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.

Elon Musk Can Have My Signature, But I Think He'd Rather Take My Soul. He'll Be Disappointed.

Have you ever felt like there's nothing to do, that everything there usually is to do you either can't do or you don't want to do, but you still wanna do something?

That's pretty much how I feel right now.

I'd say the hardest part about this blog post is deciding on a song to listen to repeatedly while writing it. Depending on the song I choose, this blog post can be different, impossibly different, so different it'd seem like a completely different writer. If I listen to Starset's "Dark On Me", it'll be a sad and pessimistic one, while Shinedown's "Cut The Cord" will create an air of rebelliousness/defiance. Thing is, I'm not sure what song to listen to, what to determine the mood of this post as. Maybe, for once, there shouldn't be any. Maybe I should just write. After all, how many people actually listened to it anyways?

I've got so much to say, and when I try to say all of it, I end up failing and forgetting about it. Even though I have an entire class period of creative writing this year, I still never have written a blog post in there. My primary focus has been my Person Of Interest/Agents Of Shield crossover, which takes up most of my free time, except the time I don't want to write. In the time I don't write, I walk around, listen to music, organize my thoughts, but I don't do anything. I want to write all these thoughts down, and I do my best with these blog posts, but sometimes all the words don't come out.

People say all the time, "oh, that thing about people going to Mars and never coming back is so controversial!" and here I am, off to the side, nervously looking around as I fake a nod. Confession time: I want to go to Mars. My family saw the Martian this past weekend, and it was amazing. Matt Damon's performance as astronaut Mark Watney, trapped on Mars with next to no hope of getting back to Earth, was a masterpiece through and through. Everyone enjoyed the movie for multiple reasons, but I took an interesting aspect of it away from the experience. Mars, the new frontier of human development. No matter if Mark Watney lived or died, no matter if the crew failed to rescue him and died in the process, they would've gone down in history. Even though I've accepted that I'm probably never going to be world famous for my maple syrup company or my (future) lightsaber duel with Jennifer Lawrence, the idea that going to Mars would make me world famous kinda stuck in my mind, I'll admit.

I started to wonder if Elon Musk had indeed funded the Martian's production to serve as a sort of ad for his idea of going to Mars. Either way, I was kinda convinced, especially after I had AP government the day after and our teacher told us how fucked up the world is going to be when we're finally in power. There's a heartless lack of responsibility in leaving everything behind, but I don't think it would be an unpopular suggestion to leave all the politicians who fucked everything up back on Earth. Everyone else can move, if the politicians wanna own the world, they can do just that.

Well at least there's some opportunity on Mars.

Another aspect of the movie that appealed to me was, quite honestly, the peacefulness of Mars and the life Mark Watney must've lived. Had he not been alone, it wouldn't be as horrible in terms of going insane (although he doesn't actually go insane), but even so, he got stuff done, as I believe I would were I in the same situation (and also if I were a botanist). When something isn't key to our immediate survival (*cough cough* college), we don't feel a need to do it. The only reason I did the college essay assignment this morning was to get my english grade up from a 43. I know my English teacher probably won't see this, but in my defense, I was so Donne with Hamlet.

The fact is, one of the things that's most stressful about life on Earth is the bureaucracy, the paperwork, the capitalism, the large-scale stuff that comes from a nation of 380 million. The thing about Mars is the relative peace. Living to survive? There is no paperwork. There's just work, there's just the stuff you need to do that's required for you to survive. There's no polluted atmosphere, plenty of scenery, and a silence that would make a man think. More importantly, there's a silence that would make a man write. I want to write, I want to not have a life of meaningless bureaucratic distraction. College, job opportunities, large-scale politics and economy, it all just takes away from how beautiful life can be, because it can be beautiful, if I had the chance to look and see it. Sadly no, as college comes first.

My valedictorian speech will start off with "I am pretty much the greatest college grad on this planet"

I want to go away, I want to be the first, I want to find my own enlightenment in the wonder of another world. Other people are gonna tear holes in my idea, particularly my mother, who's going to laugh at it, but so what if I want a change in scenery? So what if I want to boldly go? At least I'll be alive, both now and forever with the human race's memory.

I'm Rick Riordan's Competition for Coming Up With Weird Titles

So I haven't done one of these in a while, which should be a good thing, as I'm not so emotionally deprived as to write one of these out of pain, but not this time. Not this time.

As I said, it's been a while since I've done one of these. Senior year's been busy, though not as stressful. Every night I get a certain amount of sleep, and if anyone doesn't already know, I'm actually in a play this year, acting as Theseus in a Midsummer Night's Dream. I was told it wasn't a big part, but when I saw the script and how many lines he had, I was thoroughly convinced my theatre teacher had lied to me. Hippollyta isn't a big part, you know why? She barely says shit. Thankfully I've forced myself into getting off-book a week late, so I'm good, for the moment.

My anxiety? Gone. I'm more socially active than any other time in my high school life. Best I can figure is that in the wake of my dear friend's suicide (I did write a shadow-post about it a week or two ago), I'm more eager to self-harm, but instead of desiring physical harm, I seek out the pain of anxiety. In doing so, I've unwittingly forced myself out of it. I still need some work, but I feel better than ever. I can talk to people, smile in the halls, and I feel like I'm myself for once. I only considered myself as actually being a character in my personality during sophomore year, where I undertook the rite of Mal-sharan, allowing myself to fall to the edge of death in order to find myself. It wasn't a willing journey, but I undertook it nonetheless, succeeding where so many others fail day after day.

I'm writing so much more, if not for my blog. Senior year I decided to replace Latin with creative writing, deciding to take a year for myself rather than the pride of being awesome in Latin. It feels good to be awesome in Latin, you feel like you're smarter than everyone else who's taking a language. They chose the wrong language, now we can finally get a conscripted army together and enslave the other language clubs. Guess they should've learned their history.

Next, we're gonna add a hot tub to the roof of the Latin portable and get Teo a decent meterstick

Anyways, I've been insanely writing like a maniac these past few days, working on a single Person Of Interest/Agents Of Shield crossover. If you're about to wonder whether or not this is any normal fanfiction, I've nearly filled up an entire composition notebook. It's driven me to my wit's end as I've found a plot that fits perfectly together and is awesome overall. I'm wondering if I can turn it in as a final project for the class.

SPOILERS: these two become a thing :)

There were times in my life I felt absolutely shit, like I was the bottom of the barrel, that I had no friends, and there are still times I feel like that. Every time the teacher says "find a partner", I glance around to my friends and find they've all partnered up with each other (with the exception of this awesome girl who asked me if I wanted to work with her on our latest english project. That was a lift to my self-esteem). It's times like that when I realize I don't have any best friends. Everyone notices me when I'm there, but I do wonder if they notice me when I'm gone. As a defiant, rebellious teenager, my simple solution is to prove that I don't need friends, do something to make them notice I'm gone, and the way to do that is to forget my need for a friend in particular.

Friends are important, nobody can deny, but so many people focus on becoming good enough for their friends that they completely forget about becoming good enough for themselves, going to insane lengths to fit in. I learned a long time ago that I never wanted to just fit in, I wanted to be myself.

Now, for the first time in my life, I feel like myself, and I feel alive.

This morning, I heard that a friend of mine from the internet had killed herself, and I couldn't do a damn thing.

The title is self-explanatory. I spent nearly the entirety of dance thinking of how I would word this post. This grief for someone I knew but didn't know, to society's standards, still gnaws at my stomach. Unlike all my other blog posts, I won't be sharing this with everyone by notification. If you're reading this, you've seen it on my feed or were browsing my blog one day and came across this blog post you never knew existed. Right now I have something from AP government to work on that might very well take all my time in the first place, but I don't care (I had already asked for an extension and was declined, and having 'forgotten' to mention this event as my excuse, mentioning it afterwards would just seem desperate). For the first time this year, I'll get a bad grade on an assignment, and I won't care. The memory of a self-silenced person is worth more than the judicial branch any day.

Her name was Emilia, and all I can say is that she was my friend.

Her best friend Noah contacted me this morning from her phone, and the words that killed me the most were "she finally did it. She's dead", especially when put into context. At first, jokingly, I thought she had killed her bitch mother, but my dark mirth turned quickly to melancholy as someone other than Emilia answered the chat. Something one can always assume of a teenager is their possessiveness over their phone.

After a brief talk with Noah, the most prominent emotion I felt was survivor's guilt. Crafting a convincing argument for someone to forego the idea of killing themselves for a night is something I can do. The problem is that people don't want a convincing argument, someone who's overcome with emotion doesn't want reason. A person who's leaning closer to the razor blade or bottle of bleach on the counter doesn't want to hear the words, "oh it'll be alright", "you'll be fine", or anything along those lines, because according to them, none of that is true. A suicidal person will more often than not always see the negative, and will always feel alone. You can't just tell someone that their life will improve, because if it was that fucking easy, they wouldn't be depressed.

The problem with consoling a suicidal person on the internet is that in the end, you'll be words on a screen. You can put meaning behind those words, and most of the time, that meaning will be understood on the other side, but for someone who is at that point where they're ready to go, you can't be there for them. You're forced to watch as they do it and yours words fall on deaf ears, but at the very least you're doing something. When you find out it's been done without your knowledge, no chance to save your friend.

The worst part is how lonely she must've felt. As someone who goes to a high school full of enlightened, decent people, I have no shortage of friends. Everyone is friendly, unlike when one goes to a normal high school, a distinct apathy hovering over the heads of all those normal students. Not everyone is friendly to everyone. There one must truly find out who are real friends.

All I can say is, I found one in her.

Rob McKenna is Love. Rob McKenna is Life.

I've had a great week, but only so far.

For those of you who've read my blog for a long while, there is an entity that exists that I dub the Rain god. His true name could be Rob McKenna, but I'll never know. What's important is that he's important, however much we hate him. Everyone hates the rain. It's natural, almost instinctive, but it's necessary.

That being said, I had a great week, up until today. Wednesday I had a small epiphany about how awesome I was, and thus began to live with increased confidence. Thursday I had an awesome day in regards to Wednesday's events, and on top of that, my theatre teacher simply gave me a role in the upcoming Midsummers play as Theseus. I found it extremely strange that Shakespeare would manipulate Greek mythology to the point where Hipollyta, the supposed bride of Heracles, ended up with Theseus after somehow coming back to life from when Hera caused her death. The internet says the two were cousins, but I still can't see this shit happening, could you? The first rehearsal is supposed to be after school today, but alas, Rob wants to capitalize on this.

See, it took two periods to realize I felt well and truly sick. When it comes to illness, I'm known in my family as never being one to feign it. I could have my hand chopped off and I'd still go to school, but only if it was my left hand. To hell with this, I'm still going to school!

My sister gets sick fairly easily, I've found. However, whenever my mom hears me say that I feel sick, it's normally because I've felt sick for a while and I'm only now admitting it. In a way, I'm really stubborn. I'll keep going, with my soul shattered, on my force of will alone. Now, unfortunately, it's my body that feels weak and feverish. It's gotten to the point where if I even mildly feel like I'm sick, I know I am. I'm not sick often, but when I am, you can bet your ass I'm sick. t's surprising, considering I hardly ever am, but that lends wonders to believabilily. I'm not lying about it, mind you, but if that boy hardly ever cries wolf, you can assume that there's a wolf nearby when he does.

Without my sickness, the day was fairly depressing regardless. My off period I couldn't bring myself to do anything short of calculus homework, in Dance we did some shitty bookwork (which is kinda like asking an engineer to write about his feelings) which I didn't bother to finish once I had done the minimum requirement. Finally, we read W;t in English (pretend the semicolon is an "i" and you've got it down. In writing this, I've also inadvertently realized the meaning of the title), which is about a woman with stage 4 ovarian cancer who toootaly doesn't die at all. In a way, kinda cuts close to home with a sick person who's sometimes a hypochondriac when it comes to the Death Triangle of the Face.


In hindsight, I wasn't sick. I wrote this Friday of last week, now I'm writing this today. In my defense, the symptoms really did make me think I was sick. My sinuses got fucked up to hell, I kinda skimped on breakfast, and I apparently got less sleep the night before. As a result, I got a pretty convincing sell. I'm never sick, so when I feel like it, I usually assume the possibility that I'm sick.

However, half a week later and I still feel perfectly able to write about the topic I envisioned on Friday. For creative writing, I have to collect inspiration for a certain topic to write about for our final grade for the six weeks. I originally was going to do my crossover fanfiction of Agents of Shield and Person Of Interest, but last minute (yesterday) I decided on something else: the rain god. My teacher told us to not draft before tomorrow, but this isn't a draft. This is my way of collecting information about my topic. I usually prefer to write fiction in my creative writing class, as my personal thoughts and emotions are reserved for here.

My week so far is pretty damn similar to last week, emotionally. All of a sudden, my life improved last week, and hasn't dropped in quality. Today, I feel as great as I did one week ago, with no particular reason. I no longer have crappy days, only crappy moments. The rain god, it seems, has shone me his favor. The rain god, for those who don't know him, is the god of really crappy things. Everyone can hate that, right? The good thing, however, is how much greater those crappy moments can make our normal moments. When everything goes horrible, if something goes neutrally, neither good nor bad, it seems like something amazing.

I can name a dozen good things that have happened. Getting a role in Midsummers, being able to write recreationally (not just for the sake of a blog post), staying on top of my homework, all of these are amazing things, but I can't attribute any of them to my newfound happiness and passion. I'm kinda suspicious of the last one, however. If it is the last one, it would explain something for the American school system.

There are some things, of course, that go somewhat less well than expected, but they don't dim the good stuff. The contrast of life allows one to easily see the good and the bad and focus on whichever matters (hopefully the good).

There are still some bad things, however, as there naturally would be. Why should I expect everything to go perfectly? My life hasn't become perfect, but it has become a lot better. My self-esteem may be up, but the bad things that keep happening remind me of what makes it do so. My social anxiety is insanely lessened, though prevalent. I feel like I am someone now, someone who has gained the right to say hello to whoever they desire, do whatever they desire without being judged openly. Among teenagers today, that 'right' is more of a privilege. My former crush still intimidates me, but I'm finding myself more apt to looking at her again, this time as a possible friend rather than potential romantic affiliation. I've still given up on the front of love for now. Maybe once I get over her, my heart will lock onto another girl and the same will commence, but maybe not. I've learned my history, it would be dire to repeat it.

As I wrap up, I notice the distinct lack of images in this post. There's one image, surely, but that's a requirement for every blog post so that when I post it, you don't see the shitty resolution of my profile picture when expanded to be huge. Fuck it, this is captivating. I may be a bit vain, and compensate in kind (positively, mind you), but even I can tell when I've written a great work. This has passion behind it, like so every other post in this blog. Every single one isn't based on rationality, but emotion. I incorporate rationality into it, but that's so I don't just give you a page or two of teenage angst and daddy issues.

And even though it may be fun to read/watch, since when is that a masterpiece?

Yes, Supernatural fandom. Shots fired. If anyone's even mildly offended, go watch Person Of Interest.

Among My Other Issue With The Series, I Also Envy Marcus's Ability To Carry Around A Sword

I remember at one point over the summer, my mother told me one of my relatives had asked her if I was still doing alright, given that I hadn't written a blog post since the end of school. Now, of course, school has long since begun, and the blog posts have once again begun with it. Hooray me for relaxing, but now real life has begun it's shit once more. I'll try and write fast as I only have a lunch period (during which I'm supposed to be writing an essay), but what are blog posts for?

Have you ever had that kind of day where absolutely nothing has gone wrong, yet you feel like something has? My Astronomy teacher referred to today as a "triple-Monday", which I fully agree with. I'm tired, exhausted, even though I was well rested on the weekend where my most pressing activity was mastering Halo 4 with my sister. I've found we can be quite the badass pair, not just in Halo, but in real life as well.

Still, today was mainly affected, I believe, by the book I'm reading. My mom's boyfriend got me into this book series as Summer began, a series about Roman legionaries who get accidentally sent to this land of magic and sorcery. Being Romans, they kick everyone's ass at general effectiveness and everything else. In the empire of Videssos, the emperor announces they will be required to leave the city for campaign in 8 days. With much grumbling from the other groups of mercenaries in service as the emperor's military, Marcus Scaurus' senior centurion, Gaius Phillipus, gives him a smug grin, "knowing they could well be prepared in half the time."

The only issue I have with the series is that Marcus doesn't slay the dragon on the front cover. Sure, it doesn't look like a dragon, but tell Harry Turtledove that.

Expecting just a story about badass Romans, I wasn't exactly going to be let down either way. What I got instead of just that was a masterpiece. Harry Turtledove's third book, The Legion Of Videssos, attempted to tear my heart out with the heroes' fall and, finding no way to do so, simply dragged me around while grasping my still beating heart. I feel like this is one of the first real books I've read in a long while. After spending my time reading Divergent, Percy Jackson, Hunger Games, and a couple other YA novels, I feel like this book series is so startlingly real. For me, at least, it's the kind of book that gives you chills when you read, that makes you sit up, stirring with excitement and desire to quote the current passage to anyone sitting near.

I realize, of course, that the Percy Jackson obviously makes some people feel that way. I simply read it to see how Riordan would construct his universe. The story was simply a bonus. I feel somewhat deafened to simpler books like YA novels meant for people my age. The only other books I felt this way with was the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series, and through these masterpieces I realize my type of book as the type that's startlingly real. The story considers religion, bias, love, choices. It glosses over the fine details that YA novels typically characterize themselves with, instead focusing on how each event influences the bigger picture.

These kinds of novels also help me realize how real life is. In TLOV, Marcus ends up being betrayed by someone close to him, thus sending him into a depressive stage where he is alone in the Videssian court. It's something I empathize with, having your faith all in one person where it's cast away heartlessly with a simple betrayal.  The emotions in the book end up drawing attention to those within me (although my mother would argue it's because of "the stupid computer"), allowing me to truly feel human in a world where so many people fail to understand the meaning. Don't ask me to explain. It's not meant to be explained.

As for the remaining events in my life, one thing I'm certainly proud of is my ability to have gotten 4 people to check out Person Of Interest on Netflix. One of my friends (yes, Hunter) ended up getting addicted to it, which is always a good sign. When it comes to Person Of Interest, I'll simply name it as the best damn show out there. Firefly, had it continued further, would've held said title (and lost it once POI came around). Person Of Interest, I'll just say, you should watch the first few episodes and then decide whether you like it. The show needs the Netflix traffic anyways.

One last thing for today as lunch begins to wrap up is that I've noticed a funny burst of confidence today. I don't mind being me, even for a moment. My former crush I still haven't managed to look in the eye due to the increasing awkwardness that rejection entails, but I'm willing to try it. If I can get over her and stop bothering myself with my failed attempt(s) at romance, I can get ahead with myself at last.

They say romance is dead, if only it were. Maybe then we could all get ahead with ourselves before we try it with any other.

Doing Something Last Minute Deserves A Crappy Title

The hardest thing about being a writer isn't the fact that you can't write. After all, there are times where you suddenly get an idea for your story, visualizing it to the point where it's definite in your head. The hardest thing about being a writer is getting the opportunity to write. You may have a sudden burst of motivation, but unfortunately you can't just whip out your journal in the middle of calculus. I mean, you can, but people will look at you funny. Sadly, we haven't developed a device to freeze time solely for one person, to the despair of middle school boys nationwide.

The only reason why I've found the time to write now is due to a theatre assignment. Yes, I'll be presenting this in class, and by the time I read this again, will be reading this sentence aloud. If you're new to this, I break the fourth wall somewhat frequently, so get used to it. It's now, you're looking at now, sir.

"When will then be now?" "Soon!"

With the requirement of presenting this in theatre, I'm also forced to keep this under one minute, which is going to be hard, if not impossible, considering how I usually write these, so naturally I won't even bother and my teacher will cut me off halfway through a sentence. A minute is only an eternity from my perspective, and I have to keep speaking and fill every second and it will all sound like nonsense to you. I'm getting from a couple faces in the crowd that this has already happened. Remember, this isn't supposed to be long from your perspective!

Writing, as you can tell, is a passion of mine. A friend of mine once texted me to imagine what it would be like if two characters from different TV shows met, and I took the next several minutes before responding with a small story of exactly what he described. I would've gotten done sooner, but phones tend to have shitty keyboards.

It's at this point I've momentarily lost the point of what I'm writing (the pressure of writing it in the lunch before class doesn't exactly help). As per my senior year, I've been taking creative writing, and having started on an actual fanfiction over the summer, wanted to use the class to actually finish a full-blown story for once. Naturally it wouldn't be as simple as that as my teacher for that class decided to make us tell stories for the first half to get comfortable with opening up to the class. We told funny stories, ranging from weddings to drug deals to sketchy people, and in that period of time, I had an epiphany about myself in the fact that I have no stories.

Sure, I have things I've done that I can easily talk about, but the way everyone else told these stories made me realized that they were alive at those points in their lives. They were happy or sad or dying of laughter, but I realized most of my life I've never been any of these, but merely content. I can't talk about any enjoyable experiences I've had because I've never really had any. I've never been in a sketchy place, I've never walked in on a drug deal, I've never lived.

By this point my theatre teacher will have silenced me to allow time for the next person and I've probably stopped reading. If I'm still reading this out loud, I've apparently done something right. I have no idea what, but I'm sticking to that.

It occurred to me then that I need to embarrass myself, that I need to get myself out there and actually live. I realize now that people are gonna use that against me to make me do things I don't want to, but fuck it, I'm saying it, no matter how much I'm gonna regret this later, which I probably am. This idea of living my life to the fullest is probably going to kill me, but that's the idea. Life is meant to be lived, and I need to live it.

Also, if I by some miracle am allowed to read this far, it definitely won't be a secret, if it ever was one, that I didn't even begin the script assignment for this class, but what are the odds of that happening?

Well, at least I'll finally have a good story.

I had an idea for a title that mentioned all the wallets and lanyards we made, but I'm not sure how the RYLA people would react to it.

Hello, everyone! I officially returned yesterday, but exhausted from the week, neglected to write this. I've finally found the time now. Although, given I have to leave for a fourth of July party, I might very well not get around to it again. Yes, I know, even though I've returned from camp a changed man, I'm still lazy as hell.

Aaaaand here I am, having put this off for another three days, fantastic. Three days of relaxation, food, and Minecraft to put me off from writing this blog post that I wanted to write when I initially got back. Fantastic.

So I've been gone for a week, as you probably noticed, and I went to a leadership camp called RYLA. I don't remember what that stands for, but I remember what the camp stands for, if that makes any sense, which it should if you think about it. The camp was basically to teach me about leadership and it did so in the most amazing ways. The whole time we had to do teamwork exercises. We had to do fire hose jousting, Olympics, move a bowling ball with rope (not touching it with out hands), and we also had to do an egg drop challenge. As for the egg drop challenge, I explained I was in summer school physics the previous week and we had done an egg drop challenge where one of the designs had stood up to a baseball bat, of all things. They didn't listen to my advice, but I took it in stride and we failed miserably.

Of course, failure isn't necessarily bad, failure can teach you what you did wrong and what to do better next time. I won't spare us any mercy, my cabin was shit at communication for the first few days of the week. I think any of the people in my cabin would agree. It was strenuous, having to force ourselves through the events we had to do, but once we had the communication down, we were fantastic.

Speaking of forcing ourselves through events, normally some spirit of writing possesses me and makes me write so much about so little (thank you, JK Rowling), but I'm still lazy as of now. I'm kinda forcing myself to write about this considering I have tons of stuff to do about RYLA as well, (e.g., a survey and an application to be a counselor). My mind, of course, is a bit occupied with having to organize D&D later today, but here I am, still trying.

So, day #1, we went to a nearby firehouse to play games with the firemen involving fire hoses, and then that evening we listened to a speech by a guy called judge Mcdonald (his first name wasn't judge, he was an actual judge). Apparently the people at RYLA ask him to speak to their campers every year, and then after his speech one of the counselors asked, "now, do you see why we ask him to come back and speak to you guys every year?" I did, that's for sure. He talked about leadership, and what that meant. We had all sorts of definitions we shouted out, including the copout answer of "the ability to lead", which I think he rolled his eyes at, at least internally. He went into how he was the captain of some sports team (I think basketball), and they kept losing because he wasn't being a good leader, and he didn't have a good relationship with his team. His coach stressed that he needed to establish a good relationship with his team in order to work together better. He also mentioned how at college, there are always the different tables for the different groups (e.g., jocks, nerds, etc.), and he would just randomly sit down at said tables and say hi. Everyone would look at him like, "who invited this dumbass?", but he would just sit down anyway and start talking. Eventually he had built relationships with a lot of the people he sat down with, and when he ran for class president, he got it, all because of the relationships he had with people.

This was the first of many events at camp that made me challenge my anxiety, which was the main reason for my going there. I liked to help people, and I really did like being a leader, but the problem was I had this crippling social anxiety that prevented me from taking that first step. Now that I've been through RYLA, this anxiety is still there, but insanely lessened. I mainly had to stay within my cabin, but I also had things switched around, swapped into groups of people I didn't even know, where I had to force myself out there. The first thing you go through at camp is called "the welcome attack", and it's basically the campers act really insane as you drive up and attempt to make you insecure and shy in order to force you out there. I was a bit shocked the music came on, but I thought "why the fuck not?" (because I sure as hell couldn't say that), and attempted to dance to it nonetheless. That was a metaphor, before you assume I made myself dance on the first day. Hell no. It was at least Thursday (or Wednesday, I think) before that happened.

Before the Olympics, the one event where I feel my cabin really started moving and thinking together as one, the counselors found it fun to put music on during breakfast. I'm pretty sure if they knew my cabin would start an insane dance-off, they would've thought twice (or not at all). Led by my cabin, the remaining two (cabins two and four had gone river rafting) got down on the floor and jiggy with it. This also applied to me, and in case I wanted to make my sister even more certain I had been kidnapped by aliens, I can simply just dance in front of her and scare her further.

Back to the subject, I've always felt like I've been a capable leader, but I've never really felt comfortable with myself enough for me to put myself out there. When I first saw the people who would be in my cabin, I had no reason to like or dislike them, but that quickly changed when I tried to put myself out there by my most solid interest and ask who had seen Firefly. None had.

"Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?"

Despite that bad start, we got along fairly well. As the week ended, I felt my cabin had grown the closest together. My cabin was "The Rockstars" (the girls were the Divas), and initially I felt more at home with the cabin that was Star Wars themed, especially when I found out that NONE OF THEM knew what the difference between a Jedi with a blue lightsaber and a Jedi with a green lightsaber was. It was a hard life for a scifi nerd who actually knew what everyone was talking about, even if they didn't themselves. They didn't, they really didn't.

I feel like this is an accurate analogy

Nevertheless, I felt like my cabin was the closest out of all of them. We went from a ragtag bunch of people who didn't know anyone else to a close-knit family who nearly cried when we had to part at the end of the week. The one knowledge that had comforted us was the fact that we all had each other's contact info and would stay in touch after we got home.

To sum up? I am not the man I was, even though I'm still lazy, but I'm still better. I have more confidence, I can be me, I can be proud of me. All this time at RYLA has just shown me what a leader I can be. When I got there, I had decided to be known as Dirk, just Dirk, not Captain Yaple as I usually introduce myself as. I wanted to start over, I didn't wanna seem pretentious (at least, not yet), until I felt I actually knew something.

Maybe then, I'd be a little less pretentious. Maybe then, I'd be able to be me.

A Week Of No Electronics, How Shall I Survive?

Thank god summer school's finally over. However, with summer school ending, I now have to tolerate a week without electronics. It's only until Friday, but I suppose it counts.

So, during the school year, this RYLA leadership camp thing was presented as an opportunity. I first had to apply, and then go through an interview process. Naturally, with my great knowledge of interview tricks, I managed to be the one given a free trip to the camp for leadership skills (one per school in my district). It was something like that, but I barely remember the exact details of how it all works. Kinda the epitome of "I have no idea what I'm doing". 

Here I am, writing a blog post in the 50 minutes I have left about how I feel. I'm gonna do another one after I get back, so that should show the drastic change (or not) in my persona. I'm going to develop leadership skills, which I've always found useful due to my watching of Firefly. Malcolm Reynolds is the guy who inspires me to truly be a leader, and he's one of the most relatable characters I've watched on Television. Person Of Interest may be the new top dog on the television network (though others don't feel the same way), but Firefly will always hold a special place in my heart due to the soul-augmenting journey it takes me on. 

"well look at this! Seems like we got here just in the nick o' time! What's that make us?"
"Big damn heroes, sir!"
"Ain't we just!"

Leadership. Ah yes. I've always struggled with being a leader with my social anxiety, and I feel it's crippled me. In group projects I'm normally the one to take charge, normally the guy who says, "okay, what should we be doing?" As I had to go through summer school with a bunch of idiots from normal schools, I had to do this quite a bit the past few weeks. My social anxiety is still a subtle thing, it always gives me a burst of adrenaline as a fear response when I appeal to the remaining members of my group. 

I know this is short and choppy, but I'm kind of on the clock here. Were I to have been doing this since the moment I got up, I would be putting a lot more effort and thought into it. But no, I only have 45 minutes, thus the lack of funny images and witticisms that you all seem to love from my blog posts. Still, I feel I should say something profound. This camp I'm going to be spending overnight, with no electronics, with people I don't even know. What's worse is, with a good amount of people I knew in middle school having gone to another high school in Austin, there's a possibility there WILL be someone I know, which with either be awesome, alright, or a goddamned nightmare. 

There's still the anxiety I feel with the amount of people I don't know. At least if someone I know is there, it'll be the devil I know, but an entirely new group of people I can't help but feel nervous about. Now, I know what you're all saying in your mind, "oh, just be yourself!", "they won't be that bad!", "you might meet your soul mate there!". Yes, yes, and yes, but it still terrifies me somewhat. The point about anxiety is that it's an example of an irrational fear. I know all these things, but I still have an adrenaline response due to fear. I actually had a small conversation with someone yesterday about anxiety on stage. She wondered how I did it, and I had to think for a moment. The way I survive being onstage is that I force myself into it. The anxiety for me is all beforehand, anticipation of all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong (which is, in most cases, everything). The key, in my opinion, is to force yourself into it, to concentrate on swimming rather than the prospect of drowning. I rush myself through the lines, calm myself down by reassuring myself that this ecstatic heartbeat isn't fear, it's excitement. I convince myself I love it.

I actually did that without thinking earlier this morning, I was pacing back and forth, waiting the extra hour, when suddenly I felt invigorated, I was going to ace this, even though I had no idea why, but even then I did feel like I knew. Because this leadership camp is gonna solidify me into who I am. My biggest issue is my social anxiety, always crippling me in the halls, making me wonder about things that couldn't possibly happen but still could. 

Despite this, there have always been people I imagine myself being (Lukas, that's why your yearbook entry was so special to me), people who are completely at peace with themselves, making them even cooler than they believe themselves to be. I imagine, "what would Lukas do?" and smile as I imagine him handling the situation perfectly as he always seems to. It's not a Pliny-esque bromance I have ("I have wanted to be you and be held by you"), but rather an unconscious respect, admiration at the idea that someone has achieved a self-actualized persona. There are few people in my life who I can say are completely self-actualized, like Mikayla for instance. It was part of the reason I fell in love with her during sophomore year, and when I got rejected like a bitch, I feel like it somehow drove me closer to being self-actualized myself, forcing a life lesson in my face that would help me later on. 

Self-actualization, for those who don't know, is one perfecting themselves, allowing them to be at their greatest potential. Of course they can improve further, but the key is their potential to become greater. Lukas and Mikayla are some of the few people in my life, I think I'm repeating myself, who have this self-actualized personality, this quality that makes them ideal people and perfect friends. One can guess, of course, that due to anxiety I've been unable to approach anyone like this, but this camp should change that. 

I'm not anxious, I'm excited. Though I may not seem so to my mother sitting across from me, I am excited, and cannot wait. Though some subconscious feeling, I know I shall take one step closer to self-actualization this week. It's always been a goal of mine, a goal I desire so greatly to fulfill, not just for myself, but for those friends I have.

Have fun without me, guys.

This Is More Than A Memory, This Is Me

So I'm supposed to be writing an essay about a memory I've had as a result of summer school english. This is my way of politely saying, "fuck you, I'd rather write a blog post". This is a memory, though, so I guess it wouldn't be too much trouble to email my teacher the link of it later on. I only have a half hour, though, so there might be some difficulty in finishing. I'll just finish it at home, if that's the case. At least I've discovered some new music for you guys to listen to, and damn if it won't load on AISD wifi.

I never expected to take summer school, only summer delta. Health and speech, easy as pie. No muss, no fuss, just two and a half weeks of morning computer work. I would have to spend the latter half of my day with my mom at work after she picked me up from school, but I would have my charger and my laptop to carry me on until the evening when she took me home, which was sadly not true of the first day. She got a phone call from the school. I was right there in her office when it happened. She was shocked, and I was paranoid about whatever it could be, despite my skill at hiding it. As an actor and a writer, I find it remarkably easy to hide the pain. Apparently I had failed not only physics, but also English, and would have to take summer school.

Summer school, on top of summer delta, four classes, two and a half weeks. It slammed into me like a freight train right there in that chair. I was still on my phone, desperately trying to ignore the feeling of my heart sinking like a rock into my chest. This occurred for me over the period of an hour or two. My eyes had already been bothering me due to the allergies, and I at least had an excuse to cry, had I done so. Summer delta was fucking easy, and I was still relaxed, but Physics and English on top of that? Bullshit. I can't do that. Would any adult tolerate that kind of workload? Especially when your english teacher has a "no electronics" policy during certain times of the class, so I can't even work on my summer delta during English. When can I work on it, then? Physics? Of course I can, but after school? I get out of summer school at seven, my day much longer than any during the school year. When I get home, I barely have time to relax, barely time to eat dinner, watch an episode of Orphan Black, and then take a shower.

This foreboding in my chest tore through me, and my mother was rightfully aggravated, too. She had to drive me to school that evening and go out of her way to sign me up for summer school, not five hours after the phone call of death had been made. We had to go up to my school counselor (who really didn't do much over the year) and my mother had to show the signs of stress in her eyes in the form of near-tears that I had a legit reason for failing two classes. I was almost there with her, but it hurt like hell to even keep my eyes open. In the end we got a reduction in payment so that we only had to pay 100 bucks instead of 300 or some shit like that, but it turns my blood to fire at the thought that that 200 bucks saved was all both of us had gotten for our pain and suffering. Now I have to work a 13 hour school day for two and a half weeks in order to finish four fucking classes, one of which is beyond me. I knew exactly what we were learning in English, I understood it, I could write it, I just lacked the mental facility to do the work, and for that, they put me with a bunch of ghetto kids who take 10 minutes to read a page out of a book. I get some people are slow readers, but I'm far more than they are. I'm not saying I deserve more, but I at least deserve to make up the class I took, not 6th grade English, with it's definitions like "foreshadowing", "protagonist", "nonfiction", to name a few. I'm a writer, these words are second nature to me, I define them by themselves, and use them to define other words. These words are new to these other kids, who ought to be in some special class where they develop a reading level comparable to a high school one. Instead, they're here, attending, participating, and being written off as having learned the material. What a joy this public school system is.

I don't mean to badmouth other kids, I'm sure they're nice, in their own way, but a student is no longer a student when they no longer desire to learn. Having taken a break in an hour of traffic in my mom's car, I can easily say I'm stressed. There's definitely a lack of homework for both classes, which is thankful. The school year was too full of homework, and getting home at nearly 8 in the evening thus means there would be riots should homework be assigned. My own would be passive aggressive, but there could be some vehement disagreement by others. As I said, barely enough time to watch a single episode of Orphan Black all the way through, especially since the atmosphere of the show causes one to take frequent breaks, as one normally does when one gets the feeling of a character in a movie or TV show when they're doing something they shouldn't. Orphan Black is filled with moments like these, make no mistake.

And it's a moment like this where, despite the music, I've completely lost my train of thought. I usually listen to the same music, in this case Blackheart, in order to remember what the gist of it is. It's like chewing a flavor of gum while you study, then chew the same flavor during your final. The association allows you to remember what you studied. This is supposed to be an essay, but I wrote it as a blog post, why? Because one way or another, I reflect on a personal experience. I may seem mean, judgmental, but aren't we all? Aren't you? My blog posts are more than just words on a screen, they're a reflection of me, and who isn't judgmental or mean some of the time, even in their own head?

We are all memories, and this is one of them, this is several, several where I felt pain, anger, sadness, depression, and most importantly, angst, the #1 emotion in a teenager's life. This is more than just an essay, this is a fragment of me, a horcrux meant to preserve me and keep me immortal, this one blog post, capturing my brainwaves and displaying them for all to see on the internet forever. On the internet, we are immortal. We will always be here. No matter how much of an essay this isn't, this is more.

This is me.

Dad, you obviously didn't read my last blog post, maybe you'll actually read this one

I remember the last blog post I wrote about you, dad. I honestly couldn't forget. As a result, you banished me from your house the weekend after, and after some consideration, instead decided to banish me from the internet connection every weekend since. It's only recently that you barged into my room, pissed off by some random event I don't know about, that you tossed me a slip of paper, calling me a big baby and to "have it" that my access to the internet has been restored.

Of course, I wouldn't dare write a blog post such as this while at your place. How could I, with possible beratement and untapped fury just down the staircase?

I wrote my theatre final about you. I had to write a song about how I fought against something bigger than myself. I wrote about the feeling I have of powerlessness when I'm with you. It came to my attention several weeks ago that there was a reason why I had all these fantasies about magical realms, fantasy situations where advanced power could be harnessed and wielded by me. I barely have any power in real life, so I'm forced to subconsciously imagine that I do. I pretend that I have the power to level the house I'm forced to spend my time in, pretending I have something I can hold over you, something I can do that preserves the balance of power. One of the things I repeat in the chorus of my song is the lyric "I won't become the anger in your eyes".

The weekend started off alright, with your usual contented demeanor being the one to shine through. Sadly that didn't last. Despite my wireless isolation, I still played my offline game on my laptop, seemingly unaffected by your punitive behavior. Saturday evening, however, you seemed incensed by something. Naturally I was forced to resort to submissive behavior, plenty of "yes dad"s to appease the beast I knew slumbered within. Your sin has and always has been wrath. I paced in my room, listening to music to calm myself, calm my own anger inside. You said that you knew me, as I was half you. Despite how much I fear to become you, that fear has always been a rational one. When you came in complaining I was making too much noise, I retorted with the fact that I can hear my sheets when I ruffle them very quietly (the room is very resonant), but you didn't care. You noticed the rice krispie treat wrappers on the small thing that doesn't qualify as a table and got mad again, saying I was eating shit. I was apparently supposed to act like a human being, not an animal. This from the man trying to act like god.

If not for you, I never would've developed the word "Jehovianism", the syndrome of holding Yahweh in such high esteem that one ends up becoming him. The anger, the wrath, the thought that you're doing something to help 'save' me when you screw up everything in the first place. Old testament god threw the CTRL+Smite command around like no other, punishing rather than forgiving. Despite my original sin, knowing good from evil, you still haven't forgiven me, and probably never will. Instead, I'm the bad guy, I'm the evil villain trying to topple your totalitarian throne, a throne built on a house of cards which can and will do nothing but fall.

That last blog post? I could've tossed around so many words, so many hurtful things, so many things to actually make it qualify your definition of "disrespectful". Is advocating for oneself disrespectful? I merely wish to be, and here you are trying to stifle me and my words. Is it because they can actually hurt you? Is it because they're the one thing you actually care about? my words aside, you're one to talk about the disrespect I've given to you, if any at all. All the disrespect and passive aggression I've perpetrated pales in comparison to yours. We're still waiting on all the apologies you're behind on, which you've never even thought to apologize directly for. That evening where my sister and I were to spend two hours at the Costco with you on our usual Thursday night where you justified yourself and your actions in making her cry two weeks before were full of bullshit. That is all you really did, justify yourself. I could ask my sister and she, too, wouldn't be able to remember when the words "I'm sorry" left your lips that evening. Did they ever?

My sister is another matter entirely. This weekend you kept telling me if I didn't like staying at your house with restricted access to the wifi, I was in fact 17 and had the option to leave. Once would've made me think nothing of it, but the second and third times drew suspicion. I felt like you were goading me, trying to plant the suggestion to make me leave. You then said despite my being a child, I'm old enough to make that decision, but the reasoning for why I stay, the reasoning I stand through my suffering is more adult than you could ever comprehend. My sister's only 12, and you told me a previous evening that 12 isn't an age where one could make a decision on a matter such as that, but she's older than 12 now. She has been for a long time, and you've still treated her (both of us, even) like a child. She's hardly innocent anymore, especially with everything you've done. Why do I stay? I stay for her. She's cried herself to sleep on numerous occasions, she suffers, and she tries to be an amazing person like the person I described in her birthday post but just can't because of this negative force in her life, this energy that tears her apart and drives her further into the dark side.

Father of the year, 41.9 BBY -- 4 ABY

I have to be there for my sister, just like she has to be there for me. You showed our Aunt and Uncle our grades as if you had something to be proud of, but isn't pride for something one achieves on their own? All you ever care about is me taking tests, me getting scholarships, me doing good so that you have something to brag about. You only seek to punish me for my bad grades, only really caring when they're bad. You don't even try to help, don't even try to consider the emotional turmoil my sister and I are put through that causes a decline in our grades. Must be because we're not applying ourselves or because we're lazy. Well, that's true. Neither of us are applying ourselves because we can't. We're locked in this battle with you which we're forced into fighting without being able to leave. We can only surrender, but we know what happens to prisoners of war. No matter how much we're supposed to build a bridge, we've lost the spirit.

Alec Guinness didn't give in to totalitarianism, why would I?

What can we do? What could we possibly do? Your attempts to make us be a part of your "new family" can only succeed to a certain extent. Not only are the personality differences vast, but we barely know them, barely feel comfortable around them. All we know is you're increasingly defensive of them, your way of saying "won't anybody think of the children?!?" Any mild complaint about your newfound (maybe not that newfound...) family is an offense to be dealt with. You claimed my mentioning of how you and your girlfriend bought a house together somehow caused her to be fired, even though a teenager's blog isn't exactly a logical source of dependable information. You followed up by saying if I mentioned you were doing drugs in one of my blog posts, you'd get drug tested at work. Of course, you're not doing drugs, are you?

I might get my internet privileges revoked once more with this, with all this 'disrespect' I'm having by voicing my opinion. This weekend, these nudges to my shoulder to get my attention. You're little more than that bully in elementary school trying to provoke a reaction, trying to goad me into fighting you so that you can cry and scream and claim you're the one who're being bullied. That's probably how you'll portray this blog post, probably how you'll justify this downright abusive behavior. You tell my sister and I you enjoy having us around, but have you considered that both of us may not feel the same way?

You've spent all this time thinking about yourself, thinking about how you can strengthen your regime. There's a phrase about how if you encounter an asshole a day, they're an asshole, but if you encounter ten assholes a day, you're the asshole. Think about how many people are to blame for all these events, how out of all of them, none of them seems to be you. Quite fascinating that you're such a perfect being, eh? My most rational fear, as I mentioned, was becoming you, becoming the anger in your eyes that always seems to be present, even when suppressed. I said once before that I either wanted you to man up and be a proper father or to leave us alone, but your actions and hatred and dark side power you pervade have made me lean further and further towards the latter until I have nowhere left to lean.

I hate it, dad. I have having to lie, having to smile and be a good son just so I don't invoke the wrath of the heavens. My sister hates it too, and is finding it harder and harder to lie as time goes on. Sooner or later one of us will snap again, and it won't be pretty.

Let us be us, and maybe then you can figure out who you're supposed to be, too.

I'm Curious How Many People Actually Listen To The Music I Put In These

Oh jeez, is it the end of the year already? Hell yeah! For the last week or two I've groaned about the fact that school still had three weeks left, so close and yet so far. I also haven't been groaning about anything on here, so I should probably write one of my awesome blog posts to boost the view count on my website, maybe then I'll be able to put ads on my blog to get some cash out of it. Of course, I wouldn't abandon you guys to the mercy of these ads entirely...

Ad does not contain a lapdance *ding*

Cinemasins is better than most YouTube channels in this regard, and definitely serves as a role model for how to manage a blog, but I digress. Have some music.

So my life is fairly easy at the moment, as one might expect when it comes to the end of school. Naturally they try to squeeze a couple projects in before finals week, like Epic Rap Battles of US History and college portfolios in English. I sarcastically spoke up in my English class, wondering out loud what about English we were gonna learn from this project, and my teacher simply gave me a look of "I know, I know...". As a student not going to college who's currently going to a college prep school, the fuss about college is insane. I mentioned in my portfolio on the question about my college plans and/or possible majors that you could whisper something about college in a crowded hallway here and everyone around will go insane about it. "what college are you going to?" "what's your major gonna be?" "you got a scholarship??" blah blah blah...it's crazy. The fact that I compared these people to the seagulls in Finding Nemo wouldn't go unmentioned, since it's a scarily accurate comparison.

College?

My Latin teacher's actually said multiple times, "if you're not planning on going to college, why are you here?" in regards to the fact that my school's for college prep. I can't help but agree with his statement partially, but I have to retort by bringing up the fact that maybe I didn't want to go to high school with a bunch of idiots I already know are idiots from middle school. LASA's better than all the rest of the schools in the district because the students actually want to be there, and all the kids who skate through school are just filed away to other schools because they don't want to really make an effort to change their situation (because there's gonna be someone saying "oh, I'm not like that!" or "[people I know] aren't like that!", chill out. There are always exceptions).

I actually consider myself a grey Jedi, using both the light and the dark side, controlling my emotions perfectly. I can totally see myself with a curved purple lightsaber in the Star Wars Universe.

I kinda feel like I'm on "Between Two Ferns" with the kind of hate I'm venting for AISD. It's not necessarily hate, just stuff that I've always thought and never really got the chance to say. Now, this next part is hate, for those with sensitive hearts: AISD's transport system is someday going to kill someone. Yesterday we had a substitute driver who naturally took a 15-20 minute delay in getting on the route. I can barely survive the heat when it comes to the normal day, when I get home at 4:50. Given it was a Thursday, my dad also picks up my sister and I for visitation...at 5:00. With the massive delay by the sub, I had to walk from my bus stop to my house (no sidewalks, by the way) hot as hell and exhausted, with my dad already in the driveway waiting for me. I've tried telling him to shift the visitation time from 5-7 to 5:30-7:30, but for some reason he's not into the idea (I've mentioned how one thing I dislike are sticklers, who absolutely need to follow the rules to the letter. When it comes to dropping us off at home, we absolutely need to be there by 7, unless my mom's going to get pissed off to her limit...wait...oh, sorry. I forgot my mom was a pretty reasonable person, last I checked.

Anyway, back to the shitty bus system, those things are greenhouses on wheels. It's my firm belief that the AISD transportation administration have never ridden a school bus, in Texas, during the warm parts of the year, and especially not in their business attire. I've been tempted to get heat stroke on one of those buses so there'd actually be a legitimate reason to sue these assholes. I mean, it's AISD, we don't even need much of a case, we just need to say we have a lawyer and they'll do whatever we ask, right? Someone greater than I once said, "I like winter because there's only so many layers you can put on before you run out of layers. In summer there's only so many layers you can take off before it becomes illegal". The buses barely have air conditioning, only having three fans up front (only one of which actually works) to keep the driver from passing out and killing everybody while driving. I'll end this rant by saying I had to change underwear before going with my dad, because it was completely soaked through after an hour on that godforsaken bus. End rant.

Back to normal everyday life, I'm actually going to miss this year. Apart from my lack of motivation for certain subjects, I still feel like this was a great year. Not new, not being annihilated by stress, not leaving, just being here. At a school like LASA, the culture is definitely a great factor. The former assistant principal once told us a story about how he once overheard a vehement argument in the halls over the answer to a physics equation. I go to a school full of nerds, and I hear that every once in a while, when I go near the math department. One of the reasons I'm reluctant to go to college is because no matter how nerdy the college is, it's not going to be LASA. This high school of mine is where I feel like I belong, the people here accept anyone regardless of who they are (Except if you're gay, then you'll have tons of friends on the first day). I hate having to think of the fact that I'm leaving this random utopia, these last three years full of wasted opportunities, and I never really want to leave.

Except for three months, of course. God, summer's been well-anticipated here. The projects and assignments still dulling everyone down to a lazy state. I'm still gonna have to take some class over the summer (I have to email my counselor to get info), either health or speech, in order to fulfill some credit requirement. Apparently you can take all the electives you want, but you still need to do the required stuff, during the year or the summer. On top of that, I still need to do PE for next year, and it's going to be hard for the reason that I can't just take two semesters of the PE class for the credit (again, I have to email my counselor) so I have to end up playing golf. My mother asked what the alternative was, to which I replied I would have to play a sport of some kind. Can't I just be a lazy ass like I have been these last three years?

So, last day of the last official week of school, then a finals week of four half days, which means I'll have to frantically get yearbook signatures in certain classes. My friend Cole/Hollie, naturally, wanted to draw a huge penis in mine, which is why I'm getting a lot more signatures before them so that the penis, at the very least, won't be large enough to make a too awkward moment between my mother and I when she looks over my signatures. I don't even know why I bought a yearbook apart from that reason. Fact is, it's memorabilia, a piece of my childhood. My middle school years, my high school years, all preserved within those books. My friends all sign it, giving me an idea of how socially successful I was that year. After middle school, they progress from mere signatures to heartfelt messages and the 'kiss of death', as Whedon deems it, the sole phrase "have a great summer".

This year I've actually made an effort to not say that godforsaken phrase, trying to instead say nice things, things mutual between the two of us, things about the other person. My go-to phrase for when I'm signing a yearbook of someone I don't know at all is "I've seen you around, you seem cool. We should be friends", thus resigning them to automatically become my friend by apathetic convention. Friendship doesn't have to be something that's complex, actually quite simple. Just by calling a person your friend to their face (or to their yearbook, but that merely delays it by seconds), you can quite easily make them your friend. Friendship is easy, depending on the right people.

To say this was a philosophical blog post isn't entirely a truth. I did go in-depth with my thoughts, more than most would, but mainly this was a post for the purpose of venting. These last few weeks have been quite stressful, and I've finally gotten around to writing a blog post to decompress from it. We all need to relieve our stress, one way or another. Some people do it by beating the everloving fuck out of a copy machine, others do it by conquering all of Asia. You can probably guess I'm somewhere in between, good luck figuring out exactly where.

One more weekend, then a week of stressless lack of obligation (after all, AP's are over, so finals week will be easy). After that, I'm home free. Summer's coming, guys. If it hasn't reached you yet, it will soon enough. You will be free.

Alright, I'm done. It's the end of class anyway.