Meddling Universe

Perhaps the universe is trying to remind me that Walton was my home for so many precious years since I started running every morning at the Lassiter track.

Let me explain: I wake up early in an effort to realign my internal clock and I sorta fast-walk to Lassiter and run their track for an hour and do various exercises and then I sorta fast-walk back to my house. I've been doing this for over a week and the universe has noticed.

For example: today the Walton football team was on the track when I got there, they were practicing and continued to do so very obviously and loudly while I tried to not die in the muggy heat; after that I went to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's and the lady at the door was a girl I knew from Walton (I was Jimmy's wing-man when he tried to talk to her and ended up running away when she smiled at him), she and I spoke for about twenty minutes and she told me all about band camp and all the things I'd missed learning about the band's program for this year and then the girl in charge of our "party" was a girl from the Walton Orchestra who I'd spent a lot of time with in the past three years; after that we drove home and passed by Lassiter to skip some lights and the football games were still going on so we decided to drop by and THERE in all their splendid WALTON BLUE glory was the Walton football team, the crowd chanting Walton spirit songs I learned about four years ago and chanted for so long.

That was just today, just today, and it's happened before too. It happens almost daily since I began running on the Lassiter track almost two months ago, I swear the universe has noticed and is trying to mend things by reminding me of my oh so Walton blue home.

I had a blast singing "way down in the valley" while listening to Coach Imperial and Coach Nichols cuss out the players who tripped while Suttle sat under the rotating fans. I missed those Friday nights and it felt weird to be sitting on Lassiter bleachers instead of my home bleachers. I felt like a traitor, but Merlin I had a blast and if this is the universe's way of reminding me of things then I'm fine with it. I shall keep running, but the football team better stay off my track tomorrow, they messed up my work-out. :P

Random Thoughts inspired by Pandora

I'm listening to Pandora, it usually knows exactly what I need, but for the past months it's been .... well I'm listening to this song and I absolutely hate the song. I can't stand it. So I listen to some others, and they all sound the same, but by the 5th song or so I'm starting to like this kind of song. And why is this??? Because society's music is manipulating me to like their songs!! It's been months of the same ordeal with Pandora and radio stations and music videos in the morning: I hate it, so I change it, hate that one, that one sort of sounds ok and has a good beat, oh no!!!!! My foot is tapping, no no no, bad Ana, resist it. They WANT me to like their style of music, so they do that style over and over again until they brainwash me into liking it. Which is terrible because I (and we as a whole generation of brainwashed people) deserve better!!!!!! I (and we) dont need this trashy, no brainer music that just has a good beat. I mean... at the same time you kind of like it....but inside you know you deserve much better!!! Lyrics like Jason Mraz or that song I've been replaying about 50 times a day and any other song that makes you read between the lines and THINK, but Public Affair by Jessica Simpson? What the hell is that?? I admit I listen to it and ... I kind of like it...BUT STILL!!!! People make out for half of the video, and the rest of the songs mention the phrase "all night long" at least in one stanza of their music. It just drives me crazy and yet ... it's so catchy.... Dave Matthews Band would be disappointed in me for admitting this and for it being true.... (they're true musicians music, just so you know)

By the way, I have a feeling that the "5 second rule" doesnt quite work on the rug.

Anyways, WHERE IS THE MUSIC THAT MAKES YOU THINK? CHANGES YOUR MOOD? It's so rare now, defeated and shadowed by "songs with good beats that are surprisingly addicting but we're trying to resist it. Or at least I am"

Chocolate craving time: I am calming my chocolate cravings with protein bars, actually one protein bar that I snuck from the pantry while my dad wasn't looking, it's covered in chocolate and is very delicious. This is the third one I've snuck in three days, the wrappers in my desk-drawer smell good. They smell oh so faintly of chocolate. I wouldn't have to sneak them if there was chocolate in this house, or if I felt like dealing with him knowing I'm eating what's become known as "his" food. I'm a hormonally-imbalanced pms-ing teenage girl. I. Need. Chocolate. and I will get it, don't bother me with the consequences. It makes me feel better, and cravings need to be assuaged, otherwise one begins to feel all sorts of awful.

There are the only two things I've ever craved for: chocolate and chinese food. I know people say they get cravings for certain foods and feel like they must eat them, but they're so diverse with their cravings, making me think that they just "want" them instead of "craving" them. I know when I crave chocolate because it's a physical feeling as well as mental. I feel kind of sick, like I was before I unwrapped that precious protein bar and smelled the chocolate... yummy chocolate... now I'm happy again. Until a few days from now, then all the chocolate in the world won't fix anything and Morgana help those who dare oppose me or cross me. I admit I'm not the nicest person during those days, if only people had more tact and just let me be. There are days during the month when I don't want to socialize and that should be a perfectly good reason for me not to fake politeness when I'm fighting some of the worst discomfort unknown to men.

Cleaning out my feelings

Having recently scourged my room of all unnecessary items, I have begun to feel a rather strange feeling of loneliness. I know I'm surrounded every minute of every day by people, connections, conversations, first meetings, and such ... but I feel lonely.

I've just disposed of a giant black bag which weighs more than I do or did, I've lost weight since the last time I checked, and said bag contained quite a few things. First of all, all scrap pieces of paper and quizzes and tests and things I no longer need or won't help me ever again, for example my Honors Biology binder that was bursting at the seam, all that hard work and information pounded into my brain had memories attached to it and now it's gone. Only because I now have much more extensive and exhaustive materials from AP Biology to cover for all that I threw away. But all those little notes and drawings and small poems... well those were a part of me too and now .... now they're being recycled.

I had a giant box and an entire shelf from my bookshelf devoted to all my schoolstuff, binders and notebooks and folders of paper, stacks and stacks of paper that I went through one by one to see if I should keep it or not. Records and report cards, awards and letters, and books. All my books, assigned or not, were dusted and carefully rearranged now that I have more room. Twenty or so will be donated, books I was forced to read that hold no use to me, books I loathed even if I appreciated any vague literary value they may or may not have had. Sorry, but I don't read essays for fun, I don't read history textbooks disguised as summer reading "novels" or tv series/cowboy western/historical reference "novels," I'm sorry, I just don't. But some other person might, maybe the books will enjoy the store shelves more than the cardboard box...

Now, I just have the lower shelf and, to be honest, it looks pitiful. I feel a little pitiful, I threw away parts of me and my memories, things I never thought about but when I looked at them again, I saw it all. There were old love-notes and poems and a three-page long essay to ask if I like him, things I never threw away, I felt bubbling anger and resentment when I re-read them. I shredded them and lit some on fire, to remove those old pains, hopefully there are some people out there now with scorched burns and ripped wounds because I utterly loved getting rid of it all. Even the stuffed animals, they were tossed in the black abyss of the black bag, dying now somewhere in a landfill under the scorching sun.

My closet is emptier as well. It makes me sad, I pulled out everything I own, all the club and class t-shirts, each one with several memories and moments in my past. Some had holes or the sneaky chlorine stains from work, those were slipped silently into the black bag, some with brand-spanking-new tear-stains. Shirts and pants and shorts and pajama-things that no longer fit or that I never wore.... sigh .... in the bag. I know I don't wear them and that they don't fit, but they were mine anyways and now they're not. Now they belong to someone else, or they will, perhaps they won't and will forever remain in the donation center.

Little baubles and trinkets, small gifts half-broken and dust-covered , all rose from the depths of my "memory box" and some went into the black bag, some fell out of my hands and crashed into a million pieces, some I kept. All those little hats and shirts and ticket stubs and wrist bands and jewelry... it's sorta gone now.

I made the list of what I have and what I need, all because I will soon have to pack it all up and go somewhere new with it, not all of it, but it. That list of things I need kept growing as I threw out socks with holes, broken pencils and leaking pens, strangely twisted binders and notebooks, etc.

I felt tired after the second and last day of this and went running instead of napping. I walked the twenty or so minutes to the track and ran, fast and unthinking, faster until I couldn't run anymore so I walked. I walked for a good long while, talking to some lady who kept meeting my pace, but I felt very disconnected from her. As I have been feeling since I threw the bag away, it hasn't been that long, but I've been feeling it long before I started the ransacking and scouring of my room.

With this loneliness comes burst of excitement and happiness that last for days at a time. I'm so bubbly and jumpy with this new adventure on which I will embark. New people and new things to learn, new experiences and new places, new foods and clothes and books and things I'll love, things I'll like, things I'll tolerate.... I can't wait for it, I want it to be here so intensely, this new chapter of my life, this new horizon, whatever the metaphor, I'M EXCITED.

I wanna know who my roommate is, I want to move into my dorm, I want honors orientation to begin, I want to go to my first psychology of religion class, I want to eat my first actual meal there, I want to use that gym and jump into that pool, I want to meet everyone, I want to decorate my room and put all my things away there instead of back where they always have been, I want to unpack and not have a box left, I want to sleep in that new bed and jump on it, I want to see who will be the first to be thrown in the fountain, I want to go kayaking in the river nearby, I want to attend my first biology lab and spend all those hours working away and when I finish I'll head to dinner and enjoy eating while talking of dissections or microscope issues, I want to sit down to my computer and NOT have either of my siblings there to ask me what I'm doing or why I'm doing it, I want to go somewhere without my parents asking who what when where why every thirty minutes, I want to read without my siblings and/or parents fighting in the background, I want to have POTO sing-alongs while playing Scrabble with people and not be thought weird by anyone who walks by, I want to go out and explore the town without my parents calling to check where I am if I'm not within sight or yell at me if I don't take my cellphone with me if I'm walking-distance from somewhere, I want to share the mirror with three other people and not kill them for ownership of it :P

There's a lot I want and boy am I excited for it, because very very soon I'll be leaving this complicated house of mine and moving into my dorm for the next year. Asbury Hall, Third Floor, with an unknown room-mate and unknown suite-mates, an unfinished schedule, and several friendships already formed.