3/31

 "Screw You" - A Fanfiction of My Life; Cake

So, yeah, that whole "I'm going to blog every-day kind of thing" didn't work out because unlike the vast majority of people I have come across, I'm not obsessed with my own life and, normally, I do not really pay attention to note-worthy occurences unless they're really obvious.

So, to be honest, mostly my life is boring and teenager-ish when I'm not, you know, completely consumed by the stress of my family situations. Nothing really has happened lately. I got a free prom dress. I had a birthday at Kemah with my Godmother and my Mom and brother.

I spend a lot of time telling Sam to turn his music down, or pick up the game room, or ignoring the former two things until I go crazy and just want to jack him so hard he can't talk anymore.

My friends and therapist all tell me to cut him some slack and give him a break, but really, how would you feel in my position? EVERY WORD HE SAYS TO ME IS A COMMENTARY ON HOW SUCKISH I AM. Great, because that's just what I need at the moment. I'm not talking about the standard sibling-blow-off kind of arguments either, but seriously relentless insult.

But, he's just 15 so I guess I just have to lie there and take it, like I do with everyone and everything else.
Today, specifically, wasn't very great. The past few days haven't been great.
I am feeling particularly lonely: it's hard to find people who can relate easily to what I'm going through, and I don't really like to talk about it very much. I hate that, when you just don't feel like talking about something, but expect people to get it. Very human, very selfish, very hypocritical. I suck sometimes. I busy myself with projects that don't get finished and TV shows and promises I can't keep to make it hurt less that I sucked enough that my own Father decided it wasn't worth the effort anymore.

Today I didn't want to get out of bed. There were several points where I wanted to just cry in front of God and everyone.

I don't know where my family stops and I start; my identidy has been systematically sucked by the situations my parents are creating around themselves and my brother never ceases to completely destroy whatever happy thought I had going.

(Why yes, I am going to complain about this for another few paragraphs. Because I can. Why am I even validating this? It's my blog...Jesus, here I go again...)

I feel like I am swallowed up at the moment; like I'm sealed in this box that no one has bothered to look for. Everyone is worried about prom dates and I'm worried about the lasting reprucussions that having my Father reject me will do to my opinions on males for the rest of my life .

It's very, very lonely.
I am outside the jar, staring in at everyone having fun, and it's hard to slip into that. I don't feel happy or eighteen or excited. Just sad, and angry, and alone. My Senior Year got stolen from me.

Everyone tells me 'well, just be more selfish!', or 'just have fun!'. People are so stupid I want to hurl.
Do you know how seriously weird that is for me? I'm the one who gives to everyone else - I listen and I try my best to help, and I give hugs and I make people laugh. I'm really bad about being selfish unless I'm having a weird day and I'm pissy or something.

I don't just 'be more selfish'.

My Dad is selfish.
I'm not.

I don't want to be my Dad. I hardly want to look at him, let alone be like him.

I'm also falling into the cycle of distrust, and this is dangerous ground, only now instead of it being magnified with strangers, all I can think of is if I'm being cool enough or good enough or smart enough or funny enough for friends and the people I am close to. I worry I bring them down with my attitudes (I probably do) and I know I'm becoming a pessimist. It's a horrible reality, and it's shameful sometimes, because I have to always explain to myself why I'm doing certain things or acting certain ways.

Like right now, I am deeply concerned that everyone will find this all to be a self-promoting pity-party and think that I am just someone who wants attention and will go to any means to get it.
That's not it at all.

I'm just really sad right now and I don't know how to properly explain it.
I just want to disappear and be someone else.

I want to screw everyone and run away and start over.

I hate this. I hate feeling like this. I hate knowing it wasn't my fault, but feeling that way. I hate knowing I'm not rejected by everyone but feeling that way. I hate knowing that I'm a good person but feeling awful and unwanted.

I hate it. I hate knowing God loves me, but feeling like it's not true.

I want to go underground and come out as something different, because, obviously, this isn't working. My self esteem is once again at the mercy of other people because I dared to care about them. I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it or if all people just squash you in the end like your feelings are nothing.

One thing has changed -  I don't care if I eat two slices of cake in one day or not. 
I spent a lot of my life watching my Dad deny desserts and foods and a menajerie of other things.
I don't have that kind of time anymore, so screw it all, I'm eating cake.

 I'm sorry this was horribly negative, but that's life. It is suckish and horrible and also wonderful and full of cake.

I am trying to take it one day at a time, so hopefully I'll go to bed and wake up and feel better. I  don't know.
Thanks for listening.
Or something to that effect.

Next time, maybe I'll have something nicer to say :I

2/16

God and Socks

For Julie.

I bought the wrong wrapping paper recently...it was for Christmas, but the paper said 'Happy Birthday', so I just wrote 'Jesus' under that...I hope they don't notice.
- Demitri Martin

I've been thinking a lot about God lately.
God's one of those things where every time you think you have it understood the rug comes out from under you and you try to figure out how you ended up on the other side without even realizing it.

Mostly I've been thinking the same thought I've had for a while now, which is God, and socks.

God is hard to understand.
Socks are hard to knit if you've never knitted a sock before.

My teacher Ms. Ragland is a nice lady, very concise, intelligent. She genuinely cares about her students and about our grades and how we're doing, and the methods we go about learning. I stare at her a lot in class because I always finish my assignments early, and when I'm not busy drawing oodles of Young Justice fan-art I like to muse on what it would be like to live as her. She's unmarried, she's pretty (great skin), and she dresses well. She's soft spoken, but affirmative.

She would make a really good Christian (of course, I don't know if she is, but if I had to guess, she probably is), a person who is thorough about reading, about actually knowing what she's reading, about a lot of things. She'd be a killer Sunday School teacher.

I like Rob Bell too, but only as much as I like my economics teacher. It's sad to admit, but I probably would only like the majority of Christian influences I've met as much as my economics teacher - they are great people with great ideas, but their religion somehow doesn't really make a big enough difference to me. I think that's why it's so easy for me to accept the wisdom and teachings of other religions too - the whole religion thing doesn't always factor in.

I think this started when I began to try and pin God down.
Everyone wants to pin God down.

(Here come the socks, if you were wondering.)

Everyone wants to give God a zip code or an address, or a suite number at a hotel. They want to give God names and faces. They want to get invited to God's birthday parties, and invite God to theirs. They want to bring awesome hostess and host presents. They want God to be human that they can buy presents for at  Christmas. They want to figure God out. Really, really, really bad.

Because it's easy to buy Christmas gifts? Or make them.

People get crazy about it - they want to get God exactly what he wants , they want to figure him out so badly, they want to buy him the perfect present, and they brag to their friends about how they're going that extra mile to make the present by hand, and God's just going to love them and not just wear them when they go to visit, and God's so hard to shop for so they figured something from the heart means more anyway, right?

God take their theology, their ideas and say: "I know this so well, you won't even believe it. Look at my ideas, look at my philosophy on heaven and hell, how it's so much more than those other peoples, so much deeper and cerebral. I stayed up all night making this, it took me months, I pined and slaved, and I think I've gotten it!"

We all put our gifts under the tree, and one by one God opens them, folding the wrapping paper because I imagine my God as kind of anal like that.

In the words of Jim Gaffigan, God holds up the socks and finds that it's barely a sock, that the socks are all mangled, and most of them don't even have a matching pair, and says "Not even close." in that beautiful deadpan manner.

I've never knit a sock before. As far as I can tell, I've never lived another life except this one, so how do some people claim that they're so sure about everything?

How do you compare God Socks when it's the first time anybody has made one?
I don't think there's a pattern for God Socks.

I don't know.

I think the most important thing is that as I bumble through my life and think about God and socks at least I recognize that I'm trying. I know for a fact that whatever I say here is virtually meaningless, because honestly I have no. idea. what. the. hell. it'll really be like. So, I won't even attempt. I'd rather just try to get through this life with God's help instead of trying to figure out God's. God's always saying about his plans for us, and then, by osmosis or something like that, the God becomes more apparent.

I don't think it has to be the other way around - I mean, people think they have to learn to knit first, and then God will take the wheel.

I think God wants us to stop trying to make those mangled socks, so that by the time we get to heaven and we open the box up ourselves, we realize that he's the only one who really knows how to make a pair of socks, and honestly, he made them for you for now so that you wouldn't do something so stupid as get distracted with emulating them.

This is merely a wandering of my mind, nothing more or less, wrong or right or in between. Just a thought that became a bigger thought, and maybe it will make you think too!
Peace, God, and Socks
xoxo,
Hannah

2/6

Building. Breaking. God. Maiko.

It's a beautiful moment when the first words out of your best friend's mouth after telling her what you told her are excited.

"That means we'll be closer!"

Whitney, you don't know how much I needed those words, unpromted.

So, yesterday I broke, but today I'm building.
It's kind of the title idea of this, if you haven't noticed.

Life, as cliche as you want to make it, is a series of constant breakings and buildings.
The funny thing about broken bones is that they are normally stronger than they would have been following their natural repair. The human body is a constant source of beautiful little miracles like that - they give me hope when I would otherwise be hopeless.

The other funny thing about broken bones is when you first get them I hear they are quite excrutiating, but typically (unless you've been hit by, say, a sledgehammer,) really not that bad.

But enough about bones.

The plans I'd made for Auburn straight after high school are being altered. Tailored, I guess. I'll stick around for another year, go to lonestar and get my core classes out of the way, mostly for financial security. I really don't want debt when I get out of school and with the life I've been thrown the last six months, I figure I could use some down town between two phases of time to get my world straight.

Last night though, I was pretty furious. I was bitter and angry and I felt like all my 'giving it up' to the Jay-man had been futile and a complete kick in the face.

I was doubting. As soon as I wrote that blog I immediatly thought about Job and what he had faced - his whole life was taken from him and he was blessed ninety times that again, but I am not Job and I will never try to be Job. Job had lived an innocent life.

Not this girl.
I've done my share of cheating and stealing (figuratively).

If anyone would essentially deserve this, it would probably be me. I in no way can account for the blessings of my life - but I'm not Job.
So I didn't throw confetti.

I was pissed.

My mom asked if I thought it was a good idea to keep that blog up, with all the anger and the profane feeling to it. I think our society is getting really deep into this 'instantly starting over' internet business. If I wanted to, I could erase it and you guys wouldn't ever bother to look for it again.

But what's so wrong with being angry? The more we defect to this instant gratification of high-speed living we're going to start repressing our true emotions more and more. We'll teach our kids to be ashamed of comments that 'seem mean' or improper wording should be completely excused with the click of a mouse. You should never, never, ever be ashamed of feeling someway. I've learned with difficulty that the things i try to 'delete' really just sit there.

And they get heavy.
And they hurt.

So, I don't mind if you think I was being ridiculous or even outlandish. I don't care if my facebook statements are over-charged with emoiton sometimes. I'd rather deal with them in the open.

Back to God.
I'm reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.
Beautiful book.

It seems simple, but 'truth resists simplicity', so it's more complicated than that.
It's a lot of things.
Namely a guy named Don trying to figure out what Christianity is and what Spirituality is and how the two somehow reconcile.

But it has birthed a thought in me.

I think the beautiful thing about Christianity is it takes an otherwise difficult mistake - an angry outburst, a lost scholarship - and even if it may be hypothetically 'contrived' (because I always imagine God pulling out those socks and saying 'not even close', but that's a story for another blog, but I'll tell it) by me, a stupid dinky little human girl-earthling, it can become beautiful.

I think that's where people get scared. They have to admit the mistake, let the blog sit there, let the words erupt, gotta make the problem happen, but then, like something magical (and not illusion) it is...something else.

A dye in a thread in a bundle in a tapestry.

You've got it God. I know, somewhere in there, this celestial plan will come to fruition.
I want to see it now, but I'll be patient.

I'll just wade through it, like I always do, kicking up sparks when I decide to drag my heels like yesterday.
Or something along those lines.
Picture of The Day:

These living artworks are Maiko, Japanese Geisha in training.
There are only a handful of true Geiko and Maiko left in all of Japan (numbers range from 200-500 respectively from the sources I've found) and pretty much the only way you will see them is starting at about 6:00 in the Gion district of Kyoto.

These girls are not prostitutes - they are living relics of culture. They pretty much never sleep with a customer - they value a lifestyle of feminine grace, virtue, and purity. Just looking at them you can see their gentleness, but also, this strange and almost supernatural (cross-time) kind of element. They usually work multiple jobs other than being Maiko, so when they appear it is only briefly because they are in a hurry to make it to their clients on time.

They perform traditional dance and music and are supposed to be well-versed, graceful entertainment. I think they are gorgeous and so...just...exquisite?

Maiko are distinguished by the mandatory red strip on the back of their neck, on the inner strip of the kimono and the kanzashi ( the beautiful silk hand-folded flowers in their hair). The more red in their Kanzashi and Kimono collars the lower their rank (typically younger and less experienced, naturally). A mature Geiko wears a black or solid kimono and a wig with more white or muted color Kanzashi.

Their Kanzashi are so pretty ( they sell them at cons sometimes, but they are never as beautiful.)

Lots of girls can and will pay to be dressed up as Maiko, but they just look tacky to me and are easy to spot in the pictures I've seen. True Maiko and Geiko have this humbleness about them, this pleasant, gentle, secret, aura to them that is very palpable.

Anyway, something interesting.

xoxo

2/5

Wrenches and other tools.

Just when I think everything has finally settled is apparently the prime time to throw a wrench into the machine.

I can almost imagine God standing above the conveyer belts, the cogs and steaming pistons, and he in all his white-beared Gandalf-appearing goodness simply leans over and 'on accident' drops a huge piece metal straight into the heart of it.

Oops - he says innocently enough, Mah bad..., kicking aside the huge pile of chewing gum, paperclips, rubberbands, sinks, and other paraphanalia that seems to have found its way into the factory grade mechanics of my world - all having been pulled out, everything about to be restored.

The machine begins to pressurize, smoke belching out of several exhaust towers until the engine thermometer begins to wig out.

The whole thing shudders, and explodes when a tiny bolt is pried loose form the bottom.

Somtimes I don't think its very fair.
I don't think its fair that my dad decides to lose his freaking mind during my Senior Year.
Yeah, I hope you read that.

I hope you know that if you comment I'll be tempted to throw my own wrench at your head.
Stay out of my life. You've wrecked it enough, so go be happy.
I don't want to go to dinner with you. I don't want your stupid cards.
I don't want to go to your house. I don't want to see you or talk to you or have you text me.

I want you to pay for my education because at this point, it's probably the only redeeming feature I see in you.

I want to pretend you don't exist. STAY AWAY.
I can't stand you.
I can't stand you.

I'll just be here, trying to figure out how it was that the 60000 dollars I was pretty much guaranteed at Auburn is not mine anymore, so how the hell am I supposed to go now? Oh yeah, because maybe while I was trying to figure out why my life was falling apart I forgot to hit submit on one stupid document three days later than I was supposed to (even when everything else was in weeks in advance)).

How do I go out of state whithout that 2/3 scholarship?20000 freaking dollars a year. AND I EARNED EVER PENNY OF IT.
I can't. I'll have to scour through every scholarship available, but thanks to what seems to be some holy divine plan, I am not.

I just really want to say that I haven't complained very much. I tried to put it all with Jesus. I tried to just be mature about it, this whole family thing, this whole 'I just want to happy' shit or whatever it was that he called it.

I don't know what to say. I figured it was enough, that this would be the silver lining, that I would get away and everything would reveal itself. Damnit. DAMNIT DAMNIT DAMNIT IT ALL TO HELL.

IT WAS ALL I ASKED FOR AND I LET MY GUARD DOWN FOR ONE FREAKING SECOND AFTER MONTHS OF DEALING WITH THE STRESSS AND NOW ITS ALL GONE.

Words really don't do it justice.

I hope God knows what he's doing, because I sure as hell don't see how this is going to be resolved.

I don't have a picture.
Go look one up yourselves.

2/1

February. Valentines. Laaaaccccyyyy? Shaaaaay? Whitney Hill.

Oh yes.
Valentines Day. That pagan celebration of loooooooooveeeeeeee.

In ninth grade I gave a valentine to my friend who was a boy in the hopes that he would fall hopelessly in love with me. He gave me this petrified stare and then things were weird. I never knew candy could change a relationship so drastically!

This years valentine of choice is Byakugan! (and a few special ones for some extra-special people *cough*)

Get ready for some intense Valentines proclaiming our friendship!

Scotty. GET THE HELL OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE HALLWAY. YOU ARE DISTRACTINGLY TALL. HAYZEUS CREESTOSE YOU ENRAGE MY KIDNEYS. (haha. JUST KIDDING. OR AM I?)

It's flippin' freazing out here.
I'm in a dangerously good mood.
I went see Linda today.

She told me some...awesome stuff.

HEY WHITNEY HILL. I'M SHOUTING AT YOU FROM MY BLOG.
How's that for friendship?

Picture Of The Day:

Seriously,  I think if I somehow *couldn't* be a Christian (which is...impossible?) I would worship these guys. Jackson Publick. Doc Hammer. If I was actually okay with the idea, I would have your babies. Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

1/28

Thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts. More Thoughts.

Getting specific is the hardest thing for me to do.

Sometimes I really wish that I could just say things in general terms and everyone would understand - no details needed. Unfortunately that's the opposite of the world and in the words of John Green, one of my biggest inspirations, "The truth resists simplicity". As a writer it's almost tedious sometimes to develop what is already so vivid inside your head, but you can't ignore it. You have to explain because obviously your reader doesn't understand what's in your mind's eye.

I think that's why I can be a professional writer someday - there are days I don't neccesarily want to write so that other people will enjoy, but by some strange conviction I understand that I have to. Even when writing isn't as fun as it was the day before or will be tomorrow I do it. It's weird, but strangely right for me.

My writer's block remains, but it's getting better. There is no instant cure for it - you just have to somehow plow back all the garbage and get to the gold (or perhaps it's more like sifting through the racks at Ross - yeah, that's a lot more accurate actually). You spend these hours thinking about what could work and you hold it up to you and shake your head, and then, suddenly, you stumble on the thing that looks worth it and lo and behold, it is.

Fantasy writing is that thing that looks worth it right now, though I'm not sure if it matches anything in my closet.

Like an austentatious pair of shoes or something - I don't really know, but I'm back to being general.

My friend Sydney gave me a watch from Comic Con. It's startrek. It's awesome.
She is one of many people that continually surprise me about what it means to be kind or generous or just thinking about someone else.

That watch is so legit. I can't believe she gave it to me.
It's so cool.

Obviously, there's been a lot going on in my life. Stuff I can't control, stuff I can.
I want to cry sometimes, but I've gotten pretty damn good at hiding it. I don't ever really cry though - I stay up late and think about things.

My mom always asks what I'm thinking about when I respond 'I'm thinking' to 'what are you doing?'.
Ever since I was little my imagination has been overactive and too-vivid. I get lost in every day situations, expostulating the mundane to the dramatic, always looking to emulate or experiment with scenarios, both hypothetical and real.

Sometimes it feels bad because when I'm attempting to be genuine I catch myself just acting on whim to see what will happen, expirimenting with words. I don't do it maliciously. It's innocent. I've always been a pretty independent person. Leave me alone, even with my best friends, for more than two days and I start to get weird. I seek out being by myself, time to sit and literally just think.

If I never entertained my fancies I think I'd explode with them. It's when I need the thoughts that they don't come though. So frustrating.

I need ideas to do for VASE project (Art competition. I'm doing water colors). I want to impress, but I think, mostly, I want to impress myself or maybe someone else. Maybe my heart. It needs to have a meaning behind it - the piece, not impressing myself. I think I want to be honest with it, but I'll get carried away. I always do.

My mind could twist it some odd direction. Who knows.

I love my friends.
Shout outs to Lena and Matt-Matt and Greg. You guys look so tired. I worry about you constantly. I can't wait till that stupid show is over so you can get healthy, though I understand your need to do it. I just worry.
Worry Worry Worry.

And sometimes I really do wonder if people worry about me. It's the trouble with being mature about bad situations. Even when you do want to cry, you don't because the tears won't come and you start to think that people don't care about you anymore.

I don't know.
I'll just keep worrying about it I guess. It always works.
There was more, but I forgot it. Maybe tomorrow?

Yeah. Tomorrow.

No. Wait. I remember.
It makes me hurt more than anything else to think how lonely that is. It's even lonlier than the rejection and the easiness of letting me go. It hurts a lot to think that no one cares. Because I do.
But I don't think you understand.

And I'm really sorry that it's so horrible and sad and lonely. Because I will worry for you, but you pretend like I don't matter.

I heard a song yesterday.
I burst into tears. One of those old ones.
I thought about dancing at my wedding with you.

It hurts. But I know it's not something I can control.
So I'll just cry alone and then hypocritically ask if someone cares.

It's just not fair.

And remain as confusing as this blog (and as poorly spelled. I'm not spellchecking. I want you all to see how honestly stupid I am with words and their spellings.)

Picture of The Day:

There's this place in Bolivia called 'Altiplano'.
It's like, a salt flat desert thing, a giant plateau.
I first saw this picture in a National Geographic.

It's so flat it literally reflects the sky straight onto the water so it looks like you're standing in the sky - it's another thing that makes me cry. Can you even imagine what that would be like? I think I would just cry and cry and cry and give everything up to the clouds and God.

I think I would stand there and sob and feel safe, knowing I'd touched something like that, that I'd held the sky in my hands or under my feet.

I think I want to go there someday and stand there and sob and feel close to God or something. I would just cry and cry and cry.

At least, that's what I think.

(I dream of walking in the sky. I dream of it sometimes, in my head. Thinking.)

1/18

Creative Writing

So, this is a piece I wrote way back in my first week of my frist (second) semester of CW with mangreer and company.

Please Enjoy~

 

Letters to Freddie Mercury, and why writing to dead people is easier than keeping a conventional diary.

I don’t really like to sit down and recount things; I find it a task that is both monotonous and tedious and provides a rather mediocre account of what happens to me on a daily basis. I appreciate the people who can, like Whitney, who has a festive journal full of artistic supremacy that I could never match and frequently humbles me to the point of extinction. But then again, she draws in her diary, so it doesn’t really count.

I only pretend to draw compared to her.

Now writing - writing is something I can do. Just not in a diary. Diaries are, to specify my emotions toward them, stupid. I cannot even count the number of attempts I have made to present my day-to-day lifestyle on paper or cleaned out stacks of notebooks where such records have been tried. Each one always ends with the same sentence: “I’ll write again soon”. This must be code word for “I’m never going to write in this again, because it’s really dumb to write to myself. Thanks anyway though” because they remain shoved in the back of my closet, or in shoeboxes, or on shelves, or in a drawer, or under my old bed, or anywhere else I can stuff them and forget about them.

I do this in hopes that one day, the feeling will be renewed to restart, but it never happens. They always go unfinished and pathetically empty with perhaps a few novel ideas jotted down or how much I despise my brother, but nothing I couldn’t put anywhere else. They become silly and useless and in the end undergo that sacred metamorphosis into garbage. My family is less than supportive about the idea.

My Brother refers to it as “gay”, which as Vulcan Logic shows is completely ridiculous because writing in a diary is not pertinent to homosexuals at all, but to all, especially the heterosexual teenager, such as myself.

“It’s a good outlet. You can write all about how terrible your mother is.” This is what my mom usually says about everything, but particularly this, and it only detracts from the premises attractiveness. Thanks mom.

“Of course woman, you are horrible.” This is typically my reply to just about anything my Mother says, and vice versa.

My Father, as with everything, is completely indifferent.

But I still I yearn for that girlish need to just sit down and think about things that had happened to me; that uncontrollable urge to pretend that what I do routinely happens to be both extraordinary and perhaps so unthinkably interesting that I must immediately write it down for future reference. I guess this stems from the female’s natural tendency to dissect each gesticulation, and or communicated message of the opposite sex, i.e., the elusive and hard to understand male. That and document our own failures at conveying some kind of feedback to them.

How else are we expected to figure out if he likes us? By tracking their movements of course; no other way could be so logical. So the diary morphs into a kind of field guide, like the one I have on North-American birds. Not what I am about. Boys are, so as to show once again my range of emotion towards them, stupid. They are not even ripe until college so why bother before then?

But still, like a gorilla that is somehow pushed to nest, I was pushed to write down the monotony of my weekday occurrences, including the same driving seven-hour duration of school that barely even fluctuates from class period to class period. What a startling, dramatic revelation then, when I should come to discover my own unique niche in the world of journaling that seemed both pragmatic and amusing.

I would write letters. But not just any letters, oh no, but letters to people I truly admired and fawned over. More precisely, dead celebrities. Freddie was the first. Darling Freddie Mercury, the man after mine own heart, from his buck-toothed goofy face to that skin tight spandex. If only I had been born into my Mother’s shoes and listened to Queen like she did, in the light of the new experience and record players.

Though the date of this epiphany is uncertain, I do remember the keen details of its uncover: I had been listening to Princes of The Universe, my self proclaimed anthem, on repeat for the past thirty minutes and after finishing off a particularly tasty novel had stared at the un-cracked Italian leather journal my Grandmother had sent for Christmas. I looked around, hesitant, and picked it up, feeling the smooth pink surface in my hands, the pages widely ruled and virginally white.

Hopeless martyrs to the flames of my burned out system of writing in these things. That’s all I could think while flipping them around to see if maybe a bill or two had been tucked in the pages. Nothing. Just blank paper. I sighed, looking about me in some kind of procrastinating stupor, afraid that if I focused for too long, the worst would come to worst and I would end up with another failed project on my hands. My eyes wandered, straying towards my nightstand. My fingers twitched in accord and I tapped my tongue, clicking it on the roof of my mouth with loud, obnoxious, distracted pops.

There is a coffee cup that reads “UMARMY 2009” on my bedside table, and it houses a complete conglomeration of writing utensils, ranging from thick black sharpies to my favorite .5mm drawing pencil, a red one manufactured by a company no one’s ever heard of that is affectionately nicknamed ‘Rojo’ due to its deep crimson plastic shelling.

Rojo was eyeing me with a shred of challenge.

“I’m not going to start this dumb thing. It’s ridiculous.” I said out loud, answering the silent query, leaning my head back on my pillows, legs kicking out against my comforter. My bald knees kept staring up at me with bruised, abused faces, as if to see if I would really see it through. The beady, glossy eyes of my menagerie of stuffed animals gazed back, questioning. I picked up one of them from around me, surveying it with interest. It looked blankly back up at my unchanging face.

“Fine.” I muttered, before snippily adding “But only because I have nothing better to do with my time today.”

The animal then hit my wall with a slight thud, and the next thing I saw was my hand reaching for the black sharpie instinctively. If I was going to defile this journal, I was going to go big or go home.

I am immortal; I have inside me blood of kings…

The music and lyrics chimed in with my mood, one of destruction and of passionate glory. I was going to do it. This was it, I was going to accept the challenge and keep it up like a Spartan at war, and I was going to figure out whatever means it would take to see it through to the end.

Before I knew it the words were scrawled across the page in a curious arrangement.

I hadn’t even thought about it. It had just happened, right there, like the big bang or a chemical reaction.

Dear Freddie Mercury. Far more natural than “Dear Journal”.

I tried out the sentence, raking over it over and over again, like a piece of wood over hot coals, slowly deconstructing it, the ending comma hanging off like a half-pulled band aid or a tooth that you had when you were little but were too scared to pull completely out.

What would I want to tell Freddie Mercury in a letter that would never get a reply? What would I say to perhaps my greatest musical influence, whose talents I could only ballpark as astounding, to whose inspiring life I had attributed my lack of judgments and upholding of the arts? The answer was the simplest one I’d had in a long time – anything I wanted.

It was brilliant. It was like a super nova or a nebula. A factory of stars; of little, somewhat silly, gems of my life. It was questions I couldn’t ask out loud, or to my parents. It was ponderings that had no real purpose, it was all the little insecurities and cynicisms that I dared not reveal to the ever-watchful world of peers and friends I occupied. It was mature enough to be adult, the process of writing a letter where I would have to show not only respect to the one I was writing too, but I would also have to be something far more important: entertaining. After all, how could I possibly hope to hold Freddie Mercury’s attention in a boring letter?

It broke the chain of fear, of confliction and drama that had become ‘The Diary’. I had reached the nirvana of every teenage girl’s strives towards written immortality. I felt like Buddha. Heck, I felt like Jesus. It was just one more stretched out reach towards normalcy and ordinary, and when you’re sixteen, you pine for that.

This memory is one I will treasure, one of sincerest self discovery and an exploration of my more adventurous side. Since then, Freddie has been joined by several other deceased icons of our times and history: Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Monsieur Alexander Dumas, JFK, and such inspirational characters as Elvis and Frederick Chopin. Anyone I wish, though Freddie has become my favorite. He is an old friend, one I can talk to about anything, one who I take the time to write to.

Funny what adding Dear to someone’s name can do for you when you put it that way. And when you’re in a personal correspondence with Freddie Mercury, suddenly everything seems exceptionally profound.

I am describing myself as one artist to another, from one colleague to another, one politician to another.

I am able to express my condolences, my fears, my pride, my gratitude, my views and I know that they will be heard by wizened, trustworthy ears.

Reality says they are just memoirs of a teenager and her conflictions, but to me they mean that much more. They are for somebody, an unseen pen-pal, the invisible playmate ‘To Any Reader’ , as put by Robert Louis Stevenson’s in his ‘Leaves From a Child’s Book of Verses’, my Father’s favorite book to read to me when I was little.

Perhaps it was more of the idea that everyone has their own Freddie Mercury; it doesn’t have to be him, but I figure if he was willing to strut around wearing a crown and cape in front of thousands of people, he’d be willing to listen to do something as simple as listen to me.

Besides, he’s dead, so what’s he going to say about any of it?

Of course, now I blog.
So, what was your favorite part? Was it funny?
I'm trying out humor this semester, and want to know if you enjoyed it enough to pursue!

In other news, (OTHER THAN HAVING CREATIVE WRITING WITH MATT-MATT AGAIN) I am missing Whit because of my new schedule :< (check out her new blog. It's kickass). Went on that fantastic Fall retreat - I'll talk more about that tomorrow!
"Oh, my baby, when you're crying - never hide your face from me - I've conquered hell and driven out the demons, I've come with life to set you free." - Come To Jesus: Mindy Smith.

Listen to it. It's kind of awesome.
TV SCHEDULE:
- Mondays: Regular Show and Adventure Time, Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. and HIMYM
- Tuesdays: Being Human (MMMM. AIDEN)
- Thursdays: BBT, YOUNG JUSTICE (HELLLLS YESSSSS)

Picture of the Day:

Sailor Venus. Because She's blonde. I'm blonde.
She makes me happy. :'>

Made this. Every day needs more Ke$ha, narwhales, unicorns, and bears.

Oh, and majestic hair.
Oh, and high self esteem.

xoxo,
Hannah