I'll do what no one will do for me, best friend

My best friend wants to write a novel. I think it's awesome, considering I love writing and want to carry out my own novel as well. I think it's pretty cool, and to back him up and to keep him inspired and doing it, I told him that I would be there for him if he ever wants me to read his work. I want to read it. I want to see what ideas he has, just as I want to read Stephen King or Oscar Wilde.

What I can't help but thinking, though, is that no one has ever wanted to read my writing. Not my friends, not even my parents really. I mean, they say they do, but I give them a chapter and they totally forget about it or they don't have time.

My cousin doesn't even show an interest in reading my novel. She's not big into reading, but I still read every little thing she writes because I love her and I'm proud of what she does. Despite what she thinks, she CAN write, and she writes beautifully. A heartbreaking thing for me to endure, however, is the loss and emptiness of those words I give to her. For me, it's a cut in my heart. 

My friends are a totally different story.

I'll finish writing a short story, and I'll be very proud of it, and then I'll go to school and give subtle hints to them; such as: "I just barely finished writing a short story that I've been working on for a while. Cool right?" Their response: "Yeah, cool. Hey, ever heard about the cheerleaders?"

So you see? My attempts are in vain. They aren't interested in the words that I poor my soul into. They say they know me, but they never will until they read my writing or they visit my blog, which they'll never think of doing unless I literally approach them and say, "Hey, I wrote a novel and I want you to read it, because if you don't, I won't consider you a good friend."

I know what you're thinking. "Why not do it?"

The thing is, I want to give my friends a chance to be good friends. I want to wait and see how many hints I have to throw out in order to get their attention. I want to know if they ever think about me. I wonder if I'm even a subject they talk about, or if I'm just there. Do they ever think, "I want to go out tonight. Who should I call? Tyler? Junior? Bray Bray? Brody?" Of course...not Mindy.

Their problems are much bigger and more important than building a friendship with me. I am going to be narcissistic for a minute and say yeah, I'm a pretty awesome and appropriate friend to have. I live by great standards, despite my atheist views and the influences I live around. And when they care more about gossip and "seizure kid" and dirty jokes than me, then it's an insult to me and my seemingly "decided" choice of high school friends.

Some of them just don't appreciate books and writing and media that really inspires. They worship, instead, music with heavy sexual content and film and video games. They have first world problems, completely oblivious to their surroundings, and they might say their minds are open, but it isn't true. Their minds aren't TRULY open. They don't consider things from every view.

The thing is, however, if I run off and get new friends, it would be the same thing all over again. Unless I advertise my writing like a glowing billboard of a hamburger, I'm not going to get spiking interest and appreciation for the labor I put into my work. So I just get to sit and nod and smile, because that's all my friends must think I do.

I'm growing apart specifically from Kaylynn, who outwardly shows her utter focus, care, and only tolerance for her boyfriend. I said before that I've done so much for her and got nothing in return, and now it's starting to really bother me. Her attitude now is even more bothersome. She just expects me to be her best friend, despite the shit she puts me through emotionally and mentally. Every day I have to smile and nod whenever she brings up Nahuel, as if it isn't a stab in my heart to know that she cares so much about him and only a tiny bit about me.

I think I'm going to stop lending her my math homework. It's seriously the only thing that I feel is connecting us now. The fact that she doesn't get her homework done and earns a grade from the work that I did is starting to wear on me. I'm stupid for letting it happen in the first place, I know, but the only reason why I continued was because there would be miracle times when I would forget to do my homework or some problems and she would have it done, and then she'd find it fair to let me do the same. Of course, that isn't often at all, and I usually feel bad after doing it.

My point for bringing this up is because of a memory I always dwell on when I think about sharing my writing with friends. Unfortunately it comes from a dark time when I was Brody's girlfriend, but it wasn't a total horror. Actually, Brody had tried to write a journalistic book somewhat about his life, and I had no idea about it until Kaylynn brought it up one time. Then Brody let me read some of it and I had found out that Kaylynn enthusiastically read it, and was waiting impatiently for more that he wouldn't write.

Amazing, isn't it? Kaylynn would read anything her messed up admirer would write, but not her best friend's writing?

Even Brett read chapter one of my novel when it was crap.

I suppose I'm just deeply hurt. For me, writing is something so precious and expressing. It's an art, and not being able to share this art with a friend because they reject it is the same as her prettily decorated nails clawing my soul. She's rejecting who I really am.

I never expected my current friends to really want to read my writing, which was why these feelings have only simmered. Just now that my best friend suddenly has an interest in pursing what I want, I'm starting to feel a tugging, almost a tearing, at my emotional composition. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm finally being a teenage drama queen, or if these feelings of not being close to my friends in this sense is legitimate. Either way, I'm hurt now. Deeply.

Who else smells Rivalry?

I'm not a die hard fan of Twilight. I respect the books, because they were the things that kept me from having a suckish sixth grade year. Although I can't seem to understand why people swarm all over the repetitive, dissatisfying romance between Bella and Edward, I can understand why most would believe the story aside from the occult worshiping and supernatural elements.

Their relationship, thanks to the movie, is slightly awkward and mysterious. There are mood swings that send weird vibes to both the main characters and the audiences who watch with horny feelings in their pants. Bella herself is unsure and suffering from teenage hormones, making her believe she has to marry him right away just so she can have that little thing called "sex".

Edward (book wise) is trying not to be the woman and separate his manly time and his relationship but failing when  his taunting need to pervishly watch her while she sleeps settles in. Thus creating a sense of realism concerning psycho feelings in an every day teenager, written oddly by a married Mormon woman. Who would have thought?

The Hunger Games, in all its grandeur, is much more wild and enticing, but concerns the same basic elements that Twilight so blatantly shares with the world. Suzanne Collins manages to write it down better and express it in a more interesting and catching sense. She has symbolism and connections that make a bigger difference in the literary world than thesaurus-using Stephanie Meyer did.

Katniss finds herself in a love triangle, being the attractive main heroine who conquers all and bad-asses everyone to hell. The two books were written by two older women with the same need to make their characters suffer from romantic twists when the characters should be focusing on more important things, especially in Katniss's case. Katniss is also a teenager, which then throws her in with Bella and their wild girl hormones.

The major differences (and with Hunger Games, there is a lot) are that Katniss has a drive and motivation to protect and care for not only her little sister, but her seemingly comatose mother who can't function correctly from the loss of her father-figure. Bella cares about Charlie, her father, but you don't see Bella striving to protect the man. He just goes fishing and Bella screams like a girl while a vampire chases her.

What both these books have in common, however, is the fact that both are extremely popular with the masses and connect personally with teenage girls of this generation. I will proudly say that I will pee my pants if I have to wait past Sunday to see the Hunger Games. I loved the books dearly.

J.K. Rowling comes in now, with her own writing style, basically what seems to be her own freaking genre of awesome, and her main character (who I want to specifically point out is a Y-chromosome, which makes the whole perspective of the book a little bit more rounded and... ungirly).

 In a short summary, Harry Potter goes through seven years of challenge without romance distracting him from his goal, and then finally conquers his all-time foe in a hardcore battle of revenge and hope. Note how I mentioned there was no romance to distract him with. There is romance, I dare say, but certainly not enough to make you roll over and throw the book at the wall. If Rowling did that, then her fans would not be fans.
 We're all about finding out what Horcrux old man Dumbledore found rather than if Ginny tries to get into Harry's pants.

There's a great deal of diversity, not in the sense of race though. I meant in age and body type, like during the Hellenistic period, when the stuck-up classical Greeks finally decided to stop being one-minded and open to old, young, ugly, beautiful, wild, and calm, instead of just young, calm, beautiful. In Harry Potter, you had the idolized Dumbledore, stooped and old but greatly admired. Then there were the waddling goblins with pinched cheeks and beady eyes, and the ugly witches, and the handsome seven-years, and the "only a baby" first years, and the stereotypical mother-looking professors and the hippies that predict the future. It's all so spread far and wide, whereas when I read Twilight and the Hunger Games, being a white girl striving to live with an open mind, I pictured (admittedly) only white people unless written otherwise.

That's probably why I like fantasy so much. Not the main reason, but a good aspect of it.

I'm now going to crush your hopeful (or hopeless) ideas of my loving Harry Potter by saying I'm not obsessed with it and that I don't feel it as strongly as I felt other movies and books. Though I might add, I cried when I realized all seven movies had come to a close and it was no longer. (But that's beside the point.) I don't (and won't) choose between those three movies/books because none of them come even close to touching that little ventricle in my heart reserved for the real favorites. (Those real favorites I might get into one day, but not today, in concern of saving other blog-post ideas when I don't have an issue I need to talk about.) Personally, the movies for Twilight are closer to touching the rotten, sinister chamber reserved for hated things than my even normal ventricles for normal entertainment. It's just a fact that since everyone loves it I gotta hate it. (Yes, I know, everyone else who hates Twilight thinks in that same exact line of thought, except for my dear Almond, who just flat out hates Stephanie Meyer and her writing.)

This is when I begin my long and boring preach about the simple, yet completely emotionally complex story plot about original folklore paranomalty and super freaking hot guys fighting evil. Cue Supernatural and its awesomeness.

AHH!

Those red swirly mints are disgusting! I put one in my mouth without realizing what it was.......BLECH.

My Entirety: Exposed

The fantasies haunt me every waking moment. They torment me in my sleep. All I ever want is a life full of excitement and adventure, and sometimes it seems merely writing about it isn't enough. 

My beloved characters, the very personal ones with a depth that no character really has when I read about them, are the main reason I twist the plots and complicate the story. They finally seem to be a part of me. My characters are the very people that I am, in multiple forms and personalities. It's a further extension of my heart, where their hearts beat in sync with mine.

I put all my aggression into a woman with a simple appearance and a complicated background; someone who I wish I could be. In a sense, my role models don't particularly come from the outside world, but from a person composed of my own admiration and standards. I've developed a character who shares the twists and tangles of complicated emotions I feel every day, the sense of duty I share with my coworkers every shift. The gentleness and quiet within me pours itself into a man who only wants what is best for his friends. Then lastly, my heroism, my strength and determination, all my tolerance for everything I wish I could be immature about, glistens within the soul of my precious McKenzie, whom takes the lead in my dramatic story of death, war, and love.

These characters define the fantasy world in which I dwell. The idea that I need to be there for as long as I can makes learning and concentrating very difficult some days. They call to me and ask me to come back and fight with them in epic wars between good and evil. It's true that these yearning day dreams complicate my life almost in a controlling sense, that if I were to make connections with music or other texts, I would almost always find a link with my own tale.

It's like emerging from a pool coated in silver; the depth of my personalities intertwined with characters and slowly growing outward from there. The story, the plot: it all relates to situations I've been in, seen, or heard about. It's a blossoming bud growing bigger and bigger as spring dances along, slowly adding to its simple beauty with layers and layers of red and pink petals. Just as my own life events seem to grow bigger and bigger, each adding a layer of experience and wisdom to who I am, my imagination and surroundings grow with it. The settings to follow within my fantasies are ones of coldness, darkness, beauty, and light. Each is different in its own ways, but the same, just as America is to me.

The shiny outer layer is the writing and the progress it takes to make this come to life within my mind. The grace and flow of my words conjoined with the utter labor creates an entirety to the story, like tying the bow after concealing, boxing, and wrapping the surprise within. It’s exhausting sometimes, just like writing a chapter of an epic tale on a pad of notepaper.

I've set myself up for the extras, the obstacles, and the antagonist, whom begins to morph into someone of high importance and thought within the story. Though I have chosen the facade of normality and goodness, there is a monster underlying the mask with chains as thick as football fields and ferocity as passionate as fire. To let this part of me out would be to destroy everything I have ever worked for, but to disregard its presence at all is to die completely.

My villainous character, in all his grandeur, obtains predilections for specifically normal objects and acquires a rather courteous and obscure behavior to everything he says and does. His utmost normality is the reason he is so dangerous and evil. He merely has a goal to accomplish, and that determination I give my heroine reflects within the villain, thus giving the bittersweet relationship structure and meaning. I build upon my strengths by adding to my weaknesses, such is climbing the chained monster's horns and reaching the angelic light above.

There is a difficulty, however, with all this complexion and verism. How on earth do I morph these feelings of romance, doom, and heroism when I live a repetitious life dealing with teenage dramas and customer service? Obviously there must be a threshold between the two realities that should shut out one or the other while I try to cope with the loss of realistic characters or missing homework assignments.

The thought of using one another to build and strengthen both myself and the two worlds would be appealing, yet condemning, for discovering the tool to make such a miracle happen is what I believe to be the real truth we all vie to obtain in this life. Everyone has their second reality they struggle with, whether that is a teenage girl's desirable cheerleader life, or an old man's wish for peace and happiness within the world. We as human beings need something else to hold on to if our very real lives crumble between our fingertips.

Finally, Something New!

I have more time and obligation to think while in the shower, which is why they're nice to take when you're stressed. Right now my mind is racing a hundred miles a minute and I can't write fast enough to keep up.

Sometimes when I have discussions with my parents I'm always afraid they will peer over their laptops at me and look for proof that I am a stereotypical teenager. If I have the slightest hint or reckoning that my tone is filled with "attitude" or angst, I might as well be done for.

I often blame my hormones I keep bottled up inside. I cry sometimes when absolutely nothing wrong has happened, and I always cry when I talk about important things directly with my mom and dad.

Part of it would be my individualism cracking into a commuted fracture, because the thought of mom and dad's full attention on me tends to be a rarer case than most. When I am spotlighted, I realize that I'm still the child, even after all the responsibility I've maintained to keep our household a better place. They make me feel like I don't have to hold up my head and pretend while they're the only ones with me. I have an outlet for the victimized tears of stress other than my pillow. They both became my Teddy bear I tell my secrets to. They're the ones who allow me to let my guard down and open my soul like a triptych at an altar. Although they don't understand why I cry, they let me cry anyway because a part of me wants to believe that they know how it is, deep down inside.

There are several times when I can't control it, especially during times when I want to prove I am confident and strong. I cry because I know how truly weak I am in the end, no matter how big I talk.

Rare occasions include those daring confrontations with my parents right after I watch a tear jerking film. It doesn't happen often, but the emotions it made me feel were still festering inside when I forced myself to finally tell my mother an idea I've been considering for a long while now.

I've toyed over and over with the idea. I've met and talked with girls who have done it. To some people out in the world, getting a second piercing in the ear would be an easy decision said and done. For me, it's a new adventure waiting to happen, something new and unexplored. It's frightening in the long run, just like it would be frightening to trust a city bus your first time. There are many consequences that could come form it, like serious infections, deep regrets, questions, nonacceptance in the specific community I live in, and disrespect from other certain people.

My main concern is reopening the patched wound my leaving the LDS church left in both my cousin and my grandparents. All of them believe what they believe, and they're sensitive to certain changes, though I wouldn't say they're not capable of adaptation. More so, I'm concerned by the idea that they'll start to think untrue things about me and that their respect and trust will disappear completely. I speak mainly of my cousin, admittedly, but my grandparents mean just as much to me even though I may think of them as old farts every once in a while.

I believe that everything we do as humans get some kind of benefit from it. Otherwise, why would we do it? After some careful thought and suggestions from my parents, I decided that I truly am using a new look to finally express who I am. Though I do it well through writing, no one has time to sit down and read my feelings displayed on paper to know who I am. Though I show my optimism and excitement through behavior and actions, I've heard that people think I'm not as normal as I could be. Even though I have two best friends who love me a lot, they don't know certain things about me that make me me.

An earring doesn't do what I want justice, but it symbolizes the beginning of my path to joining with my full potential in the mental and social fields of life. It's the first step I take to expressing myself to others. One look at my second earring, and hopefully people sense there is more to me than meets the eye.

There are concerns that this new accessory would lead to a series of habits, behaviors, and attitudes that would generally worry well-to-do parents. My parents brought up the idea that some people dive into the world of drug abuse and alcohol and sex when a new, more 'sluttier' look is taken on in such short notice. Though this is only for some people, not all, everyone has a right to be worried about that.

Maybe a naturally rebellious teenager girl who is constantly mad at the world, irritated by her parents, hates school and chores, worries about her appearance too much, and doesn't appreciate what she had is more liable and easier to lead into a life of the neighborhood tramp. I don't aim to sound narcissistic in any way, but my situation is different. I might care about how I look and present myself, but I love school and I love my job and I love my parents. I don't indulge in new freedoms and experiences to the point that I blow it for myself or others. I have a license, a job, and a trust that I didn't get from a cereal box, and I trust that I I can control myself and think clearly on suggestions that may present themselves later in result of my decision today.

A new hairstyle to go along with the piercing focuses more on the idea of art in your appearance. Makeup alone is fun to have and work with. I find it much more attractive than a blank face. Added to earrings and color in your hair, the same routine you follow fades and it becomes a catalyst to change and happiness in life.

I find it truly amazing how one little hole in the ear lobe can have such a giant affect in everyone's lives. Though I might have dramatized some aspects of the piercing and my boring life, I know for certain that it's not a mistake. If worse comes to worse, I'll have an infection, some 30 dollars wasted, and time to heal any regrets I might have. Though it would seem so to some people, it truly isn't the end of the world to expand and experiment on ideas.

There's always a benefit where there's a consequence.