“If what I say alienates you, that only means you’re an alien to me. You and your fragile reality. Your mild dissatisfaction. Your artificial subtlety. I love the way you look at me. Your well-rehearsed disbelief. You think I made all of this up? You must be out of your mind. I never had an original thought in my life. I owe it all to you. You walk outside and close your eyes. The truth hurts when it catches up and bites you on the throat. Nothing will incinerate this vision. Nothing will stop this train.”

“The kind of songs I write all the time but never show to the band. I’ve always liked the romantic movies with the happy ending. I guess because I could leave the theater and not have to get any of it on me. I could go back to my solitary life which is the only one I have been able to understand. Not very brave, I know, but I have spent countless hours thinking about how things could be as the miles screamed underneath the wheels. So many years of travel has made a day dreamer out of me. So many years spent getting there. Makes your mind wander our of the small confines of the small enclosure you’re forced to spend so much time in.”

“I would tell you everything. I would give you all I have if I could trust you. If you wouldn’t think I was crazy. If you wouldn’t freak out and leave me while I was freaking out and leaving you. I’m terrified of terrifying you. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I know I do though. I’m walking dead. I don’t care about most things anymore. I hurt people’s feelings all the time. They ask how I could say something like that to someone else. How I can be so cold. I don’t feel. I don’t know the damage I do. “

“I’m not you. I don’t want you around me. This business of constantly having to explain myself is going to stop. My trip is my trip. Your trip is not my trip. You want to talk about weakness, talk about your own. I am a selfish man. There’s nothing more egotistical and fake than selflessness. I am self. It’s all I have and it’s all I want. Your love doesn’t keep me warm at night. Your love won’t drive me to the edge. Your hate moves me just the same. You can’t give yourself to me. Even if you could I wouldn’t take you.”

“It hurt when I found out she dug her lies more than my truth. It hurt when she finally broke down and saw the real thing. She was so let down. She felt like she had been ripped off. My truth had incinerated her lies. I asked her if she loved me. She said that I wasn’t the person she thought she knew. I told her I was right here. I was a lie to her lie. I let her down. I couldn’t feel bad for being myself. It hurts to think that when we were looking into each other’s eyes, we were looking at the strangers we thought we knew so well.”

- Henry Rollins

You constantly make it impossible to make conversation.

Keep us comatose but audible. And I like it the farther I get out. We pass it off but it is all on us, the common conversation, it took everything I got. I like it the farther I get out.

Dear you:

I absolutely adore your company. I wish we could be around each other more often. You get it. You say jokes that aren’t entirely stupid and that make sense. As much as I hate to admit it: I am in no position right now to pursue a relationship. I’m pretty lucky, though, that you got around to me. I’ve expressed such favoritism during this entire year, and I’m very excited and flattered by the fact that you want to get to know me better. It really sucks having to come to this realization, but I need to consider all aspects of my life before embarking on such a time-consuming thing. I don’t believe in destiny or anything like that at all, but I felt such a connection with you when we began speaking to each other that I just couldn’t help but get to know you better. I hope you got that part- because I totally advertise myself whenever you’re around.

… Even if you asked my best friend out during the first week of school. But you smell nice so it’s k.

___

I went to the Headstart meeting thing tonight. It’s terrible how these school institutions are set up. We are in such a rush and in a state of anxiety, given the time tables we are given in terms of entering school and leaving it, that we have virtually no time to cherish the state of security that we are in. The calm before the storm does not seem to exist here. Perhaps those Victorians really had no clue about how to deal with educating people, especially since they only seemed to value Freudian ideology. Which saddens me.

I am very stressed out, though. I cannot function as well as I used to, but I’m pushing myself to work as hard as I can because I really need to focus on school right now. Aw, man- I lost my glasses today once I got home and I couldn’t find them until two hours later. I am the only person I know who could possibly lose their glasses within a twenty second time frame, after doing something habitual. And I am so lucky that I lose those glasses within a time period in which I have no recollection of.

I’ve become more impulsive within the last couple of weeks. I’ve become pretty unhealthy, too. I suppose there’s a period of time every year in which I absolutely neglect my body and its needs for no greater cause necessarily, just because I am so stressed out that any other call for attention that my body radiates becomes lost in the state of alertness I am in. Paradoxical. I haven’t eaten a full meal in about two weeks. It could be worse, but it definitely could be better. I suppose it’s beginning to show. Three of my teachers have expressed concern in terms of my education and my personal life.

Spring is coming. Perhaps that will be enough to cheer me up. It always seems to, but then again, I have never had to face such existential problems to the degree I have had to within the last couple of months. I don’t think I have ever found it so necessary to bounce back. I also doubt I have ever emerged from such a state of melancholy and hopelessness either. Last year, most of my stress was a result of schoolwork and my parents’ reaction to my atheism.

This year, however, it was a combination of losing my best friends, coming out to my parents, lack of the care for and maintenance of my academic career, and other smaller things. As a result, though, I find it very difficult to accept that I have control over the problems I encounter, and much less over the way I can handle them. I am so incredibly frustrated with the way my life is set up right now. But we’ve been here before. I object so much to the world I live in right now and the way it affects me that I cannot even begin to describe it in a cohesive fashion. Because of that, I do not think there are other people within my age group who can comparatively speak to me about such frustration. Because no one cares about the things that are happening outside of the country they reside in. Because no one takes the time to question most of the things that happen to them or why our culture is a certain way. Quite honestly, I wish I didn’t look into all of the things I had, because I liked that childish mentality I once had. I liked being able to trust the world for the way it was. I liked not being critical of myself because of how trusting I sometimes was. I liked being able to trust the adults around me and (if ignorantly) accept their ideals and become what they wanted me to become. It was easier.

I have two notebooks now. One in which to quote the things I like, the other to write my original thoughts. It’s kind of nice.

“He went back into his house and Nicole saw that one of his most characteristic moods was upon him, the excitement that swept everyone up into it and was inevitably followed by his own form of melancholy, which he never displayed but at which she guessed. This excitement about things reached an intensity out of proportion to their importance, generating a really extraordinary virtuosity with people. Save among a few of the tough-minded and perenially suspicious, he had the power of arousing a fascinated and uncritical love. The reaction came when he realized the waste and extravagance involved. He sometimes looked back with awe at the carnivals of affections he had given, as a general might gaze upon a massacre he had ordered to satisfy an impersonal blood lust.

But to be included in Dick Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years. He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its effect. Then, without caution, lest the first bloom of the relationship wither, he opened the gate to his amusing world. So long as they subscribed to it completely, their happiness was his preoccupation, but at the first clicker of doubt as to its all-inclusiveness, he evaporated before their eyes, leaving little communicable memory of what he had said or done.”

- Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Two headed boy, all in floating glass

“I watch your mouth move. I listen to your voice. I do everything you tell me to. Minutes later, I find myself sitting on a metal chair with my hands cuffed behind my back. I tell you this is the second time that I have been handcuffed in my life. You say nothing but your expression makes me understand that you don’t care. I don’t mind being in this position because I trust you, and even as uncomfortable as this is, I don’t mind because it’s time spent with you and any time spent with you is special to me. You ask me why I love you and I tell you that no one talks to me like you do. Some of the best times I have ever known are when you call me and we talk later at night, they are.”

- Solipsist, by Henry Rollins.

I swear, I’m going to buy this book and keep it forever.

btw, BACKPACK SEARCH IS OVER! :D!

I’m singing all the songs while I’m sleeping on your couch

I went to the library today. I got the Henry Rollins books. Man, the things he wrote made me cry. I underestimated his ability to be poetic.

“Not disabled, unable. In my dream I die and come back as a brick. Yes a brick. The brick I come back as is lodged in a wall that was built in 1951. My exposed side faces the window of the woman I love who turned me away years before. Day after day I stare into her room, into her life. I watch her come and go. I see her with different men. I cannot call out, I cannot move. I am embedded in cement. I can do nothing but silently and motionlessly watch. I see her alone. Sometimes she cries and holds her face in her hands. I am forced to watch endlessly. Sometimes she stares out the window and looks right at me. It is excruciating to look directly into her eyes and know she does not see me; she only sees a wall. . . One day she moves away. Days turn into months and soon the first year of her absence arrives. In this time, I have done nothing but make up every possibility of her return to my view of potential reality. Five years pass. My mind has begun to drift. I watch squirrels and birds. A few families move in an out. I see a few traffic accident, a robbery. Leaves explode into colors and fall off branches. But at night when everything is quiet, I think of her. She is somewhere. I am here. Always here. Not waiting, just here. Please do not let me live my life untouched and tormented. Please help me escape the tragedy of myself. I envision my face: contorted and agonized, wild eyed, my mouth frozen in mid-scream. Never able to say the truth. Forever trapped. Suspended inside solid black eternity. Embedded, silent, identical to the hundreds of others, stacked symmetrically around me.”

I don’t want to love you if love is this alone.

10/28/05

When I left, I saw him smiling through the glass window fixed in the door. I had the biggest smile on my face for the rest of the day. It amazes me how special that conversation, which was the third one we have ever engaged in, was. I could not focus on anything until lunch, because he was there. It’s so much like a movie. It feels nice to be able to compare my life to that.

3/25/06

I made Allie creampuffs for her birthday a few das ago. I went to her house yesterday after school, I rode the bus home with her. Debbie did, too, but C missed the bus so Allie and her dad went to pick her up. So me and Debbie had nothing to do. Allie told us to watch TV, and she had like, fifty remotes. So me and Debbie were trying to turn it on, and when we finally did, we couldn’t find anything to watch since NONE OF US REALLY WATCH TV.
So we counted all the cows in her living room and kitchen. We stopped at 96, then we kept finding more, and Allie had a notepad that only she writes on, and I wrote that she had 96 cows, but then we kept finding more, to a total of 110, then we found even more, and we gave up.
Allie and C came back, and then we started talking in her room. We went downstairs and ate, then we went outside and played for a little while until dad picked me up.

5/6/06

Okay, this week has been so exciting, yet I am so tired of repeating the story. We went to California by train for two days. Which was ultimately delayed by three hours. Dad thought the experience was spetacular, but it was okay. We went because my aunt became sick from antibiotics and as she is 72, this is pretty simple “disease.”

We stayed at my great aunt’s house. The experience itself wasn’t particularly enriching- I had an essay to do, which I had to do on someone’s laptop.

We boarded the train once more, grandma cried! We watch 24 the entire way back and got through the first season. We were dealyed seven and a half hours this time, which only made me angrier.

When I got back, I found out that Riza has a new boytoy! Yeah, she does. This dude’s name is Zack. Mmph.

9 /14/06

Some dude: “You knit in class?”

Me: “Yeah. Our teacher said I could, so I kind of am.”

Some dude: “Oh. Knitting’s so cool, I wish I could knit.”

It’s all over now, you’re still the same.

8-12-07

I feel overwhelmingly lonely. I couldn’t figure out what I was missing, but now I realize how lonely I feel. Not just in a social sense, but in a romantic sense as well. I’m tired of being such in this state of flirting and nothing else.

The truth is, I don’t know what I want. Sometimes, I wish something tragic would happen so I could finally make up my mind.

7-7-07

Everyone is making such a huge fuss over the date. This’ll be the only time it will ever happen… Blah. I don’t care, apparently I should.

I celebrated the fourth of July with Laurie at her house. It was very beautiful and fun. Jeff was there, as well as Alex (although, I only see Alex as ‘Pancho,’ because of Spanish class.) and they were competing against the people across the water. With fireworks. So this is what we have evolved into. Boys are stupid, but all-in-all, it was fun.

I got rid of my Simple Plan poster while I cleaned my room. And everything else on my walls, besides my blink poster. I feel I grew out of the other things. I can’t help but feel that a part of myself is dying along with junior high. It seems my walls change everytime I change.

Kai is e-mailing me again. It is nice, although I have forgotten his voice and how he looks. Whenever I see him in my head, he is either laughing, or is extremely tired. I am, more or less, making myself like him. I know it is wrong, but right now, I think it is the best course of action. I need to get over Logan. And although Kai seems to have absolutely no depth at this point, I guess I have to search for connotations to make him look… Better?

Allie and I are growing apart. During school, we would see each other at least once a week; now that it is summer, I don’t even know if our friendship is going to last. We don’t talk for weeks at a time and when we do, it gets even harder to catch up. I don’t know, the more I think about it, I feel I have just labeled an acquaintance as my best friend.

Cody and I got to know each other better during food science. It is surprising how much we have in common. As much as I hate to admit it, if he weren’t Riza’s boyfriend,  I could very well have made a play for him. But I guess that’s just because he is the only male atheist that I know of right now.

So I have decided it. I dig women. I never would have expected this. A few years ago, I was a devout believer in magic and god; Now, I am a militant atheist. I was against homosexuals; Now, I am one. I suppose a part of myself is dying, along with my childhood.

I had my doubts questioning my beliefs and my orientation. But I just ignored them. I realize now that doing so does absolutely nothing but further denial and soon enough, distaste for myself for being the wrong way.

Hmm. How strange.

Catching signals that sound in the dark

“Anxiety in Heidegger’s philosophy reveals out thrownness, meaning the brute fact of our presence in the world. It breaks the spell of the anonymous public mode in which, for the most part, we lose ourselves. In the public mode I am disburdened of the responsibility for my life since I interpreted myself as they do and therefore choose whatever they choose. The they-self being everyone and no one actually in flight from itself as unique and individual. When anguish emerges, I am stripped of the tranquilizing effect of lossness in the anonymous public mode and am recalled to the self. Individualized through the awareness of myself as finite, knowing I am going to die, and responsible for how I live, anguish can bring me to the awareness of my freedom and to the obligation to assume responsibility for myself. Anxiety can also reveal Being, however, only as no-thing, when the meaning that I have given to beings falls away, leaving me with the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Anguish reveals nothing because it robs me of everyday meanings that make the world familiar. What remains is not only as uncanny nothing veiling Being. This unsettling experience does not last, although it remains an ever-present possibility. In anguish I am anxious about the nothing. The experience of nothingness is fundamental.”

I told you that book on existentialism is good. But man, it costs over two hundred bucks!

Excerpt from journal #6 and #7

11-2-06

Logan and I talked today, for the first time in a long time. I told him so, and talked about how we hardly have classes together anymore. He actually said, “I miss you, Amanda.” He said it in a serious tone. I returned the favor, but in a joke-y way. I really wish I didn’t say it like that. Little does he know.

4-17-07

Tuesday

We WASL’d today. I am so against the whole WASL thing, I hate everything it represents.

This morning, Shelley was flirting with this boy I like. She knows I like him. I can’t believe myself- everything I feel and believe right now goes against everything I believed within the last year. I feel hurt.

I love my life. I have everything I would have ever dreamed and more. Everyone tries so hard to make me happy. I feel very guilty, though- I wish I could take back every time I said “I hate my life”, or when I even complained. All those times when I felt such melancholy were so insignificant. Once you learn to appreciate the things and people in your life, everything else is satisfactory. It makes school (just barely!) tolerable…. And with him. I think he has caught onto the fact that I glance back at him (not too much!) and he definitely does not like me back, but he returns the favor. Definitely just to see if I’m looking at him. But I think that attention is all I really need.

I was talking to him yesterday morning. It was so pathetic- I ignored every word he spoke, and focused on his mere existence, as well as his temporary devotion. I suck.

Ah! Diary, I know this is really pointless to write, but I”m running out of options here. My self esteem is suffering so much here.. But do you think he could love me, possibly?

I understand “diary” hardly exists. Or any other divine being or deity. I feel quite stupid even requesting it to nothingness, which has no authority over any circumstance. But being the solipsist that I am, I hope this will help me truly make this uncontrollable situation somewhat malleable.

I guess I am really losing my mind. If he but knew! I adore him more than he will ever know. I know this is foolish, but I honestly believe I would be the happiest person on earth if he loved me back. Oh, but it’ll never be me. Secondary.

Excerpt from journal #6

11-16-06

Thursday

I can’t help but get the feeling that life is too short.

I love my life, but in all honesty- how do we know that this is all real? I feel like I am living in a dream (or in a world I’ve made up) and I feel the need to wake up and meet everyone else on the “other” side. I don’t know what is wrong with me or what I should do. I want to feel normal again.

I’m not depressed or angry, but I know this is unhealthy. And I keep doubting whether my theory is correct. But gosh. I’m going crazy.

And I can’t just tell people. If all of this is made up in my head, then what is the point of talking it out if all I’d really be doing is talking to myself? Or to this phantom I believe is my mother?

All of my friends, my family, my world is fake. Plastic. Phantom. False.

The world here is too stupid to be real.

You’re so high and I’m so down

… “this night’ll end sooner but much sooner now. Though I’m weak inside, I’m thriving just the same, still calling out your name, wondering who it is that I should blame. Stabbing hard and buried consciousness and fear, forgetting others I hold dear.”

And we WASL’d. This is getting really old, so quickly. Tomorrow we have it, and I expected tomorrow to be the day off and Friday to consist of testing. But no. Thanks, Washington Assessment of Student Learning. And I got back to class about halfway through.

Then I went to food science and ate cinnamon buns. They were okay, though a little on the rare side. Then Digitools, where I submit myself to typing tests and nerdy little pre-pubescent boys. Then math, where the drama is immeasurable. Then science, where the drama is just a little bit more. Then home, where I made croissants. They are yummy.

“I would salvage my journal from an untimely death if my home were destined to such a star-crossed fate of being caught on fire. My journal is a microcosm of ideas and concepts that only an angst-filled teenage girl would think about. Though heroically rescuing my journal would not palliate the pain of losing my childhood home, it would certainly keep me entertained, although there are probably other activities that I would prefer.”

That is what I wrote in my WASL testing booklet. And that is only a part of the four-page expository literary masterpiece that I managed to conjure up.

Total WordMaster words: two

Total innuendos that I managed to insert: Three.

You know me, not letting the WASL grading standards from getting in the way of my pride. Me > WASL.

Today was also Mix It Up Day. This is brought to the general school population by the same people who suggested the Martin Luther King assembly, I believe. After two questions, the conversation with a wonderful young lady went like this:

Some girl: “Do you like your school?”

Me: “What kind of a question is that?!”

Some girl: “Just answer, yes or no.”

Me: “Uhh.. Yes. I love my school so much that I gladly participate in Mix It Up Day.”

I think that’s how it went. Memory loss > Me.

We had a conversation today in science that somehow came to elephant mating rituals. I don’t know, either.

Oh, I’m in a great mood today, just like yesterday. I’m tired of this obligation to carry out my evolutionary responsibilities. I wish I could go asexual.

Hmm. I haven’t talked intelligently about music for a while. I watched MTV for the first time in months a few nights ago when I was a slight insomniac. They are playing the same videos that they did the last last time I saw it. Pathetic. Which justifies my MTV boycott to such extraordinary heights.

… And usually I can snap out of it by telling myself, “he’s not that great”. But I can’t. Because he is.