Introspection
Addendum: YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THIS...ITS LONG...I BABBLE IN CIRCLES MINDLESSLY. IT'S MORE LIKE A DIARY ENTRY THAN A POST. DON'T BOTHER. Oh and also, don't be hurt by anything i've said, its 2 o'clock in the morning and i've got no idea what i'm talking about anymore. All i know is I have a cavity on the tip of my broken tooth and it hurts..
Nicholas asked me to do his little dial-up using ass a favor last night. He was looking for a good version of a song by Switchfoot, called "We Were Meant To Live." I downloaded it and previewed it to make sure it was free of "jitters"...i'm still not sure what they are but hey, it was at 224...there were no jitters. Anyways, the chorus, and its a crappy song, I admit, but I listened to about 20 different versions..."We were meant to live for so much more/have we lost ourselves..."
Perhaps it was the timing or maybe its just how I would've reacted no matter what, but it got me to thinking about my life as it stands. When I left Panera in April I never intended or wanted to be unemployed for this long. When I left, I didn't want to be unemployed at all but I decided it would be better for my psyche to take some time off. So I did. I had money saved, more than enough to live on for quite a while under my circumstances. By the time I thought I was ready to go back to work, any kind of work, my mother had borrowed $1000 dollars from me and between the car and the living i ran the rest dry. But, she was good for the money so I waited a little while, assuming that no matter what kind of work I took i'd need some sort of new wardrobe item for it, be it red t-shirts for target or whatever. And then things fell apart again but now they're more back together. Or at least, I know why they're broken and its something that only getting farther from June 29th is gonna solve. Except my mother says, oops, have to pay for Jameson's summer camp, I can only give you x-amount of dollars this week but don't worry, i'll give you the rest next check and oh no don't bother getting a job at Kohls or Target or anywhere else, I can get you something doing easier work wtih better hours pay and benefits if you just wait until the 30th. So I wait until the end of the month and then she spends $400 on a pool. I have a hard time complaining about that because i'm sure to get a lot of enjoyment out of it but really, she didn't ask me before she spent the money and now she can only pay me 200 this week. Now I have to wait until the 15th and by then i'm gonna have bills due, again, rendering me short overall. But she just assumes that its not important and that i'll be fine. She doesn't even ask...Ugh...
Anyway, that's not where I started or intended to end up. In 7th grade my mother told me that she couldn't afford to send me to Prairie, but if i could keep my grades above C's she'd find away. I had a problem with writing...paragraphs, full sentances, you name it I couldn't do it. While it may seem to you like it hasn't gotten better, it has. I can now write an essay like you wouldn't believe. I'm a fucking machine...as long as I have a spellchecker. I got a C- in my history class because I totally blew the final project, a reasearch paper on a country in Africa. I had the information, I knew the shit and could've spit it out at you like a fucking bullet but ask me to write it down and I burst into tears. She pulled me out and sent me to St. Joe's. The only reason I didn't end up in public school was my dad's parents bailing me out. Although I probably would've been better off in a public school, at least they admited that I was smarter than them.
I spent the whole year coasting. That was the year I got cocky. I'd spent the first half of my education in places where there were always equals. Granted, we were always at eachothers throats so it wasn't the best social environment but always mentally engaging. I hit St. Joe's, got thrown into honors highschool classes, they didn't have a french class I couldn't have tested out of. Here I sat in a room full of Jr's and Seniors as the only one who knew the answer. I took physical science for the second time. Not because I failed it, but because if they'd have let me into highschool science they might as well have just skipped me ahead. They would've but my mom wouldn't let them...didn't want me hanging out with "older kids." That one blew up in your face didn't it mom. Maybe that way I would've met some "older kids" who did a few less drugs, huh? Then Allison got cancer and Andy OD and it was a mess. At the end of the year we decided St. Joe's sucked but my parents couldn't afford Prairie.
I homeschooled. There began what I now know as my life. Seems silly right, but its actually a very logically linked progression. Laura, my best and only friend at the time, organized the benefit for Women's and Children's Horizons (funny how things get so ironic if you let them go long enouhg) We did pretty good too, considering I did it by myself and managed to raise about $400 profit. After that there was a big falling out, I didn't really talk to anyone from Prairie or Armitage anymore and I started getting depressed so my mom made me join the Red Cross's leadership program. YLDP. Shannon, the group leader, introduced me to a program in Kenosha, designed to combat juvinille delinquancy - I ended up on the youth board. We were supposed to be rallying against youth pregnancy, gangs, guns, and dropping out of school. Whatever. There i met Tom Overocker (ironically again, we ended up in the same 300 level class two years later) He dragged me into the Teen Task force. I think I was supposed to be his liason since he and his brother got ousted. He did a lot of talking through me in the beginning. It was right after Jan left.
Sophmore year i went back to Prairie and almost strangled myself. It was the same people. The same exact people who went to pre-school together, stayed together for primary, middle, and highschool. Half of them ended up at the same colleges. Thats sick but we won't talk about that.. Anyways, I did pretty well for the first few months, Allison and I were talking but she was no more drama, the cancer was gone, and i'd had some time to get away from Ian and Andy's deaths a little. I made a few friends, we stuck like glue. Coping mechanism. If you've never been to an elitist rich kid school, you'll never understand. And then there was Doug...followed shortly by Sean, who, in retrospect, only talked to me because i look like i'm 12...and then Trish...And Kevin...And Christian...And Dewayne...And Claire....And Joey...I keep emphasising this for a reason...these people were an extremely bad influance on me. I hadn't had an outlet for black nail polish in four very long years and it was really good to dye my hair a different color.
I regret damn near every decision I made that year. When i look back on it now I wish I could go back. I remember the August before Junior year started. I was supposed to be going to registration and I was so upset. I totally lost it. I didn't want to go back because if I went back it meant I was stuck in a tennis skirt listening to Christina Agulara, N'Sync, and 98 Degrees, spending my weekends at the country club with one of them. I should've just played along and hung out with Campbell and Fetek during lunch instead. I might not have been well liked but at least i'd have stuck it out there.
Oh well, I left and just went to college. Very wrong step. See I got so caught up in the idea that I could just cut the bullshit and move on that I couldn't see past it. My mother was so convinced, with her menial experience in the matter, that no school would dare refuse a kid with two years completed that she convinced me too. I should've stayed. I should've stuck it out, finished highschool the normal way. Joined the news paper...stuck wtih soccer...run for class president.
Nobody thought I was missing anything, doing what I did. Or at least, the people who did think i was missing something didn't stand a chance at being heard because by the time they found out about it I was already doing it and it was intoxicating. The first semester anyway. I came and went as I pleased. If i didn't show up for a class I didn't get called into the principals office. Shit, most of my professors didn't even notice. It took about two weeks to realize I was still one of the smartest people in the room but it was so fun to impress people...adults... I used to pull shit just to see how far i could push it. Too bad I didn't do that with my parents...in a non-academic way...
Good thing this is my chunk of cyber-space cuz i've babbled on for quite a while. Exactly no one is still reading this but thats okay.
Nicholas asked me to do his little dial-up using ass a favor last night. He was looking for a good version of a song by Switchfoot, called "We Were Meant To Live." I downloaded it and previewed it to make sure it was free of "jitters"...i'm still not sure what they are but hey, it was at 224...there were no jitters. Anyways, the chorus, and its a crappy song, I admit, but I listened to about 20 different versions..."We were meant to live for so much more/have we lost ourselves..."
Perhaps it was the timing or maybe its just how I would've reacted no matter what, but it got me to thinking about my life as it stands. When I left Panera in April I never intended or wanted to be unemployed for this long. When I left, I didn't want to be unemployed at all but I decided it would be better for my psyche to take some time off. So I did. I had money saved, more than enough to live on for quite a while under my circumstances. By the time I thought I was ready to go back to work, any kind of work, my mother had borrowed $1000 dollars from me and between the car and the living i ran the rest dry. But, she was good for the money so I waited a little while, assuming that no matter what kind of work I took i'd need some sort of new wardrobe item for it, be it red t-shirts for target or whatever. And then things fell apart again but now they're more back together. Or at least, I know why they're broken and its something that only getting farther from June 29th is gonna solve. Except my mother says, oops, have to pay for Jameson's summer camp, I can only give you x-amount of dollars this week but don't worry, i'll give you the rest next check and oh no don't bother getting a job at Kohls or Target or anywhere else, I can get you something doing easier work wtih better hours pay and benefits if you just wait until the 30th. So I wait until the end of the month and then she spends $400 on a pool. I have a hard time complaining about that because i'm sure to get a lot of enjoyment out of it but really, she didn't ask me before she spent the money and now she can only pay me 200 this week. Now I have to wait until the 15th and by then i'm gonna have bills due, again, rendering me short overall. But she just assumes that its not important and that i'll be fine. She doesn't even ask...Ugh...
Anyway, that's not where I started or intended to end up. In 7th grade my mother told me that she couldn't afford to send me to Prairie, but if i could keep my grades above C's she'd find away. I had a problem with writing...paragraphs, full sentances, you name it I couldn't do it. While it may seem to you like it hasn't gotten better, it has. I can now write an essay like you wouldn't believe. I'm a fucking machine...as long as I have a spellchecker. I got a C- in my history class because I totally blew the final project, a reasearch paper on a country in Africa. I had the information, I knew the shit and could've spit it out at you like a fucking bullet but ask me to write it down and I burst into tears. She pulled me out and sent me to St. Joe's. The only reason I didn't end up in public school was my dad's parents bailing me out. Although I probably would've been better off in a public school, at least they admited that I was smarter than them.
I spent the whole year coasting. That was the year I got cocky. I'd spent the first half of my education in places where there were always equals. Granted, we were always at eachothers throats so it wasn't the best social environment but always mentally engaging. I hit St. Joe's, got thrown into honors highschool classes, they didn't have a french class I couldn't have tested out of. Here I sat in a room full of Jr's and Seniors as the only one who knew the answer. I took physical science for the second time. Not because I failed it, but because if they'd have let me into highschool science they might as well have just skipped me ahead. They would've but my mom wouldn't let them...didn't want me hanging out with "older kids." That one blew up in your face didn't it mom. Maybe that way I would've met some "older kids" who did a few less drugs, huh? Then Allison got cancer and Andy OD and it was a mess. At the end of the year we decided St. Joe's sucked but my parents couldn't afford Prairie.
I homeschooled. There began what I now know as my life. Seems silly right, but its actually a very logically linked progression. Laura, my best and only friend at the time, organized the benefit for Women's and Children's Horizons (funny how things get so ironic if you let them go long enouhg) We did pretty good too, considering I did it by myself and managed to raise about $400 profit. After that there was a big falling out, I didn't really talk to anyone from Prairie or Armitage anymore and I started getting depressed so my mom made me join the Red Cross's leadership program. YLDP. Shannon, the group leader, introduced me to a program in Kenosha, designed to combat juvinille delinquancy - I ended up on the youth board. We were supposed to be rallying against youth pregnancy, gangs, guns, and dropping out of school. Whatever. There i met Tom Overocker (ironically again, we ended up in the same 300 level class two years later) He dragged me into the Teen Task force. I think I was supposed to be his liason since he and his brother got ousted. He did a lot of talking through me in the beginning. It was right after Jan left.
Sophmore year i went back to Prairie and almost strangled myself. It was the same people. The same exact people who went to pre-school together, stayed together for primary, middle, and highschool. Half of them ended up at the same colleges. Thats sick but we won't talk about that.. Anyways, I did pretty well for the first few months, Allison and I were talking but she was no more drama, the cancer was gone, and i'd had some time to get away from Ian and Andy's deaths a little. I made a few friends, we stuck like glue. Coping mechanism. If you've never been to an elitist rich kid school, you'll never understand. And then there was Doug...followed shortly by Sean, who, in retrospect, only talked to me because i look like i'm 12...and then Trish...And Kevin...And Christian...And Dewayne...And Claire....And Joey...I keep emphasising this for a reason...these people were an extremely bad influance on me. I hadn't had an outlet for black nail polish in four very long years and it was really good to dye my hair a different color.
I regret damn near every decision I made that year. When i look back on it now I wish I could go back. I remember the August before Junior year started. I was supposed to be going to registration and I was so upset. I totally lost it. I didn't want to go back because if I went back it meant I was stuck in a tennis skirt listening to Christina Agulara, N'Sync, and 98 Degrees, spending my weekends at the country club with one of them. I should've just played along and hung out with Campbell and Fetek during lunch instead. I might not have been well liked but at least i'd have stuck it out there.
Oh well, I left and just went to college. Very wrong step. See I got so caught up in the idea that I could just cut the bullshit and move on that I couldn't see past it. My mother was so convinced, with her menial experience in the matter, that no school would dare refuse a kid with two years completed that she convinced me too. I should've stayed. I should've stuck it out, finished highschool the normal way. Joined the news paper...stuck wtih soccer...run for class president.
Nobody thought I was missing anything, doing what I did. Or at least, the people who did think i was missing something didn't stand a chance at being heard because by the time they found out about it I was already doing it and it was intoxicating. The first semester anyway. I came and went as I pleased. If i didn't show up for a class I didn't get called into the principals office. Shit, most of my professors didn't even notice. It took about two weeks to realize I was still one of the smartest people in the room but it was so fun to impress people...adults... I used to pull shit just to see how far i could push it. Too bad I didn't do that with my parents...in a non-academic way...
Good thing this is my chunk of cyber-space cuz i've babbled on for quite a while. Exactly no one is still reading this but thats okay.
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