So yeah, that stuff I said about deferring a semester...

HAHAHA.

I actually thought my parents would let me go through with it.

It's funny, really. They think I'm mature enough to live on my own and pay my own bills, but not enough to make decisions about my education.

The hypocrisy of those who think they know better than everyone else never ceases to amaze me.

I'm only taking two classes, so it shouldn't be too exhausting. I'm trying to find a nice work-life-school balance. A balance I'm going to dump the second summer starts because I'm going to gun it.

I mean, I'm on academic probation. I'm pretty sure if I deferred they'd just kick me out anyway.

For 2015, I have only come up with two New Year's Resolutions: no boys, and just gun it. Based on my recent school disaster, you'd think that I was just terrible under pressure. That's false. Last semester I let myself sleep. I gave myself room to breathe. I tried to deal with my family's problems instead of focusing on myself. I can't change the things that go on at home, because like I realized before but didn't practice, I can't save people from themselves. They have to want to be better.

I can only fix my own individual problems. I very much would like to save myself. Nothing less than A's in both of the classes I'm taking, nothing less than A's in my classes for the rest of my life. I don't have room for anything less.

I asked my father for advice on saving up for tuition. You know what he told me? He told me, "When I was your age, I didn't save up. I just made lots of money."

Great advice, Dad.

But since I am apparently not as smart or as hardworking as my balling daddy, I'm going to have to find inventive ways to pay for college.

One of them being financial aid. Last year, I couldn't file because my parents wouldn't give me their information. I don't understand why, I don't know why. But for the first time I can file my taxes on my own, and therefore, don't need them to give up anything.

So I'm gunning it. No option for failure this time around. I'm going to bite the bullet and pray it doesn't enter my cranium and stop me from functioning completely. The rest of the year, and I have no choice in this, the rest of the year has to go exactly the way I'm planning it to.

Just one of his half crooked smiles could be worth her stressing.

It's really easy to misunderstand what other people want from you. Your parents might tell you all they want is for you to be happy, but then have a roadmap for how you will get there that has nothing to do with your own personal definition of happiness. Your friends will say things like, we'll still talk everyday after high school ends, and then high school ends leaving your phone with no texts from anyone you actually graduated with.

People might tell you they love you, but then have no intention of actually seeing you. Boys might tell you that you're adorable one minute, and then tell you how much they need a more stimulating act from you the next. Your boss might tell you that he will work around his schedule even though you know the schedule depends on you being able to work and run solely on caffeine, not sleep.

Then you need to sit down and figure out what you want to give and what you want from them. And then that whole thing is troublesome because how much is too much to ask for? How much do you really need anyway, and do you even have enough to give? Do you have all the energy you need, the emotional tolerance to deal with everyone else's battery? Do you have the time to be everything to everyone, everything to some people? Is it even worth it?

Which of course is the real question. What's worth doing, who is worth doing right, what will make you a little happy, someone else a little happy, and not be a total waste of time. Who is worth all the worry, all the love you have to give? Who isn't worth it, and should you give it anyway because it's the right thing to do, because it's worth it to help those who can't help themselves?

Sometime though, I find myself doing things I know for a fact are not worth it. And I know they're not worth it while I'm doing those things and I do them anyway. I know it's silly and weak.

I just love making a smile happen.

Love lights up the world, so my fortune cookie proclaims.

This is the crap that came out of my fortune cookie.

So despite the crap load of screaming that goes on, the in fighting, the injustice, and the unnecessary drama of my house, my parents had a nice night out with their friends.  My brother and I got Chinese good, and as pictured, I got a very optimistic fortune in my fortune cookie.

I don't know if the universe is trying to play some cruel joke because I'm not the most optimistic person.  Nor am I the kind of person that takes fortune cookies seriously, except for a brief stint when I was thirteen where I recorded what every single fortune cookie I got said.  I wanted to see if the crap lined up with what was happening in my life.  But I don't order Chinese food enough to get the degree of continuity needed to really judge the outcome of that experiment.  Unfortunately, my lack of optimism is balanced out by a hopeless romantic trait.  No matter how many times I get hurt and declare men to be pigs, I somehow always end acting like a total idiot.

My fortune cookie read "Love lights up the world."  I'm not about to examine whether or not it's true.  I know it's true. Love makes people smile, laugh, and feel connected.  It makes people go after what they want. It helps people realize that maybe if they can't get what they want, they already have what they need.

Love is not lost in my house.  Maybe it's taken me some time to realize it because there's a lot of other stuff going on.  We're frustrated, we're crying, we're yelling, but the fact of the matter is we're so emotional about it because we do give a damn about each other.  Even if sometimes we say we don't and we try to cut our losses and move on because we think it will hurt less. We can't have the good without the bad.  If only there was so much less bad.

My dad has recently been talking about taking a big career risk and weighing the risk versus the reward.  But it's no bigger a risk he took than when he married my mother or when they decided to have children together.  Raising a family is a huge risk.  My mother lately has been talking like it wasn't worth it. My father said he'd never thought it'd be like this. I'm so proud of us for sticking it out.

Doesn't change my unrelenting desire to move out though.

He said that I'm never satisfied, that nothing's ever good enough for me.

So what?  It's a symptom of ambition. It's what drives anyone to go after what they want.  But as of late I've had some difficulty dealing with the fact that some things are just out of my control. My whole life I've been saying to myself that if I work hard enough I will have the things that I want.  But it just doesn't work that way with people and relationships.

I've discussed before how one can't save anyone else from themselves.  People have to want to fix themselves. I'm not talking about saving anybody else though.  I'm talking about falling and falling hard, and not getting caught.

People are complex, and they don't always know what they want. I can shake my head and look at my studies and my dreams and say that's good enough.  But I can't look at a guy that I can't win over and tell him I'm going to keep chasing him until he gives in.  That's insane.  That's some psycho drama drugstore romantic novel bull crap. On a side note, when a guy is overly persistent it's cute and when a girl does it's desperate.  That's some double standard bull crap. But I digress.

When this guy told me that I'm never satisfied, I thought damn right. He wasn't talking about himself in that context, but he may as well have been. I always reach for the best thing, whether it's in my grasp or not. I just have to take a step back because he's not an option. 

The only option I have is to better myself and look for things and people that make me happy.  And he's never going to make me happy in the way I'd like.  I should move on to someone who will.

Lea Michele's 'Glee' character said "Being a part of something special makes you special."

What about starting something special?  Every time I come to halt in my studies, my future career, and my personal conflicts, I come back to the same place. I come back to writing.  It's my thing, my only thing.  I refer to myself as a jack of all trades. It's not untrue; I can be great at anything I learn. But it's my home turf.

My seventh grade English teacher changed my life. I'd known before I'd loved writing, but he introduced me to a world of style, structure, and feeling that I'd been tapping into unconsciously.  He helped me to try to master it.  He was so inspiring.  I led my friends to a two year long venture of creating our own compilations of writing. The second year we almost started a website. I loved doing it.  I loved editing, I loved writing my own stuff, and I loved directing my creatives.

When we gave him the first compilation, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Seeing my teacher moved by just the gesture, and how compelled he was by our work and use of words moved me.  I want to move everyone else and I know the best way how.

On Glee when Rachel Berry says her bit about being special in the pilot, and then again and again throughout the course of the show, all I can think of is our meetings in the taco place on Northern Boulevard collaborating.  And it is those memories and that aspiration to be amazing at in on a wide scale professional level that make everything I face in my life worth facing.  Because I know at the end of the day, nobody wants what they want more than I want to do what I was born to.

That gives me hope.

I can't even tell when my own smiles are fake anymore.

When I was in the eighth grade, I started having issues with my schoolwork.  I started handing in assignments late, not handing them in at all, and ditching test days.  I even just handed in a blank test with my name on it once.  My parents were very concerned.  How could this be? My average was previously in the high nineties and now it was just all of a sudden going to have a 12 point drop?

My mother called the dean, because he'd been my English teacher the previous and had a prominent impact on who I am. I could speak volumes about him but he's not really what this story is about. He told me that everyone goes through their phases during adolescence, and it was good I was getting mine out of the way early.  And then he said to me, "Never regret, only ambition."

I've lost faith in this a little bit this week.  I've lived my whole life living forward but now all I want to do is turn back time.  I'm making so many mistakes and so repeatedly.  I've strayed from the few philosophies I have.  I've caused harm to people other than myself, I haven't taken responsibility or action and I haven't moved to change any of the things that have happened or even to apologize.

I'm not mature.  I'm not an adult.  I'm a stupid kid.  Oh look, there I go messing with another philosophy.  I just made an excuse for myself. Not all of my problems are necessarily my fault, but isn't it my fault if there's nothing I can do to fix them?

Not that they are all so insolvable.  Just the root problems seem to be without solution.  The other problems are mere symptoms. They've been searching for the cure for AIDs for decades.

Her mirror is just as bad as her villain.

She's booking it.  She needs to be faster.  She has deadlines, she has things to do.  She's getting undressed.  She needs to find her robe.  She sees a flash of flesh.  Who is that?

That's the girl in the mirror. The girl is laughing.  Taunting every misshape, scar, freckle.  Every little piece of blubber hanging over, and every stretch mark lining them.  Every single piece of food she's ever had just bulging out of her. And that face, that damn face.  Little mutt blood mix, who could tell definitively what ethnicity she was? Almond eyes, triangle nose, caramel skin.  So many things wrong.  So much laughter.  So much taunting.

Now she's daunted.  She doesn't want to walk out the door.  She puts on her robe and grips the dresser like it's the only thing that's holding her to the ground.  She thinks about what she keeps in the top left drawer.  She needed something quick to hold her, but maybe that wasn't it.

Her father would think it cowardly and pathetic for her to do it.  But her father would also be taunting her and not just for her looks.

So she left the knife where it should stay.  But her heart was still aching.  She races down the stairs and slams the bathroom door, locking it. Throws herself in front of the toilet and kneels.  Doesn't even bother pushing her hair back.  It just needs to all come out of her.

All the mistakes, the things that were wrong with her, inside and out. Every time she let herself be talked down to. Every time she was cheated, every time she cheated someone. Every day she watched her brother slip further and further into melancholic stasis.  Every time her father poured a drink.

Every time he told her she wasn't good enough.  Not smart enough.  Not pretty enough.  Not thin enough.  Not understanding or quick. Not a good daughter. Not good enough to live with him.  Every time a boy reinforced what her father did and said.  Every time she was left, lied to, wronged, forced.

She wants to puke how much of a turd she was out of her.  She knows she is no good for the world.