another february, survived

February is always a hard month. That's why it's so short, I believe; the world couldn't handle the normal amount of days. But while I did have my fair share of sad, stressful days, looking back, it was actually a pretty good month. And hey, you gotta take the crookeds with the straights.

This morning it was my friend's birthday, and a late start, so we went to IHOP. It's basically a tradition now. 

And, as if to say it's all going to be okay, I saw a rainbow at track today. It was a tiny little one, hiding in between the clouds, but it was there nonetheless.

We've made it through another February, another winter.

I'm sorry this isn't poetic -- not for your sake as much as mine. But my life isn't a poem; at least, not one I've ever read, and not one I've had the patience to write yet. My days of late are filled -- I started to say what with, but realized I could better leave it like that -- and there are a lot of things I could say but at the same time, can't.

My fingertips are brimming with stories but I don't always have the time for more than just a cursory list in a journal to get everything out of my mind. I wish, more often than not, that I could just write it all up in one long letter to someone who'd care.

Maybe, someday, I'll just write it all into a novel.  

Maybe someday, in between everything else, I'll find the right words and maybe, more importantly, some courage alongside them. 

Until then.

a monday hello

photo creds to Claudia

Hey. I'm Kendall. I like to listen to musical soundtracks while I avoid my lengthy statistics homework.

I like to spend my weekends at track meets and volunteering and at friends' birthday parties out in the woods and catching up on Downton Abbey.

I like wearing dresses sometimes and sweatshirts sometimes.

My favorite colors are purple and green and teal and, shucks, I really like light yellow, too. Also coral.

I like chocolate and I actually like zucchini now but obviously I like chocolate more.

I hate it when I think of clever things to say when it's too late. But it happens all the time. It's just one of the pitfalls of being so clever.

I like listening to country music on the way home from school and watching the sunset.

I like my art class a lot -- especially when my teacher says things like, "Why can't you be more like Kendall?"

I really, really like people and I want to be friends with everyone. I mean it, even if I don't always act like it.

Maybe I'm a strange intersection of a person. I think we're all, a little bit.

an almost-spring winter's day

We didn't have school on Monday, so my friends came over and we walked to the track to fly kites and take pictures. It was a nice break and made me optimistic that spring is coming.

11 signs your life is falling apart

by an expert in the subject

1. You pass by a dog peeing and the mere sight of it lifting up its leg sends you into fits of audible giggles.
2. You still can't drive. Even underclassmen feel sorry for you.
3. Every time someone talks about college you stick your fingers in your ears and start humming.
4. It takes you the equivalent of about three of The Strokes' albums to finish your (3 problem) Statistics homework that you had the whole three day weekend to do.
5. You have a (private) prom dress board on Pinterest even though you know you aren't going to get asked.
6. You say, "forget this, I'll be in Paris in four months" upwards of ten times a day.
7. The number of drafts on your dashboard grows exponentially while you continue to post an average of once every nine days.
8. One look at Gradespeed makes you want quit high school and go into a convent full time. 
9. You make a playlist on Spotify that includes Arctic Monkeys and Selena Gomez. And you really don't even care anymore.
10. You're not only behind on your homework; you're behind on your TV shows as well. You haven't watched the past two episodes of Downton Abbey, or Parks and Rec, and, oh yeah, there's still that unwatched Doctor Who Christmas special burning a hole on the DVR.
11. You use hashtags outside of Twitter so frequently, sometimes you even think in hashtags. 
12. And the bonus twelfth tip-off...you make lists like this to avoid doing anything else. #winning (NO! STOP THAT.)

"everything happens so much"

Horse_ebooks is, like, the Socrates of our generation, am I right?

Weeell, I haven't talked about my life on here in a while so I guess I'll just update you on some of the least boring things that have happened.

I got a new phone! It's quite a novelty to me, having had the same flip phone since the start of 8th grade. My new phone is a shiny slidey one with a full keyboard and unlimited texting. Now I don't have to worry about going over my limit of 200 per month which only happened once in all eternity. I still can't figure out how to get pictures from it onto the computer, though, and it makes me sad...

Track has proven to be a sufficient time-sucker. It's pretty fun most of the time, except like every other day when the weather decides to go all psycho us. "It's okay, in a few months, we'll miss this." "Yeah, in a few months, I'll look back and think, wow, I miss that one day I was wearing shorts and it almost snowed." Okay, it hasn't come anywhere close to snowing, but it definitely rained when it was like 50 degrees which, let's be real, is basically the same thing. Also, 800s are not fun but they aren't that bad when you 'accidentally' run the first one at a slower pace than your 2 mile, making negative splits much easier than usual. ...Does that even make sense to people who don't run? It wouldn't have made any sense to me a year ago.

Also, I have been having this pain in my left lower calf so my mom decided to make me go to the physical therapist's about it today. It's not right; I'm not even intense enough to have to go to a physical therapist. I've always thought that's for really hardcore people. It's kind of sad. Anyway, apparently I have some problems with my hip or something that's affecting my foot/leg/something. I don't really know all the details. Clearly. I mean, it's nothing major or anything. Just some minor annoyances that I have to watch out for. It only hurts while/after I run but it doesn't really inhibit me; it just kind of...hurts after. I'd just do anything to make the pain go away...except stop running. That's not an option.

Uh, Valentine's Day happened. I'm not one of those people who's super into it, but nor am I one of those who claims it's just a stupid commercialization Hallmark holiday. I like it perfectly fine because it means lots of sweets and nice cards from friends & family and Valentunes a.k.a. theatre people interrupting APUSH class to sing "Single Ladies" to our teacher. It was also a late start so we went to IHOP and I ate red velvet pancakes for breakfast and all was well. <3

I took a practice SAT on Saturday morning because I'm taking the real thing next month. I wasn't terribly happy with my score, especially after hearing someone lament their score of 2240, but then I saw someone else who got a good 200 points lower than me being lauded for having a really good score, so who really knows? Sometimes I forget that, going to my school, I kind of exist in this bubble of over-achieving, and it makes me feel really dumb in comparison sometimes. But I'll just study between now and then and hope for the best. I can always take it again.

Yesterday was another early morning as I volunteered distributing food at the Austin Marathon. I like volunteering at races because it's like all the fun without actually having to run. And I get volunteer hours. Win-win. My hands were numb with cold after twenty minutes but it was fun and I got a free T-shirt. I always sign up for the events with free T-shirts, because, duh, why not?

Let's see...Lent has also started. I gave up Tumblr for Lent. As of yesterday. It's...pretty hard, not gonna lie,  but I hope it will eliminate distractions and encourage to me to concentrate on my studies/real life more. That's the idea, anyway.

It was so nice today -- open windows nice. Kite-flying barefoot weather (pictures later).The best kind of weather. Spring is coming, and I'm more than pleased at the prospect. ♥

mt. bonnell

Today my dad and I went up to this point called Mount Bonnell to get some air. I finished off a roll of film I'd been meaning to get off my hands for a while and promptly got it developed this evening (as you can see). The weather was nice (shorts and jacket in February, hollah) and the view was wonderful. I really love this place.

a reminder to myself

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ― Mary Oliver

This week was hard. I was stressed, I was sad, I was hormonal. I cried yesterday, sobbing all the way home, from the first gas station to Chipotle to the last stop sign before our house. Crying for selfish reasons is the most pure, fulfilling kind of crying. It's really like emptying all your sadness. You fall apart, quiet as possible, in the backseat, and then you spend the rest of the night piecing yourself back together. It isn't all that hard, after you've finished crying. You eat something, take a long hot shower, and listen to something calming. You write if you're not feeling too emotional and then you go to sleep. A new day comes. 

A new day in which to find new ways to fall apart. It'll be okay until lunch when you remember what Alaska Young said: "What you must understand about me is that I'm a deeply unhappy person." For some inexplicable reason, this line lodges itself into your mind and you'll repeat it over and over again until you start to believe it applies to you. Even though it doesn't. And in English class when you're supposed to be working, you'll write a long confessional stream of consciousness which you'll reread later when you get home and realize makes you sound very depressed. Even though you're not.

Yes, this was a week of failed physics tests, a pain in my calf that won't go away, saying things I shouldn't have said and having to deal with the consequences. Of feeling dumb, feeling like a bad person, feeling terribly, terribly alone. It, largely, sucked. But guess what? I've already made a list of all the good things that came out of this week and it's surprisingly long. And even though the good things don't necessarily cancel out the bad things, guess what else? It's Friday. It's over. It doesn't matter anymore.

Things are looking up and I guess I'm pretty happy, or at least happier, but right now I'm just going to go to bed. I survived this week, and now I'm going to sleep for 400 hours to make up for it. Ciao.

***

Sundays I listen to Coldplay and try to fit the right words into my mouth but they keep spitting themselves out cause they don't quite taste right and I'm left thinking it's all my fault for burning my tongue on my Indian leftovers earlier today, for setting the microwave timer for ten extra seconds because I like things better when they're hot even if it makes everything taste a little off for the rest of the day, even if it makes things harder to swallow for the rest of the week.

It's not just food. I think I was supposed to be born in the heart of an underwater volcano, meant to live among the ashes of the only things as self-destructive as humans. I don't get into the shower until I see the steam rise up out of the top, and I wear sunburns and tan lines proudly like they're not ominous heralds of skin cancer forty years down the road. At a time of year when my hands are constantly cold, I am missing the freckles that come with the sun like nothing else. I am missing the light on the balcony in Barcelona, and that time I squeezed myself up and held onto the railing til my heart was beating fast cause it was so high up, and how I would always climb up to the highest floor possible, to prove to myself I could.

I am also thinking of the south of France and of Colorado mountains for the first time, outside an airport's walls, since I was three. I am thinking, almost more fondly than of foreign lands, of navigating my own home from the driver's side and of the green canopies that lead to my friend's house and of jumping into the crystal cool water after running and those first few seconds underwater that take your breath away momentarily. I am thinking of the million infinities before then and how they will be filled and how sometimes you want something to come but just as badly as you want something else not to end before and, well, you can't have both.

I am thinking of today.

Sundays I listen to The Beach Boys and inspect my hair for split ends. I count back five months since I last had a haircut, but when I catch a glance of my reflection in the car door, it doesn't look like it's grown at all. Maybe a centimeter or two. Grow faster, I wish I could tell it, which is funny because I'm so used to telling everything else to slow down.

Sundays I listen to Led Zeppelin and to my sister asking me a question about math, a question whose answer I do not know. I listen to the sound of my own voice -- "ow" -- react to the pain in my joints and muscles and wish it away. There are pains I can shoulder but if I cannot run, so help me God...

Sundays I read back over the words I have taken hours to write, and wonder what representation of my life they offer. I think about all the things I wrote in my journal this past week, two weeks; more stripped down and list-like, are they more accurate? "Today was a good day, all things considered." I've written about late start mornings and vague unspecified (outside of my mind) "you"s I can't stop thinking about and how dysfunctional our statistics class is, but none of it's very eloquent and when I sit down to the computer all that comes out are older memories, anyway, tumbling from my fingers like ice cubes from a pitcher of lemonade on one of those hot summer days I'm talking about. I only miss some of them, and not the ones that are conjured up when I think of lemonade.

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

 Blogging is hard because I rarely know what to say but I do know I'm done with this thing, whatever it may be. I think I'll go watch the Super Bowl now, and eat some guacamole.