Spider's Web

I guess I'm not the only person who loses sanity every summer.

The other night I walked to the park at three in the morning; the swing was a spaceship that took me almost to the moon and then pulled me back down to earth.

I need to write. Even just a poem would be better than nothing, but I can't seem to find the inspiration. Or I can, but it's all over the place, undirected. I only have fragments that fail to coalesce into anything greater.
That's my life: undirected, unfocused, not knowing where I'm heading or why. Not knowing if I believe in anything anymore. I'm tired of life and I haven't even lived yet; I'm disillusioned with things I've never seen.

I feel like I should update about prom, even though it's a little after the fact. We were little kids dressed up all pretty and it was funny watching everyone in ball gowns dancing to trashy hip hop. There were some good people there and after a while we got fed up and left. After that is a bit of a blur; we went to Chris' house and I got so drunk, and it was fun until I was sick. A little sad, or at least anticlimactic, that the culmination of four years of my life was spent over a garbage can in Paul's basement. That's how I'll be remembered. I guess if I really cared I wouldn't have drank.

'Is e=mc2 a sexed equation?...Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest...' [Luce Irigaray, Le sujet de la science est-il sexue?]

Haha, funny joke, right? Nope, apparently this is actually serious. While trying to verify whether or not this was a hoax, I discovered that, even if not, it is still not the Stupidest Thing Ever Written. The Stupidest Thing is by this same feminist, who argues that, in a nutshell, physics is sexist becasue it deals with the mechanics of solid bodies, as opposed to fluids. Why is this sexist? Becasue men get hard, and women don't. Wow.

I want so badly to understand people. Everyone I've met is piece to a puzzle, or an element that alone is inert, but when combined with others, creates a reaction that is unpredictable and epic in scale. We all see different faces of the same reality. Perhaps through combining these separate realities, one could find somethings that is universal and true.
The problem with understanding people is that it is impossible. I've always had this crazy desire to get inside someone else's head for a day, to see how they think and how they perceive things. But as it is, all I have to work with is the image that people put forward, and from that I have to extrapolate the rest. Then, there's nothing stopping me from my delusions.
Sometimes, when my life seems useless, it helps to put myself in context. I like to see myself as part of something larger: of humanity, of the universe, of anything. Yet these things exist for me only as ideas rather than direct experience, so in some paradoxical way, I am retreating further into my own head while I try to come out of it.
All my life, I've been living in my head, and it gets lonely. When I was a child I talked to God, like some kids have an imaginary friend. Ever since I gave up on religion a few years ago, I've continued to search for meaning. At times it reaches the point of obsession, and all I've found is this feeling of absurdity. Maybe it's just a big joke.

I feel my last entry needs some explanation. I can see how it could easily be interpreted as "I dont care about hurting Mike, I'm happy, I'm not shallow, blah blah blah." Frankly I'm a failed emo kid. I can only write in this journal when I have unusual bouts of happiness or excitement. That doesn't mean I never feel like shit, just that I tend to keep it to myself. Honestly, I do care. But I'm not apologizing either, because going out with him longer would have only hurt him more. I don't see how his feelings could have possibly been more than infatuation. Mine weren't. For me it takes time to develop an attachment to someone that other people seem to make in a single glance.
Sometimes I think having to hurt people must be harder than being hurt, because simple self-pity is pretty easy. Knowing you're the cause of someone else's sadness, and at the same time being powerless to do anything about it, is hard. But then I've never really been hurt that badly by anyone, so who am I to say? I admit I have hurt a lot of people and done a lot of stupid things. I am stupid, impulsive, and socially awkward, but I'm not alone. Life's like that. Most high school relationships are just a big, steaming pile of bullshit anyways.
Finally, I'm not impressed with certain people who feel the need to criticize me without properly understanding the situation. You can say whatever you want; just don't expect me to give a fuck.

Man, liking people is horrible. I can't seem to concentrate on anything else. I'm obsessed. It's weird, becasue I never get like this. I used to be overly withdrawn and isolated, which sucked, but now I've gone too far in the opposite direction. So much of my life has been about trying to find the happy mediums.
I feel like something inside me just clicked, and all of a sudden, the things that used to make me unhappy no longer matter. It's good, I guess, but on the other hand I feel guilty for not caring about everything I used to care about. I'm afraid of getting too caught up in myself and the few people around me, and no longer being able to see the larger picture.
I need to be an explorer, constantly searching for new frontiers. I need to experience every part of the world: the beautiful, the frightening and the dismal. I think I see things like an artist, finding beauty in the strangest places. After all, i've realized that appearences often only hide the truth.

Last night we snuck into a top-secret cement factory. Or I imagine it was top-secret becasue of all the barbed wire around it. I love pointless adventures. I also love life, despite all its flaws. I've decided there's no point in not being happy. I guess there's not much more to say. I quit my job. I've had a few late-night conversations with people I love. There are very few people I love, but there are some.

Someone from university of Ottawa just called, and she was like "do you have any questions about your admission" and I was like "what? I got admitted?" And she was like "yeah, and you have a two thousand dollar scolarship." Wow. Gotta like how I read my mail. Anyways, I still want to wait and find out whether I get accepted to Carleton, but right now my plan is to go to Ottawa for this international studies and modern languages program, find out how I'm going to save the world, and then do journalism as a masters degree if I still want to. I'm going to get out of this house and this city!! My life has a purpose!! yeah!

So I was supposed to write an essay for economics. For some reason, I was in the bathroom or something when the teacher was explaining it, so I came in afterwards and copied down what was on the board, which was something about the environment, assuming thats what the essay was about. So I was almost finished writing this beautiful, well-thought out essay about the environment around midnight, when someone tells me its supposed to be about sweatshops. Oh, and he gave us articles, which I never got. Excellent. Now, normally, I'd care about sweatshops; I might even enjoy researching it and whatnot. At this point, I do not care. I am surprised at how much I do not care. Wow. I care more about the fact that I'm going to lose marks for something this stupid, and about the fact that things like this seem to happen to me so often.
Maybe my parents are right. Maybe I am hopelessly irresponsable and destined to fail at life, despite the fact that I somehow manage to keep a high-80s average and a job. I woke up this morning to my mom giving me shit about how I was home a little bit after eleven last night. Im surprised at how typical I've become, with all these arguments with my parents. It's almost as if I want to be stupid, just so they can feel like they failed. That's a little harsh. Maybe I'm cruel, because I know I can hurt them more than they can ever hurt me. To me, happieness is a state of mind. You can't buy it, you can't win it, no one else can find it for you. So all these fuckers who think they know what's best for me can get lost. Maybe that's a little harsh, too. I guess I just don't like the thought that someone can care about me more than I care about myself.
Now I'm just writing another stupid emo rant, like the millions of other bored suburban teenagers just like me. I wish I could find a cause worth fighting for, or at least worth writing about. I feel like a wasted person.

This weekend, I went to Chris Ransome's cottage (please don't get the wrong idea) with Robynn and Mike Ting and some other kids. It was really fun. They had this sauna, and because there was no heating in our cabin we decided to get all cold, then sit in there for two hours (we were later told that you weren't supposed to stay in for more than twenty minutes, but whatever). Anyways, that was hot in more ways than one. Mike is really gorgeous, I have to admit, but I was reluctant to let things go too far. For one thing, being at Chris' cottage and all (he wasn't in the sauna, by the way), and knowing his feelings towards me, I figured getting too romantically involved with anyone would be an asshole thing to do. After all, i care about Chris as a friend, and on top of that I've been told that Mike isn't looking for commitment anyways, so that's probably going nowhere. It's a shame. He really is sexy. Lately I've been wondering why it is that I'm a natural failure at relationships. Invariably, something always feels wrong to me, like I've become someone's property. But I'm sick of being so cynical about it, because that's such a lonely way to be. I look at people who have been going out for ages, and I want what they have. I want to get past that awkward beginning stage and be able to open up to someone. I just need to get past my stupid ideals, and find a real person instead.

Back to this weekend. Chris' parents are really nice people. They had snowball fights with us and stuff. Surprisingly, we stayed almost completely sober (most of the time) and it was almost better that way. I just wish I could be more social. I've realized that alcohol gives me the social skills that I normally lack; even if I'm saying ridiculous things, I'm still saying something. Other than that, though, it really is overrated.

Every time I go up north, I lose myself in the stars. They are amazingly beautiful, and make me amazingly small. We walked out over the frozen lake, covered in a low fog, and just gazed up at infinity. I am a starry-eyed lunatic.