I'm not sure what words I have for you right now. I wrote a blog post about a week ago, but it was as close to "too personal" as I've ever gotten, at least in the fact that I would feel uncomfortable were the persons referenced to read it. If confrontation does come about, I don't want it to be that way.

And, frankly, I'm scared of confrontation. I'm scared of taking chances. I'm scared of sussing out truths not everyone will agree with. This doesn't mean I have never done and will never do such things but rather that, at this point in my life, I am very tentative to do them. Still, part of me wishes I could. My thoughts are most often scattered and irrational, yet I measure my every action carefully before taking it. As a result, I do nothing. As a result, I worry everything.

It's so much easier, and more fun, to replay amusing social situations here than express my true emotions. I have been in an uncomfortable state of feeling misunderstood lately, conflicted in area after area and stuck wishing.

I forget that I don't have to wish, don't have to hope. It's going to be okay. It's going to hurt, but it's going to be okay.

Life goes on.

"You'll only really need this if you become an electrician."

There are twenty minutes until the bell ending second period rings; The Bell Jar sits finished in my bag and yesterday's assignment, correct or no (I question whether it truly matters), was turned in in the first five minutes.

The teacher's aid questions how one gets from point A to point B and my Physics teacher shrugs at her and the student she's working with--"you'll only really need this if you become an electrician."

A boy somewhere behind me asserts that it is the teacher's aid's fault that he hasn't finished his worksheet.

"I question the logic in this statement," I say.

"As do I. I suppose in this case we'll just have to deem it illogical and go on with our lives."

"Hey," the boy interjects, "I know big words, too."

"Do you?"

"Only they're all in Spanish."

He means swear words. The teacher's aid gives him a stern look as a beat is skipped.

"What's he doing?" asks the teacher. His face flushes when he's amused, which is often. Divorced with two young children, I question how engaged (or, even, interested) in teaching us he is. Rumors are rumors, but he has grown on me--maybe because of that amused look. Maybe because he's a redhead with a Harry Potter-esque haircut. Maybe many things.

Says the teacher's aid: "He's got some Spanish swear words up his sleeve, only he doesn't have the wherewithal to say them."

The teacher cups a hand over one side of his mouth, whispering: "That's cojones in Spanish."

Dobbin sits behind me as we watch a movie in Sociology, which I realize only as I leave. A notebook is open on his desk, on which his arms are folded and he rests his head. I think, I truly think for a second, without malice: "I hope you're happy." And I walk away. I catapult myself towards my next class, averting my gaze from those who could potentially catch mine, and arrive at my locker even before my classmate and her maybe-maybe-not boyfriend (or else ex-boyfriend) are full into their goodbyes.

It's easier to walk quickly. I wind my way between people and through hallways and feel somehow alive because I am unattached and moving, moving towards something, even if it's only English class and Ye Old Initials.

For those who may be new (are you new? Regardless, I love you deeply.), Dobbin is my jerk of an ex-boyfriend. We dated for two months, at which point he broke up with me via text message and proved himself to be a big fat liar, and while I am generally healed following the debacle, he is still a source of slight annoyance in my life. Sometimes I write about it. Okay, I write about it often, but this is the way it is.

Writing about things allows me to find what might be hurtful amusing rather than tragic.

(Also, for reference purposes, I always change names here. Except for here, as it amused me, and of those who actively read my blog. I hope you know who you are, as you are truly truly amazing. Maggie, Lydia, Manar, Rachel, Dave, mom, and others... I am blessed.)

In my last three classes I find myself half asleep. In Sociology we watch Remember the Titans, in English we watch Hamlet, and in Government we are given a review I finish in the first five minutes of the period. I only have one book with me, and I finished it hours ago. I doodle giraffes and checkerboards on a sheet of paper until the words I am trying to find spill into another page.

Revelation regarding today's youth: a large number can't read cursive. I might as well be writing in code.

The weather this week has been cold enough to warrant a letter regarding possible "severe weather" given to all students. We're not talking about snow, of which we hear rumors of about once a year: if it freezes and there is any ice, all the schools in our (albeit small and independent) school district will close.

Welcome to tiny town Texas.

In other riveting news, this week is our annual (?) stock show. Many kids are out showing stock (?) in the newfound cold (!), for which I have heard there are possible Magic Awards and glitter parties.

(I really wish there were glitter parties.)

As such, we don't have school on Friday (or Monday, coincidentally, thanks to Marin Luther King Jr.). I'm not complaining.

Even if I don't understand it.

A mix of emotions.

"Are you a cannibal?" I overhear from somewhere behind me.

The girls from my first period class (there are a shocking total of three of us) are talking about something--an ex-boyfriend? his financial status? yard gnomes?--as we walk toward our next classes. We pass two girls in identical magenta jackets walking together and I wonder whether this was intended (it probably was, not that it matters, but these are the kinds of things I occupy myself with). The first of the girls I walk with is deposited at the entrance to another hallway where her maybe-maybe-not boyfriend (or else ex-boyfriend) waits for her. There is a harrowing tale I could tell here, but my main concern of late has been the fact that they spend a lot of time canoodling in front of my locker.

My locker is, in my unqualified opinion, a haven for shameless public displays of affection far across the land.

In advisory a girl sits between two boys as they peruse a prom magazine and discuss prom dates. I am almost certain two of the three are single until The Boy Who Asked Me To Sit There places a hand on the girl's waist and leaves it there.

They still might be single.

Sometimes I forget that I'm quiet. My thoughts are loud and occupy me well enough, so it isn't so lonely.

I watch people, their stories playing out before me, as I sit.

I want to be one of them in the sense that I want to be a part of something, but I find peace in the fact that--it just isn't my time yet. My adventure is only on the cusp of beginning, and I think for now it is okay not to be. I don't want what they have. I don't want drunken nights and a baby at sixteen and a life stuck in this tiny town. The voice telling me that I want any semblance of these things is simply a liar.

A pair of black Nikes sit on the desk of the boy next to me. Earbuds blast music I can hear from four feet away; his phone is well loved, scratches abounding, and sits next to his shiny black iPod. As I write he folds his arms on the desk and rests his head on them, temporarily muffling the music. He wears a maroon hoodie and has artfully styled his hair into what might be a faux-hawk if his hair were longer. He has a long, placid face and a mouthful of braces. For a second he mumble-sings a lyric off-key. The phone buzzes. My Physics class is a helter-skelter of conversation, and the teacher sips a large drink from a nearby fastfood place.

"I love you, sir," one of my peers informs the teacher, "no homo."

Two boys return from a search of the bathrooms; a classmate has been missing for fifteen minutes, ostensibly gone to relieve himself across the hall. "He wasn't in that bathroom," one of the boys says. "I think maybe he went to Ms. Reynaldo's." A pause. "Frank wanted to lie and say there was blood on the floor."

If this isn't a metaphor for the state of my education, I'm not certain what is.

No fewer than two girls are doing their makeup as catlovingmathteacher explains the problems we have been reviewing. The Boy With The Underpants hijacks a small tub of foundation and mimes applying it.

I wonder what kind of world this would be if we didn't feel pressured to fix ourselves.

I want to be me--not my eyelashes, complexion or, god forbid, waist size. And I don't want to lie, either, because the fact that boys have never paid me much heed does occasionally cause me to wonder whether I am really that outwardly unappealing.

But I am learning that there is merit in letting feelings be what they are with the knowledge that they are apt to be deceiving. My surroundings are not who I am.

At lunch my sister and I render crude drawings of our enemies and attack them with the remains of our hard plastic fruit containers. I enjoy it immensely as Dobbin looms behind us in the otherwise empty array of tables. I still find his voice in hallways. He still bothers me.

I don't know why it is that the news that Dobbin has managed to romantically entangled himself once more doesn't surprise me. Part of me wants to gag. Part of me is merely numb.

I deserve much more than this boy. Still he flits, vaguely peripheral, around me like some demented test.

I find myself too caught in the idea of how I'm supposed to be feeling to let myself truly feel things.

This too, I suppose, shall pass. So many other things have. They will.

Not knowing.

Hours and hours have been spent in feeble attempt to create some semblance of a blog post. No less than five drafts sit in The Magic Box Of Drafts. Two of them are blank. One is almost something. My fingers itch to backspace.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I feel now more than ever that whatever I put forth will be judged. I fear people will hate me for my words, for my scattered and uncertain thoughts. I have taken to saying nothing.

I don't know anything.

Not true, in theory, but it is how I feel at this point in my life.

It is easier to say nothing than put into words my aimless reaching for understanding.