Angst! Angst! Angst!
A day ago, I believed that I was no longer so suceptible to emotional volatility. That I was somehow in control of myself. That I was cool, and that teenage drama was over.
At the turn of the day, Friday, I was online, studying history amongst various chat distractions. I was actually going to go to sleep at around midnight, but Steff's presence and constant chatter kept me up.
I probably could've foreseen myself collapsing the way I have. Innate, continuous hypocrisy and continued conflict with each of my parents and my sister have had more effect on me than I realized ... or acknowledged. Declining grades and looming exams have placed upon me unconsciously a boatload of academic stress. Maintaining any sort of "image" is physically and morally draining. Inferiority continues to grow. I think about Steff all the time and restrict our conversations because I like the illusion of power. Our conversations suffer horribly. Irregular sleeping has its fair share. Just Thursday, I spilled my guts to an Asian sophomore bitch I don't even know.
Anyway, Friday morning, at 1:30a.m., I was chatting with Steff on irrelevant topics and vaguely perusing the history textbook, though I could long since have gone to sleep. Then she told me to go to sleep. After keeping me up this late. Typical of her: End the conversation on her own terms and don't leave me a chance to respond at all. Instead of sleeping, I ignored her until she signed off. After another half hour, I went to sleep. Well after 2:00. She makes me feel inferior. A ton.
I woke up at 6:20 with total giddiness about the day - typical of me on school days, which I much prefer to weekends. I told my mom and dad vaguely that I wouldn't be coming home for several hours after school. I changed into the black shirt and went to school many minutes later than I usually go. I still got to school on time, ignored Steff on my left, talked to others before heading to English.
At English, there was a quiz on which I did really poorly. Then abysmal class discussion with the typical repulsive faces. But even that acrimonious beginning to my day could not lower my general level of excitement.
Steege quiz I approached with much enthusiasm. Despite not knowing any answers, I felt good about it. Which counts.
Peer Tutoring at the Academic Support Center. Triumphant performance of the homework due Friday. Great atmosphere, complete with Lord of the Rings discussion.
Chem. I hate it, but I'm incapable of feeling good after bombing anything, and I did pretty miserably on the stuff Murphree handed back. My temprament fell during Chem, but it revived after class.
French was anticipation. Arnoldy's nerves were totally shot about Hope in Haiti, meaning minimal work. Meanwhile, I had sixth, seventh, and eighth free after French, meaning that I basically scribbled random phrases down in French to answer the questions.
Sixth I thought that Steff had free but apparently not. I spent the period playing Spades instead.
Seventh period, I remained in a good mood, selling raffle tickes for Hope in Haiti. I acted like a shameless whore, though it got me a pretty decent success/sales rate. Almost every single table had one or more buyers.
Then, Math Team. Like in Chem, I tried to maintain constant optimism, but continued failures depressed my mood. In particular, the judge incensed me. He was incapable of admitting the vagueness of his phrasing; he had a repulsive, condescending smile as he talked to me... and he was the final authority. No justice.
The ride home rejuvenated my spirits a little. I tried on the "New England Champions" T-shirt from math team, and I convinced Robert to go to Hope in Haiti later. Upon arriving at school, Anton, Robert, and I went down to McDonald's for dinner, catching a ride from Anandh's mom. Quality bonding time, really. A talk of games and fun, and then a return to school.
It was an area of high spirits and temperature. Once there, I found Andrew's table and took a seat until his band played. It was a class act. Then - in an effort to move away from Kevin Gaughan - Andrew, Robert, Nishanth and I went to the other room to play Spades. The game was actually pretty exciting. It was around this time that I noticed Steff in the other cafeteria. As I continued to play Spades, Wen, Ji, Sue and Nina all came around to our table to talk to Robert and me. Not Steff.
After several rounds, Andrew went back to play music. I followed to take a seat and watch, unknowingly attracting the attention of Gaughan. The song concluded, and I quickly went back to play Spades in the other room. Before we could play, however, Arnoldy sought us out to assist with Bingo. We put up numbers with great, almost unnatural gusto, running and screaming like little girls. My voice left me. Adrenaline flooded me unctontrollably. I was thoroughly unable to control the attention-whore inside of me, though I'd say the same for Andrew. During this time, Andrew asked me if my prom date was here. I told him yes and gestured with my head. Sort of embarrassing, really... since she evidently didn't want to be seen with me. Couldn't blame her, the way I was acting, especially when "24" was called and I sprinted into the cafeteria waving the number and yelling. She left eventually, something that both impacted me and relieved me. She was gone, but there was no possible further accusation of my ignoring her.
After some more games of Spades, I practically skipped home. My mom was already asleep and my sister was doing math. I signed onto Almeida None, the closed list. The one I use so that Steff doesn't know I'm online as often as I am. She actually was online when I got home, but I refrained from opening my list. I didn't want to talk about the evening, and how I'd had an awesome time without her, though it would've been better with her. I could almost feel the dismal response.
Nina IMed me a few minutes after I signed on about Patrick. Adrenaline not yet out of my system, I pounced on the topic excitedly. Mere minutes into the conversation, Nina switched the subject abruptly and started telling me to unblock Steff. She refused to go back to the ... better topic.
At around that time, Sue also signed on, telling me to unblock Steff. I would much have preferred that evening to talk about her rather than to her.
Then I had to shower. Nothing pisses me off like getting cut off from a conversation, not on my own terms. Even when I came back half an hour later, the messages told me to unblock Steff. Eventually, I put her on my closed list and talked to her. She told me that she hated having her intelligence mocked, and that she had nothing to say to me. Ironic that she should say that, since she's much smarter and harder-working than I am.
In the middle of another conversation and in the middle of trying to write a journal entry online, my dad started yelling at me to go to bed, demanding to know "what was so important" and disconnecting the internet. I told him it wast he only way I could communicate with my friends outside of school. He responded "not good enough". He asked me (rhetorically) if the school endorsed chatting at midnight, yelling at the top of his lungs for me not to raise my voice. As if I could possibly be heard over him if I didn't raise my voice - I could barely hear myself even when I did raise my voice. Regarding his question, now that I think about it, why the fuck cares about what my school thinks about chatting? The school is wrong all the time. The school hates kids who take all Honors/AP classes. It doesn't encourage kids to take Algebra I H in the seventh grade. They were dead wrong on both counts. So why should I care about what they think about chatting?
My dad wouldn't let me finish typing out my thoughts. He told me to wake up early tomorrow. It was early tomorrow - 12:30a.m. Hasn't he ever tried to preserve his thoughts after sleeping? Has he forgotten the impossibility of such a feat?
SD
Apr. 29, '06
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