I Wonder If I'll Get My Internet Privileges Taken Away Again Because I Mentioned Your Girlfriend's Name.

I think it's funny how many times I've started a blog post about my dad, then had no idea where to go with it and ended it before it began. I think that's a good assumption of my father's character, now that I think about it. I don't know, whatever gets his attention, as it seems nothing else will.

Thanksgiving break was a time my sister and I had to spend with our dad, a time my sister and I came back from still shook up from the long encounter. Our dad was abusing his dog, my sister said to my mother and I when we sat down in the living room, and watching her cry is always one of the most painful things I can witness. I would've hugged her, but alas, she was sick, as she always seems to be whenever she comes back from our weekends with dad.

Yesterday I came to a revelation, one that struck me all throughout today, preventing me from being in the proper state of mind to do homework which the district assumes we'll do with a clear head: It's not about us anymore. My sister and I aren't the focus of his life anymore.

Our dad always corrects us, never his girlfriend's kids, even though he claims we're part of a "big happy family", which anyone with eyes could see isn't true, even when it comes to him. He always makes sure we stay in line, but he lacks the passion any semi-decent parent would have to make sure their children end up prosperous and successful in life. He simply does what he always has done, not because he wants to, but because he has to. How else would he seem the perfect dad?

He chastises us for poor grades, yet fails to provide anything worthy of a homework-doing environment. TV's always on, whether anyone's there to watch or not, just showing how dysfunctional a household he lives in. The TVs are loud, the conversation is lacking (it was a bit of a shock how isolated I didn't feel when my sister and I got back to our mom's), and my sister and I have to cling to each other to survive in a place where no intelligent life seems to flourish.

Dad, I have one question for you: Are you happy now, living in the bliss that is your ignorance? I know you're not stupid, so why do you turn a blind eye towards your own children in favor of another's? Surely we actually matter to you. If we do, then why is it that you're but a sociopath towards our affairs?

And yet, despite all my words, I know what you'll do. This blog post is nothing but an attack on you, because you're the victim, and Rebecca and I are dead set on bringing you down for absolutely no reason at all. Isn't that the case? It usually seems to be. In your world, there is no such thing as a villain with human qualities. I'm left wondering exactly when, in your mind, my sister and I ceased to be human.

Dad, I have one question for you: Are you happy now?

Sadly, I need to do a project on this book. I hate English.

Books that make me depressed are books that everyone should read.

Today I finally finished A Clockwork Orange, despite my deadline last week. I'm supposed to do a big research project on it now, and yet I hesitated, not wanting to read it for a grade. The moment I started reading it, I knew this wasn't a book I wanted to rush or sparknotes. Let's face it, everyone sparknotes' the books we're supposed to read in English.

Some of the things I like about stuff like this is that the focus isn't a part of the new wave feminism. There's not a single named female character apart from possibly Alex's mom, and yet if a book like this was published today, people would be crying and screaming about how there's no strong female characters. A book like this doesn't focus on feminism, which is how everyone else should regard the issue. Stop giving a shit who's a guy or girl and just treat them like people.

A Clockwork Orange was a book that took my soul somewhere, enough to make me write a blog post about it when I still need to get my sources sheet together (if you don't understand what I mean by that, know that neither do I). So why did I start a blog post about it, music and all? I've only written two paragraphs at this point, so what else can I write? (EDIT: apparently a lot)

A Clockwork Orange is apparently one of the top 100 books of all time. I would've preferred to reread Hitchhikers Guide, but my partner didn't want to do that one, leading to me reading a truly amazing book, on levels The Stranger was on for me in sophomore year. For some reason, I feel like life somehow knew of my emotional troubles, the troubles I keep silent, the stressors I never bring up, and decided to give me a book to solve it. Sophomore year I was struggling with my identity, and trying to grow through a crack in the sidewalk like a random flower that could easily be stepped on. Since then, I've made my way with it, and adapted my attitude to suit my environment, kinda.

My recent issues are to do with who I am beyond the identity I've inherently adapted myself to, my choices. Should I do A or B in order to have the most fun? Should I say this or that to be liked more? I've spent so much time analyzing the cool people at school, seeing how they act, how they get the amount of friends they do, without being the backup friend that I always seem to be. How? How do I be loved for something other than my passive demeanor? How do I be loved for something I myself have done?

At the end of sophomore year, I had the revelation that I didn't want to be who society/school wanted me to be, and I wanted to be me. I think now, after reading A Clockwork Orange, I finally know what I've been missing. My passive demeanor I care nothing for, finding myself over the hurdle of anxiety when it comes to things I inherently do. Tossing stuff into trash cans from afar, getting up to use the bathroom, even dancing around for no reason (despite my dislike for my dance teacher, I do love the class).

I can't just be me, I need to BE me, if that makes any sense whatsoever.

I need to take risks, I need to dance around, I need to make active decisions as to who I am. I've started to do it unconsciously ever since I started reading A Clockwork Orange, and I've gained friends, friends who make me feel like I'm not just the backup friend, not just some guy you can count on for a laugh, friends who make me feel like even though I'm set apart from all the rest, I'm not an outcast.

In my fanfiction, the massive continuous fanfiction that's spanned several composition notebooks, I couldn't help but characterize someone like I characterize myself. Jeremy Lambert, a master of none, who feels continuously undervalued because everyone else gets chosen for the special tasks and appears more valued than him, while he seems nothing more than the Administrator's assistant. In the end, the Administrator dies, and while everyone else grieves, he can't seem to care, blaming him for his undervaluedness. However, an "if you're watching this I'm dead" video is shown to him, and it turns out the Administrator had chosen him to be the next one. Jeremy Lambert is the Xander Harris archetype, the normal unspecial person who ends up being the most special of them all.

They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn't chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody's watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You're not special. You're extraordinary. 

It's hard being the one who isn't chosen, the one who's always around, but nobody makes a distinct effort to talk to, the one who always has to look around when a group project comes up in class, the one who always has to back away on the sidewalk when it becomes too narrow. It's hard knowing you're not special, but it's even harder thinking it.

A Clockwork Orange helped me further along my journey, into the next chapter of my story, a better chapter, I feel. In the end, Alex finds a way to overcome his own psychopathy, find his own reason to live, find a passion other than the escape he craves in Beethoven's 9th and other classical music. A man who lives without choice becomes no longer a man. I need to make choices, I need to be me.

After all, if I won't be me, who will be?

I already knew the answer, but now I finally understand the question.

Jesus fucking christ is my heart racing. It's opening night for a Midsummer Night's Dream, I in the role of Theseus, king duke of Athens. Naturally, anyone reading this expects me to be nervous as hell with the prospect of going onstage, and it doesn't help that I'm the first dude onstage.

Now let me tell anyone who thinks that that they are wrong.

Reading this blog, at least for the people who've been there since the beginning, knowing me as the sarcastic teenager with a penchant for speaking my mind, one assumes my writing is amazing and that I'm simply logging the amount of stress I go through. While that's right, it's not just my coping method, not just a way to help me to survive life's pain and suffering that seems to be focused all on me. It's more than that, it's my light at the end of the tunnel, the hope that by exhaling the darkness of my life out onto here, that there will be less for me to deal with in real life.

Tonight before the show, we spent some time in darkness. We laid down on the stage while the lights went down with us, our vision blacking out and leaving us alone with our thoughts and my theatre teacher's voice of encouraging tones to rev us up for the show. The darkness is in all of us, it is us, it is what we fear and what we crave, it is where we go to cry, where we go to yell, it is us. The goal of the show, she said, was to allow the people in the audience to forget the darkness, if only for a short while, to forget our stress, forget grades, assignments, friends, family, drama, peace, and simply lose ourselves in a story.

Naturally, this blog post is about me, not just everyone else. It's nothing selfish, it's that every human being is entitled to one thing: their story. This is my story, and so I will tell it. This is the story of a boy who never had as many friends as everyone else, who never knew who he was, who always wandered in doubt in response to society's expectations. We say women are victims of society's expectations, which is only partly true. We are all victims, and we must all find our way out. I was expected to be someone, simply because I wanted to be recognized. I am the one who must be a one man band to entertain the rest, attempting to placate everyone. I am the one who is never who he wants to be, because he never knows what he wants.

Tonight that changed. Tonight, I found myself in the darkness. I am the jack of all trades, the one who is master of none. I am a wanderer, a thinker, an adventurer, an actor, a scholar, a lover. I am the one with a family of three. I am the one with a girlfriend in Missouri, unknown to everyone who knows me out of fear that it might not last (no longer, I say). I am the one with a girlfriend in Missouri I would hold with words when too far away to comfort. I am the one who's never gone through a year of LASA without an emotional quandary of some kind. I am the one who's always desired and hated solitude. I am the one who makes horrible jokes to challenge the security of those around me. I am the one who makes a joke out of everything so as to get a huge laugh. I am the one who loves in silence to those around me. I am the one whose anxiety cripples and encourages him. I am the one who laughs at the slightest.

Tonight is the night. Tonight is when I lose my character at the same time I find it. In discarding myself to find Theseus, I know who I am by what I have lost.

Words cannot contain the exhilaration I feel, nor would I have time for me to type or for you to read, so I'll condense it right here.

Tonight is when I become...when I became me.