Do you ever get that feeling when you look in the mirror and you have no idea who that is staring back. Yes, it's the same face: The same eyes sadly laughing back at you, the same lips pressed into a hard grimace. Yet there's something strangely different about that face. You don't recognize the features as your own. You blink once or twice, and pinch yourself just to make sure this isn't some dream. That person staring back at you isn't really you; it's an imposture. As you stand there quietly gazing at your reflection, you start to think that maybe this is you. It's just not the person you thought you'd turn out to be. This person turned out to be horribly wrong: The exact opposite of what you had envisioned. And this new person frankly scares you to death.


What happened? When did I lose myself? Now you're faced with the dilemma of finding your way back to the person you once were or accepting this new, strange person.

But what if you didn't really like who you were before that much to begin with? I mean the person you were before is someone you can live with, it's just not all that great either. In a way, you're suck between a rock and a hard place. Unfortunately change doesn't necessarily happen in the blink of an eye. And there's no way of knowing if the change is going to be for the better or for the worse. I would have to say there are certain parts of who I was before that I really liked. I liked being quiet, but loud around friends. I love laughing and joking around. My randomness is something I can't live without, and the fact that no one really seems to know who I am. I am unreadable. I'm incredibly fine with being anti-social. But where did I go wrong?


Now I've done some things that are way out of character. I don't exactly regret them, but I don't really like them either. But I know one thing, I can't continue with this new me. Eventually a line has to be drawn and boundaries made. How? Is it too late?

In my English class, we were discussing the idea of Courtly Love. To the medieval knight, loving a woman didn't mean entering into some kind of physical relationship. In fact, they rarely ever saw each other. The knight saw the lady as a sort of inspiration and as a symbol of a virtue. It was even common to be married and look to another lady for inspiration. This is because once the knight proceeded to go beyond a courtly love and take on the vows marriage, the lady lost all her meaning to him. She becomes an ordinary human to him. The reality of this made me apply a similar idea to our modern culture.

We love the getting more than the having.

What I mean by this is we are so driven to get something, but once that thing is finally attained, it's not long before it loses all charm. This can be seen in a lot of different ways. Take Christmas for example: We ask for various gifts of which we most desperately want, and yet, after a month or so we don't care about them. We want bigger and better things. Relationships are the same way. You start liking a guy or girl and almost instantly you're set on having him or her. Feeling progress and begin to grow, and you're wait to either make the move or for the other person to make the move. But once you've been with the person for a couple weeks to a couple years, you are discontent with them.

All the action and thrill is in the getting.

Sure, this may not always be the case, but it often is. We satisfy our needs in that moment (however long that moment may be) and move on. This is just food for the thought.

Seeing as how Thanksgiving is fast approaching, I hope everyone has a wonderful time with friends and family. Wish me luck, I'm preparing the entire Thanksgiving meal. I hope it's edible.

Unfortunately no, I'm not moving out of the house yet, but I am moving into my own room. I've shared a room my whole life, but with three other sisters and a brother, sharing a room is a given. My parents promised I could have my older sister's room once she moved out. Of course, she moved out at the beginning of September. It's now almost the end of November. The only problem with moving downstairs is the possibility of getting my door taken away if I hibernate in there. I'm kinda in trouble cause I stay in my room a lot = /. One of the things I hate about moving to a different room is having to take ALL your things and organizing them all over again. So far I have a huge pile of clothes on the floor, and I'm still not done getting everything else in my room. In the end, I know I'll be happy .

Now on to other news. I saw Twilight last night with a friend and my older sister. And I can honestly say I was incredibly disappointed. I know the movie will never be the same as the book, but they could have at least tried. They really didn't. I was tempted to just walk out of the theater. There were some very good parts: I will give them credit for that. It probably would have been ok if I hadn't of read the book.

Other opinions about the movie?

Also, my first Trimester is finished. Finals were brutal. I spent last weekend doing Connections homework and preparing for finals. My English final was insane: We have to write a commonplace and a poem while trying to study our notes from Beowulf and Dante's Divine Comedies. So over the weekend all I got to was the writing portion of the final, which meant lots of cramming Monday night. I spent 5 and a half hours studying for that final: It was hard paying attention cause my brain was already fried and I was sleep deprived. Then to make my week even better, I took four finals all on Thursday (I missed two on Wednesday cause I was at my other school). The common response I got to that was, "You're crazy," or "You're going to die." I was taking finals from 8 a.m. until 3:30. The last final took was Chemistry. I'm usually pretty good at Chemistry, but I couldn't remember a single thing.

Here's to hoping I at least passed ha ha.

I swear, God has a sense of humor. And I have proof. Some one please tell me why the guys worth liking are never close by. This I mean literally. This has happened to me twice now, and in a way it's terrible. Talking to someone you know you're never going to see unless a miracle takes place. Damn emotions keep getting in the way! And somehow I laugh at my situation because it's so ridiculous. There are reasons why smart people stay away from long-distance relationships. More often then not you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Well I'll explain what's going on. I've been msging a friend of a friend for some time now, and recently he finally asked me for my number. I gave it to him, not expecting anything to happen. Sure enough we've been talking none stop ever since. It seems to me that our feelings are mutual, but neither of us has said anything. And in a way I hope neither of us says anything. But I finally found a guy that is older than me (but not too old), funny, and thinks I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. Of course in my mind I'm saying, "Well you haven't really met me in person yet." WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME! Ok well it's only really happened once before, but that's beside the point. I'm not going to start anything cause I'm really not looking for anything, but I do like him.

The other time this has happened to me was at the end of summer. This guy I knew way back when I was seven found me on facebook, and we started catching up. It was really cute though cause when we were seven, we had the biggest crushes on each other. He told his mother he was in love with me and that we were going to get married. Finally he asked me straight up that if we lived in the same state would I go out with him. Of course I said yeah...if we lived in the same state. Then he proceeded to ask me how I felt about *drum role please* long distance relationships. I said that I tried to stay away from them because they never really worked out. But some how I found myself in one soon afterwards. Go figure. And surprise surprise it did not last too long. It actually kinda hurt.

After that I was pretty much done with guys, and have thankfully never had a relationship since. But I'm kicking myself cause I can't ever find a guy who lives where I do.

What are your thoughts on this?

"She's just a little too scared to get close to anyone because everyone who said, 'I'll be there,'...left."

I recently had a "talk" with my parents about how I was acting. I should say our talks are more like my parents ranting about a whole bunch of things, and me usually standing there. I guess they finally noticed my withdrawn manner, which had been going on for two months, but somehow slipped by them. I normally don't tell them anything that is going on in my life. When I do, I immediately wish I could take back everything I said. I don't like it when they, or people in general, know my personal life. I feel exposed. Naked. And it is not a comfortable feeling I might add. And most of the time, my family takes advantage of what I do tell them and use it against me. Well, back to the talk, it surprised me how much my parents got right about me. (I guess it shouldn't surprise me all that much) My dad told me I was building a wall between me and the rest of the world. Also, that I didn't like having relationships with other people. I stood there and said in my mind, "Exactly."

I'm not going to lie here, but I basically have one friend, and pretty much not even that. I have numerous acquaintances, but no true friends. The one "friend" I do have I share a lot more of my life with, but still not exactly in detail. To be honest, we were forced into a friendship. In a class of four, we had to cling to each other. I do not mean that in a negative way. As it turns out we go through similar situations, so we're a pretty good match. We're the...different ones so to speak.

But I think I finally shut down after so many of my previous friends walked in and out of my life. All of them promising 'to be there for me.' Those are empty words to me now. I can look at the past and smile, but after a second the pain sets in: Overwhelming my senses, so that I'm screaming out for the memories to stop. I double over and choke back the tears that threaten to come streaming down my cheecks. I don't want to be hurt. And in this life, there isn't much we can do to escape getting hurt, but I'm going to do whatever I can not to be crushed. If that means building a wall, then the stones must be laid. And this all fits perfectly into who I already am. In a sense, I am choosing a life of solitude, but at the moment that is all I want.

So for the moment, I am hiding behind and wall. My safe zone. The only way of life I've known for so many years.

"When you grow up you realize that there isn't really any Santa but the monsters are still around. If only they were big and hairy; now they're just dark and amorphous, and they're no longer afraid of the light. Sometimes they're the guy who climbs in the window and takes your television. And sometimes they're the guy who walks out the front door with your heart in his hand and never comes back. And sometimes they're the job or the bank or the husband or the boss or just that sort of dark heavy feeling that sits between your shoulder blades like a backpack. There are always terrible things waiting to grab you by the ankle, to pull you under, to get you with their long horrible arms. And you lie in bed and look at the shadows on the ceiling and feel, under the covers, just for a moment, like you're safe. One more day alive."

-Anna Quindelin

This is one of my favorite quotes. There are monsters every where, waiting to grab you. You never know what the monster will come in the form of. Life is full of these situations, and the only way to handle it is by tackling them straight on. There isn't away around them. And you certainly can't hide from them, safely protected by your covers, anymore. And as you go through life, the monsters keep getting bigger are uglier. Except, they don't appear that way on the outside. The monsters actually may look very appealing; They become harder to detect until they're right on top of you.

As most may have guessed, life has been that monster for me these past few months. And every night as I crawl under my covers, I am thankful I made it through one more day. I may be bruised and some what beyond repair, but I made it through. I keep pushing forward and battle against the monsters as they come along. Oh and boy do they come one right after the other. I can't give up and surrender: I have to keep inching forward. Perhaps one day the monsters wont seem as big or as scary, and I wont have to fight them off by myself.

I believe someone asked me awhile ago what my uniform looked like. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a picture of me where you could see my entire uniform. Well, this is what I looked like on Halloween (clever, I know). Now if you take away the fishnets (and replace them with blue tights or knee highs), converse, and make the skirt go down to my knees...BAM...you have my uniform.
Anyways this is a short post, but hopefully I'll have another one up sometime in the near future.

Anger. I don't think there's a stronger emotion. I would go as far to say anger is stronger then love. It's so easy to get angry over the smallest things. A comment about how you look, your siblings constantly pestering you, or when something doesn't work out exactly how you planned -- all can trigger an immediate response. That response could be a number of things: yelling, hostility, fighting, or even silence. Most of us can't go a day without getting angry about something. Anger can control your every thought and actions. When you are angry, your mind is clouded. Thinking of how you should handle the situation becomes impossible. The right thing to do isn't easily solved, and most of the time we're not concerned with finding the right way.

So what are we to do when anger decides to strike? Seclusion and silence don't necessarily solve the problem. Often the result of the two is bitterness, which is the offspring of anger. What are the other alternatives? Yelling is mindless and bestial; although, most of us choose this method of dealing with anger. Maybe because that's how we learned by seeing others yell at each other. Another tendency we lean towards is passive aggressiveness. We pretend every thing's ok, but all of our reactions are vindictive. All of our anger takes place behind the scenes, catching others off-guard. Then there are some who are brave enough to reveal their anger and confront the person. This may lead to good and resolution or more bad. I don't think we trust method nor do we feel comfortable exposing ourselves to that extent.

Anger can be an obvious emotion to spot. It can leak through our eyes and change our expression. In some cases we refuse to interact with others. Anger whispers in our ears making things appear worse than what actually happened. And the dead give away is when you take your anger out on everyone else. Perhaps scientists should find a cure for anger. Anger really should be classified as a disease. Or we should all sign up for anger management sessions. It is a bigger problem then most are willing to admit.