location affection

I was born in california, but moved away when I was three. We lived in Oxford for three years also before moving here. I have lived in texas for about eleven years now. Eleven years. For that amount of time I have held england up on a pedestal as the fairy-tale location of my childhood. Enchanting, beautiful, rainy, magical. It had it's faults as far as kid drama goes, but it was nothing compared to the awful experiences I had with kids once I moved here. Ever since moving here, one of the only things I've wanted for my future is to move back to england. I can't think of a time when I didn't want to move back.

I miss the perpetually grey skies and the rolling green fields and the crumbling castles set up on hillsides and the sheep and the cottages with flowered window sills and the buildings that date back through history and the bed-and-breakfasts and the culture and the rest of europe being a ferry ride away. That's what I've wanted for years, and I still want that. But...I've been actively shunning texas for so long that I didn't really realize when the little things slipped through the cracks. Now don't get me wrong, I still strongly dislike arlington, texas and everything about middle america suburbia that it represents, but I've developed an affection for it. An affection like the kind for someone you don't particularly like but spend a lot of time around and grow to be alright with over time.

And I still want to leave, but I'm coming to admit that I'll miss a few things. Weird things, and not many, but they're there. I'll miss these tall pine trees and the oaks and pecans. However much I complain about it and love the cold, I'll miss the ridiculously hot summers where you can just lie in the sun and the sky goes on and on and on. I'll miss the kindness of people to strangers (aside from the obvious things I dislike about lingering racism in generally old and conservative people). I think I'll miss it all in the way you miss an old pair of shoes that don't fit anymore but you remember all the places you went, be them good or bad.

My problem is that I can't let things go. Everything has sentimental value and every moment I'm just thinking that someday, somehow, I'll miss wherever I am now. I don't know how to live any other way. I don't know how to let things go. It's inevitable that you'll miss things. I just hope I can find a way to know which things to hang on to and which to let fall away with time.

selfish

Continuing on my extended energy high, I've been having some realizations about life. Nothing too mind-boggling. No cure for cancer or some magic fairy blessing me with the ability to understand math the first time it's taught. I just, like, I'm so selfish. I guess I've always been aware of the fact that we all spend our whole lives inside our own heads, and will therefor always have a level of selfishness to the things we do and say, even if that just means you sometimes have intrinsic motivations for helping other people or something similar. But my goodness, I think I am possibly one of the most self-absorbed and non-self aware people I know. Okay so technically I'm pretty aware of how I am, but there are some aspects of yourself I think you don't notice in yourself until you notice them in other people. There were a couple things that have led me to this acknowledgement of my own extreme selfishness and lack of self-awareness.

1. I've gotten quieter and less confrontational in the past year. I have become more submissive and willing to take the way people treat me, regardless of how that is. Being quieter allows much more room for listening to other people, believe it or not. I've started noticing the condescending tones of other people and the way they interact around people they do and do not like. I've noticed that when people act a certain way, sometimes my first thought is that their actions pertain to me in some way, though this only applies to some people. Lame example: Person A mentions *insert book I enjoy* while in my presence, therefor they are trying to connect with me or impress me in some way. I also have this habit of being hyper-aware of if I am coming off as sad or happy or what have you because I feel like people will notice. If I seem sad, they might think I am doing it for attention, or they might think I am genuinely sad and want to talk to me and ask me about it. BUT it would seem that people notice a lot less than you give them credit for. No one I know is probably very aware of my mood at any given time, and I need to keep that in mind.

2. People who do things that annoy me. There's this girl I know, let's call her Samantha because I don't know any Samanthas. Precursor to this bullet point. I do not hate Samantha. She is a very intelligent person who has very good points in discussions and honestly tries to be very kind and considerate and help people. I respect all those things about her. She is also only here for a year and english is not her first language and I feel like anyone in that situation would be uncomfortable and have a need to assert themselves. That being said, some things she does just grate on my nerves like nothing else. She gets very very loud when she wants people to hear her, and she keeps going even if I'm not sure if people are listening. She gets really condescending when trying to explain stuff, and she mentions the same few topics about herself over and over again. But the thing is, she reminds me of myself a few years ago. I used to always accidentally bring the subject of conversation back to myself in some way, and I would interrupt people without thinking about it. She corrects teachers sometimes and acts like she literally knows everything and one of the reasons it bothers me, I think, is that it does remind me of myself, and sometimes I'll do things similar to her and it scares me that I'm annoying people. I have no way of really knowing though because even if you tell people to be honest when telling you how you are, they won't be.

3.My friend from theatre. Let's call her Hannah. I've never met a Hannah I didn't like, so it fits. So this friend of mine, precursor to this bullet point. Hannah is just one of those people, like those people that are just so incredibly wonderful in every way that it's hard to describe. First off, she's gorgeous. She's just a beautiful person all around, like the kind of beauty that makes you feel like you're in the presence of a goddess. She's funny and so blunt and confident and caring about other people. She's so talented it actually blows my mind. And yesterday her mother died. I didn't know too much about it, but I knew she was in the hospital. The day everything got worse we were in rehearsal and we talked a lot and she mentioned her mother and I barely noticed because I was having a bad day. Her mother was in the hospital, and I had a bad day. That day at rehearsal, I meant to tell her that she was one of the best people I'd ever met and she always made me feel better and that I loved having her as a friend. And I didn't. Later that day I found out what was going on through social media, and I couldn't text her because that's what everyone does. Someone dies and everyone rushes in with the I'm so sorry's and the I'm here if you need me's and the I love you's and I felt it wouldn't land right if I just added my voice to the many. Nothing like tragedies to bring people together and drown out the sentiments. But okay, so this unbelievably unfair thing happened to one of the best people I know, and I didn't even notice that she might need support until it was too late. It's ridiculous that I spend so much time in my own head when there are so many other people more deserving of my attention.

This post in itself is selfish on some level. Making stuff about myself. I don't know anymore. I need to be a better person and I wish I was.

i'm okay, it's okay

This week has been strange. For the longest time, I've been living in this sort of stretched out state of driving down a long road in the dark. Occasionally my headlights would flick on and it would be alright, but then I'd hit a pothole and they'd flick off again. I don't mean to be preemptive by saying this, but I'm okay right now.

I didn't even realize how awful everything was until very recently. See, for really pretty consistently for about a year to two years, with stretches of cheerfulness inbetween (I'm hesitant to be one of those self-diagnosing people and call the awful stuff Depression™ but if it wasn't it was friggin close) I had this mindset where even when I was feeling pretty good I knew it wouldn't last. I could feel this fog sort of hovering at the edge of everything I would do and say, just waiting to swoop back in and claim me. I would try and think it away with religion and Positive Thinking™ and all the tricks, but the deepest voice in my head felt like it was humoring me. "Alright, Kate, Imma let you pretend you're good at stuff and that you'll be successful one day and that people like you, but if it gets out of hand I gotchu, and It's gonna suck again. Watch out, son, you don't deserve happiness so it won't stay." I'm paraphrasing of course.

So you tell yourself that when you have relatively high energy you're okay, that you're overthinking it, being melodramatic and all the rest. You go about your life trying to figure out if this is the happiest you're supposed to be and if you're expecting too much. It doesn't feel like you're in some dark hole with everything conspiring against you, it just feels bland. Like, you're living life and you laugh sometimes and things are going pretty well and you're not always crying and popping pills or anything, so you must be fine. You're fine, get over it, you're being dramatic for attention, and even if you aren't, who says you deserve to be happier?

But for about a week I haven't had like any mood drops. I don't collapse when people aren't watching and I have the energy to hold conversations with people and accept compliments without retracting into my double chin and mumbling unintelligibly. I feel like my future might not suck after all. I don't have to remind myself to be positive and to smile when people look at me. It's super weird, and looking back on how I've been feeling for honestly about a year, I can confidently say I was not happy. I was not in a good place, and heck, maybe I'm still not. Maybe this is one of those temporary things that sticks around for a bit and then goes away again. I don't know. But I do know that even if it comes back, it'll just be another tunnel. I'll make it out somehow, somewhere, sometime.

So yeah, that's me right now. The Classic Hormonal Teenager™ who doesn't understand her emotions.

I've used the trademark symbol too much in this post, but I think I like it. I'll honestly probably start using it more often from now on.

the wait

So I have these mood swings. I'm blaming it on sleep deprivation because I need something to blame besides like hormones or something. And it's mood swings within a day too, like it restarts everyday. I generally start the day on a high of mild hysteria and just about everything is funny and I digress a lot. At some point during the day, whether it be relatively early in the morning or late in the day, there's a drop. I'm just whistling along, minding my own business and wham, mood drop. Then I can hear people laughing and not even a bit of me can find humour in the situation or the energy it would take to pretend to laugh with them. It feels sort of like this curtain descending between me and them. Some sort of glass cutting me off from the connections people make with each other. I get withdrawn and quiet, much more apologetic and submissive, and much more prone to crying. And the thing about being aware of it is that it's no longer a question of whether or not my mood will shift, but when. I have to suffer through this haze of a giggly sleep deprived high, waiting for the moment when I will no longer have the energy to smile. It's the worst wait of my life, and it happens every day. I don't really know what to do about it.

suicide

logically speaking I would never go through with it, and I get that high school students aren't taken seriously when they talk about it. that makes sense. our brains aren't developed and we don't have a good enough perspective on life. it scares me how much I think about it though. like it scares me how often I have to talk myself out of it.

writing

I have trained myself to be a natural pessimist. I tend to assume the worst because I'd rather set the bar low and be pleasantly surprised than set it high and be disappointed every time. I hate the crushing feeling in my chest when things don't go according to plan. So anyway, I'm on a UIL writing team and we had an invitational competition today. (the premise of ready writing UIL is that you get two quotes and you pick one to write an essay about and you have 2 hours to do it and no preparation.) I almost bailed last minute because I didn't feel like getting up early this morning to drive out to a school 25 minutes away. But I ended up going and we were sitting around in the cafeteria of this school waiting for it to start so we could go into the room, and I was explaining my pessimism philosophy of assuming I was going to do poorly and not place rather than assuming I was going to do well and end up with failure. Writing is a little to close to heart to let myself assume to much of my abilities, if that makes sense at all. I care about it too much to assume I'm good and have someone tell me I'm wrong. But this girl on the team (who I was friends with for years when we were younger before she moved schools, and then she just moved back to my school) said something about my writing being good and "you've wanted to be an author since we were in like second grade. You'll be fine."

And it hit me that I have wanted to be an author my whole life. Writing is all I've ever really considered doing; the only thing I've ever seen myself doing for years and being happy with. I used to think that people who were truly gifted in their respective fields had to have some cool story somehow proving that they belonged where they were, like getting something published when they were like 10 or inventing something in their field at 15 or something. Maybe it's not the same thing, but my back story is that it's all I am. Writing is all I am at the end of the day, and maybe I'm not the best at it, and maybe you're cringing reading this right now, but it's all I know and it's all I love, so I guess I'd better make it work.

This is extremely convoluted and probably doesn't even make sense, but I'm too tired to change it now. Au revoir, mes amis.

pathetic

this will sound irrational and melodramatic reading back on it.

I am not good enough I am never good enough I am subpar at so many things I am decent at so many things and I am never giong to succeed at any of them. I was in dance, and I failed at that. I used to make straight As and identify as smart and now I definitely don't. I'm no good at writing, I'm fat and out of shape, I look for attention even when I don't want to I'm positively awful at time management. I suck at making friends I don't have any hobbies I don't work hard enough at school, the only things I've ever found interesting are things I'd never make it with as a career. I want to be special and live some sort of life that isn't generic and average but I will because I am generic and average. I am average looking with average intelligence and average dreams and an average family and average teenagery angst and it sucks. I just want to be good at stuff. I just want to not be so pathetic. Because that's what I am. Whatever other things I am pathetic has and always will apply. It's pathetic that I can't ever succeed at the things I enjoy. It's pathetic that I don't work harder and that I expect myself to be different in some way. It's pathetic that I fish for compliments on accident and deny it. It's pathetic that I'm falling apart when other people have it so much worse. It's pathetic that I'm writing this ridiculously stupid post on a ridiculously stupid blog that no one will ever read because no one ever pays attention to me because even though I have friends now they all have other better friends and I am not first on anyone's list of people. It's pathetic that I will read back on this and regret it but also wonder if anyone read it because I would love an innocent excuse to tell someone how I actually feel. I try so hard to like myself but it's pathetic that I'm not trying hard enough because if I were I wouldn't hate myself the way I do.

faith

I was born and raised a mormon. Full name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so yes, we are Christians despite anything you've heard to the contrary. I know people do love their predetermined notions of other people's religions, so I hear my fair share of judgement calls on what mormons are and aren't. Feel free to ask actual mormons about mormon stuff instead of looking up skeptic stuff on the internet and walking away thinking I have 7 mothers and never cut my hair and think gay people are the spawn of satan, other fun rumors etc etc.

My problem, as of late, is something most people experience at some point or another. A crisis of belief, a clashing of logical thinking and faith. Growing up I can't think of a single time when I wasn't sure it was the true church. As a child, you accept things more at face value and I also think children are less jaded as a whole, and thus more willing to put their trust in things that haven't proven themselves to be true with numbers and facts. I'm at a point where I'm picking apart the things I've taken to be true in my life thus far and examining them up close. And with religion, there are lots of things to criticize. I know there are. My dad's a good example of a once-christian-now-agnostic-atheist because he was a little too cynical in all the wrong places I think. He didn't focus on the good of it. Because I've come to understand that with religion there's always going to be things you can't explain, but for ages people thought the world was flat. We're still discovering math. We have no idea big the universe is, or how it came to be if there was nothing to begin with.

I think religion is just science we don't understand yet. It's also sort of like that thought about a 2D world where everything is 2D and that's all they know, and if you were to try and explain to them your 3D world, you wouldn't be able to. If you stuck your hand into this 2D world, all they would see is cross sections of your fingers and continue believing there is nothing else, nothing more than how they are. We assume we would have some way of proving or disproving some greater power, but it's all in your attitude. If a christian tells an atheist they will be proven wrong if they just read the bible, that atheist will not care because if they don't believe the book to be true, they aren't going to set any store by what it says. Conversely, an atheist can list all the facts about science and logic they want, but if that religious person has sufficient faith, they will still find a way to trace everything back to God. I think we spend too much time pitting science and religion against each other. If there is a God which, even in this weird questiony time for me, I believe to be true, I think he must be the greatest scientist there is. He must understand all the laws of physics and chemistry and infinitely more to have created everything the way it is. It's just science we don't understand, so it's written off as wishful thinking and witchcraft.

I am a cynic. I question everything and want to know how everything works and why things are the way they are. With my faith, it's harder because stuff can't be proven and explained the way I usually prefer, but that doesn't mean I don't think there's something very worth while in it. I remember this one conversation I had with my dad when I was maybe 7 or 8, I don't remember exactly how old, and I don't know how the topic of religion came up but it did. I think he was asking me something about how I knew anything concrete about religion or something, and I remember saying something about it not mattering because my religion was giving me a good way to live my life, and it's better to have lived a good life and not need it in the end than not caring what you do in life and ending up wrong about it all and regretting not being better.

And religion, lived correctly, is beautiful. It's built on loving and serving and caring for others. People that focus on the wrong aspects of it are the ones being idiots about gay people and stuff that isn't any of their business. I'm friends with people of all kinds of sexualities and religions and cultures and my life is so much better for having them in it. I don't want to change who they are to fit some self-thought-up notion of what religion is supposed to do to people. If you boil most religions down, you'll find compassion and love and their core, so the standards of living that go along with that are fine by me.

So yes, right now I'm struggling a bit with my faith, but even if I don't work it out and find a way to keep my faith, which is unlikely I think because I love the gospel so much, I think I will continue living it. I will continue living my life like there is a God watching over me because in the end, having that sort of hope and happiness in my life seems like a much better option than living by the concrete and not having hope for anything more.