Rememory

I was looking through old drafts of blog posts, and I found this one. Apparently I never posted it, or, if I did, I went to edit it later and never put it back up. An essay from my junior year of high school.

I am in their house, his house, but the doors are twice my height. My sisters wear large pink dresses, layers of tulle bursting around their legs. They wobble about, unable to support their heavy crowns. Although I must stand on tiptoes to see over the couch, the dresses are too small. I leave the other girls and go upstairs, looking for him. I find him using the computer in the kitchen. I sit next to him, on the same chair but barely touching, and he shows me how to fight with animated soldiers.

He races up the hill in my backyard and I chase him, trying to release the competitive spirit that he has been coaxing from me all night. He trips over a tree root and slows, I slam into him, we tumble down. He catches himself on his elbows before landing above me, but his leg still comes down on mine and I groan. I look down, trying to disentangle, and I see his pale, pale arms, glowing in the barely-there moonlight.

The moon is above us, and we are silhouetted in its light. I dance down the middle of the street, ignoring the glass shards in my hand, forgetting that I’m leaving tomorrow. I dangle the spicy mint he wants so badly in front of his face before snatching it away as he lunges and I twirl down the street, singing “mine, mine, mine.” He gives up, returning to the sidewalk, but I continue to twirl and joy under the dull moon. Then he is beside me, grabbing me, pulling me over and a car runs by so fast I can barely see it, so close I can almost touch it. He saves me. Our mothers say that now we have to get married, like the rescued damsels in distress do in all the stories, and our blushes are hidden by the dangerous darkness. I still do not give him the mint.

We are back, before it all, in Iona, where the beach is close and the tide closer. My sister hit him earlier, and he didn’t hit her back, because he never hurt anyone, not back then. He has taught me to fight the way I could, has taught me not to flinch from pain by hurling ping-pong ball after ping-pong ball right at me, but would never hit a girl, would never hurt a soul, would always save my life. I trust his goodness. Our families are on the couches, spread out and close together, and we play a card game that is more laughing than thinking. I am wet for the first time. I notice, but I don’t know what it means. When I go to the bathroom later, there is a bloody spot on the inside of his basketball shorts, the ones I wear because my luggage is lost. My mother gives me Motrin and a bulky pad and cleans the shorts and tells me that I am a woman now, and I wear her sweatpants to bed and think but I am still twelve, and I am confused by all this growing up when all I really want is to play another round of cards.

I lie in bed that night in a room with my sisters but in my own bed because now I am special, now I am old. I realize, as the last bit of wakefulness leaves me, that my body has just told me that it is ready for sex, for love, for children. I try to picture it, but I don’t know how. The next day, I examine the books in the house until I find one with vivid sex scenes, perfectly specific, and I read until I can see it in my head and have to put the book down because the image disgusts me.

I am fifteen now and he is naked, above me around me within me, sweating, panting, shaking arms dark and glowing in the dim lamplight. I toss and turn, the visual plaguing me even though it has not happened and is based entirely on imaginings, but it makes my insides warm in a way that no other dreams do, and I decide not to chase it away.

It is snowing, and he is at my house, and we chase and run with a flock of children, throwing snowballs, and I see him break a window but he doesn’t know I saw. When the window is found later, no one ever knows that it was him. He wrestles his sister who is less than half his size after she calls him weak and emasculated and worthless. He is pushing her, tugging her, pinning her down with the arms that hold him over above within me. She claws at him, writhes, but cannot escape, and he tries to smother her with a pillow. I scream.

I can never marry him, never be with him, says my mother, because he is angry and only knows how to hit. That’s what comes of having a father like his.

I am sprawled across a couch in my basement, the gangling limbs that I’ve finally come to control and love and cherish stretching all the way from armrest to armrest. He is seated on the other couch, joystick in his hands, voice calm, steering an animated car around and around an animated track, destroying competitor after competitor as he tells me that he and his girlfriend broke up because he got angry and didn’t know what to do, that it just comes out, that, that now he’s not allowed to drive because his mother saw him hit his sister. “I don’t know why it happens,” he tells me, looking only at the television. “I can’t control it, can’t see it coming, I just get angry, sometimes.”

He breaks things.

We stand in the lights of the subway car, close together although it is late and the car is empty, falling into each other with each bump and curve and turn and stop. His eyes go transparent, the pale green-blue washed out by the bright bright lights, and I can see through him and into him and he is mine and I love him and I want him but I know he is not safe.

I bike down roads less than a mile from home but they are foreign now. I go faster and faster, imagining monsters on my tail, fighting to get away, fighting the urge to go to his house and throw rocks at his window and cry that I want him and need him and beg him to hold me. I cannot go there, cannot do that, cannot let him know because even if he loves me, even if he wants me, I cannot have him. I pedal, and I cry, and I pray, seriously for the first time in my life, that this hurt can go away, that this love can run its course and leave me because I am too feeble to fight him and to weak to let go. I must not love a boy who is dangerous.

Memories, Diaries, and Youth

Last night, when I was going to sleep, I decided to open up my diary again, and, well, write. I meant to write about Connor, about the funeral. I ended up calling myself and idiot about the Rube thing, again, then worrying that the only bits of Dawson I could remember were the bad ones, near the end.

I then, of course, proceeded to spend half an hour compiling memories of Dawson. Because I am seventeen, and hormonal, and I do stupid things like that.

I want to say "I'm such a girl," but the feminist in me is getting grumpy, so perhaps "I'm such a stereotypical girl" would be preferable.

Regardless, I, per usual, have work to do.

So, as Rube always used to say, back before we embarked on this spree of mutual ignorance, farewell for now.

Rememory

What do I have that is worth re-remembering, worth breaking apart into a thousand tiny fragments of perspective, of me and mine and ours and more, until the story itself becomes almost entirely kind of partway obscured by the words, and most certainly blocked out by strength of feeling.

It's a big assignment, to write something emotional, something enjoyable. Weirdly, I want to do the depression again, to pick it apart from my own view as well as Nyx's and Gretchen's and Amy's. It's just, last time I wrote about it, I became a complete bitch in the process. And, last time I wrote it, it turned me into a crying, angry bitch who screamed at her mother for offenses committed long ago. To top it off, it was for the same teacher I have now, but with two years less of maturity and knowledge and words behind me. Gray is still it, to me, though. That's how it was before, colorless, and I don't know how to write it with color. It's gray, my memory of sadness.

And yet, what is my memory of happiness. I look back for a happy moment, look back for something, and I know their was contentment, know there was joy and excitement and happy and love and hope, but what stands out, what can be reconsidered and rewritten and torn apart and pieced back together and made into a creation that is no longer purely the memory but is more?

Nyx just said "getting ridiculous test scores." Could I do a rememory of the SAT, of the scores, of the pain and the pressure finally exploding like a bottle of champagne into pure joy? But, even that isn't all happy. It's happiness tinged, tilted by effort, a mistrust of tests, a feeling that even though the numbers say I'm better than just about everyone else, I'm not better, or I am, but not enough, or not in the right ways, or something, because always, always always always there is this pressure, this urge to do better.

Even the happy has been destroyed by the pressure.

Is this what it is, to be an overachiever? Is that what I am now, no more semi about it? Have I outgrown the title that began this? I can't have. After all, I still sleep eight hours a night. I still stress over little tiny details like essays.

And yet, why isn't there anything happy. Why can't I find happy? It's as if everything I have right now is colored, hopefully just by my headache. Maybe when I try again, in the morning, I'll have a memory worth remembering.

This is the problem, I think, by choosing to avoid depression by constantly looking to the future. The present can be difficult to stomach. The past can be impossible to confront.

I promise to be less emo tomorrow.

The funny thing about staying the same size is that nothing ever goes away

I stumble to the closet feeling as if I should be putting my pajamas back on rather than getting dressed. I smash my hand against the wall until I found the light switch and, squinting, I survey the overflowing buckets of clothing I started using a few years ago in order to keep my closet neat and tidy.

I take off what I’d slept in, a baggy tee from a middle school choir trip that had been worn to bed so many times that the conditioner from my hair had left a large white patch about the neckline. I don’t dwell on where the shirt had come from, don’t bother to send my mind back to getting whiplash on a rollercoaster and drinking myself sick with soda. It is far to early for reminiscing.

I reach into the drawer I keep my bras in, a drawer that is so full of underwear, underwire, and swimsuits that it no longer closes. I dig through it, searching for the practical skin-tone I bought last week. I skip past a bright blue bra, the first one I went to a store and bought, that, miraculously, still fits, despite its somewhat wretched appearance. I run a finger along its limp strap and considere walking into the store with my mother, blushing over the half-naked mannequins and trying to reason out why nearly every item in the store was emblazoned with the word “pink.”

I find the bra I’ve been looking for and put in on. I reach up for the t-shirt bin. I fumble through the softened cotton of the pink v-neck that I'd bought specifically to match the long lavender skirt I spent all of sixth grade dreaming of, the fuzzed print on the shirt that my sister and I both have, that we would wear together while bumping hips and laughing, and the thicker, double-printed fabric of the pink shirt I bought before freshman year, the shirt I was wearing on the day that I lay out on the grass in the sunlight, seeing words and hearing music, and noticed that, surprisingly, I was actually happy.

Happiness is nice, but, after handling the bra, I don’t want pink. I switch to the next bin. I reach past the stiff, ribbed fabric of the long sleeved white shirt I had on when I was sent home from school for being a danger to myself and others, a shirt that I defiantly wore regularly for two years before the memory had receded so far that the defiance was no longer needed, and I saw the shirt was so ugly I didn’t want to wear it in the first place. I discover, then, the thin yet fluffy fabric of the shirt I wore the first day of my freshman year, a shirt that my mother bought me for my thirteenth birthday simply because I said I liked it, a shirt that, every time I look in the mirror while wearing it, I still see my fourteen-year-old self reflected in the mirror in my grandparent’s bathroom, wearing the swirling blue shirt, trying to determine why it was that my grandfather, when looking at me, seemed only able to see that I was everything his favorite was not, with all of the intelligence that could get me to the places my grandfather dreamed of for him, but that he would never be able to reach. I resign myself to his ignorance and take the shirt out.

I reach up for a short black skirt that always brings me back to my first day of sophomore year, sitting in Music Theory, the backs of my thighs frozen against the too-cold seat, wishing that I’d had the foresight to wear pants, or leggings, or anything that could have kept the creeping cold from stretching all the way to my bones.

I remember this and open up a second drawer, this one with two pairs of tights. The first pair is flamingly red and so thin that I avoid touching them for fear of creating runs and destroying a gift from my grandmother. The second pair is gray; I got this pair for Christmas last year, and fell so madly in love that I spent the rest of my holiday vacation running about the house in them. Holding them, I can feel myself sinking back into the comfortable chair in front of the fire, watching the flames as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer danced from the radio.

I sniff both pairs, testing for cleanliness. The grays have the same scent of laundry detergent the rest of my wardrobe does. Then I bring the reds to my face, and I am suddenly back in my grandmother’s house, standing in her closet, trying on the crazy old clothes, all my size, and dancing before the mirror. Then I am younger, every inch covered by her scarves, scarves that smell of the same closet and home and woman that the tights do, and I am twirling with my sisters to the music produced by a spinning record, and my grandmother is laughing and moving and twice my size, with her eyes whole and her hair long and her heart open to my own.

I slide my left foot into the tights and began to roll them up before I realize that, if I wear them and wash them and sweat in them and fill them with memories of my own, they will no longer be my grandmother’s tights. I remove my foot, roll the tights up, and return them to the back of the drawer.

I put on the gray tights, the short black skirt, and the tee-shirt that I loved freshman year. I put on the crumbling black sweatshirt that still bears the snags of adventure camp, that is still the only item I own that lets me feel fully protected from the little tiny pinpricks of mosquito legs that I still feel crawling beneath my skin in every dawn and dusk and wood. I slip into my piano flats, a pair that I wore for each performance of Beauty and the Beast, that I wore for every recital until I discovered that I could, in fact, pedal while wearing heels.

I pull the tights out one more time, inhaling the overwhelming sense of home, before leaving the closet behind.

I am Acutely Exhausted

So I'm doing the lazy thing and making you read my old schoolwork.

Mindbender #15

The Pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of all pleasures. A. E. Hausman

Knowledge, while not the most desired pleasure, is the one that lasts the longest, staying with one until the ravages of Alzheimer's and age have fully destroyed it. Love, on the other hand, is as perishable as the one loved, who is as turn as perishable as the delicious food they once ate.

I mean, seriously, romantic relationships are rarely enduring. Spouses can die, and relationships can crumble, and we all end up mopey and depressing, eating Ben and Jerry's and watching horrible romantic comedies. For instance, A Time Traveler's wife is about a woman who, after the death of her husband, spends most of her life waiting for him. How utterly depressing.

Food is even quicker to rot. We all crave a little something yummy, but we don't have chocolate cornucopias. Be it the Halloween candy that eventually runs out or the fresh kiwis that go bad before they're eaten, food just doesn't last forever, and cake never sticks around as long as we expect it to. Here is a poem I found online about how quickly chocolate cakes is gone. It wasn't a very good poem, so I won't bother to link to it. There is a finite amount of cake, unlike good poems, of which there is surely an infinite quantity.

Knowledge, however, sticks. I remember a speech made by the minister of my church at Walden pond. He remembered the works of Thoreau. Thoreau remembered the world and nature when he wrote Walden. The knowledge gained stuck with the minister and it stuck with me. Food is eaten and love dies, but knowledge endures.

Freewrite

A piece of narrative writing with an implicit theme.

My sister Genie and I were squished together in the tiny changing room. “Where’d my tank go?” she asked.

“I think it’s under the dress,” I said, unclipping a pair of capris from their hanger. It was August, and we were doing our back-to-school shopping for the year. I slid into the pants. “What do you think?”

“They’d look better on me.”

I laughed. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

“No problem.”

I pulled a face at her, and she grinned before pulling her shirt over her head. I watched as she fit her arms into the sleeves of the embroidered red tank top. She jiggled a bit, and I reached out and poked a bit of fat above her hip. I was about to make some comment, but I remembered everything I’d read about how a single comment about weight could destroy someone’s self-confidence and said nothing.

She paused and looked at me, confused.

I smiled vacantly. “Hip bone,” I said, by way of explanation.

“What?”

“Hip bone.” I poked her again, this time deliberately aiming for the little bony ridge.

This time, she laughed and poked me back. “Hip bone.”

“Hip bone.” I poked her again.

“Hip bone.”

“Hip bone.”

We dissolved into giggles, continuing to poke each other until we were laughing so hard that I overturned the rickety chair that took up what little free space in the dressing room.

The next week, we were in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. I washed, Genie dried, and our younger sister Shelby cleared. When I reached over to pick up the fancy metal platter Mom had used to serve hamburgers, my shirt rode up my side. Genie paused in her drying and leaned over to poke my hip.

“Hey,” I recoiled, annoyed, but she just grinned at me.

“Hip bone.”

I began to laugh as well and poked her back. “Hip bone.”

“Hip bone.”

“Hip-” I gave enough of hiccup-y laugh that my words were cut off, but she caught my meaning and poked me again.

When Shelby brought her next small stack of plates over, she found us laughing so hard we were near tears. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” I shook my head, still giggling.

“Tell me!”

I chuckled again. “It’s an inside joke, you wouldn’t get it.”

“Yes I would, just tell me!”

“It doesn’t matter anyways,” said Genie. “Did you wipe the table yet?”

“You never tell me anything,” Shelby whined.

“Of course I do. Go wipe the table.”

“No, you don’t!”

“It’s not our fault you spill secrets,” I said, joining the argument.

“I don’t know any secrets to spill because you don’t talk to me.”

“Maybe if you’d actually help with the dishes I’d talk to you.”

“Yeah,” said Genie. “Go wipe the table!”

"You’re so mean!” Shelby yelled.

“I’d be nicer if you helped!” said Genie.

“Could you two just stop fighting and get back to work,” I added, my voice low and angry.

“You don’t love me,” cried Shelby.

“It’s not a matter of loving you, it’s a matter of getting things done. I don’t want to be here all night, so could you please just clear the damn table?” I was yelling.

“I hate you!” screamed Shelby, and she slammed the plates down on the counter and ran out of the room.

I grunted and punched the edge of the sink. “Ow.” I shook my hand out.

Genie laughed.

Moooovie

The Sturken encounter was fine. We actually ended up talking for a couple of hours, but it was just as friendly people, with nothing of the something of before. The Harry Potter movie was fabulous. It completely destroyed the book, but it was horrifically exciting. Julie spent a lot of time saying "it didn't happen like that!" and Gretchen and I clutched each other at the very predictable sudden zombie appearance. It was fun.

In other news, I'm going to blatantly steal another portion of Nyx's life. Can I help it if she's doing more interesting things than I am? After all, no one really wants to read about Sturken and I complaining about are siblings and noting his anger issues. Actually, I'll tell you anyways. He hit his sister's arm a few weeks ago because he was just so mad at her, and he needed somewhere for the violence to go, and I said that I'd never experienced that sort of violent impulse, and his response was that he did kind of have some anger issues, but "I'm not a psychopath! really!" My response was, "if you were, I think I'd have noticed by now."

He agrees with Nyx that our hometown is stifling. "London's really opened my mind," he said. "Not that your mind isn't open. You seem really, uh, universalist." I laughed. "It's just, for me, I was really close-minded before I left. Kind of a jerk, really." He still used gay as an insult once during the evening, so he must have been truly awful before. I told him about the boob bead (minus the boob part) and he thought it was kind of awesome in a rather gross way, but recommended that I not tell Mario. We gossiped some, and he agreed that Johannes is really rather odd. We mostly just talked, on and on and on, for literally hours, while he played some racing game on our gamecube and I hid in the basement from my sisters, who were playing fashion show. He showed himself as perpetually more flawed as the time wore on. At first, he made fun of me for being on the math team. Then, later, we talked about SAT-IIs, and he mentioned that he'd actually been on it in middle school. It's nice that he takes the IQ thing for granted. He willingly admitted that I was a bit smarter than he was, but it didn't seem to bother him, it just was. I think that since we've known each other so long, we take the things that would normally make us inaccessible (my nerdiness and his excessive athleticism (he can do A LOT of push-ups. It's scary)) as just part of who we are.

It's odd, really, how different it was from the last time I saw him. I still like him, obviously, but it's lost all of the physical attraction that there was. I think I've finally managed to file him under extended family. He's just another one of the endless string of odd cousins. Shelby, on the other hand, just can't get used to it. When she was eight, during my nightmare trip, she informed the family that "I want to hit him, but I don't know why," and proceeded to attack him. Yesterday, while we were standing around in the yard, she just spontaneously bit him. It was entirely bizarre. He was shocked at first, but when we talked it over later, he seemed to be over it. "It's funny, really, you and Shelby," he said.

I sighed. "Yeah, I just can never understand her. Genie I get, but Shelby's just completely alien."

"Well, you're really polar opposites. You're a complete introvert, and she's more extroverted. She's entirely impulsive, and you think before you act. And then Genie's somewhere in the middle."

Poor Genie, always somewhere in the middle. If I didn't love her to pieces anyways, I'd feel bad.

Oh, he remembered me talking about Gretchen two years ago, and continues to deliberately mispronounce her name, and he even talked about Nyx's biking accident. He said everyone thought she was going to die, which is, really, kind of awful.

Speaking of Nyx, she's gone and had another accidental date. The boys seem to be falling all over each other to get to her =). Direct quote below.

OH CRAP.

if my head were ANY denser, my brain would be a ShamWOW towel.

that is my analogy for last night. yay for un-dating!

i went to see harry potter with this guy. i've thought of him as like an older brother before, so i didn't think it was that weird. even when we saw the preview for twilight, in which bella says to edward, "it's my birthday, kiss me" and he leaned over and said, "it's my birthday..." i thought he was joking. i mean, he didn't protest when i paid for my own ticket.

after the movie we went to longshore because i had never seen it at night before. we sat on one of the catamarans and talked for a really long time. finally my mom's friend called and asked where i was, and i said i'd be home soon. Yamaha pulled me closer on the catamaran, but still i was just thinking, "this can still be friendly, right?" finally i said we should go, and he leaned over towards me.....dialogue to follow in next post.

Later...

what are you doing?
What do you mean, what do you think I'm doing?
Don't do it!
Why not?
Dude, really....
What?
It's just....you're twenty-two!
So what if I am?
You're six years older than me! Doesn't that mean anything to you?
No. It doesn't.
Why not?
Why should it? Ulysses and Cleo are about the same distance apart.
Seriously! I'm sixteen!!
I know.
Doesn't that bother you?
No.
Why not? Why doesn't it bother you?
What do you mean, why?
Why....am I your favorite dispatcher? (reference to earlier at work) Why me?
Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation we've been having....(lists random reasons that don't mean anything)....and i'm attracted to you.
That's it? You're attracted to me? That's silly.
No it's not. That's what it's about!
Seriously. You're ridiculous.
Are you lecturing your elder?
You need lecturing.
Come on, are you afraid?
No. I'm just not interested. I don't think of you that way, I think of you like a brother.
Then why are you sitting here with me...like this?
I would sit with my brother like this!! Well...not like this, precisely....(indicating closeness of faces)
This conversation went on for some time, but i didn't give in. Finally i sat up and turned to him, saying:
Wait. is this gonna be awkward tomorrow? Because if it's awkward I'll punch you.
I'd rather you didn't punch me.
So don't make it awkward.

later on, walking back to the car.

Okay wait. This is ALREADY awkward. Stop it. You need to learn how to not be awkward!
And you need to learn how to not be afraid.
Do not. I'm not afraid of anything.
Yeah you are. You totally wanted to kiss me back there.
I did not. You wish.
Uh-huh.
You're being preposterous.
Yeah, okay Nyx....

fortunately after that we got back to normal conversation.

I Can Make a Difference

You asked, so here it is.

I stood precariously on a wall overlooking the ocean. The sky was a flat gray, and there was a strong and chilly wind. The entire world seemed to be tinted gray; the only color left was the tan of the sand and the greenish gray of the ocean water. It was the sort of setting a movie would have for a suicide, and, at that moment, I wanted my life to end. It is by far the most terrifying moment of my fourteen years of existence.

The first person I tried to tell was my mother. Through tears, I told her that I thought about bad things, that I might be depressed, that I needed help. She responded by telling me that I should exercise to get more endorphins and feel better. I ran up and down stairs, but there was no improvement. Telling her the first time had been so painful that was not willing to go through it again, so I attempted to wait it out. Two weeks later, I was getting worse, and she seemed to have completely forgotten about my problem.

I spoke again, balanced precariously on the edge of a bathroom sink. I began to speak, the words slipping through the tears. My friend looked on, concerned, not understanding why I was crying. "I almost, I almost." I was sobbing so much that a gasp worked its way into my words, but I forced them out. "Killed myself." She was shocked. I continued my story, filling in the details, explaining that I did not know why, that I did not know if it would happen again, that right then I did not want to die. I was scared out of my mind. I was shaking, and the automatic sink behind me went off, spraying my pants with water. I cried even harder. She asked if I wanted to go to the guidance office. My guidance counselor, a creepy old man who didn't even know my name, was not someone I wanted to explain this to, so I shook my head no. My friend promised to keep my secret, and we returned to lunch, me with tears on my face, hers expressing her uncertainty as to what she could do to help.

A week later, I stood in the shower under the pounding hot water, fear flooding through me, trying to let the heat and the noise drown out my sadness and loneliness. I clearly remembered the feeling of standing on that wall. It hit me that I would need only seconds to slit my wrists and finish what I had considered beginning. A battle was raging in my mind. "You don't want that" screamed between my ears, but a little fragment managed to worm its way through the noise, whispering seductively of how easy it would be to let it all go. I rand from the piece, hiding beneath the shower, but running from myself I couldn't get very far. The conflict built to unbearable levels in my mind, so I shoved my fingers into my mouth, biting down so hard that my gums began to ached, trying to give myself a tangible reason to hurt and to make the pain and sadness fade with the marks on my knuckles, just as they had so many times before. This time it didn't help. I sank down to the bottom of the shower and promised myself that Tuesday, tomorrow, I would tell.

I had written about that colorless afternoon no the wall near the ocean. It was a poem in which I tried to figure out how to put my pain into words that people could read and possibly understand. It was scribbled in my worst handwriting in the back of my science notebook. It was accompanied by footnotes and doodles in the margins, everything I felt was needed to explain. The next day I showed it to another friend, one who also wrote poems, not mentioning that it was autobiographical. She said it was creepy but well written. I had promised myself I would tell, so I whispered to her that I was the suicidal girl in the poem. She urged me to go to guidance. It took her about fifteen minutes to talk me into it. We sat across from someone I did not know, a counselor for another grade. I handed her my poem; she called my parents. I was suspended from school for being a danger to myself and others, pending a letter from a mental health professional. I felt worse than I had before.

I saw someone the next day who gave me a letter to get back in school. It was another two and a half weeks before I finally started seeing a therapist and was allowed to close my bedroom door.

A few weeks ago, that second friend moved away. I was walking home from school and trying to console myself. I reminded myself that she was just and friend, and that, without her, I'd still be in the same place I was that day. It was then I realized that I was completely wrong. She brought me in. I have no idea where I'd be if I hadn't gotten help. It could be that I would have found another way, but I could just as easily be dead. She was gone, but I was so lucky to have had her there, and to have been able to survive. I was lucky, and I felt the good luck wash over me in a wave incomparable to the pain in the shower. I was alive, I was happy. I was walking through the first snow of the year, a snow I came so close to never being able to see. I breathed in the flakes and yelled out to a street silenced by ice, "I survived!" "But," I added inwardly, "only just." It was five weeks after I first told my mother that I got help, and I was troubled long before then. I may not have scars on my wrists, but I had a problem, and it is far more common than one might guess. Approximately one in every hundred and fourteen teenagers injures themselves. For some of these teens, five weeks may be too long.

I think mainly it was so difficult for me to get help because people do not really know what to do. I think my mother may have denied the problem, although we don't talk about it at all now, so I'm not sure. Gretchen tried to be a good friend by keeping my secret. Amy finally brought me in, but I was only placed in the care of my denying parents again. People need to be educated about what they can do to help in these situations.

I can make a difference in the world by telling my story and educating people about what they can do to help. Self-injuring and suicide are topics I have yet to cover in health class. I think that some who have not experienced it misinterpret it as a plea for attention, thinking that because people are hurting themselves, they alone are to blame. I do not believe that this is true. No one wants to hurt, and causing physical pain is not a healthy way to deal with painful emotions.

People can be healed. It was six months later, summer, that I saw that I was truly better. The permeating sadness that had hung over me seemed inexplicable gone. I was lying on a hill at music camp. The sun was beating into the back of my jeans, but rather than feeling too hot, I was pleasantly warm. Scales and songs wafted through the breeze, discordant as they mixed together, but rather than being annoying, it was soothing. I smiled into the warm grass, thinking about the friends I would see later, the music I would learn to play, and the new school that I would start in the fall. The warmth of the sun felt as if it had permeated my entire being. It took me a moment to find a word for the unfamiliar feeling: contentment. The happiness in life had come back to me. My life wasn't any better, but I was.

By using what I learned from my own experience, I can help others to feel the same contentment I am now able to feel. I am starting here. This piece of writing is not private. I am spilling out my story because it needs to be learned from. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults, but suicides can be prevented. Students need to be able to tell people more easily, and those whom they tell need to learn what they should do to help.

I am a living, breathing example that it can get better when troubled teens talk, but the people they talk to also need to know what to do. I had to talk to two people before I found one who was willing to help me stick around, so that I can taste snowflakes and feel sunlight, but many people are not so lucky. I can make a difference by speaking up, so I am going to talk.

The DMV call center is a bitch. It took FOREVER, but I finally got an appointment on September 19th. In other news, who wants to go see Harry Potter on Saturday night?

100!

This is my hundredth blog post. To commemorate, I thought I'd share some highlights of the past 100 posts.

In February, I had my first emo-ish introspective semi-rant. As far as I know, nobody bothered to read it, because, at that point, I had no readers.

Until.....Catering, written a few days after my 16th birthday, when Vicky first became a regular reader, at the time, my only reader. My birthday also marked when I began posting daily. Soon thereafter, I got my permit and began terrorizing the roads. I was also terrorized by high schoolers who lacked physical contact boundaries.

Then, in May, two important events occurred. Firstly, Mario became a regular character, and Nyx and Gretchen joined the club, with Gretch even starting her own blog. I also shared both dirty jokes and nerdy jokes. We also discovered both the Debrahs and the Jillians of cyberspace. We also learned about tampons and my subconscious.

It has been, to say the least, a very eventful 100 posts.

NOW, just for kicks, I looked up 100 random questions. I'm going to post the questions here, then answer them in a comment.

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4.

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can, What can you touch?

3. Before you started this survey, what were you doing?

4. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

5. Without looking, guess what time it is

6. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time?

7. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

8. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?

9. Did you dream last night?

10. Do you remember your dreams?

11. When did you last laugh?

12. Do you remember why / at what?

13. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

14. Seen anything weird lately?

15. What do you think of this quiz?

16. What is the last film you saw?

17. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

18. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy?

19. Tell me something about you that most people don't know.

20. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

21. Do you like to dance?

22. Would you ever consider living abroad?

23. Does your name make any interesting anagrams?

24. Who made the last incoming call on your phone?

25. What is the last thing you downloaded onto your computer?

26. Last time you swam in a pool?

27. Type of music you like most?

28. Type of music you dislike most?

29. Are you listening to music right now?

30. What color is your bedroom carpet?

31. If you could change something about your home, without worry about expense or mess, what would you do?

32. What was the last thing you bought?

33. Have you ever ridden on a motorbike?

34. Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving?

35. Do you have a garden?

36. Do you really know all the words to your national anthem?

37. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?

38. If you could eat lunch with one famous person, who would it be?

39. Who sent the last text message you received?

40. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?

41. What time is bed time?

42. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant?

43. How many tattoos do you have?

44. If you don't have any, have you ever thought of getting one?

45. What did you do for your last birthday?

46. Do you carry a donor card?

47. Who was the last person you ate dinner with?

48. Is the glass half empty or half full?

49. What's the farthest-away place you've been?

50. When's the last time you ate a homegrown tomato?

51. Have you ever won a trophy?

52. Are you a good cook?

53. Do you know how to pump your own gas?

54. If you could meet any one person (from history or currently alive), who would it be?

55. Have you ever had to wear a uniform to school?

56. Do you touch-type?

57. What's under your bed?

58. Do you believe in love at first sight?

59. Think fast, what do you like right now?

60. Where were you on Valentine's day?

61. What time do you get up?

62. What was the name of your first pet?

63. Who is the second to last person to call you?

64. Is there anything going on this weekend?

65. How are you feeling right now?

66. What do you think about the most?

67. What time do you get up in the morning?

68. If you had A Big Win in the Lottery, how long would you wait to tell people?

69. Who would you tell first?

70. What is the last movie that you saw at the cinema?

71. Do you sing in the shower?

72. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?

73. What do you do most when you are bored?

74. What do you do for a living?

75. Do you love your job?

76. What did you want to be when you grew up?

77. If you could have any job, what would you want to do/be?

78. Which came first the chicken or the egg?

79. How many keys on your key ring?

80. Where would you retire to?

81. What kind of car do you drive?

82. What are your best physical features?

83. What are your best characteristics?

84. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go?

85. What kind of books do you like to read?

86. Where would you want to retire to?

87. What is your favorite time of the day?

88. Where did you grow up?

89. How far away from your birthplace do you live now?

90. What are you reading now?

91. Are you a morning person or a night owl?

92. Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

93. Can you close your eyes and raise your eyebrows?

94. Do you have pets?

95. How many rings before you answer the phone?

96. What is your best childhood memory?

97. What are some of the different jobs that you have had in your life?

98. Any new and exciting things that you would like to share?

99. What is most important in life?

100. What Inspires You?

Feel free to participate.

Awkward Turtle

My embarrassing moment of the day:

I'm sitting in Spanish, and we're about to go over the homework, so, as always, I have to go get my textbook (the scoliosis-not-having-to-carry-it thing has advantages). While standing up, I attempted to step over my backpack, but tripped on it and did about five one-legged hop thingies to stay upright. No one laughed, but I sit in the front row- I'm sure somebody noticed. So, I got the book, and, when walking back to my chair, went the long way around my desk, in order to avoid the backpack, while concentrating on not tripping. I had almost reached the desk when Archie looked at me and said, "me presta un boligrapho?" or something to that effect. "Uh-eh-er-wha?" I responded, since I realized that I had no idea what he had just said. He repeated the question, I said, "uh, sure, si...yeah? um, here." I sat at my desk and tried to avoid looking at him the rest of class. It's rather annoying that he blocks the window.

I had a thing for Archie for a couple of months during freshman year. It faded, but I still have a slight tendency to spontaneously turn bright red when talking to him, because I remember how I always turn bright red when talking to him, and I get embarrassed about that, and then I blush again. It's a vicious cycle, really.

Him

I think I saw Him at the beach today.

Funny, isn't it, that I still think of Him with capital letters. That stupid douchebag who has barely even spoken to me since eighth grade still manages to send me into full on panic mode. I've blocked out most memories of him, but I still remember my eighth grade gym teacher forcing me to help him with his rock climbing harness, and him using his usual awful innuendos that seemed to never cease, and me mostly just wanting to cry, and that dumb bitch (I don't use that insult lightly) saying, "if you show him your tits, he'll go away."

It probably wasn't him anyways. He probably wouldn't have been at the house of another guy from our grade. He probably wouldn't be doing some strange provocative salsa dance to the music blaring from the house. He probably wasn't looking at me with that sick gaze that makes me afraid. I didn't have my glasses on, after all, so it probably wasn't him, but I still wanted to run away crying.

I almost wish that he had actually tried something at one point, simply because then I'd have a good reason for hating him, instead of this irrational fear and hatred.

Sorry for the anger, Vicky, my wonderful reader, but I really just wanted to send out a "fuck you" to Mike.

Moving On

Sturken has a date today, and I am totally and completely chill.

Well, mostly chill. Not so chill that I'm not going to write about him here.

Basically, I had a crush on him from whenever I first started liking boys up until last month- which isn't to say that I wasn't into other boys. But, always, in the back of my mind, there was always a little thought of Sturken, and little pondering that "if I love him so much, is it really fair for me to pretend to love someone else?"

Yes, I said love. I can verify it with a lot of entries in my diary from the Fall of 9th grade in which I wrote just that. He's a family friend, a nice jewish boy who I've known since infancy. In middle school, back when he was shorter than me, he was nerdy, but he moved to Europe after 8th grade, and he seems to have turned into a bit of a jock. Well, he is addicted to those football video games on the X-box, and last time we visited him, he spent the entire time betting me that he could do a slam-dunk jump (not that he could actually slam dunk) and touch high objects (I, of course, dutifully pretended that he couldn't).

All in all though, I was somewhat obsessed. I currently view him as my first love, even if it wasn't reciprocated. Seriously, though, I had it bad. Read this:

We shivered as we waited in line, chattering about school and the meaningless information that, if anyone else were explaining, I would discard immediately. Our sisters, my two and his one, stood a bit behind us, huddled together, giggling between high-pitched whispers. We continued our talk, moving on to our friends. He poked fun at the names of mine, over pronouncing every consonant, I laughed, allowing the sound to bubble out, now that the darkness prevented him from seeing my blush. I retaliated, teasing him for his association with a boy who had acquired a mullet over the summer. He laughed too, creases forming around his eyes. I carefully approached the question of when he would return home. We were only family friends, I wasn’t supposed to miss him, yet the question pushed at the edge of my consciousness even when I had gone months without seeing him. “Soon, I hope," he told me, and I wondered at his words. Was it because he wanted to see me? Or was he simply tired of this land of rain and foreign accents? I wished that he, and not his parents, who debated a move to Singapore, was right. I wanted to be able too see him, hear his voice turn deep and slow when he tried to seem manly, then speed up, changing to its ordinary tenor when he was distracted. I wanted to remember every detail of him, to learn more of him than I ever could in a few short days every year. I watched his face carefully, searching for any hidden meaning, but why would he have let one show? I kept my thoughts just as tucked away.

We reached the front, and received our crêpes, thin pancakes filled with melted chocolate, almost too hot, compared to the cold air. We settled around a small table, the little sisters sitting, and us two standing, watching over them, just as we always had. The sisters were talking about him. “His nose is crooked,” his sister said, “isn’t it crooked?” She looked at me. I gazed at his face, head tilted. “It’s,” I paused. Beautiful? Perfect? Attractive? While he’d love to hear those, they revealed more of my thoughts than I cared to share. It fit his face perfectly, slightly large, with the softened angles of a young teenager, but “it fits your face” sounds like an insult to the rest of him. The pause was dragging out, and it was sounding like I truly believed his nose crooked. I finally managed a strangled “fine,” a tiny, meaningless word, good or bad, a placeholder, like everything else I said to him. I took another bite of the warm chocolate and gazed at him, trusting the darkness to hide me. It didn’t make sense to risk telling him, not when we only had two days together, and any potential payoff would be marginal. Two days of platonic joking far outweighed two days of what I feared would be pain. I watched him as he smiled, fighting to remember each and every image so that when I was home, I could imagine that I still had him, the crêpes, and the night.

I wrote that last year, back when the obsession thing was in full swing. Last month, though, it abruptly disintegrated. I remember biking around during Christmas break, praying that my next push of the pedals would be enough to push all the need for him out, and, miraculously, it was. It's almost enough to make me believe in God.

Anyways, Sturken has a date, and my only thought was a hope that he has a nice time. No jealousy, no nothing.

I'm cured.