Posts Tagged ‘ school ’

26.04.2014

I’m treating self-harm the same way I treated marijuana. A form of self-medication. Coping, I guess is what they call it. I tell myself I don’t need it, that I like it but it isn’t an addiction, it’s a form of recreation, it won’t hurt me, but I know it’s a lie. I don’t want anyone else to do it. Why is it okay for me to do it but not them? I’m not better than them. I’m not in any more control. I’m not any less (or more) fucked up.

I’m just so used to deluding myself that I don’t know where to stop. I don’t know why I’m doing it. I don’t know whether it’s because I need to find a way to get out of myself, or if I need to see the blood because of the violence I seem to enjoy, or if I need to find a way to get the feelings into my head into my body, or if I need something in my life to be permanent, or, most disturbingly, if I do it just because I’m bored. I need something to interest me.

I just don’t know. But I was a fool to think I could handle this. I disgust myself. When I die, I want to be dissolved in a strong base so I liquify and turn into a mash and the chemicals in my body become anything but what I used to be. More destructive than cremation. More fitting, I think.

I’m just at a point in my life where everything freaks me out. I used to just be afraid of slugs and snails. I still am, but now I’m afraid of my own fingernails and the things I’ll do if I’m left alone for any amount of time. Again I’m getting these images of tall buildings on a windy day and handfuls of pills and blood spilling out over my skin. I touch myself and feel like I’m not here. I shake but I’m not cold. I don’t know how to handle it.

I can’t talk anymore. I can’t breathe. I don’t remember the things I said to my mother when I was curled in a ball in my father’s chair. I didn’t recognize my house when I walked inside it. I’ve lost all sense of familiarity. I don’t know what to do in any situation. I don’t know whether I want to do drugs, try to be who I was last summer, or if I want to stay home and sleep until 3 PM every day.

I’m not the same person I was last year. No one here is going to recognize me. I’m no longer comfortable in myself. I’m no longer content with the present. I no longer feel like it’s worth it to come over to your house just to watch movies and drink soda. I’d rather be at home ripping my skin open.

Maybe I should be hospitalized. Maybe I should stay home next semester. Maybe I should spend the rest of my life coiled up inside of myself, waiting for the moment where I can spring free and leave the carcass that I inhabit. I can’t wait for the end of the day when I can lose consciousness and forget all the things I should be happy about, but which make me miserable.

I have to go take my medicines now.

2014
04/26
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06.01.2014

they don’t want you they don’t want you they don’t

it’s only made worse because no one makes me feel this way,

i do it to myself,

with my words and my head and my eyes

and the sounds that never stop,

in my head,

in my head,

they don’t want you

they don’t they don’t

and don’t speak

because the words don’t mean anything

not when you say them

the only substantial thing you do is tear yourself down,

and you know it,

you know it,

you can’t stop and it just repeats,

and it’s a mantra that doesn’t stop,

and it’s the pendulum and it’s the stars and it won’t go away,

nothing’s wrong with you,

something’s always wrong with you,

you’re broken you’re broken you’re a broken record

and it won’t stop and it won’t go away

you just pull the skin off your lips and keep going

until it stops

2014
01/06
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Original Poetry
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04.12.2013

I will never, ever understand why some people like me so much. I just don’t understand how people can feel so strongly about me when I can hardly spare a thought about them.

It’s not that I don’t care about my friends. I do. I just don’t have the intensity that they do. I don’t miss anyone terribly. I get horribly depressed about not having people I like, but not about the people I like specifically. And I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t know. Lately I’ve been focusing a lot on what I feel like is wrong with me: my indecisiveness, my apathy, my confusion, my hopelessness. I don’t know how to stop the cycle; when I get fixated on what’s wrong, I don’t try to fix it. It just comes into clearer focus in my head and won’t leave me alone.

I don’t know if transferring to another college will help me with the problems that I’m having here, but the main thing that bothers me is that I’m spending $40K of my parent’s money per year to be completely miserable when I could be a quarter of that. Even if I’m miserable,the losses are much less in total.

I am pretty sure I can’t stay here. It isn’t just the I’m smarter than you attitude. It isn’t just the lack of support from the Honors and other academic offices. It’s not just the rigidity of the curriculum. It’s not all or any those things. It’s a general sense of not belonging. Of having taken the wrong path.

Now, I don’t know what could possibly be the “right path” for me, but I don’t want my personal journey to put my family into debt. That’s a guilt that I cannot abide, when I know I could ease the load. No, my family doesn’t struggle, but anyone would have to push some stuff around to find the money for tuition at a place like this.

I wish there was some way I could just be. I’m tired of doing all these things because of the expectations I and others have pushed upon me. I don’t want to make a ton of money. I want to do something I’m interested in. I want to know things, interesting things, varied things, things that I don’t necessarily have to make a career out of.

But I’m expected to succeed, not just in my parents’ eyes, but in the eyes of the world, because I have potential, I have that something that makes people think that there is more to me than meets the eye, that there is something amazing inside of me that could potentially change the world.

But they’re wrong.

There’s nothing inside me.

I can’t feel it.

And if I can’t feel it, I sure as hell can’t be it.

2013
12/04
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27.06.2013: Shedding Skin and Making Friends

Lately, I’ve felt like my skin is too tight for my body.

Or rather, I’ve felt like my body is outgrowing my skin. It’s like I’m preparing myself for a cataclysmic shedding of my outer layer. I’m waiting for emerge brand-new, in a vessel so shining and novel that no one will recognize me. I’m on the verge. This shell is getting chipped and cracked around the edges and soon enough, the whole skein will unravel and I will once again be comfortable.

The people around me are what’s keeping my skin on, I think. If I were to reinvent myself now, I would be alone in a place I used to be extremely comfortable in. It’s going to happen in Boston. I will become what I am underneath when I go to school. I will stop dragging around the skin suit of the way I was since eighth grade when I move into my dorm and meet my new roommates.

I want to be friendly. I want to like people. I want to see the good and the bad in them, but I want to focus on the good. I want to be studious. I want to live easily; I don’t want to strain my personality. I want to shed this anxious, angsty coat I’m wearing.

Everything I’m doing now is practice for that. Going to coffee shops and talking to people I don’t know is the first step to being able to start conversations with fellow students. I have to learn to be social, or I’ll end up alone, and that doesn’t sit well with me.

So, yes, I’m scared. This making friends thing has never been a big part of the tapestry of my life. I just have to remember that I’m about to burst and I can become whatever I want as long as I make myself work.

2013
06/27
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06.05.2013: The Beginning of the Worst Week of My Life

I know I’m supposed to be doing a poetry response, but I have just embarked on what I truly believe will be the worst week of my life thus far. I’m going to use this space to shamelessly complain in hopes that it will be counted as a completion grade. This probably won’t be read until after I graduate, anyway.

Anyway, this week is packed even on the topmost layer. I have rehearsal from 6:30 until whenever they let us out every night, one of which I’ll be missing for the band concert on Thursday, and two AP tests. Friday and Saturday are the show dates; 7:00 on Friday and Saturday and 2:30 on Saturday.

At the next level, I’m really stressed out because I just found out about a series of break-ins in my neighborhood. When I got home after rehearsal tonight, one of my neighbors flagged me down and told me someone’s house had been broken into last night. Apparently some people in a black truck with a broken muffler and tinted windows had been cruising, as well. I’ve been alone since Saturday evening (for reasons I will discuss later), and, naturally, I was kind of afraid. I called my parents in Hickory. My father told me he’d been planning on coming home, anyway.

He just got home and the first thing he asked was,  “Where’s my Tahoe?”. I had been under the impression that he and my mother had driven separately to Hickory. I didn’t think it was strange that his car wasn’t in the garage. I was wrong. He didn’t drive his car to Hickory. Someone stole his car three days ago and I only just noticed it.

Well, obviously, that makes me very comfortable about my own powers of observation and the sense of security I feel at any given moment in my house.

The tertiary level of suckiness comes from the fact that my grandmother is, quite frankly, dying. Hospice in involved. I’m terrified that it’s going to happen before I get the chance to see her again. I’m visiting after my AP test on Wednesday, but I’m still really scared. If /when it does happen, I’m probably not going to be able to come immediately. I’d have to finish out the week, or the month, and how am I supposed to live with that? I don’t know what to do at this point. Everything is happening at once and I can’t explain it to my friends because I know it’s a bunch of bullshit. This kind of stuff happens all the time and I have no right to complain about them because it could be much worse.

Somehow, that doesn’t help at all.

2013
05/06
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02.05.2013: Apathy and Vanity

I’m not sure why I’m so unhappy right now.

Nothing about my day was that bad. Indeed, my life in general is looking up. But I can’t stop staring at my feet.

I feel like I have things I want to say, but can’t quite spit them out because everyone’s telling me they don’t want to listen. I don’t have the drive right now. I can’t even convince myself that what I’m thinking is worth recording.

My English teacher talked at length about a six-letter word which is the cause of a lot of problems. It’s contagious, it’s practically incurable, and it’s incredibly common. Apathy. I never thought I would be the kind of person to be described as apathetic, but I find myself without another word to describe what I’m feeling right now. I just don’t care.

I really don’t care about school anymore. I don’t do my homework. If I learn anything, it’s because I want to know it, not because I want to make a good grade on the test. Maybe it’s not apathy; maybe it’s just a shift of perspective. The grades I’m making now will not affect my future. There are bigger things on my mind than completing all of my German homework.

I feel like I sound like a whiny high schooler, which I guess I am. I also feel like I’m using the word “I” way too much. Why does everything have to be about me? How is it that, with so much else I could focus my energy upon, I am solely devoted to try to explain myself?

2013
05/02
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22.04.2013: Just Another Nice Weekend

I had such a good weekend.

With, of course, a few setbacks.

Friday night, Cole and Britty came over. We were going to leave after I ate dinner, but we kinda ended up just sitting around smoking weed and watching trippy movies. It was really fun, especially considering that I didn’t really want to go out in the first place.

However, there was a little blip of weirdness in that really nice night. Britty is, as I know, gay and attracted to me. I mean, I’m kind of attracted to her, too, but we’ve been friends for so long and everything we do is so trivial that it’s not something I ever thought seriously about (particularly recently when things of that nature have been as far from my mind as could be imagined). Anyway, she got super duper high and wanted to cuddle, and as we cuddled, she got… frisky.

I’ve had a problem for a while. I just sort of let things happen to me, particularly sexual and relationship-y things. I don’t really know why, but I don’t know how to say no. Not in the rape-y sense. I can stop someone before they do something I’m not comfortable with, but I can’t seem to stop someone from kissing me or doing something else that feels good, if you catch my drift. It’s happened loads of times, with pretty much every guy I’ve done anything with. I didn’t realize it until the Brian thing happened and I had to face the consequences of my lack of assertion.

This was one of those times.

Britty got really comfortable with me. We weren’t thinking about it at the time, but Cole was sitting two seats over. He didn’t notice for a while, but when he noticed, well… he noticed. So things got awkward.

Britty has a girlfriend, but I made sure it didn’t end up like the Brian thing. I made her tell Skye what happened. I haven’t really talked to her much since then, and I honestly haven’t been dwelling on it. It wasn’t a big deal to me, and as long as they’re being honest with each other, that’s fine. Besides, I’ve been thinking about other things.

Saturday was 4/20, but I didn’t do anything weedy until late at night. I participated in Quiz Bowl, which was fun but also kind of sad because we didn’t do very well. I picked Kieran and Kaelyn up from the prom at midnight, and we had a jolly old time that night. It was truly awesome.

That night I fell asleep cuddled up between Gordon and Sam. I think I was cuddling Gordon when I fell asleep, but I woke up cuddling Sam. He and I awoke around 8am and cuddled and talked until everyone else woke up (much later). It was really nice. Everything about Sunday was pretty chill. I found out Sam has feelings for me that night. I’m not really worried about that, either. I’m very fond of him, but as I said before, I haven’t even been thinking about that kind of thing for quite a while now.

… But we’ll have to explore that more once I turn in my initial deposit to Northeastern University in Boston. (!!!!)

That’s all for now.

2013
04/22
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17.04.2013: The Fish

I firmly believe that things are more than they seem.

Elizabeth Bishop seems to agree with me in her poem, “The Fish“.

This poem reminds me of that fact that everything has a history. Every person, every animal, every object, and certainly every web browser. The history might be evidenced by things that you can see visibly or by looking beneath the surface.

This weekend, I visited three colleges. I already knew what they were like on the surface. I already knew the things they really wanted me to know. I knew that one presented unique research and internship opportunities (Northeastern University in Boston). I knew that one was located in an idyllic hillside town (Denison University in Granville, Ohio). I knew that one was renowned for their Conservatory of Music and the way it affected the non-Conservatory students by creating an atmosphere of creativity and passion (Oberlin College in Ohio).

What is more important is what I do with the information I learned by delving beneath the surface of these schools. The facts I gleaned by talking to the students and spending the night with a host are the things that will impact my decision most of all. Like the speaker in the poem, I have to decide whether I should let them off the hook or not (so to speak).

My plan is to look at the history behind the schools. For example, Oberlin has a history of acceptance. They were the first college to enroll women and black students, and they have a reputation of a commitment to equality and progressiveness.

Honestly, there are so many factors I have yet to consider. I’m still reeling from the idea that I have two weeks in which to choose the place where I will become a real person, with real responsibilities and deadlines and a career. I find it extremely hard to place all my interests into set categories and try to figure out where I want to go based on that. I want to have opportunities I never thought about having. I think that I will eventually find the best school for this undeniably daunting task.

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2013
04/17
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10.04.2013: Letter Sent to Summer

Most of my friends long for summer. They want the sun, the fun, the sleeping in, the hakuna-matata-esque lifestyle they lead for a a few warm months each year.

The poem “A Letter Sent to Summer” by Jane Shore reminds me a lot of that longing.

In some ways, I completely understand why people love summer so much. Sunshine can invigorate you. It makes you feel good on the inside and the out. It’s scientifically proven that warmer climates promote more positive attitudes. Now, I can’t cite that, but it’s what I’ve read.

Personally, summer kind of bums me out. I have fair skin which burns easily. I don’t like swimming. I detest the beach (it’s heat, humidity, sand, and salt).

So, I’d rather talk about the underlying theme of this poem: the summertime of the the mind. It reminds me of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The longing for bliss, for an escape from the harshness of the world, the bite of the cold, the loneliness of the winter. It’s easy to get stuck in that “season” of the mind.

But even the good times aren’t all good. Summer, for most students, is a time of mental stagnation. It’s a season during which we are programmed to “relax and have fun”, even when there are better things we could be doing.

I don’t think that we should have school during the summer or anything like that. I think breaks are a healthy part of the developing mind and important when you’re learning, well, anything. Sometimes you have to take a step back and look at what you’ve done so far in order to figure out how to progress.

In fact, I had to take a break from writing this very entry before I could finish it. Often, when you set something aside, you can see it from a different perspective when you return.

Moving to a more personal note, I think that this summer will be especially important to me. During it, I will wash myself clean of whatever high school crap may be clinging onto me. I’ll prepare myself for the brand newness of the four years to come by discarding the staleness of my life thus far.

I need to step out for a while. Spring break did nothing for me because I was surrounded by the same people, the same people who weigh me down and inadvertently force me into unhappiness.

So, while I don’t like the season of summer, I love and I need the idea of summer. And I’m going to embrace it.

2013
04/10
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08.04.2013: At Least I’m Better Than Mediocre

I’The more I think about it, the more afraid I am of college.

I’m about to embark on an epic adventure, away from an incredibly mediocre town of relatively mediocre people, and I’m going to end up in a place filled with people who are way, way, way more talented than I am.

How can I compete with some of these people? Now, I know scholarships are not the best way to judge a person or their abilities, but, financially speaking, there will be people at these schools that the university thinks are more than 4 times as good as me (the ones with full rides). There will be people who have incredible skill at art, music, science, and language. I am above average in some of those things, but that’s about all I can say.

Because being better than average in a lower than average context doesn’t mean anything.

I try. I work hard for the things I want. And I want to be good in school. I want to be able to talk to people whose minds live in places so far above me that my neck hurts from craning my neck to try to understand. How else can I grow?

There was a guy who graduated a few years ago. Ever since his voice changed, he was looked upon as a young god among the theater-goers. He got all the leads. He was a heartthrob. He was so incredibly talented.

He went to an in-state college to major in theater and got slammed.

He was so bad compared to everyone else that he had to change his major. As far as I know, he doesn’t act in college. Because he can’t compete with the people who were born  for it. And how can I?

I’m sure I’ll be able to be with some people. Not everyone will be above me. But most people will, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to deal with not being the best anymore. I’ve always been the best. I’ve had straight As my entire life. I just have to keep reminding myself that North Carolina is rated extremely poorly in its education. Being good here is not the same as being good in the real world.

Who knows, though? Maybe I’ll step up my game when I get to college. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Grow up? Learn how to adapt? I’m pretty good at adapting, I guess. And I’ll have the benefit of being able to redesign my life, find people I actually like among a class of people with similar interests.

… right?

2013
04/08
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