measure of friendship
3/9/04

Well friends are funny. Jodi used to be my best friend and this year we drifted far apart, but somehow I still feel close to her. A lot of times we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, mostly superficial things like how she stereotypes people on the way they dress but she’s getting a lot less stubborn on that and I can deal with it, she’s still very naïve to the world and I was a lot like her once too. Well even though we don’t talk much any more unless it’s about something kind of stupid, when I found out that her grandmother had passed away today I couldn’t help but feel drawn to her as a friend again. I called her after school to see how she was and how she felt. She seemed ok, but she also seemed like she was trying to mask her emotions, I know this has taken a great toll on her and her family and I know she’s a really caring person deep down so I can’t help but feel like she’s not expressing her true self to me. That’s ok though maybe she doesn’t feel close enough to me anymore to express emotion around me or maybe she isn’t ready to talk about it, but I still feel happy I called her and hopefully it helped to show her that there are still people around that do care. I know when my grandmother died I couldn’t face the truth for years; she died when I was in 3rd grade and I didn’t come to terms with it until about 7th grade when I wrote a memoir about it and I also wrote a short story that was masked with me letting her go in the story. Death is a very stressful thing for anyone to experience even if they didn’t know the person that well so when someone close to you dies it is a horrible thing, although all I can offer her is my support and advice, she has to do the rest. I am trying to let people deal with their own problems and me just guide them and give them advice on what they should do. I used to care too much I guess you could say and I used to try and take on other people’s problems and would always fail at solving them, but now I can say it’s their problem and I am trying to remind myself they have to solve them and deal with them themselves, and no matter how much I want to help someone I can’t help them unless they want to be helped. So I’ve decided to lay back and let life happen as it will and try and make the best of whatever situations come my way.

Also today is my friend Gins’ birthday, happy birthday! Well now that that’s over I am pissed at him. I was talking to him the other day and we got in a fight. We get in a fight almost every single day but this day was much different. He said that all the fights we’ve had are because of me and that I am a horrible friend. He also said that I sue my problems and family for attention and I think because of them I am special and I’m not. He said I flaunt them around because I think the world owes me something and that I want people to pity me. Well everyone I’ve talked to says this isn’t the case, and I don’t think it is either. With the exception of this, I try to only open up to people with my feelings on things that are close to me because I don’t want them to throw them back in my face, kind of like he did. He really hurt me and I told him I wasn’t going to be his friend anymore. What he said is something unforgettable, I may someday forgive him for my sake, not his, but I will never forget what he said to me and how it made me feel. I am going over his house this Saturday to figure things out. Unfortunately I do miss him, but I have to do what’s good for me for once! I am going to have to think long and hard about how much our friendship means to me and how much I mean to myself and decide what I am going to do. People have said some pretty mean things to me in my life but I think that that was one of the most meaningful and painful things anyone has ever done. It is probably mostly because he was a close friend of mine. He makes me so MAD! Sometimes I think he’s more pain than he’s worth, and then when I think about it, if he’s worth something to me, then he’s worth my pain and suffering to keep him worth something to me, but it makes me wonder if he would go through all the things I went through in my life and then I said those things to him, if he would want to still be my friend. A lot of times people don’t put themselves in the other person’s shoes and it makes me upset because to truly understand someone and why they are the way they are then you have to almost become them and think the way they do. I’ve tried for many night to understand where he was coming from with what he said, but I can’t come to a solution of why. It pains me a lot to because I don’t like to tell people about my problems because I feel like I’m complaining too, and that night he made me feel like I was right with that. I don’t know ill have to do some self evaluations and friend evaluation and inform you on what my answer is.
~Ali

p.s. I normally wouldn’t broadcast my life online, but I do it for other people to help them with whatever they’re going thro, incase they can relate to anything I say in here, but it’s still hard.

choose your life
2/11/04 Why do people always assume things just because they don’t know them for sure? People are always assuming things in my life. I must admit that I fail when it comes to being a perfect angel in this department as well as the other guy, but I really have been trying not to do this as much. Today my aunt came in my room and yelled at me for being on the phone because she assumed I did none of my homework, this of course was not the case. She always amazes me, she can go have a total conniption, cry, hyper ventilate, scream until she’s red, stomp her feet around the house, whatever she can do to make noise, and then once she’s done saying whatever she has to say she’s completely fine and thinks she’s my friend again. Well I’m not fine and I’m not her friend! I don’t understand if you are really upset that you can just go back to being normal within seconds and not think anything of it. After she yells at me, I am still upset inside, but I wouldn’t dare tell her because God forbid if she’s wrong. She has been wrong many times, and every time she hints toward it, but blames me for something else, like today when she got mad at me for being on the phone she realized after I said that I had done my homework that she was wrong. She didn’t acknowledge the fact that she was until about 15 minutes later and all she said was “You know Ali, all you have to say is I did my homework and I wouldn’t have to get like this.” I responded to her, and I responded with the truth, I told her that I didn’t have the time with her assuming what I have and haven’t done and coming in my room yelling at me over nothing because she’s stressed out that Anissa lost her job. Sometimes I feel like I’m the most adult person in my house, like everyone in my life is 3 years old and has to depend on me for everything. I can’t solve everyone’s problems; this is something I’ve had to deal with in my life extensively. I used to have a lot of issues with this because I always would eat myself up about not being able to solve everything for everyone I know, but I know now that that’s ok and people can only solve their own problems. I think I am the way I am, and have a lot of my faults because of the way I was raised and the people I have encountered in my life. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of my faults are because of personal things too, but a lot of them are from the people I know and spend the most time with. I mean my family blames my mother for a lot of the things I have wrong with me, but that’s only the problems I have to deal with everyday, not the way I am as a person or my downfalls, that is their fault mostly. I mean all the imperfections are picked up from personal experience and the way you perceive other people’s actions. We learn the most from our families, and most of the time their faults become our own, it all has to do with monkey see-monkey do. We don’t just learn to act the way we do on our own we learn from watching other people and the way they act. Some of the biggest role models in our lives are our family and sometimes when we get in trouble for what we do it isn’t all on us, sometimes people should sit back and think that whatever that person did wrong, they probably do too, and they are probably the reason the person did it. It’s all part of conformity. No matter how much of an individual you think you are, everyone has something in common and that is for a reason. If you really think about it we really all are a lot alike…so then why is there still an issue of why can’t everyone get along? There is a simple answer to this question, because they don’t want to. Just like when people assume things it’s because they don’t want to hear what is real, they want to believe what they already do or what they want to outcome of the situation to be. Simply people don’t want to know, don’t want to listen, don’t want to learn, don’t want to relate or conform, and most of all they don’t want to love. The world is really very basic once you think about it; everyone is the way they are for a reason, and most of the time the reason is because of the people they are closest to. Whatever my faults are, there are those out there who have them too, and I just want to say I want to… ~Ali~

About me
2/25/04 Well it’s been a while since I wrote in here, but today I figured was a good day to summarize everything that has happened. It’s been really hard lately at home. My whole family sort of takes their problems out on me because they are used to me taking them on and me having the responsibility for them, but I’m getting tired of it. I need some time off, to work on me and catch up on how I feel. It seems funny to say that, catch up on how I feel, but I need to. Right now I am figuring out who I am and what I want to do with that. It’s a hard thing, finding out who you are, because you might not always like it, but there’s always the possibility of change, which I try and remind myself of everyday. My aunt and I don’t always see eye to eye on things, well lately it seems like never, but I know deep down she needs me so I stay around. Honestly sometimes I wonder that if all the people who cared about me didn’t care anymore, or disappeared to never existed, if I would still be here. I am not sure sometimes of my purpose in life, but I have been faced with many challenges and been given many chances to die or give up, but I am still here, so there must be some plan for me. Right now my life is full of ups and downs and I’m not quite ready for all of them and definitely not sure how to handle all of them, but I’m trying my best, and my best is all I have to offer. The world is a funny thing, there is really no such thing as a perfect day. For the past 2 weeks or so I haven’t been having that good of days, which has put me in kind of a depressed mood. I don’t like feeling this way, but today I thought this would all have stopped. Well today was a great day, at school anyway, I really thought that it would end my depressed streak, but then I came home. My aunt and I got into a fight, which I try and avoid at all cost, especially by staying out of her way, because most of the time that’s all I feel like I am in this world, in someone’s way. Well I talked about it to people, and my friend, Gins, told my boyfriend, Dan, about what had happened with my aunt, I’ll fill you in on Dan in a little while. I’m not sure if it was his idea to call, or if Gins initially forced him to, but he called me up when he found out I was upset. This meant a lot to me, at a time like this, it was a very good thing to be reminded of the ones who care for me. I told him about what was going on and how I’ve been feeling for the past while and he listened pretty well, I could tell he spaced out a little, or maybe just didn’t know what to say to me, but it made me feel good that he cared enough to call. It’s funny how things are, a simple phone call can turn a good day gone bad, back into a good one. Sometime I think that whether I have a good day or a bad day isn’t really up to what happens, but it’s up to me. I mean if you don’t let things bother you, or you think about them long enough, you can change how you feel about a bad situation and not let it bother you. From now on I am going to try and be more optimistic and not let other people bother me as much as I let them do now. As for Dan, I told you I would tell you about him. I haven’t told you much about him yet, nor any of my friends so I figure I’ll fill you in for future reference. Well Dan is my boyfriend, and just last Saturday, I told him I love him. It’s more like I’m in love with him at this point. I was extremely nervous. I was nervous about his reaction, because of course I wanted him to say it back, but I wasn’t sure if he would, or if he did, I would be ready for it. I was more scared of telling him though. Love isn’t about the reaction of the person you tell it to, it’s about telling them how you feel. I told him about my worries, and how I felt, and when I get really exited or afraid or happy, basically anything that is emotional, but to an extreme, I can’t breathe. I’m told it’s a side effect of being born addicted to drugs. Well I couldn’t breathe toward the end of telling him everything so I said I was going to get water, so I could get away and calm down, and hopefully breathe again, it worked. Although when I came back, he thought I was still gone, since I told him online, because I couldn’t wait any longer to tell him, so it took him a while before he responded. I got his friend to tell him to reply to me, and he finally did. I’m so happy, he loves me too!!! This immediately made my day much better, since I was stressing myself out all day about it. Well more like all week. See I figure out that I love people in an instant, even if I’ve loved them before, I don’t really realize it until one moment when it just clicks. On Monday we went to the movies with Leah, my best friend, and her boyfriend, Mike, Dan’s best friend, I know, how cute? Well anyway on the way home, me and Dan were sitting in the back, and he fell asleep in my arms, well more like on my shoulder, and I’m not sure if he actually got to sleep, but it’s close enough. It was at that moment that I wanted to say “I love you” to him, but I just thought it instead, I finally realized that I loved him, but this kind of freaked me out, because I didn’t want anything to happen to him or us, considering it seems like everyone I love I lose. I am living in today though, well trying to, and as of today I love him, and he loves me, and that’s good enough. We haven’t had that many chances to say it, but that’s okay. Love is a weird thing, it’s more like all emotions put into one, sadness, happiness, nervousness, fear, laughter, hope, worry, but when it’s all warped together at the same time, even when it feels horrible at times, it still is the best feeling in the world. Many people say that I am too young to be in love, and that it’s dangerous that I am. Well I think I’m old enough to make my own choices, and as Leah say’s, if I’m too young to love, then what about my family? It’s true though, we are taught to love our family, and we do, and understand it, or to love our friends, or pets, or ourselves even, and we are never too young, so why is this different? All I know is I’m in love with love and I never want to get over it, even if it pains me for the rest of my life, it’s better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved at all. ~Ali~

twisted life
2/10/04 Life is funny, how things work out I mean. My cousin was fired from work today; she was looking at it very negatively and was very upset, crying, as most people would be. When she was doing this though I found myself telling her that everything happens for a reason, so maybe in some fucked up way this is really a good thing. I mean she didn’t like that job and she really needs to get her act together, maybe this is god’s way, if there is a god, of making her slow down and think. Maybe this whole thing is just one big disaster that’s leading into a masterpiece. People say that there are no mistakes in art; they say that if you are truly a good artist all your mistakes are worked into a piece to make is truly original and eloquently beautiful. If this is true, and I’ve found it to be true from personal experience, then maybe in some twisted metaphoric way life is like art. Maybe there really are no mistakes, just mile stones that you have to mold into a path that creates a masterpiece, a life, full of problems and tears and loss, and full of solutions and smiles and love as well. This has shown to be true in my life too. With all the problems with my family, mostly including my mother, most people would ask how I am still standing today, still living, still yearning to take breath after breath so I can wake up the next morning. To them I simply say it’s not that bad. After all, we are all faced with problems, even if they are as small as “my shoes don’t match my pants,” or as big as “my dad killed himself when I was 3 years old,” 2 problems I have been faced with in my own life. I don’t believe that anyone is ever presented with a problem too big or one that they cannot overcome. After all the problems I have encountered in my life I have lived through them all and they have only made me a better person because of it. After living through so many losses in my life, I have learned to cherish the relationships I have with people as they last. Through my exposure to drug and alcohol abuse I know how to deal with people who are faced with problems involving it and it has made it easy for me to find no interest in trying anything like that. Dealing with a raging alcoholic has also made it easy to relate to a lot of people in problems they have with their parents. I do hate it when people make it out to seem worse than it is, like if they say my mom went on a rampage, or my mom is crazy, or I hate my dad he’s such a bastard. In reality the person loves their parents no matter what they did or they wouldn’t care about them and wouldn’t care enough to bring up whatever is bothering them about them. I must admit that a lot of the time I will fall into this trap too, like when I say I hate my mother, or I wish she was out of my life, or even that no one has seen crazy or heard yelling until they’ve met my aunt or my mother. It’s true when I say this I am thinking of things that most people don’t know about me, like all the nights I hid behind my dresser crying praying my mother wouldn’t find me, or how I still have nightmares about the fights she had between me or my brother or one of her boyfriends. It’s true that when my mother gets upset she does throw stuff at me or lock me in my room for like 2 days with no food, or one time tied me to the bath tub faucet and turned the water on and left me in there, which these punishments are out of the ordinary of course, but there are people worse off than me and I remind myself of that everyday. Most of these things she doesn’t even remember doing because she was so drunk or high at the time she didn’t even know what she was doing, but it still hurts. It seems weird to people when I say that I like my life and I don’t mind it too much. Obviously I have problems and they bother me but in the end I’m happy for them. Through the 14 years of my existence I have lost a grandmother to cancer, got taken from my mother because she loved drugs more than me, had a father who walked out on my family after I was born, and whom I’ve never met but only heard about, who actually is the cause of most of my problems since he got my mother into drugs. I have had a cousin who has relapses with mostly crack/cocaine, more often than she’d like, but I always am here for her to have a shoulder to cry on. I’ve had a friend kill himself, 2 cats die, a suicidal brother, a crazy aunt, a lot of confronting myself with who I am and being happy with myself, a lot of heart break and too many break ups with boyfriends and friends, but in the end I am grateful for it all. If it wasn’t for any of this then I wouldn’t have experienced as much wisdom as I have, I wouldn’t be as sarcastic as I am, I wouldn’t be as funny and be able to brush things off when people think badly of me. I wouldn’t be such a perfectionist, I wouldn’t care about people, I would never know how to love, I would never know how to cry, I wouldn’t be able to relate to people as well, I wouldn’t have as much knowledge, I wouldn’t like the same kind of music, I wouldn’t accept so many different kinds of people. I wouldn’t tell people I’m bisexual, I wouldn’t understand how people think as well, I wouldn’t look at all angles of problems, and basically I wouldn’t be me. I am pretty content with who I am right now, and I love it that way. If it wasn’t for all the bad stuff then there would be nothing to lead to the good stuff, and the good stuff sure wouldn’t feel as good when it came. Just for today, my glass is half full, and just for tomorrow I was to keep it that way. ~Ali~

chasing the wind??
2/9/04 Do you ever feel like you’re chasing the wind, like you’re faced with a task so impossible that it will take an eternity to finish it? Well I feel like that all the time and I’ve noticed through this that nothing is impossible and there are always ways of accomplishing things. Most of the time we forget in our stubborn minds that there are more than one way to approach issues. When we ask for a friend’s advice a lot of the time they will give you a lot of suggestions and you will disregard all but one, the one you’ve already tried. Sometimes your friends are right and sometimes you just have to look at the problem from someone else’s perspective. We always want to be right so we look at issues from one angle, the angle we think is right. But this is not always the case. Step away from your problems and look at them from a person who is not directly involved in the situation’s perspective. This way you can see where everyone in the problem falls and how they feel, and all possible explanations of why they act the way they do. Sometimes you have to sit back and think. Today stop for a second and stop trying to catch the wind, and if you sit long enough maybe someday the wind will catch you. “Dry tears” this is a phrase that I have become very familiar with over the years. Dry tears are what I call what happens when I cry, because when I do I don’t form tears anymore. It’s almost like I am afraid to cry. I know this is a problem and I know this is all because I am afraid to open up to people. When I do open up to people it means that I trust them and when I trust them I become very vulnerable to loving them. I hate to love people, if that makes any sense. I have grown a very strong disliking toward falling in love with new people because in my past I have learned that many of the things I love I lose. This is something I have a lot of trouble with. My mother, someone I love very much, is in and out of my life constantly and even when she is in my life she finds a way to make it seem as though I don’t really have her because she’s too busy doing drugs or caring about my brother or her new boyfriend or herself. She recently wrote a letter to my cousin taking to blame for everything she’s done. This was a shock to me because she never takes the blame for her actions. Unfortunately this will get my hopes up in thinking that she will change and as soon as I let myself fall back in love with her she will fuck up again and be out of my life. My brother was a very big part of my life growing up. He’s a really messed up kid but I love him anyway. I was the only thing that was really there for him when he was younger and he used to talk to me about everything going on in his life and how he wanted to escape. I didn’t realize it at the time but escaping for him meant escaping this world by killing himself. I didn’t fully realize this until I was about 9 and he started his first suicide attempts. Sometimes he didn’t even want to talk to me he would just hold me and cry, I didn’t even understand why or what he was crying about but I knew I had to be there for him so I would always try and help and I will always be there for him. I learned at an early age to care for people and the things they do. This is a problem for me now because I take on other peoples problems and try and solve them. Then when I realize that I can’t solve them I don’t know what to do with myself, I literally drive myself insane. When he was 16 he left to go live with my mother and ever since then he hasn’t really been around me. Now every time I begin to trust people I am afraid of falling in love with them because I think I will lose them too. I know this is irrational and deep down I know that people come and go in everyone’s life and I have to learn to deal with it but it’s hard. I know I shouldn’t be the way I am because it’s better to love and lose then to never have loved at all, but it’s so much easier just to never love anyone ever again. ~Ali~