The substitute comes around to the front of the room and a wide-eyed girl whose words string together very precisely, almost like questions, exclaims "my nipples are freezing!"
"Did you hear that, ma'am," one of her friends shouts across the room, "did you hear that? She says her nipples are freezing!!"
The substitute only scoffs.
"If you knew Sally," The Boy With The Underpants told me in math class today, as I helped Teen Mom with the worksheet we were doing under the orders of yet another substitute, "you would hate her. So nice, but dumb as a brick."
"Really," I said, noncommittally. A group of boys huddled around the desk to my right, deeming themselves The iPhone Club and discussing bandwidth or something equally Interesting.
"The other day," he began, "I said to Sally 'hey Sally, did you hear about the fire at the Eiffel Tower? It killed everybody in France!' and she was just all, 'Everybody?' And I said 'hey Sally, did you hear that everybody in France was also decapitated?' and she was all 'what's decapitated?' So I said 'it means everybody had their head cut off, Sally, everybody had their head cut off!' She believed it all."
"Yeah," agreed the girl who sits behind me, "really nice girl, so much fun to be around. If you are around her you will have fun, but she's as dumb as a brick. Dumb as a brick."
Today is nerd day at school, a theme child of The Opulent And Important Homecoming Week. In Physics I submit a personal tirade to the boy costumed in suspenders, plastic glasses and a set of (green) fake teeth. As I try to explain that I am firmly rooted in team nerd and do not find the term demeaning, my Physics teacher asks for my nerd credentials. I draw a blank.
And while this leads me to question whether I am a nerd at all, instinct tells me that I can be a nerd if I damn want to, no matter what my 'credentials' might be.
My words do not appeal to me as they hit the page lately, scattered and self-pitying and downright confused as they are. I question the very foundations on which I have always stood, write myself into loops.
So much revolves around want, and I've never been sure. My hesitancy to choose has always brought about conflict. Oftentimes I just don't want things enough, and it worries me.
And it goes back to trying, too.
As a child (which I still am, but work with me here) I thought that if I tried hard enough, if I was Perfect, equilibrium could be reached. I thought I was the keystone in my family; only a handful of years ago I still believed this, that I was the only constant, and in some ways this still plagues my thoughts. I watched as my immediate family went through atrocities of their own and thought, ridden with panic, that I could not let myself fall apart. I could not make waves. Making waves was Bad. Making waves was Wrong and Not Allowed.
I still feel this way.
Eighth grade self wrote kept a journal in a word document. Eighth grade self, only just fourteen years old, was confused and hurting and arrogant. Eighth grade self felt like she knew everything and nothing all at once, keying words into her refurbished (see: used, 300 dollars, internetless) laptop.
I skimmed through hoping for inspiration, insight or magic sparkles and return here with only the impression that fourteen year old me was severely confused. She also feels distant. Only about four years have passed since eighth grade self wrote these words, but I no longer feel they belong to me. I am no longer that person.
I will not always be the person I am now.
I want to be more than I am, maybe. I want to stretch farther, be more than the words I will later cringe over.
I help my mom make pizza on Monday night and tell her about the journal, tell her that it scares me how far away my words seem. Encouraging words: It's a function of growing up. Will it always be this way? No. No, it gets less so as you get older.
It is all so distant and cloistering at the same time.
Sometimes I can draw no conclusions. This is scarier, I think, than it sounds. I am one to search for logic where none will ever appear, parse out reason and reach for truth. Which isn't to say that I am a lover of reason, either, merely that I look for it. It isn't even that I lack answers, though I grieve that too, but that my experiences muddle together in such a way that sometimes I just don't know that to make of them. Am I fourteen year old me, angry at the world without really knowing it? Am I the girl who tried so very hard to be perfect only to write that despite all this, her father was angry with her?
Despite the arrogance I see in that me now, I really did try. But trying doesn't necessarily equate to change, and the obstacles I was facing were insurmountable. There was nothing more I could have done--and maybe it isn't about being enough. Maybe it's about realizing that there are some things you cannot do.
Fixing the situation I've been placed in is one of them.
What do I want? I want a lot of things. I want to feel whole, feel (honestly?) perfect. I want to read more and sleep more. I want to smile, a lot, and I want to be happy. I want to breathe in clear, cold air on an autumn evening as the sky dims. I want an uncomplicated and exquisite love story, I want to hold someone's hand, and I want it soon. I want to hold a star in the palm of my hand. I want friends here in tiny town Texas, birthplace of the mother effing cowboy. I want to know exactly where I want to go to college. I want out of the box I've built around myself. I want to replicate moments as words and live within their immensity.
It is in Physics class on Tuesday that the teacher's aid says "so I can assume from the noise level in here that everyone understands the work and needs no help at all?" and I snap.
"No," I say, and it is unlikely that anyone listens, "because I haven't said a word." I want to rest my head on the desk and scream, I want to leave, slam the door to this classroom, and I want to slap words against the concrete walls they have built until they break.
Maybe I want justice. Maybe I want to feel whole and I want to be happy and I want to stop wanting for things so ill-defined and unreachable.
There is some beauty in chaos. That's all I can think.
O.o You are letting tension build up in your system. You will probably explode sparkles one day soon. I know how you feel, though. Yes. I've snapped in class before.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading about Chaos Theory, http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html
ReplyDeleteChaos is related to fractals and is the basis of nature. Chaos can be good.
You. Are. So. Cool.
ReplyDeleteI wish we were neighbors. That would be the best thing ever.
Anyway, all I can say is hang in there. I really hope that you'll get all the things you want, unlikely as it seems<3
In the meantime, you should write a novel. Because you would make an amazing author. And then I could start a Katherine Hardman fan club, and it would be AWESOME.
I read some diary entries from my seventh and eighth grade years. Definitely NOT the same person at all. In fact, I found myself wanting to hit 8th grade Maggie.
ReplyDeleteChange is good. You shouldn't be too worried about not recognizing your own words from however many years ago. Sometimes I'll read an essay or paper from just a year ago that I had forgotten about, and I cannot recognize it as my own work.
We adolescents are doomed to a life of fast-paced change. We learn so much through school, family, friends, experience that I doubt we are even the same people from day to day.
I am positive that you will find the right college. And once you are there, I would not be surprised if your thoughts are liberated.
When we are born into certain familial situations, there is not much we can do to rectify things that oppress us. But it isn't forever. We do get to move on and have more control over our lives. I think you will do well with that freedom.