Undercover Martyn

One Act had state competition yesterday morning, and before I complain incessantly about us LOSING MISERABLY, let me just say that I’ve actually had a pretty good weekend. I got close to a lot of my cast mates that I didn’t know all that well before, and I actually reconnected with one of my best friends.

We left school at about 1:20 on Friday to drive over to [insert town name that I’m not going to tell you], and drove right to our hotel to drop our stuff off. The bus ride was ridiculously fun; we played Screw Marry Kill and Never Have I Ever.

Monica (our director/sponsor) had picked the rooms kind of randomly and originally I was worried about my room because one of the girls in the room hated my guts for drama between the two of us and her boyfriend over the summer (long story), but we ended up having a pretty good time. More on that later.

After we dropped all our crap off, we went to Little Tokyo, a hibachi grill in [insert town name that I’m not going to tell you] that was really cool. I got edamame, steak, and fried rice and pretty much died of deliciousness. Dinner was fun; we took a bunch of goofy panoramas and just generally messed around. I ended up taking a to-go box back to the hotel and ate the rest of my dinner at 9:45-ish.

When we got back to the hotel, we had a little while to relax in our rooms then we all gathered in the pool room and Dorian gave us a pep talk then we went over some notes/changed some scenes. They released us to go hang out upstairs and Luke (he played Mark Twain) and his mom, Shannon, brought around goodie bags for each room. She also gave me Trolli Sour Trees, which was funny because I’m the Tree of Knowledge in our play. The entire cast met in Luke’s room for thirty minutes to read something Shannon put together (“How You Know You’re a Drama Kid”), then dispersed amongst different rooms. The room I was in played Never Have I Ever again, as well as got Treavor (a savagely gay kid in ninth grade) to put makeup on.

You know, typical drama student shit.

We had to be in our rooms around 10:30 or so and I talked on the phone with Garrett and joked around with my roommates. There actually wasn’t that much tension between Courtney and I, which was an enormous relief considering all of the crap that happened. We fell asleep about 11:40.

Saturday morning, everyone ran downstairs to gorge on breakfast, then hurried to throw on some makeup and do something with our hair before rushing over to the school where the performance was to be held and getting dressed. Surprisingly, everyone managed to more or less hold back tears as we discussed our favorite parts of One Act this year and as we warmed up for the last time before 11, when we performed.

We performed. Most people cried. I thought I was going to puke. Etc.

There were still six plays after us (eight in total), so we had to wait until 7:30 to get results. Lunch was Little Caesar’s Pizza, and during all of the plays we lounged together in the audience and basically enjoyed being together. We were nervous, but the fact that we were all so tight-knit made everything a little bit better.

Awards scared the hell out of everybody. Luke won best actor again [insert broad smile], but we ended up getting fifth place- which didn’t even get mentioned AT ALL. We lost to three musicals and a comedy, all of which we felt weren’t THAT great. Especially our directors.

Maybe it was silly (as Mom keeps telling me it was), but we all cried very, very hard. We were so sure we would get second, if not first, and it hurt to be told that we were worse than plays that didn’t evoke real emotion. It sucked. A lot. And because this was BY FAR not my finest performance, I cried harder than most other people, because I felt as though I could have done something more to ensure we didn’t fail so horribly.

Dinner was Chile’s, and I was sniffly the whole time. Besides the fact that we’d completely bombed ten minutes before, it was still fun. Everyone was close in their collective failure.

[Insert gagging noise]

We drove home directly after, and I sat next to Noah, who has been one of my best friends since seventh grade. I actually fell asleep on him a couple times, but it was freezing on the bus and a few people around us were super loud so that didn’t really last. I called Garrett again, and he did his best to cheer me up.

We got back to the Fine Arts Center at 1:30, and I fell asleep around 2 last night/this morning.

So, yes, I had fun this weekend, but it was also hell so I don’t know whether to count it as a positive or negative couple of days.

[Insert shrug]

Light Me Up

This was written for Writing 101

I’m not very good at expressing my emotions. For one, I’m just not capable of comprehending them. I am every stereotype of an overly emotional teenage girl. On top of that, I’m not big on the whole “sharing” thing. If I tell someone something, I’m going to OVERshare, and this is one of my least favorite things about myself.

Hence my chosen word for today’s writing prompt: regret.

I’ve had about a million problems with my relationships with other people, be they friends or family or romantic entanglements. As a girl who relies heavily on having people I can trust with every little thing, this sucks a big one.

It’s actually ironic, really. I put on this show of being untouchable, being this hard creature with no emotional needs, when in actuality I need so much. I think this surprises people, because when we get close I just dump a whole shitload on them and they get overwhelmed.

So I’ve just stopped getting close to people.

Which also sucks a big one.

Seriously, I can’t express how much it hurts to need someone to just be with, then push everybody away because I don’t think they want that with me. It’s messed up my relationship with my boyfriend a few times, which is frustrating. I always regret pushing him away (it’s one of those things that keeps me up at night), but I can’t help myself. It’s almost as though I care so damned much, I have to stop myself caring or I’m going to shatter.

Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it doesn’t follow the prompt. Oh well. I needed to say it.

Can’t Help Falling In Love

I believe in love. Perhaps not love at first sight, perhaps not soul mates, but I believe that it is possible to fall deeply in love with another person, no matter how long you’ve known said person. I also believe that there are varying degrees of love: I love Garrett as a partner. I love Caitlin as a little sister. I love Grace as a best friend, practically a sister. I love Carver by default, because he is Garrett’s twin and no matter how annoying he can be, his emotions and actions affect my relationship- even if he doesn’t mean for them to.

It’s this that has been causing a lot of pain recently. I hate to throw Carver under the bus, but he and his girlfriend have been having issues and while I try to be compassionate, it’s frustrating to see Garrett so upset and so angry over something neither of us can control. I’m good friends with Sophie now, and I care for Carver as if he were my own brother (and he is just as obnoxious as mine), but their problems are affecting what little time I have with my boyfriend and it’s ANNOYING. When Garrett gets so pissed off that he breaks a pencil and cuts his hand, I can’t continue to stand back and let this carry on as it has.

Relationships are all or nothing for me, and this has caused me a lot of pain in the past. However, I don’t foresee this happening in the near future with Garrett, so I’m going to continue to worry about him and get angry when someone upsets him. Even if that someone is his brother and one of my good friends.

Sorry for ranting about people you probably don’t care about. Enjoy the video as retribution 🙂

Gives You Hell

If there’s one thing I despise, it’s when people slut-shame others, be they male or female- though I’ll admit it’s more likely for the shamed to be female and the shamer to be male, at least in my experience.

I’m speaking specifically of one boy at my school, who will go unnamed for my own sake (just thinking about his stupid name makes me want to punch something inanimate; actually typing it might cause my computer to burst into flames). This boy, this child, calls me a slut and a whore every time he sees me. He makes snide, sexual comments, and if he isn’t alluding to sex than he’s insulting me, whether it’s physically (i.e. “ugly hoe”), mentally (“dumb blonde”), or socially (“friendless whore”).

I’m sick of it.

Yes, in the very beginning of this shit (about a year ago?) I was fairly calm about everything; I tried to just joke around, roll my eyes, etc. I’m not a ridiculously kind person, and I just figured I’d said something that made him angry and he was slowly getting revenge. I felt I deserved it either way. (I was in a darker place than I am today.) Besides, we occasionally hung out during class, and I trade petty insults with some of my friends so I thought perhaps he’d picked up on that.

Now it’s pissing me off.

This boy and I do not associate with each other aside from a few chance meetings in the hallways, and our shared lunch period. We do not move in the same social circles (though I despise cliques, I’ll admit that there are certain groups I do not want to hang out with), and we do not have any shared classes.

Yet every damned day it’s “hey, whore” or “*cough* slut” or any one of the million ways he manages to work in an insult as we pass each other. I’m not one to stand down when somebody talks shit about me, but I’m at the point where I can’t even muster up a good “fuck off, asshole.” any longer. Hell, I don’t even bother flicking him off. What’s the point? Nothing I say or do will make him stop.

I am not a slut.

I am not a whore.

I am, however, a bitch. Keep fucking with me, and I’ll make sure it’s anatomically impossible for you to procreate.

Unsteady

I plan on complaining right now. Go figure, right?

So, for those who don’t know (and none of you do), I have an absolutely shitty relationship with my mom. I suppose that there have been a couple pretty big mistakes I’ve made that lended to this, but all in all I’m not honestly that bad of a kid, in comparison to some of the crap people I know do. I mean, I spend 80% of my free time writing. There’s not much trouble to get into just writing all the time (unless you’re somebody like E. L. James, who I am most certainly not).

And, seriously, I’m fifteen. I’m supposed to make stupid mistakes and fall in love and ignore authority and figure out who the hell I am as an individual.

There’s a lot done in my house that severely undermines my ability to figure that out. First of all, the laptop I’m working right now is sitting in my kitchen. In my kitchen. You try enjoying some (occasionally naughty) fanfiction while you’re sitting in your goddamn kitchen with your parents and two siblings walking past constantly. Second, my mom has some spy software on the computer that gives her access to everything I do online. I don’t know the extent of what she can and cannot see, but let me just point out that she’s made an account on almost every single website I’m on just to keep up with what I’m doing. Third, I’m not allowed to go anywhere. It takes a million years of begging and pleading to do anything, and even then I often have to pull out of whatever the plans were at the last minute. I haven’t gone anywhere with friends, just me and friends, since January. I haven’t had a sleepover since December of 2012. Fourth, I have no privacy. My parents come into my room at all hours of the night and occasionally decide to ransack my belongings. These are seriously a few grains of salt to the dozens of other examples I could give.

But I seriously think I’ve reached the end of my rope.

I’ve known for a while that Mom gets a notification whenever I text or get a text. She uses it to make sure I’m not texting during school, which I guess I sort of understand but at the same time, if my teachers don’t care then I personally don’t think she should, either.

However, it has recently come to my attention that Mom also has the ability to read every. single. one. of my text messages.

Of course, my first thought was an enormous Oh. Fuck. My second thought was a garbled mess. My third: Garrett’s going to panic.

See, I’m a teenager. I like to flirt with my boyfriend and complain to my best friends and discuss sex and tattoos and moving out and college and I curse. A lot. More than all that, though, I like to have a little bit of fucking privacy.

I’m not perfect. Nor have I ever pretended to be. But this… this crosses a line. When my thoughts and my emotions can’t be private, I’m ready to fuck over everything and just leave.

Back to My Roots

This was written for Writing 201: Poetry

Cracked sidewalk,

Running beside overgrown bushes

That moan under the weight

Of immense unknown blossoms.

It leads me to my own home,

Where he waits alone

Under the stone archway.

His hipbone protrudes;

I can see it through his shirt,

Which I’m sure he’s sprayed

With his sweet cologne.

I can almost hear his deep groan,

Muttered into my ear as I attone

For having flown away from our safe zone.

Red Hands

((NOTE: To skip all of the introductory whatever in the video, skip to 2:03.))

I think I ought to admit, right off the bat, that I write all of my blog posts, poems, short stories, novellas, books, etc while listening to music. Or, at least, I try to do so; music always helps my thoughts flow much easier between my brain and my fingers. On top of that, a lot of my poems and all of my posts have titles that are either song lyrics or titles (usually the latter; it’s just so much easier).

I got chewed out for that today, and I’m still reeling.

I was singing Troye Sivan’s The Fault In Our Stars (the song above) under my breath and one of my on-again-off-again friends, Bryn, happened to overhear me.  When I told her the title of the song I was singing, Bryn flipped shit. She went off about people not being creative enough to come up with their own damn work for God’s sake, and I’ll admit I was a little affronted. First of all, I think TFIOS is a really good song, though honestly nothing about it is particularly amazing. Second, I think Troye Sivan is alright naming his song after the book he literally wrote it about. And finally, like I said, I do almost the exact same thing all the time.

I tried to explain all of this to her (calmly, if I do say so myself), but she just shut me down and it actually really ticked me off. I view reusing titles the same way I do fanfiction: it’s extremely easy to mess up, but it’s also flattering. I mean, I wouldn’t suggest naming your book The Fault In Our Stars or anything (that might not go over well), but a song? No big deal. Besides, Troye Sivan isn’t some huge popstar with a million zillion fangirls; he’s just a Youtuber who happens to have a decent sized fan base.

I don’t know, maybe I was overreacting. At least I didn’t yell at her like I absolutely wanted to.

Mess Is Mine

It feels like all of my posts (what few there have been, and including poems) have revolved around my own frustration, and I hate to devote any more time to the same subject. I don’t like doing that; I’d told myself that this would be less of a hey-look-I’m-a-good-complainer and more of a this-is-me-take-it-or-leave-it-but-I’m-gonna-keep-being-funny-as-hell. Which so far I think I’ve miserably failed at.

So this post is going to involve me complaining about me complaining. Creative, right?

Seriously: it’s so easy to complain and lament how stupid everybody around us has become and just generally be a stick in the mud (stick-in-the-mud?). I don’t know if this is just my generation, or if adults much older than me struggle with the inability to phrase a sentence without it devolving into petulant whining. (Well, okay, the petulant part is probably fairly unique to me, but I’m okay with being childish. It helps me get my way- and who doesn’t like that?)

I’ve noticed this especially in my conversations with my boyfriend the past couple days. Of course, it’s not just him, but I find it easiest to carry on around him, since he happens to be one of the few people I trust not to just ignore me.

Plus his responses are hilarious.

Besides that, though, I’ve also been going back and reading some of my journal entries (I’m a fairly consistent journal-er), and the amount of whining I do is ridiculous. To be fair to myself, I actually don’t complain as much as I could, but it’s still pretty ridiculous. And if I’m not wailing about life, the universe, and everything, then I’m freaking out because such-and-such happened and I think it meant this but whatifI’mjustreadingtoofarintothis?!

This is, honestly, one of the reasons I can’t put up with most of the girls in my school. They do nothing but complain or create drama and I like to think that I’m a pretty relaxed person. Sure, I’m hyper during second block, I fidget constantly, I gossip like an old woman (though only really with my best friends, which just happen to be male), I drop out of conversations for no apparent reason, I obsess over British television, I make the dirtiest jokes during Choir, and if you can’t handle sarcasm and/or random insults (that I swear I say out of genuine fondness) then you’ll absolutely hate me… but despite all that, I really don’t get into much drama- unless yanked in by some idiot. I can complain with the best of them, but I really hate it when girls go on and on about random little things that I fail to give a shit about (does that make me a hypocrite? whoops).

Or maybe I’m just reading too far into this. I wouldn’t be able to tell: I’m just some dumb kid who complains more than a sleepy toddler.

In This Hole

I can’t think.

Can’t get my thoughts

To stop their frenzied waltz

And line up once again

In a straight pattern,

One after the other,

The way they used to

When everything was still

So goddamned simple.

I can’t fucking think.

If my shattered heart

Beats any faster,

I fear it will escape

The familiar prison of my ribcage,

Take off into oblivion

As I wish I could

Every time I meet

My own pleading eyes

In the reflection cast

By broken mirrors.

Thinking used to hurt

So much less than it does now.

Even my own damn voice

Makes my skin erupt

In waves of gooseflesh;

A rain dance illuminating

How dark and how cold

Self-hatred can become.

The blindingly bright fires

That once warmed my despair

Are hardly pinpricks of light,

Dwindling away the more I drown:

The more my hair swirls

Around my tear-stained face,

The more my hands

Fail to grasp for the rope

That might have saved my life

If it had been thrown

Just a bit sooner.

What You Know

Like I mentioned in my first post, I’m fifteen years old. As such, I’m a high schooler- a sophomore, to be precise.

And let me just tell you up front: high school is hell.

I know that I’m just a kid, I haven’t done enough in fifteen short years to understand how small a blip high school is on the grand scale, blah blah blah. Seriously, I’ve heard enough crap about that to choke a whale.

In all honesty, though, I don’t care how old I am or how little life experience I’ve had as of yet, because this is my now. This is my reality, and I am not omniscient enough to compare my own experiences to those of another person. Especially not those of an adult.

I could give a lot of examples spelling out just how horrible being a teenager is, but I’m trying very hard not to be long-winded and if I start…

Well. I can talk for ages.

I initially wanted to type all this out because I’m frustrated with an essay I’m attempting to compose about the horrors of the Holocaust. (Which, honestly, is one of the most overused topics in literature/history classes.) My class read Night by Elie Wiesel (good book; I’d suggest it to anyone with a soul), and now I’ve got to find a way to drone on about natural human rights for five paragraphs.

Sigh.

I suppose I oughtn’t complain much about it, because I am a fairly decent writer and I’m sure I’ll tap out something halfway acceptable within the next couple hours. And, besides, after editing a few of my peers’ papers… I should feel grateful for being less of an incompetent nincompoop than I could be.

Screw grateful. I never liked Thanksgiving anyway.

Besides that, though, I have come to the conclusion that adults, even ones who were my age less than a decade ago, fail to remember what adolescence feels like. For example: I am involved in the drama department in my school, and we are currently working on Mark Twain in the Garden of Eden for One Act. (OA is a competitive drama event, composed quit literally of one act presented within fifty-five minutes.) My school has a fantastic drama department. I’m not exaggerating; we really do kick ass. A lot of this stems from our good actors/actresses and dedication, of course, but we also have two incredible directors: Monica Turner and Dorian Santiago. The former is a lit teacher at my school, and Dorian… well. He’s Dorian. (Look him up: seeing this man will help you understand where I’m coming from.) Ms. Turner basically turns most of the directing over to Dorian, and he pretty much uses his independence to scare the absolute hell out of all of us.

Yes, we win. But we’re also miserable.

Drama departments seem to have this enormous stereotype about being extremely open and welcoming and whatever else. This is true for us as well, but at the same time we fail to have the close-knit and safe, soft, warm atmosphere I think we really need. Dorian and Ms. Turner (specifically Dorian) choose to single us out and humiliate us in front of our peers. They nitpick and yell and generally embarrass students who are already depressed, paranoid, and socially awkward. To me, drama should be a home. Somewhere I can go to escape from the evils of the world. Instead, I just sink deeper and deeper into pits of rolling despair.

But, yenno, we win.