The Drug Happy and the Fortunate

It rang in my mind through reading some of the newest posts about how drugs are an issue.  I thought I'd like to tell you a little about my view of it, and then at the end of this I have a new prompt for everyone.  Anyway, here I go.

So, I am a pretty well-off kid, money-wise.  Seriously, my family has a lot of problems, but money isn't one of them.  I mean, sometimes we all worry and my mother screams at me about how we can't afford this or we can't afford that, but generally, we clean up.  We live in a very nice neighborhood.  A gated community.  And, if you didn't already know, Arizona is usually the home of older people who come to spend the winter months here because it's not cold.  You know, the snooty rich people with the multiple homes?  Jackpot.

The neighborhood I come from is just about the cushiest.  But I think the biggest problem is that nobody realizes that it's not so cushy after all.  You know, it's not like we're growing up on back streets of Brooklyn, okay.  I'm not threatened with a gun every day.   But Arizona is like the 5th most dangerous state because we're FULL of sex offenders and rapists and violent criminals.  It's true.  We have a ridiculous amount of all of that crime in Arizona.  And our schools suck.  We have ridiculous dropout rates at schools.  In fact, I just found out that a girl I used to know just dropped out of school because she's pregnant.  Pregnant. Pregnant!  This isn't supposed to happen.

So, one day I decided to eavesdrop on these kids in my class, and I found out that there's some guy in his mid-forties who is providing our school with drugs.  Well, the really bad drugs, like ecstasy and heroin.  I don't know where everybody gets the pot.  I mean, at my school we have different "groups" of druggies:

The hardcore kids - The "hardcore" refers to all the hardcore drugs.  Cocaine-Kids, Heroin-Happies, Ecstacy-Eccentrics, blah blah blah. A lot of them wear necklaces that have very obvious references to drugs and nobody does anything about them. They don't talk to any of the other druggies.

The "social" pot-smokers - They hardly ever go to school and usually only smoke at parties.  It's like social drinkers.  They're like the rave kids but think they're a lot better.

The rich-ass alcoholics - Just a bunch of really rich kids who hang out, smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol after school where the people who carpool get picked up.  They're the worst because the school knows about it and refuses to do anything about it.  

Pot-Slugs - I call them Pot Slugs because they trail the scent of pot everywhere they go, like slugs and their slime trails.  They're almost as bad as the rich-ass alcoholics because they do all this during school hours and nobody seems to fucking care.

I'm tired of it.  So tired of it.  

NEW PROMPT:

So, we've pretty much finished the prompt.  If you haven't, or are just joining us, continue the old prompt.

Lessons. We've all had to learn them. Pick a few questions to answer:

What's the most difficult/most prevalent lesson you've ever had to learn?  

Why was it the most difficult/most prevalent lesson?  

What advice do you have to people who have made the same past mistakes you have? 

Are you in the middle of learning a lesson?

What is your view on denial/what role does denial play in learning a lesson?  

If you could go back and change something that you've done [that relates to the lesson you've learned], what would it be and how would you change it?

Why do you think we have to learn lessons?

Learning a lesson involves seeing something you've do/have done and realize that you can't do it any more.  Do you think that on some level we always know that what we do is wrong?  

Are lessons something we inflict upon ourselves?

I might have forgotten to mention this...

I just figured out what makes me different. It's the fact that, when I get in a fight with my mother, I don't slam the door-I'm not allowed to. So instead, to unleash the anger, guess what I do?
Instead of the classic cutting, I grow fingernails. Pretty big ones, too. Well, big enough to make little marks in my legs where I sink them while hiding in the closet.
My teeth work well when my fingernails have been massacred-they leave quite the markings on my hand.....
Oh-someone's coming. I have to go. I might continue this later...

Intro..

Hey, this is my first post for the Daily Pessimist, so I guess I owe you an introduction.
I’m Kerryn and I’m almost 15. I’m quite mature for my age, but other than that I’m just your average girl. My life consists of: stressing out about everything, from school to friends to unwanted hair, watching and quoting Juno, pretending I don’t absolutely love watching ‘Overhaulin’, obsessing over Leonardo Di Caprio, talking, breathing, sleeping and eating. A lot. I love all my friends and family to death, even though sometimes I don’t show it. Did I mention I love to eat?

I think the main thing to think about with this blog is that we all are going through problems, minor, major, it doesn’t matter. Some-one is better off than you and their best mate is probably worse off than you. Wow, I sound extremely Australian. I’ve been following the post of fellow authors at The Daily Pessimist, (kudos to all of you) and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have been handed the better end of the stick. I have friends and a family that loves me. I’ve never been bullied; I’ve never inflicted harm on myself.

But maybe that’s the reason I can be so negative about everything, because I act like I’m worse off than everyone else when really I know I’m not. Maybe deep down inside of me I feel bad that I’m such a stress-head about the smallest things, knowing people who have real problems are the ones comforting me.

Of course here I go again. I’ll lay out my problems for you. My mum and dad got divorced when I was 4. Both remarried. Mum divorced her new husband, resulting in her having a spell of horrible boyfriends. Too old, too young, too time consuming, they all had some problem. The thing is she doesn’t think it affects me or my brother and sister. “It’s none of your business,” this is her favorite sentence. It’s kind of like her word of the day but it’s more like her statement of the decade. Dad is a controlling freak of nature that means well but pisses me off. I only see him once a fortnight and I’m ashamed to say for that I’m thankful. I always turn into someone else around him, the happy chappy with perfect grades and a perfectly fine family situation. I’m sick of pretending.

So I’m sure your reading this saying “Who cares...” well I’m happy to say my friends are all wonderful people who do care about me. They’re pretty much what makes life worth living. Now I’m sounded inspirational and I don’t like it. Well I’m off to see what sort of trouble I can get into.

(Oh did I mention this blog was a kick-ass idea and this layout is awesomely wicked. Zeph, this is all praise for you, thanks a ton.)

It's about time I made my first post...

So, I guess I should introduce myself first...
First of all, I'm Rina. But however I feel like that name doesn't agree with me. I don't feel like Rina. I feel...well, right now I feel kinda like a blank space.
I type in purple. I always did, always do and always will, so don't let that put you off.
What is it that makes me different?
I don't think there is anything different about me. I'm just not the differen kind of person. I don't stand out, I stay in. I have plain chastnut brown hair which I'm dying to have streaked dark red and purple. I am well fed (read: I overeat when I get emotional and then I feel insecure about how I look). I have friends-sorry, scratch that-I had friends who made me happy. Now I don't have them. And once again I look at these 15 people in my class and wish I had a life, too.
I'll admit it, I am a hard-core pessimist.
I always feel the worst will happen--and most of the time it does.
In the idea of creating a "gray area" in which we all have common ground, my views and words represent soothing patches for wounds of the everlasting combat of Person vs. Self to use Lizzie's words.
I don't lok at the world through pink glasses;I see it with my own blurred vision which forces me to wear ugly pink-rimmed glasses. My own vision colours everything purple. Everything purple means, to me, everything worthless to pay attention to.
Maybe one day, however, I'll go through Zeph's metaphorical waterfall and the water flowing will cleanse my vision. And then everything will be good.
What has made me the way I am?
Before, I was a crybaby. I was the little kid.
I had to switch schools and go from an ultimately friendly environment to a violent, attacking one. I swear, I think most of the kids from my class smoke (we're 13, people!) and will probably do drugs by next year. The cool kids aren't a clique anymore; now they're a gang. A gang I don't fit in with. I only have 2 people I can trust in my class; one is a goofy mess who is still just a kid and doesn't have the problems the "big girls" do. The other one is just a mess who has to be pulled away from the biggest wannabe on Earth and restore her character. (I love to do that.)
They, naturally, are geeks-the group I always fitted in with the best.
So the thing that has made me who I am is my school environement. I learned the fake smile;I learned the "frienemy" attitude;I learned to see through people better and I learned who not to trust, no matter what. But most of all, I have learned to swallow the tears. They have never seen me cry. They pull my hair, steal my stuff and throw in around, they hit me with books and pencils. But I don't cry. They are not going to break me, because they built the barrier around me. I couldn't do it myself....
*update*
I also forgot to mention how perfect this layout is. Amazing, Zeph. Fucking amazing.

Why I'm Different.

When I was in 3rd grade I wrote a story about a girl who jumped off a cliff into the ocean. She was smiling as she did it and hugged herself as she sank down deep in the water. I wrote it because I wanted to be that girl. And I turned it in for a school project because I knew no one would realize anything; everyone was too blind. My teacher said the story was childish and my writing is absolutely horrible. I ripped it up and didn't say a word for the rest of the day.
I was always different this way, every teacher and person I met made me invisible. No one could see me. There were only two girls that were willing to be my friend, since 2nd grade. They had me feel like they actually cared about my life. Until last year when they told me that everyone in the world hated me and killing myself would do them all a favor. I lost a piece of myself from that, and it's still not back. I don't think it'll every be back. I've changed even more from that experience, now I don't trust anyone. In my real life, I literally trust no one. I made three new friends this year, but I still don't trust them. The only people I trust are online. You could say that also makes me different. The reasons why I'm still here is my online friends and music. I can honestly say that.
Music plays a bigger part, though. The band that has helped me the most, no doubt, is My Chemical Romance. They are the only source of music that can actually make me feel like nothing's wrong with anything. They clear my mind and leave me with hope. They were my only hope at many points. But sometimes I'm so hopeless and stressed that I forget to listen to music. At those times, I felt the only thing I could do is to hurt myself. By taking my craft knife and making slits on my arms. I first started with shallow, short cut.
There was just so much emotional pain and there nothing you can do but release it from cutting. Most people don't understand, though. It's just you feel this emotion after the cut.. I can't put it in words. I immediately got addicted to that feeling. After my first few cuts, whenever I felt shitty, I went away from music and pulled out that knife instead and the cuts got deeper and deeper. The bigger the cut, the more of that feeling happened afterwards. It's like a drug. I now rarely cut myself. But I hate to admit, every once in a while I just need to feel that feeling again.. But I don't do anything really serious. All of these experiences make me who I am.
Edit: I forgot to mention how fucking amazing this idea of this blog is. And the layout. Sorry for not mentioning that. Zeph, you are TRUELY a genius.

My Turn. Prompt uno!

What makes me different?

First an introduction is in order. I’m Liz. I also have strange names given to me by friends, so be my guest to call me whatever you want to.

Well, a bit about me: I make up my own words and believe in Peter Pan. A lot of people think I say things that Simon Cowell would say, minus the English accent. I just gave away the fact that I have a guilty pleasure of watching American Idol. I have a deep longing to have straight hair. I have words of the day. I’m a teenager, which goes without saying on here. I find music to be a timeless way to express a mood. I quote The Office and House regularly. My deepest wish is that I could be a more quixotic thinker.

Prompt time.

First. Zephyr’s response to this prompt was amazing. Nice job! I hope I can do the same amount of justice.

Well, it’s really disappointing me that it’s hard to thinking of anything different about me.

If you want an idea of my life, picture this: You know those beeping things with the spiky lines that are next to patients in hospitals? My life has been like one of those, only the person the machine monitors is pretty much dead…Monotonous, eh?

In English class a couple weeks ago, we studied the four types of conflict: Person v. Society, Person v. Person, Person v. Fate, and Person v. Self. After reading some short stories (from Poe and and the like) I came to the conclusion that the most important type of conflict that can arise is Person v. Self. In my related essay, I said: “…figuring yourself out is more important than understanding fate, society, or another person.” So I’ve been paying attention to myself. No so much in the selfish way, but more in a way where I really hope to “take notes” on me. I just hope I’m not a boring lesson.

I’ve learned a few things. One thing in particular stood out to me:

I am much more opinionated than I ever thought I was. You know how it feels like sometimes you’re just swimming upstream; going against everyone and their ideas? You’re not alone as long as I’m here. If somebody thinks one thing, then I’m prone to think the other.

It comes out in theology class, family issues, music, just about anything.

Let me break it down for ya.

Example time: This jerk of a kid that I’ve known for a few years was at a party for football several weeks ago. Don’t get me wrong—my school is nice. I just have no idea how this kid got into it. Rumor has I that a “friend” brought out a gun. Being the stupid person he is, this boy took the gun from his “friend” and shot himself in the leg. I just saw him today with cast and crutches.

After the news got around, my mom gave her usual “do the right thing” speech. She told me that if that ever happened to me, I should know to leave right away. Here’s the part where I sound stupid and where my Catholic grade school morals go haywire: I wouldn’t leave that party.

I’d talk some effing sense into the gun handler. Okay; I could get some shot. But I’d go out saving some people that didn’t have those guts.

Where’d all this opinionated stuff come from? What made me this way? I hope you can relate to all this, otherwise I’m ranting for no apparent reason. We’re teenagers. We have our opinions and it’s happened for the history of forever. I can bet you anything that those teenage Neanderthals were total rebels, writing on the cave walls and whatnot.

We go upstream against the common crowds. In some way, we can all agree that it’s because we feel so restrained. Think of this like a 5 year old (because they have the best way of looking at things). Your mom says you can’t have more Halloween candy. It only makes you want it more. So maybe…just a theory here…as teenagers, we have a natural tendency to just go against what people want.

Now I might be copying Aravis here, but I have a similar question. I want to know if there’s ever a point where the wires in life go *click-zap-boom* and all of a sudden things make sense?

Is it called love or peace or rock and roll?

Or does it have a name at all?

So that’s what makes me semi-different, among other trivial things like the minuscule bump on my nose or my comedic timing. My opinion.

Lots o' love!
-Lizzie.

serendipity. it's my word of the day.

My first post? I think yes.

Only reason I'm posting this is so I can attempt to use this "add an entry" thing and make sure I've got it down. Hmm...reall hoping this will publish. I'm so insecure when it comes to computers.
Putting it lightly, this blog is really exciting me. This layout is bomb diggity, by the way. Plus all you contributors and followers look mighty fine. I'm convinced this will be the coolest blog ever. 100% convinced. Just the idea of pure, no-pulp writing from people I can relate to fires me up.
WHOO! I, for one, and pumped.

I love technology. Not as much as you, you see. But I love technology. Always and forever.
--Lizzle fo' shizzle.

My God, I'm Pathetic. But at Least I Make You Feel Better About Yourself.

I find it extremely pathetic that I'm writing a response to my own prompt when I posted it not very long ago and I said I wasn't going to be on and this will be my third post in a row and I'm telling you about everything online.  On the internet.  Where people can see what I've written.  But I've remembered something that I discovered a while ago:  reading about other people really makes you feel better about yourself.  That's why people pick on other people.  That's kind of the purpose of this blog.  We can sit  here, whine about how pathetic and depressed we are sometimes and read about other people and be able to judge them and just generally breathe a sigh of relief that you're not the only one out there who is like this, who feels like this, bleh, blah, bleh, bleh, blah blah bleh blah blah bleh.  Bloo blah blah.  Blah.  Bleh. Bloo bleh.  Bah.

So, you can feel a little better about yourself.  I guess I'm up to sharing this.  I mean, I wish I could say it to SOMEBODY.  So you will suffice. It's not my life story, but it's the part I'm most bitter about today.  I guess now you'll find out why.

So, one day, I was born.  :)  Haha, sorry, I had to say that.  

First of all, know that I'm a very bitter person.  I do, admittedly, hate people for what they've done to me.  I know it's wrong, but I have to.  

 I moved schools after kindergarten, so I had to make all new friends.  And, unfortunately I chose just about the worst person I could ever be friends with.  When all I got was awful accusations and other reactions from the other kids, I really needed someone to reach out to.  And I tried, I did.  I tried so hard that I tricked myself into thinking that the person I chose was my actual friend.  I ignored so much, I just let it go, because it was what I needed and being blind to the truth was what I thought would help me.  Somehow, no matter how convinced I would be that I was going to accept the truth and move on, somehow I would get dragged back in.  I made friends with the backstabbing flake.  For an entire 9 years I disregarded the fact that she treated me like a dirty hand towel.  No, she treated me like used toilet paper.  And the sad thing is that for the longest time, I didn't even know that what she was doing was wrong.  I just thought it was okay.  I smiled anyway when I was completely abandoned when someone better was around.  Even with my other friends, I didn't stand a chance.  If she came up when I was with other people, she would walk up and hug that person and start talking to them, and before I knew it I was just some unnamed nobody standing next to them.  I had been her friend for 7 years. Well, I was her best friend, but, of course, she only said that when we were alone.  Never in front of other people.  I eventually knew that even though we would carpool to school together, we would talk until we saw her friends, and I would just keep walking while she would go over and talk to them without a word to me.  

I treat used gum better than she treated me.

I was inferior.  I was just some other person that she could use.  It's been almost a year since we've spoken [Two words from me, no words from her].  I've known her for 11 years.  I told her happy birthday, even though I could barely stomach the words, and she looked me in the eye and I could tell that I meant nothing to her.  I could barely hold back my tears as she looked at my face like she was searching for my name, but she didn't know me.  She didn't see me.  She didn't care, and she never did.  And the world doesn't care, and it never did.  We're here alone, and we always will be.

I kept everything she ever gave me as a present.  She threw away things I've given her right in front of my face without seeming like a single thing was wrong.  I remember her birthday, I still have her home phone number memorized, and I still don't have a best friend like I did 11 years ago.  It never changed.  I've never had a best friend.  Never, ever.

I can't believe she used me.  And it's all my fault.  I hate that.  Everything that ever goes wrong is my fault.  I can never change that fact, ever.

Every year for her birthday I would spend so much time getting her a present that I knew she would like.  Every year I made her a birthday cake, which she never let me have a piece of.  Every year I would try and make her birthday special, even if it was clear that she didn't care about me and didn't want me there.  She always knew that she didn't need me, and she was right.  

I recall myself counting the end of our "friendship" as my birthday, two years ago.  She'd be in Texas, and I'd get a postcard from her and her family.  I was ecstatic.  I didn't need a present.  Having a friend, or so I thought, was a present enough.  But that day, I walked down to the mailbox and nothing came.  They always sent the postcard a week early, but I had figured that it was just late.  Still, nothing.  I settled back into my room, and I stared at the phone.  She was going to call and tell me happy birthday.  She was going to say why the postcard wasn't there, or to see if I got it, just in case.  It probably just got lost in the mail.  I waited all day by that phone, and nobody called.  And since then, nobody has ever called, sent messages or mail to me on my birthday.  Nothing.  I don't need a present.  I don't need a card.  I'd like a call.  I'd like you to say that you're sorry you couldn't be here.  Or maybe that you're sorry for what you did 6 weeks ago.  That was the last time we talked.

Our parents went out to eat like they always did.  I guess that our parents are better friends than we ever were.  I guess you're more attached to the dirt on the bottom of your shoe than you are to me.  I came over, and I didn't see you.  I watched over your siblings.  They always liked me better than you did.  All that night, I waited for you to come out.  They said you were in your room, but you were probably sleeping.  That night, after waiting two hours for you I realized I was the babysitter that night.  You came out with another friend, and you were laughing with her.  You walked right by me, and you almost ran straight into me, but I moved out of the way.  I automatically said, "I'm sorry."  You didn't say a word, bat an eyelash, or look at me.  I was right there, and you didn't say a word to me.  You hadn't seen me in 3 weeks.  And at that point, I told your siblings I was going to the restroom.  I stayed in there the rest of the night and cried.  I was there, I was there, and you didn't see me.  You didn't care.  I am nothing, I have always been nothing, and I will not ever in your entire life mean a thing to you.

You never called me.  You never said goodbye.  You never said that you were sorry.  But I did.  I always did.

The next year, we didn't talk.  On your birthday, you got a cake.  Just like I used to do.  You had gifts, you had friends all around you.  And then I finally knew that you didn't need me, and you never did.  That's why you didn't care.  After removing me from your life, everything was exactly the same.  Nothing had moved an inch.  I hate that.  Your life was exactly the same, and suddenly I had realized that 11 years of my life had just been wasted, and I will never be able to get them back.  I will never be able to relive them.  I will be missing 11 years, and there will be a giant empty space in my life, in my heart, and in me.  I will always be waiting to get those 11 years of my life back because I just can't believe that it's over, and I've got nothing.  

Well, the only thing I've got that you don't is the gifts we've given.  Because I keep them in my box, where I also keep every letter I've ever gotten from anybody, and you've thrown yours away.  You threw me away.  Like a piece of old gum that's beginning to disintegrate into a runny, plastic-like mess because you chewed it too long.

You used me too long.  Now I'm a mess.  Throw me away.  Replace me so it's like it was 11 years ago.  Sometimes gum gets gross and you need to get a new piece.  I just never knew that friends were like that, too.

Now, I can never trust people no matter how much I want to.  I always think it's some huge trick to terrorize me or make fun of me.  I can never see other people as just being nice.  I try so, so hard, but a part of me always yanks my heart up my throat with a string and makes me stop.  I can't help it.  And every time it happens, it's so hard because I want to crumple into a pile on the floor and cry.  I'm a mess.  A runny, plastic-like, disgusting mess.  I'm scarred and I'm torn and I don't know what to do about it.  That's why I smile.  Your lips get torn apart from each other when you smile wide.  It's a gaping wound.  Just like the wounds that I have and always will have.  And the wider you smile, the more you're torn apart.  But nobody ever guesses.  Ever.  Because nobody knows who I am.  Nobody knows my secrets.  Except, of course, I really do keep living because of my online friends.  Alina's draft post made me remember that.  That's why I'm saying this.  Because I don't feel like I do all those other times on here.  People aren't there to hurt me here, or at least that's how I feel.  And I've already screwed up how people I actually know in real life react around me and how I react around them, so I turn here.  And right now, this is all I am going to discuss.  

This is why I have the attitude I have.  It's why I am who I am.  Really, I feel like even though I hate myself as I am now, I'd rather stay the same than take a gamble at who I might be now if my life had been different.  I might like that girl less.  I believe that one day, it's going to be okay.  In the end, it will all be okay.  That doesn't mean that now is okay.  It just means that somehow, somewhere, some way, we're going to get through this alive and we'll all be glad that what happened actually happened the way it did despite what we think now.  We are who we are and life is how it is because of what's happened.  And if you change something, who knows if it would be worse or better.  But even so, we can't change the past.  We can only brace ourselves for the impact of the future.  I am who I am, and I don't want to risk possibly being someone else because all of this makes me content with what's happened.  Because what's going to happen is going to be beautiful one day.  We just have to wait for it.  And we just have to open our eyes to different kinds of beauty.  There is beauty in pain, sadness, happiness, loneliness, excitement, contentment, you just have to see it.  Life is how it is.  Lay it out straight.  There's not much you can do except hope for the best.  It's a rough ride, but at the end, just be glad that you got to ride.  Don't think about what you could have done or what you could have felt when everything's over.  Think about it now.  And take a deep breath, because somehow everything is going to be okay.  Don't question, just know.  In the end, everything happens for the best.  What you know now and what you've learned is because of what you've been through.  Ignorance is not bliss.  It's wandering through life blind.

Maybe we're not exactly optimistic about everything, but at least we're walking through life with our eyes open.  Don't expect things to always go right, because they won't.  Expect the worst sometimes, because when the best happens you'll be so much happier about it.  Life is awful, but if you really have to, think of it as a contest.  And the more you survive through, the stronger you get, and in the end, the strongest are still there and the weak have eliminated themselves.  Know that life sucks.  Wander through life knowing that you're stepping barefoot over hot coals and broken glass in a narrow dark passageway with spikes on the walls and soot-choked air in your lungs.  Don't close your eyes.  You're bearing the worst.  They think everything is okay because they deny the fact that everything isn't phenomenal all of the time and that everyone and everything isn't perfect.  Pave your own path and see it the way you know it is.  Ignore what people say, because they don't know what's best for you.  They have no place to say what's best for you.  Defy all odds, break rules, force your way to the end, where the coals meet a waterfall.  It cools the stones, and as you walk through the cool, cleansing water, the blood from your wounds is washed away and before you is a lake surrounded by the greenest grass that feels so soft against your aching feet.  And at the end, when everything is over, think about how it would have felt if you had walked through life blindly and you had never seen the waterfall and walked through it.  Rewards come for those who accept things the way they are, as they are, and as they will be. 

El Posto Firsto!

Okay, I have written three drafts of my first post and I didn't like any of them, so here I go: number four.

I'm not exactly sure what to say here, but I'll do my best.

I'm not sure what makes me different. I haven't really had any childhood trauma or life-changing experience. Personally, I think I'm just your average girl. I go to school. I do my homework. I play with my cats. I argue with my brother, and then we forget about the whole thing and watch a billion episodes of Top Gear together. I have parents (no, really?). I guess the only thing that's really different about me in that aspect is that my mom has an eye disease that is slowly deteriorating her vision. We don't know if or when she'll lose it completely, but we're hoping it'll be never or a very long time until then.

Today I realized that I'm kind of a prideful person, and that upset me more than what made me realize my pridefulness in the first place. Looking back on it, although it only happened a few hours ago, I see that the whole thing is kind of insignificant in comparison to other things people are going through, but of course, to a teenage girl, it seems like the end of the whole freaking world. Have you ever realized something about your personality that made you like yourself less? And then you tried your hardest to fix that, because you want to be this certain way, and not like that? Everybody always says "be yourself," but what if you don't think being yourself is the best thing? Such questions. I sound like a moody kid.

I must say, somewhere in this post (so I guess I'll stick it in here), that Zephyr's latest post was absolutely amazing, and I don't know how my lame, monotonous posts are ever going to compare, but I suppose I'll try. Although today might not be the best day for that. It hasn't been all full of cupcakes and rainbows.

Now for a little question. This might keep you up at night thinking about it, though I kind of doubt that. Is there a time when a person suddenly realizes who they truly are? Does a little 40-watt lightbulb appear over their head, go off with a "DING," and they go "Eureka! I know who I am!" Somehow, I seriously doubt that this cartoon-esque scenario is actually how it happens. But does it happen? Or do you go your whole life always trying to figure it out? I wish I knew. Then again, maybe I don't.

Sorry this post is rather pessimistic, although the blog is called The Daily Pessimist, so I suppose it fits.

Thanks for reading, if you did.

Sincerely,
Aravis

And I lied. It's not the only post.

Can I open my eyes now?

Thanks guys for joining with the blog.  I know some of you are having trouble with this stuff so please ask Alina or Liz if you're having difficulty, because they already accepted the "invitation" to be added as authors.  And authors they be.  I do want to ask you two, though, if you want to just be authors or if you would be okay helping me with administrator problems.  Please send me a PM from PV to let me know whether you want to stay an "author" or have me make you an admin.  It doesn't matter to me, and if both of you want to be admins that's fine.  I will just need someone to help find people and send them "invites" to be writers for the blog when I'm not here.  I am in over my head right now, so I'm going to make a prompt and you guys can think about and write a post, as well.  I just know that for the next 4 or so days I probably won't be on enough, and I want to hurry up and get at least 8 or so people on the team so we can begin to be active!  So Liz and Alina, I changed my mind.  I'm actually going to add you as administrators until I am going to be on regularly, and then you can just tell me whether or not you want to continue to have admin powers.   Thanks.  Look for people who want to write!  I trust you guys to know who is the kind of person that would be good to invite.  Good grammar, poetic, stuff like that.  But we NEED people.  And the others will need help figuring out how to accept an invitation to be a writer because I know they're having trouble with that.  Thanks.

Anyone else who views this blog, if you would like to become a writer, please make a comment on this.  More writers are definitely needed.  I like poets with good grammar.  Please join us and help us by giving your opinion on these prompts that we will have soon. 

FIRST OFFICIAL PROMPT, GUYS:

What do you have that makes you different?  In the idea of creating a "gray area" in which we all have common ground, what would your views and your words represent?  What have you experienced mostly in your life?  What has made you the way you are now? If you don't want to go too far into this because, quite frankly, that would be broadcasting your entire life over some random site on the internet, that's fine.  Be general, but describe the basic attitude you have towards things, the way you approach problems, what you're good at giving advice about, etc.  Basically, if someone had a problem, give them a guideline as to whose posts they would want to read that they would relate most to/like the most/find insightful/whatever.  Introduce yourself.  I really don't care other than that, go wild with this.  I'm not asking that you complete this by any specific time, so don't feel like you have to do it now.  Just, when you feel inspired and ready to write.  That's what this is all about.  You won't put the same amount of feeling into your writing when you're not in the mood to write it.  Write whatever you feel like writing, and save it.  We will have a "random ranting" section soon where you can just post whatever when you're upset and just want to type and have somebody "listen".  Writers, I expect you all to leave responses and comments on all the other writers' posts.  Don't be so callous.  Well, these first two posts of mine don't count.  I don't care if you write comments on these. Write about what makes sense, and that's all that matters.  Remember that.  That's all I want to see.  Thanks again guys, and good luck on this prompt.

Love,

Zephyr

Writer and Creator of The Daily Pessimist