thoughts from middle school

I met my first real, and current, girlfriend in eighth grade. While I agree, for the most part, with those who say that middle schoolers can't be "in love", I came across something this morning that makes me think that it may be possible, on a different (and perhaps lesser) level. I remember being close to her in eighth grade, and sometimes experiencing feelings in my stomach that I couldn't quite explain, but I wouldn't say that I was in love with her. I was so young, so naive, and in that year, so incredibly depressed. However, I had forgotten the light that she brought me during that year.

I found these few paragraphs on an old private blog from 8th grade. The writing is choppy and awkward and a little bit superficial-sounding, but there's... emotion behind it. This strange kind of 14-year old emotion, that's shrouded in mystery and confusion, but pure and informative nonetheless.

This girl is dark haired with dark chocolate eyes. She has curly hair, although sometimes she straightens it and sometimes she uses curling stuff. I personally like the curly days better, curly hair as always had an effect on me. Our friendship is complicated and simple on so many levels. I really have no idea where to start. I suppose at our first meeting or maybe our first experience of friendship…? This girl is so much like me, yet so different. She is quiet and shy and thoughtful and kind and many other things. While I like to think that I’m thoughtful and kind and a bit shy and quiet, I’m also loud and outgoing to a certain extent. I, as my favorite saying right now goes, am truly a child at heart. I love to play little games like “don’t wake Daddy” and play on monkey bars. I’m a bit silly and goofy and always laughing, loudly. 

Wait, am I describing this girl or myself? This girl is quiet and shy to people she doesn’t know, but when she knows you well, she can open up. In fact, last night, I went to a funfair with her at her old Elementary School, and it was so fun. I loved it so much. We ate a lot of sugar and I had 2 sodas and we were silly and so was she and it may have been the best night of my life. I kept laughing and giggling and running all over the place and it was so much fun.

Wait, am I talking about the funfair or this girl? She is this queen of understanding, a real genius. She gets me. I wish I couldn’t say this, but sometimes that scares me. I have a lot of baggage, lol, and some of that I wish to cover up, I wish I could hide in my shell of sarcasm and just disappear, but she is there and she is knowing me and understanding me and the conversations on the internet we have are so intense I feel the room cloud and I just want to cry because I am so glad I have someone to talk to. But it takes a lot out of me and I have to watch the Office or some other show to get my mind out of the depression of the world, because the world sucks. I mean, I can’t blame Jan for not wanting to bring a baby in this world (although that skank totally broke Michaels heart by knocking herself up with some sperm-donaters baby when she can have Michaels wonderful, albeit creepy, sperm!) because it really sucks. I almost said, “f***s” lol. Okay, so this whole thing isn’t working out very well. I need to make paragraphs.

I clearly felt something for this girl, and even when I was attempting to open up about it, I hid behind "lol"s and tv references and awkward catch phrases. It's just so interesting to me, how I can read this now and see so clearly: I had such a crush on this girl. But then, I chalked it up to our "complicated friendship." While I wasn't in love with her, I can just tell from my words that I felt something extremely strong for her. But I pushed those thoughts and feeling away, partly for the sake of preserving the friendship, but mostly because I simply could not fathom the idea that I might be prone to falling in love with girls.*

 Now, of course, I know that I am in love with her. Now, I kind of sort of believe in soul mates, because although I'm not ready to share what I've been through this year, I know that there is no one else I would stick around like this for. The feelings that have kept me going for the past nine months started years ago, when I was too young to understand love, and to me, that's everything.

 

PS: Just an observation: how the hell did I not know I had ADD until this year?! I could barely focus long enough to write a paragraph or finish a complete thought. How did no one else notice? Did I just hide this from everyone, unknowingly? Aye.

*I purposely didn't write "attracted" in that sentence, and this is why: for me, my attraction (general term) is mostly emotional. I'm probably equally physically attracted to boys as I am to girls, but my emotional attraction and the emotional just... overpowering chemical effects I feel is what makes my "bisexual ratio" about 9:1. There is just something about the complexity of girls that 1) drives me up the wall and 2) makes me melt into a worthless pile of goo.

knowledge bomb

Without meaning to sound cocky at all, I'm going to drop some knowledge on you. And here it is: there is no perfect relationship. No perfect girl, or boy, or what have you. You will never be able to find someone whose habits entirely endear you, one who you will not be grossed out by at least once in a while. Even the most tolerant person in the world gets annoyed, and they get annoyed at their special someone. But here's something even more interesting: it doesn't mean you have a bad relationship. It means, and get this, that you are normal. 

I have no idea who I am. And this sucks because I used to be one of the only people I know who had things figured out. The key to life, so to speak. There are only a few things that I know to be true these days.

1. I feel most comfortable in a tshirt and cardigan. It makes me feel thin, which if anyone knows me at all, would say that me thinking anything but is ridiculous, "you're so thin! omfg!" I know it's ridiculous. I know I'm thin, too thin, maybe. But I have terrible body-image and one of my greatest fears is gaining too much weight, or appearing fat. I don't really know where it comes from. It's just something I struggle with. Days where I'm happy with my body leave me feeling confident and able to focus on actual things that matter.
2. I'm incredibly self-centered, while at the same time extremely judgmental of those who think too highly of themselves and/or are obsessed with protecting themselves. I am not proud of this. It is an extremely disturbing character trait that I have developed, and I'm working hard to get it to go away.
3. I'm a hypocrite! Don't you see? The last half of the last point I made was me trying to protect myself from people calling me an ass for thinking like that. It's disgusting, disturbing. No wonder I have such poor self-esteem.
4. (I'm going to try and think of something positive about myself now. Although it's been clearly stated that I need no help in the pay-more-attention-to-yourself column, beating myself up isn't going to get me anywhere.) I like food.
5. I like online shopping. I don't know why, but I take this strange kind of solace in making lists of things I'd like, things that maybe would make me happy. Okay, scratch that. I do know why. I'm a materialistic american who thinks that shiny water bottles and crisp, clean notebooks I'll never write in will make me happy. I'm searching for some way to be happy.
6. Okay, I'm sorry, but seriously, could I be more pathetic right now? This entire list is turning into a pity party, party of one. And it's seriously annoying. My opinion of myself changes so rapidly, between thinking that I'm okay, that I'll make it, that maybe-just-maybe, I have something special about me, to "oh my god. I'm. so. pa. the. thic. sobsobsbsob!!1" It's annoying. And pathetic. God, it's like a vicious cycle or self-loathing and narcissism.  
7. Last thing. This is the last thing I know. I really really don't like who I am. But I'm not just going to give up on myself, because I know that I can be a good person. And not just for me, for those that I love. For those that I have ignored and betrayed and cast to the side in these past few months. I owe it to the people I love to stop being so goddamn pathetic, grow a pair, and more importantly: grow up.

Knowledge bombed. KABAM.

I am the only son

listen and love and never never forget

we fall but our souls are flying

pajama professor.

I definitely should either be using this time to be 1) sleeping or 2) reading Shakespeare, but I kind of want to blog instead. Sleep is something I really should do, you know, log some hours. Between loads and loads of homework, projects, and tests, having little to no self control to talk or hang out with friends for hours on end, and all of the little other things that fill up my days, I have a very strained relationship with sleep. Sometimes I can go to bed at 9pm and sleep until 6am and it's wonderful, glorious, and awesome. But other times, I'm up until 11 0r 12 working on physics lab reports or like, doing whatever it was that I was doing on Sunday night until 1:30am.


Which brings me to this: thank you guys for all of your comments on my post from Sunday night. And thanks for the hugs, cyber hugs make me feel all warm inside, much like a real hug. Reading them throughout the week has helped, because this week has been a combination of busy/glowy/nice/stressful/anxious/tiring/warm and reading those helped the bad parts. I do hope you know that I don't feel like that all the time, just certain parts of the day and some days for long periods of time. I have bad days and such, but I'm not usually in a perpetual state of panic and anxiety. Which is good, and is precisely the reason that I haven't seen a doctor about it.


I'm sitting on my bed at my mom's house, with my back against the pillows, and I can look across my room and out the window and see a white world. A white world with a couple bushes and some tree branches and this house that has lights in their yard and lining their roof and it's really pretty. I like winter, or at least December. Once it gets to be maybe February or so, that depressing, lonely rut where I don't want to do anything at all sets in, but December is just so magical. The cold and snow are so new that I can't even mind them. I kind of keep looking out of the window at the snow and the lights and feeling that Christmas-y feeling wash over me. It's nice.


I look like a pajama professor. I'm wearing a combination of a t-shirt, really high (penguin) socks, wiener dog boxers, and this really weird sweater that my mom gave me. It has a collar and when I was brushing my teeth earlier, I realized that the collar made me look like a professor, for some reason. It might be my deteriorating brain playing tricks on me, but I totally looked like I was going to grade some super intense dreams later, or something. Nope, no, I can't anymore. My eyelids are drooping and I'm way too excited to sleep. Before 11pm for the first time in 2 days. Goodnight. :)

the things I don't tell.

There is a lot that I don't tell people. Even the people that I'm closest to. I guess it's because I know that honestly, they don't want to hear it. If they really care about me, it will make them sad and a little, screaming part of me will always believe that telling too much about the side of me that is very, very dark will push them away. Because, who really wants an unstable friend? Someone you can't depend on to just be… normal? And if they don't care, it will just make them feel awkward. I can always tell.

But the people who care… they may tell me that they want me to tell them when something is going very, very wrong, but I don't tell them. How do you explain to someone that you spend an evening shaking, with your heart beating rapidly, and your brain feeling like it's ripping apart at the seams from a mixture of dull pain and haunting images, when you can't even explain why?

I spend so many of my moments worrying about other people, so how can anyone blame me when I don't want to inflict that brain-crippling worry on anyone else? I'd be lying, though, if I said that the reasons for me keeping in my unexplainable moments of panic is purely selfless. It's not, really. I'm terrified of letting people know that I have these moments, where my heart won't stop beating and I feel my chest constrict and everything feels empty and numb and painful all at the same time. I know that weakness is a part of being human, and that isn't the point. My worry is that someday, people will start to realize that I'm more trouble than I'm worth, and leave. I'm afraid that someday, everyone will realize that they're better off without me and just… leave. And I won't have these amazing people in my life anymore. They'll just be gone, and I'll be alone.

A logical part of me knows that I'll wake up tomorrow and have very little memory of this empty and yet aching feeling in my chest. I'll wake up to my alarm at 5:45, groan, kiss my dog, and get into the shower. I'll put in my hair mousse and the whole bathroom will smell good and I'll adjust my sweater and make funny faces in the mirror. I'll eat some incredibly non-breakfast-food breakfast and watch whatever episode of South Park I'm on on Netflix Instant Play. I'll go to school and see my friends and play Angry Birds in math and listen to music that makes me smile and I'll probably have a good day. But right now, even though I know that nothing is wrong and that tomorrow holds unknown promise, I can't stop my body from twitching and shaking and sinking.

I guess the point of this wasn't to try to open up to more people about my heart-stuttering anxiety or to try and get my feelings off of my chest. I guess, to be honest, the real reason for this was because twenty minutes ago, I was laying in bed, trying so many different things to ease my mind, and none of them were working. I tried to play Fastball 2, but it got me feeling even more panic-y , and then I started to read, but the content of the book I was reading completely collided with some of the things my brain was (unnecessarily) freaking out about, and so I wrote this. As a cure for my unrelenting mind.

I think it helped. And I'm really sorry if this post made anyone feel uncomfortable, it's just that Nora has been begging me to blog for the longest time, and I decided to try and kill two birds with one stone. And I really do think it helped.

the infection of love.

Hi there, good people of the blogging universe. :) I'm coming to you at 11:37pm on a Wednesday night. A school night. But I'm not rebelling, I promise, and I'm going to hop back on the sleeping-bandwagon tomorrow night, but earlier tonight I had literally a little over a cup of diet coke at a restaurant and now… so much energy. Can't sleep. But it's the story of my life, and I'm not going to dwell on it. I'll simply use this leftover energy to do something productive. Such as explore a poem by Anne Sexton.


Wanting to Die, a poem by Anne Sexton, was written to explain why poets, people, anyone like herself (and her friend Sylvia Plath) would want to kill themselves. Keep in mind, this isn't my opinion, nor is it any general truth, just her opinion, I suppose. You can read it here if you want, I don't wanna poem overload, but I just wanted to kind of… dwell on the last line. "and the love, whatever it was, an infection." Just that idea, of love being an infection, is just so beautiful, in a heartwrenching way. Love, it can spread and it can hurt and it can take you down. It's infectious.


My friend pointed out this line after we saw Inception today and there was the line about an idea being a parasite, the most resilient of them. Because we're, uh, nerdy, I whipped out the poem book we've been looking at lately (it's her's) and read that poem and that line just… I don't know. I had just come out of the movie about an hour ago, but it just struck a nerve. I wasn't emotional or anything, not really at that part of the conversation, but the idea of these things, that seem innocent enough, taking over your mind and your body and everything… it's fascinating.


To lighten the mood a little bit, I'll talk about myself a little bit. I'm not sure what's been going on with me lately, to be honest, I've been reliving the past a lot, and spending every free moment (which, alas, are few) either watching Parenthood (I am newly obsessed with this show. guys, you have to watch it. please) or reading old conversations/poems/journal entries/notes, anything from 8th grade. I feel like I just need to figure out that person I was then. Why I did the things I did and what I thought and when things fell apart and how I put them back together and… it's crazy. The lines between 8th grade and the present are starting to blur when characters from then and now collide. It's super weird.


Wow… that didn't really lighten the mood, did it? Oh well. I hope this entry didn't sound bleak, that wasn't my intention at all. In fact, I've been good lately. A warm, familiar sort of happiness. Not a crap-is-this-gonna-get-yanked-away kind of happiness but one that feels secure. I don't know. I like it. How are YOU guys?