I'll see you when we're both not so emotional

I said I wasn't going to do this, but the thing is, I can't not.

It's my last night of being in high school. We went for burgers for dinner, and while the rest of my family was still finishing off their milkshakes, I left to wander around the shopping center. Sometimes I need to be alone. The restaurant was playing the OJ Simpson car chase, and it was making me sad, how confused and convoluted the world can be, so I went for a walk. I climbed on the columns outside the camera shop and sat there, looking out, until a policeman came and told me I had to get down. It was a liability thing, he explained. They didn't want to get in trouble if I fell and hurt myself.

I always like to climb on things, to be high up, and I'm always moving fast so I often scrape myself in the process. Today alone, I gave myself a paper cut and got a bright red gash on the back of my thigh from when my sister threw our cat on me. I dabbed at it with water until the napkin was stained more red than my skin.

It's my last night of being in high school, and I said I wasn't going to do this, but I couldn't not. I was sitting on the ledge and I was looking out at the past four years right in front of me. There was the pizza place we went to at my friend's birthday party in freshman year. There's the Walmart we stopped at this New Year's Eve to buy firecrackers, only to find they didn't have any. There's the movie theater where I saw Catching Fire, and the Grand Budapest Hotel, and Ponyo, so long ago. There's my family's favorite Indian restaurant. There's the Tigermart of my friends' legends -- it's not a Tigermart anymore, though. There's the streets that lead to school, and there's the ones that lead home.

I'm home now and reading something my friend wrote about this very feeling -- the 'being on the precipice of leaving everything behind' feeling. Sometimes I get stupid but when I think about a different life my throat hurts. My eyes are wet. Don't look at me. High school is over and that's cool. High school is over and I want to die. I'll settle for something in between.

I'm excited for college, don't get me wrong, but right now, tonight, I'm in mourning. This is my valediction to high school -- to skipping class to go to H-E-B and Jamba Juice, to early morning carpool blasting rap music, to our lunchtime group in that little corner by the library. To crying in the bathroom about the future, to class periods spent taking selfies and online shopping, to those times we'd stay after track practice just to talk and stretch. To making faces at people in the hallways, to sneaking into hotel pools just to dip my feet in, to misunderstandings that make your blood boil and make you slam doors. To all those late nights writing papers and working on projects, late start breakfasts, karaoke nights, picnics in the park, football games, flashcards, acquaintances who became friends, funny teacher stories, field trips planting trees, signing yearbooks, riding the school bus, camping in backyards, lab partners, college applications, driving home late at night with the car quiet except for the music, Coffeehouse, everything everything everything. Goodbye to all of it.

Maybe this would have been easier if I had been asleep, she said.

Maybe.

Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much.

 But maybe then it wouldn't hurt so good, either.

all those wasted hours we used to know

I wrote this a few weeks ago for an English assignment. It was based off this post of mine from a few years ago, because if I'm not annoyingly self-referential all the time on here then who even am I?

So my high school experience is about 99% complete and suffice it to say after a lifetime of being submerged in pop culture surrounding this mythical time in a young person’s life, it has completely failed me.

My high school experience was not a classic coming-of-age film or like any teen book I ever read, nor was it anything an article in Seventeen could possibly have prepared me for. My high school experience was more like a low-budget comedy sitcom that was canceled after the first season. It has a pretty good cast, but the plot is, quite frankly, terrible. I mean, nothing ever happens. There are way too many shots of the main character just lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, while some kind of soft, sad indie music plays in the background.

Most of the conflict and action is internal and it doesn’t really translate to the screen well. The show is marked by awkward dialogue and a lack of a real storyline. The conversations can be uncomfortable, the main character can be frustrating. Sometimes you wonder whether she is capable of empathy or any emotion at all, and then the next moment you realize the reason you hate her so much is because she is the manifestation of all your own flaws, staring back at you, and then you’re quietly sobbing in front of your television. The characters are all infuriating, and they all let you down, and that’s how you know it’s true to life.

It is pretty funny, sometimes, in a bitterly ironic way. There is a lot of subtle humor and inside jokes most people probably wouldn’t get the first time around. I appreciate that. Sometimes, though, it was just laughably bad. There’s a lot of falling and people injuring themselves, which somehow doesn’t stop being funny after four years.

There are a few subplots that are actually more interesting than the main one. The lovably idiosyncratic minor characters provide much entertainment amid a main plot rather devoid of action.

The soundtrack is pretty solid, too, probably one of the most redeemable parts of the show. There’s a wide variety of music, but it works. It’s paired with skilled cinematography and the result is a number of really sublime scenes where nothing happens but you still feel it’s somehow contributing to the narrative.

Overall, I’m not really sad this show is over. It had its moments, to be sure, but all the actors are moving onto better things. If for some reason you feel like reminiscing about your own days as a sarcastic teenager with no clue about anything in the world, then, sure, I recommend it. It could have been a lot worse. Three out of five stars. 30

home by now

I feel really weird, maybe because it's Friday and I've spent all afternoon at home doing nothing except for ordering a pizza and feeling rottingly nostalgic. It feels kind of like sophomore year all over again right now but weird in that strange irreversible things have happened since then so it will never really be the same. 

When I was younger, in middle school, I used to read the news online for fun in class. I used to do all my homework and do it well. I used to have books checked out from the library at all times. I would write frequently -- poems, personal anecdotes, the beginnings of novels, blog posts -- just for fun. I used to take pictures everywhere, of everything, and spend time getting the composition right, making sure the aperture and the ISO all lined up. I played soccer and had guitar lessons and went to youth group every Sunday. I spent a lot more time with my family, and a lot more time by myself. 

And somewhere along the way from then to now, I stopped doing all those things. My soccer team fell apart and I replaced it with track and cross country. I stopped playing guitar after my finger got hurt in November. Books and photography and magazines I replaced with Tumblr and blogs and hanging out with friends.

The only thing I didn't really stop doing was writing; if anything, my journals became more regular. Of this, I am glad. I am so, so thankful I have this way of documenting my life.

I don't want to make it sound like I want to go back to when I was younger, because I don't. It's just become increasingly clear to me that although I am fundamentally the same person I was sophomore year, I'm in a different place. I have more experiences, so to speak, and although I'm still rather hopelessly naive when it comes to, well, pretty much everything, I'm ever so slightly less so. Which is, I think, is probably a normal side-effect of growing up. More than that, I became less lonely, more sure of myself. I don't hate myself the way I did when I was thirteen. I don't hate myself at all. 

It's kind of like, forgive me my cheesy comparisons, climbing a mountain. Of life? And I'm not at the top and if the top is true enlightenment then maybe I'll never get there, but I've made some progress, and now I'm at a vantage point where I can see where I started and see how far I've come and how things have changed since then. Maybe not all the changes are good, and maybe I've tripped once or five times on my way up, but there's perspective. And there's good company, and good food, and hell, I'm going to be okay, I'm always going to be okay. 

Sometimes I feel like I lost a part of myself when I stopped doing all those things that defined me. I know part of growing up -- being alive -- is shedding skin and shedding chains, even if it's kinda sad. Sometimes, maybe you do lose parts of yourself in the thick of it all. But you gain things, you lose things, the ebb and flow. It'll come back, the parts you want to. Not all of it should. 

I want to start reading more and writing more, seriously. I also want to keep running and keep hanging out with my crazy friends and sing pop songs with my sister in the kitchen while I still can. I want to not be sad about the things I've lost or am losing, but just. Go with it. Just love. 

I didn't mean for this to get so cheesy and reflective but God help me if I ever write something that isn't. God help me if I ever manage to write a post without asphyxiating it with nostalgia and "weirdness" and some saccharine sentiment about growing up. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, etc. I'm not.