I'll take you where nobody knows you, and nobody gives a damn.

Sometimes I filter what I want to say so heavily that I have days where it's so overwhelming I find I can't say anything. Sometimes the game that everyone is playing becomes too self-defeating that I refuse to play, and reject all the rules. Those are the days I find I have nothing to say, despite my newfound will to speak. Those are the days I realize that I've become so good at sifting through what I want to say, that I've lost my point. A friend pointed out to me yesterday that he sometimes doesn't know how to say what he wants to, so he simply doesn't. The difference is subtle, but important--I know HOW to say what I keep inside my brain, I just don't know when to speak. 

Socially I'm taught to interact with decorum. Granted I don't, but I do curb my initial reactions to things, as to not scare anyone too much. This "curbing of reactions" however, has gradually assumed a much heavier presence since my move to college. I find myself saying little to nothing. I keep in what I find too personal to say to people who "don't know me." This presents a much greater cyclonic problem: if I'm keeping myself to myself because I'm not known, how will I ever be known? I don't need any type of recognition, I just don't find myself jumping any type of gun to share my thoughts when I don't know who I'm giving them too. 

Yesterday my roommate displayed the heart of the problem with her naiveté. She is rather genuine, and socially unacceptable. She is liked by many, understood by few, and disliked by even fewer. She is loud, and never shields what she feels. Her greatest attribute is sadly what also got her into her situation yesterday. Yesterday, I watched my roommate express her feelings--unfiltered and unfazed--only to get a shielded return of interaction. Then I started thinking, just how many times a day do I subdue my actions so there's no chance of rejection or misunderstanding? More than I act upon my initial impulse, that's for sure. The problem with all of this emerges when you end up filtering everything you find yourself saying. When you don't have anything to say, because nothing feels fitting. This transcends into such an unbearable weight, especially when you're still new, in a new place. 

So, there comes a point, a breaking point, ironically encased within silence. The silence is

deafening, and extremely unsettling, but also unbreakable. It's weird...the silence is a result of 

having too much to say, but keeping it in.

I have no solution. I still don't know why I filter (or rather, care enough to filter) what I say, but

that awareness isn't alone stopping anything. I don't know what else I need to do, or change, but

it's quiet.

everything is really quiet.

this side of me--

There’s a pressure to begin; a pressure to create something worth reading, something articulate and graceful that explains this silence I’ve encompassed--there’s a blinking curser constantly reminding me that if I stop trying then my words remain my thoughts and my thoughts will remain unformulated. There’s a pressure to explain, a pressure to begin.

I am so tired. If I can pull out one full complete thought from my mind, it’s that I am so very tired. In every sense of the word, I hold true to it--tired in mind, spirit, and body; I am exhausted. I haven’t written in a while because writing has made me feel too vulnerable, without any clear cause; simply a voluntary discomfort. The feeling of unnecessarily exposing myself hasn’t left me, but a more pressing need to talk has overcome it. Maybe it’s not talking I need to do, maybe I just need to listen. I realize I expect too much from those around me, but I don’t know what to do with my unnatural expectations. I don’t know how I am to cope with such a shifting force. It’s a paradox of sorts: if I consciously battle my surroundings, and what I expect, than am I lowering what I think for a cause? Or am I selling short? I stress the concept of “just being” constantly, but how do you actually just “be.” I don’t know if I can find the energy to care, I seem to lead quite the lethargic lifestyle now, and I am okay with it. When you take time and place it into an autoclave, well, you lose a lot of perspective. It’s hard, this depleting supply of self-awareness, it’s especially hard when you feel isolated. Which might be begetting this constant tiresome life of mine, or is it the tiredness perpetuating lonesome days?

The momentous step all my peers and I were apprehensive about taking has descended and passed. We are finally high school graduates. The feat itself is nothing to stumble over, a high school degree is expected, it is in my family, at least. But nevertheless, the accomplishment comes with an expected mood; people are supposed to have pride in it. I know there are many things I should feel, but I just feel unfinished. I walked away from the campus that controlled the last four years of my life smiling: they couldn’t control me anymore. I walked away feeling a little less than accomplished, and a little more than fulfilled. I am glad I walked away, but I don’t believe I said a proper goodbye. It’s a funny thing about me, but saying goodbye makes things final (no matter how definite the situation already stands). It’s a finality that begets disconnection, and I don’t deal well with truncating anything, no matter the discomfort it caused.

I know I am ready for change, it’s a gradual realization I am coming to. I love what surrounds me, what I engage with here, but it is not my home. I struggled with having a disconnection from my house and my home earlier this year, but I’ve come to terms with the divide, and found I am okay with not having a concrete home. There’s nothing that I must come “home” to, because my "home" stays with me.

"I like songs about drifters - books about the same.
They both make me feel a little less insane."

Resurrection Fern

In the presence of Iron and Wine, with nothing but an unnervingly-demure crowd, and cough drops, your thoughts are louder than your mouth can ever hope to be. There has never been anything quite so captivating for me, or so annoyingly placed. When your mind has a lot to mull over, and you’re presented with nothing but time, you think.

Earlier this year, I wrote something about the beginnings of what I deemed the Great Senior Divide, with hopes that what I was glimpsing then would soon subside and what we all knew of normalcy would soon return. The sad truth of it, though, happened a lot like not-knocking-on-wood does for me. When I acknowledged the weird, engaged with the different, it just illuminated itself, and got worse. This past month has been a prime example of what happens when true colors show. Actually, I’m not even sure “this” is what happens when people are themselves because I’ve lose any and all desire to uncover layers of people--there are sometimes just too many. You discover too many faces, you then lose all desire, and with that, all motivation behind getting to their core--in fact, I’ve lost belief in the existence of cores, for some.

I think I expect too much all together. I keep getting reminded that what I have is not normal; which I’m aware of, but I guess the reminders are to keep the full gravity of my abnormal in check. I think I expect people around me, those I associate with, whether or not they’re “my people,” to ethically respond within certain boundaries towards certain situations--and admit to certain wrongs when they wrong. When they don’t, and nothing holds them to it, when nothing binds them--why can’t I?

So surrounded by an ocean of sound, I remembered. Because I am not this. I am not this overwhelming noise that can carry you. I am just a girl in the world. While I don’t agree with what you’ve done, and know one day, somehow something will justly right you, and isolate you in your amoral path, I am nothing more than a single sound. My morals are nothing more than simply mine. And what I feel is ethically right, cannot be forced upon you.

So even if in the middle of a beautiful thing you find you have a horrible cough, it's okay. We have cough drops. Close your eyes. They're designed to sooth your throat--you just have to be patient enough to let them work.

A Disclaimer for The Wavering Mind -- Part I

"I think that I is the only word in your vocabulary tonight."

Let me tell you all about it-- if you listen it seems to be all you hear. If you tell a story, if you say anything, to anyone, the response is increasingly (disappointingly) solely about the person responding. Understandably we speak from personal experience, and in order to get on a personal level with another person we share experience--but there are limits we can exceed, selfless boundaries we can ignore. So all we need to do is listen.

Recently I have began consciously noting every time it seemed "I was the only word" in someone's vocabulary. The numbers are astounding. So rather than dwelling on the numbers and never getting over what I found disgusting--I wanted to figure how how we got to this point.

I have come to a few different conclusions, one however, has struck me as most probable: Self identifying issues are huge. If you're not comfortable with who you are no one ever will be; how you inwardly feel about yourself is reflected outwardly, no matter how hard you try to contain it. The reflection is not necessarily performed in any melodramatic sweeping display, either, it can be displayed in simple mannerisms; it can go undetected if people don't know what to look for, or rather how to look. Regardless a reflection is apparent. So if you have issues with your person, people who know what they're looking for, know.

If you feel like you're worth something, but it's not any type of worth people can easily see from your surface, don't you think I would be a frequently used word in your vocabulary?

Nowadays-instant-gratification is an indication for what type of character traits people think they need to possess: blindly misleading, but blindly controlling. So back to my point--those friends we have, the ones who no matter what you tell them, manage to pull it back to themselves--they're the friends that I'm not sure we can blame for only having I in their vocabulary. I think they are just trying to remember who they are, and what they stand for. I think it is not the people around them they are reassuring of their worth, but themselves.

While their process is destructive, and I'm sure along their paths they've lost many, and have many more friends to lose...I have faith they will find their way.

I found mine.

the downpour

I think it's the constant downpour that has been the perpetuating force behind my recent thoughts lately, so like the persistence of the rain, I've been analyzing everything.

Not that I don't normally suffer from chronically over-analyzing every situation, it's just recently it hasn't been so painful, or so over-analytical. It's actually been productive, and I think I'm finally defining categories in my head; finally sifting through what I've set aside for what seems like too long. 

It's really hard to function within any standards of "normal" when you know everything you've ever known is about to change. I keep thinking back to the senior class last year, and can't help but relate to their angst, their anticipation. I was told right before your universe explodes it becomes microscopic, every little thing becomes magnified, distorted. Does that explain all the underlying currents? The unspoken words, and different vibes? Microscopic worlds? Maybe. It's hard to wake up and follow the same pattern (though it's somewhat flexible, it's still relatively a regimented pattern) without questioning what it will feel like to wake up with different walls. 

Only recently (recently being within the last two hours) have I managed to drag my feet through four years of mental build-up. I can't say I feel any different, I am not sad, nor am I angry, I just feel accomplished. I have been missing home, and been unable to place one for myself. I still don't know where my home is, or if there even is a where for that matter, but I don't need to know where my home is. I had been holding onto my past for too long, and holding people accountable for voids they shouldn't have to fill. 

I guess we know we're fooling ourselves when it's our words reassuring us of another's, and not theirs. It makes perfect sense to me, I'm just surprised it took me this long to finally come to terms with. 

So I've come to terms with change now, I accept it. I don't have to like it, but I have to be able to live with it... at least adjust to it when it occurs. I think I will be okay. Despite the fact I've finally found my family, and it feels like I'm going to lose them, I think it will be okay. I know I won't lose anyone. Part of my four-year-mind-sifting-drudgery was placing people into categories. I had help developing these one night on my dock, with quite unexpected company but came up with three different groups: 

(1) there will always be people in life who will grow you--people who are highly influential, short-lived, but never forgotten. 

(2) Then, there are the people you grow with--these are the people who are not necessarily like you, but equal in other senses, people who are experiencing life with you, taking in new things by your side, not behind or ahead of you.

(3) And last, the people you will grow--this is basically the inverse of people who have grown you. You become the highly influential person for someone else, and while you may not learn much from them, or take away anything life-changing from your relationship with them, it was still necessary, they still needed you. 

and so the cycle will continue.

We're all just a little flaky.

Through a response to a previous entry I found exactly what I've been looking for:

"Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars."

--Emerson's Self-Reliance (excerpt)

I found myself bombarded by three very hostile situations today; each one testing my patience beyond all conceivable limits....and they all occurred before lunch even began.

The first attack: poetry club, 12:00 p.m.

The amount of stupid that circulated in our relatively spacious classroom was beyond conceivable imagination--it was everywhere.

"Can I write with a brown pencil?"
"Like...a poem?"
"I don't rememberrr..."
"Uh, I can't tall ANYONE what I did...."
"I don't rememberrr!"
"I drank."
"How about a purple pen?"
"I did too many illegal things."
...and what I think may have been my favorite:
"All I did was play video games and blow things up."

...This was my first attack of gorilla warfare of the day; hostile, hot and angry.

I always find that it is after breaks people become most lost in perfecting their image. Attending a private day/boarding school presents a difficult predicament for those striving to create a name for themselves: where do we find the time? Breaks present an ample amount of time in which we're free to create ourselves however we please. We may drink illegally, smoke contraband, have sex rampantly, "blow things up"...but even if we do everything we're kept from doing while confined at school (allegedly), how do we make it known? Evidently it's between the hours of noon and one at Montverde Academy, inside our very own Poetry Club. This disgusting flaunting of the self is not only saddening but repulsive. The content of ones life is laid upon a desk, leaving no detail unknown. All that we seem to worry about is what our neighbor thinks--has it really become that important to "belong"?? And does no one realize this painting of the self is only label-confining crap?

Dazed, but alive, I left for lunch.

Before Lunch ended I was expected at another highly productive NHS meeting.

This was attack number two.

"Does anyone know his study hall?
(all) "no."
"You, do you know his study hall?"
(intended target) "no."
"Do you know his study hall?"
--"I don't think anyone know his study hall?"
"Does anyone know his study hall?"
(all) "no."

By this point, I caught the pattern. A few more painful repetitive questions and we'd "moved on."
This can't last long.

"Now, concerning the hour-forms. See this area that says "Your Name"? What do you think you write after it in the blank space?"

Please, stop me if I'm being unreasonable, but are we not the "National Honor Society?" Hand picked for our intelligence and our outstanding common sense? We're supposed to be the smart kids, right?

silence. Dead Silence.

"YOUR NAME!"

Que end of hostile stupid attack number two: 1:28 p.m.

So maybe I lied, the last attack did occur after lunch, but just barely.

Apparently the above quote is relevant in more serious ways than I had originally anticipated. The line that would have been most fitting to scream at the top of my lungs would have been: "This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars."

False in all particulars.

I guess it's gotten to the point where if the image is satisfactory, it doesn't matter if the shoe's missing it's sole. Quite frankly, we've arrived at the place where the mere word "shoe" written in black sharpie on the side of a foot has become acceptable.

Today I felt like everyone was barefoot.

shoe.

there's nobody like you

When I was a child everybody smiled, nobody knows me at all.
Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all.

I got lots of friends, yes, but then again, nobody knows me at all.
Kids and a wife, it's a beautiful life, nobody knows me at all.

And oh when the lights are low,
Oh with someone I don't know.

I don't give a damn, I'm happy as a clam, nobody knows me at all.
Ah, what can you do? There's nobody like you. Nobody knows me at all.

I know how you feel, no secrets to reveal, nobody knows me at all.
Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all.
Nobody knows me, nobody knows me, nobody knows me at all.

maturity?

I don't understand this awkward skewed perception of relationships anymore. I don't understand why it has become a favored m.o. to find someone and define them as "yours." I could easily excuse recent happenings to senior-weirdness or a spring break fever, but I don't think that it can be dismissed that easily.

The breaking point seems to present itself when someone finds it necessary to define what they feel for the other person. Now, while I'm all for being forward, I don't think this is always a necessity. Especially when time is a limiting factor. Yet we seem to think we can hold onto something/someone longer if they're under the pretense of belonging to us. I think the moment you commit yourself to another person you actually distance yourself. No longer are actions needed to demonstrate your connection; words manage to take their place.

I found myself in a similar situation a year ago when I realized I no longer felt what I was proclaiming to feel; how do you manage to salvage yourself from a loophole like that? I didn't. Not entirely, at least. I lost a lot of who I thought I was to sheer ignorance--I forgot to think; I forgot to remember. Now, an entire year later, I watch in fear as situations much like my own a year ago, unfold all around me.

When you're on the outside looking in, it's much easier to critique and find holes you keep falling into. I remember being told exactly where to watch my step, but I also remember ignoring the warnings, taking no heed to the brightly flashing caution signs. So now, it's only expected that when I plug in the signs for others who have forgot we have working electricity, that I take no offense when I am ignored. The only way to realize you're in a loophole is to find it yourself, and to be strong enough to walk away.

All of this, however, is easily side-stepped. Relationships are dynamic, and therefore can change instantaneously. I find myself on the brink of very murky waters, waters I'm not sure I'm willing to step back into. I will just remain how I am, staying constant with my affections and decision to destroy the unnecessary label. Whether I think it's strictly friendship, or more than, is irrelevant. Quite simply because I'll remain constant with who I've become, how I feel, and the accepted fact that we don't need anything or anyone.

We can get over this weirdness, all we have to do is be.

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