Separation Sisters

The red paint was peeling off the pole next to me but I didn't notice it, why would I? Above my head, a platform covered in splintery wood, gray with erosion and age. To most, it was a part of an old, run down playground. To me, it was the firehouse, a part of my carefully crafted imaginary fairy world. But more importantly, it was memories.
Across from me, another girl, my age, sat, her legs crossed, her eyes wide. The space was tight, although how it got to be that way, I was unsure, as we always used to fit down there. My naive self couldn't believe, rather, refused to believe that I could actually be growing older.
We were hiding, our heartbeats erratic, our bodies on edge as we waited silently. We knew it was a useless hope to think we would be unspotted forever, but hoped anyway. With childhood naiveness comes unquestioned belivance.
Yes, we would stand up for what we believed in. It made perfect sense to us. Everything added up.
Literally.
Everything.
A missing button, a certain date, an absent teacher, and some mysterious phone calls in french.
Yes, it made perfect sense at the time. It was insane.
The people we were hiding from didn't find us. But someone did. Someone worse. We didn't realize it at the time. Our minds were too concentrated in protecting the mission at hand, and its secrecy. We didn't care what anyone else thought, what anyone else suspected, as long as they didn't know.
We were foolish.
From the outside, our actions looked odd, to say the least. Our teacher asked us if we were okay, giving us a concerned glance. Something about the way she said it made me know...she would be watching us more carefully now.
I didn't know it then, however it became blatantly clear later in life that it was because of that moment, of that closeness between the us that the teacher placed us in different classes the following year. Clearly, there was something unusual about it, something different. Not the normal closeness between two friends of this age. There must have been something different about it, something to indicate need for splitting friends, placing them in different classes.
We never spoke of the incident again, her and I, but we always associated the closeness in our friendship with that year. I don't even remember being friends with her before that year, that moment in time. We had been friends for four years previous but as far as I'm concerned, that moment was the first time I decided that we were friends, no, best friends. It was the first time I decided that she was someone who I wanted to be friends with for the rest of my life.

As years passed, our closeness only grew. We survived the tests of time, from the first days of elementary school to the first of high school; nothing could keep us apart.

The forces of evil that attempted to destroy our bond used separation as their greatest weapon. However, if anything, the weapon backfired as it proved to have the opposite effect. Everything life threw at us: bitches, teachers, separate schools, other friends, and even my mother, became our motivation to stay together and beat the odds rather than be the obstacle which tore us to pieces.
If we had learned anything in our time together it was that one thing would never change: We would always be there for each other. Our naive childhood promise to each other would not be in vain, we would be friends forever, we were sure of it, even if I acted cynical about the matter at times. Deep down, I wanted nothing more than to be bragging about our friendship when I turned one hundred. I wanted nothing more than to tell my grandchildren about how in ninety five years of friendship, we'd never fought once.

As for our mission, well, that was forgotten long ago. A silly childhood fantasy, a game we played, pretending we were something we were not, detectives. Detectives with an unsolvable mystery, the mystery of life.
We've moved on to other fantasies, other games which prove our close bonds. We act like old ladies, partners in crime, a married couple (jokingly, of course), inseparable twins, sisters. She was the sister I never had, being an only child.
Sure, our mission has changed, but the mystery is still the same. We're still traveling the same path that is life, that is our identities, together.
We are the proof that not everything has to change, some things can remain. I can't imagine my life without her. Where I would be, or more importantly, WHO I would be. I would most certainly be lost without her.


Nine years of memories in our story of forever. Best friends forever.

Innocence Forever

"Do you remember when we were just kids?


And cardboard boxes took us miles from what would miss,


schoolyard conversations taken to heart,


and laughter took the place of everything we knew we were not..."


-Inevitable, Anberlin


Children with their infinite imaginations, universal acceptance, and unquestionable love. Not a care in the world, not a worry in their mind, the weight of life not yet on their shoulders.

Why can't we (sometimes) be kids again? Leave the weight and the worry, the cares and judgments, the stereotypes and the conformity, all of it. Why can't we leave it at the door, grow back our wings and soar.

We need to learn how to let go. To free ourselves from constraint. To remind ourselves, "Why does it even matter?" Sometimes we just need to remember.

We need more of this in the world:

Innocence forever.

[A/n: Credit to K for the title]

There are no words.

Sometimes there just are no words.
A rariety for me, I will admit.
I am a writer.
But sometimes words are not enough.
Some things just can't replace raw emotion.

Expectations,
High hopes,
Disappointment.

Life. Goes. On.

I am livid.

They should create new curse words in the English language for times like these:
when you over use the current ones.

She Knows Me Too Well...

Her name is impossible to pronounce at first, but once you get the hang of it, simple.
Her name is 2 away from mine in roll call, and therefore, she sits near me in every class.
Her locker is one across and up from mine. It bugs me how she gets a top lock, and I don't.
She's mature for her age...physically and mentally.
She has a "twisted perception of the world," and I'm totally jealous of her handwriting. Like everything else about her, it's mature and adult like.
She's musical, and I want to say she plays the sax, although I really don't know. She has a boyfriend, I forgot his name, but they've been dating a while, so I hear. He's the only real friend she has.
The person it appears on the outside she's friends with, she couldn't care less about. A tool, for show, a place holder so she's not alone. She tells me how sometimes its a pain. "I'm territorial," she claims. I don't blame her. I've been there, done that.
I like her attitude, and try to be nice. We're friendly, not friends...yet?
And yet, despite all these IFs, all these uncertainties and vauge details to her description:
She knows me better than my friends do.
True, my friends are rather...absorbed at the moment. I don't blame them. But the fact that SHE could pick up on it, troubling.
Either I'm being really obvious (which I doubt is the case, I'm good at hiding things, especially my feelings)
Or my friends are just blind?
I hate to think that a complete stranger would know me better than my friends...
But she does.
She knew I was upset. That something was off, something was bugging me.
She asked me twice, why my face was allk scrunched up, why I seemed a little out of it.
I wasn't quite sure what it was myself.
I just don't feel myself, and its bothering me.
Is it time I need?
Space?
This headache seems never ending.
For now, sleep is what I need.
And for this chaotic rant to end.

Headaches.

According to my dad, they don't exist. He doesn't get headaches. He doesn't believe in them. Then again, there are a lot of things my dad says he "doesn't believe in." Although, that's another discussion.
Me, I believe in headaches. Physical AND metaphorical ones.

This week, I've had nothing but one huge headache. It started out as a metaphorical headache, a combination of stress, school, theater and parents, and then morphed into a real headache.
What's a real headache? That stinging, pounding, eye piercing feeling in your head which makes you unable to think.
Thus why this entry sucks so much, and why I can't think now. Rain usually inspires me, but today, I was useless.

Blame the headache.

Physical or metaphorical?

You choose.

And if you, like my dad, don't believe in headaches, then horray for you. You're gifted.

Go celebrate.

Go!

Go!

GO!

Flirting with Fire

When you're little, life is like a comic book. There are good guys, and there are bad guys. The difference clear and definite. The villains threaten to destroy everything good, and the heroes prevent them, saving the day, always.
But who are these daily super natural? What is a child's definition of the real life villain? The real life hero?

Villain: Someone who's mean to them at the playground. A bully. A bad person.

Hero: Their parents. Their family. Their teachers. Their role models.

Somehow, as you get older, saving the day isn't so simple. The heroes are flawed and the villains sympathetic. The line which was once clear and definite is now blurry and smudged.
Nothing is the way it used to be. The innocence, the childhood naiveness, is lost. Everything you knew is thrown into question. Are there really any good guys in the world?
It's that epiphany moment where you realize that your parents aren't perfect, that your role model was never really as great as you imagined. It's easy to loose faith. You forget why you loved them in the first place.
I thought I was too old for such disappointments, but apparently, you're never too old. I guess part of you is always that child, looking for the good in everyone, forgetting the flaws.
Reality is harsh, it hit me like a punch to the stomach, and winded me. The information didn't process properly, I thought I was hearing things, that I'd somehow misinterpreted what she'd said.
But I hadn't. In truth, I knew I hadn't. At least if she hadn't said anything afterwards I could have lied to myself. I could have pretended. But she had to protect me. What she didn't realize was that by trying to protect me, she'd hurt me instead.
I'd never had a real role model before. Not a live one at least.
Amelia Earheart was my first, and she was dead. And she was too famous to come and haunt me.
My second was my aunt. Again, dead way before I knew her. After my grandfather died, she became to painful to think about.
This was my third role model, and she was different than the ones before her. And not just because she was actually alive. It was because I didn't realize that she was my role model at all. I was blinded in a trance.
Like a puppet, or in her words, a minon. I was her minon, her puppet. I followed her everywhere. I copied her behavior, looked to her for help. I wanted her approval, I was desperate for it. I wanted to one day BE HER.
I didn't expect her to let me down.

"Dammit, how do you work these things! I can't make it light," she said, looking up to the girl who'd given the lighter to her. There was a moment of silent stares, so quick and nonchalant I almost didn't notice. But there was an exchange. I thought nothing of it. "Usually when I do it, someone lights it for me!" She said, her frustration growing. I furrowed my brow, my head fuzzy. What did she just say? I wasn't comprehending.
Seeing the faces of others around her, she spoke, suddenly defensive. "You didn't hear that! She said, looking to each of us, calling us by name. I couldn't believe it, she smoked! Smoked what? I wondered, worried. She said my name last, serious worry on her voice as her eyes tried to meet mine. I looked down and mumbled under my breathe. "I kinda just did," I said, barely audible. Although just in front of me, she didn't reply, for at that moment, her lighter finally lite. The excitement on her face was like none I'd ever seen.
As wrong as it was, I wanted to understand it.
They wouldn't let me, none of them would. Being the youngest is sometimes a drag. I wanted the experience, that brilliant gleam in my eyes, the light of the fire.
When no one was looking, I grabbed the lighter.
No one ever teaches you the true dangers of fire.
Beyond its destructive qualities, its pain, its harm, there's something worse:
It's addiction.
Fire is beautiful, mesmerising, indescribable.
Fire is dangerous in the hands of any one, but in the hands of teenagers, its toxic.
It frightened me. Not the fire, the fire was alluring in my mind. I never played it safe. No, it was the joy that the fire brought which frightened me. The pure delight of being able to set things on fire which worried me.
I wanted that experience, despite how wrong I knew it was.
But the lighter was child proof, I'll give it that much. I couldn't get the stupid thing to work.
Putting it down before anyone noticed, I watched others instead.
I wanted to ask, but I knew the answer I'd get.
I was just a freshman. I knew too much as it was.
I made a mental note to play with my father's lighter the next I was home alone.

That was my first time flirting with fire. Whether it would be the last, about that, I was still unsure.

The People Zoo

Invisible (adjective) withdrawn from or out of sight; hidden.

I'm sitting in a room. There are others around me, but they pay no attention to little old me, their focus is elsewhere. Sitting back in my chair, I nibble at my sandwich and make no noise. I watch everyone else, silently. I wait. Slowly, the feeling of being watched wears off. The people stop turning their heads to look in my direction, gauge my reaction. Slowly but surely, I'm becoming invisible. A little longer, and no one will notice me at all. I can get up, move around, do anything. No one's head will turn, no one's eyes will even flutter away for a second from whatever grasps their attention, be it the girl they have a crush on, the boy who disgusts them, or even the teacher who grudgingly entertains them.

No one realizes it, but I am the only one in the room who possesses control, self control. Others are under the tyrants of their deepest desires, of temptation, of despair. Me, I am free. Free to watch and laugh (internally of course, as to not break the spell) at their pure absurdness, their desperation for acceptance and approval. I pity their inability to see beyond their insignificant issues in life: the rumors, the romance, the rows.

And yet, I am a hypocrite because I know that the second the spell is broken, I will be as ignorant as the rest of them, making the same fatal mistake. It is only when I am invisible, when I am behind the glass, watching the people zoo from the outside, that I have the proper perspective to truly understand, to laugh at the imperfections of humanity.

The power of people watching is extraordinary in the hands of a writer, but devastating in the hands of a teenager. Combining both results in insanity. I guess that means I consider myself one of the insane.

But how many brilliant minds do you know who were normal?
Personally, I know none.

Home

Home.

Home is an abstract concept to me, something which as a child, I never fully understood. What does it mean? I decided to look it up.

Home (noun) The place or region where something is native or most common.

In my early childhood, my home was constantly changing, which, if you ask me is an oximoron. How can something be common if it's never the same?

It can't. But that's the way things are. Life is an oximoron. I've learned to live with that.

Even so, questions still burn inside me. Did I even have a home? In five years I traveled to over 52 places. (47 states and 5 countries.) How do I know which one was my home? Were they all my home? How can one fully understand their identity, where they come from, without their home? To me, my childhood, my earliest memories, my home before the age of five...all of it...it's nothing but a black hole in my universe. A place where matter and dying stars have merged, where the universe is collapsing in on itself. It's a void where so many things should be but aren't. I feel empty, there's a missing piece, a part of life I fear I've missed out on.

And yet, everyone fails to recognize this. They find it quite the opposit. All they see is a girl who "is so lucky to have traveled so much, so young."
They fail to realize the fatal flaw in this perfection, the damage it can cause. How can you remember when there's nothing the same to hold on to, to look back on. No room to spark your memory, object to remind you of a mood. There's nothing. Nothing but pictures. And pictures don't help you remember anything except the picture itself. And what help is that?

Of course, all this time I've talked of my physical home. In my opinion, the only real home I've ever had, is the one I keep inside my head. It's a place, where I come from (or am naitive to) and it doesn't change dramatically from week to week, like my physical home used to.

It's the one place where I know that I'm safe from the outside world. I'm protected from getting hurt, from change, and from real life. It's more home to me than any of those 52 places I've been, or even the place that I live in now. I've lived there, in my mind, longer than anywhere else; it's always been home to me.

My world, my universe, it's who I am.
Universe Euphaeria is me, not that enormous black hole which exists within it and continues to attempt to eat my universe away, bit by bit and eat away everything that I've created for myself, in my memory since the age of four: a child desperate for something to hold on to.
That child still exists, within me, within the universe I so carefully created around my constantly moving lifestyle so that it could never go without me.
I saved myself from change, I created a new life.
I took control, for better or for worse.

I guess you could say it's like that famous quote:

"Home, is where the heart is."

Universe Euphaeria

My memories, like a black hole, are dragged in one end, and pulled into the darkness.
What is the darkness?
The darkness is my mind, my endless thought, the world I share with no one.
The space is vast, cold, and dark, much like the real outer space. It goes beyond the world of what we know, beyond the world of what we can interpert with our own senses. Not even I can fully navigate through. I'm lost on my own turf.
I've yet to find my identity.
There are many systems in my universe, many planets within those systems, many stars, trying to shine bright. What will become of them, I do not know. All I know is that they continue to form, and grow, and change, as I form, and grow, and change. They are me, and their stories are my memories and soon to be this blog, maybe.
I'm not sure if my world is ready for the outside one.
Are people truly ready for my world?
Are people ready for Universe Euphaeria?