2.21.04

You know what.....I don't ever truly feel like I'm out of depression.   Worldly depression, at least.   I still have joy in Jesus Christ and the peace that passes all understanding.   But then...why do I rarely feel that simple....good?

2.10.04 Goodness gracious, look at that huge gap between those dates!   Too long, man...I'm not even going to try to summarize the events of the past two weeks, nor am I going to try to remember all those little rant fodder thingies I've thought of over that time.   It's been all in all pretty good, though.   I guess.   Can't really remember all of it.   Most of it, actually.   It's all either in my bolt journal or my regular journal.   I've started writing longer entries in my nightly time with my regular journal lately.   I FINALLY broke free of my OCD with only writing on ONE page per night, even if that little limit meant writing all up in the margins.   So now I have, like, four page entries each night.   And of course, I must turn off the lights and write by candlelight.   If you're going to write, you must do it right.   Haha...that rhymed....wow, okay, yeah, I'm retarded.   Happy February 10th, everybody.

1.26.04

Haven't been able to write or update for awhile due to an unfortunate internet connection failure on my computer.   But I think it's good for at least long enough for me to write.

First things first.   Love sucks.   Don't fall into it, it'll only hurt you.   And another thing: Once a player, always a player.   They don't change. And if the specific one I'm talking about actually reads this (doubt it, seeing as he tries to repel anything that could be conceived as half-intelligent...) and recognizes that this is about him, you know what....I still don't take back a single word of it.   Not even the ones I said before.   Because I meant them all from the bottom of my heart at the time of saying them, and my present can't change my past....what's felt is felt and there's nothing [you] can do to change it.   But anyway.   This is starting to look like a common profile.   If you recall the entry when I was talking about the inevitable cycle that happens when one loves another, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say I've took the rebound yet again and have passed into the anger before the indifference.   *shrugs*   At least I know where I am.   Maybe that'll help the process along a bit.   So...I can move faster....into.....the next rebound.....*sob*

Maybe I ought to move on.   That's only the latest of the past few days.   I suppose if I'm going to be truthful to myself in this I have to explain the small group meeting that took place yesterday evening.   We do this thing called Life Stories, where we each take a turn, a few a week, and summarize our lives up until the present in order to better understand on another; we're all really close friends by now, but there's still things that even we don't know about each other.   Anyway, yesterday's meeting was my turn.   I didn't know where to start.   Well, I mean, I did all the conventional stuff...."I was born the day after Hurricane Hugo on September 23rd, 1989 in Columbia, South Carolina...then we moved...." yadda yadda yadda.   The blahs and the blehs.   We're encouraged to share three main aspects of our lives: the basic birth/family/location/school kind of stuff, the maturing and emotional aspect, and the spiritual aspect.   So I did the first easily -- nothing too personal about that.   The second part wasn't so easy.   I basically spilled my guts about the anorexia I went through in 7th grade and the first half or so of eighth grade.   I've been wanting to tell them about that for the longest time....I just wanted to see people's reactions!   I mean, you hear all these stories about girls slipping into anorexia and being hospitalized or at least noticed and helped out, but with me, no one noticed.   No one helped me out.   I had to do it on my own.   In retrospect, it may have been a good thing that no one seemed to notice or care, because if they had I would have been encouraged by my success at being dangerously skinny and thus pushed myself even further than I did.   But really now....I lost 40 pounds in three months.   I went from hyperactive to fatigued and lethargic.   I went from cheerful and optimistic to suicidal.   It's either a mark of how good I am at hiding my emotions or how little I mean to this world that no one said anything.   Even my parents denied it at my peak of starvation (300 calories a day and always striving for just a little less) when my friend complained of my lack of energy (I found this out later).   They simply would not admit that their daughter was killing herself slowly.   After the fact (waaaay after the fact...) I discovered that a few of my friends had been really concerned and did a lot of research on my behalf on anorexia, and that my youth group leader suspected that something was up.   But none of them said anything until a year or so after the fact, and not even then until I told them first.   I wonder....what if I HADN'T climbed my way out of that mess?   What if I HAD decided to cut those last few calories from my diet and lost the last few pounds that were keeping me alive?   Would they have passively let me die, then said at my funeral, "Gosh, I always thought there might have been something going on..."   Why didn't they say anything to me THEN?   Carpe diem!   *sigh*   Can't say that whole deal has done wonders for my self-esteem...not really...either way, though.   That took awhile, so I didn't have much time for the spiritual part of it.   I just told them briefly about the period of doubt pertaining to the existence of God that I had and still find myself struggling with, and next week I'm going to elaborate on that a bit more.   Don't know what to say, quite frankly.   Because, see, most of my reason for swaying back is based on feelings and how much better I feel knowing that I have at least one Being that will love me unconditionally, even when certain unamed parties won't.   And how can you explain feelings?   I'm going to bring my diaries and refer back to entries in which I wrote about my struggle.   The struggle was more against myself, though, than it was against God.   So I don't think it's going to be of much help.   I'll just pray that God will guide me.   I haven't prayed that in a very long time.

This is an extremely long entry, I know.   But I just want to summarize what my small group said when I opened up my heart to them (and I don't do that very often, because they're very talkative people, and I tend to yield more).   Catherine said that there must be reason why I go through things like these -- I seem to go through a lot of them...*AHEMvictoriaAHEM* -- and that I have consequently been made very wise.   I've never thought of myself as wise before.   Experienced, though, and I guess the two are almost interchangeable.   And there's not much else that they said, but I would like to say that I feel like everyone gets sick of my constant "deepness".   I mean, all these emotionally overwhelming things happen to me, but I can't help but think that it's not that I'm hit with so many things as much as it is that I'm the only one who doesn't suck it up and bear it.   I really hope it's not the latter.   I hate to think of myself as a whiner like that...Molly says I'm strong....whenever she says that, though, I hear a Rebecca St. James song running through the back of my head..."And I know they are wrong/when they say I am strong/as the darkness/covers me."   Because I think it's true.   I have so much more I want to say but I had better save some for another entry, I am thinking.   ;)

1.22.04

Aaaaaaaaaaa......found out that I'm failing art.   It's not entirely my fault, either.   Both my teacher and Ana have contributed to my spectacular failure.   Perhaps if I didn't have Ana hitting my elbow every 3 seconds asking if she did her picture right (have some self-confidence, girl!), or perhaps if my teacher would keep track of the projects I've turned in long enough to grade them....eh.   I guess it's not very mature of me to dwell on it.   But still!   Not only does this kill my GPA (and really, why close doors by failing art??), but also, I really and truly don't want to disappoint my dad.   He doesn't seem to understand that conscience part of me.   He thinks I hate him -- and sometimes I feel something close to it, but don't we feel that for everyone at some point....the truth is, I don't want to let him down!   Anyone, for that matter.   Everyone thinks I'm intelligent; I want to keep that image!   He asks, "What have I done to make you dread coming to me with bad news on your grades?"   Nothing, dad, you've done nothing.   Well, yes you have, but nothing directly.   I don't want to come to you with bad news on my grades because I don't want to let you down...I don't want to let you know that your big girl is anything less than perfect.   And I hate all the stereotypes adults have of teens: "Oh, she's only hiding her potential because she wants to fit in....it's not cool to be smart, you know..."   Holy crap, you people!   I couldn't care less about fitting in!   As long as I have a few good friends who I can be myself around (ironically enough, I was having these major bouts of depression today because I'm not outgoing and talkative enough....I mean, I don't have friends to talk to every time I turn around like a lot of people in my school....and usually I don't care, because this is me, and having to talk all day would stress the crap out of me anyway, but Amanda said something like, "I know all these people and you don't...." and then jokingly, "Go make some friends!"   Jokingly, yeah, I know.   But it's true.   She always tells me how quiet I am and shy around people I don't know, and those who I look up to, and I don't think she realizes how much of a touchy spot that is for me.....long story that goes way back, especially in seventh grade, and it almost killed me.   Literally.).   I honestly don't mind if I stand out.   In fact, I WANT to stand out.   Anyone who reads my bio should know.   I don't stand out, but I want to, so if being intelligent is the quiet chance I get, by god, I'll take it.   I really want to do better next quarter.   Even if it does mean sacrificing the little bit of sleep I've managed to preserve.

Let's see.....there's been a lot of bad things about today, but a few good....good thing, too, otherwise I may have had to jump out a third story window.   The first good thing was that I studied really hard for my Latin cumulative vocabulary test on all the words we've learned so far this year, chapters 18-30.   And I gots 100.   :)   Only one other girl got a 100.   Then before that we played a game where we basically stood up and went around the room translating vocab words and once you got one wrong you sat down and were out.   That other girl and I were the last two standing, and eventually he just gave up on trying to eliminate one of us and told us we won.   :)   Yay.   And then after school I went to a meeting with the Latin 4 teacher who basically explained what making the jump from Latin 2 to Latin 4 would require, and assured us that if we had been selected to be placed under consideration, she was sure that we would do fine.   I got a MASSIVE headache during the meeting.   I think it's from stress.   The same stress that causes me to dissolve into tears as soon as I can escape to my room each day now, perhaps.   Man, I don't know how people make it through this high school thing.   I've always been smart, I've always gotten good grades, I've never had to study before in my life.   Now, all of a sudden, I may have to study to get a B.   If I can just make it through with pretty good marks, though (my SAT scores should make up for at least some less-than-satisfactory grades....they're at about a 1200 now, and I have yet to take Geometry, Trigonometry, and Pre-Calculus...), I'll be out of high school soon enough and in college.   Praise the LORD.

1.21.04

One of my friends visited this site and told me that my journal seems nothing like how I am in person.   How I am in real life, some people put it.   But they are horribly, horribly mistaken -- how do they know that the online journal me isn't the real me?   Why do they assume that how I act in person is an accurate reflection of who I really am?   I guess the "real me" is seen as that quiet, polite, smart girl I mentioned before.   I remember in 6th grade Stephanie Huntsman told me that she could get mad at just about every person in the entire world, but she couldn't get mad at me.   Quite surprising, really...I mean, if only they knew what goes on in my HEAD!   All the little voices talking at once, trying to make sense of each other, telling me that I'm right and everyone else is wrong, telling me the absolute stupidest ideas on the entire face of the earth, trying to get me to believe them.   That last sentence made no sense whatsoever, which is a lot like how the inside of my head is.   In history I'm studying the character of Muhammad, the prophet for Islam, and I feel like I can relate to him really, really well.   He was basically this bipolar dillusional psycho who happened to be really smart and poetic.   That part I feel like I can relate to.   Then he thought that he was the divine messenger of God and was in communion with the angels, yadda yadda yadda -- that part I can't say that I'm feeling.   But see, the Quran (or Koran, whatever floats yer boat...) was a compilation of all these things that he said that were recorded and they make NO sense WHATSOEVER.   A random muddled mess of poetic phrases and incompleted philosophies, rounded off with a lucky moment of sanity here and there to hold the nonsense together.   Now, I'm not out to attack anyone's religion or Holy Book or whatnot, but really, it seems like a very risky thing to base your life on -- the whims of a lunatic.   When I read excerpts, though, I feel as though I'm looking at one of my freestyle poems, the style I was really into about a year ago.   Random deep-sounding phrases and once or twice in every rambling prose I would hit the deeper-meaning jackpot and actually have a line or two worth remembering.   But yeah, that's that.   I'm tired, and I have this nail that has been hurting all day and is killing me as I type this, and I'm feeling more or less elated because I have confirmed the fact that people can in fact stand my existence.   Pretty cool thing to realize.   :)

1.20.04

*grins*   I'm happy.   I don't want to ruin it by actually relaying any information, but I'm happy.   *grins again*

1.16.04

Revelations.   Revelations that my life is fantasy after fantasy, escape after escape.   Escape from the real world.   Fantasies of what I imagine it ought to be...yet things I do not know myself.   What kills me the most is that I know that there is no person on earth, not even myself-- especially not myself-- that could ever measure up to my ideas of what humanity should be.   It's just...I feel like we're satisfied with so little.   Little education, little ambition, little everything that does not bring immediate pleasure.   I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and did my customary Kristin-don't-flatter-yourself-by-thinking-you're-anything-special routine today.   Nothing new.   But something new happened; I broke down sobbing.   It wasn't because of my self-criticism-- god, I've been taking that from myself for years now, and after that amount of time you build of more or less of an immunity to your words.   No, it was the revelations.   I've been reading the book "Ender's Game" and it is.....really, really, really good.  I mean, I've cried while reading it, it's so good.   The main chracter, Ender, is this super-genius of a kid, and see.....I can't help but compare myself to him.   And I don't even BEGIN to measure up.   Not so much to Ender, because honestly, he's a fictional character.   (Although I ended up whispering to his picture on the cover of the book that I loved him...read the book, it'll make more sense why if you do.)   I was comparing myself and my pain to the pain of just about everyone else in the world, and it's absolutely nothing.   That kind of revelation hurts.   Which is something I've been doing a lot of in the past few days.

It's kind of sad how anything and everything deep is extremely discouraged nowadays.   I know one or two people who I can talk about deep, meaningful things with...when I bring up an issue like that with anyone else, they're just like, "Okay, yeah, whatever.   Sooo, back to fashion..."   I mean, these people are still my friends, but I have to say that annoys me to no end.   Many many thanks to the people who ARE willing to talk about those sorts of things.   You guys have saved my soul from exploding with loneliness.   :)

It's also kind of sad that when you tell your mother that you have mental instabilities, she laughs.   And says, "No child of mine could have that many problems."   And I know that everyone else laughs at the thought of me being insane, too.   But you know what....you guys don't know the half of it.   The quarter of it, even.   Primarily because anything deeper than epidermis level is shoved under the bed.

But throughout it all, my sister has always listened, and is the one person in this world who actually believes me.   And for that I thank her indefinitely.

1.14.04

I am so fucking gullible.   I simply cannot stand it.   You know what I did last night?   I went and comforted this person that I love so much to the best of my ability.   And he was ever so sweet about it.   And I was ever so happy about it.   And I was ever so stupid.   They say that people never change, but I didn't want to believe it!   And it's been proven to me time and time again, but that doesn't make it any better in my mind!   This person....I believe that there's pain in them that even they won't admit to, and whenever I see even a bit of it, all I want to do is tell them it's going to be alright, to kiss their tears away, to make everything better than it ever was before.   I get in these fits of compassion and I want to single-handedly free the world of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression (yeah, Prayers of the People....I'm sure everyone from my church recognized that...), and free this person of any and every form of pain they have and will ever have to endure.   But I have determined a cycle, an inevitable cycle that I cannot alter or waylay in any way, shape or form, that happens every single time I feel this way.   Anger, indifference, compassion, and rebound.   The anger comes first after a rebound; that feeling of betrayal that comes when one is betrayed.   Quite naturally.   Then comes indifference.   During anger, this period seems like it will NEVER come, but it always does.   Basically, it's when you either really don't care or you have convinced yourself so thoroughly that you don't care that it works and....you don't care.   Then, randomly, comes compassion.   I believe this comes because the event that originally resulted in anger has been sitting so long in the back of all the indifference, with only repeating itself over and over to be done, that eventually the subconscience moves to the conscience and you have a revelation of all the things you coulda-shoulda-woulda done and didn't, and the plausible reasons the other person may have had for their rebounding action.   So during this period of compassion, the compassionate person feels awful about themselves and does everything within their ability to help the person they care so deeply about.   They feel good about this.   Soon enough, however, the fact that people do not change kicks in and rebound occurs upon the compassionate person who has tried so hard to make up for all the crap they've pulled, thus triggering anger.   And the cycle goes on and on and on and on.   God, I don't envy this poor person.

1.13.04

I'm hurting.   Not physical pain....physical pain is nothing to how I'm hurting now.   It's a matter of the soul, the morals, the only things that keep our race of humanity in line.   And I see now; if everyone were like me, we'd all be bloody dead by now.   I have turned someone I love very dearly from me.   I have tried in vain to use time as an eraser for the selfish and wistful things I have done.   I have cried and blamed it on them.   All these because of my own selfishness, my own desperate longing to be....happy.   Like the new meaning of life for me.   To find this ever-elusive happiness.   And my mind is clever enough to fool even me....twisting my obvious and ever-blantant intentions at the core, whether involuntary or not, to fit the image of myself I have always struggled to live up to.   This quietly intelligent girl with a heart for others and a passion for learning, who takes all her struggles head-on, standing up.   This is the image I have been placed into, but I've found that it doesn't quite fit.   But eventually I was bound to catch on, sooner or later it was inevitable that I would see through these malicious yet wily tactics of mine.   And see through them I did, and pretty quickly at that.   But I absolutely refused to admit that these kinds of selfish tendencies....that they could be MINE.   Quietly intelligent girls with a heart for others and a passion for learning simply did not screw with other people's lives.   They waited their turn for the safe way in.   But despite the suit, the body is still perfectly capable of performing dastardly things to the best of its ability, and more often than not, it does.   And I did.   Using my slight powers of communicating in a way to manipulate things to work for me, using the external power of guilt.....pathetic.   I'm ashamed to think that I did.   But I did.   Probably still do, involuntarily, and that absolutely kills me!   I don't want to be this monster in a girl suit!   Because there is some truth to that image I've been placed with; those that I care for, I truly, truly care for.   I'm not very adept at recognizing these people that should be cared for, but when at last I do, they're in my heart for keeps.   But then I think back to all the things I've said, wringing sympathy and guilt with every deft twist of my words.   Rehearsed.   Refined.   They were mine, but hardly.   And now....I hate that.   Now I've lost.....something that I have never taken well.   And while outwardly it appears that surely I was in the right, surely what was given was well-deserved, inside I know truly what a bitch I can be.   And now this person I have so successfully turned away needs to be loved the most.   All I can do is love, I can't make them receive.   I realize that....please know that I realize that.   As much as I may struggle against it, as many words as I may use -- twist -- to make it not so, the truth is that when the final word is said it IS so, and then I will have lost.   Not only a person I care deeply about, but also that little part of my soul that says, "No matter what horrific things go on in the world around you, you can know that you, Kristin, are not among them."   But when I act as I do, speak as I do, use every ounce of control allowed to me as I do, that little part, the part that contains my last ounce of morality, that is lost.   And as I've often said.....rules work only up until the one breaking them is stronger than the one enforcing them.   When worst comes to worst, it is ultimately the strongest that wins, not the one that happens to be right, and the only thing to keep mankind from complete and total annhilation is that last ounce of morality.   If that is lost, we are all lost.

1.12.04

Goodness!   Long time, no write!   Well, long time, no update.   But this is a journal.   So I really don't have to update to write in it.   :)   So anyway, happy new year, may it be a really, really good one.   My new friend in the UK says it will be.   I didn't really make a new year's resolution this year.   I usually make a wistful laundry list of things I'd like to change about myself, then break the resolutions three days into the new year and end up spending the entire month of January morbidly depressed.   So I, like so many others as miserable at self-discipline as I am, have decided the depression is simply not worth it.   Besides, one of the resolutions I have made repeatedly is to be generally happier....mind as well get at least one of them, no?   :)

So let's see....what else has happened this year....several things, actually.   I found out that maybe I'm not so worthless afterall.   I also discovered that I am just as much the angsty teenager as the next....well.....angsty teenager.   Heh.   ;)   No, seriously, though.   My mood has been uppish more than downish, "and that's a big deal.....for me...."   Haha.   Too much Finding Nemo.   :)   I've started this book called Ender's Game, which is really really really good.   It's science fiction and I'm enjoying it, let's put it that way.   Must be BRILLIANT.   XD

I guess that's it for now, because I don't have much time to update on the weekdays.   Really.   Darn homework gods.   >.<

12.31.03

Another update for today.   That first one was originally 12/30/03, actually, but while I was typing the date, the date changed, so I decided to change my date as well.   Little bit of useless background info there.   :)   Anyway, I'm proud to say that a whopping 4 out of 6 of my links work.   I made the journal and poetry page late last night.   VERY late last night.   Finally finished coding the last poem at 3 am.   Heh.   But it's DONE!!   And now I feel inspired to go write even MORE poetry.   :P

It's somewhat sad how unenthusiastic my friends are about my whole web designing interest.   Well, some of them, anyway.   I was trying to tell Erin about it last night at the skating rink and she just gave me this weird look like "what a dork" and said, "Yeah, oookay..."   Meh.   Annoying.   On the other hand, I showed it to Mindi and she said it was really, really cool.   So it kinda evens out.   :)

12.31.03

This is, without a doubt, the coolest site I have ever made.   That's not actually saying all that much, really....but it's still looking pretty good compared to anything else I've ever made in my life.   Many, many thanks to Minnie and Ameenah because their sites were both really good inspirations.   Basically, they kicked my sites' butts....o_O   Forced me to learn how to use iframes and image maps, at least.   They don't look like much, I suppose, but it took me about three hours to complete my first image map and four to figure out and (more or less) perfect my iframes, so I'm kinda proud of them.   :)   I mean, finally, a somewhat less than blah layout.   Of course, there's still much, much, MUCH to be learned.   It just doesn't seem like HTML should be so hard to learn.   I mean, you're just copying a bunch of code, after all.   But...ack....it IS.   Nonetheless extremely satisfying.   :)

I guess since this is my journal I'll start it off with some journal-like things.   I spent most of the day working on this site, but I also went ice skating with my friend, Erin.   Found out that ice skating, unlike bike riding, is not a skill that is impossible to forget.   o_O   There was this group of teens there who were about our age....punks who tried way too hard....that was somewhat distracting.   Especially this one guy with a mowhawk and camoflauge cargo pants.   I mean, that's fine, I'm not one to downplay expressions of originality, but god did he look self-conscious.   If you wanna wear the clothes, fine, but if you're embarrassed, don't.   Pretty simple.   I dunno.   Just a little pet-peeve of mine.