Irrationality

I have this fear that, one day, I'll turn my back to my parents, only to find that while I wasn't watching, they transformed into their true selves, two monsters staring back at me, faces identical to those I love but with eyes reflecting gleeful malice like shattering glass in a hurricane. I fear that I have placed my trust in two time bomb spiders, biding their time for years, nearly two decades, crouched in position, rubbing hairy pincers together in hungry anticipation, drooling through their fangs, weaving my infallable reliance on them until they have enough fabric to smother me, capture me, throw a dinner party. Make sure to use the good china. Forks on the left. Use red wine glasses for blood. Charming.

I can't look at mirrors when it's dark out. An irrational brain has convinced unreliable eyes that my face will melt off its bones, that who I see will gesture and blink of her own accord, that she will be the one with dagger cheekbones and hook eyes that pierce with barbs; that she will walk out of her frame, have her own reflection in that mirror. I'm torn between removing my eyes from their sockets as I run out of the bathroom, and forcing them to prove me wrong.

Flicker

The world can be truly beautiful if you catch it at the right moments, like the tiny hint of a smile caught in the reflection of a mirror, the twinkle in her eyes so quick you have to wish on it.

Street lights will go out precisely when you need to see the stars.

When the moment comes, take it, without urgency. Allow it to dissipate at will. It will come back.

You're not dating? Ooooh, I understand. Is it contagious?

For Chrissakes, I'm not diseased. I'm also sick of being called a "single", as if my not being in a relationship automatically means that I'm free to be snatched up by the first horny guy to notice I exist.

"Like, oh my god, you aren't in a relationship?"
"Nope".
"But aren't you looking forward to finding somebody to share your life with?"

Why do I have to share my life with somebody? Whenever I express the desire to remain single, the general reaction is "Oh sweetie, you'll find someone who will change all that". And maybe I will. But why is that the goal here? In case you have failed to notice, I am perfectly whole on my own. I'm not missing pieces. I don't need another person to make me feel complete, or to make my life better. In every "relationship" I've ever been in, I've actually felt like pieces of me were falling off; either I was shedding them, or the boy in question was trying to pick which pieces he liked and discard the rest. They're my pieces, and I'll do what I wish with them, thank you very much. Why do people keep insisting that I'll find someone who I'll fall head over heels for into a drooling puddle of looooove. Who on earth would believe that kind of emotion to be healthy or permanant? What I want to know is why they think I'll be happier with someone. Are they so unobservant that they never realized I was miserable every time I tried to have a relationship? I'm not going to pretend to be all cynical. "It" could very well happen for me. But I am currently unable to imagine myself being fulfilled while in a relationship. And that is okay.

Do people have this obsession with curing single people of our obvious disease because they pity us? Like, they just want us to feel the pure bliss of finding true love? Guess what, darlings: pure bliss can be found in many places. I defy you to tell me that I can't find it in other ways. I sing. I write. I have friendships. I have places. Tell me I'm not blissfully happy while experiencing those things. Tell me. I dare you. You're pity means nothing to me. I'm happier alone than I've ever been while linked to another person, and many people who are currently linked seemed to me to be much happier whilst unattached.

Or, does this desire to "couple" everybody happen because we live in a culture where you haven't matured until you've had sex, which is something often associated with relationships?

"You're still a virgin? Haha, you must be a prude/immature/scared".
"You're still a virgin? Good girl, keep your innocence for as long as possible".

Why does it matter if I've had sex or not? Whether I'm "immature" or "innocent", why am I considered different just because some guy hasn't shoved his penis inside of me? If you're different after having sex, I'm pretty sure that means you're doing it wrong. If a person hasn't had sex in our culture, then they get two choices: be asexual, or claim that they're "waiting". The former aside, why must people be seen in relation to whether or not they've fucked somebody else? She's "waiting". She's not, you know, a fabulous artist, or an aspiring travel journalist, or an avid collector of obscure socks. Nope. She's a virgin. Because a person hasn't lived until they've had sex. They need that other person in their life, however briefly, in order to validate their existence. They can't possibly be content with their life if it does not contain romance.

I'm not saying I think legitimate love doesn't exist, or that there aren't people in relationships who are so happy they feel like there are rockets in their feet that could shoot them to the moon. I'm saying stop defining people by whether or not they are currently "single" or "in a relationship". Stop telling me that eventually I'll change my mind and get married. You don't get to tell me that. I'm 17; there are many other much more important things I should be concerning myself with right now.  

Every single person is not a set-up waiting to happen, Yenta. This is not Fiddler on the Roof.

Flee Until Nobody Speaks Your Language

I recently started running. Well, running is a loose term here, because I run marginally faster than I walk. But pride is still present. I'm getting better, building up stamina. I can run four kilometres without stopping, and without feeling like the inside of my stomach is home to ancient tribal dancers who are over-zealous with their spears. I feel strong when I run, and that's weird for me. Feeling strong, I mean.

I'm a relatively weak person. I can't do a push up. I can't stand the idea of somebody thinking anything negative about me. I can't stand it because I have little conviction. I don't think about anything long enough to form a strong opinion about it, and so I have no passion to back up what I say. That passion would make negative opinions bounce off me, because I would know what I believe and be able to articulate it. Instead, I form half-baked opinions and then go about shouting like a fool. I don't like it. Whenever I say something stupid, or rude, or tactless, my first and strongest desire is to simply run away. To Europe. Where nobody knows me and I can live alone and never have to associate with anybody ever again and be mysterious and read lots and lots of books. I could be he biggest coward with the least pride; the fastest runner you've ever seen.

Regrets

There is no point to whining about how you wish you hadn't done something. It's done. It's over. Move on.

If you know that you're going to regret what you're about to do, or what you are planning to do, or what you are considering doing maybe, there is a very simple way to avoid that regret: DON'T DO IT. You might try to convince yourself that it will be fun, or that it's not that big of a deal, or that you won't regret it as much as you think you will. Guess what? The fact that you need to think about it this hard probably means that you shouldn't do it.

I believe that more people have good instincts than we can see. It's just that a lot of those people ignore those instincts and try to pretend that things don't matter to them that actually matter quite a bit to them. They ignore the nagging feeling that says "You're being stupid/a coward/immature". But no matter how hard you try to murder it with a samuri sword or a fork, you'll always feel that nagging in your chest or your head or your back or the third toe on your right foot or wherever that nagging feeling hits you.

So, you can make the choice to do it anyway, then try to brush it off and say that next time you'll be stronger and make the choice that feels right. Or, you can make the right choice now, even though it might not seem as fun, interesting, or kind. But, whatever choice you make, you have total control over the situation. If Brotips has taught me anything, it's that "you can literally do whatever you want". So stop whining about your regrets and actually do something about them.

Somebody Link This to Me When I Backslide

No more complaining. Only doing or fixing or getting over or standing up for. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a science lab to complete.

Go Out Into the World and be Mediocre!

Right now, most high school almost-graduates are flipping just a little bit of shit. Everyone has to think about the future. Some people have parents who are predisposed to do a lot of that thinking for them. However, it is still up to the almost-graduates to make their own decisions, if they plan to be relatively happy with how their lives turn out. Their parents aren't going to live their futures for them. But I digress...

High school is all about grades. It is all about getting the highest grades possible so that you can prove that you're a smarter, harder worker than everybody else. It's a competition. It is supposed to be about acquiring knowledge and figuring out what interests you and learning self-discipline. Ha. That's a very noble goal. High school is not a noble place. In high school, acquiring knowledge is unnecessary as long as you can remember something long enough to puke it out onto a test; who cares if you've actually benefitted from the class, as long as you pass it? In high school, interests are certainly not cultivated, broad music classes and sports teams aside; if they were, why would my school have so few clubs that the Yearbook Exec had to scramble to find enough to fill a page? And self-discipline? You've got to be kidding me. I'm writing this blog instead of writing an overdue lab report about pee. Self-discipline in high school consists of being able to hold your liquor, not talking back so much that your teacher actually punishes you, and handing in your assignments before the teacher refuses to mark them.

We're supposed to be "acquiring knowledge". LEARNING. But even I can't say that I'm trying very hard to do so. All I want to do is pass the test and get out. Only I also want to learn. I keep saying that I'll learn more tomorrow; I'll learn when I have the time, when I'm not busy doing busy work. I have to make time. I'm lazy, and that needs to change if I plan to live a life worth being proud of. Not everybody seems to care so much about pride of accomplishment, of learning for the sake of bettering yourself. You can't force people to learn. You can stick them in a chair and talk at them and be all big and scary and tell them how their future will be so much more open if they actually try, but you can't make them try. Motivation has to come from them, and if they don't have it, all you can do is struggle and scream and push until they pass the test. High school is all about creating functional members of society. It teaches you to conform; sticks you in a giant machine that makes a really ominous whirring sound and tries to scare you into getting good grades because that means that you get to have a future.

I understand: people do need to be functional members of society. We can't just have a bunch of lazy bums wandering around, leeching off other people and doing nothing to contribute. But it makes me sad that all high school does is encourage mediocrity, even if it is unwittingly. It might tell us to thrive and to think and to be creative and to be innovative. But when your teacher lets slide a deadline because nobody did the work, because everybody was so busy with the bajillion other things they need to do to graduate, it makes me wonder if this system, overloading people who have not yet fully matured with pile of work to do, is actually the best approach. We could get it done if we tried. I truly believe that. We don't need to be on Facebook updating our statuses about how much homework we have instead of actually doing our homework. But we're not getting it done. Personally, I'm not getting it done because I'm not motivated, because my whole life I've have been told that the test is the most important thing, and I'm starting to realize that it's not. Some of people aren't interested in their classes. Some do so much that they have to pick and choose what to care about. And some of us just don't like to be told that we have to do something-which I agree is a poor excuse for not doing something. But whatever the reason, we're not actually passionate about learning, at least in our current setting. We're passionate about passing. We're, however unwittingly, setting ourselves up to be merely functional. We need to figure out a different system; one that gives students the motivation and direction they need in order to actually find something they're passionate about. If they're passionate about it, they will try. Trust me.

I'm so caught up in shallow concern for what I'm supposed to be doing that taking time to do what matters to me feels like blasphemy.

Public education is better than no education. I believe that anybody should have the chance to learn. But that does not mean that everybody is going to take that chance. So many people waste their schooling. They are to blame for doing so. But the schools are letting them. The schools couldn't care less if the students are happy, or working to their full potential, or doing what they love. As long as the students aren't overly disruptive, do well enough to get a B, and end up as decent, tax-paying citizens, the schools brush off their hands and call it a day. Who cares if anything spectacular is created ever again? We just want to survive.

There's a reason Michelangelo and da Vinci existed so long ago. They didn't go to public high school.