To the lovely person who left the message on my driveway:

I'd like to say a very gracious "thank you" to the wonderful person who wrote the lovely message to me by means of shaving cream on my driveway. Thank you so much. I admire your maturity and your respect for people's property. I also am so very disappointed that I couldn't see the entire message, due to my mother's washing it off with a hose this morning in an attempt to spare me the pleasure, but thank goodness some of it was visible. Again, thank you so much! It really made me feel so warm and tickly inside. I just wanted to return the gracious message that was so lovingly bestowed upon me.

Happy effing Halloween, jerk.

Recollection.

I found this in an old, seemingly-unused notebook that was lying under my old school books. Make with it what you will. I, personally, believe that it's my most powerful piece.

I'm lying in a hosital bed and I'm so lonely. I think that I'm going to blow up into ten thousand tiny pieces. I'm coming undone. I'm unwinding. I need to write. I need to write.

"i get up and walk to the window. i feel all eyes upon my back as i lift the blinds. my teacher calls out my name, asking what in goodness sakes do i think i'm doing, but i'm not listening; i'm already punching out the screen. i look to the first row, last seat, to the boy who is staring back at me; from between my lips slide the words "i love you," and before i know it, i am in free fall.


the drop is only two stories, and yet it feels like a full minute that i am falling. twisting, slipping, curling over on myself. i can hear the screams and screeches of surprise from above me, and all i can see is a blur of brick, grass, concrete, brick, grass, concrete.

i feel a surge of energy pulse through my veins, and i think: "dear god. i'm dying."

the teacher above me leans frantically out the window, her hands in her hair, screaming, "stop! class! everyone, back..." the class has crowded around her, wondering what in god's name is going on; the only person who remains in his seat is the boy.

he brushes off his jeans with his palms and rises from his seat, meandering to the last window in the room. his electric blue eyes scan the faces of his classmates, and as he sees their terrified, confused expressions, he tosses his hair from his eyes and lets out a laugh of pleasure. he looks to the window, lifts the blinds, and looks down at my falling body. he smiles to himself.

i am inches, parts of inches, centimeters, from the concrete when something inside of me snaps. i can feel bone splintering, skull contorting, body twisting, moving; flying.

i scream, but the scream is caught in my throat and from my lips emerges a soft song; subtle, but boasting; and meaningful, and powerful. it's the song of a phoenix, and as i am propelled off the ground as if there is a force preventing it, i spread my wings and burst upward. feathers are tickling my body and and i listen to my voice sing songs of wisdom, of worry.

i am flying, i am expanding, i am growing. i am shining, brighter than the eyes of two lovers, brighter than the cries of the widowed mother. with three pumps of the wings that make me soar, i am level to the window. i look inside the room for the briefest moment; and inside i see the teacher, dialing phones while at the same time trying to control the now-panicking students; and i see the boy, sitting in a corner, smirking and defiant. a flutter of feathers, a superficial song, and i am gone.

i am floating, high above the window that i dropped from, higher than the school i hated so much, higher than the sky, higher than the heavens. my throat bellows songs of praise, power, pride; lust, love, anger, angst. my wings pound against my body and as i look down upon the town that caused me so many tears, i wonder. i ponder, "what is it that made the caged bird emerge?" as i look down to the earth, hearing all the grief and giddiness, my phoenix insides begin to churn. i could be so much more than just a sob story, a success tale. i could float to the ground and walk the earth, and i could build a new one. i could build a ladder to the heaven of truth, and i could see the world burst open, flourish, and fly."

I'm frozen in place with IVs in my arm and tubes town my throat. I could be so much more than a sob story.

"Post-traumatic stress is a war within for military and civilians" response

I've had several near-death experiences; I suppose it would make sense to say that I have used up pretty close to all of my nine lives. However, I do not suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), unlike many other people who have survived through something mentally scarring and severely damaging. The diagnosis, much like Schizophrenic disorder, is extremely difficult to diagnose. Don't listen to me. I'm not a doctor, nor a therapist, nor a psychiatrist, nor a mental health specialist. But after reading this article, I am more aware of the causes, symptoms, effects, and treatment of PTSD.

Friennemies.

After reading everyone's blogs about "friennemies," which I'm assuming we discussed in class today or yesterday, I was inspired, and decided to do my little letter to my own "friennemy." Enjoy.


Dear Kristen,

Yeah, weird, I know, that I'm writing to you. But it isn't really me that I'm writing to. I'm writing to you. Because with each passing second, I am a different and changed being. Every little thing that goes on in my life has an impact on me, no matter how small. So I'm writing to my 8th grade self. Here goes nothing.

I hate you. Yeah. That's correct. You heard me right, sister: I didn't stutter. I didn't slip up or say that to be funny. I honestly do hate you. I hate the way you talk to people you don't like, and I hate how you pretend. I hate the way you press your tongue against your cheek when you're annoyed. I hate the way you dress, and I hate the way you shake your hair out of your eyes when you're nervous or when you're anxious. I hate your teeth and I hate your weight. I hate the way you giggle quietly to yourself when you think about your old jokes, that you used to giggle about with him. I hate the fact that you're still thinking about him, I hate the fact that he's been gone for a year now, and I hate how it's all your fault. I hate when you cry and I hate when you laugh. I hate what you look like in the morning before you shower, and I hate what you look like in the morning after you shower. I hate how you talk too much. I hate how silence makes you uncomfortable. I hate the way you react to people's pain, and I hate the way you attempt to make other people react to yours. Your perfume doesn't cover up how disgusting you smell after you've worked out for three hours straight, and I hate that smell. I hate how fake you are and I hate you for setting me on the wrong path for the rest of my life. You bother me to the point of exasperation, frustration, and ferocity. I hate you for saving me.

I love you for saving me. I love your strength, and I love your vulnerability. I love the way you bat your eyes at your mother and pretend to have a halo above your head when you want something from her. I love the way you carry yourself in front of people who don't like you. I love how people don't like you: it means you actually stood up for something, or that you actually made a mistake. I love your smile and I love your handwriting. I love your mind, and the way it works, even if it's sometimes a little cloudy up there. I love your capability, and I love your passion and talent. I love how you walk with ease down a hallway crowded with people you don't like. I love your weakness for men with long hair, and I love your weakness for men who don't care. I love the way you smile at children and watch them grow and change. I love your silhouette in the doorframe, watching the sky turn and curl. I love the way your hair sticks up in different directions after you're done showering. I love the way you sumo wrestled with that old boyfriend of yours, in the moonlight and in the rain, back in the summer. I love the color of your eyes when you're happy, and I love the way your cheeks and forehead flush when you cry. I love how you try too hard to change yourself for other people, and I love how they all see who you are anyway. I love you for what you're worth: not for what you will become.

I hate you, because you are a part of me. You ruined my life.
I love you, because you are a part of me. You saved my life.

Yours,
Kristen.

Am I the end?

I want so desperately for me to be the end of sadness in this society. After all of the pain I've struggled through, I don't think anyone deserves to live like I do. Not one single person in this life deserves to suffer through the pain of losing someone. Not one single person in this universe deserves to suffer through the pain of having your first love, first kiss, first everything, be snatched away by complacency and greed.

There have been nights of pleasure and passion, and laughter, bliss, and ease; I will spare you that notion. Although I won't remember these nights in their entirety, due to my nights of pain and anger, they still exist, or at least existed at one point. It's much like that philosophical question, "if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" If I don't remember something, who's to say it actually happened?

Too many a night I have spent wasting my lungs and my heart and my blood. Even my joy is coated with blackness, with tar, with selfish relief that comes with being a lost teenager. I have spent too many nights wasting myself away, wasting my life away.

I have spent too many nights curled up in a small corner of my room, surrounded by walls of plaster and tears, walls that press further into me with each passing day. I have spent too many nights crying myself into a fit of rage, such that I don't return until the next day. I have spent too many nights with my face contorted with the anguish of sorrow. I have spent too many nights wishing the nights like this would end. Well, my friend, they end with me.

Yes, I've hopped on the bandwagon.

I am currently reading Twilight.

And, surprisngly, I'm not ashamed to say it.

I'm on page 54 presently. So far it's been like every other targeted-to-teens book I've read. I guess it picks up. I hope it picks up.

You never had the time, because you moved too slow.

I'm just another one, I'm just another one.

Am I the end of this? I told my father yesterday through the tears that I just want to be normal. It feels like I'm crawling around in the dark, no end or light within view.

Is today the last day spent in a lie? I sit around and I jump around, I bounce from relationship to friend to relationship and back again, I attempt to be myself around other people, but most of the time it doesn't work; and the only person I could ever let loose around is gone, gone for months, almost a year.

It's chilly outside, chilly enough to freeze my perspective. I am not the person I promise you I am. I will never be the person you think I am. I wish I had the life you think I live. Listen: it isn't that simple.

I was as reckless and selfish as you.

I'm sitting in my dad's office, still half-awake and still slightly frazzled. Little crumbs litter his desk, all produced by yours truly in my attempt to constuct a breakfast with very few supplies.

Of all the things that could've happened, this is probably the most unexpected. I expected to end up in Connecticut again, or New York. Maybe, I was hoping, Pennsylvania. But here? I can't even really remember much of what happened. One minute I was sitting in school, then I was in the hospital (again), then I was in my dad's car, then at home, then at Nancy's, my dad's car, then my dad's house, then a hotel. It was the most absurdly random day I've ever lived through. But I did live through.

I'm listening to a song that makes me want to cry: "Still Around" by 3OH!3. It kind of reminds me of an old situation I was in, but it was so long ago that I barely remember how I felt. I don't know. It just is such a beautiful song, that I felt the need to say something.

My mom basically told my dad over the phone that it was his turn to parent me, that she's been doing it for twelve years and that he should "step up to the plate." Like I was a piece of meat. "Ian, it's your turn to cook it, I tried but it's still tender in places and tough in others." I hate when she does that. Which is actually quite often.

The tip of the iceberg.

It's pleasantly chilly: just enough to keep you awake, but still cold enough to freeze the tips of my fingers. My laptop is warm on my lap, and the birds of summer no longer chatter from their perches. They have already flown to a warmer, calmer place. I wish I could fly along with them. Sometimes I wonder what it would take to be reborn as a bird. It's such a calming thought to think about. What if I was born a bird? What if my arms weren't arms, but wings, allowing me to soar to wherever I wanted? I wouldn't speak words to myself that were unnecessary and unhealthy. I'd sing songs of praise and wonder. I would be free to roam the globe, to reach the corners of the earth rarely touched. I'd love to be a bird. The freedom and carelessness of the idea is what appeals to me. The notion that I could just get up from a situation and move to somewhere else makes me so calm. I wish I could do that.

55 Fiction

I paused to look at her, offended by her short tone. My constant complaints about things I need to do and things I wish I hadn't or had done are beginning to take their toll on her. She loves me, but she's a human being. I don’t realize how much I hurt until it’s done.

Rebirth.

I sat there for probably close to three minutes, just sitting and looking at her. For where I was in my mind, it felt like hours. She stared boldly back at me, waiting for a response, a blink, a flicker of my toe. Anything. I wouldn't spare her the satisfaction.

"I sense a wall between us, Kristen."

I surprised myself by not laughing. "A wall? When is there not a wall, Nancy? You don't know me half as well as you think you do. You know what I tell you of myself. But you don't know me."

"I still sense a wall. More so than I did on Thursday."

She's so clueless. She pretends to know me, to know how to help, but she doesn't, and she can't. She listens, nods her head in agreement, laughs at my jokes, doesn't judge, and doesn't help.

Somehow through all of this she has kept me breathing. She must have said something right in order for me to still be okay. But whatever she's doing that doesn't involve "saving my soul," it's the most irritating tactic one could use.

I left about half an hour later. On my walk to the local stationery store, where I was to be picked up, I began to ponder...

It's so unreal.

I can't believe that I'm sitting here in lunch. It's too real, it's so bright, everything is too clear and clean to be tangible. This life is too beautiful to be mine. Is this really a life that I'm living? Is this really the world that I'm in? Is my name really Kristen? Am I really here, right now, right in this very moment?

I so wish I could see this world through blind, infant eyes. Imagine the purity that that child must live in. I want to not know what a color is, nor what a person looks like; only what he or she sounds like, how this person feels beneath my fingertips. I so wish I could rewind and make the entire world dark and black, but only for me. I think this world would be so much more beautiful if only we didn't have the sense of sight. It biases us; it distorts our view of the world. I wish I could go blind, not only so I would see the beauty that this world has to offer, but so I wouldn't have to watch this fiasco terminate itself. I wouldn't have to watch myself drift from the young and gifted person that everyone sees in me. I wouldn't have to judge by the mirror, or by appearances in general. 

Insomnia disgusts me.

I'm leaning against the wall, half-crying and half-laughing. It's all over, it just started. A door is opening while the one behind me closes.

It's dark in my room, it's dark in this small and pinching room, something's on my chest I think I'm gonna blow oh god oh god what just happened?

He said I need to hit rock bottom.

I hit it a while ago, I replied, through the tears and the heart breaking all over again.

No, he said, it usually happens when something inside you dies.

I have no idea. What is it that I am feeling? What is it that I am supposed to feel? I'm so confused, I'm so sorry, I'm trying really hard to leave you alone. You seem so happy with your life without me. I'm trying to be happy with my life without you.

You made me whole. I hope you know that. You make me sit on therapists' couches and cry in the fetal position, you make me weak, you make me tremble, you make me so ridiculously angry but I guess that's love. You broke me. You make me whole.

To say I would give my right arm to have you back isn't quite right. I'd give my entire body. I'd give my body and my mind to have you sitting near the pillow I recently drowned in tears, I shredded it to bits, you're gone and you're happier, how long ago was it that I made you happy? How long ago was it that you promised everything would turn out fine? How long ago was it that your hand slipped into mine, how long has it been since you said you loved me? How long has it been since you meant it?

My Chair

My chair is a tired plastic blow-up chair. While it is appears light, while it appears to be insensitive and carefree, it is very heavy. It is white under black, under silver, under red. It has been painted so many different times that it is unaware of its true shade. The various array of paint coats don't allow one to see the blackness of cigarette ash mixed with the blood of a dying wound. My chair is heavy, heavier than it is old, and it is uneven. It is thin in places, while at the same time, it is too heavy for its own liking. My chair is eroding against the constant waves that pound against it. It has wheels, for people to bring it wherever they please, but its wheels creak and groan in angst whenever touched. It is unbearably puckered with the pockmarks of worry. The edges are smooth, its planks rough and angry; and while the plastic sings and whistles in the wind, it sags with age and with weariness. It has been around the world of pain more than once, and there is so much more to it than it will ever tell you.

My chair is hopeful. It has been knocked around, inflated, deflated, molded, remolded, remodeled, punctured, taped back together; and yet it still stands erect, it still stands for people to place themselves upon it. My chair is one that has been battered and beaten, but my chair is still standing tall. It is not proud, and it is not elaborate. But my chair is the most delicately--and beautifully--intricate chair that this author has ever seen.

Third post of the day.

I see the hallway surrounding me, but I don't feel the locker against my back, or the keys of my laptop as I type out my story, or the wind that the small crowd of alumni whip up as they flutter about the school, reminiscing and laughing.

I can't remember the last time I felt alright.

You took me there, too. I bet you don't even remember. You're so pathetic. It was less than two years ago and yet you act like it didn't happen to begin with. I bet you don't even realize how destroyed I've become. I bet if you did you wouldn't care. You don't care. You never cared.

I'm at a loss of how to begin. I don't want to start, and I don't want to stop, I just want to go back to the way things were in 8th grade, they were so much simpler. With the simplicity, I suppose, comes the pain, but I still wish I could go back. I wouldn't live in this disaster if you paid me three million bucks. I'm a car crash. I'm a sellout. I'm a fraud. I'm a loner. I need someone so badly, just to tell me that I'm going to be okay, but I need them to mean it. 

I'm sitting in a hallway, in a corner by the photo room, I probably should have gone back to Chem but it's too late now. I see an old friend of mine, we were golden, we were so close, we were best friends. I miss her. I look at her, her pride and her success, and then I look at the body that is below me, the stained jeans that are growing bigger and the lungs that are growing blacker, the nails that are getting sharper and the disaster I'm becoming. You could argue that I'm being dealt a bad hand. I would argue back that I've done this all to myself.

I don't know how long I stood there,

palms facing the darkened sky, icy droplets chasing each other down my neck, my back, and my legs, gathering in vibrating pools at my ankles. I can feel the mask of makeup slowly draining from my pores. I watch the pigment soak away into the night, it's the end, it's the beginning, it's both, it's neither. I watch my body curl under and over itself, surrounding the clothes that contain me and restrain my body. A scream ripples through my chest, my mouth doesn't open to let it out, I choke, I fall to my knees. I need a fix, I need a fix, I need a hoax, I need something to wash this madness down the storm drain. His limp figure is lying at my feet, on his side and at his end, and I'm falling just as fast.

I'm gone if he is, we're siblings, we're friends. He was just walking around with me, he was just laughing, talking. He was just alive. He was just alive.

The car is gone now, it's been gone for minutes or hours, one of the two; it had left mere seconds after its headlights disappeared behind his body, then reappeared as his body was catapulted above the windshield, over the hood, on the trunk, hit the ground, the car sped away, it's gone now, he's gone now.

The night air is moist with the scent of fresh rain, as are the bloody clothes that I wish to tear off so desperately, but still I walk. He's still lying on the pavement, limp and cold and bloody. His scream still pierces my ears, they ring louder than they did after he shot the gun, he's screaming my name, he's screaming my name. Through the blanket of moisture and precipitation, I emerge as the being he once was. My brother, my brother, where did you go?, you were just here with me, you were right there. I can still see the spot. It's right here beside him. The gun now lies there instead, black and dripping with rain, but I can't see it anymore, it's behind me now, I'm thrusting myself forward, my legs aren't listening but I'm trying to control them anyway. 

I waste away as I lean into the rain, sharp and metallic, like nails, drilling into my soft body. I waste away as I lean into the pain, sharp and crunching, and I'm on the ground, I'm lying in a puddle of his blood and this rain, mixed with the tears that won't escape my eyes.

Rest In Peace.

Vacation house & feminism.

I'm going to my vacation house today after school. Thank god. I'm so sick of this town, this house, this school. I miss D, and I miss the chilly, crisp air that brings me such relief. I miss lying down on the lake's shore, the sun beating down on my browned legs, listening to the waves smack and recess against the dock. I miss the summer. No, I miss last summer. The summer before this past one. It was so much more fun, so much more laid back. Summery. It was the summer after everything died down, the summer that made me think things will finally be okay. It was the summer I met D, Z, K. It was the last summer that I spent thinking like a child.

I don't really care so much about acting like a child, as opposed to acting like an adult; in my experienced opinion, either are acceptable in society. Look at the celebrities in the news today. Thirty-year-old mothers are running around, partying like they're in their early twenties. And yet, we still call them our role models. "They live how they want! They're doing so much for the environment! Who cares about their three kids! That's what live-in nannies are for!"

It bothers me and scares me how deeply in love our society has fallen with stupidity and selfishness. What has happened to compassion, to self-confidence, to the power of simplicity? 

What happened to good-old feminism? What happened to the glorification of women's sexuality? Why do women fight to survive in a man's world by making themselves more aggressive, more power-driven? I just read an article that explained perfectly what I'm trying to say. Check it out, it's a really well-written explanation of feminism in the media. 

Why does the widely-popular, fashion magazine Vogue advertise itself as a feminist magazine? I've always been so confused by this. Yes, as a whole, it does glorify women and their sexuality in a way that doesn't make all feminists look like bra-burning radicals. But look at the ads that Vogue publishes. In general, we have skipped from one extreme to the other: the first being the belief that tiny-waisted, big-chested, blonde women are the perfect example to aspire to be. If those ads aren't the epitome of sexism, I don't know what is. Basically, what the ad with the skinny, beautiful, clear-skinned, long-haired, small-waisted, small-chested, big-eyed model is telling you is, "In order to be beautiful, you must first look like this." Outward beauty is the product of an inner glow. 

Personally, I think that the argument most designers use ("My garments look better on thin models") is complete BS. Close to no one is as thin as the model wearing that Versace gown, or can afford it; since nearly none of us look like that model, how are we supposed to buy it? If what it looks like in the ad was the main spur to try it on, and it doesn't look like it does in print, then how does this marketing tactic work?... I understand that the idea of high fashion and cutoure is that the garments aren't really wearable anyway, but still. What should a ten-year-old think when she watches the beautiful (yet really really puffy) evening gown parade itself down the runway, worn by a thinner-than-is-healthy model?

"Let's race right off the cliff, they will remember this."

Brendan's dead.

I'm so close to the edge, of what I don't know. Am I even really awake? Someone wake me up, pinch me, do something, something, anything, to awaken me from this slumber. I'm spiraling down this plastic playground slide that will catapult me into a pit of razors and cigarette butts instead of mulch. I'm the little 5-year-old that lived with her father and stepmother in Ohio. I'm the elderly 70-year-old who has lost everything, seen everything, done everything, it's out of my control, it's out of my control. I'm so unaware of the irony in everyday life that sometimes it has to smack me in the face before I realize it's there. Read my last post, the one about the girl who wakes up in the hospital. Ironic, it's all very ironic. I got out yesterday. Brendan didn't.

Brendan's dead.

I listen to the sounds of my music, pouring like an endless inferno of flame through the speakers, and I don't even hear what the lyrics are telling me. The only person I can bring myself to be around is my neighbor. And he doesn't even know how shredded I am on the inside. I see my family, I see my computer screen, I see the torn bits of paper scattered across my floor, I see my room, same four walls, same four walls, I just remember the first time we met. It's so dark, it's 9:30, he's dead, he's dead.

Brendan's dead.

I didn't know him all that well. I met him maybe three or four times. But we had spoken. I always wondered how he was still surviving through all that had happened. Cancer took my maternal grandpa, it took my paternal grandma, it took my friends' parents, and now it took my friend. He's gone. D's so miserable. I'm a 2-hour drive away and I can't do anything to comfort him. I shouldn't even be complaining, I'm trying really hard not to get upset about this, I barely knew him for god's sake.

Brendan's dead.

D's more upset than I expected, and I expected him to be upset. For heaven's sake, he was going to visit Brendan the day he died. He was driving to Brendan's house with K when he got the call. I'm lucky, and he is too, that he didn't drive off the road. He probably did. He's okay though. Brendan isn't.

Rest in peace. You were a soldier; I can only aspire to be as strong as you were.

I was in the hospital during the funeral.

Brendan's dead.

I don't want to write anymore.

Daily Planner 5.

This weekend was horribly fun and horribly terrible.

Fun:

Slept over a friend's house on Friday, went into town on Saturday, then went to a party. She slept over my house on Saturday night. Sunday we went back into town, then went to the mall with my uncle. I found my favorite pair of jeans, thank the high heavens, I missed them so much.

Not Fun:

Oddly enough I think I'm headed down the same path that I embarked on in 8th grade. I now begin to realize what I'm doing after it's done. 

Prime example: take a teenaged girl who is the epitome of the American dream. She's gorgeous, she's smart, she's talented, she has a good job, a loving boyfriend, a great family. She's miserable. Her eyes are the eyes that smile at her boyfriend as he tells her he loves her. Her eyes are the eyes that weep oceans at night, in the morning, in the afternoon after she returns home from school, in the bathroom at lunch. She doesn't realize (or doesn't care) what she does to herself, because she doesn't know who "herself" is anymore.

A month after her fifteenth birthday, she wakes up in the hospital. She doesn't know what she's done to herself, why she's lying in the intensive care unit, how in god's name she got there. Only after learning how she accidentally overdosed on her diet pills, she finally realizes that her life was spinning.

That's pretty much the best way I can describe it. I'm not that girl, since I am not a made-up character and also since I don't consider myself any of the traits I used to describe her. Sometimes I think of why people always tell me I'm her. I think it's mainly because she's a good example of what I could become in a year, or more, or less. Maybe I should worry about my direction. I suppose I don't really care enough.

Whiparound 1: To all those who hear me all too well.

I'm begging to hear your voice, flowing out like

endless rain, I'm begging to love me too, I'm

telling you I've got nothing to prove;

I'm begging you to answer the questions

in my heart. Where do I belong? The bar is

lengthened, can I put the drink down? 

You never were at your best when you were

sober. Why haven't you taken my life too? I'm so

done with living in the moment, I'm so done with

"so alone." The sound of your voice telling me

the speed I should be traveling, those summer nights spent

splashing through the sandbar and singing 

to the campfire. I'm living life without fear. 

You dropped out of high school, so I hear. The simplest 

things in life they scream, such a shame for

us to part. Take it slow, take it slow. Don't be too

fast to trade your passions for glory. 

And still I feel black inside. Take me back to the start

of the hope that someone sits with you. It's not always easy,

and life can be deceiving; we always always

see those churches on TV. We never would've said forever,

if we knew it would end so fast. No longer,

this is home: the sky's the limit.

km

Daily Planner 4.

I'm sitting in lunch right now; I most likely should be doing my spanish homework but I'm too inspired.

Have you ever listened to a song after not hearing it for a very long time, remembered that you liked it, and began liking it again? Well, that's what just happened. That's the beauty of iTunes shuffle.

"There's No Sympathy for the Dead" by Escape the Fate has 

horrendous lyrics (it's about the apocalypse) but the guitar riffs, solo, and screaming in it are superb. I don't think I'll ever grow tired of this song. Escape the Fate's new album is

 terrible, though. Without 

Ronnie, their addicted-to-heroin lead vocalist, they're basically nothing. He made the band for me. His vocals were the icing on the cake, except the icing made up more of the package than the actual cake did.

It's really depressing that he was kicked out.

Somehow this turned into a music review. It was supposed to be a planner. Last time I checked, a planner involves me giving a boring account of my daily escapades. 

Oh well. Ronnie's worth it.

"Where are your feet, Kristen."

"Well, they're right here, on the ground, right?"

"No. What time are your feet in."

"Now?"

"Exactly."

I paused to look at her, slightly offended at her short tone. I think that my constant complaints about things I need to do and things I wish I hadn't or had done are beginning to take its toll on her. She loves me, she's my best friend, but she's also a human being. She has limits as to how much she can take.

I listen in depth to the lyrics she writes, to the things she says, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, I'm still the little kid in the corner of her preschool, confused and shy.

Move on, move on, I don't listen. Move on to the next big thing. Move on to what I "need" next. I'll move on, alright. I'll move on.

"I'm a rolling stone, Nancy. I'm not meant to sit in an office and do the same thing every day. Why do I have to live according to other people's desires? Why do I have to live for other people's approval? I'm not a politician, I'm not anything close to being perfect. No one is perfect, Nancy, and yet I try so hard to achieve it. Because in everyone's opinion, perfection is equal to greatness."

She looked at me with an astonished face, thinking so hard I could hear the gears in her brain squeaking, creaking, turning.

"Kristen, your feet aren't in here, in today. They're here, in my office right now. That's what I was trying to get at. Take one step at a time. Planning is good when you're dealing with parties or weddings or recitals. Planning isn't good when you're recovering."

I hesitate...

Generally speaking.

Generally speaking, I've got this in the bag.

My world has become somewhat of a freak show. I had a friend over Friday, and we were greeted by angry voices when we walked in the door. I am now kind-of-sort-of dating someone who lives two and a half hours away from me. My been-there-for-me-since-birth great grandma's getting fairly close to being so senile she forgets her name. My best friend is mad at me and probably will never speak to me ever again. And through all of this, I've maintained a smile.

It isn't a fake one, mind you. It's a legitimate smile. I'm happy, for probably the first time in my young-adult life. Which is mildly ironic, because there's an intense chaos going on right inside my small, young world.

Things that used to calm me are now stirring me up. Not in a negative way, but they just make me restless. They make me want to get older so I can escape this town, this area. It's nice for some people, but not for me. I wasn't meant to live here. I was meant to be untamed.