he doesn't look a thing like jesus, but he talks like a gentleman like you imagined when you were young

I'm reading 'A Shining Affliction'. It makes me want to cry a lot and it also makes me feel like becoming a therapist is the right choice. At one point the author said this, more as an afterthought than anything. "I wonder if this is a hazard of being a writer: a sense of detachment that sometimes makes the present seem like it is already past."
I sometimes too often ask others what they think of me. I want, more than anything, to know myself and what others think. I do not think that I am particularly insecure, because I do not think I would change myself for someone else. I am happy with the person I feel that I am, I just wonder if everyone views me the way I do. I sometimes wish i could see a therapist just so that someone would tell me who I seem to be. I want to understand myself more. I think it is more vanity than insecurity. But then I guess I am insecure because it pains me to be less than someone else at the things I feel I am good at. It is very hard, sometimes, to get people to tell me the thoughts I want to hear. People are always too afraid of hurting me, I think. Sometimes, when people do say things that are not really positive, though, I am surprised by how much their words can hurt me even though I feel that I should let them roll off my back. The best impressions I get of myself are the ones that come unexpectedly. Yesterday Peter got very upset with me and I knew why, but I felt that he was being irrational. Later he told me some things that I already knew and then some other things that I did not know, that he feels sometimes that I am better than him because I know a lot of words and I am a vegetarian. It was interesting to me to hear because I have never really felt like a good person. A smart person, maybe sometimes. It was interesting to hear those words from someone telling me how they feel and not how they think I want them to feel. I hope.
It has always been difficult for me to verbalize the reasons why I became a vegetarian. I think it started as an attempt to annoy my grandparents, but after I thought about it some more and read some literature I realized that it was because I did not feel good about being indirectly responsible for death. I still ate fish for a while, and I used to tell my dad it was because I did not look at a fish and feel that it had a soul. I don't really believe in souls as I did when I was younger- as a kind of smoke that lived in your chest until it flew into the sky when you died. I used to think about that a lot. (god was a man who lived on a planet. Angels lived on their own planet. Jesus lived on another one. I was kind of like a Mormon in that way. I guess I never thought about how terribly lonely they all must be.) I do, though, believe in the idea of a part of you that makes you an individual. And I think you can call that a soul, separate from our calculating brains. I don't like to eat fish much anymore, partially because my best friend became a vegetarian recently and refuses to eat it, so I feel like a bad vegetarian when I do. But also because all those humane society newsletters I used to read really got to me. I hate the idea of factory farming and I know that it is particularly bad for fish. Without getting into the gory details, I would only feel comfortable eating a fish or any other animal if I knew where it came from. I do not feel this is something that it makes me better than anyone else. Perhaps more squeamish.
I always try to do my best in school because it pisses me off when people are better than me. Secretly, I'm very competitive. 
I think I learned a lot of words from a young age because I wanted to be able to express myself as precisely as I possibly can. I re-read some of the reading responses I wrote to my teacher in fifth grade and it became clear to me that I was, at least sometimes, very unhappy. When I look back on my childhood, I tend to forget those unhappy patches because after all, I had everything I should have wanted. I think my childhood was very happy, but, like everyone else, things were sometimes hard. To my teacher, I described myself as depressed and I was surprised to hear myself use those words. Sometimes looking back I feel like I've forgotten parts of myself like these and it makes me sad. I have never dealt well with change and as time moves on I inevitably lose things. I gain so much, too, though. Just the other day an old friend looked at me and said, 'you seem a lot happier now.' and though I had never thought this, I knew it was true.
I do not feel like a good person, but I guess I try. 
I am at my grandparent's house with my best friend. They live at the beach. We visited a graveyard today at my request. It was beautiful. I also saw some pictures of my parents when they were young.

this is where we are, for miles and miles. interrupted only by a huge house rising out of the swamp along the horizon every so often. a house like the one i am in.

this  is my best friend standing on a surveyor's thing. i don't know what it's called.

this is my best friend sitting on the end of a bridge that we trespassed onto. 

this is a dead tree.

this is that same bridge walking back home.

this is the back of a tombstone. many of the stones were so pious it almost sounded hopeful. some of them were very wistful. others were grand and somewhat boisterous. still others- mostly of kids- were just sad. a lot of them said 'our darling baby'.

there was a quiet kind of peace here. i don't think it would be a bad place to spend forever. my mother explained to me that she never visits her father's grave because she doesn't feel like he is there. i think if she died i would want to go if only because i feel like i ought to.

the graveyard was founded in 1792. what a terribly long time ago.

here are my parents. 

sometimes, people try to convince me not to live where i do. friends who live other, richer places. i used to hate being here but now i'm glad because not everybody gets to help a drug dealer write his memoirs. i'm glad because i feel like i am able to become a better person by being exposed to different, but not neccessarily good people. i feel it's important for me to get to know people who are different than me so that i can view them as people and not, i don't know, gangsters and drug dealers. it helps me developed a more well-rounded world view, i guess.
Anyway. this is a silly and not well thought out post.

it's what we needed to have a good time

I went to a party about two weeks ago. I wrote this a few weeks ago, but failed to post it. This is more for my benefit than yours. It was my first unchaperoned, boy-girl, alcoholic sexytimes party. It was hosted by my on-again, off-again friend in an effort to make a group of kids who call themselves 'The Crew' (douchey. yes. i know.) like her more. This is also the group of people one of my best friends hangs out with while not with me. So I wanted to get to know them better, plus I feel like this is one of the things a person has to do while in high school. When we arrived it was just a few girls and 12 bottles of mike's. I had half a glass, half wanting to get smashed but mostly endeavoring to keep my wits about myself. Boys- four of them- arrive with Bacardi in a Gatorade bottle. because we classy sons of bitches. We drink. I don't, and neither does my best friend. Our hostess drinks a bit but is quite capable of holding her liquor. The fourth girl, whom we'll call C because these titles are getting cumbersome, also abstains from drinking. I assume it's a religious thing with her and also with my best friend. We play card/drinking games, which are fairly fun. Things are getting a bit rowdier but I am not perturbed. Then... hostess informs me that her parents will be getting home at 11. They think the party is going to be happening at the neighbor's house. The neighbor girl, whom we shall refer to as P, has been a friend of our hostess since middle school. She's kind of a bitch. P, and her friend, an eighth grader whom we'll call vomit girl for reasons that will become all too clear, have managed to get rather drunk. So has a third girl, the only sophomore. She, however, is actually somewhat capable at drinking and so handles herself fairly appropriately throughout the entire party. Our hostess hasn't planned the party very well so she and I, at my urging, begin to clean up the snacks she has laid out. One half hour later. We all put on our swimsuits- I put on a too-small swimsuit that belonged to our hostess when she was younger, and get into the hot tub. I dislike hot tubs because it feels like I am in a person soup, but wanted to be sociable. After a few moments, I get out to check on everyone else. I find my dear baseball friend sitting on the floor of our hostess's parent's bedroom floor, with vomit girl sobbing into his shoulder. He looks up at me somewhat bewildered, and I assume, with a twinge of jealousy, that she is an ex-girlfriend of his. I smile and leave him to his duty. P and one of the twins, and sophomore girl and a boy who's name I'm not really sure of but I refer to as 'the large boy', are pretty much fucking in the hot tub. After a little while our hostess frantically informs me that her parents texted to say they would be coming home early and we need to get everyone to P's house, like, now. Everyone drunkenly gets out of the hot tub. Hostess runs around cleaning things up inside the house, and C, my best friend, and I are tasked with somehow getting the drunken people to P's house. The boys are all kind of drunk but not terribly so. They are still conscious and standing. P and vomit girl, on the other hand, are not. Everyone is being a douchebag, except for baseball friend, my knight in shining armor. He attempts to single-handedly carry vomit girl, who is still sobbing, but fails because she is heavy. We end up organizing parties of two- one person on either side- of both drunken girls. I, for some reason, take vomit girl, who I have actually before that evening never met. Didn't even know her name. Anyway, I and sophomore girl take her, and my best friend and C take P. We walk down the driveway and down to P's house with considerable effort and much falling down. And sobbing. At this point, P realizes, in a moment of clarity, that there is a car in the driveway. We all assume that it is P's mother and after some standing in the middle of the road; rush, for some reason, back to the hostess's house. At this point, vomit girl has hit her head on several rocks and C and I think it would be best if someone called her legal guardian. Sophomore girl insists that this is not a good idea, but C calls anyway. NO ANSWER. For some reason, we take vomit girl up to this weird attic our hostess has and used as a playground as a child. At this point I ask if we are going to be 'hiding her like motherfucking Anne Frank in there'. Even kind of drunk and panicked, I am a nerd. Apparently, hiding her like motherfucking Anne Frank was indeed the idea. At this point, we have been joined by a boy who I like to refer to as 'The Lesbian'. Our hostess is madly in love with him. She has never spoken with him. He is outrageously late and everyone is freaking the fuck out. With him has arrived has arrived his older sister, who has just graduated. She was homecoming queen and was in my gym class. Homecoming queen is actually fairly helpful. She assists us in getting the still sobbing vomit girl up and into the attic and onto a couch. Homecoming queen and sophomore girl seem like they've got a handle on things so I go downstairs to inform our panicky hostess of what has happened. I go back up, and sophomore girl has left to check on P, who was apparently escorted back to her house by my best friend. C is currently taking care of vomit girl, and vomit girl is unconscious. At this point, homecoming queen has gotten her boyfriend from the car, and he is standing unhelpfully in the corner. Now the real fun begins! Vomit girl starts vomiting all over herself while still unconscious. C, homecoming queen, and her boyfriend all start freaking the fuck out. I calmly request that someone go get some goddamn paper towels and help me turn vomit girl on her side so she doesn't asphyxiate. Someone complies with my orders. Unhelpful boyfriend stands unhelpfully in the corner, gagging douchily. Vomit girl is vomiting a lot, and even I will admit that it smells really, really bad. Now baseball friend has arrived and, ever the gentleman, attempts to help me in cleaning up vomit. The vomit is down vomit girl's shirt, in her hair, and on the couch. C comes back up and attempts to clean the couch with febreze and uses carpet cleaner as an airfreshener. C tries to help with the vomit but has a rather weak stomach. Secretly, I think baseball friend does too, but wants to feel in control of the situation. Vomit girl vomits more, I clean it up. We get her onto a waterproof sleeping bag onto the floor. She vomits more. Homecoming queen, hostess, baseball friend, C, and I, all carry unconscious girl down the steps of the attic and take her into hostess's parent's bedroom, which has a wooden floor and a bathroom. Homecoming queen and her unhelpful boyfriend leave after exchanging cell phone numbers with me, and baseball friend soon reluctantly follows. (The other  boys, meanwhile, have been socializing outside THIS ENTIRE TIME.) At some point, C has managed to get ahold of vomit girl's legal guardian. Apparently her father died in a car accident a few months ago and her mother is crazy, so her aunt is taking care of her. I grab the phone and shout at the aunt to pick her child up. I attempt to clean the vomit out of vomit girl's hair. I successfully take the runny mascara off of her face. She is still unconscious and everyone is freaking the fuck out. At some point, our hostess's parents arrive. Her father does not really do anything and stays outside the whole night. Her mother first removes her jewelry and then I guess realizes that there is an unconscious, vomit covered girl on her bathroom floor and decides to kind of help us. Actually, I continue to clean up vomit as she explains to us that this sort of thing happens a lot in college. It is not, actually, very helpful. Then I cry some and the hostess's mother comforts me somewhat. C has been crying the entire time. The aunt arrives and does not seem appropriately concerned at all, MUCH LIKE ALL OF THE ADULTS IN THIS SITUATION. The aunt tries to wake up vomit girl. She is unsuccessful because vomit girl is unconscious. I help her carry vomit girl to the car. The aunt is annoyed because vomit girl has ruined her night out. The aunt thanks me and leaves. We all cry some more and finally call my best friend, who has been at P's house since the 'standing in the road' portion of the evening. P has not vomited or passed out, but has cried the entire evening. Since my best friend is a saint, she feels reluctant to leave P even though P is so drunk she won't remember anything tomorrow. My best friend comes over, we bathe briefly and recap the night's events. My best friend wants to go and make sure P is okay, so I accompany her, clad only in someone's hideous green and pink fuzzy bathrobe. My best friend goes upstairs to P's room, and I am left standing in the living room of P's house with P's older brother, his girlfriend, and sophomore girl. The girlfriend is extremely nice and we chat about That 70s Show for a while. I am mildly in shock. After some time, I fetch my best friend from P's bedroom and we head back to the hostess's house, where she, C, and I will be spending the night. We cry, recap the night, then angrily tweet before going to sleep at two in the morning.
Here are the things I got out of this experience that was probably something you had to be there for and will be very uninteresting to read about:
C is now my friend.
Drinking is sometimes awful.
Baseball friend is a shining example of a human.
I would go to this party again if I got the chance. Is it the lure of popularity? I don't think so. I think I just like parties. I like that something sometimes happens so my life doesn't have to be so stagnant all the time. I also like baseball friend. Let's call him J from now on.

so i tried, and i begged and i screamed and i sighed

I was thinking about middle school today. Evidently some other people were too, because a bunch of people commented on a friend's photo of us from late 2009. One of the girls who was in the picture, Katherine (I changed the name, but I felt it was important for her to have one), was not someone who you could call popular when we were young. In fact, she was extremely unpopular. She had a strange demeanor and poor social skills. She was never quite able to pick up the cues that for most of us come so easily. She was one of the unlucky few that were picked on. When people would pick on her, she would just explode. It was a reaction everyone predicted. She was so easy to manipulate. I was flipping back through an album, and I found these. I blurred out the names and pictures, but left the initial so you can see the recurring characters. I didn't include the actual photos because they are irrelevant to the story that unfolds.

these are all sequential on the same photograph. i'm proud to say that E is a close friend of mine. I remember thinking that C, the one with the warm colored photograph, was a mean kid even then. Sociopathic, I remember thinking. But the rest of these people? I considered them to be my friends. Not close, but friendly nonetheless.

Again, all casual friends. Not for a long time, but they were then.

Friends.

This one was the worst. 

You'll note that C and C are the main antagonists in multiple pictures. 

And here's where I come in. Obviously I'm Frances. 

I read these and I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed at my friends and ashamed at myself and embarrassed for Katherine. I almost felt physically sick. I knew, then, how troubled she was. I KNEW that she was adopted and struggling with it, knew she had emotional problems for which she took medication, and I still did it.
I sent Katherine a message a few hours ago, reading:
Hey, Katherine, I just went through that old album from middle school and I kind of realized how awful people acted towards you. And I realized that I was a part of that and I should have been kinder. I didn't think about how the way I acted affected you, and I feel awful about it. So I'm sorry and I hope you're at a better place in your life now.
-Frances


She hasn't replied and I don't know that she ever will. I know she's still not well but she is doing better. She has some friends from sports, and for the most part people have dropped their torment of her. I don't expect her to forgive me, but I want her to know that things are not the same as they were then. This whole thing reminds me of Salon's self-indulgent 'Interview with my Bully'.
I wrote all this down because I don't want to forget the person I was and how far I've come. I want to leave this person behind forever, but I can't, because this is who I am.

• 
  

homegirl drop it like the nasdaq

Today was my official last day of school. I took the English exam. My chemistry teacher was proctoring- the one who I like but find terrifying. When we walked in she said hi to me and I felt special. We took the exam, which was easy and boring. Then we sat for two hours doing nothing but sleeping. I can't sleep in public places so I usually write lists on the cover sheet they give you. Some of the lists include Possible Topics for Research: schizophrenia in children, schizophrenic hallucinations, quantum physics, primitive religion and its origins; a boring to-do list for summer, Things That Might Be Fun: Visit Snow Camp (an activity which I will be completing tomorrow); a list of all the nouns in the first story on the test, Things That I Learned Today: I am not a person who can fall asleep in public places, I am not a person who can entertain themselves using only their imaginations, High-fives are not allowed during standardized testing; Favorite [Chemistry teacher]-isms: "Madison, close your mouth. You are not a bear," and, "If I am a pedophile...". Later, the lists devolved into me marking the time every 5 minutes, drawing a flowchart of all the orders of matter from strings to the universe, and attempting to draw a sailboat by filling in the bubbles of the answer sheet. I included inside the body of the sailboat a brief paragraph about how once my cousin who is dead did this on a standardized test sheet. I thought it was an odd thing to say at a funeral. Anyway, the point of this is that my Chemistry teacher collected the sheets which were mostly blank or covered in vapid doodles. She sat at the front of the class and went through them until she got to mine. Recognizing my handwriting, she stops and looks up at me. She proceeds to read the sheet, glancing up at me every so often. I think she likes me more now.
Then my best friend and I went to a pizza place. Peter and I have rescheduled our bookclub for today at three in the morning. I'm already bored out of my mind and it hasn't even been twenty-four hours since my break. Deliver us from normal.

and now the state line felt like the Berlin wall

I've had a pretty good week. School is pretty much over, except for the English exam I have to take tomorrow. I managed to make it out with my 4.0 GPA intact, though it's not set in stone just yet- our Chemistry Independent Research Papers and the English EOC haven't been graded yet. I could still be screwed! Things are feeling precarious.
On Friday, my best friend and I hosted a dinner party. We invited an assortment of people, and only one person (baseball friend) failed to show. It was pretty successful. Everyone liked each other as far as I'm aware, the food was decent and we walked in the rain around my neighborhood. Then after the two girls we don't know as well but still really like left and we (the best friend, the other best friend, our carpool buddy and his friend) watched Saw 6, which was surprisingly not that scary. I was pretty proud of myself, but I guess it helped that the color contrast was a bit out of whack so the blood looked pink.  People in horror movies are pretty fucking stupid. We all flirted shamelessly but it was okay because nothing could happen because both carpool buddy and his friend have girlfriends. Carpool buddy's girlfriend lives in Georgia. He met her at TIP and claims they're in love. I guess we'll see when we meet her on the seventh. Then, the other best friend slept over and we watched Paranormal Activity. Which was also not very scary. I think I like horror movies now.
Then, yesterday, a friend of mine and I went to her godmother's birthday party. Actually, the seventh annual celebration of her 40th birthday. It was quite nice. The thing about this friend is that her parents are extremely popular and hip. There were a lot of successful 30-somethings at the party. Her godfather told me my voice had gotten 'even more sophisticated', which I think means that it's gotten deeper, but I was still flattered because as we all know, my voice is a bit of a weak point.
Then I went and acted like kind of a cunt. I forgot... well, I didn't forget. I chose to forget about Peter and I's scheduled book club beginning time yesterday. Instead, I was at this party with no wifi and a whole lot of Southern Comfort. I didn't even read The Fountainhead. I kind of thought he was kidding about being mad because I was a little buzzed last night. Then I woke up this morning... well, noon. I woke up at noon and realized, wow, that was kind of a cunty thing to do and he's probably not exactly thrilled with me right now. And then I was annoyed with myself. I read the first chapter of The Fountainhead and thought about what Peter said and realized he probably just read the whole thing because he was mad. And then I was even more annoyed with myself because I was looking forward to this too and I went and fucked it up. He's never really ignored me before so I feel like it's a very bad sign.
I guess blogging is kind of a way for Peter and I to tell each other things we don't want to say. And I gotta say, I didn't realize how invested I was in us, or him, until I wasn't certain that he would be there. I guess Peter has been kind of a constant in my life so far. He's safe. But now I guess I realize we're both just people with feelings and a code of conduct. And I didn't really conduct myself very well. Peter is not a cat. His friendship is not unconditional. (I also cannot pet his stomach or call him obese.)
And here's another thing. Reality hit me in the face yesterday like a bucket of water. I realized when I was talking to my friend just before we both fell asleep that I am probably never going to see Peter ever again. He's not coming to TIP this year, which means I'll never see him at TIP again. Texas is a very long way away and I don't think I'll make it there for a long time. I felt sad about it, even though this is something I had known from the start, or very nearly. I realize that there's an inevitability here, that we will grow apart. In fact, it's surprising it hasn't started already. Or maybe it has and I haven't noticed. Without the constant reminder of a face it's easy to let things waste away until one day you realize that the relationship you one had is gone. This is a phenomenon that happens to a small degree each summer when we take a break from everyone. The summer is when we do things for ourselves. The relationships we were cultivating stop growing and only the ones that are solid survive. Each fall we come back to find that things are not as they were when we left. Couples have broken apart and friendships have atrophied. I realize that I don't want this to happen but I don't know that there's anything I can do.
Jesus Christ on a stick, what am I talking about?
At the end of the year the English teacher that hates me had us all write a letter to ourselves that she would send to us the June after we graduate. I thought it was an interesting assignment. I didn't spend a lot of time on it because I had that Chemistry paper due so now I kind of regret it. The letter covered goals for the future, classes and teachers, clubs, crushes, friendships, appearances, and miscellaneous relationships. It was hard to decide what to include because I don't know what I'll remember three years from now. That's all it is from now until then. Three long years.