Repeating Disaster (A song I wrote)

I turn my tears into stones so they can hurt you too.
Might not break your bones, but the message'll get through.
Take a good hard look at what we've become.
The monsters are coming out, so you better run.

No future's set in stone...
any place could be your home...
wish the past was unknown...
so we won't know -

we're repeating disaster...
we're repeating disaster...
we're repeating disaster (disaster)...
no, we're repeating disaster...

Harsh lines set into your face.
Tell the time that the pain took place.
Hide all you want but you can't disguise your eyes... they're like an inkwell brimming over...
the story's told every night you sleep.
The poor souls just sit and weep and you... well you're a human too.

No future's set in stone...
any place could be your home...
wish the past was unknown...
so we won't know -

we're repeating disaster....
we're repeating disaster...
we're repeating disaster (disaster)...
oh no, we're repeating disaster...

Reappearing shadows with crooked aims,
haunting legends with peculiar names,
childhood memories based on broken games,
these same faces oh these same faces.
Invisible supporters hidden in the frames,
hateful people with ridiculous claims -
oh the damage they cause isn't it a shame,
these same faces, these dear old faces!

we're repeating disaster....
we're repeating disaster...
we're repeating disaster...
oh we're repeating repeating yes!
we're repeating disaster!
we're repeating disaster!
we should've run faster...
nooo, why are we repeating disaster..."

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time."

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time."

Teens commit suicide.

When you're a teen, you are supposed to be growing, trying to find yourself and who you are meant to be.

But when teens kill themselves before they even get a chance to see what they could have been... it just... ruins so much. Because they keep getting called out for trying to express themselves and find themselves, they push themselves so far away from everyone and everything else that... there's nothing left but their corpse... their body cold and empty.


I've been suicidal, and luckily it has not been because I've been bullied or because I'm gay... in fact being gay is one of the smaller reasons I don't like who I am. I'm mostly just afraid that the people I care about will be disappointed in me and drift away from me. People have distanced themselves from me because I needed to grow up or because I grew up to be someone they didn't like, and I really don't care much about the reasons why they stopped liking me - it just hurts that they did stop liking me. Best friends that I imagined having fun with for years to come stopped talking to me years ago, and it was never my decision to let that happen. It hurts when you can't control things.


I'm a little afraid that coming out to my family will be the final straw where they actually express their disappoint in my to my face. I know some of them don't agree with the things I've done or who I'm growing up to be, and in a way, I accept that because I don't plan on remaining very close to my family in the future. But still, the fact that someone you have grown so close to can just drop you from their heart like you were never meant to be there in the first place hurts so badly.


Right now, I really like this boy. And I know that as a teenager, I've had crushes come and go more often than I text, but he's different. I think he sort of ... initiated any flirting, and it's such a serious head game trying to figure out how he really feels about me. He's extremely weird, so I don't feel like the odd man out, he's a musician, he's an artist, and he's fun. Sometimes, I feel moments where a connection would be made if it were written that way in a story, but like I said, he's hard to figure out, so I can't figure out what he feels. And I like that - he keeps me guessing. As a girl who writes love stories, not knowing how my own is going to end up is a thrill. I can usually see how things might end up, and there's only been one instance where I was so naive and blinded by love that I couldn't see us heading for disaster. With this guy, I don't know what's going to happen, but even if it ends in heartbreak, I'd still be buzzing from the excitement of the few times we've spent together already.


But in liking him, I've realized something.


I haven't acted very much like myself around him, not because I felt like he would judge me, but because I've been too busy analyzing him, really. But if I am to be myself, how much of myself should I be? Not many people are accepting of gays, bisexuals, etc. Not many people are understanding of depressed people. I've been lucky to find some who are, but can I find any who would be willing to date a mess like me?


I didn't mean to make this personal, but if I kept writing about suicide, I was going to cry.


I'm still here. I like it here, being alive. I haven't known anyone who's committed suicide, and I hope I never do. It wouldn't make me stronger or weaker - it would make me scared that it could have been me giving up like that. I don't want to envision myself hanging from up high, or bleeding to death because I cut myself, or having my body mangled or torn apart by whatever gruesome end I thought would help. Because I know suicide doesn't solve anything. It doesn't solve any problems at all. It's like when I had a list of math problems to do, and no matter how hard I tried to work it out, no matter how many people I asked for help, I was still lost and confused, and I would leave the page blank. The problems were still there, and they still hurt me in the end, but the world would move on and those problems would be forgotten for me. My problems would just float around somewhere until they bothered someone else - they never go away for everyone.


Lately, I've been thinking about my brothers, and I've wanted to make some art piece with a message to them and anyone else who's misunderstood. My brothers express themselves, and even if they get into more dangerous and life-threatening situations than most people, I still think that they might outlive me soon. And I don't want that - I want to grow old with them. 


When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.


I'm tired of slowly dying. I want to express myself, one art piece at a time.

A (Really) Good Cry

Even though I've been trying MAJORLY hard to get past my issues, there is one person in my life who can always smack me right back down.

My mother.

You know how there are those people in your life that you just can't ignore, no matter what you do? That's her. Even though I know she's not always right, she just finds a way to always make me feel wrong. I just can't be what she wants me to be. And I stopped trying to be what she wanted a long time ago - I just wanted to be myself, but I feel like I can't even do that right.

I almost gave up on life last Thursday night.

The stress of being me has been really weighing down on me, and my mom is not helping at all. She says I never talk to her, but that's because there is no talking to her: logic is no match for my mom. You will never be right, you will never be listened to. While I'm struggling to pass my three AP classes plus my other classes, my afterschool activities, my job, my self-esteem, my friends, my family, college applications, college scholarships, and the things that make me happy so I can keep the strength to handle all of this, she can just tear me down and make me feel worthless. I tried to explain to her that my grades weren't A's and B's right now because that's not how the grades work at the beginning of the year - if you miss one assignment or score low on a test/quiz at the beginning of the year, it really takes a toll on your grade because you don't have a lot of other assignments to balance out your grade, and I told her that's how it's always been with my grades every year and my friends agree. But that doesn't matter to her

"You can't get into U of I with grades like this, you can't get into Northwestern or even Chicago State or even community college with those grades!"

But mom...

I just...

And then she doesn't believe me when I say I'm stressed.

"What do you have to be stressed about?!"

EVERYTHING. I've been struggling since 6th grade with the problems in my life, and it's never "How can I help?" or "what's wrong?", it's always "you need to fix this". She doesn't tell me how, or what should change, she just looks at what I've done and tells me I'm wrong. Always wrong.

After my fight with her, I ran to my room and cried in the dark. She didn't even check on me, just went to cook food as if nothing happened. I called my friend Brandon and he got so worried about how I was speaking to him and how suicidal I sounded that I had him crying. But he really really helped me. I talked to him for a long time about everything that was bothering me, and he kept trying to make me happy. What resonated with me most was "You are good, you are really good." He just kept reminding me that I am strong and that I've gotten this far, and even though my mom is making things so much harder, I really only have to wait four months until I can move out and then I just have to wait until college.

That day, I realized how much my friends really cared about me. Sheridane gave me a shoulder to cry on when I had a panic attack during school, Rowan was forcing me into the counselor's office to talk and relax when school was almost over, and Brandon was there to talk me off the ledge when I just couldn't stand being at home. And of course I can't forget people like JoLynn who keep reminding me that the more I speak, the more help I will get.

In the end, after all the talking I did, after I listed every problem I had, got rid of the extra things that added to my stress like the school newspaper, and finally broke down to my raw emotions, the thing that I was most relieved about...

was that I was finally able to cry.

I have been searching for an outlet strong enough to handle my pain. Writing and talking help but it's not enough, I can't do self-harm, and I can't even get myself to cry more than like twice a year. But on Thursday, I got to cry three times that day. And it was the happiest experience of my life. Everything just felt so much better after that last cry.

I know I still have to deal with some stress. I still want my job because I have no reason to quit it, I need my friends to get me through it, I do need to open up to more people like the counselor, and college isn't as scary as some other things in my life. But if I keep pushing myself to the limit without tagging out every once in a while, I'm not going anywhere. I don't want to make anymore rash decisions like cutting off half my hair or considering going through with suicide, a thought I haven't had since 7th and 8th grade. I just want to let the worries roll off my back and keep trying because as far as I can tell, I haven't failed yet.

Lonely (And it's all my fault)

Trying not to have an emo blog update, but I feel more defective than usual.

Today, we had an art showcase for my summer program, and for once my mom didn't offer any criticism. Thumbs up right? Well, the whole day, I was obsessing over my friend who I recently realized that I liked. I can't even say that it's a huge crush or deep admiration, it's a regular crush that I always get that starts out like a huge burning fire then fizzles out when I realize there are actually few things that I know about and/or like about this person. I'm used to the crushing thing, but that's what made me sad. I thought that I was finally past the small crush faze where I like a person for a maximum three or four months before moving on, but here I am again. I've had two boyfriends, reaccessed my sexuality, openly flirted and conversed with new people, even gotten a guy's phone number, yet I'm back at square one.

I am extremely apathetic when it comes to relationships. I want to be in one but I can't put much effort into it. And when things start to go farther, I just shut down, becoming submissive and uncaring. I tell them I don't know what I want, and things immediately die out because of lack of communication.

Why can't I just fix myself so that I can be happy? I don't want to spend my life obsessing over my friends because they are the only people who listen to and put up with me, I don't want to lie to my family because I'm afraid of more criticism, and I don't want to keep torturing myself with self-criticism. I can't give up on trying to get with someone because that is one of few things I look forward to in my life that I can deal with right now. The only other thing is having friends, getting along with my family, and making a successful career - one is ever-changing, the next is impossible, and the last isn't gonna happen for at least 5 years.

Ugh... why? Why do I do this to myself? Why can't my brain just shut up?

If A Tree Falls In The Forest...

I knew I wouldn't be able to stay happy for too long. Me being happy is like a crime apparently.

I was helping my sister move today, and it was me, her, her fiance, his sister, and our uncle. My uncle, much like the rest of my family, is: stubborn, egotistical, ignorant, bossy, a know-it-all, and overall annoying. He was trying to butt his opinion into my sister's original plan, and my sister was like "it's late, we're tired, and we've already started on this plan. there's no point in changing it now." But he kept arguing with her. My sister has very little patience and my uncle was pushing her. At first, I expected it to just end with an awkward silence after somebody yelled or backed off, but no - my uncle had to ask what my opinion was.

He basically asked me to choose sides.

Would you ever want to choose sides in your family? Your stubborn, dysfunctional, breaking-at-the-seams family?

I didn't think so.

I wanted to stay out of it, but I'm never granted that wish. Even when family problems don't involve me directly, there is always last minute pressure put onto me, and I can't handle it.

I tried staying quiet, but he kept asking me my opinion, and I tried telling him that I don't have one, that I don't know who's right or wrong, and that this always happens - my family ends up arguing and I get dragged into it and I can't do anything... this is where my voice cracked and my sister knew I was upset and about to cry. My uncle didn't get the memo and kept bugging me, and then my sister snapped, screamed, threw a tantrum, and stormed off from the car. I'm used to her storming off like that, but that was the first time I showed that I wasn't as strong as I portrayed to my family.

And later, my uncle kept bringing it up. I told myself "if he says one more thing, I'm going to tell him to shut up. And I'm not kidding, I will actually tell them what is on my mind for once." Of course, Fate is a bitch though, and the next thing he said was not related to the previous argument, so it's like "well it doesn't make sense to tell him to shut up now." So I didn't say anything. However, later he asked me if I was still mad, and I gave him the silent treatment.

He finally listened to me. Tonight was the first time I stood up for myself against my family - I showed them how I felt, and then I showed them I was angry.

Silence speaks louder than words.

Later my sister apologized, but I don't know what she was apologizing for: the fact that I got upset, the fact that she stormed off yet again, the fact that my uncle kept bothering me or that I got dragged into the argument. It didn't matter. I know my family is dysfunctional, and there is nothing I can do about it at this point. I came into a delicate family tree, and over time the tree just started to wither and break and rot. I can't do anything but lop off my limb before it gets diseased like the rest.

I remember the day where my sister first stormed off after arguing with my mother. She came back once my mom went upstairs, grabbed her things, and told me "Stay in school. Get good grades, get into college, and then you can leave here. That's the only way - just leave." That's what she did - she's always distancing herself from us, so I'm not very close to her, but I can't argue with her here. I can't stop this tree from falling - I'm only one person. I have to plant myself somewhere else out of harm's way so I can keep growing.