new years

January 1st is a completely arbitrary date that we chose to celebrate because apparently this time of year is when the circle starts over again. I never used to follow through with resolutions and now I don't make them. I don't make them because looking back on this year there's no way I could have seen some of the changes that came my way. With those changes I have a harder time adhering to a previously written set of goals, and I hate failure. It's easier to just say I'm always changing, always growing, and sometimes it takes me longer to reach the destination than at other times. I prefer to not lock my goals into a 12 month box.

Or I'm just lazy and afraid of commitment. I haven't decided yet.

friggin hormones

I hate myself for wanting to be in a relationship. I'm of a split mind truth be told. Like a 80%-20% split. Maybe 90%-10% honestly, but like with wind chill in temperature so it seems colder than it is. It seems like I'm more inner turmoily than I am.

Logical 90% Kate says: 1)the lack of maturity in guys my age is actually astonishing. 2)just being friends with people can have literally all the benefits of dating besides excessive face-sucking and possible young heartbreak. 3)I would rather focus energy on school and other things. 4)brain development is not done until you're like 23 and before then I feel like stuff considered 'love' by young minds is more like infatuation. 5)I can hardly take care of my own emotions, so I don't want to be partially responsible for the well being of someone else's?? 6)just no. 7)I enjoy being my own person. 8)I am genuinely afraid of sharing my feelings with people and I don't want to give other people the power to hold anything against me.

But okay illogical 10% Kate says several things I wouldn't say if I wasn't 99.9% sure no one was ever going to read this. 1)I would love a cute relationship where he holds my hand and sarcastic banters with me and texts me at weird hours of the day with random thoughts. 2)I have never kissed anyone and I am 17 and I don't just want to kiss someone for the sake of kissing someone but I'm curious if it's all it's cracked up to be. 3)I want guys to compliment me on my personality but also on appearance that would be cool. 4)I irrationally feel like I'm less of a person because no one has ever wanted to date me or kiss me or anything. 5)I think I think about sex too much? I don't have a frame of reference but considering I've never even dated anyone I think anything is a lot. I am a child goodness gracious I have no experience in anything involving the other gender why am I so alone. 6)but yeah even though I have no intention of even trying to sleep with anyone before getting married anyway (yep I'm one of those people), in theory I really sort of just want to have sex with someone? Man I hate myself for saying that. I am a virgin in literally every sense of the word, and I've already said literally more than once in this rant so I think I'll stop now.

Idiotic Confused Teenager Adult Child 100% Kate says: I am not going to date until I think it will mean something because at the end of the day, I want someone who I can be my true self around. Someone I can love the flaws of and someone who can love my flaws. Someone I can grow old with after some young romance that makes me feel infinite and beautiful everyday. I don't really care if I'm setting my sights too high. I'm sure it'll work out eventually somehow. Well, hopefully.

silverware

When I was younger it was my job to set the table for dinner, and my brother's job to clear it. We had two sets of silverware all mixed up together in the drawer; one set was smooth and the other set had handles that had like flowers and swirly things etched into them. I liked the smooth ones better because they looked cleaner when I was trying to set the table nicely. I avoided setting the table with the etched ones whenever possible.

When I was angry at a family member I would give them an etched fork or something. I would even feel guilty about it. Like sometimes I would go back and switch out their silverware for the smooth kind and hope they didn't notice. If I didn't have enough clean smooth silverware and had to give someone the etched kind I would get worried that they would think I was mad at them. And the stupid thing is literally nobody cared. Nobody even noticed the difference in silverware. I spent my entire childhood getting back at people with etched silverware that no one else even cared about, and if that doesn't say something about how I understand and deal with conflict then I don't know what to tell you.

it's late

sometimes I catch glimpses of myself in black screens and darkened windows and think I'm pretty. I don't know if I'm right or not but I really want to be right because I'm tired of hating myself and doubting everything I do and I keep telling myself that it would be easier if I were beautiful

miscellaneous

Scenario:
Yesterday was the last day of the semester, and last night I went to a bonfire at a friend's house. We talked and some of us played cards and this one guy brought a guitar. We ended up singing Rivers and Roads by The Head and the Heart, and honestly it got me to thinking about all the things that I miss, and all the things I almost didn't get to be a part of this year. There were several things that crossed and uncrossed in my life this year.

1)Philmont. Rivers and Roads is a song that we sang a lot at Philmont, a Scout ranch in New Mexico that I went backpacking at this past summer for 3 weeks. On that trek I got to meet some amazing people and make some really close friends that I would have never met had I not gone to Philmont. Every time I hear that song it brings back memories of mountains and sore feet and exhausted laughter. Absolutely beautiful memories that make me smile to just think of them.

2)Ballet. I have been in ballet since I was 5 years old. I have devoted years of my life to dance and hours of my time that prevented me from participating in other extracurriculars or hanging out with people outside of school or dance. I have been in recitals every spring and the Nutcracker every December for the majority of my life, and most of my memories can be tied in one way or another to dancing. I love dancing. There's not much to it besides that. Dancing has shaped me into who I am today. It has taught me things about working hard and time management, and it has given me so much joy I can't even explain it in words. No matter where I go in life or what I do, ballet will always be a part of who I am. But I left dance this year. I don't have the right body type for it, and my instructor told me if I didn't lose weight, they couldn't put me in shows, even though I am a perfectly normal weight for my age and height. In ballet I am overweight though, and it cost me the only hobby I had ever given myself over to. I miss dance so much it hurts.

3)Theatre. This year at school I joined theatre, since I enjoy performance and I no longer had class everyday for ballet. I have been in two shows this year and they were both really fun and I got to meet some incredible people. I don't enjoy theatre the way I enjoyed dance, and before the opening shows of both shows I just cried. Going on a stage without my old friends in ballet and without wearing tights with my hair up is a painful experience in ways I can't really explain. It makes me sad in the center of my body. Sort of scoops out the happiness in my chest. I wouldn't have to deal with that if I had found a way to stay in ballet, but I also would have never met some people that I now consider to be some of my best friends. Theatre, as well as the amazing and kind people I have met through the shows, are teaching me to accept myself for who I am in ways that ballet never did, and I will always be grateful for that.

4)International Baccalaureate. I joined the IB program at my school this year, which is like AP in the way that they are advanced classes, but it is more writing based and there are a lot more projects and discussions and the like. There are about 23 juniors in the program at my school, so we have become like a little family. We have gotten really close and we hang out outside of school and help each other study for things. It's a support system I've never had before. It's friends I've never had before. It's been such a stressful semester already, but it has been so much better than school previously because I have people I genuinely care about to share it with. It's been an incredible experience so far.

Conclusion:
Life is going to screw you over, but it'll also feel bad about it and pay you back in some way. I lost ballet, but I gained friends and experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise. There are always moments I wish I could freeze in time because they're so beautiful I don't want to let them go. But if I had the power to remain in a single snapshot of my life forever, I would miss out on so much. It sucks, but it doesn't. And you know? That's okay with me.

these flowers

     these flowers see the way i breathe
     they wilt and burn like tabletops
     curl endlessly off the edge of a knife
     blinking eyes and closing legs
     darkness through the pages between their leaves
     we will yellow like these pages
     wilt like sunrises in the winter
     blood blossoming from the eaves
     falling floating shifting
     clouds like the back of your eyelids
     dying light like the way you used to touch me
     i breathe as these flowers die
perhaps it is for the best

fears

I am not afraid of the dark. I'm not afraid of heights or spiders or snakes or any of those fears that could be labeled as ordinary. Ordinary fears. That's a strange phrase, isn't it? Things that so many people are afraid of that they're often written off as being, I dunno, less serious. Childish. You say you're afraid of the dark and I promise one of the first things anyone will think is 'childish'. And it shouldn't be that way. Why can't we accept each other for our fears?

But I digress. I am not afraid of the dark, but I am afraid. Afraid of more things than I'd care to admit. For example, I am afraid of arriving at an event under or overdressed for fear of standing out. I am afraid of doing poorly in school and I am afraid of getting fat and I am afraid of failure.

I am afraid of loneliness. Of growing old having never shrugged off the isolation that clings to me like a shadow. The loneliness that seeps into my conversations when the other person would rather be elsewhere. The kind that holds me close when people laugh and I haven't the energy to. The isolation I feel when watching friends interact, when watching people connect. I have never understood the formation of friendships, have never managed to capture the moment where people become friends and replicate it in my own life. I am loud when I need to be, sarcastic when I am uncomfortable, and quiet every time else. I have never had a best friend, and at the rate I am going I sometimes doubt I ever will. I have never dated anyone, never held someone's hand or kissed anyone. I know I'm not missing out on much, but part of me aches thinking about it. The center of my chest gets all tight and my lungs shrivel up mid-breath because sometimes that is all I want.

I want to be loved.

That is a human desire. An ordinary wish, if you will. Oh, a teenage girl wants to date someone!!?! Now that's something that's never happened before!! But I don't want to date someone, not really. I don't want to pretend I'm adult enough to invest my emotions in another person and trust them to do the same with me. I want love, but I don't want to be in love. I just want that spark I see between people. That connection between friends when they look at each other and understand what they see in the other person. I want to feel safe in social interactions instead of constantly overthinking, worrying, feeling like I'm receiving different frequency signals than everyone else in the room. Getting messages just different enough to hinder my ability to understand situations and react accordingly.

I don't know how to face this fear. I don't know how to look society in the eye and force it to love me. And maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe everyone's like me, thinking that everyone else is connecting in ways they aren't. Maybe they're not. Who's to say?

Maybe living life alone isn't the worst fate. We'll see.

today

today. I woke up before the sun and wore jeans for the first time in weeks. I forgot to brush my teeth.

School is like one of those giant cages for lots of birds. Aviaries? Yeah, so school is like this giant aviary with all these birds flapping around and no one knows how to get out. We're all running into the windows hoping to find some escape to everything, but no one ever does because that's the way life works. You keep banging your head against the glass until you die, and then some other stupid bird replaces you. Life is the only game everyone loses.

My chest does this great thing sometimes where is decides to get really tight and not let me breathe, and I'm not yet sure if planning out when I can go to the bathroom to have a panic attack is responsible of me or unhealthy. It doesn't really matter, but sometimes I think about it.

If I write something on this blog everyday I might connect the dots of my life and sew something coherent with the broken threads.

How poetic, kate. Shut up.