Getting Back In

Recently my girlfriend and I broke up.

It wasn't a hurtful breakup or anything. We both felt it wasn't working, and that's that. Now she has a boyfriend and she seems happy, so that's good. (They're also a cute couple. Just saying.)

I'm just a little confused. Because I got so used to thinking about her quite literally all the time, and now I'm not really doing that, or not in the same way. So there's a certain silence to my thoughts right now.

I'm sad as well, don't get me wrong. Not as much because we broke up, because it was coming...but because when we broke up, I was in love with this idea of her. I don't think I've known the real her for a while.

You'd think, after reading and loving Paper Towns, I wouldn't have this problem. Yet it is too easy to assume that your consciousness is not merely a window (and a poor one at that) but a view of the whole world. It was far too easy for me to take this idea, one that had grown with being away from her and everyone, and take it as the truth.

It makes me wonder - what if the reason I felt like I changed in Israel was because everything became an idea? Who am I, and what am I, and am I happy? I'm not sure. I'm trying to understand.

I'm trying to get more into the community of my school and really love it. I'm trying to know everyone fully and imagine them complexly. I'm trying to understand whether what I see is really so reliable.

I'm also trying not to think too deeply into being sad about things, because I've realized I'm very good - too good, in fact - at convincing myself of my opinions or beliefs. I try not to think about spirituality, because it won't turn out well, and I'm fairly stable where I am. I try not to think about what ifs, because those have been known to be trouble for me. I try not to ponder others' opinions in places where it doesn't matter, so that I keep thinking the way I think rather than taking on others' opinions as my own. And right now especially, I'm trying not to think too much about depression. Because I climbed out of it with the help of semi-existent ideas, ideas which only now I'm realizing weren't precisely true or real. I feel as though I'm on the verge, and I need to stay on this side of it, because the other side is far too dark for me to see, and life is crazy enough as it is.

Mostly? I'm trying to realize what reality is, and to get back in.

"Reunion"

There was this thing. At the art center.

They called it a reunion but it wasn't really, it was just an invitation to come and make art with other people. And eat pizza. And ice cream. And it was brilliant.

I was the first one there and then this other girl came and we were talking and laughing with the teachers. We made a plan for what we were going to do on the giant canvas that was provided. Then we started to paint and some other kids arrived. I went downstairs to see my friends from ceramics since I wasn't attending this week. We ate pizza and ice cream and went on painting.

I did not feel at all emotionally attached to the painting that I was doing with the second girl who arrived. The other people were also doing a giant one. It was amazing not to give a damn at all and just go wild with color. Ours ended up as a real explosion of hues, and quite abstract too. The canvas was absolutely enormous. I've never done something so large-scale.

So. Much. Fun.

I talked with the girl about middle school and high school and social things and it was kind of fun because we had the same opinions on a lot of things even though she's a "popular kid" and I'm a "book/YouTube nerd." It's amazing how fundamentally similar humans are.

When I signed my name at the end of the evening, I looked at our work and kind of liked it. It definitely wasn't my favorite thing I ever made but it wasn't bad. Creating it was almost like letting go, just letting everything out, with vast brush strokes across the enormous space.

It feels good not to be attached, almost like floating, like being on a ship in the open sea. You choose what ports to enter, which ones you want to explore, and where you want to stay. "I can see...perfectly in this cracked darkness." ~ Paper Towns by John Green

In which I seem to be crazier than usual

So, here I sit by my computer with languages jumbled in my head along with the blog post that started writing itself as I was setting the table for a dinner that my dad is out shopping for while my brother is watching Jeopardy downstairs and I am eating cereal (because, you know, cereal is awesome).

One of the strangest run on sentences I've ever written.

I went out and bought a few books today - The Hobbit and Fahrenheit 451 because they are classics that must be read and Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns by John Green because they are awesome and hopefully someday they shall be classics that must be read.

I started re-reading Looking for Alaska because when I read it I hadn't read any of his other books yet and besides I was all depressedly screwed-up (or anyway, more depressedly screwed-up than I am now) and probably read it slightly differently.

People, you have to read this book. And all of John's books. But heck, if you haven't read any of them, stop reading this blog post now and go to your bookstore or library or website of choice and get it somehow. Break-in may be necessary if it's past closing time. But even if you get chucked in jail for a bit, you know, you'll have read the book.

And I know it's controversial and whatever, which sort of startled me when I first read it (prepare for extreme profanity), I've become someone who swears more often now (though thankfully enough I don't smoke) so that part doesn't bother me that much.

I can so relate to these characters. Oh my freaking Rowling, just read it.

Quotes

"It's reminding people what friendship should really feel like, which is inconvenient, and annoying, and a bit of a pain in the arse."

~ Alex Day

"In real life, people are rude! People are shit!"

~ Alex Day

"In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it's vital to remember that our gods don't choose us. We choose them."

~ John Green

"I'm being extremely clever up here and there's no one to stand around looking impressed! What's the point in having you all?"

~ The Doctor

"The universe is big, it's vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles."

~ The Doctor

"Forever is composed of nows."

~ Emily Dickinson

"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."

~ Hazel Grace Lancaster

"It makes good times even better when you know they are going to end."

~ Violet

"You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love someone as much as miss them."

~ Colin Singleton

"We're invisible. I've never been here with someone else. It's different being invisible with someone."

~ Lindsey Lee Wells

"What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person."

~ Q Jacobsen

This is what I do in the times when I don't know who I am: I look for quotes. Because I am the quotes and the quotes are me. "I'm not a complex person, wind me up and watch me go" ~ "Don't Look Back" by Alex Day

Quote of the Week: from three weeks ago

Okay, this is my first quote to make up for my absence. It's pretty long but it's one of my favorites ever.

"It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

~ Paper Towns by John Green

There is something about this quote that makes you look at the world in a different way. The whole book, Paper Towns, has got to be one of my favorites. The characters are people just like me (albeit a bit older) and I don't have to imagine much to understand their feelings and reactions. The book makes you think, and it made me look at the world in a different way. I definitely recommend reading it, if you weren't convinced by the quote.