A Helping Hand

A long time ago, I wrote a little snippet about vices. I don’t remember what I was referring to, but reading it now, I can see that some things about myself haven’t changed, except maybe I have a few more vices.

            What I wanted to address was my ending point of a ‘helping hand’. I’m the kind of person who likes to be independent. It’s probably a stupid notion, but I don’t like asking people to help me if I can help it.

            Relying on people, in short, is very difficult for me.

            So why bring up the point of letting others help me? Sometimes, my walls inch down a little bit and I let someone in, let someone help me. But the moment I feel vulnerable or hurt, I rebuild them in an instant.

            I don’t think I’ve ever truly let anyone in, not anyone in my friend groups and certainly not anyone in my family. Trusting someone takes months, years, and even then, I find it hard to do that.

            I’m starting a new life right now, over a month into it actually, and I’ve made an effort to let people get to know me. Is it working? Somewhat. But at the same time… I still do what I’ve always done. If there’s a chance that I might be hurt, I shield myself so that it’s like I’m made out of stone.

            I can hide it, definitely. I can act happy on the outside. But then in the end, what’s the point if nobody ever knows how I really feel?

            I just wish this bothered me enough so that I could have the motivation to change it.

Poetry. Yes, Poetry.

Because my writing just always revolves around what's happening in my life, I want to write about poetry. I don't know why, but the lessons I have in AP Lit always has a way of making its way into my life, even when I don't think about it.

When I put my mind to it and I'm just... in the mood, I guess... I actually really, really love it. How does it even do the things it does? If I were a poet, I would want to be famous, just so I could make people feel the way I feel when I read it.

I'm not saying I read poetry for fun. That's not me, mostly because I'm too busy to sit down and do that. But last night, spontaneously, I was working my butt off to finish my homework (due to a weekend of procrastinating and, um, shopping), and my sister comes in saying she needs help with poetry analysis. Since we're learning it in AP Lit and all, I got excited about helping her.

I read the poem...

And I didn't understand it. At all. But I wasn't turned away from it. In fact, my confusion was intriguing, made me want to explore it some more, made me actually use the skills I had taken away from school. When I kinda sort of figured out the meaning, I fell in love with the poem, because the extended metaphor--so complicated and simple at the same time--blew my mind.

I don't want to get into what the poem was about. That would take way too long. But reading a poem and realizing its meaning (all on my own, no help from my teacher) always makes me excited. Maybe I can't do it again, but the poem, the timing--everything was perfect.

It kind of makes me want to become a poet.

Bad English

I'm incredibly disappointed in myself.

I love the English language, I truly do, but reading back on some of my more 'rushed' blog posts make me cringe with the awfulness of my writing. Sure, I get my point across, but seriously, I need to spend more time looking over what I've written, because some of it just doesn't make sense.

And this leads into the English of this day and age. It honestly really truly sickens me when people say "u" instead of "you", "btw" instead of "by the way", "y" instead of "why", etc. What's a few extra letters so that reading a text or an email isn't such a horrendous experience?

And to top it off, the "LOL's" and the "OMG's" have become viral. Is someone really "laughing out loud" when they send "LOL", or "ROFL", or any of the other indications that state something is funny. Um, probably not.

I mean, I guess I'm not completely innocent. I don't use "LOL", thank goodness for that, but I do use the awful phrase "haha" when I text. No, I am not actually saying "haha"; maybe thinking it, I don't know. I don't keep track of these things.

Okay, I do have a point to this. Communication. I'm not the best communicator in the world because I don't like it when people know how I feel (gives them a reason to judge, you know). BUT. I think emotion is completely lost in a text, and sometimes the "LOL's" and the "haha's" and the "OMG's" are a bit of an exaggeration of how we feel. And that's a problem in a world like this, because I also feel like this exaggeration follows us when we leave technology and talk face to face...

And this scares me because then I never really know if the appearances people give are true or not.

12/12/12/12.....

I should be doing homework.

Actually, I should be sleeping.

But today is too good of a day to leave without acknowledgment. Why? Because it's my sister's birthday, and she is 12 years old.

Okay, everybody was hyped about it being 12/12/12 and my journalism class all screamed and shouted at 12:12 today (and how I wish it was 12:12 right now. Would be perfect), BUT, to top it off, my sister just turned 12 years old. On the 12th day. Of the 12th month. Of 2012.

I think that is so much cooler than just a regular 12/12/12. Nope. My sister has 12/12/12/12. ONE MORE. And this is a stupid blog. I don't have a point to writing this, except to wish my little sister a happy birthday, because half the family wasn't home on her birthday, and she honestly deserves all the love she can get on this special day.

New Words

Sometimes, even a writer needs some help putting words to feelings. I discovered that today.

When two people are in a relationship, it's all about connecting, and keeping that connection. When two people are apart for a little while, sometimes, the little phone call, email, text, skype call, can all make both people feel like they are each other's.

Being apart can make each person feel full of angst, like something is missing from their lives, and to let something like this keep going--to not contact each other just to let the other know you're still there--can end up making the relationship bitter.

Everybody wants to feel that connection. Oh, it can get lost along the way, I'm sure, but a little bit of effort from both sides can always pull two people back together, if they want it enough.

I guess that's the feeling I feel whenever I'm away from people I love, whether it's a family member or a friend. It doesn't only go for relationships. It's a loss that's hard to explain, and it can be bitter, or it can be dealt with by simply seeing how the other person is doing.

It's never good to make up stories in your head. Another thing I learned.

Putting words to feelings, especially for someone like me, always makes muddled things seem so much clearer.

Silence

Yesterday I experienced something kind of amazing.

I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. It was very... quiet. I was just sitting there, listening to someone speak. I tend to have multiple conflicts with myself throughout the day about life, about people, about how messed up the world can be.

And then suddenly, out of no where, I felt like I understood it all. Not in a way that I can put it into words. It was just a feeling, an underlying knowledge that everything will be okay, and that we're all going to die one day and we have to live life to the fullest and stop moping that life isn't perfect.

It was so peaceful.

Throughout it all, this epiphany, I was just hoping it wouldn't go away, because I knew once it did, all the conflicts would come back, all those arguments with myself, and I'd have to go back to trying to figure out life.

I still have that memory though, locked in my mind, and thinking back on it reminds me that I can never let the world influence me to a point that I forget who I am.

It was just... a moment of absolute silence.

In the Dead of the Night

Two posts in one day. I'm not trying to make up for all the slow blogging, but actually, it's Halloween, and I wanted to blog about it.

I've always wondered what it is that people really fear about Halloween when a lot of it--zombies, ghosts, etc--are just make believe characters created for the simple sake of scaring people. But if people got it into their heads that these characters don't exist... where's the fear in that?

Maybe I'm being a bit far fetched here (or maybe I'm just exhausted; there's a high possibility of that), but I'm wondering what the scariest monster would look like. They wouldn't have to appear in the dead of the night. No. And I'm just going off the top of my head here.

I'm pretty sure they would have to be real, or at least realistic. The idea of a realistic monster strays far away from zombies, actually. And thinking about it right now makes me sad because, well, the realistic monsters would have to be serial killers, or any killers for that matter, or people who rape others or use others in ways I don't even want to describe.

But that's not what Halloween is about.

I think, and this is just a theory I'm coming up with on the spot, that people need those make believe monsters in order to remind themselves that sometimes, they can laugh at being scared. I feel like it brings people a kind of relief.

Because honestly, even for someone who hasn't been through as much as probably a lot of others have, zombies can't be as scary as some of the stuff we have to face in this life.