holla

Wow!
So, I let this thing go for a little while, and I come back to a spike in pageviews!
Well, not really that much of a spike, but it's a big number to me.
Anyway, I guess I should keep this up!
Things still fucking suck, just so you know. The financial situation has taken a nosedive. My mom is working two jobs again, and I'm trying to get another job, but nobody is calling me back. Trust me, I've been applying. I hit entire strip malls at a time. To no avail.
My summer job is starting up soon though, and I'm hoping to make as much as I can over the summer to cover whatever dumbass college fees I know my mom isn't going to pay.
It's so much easier for her to say no to me than it is for her to say no to any of my other siblings. She bails my brother out willy nilly, but I'm despicable for needing a new graphing calculator.
Sorry that this one is so half-assed. It's, like, four in the morning and I haven't slept. : /
Peace out.

Fuck Everything

  Thanksgiving was so bad this year. Let's just leave it at that. Good night.

Bad Habits

   Sometimes I feel like a living breathing train wreck, but sometimes I feel like I'm just a giant poser. I supposedly have all these problems with my brain, but then I see so many other people struggling a lot more with their shit, and it makes me feel terrible. I feel like I'm making excuses for being a bad person.
   Today I made myself a bag of popcorn and was doing just fine. But then my brother came bumbling in and just dug his hand into the bag, touched every piece, and took a fistful. I mean, that's his thing, he acts obnoxious but it's not like his goal is to honestly bother people. He just wants to annoy you a little. Trademark brother personality. No, trademark sibling personality. But it really did bother me. I couldn't eat any more popcorn. I just put it in the fridge when I was sure he was done with it.
   My compulsions have always been weird. They're sporadic, and they are triggered by weird things. Some people I'm completely fine around, but others can unintentionally drive me nuts in less than a minute. And it makes me feel awful because some of these things that I have to do to counter whatever somebody else just did, they aren't very flattering or polite or discreet. Another thing, they change. It seems like they take shifts. One day I can't touch doors, another I have to tap the sink faucet about forty times. The one thing that's been consistent though, is that whenever my AP Euro teacher passes around something for us to look at (he travels a lot so he enjoys sharing his souvenirs), I can not touch it. Under absolutely no circumstance can I touch it ever. It doesn't matter what it is or where it came from, I just can't do it.
   Help.
   I seriously cannot wait until I can take care of myself, and then I can go and get cat scans and be psychologically analysed to my heart's content.

Hey

   Everybody is ugly when they are faced with the glaring rays of the sun. That's something I always try to keep in mind because really, how easy is it to be nice when something terrible might've just happened to you? Of course there are always those people who are just miserable all the time, but I'm not in this to hurt anybody's feelings.
   Just a little blurb that's been bothering me.

"I Am the Girl You Know..."

   I went running for the first time in forever, the day after our school's esteemed Fitness Friday gym class, and my thighs are killing me. It feels good though. I'll take the pain in my muscles that screams "Improvement!" over making myself throw up every five seconds. It seems as though my subconscious revolves around finding ways to inflict the most hurt on my body that it possibly can at all times. This method is inarguably the healthiest. Bulimia was awful and disgusting and although the recovery process is almost pretty much over and that is a huge relief, I can't help but feel a little panicked. My self-destructive tendencies have seemed to get worse over the years... I've consistently kicked one bad habit for another since I was thirteen.
   Ugh, it's a little embarrassing to admit these things, but I'm a firm believer in talking it out, and this blog is more or less supposed to help me by voicing my frustrations. Most of my frustrations stem from my poor decision-making skills.
   Ok, with that little introduction out of the way, I'm going to list the few pastimes I've successfully carried out and pushed aside over the past four years without getting caught.
   It all started in middle school when I would huff pretty much anything I could get my hands on. I was in seventh grade at the time. I cringe every time I admit that. Not only does that habit make me look like a total dumbass, it made me act like a total dumbass. Yeah, yeah, the highs only last fifteen seconds at most, but the chemicals eat away at your brain and turn you into a living, breathing dumbass. I'm just banking on the fact that it only lasted a little less than a year, and I was so young that maybe my brain cells recuperated perfectly and now I'm totally fine.
   After huffing came alcohol. That lasted from eighth to tenth grade. It was more sporadic than the huffing, but it got out of control extremely fast. It went from stealing a can of light beer from the surplus in the fridge that would appear from time to time, to taking an entire bottle of 70-proof liquor and downing it in less than half an hour. The last drink I ever took was enough to put me out and mercilessly let me wake up in a puddle of my own vomit. Luckily, I didn't piss or shit myself, but I spewed all over my bed and headboard. I don't get hangovers, I just sleep a little more. But Jesus Christ, that one night I drank enough to keep me drunk for the next two days. It went way too far, and that was enough for me to just stop drinking altogether. I am so relieved that I stopped when I did though, because I started experiencing some of the withdrawal symptoms when I gave it up cold turkey. They weren't that severe, and honestly it was probably just some sort of placebo effect, but it scared me a little bit. I was sixteen and nursing an alcohol addiction. Holy shit. That actually still terrifies me. What if later on in my life I take it up again? I just really don't want to end up like so many of my family members. I don't want to be a failure.
   The bulimia and the drinking overlapped a bit. It was just a bad time for me. But the disorder really didn't get worse until later on. The funny thing is, my family actually did catch me with it, but they only threatened me and stuff like that. They didn't really do anything about it. So it carried on until maybe last month. I've been pretty solid with recovery since the summer, but this school year has seen a couple week-long relapses, but now it's just like I have no desire to do it whatsoever. Which is amazing and makes me really happy to think about.
   Anyway, I've started exercising vigorously again because I finally found a way to listen to music on my runs since my phone broke. I have this really old ipod, and the charger was broken, so I gave my mom some cash and asked her to get a new one for me and she did! Now I can listen to all of my emo tenth-grade jams and power through my neighborhood jog. I ran five miles today, and "Miss World" by Hole came on. I love that song. It has a weird meaning to me. The one line she sings goes, "I am the girl you know, can't look you in the eye," and it seems that it's about this chick that's super hot and super shy and super cool, but whenever I hate someone so passionately, I can't look them in the eye. I don't talk a lot either. Am I calling myself super hot and super cool though? Hey, that's miss Courtney Love-Cobain doing that, there. But joking aside, maybe she's talking about being too good for these people around her who think that they have the right to judge. I like that a lot. I'm glad that I made that connection. Even if it doesn't make a lot of sense to other people, it makes me feel a little bit better about everything. It's like I'm not going it alone, you know?

The Requested Burden

   I don't have a lot of pet peeves. Granted, if I'm annoyed, I'm annoyed and there's nothing to be done about that. But there aren't very many specific behaviors that can really ruin my mood. I'm sure that on this blog I come across as this belligerent and powerless force of aggression, attempting to break through to the aging society that threatens to drown my people with their tightening authority. That is on purpose. I portray myself as such on purpose. This is a blog about teenage angst; what else did you expect? Don't get me wrong, the subjects that I address are ones that I care about, but real talk here, I'm usually pretty calm and probably seem a little lethargic at times. My brain is always going a mile a minute, believe me, but it isn't as though I'm constantly fighting the urge to leap up onto my desk and preach the pleas of the misunderstood masses. I'd rather just express myself through a platform where it is your choice as people to decide whether to listen or to peacefully disregard me. I really don't have a problem with being ignored. Yeah, attention is awesome, but not when I'm just doing me, trying to get through every day without keeling over and dying of boredom. I like to perform, and I like to write, and as long as somebody is watching or reading, I'm totally fine.
   Anyway, back to the matter at hand: pet peeves. I most likely would not be able to name at least five of these. We've established that. But I was thinking in the hallway while heading to the library that there is one thing that bothers me far beyond the point of politely forced apathy, and that is the use of frivolous, unimportant questions so often resorted to to start a conversation. There are different degrees of this frustration; I actually love those conversation-starter flash cards that people bring to parties and stuff. They are delightfully awkward. No, my frustrations are directed towards the mundane inquiries asked persistently by people who should by now realize I don't enjoy answering them.
   That sounds a little shitty, I know. But it bothers me so much and I've been nice about it for at least the past twelve years.
   Yes, readers, the infamous, "How was your day?" Asked by my mother, of course.
   As someone dealing with clinical depression, I figuratively have to slap myself around eight times to keep from saying, "I hate everything that I am forced to do. How the fuck do you think my day was?" Obviously, this has never been used as an actual response, but it's getting harder and harder to avoid it.
   I am sick. I am very, very, excruciatingly sick as a result of reckless parents. My father used to bring me with him to bars and smoked around me and let his brothers and friends smoke around me as well. This pretty much resulted in my lungs being utterly destroyed. It's not so huge a problem now. I get around. But it's enough to hospitalize me  for about a week once every two years. This year, I need to be hospitalized again. It's going to turn into something ugly and devastating, but of course, it is going to be pushed off until next year because I apparently "have a problem with being one of four." My mom basically just told me to get better because we don't have any medical until January first, in spite of the fact that she's had a doctor's appointment a week for the past month-and-a-half. That is not an exaggeration, I promise you.
   She knows about my excessive lung issues and my completely fucked to shit brain chemistry, and she wants to know how my day went. This is coming from the woman who explicitly declares that my problems are nothing compared to hers, and also that I'm just a greedy little shit that always needs attention, and the hypocrite needs to know what I learned in class today. The hypocrisy dripping from those words disgusts me. See, despite how much of a burden I tend to be (you know, just the fourth fucking child that she decided to have), she is so desperate for my approval that she needs to pretend to care just a little bit, and then she knows I'm absolutely sold, and my opinion of her is ranking higher than that of Queen Elizabeth I and Madame Curie, right where it's supposed to be. I am appalled at this half-assed attempt at an interest in my life.
   I told her the other day that when I have children, I am always going to help them with their homework and she just laughed at me and said, "Good luck with that." And I just looked at her and said, "I'll make it work." I know that by the time my kids are in eighth grade, they'll probably be learning calculus and fucking physics, but I will learn it with them and call whomever I need to call to ensure their success. To this, she gave the most bullshit answer I have ever heard pass anyone's lips in my entire life. She shrugged and told me, "I never helped you kids with your homework." I fucking shit. I had to leave the room. Her point was one of those and-look-where-you-are-now points, and it made no sense whatsoever. No sense. My sister is a doctor now, yes, but my two brothers are fucking college dropouts that still live at home, and I am a fucking basket case. How the fuck can you use that as an example of your shining exhibition of parenting. She literally does not care what we do at all. When I was sixteen, I walked around the house drunk for two days straight, just blatantly drunk, and she ignored the whole thing. (I've been sober ever since, I promise, haha... That experience was unpleasant to say the least.) She does not address any problems with me, and she never cares where I am as long as I don't miss a major family event that has something to do with her.
   Ugh, I'm sorry. This whole blog has just been bitching about my mother for a couple posts now, but I'm seething with rage at the moment, so... this is probably the last one for now that's about her, though. I'm just so upset with everything. As always. But still.

Nature vs. Nurture

   It was my brother's twenty-third birthday last week, and since everybody had work and such that night, we celebrated yesterday (Sunday). For some strange reason he has this fascination with my hair, and he'll pull on it and/or just touch it. So I was sitting next to him at the dinner table and he put his arm around me. Going to be honest here, that actually made me really happy. We used to be super close and then something happened and we grew apart, but now we're finally getting to that super closeness again. But then he put his hand on the top of my head and just started scratching it for a solid thirty seconds. We're weird with our expressions of affection.

   I was thinking about this, and I came across the realization that my brothers can toss me around like a hot potato, but as soon as my mother reaches out to fix my collar or rub my back or something, I freak out. It's a squirmy uncomfortable feeling whenever she tries to touch me. I'd always been like that for as long as I can remember, until I really sat down and thought about it. I used to climb all over my mother when I was a small child. Then I have this memory where I guess I made her mad or something, and she slapped me. Ever since then I don't have any recollection of cuddling with her or holding her hand. I was about five or six years old.

   That really clarified things for me. It takes a lot to break that trust in me, but that one instant was probably the biggest disappointment I've ever had in any of my family members. I thought she was perfect, and that she was capable of ever hurting me kind of ruined my image of mothers. I talk to her a lot, and if you were to ask her, she'd most likely tell you that we have an excellent relationship, but just because I talk to her a lot doesn't mean that I ever tell her anything about myself. As a result, she has no idea of who I am as a person. Every time I try to ask her for some kind of help, she becomes angry and defensive and gives the impression that she's aiming to hurt my feelings. 

   I'll never understand that. I never want to hurt anybody's feelings. The only negative reaction you could provoke from me is one that stems from my strong desire to be left alone. In that case, I'll be mean, but if I care about you, I know how to apologize. In all of my seventeen years as her daughter, I have never heard that woman tell me she was sorry for anything. I'm just so sick of this place. Every time she sees me upset over something she immediately leaps to the offensive and makes a big deal out of trying to get me to understand that whatever happened wasn't her fault. I've recently started responding with, "Did I say I blamed you for this? I'm allowed to be upset."

   It kills me having to be around her, because she is one of the most two-faced people I have ever met. If I'm sad then she transforms into the world's most loving mother, but as soon as I tell her why, I transform into the world's shittiest daughter. I don't know what to do. I just really don't want to be here anymore.