Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust,
and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply,
and the night sky is no home,
and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times
That you are down to your last two percent,
But nothing is infinite, not even loss.
You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself
again.
I am going to attempt to summarize the last month of my life in a few short paragraphs. I have honestly no idea how I am going to do this, but here we go.
I went to Boston for the fourth of July and it was incredibly fun and I loved it and we spent ten days in New England and nearly died from the heat, but I also went to Maine just so my dad could say he had been to Maine, and it was frankly a fantastic trip. My dad got us VIP tickets to see the Boston Pops, so we were mere feet away from one of the best orchestras in the country. It was absolutely fantastic, as were the fireworks afterwards.
I helped out with VBS at my church and it was exhausting and I was at church until 11 every night and then got up the next morning to do it again but 15 kids reached the Lord and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
I gave up on Nanowrimo because I just didn't have time. I can't write at night, I literally cannot, or I have a mess of jumbled sentences that don't make sense. And I've been out of town and again, helping with VBS, and I love my novel and my characters, but this month was not a good month to devote to them.
I found out that two of my best friends in the entire world are coming to visit me for an entire week, one from Louisana and one from Vermont next month! I've been freaking out about it, it's going to be an amazing time.
I went down to Florida to see my dad graduate from Valdosta State University! As of now, he officially a PhD level graduate, I'm so proud of him! He was the very first one to receive his degree that day, and he was honored on stage, it was amazing. I look forward to seeing what else the Lord has in store for him.
So that's been my month. It's been a good one. I've gone a lot of places and done a lot of things. And now I'm back to school. Time goes fast.
Oh, and I'm sixteen now. That might be sort of important.
xx
“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.”
I sort of promised myself that I wouldn't use any Perks of Being a Wallflower quotes at the beginning of making this blog.
And gosh, look where I am. This is a sad day.
But, um, it sort of sums up my life right now. And I'm really ridiculously scared of change. Everything was perfect. And I'm really scared that right now I'm at the top of a roller coaster and if I make the slightest move it's going to come tumbling down to the bottom and I'll land at the bottom in a mess of broken pieces.
That's not how life works though. It's more like a wheel, really. Yes, you reach the top and you tumble off, but it catches you at the bottom and pushes you back to the top. You start all over again. Life starts all over again. Sort of like spring, I suppose. I hate when people leave. It's the one thing I'm scared of in the entire world, more than anything. And...people do leave. It's a fact, like the sky is blue and the grass is green. People leave.
But hey, I'll be okay. It's happened before, which sounds really stupid and sad, and maybe it is. It's the art of learning to bounce back, the chance to learn to fly. And I think I'm a stronger person because of it.
Life's pretty pathetic sometimes. Or maybe it's just me. But I don't want to sit and wait for people to come to me, because I feel like I'll be waiting my entire life if that happens. It's MY LIFE, not my life as it depends on other people. My mom and I were talking about this yesterday, and I was being a bit of a pain because I was complaining about what I said above. I have a habit of waiting for everyone else. It's the beginning of summer, the start of a new school year, and I'm going to go out and make my own life, not my life as defined by other people. You can't rely on other people, I've discovered (heck, that's why I hate group projects so much). People are nice, but I am my own person with my own life and my own agenda.
So I'm really scared about tomorrow and Thursday and all the days to follow. But I also can't just sit there waiting for the other foot to drop.
I don't even know what I'm doing, but I had to write all this down and I hope I can empty my thoughts enough to relax.
The school year is finished, I'm home from the End of the Year Gathering, and I have the ACT tomorrow. That's been my life for the last two weeks.
So, I finished school. And people graduated. It's sort of anticlimactic for people to graduate, since they don't even really leave for another couple of months. You don't have to say goodbye yet, it's more like this coming stomach ache, like, "they're going to leave soon and you can't do anything about it." So I was sad...and I also wasn't sad. It's funny. I'm going to miss people, but it's like it's not yet time to miss them. I'll check back in in September and see how I'm doing then. I might be an emotional wreck, I might be fine, who knows.
But yeah, I'm done with school for the year. Or at least I'm done with tenth grade. I'm a junior next year, how scary is that? I'm looking forward to next year. I have some amazing classes with some amazing people, that's good. And I'm making more and better friends slowly and surely, that's nice too.
I feel like I should have blogged sooner, I have so much to say and so little time to say it in. I've been so busy over these last couple of weeks, and I had one of those "Hmm, guess I'll blog...nah..." kind of feeling.
But on to the End of the Year Gathering. For anyone who doesn't know, it's a meeting of the kids from my online school, and I love it so much. It sounds stupid I suppose, but my very best friends live thousands of miles away from me. We have so much in common, and for five days we have the opportunity to connect in person and actually meet each other after chatting and skyping all year. It's really exhilarating, at least for me, to try to pack in as much as we can in that time. From Wednesday through Sunday we took over a hotel in Lancaster, PA, and completely went crazy. I laughed more that weekend than I think I have all year. I competed in the talent show, that was fun. We had movie night and cooked pancakes on a tiny stove with no spatula and hung out at midnight on the kids playground and danced the night away and ate so. much. pizza. And I don't even know how to say it, but I LOVE these kids that I go to school with. Every single one of them, even the few that drive me insane. I want to spend my entire life hanging out with them, just doing nothing and doing everything. It was amazing. I met people I had been talking to all year, actually met them, and got to hang out with some old friends. I loved it. Oh I loved it.
I can't wait until next May.
I have the ACT tomorrow and my birthday in a couple of weeks. I'll be sixteen, which is pretty big, I must admit. I'm pretty dang excited. It's going to be great. So, love to you all. I'm starting a new chapter (actually I am, since I'm starting a new novel) in my life. And it's going to be wonderful.
I had the chance to go see a sing-along version of the Sound of Music at a park near my house on Friday. My grandparents and my aunt were in town, so we all went out, brought blankets and food, and when the sun set the hills came alive.
The Sound of Music is one of my favorite films. It makes me happy somehow, just to know that everything will be all right every time, that they're going to escape, they have a new life, these children can be happy and so can Maria. And in a way, I guess, so can I.
So when Edelweiss started playing, the Captain (who is gorgeous, by the way, something I didn't appreciate when I was younger,) began singing, and I began crying. I don't think I even realized how much this song means to me. It was the song I danced do at a ballet recital almost an entire decade ago, with five other little girls. I don't think I had even seen the film then, or if I did I didn't remember it. But I thought the song was beautiful.
Now, you have to understand, that was a very difficult time in my life. My family had moved away from all of our friends not long ago, I was still trying to get to know people, which is very difficult for a shy seven year old, and we were having some health worries with my little sister. But this song, it was there, and when I hear it all I can imagine is a little seven year old who wants to dance on her toes someday. It brings back all those memories, both the good ones and the bad ones. It reminds me that things will always be better, even if they don't seem like it at the time. It's cold winters inside and the beginnings of spring and families being there for each other even when no one else will be.
Lonely little question mark on a bench in the park:
See the people passing by? See the airplanes in the sky? See the birds flying home before dark?
Home's just around the corner there-- but not really anywhere.
--Langston Hughes,
Kid in the Park
This poem hit me so hard. It's funny how some poets know exactly what you're feeling, even though you've never met them, and some people seem to know you so well, even though you'll never even touch. I just love words, that's all there is to it.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Alice and Wonderland is one of those books that creeps me out entirely, but this week my sister has been reading it for school and I decided to flip through it again. And...it's really fascinating. I used to hate it. I wouldn't watch the movies, I read it but never really GOT IT, and I just thought it was a bit strange.
But now, somehow, I love the strange. It's full of impossibilities, and even though it's a terrifying world, it's also a world of hope. I love the idea that a bored little girl, not unlike me when I was eight or nine, can fall down a hole and instantly be placed in the middle of this adventure.
I love the characters. I love the way they deal with the insanity around them. The nonchalant way they react to everything makes me see the world differently, as if they're the right ones and I've been seeing everything upside down the whole time.
Alice's use of logic reminds me of a dream, when you know nothing is right, yet you can't stop yourself from trying to make it make sense, until ultimately you give up and let go. Alice tries rationalizing with herself, until she finally realizes that her practicality is of no use in this land, with the words, 'So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun
to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.'
Even the last scene, where the red queen and her knights start attacking Alice, she's begun to let go herself so entirely that she can'tfully come back to reality, until her life depends on it. It's so brilliant and clever that you don't realize the transition all across the story, until those few words appear. 'Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'
I mean, how great is that? Alice is a little girl in a strange land trying to make sense of everything, and she learns when to use logic and when to just let go and believe.
I used to think she was such a little, selfish prig, and I hated the way she acted. But now, taking a closer look, she's really quite clever and someone who I would have liked to have known...even if she drinks out of strange bottles.
Oh, and why is a raven like a writing desk? Because Poe wrote on both.
I'll spend my days and nights just dreaming about what we could be
so throw it all away, come down the rabbit hole with me
