A Lack Of Music Is Exactly the Problem with School.

We tend to forget the simple things in life.

Every time I write (*had written) a blog post, I always include music of some sort. Music is inherent with humanity, and even if you don't understand the English language, Shinedown's "save me" still makes sense. It's grief, and it's uniform in everyone's culture. Music is amazing because it can convey more than words can simply let loose. Music is a sound, and sounds can be simple or complex, and it's effect is astounding. In the princess bride, Inigo recognizes the sound of ultimate suffering, and in 300, when Astinos dies, Captain Artemis' cries of pain at the loss of his son scare the Persians away for an entire evening. Happiness is silence, a contentedness, which is probably why I haven't really been writing much on here, and more in my spiral notebook, the repository for all my random thoughts that save me from having to mull them over in my head. When I can't write, I listen to music, absorb the emotions of the story, and find a way to relate them to my own.

Needless to say, I'm rather pissed that some asshole in my school district found the need to restrict YouTube to the point where the only videos there are the crappy homemade videos that don't qualify as restricted content. I can't find Shinedown's Nowhere Kids, but for some reason, the third result is a pokemon battle in another language. Fucking thank you, AISD, as if I didn't feel stressed enough.

On top of that, the room I spend my off period doesn't allow even the faintest of cell signals to get through, so to force myself to not have a panic attack (other than hypnotizing myself) I had to pace all around the halls of my school in order to even relatively slow my heartbeat. Thank you, AISD, you done fucked up again.

I got that from my computer's auto-fill thingy when I type it in, but I can't play it, so instead of having noise, I instead have silence, the illusion of silence where there should be none.

Miss me?

It truly has been a while. So much stuff's gone on, an interesting developmental period in my life. The main one I can think of right now is the book Hypnotizing Maria, a book that made me question the very foundations of my reality and, if you ask me, much better than anything having to do with Pride and Prejudice. That book truly sucked, because of how boring it is, and I honestly had no interest whatsoever. I don't give a shit about how people in England felt 200 years ago, I already know how Jane Austen was trying to challenge the aristocracy or some shit like that. Feminism of any sort I hate to read about, because I'm beyond feminism. Other people may like to read it, but not me. I'm beyond feminism because I'm beyond the idea of whether someone's male or female. Fuck that shit, you're human, and that's good enough for me.

Instead of learning about how people in England 200 years ago wanted to get married, I learned how to adequately cheat at the game that is reality, how to awaken myself to life and how I can simply whisper a few words to myself and suddenly make my anxiety go away for a short while. I learned how to attain a higher level of thought, how to read people, and how to make myself more awake, all in the span of 150 pages or so.

Strangely enough, I couldn't hypnotize myself into getting interested in Pride and Prejudice.

Right now, I'm suggesting something to you. Your shirt's red.

A good amount of people reading this accept that suggestion as true. An equally good amount of people aren't wearing a red shirt, and have the ability to go "haha, you're wrong!" and disregard my suggestion.

But am I?

You should probably pay attention if I say you're wearing a red shirt. Believe me, it's a metaphor.

All hypnotism is is the accepting of suggestions about your current reality. I can use 500 suggestions, and eventually convince you that due to wavelengths or light patterns or whatever that your shirt is, in fact, red. It's only when someone does it in 2 or 3 that we consider it hypnotism. You're hypnotized right now. I can suggest to you that you're in a cage, and that's all I need to do. If you accept that suggestion, your mind will fill in the rest. Whatever it looks like or how many bars, that's your mind's decision, but the initial suggestion is mine: you're in a cage right now. Can't you see it?

Hypnotizing Maria was a fantastic book because it helped me realize that the accepting and disregard of suggestions is something within my own scope of power. You can choose what suggestions you accept and disregard, and you can change your reality based on those perceptions of it. I could've chosen to accept the suggestion that Pride and Prejudice was entertaining, I really could've, but I didn't want to. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have made a 50 in English last six weeks, and maybe I wouldn't be as hard pressed to pass that godforsaken class. Maybe I wouldn't be here on this blog post bitching about how my life's kinda going downwards. Maybe my girlfriend wouldn't have broken up with me. Maybe.

I'll avoid that topic, I'm still in shock, so I haven't broken down and felt anything. Maybe when I do I'll write another blog post, but in the meantime, the stress of these past few weeks really got to me this morning, making me lag behind in a dance class that seemed to be missing a whistle and army helmets. I had the usual "end of the grading period" frenzy where I had to present at least 5 final grades (one to be presented tomorrow). The whole thing with Pride and Prejudice in English went on for the entire grading period, so that shit was unavoidable, and it's made me dread the entire class (at the very least, more than I already did). What's funny is I'm in English class right now as we watch the Pride and Prejudice movie, complete with worksheet on a comparison between the book and movie versions of the character.

All I can think is "why?" At least pick a less boring movie!

The amount of shade thrown in this movie/book is the only reason to check it out. I highly suggest the movie.

I could go on and on about Pride and Prejudice. This blog post is more interesting than that book, but you may disagree. My sister enjoys that kind of thing, exploring the idea of real life and it's ordinaryness. Switched At Birth is one of her favorite shows, but I can't see the appeal. All that it is is real life drama with one simple question: what now? Whatever the hell you want, that's what's now. Thankfully, I managed to get my sister into Person of Interest, where the problem is the urge to kill, and how it can be predicted through very real means, and what should be considered when using these means. In short, Person Of Interest provides worthwhile questions about society, which is important, considering nowadays it seems like society could collapse at any time.

Well, the Pride and Prejudice movie is something. Maybe that's because someone actually made it with the idea in mind that someone would have to sit through it.

Wow, I care about the whole thing about as much as Mr. Darcy does.

So....if this is how easy it is to get a girl, I'll gladly move out after I graduate.

This is almost as good a love story as Root and Shaw.

This is probably the wrong image to depict their relationship.

That, or the right one.

I should conclude this blog post before this all ends up becoming Pride and Prejudice commentary. I'll assume unless you also dislike Pride and Prejudice, it'll be too snarky for you to take in.

Pride and Prejudice is just another example of why I think screenwriting is a much more interesting profession than just writing (I'll hear no end of this from my mother), because a book can go as far as it likes in the life of the main character(s), but a movie can only go so far before the audience loses interest. They have to keep the story fresh and exciting, no time for a week in bed, the movie skips to right afterwards. The book shows you a main character in a scene, the movie shows you the best angle to view it in. Fantastic books are all over the place, but fantastic movies are rare as life.

If Leo had been in this movie, he probably still would've won an Oscar.

All around us is fantastic art, art that mimics the hypotheticals of life and what we must do compared with who we are. All around us, no matter how terrible it is, we have to try to take it in and understand it.

All around us, AISD will still censor it for no reason.

As Always, I Have No Idea What To Title This. Good Luck Trying To Reference This.

So I've neglected to make a post on New Years like I planned, and am instead making it on the last day of my break, which my mother deemed the day to work on some college stuff. Even though I'd like to enjoy the last bit of my unstructured freedom (the lack of structure, I'll admit, has had an effect on my sleep schedule), I'm stuck looking up college stuff with a distinct un-passion. Instead, I'll just write about all this other stuff. Why not? It's not like college was that important anyways.

One thing some people have noticed by now is that I'm not Captain Dirk Yaple on G+ anymore. Ever since sophomore year, I've always clung to it as a title, like some other obsessive pirate we all know and love. Now, however, it feels kinda tedious having to introduce myself like that everywhere, instead of just keeping it as a theatre nickname/reputation that'll always precede me. It feels as if it's something more I'm adding to myself, and on New Years, even though I didn't write this blog post, I did change my G+ name back to it's original Dirk Yaple (keep in mind the picture will remain unchanged until I can shoot a high-def version of it). The "Captain" was just an add-on to who I was, when in reality, I needed to be proud of just who I was, and that's my new years resolution, I guess: to be proud of who I am. Sorry Jack.

Not him, we named the monkey Jack

Continuing with the whole "philosophical self-reflection" motif, I finally read Paper Towns. My mother may or may not have gotten annoyed with me over college stuff and taken away my electronics, leaving me with no entertainment but the stack of books I'd amassed over the week from Christmas. I had a Star Wars book, recently written as a prelude to The Force Awakens (brilliant movie, by the way; I'll fangirl about it some other time, because if I do now, someone's gonna say I spoiled shit for them), but Paper Towns seemed to call out to me, as if it was telling me that it was the book that needed to be read next in my life; I hate books like that, because those books tend to require frequent breaks to self-psychoanalyze like no tomorrow.

The one thing that stood out to me during Q's adventure with Margo in the night was her anti-college speech, where she mentions how our lives have devolved to the point where all we live for is in the future, and nobody really lives to appreciate the moments we have to do awesome things. I really loved Margo's character on a personal level, because she always seemed to be one to seize the moment and have adventures, a person I've wanted to be, but my anxiety, personified by Q, always held me back. I think even though I'm a really chill person and don't have much of a desire for revenge, romance (well, I have a girlfriend now, so I'm kinda out of the game of love), or real estate, there still was a passion inside me that wanted to be unleashed but was capped by the anxiety of not wanting to be disliked by anyone. I'm the kind of person always cracking jokes, like Leo Valdez in Percy Jackson, because I never really had a good set of friends, and people will keep you around if you're funny. People always laughed at my humor, but nobody ever appreciated me for it. Props to my new friend group I found this year, the right kind of friend group, and it sucks because I won't be able to chill with them after this year, because after 3 years of high school, I finally actually have real friends.

Back to college, I still don't have any kind of inborn passion for it, because for every story about how college made someone's life great, there are 5 stories that say they did just fine without even high school or that college screwed them over in life. No matter how many assemblies school calls where they tell us all about how college is awesome, it always seems like it's more of a detriment than a benefit to do it right after high school, when my personality is barely established and my finances far from capable (which is why I say gap year all the way). Re-watching Tim Minchin's graduation speech helped me relax this morning and let stress subside. The idea that it's all luck and that I shouldn't rush helps the anxious feeling of "you're a failure" that you seem to get whenever you tell someone you're not really interested in college. It's amazing how much it's advertised that your success in society is dependent upon whether or not you go to college, even if you can't afford college. At the very least, it'd help if schools were subsidized by the government, meaning admissions prices (and even the cost to apply) would drop and broke teenagers (like myself) could actually go to college without fear or worry.

A half-decent politician for once and he probably won't even make it into the primary. If the democrats won't take him, then he'll probably run as an independent, stealing enough votes from the democratic party so that they can't get the majority and making it so that Ben Carson wins the presidential election. A creationist brain surgeon is exactly who we need running America.

Thank god I can vote this year, but I'll start making a sign just in case.

I wish you all good luck for your spring semesters, if you are in school. If not, I still wish you luck. 2016 will be great for all of us, I just feel it.

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.