J9

I am sitting across from a girl who doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know my name, she doesn’t know how weak I can be; she doesn’t know anything about me at all. I wonder what she thinks of me. If I didn’t know anything about her, I would think that she has it all together- but I know better. I know her name, I know how weak she can be, and I know things about her that she probably wishes nobody did. Seemingly a stranger, she probably thinks I am weird. I keep looking at her to ensure that I am thinking of the right girl, that she is in fact who I believe her to be. I am quite certain of it. She is the girl who my ex-boyfriend, who I just so happened to have dreamt about last night, was dating when I spoke to him last. They have broken up since then. He broke her heart. I was told that I wasn’t the last girl he was going to do that to, and apparently I wasn’t. She is broken now. The girl I am sitting across from is broken, but she hides it so well. Any time our eyes meet she smiles politely, acting in the accepted cultural manner. She is very proper and comfortable looking. She looks as if she is without a care in the world.

I think that she’s on to me. I can feel her looking at me, as if she knows I am typing about her. As if she knows her secret’s out.

Or…

Maybe worse.

Maybe she knows who I am. Maybe he talked about me, told her my secrets. Maybe she is thinking the exact same things that I am. Maybe she pities me. Maybe she thinks that I am broken and that I hide it so well.

Well, I’m not broken- but I do hide it very well.

As each day passes I feel like I am merely letting down my loved ones because I haven’t turned out as intelligent as they had hoped.

The places I’ve been and the places I’m going don’t collide. I don’t mean to make you feel badly but I want need to get far away from where we are. I need to get out of here. I seek a place that is more than that. Somewhere where the people are unlike any other. Life is simple when your problems are fatal. Things get messy when we revolve our lives around meaningless, material and petty things. I have found that we can have everything we ask for and will still find room to complain. It seems that it is the people who have the least material possessions have the most appreciation and that is something I need to be around more often.

I really hate it when people tell me that there is something wrong, but won’t tell me what exactly is wrong. We are told to be polite and not ask too deeply into people’s lives, but if we don’t how are we to expect to learn anything about anybody? If you don’t want to tell me what is wrong in your life, I can’t feel comfortable telling you if there is anything wrong in mine. So essentially, when you close me out you force me to close you out. Eventually, if we all act in such a manner, we all will clam up and nobody will have their problems solved.

But- we don’t want people to worry about us. God forbid somebody give a shit about me. And, that is honestly how I feel. Now that I know that there are people actually reading this I don’t want to be as honest as I was before, basically because I don’t want people to worry about me. So, now that I have an audience I’d like to tell you all that this is my way of making things better. If I say that I am feeling shitty, it isn’t because I want you to help me feel better. This isn’t my half-assed method of communicating with the world. It is how I communicate with myself. So… if you read something in here and learn something about me, I don’t want you to talk to me about it in real life until I tell you it in real life. I don’t want you to find out things about me that you wouldn’t normally have, simply because of this.

It is interesting to note how impacting different things can be for different people. Where I am sitting represents one of the most sacred places a person could be. For most of the people who sit where I am sitting, this room is one that influences their entire lifestyle. To me, the light that shines off of the rain water on the ground means more. To me this is a white room where it is quiet and I can escape the pressure that I feel when I walk away from it and towards society. If any of the people I am with were to know what I was writing in here they would undoubtedly like me less. That is how powerful this room is. I can’t help but have respect for such a room but at the same time I am able to realize that it is just that. A room. Four walls, four windows, twenty-four pews, one pulpit, a thousand different representations. All of this coming from one room.

While this room is so profound and sacred to so many, they must realize that right on the other side of this wall a police car passes by daily, surely to arrest the same people who flock to the room. They must understand that this room is doing them no good. This room has no healing powers; it has nothing for you but an image of an all powerful being and only a book written many years ago to back that up. These people must see the fact that their luck doesn’t change if they come to the room.

Maybe they come to this room out of fear. They fear their life circumstances worsening and with no where else to run they come here. Shit- if was god I’d be pissed.

I think it is strange that we invest so much in other people. With so many other sure bets, why is it that we frequently feel confident in putting all of our chips on things that cannot be ensured? Sometimes it is the unpredictability that we are so fascinated by and thus is the motivator of our decisions. While the less adventurous of us do this in a much less outlandish manner, we all inevitably do it and are essentially are guilty of gambling for security.

The accepted goal in a young person’s life is to ensure the security for their future. We go to school so that we can secure a job and in doing so secure ourselves financially for later in life. We date so that we can secure companionship and potentially secure our lineage. We are constantly building up our expectations for the future frequently only to be let down and have to start over.

Our entire lives we are promoted to prepare ourselves, but we never really know what exactly we are in preparation for. Why is it that, as a culture, we are so focused on the future? What is it about the unknown that is to come that is so interesting to us? It seems to me that more often than not we aren’t prepared for what does come, so I can’t help but question, why prepare?

Life is a constant lesson. As cliché as it may sound, and be, we are constantly learning and by the time we have learned enough to get by, we loose our minds. It feels like we are always striving to have more of everything that we frequently loose sight of that which is important. While I cannot easily and honestly say that preparation is not necessary, I can clearly say that we value it too much. The preparation that we call our lives seems to me to merely be a way of cheating. We cheat to have the odds in our favor, so that when we do gamble we can feel confident, when in reality we have no right to feel this way.

I feel as though I have been rejected a lot in these past few weeks. The most disturbing of all came today by way of mailbox 1355. I think that this rejection was so potent because 1. it scares me and 2. it was so unexpected. The letters were supposed to be sent out Friday. Today is Wednesday. Why the hell am I being rejected before everyone else? Was my application so horrid that at first glance I was banned from having a possibility of studying abroad? While I wasn’t whole heartedly expecting to be accepted to study abroad, I most certainly wasn’t entirely expecting to be rejected. I just feel cheated.

It scares me to be rejected from study abroad merely because I worry that it puts me that much further away from my dreams. I worry that maybe all of those critics may be right. My own sister has told me that she doesn’t believe I will get where I want to be. My sister, my blood, my family, my best friend, doesn’t have faith that I will be successful. I brushed it off when she said it, or at least tried to, and just added it to the list of reasons why I believe nobody really takes me seriously. The reason that I am most upset about not being able to study abroad is because for a mere second it put doubt in my own head that I would fulfill my dreams. It put me on the level of those who doubt my dreams. I know that there is no way I can realize my dreams if I don’t have faith in them. While everyone else may doubt me, I myself cannot do that. I will not do that.

I have changed for you and you don’t even care. I put myself out there, I really made myself vulnerable and you didn’t even bat an eyelash. I feel like you have changed me and I am mad at you because of it. I am mad because I am now someone I don’t even know and it is all because of you and you can’t even acknowledge my existence. I have changed the way that I look at the world and how the world looks at me and you hardly know my name. I never see you anymore, and even when I do see you it isn’t as if I can speak, act, or do anything because, after all, this isn’t me. I don’t know who you have turned me into but I know I don’t like it. I also know that I am mad. Mad at you, mad at myself and mad at her for making me like this. I am mad and I have no right to be and I normally wouldn’t be, but I am. And it is all because of you.

Perhaps we need a liquid haze to clearly see that which is important in our lives. We truly are 21 and invincible.

I feel as though I have merely been waiting my entire life. Waiting for something better, bigger and usually, more destructive to come along for me to jump on. No matter how much I am let down or how frequently I am disappointed, I always seem to have this innocent hope for a better future. I want to be so independent so I can make my own choices and in this make myself happy, provide myself with the future that will satisfy me. Ultimately I dream of the day when I can move myself out of the situation that I am in and can merely be happy on my own living the life that I have created for myself.

I have found that recently I like to spend a lot of time alone. I frequently loose myself deep in thought about what is to come or what is not to come. Worrying that what I want, need, to come in the future will not and how I can get around this. What I have realized is that I should be focusing on how I can make the current situation better. Instead of planning on making next year better than this one, I should make this year better than last. I needn’t worry about how the future will turn out; in spite of everything it never turns out how you dream it to. To this one could say, why dream? I think it is undoubtedly necessary to dream. We need to dream to motivate ourselves to work hard for that dream, but we shouldn’t spend more time in our dreams than we do in reality. But dreams, they are necessary for daily life.

After all, you aren’t supposed to put off for tomorrow that which you can do today.

Sometimes I fall asleep with my contacts in and hate when I wake up that my eyes hurt so badly and I can hardly see anything for the first five to ten minutes of being awake. It is somewhat of a catch 22 because I hate waking up with my contacts in, because my vision is so cloudy after doing this, but at the same time I hate putting my contacts in in the morning because my hands are always cold when I wake up. This is really the least of anybody’s problems.

My societal detox was catalyzed by a call from an old friend and a bacterial infection. While this may not make sense to you, it is logical if only examined carefully. First off, I am sick. Feeling like shit and wanting to die has its effects on a girl. Currently I am feeling much better and finally am seeing things more clearly. This better feeling that I have will last only until I stand up, and I know this, but I am looking forward to getting over this illness. Either way, I have talked things over with a close friend of mine who I was recently feeling distant from and overall am no longer feeling badly. I feel almost as if my slate was wiped clean and I am starting fresh. Additionally, I got a phone call today from an old friend who means a lot to me. He just called to say hey and see how things were going. I haven’t spoken with him in a few months and it was really nice just to hear his laugh. I am now in a really good mood about life and am taking on this societal detox with much more confidence and understanding. I am pretty grateful for the good people around me and am really looking forward to my health rebounding so I can be active again, physically as well as mentally.

I feel as though I have woken up and for the first time in quite a while, and I can see clearly. No contacts are needed, no clouded vision, no cold hands. I can just see. It feels nice to be able to see without the assistance of manufactured goods.