How Intelligent Are You?

I need to speak about this.

This may not be as whimsical or joking as my other posts, because I’m disturbed. I’m deeply disturbed and actually a little hurt. Not for myself, but for the people who have been reaching out to me specifically and confiding in me. I see a disturbing trend in a subject that’s only ever touched on briefly in the media.

I’m on a website to help people dealing with depression or crisis or other mental health issues. (Yes, they train you, but what better training is there than having been in such situations yourself?) I spent a few hours today talking with a deeply saddened individual who was cutting themselves as we spoke and I stayed on the inter-web line with them until I could confirm they were safe to the best of my abilities. I also gave them resources links. I’m used to speaking with the deeply depressed and hopeless.

What I was not prepared for today was the influx of high school students applying to college, and undergraduates.

Obviously that’s a stressful time in many people’s lives: it was stressful in mine because I realized spending the last two years of my high school career smoking weed in the back of the school wouldn’t help me get into Stanford and that I was stuck in my home down for another three years. Who would have known? Life is a mystery.

I’m sure you’ve all heard recently that this generation of college applicants and high schoolers are under the most amount of stress yet. I’m sure you’ve all heard that because that’s all you hear–that one line. Maybe they mention the price of tuition (which, by the way, I was seriously considering sawing off my left leg and sending it in with one of my applications just to see if they’d willingly accept the payment) or the average required G.P.A (U.S.A standards here).

We don’t talk much anymore about how we force kids to intertwine their identity with their grades or about how we constantly compare their grades to their level of intelligence and therefore knowingly pressure them into perfection? Something we tell them from birth doesn’t exist? 

I went through college prep; the class was small and I felt generally comfortable around them. We knew each other all four years. They stressed a 3.5 G.P.A and above, labeling 3.5 as the absolutely worst you could do.

Because I had nothing else, and because it was the only thing the school and I felt I could excel at, I turned to academia as my savior. So when I went to college and pushed a 3.9 G.P.A, I had self confidence. I could do something right, and people respected me for it, particularly for my writing. Each essay I wrote had to be better than the last. Each paragraph I wrote needed to be ingenious, particularly since I wasn’t so great of a talker.

Part of my drive to become an M.D came from the fact that people expect me to do something they consider great.

I’ve since found my own reasons to strive for it.

The Stamp On My Forehead I Wore Not So Proudly

It all fueled my self-esteem and I wrapped my identity around it all. So when my mental health decided to tear me down and my G.P.A fell from 3.9 to 3.5 I almost killed myself. I was self-harming like crazy, sitting in my room, the stress and depression getting worse the more I focused on it, figuring out ways to kill myself with style.

I wished I could have a gun, that would have been the ultimate way to go out, like the man who took his life right down the street from my house in his car. Quick and painless if you do it right. They say those who use violent weapons are generally self-loathing and I certainly loathed myself at that point in my life.

Slitting the wrists vertical was an option, but I couldn’t leave the mess. I considered jumping off that one cliff again but could never find the energy to drive out there. Perhaps I didn’t want it enough.

If I wasn’t perfect, I didn’t want to be alive. I hadn’t even turned 19 yet.

These are values instilled in some of us in this education system. If you don’t live up to these expectations, if you don’t become this, if you don’t get into this school than what’s the point of your life? You can’t get a job without college, you can’t be happy without college, you’re NOTHING without college.

I beg to differ. Greatly.

I spoke to so many students today who scored spectacularly on the SAT (perfect score I believe), maintained amazing G.p.A’s and did everything right. Most of them got rejected from the schools they wanted.

Now let’s think about that for a moment. What does it take to get into an Ivy League school? Often money or Fame or family history or ethnic background help tremendously because let’s not forget that all too important quota to fill.

So the system they make us strive for perfection in, the system they say will guarantee us a good reputation (as if that defines our character), is one of the most imperfect piece of shit machines man has corrupted in the last few hundred years.

That’s how desperate we are as a society for perfection. It’s not what you do with yourself, it’s not how you handle or acquire the knowledge you do, it’s all about how it looks on paper. 

This is why I loathe the reality of resumes and professional interviews; it’s all just a way to make yourself sound like some perfect, well oiled machine when you’re really just a ratty old human.

We’re obsessed with the idea and theory of intelligence, not so much the actuality of it. Everyone wants to be “smart”, but most people are conflicted on what that means. And for good reason.

I talked down another medical student ready to give up on life because he felt like his fellow students were more successful and perfect than him.

I saw an influx of people my age who could think about nothing more than their reputation, than who will be proud of them when they get finished slaving over a pot of grades on the stove of college, as if any of that determines a happy life. I took the time (a couple hours each person) to pull them from that warped mind set and got them into the present, talking about the good things about themselves, their personality, the other things in their life besides the pressures placed on them. I helped them see, for a brief moment, perfection doesn’t exist and I’m living proof.

I don’t see this as much in people who were not pushed as children to be better than everyone, in people who were exposed to other things besides academic education, in people who were allowed to develop their own interests instead of their worthiness as humans being placed upon their unusual level of intelligence.

So, more than anything, this is a message to the future college students and current college students who feel that stress of living up to a certain reputation that has somehow been placed upon you. A G.P.A is about as relevant to your life as your I.Q. Your I.Q is about as indicative of your intelligence as the bottom of my shoe, the one that stepped in the dog shit.

I mean, think about it. IQ tests mainly measure processing speed and vague understanding, (as well as learned knowledge they don’t tell you about). But who said that was the definition of intelligence? If the validity of science is determined by what it can measure and what it can detect, and the measurement is horribly inaccurate because of that fact that what you’re measuring can’t actually be measured unless you yourself create the parameters and definition of said thing being measured (and therefore end up with a biased definition), than how in the world can you logically conclude you can pinpoint the level of someone’s intelligence?

My point? Live by your own terms. It saves a lot of heartache on your part.

Don’t Text and Drive, Kids

This afternoon I agreed to pick up my boyfriend’s siblings from their schools because he and his parents were unable to.

School traffic is a mess and I’m not very good with kids in terms of understanding what they want or need and I don’t really know how to ask, and I’m also uncomfortable with asserting myself as being “in charge” (luckily they’re well behaved with me) but I like being as helpful as I can to people who are good to me.

I also have trouble relating to children because most of the ones I encounter are talkative or enjoy being outdoors and having fun with friends and family, a list of things I didn’t enjoy as a child.

I liked being outdoors, but I liked being outdoors by myself or with one other person and away from other people.

Anyway, none of that is relevant. As I was driving to their schools, I got behind a 2014 Chrysler.

I glanced at the license plate and squinted trying to see the driver, but there was no need. I knew it was my friend. How did I know?

1. She can’t stay at a consistent speed. She’s flooring the pedal then slamming on the breaks, flooring the pedal, then slamming on the breaks; then she tailgates the green breadbox in front of her.

   

   I Call These Breadboxes

2. While we make a gentle turn down a very gentle, two lane, curved road, she’s . . . Keep in mind here, this is not a sharp turn. I drew this sharper than the curve actually is. She was halfway in the other lane just speeding up and slamming on her breaks and speeding up and . . . you get my drift.
3. When she turns into someone’s driveway, she makes it a quick right turn without turning her blinker on.
4. She didn’t send me an excited text saying “I saw you”, nor did she honk at me, which means she didn’t once glance in her rear view mirrors, which is a bad habit of hers. I’m very easy to spot, as is my car. It’s customized. Last time we came across each other on the road it was 10:00pm and I slammed my pedal to the floor and drag raced her down the street. Just so she knows my sporty little 99′ is up for any 2014 challenge.

I therefore came to the conclusion that this 2014 Chrysler was hers. I would ask her what her license plate number is just to make sure, but she doesn’t have it memorized and she’s too lazy to step outside and look at it. I’ll look at it next time I see her in her car and then I’ll know. My brain has the tendency to memorize things like that.

It’s interesting really. I have a horrible short term memory–I forget where I put my keys, my wallet, my phone (even when all three are in my hand). When I put things away I forget where I put them and therefore I have a small organization problem.

A huge one. My room is constantly thrashed. I try and clean it every couple months or so just to appease my parents who grumble about it every time they pass the hall, but it never lasts any longer than three days.

This Isn’t My Room, Obviously This Is An Office, But I’ve Had It Look Similar Before.

But when it comes to my long term memory, particularly with patterned things like license plates and cars, I remember them.

Whenever I drive with people, whether I’m behind the wheel or they are, I notice every little detail we pass. When we arrive at our destination and stay for a few hours or whatever, and we happen to pass the same car we passed on our way to a destination, I’ll blurt it out and they have no idea what I’m talking about.

I’ll recognize the license plate if I saw it. If not, I’ll recognize the driver or the unique things on their dashboard. I’ll certainly remember the car.

Weird thing is, I don’t actually remember all of the numbers of the plate. I just recognize the pattern the numbers are in. So I do remember the numbers . . .but I don’t at the same time.

I do this a lot. It’s how I made it through school.

It only takes one semi-decent glance. In high school I took a slew of so-called “Advanced Placement” classes and one of them was U.S history (APUSH). They give you a college text and we read forty pages twice a week, sometimes more. The pages had no pictures, only compressed words, and it was roughly this size:

So about 1200 pages or more.

We skipped a few sections of certain chapters, so the days we only had 30 pages to read was a day we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Anyway, while everyone was scrambling to study for it, I just read and listened to the class play jeopardy. The week before the test I went through two flashcards of the 200 APUSH flashcard set I bought with my mother.

That was my form of studying.

I breezed through those multiple choice questions like there was no tomorrow. I am the reason I think they need to get rid of multiple choice questions. I didn’t know half of what they were talking about, but the information I’d read–just the words, not the context of them– were hiding out in the back of my head, where I store them.

They purposefully write the questions so that it’s not based entirely on memory–you do have to know the context behind the words. But every multiple choice has key words, even the most difficult ones, and those words have patterns and that’s what I connect in my head.

I do this in large quantities for subjects I’m not interested in.

But I’m not memorizing the words.

This is probably confusing people.

Words have patterns to them in my head. I’m not talking about how the sentence is structured, so don’t get it confused with structure or syntax or diction or anything. It’s literally the pattern of the words. How they’re spelled . . . kind of.

 

Ironically, this important detail about how I process words I can’t explain in words. It’s one of the few things I can’t.

The easiest way to say this, is if you gave me the AP test from 2013 for history, I’d probably recognize the majority of the answers even though I don’t remember shit from that class.

You could probably deduce the answers through process of elimination too, but like I said, you do need to understand the context. They aren’t your average multiple choice questions.

If that friend of mine would just give me her license plate number, I’d be able to know it was her.

She has the brain of a fucking coconut.

 

Don’t text and drive kids.

She once wanted me to get on the freeway with her. I said you better pull over and drop my ass off and I’ll walk home because unfortunately for you, I’m not suicidal today. 

Should I stop texting just because she’s driving? That’s not my responsibility. 

I value personal responsibility. You do your homework and go to college because you want to, not because the professor tells you to. You don’t text and drive because you’re in control of your phone and your impulse control. It doesn’t matter if the person texts you a million times–who gives a fuck? Stop looking at your phone.

Pull over.

There are a number of ways to handle the situation. It’s not my fault if she crashes while I’m texting her.

Logic.

 

All Threats Are Guaranteed Possible

It’s an interesting experience sitting and talking to people who have never experienced drug addiction in their family or for themselves. They have such a blank stare in their eyes when you talk about he emaciation and the depression and the havoc. I used to blame them for it, the ones I share my secrets with. Why couldn’t they just be more helpful? What the fuck is wrong with them?

Then I realized if their parent or family member or they themselves had Cancer, I’d never truly understand how it felt. All the medical procedures, the wary doctors, the chemotherapy.

But we could find some common ground there; both of us would have seen the sight of someone withering away on the brink of death and (hopefully) bouncing back to life.

I’ve seen and been through a lot more in my life than I thought. I don’t think my closest acquaintances understand that. They managed a childhood, they grew up with family around and holiday parties (shout-out to Thanksgiving, the stupidest holiday in American history besides “Columbus Day”) and they took trips and they did fun things and they never hovered in corners because of an angry drunk or slept in a tent and fried hot dogs on a grill for breakfast or slept in the basement of a house on a concrete floor where convicts who just got out of jail came and banged on the door like they had a fight to pick.

So when they see I have trouble enjoying things sometimes, they don’t understand it. They grew up with relatively happy (with ups and downs like everyone else) but stable and well nourished and they interacted with their peers in Kindergarten instead of being that one tall girl who went off in the corner with a box of blocks and made a flat, five foot wide symmetrical pattern on the floor that the teacher took a picture of. They don’t understand how I can be happy with being introverted and yet simultaneously feel lonely.

I know I have a lot to work on to be where I want to be (not where everyone else thinks I should be).

I’m never going to be that person who talks up everyone and their mom on the street and in the grocery store lines; I’m never going to enjoy parties or prefer human company to a night of writing. I’m never going to not over-analyze everything around me (I find that shit crazy fun, who the hell is content with sitting in the dark their whole life? With accepting everything like “oh, uh, I should just let it be”?) and I’m never going to not feel a tiny, tiny bit of anxiousness. I’ve been anxious ever since I can remember and life experiences just intensified it.

I’m perfectly happy with never being like everyone else I’ve met.

Doesn’t mean I don’t struggle.

My goal is to get comfortable with all the social skills I never developed enough so people don’t think I’m some stuck up rude bitch for not talking to them or some freak for not talking to them, and enough so I can get through medical school. After that, I do what the fuck I want.

You tell me I should be happy? Fuck you, I’ll be sad when I want to be sad and if you’re uncomfortable around emotion than fuck off.

You say psychiatrists hardly ever offer talk-therapy? Well fuck you, I’m going to do it anyway.

You say I was that one weird girl in high school who some how managed all the advanced classes without saying a word? Well fuck you, I’ll drive past your house in a 100k dollar Tesla and egg your windows with 100 dollar eggs bitch.

I’m immature at heart, can you tell?

Just for the record, I was actually never made fun of in high school probably because I managed to keep myself as a competitor in those advanced classes.

I remember a few incidences where I felt judged though. I remember I had to recite a fucking poem in an honors class as a presentation (my worst nightmare since elementary school–that’s when the teachers thought there was something wrong with my brain because I could never remember anything) and I said the first two lines perfectly and fucked up the other fourteen.

When I say fucked up, I mean I completely blanked. The teacher had to walk me through the whole thing in front of the entire class. Mind you, I spent three weeks remembering that bullshit and I had it down until the moment I stepped in that class and felt that heart racing, face flushing, arms tingling/twitching, cold sweat bullshit. Then I looked incompetent.

Anyway, there was this one white girl (sorry, I don’t usually like to bring race into things but this chick was transparent as hell, like Casper the bitch-ass ghost who never learned an ounce of respect.) and she was always smirking in the background when I had to speak. She’d talk to me like I was a baby when we were in groups together and she always thought she was so smart.

She went up right after me and forgot her entire poem.

I grinned so large I thought my teeth were going to pop out my mouth. And because ya’ll have never seen me, I will tell you right now I have some chompers.

Can I just say this?

That’s right bitch!!!!! Fucking choke on your words and fucking get red cheeks and fucking feel the pain!!!! Karma’s a bitch!!!!!

*Breathes*

I’ve been holding that in for so long.

One time she stepped on my shoes and stared at me like this: 

And then turned back around.

Fuck you too bitch, fuck you too. I ever see you on the street somewhere you’re going to hear my mouth. Right in your face. Because fuck you.

Yes, I have anger issues I need to work on.

But really ya’ll, I’ll see her again one day, I can feel it. We might be in the same class together. We might be in med school together, you never know. I hope to God we’re in chemistry together.

It’ll play out like: “Oops, uh, yo prof, this bitch on fire, I . . . I don’t know what happened I . . . I didn’t know gasoline was flammable, I swear.

Talk to me like I’m a baby? Bitch, my brain will run circles around you. Go sit in the sun and get some color to your skin so we don’t have to look at every single one of your veins anymore.

I hope she somehow finds this.

She’ll remember exactly who the fuck I am.

I started this post about drug addiction and somehow it ended on dumb bitches.  I don’t know what my brain does.

Rant: END.

 

 

 

Always Be Careful When Exposing Yourself To Entities

This time it only took nineteen minutes to load the page. That’s a new record, I think.

Whatever.

Anyway, just because I love writing–as I’ve stated many, many times before–does not mean I don’t get annoyed by essays. They’re honestly a pain in the ass. It’s worse knowing that I can pull it off in a day because I seem to have an insatiable urge to test myself; you know, I’ll wait until the last minute and bust out seven pages and then laugh when I get told it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. As of right now, with my essay due on Thursday and absolutely no theme in mind, I’m giving myself the ultimate test–by default and procrastination.

So instead of mapping out my essay I’m sitting here blogging.

In high school those I knew who were undergraduates and often asked me for help editing always wanted tips on how to plan out essays and they suddenly doubted my skill when I gave them the look of a deer in headlights.

Hmm.

Two things:

1. Don’t expect me to explain something verbally with coherence, that’s literally the bane of my existence.
2. My map of an essay is more like an inexperienced serial killer opening their first victim.

I’ll leave it at that.

I don’t think I’ll ever know how to answer that question. I see people with these neat little structures and labels and dates on their notes that look like they’d been edited and perfected for the last five years of their life rather than the last five minutes and I see them print words on their paper all carefully as if the break of their pencil tip is the destruction of the Earth.

I’m over here murdering pens, cussing out the ink, talking to myself until the student next to me slowly inches his desk away, and slapping words across the paper like it’s a Jackson Pollock. By the time I’m finished with my “outline” my paper looks like a bloody crime scene. My pen tips are singed. My ideas are little word bubbles across the tops, sides, bottoms, and backs of my pages and when I’m finished with my essay it looks like fifty different people wrote it on account of my ambiguous handwriting.

So to those people who structure their notes like their parents probably structured their entire life: how do you do it? How can you be so neat? How is your brain so organized? How can you think amid the absence of chaos?

Weird.

Thoughts fly the speed of light behind my eyes and if I’m lucky enough to catch one they tend to be pretty solid. You would think I would complain that I’m always distracted (I am) and that I think too much (I do), but I couldn’t see myself dotting my I’s with little hearts and neatly underlining main points and then going paragraph by paragraph. That just goes to show how your mind’s been sculpted. I prefer my Pollock to a Michaelangelo any day.

The good thing about thinking a mile a minute is you never run out of ideas. If there’s a timer, you’re sure to beat it. You might put too many words on the page and ideas might clash, but because you’ve finished a half an hour ahead of everyone else you can sit comfortably in your chair and proofread. Why get frustrated over something that has it’s advantages?

Maybe people get frustrated at it because they can’t see the advantages.

I saw one of my classmates in my literature class with Cornell notes from another class. If you don’t know what Cornell notes are, they’re this very strict method of note taking where, generally speaking, you split your paper in half and write your notes on the left side and questions on the right, ones that are meant to be answered by your notes. Or some shit. Whatever; high school tried getting me into it. I refused. Blatantly. I accepted my loss of points for non-compliance proudly.

This is the same high school that, year after year, handed me papers in Spanish to take home to my parents. If you’re not going to respect me than don’t expect me to be a little zombie for you.

Not only did they try to tell me what to think, they also tried to tell me how I’m supposed to take notes about what they want me to think about. So . . . where’s my brain come in again?

Cornell notes work for some people. Not me. Too structured, too organized, and much too standardized.

Is it a coincidence that the classmate with the Cornell notes also happens to be that one who always blurts textbook knowledge and falls flat on his face when he attempts to connect with writing pieces emotionally that I’ve mentioned several times? Hmmm.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

Then you have the people who are so stressed about sounding “professional” rather than discovering their own voice, they slap their face in a thesaurus and bob for words. I love those people.

My senior year in high school I helped a friend edit his papers for his literature class (he apparently had one of the “hardest professors”) and although the essay was meant to be personal, a sort of introduction for the professor to learn more about the student and assess skill, he veered off into the dark abyss of “words that sound smart”. Suddenly he was in a “vacuous playground of no consequences” and “exposing himself to entities.”

I have no idea what the fuck kind of metaphor, I . . . what . . . exposing himself?

Words are a dangerous game, my friend; they can make you and they can break you.

***blows smoke from end of word gun, spins around fingers, slips weapon back into holster and flies into space***

He’s transferred to a university now, and hopefully isn’t exposing himself to anyone or anything.

Lesson? Sometimes the less you think, the better you sound. Your brain thinks in words all the time, it doesn’t need you busting a vein over it.

I think I’ve spent enough time procrastinating.

Here are some of my latest photos:

Music Is Love; Music Is Life

Here’s something you might not know about me:

I’m a music lover.

Shocked?

You shouldn’t be, I’ve said it a million times.

See, when my father moved into this town he started a few bands and one of them took off. They were a Rhythm and Blues cover band doing classics by Stevie Wonder, James Brown, E.c.t. So that’s the music I grew up around. I was the only little girl in the clubs at night sitting with my mom who got special meals and treats because I was the Drummer/Vocalist’s daughter. In my early teen years one dude in his late twenties asked me to dance because he thought I was older and I said no and was too afraid to go back to that club after a while. People walking up and talking to me was not part of the deal.

I’m not that tall, I’m about 5’7, almost 5’8. I was the tallest kid in middle school always fighting for the top spot with this one boy. We were always the same height until middle school when he sky rocketed to almost six feet and my growth steadied itself. So I guess in the dark I looked older than I really was.

Anyway, my father’s band did a lot of weddings too. Those were the big bucks. Three, four, five grand maybe more. I went to some extravagant ones in the mountains where they had huge stone pools and clear water and great food and bubbles and although I wasn’t a social child I had my adventures in the pools with the other kids. I mostly liked the little bubbles containers though. I constantly had one in my hand so I could blow them into the air at any moment. I think I still have some.

The band broke up before I started high school. He solidified his identity in his music and I think that was a breaking point. He was already drinking and into drugs and it spiraled out of control. The last straw was when we’d been kicked out of our apartment (due to a gossiping drunk of a manager who lied to our landlords about us) and we were living on the street and he had to sell his Slingerland drum set. He’d had it since he was a child and it still had that vintage wood with the exception of a large black mark from when his mother threw it out of his bedroom window as a child because she had eight kids and couldn’t stand anymore noise or disobedience.

Contrary to what you might think, I wasn’t a huge oldies fan. I think it was pounded in my ears all hours of the day that I fucking got over it. As a socially anxious, tall, mixed race, acne covered child, the last thing I needed was to listen to music other kids couldn’t relate to. I discovered a local battle of the bands CD and fell down a dark chute into hell where all the metal bands sat around a table sipping tea, snorting coke, and tuning their guitars. My parents called me a demon child and I gladly embraced that title. I loved the chains on my clothes, the black hair, the thick eyeliner, the band shirts, the chokers with the spikes, the wristbands with “fuck you, dick” on them or whatever.

Then I had a lot of friends. I actually had about five close friends, ten or eleven all together, and I was mostly comfortable around them. I went to their houses, I stayed the night, and all their parents loved me for some reason. Probably because I was the quiet one until someone did something fucking stupid and I got in their face about it.

Two of my friends enjoyed making fun of this girl who was obviously slow and one day I got sick of it and shoved them backwards in the middle of the school yard and told them I was going to fucking break their nose with the basketball in my hand if they didn’t back off. They thought I was kidding until I got closer and said “fucking try me”. They asked why I was so mad and I stared at them like they were the mentally challenged ones. I told them to stop being dumbasses and launched the ball at them and walked with the slow girl to the fence where she waited for her mother on the bike. I told her not to listen to people like my friends. She followed me around (literally, she followed me) through high school until my senior year when she finally got a group of friends.

She’d turned bitter by then, though.

I was never made fun of. Okay, maybe once or twice in high school, but it was never hounded in my face. I wasn’t bullied or even really talked about because I kept to myself. I had my earphones in my ear and people didn’t mess with me. I wasn’t an easy target. The whole of my sophomore class saw me almost yank out the piercings of this one girl’s face (former friend) because she kept walking past my friend and I and muttering “whore” to her. I was very open about the fact that I am always willing to beat someone’s ass. I’m the quiet aggressive. If they couldn’t get that, they’d hear it in my “Cryin like a bitch” by Godsmack screaming from my earphones. I was known for smacking shit out of people’s hands and shoving them down or cutting an argument short with persuasive yelling. You didn’t win with me.

So people left me alone.

I wasn’t a bully. It was people who were fucking ignorant I targeted, and they were more often my friends.

In my family, the words that come out of your mouth are important. If you say something “stupid”, you will get fucking corrected very fast. Do I believe that’s how you should raise children? Not entirely. I don’t think screaming in their face and threatening them or hitting them with belts gets them to understand . . . but it was how I was raised and in high school it’s how I was with others. If you said something ignorant, like arguing with me over whether or not a broken arm can heal in two weeks, you’re going to get smacked and taught a lesson. The parents of many of my friends were still in their late twenties, early thirties. They’d had children in their teens. My parents were already in their fifties and had traditional values they followed. My parents weren’t strict but they weren’t loose with me like their parents were with them.

Who the fuck lets their thirteen year old walk out the door with shorts barely covering their asscheeks? That’s the type of shit I’m talking about. Are you kidding me? I would have got my ass beat! Honestly, if I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble I would have beat their ass myself.

I was an angry child, I think. I didn’t see it then but I see it now. And now much of that childhood anger has morphed into . . . well, I still have a temper. But it’s simmered considerably. What does music have to do with any of this? It has everything to do with it. When I was angry, disgruntled, depressed, anxious, happy, music was the one thing that never let me down. There was a song for everything. And I listened to anything I could get my hands on, from American classics and oldies to Beijing Theater songs. Today when I wander into a store and hum the tune to every song they play, my boyfriend is baffled. He claims I know every song ever. I know I don’t, but I have heard a lot and the best thing about it is that it never gets old. People get old, people leave, people hurt you–music never does, it never will, and it never can. It’s forever solidified in whichever emotional state it was originally recorded in and therefore it caters to your need without complaint.

I have a guitar, a bass, a clarinet, a keyboard, all of which I’ve lost my magic touch with really, but could pick up and lose myself for hours relearning what I’ve forgotten and learning what I still don’t know. I have an emotional connection with music I don’t think I’ll ever have with people. And I’m okay with that.

I still mourn the death of MTV.

And for the record, I don’t know if you’ve all had your ear to your local “hip hop” or “pop” station lately but . . . what the fuck is the world coming to? I listen to a lot of culture’s music, everything holds a story. These people today are disgracing the sacred bond humans have with song. I don’t give a fuck if you like to fuck your girlfriend in your mansion or that you spent two million dollars on the chain around your neck. God, these people are a disgrace. And the R&B stations? That is not R&B. I grew up with R&B.

USHER IS NOT RHYTHM AND BLUES.

If you want to label him and any of those people with R&B, then announce the acronym to mean something else. Just take away the R and label it B for Bullshit.

Rant: END

Dear High School: I Never Loved You

Does anyone ever feel like they forget what depression feels like?

That’s my current mood.

I tried studying for my test tomorrow (today by the time I post this shit) but there are more things to remember than to study. You either get it or you don’t; there’s no half getting it. I feel like if I can do integration and physics and approximations I can do some fucking conversion factors in chemistry. It’s not like rocket science over here. It’s like taking algebra all over again. This is what I get for skipping chemistry in high school to go get high in the park.

I’m dead serious; I have to start from the beginning with this shit, significant figures and all. The first week of the class was learning how to add numbers. He did a ten minute explanation on the scientific method. Fuck me, dude.

If there’s anything I’m mad at my social anxiety for, it’s for getting me so far behind in school in my earlier years. I couldn’t do math because I couldn’t ask questions, I never did presentations in my science classes (so I often got dinged majorly), and although I took college level classes I was basically mute. I did well on tests and exams. That’s basically what I went to school for: to take exams, quizzes, and watch movies.

I remember the first friend I kind of made my freshman year. She came from a private school over the hill and we were both in “Intensive English”. If you have social anxiety disorder, you may experience a phenomenon where you can literally “sniff” out people you’re able to talk with. I’ve been able to do that since I was in first grade. These were people I instantly felt comfortable speaking with. It happened again freshman year, and sophomore year. Three people I’ve felt absolutely comfortable talking to in my life within the first ten minutes of meeting them.

Anyway, this girl was incredibly smart. She spoke well and I wrote well. We had physical education together and there I met a few other people, reluctantly, through her. We were never all “friends” but they were people I could talk with during class so I didn’t look like a complete loner. We drifted apart junior year; she was much more social.

Instead, I stayed with some friends from middle school. We were the last true “goth/emo/rock” kids of our generation, I swear by it. We were in all black with the chains, the wrist bands, the dyed hair cut halfway over our face, and we headbanged during break. I still love metal, although I’ve since dropped the fashion statement. It gets too hot. I’d also look like a jackass at my school; I’m already paranoid people are constantly staring at me.

I sucked ass in algebra. I mean literally, I sucked ass. I carried a fat donkey with me to class and sucked on it. That’s how bad I was. The teacher also sucked ass. He got a pink slip within his first year of teaching because the average of his class ranged about 50%. So, we all got F’s. Except maybe two people. Fuck those two people.

My few friends (literally, three) moved away after freshman year. I had one left.

My second math teacher was young, hilarious, sarcastic as fuck, and not too bad on the eyes either. He had anger issues. I went on a field trip to a college once  and came back to learn his entire class was scarred for life because some kid spit-balled on the brand new projector in the room and the teacher blew up on him, screamed about how the class was lazy, how we didn’t even try, how mentally challenged monkeys out-performed us on a test for shapes.

Just kidding about the monkey part. I’m sure he thought that in his head.

Anyway, he went into anger management and started taking days off to go out on his boat. He’d say “I won’t be here tomorrow, I’m going out on my boat”.

In his defense, our classes were pretty . . . inattentive.

Last I heard, him and his wife had a falling through and he fell into a major depression. He always gave me breaks on my homework because I was so quiet and timid and stupid and probably looked like a complete jackass; I’m determined to show him, one day, how far I’ve come in math. It’d probably make him faint.

I couldn’t multiply 9 x 8 in my head people, that’s how bad I was.

So social anxiety ruined my high school career. I had no friends, no joy, no happiness. I failed in subjects I could have easily excelled in and now I have to pay for it by sitting through 5 hours of chemistry with fucking Miniature Michael J Fox with a bad case of Howie Mendel OCD. He really is obsessive, I’m not using that as an adjective.

Sophomore year my one friend started hanging out with a freshmen with a bad reputation. They skipped class all the time. I called them fucking idiots.

Junior year, I skipped the majority of my classes . . .

 . . . but with smarts. I asked around in my AVID (a college prep course; only course I knew people in) class about how they calculated who got detention and who didn’t. Through a few other master skippers I learned how they counted days, weeks, and months, and how many skips you were allowed to get in a week and a month before they contacted your parents. If you managed to stay below that number, your parents never found out.

So I planned accordingly. I was really quite sneaky. I have to be: I’m always supposed to be smart and perfect and quiet and passive. When I need a little danger, I have to be a ninja.

I just hated school. The people saw me as an idiot, I was too nervous around my teachers for them to ever help me, I couldn’t make any friends on my own, and I woke up every morning at 4:30am so I could calm myself down until 7 am.

I never got involved in heavy drugs and I never will. But I was an avid marijuana smoker. I hit it before class, between class, after class, and if I was out at night, I’d do it at night. I brought vodka to school in water bottles which I sipped in class.

One morning I arrived extra early at my friends house. We often walked to school together. Her parents were always gone so I’d go in the back yard while she got ready and smoked until it was time to go. It took her a little over an hour one morning and by the time I walked with her and her other friend, I was floating so high I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I kept packing and lighting, packing and lighting, packing and lighting, non-stop. I walked my bike with them because I couldn’t ride it without falling. On the street I started laughing. They kind of laughed. My vision had turned into a fish eye lens. All the sound around me muted beside the soft thumping of my heart and I no longer existed. I asked them over and over again “dude . . . you guys, is this reality? I’m serious, no, I’m serious, is this reality?”

I remember they kept telling me it was but they weren’t convincing me. I just kept laughing. I ran into the walls in art class, almost tipped over the printing press in art class, and my table in art class could smell the stench from my backpack. People weren’t snitches at my high school, though, because we were all in the same boat. I sold weed to people, they gave weed to me, and that was my greatest connection to most people. By the middle of the day I was fucking done. I skipped math and slept out on the bleachers.

Every once in a while I still smoke, but eh, who gives a shit. I stopped public drinking and smoking when I turned 18 because I didn’t want my financial aid revoked if a cop ever charged me with something. None of it really helped my anxiety anyway.

I think what inspired me to do this post is that whenever I get like this, whenever I get “happy” or I’m up for a while or I just feel like I’m clawing to get out of my skin, I think about those times. I think about all the contacts I had with people who popped X  and Xanax on the daily and people who snorted cocaine after school. I think about how good I feel right now and how much better I’d feel with them.

If I wasn’t writing this post I’d be texting that one friend and saying bro, we need to find some shit to do, something to drink, let’s party, fuck this shit!

Because that’s how I feel right now. I need to party. I need to say FUCK EVERYTHING and celebrate this moment of feeling good for once. I don’t want it to go away.

I end up wishing my friend didn’t have a job so I could go out with her tonight, smoke up my car, toss back some shots, and stroll through downtown causing havoc. Fuck, that sounds like so much FUN. Maybe she is awake?

I end up wishing my boyfriend would drink with me and party and smoke and we too could stroll through downtown causing havoc. He tried a packed edible on an empty stomach and has been turned off of marijuana since.

I feel like partying is the RIGHT thing to do. It’s not like I’m shooting heroin or cocaine or binge drinking.

I’m sick of being depressed all the time and now that I’m not, now that I’m back, that I’m free, I can’t even embrace it.

Fuck this.