Open Happiness

Won some concert tickets today. Discussed the possibility of having to put Blacky down. Got told by my parents that they wouldn't take me to the concert. Got offered a ride to the concert by a really cool girl who also wears a Keltie Colleen mantra cuff. It's been a day full of up's and down's and I'm still not able to end it because I have to finish a research paper. Days like this make it hard to be optimistic, but I can still manage it.

Karma.

Kyle and I won second place in NHD. We're going to Washington, D.C. in June. I dropped my phone in the toilet. I dropped my laptop on the ground. Neither works right now. I don't understand my karma. I never do anything mean (as far as I know), and I just don't see why this always happens. I'm incredibly frustrated, because no one's realizing that yes, my laptop is pretty much going to die soon, and it kind of is a big deal, seeing as I use it for everything, especially talking to my friends, since you know... I live in the middle of nowhere. I'm basically prepared to just waste my college money on a new one when this one does die. I didn't want to, but it'll probably be necessary. I hate how my fantastic and surprising day (we didn't expect to even make it into round 2, and we ended up qualifying for nationals) somehow turns sour. This always happens. No one understands how frustrating it is. I accomplish something I'm proud of, and it just gets completely buried with double the amount of negative things. I try so hard to remain positive, so I'm pretty sure a few moments of negativity aren't going to hurt. I know it's just a laptop and a phone, all material possessions that don't effect my real happiness. They'll effect my short term happiness, but overall, in a few years it won't matter. It's just frustrating that I'm never allowed to have a full day of being able to be proud of myself.

I'm talented at being normal, and I hate it. I'm talented at doing nothing, and I hate it. When I finally find something I can be talented at, I don't even get to enjoy it. Sometimes, I wonder why I never get to, and then I remember, I'm just not supposed to be talented at anything. No matter how hard I try not to live a normal life and make things interesting and fun, and try to find a talent, it's always just pushed away. It. Sucks.

I just need sleep.

Hate.

I was reading alexevans.net to get some ideas for cameras to look into saving up for/buying, and I found this, which he found from someone else. I thought it had a lot of meaning to it.

You can hate a person just by looking at her/him: the hair, the smile, the look, the clothes. Anything can trigger negative feelings. You just have to go with that flow and any proof that person is not horrible will have no influence on you.

I don’t know if we could say a good thing about every person we’ve met so far, maybe they haven’t impressed us in a positive way, but we can most certainly bitch about all of them. There must have been something to annoy us at one point. It’s only human! For every nice gesture and person who smiled thanks to you, there is an unhappy person, someone who feels neglected or discriminated against.

It’s human to be annoyed, but above that, I think it’s human to be hatable (being available for hate).

We are hatable with every gesture, every choice we make and tear we drop. Because all these are movements on a map filled with people and, inevitably, when we go one way we get closer to some and estrange from others. We are, in essence, controversial.

Some are more controversial than others, true. It depends on how far we move from the center of the map or, in other words, how extremist we are. And how much we show of our personality we show to others. But still, we are always lovable to some and hatable to others.

That’s the breakthrough. We’re both good and evil, pleasant and repulsive, smart and stupid. It only depends on where we’re standing when we’re judging. There is no black and white. And that’s why the big picture is important: we need to see the balance between the smiles and the tears someone provokes. And the reasons. The intentions. The more information we have, the better we see the tone of gray.

Anyway, we are hatable. That’s our most human trait. Every person stands for the things another one hates. That’s life.

And that's my blog entry for today.

Guilt.

I feel guilty when I shouldn't have to. Maybe there is a small reason for me to feel guilty, but I shouldn't even feel as guilty as I do. It's just who I am. I'm too shy and timid to stand up for myself, and when I try, I fail miserably. I just try to avoid problems, and it just makes more. But, I don't really see how I can change that, so I guess I can deal with the guilt until things level out a bit. I'm still happy though, probably happiest I've been all year. Well, except for my grades. Thaaaat's a different story. Haha.

Kirsten has prom this weekend. I want her to spend the night! And I need to buy a dress for her sweet sixteen. I want one, just because I don't really like spending my birthday alone, or without anyone even calling. I think it'll be different this year. I've got a handful of friends I wouldn't trade for the world.

My teddy is my favorite pillow. I can't sleep without him as my pillow anymore! He just makes me feel better.

Cupcakes.

I'm a huge fan of cupcakes, I'm going to admit, but I prefer to eat them, not find more than a dozen of them thrown up and down our driveway and at our cars. Especially when they're frosted. I find it baffling and hilarious that someone took the time to either buy or make cupcakes, drive to our house (which is in the middle of nowhere), turn off their car/lights so my dad wouldn't notice, and chuck the cupcakes at our house. I just don't understand it. We're all baffled, and none of us really know why someone would want to cupcake our house. I would understand throwing eggs, but... cupcakes? I think what's worse is I have small concerns that it might even have been done by "friends" of mine, who know just how anal my dad is about these things. Whoever did it, I think they should've thought more about the poor cupcakes they had thrown. I bet they were good.

Aside from that, I was out both Saturday and Sunday night with my friends, and although I don't want to be out every night, it's something I look forward to doing more often. I'm sad I missed out on at least one day of my weekend to sit around and do nothing, but that's what spring break will be for. One whole week of laziness. I think I deserve it, especially after the stress of finding out I was failing two classes and that I had to make up way too many tests, and way too many quizes. At least I'm feeling better now, and I got over my two or three days of being way too incredibly unhappy. I just needed to remember to breathe, that's all.

I'm happy that it's raining right now, and I hope that after I take my shower, it'll be raining when I go to sleep. It's one of my favorite sounds to fall asleep to.

Weakness.

When you pick up your phone and scroll through your contacts and can't find a single person you can call and cry to and tell all your problems to, that's when you realize that things really suck. I've never had a friend that I could call crying and tell them everything that's wrong with me. All of my other girl friends tell me that they called so-and-so when they needed help, but I don't have someone to call. Keeping in all of my problems and never bothering anybody with the most important ones ("I'm tired" is one I'll happily give out whenever I have a problem with not getting enough sleep) really can't be healthy. There ARE probably people I could call, but I'm afraid to call them, and I wouldn't even know what to say. I only know I'll never feel comfortable confiding in my mother and sister, seeing as they never are much of a help when I need them. I finally started telling them things, and all my mom can do is shrug and say nothing else, and Lisa. Well, Lisa just never ends up making me feel better about myself as a person, and I always feel like the villain, even though I know I'm the victim.

Real life (school AND friends) is kicking my butt right now, and I don't want to deal with it, but I know I have to. I need to concentrate on NOT failing this quarter of math, because there's no reason for me to be failing other than laziness. I'm just being lazy, that's all.

I also really need to learn to stand up to the people who don't deserve to be in my life, who aren't making it too easy for me. I'm just afraid of making people angry, and I have a problem with putting others before myself. If they're happy, than I'm happy. I hate being attacked by them, making them angry, being pressured by them. But I'm too weak and self-conscious to do anything about it, so I let it happen. I'm hoping next year will be a bit different, and that maybe I'll have the strength to stand up to them. It just gets old, being pushed around and taken for granted by so many people. I know I'm not a strong person, and I've never tried to tell anyone I was. I only know that I need to learn to put myself first in certain situations, and to concentrate on not keeping all of my problems to myself.

I'm not a strong person, but I want to be.

i've never been so overwhelmed.

Coming to Germany has been a brand new experience for me. I thought I was pretty good at German, but once we arrived at my grandparent's house and my ENTIRE family was waiting there for breakfast, I realized I knew barely anything. I don't really understand much, and when I do, I only catch a few words and phrases and I try to piece them together to make sense of it. When I understand a question someone asks me, I try not to use that many words. It's very overwhelming, and when they're making fun of me for not understanding (I can understand when people tease me better than I can understand meaningful stories, for whatever reason), it can get a little tough, but I'm determined to make it through these two weeks and come out of it having learned something.

This little village is my dream town. All the family is in the village, or the village next to it, and even in this cold weather, people opt to walk or ride their bikes. Even though there's always cars driving, even in the middle of the night, they still don't use their cars to go everywhere. I wish I had the choice to walk or take the bus or ride my bike everywhere, especially if it was just to go down the road, take a right, and head right into the bakery. I'm very jealous of how my cousins get to live their lives.

My grandmother is super endearing. She's only learned a few English words and phrases ("fine" and "I love you"), but she always uses them at the right moments. She had red hair like mine when I was her age, and she understands the "chic" fashion that all the "hip" people wear. When I bought a leather jacket from H&M, she wouldn't stop talking about how "cool" it was. I don't want to leave her, or her fantastic cooking.

And of course, I love my grandfather to bits and pieces. He speaks the dialect, so I hardly understand him at all, so I just smile and nod and try to understand. When I saw him at the airport and hugged him, I cried. It was embarssing, but I couldn't help myself. I missed him a lot, as if that wasn't obvious enough. I wish I could speak better German so we can actually hold a conversation.

Overall, I'm not excited to leave. I'm super content here, and I like not having to worry about everyone back home. All I need is my cats here, and I'll be good to go.