The crossing of paths.

The science wing is separated from the main building by a gated courtyard and double doors at each end, and one of each is locked from the outside. This equates to congestion between classes until someone has the sense to open the other door from the inside and the fact that, unless I make a point to reach around and pop open the other door (which I have done), I am forced to let my ex-boyfriend hold a door open for me on occasion.

I dislike the fact that I still see this boy as a major source of trauma in my life. Granted, I'm much better off than I was months ago. I am, largely, past it. I am no longer a wreck as a result of his general idiocy, and I have passed the point where I notice what color shirt he is wearing every day (it thrills me).

Still, it frustrates me. I want to be over the fact that I let this boy into my life and he hurt me. I want it to dissipate magically, and worse, I find myself thinking about myself in relation to the opposite sex. I find myself thinking that I want that again, that feeling of elation and hope.

And I do, of course. I am a teenage girl. I am also human (yes, you are rightly shocked).

There was a moment this morning that we rounded a corner at the same time, and in the second that we crossed paths I could have sworn I felt the inches hovering between us. A split second, I thought.

It's silly, maybe.

I find myself wishing I were more than I am, and that just doesn't work.

Without.

I have spent my day furiously trying to edit essays for college applications, and while I suppose I could be worse off, this hasn't left me in the best state. Not content with writing a cookie cutter essay waxing poetic on the gloriousness that is my granny/first pet/second cousin Albert, I singlehandedly chose to delve into the deep grove of my soul and pull out what might or might not be meaning. And as if the process of applying to colleges were not frazzling enough, the fact of this alone would be enough to unhinge me.

I don't regret writing the essays, exactly, but the subjects are so difficult for me that even thinking about them makes me dizzy.

Words are like pieces of a puzzle to me. I don't know that I have any concrete control over them, but it is only as I locate and rearrange my words that I begin to find my own meaning. Too few and I am blank, too many and I am furiously scribbling in margins already filled. Balance and I are either unacquainted or jolly well pissed off with one another.

I really don't want to muse on life and bewilderment right now, but this is all I can find. I wish I could feel within myself that everything will be fine.

It has never been fine. It will be fine, but it has never been fine.

"Because we hate each other so much?"

It is on my usual bench at lunch that I find myself wanting for words.

I face away from the crowds, groups magnetized and reminding me of television specials focused on penguins in winter.

But it isn't winter, even. We're working on autumn still, only just cold enough for a sweater in early morning.

Clear blue sky finds its way around parked cars and through trees, and fallen leaves (there are very few, as trees don't shed for the winter here) are tossed by the breeze.

I have to turn to see what's going on, but it isn't anything I can relate to. People are situated in their groups and I merely sit here, my sweater folded beside me. Every minute or so someone turns the corner outside the cafeteria and passes me on a patch of sidewalk.

I don't have the courage or desire to join the group I try to associate with across the quadrangle; Dobbin is close at hand, and this is my only alone time all day. When it gets colder I may have to relegate myself to the library at lunch like last year, but I'd like to avoid it. I'd like this weather to stay, because it helps me feel alive.

I can use all the help I can get.

In Psychology the desks have been realigned into rows and I have to navigate where I will sit.

"Am I chairless?" I ask the members of my group, thinking I may have to sit on the other side of the room.

"No," one of them says, "Gerry isn't here today, you can sit behind Ruth."

"Best day ever!" I say as I sit, making little of the fact that Dobbin is directly behind me.

Meanwhile, Bowl Cut Boy waves in my direction.

"I know, Peter," I say mournfully, "you're so far away from me."

"I was just saying hello," he says, a little defensively. He sits in the next row, a few seats ahead.

"Hey Peter," says Dobbin, "you want to trade seats?'

"Why?" asks Bowl Cut Boy (aka Peter, though his name is not Peter either).

"Because we hate each other so much?" I say as I swivel around to face Dobbin. I smile tightly and turn back around in my seat, busying myself by putting my sweater back on.

A minute later he gets up and moves across the room, closer to the television that will soon play a fascinating video on blood circulation (demonstrated by tango dancers!).

"I was too alluring," I joke to the Ruth, who sits in front of me. "He hated himself too much so he had to move."

"No, don't make him feel bad. You're just too awesome." She goes along with it, but she's friends with him too. They all are, and though my words make me feel better, it unnerves me that he will say nothing to me directly.

I realize that I am more than this.

I would like to understand this boy. I would like to let go.

I would like a lot of things.

Lost and Found

I haven't fallen out of step with blog writing so much as fallen out of step with blog posting; ideas sprawl across pages every which way in unfinished pieces, and I feel more comfortable commenting on my observances of human behavior than my own feelings.

Only fragments surface and the smallest of things serve to make my heart hurt.

A table to my left is discussing a possible case of incest and my advisory teacher asks them to change the subject; they continue on in quieter voices.

The boy sitting next to me is a transfer student from somewhere I've never heard of (as amusing as it is, my tiny town is a bit of a metropolis when compared to neighboring cities. I mean, we have a mini-Walmart and everything) rumored to have moved here to be near his girlfriend. The truth of this is suspect, but I won't deny my having seen a lot of canoodling going on between classes.

It is easier to make observations than ink of my emotions.

Cute Guy, who I unfriended on Facebook long ago, sat behind me during a (reward!) viewing of Toy Story 3 on Friday, leaning on the back of my chair the whole time in order to chat with the boy to my right. Every once in a while he would say sorry for bothering me while continuing to take up my personal space, and at the end of the movie both of them burst into fake hysterics.

catlovingmathteacher moves a cocky, sweet faced boy to a different desk. On his journey he brings with him a plastic ziploc of cheetos. As he sits down he plucks one from the bag, sets it between his lips and sucks. For a moment I think he wiggles his eyebrows at me.

I am a lost and found of moments.

Group Dynamics

"This," Dobbin says, handing a piece of paper to the girl who sits across from me, "is not a love poem."

She reads it and her eyes widen, a hint of amusement in her voice as she says "wow, man, that's... not creepy, but dark. Dark."

He takes it back from her, chuckles "yeah" and it makes its way around the table.

The boy who sits to my left, the only thing keeping me from having to ignore Dobbin with a passion every day, has a bowl cut that falls almost to his eyelashes. He reminds me of a little boy, his face cherubic and voice quiet but eager. He gets the page next and I read over his shoulder.

"I mean," says Dobbin, and I can hear the laughter in his voice, "gosh, it is dark. I don't really feel that way..."

There is enough blood gushing from veins and lines like "I cannot keep hold of love" and, oh, "she thinks she has felt my pain" for me to find it all vastly amusing.

I doodle on scratch paper as worlds spin around me; the boy sitting next to me asks me what I'm drawing 1, 2, 3 times.

"Is that a cage? Are you going to put a cat in the cage?"

"I'm just doodling," I insist. "I'm not drawing anything in particular."

The boy sitting next to me worries me. Beyond being a useful candidate for blocking my view of Dobbin, I have become fond of him in a way that one might be fond of a small child or little brother. Last week he nearly fell over himself trying to help me research my Psychology paper--

"You need a laptop."

"No, I don't."

"You need a laptop."

"Why would I need a laptop?"

"For research!"

"I don't need one."

He left our patchwork grouping of desks after this, returning with a laptop from the cart. He slouched close to the screen, fingers poised to type words into the mighty tyrant that is Bing (which he insists is better than Google--pah!).

"What do you want to type in?"

"I don't need help. Shouldn't you be writing your own paper?"

"Well..."

I am, tentatively, concerned.

One could say I have prioritized. Dobbin is in this group, as well, but rarely bothers me these days. He's annoying, absolutely, and I often think he's trying to dig at me.

But whatever.

And really? "She thinks she has felt my pain"? "I cannot keep hold of love"?

Lols.

To my right, at an angle, sits a guy who aspires to be a train conductor. Some symbols are tattooed on his wrist and he practices slacking as an art form. Across from me is a girl I know from last year. Her hair is cut distinctively, two long pieces at each side of her face; she invited me to join their group at the beginning of the year. She enjoys singing, Jesus (which surprised me, somehow), and is edgy in a way I can't quite distinguish. She wears clunky boots a lot (I am ace at this description thing).

The boy next to her works at a hamster farm. He's a big guy, very huggable looking; his guitar case is shaped like a coffin. I don't know much about the boy who sits next to him, at at an angle, besides the fact that he writes stories and, of course, sits next to Dobbin himself.

I don't know where I fit in this group, if I fit, but they have never questioned my right to be here and fitting isn't an issue I had considered before this moment. I just am. Maybe I'm nothing special, nothing glittering, but I am here... and I am okay.

This morning I was talking to the quick-speaking, oft unintelligible boy I know in Physics as we fiddled with library computers and a worksheet.

"You know," he said, voice high pitched and gesturing with his index finger, "I'm going to be named most important person ever to go to this high school."

I smiled. "Can I be the second most important person, then?"

"No," he said, "no you can't. Because you're not from here. You have to be here... be here your whole life. You haven't."

I smiled again, grateful for these words. "At least you're honest."

10/22

"I'm sitting in Pre-Cal class," raps The Boy With The Underpants, "over here it smells like ass. But it's gonna go by real fast. Gettin' out my iPhone, checkin' my apps..."

A preliminary glance counts six phones hidden behind bags on desks and in laps as catlovingmathteacher goes over last week's quiz.

The boy to my right asks "Who're you writing to?" and I slam my notebook shut, saying no one, they're just words. Just words.

"Thank you for the help, Winston," says catlovingmathteacher.

"You're welcome, sir."

"I was being facetious."

A cowboy sitting on the other side of the room, the one who threatened to kill himself when his girlfriend (an acquaintance of mine) tried to break up with him last year and admits to being racist and I shy away from, interjects: "Hey, no big words!"

I have been feeling wordless recently, and it scares me. Words do not bubble up inside me. I'm supposed to have my college application essays written. I'm supposed to be figuring things out. I'm supposed to attempt NaNoWriMo again and apply to colleges and take the SAT again and hope last month's scores don't prove my idiocy as a human being.

I'm supposed to prove things with my words.

But my words feel cold.

Wanting

I sit in Economics and pretend to review for a test that was supposed to be today but now isn't. Thoughts drift, thinking--the boy who sits behind me has nice lips, it embarrasses me a little that stupid memories of Dobbin make me smile sometimes, I think I might be the only white girl in this class, I wish someone here would just get me. The four white boys in this class group in one corner of the room, talking with the teen mom I know and her cohort, who wears a lot of eye makeup and seems to have a dose of sense about her. The guy who wears ironic t-shirts makes funny faces as the guy who sleeps grins drowsily and one of them takes on a silly voice--"spank me harder!"

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.

I've been thinking a bit about want. Specifically in monetary terms, as I am now being paid for my time (what?!) in my school's library, but want can be such a big thing in many areas: What do I want? What don't I want? Why does all this wantwantwant have to make my heart hurt so much?

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.