I'm Back, Baby

Hey guys, the reason why I'm doing this blog post during robotics will be explained below. Thank god for substitute teachers. Now have some music.

I posted something on G+ yesterday. I said that sophomore year Yaple was back, and that says so much about how I feel right now. Most of the time I feel stressed by my A day classes, physics, pre-cal, latin, and AP US history, but they're comparatively easy all of a sudden. It's my B day classes where I'm being battered by two different in-class projects. The reason why I enjoy my A day classes is because at least they occupy your time and you can't get distracted. Not B days, B days you're forced to entertain yourself by spilling your guts on the internet for all to see.

This first week back at school after a week of break has been pretty hard emotionally. There's the stress of being behind (yes, on both projects), the stress of my difficult dad, and of course, the subconscious nagging responsibility to printing out all the shit you need to DM for your friends at lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays. Fuck printers.

It's a hard life, not really having any time to myself. The time I take for myself is me saying "screw it" to tomorrow's homework. The teachers at my school seem to assign homework as if we have nothing going on in our lives, when we might just have the worst possible shit going on. My anxiety has fluctuated the past week, going up slightly, then plummeting. I've given less of a shit about telling my English teacher in our Wise Blood essay that I couldn't care less about the book, especially having not read it. I can only picture my English teacher like this:

"Imagine a bacterium sat at your table and began to get snarky"

Anyone else would say I'm becoming so stressed that I'm caring less, since when you place certain things on a higher pedestal, like homework, other things get lower in your priorities list, like college. I can say that's wrong, and that I wasn't stressed as of when I stopped caring. I call this state of mind "sophomore year Yaple", and anyone who's known me during sophomore year knows that's when I killed my previous self and waltzed down the stairway from heaven to limbo, the dimension of not giving a shit.

My sophomore year self isn't stressed behavior, but rather a regression from that state. When I've been stressed past my limit is when I finally shine through. During everyday stuff, casual stress, my anxiety shows up to plague me, preventing me from acting as myself. Thankfully that goes away during said stress (the funny part is the anxiety causes part of the stress that gets rid of itself) and I can be free.

Since I do most of my A day homework on B days, when I barely do anything, my night of homework isn't as stressful. B day homework is entirely project based, and if there's one thing I hate, it's a project that doesn't give a shit about you, but expects you to care about it. I've been forced to email my English teacher and ask for extensions on shit that I might not even do, simply because I've lost the will to care, due to family issues for the first time.

And now for the part about my familial issues, great. My last blog post was somewhat detailed, but it seemed to be enough. Straightforward summary: my dad was a complete asshole-ic narcissist, thinking that simply because he had taken us to a movie and provided some cool stuff for us that it was a requirement for my sister to hug him. Truth was, she just might've, except on our way back we drove past our old neighborhood, and my sister felt sad about the fact that we'd left our home and asked dad if he could take a different route next time, since it was too painful. His response? He told her to get over it, because she was gonna have many different homes in her life, and she's gonna have to leave them all and get over the pain of lost memories. Now, had my dad simply said, "sorry, I hadn't noticed, I'll take a different route", she might've hugged him at the end of all of it, and when she didn't, he blamed her for not appreciating what he had done for her, despite realizing that, as well as taking her to a movie, he had also thrown salt in wounds that still were healing.

Since my dad reads my blog, I hope he'll be more conscious next time he sees us. I've resisted blogging about him and his actions for so long because it hadn't become as much of an issue that I would write about it. I could tolerate the neglect and the fact that he had supplanted us with a new family, who strangely were a part of his life a little too close to when the divorce happened, now that I think about it. The moment when she started crying was that moment for me, that moment where I had decided I was absolutely sick of it. I was gonna say what I thought of him, what I always kept inside to prevent getting burned by the fires of his rage that were always hidden until they appeared. My sister is too young to have known about when he exploded, when you bugged him for just one single minute too long and he tore your soul to shreds with his voice. She didn't understand why my mother and I urged her to keep her angry feelings private (which unlike my dad's, are perfectly rational).

Whenever I tried to talk to my dad on the down-low about issues, such as when he took me to dinner with his new family on my visitation night and I told him afterwards it was supposed to be between me, my sister, and him. In response, he gave a bullshit answer, and instead of countering it, I simply repeated verbatim what I had just said. He told me "I don't think you get this", to which I replied, "I don't think I get this either", but I digress.

This is just one of the things that bothers me, that when my mom has to unload on me how angry she is, and my sister grumpily mentions her desire to punch him, I feel my own anger stir exponentially. Nobody at my school has ever seen me get angry, because whenever I encounter something that would normally make someone angry, I shrug and carry on. When the anger personally affects me, I tend to blame myself. I currently blame myself for not speaking out earlier, my anxiety silencing my voice. I'm not going to blame myself anymore, however, because I know how to forgive myself for my silence, the same way former bad guys go fight crime to atone for their past sins.

For some reason, I like Spike's character more than Angel's

That was then, this is now. The circumstances are different from before. Sophomore year Yaple is back, and I welcome him, as a spirit of rebellion to aid my silenced voice. This regression from stress is like a lucidity period for me. I'm now free from judgement, free to speak, free to fight, free to be myself. I feel alive and conscious now, not just drudging around school waiting for the year to end. I feel every scratch on my fingers, every bruise on my arm, every injury that life provides to balance out it's goodness, and I'm going to use it.

People breeze through life too fast, and becoming Sophomore year Yaple again grants me the sobriety to truly live.

I'm starring in a friend's film in AVP (Audio-Video Production) as a truly epic role. I play the manifestation of Bill's depression, a manifestation only he can see, and a manifestation that is a complete asshole. Bill trudges through his day constantly bothered by Depression, until finally a coworker (the office screw-up) admits to Bill that he broke the copy machine, and Bill suddenly beats the shit out of him with a stapler. After being fired, Depression appears again, and Bill realized he was actually happy when he beat the shit out of his screw-up coworker, and proceeds to do what makes him happy (which takes a sadistic twist of robbing a convenience store and asking out the girl he likes).

My point in mentioning this is that depression, despite being a negative force in our lives, is meant to drag us down for a reason. The reason why J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-man is such an asshole to Spider-Man to Peter's face is because he knows that Peter Parker is Spider-man. How can't he? A guy showing up with pictures of Spider-man so good that only Spider-man himself could've taken them? Whenever Jameson attempts to have Peter get pictures of Spider-man to smear him, Peter one-ups Jameson, always making sure to rise to the challenge with his pictures to use in the Daily Bugle. The result? Peter takes better and better pictures, because Jameson is trying to keep Peter from getting stagnant. In case you don't believe this, then tell me why the hell Jameson is toasting Spider-man in his absence during Spider-Man 2 and painting him in nothing but a positive light?

News flash: this man, despite being a complete asshole, is actually not that much of an asshole

Depression will always be there to haunt us, bug us, make us feel inadequate, but it's there for another purpose. The pain of life is something to fight, and we're meant to keep fighting, even when there's no hope, and "If you do not fight for what you believe in, all may be lost for everyone else". Depression and pain are there because we need to utilize our defiance and become greater. We could never have developed computers without the pain of WW2. Every tragic mark in our history, be it that of the world or of yourself, is just one example of how humanity is becoming better in the face of it's mistakes.

I've written quite a lot here, but the point still stands as to who I am. I am awake now, and I'm certainly alive.