Inner Musings

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

It's hard for me to find the time to write anymore. Mainly I'll just work myself into a frenzy, trying to get school work done, get house work done, make my parents happy, and wonder why it seems like all the time I do have to myself gets wasted as I lie on the floor, staring at the ceiling. Inevitably, I'll fall into a spurt of productivity where I just lay it all down to paper and then not look at it for weeks on end until I get another spurt during which I reread and edit my incoherent ramblings. Generally, I like to write a lot on vacations because the different venues tend to inspire creative productions that aren't necessarily so damned similar to all the stuff I write in Seattle. Anyhow.

The time crunch is a problem, especially the last quarter of my senior year. And lately, my creative inclinations have been popping up during class, not so much because a brilliant idea has struck me like burning, but mainly just because I've been in the same school system for thirteen years, and someone has told me that soon, yes, soon I'll be getting out of it. Of course, I'm starting to experience that frantic, nihilistic nostalgia that makes me certain I'll miss all the shitheads whom I never really liked, and wouldn't it have been nice if we could have gotten to know each other better over the last four years?

And aside from all these feelings of anxiety, there's a pervading je ne sais quois of tedium, boredom, and malaise, not just with the doldrums of public high school, but also with my family life. I'm really irritable around my family, which makes me feel worse because they're the people I actually care about. And by the time I'm through dealing with the bullshit that the school day has managed to serve me on a golden platter, it's so hard to be compassionate. And I don't want to take my family for granted. My mother and I have been stepping on each other's toes a lot lately; we're both too sensitive and martyrous to adequately balance each other out. My father and I just clash a lot. He wants one thing, I want another. Namely, my independence, which both my parents insist they're trying to help me achieve (through "responsibility") but I think they may have forgotten to force themselves to relax and trust me.

My neighbor Matthew said to me, "You know, you've been an adult for a long time. It's just that nobody will let you be one." I agreed wholeheartedly, glad that all this confusion and apprehension isn't just hormone imbalances fizzling out the circuits in my brain. I've been working for Matthew for about two months now, cleaning house and running errands. He came into vast wealth at an early age but is still sharp and quite worldly; we get along well. Unfortunately, he's 31 and I'm still 17, not old enough to be comfortably out of range, but definitely not young enough to be in range. And to me, sometimes age is just a number, especially where he's concerned. I'm probably just trying to complicate things because it's what I do, and life's been a little slow for me. And at the same time, who really knows. Who really fucking knows. All I know is that I feel like Lolita, and I�m neither 13 nor dependent.

I've completed another phase of friends. This time, I fell in with the "bad" crowd, complete with hotel parties, underage drinking, general malaise. I haven't hung out with any of them in some time, or any of my old friends for that matter, and don't really know what to do with myself at this point.

This summer, I want to have a couple of months to enjoy my youth while I've still got it. I want the smell of chlorine and sunscreen, and I want grass stains on the butt of my pants and I want fights with the garden hose.

My age right now is somewhat of a curse. I�m 17; the only perk of this age is being able to watch rated R movies, which everyone does from the age of 12 or so anyways. I can�t vote, can�t buy cigars, can�t go into porno shops (oh. no.) can�t go dancing, can�t write myself late notes to class�actually, I�m not legally �responsible� for my actions (financially, anyways) which is nice, but it�s not like I�m wracking up huge criminal deaths as it is. And who the fuck decides that a day before your birthday, you are mentally deranged and incapable of purchasing pornography (oxy moron?) but the day after is perfectly fine. Status crimes, I believe they�re called. And let�s not even get into the 21 year old thing. How the fuck are you a major (or whatever they call you��legal citizen�) but unable to buy beer and prosecuted as a minor (with major consequences) if caught with a bit of alcohol? The American legal system is beyond me. No one person will take complete credit for the way it is precisely at this moment, and if they did, I�m sure they�re clinically insane.

I finally managed to clean my room and arrange it in a manner that I find quite pleasing. It�s taken me ten odd years to do this, but I�ve come a long way, baby.

Far as big future plans go, I�m holding my breath in�breathless anticipation. Come September, I�ll be shuttling off (an hour�s drive away from home, thankyouverymuch) to college where I�ll pursue a mind-expanding experience, hopefully meet Epiphany, experience God, or find my soulmate. In lieu of this, I hope to get an adequate education. It�s been a bit piecey these last few years.

In spite of all this psuedo-political rage, I�m still wandering around in a wide-eyed fashion, dazedly eyeballing my breakfast toast and hysterically trying to recall people�s names as I stare them in the face. It�s very �twilight zone�, really. I think my brain may have short-circuited somewhere in the quiet section towards the back, where you don�t notice the little snag until BOOM suddenly everything just starts falling apart�

Anemone Ra 9:05 PM