My Immediate Future

I don’t know what to say because stuff happened and lalala I haven’t thought deep thoughts. ANYWAY, let’s talk about stuff I’m going to do!

Next week I’m doing a pentathlon for track! I’m really excited. It sounds like so much fun, and I hope I do well. Coach thinks I’m going to do really well because I’m a hurdler and do high jump, which are two of the highest weighted events. The events of the pentathlon are the 100 meter hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put, and the 800 meter run. I think I’ll be OK on most of them, as I was fine when I did the long jump today and should be reasonably OK at shot put, but I’m really nervous about the 800. I’m a sprinter, and I’m worried that I won’t get the pacing right. I’m getting to learn really cool events, though, so this should be fun!

I’m going to see the Dixie Chicks in two weeks! I didn’t realize how soon it was and now I have to study up on my Dixie Chicks because I basically only know their most recent album. My cousins put me to shame this weekend with their Dixie Chicks knowledge. Unfortunately, I only want to listen to endless Sara Bareilles because I went to see Waitress on Broadway during Mother’s Day weekend and the songs are still stuck in my head. Also, Sara Bareilles is amazing. But the Dixie Chicks are awesome too! Agh, decisions!

In a month I’m going to Peru. I’ll be living on a boat in the Amazon Rainforest for two weeks while I do biological research, and I’m super excited! It’s going to be amazing and I’m going to learn a ton and have a great experience. I’ll be hiking through the rainforest and doing surveys in boats and stuff like that, and it should be super cool. I’m going with one of my best friends, so that will make it even more awesome. Hopefully I don’t get bitten by mosquitoes, because I really don’t want to get sick. That would ruin the whole thing.

When I get back from Peru, I’m immediately going to Ogunquit, Maine. We go up there sometimes with my mom’s family, and it’s always super fun. There’s an awesome candy shop (and I don’t have braces this time MWAHAHA) and I eat ice cream at least twice a day, because I can get away with that on vacation! I’ll probably be super exhausted for the first few days, but after that I’ll get to hang out with my family and sing with my cousins and generally have an awesome time on the beach. And I’ll get to swim! (They don’t let you do that in the Amazon River. I’m sure you can figure out why.)

I’m going to co-stage manage the summer play! I’m really pumped for that, because I’ve never taken a leadership position in a play before. It sounds awesome, and I really hope I’m up to it. I just kind of became the stage manager by accident, and I don’t really know what I’ll be doing, but hopefully I’m good at it!

In early August I’m going to Puerto Rico with my Girls Scout troop. That should be awesome, too! We’re only there for a few days, but we’ll do all sorts of fun activities and hang out together and it should be a great. We’re meeting up with a troop from Puerto Rico, too, which will just make the whole thing that much better.

So yeah, I’m going to have an awesome time, especially over summer vacation! I can’t wait!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things (Sing This Title Like You’re in The Sound of Music)

A few days ago, right before my last post, my dad suggested that I try writing some more positive blog posts. I think that’s a good idea, as my posts have gotten rather dark lately. Unfortunately, after four days of thinking about happy blog ideas I came up with… favorite things. Which happens to be the assigned post for the people in Creative Writing right now (the irony is killing me).

Anyway, here’s a list of some of my favorite things. These descriptions might get a bit long (I’m so excited!).

Authors: Brandon Sanderson and JRR Tolkien Notice I put Sanderson before Tolkien. That’s how good he is. I love Tolkien’s works – I read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion in seventh grade and never looked back. I’m a nerd about it. I know an absurd amount about the world and history. Evidence? I’ve read the whole Silmarillion! Do you know how big that thing is? I read it in a week. Because I’m obsessed. The Lord of the Rings is my happy book, and when I reread it this winter I was just crazy smiley the whole time. No matter how much I love Tolkien, though, I love Sanderson even more. Really I find it hard to compare them, but Sanderson gets pushed over the edge into first by the fact that he’s writing now. And he’s prolific! He comes out with two or three books per year, and they’re all amazing. Every single one is one of the best I’ve read (except maybe Infinity Blade – stupid video game people trying control the magic of Sanderson!). I can speak from experience on the general awesomeness, as I’ve read pretty much all of his books. I discovered Sanderson two years ago at the beginning of summer, and I read everything of his I could get my hands on from then on. It took me basically the whole summer. Sanderson is a master of world building – every one of his fantasy series is in a different world with a different magic system, and each one is incredibly unique. I’ve heard people say that “it’s not fantasy if there’s no dragons”, but in my opinion dragons and “traditional” magic systems are kind of a crutch for fantasy as a genre. It’s so much more creative and interesting when a book has a unique and interesting world. All of Sanderson’s books have really well thought out worlds, with a fabulous backdrop of national, ethnic, and religious conflicts and complexities against which the story plays out. The stories themselves are also amazing, with wonderfully three-dimensional characters and multiple view points. Every book has some kind of fabulous ending (usually with a totally unexpected twist) that drags me in until my whole heart is in this book. So yeah, long story short Brandon Sanderson is amazing. My writing goal is to be as good as he is (although I know I never will be).

Movies: The Lord of the Rings, Inkheart, Stardust, The Princess Bride These are all great. The Return of the King (last LotR for those who don’t know) is the first movie I ever cried over. I started crying at the Grey Havens scene and just kept going until I cried myself to sleep singing “Into the West”. Those movies are so good. I wish I could re-watch them but they’re so long that I never have the time, which is really annoying. Inkheart and Stardust are kind of similar but really aren’t. Both are great books that I’ve read and loved, and the movies are awesome in not downgrading them at all. The Princess Bride is The Princess Bride. I quote it all the time. It’s awesome. If you haven’t watched it, do. Enough said.

Places: Anywhere Beautiful and in Nature I love nature and the environment, and I’m happiest outdoors. My brain just doesn’t work as well inside as outside; I feel cloudy and tired. Outside I feel alive, centered, adventurous. Wind on my face and the feeling of movement makes me confident and whole. With my family I go on all kinds of adventures – hiking, skiing, biking, swimming, camping, canoeing – and even some that we don’t get to do that often but which I love, like tubing or riding in motor boats. Some of my all time favorite moments have been on the tops of mountains, with wind in my face and the world stretched below me. Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to do these things, but in the end it’s worth it.

Songs (Currently): The Lighthouse’s Tale by Nickle Creek, Gravity by Sara Bareilles, Not Ready to Make Nice by the Dixie Chicks, Falling In by Lifehouse, You Found Me by The Fray, It’s Not Right For You by The Script These are really just a sample because my favorite songs change every five seconds. I don’t have a favorite song as much as I have a favorite playlist, and that’s a collection of 40-something songs that doesn’t even have them all. Music is just too good and varied.

Food: Pasta (particularly Alfredo, Mac n’ Cheese, Ravioli, and Seafood Marinara), Gelato, Ice Cream, Smacos, Salted Caramel Milanos, Steak Tips, Cucumber Salad, Waffles, Gluten Free Pretzels Food is so good! I have always been the pasta girl at my house – I love pasta so much. Pretty much all kinds of pasta are good (although a few aren’t), but they’re best with really good sauces. My favorite sauces are creamy deliciousness, like alfredo, but they’re really bad health wise so I don’t eat them that often. I also love mac n’ cheese, particularly the homemade kind with breadcrumbs on top, and ravioli is a fabulous thing always. The best pastas are the ones my grandma makes – she’s a great cook and whenever we go to her house she gives us delicious food like homemade pasta. One of my favorite days of the year is Christmas Eve, because that’s when she makes one of my very favorite pastas for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It’s homemade linguine with a homemade tomato sauce full of all kinds of seafood, and it’s delicious. I don’t really know what to call it, so it’s just seafood marinara in the list above, but it’s super good. Anyway, my next favorite food is also Italian – Gelato. For those who haven’t had it, gelato is essentially Italian ice cream. It’s so much better, though. It’s super creamy and rich in flavor and tastes delicious. If you’ve never had it, I beg you, go to the North End and get some. Your life will never be the same. I also love normal ice cream (although it’s not gelato), because ice cream is amazing always. The next thing, smacos, are things you make in campfires. They’re marshmallows, chocolate, cinnamon sugar, and cookie dough wrapped in a tortilla and baked in the coals while in tin foil. They come out melty and delicious. I discovered them at Girl Scout camp one year, and my mind was blown. A few weeks ago I tried salted caramel Milanos, which is apparently a new thing, and they are now my favorite cookie. I need to find more.  Steak tips are amazing, especially with my mom’s marinade, and are by far my favorite meat. I like them medium rare, thanks very much. Cucumbers are the best vegetable ever and I love vinegar and dill, so cucumber salad s one of my favorite summer foods. It’s very good with steak tips. Waffles. How can that ever be questioned as the supreme breakfast food? My dad makes amazing waffles, and I’ve always adored it when he makes them. That would put waffles here on it’s own, but last winter I went skiing and there was a waffle shack selling sugar waffles. I need to know where to find more, because they’re so melt in your mouth good. Gluten free pretzels sounds like a weird thing to love, but they are ten thousand times better than regular pretzels. You have to try them to understand the unique and incredible taste.

So yeah, those are some of my favorite things. Thanks for reading all that – I know I rambled. I could say so much more, but this is really long already, so I’ll just stop here. Yay for my favorite stuff!

Apologies

I meant to write this blog two days ago but then life happened and I procrastinated, so I’m writing it now.

Recently I’ve been thinking about apologies. Not as in “things I want to apologize for” but as in “why do I apologize so much?”. I apologize for basically everything, even when I really shouldn’t. I recently saw a post on Facebook that talked about how the author was always upset when people are really excited about something and then stopped and said “oh, sorry, this is probably boring you”, because that meant that someone at some point told them that the things they care about don’t matter. I related to that entirely too much, because whenever I care about something and get talking about it I always feel the need to apologize, to take it back because wow, I must look like an idiot right now. And that’s not the only thing I apologize for with no real reason. Here’s a list of some of the things I apologize for all the time when I shouldn’t:

• Being good at something
• Being bad at something
• Being less than perfect at something while trying it for the first time
• Being frustrated, angry, or sad
• Being happy when other people are sad or angry
• Liking something or someone that other people dislike
• Disliking something or someone that other people like
• Being indifferent about something other people care about a lot
• Caring about something other people don’t care about
• Talking about things that I like
• Talking about things that I dislike
• Being proud of something I’ve done
• Talking about things I’m proud of
• Not being proud of something that others think I should be proud of
• Trying to do something and not succeeding
• Not meeting others’ expectations
• Other people not being good at something that I am good at
• Other people being frustrated, angry, or sad (if it’s not my fault)
• Making a mistake or being wrong about something (if it is something small and unimportant that the other person doesn’t even want an apology for)
• Wanting to do something if other people don’t want to do it
• Not wanting to do something if other people want to do it
• Talking about things I’ve done that other people haven’t done (like vacations, sports tournaments, or hiking)
• Not noticing something
• Changing my mind about something
• Having to ask for help with something
• Not being able to make it to events because of prior commitments
• Having different priorities from someone else
• Things I’m not sorry for
• Things that are out of my control
• Other people making mistakes
• Not having confidence about something
• Having confidence about something
• Talking about something that someone else has more experience with
• “Usurping” someone’s place of power when they really don’t care or weren’t doing what they were supposed to
• Having incorrect information about a topic when I thought it was correct
• Correcting someone when they make a mistake
• Giving criticism (especially when the other person specifically asked for criticism)
• Doing/liking something that is considered “bad” (if it’s not actually bad)
• Being excited about something
• Volunteering to do something
• Expressing my thoughts, emotions, or opinions when I am not being backed up by someone else feeling the same way

Essentially those can all be summed up by saying “being me”. That is something I should never ever be apologizing for, but I do it all the time. Constantly. I’m haunted by imagining others’ opinions of me. It permeates everything I do or say, and even what I think. I need to learn to stand up for myself, because these wasted apologies are just a symptom of a far greater problem – my lack of confidence in myself. I’ve known I have self-confidence issues for a while, but I’ve never been able to figure out how to fix it. How do I make myself believe in something? It seems impossible, and I still haven’t figured it out, but at least at this point I’ve made a decision – I’m done apologizing for being me. I’m done holding back on the things I care about because maybe someone else doesn’t care. Yeah, it’ll be hard, and yeah, I’ll cringe every time I put myself out there, but the more I avoid standing up for myself the further I slide in this downward path of disliking myself. I’m not doing that anymore.

 

My Rant Against my Robo-Self

I don’t even know what I’m saying for most of this, but it feels good to say it.

So hey. Sorry for crushing everybody with my last post. I’m OK now, disturbingly. Seriously, it’s kind of freaking me out how fine I am. I just lost my dog, why am I not dying and depressed? WHAT IS GOING ON, BRAIN? I should probably be crying or something, everyone expects me to. I expect me to. But I’m not. I don’t really know why. As near as I can tell my freaky fact-mind turned off the emotion bit of memories like it always does. I can remember being sad, I can remember why I was sad, but I can’t actually be sad. I spent yesterday attempting to torture myself into tears, but every time I pulled out an idea and shoved it into my mental face it just got more creased and well worn, until it had basically no effect, not that it had that much effect initially. Why must I be an emotionless robot? Why?! Ugh!

That last paragraph probably sounds like I’m mad, but I’m not. As previously mentioned, I know I should be mad, and I have a vague kind of shadow frustration deep down somewhere, but I don’t really feel anything. I do this all the time, where I know I should feel something, but can’t, so I pretend it. Honestly, is this a mental condition or something? Because logically I know other people don’t do that and it’s been worrying me for years (in a vague, “I should be worried by thoughts of my emotionless creepiness, but still can’t do it” way).

When I do feel something it’s like a storm, coming out of nowhere, totally out of my control, irrational and stupid but powerful and unstoppable. I’ll go from “wow, I woke up early today” to “I’m sobbing uncontrollably from the painful grief of losing an hour of sleep”(This actually happened).  Then as soon as the emotional burst ends it’s gone like it never was, and I’m left wondering why I even cared as I go calmly about my life, feeling perfectly normal. I look back at whatever made me sad or angry and think really hard about it, but I can never summon up more than a twinge. I keep thinking that something big will come along and break that wall and I’ll feel strongly about it for more than a few seconds, but if my dog dying wasn’t enough to do that I seriously doubt anything will. Stupid robo-me.

Sometimes I think my own knowledge of all of this is a major reason for why it’s even happening, because whenever I start feeling anything real my little scientist mind pokes and prods it until it dies, then determines it was never real in the first place. This is why I’ve never had a crush. My robot/scientist brain analyzes the facts and determines that it’s just not important or real enough. When I actually feel pure emotion is when that analysis gets overloaded, either by something traumatic, by an inhibition due to lack of sleep or some such, or by overload of emotion (books and movies do this a lot).

I know this is all maybe just puberty or I”m making it up or I’m overreacting. I’ve heard that a lot, I’ve even told myself that, but it doesn’t really help. I still worry, I still mull it over and over in my mind, I still imagine a world where it’s different. I’m just not good at waiting, OK! I don’t want this to all make sense later, I want it to make sense now! I don’t even know what I want, really, but waiting and hoping has never helped before, and no matter how many times I convince myself I’ll be better and more comfortable around the next corner, getting older never really helps. It just makes it worse.

So yeah. There’s my deep dark heart of this issue. I kind of don’t like the me I’m stuck with. I want to be able to let go and have things work, but I’ve got a death grip on the reins of everything and I can’t seem to loosen my fists. It’s like when I focus on breathing. I can’t stop once I’ve started, can’t make it natural again without forgetting to breath completely. Thinking about it takes up half my mind and stresses me out, but I can’t stop. I wish I could stop thinking and worrying about everything, but I can’t seem to. Jeez, I need a break. Where is my summer?!

Lara

This is going to be a super depressing blog post and I’m sorry but it’s really really justified.

I know I haven’t mentioned this on the blog before, but I have a dog named Lara. She’s a beagle terrier mix and is an orangy-tan color, and she’s really cute and sweet and nice to everyone. She’s a rescue dog from someplace in Louisiana, and we got her four years ago. It feels like less and more all at once. She’s like my little sister and my mom all at once, sometimes wise and calm and sometimes excited and silly. She’s so loving and always sticks with us and follows us wherever we go, never lagging behind even when she’s tired. Together we’ve hiked mountains and gone backpacking and walked around towns and driven to all kinds of places. She loves to go on adventures with us, and never lets us get in the car without wanting to go too, but she also loves to lie around the house and snuggle with us and look up at us with her big brown eyes like she’s asking “please, can I have your food?”. She’s so cute and such a good girl, even if she is food-obsessed, and everyone she meets loves her.

That last paragraph should all have been in the past tense, technically, because she died last night.

She seemed fine, her usual self, if a little tired, until yesterday. Over the course of one day she went from fine to dead. When my dad picked me up from a sleepover that morning she had thrown up and not eaten her breakfast, but I just thought she was a little sick, like she’s been before, and that she’s be better by the next day. I went off to my track meet and didn’t worry about it. When I got home she was lying on her bed in an way that I could just tell was wrong, like she couldn’t move anything but her head. She looked so exhausted, so sick. When we let her out to go to the bathroom she staggered as she walked. We decided to take her to the animal hospital, but although I was worried the whole time I was thinking “Oh, we’re overreacting she’s just sick and she’ll be better tomorrow”.

My dad and I brought her there, leaving my brother at home. I carried her in because we didn’t want her to have to walk. They did blood tests and an ultrasound, and when they came out they told us she had a tumor in her spleen. I started worrying then, but I was thinking that she had cancer and would only have a few months and wouldn’t that be awful? Then they told us she was bleeding internally from the tumor and that it had made her anemic. And they started saying things about her not lasting until Monday. It went from “will she last months?” to “will she last hours?” in a few seconds. I didn’t know what to do.I was helpless, and I hate being helpless more than just about anything. How could this be happening? She’d been fine a few days ago! She’d gone on a woods walk that morning! How could she be dying? But she was.

I was crying in the doctors’ office and Dad and I walked around the parking lot a few times just trying to come to grips with what was going on, as it went from “here’s your options” to “there’s no options” and the world fell apart. When we realized we’d have to put her down, we were both crying. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen my dad cry. I sobbed in the darkness of the parking lot in the empty plaza as Dad called Mom and Bryce to come over and say goodbye. I was praying that this was not happening, that there would be a miracle and she would be OK. We did a project in English last week about the stages of grief in Gilgamesh, and I remember thinking that those sounded like stupid things to do when you lose someone, but I went through them all, right there, before I’d even lost her.

We said goodbye to her on the floor of one of the rooms, with her lying on a blanket looking just as calm and collected as normal, except for her labored breathing. I lay on the cold tiles next to her, and Bryce and I petted her and told her stories about all the things we’d done together and about how much I loved her. We were both talking in whispers around the tears, and we used up so many tissues. Our parents were out in the hallway talking to the doctor. Eventually they came back in and we all were there for a while, petting her and talking, telling her that we loved her so much and we’d miss her. Then we had to leave and Dad drove me and Bryce home. We were all so broken up, but Dad told stories about his pets when he was a kid, and we could all forget what was going on, a little.

It still doesn’t feel real. I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that she’s gone. This is the first time I’ve ever lost somebody I care about, and I don’t know what to do. So far I’ve avoided thinking about it because when I do I start crying. If I don’t think about it too hard it seems like she’s just away at somebody else’s house, like she sometimes is when we’ve just come back from a vacation and haven’t picked her up yet. I can’t just forget, though, and even wanting to makes me feel guilty. I don’t want to cry but I feel bad that I’m not crying, like I’m betraying her. Because she’s gone, and I’m never going to hear her tags jingling when I come in the door again, and I’m never going to see her ears blow back as she stands on top of a mountain, and I’m never going to laugh when she does something silly because she’s not here to make me laugh. I don’t know what to do with that. I just don’t know and I’m crying as I write this because she’s gone. She’s gone and she’s not coming back.

Scar Stories

I have a bunch of scars, because I’ve always been a bit of a crazy outdoors person. I’m not as bad as my dad or brother – I don’t climb trees and swing between branches on ropes (most of the time), but by most people’s standards I’m pretty outdoorsy. I’ve been hiking, camping, skiing, swimming, climbing, and canoeing since before I can remember. Both of my parents are really into nature, and they raised me to love and respect the world around me. It’s part of why I’m often more comfortable in outdoor settings – I feel more alive when I’m breathing fresh air and moving. It clears out the fog and lets my brain focus. Anyway, all that time outside has been accompanied by a lot of falls, as my coordination is not always the best. Those have, over time, led to many small and unidentifiable scars all over me. There are some scars, however, that have stories, and as I love to tell stories that’s what I’m going to do here.

Let’s start with the summer of stitches. When I was 11 my family went on a cruise to Alaska, stopping in Vancouver on the way it see my grandpa’s brother. It was a fun trip, and we got to do and see a lot. Unfortunately, on our first day out of port I went swimming in the pool while my parents were doing yoga. I didn’t have goggles, and it was a saltwater pool, so I swam with my eyes closed. I hit the wall a few times, but mostly I was alright. Then on one dive, I pushed up from the bottom and whacked my head on the ladder. I shook it off, but it had finally occurred to me that perhaps I was hitting the side too much and that I might need a break. I got out of the water and was confronted with the horrified faces of my grandparents as they asked me loudly why I was bleeding. I was confused. Bleeding? It turns out I had hit my head on a loose screw or some such on the ladder. My head was bleeding rather a lot. My grandparents took me and my brother to our room and applied neosporin to the wound, but they didn’t put on a band aid because it was in my hair. When my parents got back the adults consulted about what to do, and decided that, hair or not, I needed a band aid. We didn’t have any with us, though, so we went down to the medical deck to ask for some. The people on the medical deck took one look at me and declared that I needed stitches. I held my dad’s hand the whole time, trying not to panic, and when it was over I was told I couldn’t get my head wet and to come back at the end of the cruise to have the stitches removed. I spent the rest of the cruise firmly above the water, which, although it didn’t ruin the vacation, was extremely frustrating. That wound never actually scarred (apparently cruise ships have very good doctors) but I’m still telling it here because it should have. I felt rather cheated when it didn’t.

The second half of the summer of stitches didn’t result in actual stitches, although by all rights it should have. I was at an engineering camp and had been given a tool kit, and was completing a project that required a round piece of foam board. In order to create this, we were cutting the shape out with exacto knives. I was 11. What do you expect happened? The knife slipped and I cut my own hand at the base of my thumb. I remember staring at the white cut for a second before going up to the person at the front of the room. It started bleeding as I walked, and I started to panic very quickly after that. They handed me off to the camp doctor, who handed me off to a real doctor, who gave me a butterfly stitch and a tetanus shot. Seriously? It was a horrible solution and fell off after less than a day, leaving the wound flapping open so that it healed at twice the size it needed to be. I was a very annoyed 11-year-old.

I have scars on my knees from many different things, but the most memorable is an incident that happened at the beginning of my eighth grade track season. It was our first meet of the season and it was freezing. I had on gloves, sweat pants, and a sweatshirt right up until I needed to run. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a hurdler. I had also been doing high jump for the first time, so when the hurdles came up I left that and went to run my race. I don’t remember much about the competitors of the race, just that after the third or fourth hurdle I messed myself up by trying to do a different number of steps between hurdles and tripped, falling to my hands and knees on the track. For those who don’t know, the middle school track is awful. It is essentially asphalt, pebbles held in place by rubber in a way that seems designed to rip up anyone who falls on it. I was no exception. My knees came away bleeding and embedded with track bits, and my hands were little better. In a strange twist, though, it was so cold that I couldn’t actually feel the pain. I only felt the burning cold of the water as parents attempted to clean me up, begging to be allowed to put my gloved back on. As I couldn’t feel my wounds, I decided to jump anyway. I think I did well, although I can’t really remember. The pain eventually caught up with me as I warmed up, and washing the asphalt from my knees was pretty awful, but I came away with a great story to tell at future meets.

Dreams

I have really weird dreams, and as I don’t know what to write today I’m going to tell you about them. As far as I can tell my sleep is just a mishmash of dreams. Sometimes I remember them when I wake up, sometimes I just remember the feeling, and sometimes I just remember that “wow, that was a great dream” (that last is really annoying). Anyway, if you’re one of the people who listen to these all the time feel free to ignore this blog, but if you want a strangely detailed bizarrely constructed story, read on.

Once upon a time I dreamed my brother turned into a butterfly. I tell this one a lot, as it’s the first dream I ever really remembered and told to people. It’s all around strange, so please suspend your disbelief.

We were trying to catch a mouse to eat it for dessert, after already having caught two larger sized rodents to have for appetizers and dinner. We tried and tried to corner the mouse in the corrals that we’d set up in our living room, but it was too fast. Eventually we gave up and had ramen noodles instead,  and invited the mouse to join us as a peace offering. The mouse sat at our table with a bowl of ramen noodles, but it didn’t eat them. Instead it spun silk on top of them. The bowls became mixed up, and the silk bowl became my brother’s. When we saw the silk in the bowl we reached the only logical conclusion – that he was turning into a butterfly and had started to spin his cocoon. Being a supportive family, we decided to send him into the swamp to spin his cocoon in piece and aided him in his journey using a giant dandelion stem tied to a clay flower pot and tying the other end around his waist. This somehow made him fly, allowing him to levitate over the trees and into the marsh. I remember my grandmother crying over the loss of “a perfectly good flowerpot”. My dad hadn’t come outside to see him off, instead sitting in the office staring at a computer. When I came in sobbing and asked him how we would ever know which butterfly was my brother, he looked up and said in a perfectly monotone voice, “don’t worry, Kira, he’ll be a really big butterfly.”

That’s when I woke up, crying. Being a drama queen, I ran into my brother’s room to tell him about it. He wasn’t there. At that point I panicked. I thought I’d lost him. I ran downstairs, and burst into the dining room to see him sitting calmly, watching my mother grade papers. They both turned to look at me, asking what was wrong. I sobbed out in all seriousness, “I dreamed you turned into a butterfly!”. They laughed so hard…

Weird enough for you? I had that when I was about eight. Not all my dreams are the same kind of strange. Some are disturbing, some are scary, some are downright funny even in them. Most become funny when I tell them, even if they weren’t when I dreamt them. Some don’t. I’m not going into detail on the one a few weeks ago where my finger was amputated. That was probably the creepiest I’ve ever had. Let’s not go there. Some dreams are fragments, but there are one or two other than the butterfly dream that are pretty complete. Here’s a dream I had in seventh grade:

We lived in a castle. It was our house, but it was a castle, complete with stone construction and towers and walls. We had invited people over for a party. I was playing with my friends (you know how in dreams people look totally unfamiliar but you just know who they are? That’s what most people in this dream were like). We’d gone upstairs and played in my room, and my brother’s room, and finally we ventured into my parents’ room – the forbidden area. We went in and played around, until suddenly the bedside lamps went out as if the power was off, but the floor lamp was still on. We panicked a bit and ran downstairs to tell my parents about the strange power failure. Unfortunately, they were too busy building a tin canoe in our blacksmith shop/basement to bother with what we were saying. One guy payed attention to what we were saying, though. In the dream he was Aragorn, although he looked nothing like Aragorn. He took us into our private movie theater (our castle house was really cool) and introduced us to his son, Legolas. They told us about the quest we needed to go on to destroy a magical knife, a story accompanied by a flash forward to us standing on a long stone bridge as it crumbled on either side of us. We set off on our journey. Soon we stopped at a hotel in a river town, a place bedecked in gold and red. We went to sleep, and when we woke up we were surrounded by thin translucent screens that rapped us off from each other an the door, although they were so ineffective that we walked around them and reached the same spot, watching as Legolas tried to hack the big red button that was the key to our escape. Eventually he gave up, and Aragorn pushed us into our next plan – we jumped off the balcony into the river below to swim away. I woke up as I hit the water.

So there are some of my weird dreams. My mind works in strange ways, mysterious even to me, but somehow it always comes back to stories like these. I guess tales are embedded at my core. I have many more dream stories, but that’s all for now.

Worst Fears (Or At Least One)

People have asked me what my greatest fear is many times. The truth is, I don’t really have one. I have things that I’m afraid of, but I don’t have one that I think about more or that is noticeably worse than the others. I do, however, have several fears that are repeated and that I really notice. It takes a whole blog to write about each, so here’s one that bothers me pretty often.

I’m scared of myself. It’s a weird fear, but a compelling one. That statement really over simplifies it, but mostly I’m worried and afraid that I’m not who I think I am. I know I am biased in my own opinions of myself. It’s a weirdly positive but also really negative lens that allows me to see my flaws and beat myself up with them very easily, while at the same time always believing myself to be the best. Both sides see the flaws in the other’s argument, and normally I’m able to cut through the levels of what I’m telling myself to what I think the truth is. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to know if it really is true. I try to give myself the benefit of the doubt without being unrealistically optimistic, but it’s a delicate balance.

My dad once asked me a series of questions, trying to prove some point about the human psyche after we’d watched a show about the brain. Let’s set the scene: there’s a runaway train with a lot of people on it. First question: It’s approaching a fork in the track. If it goes one way, it will crash and the people on it will die. If it goes the other, it will run over four people working on the track, but the train will stop without crashing. You’re standing by the switch that decides which way it goes. Which do you choose? Second Question: You’re standing near the track next to a big guy. You know if you push him into the track, it will stop the train but kill him. Do you push him? Third Question: You’re standing next to the track, and you know if you jump in front of the train it will stop but you will die. Do you do it?

I spent at least ten minutes contemplating the first question, and the time lengthened with each new one. I honestly scoured the depths of my soul, trying to find what I would do, how I would react in that split second of decision. I couldn’t figure it out. Although I went back and changed my mind ten billion times,I eventually answered the first two. I’d save the people on the train. It’s simple logic, a few lives to save so many more. It would haunt me for the rest of my life, but I think I would pull that switch and give that push. The last I couldn’t figure out at all. It haunted me for hours afterword, and I couldn’t stop turning it over and over in my head. That last question embodies what I’m most scared of. I want to say that I would jump, that I would give my life like the heroes in the books I read. I want to say I would be a person I could admire. I’m not sure, though. What if, at heart, I’m a coward. What if I’m not as brave as I pretend? What if, in the end, I am selfish enough to refuse, to sacrifice all those lives for me? I’d hate myself for the rest of my life if I ever did that. I know I would. What I don’t know, and can’t know unless I’m ever in a situation where I have to make that choice, is what I would do. I hope I would jump. I really do. But I’m scared that I’m not that person, and if I’m not I don’t know what I am. So yeah. That’s why I analyze myself so much – I want to pry open the core and know for sure who I am, because as long as I don’t know I’m a fake, and that’s what I least want to be.

Learning Leadership

I’m awful at being a leader. I’m chronically unable to make decisions, even about small and simple things, so me making choices for others or giving them directions probably wouldn’t go well. At the same time, when I know how to do something, I always want to be the best at it. I want to blow everyone away with my awesomeness (I am a rather prideful individual sometimes, which is weird, because I lack all confidence). I also want to lead, even if I’m not that great at it. This sometimes goes well and sometimes doesn’t.

That whole last paragraph is kind of wrong. It’s the things I think first when it comes to leadership. Here’s a truth that I have to acknowledge often – I am really unnecessarily disparaging of myself. I’m constantly doubting myself and second guessing my every choice, which is why I’m so bad at making decisions. But when I get out of my own way and have some confidence, I can actually do that and many other things pretty well. I’m not as bad at leading as I normally think I am, as long as I know what I’m talking about. If I’m confident in my material I can hold my own. If I’m not, well that’s another story.

I have an admission- I really really really want to be a track captain someday. I’ve never told this to anyone before because I don’t want to sound conceited and annoying, but I think I’d be good at it, or at least I hope so. I think my coach thinks so too, although she’s never outright said anything, so I have a chance. My obsessive rule following would make me good at holding everyone to what they’re supposed to be doing, and I think I’d be fairly good at teaching new stuff to the new kids. I’m also not afraid to make the decision that makes the most sense, even if it’s not the one I want to make. I learned that at our first meet this year, when I stepped down from the first heat of the hurdles to let two other girls run.

Last year I loved our captains, but I was annoyed by their inconsistency. They would let people get out of workouts, shorten the warm up, stuff like that. I know you can’t be crazy about that stuff all the time, but it happened a ton and it really drove my detail obsessed self nuts. Every time it happened I’d think “if I were only in charge this wouldn’t be happening”. Unfortunately, I have this kind of built in “defer to the older person” feature, so I’m super reluctant to contradict an upperclassman, especially a captain. Thus, freshman year I was like an omega wolf showing its stomach every five seconds. I was scared to talk to, interact with, or in anyway seem to consider myself equal to the older kids. This year, though, I’m a returning person, versed in the ways of high school track. That experience raises my confidence considerably. I feel able to step up into empty roles, take some command when there’s and opportunity. I’ve never butted out a senior or junior (not on purpose, anyway) but when there aren’t any upperclassmen or the upperclassmen aren’t stepping forward I have helped lead warm ups, hurdle drills, and even occasional workouts. I’m proud of that, but I’m even more proud of my new confidence in my events. I feel able to help people who aren’t as good at hurdles as I am (regardless of their age), and I’ve been helping the freshmen learn high jump by giving advice at meets when there’s no coach around. It makes me feel so good to do it, and gradually I’m learning that the only boundaries I might be overstepping are the ones I had set up myself – boundaries that limited my growth. It makes me happy to teach and lead, even if I’m not fabulous at it. I might not be the best or most social leader ever, but at least I do my best and enjoy the attempt. In the end, I don’t need to make decisions for others or control their actions – I just need to do what I do and hope I can help others along the way.

Sleep

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted. I’m still figuring out this whole blogging on my own thing. The main reason for not blogging is that I spent this whole past week in a sleep deprived state because I’m bad at time management and always seem to be doing homework at midnight. So today I’ll be blogging about what I’m seriously missing right now – sleep.

Sleep is important. I know this. My dad reminds me all the time. I am aware that I should be getting more, that not getting enough sleep can have all kinds of drastic effects. I watched a show on it with the rest of my family – it was called Sleepless in America and raised my stress ten notches by informing me that sleep deprivation causes mental illness and cancer. Despite all this, I can’t seem to get enough sleep. I don’t feel tired until late, which makes it really hard to get to bed at 9:00 like I would need to in order to get my full 8 hours. I know this is the natural teenager sleep cycle, but it still feels like failure when I’m unable to do what I know I need to. Also, my being tired is similar to my being hungry or thirsty – I feel it for a little while, but if I don’t act on it immediately it goes away and I feel fine, even as I get completely run down. I don’t feel it until the next morning – getting out of bed becomes progressively harder even as staying up feels more natural. It’s a vicious unending cycle as I get pushed into a totally different time zone by my messed up sleep schedule. Every week I feel more rundown, and the more rundown I am the harder it gets to force myself to do my homework, resulting in my staying up later trying to finish.

I’ve never been good at getting to sleep. my mom is really good at it – she can close her eyes and flip her sleep switch anywhere – but it’s always been harder for me. I’m basically unable to nap unless I’m extremely sick or beyond exhausted, and I need it to be completely quiet and dark if I want to drift off. Even in perfect conditions, I often lie awake staring at my ceiling for what feels like forever. I think it takes an hour for me to actually go to sleep after turning my light off, because I can’t bear to think it’s more. I’ve developed many methods to try to get to sleep over the years, but they’re only effective so far. When I was little I would tell myself stories in my head until I slipped into a half dream state and from there to dreams. That’s normally how falling asleep works for me – the dreams come as I drift off and wake up. I have really weird dreams. I might tell you about them sometime, but be warned I’m horrible at describing them. Anyway, other methods for falling asleep include focusing on my breath and heart beat and slowing them down, listening to rain on my skylights, imagining myself floating in water and each breath out sinking me deeper as the light slowly fades from blue to black (I know that sounds like drowning, but it’s actually really relaxing), focusing on relaxing each muscle in my body one by one, and getting up and getting a glass of water after everyone else’s lights are out. That last one is best when the moon is out. It’s kind of spiritual for me, a silent moment when I feel alone and connected to the world as I stare out the window with my glass  in my hand, slowly drinking my water before going back to bed. None of these is fool proof, but they’re the most effective. Going to bed is quite an endeavor for me, requiring the completion of ten different routines on my way to rest. It’s probably no wonder I’m sleep deprived – sleep isn’t easy. Still, to me it’s precious.

I just stayed up late writing a blog post about sleep. Oh, the irony. Goodnight!