill. She did it for me.

In a letter that she wrote me she furthur proved that we are a lot alike in our views of the world and ourselves (although I am a bit ahead on realizing my good qualities) and that- this can be attributed, I think, to the empathetic, humanistic characteristics that we share- she really did care about me, even though she hadn't really known me until that point. It was refreshing, to read a letter like that, to read a letter that I could have easily written to someone. It made me feel cared about and noticed the way my friends in real life never do.

In these past few months as I've put together all of the pieces of Morgan I have realized that all of these wonderful qualities she has really are genuine, and they are motivated by such an amazing passion for love. It makes me cringe to imagine her OD-ing or cutting herself or doing anything I do because I know that her life will be amazing because she is amazing. It is so hard for me to hear the things she thinks about herself because I know they are not true and I know that I cannot convince her of that ever.

I believe in Morgan's potential more than I believe in my hands, or in this computer, or in this world, or in anything right now. I know that if she somehow comes around the bend, there is absolutely nothing in this world that can stop her. She's the only one that can stop her. I believe in her as she is now more than all of those things as well. I believe in her love and her empathy and her brilliance and her transcendence and in that strong substance that she is made of. I believe in her strength. I believe in her hope. I believe in her future and her life and her passion. Her passion makes her my hero. I want to have her honesty someday. I want to be that authentic. I want to be that smart. I want to care that much about everything. I want to be that kind. I want to have that kind of love.

I think that when I read that she is happy, that she is hopeful of her future, that she has bought the shoes, computer, or backpack of dhoom, that she wants to be a philosophy professor and really believes it's possible, that she's d**ned amazing for being everything that she is and she's started to realize a tiny bit of that, it makes me happier than anything else in the world. I'm not exaggerating either. Nothing can make my day like Morgan's happiness. Nobody deserves happiness and love and comfort quite as much as she does. Nobody. And like I said, this is no exaggeration.

The day Morgan realizes how special she is, the day she throws away the razors forever and doesn't have to OD or go to the hospital or be depressed or anxious or self-doubting or anything, will be one of the select few happiest days of my life. It will be such an amazing triumph. Even the thought of it will motivate me to try to be like that, to try to do similar amazing things.

I am sad for everyone in the world that doesn't know Morgan and will never know Morgan because they are missing out on a major essence of life and love. She is the most authentic person I have ever met. She is the most caring person I have ever met. She is an awesome friend. She is brilliant and she won't see it. But she will. I know that someday she will. I pray with all my heart to any God, any collection of substance that transcends and molds like Morgan's substance does, that college will be good to her, and that she will see herself the way everyone else in her life sees her. I want her to be happy so badly.

When I walked away from her yesterday it was very difficult. I had to continually remind myself that I wasn't really letting go. I know true friendships can withstand distances, especially in this day of the internet. I saw her walk away across the field with her bag as we walked towards the car and I felt like I couldn't do it. I felt like she was so small and I couldn't leave her, I had to help her somehow, I couldn't just leave her. But I think Morgan was walking into a sunrise. I think she can help herself. I think that even though she is small she is stronger than anyone else I know in very many ways.

I hope, please, God, I'm hoping, that she will walk into a better life. Nothing could make me happier than to hear about the Puget Sound experience of Dhoom. Absolutely nothing.

Morgan, I love you. I really do.

I've dragged out my math book from last year and my tests. Looking at some of these tests, I can't even remember ever knowing a few of these things. Sometimes it's like I've never seen a calculus problem before, rather than having taken two years of calculus. This happened to me last year, though, and it came back really quickly, so I know I'll be okay. The problem with college classes is that they're staggered. Last year first semester was calculus, second semester was discrete math and linear algebra. This year, first semester is calculus (multivariable) and second semester is linear algebra and discrete math (2). Why can't they go together? Why can't I take two semesters of calculus in a row or two semesters of DDS/linear algebra? Why must the educational system enact such a tyranny over the world?

Today wasn't so good. My gel at work didn't work (not my fault though). Then I just felt so anxious and panicky at home. Every time there was any thunder I would jump a foot in the air and think someone was at the door trying to kill me. I finally got out of the house to go running barefoot in the rain and hail, which was nice. But I was definitely panicked even while I was running. It's this feeling like all of your insides are a rubber band stretched to snapping point and you're trying to stretch it a little more. I hate anxiety attacks and panic attacks. Maybe even more than bipolar and OCD.
Apparently I was addicted to xanax or something because when I stopped it (to use only in the case of panic/anxiety attacks rather then every night, because my other meds help with panic/anxiety too) I couldn't sleep anymore. I have gotten only a few hours of sleep these past few nights. It's going to be miserable trying to come off of this xanax. I decided to take it these next few days though. Then I'll worry about it.

I'm going to Tacoma with Morgan and Shea and will be back Saturday night very late or Sunday very early. Then I have one last day of freedom before I have to walk back into calculus land. It's a good thing we're starting with calculus and not DDS/linear algebra, because I don't know if I'd have enough motivation to review DDS/linear algebra. They were way harder for me than calculus.

I can't believe half my friends are leaving for college. It doesn't feel real to me yet. It seems impossible. It's going to be a big shock. It'll be hard leaving Morgan in Tacoma, very hard. I will miss her a lot. I hate leaving people. Probably because I hate being left.

Empathy. Love. I'm still convinced that no matter what those are the best philosophies.

everything is connected

I was sitting in my car today reading Sartre when suddenly *everything* made sense. I could see these connections everywhere. The past few months of my desperate philosophizing were culminated into that moment, and I wasn't confused anymore. It was like everything was turned inside-out, and I could finally get it. Of course then I had to go stab micropipetters everywhere and do PCR so I got distracted, but I still remember quite a bit of my moment of enlightenment so I want to write it before I forget.

I was thinking about existentialism. I wrote that earlier. And I was reading mainly psychology in Sartre. I was thinking about institutions, and churches, and why Nietzsche and Kierkegaard especially were so different and so adamant about not having followers. I realized it was all connected. Something Sartre said triggered a fuse in my mind. Sartre said that people life in self-deception; they don't know it's a lie, which creates a unity of spirit, but at the same time some part of them knows everything, all the truths in the world, because you can't lie unless you know the truth.

So this is my truth. Feel free to disagree. It managed to bring everything wrong with me this whole school year together.

People are lies. Society has created a myth of consciousness and we adopted it. We say we are angry because someone did something to us; so many excuses. We aren't angry because people did it to us; we are angry because it hurt us. Usually anger occurs after hurt. Sometimes before. But I have rarely in my life experienced them separate from each other.
I learned last year at my seminar that the mind is like an iceburg. 90% of it is unseen. We are only aware of the top bit. I was thinking about that today in my car as well. How can the mind be conscious of an unconsciousness? The unconscious holds all of the reasons for our actions; in our consciousness we hold only the excuses we are willing to believe. It's like what Dostoevsky said about houses. People are actually believing themselves when they tell themselves the reason they do drugs or cut or something is that they are depressed. But people have complete control. I am bipolar. I understand depression. However, I think it's still an excuse. People hurt themselves because they are afraid of being happy. They are afraid of not having anything wrong.
So everyone, in their self-perception, is off. We are lying to ourselves. We don't seek the real motives of our actions, but we admit that they are there, buried in some subconscious. However, we are aware of our subconscious which means that some part of it must be conscious. We are lying, so some part of us must know the truth.

This makes the superficial world mostly a lie. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. People find a sort of happiness in the lies. Sartre says there is a sort of honesty in the lies. But I don't think they can ever find real fulfillment or existence. This makes our interpersonal relationships sometimes based on lies as well, but they are only lies we tell ourselves. I thought about Josh a lot today too, and how all year I have seen that he's afraid of being happy and healthy and not being busy but he would never admit it. It's crazy, to be told the truth, to know it, and to bury it in favor of the comfort of depression.

This is how it all came together. I think that people like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard become conscious of their subconscious to the extent that their whole mind is conscious. They are totally self-aware. None of the iceburg is hidden. They see the truth behind their actions, and that gives them a very different view of the world. I think that the 'existenz' is simply self-awareness and a rejection of the lies we have accepted about our psychology.

Sartre said that it is interesting when people go to psychologists because they usually end up subconsciously running away from the wellness they thought they sought by seeing a professional. And some part of people knows this. They are at the psychologist's office, and during the week they do everything they can to not get better. The psychosis is always conscious of itself. The self-deception can make this consciousness a sub-existence rather than awareness.

I have been in therapy for probably twelve years total of my life. I have been running from health that whole time. But also that whole time I have been fed things to make me begin to understand the real motives of my actions. People can't really feel fulfilled, they can't change, until they are willing to admit the real reasons why they do things. With all of these excuses we use, we are just giving ourselves excuses to not change.

Existentialism is intensely personal because all of this I'm describing is a personal process. You have to realize that your consciousness is a lie. You have to begin delving into the real psychology of people. And there you meet a sort of nothingness that most existentialists talk about. Only then can you face the truth. You know it, right now. But you can't face it yet.

I read Frankl's book about happiness and I agreed with him. I think that people always have the option to be happy. They use outward circumstances as excuses to not be happy. They use a lot of things as excuses to not be happy. They even believe, sometimes, that they really want to be happy. But that reminds me of Josh, how he says he loves me, and he doesn't act like it. People that say they want to be happy but then run off after some self-injurious muse are lying with their actions. Honesty leads to happiness. Not an easy happiness, but an authentic happiness.

I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of addictions and the need to punish oneself. I know what it's like. I've been through it all. But I'm still convinced this is the truth. I'm convinced that these things are just structures we put into place to escape the fear of what it would be like to be 100% conscious.

I think that church can easily become another excuse to not face things, even though I do believe in God at this point. I think that people should discover their religious convictions themselves, and then seek fellowship. There is no real fellowship until we know and love ourselves anyway.

I sat in my car today, and it all made sense, everything. Existentialism suddenly connected to philosophy and theology and all of the mistakes that I've made in my life. The knifeblade between self awareness and self-produced insanity made sense. Life in general made sense.

However, I still think that real truths are only self-derived, which I guess makes me an existentialist. I'm not sure, however, that in the end some of those truths aren't universal. I just know they have to come from inside, not some institution.

It was just like the domino scene in V for Vendetta (should be italics but I'm lazy). Everything began hitting everything else until I could see the last domino standing.

existentialism

I've been reading a lot of it. None of them would really call it a philosophy. It's a way of thought. It makes so much more sense to me than all of the universal philosophies preceding it. I am loving the authors too. They are very good with words. They beat Kant any day. I'm reading Jaspers right now. He's not quite as good as the others, but he describes some things well. He describes existentialism well, so I can understand it.

The most interesting self-contradicting ironic thing about this whole existentialist ordeal is that Nietzsche and Kierkegaard (and perhaps others that I have not read) have said that it is hard to understand, that you can't just read it, you have to understand.

It's funny, to me, that a philosophy about finding truth on the edge of self-annihilation by reflection is hard to understand. It all seems so deified until then, until they say that. And then it makes me smile, because we're all so human, too human.

my favorite things...

This is going to be a progressive post. I'll keep coming back to it and editing as I think of things, even as I move on with my blog. My blog is kind of like a car. It was built to move.
Wow. Aren't I the producer of bad similies.
Anyway, these are some of my favorite things:
-running away from the sun when it is hot and the sun is setting. all of the colors seem like inversions, and i can see myself sillhoetted, just my arms and my legs and my headphones and the sun, apparent but not seen.
-air that smells like laundry detergent. or anything that smells like laundry detergent. when i am older i will add extra dryer sheets and laundry detergent to all laundry. i love clothes that smell good. i like it when i'm with a boy and his clothes smell like detergent. it even beats calogne.
-lime popsicles. especially on the friday night of a debate tournament. somehow i can unwind. debate tournaments are horrible for me. i literally worry myself sick. i always get really sick at debate tournaments. but those lime popsicles... i'm convinced they can cure anything.
-pauses in conversations that aren't awkward, because you're really close to the person and you don't have to fill in the spaces with words about something your mind isn't even thinking about.
-friday nights during the school year when there is no debate and i have the courage to put of my homework. i can curl up on the couch in a blanket with hot chocolate and a book. i love books. oh man, i love books.
-movies that make me think. movies that make me sad. movies that make me view the world differently. watching movies with people i care about. watching movies when i'm sad and nothing else in the world can get my mind off of everything fitting together in loose pieces but Finding Nemo. somehow if i have a little Finding Nemo things make sense again.
-crying. i can't cry very often, so when i do it's very needed. when i do cry, it's usually sobbing. sometimes it's in the car and i hit the steering wheel. we always think we're angry, but underneath it we're usually hurt and sad. that's why we pretend to be so tough and angry all the time. i like crying and putting on songs that make me even sadder or songs that make me remember somebody i lost just because i can let go. never in front of people other than family though. no matter how hard i try.
-sweats. i cannot explain to you how much i love sweats when it's below zero out and everything is hanging all crystalline in the air. i like wearing a lot of clothes all of the time because it makes me feel safer. whenever i feel like i'm drifting too close to someone, i wear more clothes. but sweats take the cake. they win every contest.
-feeling okay with buying things. whenever i buy anything, i usually feel regret. i inhereted that from my father; i don't spend money without obsessing and thinking and calculating about whether i need it. but i love holding something in my hands that i had to buy and not regretting a single penny of it.
-steamers from Friendly's on fridays after school that taste like caramel or strawberry or just plain cream and really do steam out of the hole in the top of the lid.
-feeling usefull, and needed, or even just loved. i love it when people touch me or hug me. i love it when they ignore the stony exterior that i give everyone. i love it when i am close to someone. it's not sexual at all. it's just from never touching anyone. i can't touch, but i crave being touched. i feel so loved in a hug. not the awkward A-frame of friends that don't really know what to do with their arms, but people that aren't afraid to crush me, people that know that no matter how how hard they hug me more of me will remain at the end of the hug than existed at the beginning.
-running outside when it is really really cold. i love wearing sweats and gloves and being really cold at the beginning but then somehow warming up so i am really hot. i love that my body can do that, that it can insulate me like that just because i'm running, and moving. maybe i just love running. Yay for endorphins.
-being healthy, being on the apex of the eating disorder sine wave. i love being at the top. i can eat and i can run every day and i'm not hungry and i'm not thinking about throwing up or anything, i'm not thinking about food all the time, i'm free, i'm not even thinking about how much i can weigh. that's how i am right now. i still feel fat, but my food mentality isn't off. this has always been a transient feeling in my life though. i have started viewing it as something that controls me. but i realized today that i control it. it doesn't have to end, if i can face my fear, if i can face waking up and feeling like i can't eat anymore.
-spring. i love it when the tips of the trees suddenly explode with flowers and green fingernails overnight. every year i try to watch it; i try to catch it like in time-lapse photography, but it really does happen all at once; it really does happen while you're asleep.
-spring break. it just has to go with the spring discussion. by spring break i'm usually about ready to go crazy if i have to go through one more routine day at school and focus in the classes...
-being able to relax, without thinking. those sustainable moments, the rare ones for me. the ones like the moment that kids hang in the air when they jump through the sprinkler and they're not even thinking about landing. they're just thinking about the air, and the water, and the world; all it needs is that one moment.
-learning. i love reading about science, and philosophy, and everything (except US history now that the AP test has ruined it for me). i love thinking about the new pathways in my brain that the neurons are building, i like thinking that those neurons are ants and yet they are me.
-feeling beautiful. this is a very rare occurrance, but it has happened a few times in my life. it's usually when i'm nowhere near a mirror. the only feedback is the way i feel; the way i feel so tall even in my shortness, the way i feel like i desire myself.
-conversations where i am talking to people and they are really sad or miserable or something and somehow i can say the right thing and when we quit talking we are both happier.
-writing. maybe this is one of my foremost loves. it deserves to be at the top of the list, but it just can't quite literally parallel running away from the sun (which is extremely ironic if you think about it). i love writing for hours without realizing how long i've written. i love writing because it is totally self-contained learning. every time i write i learn. i learn a lot about myself. i learn a lot about other people. i can put myself in their minds and suddenly they make more sense to me.
-laughing at dumb jokes, just because they're really funny and for a few seconds i don't have to be the obsessive emo withdrawn high school student and i can just laugh and laugh and nobody cares. i love laughter. i'll join nietzsche in that one.
-feeling spiritual. i love the feeling music about God gives me when everyone's really into it. i don't know if it's objectively real or not, but it sure is real to me. it makes me cry. like i said, not a lot makes me cry.
-feeling. i never feel things physically, so i like feeling. i like sensation.

Anyway, more later...

Why can't I believe it?

tarzaan

Today I told myself I would get everything done I've been neglecting for months. I got surprisingly far. I'm not done yet. I cleaned my room basically, I got another lesson of my Spanish done (even if my grade on it was not what it needs to be), and I will now procede to do SAT work, read a neglected science magazine, and write in my book. I have so many goals for this summer, and while reading random existentialist writings is something I really enjoy, it's not moving me towards any of those goals. It's static (imperfect), not moving (preterite). I want to achieve my goals for this summer.

The college schedule and everything came. I looked at some calculus from last year, and it took me like ten minutes to understand it. It's become as vague as Spanish.
My dog and I had a very large argument today over whether my stuffed animals are hers or mine. The sad thing is that I'm not sure I won.

I would like to point out to all, as I have not mentioned it, the amazing tarzaan picture I have in my profile now. I *am* the queen of the jungle. And the king and every other authoritarian word. And, to borrow Morgan's word, I am the Tarzaan of DHOOM.

finding home

I was intending, a while ago, to post the bits of Notes from Underground that I found the most relevant and stimulating, but upon reading most of it I realized that I would just have to post the whole thing. In only posting these few lines I am not doing justice to these essays at all. I would suggest to everyone who hasn't read this work to go read it. I found it infinitely better than Dostoevsky's fiction, and I really like his fiction.

These are the two parts I will post though:
"In spite of all these uncertanties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache." (From III)
"You think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself. I agree that man is pre-eminately a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering- that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead. But the reason why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is predestined to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid that "direct" practial man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always does lead somewhere, and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving way to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the vices. Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also? Tell me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of les animaux domestiques- such as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the ants have quite a different taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that pattern with endures for ever- the ant-heap. ....Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrfices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, he dreads, I assure you. He feels that when eh has found i there will be nothing for him to look for."

I cannot tell you how happy I am that at the end of this long succession of philosophers I have been reading I found Notes from Underground. Whereas in most philosophers I saw confusion, contradiction, doubt, and some vague vain attempt, Dostoevsky makes sense of everything. I really needed to read this essay right now, and I'm so glad that now is the time I have reached it in my philosophical reading. The entire essay rings very, very, very close to home. It might even ring at home if I wasn't one of those people he's talking about, the kind that can only build but can never live in their homes. I can hear the bell ringing in my house, but like everyone I cling to death and chaos and destruction because I am terrified that I will not have anything left to look for if I allow myself to be happy and live in my home.

If there is something remarkable I have discovered this year it is that in everyone I know that is struggling with things like self-injury and drugs and relationships and alcohol and all of that, they have done it to themselves. I have discovered that people sabotage themselves. I mentioned that I was doing that to myself a little while ago in that essay I wrote while I was at the lake. It's true. We like building, but in the end, we can't stand moving in.

I know that I could be happy if only I wasn't so afraid of happiness.

I won't settle with the henhouse. My life is about more than keeping out of the rain.

movies

So today we rented some R-rated movies, and they didn't even card us. It was extremely anticlimatic and I was very disappointed. It seemed like another rite of passage, like driving home from Wyoming.
However, the reason I have not rented R-rated movies is not that I have not been old enough, it's that I have seen very few and plan on seeing very few as I really don't like too much sex, violence, language, or anything.

Anyway, I had a very productive morning looking up restriction enzyme sites in my gene I'm working with to try to pick one, and there are some awesome websites that make it very easy, like New England Biolabs. So that was nice. Then I tried to ride my bike home (all uphill). I have been running two miles daily, but apparently bike-riding requires very different muscles. I had to walk for many steep parts. My father told me before I left that the bike I was riding was intended to be my second of three (my first was this pink and white thing when I was seven on), as I got it in fourth grade (it was big for me then). Unfortunately, however, my plan was thwarted as my bike still pretty much fits me. Sad. From 50 percentile to 25th to 15th... Hopefully my down-trent has ended.

So the movies we got were V for Vendetta and Matrix Revolutions, both of which I had researched on the internet and talked to people about and decided were okay. The first had too many f-words for my taste, but other than that it was awesome. They both made me think a lot.

V for Vendetta bothered me at first because the protagonist dealt with things very violently, and I am very opposed to any sort of violence or killing. In my ideal world, there would be no killing, and even if people did kill others maliciously we should never retaliate in the same way. I follow this line of thinking when it comes to war as well. So when I saw the vigilante on screen being that violent, it made me think. The movie is set in a very oppressive government, and the government officials don't really bother to not kill people. The vigilante was definitely killing in the name of justice and freedom and other ideals I believe strongly in. But if we allow vigilantes or anyone to use violence the way he did, then we place violence in subjective hands. Sometimes justice and truth and freedom are hard things to agree upon. I just don't think one individual should have the power to kill other individuals. I really don't think even sovereign states should either, but I'm more emphatic about my disbelief in individual violence.
The movie, however, raised those questions over whether violence could be justified if it was for an ideal end. Kind of a teleology versus deontology thing. And although I really don't like Kant, I'm more inclined to go with his categorical imperative here than some Lockean justification of mass political murder. So I watched the movie, and I thought it was awesome. But the movements that I agreed with in it had nothing to do with violence (unless it was enacted on the perpetrators of the methods I agree with). I think that political revolutions under those kinds of governments should be enacted through media, or personal defiance. I am very much a supporter of non-violent defiance a la Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mendelle (yes I know I spelled that wrong). Passive resistance. So I agreed with the movie. I think the movie is precisely the sort of thing that should be done to combat possible governmental oppression. Actual violent action just isn't something I can agree with.
I will admit, though, that when they blew up parliament at the end, it was awesome. I have been to those buildings and love them, but chain explosions, even if only special effects... cool.

I watched the first Matrix movie three and a half years ago, so I didn't remember it that well tonight. Brittany and I looked up plot synapses for the first two on the internet. I can't see the second one due to sexuality and language, so I didn't have a huge clue of what was going on when we started the third one (or finished it really). Anyway, I liked the movie a lot, especially the ending (more things blowing up), except for certain characters whose deaths saddened me... at the end the Oracle said "I didn't know, but I believed," or something like that, and it hit home. Actually, the whole idea of the Matrix hit home. I seem to be currently faced with a similar problem. I'm worried that the earth may be a fabrication, that the universe may be, and that it may belong to some kind of matrix. I think that there may be something out there, ruling this matrix, however I'm not sure if they (like the sentinels) are real either. Past all of that, there just might be some real place, some real Zion that rules everything, both the fabrication and the fabrication of the fabrication (this universe, or multiverse).
I've reached the pills. There's the red one, the blue one. I can't remember which is which in the movie, but they stand for two different things. I can go back to my world, my existence which I now know may be fabricated, or I can keep pursuing some Zion that may not even exist, and if it does exist it's very far away and hard to get to and may not even be worth living for, and I may never be happy in my pursuit of it.
You're telling me that I can't take the pill that corresponds with going back to fabrication. You're telling me I can't go back to just blindly believing the things I have believed my whole life, not now, not now that I've doubted. But what if I can? What if it's the only way to really be happy? Can I be happy now, in ignorance, if I always remember that I am in ignorance? I suppose ignorance is only bliss as long as it believes itself to be ignorant.
I want a purple pill. I want a compromise. That's always what I look for when I reach these problems.

Oh well. Right now I'm like Neo, and I'm sitting in that chair, and instead of looking at the pills I'm looking in Morpheus's eyes for some other way out.

dead-ends (but open to help)

I kept going so far that my metaphysics were synonymous to my epistemology, when all I wanted was for the epistemology and metaphysics to independently exist. I have taken my desires and run from the object of those desires. I want so badly to believe in empiricism, but am left with only my own rationalism. I am lost in phenomenology.

It rains and I run and it feels real (I am running on this earth no one can agree exists), but all of the confusion is born in my mind. We all have the same logical devices, the same physical neurons, the same mysterious Cartesian mind (if the Cartesian mind cannot be accounted for by any empirical argument, which is then negated- the mind, or the empirical world?). We can collaborate our logic and rationality and as a society use the same processes. But every individual comes up with a different philosophy. The philosophers agree on processes and disagree on necessary conclusions concerning those processes. There is a flaw somewhere in this whole system: we are trying to prove truths with the logic of myths.

However, we cannot just all go with the pessimism of someone like Schopenhauer because it assumes that humans are biologically exempt of their own science that they place on non-conscious beings. Namely, it is in a species interest to believe in meaning and truth, even non-consciously. Negating life is biologically infeasable, and we would never expect it in an ant or a dog (Schopenhauer- yes I know I'm spelling that incorrectly- tries to placate me here with his indomitable "will to live" but I think that what he's really saying is that death or self-abnegation is the only way to escape biology. This truth implies that we should do so, which implies that we are the exception in this biological world, which may or may not exist).

Anyway, there is a gap so much of the time between our processes and our conclusions, and that's what I have my biggest problem with. I don't know if I could believe in phenomenology because it implies that every human mind is capable of consistently perceiving everything similarly. Are we capable of that kind of consistency? Isn't philosophy just contradicting itself in this sense by not perceiving things similarly? Philosophy philosophizes that philosophy negates philosophy... that is the result. It is like saying "the truth is that there is no truth." The statement is both true and horribly contradictory.

Yet we agree on the process, on the logic, on the framework, on the consistency of empirical interpretation. Why? Maybe the truth is the process. Maybe they are right- there are many truths, but no truth. Maybe the truth is that there are many truths.

I think that the culmination of all of my obsessing over philosophy and science is that at the heart of everything there is this great contradiction: our biology- which is created out of our minds according to many philosophers, and therefore dependent on our epistemology- negates philosophy. It isn't rational to say that it is biologically enhancing for beings to reflect upon their own consciousness or an empirical universe. What biologically makes sense is to not think of it, and to rather just focus on reasons for living, which non-human creatures seem to do. Therefore, scientifically (keeping in mind science could be just a production of our philosophy), philosophy doesn't make any sort of sense. However, philosophically, many believe that we created science. Why would we create a universe that negates its creator? Suddenly we have become some sort of god...

I do not want to end up at solipsism, which makes the least sense of all to me and yet is at the conclusion of many of my philosophical thoughts. I have just reached this point where if I believe in science, I have to believe that philosophical truth must obey bioligcal behaviors, but if I believe philosophy, I have to believe that my imagined science will be consistent and not contradict the philosophy that made it. Neither of these things has proven true.

Dead ends, dead ends, dead ends. I want to get to that gap between causality and result... I want to understand the human biology-defying chaos that exists there...

If science is true, why would the highest being (or whatever) on our planet-humans- do something so contrary to basic instinctive biology, like develop philosophy? And if philosophy is true, why would we as humans seeking a constant, if not phenomological, universe end up with a conclusion that defies our own reasoning like science does?

Josh IM-d me today. He's not supposed to do that. It was just a heart. Just a heart but it fit right into that box in me that has a fuse and was waiting for a bomb to light. Suddenly that pixel heart was exploding in me and every resolve of these past few days melted away in my imaginary pixelled flames. If my resolve to let go is what I should do, if it is the truth, why does it take all of my energy to maintain my belief and only a pixel heart to bring the whole thing down?

I'm sorry if I haven't made sense in this post. Please reply anyway. I really need people to reply. I really need you to help me in the process. I really need to reach a conclusion that can explain so many diverse conclusions from this same process.