The first chapter

My entire life, I have hated to think of the theme of stories, novels and poems that I’ve read. I like to think that there is no specific reason, and that works can’t always be put into a category. This is why I roll my eyes at themes we have to talk about in school, especially ones like “don’t judge a book by its cover” and “curiosity killed the cat.” I guess it just bugs me that things can be categorized, no matter what. But, now I understand.

I judged a book. I looked at the cover, didn’t like what I saw, then shoved it aside. I often referred to that book as “annoying” or “not as cute as everyone thinks.” I didn’t even bother with digging deeper by reading the description of the book on the back cover or by cracking the binding and sampling a page or two. I looked, I judged, I set it down. This is what I do with most things. There’s one thing that I changed my mind on. And now I regret what I thought before.

I saw the book on the shelf, dusted it off, then looked at it again. I smiled to myself as I opened it up and took a look inside. I saw that this book I shoved aside before is absolutely beautiful and kicked myself for not thinking so before. It makes me smile and laugh and made this past week of my life one of the most cheerful ones I have experienced in awhile. I’m still only in the first chapter, but I am planning on reading more and more in the future. I can’t wait to see what else I find.

The luckiest girl in the world

I have changed my whole outlook on life. To quote Good Charlotte, “I just wanna live,” and I don’t really care about the things that they say or what happens to me. I’m just going to live.

This week, I have been a busy bee. I watched The Great Mouse Detective, The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under, Fievel Goes West and some Darkwing Duck. A friend and I have been devouring Disney movies (Fievel is an exception – that was a movie I watched with my daddy) in preparation for our trip to Disney that is just around the corner. I couldn’t be more excited!

While I was eating cheeseburgers with two of my friends one day (and asking for more pickles!) and then bowling with them a few days later, I couldn’t help but think. I should probably stop thinking, but in this case, I’m glad I did. While I was retrieving the yellow ball I was using to bowl, I looked back at my two friends (one of them being my best) and smiled to myself. Four weeks ago, hanging out with anyone else could possibly have been considered a sin, but with everything over I am finally able to have fun with different people; something I have been itching to do.

Now, I have the sweetest boy I’ve ever met giving me the nicest hugs and whispering the cutest things in my ear. I don’t want a boyfriend any time soon, but it’s hard to ignore these things. I think I smell opportunity in the air, but I’m not quite sure yet. We need to hang out a few more times and see what happens.

I whine and bitch and moan and complain, but in reality, I’m the luckiest girl in the world. There are people in Uganda (my country!) and Haiti that would do anything to have what I do. I don’t intend to let what I have go to waste.

They’re trying to kill me

So, it probably wasn’t smart of me to take up knitting. Or wait, let me back up. It probably wasn’t smart of my family to get two kittens for Christmas barely a month after I had started knitting. My yarn stayed where I left it for that blissful month, then, after Christmas, I found my yarn strewn around furniture and twisting this way and that around the rooms of our house. Finally, I had the sense to shut my yarn away in a bin with a secure lid. Now they can’t get to my yarn…unless it’s out because I am in the process of knitting something and just set it down and walk away.

Sometimes, we’d wake up and find that our kittens had gone crazy winding the yarn around and we would joke around about how they were probably building a trap for us. This morning was no exception.

I don’t know how I didn’t hear them in my room late last night and early this morning, but this is the damage that was done because of my deep, drugged sleep:

I swear, they’re trying to kill me.

Believing ain’t easy

I almost started crying when I entered the room with the high ceilings. I could still hear our laughter and heavy breathing as we darted in and out of the rows of pews. Fresh in my mind was the vision of us kids running around in the darkness while our parents socialized in the next room. I could still see him looking up at me, for I was taller than him the last time I encountered his presence. That has changed, I’m sure.

It was weird to be back, albeit nice. Except, there were things that weren’t nice. My grandma was scowling like a jealous schoolgirl and things had changed too much. Not only was the basement a mess, but the parsonage had been burned to the ground. Stress was something I could feel strongly in the air. Its prominence burned me much like the charred pile of former house innards laying out in the January winter.

There was no choir. There was no organ; just piano. There were no children that I recognized, there was nobody my age up in the back, getting ready to snuff out the candles after the service to signify their job as an acolyte.

“We stopped doing that,” she said. Well, I think that kind of sucks.

There was no comfort. Or, at least there was very little. The only times I cracked a smile was when Papa fell asleep here and there and when I heard the voice of my favorite choir member singing behind me. At least he was there to provide me with a sense of normalcy; even if it wasn’t a very big chunk of it.

There’s also the issue of not necessarily believing. What am I to do about that? I know I pleased my grandparents by acting as their chauffeur and acting as something they could show off to their friends, but I don’t know if I see this becoming a regular thing. It was fun to make them happy, but if I don’t believe, what am I to do? Sit there every Sunday with a blank look painted on my face, much like I displayed today?

I’m glad I did it. I don’t regret it. I just wish I wasn’t so shrouded with disbelief. Believing comes to other people so easily…why can’t it be that easy for me?

For everything there is a season

It was like greeting an old friend as soon as my feet found the pavement. The snow had melted just enough and the air seemed balmy in all its glory of forty degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve always found it amazing just how different forty degrees can be, depending on the perspective you’re taking. When the seasons change from summer to fall, 40 degrees seems like the coldest temperature on earth. But, when the winter chill backs off a bit and lets in some of that 40-degree air, it’s as if spring has come early. It’s the same temperature and yet, it’s different.

I had considered making up a quick playlist of songs I could listen to while I ran, but I opted to leave my iPods at home, instead. The birds sang as I left the cul-de-sac I have lived on my whole life and let my legs carry me out to the main road and down the hill. I was surprised at how good I felt and let that carry me through the pain as muscles were put back into use after remaining dormant for nearly two months. The pain gave me something to think about and something to distract me from the mountain of homework I had to do and the hardships I had been dealing with on a regular basis.

When I was running, I didn’t have to feel anything but the pain from the exertion I was putting my body through. When I thought about it hard enough, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, but if I just let my mind wander and let my legs do my thinking for me, nothing really mattered. I ran by a business that owes my dad money and considered trashing it. But, I didn’t. I kept running and made my way toward the hill that stood menacingly in the not-so-distant distance.

My energy deteriorated once I reached the top, but I kept on running. I reached my halfway mark and kept going. I thought about how natural it is for me to run and how effortless it can be once I am in good shape to do it. I thought about the summer and how the three of us took part of this same route in an effort to be in shape for cross-country season. I thought about how fast the time goes and how it doesn’t make sense to try and cherish every moment. If you’re too busy cherishing, you’re not living. You’re just trying to keep it in your memory forever. A memory should be something you remember effortlessly, not something you save onto the desktop in your brain so you can click on it and wait for it to load.

I decided against taking a shortcut and instead went the whole way around and back to my street. I took a left, ran down to the green Pennysaver box and then took a right, thinking in my head about that last 200m that I face with every race I run on the track. I ran halfway up my slushy driveway and then bent over to catch my breath. I always do this, and then I bend my knees carefully before reaching my full height (5′2″ if you were wondering) and then walking around a little bit, my hands over my head.

I entered through the side garage door, made my way through the traffic blocking my way to the house door (sleds, snowshoes, etc) and shed my running sneakers (New Balance this year – a brand I never really gave a chance until over the summer), grabbed my already-full glass of water off of our butcher block-esque island and downed it in a second.

My ears stung from the cold and my breathing was wheezy with each inhale and exhale I made.

“How’d you feel?” my dad asked.

“All right,” I replied. “I started out too fast and was dead by the end, but it felt good to run. I’m gonna go lay down now.”

I entered the family room and plopped onto our brand-new couch to catch my wheezy breaths. After thirty minutes passed without my daddy turning on the TV, I went upstairs and grabbed The Lovely Bones and continued reading from where I had left off right before daddy had picked me up at the school just barely an hour previously. We sat there, father and daughter, reading our books of choice: his a Yankee book that someone had gotten him and mine a novel that had been made into yet another movie based off of a book. He wore one of his many pairs of $0.99 reading glasses and I wore the sweat and dirt of a girl who had almost made it through one of the toughest weeks of her sixteen years of living, and was coming out on the other side unscathed and perfectly fine.

At 4 o’clock, I tossed my book down and ran the shower upstairs in the bathroom that all of my brothers had vacated and bestowed unto me (we painted it a light brown and pretty light blue and got rid of the old Mickey Mouse theme that had previously reigned).

Before shedding my clothing, I focused on the length of my hair in the mirror. Back in ninth grade, it was a shock of bright-red curls. Now, it’s back to its normal color (brown/blond/red depending on the season and amount of sun received), though the curls have been kept (I have not dyed my hair since November 2008). I’ve decided that I want it to be long for when I take my senior pictures. I thought to myself Oh yeah, it will be long enough by the summer after this one!

And then it hit me.

I will be taking my senior pictures this summer. It’s crazy just how much time flies and how one change in your thoughts can create a chain-reaction of changes throughout your entire mind. At the moment, I am halfway through my junior year of high school. In June, I will sing in the Chamber Choir and watch some of my best friends ever don those white and blue robes and graduate from our little sliver of the universe and move on to bigger (and better) things. This hit me hard because I realized that I haven’t exactly enjoyed my high school experience that much. In recent months, Misery had taken over my entire being and forced me to look at everything pessimistically. But now, happy little Emily is back, and she plans on staying happy and little until she is forced to grow up in a year and a half.

I quit and stared out the window

I sat in the backseat of the car, cursing my misfortune. Sure, I was uber thankful, but I knew I hadn’t thought any of it through.

Tonight I discovered that I truly don’t belong. I also received a reminder that not all friends are good ones. So, there I sat. Listening to some awful pick-me-up girl music that is usually accompanied by a gallon of Rocky Road. Instead, I was literally on a rocky road. My teeth chattered, my legs shook with the cold in my skimpy pink tights and all I wanted was to be anywhere but where I was. When the fifth member of our overcrowded party joined us, I groaned inwardly.

I wanted to be with Taylor. Sitting in the front seat, jamming to Lady GaGa, drinking our Tim Horton’s cocoa, digesting our bagels and cramming McDonald’s fries was a more than welcome alternative. Instead, I was sitting between two bickering girls and could hear the talking/”he texted you, what do you want to say?” crap that was going on in the two front seats. I was stuck in a world where I simply didn’t belong. I was crowded in and surrounded by cheerleaders, listening to the horrid “Glee!” soundtrack and gritting my teeth uncomfortably. All I wanted was to break out my iPod and play some Every Time I Die or something to express the screaming in my head in a way that couldn’t possibly hurt the ears of others.

I tried to break the ice, but when they showed no enthusiasm, I quit and stared out the window. I guess that just shows what kind of people they are.

The butterflies have risen!

You know how you have to be in one of those moods to really appreciate artists like Marilyn Manson, Eyes Set to Kill and Every Time I Die? Well, I’m in one of those moods. I had Persephone going on shuffle, and she was doing pretty good until an ETID song came on, and I realized that I am in the mood for them today. I don’t know why; it’s not like I’m cranky or anything at the moment, now just seems like to right time to listen to something that is so beautifully screamy. I just can’t describe it.

I’m feeling pretty damn good, actually. The butterflies are alive again within me (you’d have to be a regular reader of my poetry to understand that reference, and I am the only one that fits in that department) and they flitter and flutter every once in awhile to remind me that they’ve been released from their cocoons once more.

So, there’s this guy. Well, actually, there are several guys at the moment, but whatever. He doesn’t even go to our school (and plus I know the ones from G-Town could never click with me…and the one that actually could has a girlfriend, even though he agrees with me on that subject), and yet for some reason I have a good idea about him. See, I’ve known him practically my whole life. The last time I saw him, he was shorter than me and kind of geeky. Okay, really geeky. We just didn’t mesh. Now, we received a Christmas card from them, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I don’t really know if he’s my type, but I’m willing to find out. He’s tall, not anorexic-esque skinny, but nicely shaped and he plays hockey. Yeah, the hockey thing is what won me over. I like a guy who can play a real manly sport (that ISN’T football).

I told myself yesterday that if he came online in the facebook chat thing, I would say hello. Well, he came online. My heart started beating faster, but I didn’t do anything. Instead, I just kept clicking “Home” to distract myself with the posting of meaningless statuses by my other “friends.” I think that if we were to start hanging out, that’d be pretty cool, regardless of the driving distance between us. It’s only, like, an hour, so so what? Once I get my license I’ll be able to make that commute.

But, I’m not promising anything with anyone. I noticed several different guys making eye contact with me at the dance (will post pictures later, I promise!) and I became attached to one and realized that I wouldn’t mind hanging out with him, too. I don’t want to date anyone, I just want to go on dates and see how it is. Kiss a few guys, take in a few movies, hold a couple different pairs of hands; that’s all I want. I’m back to the “he likes me, he likes me not” thing again, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. This time, I’m not going to sit around and wait for something to happen (with the one exception yesterday!); I’m going to do something about it if I want someone that bad. I’m going to drop hints and be flirty and cute in a subtle way and play hard-to-get. This is what’s fun about being a teenager; fun that I’ve been missing out on for years because I was always stuck solely on one person.

Well, watch out. Have you ever felt that pitter patter of your heart when you see someone walk down the hallway? I have, and it’s not focused on just one person anymore.

Protected: My feet are cold

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This is me rambling, at least

I can’t sleep. That’s right, I said it. It’s half past one o’clock in the morning, and I am announcing that stupid old Insomnia has visited me once more. I thought I had rid myself from his awful, testing grasp…but it seems as though he has me again. I can only hope this is temporary.

So, here I sit. I have two of my many pillows (apparently you can never have too many) supporting my back and to tell the truth, I am losing feeling in my buttocks… not that you needed to know that.

We watched Hoarders until 11, and instead of continuing to watch another episode about some person named Chris who still had baby toys from when her seventeen-year-old daughter was a baby, I decided to retire and headed upstairs with the ‘rents. I arrived at my doorstep (if you can call the carpet leading into one’s bedroom a doorstep) and thought excitedly hey! I can play Kingdom Hearts until the wee hours of the morning! which was soon halted by the book hanging out on my nightstand. Not to mention the dog that had taken up residence on my bed; that was distracting, too.

I forgot all about KH and picked up the book. A friend had remembered to bring it in for me along with one of the counterparts to it, so I picked up reading where I had left off before I hastily put the book down to get to play practice earlier in the evening. I picked up Crank (which I have already read – and last time I read it in once sitting) but after awhile found it to be rather depressing, so I put it down to succumb to the sleep I had been evading. At this point, it was 11:48 PM.

Now, nearly two hours later, after tossing and turning and turning the temperature on my heated blanket down, I have given up on the hopes of maybe catching some shut-eye tonight. Maybe I can get some writing done tonight seeing as how I have three stories for one newspaper due tomorrow (Wednesday) and three more stories that I promised for a different newspaper that I can get done anytime I’d like, but I’d like that anytime to be soon. Piling up on top of this unnecessary stress I put myself through due to my habit of procrastination, I have 118 lines to memorize in the play we’re working on, 4 different National Honors Society forms to pass out to 4 (or maybe it was 5…I can’t remember this early in the AM) different teachers/adults AND an essay due for NHS on top of that. 5 paragraphs in ABC paragraph format that concern me and are all about me. How boring. I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe I’ll print this off and hand it in – this is me, is it not? Me rambling, at least.

I’ve always found that I am a night owl and always get inspired once the sun goes down. Tonight is no exception. While I was tossing and turning and turning and tossing, I was having several brainstorms, but didn’t feel like reaching over to the stack of Post-Its I always keep handy on my nightstand (specifically for those late-night ideas) to write them down. I remember them crystal clear.

1. Banned-AIDS “Together we can make it so we can say we’ve banned AIDS. Donate your extra bandages and maybe throw in a dollar or two. The littlest contribution can help fix the boo-boos and fight against AIDS in African countries like Uganda.”
2. Mention how mom has had three different jobs in the last four years and now has one that she likes. Coincidentally, she got the job while she was in college study Public Relations. She holds the position of a PR Specialist.
3. Picture caption should read “Emily greatly resembles her mother, Nancy, who handled being a mother, helping to provide for her family and attending college classes to earn her Masters Degree all at once.”

Yep, that’s all. Don’t try to wrap your mind around how those three ideas might connect, because they definitely don’t (well, 2 and 3 do). They are very different ideas for two very different things that I’m working on at the moment. Hopefully I can get everything done that I need to be done by the end of this week with flying colors. It would help if I got some sleep, but tomorrow I’ll be loopy, tired and fun…and maybe I can take a nap when I get home from school. Wait…maybe not. I have too much shit to do.

Double zero decade

Last year I told ya’ll that I was planning on washing my mouth out with soap to avoid swearing and to stop my vicious knuckle cracking. Well, after like, two days of not doing either of things after the start of 2009, I said screw it. In fact, I just cracked my knuckles and found it quite satisfying. Why should I have to ditch something that’s satisfying?

So, this year, I’m not making a single resolution. This way I won’t be disappointed when I break it (which I know I’m bound to do). I’m happy with who I am and what I do and wouldn’t change a thing.

Goodbye, 2009. Goodbye double zero decade and the rise of Twilight, vampire books and stupid vampire fans, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Lady GaGa, the formation of Paramore and Flyleaf and the death of many people. May the next decade bring better circumstances and positive fortunes.