So I am going to use this blog as an outlet for everything I'm feeling right now. I hate to feel that I'm no better than the masses of teenagers who whine and complain and moan on the internet...but I really am no better than them, I suppose.

The thing is this. My boyfriend left me.

Yes, I know, it's a very banal sort of unhappiness but it is my unhappiness nevertheless and I reserve the right to whine and complain and moan on the internet.

I'm in a lot of pain. I don't fully understand why he chose to do this, but it hurts. I thought that we were doing really well, and I was really happy with us, but apparently he thought that his emotional instability would end up hurting more than this current pain. I disagree, and I let him know, quite vehemently, that he is wrong, but there's not anything I can do to change his mind. He's arrogant, and believes he's always right, and is stubborn, so therefore his mind cannot be changed. I'm the same way, so that either means that we were doomed from the start or we were really good for each other. I was starting to change my ways for him...I feel like, if we weren't only 18 and going off to college soon, we could have really been something.

I know that every teenager in a relationship must think that...and I'm sorry that this entry is so...stereotypical, but if it is stereotypical, then I'm feeling stereotypical. My heart is stereotypically broken.

Every so often, I have brief moments of clarity, short periods of enlightenment in which I realize that I'm going to be much happier with someone less emotionally messed up in the future, hopefully, and I feel a lot better, however briefly. I think I would feel a lot better a lot sooner if I had more to do this summer. If I had some sort of hobby, or full routine, it would be easier to take my mind off everything, but as it is, my days are empty. That, unfortunately, gives me more time to think and mull over everything that has happened between me and him over these past few months, and really, everything that has happened between us since I met him 4 years ago. With all the time I have to think, I should spend more of it thinking about why I'm better off without him. Or even thinking about everything I have to do to prepare for next fall.

Sometimes I feel apprehensive about going to college. I'll be leaving all my friends behind, and going off to all these entirely new experiences completely alone and far away from everybody. Sometimes I can't wait for college. I can't wait to leave all of the drama and pain and unhappiness of high school far behind me. I can't wait to meet people who don't know (yet) about some of the not-so-great things I've done in the past, meet people who will be my friends for the rest of my life. Meet, hopefully, a guy who will help me leave all this pain far behind me.

I'm tired of feeling this pain. Can I skip through it and get to the "I'm a better person from this whole experience" part, please?

It hasn't quite hit me yet that I am no longer a student in high school. It's really weird. It's like, yeah, I'm sleeping in while my siblings are still getting up at ungodly hours of the morning, and yeah I have nothing to do all day, but no way am I graduated.

That's only for cool people. And I am certainly not one of those awesome seniors who are really no longer seniors but always will remain in my memory as such. I am definitely not cool enough to be one of them, no way no how. I am way too much of a high school student to be done with it.

I mean, I've spent a good quarter of my life (so far) in that building, with those people. It's weird to think that I can don a silly hat and robe, walk across a stage, receive a fancy piece of paper, and all of the sudden I'm done with it. If I had known it was that easy, I would have graduated a LONG time ago. Probably sometime when I was about to blow my brains out with all the AP classes I had. Or when we were learning about organic chemistry. Or perhaps that day right after my first serious boyfriend and I broke up.

Even though there are a lot of moments I will cringe about in the years to come, high school, strangely enough, does have one redeeming quality. High school has all my friends. University...that doesn't have any of my friends. They're all here. Sure, most of them graduated with me, but from now on they'll all be my "high school friends." I think the moment I realized I was scared to death of going off to school in the fall was when my dad told me about his university friends versus his high school friends.

"Carolyn," he told me wisely while we were out-and-about in the vast icy wilderness of Canada, my future land of schooling, "In university, you will meet the friends you will have for the rest of your life. You might keep in touch with your high school friends...but once you move away, it gets more and more difficult and you gradually just drift apart."

As someone who feels that she is already drifting away from her high school friends when they still all live in the same town, this is absolutely terrifying. What if nobody likes me in university? What if I can't connect with anyone? What if I'm going to be stuck as the drifter, going between several different groups of people but not really getting close to anybody? I still lose my high school friends, but I don't make any new, lifelong friends, and then I'm stuck alone in the world for the rest of time!

Yes, I am being over dramatic, and I apologize. As someone who has difficulty meeting new people and making new friends, this is a genuine concern for me. I have this other friend who visited her school a few months ago for a weekend and came back with a new group of friends and several boys' phone numbers. I've visited my school twice now and have yet to say a single word to another person. Presumably, while living there, I will say a few words to at least one person, but that's not even a given. Maybe I'll be so seized with fear that people will assume I'm mute.

That wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't be expected to have opinions on things. I wouldn't be expected to make presentations in class. I wouldn't be pressured to have something interesting to say when the conversation is lagging. Hm. Being mute wouldn't be half bad.

Maybe I'm scared of college because it will mean that high school is really over. If high school is really over, then I'm way out of my comfort zone. If high school is over...all those memories are just memories and no longer hold substance.

If high school is really over...that means I'm going to get all nostalgic and weepy. Damn.

Hello, my name is Carolyn.

 

I’m the girl you neglected.

The girl you rejected.

The girl who is just looking for meaning in this lifeless world.

The girl with whom you shared your secrets.

The girl with whom you shared sleepovers,

And parties

And happiness.

But where is that happiness now?

Lost so easily to judgment, to discord?

I stand by choices I have made,

Choices that drive my happiness further and further away.

Why can’t you stand by my choices too?

Do you understand when you look at me

That I know we’re drifting apart

And it kills me every single day?

Do you know how often I lie in the darkness

Longing

Yearning

For another place and time?

A setting in which we could stand by and support each other

As the friends we once were.

I know that I have done wrong,

I know that I am not a good person,

And it was difficult for me to accept,

To forgive myself,

Under the pretense that I could be happier.

Now that is done with,

And I am not happier.

I have accepted my wrongs,

Can you?

Can you forgive me for my faults?

I understand if you can’t,

I can barely forgive myself.

Yet still I stand by my decisions.

When you talk about me

When you discuss the sins I’ve committed

Remember the passage

Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.

I am not religious,

But that makes sense to me.

I know I am self-centered

Egotistical

And opinionated.

I was hoping you’d love me anyway

Because I can’t.

But I know you don’t.

I also know that you are self-centered

Obnoxious

Compulsively unique

Compulsively different

Egotistical

Annoying

And hateful.

I love you anyway,

And I wish you still loved me.

I did not want to be this way,

Friendless and lonely,

Paranoid and unforgiving,

But it was you who made me this way.

You taught me not to trust,

To know that the world is against me,

As well as you.

I will not apologize for what I have done.

I will not rebuild my burnt bridges.

No, scratch that.

I will not rebuild my unintentionally burnt bridges.

Because my ego, my self, is bruised,

(You know how easily I bruise)

And I was hoping you could help me.

If not, well,

I guess that’s cool too.

I just wanted to tell you

That I’m addicted to your friendship,

And withdrawal’s a bitch.

I can accept your wrongs,

Can you accept mine?

I have suffered many unpleasant things in my life. I have lived through gym class, Sunday nights wasted at church, sex ed, poor decisions, sickness, break-ups, extreme pain, and so on and so on, but I must say that applying to college is the single most horrible thing that I have ever done.

There is nothing that could make you feel like more of a failure than finally finishing the basic information section of an application, submitting it, and immediately realized that you made a possibly simply minor mistake. Or, finishing the basic information section and realizing several weeks later that you made a possibly catastrophic mistake, a mistake that could change the amount of money you have and will give to that school in the future.

When you do it right, however, it's a good feeling. At least, that's what I've been told. I am applying to four schools. I have completely completed a single application, and am waiting for my response. That is the only application, thus far, that I have done correctly. And, of course, it's for the school that I'm least likely to get into, the big MIT.

By this point, the only way I figure I could actually redeem myself with this whole college thing would be if I actually got into MIT. Granted, it's not my top choice, and part of me hopes that I don't get into MIT. Frankly, if I got in there, I would have a huge decision to worry about. The thing is that, living where I do, MIT is a big deal. Like a really big deal. University, in general, is a big deal, and the crowd I run with is very focused on success. Going to MIT would really put me up a few notches on the success scale, and I would really feel good about myself (until, of course, I failed out). It's the name. MIT. Big, capital, intimidating letters that just seem to shout "I'm much too smart for this whole un-abbreviated business." Do you realize how much respect I could garner from people if I could say, "Oh yes, MIT, I got in there, I'm thinking of accepting."

It's an ego thing. But the other half of me still manages to shout above the ego, "YOU WANT TO BE A MATH TEACHER, GOD DAMN IT!" And I must admit that it has a point. If I go to MIT, then I cannot be a math teacher because they do not have a teaching program. So what will become of my future? I don't know, but there will definitely be a lot of potential ego growth in it. That is not, necessarily, a good thing. So please, the next time I talk about my application to MIT and I say "but I'm definitely not going to get in," you would be helping me a lot more by agreeing. I hear a lot of people tell me that I'll get in, and while I know that they are either being nice or over-estimating my intelligence, I begin to expect it, then I'm just disappointed. The same thing happened to me with my SAT: I scored a 2020, and I expected much, much better.

But, uh, this has so far just been a rant about my university difficulties. I'm just feeling kind of like a failure right now because, first of all, I flipped a bowl of salsa onto the ground while trying to pick it up, I tripped up the stairs at math team, and I've already managed to screw up college.

Argh. Can I just go back in time to sophomore year when I was like, happy? Please? Or, better yet, into a future where I am at college and don't have to worry about applying any more.

I remember, in elementary school, my friend Emily had this strange thing that she would do. During recess, when we were in a big group of people, she would spontaneously walk away and count how long it took for people to realize that she had left and follow her.

I wonder if anyone would follow me if I just walked away.

I think that I'd get bored of counting and give up.

I am seventeen years old. I am a good driver.

"Wait, what?" you may ask yourself, "Do those two sentences go together? Isn't teenager synonymous with bad driver?"

You would think so.

You would also be wrong.

I am a good driver. I have been driving for nearly a year and a half. I have never crashed into another car, or anything else, for that matter. I have never done something stupid that has caused my car to be sent away for a few days to the car doctor. The one time I was pulled over was because I needed to follow to my friend the wrong way down a one-way street that I didn't realize was a one-way street, and I got off with a warning. I never answer my cell phone in the car. I love driving other people around, and the only way I am affected by the distraction is that I sometimes forget where I am going, but I NEVER forget the rules of the road.

Let's take that paragraph and warp it so that we can all read it from the perspective of  an overprotective parent who does not let his or her child drive with other teenagers (or, as I like to call them, cowardly bastards, or CB's for short).

"I am a good driver" = I pretend I'm a good driver so that I can lure your son/daughter into the car with me so that I can kill them on the road.

"I have been driving for nearly a year and a half" = driving less than 20 years = IMMINENT DOOM.

"I have never crashed into another car, or anything else, for that matter" = when I am not drunk and can remember properly.

"I have never done something stupid that has caused my car to be sent away for a few days to the car doctor" = the wrecks are so bad I have to get a new car every time.

"The one time I was pulled over was because I needed to follow to my friend the wrong way down a one-way street that I didn't realize was a one-way street, and I got off with a warning" = I should totally have a sixth sense for one-way streets, not to mention a perfect sense of direction so that I never get lost.

"I never answer my cell phone in the car" = unless it's a REALLY important call or a text.

"I love driving other people around, and the only way I am affected by the distraction is that I sometimes forget where I am going, but I NEVER forget the rules of the road" = ...except when I'm drunk and about to kill your son/daughter.

Please keep in mind that the part after the equals sign is what the CB's assume I really mean.

I realize that the term "cowardly bastard" may be somewhat offensive to some people. But what you must realize is that I have been equally offended.

How would you feel if I walked up to you and told you that I did not want my child riding in the car with you because I thought you were a bad driver, when I had never even BEEN in the car with you? Don't you think that that is unfair judgment? Why, just because I am a teenager, does the whole world assume that I am about to cause injury or death to those around me?

You think that you're protecting your son or daughter. You think that by buying them their own car when they get their license, limiting their use of it, not allowing them on the highway, not allowing them to drive other kids, is helping them, is protecting them. What about when they leave your safe, warm, protective nest? What about when they're in college, with their own car, access to alcohol, and the whole world in front of them without you standing in the way?

A lot of people might say "the statistics say," "I read an article that said," etc. and frankly, I don't care what you read about 256% of the teen population getting drunk and driving around a car-full of people at 80 mph speeds on the local roads on Saturday night and killing everybody. You simply cannot generalize a statistic to each separate person.

I bet there are teen drivers who are better drivers than you are. Maybe not me. But I'm sure that there are some out there. You can spew your arguments about experience all you want, but what do you have experience with? Maybe driving when you're a little buzzed. Speeding. Not using your blinkers. Blinding other drivers with your high beams. Not turning on your four-ways. Frankly, you do not have experience with the rules of the road; you have experience with the LIMITS of the rules of the road. And here I am, not driving long enough to have chronic bad habits, never drinking, never going more than 5 miles over the speed limit, always yielding right-of-way where it's due, with 12 hours of driving lessons and interminable hours of driver's ed under my belt, not to mention taking the test twice. What did you have to do? Study a bit, drive for a day, and take the test?

Leave me alone and let me drive your kid when it's convenient. Otherwise I will not withhold my "cowardly bastard" judgment.

This is the "weekly summary" I wrote for my calculus class. I hope you enjoy it, I did.

This week has been a week of new beginnings. I have begun my last year of high school, I have begun to put in my 100% effort that is expected of me, I have started thoroughly doing homework, hell, I'm typing this weekly summary on the computer. Most importantly, however, I have begun my journey into the wide world of calculus.

 

Besides a few minor logarithmic problems, the material is…I'm afraid to say it…easy. That's because it's review, though; I think that if the review WASN'T easy…that's where there would be problems. That's all we've done this week in class: review work, and learning about hazing. Good times.

 

The most important thing I've learned about math this week, however, I did not learn in either of my advanced placement classes. I have come to learn how math is universal. Something as simple as a smiley face can boil down to numbers and equations. I'll graph you one sometime when you're feeling down. It brightened my day.

Okay, the first day of school is done, that means I don't have to go back again, right?

...RIGHT?!

My classes all seem pretty good, except maybe for French and Statistics. French I am not looking forward to. I have the same teacher whom I had last year...and the year before that. We have a sort of on and off liking relationship. That is, she doesn't like me when I don't do my work, but loves me when she realizes that I'm good at French. Anyway, she has this annoying habit where, every term, we have one, huge, overarching project, or test, or essay, or something that is worth a lot more than the rest of the grades that term. Basically, this one thing can make or break your grade. First of all, I forgot that she did that until today. Second of all, if I had remembered that she did that, I would have never thought that the ultimate assignment would be the summer work.

Yessir, I have screwed myself over for term 1 French due to my laziness with the summer work. Joy.

Anyway, Stat. Stat was weird. He insisted that we all get this application onto our calculators that only two people had in the classroom in five minutes with only one connector cable. Yeah, so didn't happen. He kept asking questions about how much we knew how to do on our calculators, and I knew how to do everything because obviously I'm a calculator GENIUS. No. I attend math team. And that's about all I can attribute my calculator knowledge to. I think he thinks that, since I'm good at my calculator, I can't do math without it. Whatever. Oh, and, by the way, that program he wanted us to get? Doesn't fit on my calculator. I have too many USEFUL programs. If he ABSOLUTELY INSISTS that we get it, I'll have to archive stuff. Grah.

Anyway, I've decided to be studious this year. I've done my homework for tonight, planned everything out, even started a book that's due in a few weeks. Yeah. I'm awesome. We'll see how long this lasts.

OMG UPDATES TWO DAYS IN A ROW!

I'm sure you're just wetting yourself from ecstasy.

Anyway, today I went on a magical library adventure. I hope you listen to this story better than my mother did, she rushed me by impatiently saying, "Uh huh, yeah, uh huh," every few seconds.

So today after work, I thought, "Hey! I have these two SUPER overdue books to return and one book to get from the library! Since it's on the way, I'll stop in for a few minutes and take care of it!" As it turned out, a few minutes equals about an hour and a half.

The first thing that my brother and I do is to drop my SUPER overdue books into the book drop. SQUEAK, THUMP, the action that will haunt us for the rest of the night is done. So we go to the computer catalogs and look up this book I have to get for my summer work, A Summer Life by Gary Soto. The computer informs me that there is one copy in the library. Cool! Let's go get it!

Five minutes of looking later and we determine that we can't find it. So we go the reference desk where this nice but a little spacey woman repeats the looking process and determines that somebody must have crammed it on the wrong shelf or stolen it. But hey, the library in a nearby town might have it! So she goes back to her desk, calls them up, and yes, they have a copy! But wait...have I incurred any late fees on my card?

Errr......

Okay, well, I'll just have to go to the main desk and pay them. No big deal. It's just that the other library doesn't like to give books to people who have late fees. So we go to the main desk.

Hi, I'm just here to pay some of my late fees.

Okay, it looks like I have $1.75 for returned books from years ago, but also $2.50 for two books that haven't been returned yet.

Oh, I just returned those.

Okay, but they haven't gone through yet, so I can't pay the fee yet.

But I need to pay the fee now so that the other library will allow me to take their book.

Did I use the drop box? Yes. *sigh*

So the other desk lady bumbles off downstairs to search out the books I dropped in the drop box. Twenty minutes later, she returns with an armful of books that are irrelevant to my situation.

Well, the whole floor was covered in books from the book drop and she was NOT going to paw through them to find my books.

But I need to pay this fee and go to the other library!

Luckily, the nice but a little spacey woman from the Reference desk is there.

Oh, she'll go get the books so that we can check them in. We'll just go with her to help her look.

She opens the door, and the annoyed Circulation Desk lady was right: the floor of the maybe three by three foot room is covered in books. After a minute and a half of searching, my brother and I locate the proper books and bring them upstairs, where, after several more minutes of, "Fees over two dollars need a receipt," "Where are the receipts?" etc, I leave with a library card with a cleaned slate.

I turn to my brother and say, "This is exactly why I wanted to use our sister's library card to get this book."

Fifteen minutes of driving later, we arrive at the other library. We walk upstairs where we see a desk and ask if the woman there is holding a book for me. No, but she'll go check at the other desk, and, SUCCESS! The 150-page and otherwise generally insignificant book is sitting on the shelf with my name on it!

My brother and I return to the car discussing our dire need for War and Peace written in Czechoslovakian for our Czechoslovakian class in our Czechoslovakian school with our Czechoslovakian friends to prepare for a Czechoslovakian college and how we must get it from the library.

We are broken, tired, and hungry, but our mission was a success. Gary Soto, thank you for ruining what could have been a perfectly pleasant evening.

I hope you noticed the change in layout. It only took me FOR-FREAKING-EVER. I almost used a different f-word in the middle there, but I don't really like swearing on my blog. The other, more profane f-word would have been more appropriate, though. It drove me crazy. Sure, at first it was simply looking through the code and deleting stuff that I didn't need, but then once the stuff was deleted other stuff needed to be moved around. Then it was simply changing widths and padding. But then I had a line down the middle of the entries.

I began the process at 10:00pm. I ended the process at 12:15am. It took about an hour to delete stuff and changing widths and padding. The other hour and a quarter was spent trying to get rid of the line. I thought that the line was a border for something, so I changed around a ton of borders...then changed them back. I changed around a ton of widths...then changed them back. Nothing was working. I basically searched and read through lines and lines of code over and over and over and over and over again for over an hour. It was infuriating, but I knew that I couldn't give up or go to bed until I finished.

It's still sort of not quite right, which bothers me. For one, the line that I had to delete through the middle I was hoping to move to the side to separate the entries and the side bit, but it turned out that it was a picture that couldn't be moved. Also, the header is too far to the left. And the side bit is short and the horizontal lines further down go all the way across and look kind of weird.

Of course, I could get rid of the horizontal lines too to be rid of that awkwardness. At the moment, however, I feel that I have butchered Terka's fine work enough. If this stuff bothers her as much as it bothers me, perhaps she will go through and fix it. Or perhaps I will go through later and fix it. I know that code forwards and backwards now. I'm slightly literate in HTML and CSS again. Not that I could ever possibly write it, but I know how to read it and tell what stuff does.

Okay. So. I'm in a weird sort of fed up mood. I don't really know. After searching through lines of code for hours, I'm rather irritated.

I'm listening to the radio right now. It's basically like, current hits. And they just announced a song as "New music," so I was all excited. Are they going to play something new and interesting that I can get into?

No. They're going to play a song that they play pretty much once an hour. I don't think a song counts as "new" if you play it that often. Just a memo to KISS 108. It's great, after listening to this station for only a few hours, you can learn the words to every song they play. The repetitiveness doesn't usually bother me: only when I actually pay attention. They have quite a lot of commercials too. There is this one commercial that I particularly love about a mango. It's a hoot.

This entry is kind of rambling and poorly written, and I apologize. But I think you can live through.

As an ending note, The Stranger by Albert Camus makes no sense and I do not look forward to writing my notes on it.

That is all. At ease, soldier.



EDIT: I've gotten the hang of this CSS/HTML thing again. I fixed up the layout to my liking. I hope you like it too. If not...too bad.