So...it's been a month, nearly. I don't know. I just haven't felt like posting much since Jimmy's death. That still hasn't hit me properly and I know it won't forever. It just feels so unreal. My thoughts on death are strange. I never know how to get my mind around it. The fact that people can just be here and then be gone...I don't know. It will never make sense to me.

I don't know what to say, honestly. I'm just ready to get out of here. And I'm really hoping that I can get the hell out when I plan to. Wish me luck. I'll need it. Read More

Although I'm hard-pressed to back from a fight,
you'd think that this would end soon,
but it's taking it's time.
Confusion, it is such an all time bad written melody;
of course you'd sing.

There are so many things I want to do and see, and I am scared, but I am ready. You know? I'm ready. I'm ready to get out of here, and I'm ready to do fight to do these things and live vicariously through the artists who created my fantasy worlds. I'm ready, I swear to God, I'm ready.

I need to hear Big Ben chime.
I need to see statues and structures.
I need to run through Venice.
I need to climb the Eiffel tower and touch the Arc de Triomphe.
I need to text and call and write everyone I know from every city.
I need to experience things. I need to.

In a couple years, I will be in college, hopefully in Europe. I will be best friends with spontaneity like I should be, because God knows, I hate routine. I want to read more books than I have ever read, and run my fingers across volumes that my life will not last long enough to read.

I want to have a degree, but it will never be about that. It will be about living. It will be about learning. And I need to learn. I need to. Some university in some city full of hipster girls and boys with accents waits for me, and I will go to meet it. I have hated high school, but I am ready for real learning. And yes, it's about history and art and music and just living and it always will be, but it's about friendships and love and stupid things on sleepless nights. And it always will be.

I want to flop down in the grass and work on ages worth of homework, more homework than two weeks of high school would have afforded me. I want to sleep in the cold of a European December, shivering under my bedsheets in my dorm with a roommate who may hate or love me, but will eventually learn to hate and love me, and then just love me. And we'll be friends for the rest of my life because it's not just my experience or her experience anymore; it's ours.

Every bit of the life that waits to enfold me in open arms is somewhere else. and goddamnit, I am scared. But I am ready. To live, to love, to laugh, to dance, to sing, to write, to read, and in the end, to die happy. Read More

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

I don't know why I thought I could do this because I don't think I can. I have this dream, you see; I want to be a roadie for the best organisation to come out of utter tragedy. Invisible Children. Since they waltzed into my life around 2006, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with them because every time I see the faces of those kids in Northern Uganda that still show hope despite the everyday torture they are put through, it gives me hope that things can change. And oh, how I desperately want to help change them.

It's been a few years now but nothing has changed. I still want to work with them and when I found out about the roadie opportunity, I became utterly enthralled with becoming one. I have always loved travelling and the idea of being in the back of a van with people I don't know but will come to know over a series of days and weeks and months excites me beyond belief. I would love that more than anyone could ever possibly realise.

I have stumbled through high school quite clumsily. I haven't had any highly amazing grades since the fourth grade and as it's my senior year and I'm done with high school in about seven months, I don't expect that to change. I'm struggling and pushing myself harder than I ever have to graduate and it's for one reason: so I can be a roadie. Right now, I don't care about college (though of course, I plan to go) and I don't care about future employers. All I care about is having the opportunity to help those kids and to change someone's life and for that, I need a high school degree.

So...I intend to graduate on time, and I will turn eighteen, but there are more obstacles. I'm supposed to have my license. I don't have to, but it's preferred and it would be nice to have, but it's not going to happen in time. Driver's ed at school is so expensive and I just haven't had the opportunity to do it. It'd be nice to just wait until I'm eighteen and try to pass my test to get my license, but that isn't going to happen either, seeing as by then, it will probably be too late. Even if I were accepted without having gotten my license or permit by then, there's still the money thing.

They ask that at least $1500 be raised for food, etc. but I have no job and have no time to get one - not with as much as I'm struggling just to get by in high school and my university classes. I am stressing out so much and I've pushed myself before, but never this hard. I want this. I need this. And it's not even that I want or need it, it's that I was meant for it. I finally found my purpose and it would absolutely break my heart if I couldn't do it. To be turned down would be one thing, but the possibility of not even being able to apply because there are so many obstacles in my way...that's another. And it's already breaking my heart.

I was meant for this. I'm not just some kid who wants to tour with their favourite band. This is so much bigger than me and I would KILL to be a part of it. And it's killing me that I may not be able to. Read More

There are these times in my life when I look back on everything that's happened in the past several years and wonder if it all really happened for a reason. It's interesting when something happens to you and all anyone can tell you is "It happened for a reason." I hate that phrase because when those same people who told you in your moment of absolute pain or fear or grief that it happened for a reason have something happen to them, they want you to be upset for them. And you try to, even though all you really want to say is "It happened for a reason. Remember when you said that to me? Does this feel like it happened for a reason?"

The night before my grampy passed away, I was bit restless; pacing my bedroom waiting for a phone call from my mum with the worst of news, typing anxiously my reactions to hearing the phone ring in the first place and my mum saying she had to go up to the hospital, that they had moved him from the nursing home to the ER. I remember falling asleep at one point and when I woke up, calling my mom and asking for any news. And I remember her telling me that he had passed away.

I can't recall everything I felt at that point, but at first, I didn't cry. It came as a shock because my grampy, essentially the strongest man I ever knew, still alive for just over 81 years after smoking his whole life had just died. That was strange. I used to think he was too tough to die, that it was him against the world and goddamnit, the world would always lose. Not on May 17th, though. He lost the fight and we lost him. I remember several people in the days after that telling me it happened for a reason.

It's infinitely interesting how things "happen for a reason" but nobody can ever give you a reason. And if they can, it's never very good, is it? When someone in your life passes away, it's always "I'm sure they're in a better place." I know people mean well, but at the same time, I wish a response like that wasn't so conditioned in people that they just say it. I wish there were more thoughtful responses than that, ones that made sense and made everyone feel better. Maybe I over-analyse things, but it's 2009 and I can't afford not to. If I don't, then I run the risk of misunderstanding and finding myself lost in translation. Clarity is so important because people make mistakes so often as a result of not getting things clarified.

It was startling, the day my grampy died and there was no clarity for me for several weeks after that and I still think that when it comes to grief, there is nothing to clarify. Grief is grief and you can't clarify it with "It happened for a reason." Even if it did, who is going to say "Oh, thank you so much for that, I feel so much better" in their lowest of low moments? Read More

No one else will know that part of me.
I'm still driving away and I'm sorry everyday.
I won't always love these selfish things.
I won't always live.

I have found that I have changed a lot over the past year. I call it change for lack of a better word, because I don't really think these things are changes. I feel as though I've just been hiding a part of myself behind a façade and faking it for people who really don't matter to me. It's sad to say that the people I'm talking about used to be my closest friends and my family, but I can't change them or their opinions of me.

I used to be so scared of what everyone would say. Gradually, I let myself out a little more, starting with my piercings. Just piercings, right? Or rather, instant uproar in my family. Yeah, the comments about them and about me hurt, but what was I to do? Get angry? Cause more drama by talking about how that really felt? No. I couldn't. So I sat there and laughed along with everyone else and let them say those things because what was I really going to do?

I found myself hiding every part of me that was real in exchange for some stupid fictitious version of me so they wouldn't talk anymore. The piercings stayed, but I refused to talk about what music I liked (even though that was all I wanted to talk about, the pure genius of some of the artists I listen to) or anything else of that sort. But they still talked. And finally I learned that no matter what I do, one of them is always going to be around to say "Hey, I don't like what you just did." Well, in the words of my hero, David Bowie, “I don’t care what anybody says, I like doing it and it’s what I shall continue to do.”

So, yes, I have changed a little. I stopped letting people walk all over me and tell me what I should do and what's right for me. These people don't live my life or know my feelings, so why should they be able to dictate my actions as a direct result of these things? They shouldn't, and I am no longer going to let anybody do that. I don't have room in my life for people without the guts to be themselves, and that includes myself.

Finally, I have brought to the forefront of my life every little thing about me that my real friends, the ones that sadly live so far away, love about me. As a result, I am more honest and I have found that honesty is more favourable than lying. I'm done lying to myself and hiding my real self away in the hopes that these people will change. They won't. Some people change and some people don't and these are the people that won't, so I have stopped caring. I disregard each and every one of them who tell me I can't and I won't and I don't because I can and I will and I do. I'm done with being used, done with being hurt and so completely over being told what's best for me by people who are the very definition of 'hypocrite'. I'm just done.

What if I didn't forget passion like you did?
What if I find my purpose first?
What if I fulfill my life's work?
What if you counting on my failure made me live?
Not scared, I know you thought I was shaking fast in
my own two shoes. But these soles
could fight the ocean waves, dirty laundry and World War II.
Finally, I see past my front hands,
not a coward's piss-stained pants.
Thank you for telling me I can't;
without you, I wouldn't be where I am. Read More