Letter to Me, Non- Spoiler Edition

Hey Kid,

So it’s your senior year. You are finally the mascot. You have no idea how much that one little thing will change our life. You are involved in everything. And you’ll be shocked when you get to college that none of it really mattered. Cross country never really was your strong suit, but from that you acquired a ridiculous amount of heart that you are going to use later. When you randomly picked up yearbook and newspaper, you found your calling. Yeah sure, you’ll switch your major almost half a dozen times, but ultimately, you’ll go back to what you love.

You are going to go to college out-of-state. Where, will totally surprise you, but keep your expectations low, and your humility high. You will get a scholarship that will push you. It won’t break you. Don’t let it break your spirit. Be kind in everything, and try to get along with everyone no matter how unimportant you may think they are. They could become a huge part of your life.

And some of those people do. Is it unexpected? Sure, but you’ll learn that life is really unexpected. You think that right now you want to get out of this crappy place and everything will be rainbows and butterflies. You know what the words to that song truly are. It’s not always rainbows and butterflies; it’s compromise that moves us along.

So stay loyal to your friends here. They won’t be here forever.  You might fight because they date the wrong boy or girl, but I promise they will come running back to you when that person breaks their heart so stay kind. Share your crazy times at college with them. Invite them over. Go dancing. Go to restaurants and just chat. Just make sure you keep in touch or your summers and your weekends home are going to be really sad and empty.

Naturally, you are bound to feel that way in college too. As much as your parents annoy you, they really do love you. After your first boyfriend, you will understand just how many people love you. It will be difficult and beautiful all in the same breath. You’ll date again. And every single one of them will treat you better than he did.

Right now you are thinking that you will find the boy, or friends, of your dreams in a second. You think you know who you are right now. When you are tossed into a crazy mess of people you want to question that, you will be right back to square one. You lose yourself. You start living for other people. You were too busy trying to prove people wrong that you lost your happiness in the process. So quit the sorority, and don’t worry about making friends. Yes, it is still going to be hard, really really really hard. But you won’t miss it.  

That is because God has His hand on you in a huge way. You are going to stop going to church for a little bit because your friends tell you that is the cool thing to do. Then you’ll go again and get frustrated with religion. Then you will have the most difficult year of your life. You thought high school was bad, but now you don’t have your mom around the corner to give you a hug and kiss when people betray you and boys ruin your reputation.

It’ll happen for sure. You’ll get into messes that leave you with scars. But soon after you’ll meet people that turn your college experience around. They are loving and kind and wonderful. And you won’t even realize how big of a part of your life they are becoming. Lean on those people. They truly want what is best for you. In the end, it really does work out for the better.

Seriously, that year and all the horrible rotten things that happened shape you into who you are today. You back into church and you actually follow God. You are in your Bible sometimes. You want to know what He is saying in your life. God will speak through other people to you. Don’t neglect Him when that happens. Don’t run out of fear. He will bring you through a crazy dark place and put you in a wonderful one. And you had to go through that to trust Him, to see that He is enough, that He is all.

Never forget how beautiful you are, even without makeup or your hair done. If other people can’t see that, then don’t waste your time with them. Focus more on who you are than who or what you are wearing. Look at the inside of people. Get to know their dreams and aspirations. Find a friend that you can tell all of your secrets to. You will. So don’t give up. 

Life is messy. School is pretty easy. Don’t be bitter. Things will work out, just trust in the Lord. You make mistakes, but the right people will look beyond that. Love yourself and do things even if no one else wants to do them with you. Live a life that you will be proud of. And never, ever, ever give up.

Love your future self
Summit High School
Class of 2010

So maybe it's cliche: a poem

so maybe it’s cliche.
maybe it’s grand design. 
maybe there are a lot of things 
that don’t make sense any
way they’re sliced.
maybe I won’t know it now,

But maybe I’ll know it then.
That standing by yourself
content, is better than 
standing next to a questionable him.
I know that for a fact right now,
even though I don’t want to 
face it. I just roll the windows down,
enjoy my freedom, and make 
sure not to abuse it.

Because I’ve been a sinner
and a saint, but I but confess:
the best times of all I was
just enjoying life, but I digress.
Now I’m just going to
keep on keeping on. My life is not
a game of chess. 

I should not be anyone’s pawn.
I don’t need to be, I don’t want to be,
I’ve learned as life’s gone on. 
I thought I did in not so many words,
but as it turns out I’ve proven myself wrong.

So here’s to being a free-spirit
to any matter life throws my way.
I’ll catch and I’ll toss it back, 
and weave my path just
for my living today.

How I Pick Books

           Whenever I read books, I always like to get them from the library. I absolutely hate buying books. Sure, bookstores smell cool and all, and I feel eccentric and adventurous whenever I am in one, but I am super cheap. I like to conserve money where and whenever I can.

             Also, when I was really little, my mother would take us to the library once or twice a month and we would get French Fries from the little fast food joint across the street.  And from time to time, I would find nice little inspirational notes written from other readers in my library books which would make me so happy. These two occurrences have always helped me associate reading in a positive manner. 

             So I like libraries. And if there is one thing you should know about me, it is that I head to the Teen Section the minute I get in there. I like reading YA books. Since I grew up in an ultra-conservative household, I have always been graphic language, violence, gore, and sexual content adverse. Even though I am now into my twenties, I still read the books with the neon green TEEN sticker on the binding. And if I ever decide to become an author, or attempt to, I will probably stick to that genre. 

             After I am in the teen section, I pick a part of the wall to look at for the day. It might be authors with the name Da- Gr. Some days I pick bindings that look really awesome. Other days when I am feeling more adventurous, I pick books with ugly bindings, with the ugliest of covers. And I don't read what it is about. That is one of my biggest rules. 

              When I pick up a book that looks interesting or boring, depending on my mood, I will flip a couple of pages in and look for the page that says Text copyright with a date and the author's name. Most of the time, there will be a summary of the book followed by the categories that it would be put in. I've found that most of my favorite books are in the Interpersonal Relationship category.

              But I don't stick to just one category! Most of the time, I like to read romantic books, but I am not afraid of other genres. I have found that I like First Person or Third Person Omniscient books over all of the other kinds. And in my Professional Writing class, I learned that most people dislike those the most (so strange)! 

              If the summary or the categories sound interesting, I get the book. If not, I keep looking. But I never read the book jacket. I'm one of those people that if I know the general plot, I can predict the ending. So I really love the whole "going-in-blind" thing. It makes the book so much more enjoyable to me. There are very few times that I will stop reading a book that I have found with this method.

             Usually it is because the character is too crass, mouthy, or unintelligent for me to keep reading about their life. If they are unlikable, I will stop reading too. Most of the time, I power through and hope that I will be a better reader and writer at the end of the book. 

            And that's the method to my madness of how I pick the books I read.

   

            

Book Review: Rules- Cynthia Lord

             Rules by Cynthia Lord is an easy 200 page read that I finished within 2-3 hours. The front cover boasts a Newberry Honor as well as a Schneider Family Book Award. In some other lifetime, I would probably recall what those meant. However, I saw those as indicators that this book wouldn't be too terrible. And it wasn't terrible at all.

              For starters, Rules is about Catherine, a 12 year old girl's life with her autistic younger brother. It is a great look into how the friends and family members of special needs individuals deal with their own lives. She loves her brother, but throughout the book there is a constant desire for her to feel like every other person with "normal" siblings.

             On every Tuesday and Thursday, she goes with her mom and brother to his Occupational Therapy appointments because she likes to have time with her mother without her brother's interruption. While there, she meets Jason and they become friends. She tries to find out who she is, how she fits in with her family and the world.

              This book would be absolutely wonderful for people who feel like they are overshadowed by a sibling for any reason. Although hers was more of a burden, I think kids with over-achieving siblings could also relate. Younger children who are just getting into chapter books would enjoy this book as well. However, there is not much depth to the characters to teens over the age of 13-14 might get bored quickly.

              All in all, Rules is a great book for beginning readers. As a parent of a child with autism, she conveys Catherine's frustration with the brother in a way that still makes the character likable to the reader. It would be a recommended read for 2nd- 5th graders!

Wait, what?

Last night, I was cruising through tumblr.com. It is a blogosphere where people post videos, pictures, poetry, prose, GIFs, sound bites, and other miscellaneous things. While usually for fun, sometimes it is a platform for human rights, particularly gay rights, or current events and users reactions to it. But yesterday, something was different about what I saw on my dashboard (,which is kind of  like a person's personal homepage on tumblr).
          I saw a sound player with captions about how what people heard from the sound player was not real. So of course my curiosity was peaked and I had to listen to whatever sound  bite these people were talking about. I expected something really cool, or something the people of tumblr thought was really cool. Perhaps a mashup from the boys of One Direction or a song from quotes by Regina George would be what I would hear.
          It was not. Instead, at first I heard nothing which made me think that I hadn't pushed play. Then right as i was about to try again, I heard a voice say,"This is 9-1-1. What is your emergency?" And the rest of the twenty minute sound bite was a real call to 911 from a seventeen year old boy that had just killed his mother and his sister 30 minutes prior.
          Wait, what?           That was my first reaction. But the boy was so calm about everything. And the 911 operator was as well. If someone had called me about killing someone, I would probably not have handled the whole situation as eloquently as she did. The entire time, the boy kind of tried to explain that he had been thinking about killing - anyone, really- for a while now and he just wanted his mom and sister to be in as little pain as possible as they were dying.
          And the 911 operator sounded so understanding the whole time. She empathized with the boy. She assured him that everything would be okay, that he would find the help he needed. Even when the boy talked about how messed up he was going to be.
         Wait, what?
         I thought again. He had two more sisters and a father that were on away. They were going to have to get phone calls in the middle of the night saying that his son, their brother, had killed two members of their family. The grandparents who lived across the street had to hear the same news. Yet, all he could think about was how this was going to mess him up.
         Throughout the whole conversation, I don't think that he truly understood the weight of what he had just done carried. He said that he didn't like the feeling of knowing he had just killed people. The fact that they were dead didn't seem to bother him, but that he had killed him. Through the whole thing, he seemed selfish, but not a monster. Listening to the tape, I felt almost sorry for him. It wasn't that he lived in a super abusive home, or it didn't sound that way. The way he described his home life was that his family was just rude to each other, and he didn't like that. He said that was why he killed them.
         But there was no anger in his voice. There was no sadness. It was so so strange. For the family, I don't even know what I would feel. If my brother had done something like this, I would just be sad. But I don't know all of the details around the situation, so can't say what it would be like for his family. All I know is that this going to be a very difficult time, for the family and the boy. And all I can say is that I want to keep them in my prayers.