COLLEGE

getting through high school isn't too tough.  quickly, you learn how to navigate between people and groups and know which teachers to talk to and which to avoid.  Not a problem, because at the end of the day, to home you go and the comforts and warmth of a mother's arms and a bed you've slept in for many many years.  But college is a whole different playing field.  High school is the minor leagues.  You've just been signed to the majors in college.  And just like that, a bus hits and your in a room that others have used.  Your in a city or town that maybe you don't know.  Not only do you have to navigate between groups of people and classes, but also trying to find a grocery store.  Welcome to life, the world screams at you while you stare questioning at a map.  Welcome to life.  To the real world.  To the rest of your life.  You are no longer in the warmth and comfort of your mother's arms.  You have just stepped into a world you only hoped about when younger but didn't dare to dream about.  A new life, and a new beginning.  No one is here telling you who to be, all of the strings are broken and you are the person that you wish to become, you want others to see you as.  No parents to catch you when you fall.  Hopefully, you'll have supporting friends, ones that will try and lift you back up again if you do happen to fall.  Hopefully, you'll have comforting teachers and administrators who will temporarily take the place of arms where you can cry to.  Welcome, the world whispers, almost cynically, almost mercilessly, almost wishing you to fail.  Wishing disaster and chaos to come into your once peaceful life.  Welcome, and good luck.

Graduation

I graduated from High School on Sunday.  The moment that I had been looking forward to for the past 6 months had finally come.  What did it feel like?  surreal.  I can't process it.  I can't process any of this.  I'll be leaving the comforts of my high school community for a totally new city, a new state, a new school.  I dare compare it to birth, and the leaving of the womb.  It will be a slap in the face and I will gasp for air, staring around at the new life presented to me.  I feel like I'll have to relearn everything that I have gotten up to now.  Hopefully it won't be too traumatizing.  I am looking forward to the slap.

After my ACL surgery, it has left me with a similar knee as a grandmother.  I ache when it rains, and cry when I have to go up or down the stairs.  I avoid lifting anything heavy because I'm a little afraid my knee won't be able to handle it.  But I want to run.  I am to run so bad.  I actually miss it.  I make excuses all the time to people, but the point is, I really wish I could run again.  and jog.  I'm cleared to jump rope, which was on the track to jogging.  So I think I'll be able to jog soon.  Today was painful.  And the numb patch on my knee hurt, along with my shin.  I guess it sounds a little confusing saying that a nump part hurts.  But it does, even if someone hits it, or I bump it accidentally, it hurts.  I just want the pain to stop and go away.  If oxicodone didn't suck so much, I would be popping the pills.  Sometimes it's gone all together, and I forget that I had surgery.  But when I have to go up or down stairs, I am reminded constantly that I can't run just yet.  I really am looking forward to that day when I can jog without a limp.

Looking towards the future

It is a slow realization that my life will change drasticlly in a couple of months. In June I graduate from High School. I will never again be called a high school student. I don't know if I should be jumping up and down with joy, or approaching this change with apprehension. It kind of reminds me of my pending 10th birthday. As excited as I was to be another year older and closer to womanhood, it was a shock that I would never be a single digit age again. That seems a silly comparision, but I was not at all saddned by my graduatoin from 8th grade into high school. Grammer school was literally a hell on earth for me, and I never wish to repeat those years. But High School has been an experiance, both good and bad, but definatly a learning one. The time is fast approaching. And it is hard to believe, and slowly sinking into my head. I look around my room with each passing day and am realizing that this will only be my room when i visit. When I visit, because it will no longer be my permanent home. I will be going out into the world (of Boston) and living a new life, leaving behind the old. Much like sheading of skin. It is a welcome change that I won't have to visit my father everyother weekend and deal with the junk that he puts on me, but I will mourn the loss of my much loved house. This will be the biggest change in all my 18 years of living. But still, mixed feelings are building up inside of me. Change has that affect on the best of us, I do believe. The future is looming on the horizon, and I go to meet it. It makes me excited, to think that I will be meeting new people, gaining new friends, and living new experiences. But I am afraid that it will leave a whole inside of me that could have the potential to swallow me, if I let it. There are particular people that I will miss most of all, others were just passing through and does not matter much if they come or go. I guess that is how it goes, you take with you those that mean the most to you, so that at the end of your life you are only surrounded by the best. Those that you trust, and love, and who return the feelings. Only the truest of friends. I guess I have to look at it like a spring cleaning of friends. of my soul. Only the important people, important ideas, leave with you.

the Drama

I hate prom. It is silly and totally rediculus. The whole point is to look pretty and get all dolled up. Other then that, no one really wants to STAY once they get to prom. wow, money totally well spent.
So I'll be in Cambodia right before graduation. How insane is that? I really do not know what to expect, but should be rather interesting.

Rantings

I sit here, wondering why life can't become more simple than it is. And why, finding a special someone, can't be more simple. Why can't it just be: I like someone and I just go up to him and tell him. Why does there have to be games played and hints thrown and glances catched. Because the fear of rejection can be greater than the growing like of the boy. But why are we taught to go with our fears, or to be scared at all. When did that change begin to happen, because as a child I climbed trees without a second thought and jumped out of them without fear of breaking a bone or hurting myself. When did I become aware that things like that could hurt me, and when did fear begin to creep in. Maybe it happens when we learn that santa clause isn't real. or the tooth fairy, or the easter bunny. and why isn't it alright to believe in mythical or magical creatures. or that a man can travel the world in one night, because the rules of time do not apply to him. It is so magical to believe in something like that. But the age of innocence was lost, and somehow it can not be returned. how, then, can we prevent it from ever being lost. But then we find other things to place our hopes in, without fears. We find something that is unbelievable and throw ourselves into it. Sometimes its love, sometimes it mythology, or human nature. I don't know. Maybe I'm guilty of believing in love, but then it was shattered, just like Santa Clause was. Now I find myself without that inconcievable belief in something. It was a harsh reality to find that the Disney movies had gotten it all wrong about love and relationships. The girl shouldn't wait for her prince because the prince may never come. She needs to find her own way out of the dungeon. And there is no happily ever after. What happens, Cinderella, when you don't have the fairy god mother anymore? and you don't provide an heir to the throne? There is always a prince in all the stories. Can't they just fall in love with someone simple? Instead of a prince? I just want someone real, who doesnt have a country to run. But that phase of silly blind belief in the overcoming power of love that can break curses and charms is over. Again, I wish I could go back to it, and throw myself into its belief, but that glass was shattered and no matter how you glue it back together, the cracks still exist.

Progression

I am just now realizing how much a person uses their legs. Walking, laying down, sitting down, getting up, turning, driving. Even just sitting is uncomfortable. It is such a blessing to have the use of both legs and knees. It is something that the average people takes advantage of every single day. Even the use of arms and carrying things is made more difficult by the limitation of the legs. You can not get any where quickly, and must be patient with just walking down the hallway. And at the end of the day, I am exhausted from exerting the extra energy of just living through a normal school day. There is no need to complain though, because complaining only causes yourself to get frustrated and others to get upset at your whining. No one likes a whiner. Putting a smile on only makes things easier for yourself and others. At least, that is what I have discovered, and the philosophy that I utilize every day.

Only My Knee got hit by a truck

So, over break, I went skiing. For the first time in my life, I went on slopes. It was fun until I got off the ski lift. The ski instructure and I were heading down the mountain again, (well, i guess it would be not so much fun if we headed up) when I fell. It was a pretty lame tumble, to say the least. But basically, my knee popped because of my idiocracy and lack of skiing ability. I vow to never ski again. Come to find out (after I get home and go to the doctor) that I tore my ACL. one of the most important legaments in the knee. Oh joy. So doctor, what does that mean? I have to get reconstructive surgery. Which happened today.

Well, I want to curl up into a ball and die. except i can bend my knee, so i guess I can't curl. But pain killers are really really helpful :D I currently have an ice pack wrapped around my knee, having ice cold water pumped around my knee. It is a pretty nifty feeling, because It is so numb by now that my mom touched the water and asked if I could feel how cold it is. Nope, I cant really feel at all. When I got home, I cried. Trying to get up the steps, trying not to fall over while walking on crutches. I must have looked so pathetic, but it hurts to putt any kind of weight on it.

It's gone..

I've lost it. The drive to play my flute. For a split second in time, I had the vision of brilliance. I was going to be a performer. There was nothing except music, playing it that is. I knew what I wanted to be for the rest of my life and it was a musician. But it's gone. My image, my vision, has left me dry. I can not muster up the energy to pick up my flute because of the dream that I have lost. I play and my fingers do not cooperate anymore. My eyes go blurry and the notes all fuzzy. I have lost something precious and I want it back, but it does not want me.

What went wrong

I often reflect on the turn that my life has taken by actions that were decided by others. I entered High School a totally normal young lady. I feel that I am leaving it extremly changed in so many ways that I did not anticipate. It is never normal or healthy for a little girl to witness her parents fighting. I tried to shield my younger sister from it often times because I had been subjected to it when I was her age. As a young girl, I would lie away at night and hear my parents arguing, loudly. They must have assumed that we were asleep because they never fought in front of us. We is refering to myself and my older sister of 3 years. I don't remember what the arguments were about except that my father would always walk away and my mother would yell at him not to walk away while she was talking to him. That she was talking. He would passively ignore her. I think that I attribute this to my avoidance of conflict. The sound of arguing makes me uncomfortable and scared, frankly. Unsafe. My father was always there for me. I looked up to him when I was younger, but I was the second child. Softly pushed aside in favor of my older sister. I love her dearly, and I don't resent her for being first. I simply got used to being second. I understood and complied with my treatment. This isn't to say that I was flat out ignored, but I learned my place, which was not in the spot light. She was talk with at night, and it was a common practice that I would be ignore for bedtime "tuck in". That was the way it was. And then my younger sister came along, and she got more attention than I did. She is the sensitive one. She needs to have the special attention. Again, I got used to it.
But my parents: their fighting got worse. We never really went on vacation as a family, and my father was often busy with his biking. I don't much remember my mother in my early years. I think because she was like a ghost. Quiet in the background, helping us along, having snacks for us after school. She was not a major actor in her own life, I think. After the divorce, things changed. My mother, my father, my life. Everything is different. Everything and Everyone. My mother has found her voice and my father has changed personalities. I sleep in a bed that is not my own and eat other people's food. I have to smile and pretend that this new life, this new world that I have entered is perciesly what I asked for. Because watching my father dote on another woman is exactly what I want to see. Hearing him speak to her in ways that I did not know he could to someone that is not my mother is just what I love to hear. And then he tries to be my best friend. He can not see what he has done to my life, to my personality. I am scared to death of comitment. What if my special someone leaves me like my father left my mother? But my mother!! Her strength has become a brilliant and beautiful thing. She has found her strength that was always there but lay dormant inside of her. It has come alive in ways that are just beginning to unfold. I admire her more and more each day. I wish I had noticed her in my childhood. I am only starting to appreciate her and I am really saddened over our loss of time. I am going to run away for a while. I need to find my own voice. I need to seperate myself from the strangling oppression that I feel around my father. I need to break out of this shell that has been created by my parents. They have instilled in me virtues that are important, but consciously and invertantly. But starting this summer, I plan on writing about the things I AM doing, not what I WISH to do.

Into the Wild

I recently read a book called Into the Wild. Actually I read it last summer, but the impact that it had on me was so huge! Maybe I've talked about this before. The book is based on a true story about a young man who travels across America, basically. His life is so wonderful though. Full of everything that I long to do. I was discussing this book with my father, because I encouraged him to read it, and he thought that it was almost cruel for the boy to cut ties with his family. How can he not understand though? I see and understand his motives clearly.

I see my life, and what it is cracking up to be, and I am a little disappointed. I wish for it to be adventerous and amazing. I want someone else to see my life and go "wow, she really lived" not, "what was she doing with herself?" That is what I have been doing for the past 18 years, just living, just existing. Chris McCandless knew how to live. I love my family, but when going into the adventure of a lifetime, it is not wise to tie oneself down to family and relationships. Someone said that Chris had a problem with intimacy. I think not, but just being tied down to something pointless. My father thinks that it is because he was angry with his father. I was thinking about it and realized something: Chris's father had almost lived a double life and he found out that he was illegitamit. His whole identity was shattered. Your parents bring you into this world, and you expect them to know and understand themselves in order for you to define yourself. When the image of who your parents are is shattered you have to reevalute yourself.

Who you are becomes someone else. This whole image that you have had up until this realization is someone completely different from then on. Who you are is very dependent on who your parents are. But once you find out something about your parents that shatteres your image of them in consequence shatters your image of self. Your world crumbles around you. I think that is why Chris was able to become closer to those that he met on the road. They did not define him, but he could start clean with that relationship. He had to reevaluate himself in order to re-learn and understand who his parents were. Maybe I am reading too much into this and projecting my life into this situation, but that is how I see it. How I am beginning to see it.

Floodwood is one place where I can redefine myself, and figure things out. It is so easy to see who you are without the complications of family, which is another reason why I think it is healthy to seperate from family for a while. Not sever the ties completely, because it is family that should love you unconditionally, but just for a season. It is important to define yourself by your own standards. I see who I am most clearly when I am surrounded by nature. Others in other places. But Chris was able to be himself, most comfortable as I understood it, around nature as well. I find him to be a tragic hero, because in the end he did discover his tragic flaw which killed him. He had been living a secluded life. And I understand it. But he realized that having companionship of any kind is a gift as well. "And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness....And this most vexing of all, HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED."