Obedient Women Never Made History -

Today I was rummaging through my room for a notebook that hadn't been completely filled with my sloppily conveyed thoughts, when I found a rather large black spiral that I remembered purchasing the summer before my freshmen year.  No, I don't keep a reccord of every notebook I buy, I only remembered this one because it is the largest, most expensive spiral I have ever owned; I made Rose purchase several of them for me for school, after I had spent the day enduring her cruel comments about my weight, appearance, mind, talent (or lack thereof) and out look on life.  It was the best revenge my meek, beaten down little mind could think of, sadly.  But I digress; the orgin behind this notebook isn't what this entry is about.

I opened the slightly battered notebook to see if I'd written anything in it-- I have a nasty habit of saving notebooks I like until I have the perfect thing to write in them, and then I never end up writing in them-- and I was greeted by my own familiar scrawl.  I don't like writing in pen, so pencil scratch had faded and smudged, making my writing even more difficult to decipher, but I managed.  The notebook wasn't one I used for any particular class, it was probably the one that I have every year that sits in my bag getting badly abused by pounds of text books and binders, waiting for me to need something to take down a few notes or vent in.  On the first page of this notebook I found a poem.  After reading this poem, I could remember the day I wrote it; I was seated on the steps outside the school during lunch, and I was positively fuming, which is made obvious through the hastily scribbled lines of angst.  Needless to say, the poem was terrible, yet, at the same time, the raw emotion in it made it kind of... I don't want to say beautiful.  Pure, I guess.  Whether its good or not, there's something to be said for art-- be it music, writing or anything else-- that is created on an impulse, existing only because its creator was in danger of imploding if they didn't find another place to put some of that emotion. 

Flipping through the notebook, I found more evidence of my freshmen life; the pages were practically dripping with the residue of my former self.  I found poems, stories, science notes, math problems, articles written for my beloved newspaper (I especially enjoyed reading those) and impromptu journal entries.  At the very last page of the notebook that had writing in it (which is only about halfway through the thing) I found the question who am I?  For the life of me, I can't remember why I penned that particular question.  Perhaps it was the beginning of an assignment, perhaps it was the product of a moment of melodrama...who knows?  But seeing it after reading some of my old stuff made me think really think about that question.  I've made it to a point in my life where there's a huge difference between who I was and who I am, and an even bigger difference between who I am and who I will be...I hope, anyway. 

It's so weird to look back at my life from where I'm standing now.  In my mind, I see it split into chunks, or maybe I'll call them chapters, seeing as I fancy myself a writer.  The first chapter covers the first nine years of my life, up until my father died; the second ends when my step father left; the third when we moved to Redmond; the fourth when I graduated from middle school, and the fifth is coming to a close even as I type these words.  Not to mention the many subchapters that litter these larger chunks.  Or maybe the subchapters are actually chapters, and the chapters are really seperate books entirely.  It does seem as if I was a completely different person in each of these sections that I've created; as if who I was in each of these stories ceases to exist the moment the story ends, and a new version is born at the beginning of the next. 

I could write forever about my past, and maybe someday I will.  The pages of my past may being boring and insignificant to everyone in the world save for me, but the temptation is always there to just sit down at my computer or with a good note book and slice open a vein so I can let the blood that has been running through my body for seventeen years spill out and stain page after page...  But at this point, it would have no point and purpose.  What good would come from looking at the past?  If I dwell on it, I'll never manage to move forward and, frankly, I'm just not ready to relive all of it, so what would be the point?

Who was I?  It doesn't matter.  That person-- or those people-- is/are either gone or a part of who I am now, either way, it's nothing worthy of an explanation or moment's worth more of contemplation.

Who am I?  It's wonderful and stupid question.  I am the president of the speech and debate team, I'm an aspiring writer, I'm a student, a family member, a friend, a bitch... Like everyone else in the world, I'm many things, but who I am can't be summed up in a series of titles, or any words, really.  A better question would be where am I?  I have just stumbled over the thresh hold of my senior year, and I'm trying to plan my future.  It's hard to do, considering...everything.  I'm scared.  I'm scared (and delighted by the idea) of things changing again, I'm scared of the fact that America is spiraling into another depression and I don't have one skill that will keep me alive in a desperate country, and I'm scared of everything that I'm so damn uncertain of.  Everyday the same questions whiz through my head at a thousand miles an hour.  How am I going to pay for college?  What can I do afterwards?  Journalism?  Teaching?  Am I actually good enough to be a writer?  What's the point of all this?  Like all teenagers, I guess, I have highs and lows.  Sometimes I'm confident and excited and can't wait to dive right into life and write my little heart away, and others I feel like I've made a mess of things by choosing such a career, one that is so uncertain.  And then I realize that it's all I'm good at and feel even worse.

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a fish bowl.  Though I never stop moving, I never get anywhere, I just keep moving in helpless circles.  And as I'm moving around in circles, I can see another world, I just can't quite get out into it... and then there's the fear that, even if I could, I'd never survive. 


I don't know.  I needed to rant, I have done it.  Tada.