In this era, we summarize our years on Myspace surveys.

Where​ did you begin​ 2008?
On the sofa with my dad and my now departed cat. I then went upstairs and called Ty. We’d been watching Times Square online and proceeded to have a conversation during which he made my first wish on a star.
It came true. What luck.

What was your statu​s by Valen​tine’s​ Day?
Single and although slightly miserable as V-Day is bound to be to singletons, I was far from hopeless.

Were you in schoo​l anyti​me this year?
Most, most unfortunately.

Did you go to the hospital?
Hm. Now that you mention it… I don’t think I have.

Did you have any encou​nters​ with the polic​e?
Probably. This is New York, after all. And we asked a traffic cop for directions yesterday. Born and raised!

Where​ did you go on vacat​ion?
Chicago, Michigan, Upstate (Lake George + Saratoga), New Jersey, Kentucky

What did you purchase that is above $100?
Love.
My heart is worth over $100 thank you very much (as in, that was the price I paid for it)

Did you know anybo​dy who got marri​ed?
Yes. It was beautiful. For once the cynic was silent.

Did you know anybo​dy who passe​d away?
Sadly.

Did you move anywh​ere?
Not technically.

What sport​ing event​s did you atten​d?
My first legitimate baseball game. Other than that, informal things.

What conce​rts/​shows​ did you go to?
I am a music nerd, I went to too many concerts to name. Same goes for shows.

Descr​ibe your birth​day:
I had my first house party to which I invited my entire family (as in, class from SMS). We had quite an amazing time both messing up my house and going to the park (as well as the lake within). I got a fabulously large amount of money in the form of Starbucks gift cards and a fish which remains with me to this day.

What is the one thing​ you thoug​ht you would​ not do, but did, in 2008?
Meet Ty and Nira.

What has been your favor​ite momen​t?
The year. All 365 days of it.

Any new additions to your famil​y?
Through bond, not blood.

What was your best month​?
Hallelujah December.

Made new frien​ds?
Boatloads

Other​ than home,​ where​ did you spend​ most of your time?
School. Repulsive, I know.

Have you lost any frien​ds this year?
Yes.

Chang​e your hairs​tyle?
Somewhat.

How old did/​do you turn this year?
14

Do you have a New Years​ resol​ution​?
Yes. In singular.

Do anyth​ing embar​rassi​ng?
Depending on who found out.
But of course there was always toppling down the stairs in the first week of school

Buy anyth​ing new from eBay?
The only eBay I’e gotten exposure to was the Weird Al parody during the talent show.

Get marri​ed or divor​ced?
In my dreams. And possibly yours.

Get arres​ted?
No, I haven’t got the cojones to get myself into such controversial situations.

Been snowb​oardi​ng?
Ooh, that’s one activity I didn’t think of

Did you get sick this year?
Of course, I missed the regeneration gene.

Are you happy​ to see 2008 go?
I’m ambivalent about it. It was possibly the best of my life thus far, though, which warms the heart. Oh, wait, shit- I kind of gave that away, didn’t I?

Been naugh​ty or nice?
The latter on the surface, the former underneath.
Shall we change that for the next round?

What are you looki​ng forwa​rd to most in 2009?
Change.

2009: Uncensored

New Year’s Resolution 2009

1. Live like you’re dying.

I feel like there should be more fanfare.
Now that I look back, I’ve felt that way about a shitload of things this year. Everything seems to have come and gone so quickly and quietly that their passing makes no sense. There’s no time for me to absorb it, nothing that’s hitting me and saying, HEY. IT’S OVER. YOU’RE DONE. MOVE ON.
Hello?!
It has been a strange year, anticlimactic at some points and completely miraculous at others. My life is STILL a gigantic bloody contradiction, and I’ve realized that’s not going to change. That sucks. That means I’m going to be just as confused at 44 as I am at 14. Fuck.
Maybe I’m just overanalyzing this the way I used to, but I honestly believe the number 14 means more than all those other digits or combinations of digits. Whatever. I hate numbers- they make no sense to me, they’re constructs, they place tags on things that can’t be understood through statistics but nevertheless there is this one number I wish to hang on to.
I was fourteen for the majority of 2008. And though I hate to admit how superstitious I really am underneath all the cynicism I actually think that has something to do with why this year has been such a year. I turn around and the things I’ve gone through in the past 365 days could make up a lifetime, and yet in my eyes it’s still not enough, not enough, not enough. Never enough. It’s not enough until I hit my limits and I still have no idea what and where those are.
In 2008, my father and I became a team. I met the love of my short yet still rapidly waning life, ended a two-year stop in cyberspace, and started a chain of events in the real, tangible world that will go on to shape the next decade of my existence if not my life in its entirety. I lost my lip virginity and started sleeping at 11-12. I broke up with someone for the first time, rejected someone for the first time, even smacked a guy across the face for the first time. I went from the invisible girl to the one who could have anything she wanted if she could be fucked to try, the ugly duckling to the girl three guys ask out at camp. Camp Mason. Religion, Christianity, God. My aunt. A family. My sister. Nira Martinez. Irreversibly breaking a bond. Love too much. Too hard. Too little. Not at all. Taking chances and passing up about three times as many.
Which leads me to the only thing I want to bring into 2009.
At any given moment all of this could be over. I could be standing at a funeral thinking, why did I waste all that time? It could be MY funeral, my life, my wasted life, my nothing. We are never powerless to take charge of our lives. They belong to us, and what we do with them depends on motivation, will, and as always the healthy dose of luck. But what happens when my luck runs out? Is that really the only thing my life is built on?
So I guess looking back on this year, having thrown me headfirst and more prepared than I expected into the kind of whirlwind life I’ve been waiting 13 years to live, I walk away from it knowing that all this was given to me through a little willpower and a lot of luck. And if I don’t tip the scales, even them out- it will be over. If I keep waiting to be ready I will never be ready. I am ready now. Go. Move. Run. Jump. Live. Don’t look back. There’s the world full of experiences and your clock is ticking. This is your life. You control it. Make your decisions. Make your choices. You’ve spent long enough daydreaming every night before you go to bed. Bring it to life. Here’s the path, the runway. We’ve given you the four-inch heels. Walk in them. Don’t stop. Take control.
Then lose it.

Page 93

Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.

It’s done.

I will be sure to blog about it later;
It’ll probably be password protected for those who would prefer to be spared.
EDIT:
GRR. This never published! I wrote it on the 23rd.
Merry Christmas!

LESS THAN 12 HOURS

Until I see Tyler Rhinehart, also known as Roy.
And his mother. And his sister.
And they will see my dad.

And I will be
So
Happy
There will be no room for my joy in the thinning ozone layer, it will explode, and the world will end

I Can’t Keep Up With Myself

Haven’t been updating because I’ve been going at 12091203910293187238718273mph. Thanks, Townsend Harris + earlier procrastination habits.

I have made a pact with myself;
If I survive past 3 p.m. tomorrow, I will go home, take my biology notes, and burn them.
BURN THEM I TELL YOU.
I will watch all those biological facts going up in the beautiful chemistry of flames.
And it will be heavenly.

Geometry Can Kiss My Angle-Side-Side

I was in room 512 and the five minute bell had just jolted me out of my half-doze, half-daydream. Although I was sitting at the front of the 8th-band geometry class, my hair + bag (of the same color) concealed my earphones from view. I was beginning to pack when I was hit by the poetry bug. Having always placed my creative whims far higher on my priority list than following the rules, I grabbed the nearest writing utensil, opened to the nearest blank surface (last page of my geometry workbook) and started scrawling another fragment of my soul onto the off-white paper.
I haven’t written any poetry in quite a while, and even though I neglected to do any mathematically-inclined work that class, what I did accomplish is SO much more worthwhile (by my standards at least) than being taught a shitload of new postulates I’m bound to forget the moment I walk out of the classroom.

well nothing you ever said
could ever be as poignant as this poem scrawled
on the back of my notebook, all about the words
that you just couldn’t spit out of your mouth.

the dreams that stayed as sentence fragments
while i wrote essays, essays of my hopes
and of the shooting star i wished on that night in december.
i couldn’t have missed it going by my window
it wasn’t like there were any other stars flying down
or roads going up.
you couldn’t be fucked to build them

so you can go ahead and stay right here
with your verbal diarrhea.
my words are my way out
the spells will come if you can steal the strength to write them.

INSPIRATION (or at least the proverbial artistic trigger): Tremble For My Beloved by Collective Soul

Edward Cullen: Satisfying Your Secret Bad-Boy Complex?

Or not so secret, as the case may be.
Below are links to the interpretation of the modern Romeo + Juliet (namely, Bella Swan and Edward Cullen) by one of my favorite authors, Megan McCafferty.
The fact that she does not fall under the ‘obsessed teen-tween fangirl category’ already gives her brownie points. The remainder of the essay- written from a more critical but still irresistably Meyer-magnetized perspective- should serve to set its integrity in stone.

Whether or not you understood a word of what I just said, FOLLOW THESE LINKS IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.
Which most of you don’t, but whatever; if you can identify Ctrl/Command-C + V on your keyboard, you are honor-bound (and Cullen-bound) to check this out.
[Spoiler Alert; Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse (Stephenie Meyer)]

http://www.meganmccafferty.com/archives/2008/12/vampire-books-are-not-my-bag-part-one/
http://www.meganmccafferty.com/archives/2008/12/vampire-books-are-not-my-bag-part-2/
http://www.meganmccafferty.com/archives/2008/12/vampire-books-are-not-my-bag-part-3/

Christmas Doesn’t Wait For You To Feel Like It’s Coming

Yeah, I know.
I haven’t been writing.
The reminders I got to quote “UPDATE YOUR DAMN BLOG” unquote ranged from friendly impatience to impatient exasperation.
I had no idea my blog was so popular.
Well, I could waste paragraphs going on and on about how craptastically sorry I am, but you’re all pretty smart cookies if you’re reading this (proverbially speaking, I don’t think any of you are actually edible *by my standards, anyway; I’m not too sure about Edward Cullen*) so I’ll just say it once. Drumroll please…
I’m sorry.
Now let me not waste any of your time and move on to something that’s actually of interest. Or not, as the case may be. Repeat drumroll… the holidays.

Most of the talk I’ve overheard concerning this holiday season is actually rather anti-holiday (shut up, Laurie, it’s not my fault “anti” is the best word to express it). Why? Maybe it’s the recession; there’s a reason why it was called the “Great Depression” (and how depressing was Black Friday? The masses were so desperate for the ridiculous discounts that one unfortunate shopper was actually crushed to death in front of… Walmart. No Prada, Mr. Scardino. Just Walmart). Maybe it’s the lack of snow in the polluted cement-gray skies; when was the last time you actually had a white Christmas? After all, it kind of sucks to have to listen to all these songs about sleigh rides, chestnuts, and kisses on your hypothermic nose on the radio when it seems like the only constants in your life are the infamous questions about your 2nd marking period average, freezing mornings with only your sheets for company, and the Townsend Harris track that has left its mark on both the soles of our “shoes for fashion” (Wanda Nix) and our tender young hearts.
Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem like anyone is feeling the love this holiday season. But regardless of your lackluster holiday spirit, time doesn’t stop for anyone- as well all know by now (procrastinators anonymous, I’m talking to you)- and Santa is coming to town.
I’ve been wasting so much of my time on activities endorsed by society (i.e. school, homework, school, homework) that I think it’s about time we take up a worthwhile cause for a change. No, I don’t mean bettering your college transcript. I mean saving your Christmas so that when you wake up on December 25th, your first thought is not “thank god there’s no school”.
And what better way to do so than talk about the best part of Christmas? P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S.
I’d like to say I’m sorry for not generously citing religion instead of being selfish, but that would be lying. I am human, I am flawed, and I really love receiving (and giving; no lie) presents.

OPERATION RESCUE.CHRISTMAS.08. : HERE’S YOUR FIRST TASK.
If you’re one of the people who actually reads and enjoys my blog when I bother to update it, lend me a motivational hand here and leave a comment about what’s on your X-mas wishlist. Not exclusive to inanimate objects.

So tell me what you want- what you really, really want.