BUA

I just went to visit BUA. And right now I am so confused.

Not only did about half the students there tell me I should have applied, two of the teachers did, and the rest seemed to like me fairly well.

And you know what else? I really want to apply. But I also don't. But I do, but I don't.

I don't because I love my friends and community and speech team. I do want to go because, well, because it's BUA.

But the thing is, they usually admit only people coming for freshman and sophomore year. And I missed that chance. And I'm worried now that I missed my chance at everything else, because I don't have time to do all the things I want to do. I live for knowing, for being among the educated, for having a reason to be superior. Why did I not realize back in the fall that this was my best chance?

Don't get me wrong - if nothing else, I'm glad I went and saw the place. It's going to give me motivation in my independent studies.

But I am so, so confused. And I'm worried that I've missed my chance at everything I've wanted, and that I'll never get one like this again.

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.

Poems and Thoughts of Israel

It's nearing one a.m. and I just spent the past hour and a half finishing a book of Hebrew poetry.

I don't know.

I've been wanting to finish it for a while, and now I need to reread it because I'm so tired that I'm not sure what stuck and what didn't.

But what did stick was beautiful. I really like this book, almost as much as Hazel loves An Imperial Affliction.

But I suddenly thought about going to visit Israel - this Wednesday as it happens - and I'm terrified as hell, honestly. How different will it feel? Will my happiness fade again? Where will I be after going back to that place?

I've forgotten so much, honestly I have. I had forgotten, until today, how the streets in Tel Aviv connect and how it felt to be there and being away from my friends and everything. It hurt, and I think I forgot that a little. Suddenly I remember all these things from the evening I got this book of poetry signed and how good I felt that night, and being close to my family, and having Hebrew all around me.

I'm kind of alarmed at how much this trip crept up on me. It was always kind of in the near future and all but never really this close. In seventy-two hours I'll already be there or close at least. It's scaring me. Deja vu to this time last year, before I changed.

But how much did I stay the same?

I don't know right now. I don't know anything right now.

Confused, etc.

This is an angsty post. You have been warned.

I'm still thinking a lot about Israel. Especially today.

I have this thing where music makes me feel different things, not necessarily because of the way it is, but more because of when I first heard it or when I was listening to it a lot.

So there are some songs that are Israel Songs. Songs that I would listen to and would make me feel all of the feels.

And some of those songs are ones that I haven't heard in a very long while.

So I had Spotify on and was listening to one of them and BAM. The feels. I felt like I had in Israel, and suddenly I realize that I just don't feel like that anymore, and I remembered.

How much I missed my friends. How confusing it was to have two homes. How different my outlook was, how I felt about different people back then. How I felt about myself.

And I'm still thinking about it, and I'm still sad.

And also - I missed my friends here so much. How is it that after nearly six months here, I don't miss Israel so much? Was it all really that fleeting? Were my friendships too hastily built to last?

And now I miss them. And I miss the apartment. And school.

Something about my geography teacher in Israel came up during lunch. And I realized - I had never really told my friends here that much about my actual life in Israel. I talked about feelings, about homework, about general things - a bit about a few classes. But there wasn't much.

And now I remember everything.

How did I survive for so long without my friends? How am I surviving now, without my friends in Israel?

How?

September?!

How?

The Hogwarts Express chugged along to Hogwarts at 11 am today and now Asylum of the Daleks is airing and high school is starting in three days.

Huh?

Ice Cream Whatagain

Well.

Yesterday I went to something at the high school I'll be at starting Tuesday. They called it an ice cream social.

Just ponder that for a minute. What?

STOP TACKING FANCY NAMES ONTO THINGS.

Okay, sorry. I'll continue now.

The only reason I went was that we were getting our schedules.

So.

I went to the "student center" (aka cafeteria for normal folk like you and me) and stood in line for like ten minutes to get the schedule. I got it, and it looked like this:

A block: Directed Study
B block: Directed Study
C block: Directed Study
ETC.

I looked at it for about a minute and finally thought, "That can't be right..."

And then I had to go to the office and get it sorted out and I missed the looking around the school and getting a tour and whatever. Take a moment to pity me.

...

Thank you.

So after that I went back to the cafeteria for a Schedule Comparison Fest and various processed sweet frozen stuff. Processed sweet frozen stuff happens to be delicious, which made it a little less irritating that almost none of my friends are in my classes.

After looking at my schedule just now I've decided that the schedule times make absolutely no sense. I may be vastly confused for the first month or so, hmm...

Sluttish Time

(No, I didn't invent the title, it's from Shakespeare's Sonnet fifty-five.)

Today I realized that on Tuesday it will be two weeks until I'm gone.

Shakespeare was right on for a lot of stuff. Including about time and "all the world's a stage" and things.

Time is making me confused. The passing of time is a strange thing. What is time? I don't think there's a definition. If time is a collection of seconds and minutes and hours, what are seconds and minutes and hours? They are ways of measuring time. And time is...well, you get the idea. Chicken and the egg kind of thing.

And so suddenly I've got three days left of school and I'm getting my report card soon and my uncle is arriving from New York and it's officially going to be summer on Thursday and I have to say goodbye to my friends here.

My life is bonkers. But then, it always was.