now painting rainbows on my ugly face

I don't really have anything thought out for this. It was nice to hear that someone appreciated something I did, yesterday. I like writing letters.
I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. Gallup recently released a poll, declaring my state the eighth most religious in the nation. And I don't know. Sometimes people think that me being atheist makes me automatically anti-religion. And sometimes I feel like I am. Like, the other day I was on the internet (like every other day) and I stumbled across jesus-is-savior.com. Let me just... if you don't laugh, you'll cry. Some of their brave viewpoints include women not wearing pants, reclaiming the rainbow for GOD!, and Taylor Swift is a lewd harlot. It's pretty bad. But other times I feel like religion helps people feel happy and belong to something. I sometimes feel like religion fills a void in people, that they wouldn't need it if they felt whole. Or maybe it's me who is incomplete somehow.
There are an awful lot of abandoned houses in North Carolina. I feel like if we added them all up, we would have enough for everyone to live in. Sometimes I think about the people who used to live in them. I wonder if they left anything behind. Once a house fell down near where I live. It just collapsed in on itself. I remember driving by and seeing the refrigerator outside on the ground with the alphabet letters in a jumbled mess on the door. It all seemed terribly sad in a vague way.
There are a lot of people posting on facebook about all the people they've lost. It seems a bit crass to post a memoriam on facebook, but I guess if you're just the sort of person who pours your heart into everything, it happens naturally. But what are you supposed to say? It just feels like those moments are meant to be private and they get cheapened somehow by using the same platform to wax poetic on your dead father as you do to play farmville. It feels wrong to scroll down a page and see RIPs mixed inbetween horoscope readings and sports predictions. It makes me a little sad and a little nervous because it feels like I've somehow dodged a bullet- I have four mismatched grandparents, and two parents, and no dead siblings.  It almost feels like I'm due for a tragedy.
I've been thinking about smells, too. I think they're a little interesting. I'm trying to dissect the smell of my house piece by piece. It's sort of impossible. Sweat, but clean sweat- not body odor. Sweat has a distinct smell. Cat. Possibly just the dusty smell of cat litter. Cleaning products. It sounds like it smells terrible but it doesn't. I guess the smell of outside, which I've heard described as 'ozone'. I have no idea how you actually know what ozone smells like, but sure. I guess it's more like the smell of rain. I love it when it rains, especially in these days with a thin layer of pollen on every surface. It feels like it's deluged my skin and there's a bit of yellow powder on my bones. Laundry detergent. I adore the smell of laundry. Sometimes I feel like nothing can ever be clean. It's impossible for me to clean everything as fast as it gets dirty. When I leave home my house is going to be a cesspool because I won't have my mother to help me. My mother is very helpful. Coffee, except not this week because my dad is away. He's in Texas. Garlic, because my mother is Italian.
We finished reading Romeo and Juliet today in English. It was sort of terrible because no one can ever read anything right, and our teacher never corrects them. How are they ever going to learn how to say something if no one ever corrects them? They aren't, that's how. If you're on a job interview and you think the word 'flow' is pronounced rhymes with cow, you're not going to get that job. No, seriously, that fucking happened. Because you're a dumbass.
I wonder what would happen if I just dropped out of school right now? I feel like pencil dust and eraser shreds have settled onto all my clothes. It's really not that much work, I think it just feels that way right now. I hope so.
I use the word 'somehow' too much. I have a particular friend who overuses words she's just learned and it annoys everyone. And by everyone, I mean me. I need to be more patient with everyone else. There are some days where everything annoys me a little bit. And I always have to stop and say to myself, 'these are people you care about. you have to like them.' and usually I do. I think it happens with everyone I know, but I think it's easy for me to rank how close someone is to me by how often it happens. With my two best friends, it only happens occasionally and passes quickly. I feel like that's not a normal thing to feel. Maybe it is.
Yesterday that same friend who overuses words told me about a mutual friend of ours overdosing on pain medication two nights ago and going to the hospital and throwing up blood. I haven't spoken to her in such a long time, I felt guilty somehow. Like if I had tried to maintain my friendship with her, she would somehow not abuse pain medication nightly. It scared me a little bit because we're so young. Like this isn't something that should happen to people like her. People like us, I guess.
I don't wear makeup except for concealer when I look particularly bad or I'm feeling particularly ambitious. Sometimes girls at my school don't wear makeup and it's startling to see their ruddy skin and flat eyes. I don't want people to look at me and think I'm ugly because I haven't taken the time to do what I usually do. At least if they think I'm ugly, they won't be surprised. There's a girl at my school who applies makeup so thick on her face that it looks like a mask. It's just a few shades too light for her face and the whites of her eyes seem to stare out at me from behind her skin. It looks like she took someone else's face. There's another girl at my school who curls her hair so tightly it looks like little sausages, but it's so stringy and lies so flat somehow still that it looks like ramen noodles. Privately, we call her noodle girl.
Sometimes I feel cruel. I feel like I shouldn't judge people because they're trying their best to get through everything, just like me. But then I think, hey, that means they're probably judging me too.