there's so much more than empty conversations filled with empty words

I have a lot of problems.  It's kind of plain and simple to me as the days pass and go on and I watch from afar all of the things that I wish could be, but it's not that way in reality. I wouldn't say a lot of problems, actually, but obviously one big one.  And that one big problem branches itself out and radiates out into all these other little things that always go wrong.  I've wanted to do so much, but I just don't have the capacity to hold it all inside me.  I've always looked at myself as an optimist, but now I always see myself, or thing to myself rather, that I'm changing that way I look at things.  I'm not changing exactly, but just my views are taking a slightly different direction than I would have expected them to go in the first place.

I always wanted to be that person.  I wanted to be the one person that would always see the beauty in things.  In anything I looked at, I would always try and decipher what could possibly be nice about it, but now I'm finding that I just don't care.  I'm feeling way too depressed for an optimistic person, so how could I possibly still be considered one if I don't meet the criteria?  I've had ups and downs, but never anything that feels this serious.  I have this feeling that there's something wrong with me.  I feel like I'm unwillingly changing.  I don't want to and I don't want to make it of notice, but that doesn't slow the process any second shorter.  I don't even know what I'm changing into and that's what scares the fuck out me.  How can I cope with something I don't understand, or better yet, something I don't want to happen?

Well that's easy.  I deal.  Always have and always will.  I fucking deal and take whatever happens with hardly any questions.  Actually, I try not to question it.  I think that although questions are supposed to be the perfect way to gain knowledge, they show weakness.  But who am I kidding?  I'm the weakest person I see when I look at everyone around me.  I feel so vulnerable and that all my problems are written all over me for everyone to read as they pass me by.  I feel like with every glance or with every odd gesture, someone's making some kind of advance that I'm not aware of.

I've never understood all of the things I've seen, nor do I really want to sometimes.  I don't want to understand why my mom died right in front of my eyes and I don't want to understand why people forget about so many important things.  I don't want to know why there is such utter discord and disregard for innocent feelings of other people and I don't know how in the midst of this fucked up life that I've tried to bandage together, everything still manages to fall apart.  I'm not a fucking masonry for Christ's sake.  I'm just trying to do the best I can and apparently it's not working out too well.

For months I've thought that I just need to have a really good talk with someone.  Just vent about everything and rant and rave and get angry and cry and just let everything flow out of me while having someone else absorb it, trying their best to empathize with me.  But I have yet to find anyone who is willing to step up to the challenge.  But you know, never mind.  I've actually just realized for some while that that's not what I want anymore.  I don't want to talk about my feelings.  I always thought that it would make me feel better and this incredible weight would just get lifted up and off of my shoulders and I would feel a world of good surround and embrace me, but I don't think that anymore.  Not now.  I don't think anyone can help.  They can try, but it's not going to do anything.

I find myself just sitting around and my mind always goes to one specific thing.  I've been thinking about my mom so much lately.  I've been thinking about when she died and how everyone told me I was a little trooper for everything I'd been through.  I've been closing my eyes and seeing her right in front of me; the last memory I have of her right before she left.  I keep seeing her in that hospital bed and she's hooked up to all of these wires.  I didn't know what they did, I still don't know, but I assumed they would be helping her.  I guess they didn't do their job correctly.  But I remember everything perfectly with uncanny visual dynamics.  I remember seeing her bald head from all the chemo-therapy chemicals.  All the radiation shit they injected into her with some hope that she would get better.  Her hair was just starting to grow back too.

And her right arm was rendered totally immobile.  It filled up with fluid and turned purple, almost like there were bruises everywhere.  Nothing had happened, she didn't hit it or anything for there to be a reason for internal bleeding, but I guess her circulation was shutting down in that area.  She couldn't talk anymore.  That's what I missed when I was standing there next to her.  I stood on her left side because I didn't want to look at her now non-circulating right arm.  It was too scary for me.  To think that was something that scared me compared to the gravity of more important things going on simultaneously.  But her voice was always something that calmed me.  That and her touch.  It was so soft.  She could hardly even move her head side-to-side, let alone the rest of her body.  When I touched her, I couldn't feel her warmth.  Everything was gone.  She hadn't held on to anything.  She was leaving and she knew it.  She didn't hold on to any of that warmth she always had.  Why should she?  There wasn't any point.  So what was the point for me still hoping for anything?  None.  There wasn't any at all.

The worst part was to look into her eyes.  There was nothing left of them.  She had really pretty, clear blue eyes.  The irises were so vibrant against the ebony white and charcoal pupils.  There used to be so much freedom in them.  I would look into them when I was really little and just always know that everything would be okay.  I would find reassurance for everything and all I needed for that was to look into the trusting eyes of my mother, but the blue was dull and faded.  It didn't stand out against the once ebony white that had now turned to a blunt yellow.  All the light had left every inch and corner of her soul and it was the most unbearable feeling.  She knew there wasn't any more that could be done.  She knew she'd lost and couldn't stand any more of a chance at getting a step closer to the idea of winning at that point.  She was dying and it was her last moments.  What more could anyone else do but let her go?  The pain to let go was the most struggling idea I've ever had to deal with.  I'm still going through it emotionally.  Obviously it's out of my hands physically.  There was no stopping that, but emotionally...I can't.

That's the image that I'm haunted with every single time I close my eyes.  I can't peacefully drift into dreams of fantasy or desire or any of that.  There's nothing I wouldn't do to have just one more chance to look into her eyes again.  But the more I think about something like that ever happening, the more insane I think I am.  I want it, but I don't.  And the only reason I say that is as much of the idea of how wonderful it would be for something like that to ever worldly happen, saying goodbye for the second time would be so much harder that I would ever imagine.  It's like you can't have something that has such an enormous price on it for a lesser bargain, you know?  You have to give more than what you have in exchange for something that may not last as long, but it seems well worth it at the time.

I'm never going to ever say that I'm going to try to forget because the memories that I have are all that I am.  And I can't give up either because that's where I get my strength.  I can't have one without the other.  It's like the bargain thing again except it's working in the opposite way now.  I have to stick with the bad memories to have everything better, but I'd want everything better to hinder them.  But still I have nothing to give.  I'm an empty person with nothing to offer anyone.  Who wants that?  I don't understand any of it.

I used to love laying in the grass at night and watching all of the starts twinkle.  I would always want my mom to come outside with me and see it for herself, but she never did.  So I would always find myself falling into the grass alone and losing myself in the blackness of night.  I don't do that anymore.  My grass is dead too.  I haven't done it in years.  It's as if everything died along with everything I loved.  I would just lay out in my front yard on my hill.  I have this hill with a big, massive pine tree on top of it.  I would go out and lay right under the tree so I was laying on the slope.  It would feel like the perfect recliner for staring up at the stars.  But there seem to be less and less stars in the sky visible to my eyes.  I don't know if that's just me or horrible pollution erasing all the the natural beauty of the world, but regardless of the earthly problems, everything has its time.  Everything dies and sometimes, as I've notice so diligently, most of the best things about life seem to die simultaneously.  And then they're gone.

the dust has only just begun to fall

So now today has been transformed into a half-day.  We had a stupid fucking bomb scare this morning at like 10:30 and we went to the elementary school again.  Last year it was a gas leak.  So are we going to alternate every other year now?  I guess.  Because the year before last, there was another bomb scare.  Come go to school at Pascack Valley!  Hah yeah.

Anyways, it's now a half-day.  It's "seventh" period and that means we didn't have to change for gym.  Yessss.  So I'm sitting here and I'm so beyond bored and way too overtired to be pleasant.  I also haven't eaten anything all day too.  I'm so fucking hungry, but I don't have any money.  I have to get a job like PRONTO.  I need money, it's not even funny.  This economy situation is getting pretty bad now.  I don't like it.

I really wanna see Brandi.  We've been having a serious communication problem lately.  I text her, I wait for her response, I go to sleep, and then I wake up the next morning for school and look at my phone to see that she responded to my text while I was already asleep.  It's getting me so mad that I cannot find a decent time to talk to this girl.  We have all of next week off so I wanna fix that and see her.  It's her birthday next Friday on the 20th, but I doubt I'll be seeing her on her birthday.  She'll probably be with her boyfriend.  The one who I still haven't met, but I don't know.  She's come to me a few times about things to do because some stuff's happened between them.  And I keep telling her that I wouldn't know as much as she would because I have yet to be in that kind of relationship yet.  But I'm pretty good with situations and handling things, so I helped her and I think she's okay.  I miss her a lot.

I miss Christine too.  Oh my god, I felt like such an idiot.  The whole time I was trying to text her and talk to her because I just needed someone so bad, her phone's screen was broken.  Fucking broken.  And all that time, I thought she was ignoring me or not reading my messages or something.  I feel like such a douche for thinking that because of course she cares.  I can't even recount all the numerous times she's told me she loves me and has meant it every time.  So I have no clue why I thought that.  No, I do.  I over-think and blow things out of proportion WAY too much when the situation's so little.  I take everything out of hand.  I guess I can't grasp the idea of simplicity.  Alright, well I hope that I see her sometime soon too.  She said that with school being so busy, she doesn't have that much free time on her hands, but I hope she can find some.  I haven't hung out with her at all.  Never.  The only times I see her are at MDI related things.  So yeah.  I don't know.

Hmm, what else?  I talked to Marlene on the way back to the high school from the bomb scare safe-zone.  Well, I talked or at least I tried to.  She didn't really seem like she wanted to carry on much of a conversation.  She was sick, coughing and shit, but whatever.  I tried to ask if she wanted to do something over break and she was thinking out loud of the idea of getting a whole group.  I don't think she got the hint that I kind of just want to talk and hang out with her alone.  We have a lot to talk about and I would prefer if we didn't have an audience.

I also really want to reconnect with Shayna sometime soon too.  I miss her.  I miss so many people who I used to be so close with and now our actions between each other have been reduced to maybe 30-second conversations and waves and hello's in the hallways as we pass each other.  I don't like it at all.  I have so many people whom I used to be such good friends with and now they seem like strangers.  The same with Robin.  I've been seeing her all day today, like legit, everywhere I've been going and I've been thinking the same about her too.  I want to talk to her again, be friends like we used to be.  I know she's a senior and all, but that shouldn't matter.  I used to have really intense talks with her and now we seriously don't talk at all.  Just pass-by's in the hallways as always.

I want to fix so many things, but it's like there isn't enough time for everything now.  Everything's being jammed together and I can't even find the time to breathe.  I don't know what's going on and things are happening at light speed, whizzing past me before I have any time at all to regain my composure and just think about what just happened.  I'm losing myself and I need to gain my control back.  Desperately.  That's all for now.

because you're paper thin & it's visible

There's nothing to do so of course, I plug in my iPod and lose myself.  Everyone else around me is doing homework, but I can't do mine because I don't have the stupid password for the online textbook.  Go figure, I guess.  So whatever.  Sitting isn't so bad.  I'm just kind of soaking in everything that's going on around me.  Fucking obnoxious douchebags arguing about something totally having nothing to do with the real world right behind me.  I can hear them a little bit.  And that says a lot since I'm all but bursting my eardrums with my music.  I bet they have nothing good to do with their lives.  They're the kind of idiots who wear their jeans practically just above their crotches.  Why did that ever become a trend for anyone?  It's disgusting.  I, along with a lot of other people probably, don't want to see someone walking around with their boxers hanging out of the stretch line of their jeans all the time.  And why do it?  I will not believe for a second that it's not uncomfortable.

There's another table of guys diagonally behind me who sound just like the ones behind me.  They're all the same.  I haven't met a truly unique person in a while.  What happened to originality?  Does everyone have to be the same now?  Do they all have to wear their jeans at the same way-too-low level and talk in the same sonic frequencies?  I guess that's the way to be a peace-disturbing asshole these days.  Stand up and shout for no apparent reason to draw attention to yourself and then sit back down leaving everyone around you wondering why you just did that.  So it's all about them.  Even if no one gives a shit, it still is.  How exciting.

back on subject

Okay, so I'm still on the same topic I was on my previous post.  So now, there are like a million and one things bothering me.  Well not literally, but it definitely feels like it.  And it's so fucking annoying to go through and organize all of my problems from priority and what I want to fix first.  It all depends on the importance, I guess.  What I value most as opposed to what's actually realistic. It's ridiculous and yet it feels really prevalent.  It's something I just HAVE to do.  I'm the kind of person that if there's something wrong in my life, I can't just leave it be.  I can't just let it go on past me, still lingering in the back of my mind.  I won't be at full appreciation of myself until I fix it, as opposed to letting it go unsolved.  I can't just forgive and forget and then that's the end of it either.  I know it's stupid and in some instances, I know I'm probably wasting all of my time and energy agonizing over it, but it's what I feel to be right and I won't settle for less.  I've just been having all of these problems with different friends and then things that I want to tell specific people all the time, but I never do.  I don't understand it myself.  I want to tell people how distanced I feel from them, I want to see their faces, I want to get to know them better than I already do [[or if I don't anymore and try to fix it, which I'm presently doing]], I want to know that they care about me as a person and as one of their friends and don't deliberately blow me off all the time or ignore me when I try to talk to them.  Because all of this has happened.  And I don't get it.  I don't get how someone can ignore someone with whom they used to talk to all the time or spend so much of their time with.  I don't get how a human mind can just "forget" so fast.  Although, it's not memory, but they're just blocking things out.  I don't know why that would have a reasoning for happening, but it's always depending on the situation.  From what I recall, I haven't done anything to get anyone annoyed at me.  Or maybe I have.

I don't know.  I'm always really paranoid when it comes to that.  I talk to people and then when they don't respond, I try and try to contact them, but I always have that though in my mind that I'm being some kind of annoying person in their lives and they'd just want me to stop.  But usually that's not the case at all.  But that's what I always think.  I always come to that point in my mind where I over think too many things and overanalyze a fairly easy situation.  And I always think it's bigger than it really is.  Maybe I have some sort of deficiency.  Maybe I'm just messed up like that.  I don't know.  Whatever.  I'm going to try and figure this all out.  We have break in like 2 weeks.  So I can spend some of that time rekindling some things.  I guess I'll see how it goes and hope it's in the direction I want to go in.

come break me down

I've been feeling so weird lately.  There's a million little things going on all at once, each of them unraveling my world by a thin strand that somehow manages to stay intact by the root.  I don't know how all of this is happening.  I look at the people whom I used to be so close with and I see strangers.  It feels so unsettling.  I thought I used to know them, but I glance at them sometimes, and they're just totally different people.  I don't even know who they are anymore.  I'm trying to repair it, but it doesn't seem to be working at all.  No one on the other side is putting towards effort and it's fucking pissing me off.  If they don't seem to care about losing me as a friend, then why should I continue to put forth all this effort in the struggle to make a change?  A change that's so unwilling to revert back to its original standpoint.  I don't even know why I waste so much of my time thinking about it.  Maybe just in the spite of that one, now severely clouded, hope that I can do something to change this.  But you know what?  I heavily doubt it as of now.

I'm getting sidetracked, but I'm definitely not done on this topic...

& there's no one here...

So I'm sitting here at my lunch table.  It's just Ryan and I, all our other friends are either doing something with their teachers or sick today.  Which kind of sucks, but whatever.  I've been thinking lately...I've been listening to so many songs and with the musical coming up, I'll be dancing so much.  I really want to choreograph something of my own to dance.  I want to listen to a really great song, and then just dance it.  

Make something meaningful that I'll always remember when I hear that song or something.  Yeah, that's all I wanted to say.  I want to choreograph.  I wasn't doing anything in choir today, so I was just listening to my iPod, sitting there, coming up with different things and fooling around with steps in my head to see what would work.  It's something I think I could do and it could end up being really great.  But knowing me, I won't perform anything until I think it's perfect and ready for people to see.  So yeah.  I'll get on that when I have nothing to do.  Okay.  Yes. =D

i'll stand here so i can catch you if you faint

So today after school were the Seussical auditions.  And I was fucking nervous as hell.  I'd just learned my song last night with Mrs. Simet and I also couldn't stop the stomach-churning feeling despite my best efforts to do so.  I'd also never auditioned with these directors before, so I was also meeting them for the first time.  Which also scared me shitless because Mr. Lupfer is an intimidating-looking person.

So i spent an hour and a half after school practicing my song.  And then I went home to calm myself down [[my audition slot wasn't until 6:15]].  I got home and sang my song again about 10+ times until I got a little bored of it.  That's when I knew I should stop and I had it down and I was comfortable.  I was ready and there wasn't anything else I could do.  It was almost time, so I had to just go and face it and hope to do my best.

So I got to the school at around 5:45 and it turned out that the directors were running REALLY ahead of schedule because some people didn't show up.  So my friend tells me that I'm going in just 5 minutes, when I was really supposed to be waiting around for a half hour.  Yeah.  THAT'S when I started to get that stomach-churning feeling again.  But I went in and did my thing.  I was so nervous, it was almost obvious.  I introduced myself to the two directors [[they're husband and wife]] and told them what I would be singing, "What I Did For Love" from A Chorus Line.  I gave my sheet music to the pianist and told him to play at "an even tempo" and follow me for the first que.

Okay, so first off, the pianist wasn't my favorite.  He was going WAY too slow and not keeping up with me and taking pauses and stopping whenever I held out a note, so I got so confused.  And then I was too busy worrying about that, so I forgot about 2 or 3 seconds towards the end and just kind of ad-libbed until I remembered where I was at.  I was so embarrassed though!  I forgot the words and then I remembered what was going on and finished.  I can't really explain what happened, but I hope they took it for someone who was so nervous because they didn't me and I didn't know them and everyone is nervous to audition for things.

So yeah, I ended the song and was so pissed at the pianist, but then Mr. Lupfer spoke to me and asked me, of all things, to take my hair down.  I had it in a ponytail while auditioning and I really didn't think it would be a problem or anything.  If anything, I thought it would help; get my hair out of my face as opposed to being down, you know?  But I complied and took it down and they looked at me for a second or two.  Then it was Mrs. Lupfer who spoke, asking me about my dancing, referring to my audition form where I talked a little about my years of experience.  She wanted to know my strongest styles and which one I liked the best.  I told them both my honest answers.   I said I would put it between lyrical, modern, and tap and my strongest and as for my favorites, I said that for as many years that I've been dancing, it's not about the individual styles that I love, but the passion that comes out of doing something I enjoy so much.  They really seems to like my answers very much and said they would see me tomorrow at dance auditions.  And I'm kind of convinced that I'm going to kick ass at those seeing as most of the kids who try out for the dramas and musicals can sing, but they're hardly dance oriented.  Hahah I'm excited to show off.

So you know, overall, it was a pretty solid audition, I think.  I'm confident that they'll overlook that one mess-up at the end of my song and take into consideration my experience and all.  So I'm hoping that I get the part I had in mind, but I'd be grateful for anything, really.  I'm not even nervous for dance auditions tomorrow.  My friend, Maja, who's been in all the high school productions so far, says that with all my experience and the lack of every one else's, I'll just possibly be bored with everything.  Haha I hope it's really as easy as she says it's going to be.  But hey, I always love a challenge when it comes to dance.  We'll see.

i'll come to you in pieces

Alright, so I have a problem here.  Have you ever woken up one morning and the people who you used to be really close with aren't really that friendly with you anymore?  And no, I don't mean literally occurring overnight, but I mean as a gradual time period goes on, you see and notice a friendship diminishing for whatever reason.  It comes down to this: you don't talk, you hardly see each other, and you think that there's nothing that you can do about it.  So what is there to do if you think there isn't anything you can do about it?

There might not be anything you can do about it, but you know, you can give the old college try at least.  Well, not in this sense, but you know what I mean.  You can try and rekindle that friendship in the hopes that there's still something there.  And if not, well then, there's really not much to do about it.  Just to go and get on with your life, I guess.  I mean, that seems to be the more practical approach, if you ask me.  And if you really think about it, the person who won't accept you as a friend now, being that you've drifted apart over time, probably wasn't much of a real friend to you when you were friends to begin with, back in the days when you were friends and saw each other on a somewhat regular basis.

Think about it...if the person's not willing to be friends again after however long of a period of time that you two really weren't that close, then what made them such a good friend in the first place?  I don't know why someone would want someone like that in their lives.  But I'm getting sidetracked.  That's not what I wanted to talk about, but that thought just kind of crossed my mind.  What I did want to talk about what what was going on with me though.  It's basically that situation though.  Minus the "not being friends again" part because I haven't approached her about it just yet.  Though, I really do want to, I have to say, I'm kind of conscious of what she'll think.

Okay, so here's the gist.  So for the past year, I've been really good friends with this girl who I met the summer before going into high school together.  We would be going to school together in the fall and I hadn't met her before because she was from Rivervale.  So she's a pretty down-to-earth kind of girl.  And she likes what I like.  Dance, that is.  She's amazing at what she does.  Dance team technique, though.  I'm all studio, so there's some conflict there but whatever, I really could care less.  It's not like we bicker about better techniques or anything, that's stupid.  But anyways, we got to being really great friends over freshman year, but you know, this summer going into sophomore year, we kind of got to see each other less and less as the time went on.  No, not even at the start of the summer.  I could kind of tell that it was all happening a little before that even.

So as of right now, we don't talk at all, minus the ever-exchanged "hello's" whenever I see her in the hallway.  And not to make her sound like a bitch, but I'm lucky if I ever get a response...or a smile.  Which is weird, and I do kind of find it a little inconsiderate.  It's like I'm not even there and she just breezes past me in some kind of bubble zone that totally tunes me out.  And I do want to confront her, I really do.  Well, not like confront, like totally rage on her for whatever, but I want to talk to her to see if she feels the same way as I do.  Because we used to talk A LOT and about really touchy things and it always felt good talking to someone.  And I really miss it.  I miss everything.  Talking, hanging out, walking all the way from her house to Dairy Queen in Bi State Plaza [[my GOD that was the longest walk ever, it took like 2 1/2 hours!]].  It was all so fun and it's like whenever our eyes met, none of that happened at all.  It does make me sad.

So I'm sort of committed to rebuild this relationship with her.  She's a sweet girl and I keep hearing all of these things that happened to her at parties and how she broke up with her boyfriend [[who hooked up with someone RIGHT after they broke up the first time and she was trying to get over him so everyone basically hated him for doing that to her, but then she took him back.  which I think was a stupid move, but it's all done and over now]].  And I mean, I just really want to be there for her and help her out with whatever and just do something to make it feel like we're friends again.

Ahh I don't even know.  All of this is just so out of whack, I don't even know what to really even say about it.  I want to talk to her, so I think I will.  I mean, someone can't possibly not have a heart and just disband people like there's no tomorrow, right?  Right.  Yeah.  Okay.