"Nothing lasts forever, no matter how it feels today"

A mix of pain and disbelief strike like a clock as I hear my mom's words again in my head. "I don't want to hear about your medicine, or your favorite candy bar, or your eye problem. I don't want to hear what you have to say. I don't care. I don't."

Something about words allows them to have this violent sting, similar to how I react to bees, with my near anaphylactic reaction. Something hurts even more when you know the words were intended, not out of anger, but out of legitimate feelings and nothing but the raw truth. Unlike the large inflamed area that aches for days after the bee sting but eventually ceases to remain, a slight but noticeable darkened spot of where the bee decided to proclaim territory tarries, never entirely removing itself. That mark is left for weeks, new moons, decades, just a small mark left to wholly symbolize the total caustic happening.

Tears are good. They don't come easily to me, not at all, but I wish I could cry more. When something absolutely sucks, and you're left broken, crying seems to me as a physical ridding of the pain, a final step towards healing. When you can't cry, you just remain, allowing these waves of emotion and hurt to sweep over you, but instead stare blankly, praying for the sun to rise on the distant horizon. And the injury beneath the surface begins to heal and grow a new layer of skin, baby steps to being okay again, when another tide comes ashore, breaking the skin, allowing the wound to return to square one.

Now I am here, in this place they call the present, though if this were tucked into a box decorated with shiny wrapping and an extravagant bow, I wouldn't want it. I would ask for the gift receipt and be first in line to get my money back. And even if they handed a card with store credit, to get anything but this, this small scalded burn would reside, throbbing more with every ice cube, every attempt to heal, forcing the words to feel unforgettable, after weeks, new moons, and decades, forever. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0o8JCxjjpM

I have so much on my mind, yet so little understand as to which keys to use first. It's a gross understatement to tell you that I have been meaning to post but running low on time. And starting Tuesday, the first day of the swim season, I will officially have lost about 15 more hours per week. So here's to the last post for, who knows, maybe a week, maybe two months.

The  last time I wrote, September 26, was exactly a week and four days before my grandfather passed away. I like to think that October 7th was only his official passing, and that he had been gone for a while before that, that October 7th was finally the day he bowed out stubbornly to his malignant brain tumor. While those of you who did not know him may think calling him stubborn was an insult, it is not at all. He was a fighter, in multiple senses of the word, dying as a two star Admiral, a widow, a father to five, a widow of 15 years, and the husband of a smoker and alcoholic, the only complaint I heard leave his mouth being about his hip pain two years ago.  

I will certainly miss him, as I already do, but I am acutely aware of the beauty and sheer blessing of knowing him for fifteen years. The song in the title is a good one, one that definitely expresses so many emotions in no defined lyrics, but instead the lyrics being the thoughts that occupy your mind as you listen. My fingers are prosed above these keys, unsure of the words necessary to capture what I am trying to vocalize. Listen to 3:17 until around 6. There are few feelings not explored in this measure of time. It reminds me extremely much of my grandfather's death, explosions of intensity and uncertainty of what is to follow, an absolute silence then resuming with such tranquility. I swear, I have never seen more random people at a funeral than his. I have attended my share of family funerals but not one had audiences of random passers-by who had been  just strongly affected and inspired by the deceased except for my grandfather's. I chose to believe that the truth about his death is rather simple, like those 2 minutes and 43 seconds of the song. While there is such pain and a striking reality left in the open like shattered glass, one never able to be fixed, it will eventually subside, be swept away, and a period of serenity, a beautifully broken serenity will remain in the space of the once shattered glass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMLmlHfehQ

So, today I turn 15. While I've thought about this fact only briefly, I did come across one thought that could summarize what I've learned in life thus far.

Memories are almost an addiction for the most of us. We hold them with both hands, and let them live by telling of them until they are worn into just words. But as I proceed into the coming years, months, days, or whatever I have left, I want to be hands-on involved into my life at the moment, releasing past memories to fall into the places they belong.

It's a winding road, when you're in the lost and found. You're a lover, I'm a runner and we go 'round and 'round.

The feeling of relief after a good cry is comparable to few things in life. As I type I just think one thing, however sinful it is, goddamn it. Hello to all readers, if you're just tuning in, be aware that I am not a people pleaser, but I tell it like it is.

My breath is sharp and punctuated by my shivering, audible even above the music flowing from my earphones and into my ears. Sometimes I just wonder, are there people in similar situations to mine that, like me, don't share it with many or even any. I wonder, do the people I encounter daily know what is happening in my life, or are they maybe even too consumed with struggles in their own, greater than mine? 

I am long since discovering that my mother and I will never cease to fight. But, on Friday, as I drove five hours with her to visit my dying grandfather, I had a fleeting idea that maybe that didn't have to be the case. Once more, I realize how far off that thought was. One more fight, one less day. The thought keeps scrolling through my brain, continuously, just as Krispy Kreme doughnuts do in the factory behind the seemingly quaint dining area. I've realized the worst type of fights are the ones which are inclusive of words beyond the personal sphere, which are shameful, seizing words, that just leave you breathless.

As I sat eating my 3 Minute Brownie, back against my cheetah print pillow that I can't remember life without, I heard my mom's footsteps advancing up the stairs and knew they were directed towards me. She brought in her cell phone, the back held together by a piece of duct tape, an abhorrent yet sufficing solution to her. My father was on the other end, and we spoke for a while, about my mom's and my argument, about my grandfather, about trivial topics. Only a few of the hundreds of words he spoke really registered with me, depositing an unpleasant sting on my argument with my mom. "I don't have any more money and she is having to use her savings to shop for you." Suddenly I knew why she had been so taken aback as I complained about the lack of apple sauce and cheez-its. 

I wish I could draw a cliche picture for you, how I sat with my head in my hands and was so torn up, how I cried, how I sat in dismay at my own ignorance. But, instead, I just used the back of my spoon to smush the rest of my brownie, and strained to hold back tears, to let myself be weak, one thing my grandfather wasn't. I remained immobile, and sucked in my own breath hard, pulling my hair back to keep from falling in my face. I just rested, without movement, my head placed on the edge of the desk behind me. Looking up at my fan, I just wept. I wouldn't look down and allow even more tears escape from my eyes, as I saw that my grandfather is just one more thing neither my dad nor I have anymore of. And I refused to look down, because I am too aware that the bottom is lurking right beneath me, that my white flag stands taller than I do, and that there is no where left for me to run.  .

Money makes for a great slave but a horrible master

Ah, it feels good to be back. I had been meaning to post for such a long time, but I've had a shortage of time. The days feel so long in the passing but all at once, they're gone.

Inside me, emotions are so abundantly flowing, making every move of mine feel stifled. So many feelings that I am unsure of what to make of them. It's like a fork in the river, with more than two ways to go. These next few months of my life fit that last sentence perfectly. Oh, how things can change. But, maybe in these next few months there will be a glorious beginning. Which is where I should probably start.

I have been blessed with two parents who love me dearly and are wonderful. But, as the economy crashed, my parents' jobs were both taken. And while this has been an adjustment, I'm afraid the adjustment of adjustments is ahead of me. Needless to divulge all the details, my parents' funds run out right after Christmas. What is there to say? Fear is for cowards, though sometimes the cowards are the wiser ones.

So much of what I know as true, so much of my lifestyle, has been altered already and may be once more. As I glance around my room from behind my laptop, I picture all of my belongings in boxes, them being the only part of me that will be ready to leave this house. And while I can picture this room stark white, back to the way it was the first time I saw it, none of my possessions will remain. I'll be all I have left, with one exception. Jesus remains. Sometimes I had to admit this truth, but He's the only thing I've learned I can hold on to. As things, places and people have been stripped from my life, as I've had to adjust to living on less, Jesus never once even shifted.

"Things can only go up from here," a friend told me the day I found out my dad had lost his job. Boy, were they wrong. I am desperately afraid, I won't lie. But if things go down from here, I know one thing. My desire is to be at the bottom, sitting on Jesus' lap, his arms cradling my trembling body.

As I type this post, I am moving my back up against my futon, looking quite peculiar, I'm sure. I have been eaten by bugs, not nearly as bad as I have been before, but as bad as you can be in a mile walk at 10pm.

The problem with telling people how you feel is, unlike the school counselor who always provides insightful perspective and never becomes short-tempered, they have a choice of how to respond. Even if you are sobbing, and your heart is broken, these people have a choice to be insensitive.

This evening, as my mom picked me up from the library and we began to make conversation on the ride home, my sister came up as a topic. If you happen to know anything about me, or have read earlier posts, you'll know that my relationship with my sister, second only to my relationship with my mom, is the most broken relationship I've ever seen. It pains me so deeply, and never ceases to, no matter the circumstance. As the conversation took a turn and became a little more deeper, this once more arose... my problem with me sister, or, rather, her problem with me. I shared with my mother what I hoped she would have known in my fifteen years of life. My sister's emotionally murderous remarks, threats, words and more importantly, actions. When we finally stopped at Harris Teeter, where my mom was stopping to pick up some groceries, she exited the car without slightest sign of hearing a word. She rounded the small SUV and opened one of the back doors and lifted her purse over her shoulder. "Are you mad at me?" The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"I don't know. I'm just tired of hearing the same old thing, over and over again. I'm so tired of it." At this moment, I should have just slid out of my seat and walked home. Instead, I sat and waited, in the heat of a car without open windows or AC, a car as still and immovable, as determined as my mother's mind. She returned and began to spit out words quickly, asking questions, but not really asking, instead just wanting to put me in my place, put me back in the playpen, back where the only sounds I could make were safe, positive ones  "ma", "pa", "gah." She asked what my plan was and I said, wearily, I was done trying. This was quickly rebuked and she proclaimed to me how that relationship affects everyone. My last rational words were that she should take it up with my sister then. More retorts, more painted-white wooden stakes were driven into the ground, a picket fence that didn't mean a happy, American family at all, but instead a divided one. I had too much self-respect to listen to that, or maybe was too weak to hear the consequences of my own actions and said "You have NO compassion. Stop the car. I'm getting out. I don't ever want to talk to you."

I fled the car and walked onto the sidewalk, where my mother's car followed. I made a sharp turn and crossed the road, which she couldn't emulate. The little gold car drove past the intersection and stopped, her lights signalling traffic to go around. As I continued to walk straight, approaching my mother in her car, I heard her yell for me to get back in the car. I just repeated what I had said before, I don't want to talk to you. And off went the car, but mostly my mother, quickly and without hesitation, with ease and even seeming eager to do so.

One thing I was distinctly aware of was how many times I had done that exact same thing before: been left, emotionally, on the curb of a road, to walk home. In all of about the eight times I've just had to leave, out of sheer hurt and inability to exist under the same roof with those people and remain civil, not once have I been sought out. This was an acute awareness, that just seemed to be sharpened as I turned a corner and saw the back door of my house, shut, appearing to be a different world. The door is made of wood but felt like a thick, steel lock. The criss-crossing of the window panes of the upper half of the door screamed indifference, the wooden grain the same direction it had always been, no evidence of a missing daughter.

I came into my house, though it felt like a stranger's, like that of the people I petsit for, maybe even more unfamiliar. I heard the voices of my parents in the other room, and I knew they'd heard the door, though neither of us said a word to the other. Running upstairs and settling into the groove of the futon I'm still on now, someone texted me and asked if I'd done anything this summer. I knew my normal response: camp, the keys, and backpacking and whitewater canoeing trip (in chronological order). But instead, I altered it: camp and a backpacking and whitewater canoeing trip, what about you? I slid in a pair of earbuds after I sent the text, and turned my music up loud enough to not be able to hear my ceiling fan.

Bit by bit, even an unnoticeable amount, I built my window panes, the beginning of my door. It'll be wooden alright, but feel like thick steel. My door will be just a door to most of those, but to my family, the ones who fabricated wall after wall to keep me out, it'll be impassable. It'll look like aged wood, painted white with a friendly brass doorknob. But that doorknob, with its four-inch diameter, will be all it takes to keep us apart. It was all it took to take us back to the silence, the cold-shoulder; back to the start.

And Why Do We Like to Hurt So Much? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKy2a2LVIWE

Sometimes being at war doesn't make you a warrior. It makes you a coward, a big, fat coward. You shoot at the enemy because you feel inadequate.

In the background, a series of doors smacking their frame feel almost rhythmic, musical. Blood rushes to my head as I hear yells, my heart thumping with such fervent emotion. I feel scared to touch these keys, scared to make even a peep in the storms of war beyond my door. I'll spare you the gruesome details, the words and the numerous, mindless remarks such as "I don't want any part of you. I don't want you near me." But, as I sit here in shock, I need to become real with myself. I knew, all day, this would happen. Since the first minute my mom stepped over the threshold, with a solemn look in her eyes, a cold war began, its silence killing all the inhabitants of this house, slowly and invisibly, like carbon monoxide.

Words are flying through my head, like Color Guard flags do as girls in shiny uniforms thrust them into the air and in circles. I'm not sure how to sort them, to group them, just like football players on a field, colorful blurs in constant motion that proceed after the Marching Band and Color Guard at high school games. Violent debacles make my head ache, even if I weren't involved. But, somehow, I was. My parents, the people by which nearly all my physical attributes are derived from, and more specifically my mother, hurling words at my dad that can't be erased, words that slice and chop, words that puncture and scar, words that even Mederma can't fade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ige8G7qpEF8

     Shaking in my closet, I try to type and balance the laptop on my knee. It's been a while, and I apologize, because it feels unjust that I can just ditch as I please. That seems though to be my main desire these days. After a violent battle with my parents, physically, emotionally and verbally, no thought is more pertinent in my mind than this: I need to get out. However you interpret it, an exit is all I long for.

    After a call to someone, I realized how numb everyone is to my unsettledness, but I know writing always extends a hand in my time of destitution. So here goes: Today I woke up, my consciousness focused on a strange dream in which my sister was giving birth to a Muslim and would have to give it up because she wasn't 21... a little nonsensical but bear with me. I gathered myself and stumbled down the stairs, exhaustion present in my step. I spoke to my mom, explaining my dream to her with brevity. She sighed and voiced her displease as I mentioned the fact that the baby was Muslim. I stood up for the imaginary baby, a more figurative stand for Muslims everywhere, that just because they come from a culture with terrorists means little. Are all Americans overweight and stupid? No. She used her shield of religion, "I just want everyone to know Jesus!" Because, similarly, all American babies are born Christian, right? I was set with unease realizing her prejudice, her obvious and ignorant racism. I let it be, finished my breakfast then went to the house possessed by the dog I'm petsitting and returned home after running into some friends on the walk back. From the first step on my lawn to this exact moment, the unease has succeeded in occupying my whole body. Long story short, the tussle abridged to just a exchange of mean words, I am an ungrateful brat (repeat mentally about 5 octaves higher and that's more like it). Basically, I am a worthless child that is undeserving of anything but being pushed, shoved and/or hit. And for the past 41 minutes, I've sulked in this truth. I've been told by who I thought was my 2AM that they're just tired of hearing it. And, to be frank, I feel as if I am fighting for my life. This anger, this brokenness harbored behind my door is cancer, eating the good cells and converting them into   malevolent ones. And the outside of me, slightly battered, is not a valid reflection of the inside, torn and in tatters. As my parents yelled over my weak and poorly broad-casted defense, all I remember thinking was this: "For it is impossible to be feared and loved." My fear was suffocating, bursting into small droplets and falling from the corners of my eyes. It was exploding into red roses under my skin, doing an excellent job of turning my face nearly maroon. The fear was feasting on the traces of love I knew to have for these people who I shared the most genetic similarity with in this world. This fear was opening a chasm of which hurt would overflow. And fissures continue to appear, all over my body, a weak representation of the internal bruising. Because every inch of me is bruised.

-

I conceive the idea that honesty is understanding the meaning of a word. The word never has one definition, instead varying from person to person. And while truth is definite and solid, it is relative. It is relative to the person who speaks it. I feel that the world would be so horrid, so torn if only truth was broadcasted. But I have this perception that we would all be better, we would all be brokenly whole in some twisted way. We would cease to see these hues of gray that were materialized by the liars. We would see it, this life, as a shattering, paining beauty. We would be one hue of black, because we couldn't all be friends, and hold hands on the playground, but we'd know where we stood, and we'd occupy our square of territory. But all at once, we'd be a crisp white, dashing out of where we were stationed because we would conceal nothing. Life would be an hour of recess on the playground and everywhere you stopped and stood you'd leave as soon as you came. We'd push through the lines drawn with chalk and we'd smear them. We'd be so sure of ourselves we'd become lost. We'd be fearlessly exhausted. We'd run then freeze, like greenlight-redlight. And before we knew it, the whistle would blow and we'd end in a totally new formation than we'd began in, a shuffled deck of cards, anticipating being dealt again.

-

Dressed in white,
I'm letting you win this fight.
Zero - one,
record the score, you won.
Now you have it all,
everything but me,
my hands may be calloused but they're empty.
But I'm better without it all,
with nothing left,
there's no way to fall.

A cut beneath the skin,
we walk around pretending we're not stretched thin.
Lay your weapon down,
it isn't a race of who can fire sooner,
who can make the first sound.

I see it when you look at me,
like an actor's cue,
it's my time to leave.
As I go,
the strings within me pulled tightly so,
I feel a pang,
a broken love for someone I'm afraid I don't know.

I bReAkdowN.

Clap my heels,
I have an ache to return home,
but I don't know how home feels.
The sky closes,
the amethyst clouds burst.
That bright sun be cursed,
because this rainbow isn't worth a cent,
because of all those words, not one was meant.

Put your eyes on me,
are bruises and wounds all you see?
There is pain beneath the surface.
Mind you, I come at a cost, though I'm no purchase.
Release me, I'm no slave,
I am not of your service.
Watch me limp,
oh, watch me stagger.
Just know that what I was, what I am,
deserved more than these punctures,
the conversation of my heart and your dagger.

"I lived to Wr!+E and I wrote to LiVE."

Packing up my bag, scurrying into the hall and dashing away from my friend rudely, I raced to my Latin classroom. Last Thursday I taught a lesson on the famous poet, author, whatever you want to call him: Horace. There are ten people in my Latin class, including me. The majority are juniors, and there are three other underclassmen. Of the ten, there are three kids who never make above an 85 though, even on the classwork where using the text book is fair game. They are paralyzed by exhaustion, though I can never see how they are so weary if they don't appear to do anything, their grades a testament. They resemble sloths, the three of them distributed amongst a handful of average students, with their heads as their only defense and their face hidden. Basically, they catch some zzzzzzs in chairs about as comfortable as hugging a cactus, with their heads down, their face neighboring a filthy surface by which we know as a desk. Then, as they receive their 71, 59, 64 or whatever hardly/non-passing grade, they complain. Do you want some cheese with that whine? My presentation was no exception. Two with heads down, another perusing the room, I taught. One bothered to participate, only to tell me the way in which I employed a word was incorrect. Just because you don't know the definition of the word well enough to know this is, in fact, also correct usage doesn't mean you're ever allowed to correct a teacher. Or anyone, actually, mind you. As I finished the slideshow, the teacher handed out the translation sheets. I told them they only were required to translation through line six, but *hint hint, nudge nudge,* attempting the whole thing wouldn't do a bit of harm. It was mandatory that I give a quiz on my topic, which is why I *hint hint nudge nudge*d.
Neither surprised me, but as I retrieved the quizzes from my teacher and took out my green pen, two things happened. First, I so much as glanced and already was embarrassed by the answers I saw circled on fellow classmates quizzes. Second, I heard a voice of one of the sloths from my class, projecting his voice loudly and confidently as ever, though honestly, he shouldn't. FYI, I am about to take mean to a whole new level, but after today, I need to retaliate, even silently. He is not talented, attractive, nice nor funny. He lacks basically any genetic gift you could receive, whether it be extreme musical ability, acumen or even just being easy on the eyes. His personality is also about a 3 out of 10 for having any flavor, or anything that would draw you to him, and that is being generous. I told my dad later that I hope the most promising thing in his future is a job at Dairy Queen, and that he is perpetually dissatisfied with his life. Mean? Yes. On my part? Yes. What he said? Yes.
He strutted into the room, showcasing a body that I wouldn't be proud of in a million years, even if I had been born with only one X chromosome and a Y chromosome. Breathing deeply, he gathered enough air to smoothly verbalize one thing, which turned into a series of tear-downs.
"Herr Wachter (our teacher), I think Jenny's quiz should be dropped."
I casually asked why, to which I was not sure what to expect as a response, but certainly did not expect what I heard. Maybe one breath was taken through the entire time of telling me: It was all dates, therefore quite a dumb quiz, hardly anyone passed so it should not count, my presentation was messy, unprepared, one of the worst he'd seen, he DID pay attention (hmm...you sure about that? That'd be a first, cause we all know your quiz grades say differently), he refused to take notes only because it was "so bad", asked me if I knew what a Word Wall was, because I had certainly implemented that, and OH HEAVENS, god forbid that we even dare take a quiz on material that was in the format of a Word Wall. After he blew all that steam, and stepped out of the room, I mumbled, "that'd explain why you failed."
Now, as Miss Kern, I don't ask for much. A sheet of paper and pencil if you choose, and a closed mouth. But even if I receive neither, it's your grade not mine. Overall, I saw one thing, as I totaled points on one of the last quizzes, the only one to receive a 100: Yell at me, oh please do, and place blame on me for your failure, because I certainly deserve it. But really, your attempts to prove yourself to be worthy hinder your performance ability. And, please notice, just as I don't take a test and you obtain the grade I earned, your actions are yours. Broken home, deceased parent, foster family, your reaction is your own. What happens around you may be enclosing, the flames coming a little closer every second, but how you fight the fire is all yours.

Cold Weather

Cause I see it, in you and in me, and I long to tell you how easy it could never be, but still I know I'd fight and die before victory escapes me. 

Because I saw sense in locks, chains, and fences, but you told me to leave the keys, and not to bring a thing, 'cause we're escaping those nonsenses. 

Because truth is a four letter word plus one, that left my home the day you ran. 

Because I lived in a world of dark, and you lived in a world of light. You taught me how to wish on stars, but at the end of the night, we were too many worlds apart. 

Slide the paper into my hand like you do your fingers,
Let me know why you cry at night.
I long to know who you cry for,
Because I cry at knowing who you long for.
If you send it to me like a paper airplane,
It's Nine-Eleven.
My heart is the twin towers.
Come with me, though, you'll go to heaven.
Because there we'll be able to forget the pain,
You'll kiss me on the cheek
And I'll return to you a dandelion.

An invisible trip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfI11wbAxiI

My bare feet hit the pavement,
oh god, it hurts with such delight.
I hear the thunder,
the only thing I feel comfort in tonight.
It's a melody I know by heart.
The claps bring me back to the start,
reminding me of a time I would never depart.
It's a melody I know too well,
like your relentless hand even after I fell,
it's a piece of my searing pain,
it's my addiction, my cocaine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIOwxyfRqv4

Because the second you stop hiding from everyone else and begin hiding from yourself, you're really hidden. And even you don't know where to start looking.

You'll tell me your secrets and I'll shove them in my pocket. And you'll wish you never had.

Because she's searching, for any truth, any secret, and I'm afraid to tell to her that the biggest secret of all is that there is no truth left. 

Because it is all looking up now. The sky or the soil, and I'm ready to fly. 

Because I'd wish for wind and rain, but then I would remember: since you left, nothing has changed.

Because each smile is a dollar, and I'm bankrupt. 

Cause you are beautiful inside, so lovely and I can't see why I do anything without you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzdPeMQSPqM&playnext=1&list=PLFAD4544A9D9CA108

Ever have something to say? Something so brutally honest but you just want a megaphone and a place in front of a podium to tell people? But you can't. No, you can't and it kills you. You just have this piece of news, this truth that you silently shout, just hoping someone will suspect it and know. Know and understand. But no one does, no nothing, no childhood teddy bear or even chocolate or any one does. And everything all blends into one big surrounding, one setting, and it becomes you and everything else. Two separate categories. And nothing is in yours but you, and even you are slowly slipping away.

Ever want something so badly you'd do anything to have it? Ever have it and be deathly afraid of losing it? I sit in the backseat of a car returning home from a cookout, being asked about my spring break. I have vivid recollections of the end of mine, circling Raleigh with my brother, watching Limitless and eating goodberrys with him. I recall the careless Sunday afternoon, sunny and juvenile, but so short-lived. And through the bliss of that afternoon, I see people's faces, those of who I miss so dearly. I fear that I won't see my brother for months, that my teenage life is like a jacket flying out the window, seconds away from no longer being mine. I tremble at the possibility that it was as great as it will ever be, and it has been sealed, enclosed in cardboard box and placed in an attack to accumulate dust.

I'm afraid mostly though that I have already given everything. But not for the sake of going back to the moments I love or for the sake of being with those people again, instead I gave them up for this. This lethargic, bitter place I am in now. I fear, so deeply, that I have replaced what I loved with what I resent, and this switch is permanent.

Your name.
My eyes.
I see the the bright flashes.
I recall violent crashes.
My skin reddened,
My soul became a little more deadened.
I felt the whip.
Not just of your hand but of your lips.
I'm not weeping though,
Because I've decided to keep dreaming.

A walk through the woods
And I feel safe.
The rain drops fall harder
Than they were dared to.
They come colliding with my skin
And I'm too fragile.
I'll let them catch in my satchel.
I'll take them with me as I fall,
They'll be my safeguard, my soldier,
On a long walk down a narrow hall.

I'm no beauty queen, I'm just beautiful me. (go look up Who Says by Selena Gomez, trust me, it's worth it and I don't even like Selena)

Silence penetrates,
Burning like a flame.
I want to hear you say,
"How are you? Good! Same."
Instead no words will do,
We're becoming not one but two.
And nothing will fix us,
Not even my trusty Elmer's glue.

Your lies,
Slice.
I wish I could sit here and say I didn't try.
They rake me soul, creating little holes,
Robbing me of my few joys.
I am human, I have emotions,
I dare you to quit treating me like your dog's chew toy.
But you won't.
And the piece of me you owned,
Is minced, even smaller shreds,
I wince, oh how it hurts,
But at least I can admit the truth.
Part of me may be dead, though it's you who I dread,
And I'll spend my life doing anything and everything,
Trying to forget the words you said.

Two Days

Your name.
My eyes.
I see the bright flashes,
I recall the violent crashes.
My skin reddened,
my soul became a little more deadened.
I felt the whip,
not just of your hands but of your lips.
You won't find me weeping,
'cause I've chose to keep sleeping,
in vain hopes of dreaming.

"In the pain, there is healing. In your name, I find meaning. So I'm holding on."

I'm buried in the dirt,
my sores scorched and burning like a desert.
Just turn me over, I want to see the horizon.
look me in the eyes, hear my cries and
Rock me back in forth,
'till my wounds heal, 'till I begin to feel.
Instead you left me, in this austere room,
and I'm searching for clues,
to tell me whether or not this life is real.
The fluorescent lights are my companion,
but even they were an omen.
I sit beside the darkness,
beaten at best, waving my white flag, defenseless.

And they told me that the one who never believes is the winner.

I wanted to make a wish,
when you said nothing would happen.
You scolded me as I insisted.
I wanted to fly,
but you reminded me of my mortality.
I'm susceptible to death,
but I can know and forget by tomorrow.
On those steps, I cried.
You told me all of it was just futile, your words were unforgiving and brutal.
I wanted to pick daises, run thoughtlessly through the corn mazes.
I was so juvenile, but you witnessed my happiness die.

I know of a girl,

her heart is flooded by tears 

while she motionlessly shakes with fear.

She stares into air,

believing in a world of nowhere.

Magic and mystery,

some hope to carry her away from her misery.

The girls at school ignore her,

raise their nose and ignorantly think better.

She peers into a broken mirror,

shattered by her own terror. 

In case you haven't been given the chance to see the Spring weather, and all it brings

Hug a tree. They are why we live - what they produce is what we breathe.

Just 'cause we are holding together on the outside doesn't mean we're not broken within. 

I can peer at shades of purple and green, know what they mean, and allow them to be equally seen.  

Where the world fades to gray, so far away, is where I want to spend my days.

Sunrise after sunset, I'm going for these days even if they're something I'll regret.

We grow and we fade.

The thrill of life is as robust as the smell of flowers on a spring day.

Falling and yearning to come back, but forgive me, grace is what I lack

You lost us both.
I was less than what you wished for,
now you have to decide who you miss more.
Your frivolity,
your actions so dumbly,
I'm leaving town,
sweeping the street at sundown.
Pick up my belongings, wrap my heart in protective gear,
take everything I need,
all but you, my dear.

Cause living makes me want to cry and shout for joy all at once. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH_XCuf_jTM

Cause they say no strings attached, but I'm afraid of a world without them.

Cause dark and light are so startlingly close, we mistake them for each other. 

Is there anything worth looking for? Worth loving for? Worth dying for? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT3_iYr7xW0

"It's a long way for an answer" replays in my head a lot these days.

      As you may know, I am agnostic. I don't believe there is enough evidence to prove whether there is a god or not. Christians will argue this point, as other religions will, but truth is, there is not enough evidence. Personal encounters may have lead you to believe there is a god (which may actually be right) but there are not enough universal facts to completely ensure the truth of the existence of a god. Yes, there may be a surpassingly substantial amount of evidence for Christianity, but just as scientific laws, there must be 100% evidence and the conclusion must be indisputable. Similar to gravity. Every object on Earth that elevates through the air will fall back down at some point. Without doubt. But sadly, we do not have enough knowledge of a god to say that. Thus we continue in a foolish fight over an answer only time will reveal, not unkind words and sharp swords.
      Now that I have moved past the basics of where I stand and why, I'll move onto something that matters. (PLEASE LISTEN TO THE SONG IN THE LINK.) Despite the many song meanings I looked up, I have decided that this song is somewhat religiously/emotionally speaking. As I was listening to a playlist of mine on Pandora, this song came on. In the beginning, I found nothing spectacular. Upon hearing the chorus, I identified easily with the singers. My life in words would be exceedingly similar to the chorus of this song (minus the "I'm home" line).
      Throughout this week, I cannot tell you how many times I have turned this song on. Especially in my numerous nights of insomnia. My mind would not rest. Grades to family, family to friends, friends to sports, sports to grades. Then grades again. I was lying awake last night around 11:40 and developed a headache from doing too much math in my head. Not just random "let's fall asleep counting degrees of this function and determing the end behavior! FUN!" math, but semi-significant and relevant math. I was figuring out my grades based on my midterm grades then the total grade and what I will have to make in each class to acquire my desirable set of As and Bs: A in LatinII (easy), A in health/P.E. (super easy), A in Algebra II (challenging), B in Biology (challenging once more). After long calculations, I began to freak out because I did not know that at the beginning of a new quarter, you start from nothing. I thought that you kept your remaining average and  had to start with that. I worried that my first quarter grades would hurt my second quarter, lowering my GPA, my class rank and as well my chance of obtaining admittance to Yale. Stop laughing, I seriously want to attend Yale, whether you think it is possible or not. And if I am not accepted, at least I will have known that I tried.
       After this long fight with myself and stressing way too much, I went downstairs to ask my dad if students started from 0 in a new quarter or not. He was asleep on the couch. Great. I came back upstairs and dialed my brother's number. Thankfully, he picked up and slowly but surely helped me through my dilemma. He did not know the answer to my initial question but instead knew the answer to what I was searching for. I felt vulnerable as I confessed to him all that I had harbored so well. How I hate being a disappointment, a failure, how I hate being called stupid, how I may not be naturally scholarly, but capable and how I found that a positive, a blessing, but everyone looks upon me demoralizingly because I have to work hard, and few things come naturally. I felt even more pitiful to be divulging all the things that I had so tightly wound to an outsider, someone who could never understand. I felt merciless towards everything, enraged because I was a victim in a cruel game, as I waited in silence for my brother's response.
      Eventually he drew words out, elucidating each syllable, a gross change from my hasty, shaky, dialogue  that was split by sobs. Then and there, my brother expounded on how God's grace is what I need. How I need to stop for a second and plead for it, because I could not lose anything from doing so. I asked him what to say, and echoed the words. Terror struck through my body like a Grandfather clock hitting midnight. I cannot be one of the people who have persecuted me in times of need, who have judged me when they are equally as human. I cannot conform to the most ignorant, judgmental, liars. I continued to be stirred up with negative feelings, with unsettledness. I prayed for grace again and again. Because I need it more than anything right now. I need to be helped and relieved of the burdens a teenage girl should not carry. I need to have those brutal events and memories erased from my memory, I need a rescue boat, I need a Savior.
      Now I sit here in a confused state of being, unsure of where I want to be. I remember once having told someone so deeply much about my life and they responded saying this: "I see you knowing where you are, knowing where you've been, and knowing you're destination, but unsure if that is really where you want to be." I am a mirror image of that, so sure of what I've been and ready to go somewhere, but not sure if that is really where I desire to go.

Yesterday I was broken. Today I am searching for one to put me back together. I am moving in some direction. Which way, I am unsure. I am sickly and looking for a cure. "I need your grace to remind me to find my own" (Snow Patrol). I'm searching for grace, even though I may always remain a disgrace. I am searching for it an answer, but it's a long way. I'm searching, not for something to grasp as my ineptitude bears down on my shoulders. Instead I'm searching for something just to steady me as I stand up from my fall.

Being hit does something to a person, whether it hurts or not.

I choke back tears,
doing an exceptional job at concealing my fears.
I scrub a little harder,
increase the temperature of the water.
These scars don't always go away,
at least not today.
If you say I love you one more time, I swear,
lies are the last thing I want to hear.
But I'll heal,
forgetting these unpleasant ordeals.
Don't expect an apology, when you're the one who committed the felony.
I may be battered, but in the end it's you who is hurting yourself.

A candle that's lost its flame is still a candle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT10h5vqmZs

Through the thorns, I can see the sky. I forget the stings.

We'll fight what we have to, just because what's waiting for me is you.

Words just fall away sometimes, and all that's left are the feelings.

Cause the intricacy of nature confuses me and I'm aghast in it's beauty, it's splendor. I feel bliss in the breeze.

Every color has many shades. Every person has many sides and can't be defined by one.

Cause I'm moving forward and looking back, but keeping on track. 

Take my hand and my sweater, we'll keep moving through this cold weather.

The Summit. Of his cancer.

This Sunday, my parents and I attended the 11 o'clock service at the Summit church, which happens to be exactly in the middle of wanna-be-somewhere-but-instead-nowhere-ville. I fell into step with my parents as we entered the warehouse-resembling sanctuary. I placed my belongings on the chair my parents had assigned me to and stared into space, absently  allowing each lyric that the singer uttered to drift through one ear and out the other. Suddenly, I saw some kids traipsing in, on the heels of (who I assumed was their) mother. As the children settled in, one seat open between their mother and the two children, a second boy maneuvered between his brother and sister and the chairs of the row in front of him. Gracefully, he shifted into his spot and rolled back his shoulders and raised a hand to his face. Beneath his palm was a white air mask. Inches above it resided a pair of eyes, observing and grasping everything around his slender being, gaping at the austere sights around him. Those eyes were solemn and rigid, sour and calloused. They were just eyes, no eyebrows or eyelashes. Only eyelids and eyeballs. A dark purple, a passionate purple, a searching purple-colored pupil.
I glance away, not wanting this young boy to feel ashamed of what he cannot control. I feel ashamed as he probably felt my stare, as he probably receives many, for having cancer at such a young age. I flip open to Pride and Prejudice as the pastor's presentation begins (I normally would at least listen, despite my agnosticism, but he is talking too fast for me to process). I read about one page every six minutes. I can't help but peering out of the corners of my eyes to catch sight of this young boy in a blue shirt. Thoughts and questions are flying quickly through my head, like a ball in an intense tennis match. I wonder if the boy can play dodgeball, or eat a thickburger. I wonder if he can skid into home base when he hits a home run or if he can have a hot dog eating race. I had to put away my book for a moment to gather myself. I had to shake out the thoughts and questions of what he will be able to do, because I knew that none of those things probably mattered, just the fact that he was alive.
I whispered to my dad that the kid had cancer, that his life was in danger. I had to divulge to someone this secret that was slowly eating me away. The whole rest of the sermon, my concentration was fleeting. As the service dragged on and communion began, I was a spectator of the little boy's every move, silently desiring that my concern would be his cure. I sat in absolute reticence, all thoughts  filtering through my brain and then dissolving into dust. I continued to look in the boy's direction, but all I saw was a shiny scalp, and a line of white circling an ear. I choked back tears, on the brink of breaking down in a bible-beating building. I looked down at my crossed legs and tried to focus on a bruise on my leg. I tried to focus on anything that pushed the boy out of my mind's eye. The glistening head under the fluorescent lights blinded me, I couldn't even see his face because he was so small, so young, so innocent and undeserving. And there, that church, was the last place I'd want to be if I were so juvenile and already cursed with cancer. Finally crowds became swarming my direction, toward the direction of the doors. I stood up, shaky and basically having to turn on my cognitive functions,  forcing myself to think and return to where I was.
I followed my parents to the car and once again brought up the young boy in the blue shirt. An angry peace came in the middle of us. Silence had never enraged me more. I bit my tongue and clasped my hands to prevent myself from exhibiting my upset attitude. Unsettledness ran from my head to my toe as I had just witnessed my parent's indifference towards a boy who probably cannot even think about living to be 50 years old, at this point in his life. He cannot even  think of naturally balding as my father is, for chemotherapy has already taken his hair in exchange for a cancer-free life, something it may not even be able to return to him.  He doesn't have to worry about graying as my mother is, because there is no hair to gray. He won't receive mono, like my sister has, because he cannot even remove the air mask to share a drink or kiss someone. No, instead gifts that any seven-year-old would not even think twice about, have already been robbed from him. I looked down at my phone and pressed the home button: 12:34 read on my screen. It's my favorite two minutes of every 24 hours, but I normally don't see it but once every couple months. Whenever I see it, I always make a wish on it, because it is such a lucky number, and my favorite number. I glanced at the time again. It was stubborn and tantalizing, as I fought my selfish desires. Before I could consider my own wish anymore, I made one for the blue shirt boy. Too many things have already been taken from him, I knew. That wish wasn't mine to make anyhow, it was his.

baaaaaaa! wiy786cy6r2397xsjkjhskd

Seriously, the "Title:" bar mocks me! I can't come up with even semi-decent titles, shouldn't there be an option for no title!? Blogger should definitely update their technology to include that, for those of us who have much to say but are inept in creating titles!
Anyhow, I just really need to write. These past couple days  weeks have been exhausting, draining and only slightly rewarding. YAY - 94 on AlgII project and 93 on test, but boo for the 79 on Biology. I am extremely bad at time management. So I have some food for the thought. Mechanic efficiency in physics = work output / work input x 100. Now, if humans were 100% efficient (machines) would we only be able to complete what is told/expected/commanded of us or would we be efficient at everything including at being lazy? Like we are now...? I know that is such an absurd thing to say, much less think, but it has been eating up my brain the past few weeks, as I have been pondering about how bad I am at time management (which is ironic because I am bad at time management because I was ruminating over my ineptitude at time management...).
I am sure you are thoroughly confused and about to tell yourself you should've had a V8 (because if you had one, which of course contains mystical powers, you would have known this post was actually quite stupefying and futile). I really have nothing profound or recondite to say. Instead I am sitting here typing aimlessly about really nothing. Actually, I do have something to say. But it can't blend with the horrid awfulness of this post so I'll make a new one. Keep reading!!

Sorry I just wasted your time...

Maybe I've been going back too much lately, when time stood still and I had you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EY2eYfXgLE

I must say it is a smidgen disappointing to check my stats and have none for this entire week, but not enough to restrain me from writing. I wrote this on the way to soccer practice the other day, as I sat in the back seat, watching shiny vehicles drive by and constantly trying to revert my attention back to my biology di-hybrid crosses (no luck), so I scribbled this down:

When I was young,
I praised the words he sung.
Thinking he knew it all,
was my greatest fall.
He knows nothing,
He should hop down from his high horse, he is no king,
I now hear myself thinking.
But now I know: his smarts are low,
for he does not know all he owns.
His hand stumbles through his hair, he groans,
never remembering that all his blessings are just loans.

One-sided tag.

Keep blaming,
my heart is where you're aiming.
I'll continue walking,
into the distance, my ears filled with your ceaseless mocking.
Your arrows stab then fall.
I've built a brick wall.
I won't tarry,
You're last arrow, you carry.
Go ahead, shoot. You'll only find a soul, nothing pecuniary.

There's nothing better than a sunburn... during the Winter.

I have strange genetics. They're rather nonsensical. WHO BECOMES SUNBURNED AFTER A FEW HOURS OF HARMLESS SUNLIGHT? I spend maybe 6 hours outside this weekend because of my soccer games. BUT, it is like 62 degrees out there and the sun warmed me about about as much as standing near a microwave would. So last night as I washed my face and began to apply my acne meds (Benzyl Peroxide, aka burning fire in an abyss is only about two inches tall... it really doesn't make sense), there was a stinging sensation that began the second the cold, seemingly harmless, pearly poison made contact with my face. Today was filled with comment "your face is really red." Can you at least be a little more creative? Like "hey, did you walk into a tree or something?" That would at least show some thought behind the observation of my blotchy, cherry complexion. But nope. Just dumb people reminding me that my face is as crimson-colored as a can of Coke.

Anyhow, I have more to write on this weekend and today. I just can really consolidate all those thoughts into one post. More is to come, but I needed to burn some steam on the fact that my face is redder than Rudolph's nose. And isn't the next stage to sunburn peeling? One ticket to Timbuktu, please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcXBASNAhHc&feature=BF&list=PL061486AF96B61AE3&index=3

Old arguments drift through my door,
all I can think is that your voice must be sore.
Staying here is your chore,
But I don't need to be waited for.
Just leave, the way you want to.
We'll go our separate ways, forsaking our petty issues.
I'll go back to the start, everything anew.
And though you never apologized, I'll forgive you.

Bad Day? There's an ice cream flavor for that.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERl96rtCw10&feature=related

Over the past three days, I have had .92lbs of ice cream (Skinny Dip) plus a (gallon?) huge tub of cookie dough ice cream from Harris Teeter. Can you say Jenny likes to eat her feelings? But, beyond bad days, nothing makes me eat more than some anxious nerves, and the wheels turning in my head.
Anyhow, I hate government. We should just be self-governing criminals because human nature is rotten. I wholeheartedly agree with Thomas Hobbes, life without government are men at war. But, then again, life with government is as well. Today, as I sat in the library after school, yearning to leave school without any written homework to do, teachers began filing in. Apparently, there was a small meeting planned to discuss midterm schedule and whatnot. I tuned most of it out, determined to finish my quadratics before exiting Jesse O. Sanderson High School. About twenty minutes after the meeting convened, I came to a different set of problems, and sought the help of my trust notes packet. As I stared at the page, slowly, just like increasing the volume on a radio, the meeting became more and more audible. For whatever reason, some man on staff felt passionately towards exams (of all things to feel passion towards, you pick midterms?!) and finished his spout by rattling off a couple swear words, the exact same words students spend an entire afternoon in Detention for using. How ironic. Seconds later, my mind reverted back to making sense of the example I had scribbled into my notes. After maybe ten seconds of pure concentration, this teacher walked up to me and sat down. She asked if I were her for quiet study, in which I held my tongue from saying clearly not, because her whole clan of cussing co-workers were crushing any ability for it to even been a remotely quiet study time. I responded saying yes, to which her face was a blatant expression of stress, as if my presence of trying to complete my homework was killing her. She said she would HATE for me to have to hear this "boring" meeting, and be "distracted" by it, so would I mind being relocated? Now what is wrong with this picture? First off, for the other almost half hour I have been placed in this chair, you have not cared in the slightest that I was distracted. Secondly, if this meeting is so excruciatingly unamusing, how would I be distracted? You should have thought of some better reasons for kicking me out of the library, maybe like the fact that you want to conceal that our "over-equipped" teachers cuss so comfortably outside of the classroom confines. Maybe that our own government (of schooling) does exactly what they instruct us not to do?
Men are by nature murderers, robbers and thieves, liars and lazybums, molesters, and selfish ambition-ers. From day one, we are consumed by #1. There is no denial of this, so then why are we governed? Our government are just a handful of criminals who know how to camouflage their crimes. Everything we amount to be is everything we amount to be. We can never amount to being perfect, or good-natured. We are evil and egocentric, narcissistic and greedy. And by saying we aren't, we're even greater liars.

Precious Lord, declare Your heart to me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7F-B2DLvAQ&NR=1

Nights similar to tonight are the occasions that leave me most perplexed, yet most persuaded and assured.

    First off, I am not a people person. I am a nature person, a Creation-appreciator. I love rocks and trees, flowers and leaves, not clothes and shoes. Everyday, I crave time alone in the majestic mystery called Mother Nature. As I rushed through my Biology study guide, I gathered a fleece and some slippers for my expedition to the outdoors (aka my backyard). Living in Raleigh, NC is not ideal for someone who prefers a day of hiking to a sleepover, but I make due.
    So, this evening, I gathered nothing but apparel for warmth, and headed to hide behind my favorite tree. If only because it initially obscures me from any of the windows on the back side of my house. I become sedentary within a crook in the tree's trunk and sometimes just talk through some things that have been pestering me or instead digest the intricacy of everything around me - from the trees to each blade of grass. Then and only then am I affirmed that there is something beyond me, a Creator to fit the confounding and overwhelming Creation. For the moments of tranquility, nothing consumes me more than the possibility of a Potter, a Fabricator of the forests. I'll close my eyes for a sheer second and just cling to the chance of that Creator, as I sense His presence in the wonders encircling, the woods and the wind, all encompassing me. In those moments, logic and rationality fade to gray, while the Creator's colors become beyond vivid. It requires more faith to defy Him than to follow Him while I sit under the provision of that tree, the tree He made for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=690Fa5ERNxM

Because the world is topsy-turvy, crooked and impaired, so I keep my eyes fixed on the one thing that will never move.

Because there is beauty in the ordinary, one that comes alive as the fleeting appearances fade.

Because storms produce new beginnings. And new beginnings are anything you want them to be. 

Because surprises are the greatest. Because change is always embraced. Because a change in scenery is the most astonishing surprise, paralyzing everything in me. 

This Ship Is Sinking, I Gotta Swim for It http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERdtgGkwwxU

    I cherish the glorious, soft din of the patter of my laptop keys harmonizing with the unrelenting winds and rain beckoning beyond my shelter. Few things fill me with deeper contempt than a world always in motion, never ceasing, never breaking, never bowing, pressing me into the mold, to be like the Energizer bunny, a product of its haste. The rain appeases me in a lifestyle that is just that. The rain is a melody of madness, a cold oxymoron that expresses enmity yet soothes. As I was sitting in solitude, absorbing and meditating on the divine drumming of the storm, a siren split through the sounds of the sky. I immediately entered a frustrated state. Seeing that I live so close to the city, I hear sirens about six times a day. And a day with terenchal winds and waves of rain was no exception, though that makes little sense to me. If, with music on full blast, I can still take in the resonance of rain (more like gallons of rain) pounding against the shingles keeping my head dry, is there really enough dryness in the air for a fire to ignite? Even if water and electricity produces fire, how can a fire thrive in this thrashing gale?
    Either way, fires still happen during storms, even though it seems quite illogical. But today isn't a day for logic, it's a day for listening to the inclement lullaby just outside these walls. Oh, how I adore the aggravated atmosphere, the smashing, soaking sky's tears! And not for the reason every other teenage girl loves it, no. Honestly, romance shromance. Kissing in the rain, shmissing in the rain. All the same and I couldn't care less. Rain is merely the most perfect, breath-taking, intricately sloppy, stunning arrangement of ideas strewn into a violently gorgeous portrayal. It is the culmination of a crisis, a horribly awful event that produces buckets of hope. It is reaching the last hundred yards of hiking a steep mountain - so close, almost tangible, yet so far, so promising and rewarding yet so stripping and paining. It is the last straw, finally, it is the end of the brutal drought. The worst is yet to come, but I forget it about all the strife, all the soreness when I just so much as hear the beating, bruising, beautiful beads from above.

Time is of the essence...or, Time is important only to those who haven't learned their lessons.

Dear Reader, what is important to you? Please don't let it be an occupation or a job, and in the case that it is, please tell me you do not want children. Hi, my name is Jenny, and I am the daughter of a job-addict. I experience symptoms like over-independence because at times, I am nearly parent-less, then a squashed because I am "not yet 18."
Today, after school, I mustered all my courage with the intention of noting to my math teacher how there were two grades that needed updating in SPAN, but then asked some lame question because I couldn't bare to tell one of my favorite teachers how she screwed up. Instead, I asked something about grading and she answered quite concisely. After that, she asked if I had retrieved a "green sheet" from the stool during class today. Upon responding that I had not, she thrust three pages of material into my empty hands. I thanked her for her time and wished her a well weekend. Dashing down the stairs, I looked at the pages that I was grasping. AP STATISTICS was confidently pasted on the page, followed by two more that detailed what I suppose is everything anyone would ever need to know about AP Stat without taking one day of the class.
I carefully weaved through the words, collecting an impression of this mathematics course that I will be taking starting August 25, 2011, unless any circumstance forbids it. Moments later, a friend from before Sanderson bumped into me and needed help finding something. As I dragged my feet through the halls (literally, for whatever reason it feels much better to slide in the boots I was wearing than pick up my feet), I passed a teacher I had last semester. He once said he believed As should be earned, therefore they should be 96s and higher. I came out of that honors class (which he used as excuse to manipulate us for whatever reason on multiple occassions, such as refilling his water bottle or doing a 36 page note packet the day before the final exam....) with a 96.7. Looks like I did pass even your way too high standards, you slimy, disorganized teacher. While I politely acknowledged him, which I would not have done if there were more people in the hall so I could pretend to be distracted, I realized how well I did do in his class. Though I received a 77 on an essay on The Cause of World War 3, because I am too "hypothetical" and it "sounded like a novel," I worked extremely hard to achieve the grade I did.
I continued drudging through the halls, listening to my friend chatter, and more than happily obliging to the mindless searching of a small trinket. Eventually, we parted, as she intended on going to sing in the choir room, and I am less musically gifted than a pillow. I went outside to the carpool line and stood with some friends, being questioned by one friend about this guy who has a crush on me ("So... yall are really cute and should totes go out"), numbly responding. As I then saw my parent in the line that strings around like a laptop cable, in the most unconventional strand, I peered around for the MOST ANNOYING boy that I, JOYOUSLY, carpool with....nope, not there....uh-uh, nor near the benches. Then I dashed out of that trap, forcing me to say something about this guy and then have it manipulated so it appears that I really do like him. I scoured everywhere I could think of in two minutes for my LOVELY, WONDERFUL, PERFECT creation of a carpool who SITS BEHIND ME AND TALKS LOUDLY IN MY EAR EVEN THOUGH I INCLUDED "please" IN MY REQUEST FOR SILENCE. DID YOU HEAR ME SAY I HAVE A HEADACHE?! or were you deafened by your own obnoxious voice? Makes two of us. After a pretty lame attempt (it's effort that counts!) to find my carpool (PEACE, LOVE AND HAPPINESS :) :) :)), I just darted down the stairs, eager at a shot at riding home in silence. Loading into the car, with my heart shouting "GO! GO! GO!" the way people do at swim meets, I reported to my dad my results on searching for the such-a-fabulous-communicator and responsible carpool I have. He walks home sometime anyhow, was the obvious thought in my dad's mind, clearly expressed by his indecisive facial expression.  Next thing I knew, the car is accelerating and I can feel wind blowing through the driver's side window. Bye-bye old friend, scratch that. Old enemy. 
I held my AP Stat papers tightly enough that they would have been totally pulverized had they been crackers. The drive home flew, and my dad sped into the space off to the side of the carport, his parking spot. I hopped out of the car and upstairs to my room, surfing the Web for a few minutes, and forgetting totally how I was still gripping my Precious Papers. They had become an extension of me, a part of my phalanges.
Deciding I needed to do something with them, I remembered how my teacher had said that parents must sign some paper allowing a student's placement in AP, and therefore needed to be aware of the expectations (discussed in part of the Bible of Statistics Without Taking Statistics that was sitting on my palm, expectant of my next move). Arriving at my dad's desk (No-No number one), I handed him the sheets that were matted together from my hand sweating (go ahead, ewwww). He examined them and I scurried away to the kitchen to eat a carrot cupcake...isn't that the stupidest food ever invented? If you want to taste carrots, go eat a carrot! Basically two bites and I was sold.........sold on never eating carrot cake again in my life. Then, as I came to my senses and out of the faze of feeling disgusting that the carrot cupcake placed on me, I called out (No-No number two) to my dad and asked if he'd read the papers, afraid already of the reply.
"You're taking it next year right?"
"Right."
"Then I don't have time to read something that doesn't even matter now."
And there it was. I don't have time, for you, my daughter. I don't have time to even complicate my life with the things you are so proud of, my youngest. I don't have a split second to even think about anything that spins outside my egocentric atmosphere. I don't have an ounce of time to even comprehend that my daughter is taking a higher-level math class than I ever took. And why? Maybe because she just wants your attention. Maybe because she wants to actually be told, for once, that I'm proud of her. But wait, that takes a total of ten seconds to contemplate, and remember, she only can have the square root of a tenth of a second. She can only occupy my brain as much as a grain of sand would.
She can sit here, over-achieving and spending more time in math extra-help than with me. She can slowly but surely grow and become a stronger student, she can prepare herself for the world so she'll never come back.

Remember, she's as close to obtaining an actual job as you are to retiring. Memento, one day, you'll be old and frail, retired and alone, and children will be all you have. But one of them won't even really know you anymore, she won't have an ounce of time for you even, because you taught her well.

I'll sit here and study, I'll sit here and take notes from the best on how to not even have a penny worth of care for another individual, not to mention my own offspring. One day, I'll fly away without looking twice. I'll supply myself in every way I can, and become more self-sufficient day by day. I'll be old with kids of my own one day, and they'll ask about my daddy. I'll say I didn't know him well, I'll say that he was too consumed by his own interests.
Then I'll return to dust one day, stomping ground for the next generation. All that will be left of me will be my descendants, because even my achievements will become a shade of murky gray. I'll just be part of a Family Tree Project, my name and birth-date all that is prevalent after the years. My name will follow my father's,  our names connected by a thin line, a branch in the family tree. And little will they know, that will have been all that connected us, a thin line, a crevice, a crack, one that cannot be mended, one that will be overlooked and forgotten, one that completely defined our relationship.

Cave Canem........long story.

Don't come groveling, knocking at my door
with your apologizes to pour.
See, if you did it right the first time,
none of this would happen, I wouldn't have to hear your shaking whines.
But seeing as you have to screw-up before doing anything right,
I'm heading out of sight, 'cause unlike you, I don't feel satisfied by instigating fights.

Quod.

At the end of the day, we think we want to be everything we're expected to be.

But, at the end of the day, we really just desire someone to tell us we're more than anything they could have expected us to be. 

Cause my camera is my prescription glasses, cause without that lens and that shutter button, this world is blurry and exploding, unexplainable in every sense.

We are who we are not because we chose to be, but because there's that one person that makes us decide we have to prove them wrong. 

Because anyone who's defined me has been wrong about me. And anyone's who hasn't been wrong about me never defined me.

Because Hope isn't just from heaven. It's from human to human and from him to her. 

Hindrances / Merchandise (sorry, I know my titles suck)

We're standing here for no reason.
And here, the weather changes though it's not a new season.
You're as cold as the North Winds, but windier,
but, this time, our relationship isn't the only that's being hindered.

Falling through the cracks, I can hardly believe that we did.
You believe it's all my fault, my flaws, just 'cause I'm a foolish kid.
Drive me to the nearest Target and place me back on the shelf
cause there's clearly a price tag on me that I couldn't see myself.
I look in the mirror and see you,
our similarities are obvious, I won't argue.
Though the truth is, I'd rather have anything than that be true

Oh, these times are hard. They're making us crazy. Don't give up on me baby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRh4lskJQUQ&feature=related

    I really don't even know what to write about. I feel about as motivated and inspired as a piece of burnt toast. No emotion. I'm tired, but a gratifying and admirable, an almost congenial tired. I went running last night, threw up, woke up early this morning and did the same route....but without throwing up. Actually, scratch the no emotion thing... I am exhilarated. Animated. Invigorated. Ebullient. Yesterday was a harmoniously, pleasingly great day, but it was one of those days that you don't realize how fabulous it was until you glance back. Just like you can't really judge a president until they're out of office, and the effects of their leadership settle in. You can't tell how good they are (or bad, in Bush's case) until their laws are executed. Yesterday, my dad told me that we are actually attending my cousin's wedding, this June in Islamorada (one of the Florida Keys). I absolutely love summer, beaches, vacation, travelling, weddings, the month of June (isn't it just such a "Oh, look at the lovely dandelions! See the green grass! Wear a sundress! Look at the brilliant stars!" month? Gahhh, I adore June!), celebrations with food, the Kerns, and planes. All that's left is my siblings to both be able to attend, then I am convinced few things could be more sublime.
    Rewind to Friday. I babysat some of the coolest kids alive. Around eleven (no party animals here), the kids' mom came home and we hopped into the car and she drove me the three blocks to my house. She handed me some cash before I dashed out of the car and said the most encouraging thing I've heard all week. As my fingers fumbled around on the cash, slightly uncomfortable that I'm sitting having a sentimental talk with one of my employer's, I caught a few words that she was really articulating, clearly but quickly. She was saying how her family loves me, loves how I play with her children, how wonderful I am, and how I will continue to be her #1 babysitter. We need more of those people. She had no need to tell me anything she did, she had no need to drive me up the street just because it was cold and late, but she did, without hope of repayment and without question. Those people are the ones that save the cynical critics, like me, from drowning in this plundering and pillaged world.

Home isn't always where the heart is

I know two play this game,

but it's you who don't live up to your name.

One to provide and support,

instead a father waiting for a chance at a callous retort.

Through my stinging eyes, I envision crossing that threshold, void of a goodbye.

I would never return. Farther than far, I would go.

Because your snide speech reaps far more than it sows. 

Because your treacherous tongue hurts more of me than you know.

"Dad, three years, and I'm out of here."

Your face turns to iron: unrelenting, cold and stern.

My feet carry me away, it's too much to handle, 

I saw the sincerity of your indifference, your true colors at their essence.