opinionated's Journal

Here again is the one and only oddity commonly known as Annabel, come again to grace these halls of bloggers.

Just kidding. Grace anything, me? You must have me mixed up with someone. Hello again, and sorry for being gone so long. It has been a busy (and when I say so, I mean it) summer. I've traveled a bit--gotten to see just about my best friend on the face of the planet, who happens to live 5000 kms from me. She lives in just about the most beautiful place I've ever seen. My mother (who I traveled with) disagreed on that count, but I would be completely willing to live there. Gorgeous. I've also gone to horseback riding camp for a week; that was very fun, despite being put on every horse but the one I wanted to ride the most. I also applied for a job I don't want, read a book I highly anticipated and was slightly disappointed by, and got a chance to get together with a few friends I hadn't had a chance to prior to my last post.

Read a few books... none really worth mentioning. Oh, besides Breaking Dawn. But I won't talk about it, because if I do, oh, man, will that post take forever. Depends on whether or not I have the patience to type it all up, one of these days. Then again, I am not reknowned for my patience--rather, I am reknowned for the lack thereof.

So, since I am kind of at loss of what to say, I will say something random that has occurred to me recently. Anyone out there believe in a sixth sense? Ok, wait, hold up. Let me preface this with something one of my favourite book characters (from one of my favourite books, from one of my favourite authors) said: "Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants." I must say I feel like that all the time, and while I understand that most... some... a number of other people my age feel that way, it's still true for me. Which bemuses me, because I can so barely relate to any person I know. And now, about to go on a teenage angst rant about the unfairness of life and how special and different I am, I can't help thinking of that and knowing that "You're not so freaking alone as you thought, smart one". Which, since I am an angst-ridden (<-- key word) teenager, doesn't help whatsoever.

And due to my extreme lack of concentration, I haven't even begun to say what I intended to. So like that quote said, I do think there's something up with me. What? I don't know. But something. And since I don't believe especially in being able to tell the future or having a sixth sense, this is even weirder for me to make anything out of it. But I want to say it to someone. My mother doesn't care. Neither does the rest of my family. So here goes.

Remember a few months ago I mentioned that I went to a family wedding (yes, I did. It's there if you want to look.) and I was all happy for the bride and groom. I don't know if I mentioned THIS, but something weird happened. I saw one of my mom's cousins there, who my mother hadn't seen in a while, and I hadn't either. She was wearing a tight black dress and holding her daughter, who's about 2. And, inexplicably, I looked at her and the only think I could think was, "She's pregnant." See where this is going? There was no evidence of it. It hadn't been mentioned or announced. She didn't have a baby bump. But it was TRUE. She told my mother. That was instance one.

Instance two. More recently, I was driving with my mom and got suddenly really excited. For no reason. Again. I get that often: anticipating nothing. But the feeling persisted, and when I got home, someone told me really great news about something I've been looking forward to a LOT (a movie release date got pushed forward) and I kept on being excited as though that was what I'd been excited about in the first place.

This happens often. I try to dismiss it as my standard oddities, but the pregnant thing especially got to me. So I had to say it SOMEWHERE, to SOMEONE. No sense. Don't know what to do about it... don't know IF there's anything to do about it.

Well, that's all for now. Ranting over. Going to try not to think about my strangeness.

Recommendation: Universe and You, by KT Tunstall. The acoustic version. It's so pretty.

~Annabel

All right. So I've gotten some comments, and I want to address them. Unfortunately, I can't see who sent them, so I cannot address you by screen name.

First, about the fact that a shooting star is not, in fact, a star: I am aware of that. I said (Duh, it's a STAR) because it is commonly called a shooting star, and I took it from the name. Thank you for the link and pointing that out.

And about Wuthering Heights: It may just be my opinion of them (keep in mind that I am not done yet. I am at page 153 of this old, old paperback edition), but I do think that Cathy is just screwing everything up with her melodramatics--why would she ACCEPT to marry Linton if she KNOWS she won't love him as much as Heathcliff?? Yes, convenience, knowing she wouldn't ever be allowed to marry Heathcliff, but REALLY. She shows up and says "I love Heathcliff. And I just agreed to marry Linton." and then later throws fits over how her husband "treats" her--Sigh. You can't see me, but I'm rolling my eyes. She's just screwing everything up.

Heathcliff? He's evil. Just an all-around nasty person.

Linton is a wimp, completely and utterly. He refuses to stand up to Heathcliff on his own.

Hareton is being corrupted by Heathcliff.

Catherine's brother (I always forget his name--Hindley?) is an a$$hole with a superiority complex.

Joseph is a bigot.

Sorry if I made any enemies with this. These are just my impressions of the characters, and I'm not done the book. But first impressions are a kicker, aren't they? I like the book itself. I just find its characters not very likeable. I think the book's interesting because of it.

Not much is new. I got (one second, let me count...) 3 new books yesterday. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare, Peeps, by Scott Westerfield, and The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (also known as the amazing, incredible, fabulous author who brought us Twilight). In addition to that, my mother's friend who borrowed Twilight from me returned it yesterday, so now I have that to read too. It has been a while since I've been this happy.

Bye for now!

~Annabel

Haha, I love the quote that's up today--the one about telephones. Take that, Boston Post!

Everything's normal up here. I am taking livesaving courses in the morning instead of swim team like usual. It's pretty fun; I like it. It's for the rest of this week and all of next week, then it's back to swim team.

This entry is going to be relatively (actually, VERY) short, because I have to go cook supper for my brothers. We have a swim meet tonight and my parents are going to a concert.

Music suggestion of the day (there have been a lot of those recently, don't you think?): The Scientist, by Coldplay. I love it. I'm going to use it if my parents try to make me go into sciences after I graduate from my school. There's a line that fits exactly into how I feel. See if you can guess--it's slightly obvious.

~Annabel

PS: I'm reading Wuthering Heights right now. I've only just started, but does anyone else find Heathcliff kind of evil?

It really has been a month. Wow. Whatever I said before about inconsistency takes on a whole new meaning here.

A lot has happened in the last month. Will I write it all out? No. A good deal of it is merely minutiae, and though it had an effect on my month, it didn't contribute to my overall state of mind. Some good stuff, some bad stuff.

My cousins on my mother's side are now here. They visited for a few days, but had to leave because my aunt's exchange students were coming and she was meeting them in another city. That was their excuse, anyway. It's true that the students were coming, but the real reason they do not spend more time with us when they visit is due in large part to the fact that my mother and her sister do not get along. At all. In any way. So that leaves us, the children, stuck in the middle of this ridiculous feud that puts our parents at odds. It was for our benefit that they stayed with us, and that our mothers did not explode at each other.

I finished school with 9 exams. I wasn't reduced to tears, but it was close. I have no choice, none at all, but to strive to be the best, do the best that I could possibly, as a human, do. Why? One word: Parents. They expect me to be supergirl and perfect and infallible. Well, newsflash: I'M NOT. I'm not perfect, not by a longshot, and I'm not infallible by any stretch of the imagination. I make more mistakes, large, small, meaningless, significant, or otherwise, than anyone I know. I may be book smart, but I'm not street smart. I have a total of ZeRo common sense. I know myself enough to know that.

Another thing I noticed recently. Keep in mind that I am the definition of a bookworm, and next to dreamer in the dictionary there is a picture of me (or there should be). So David's favourite music nowadays is Lord of the Rings music. I love love LOVE the Lord of the Rings. It's up there as one of my favourite books and some of my favourite movies. But, inexplicably, whenever my brother plays the music (and he does, all the time) I get completely and utterly sad. I hesitate to say depressed; it just misses that category. But I feel... desolate? I guess that's the word. My chest feels empty. My heart hurts. It didn't make sense at first. It is magnificently beautiful music, so why did I feel completely empty and desolate? What I have come up with so far, and I believe this is the explanation, is that that music represents everything that I, as a dreamer/bookworm/girl who doesn't fit in in her own world, desire more than is comprehendible and can never have. What do I desire so? Hmm. Ouch. I feel juvenile as I type this, but I might as well say (even though only a sense of deduction is necessary to see it). I want adventure. I want magic. I want to quest for something. I want to experience something that no one on this planet or in this life would believe. I want to see things that can't be seen here. I want magic, the extraordinary, fantasy. There. I said it. I want to live in a world with magic and go on adventures. I would give almost anything. Am I ashamed of this? Why, yes, I am. But that doesn't stop it from being true. And I still want it. So I know that I cannot have it. And here is my brother, playing the music, unknowingly blaring heartbreak on a loop for me, all day long.

Could I ever even consider admitting this to anyone? Yes and no. Charlotte feels the exact same way that I do. We confide these things in each other. And it makes it feel not so bad. But then I'm around everyone normal and it gets thrown at me, how blatantly different I am. And how unusual these wishes are to someone who could be called normal. Which doesn't help the desolation.

UGH. I can't believe that I came on for the first time in a month and spent the time whining. I'm sorry. I will try to come on more often, and maybe post something less philosophically whiny and teenage-angsty.

Song suggestion of the day: Viva la Vida by Coldplay. Really, really cool song.

~Annabel

Ugh. I am sooo tired of problems.

I wish my life were different. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of different, but I do not like my life. I am not suicidal, don't worry. I am just... uncomfortable. I don't know what it is that makes me feel this way.

Maybe I know myself too well. I can tell you, without a trace of doubt, that I have pretty well non-existant self-esteem. I was taught not to like myself in school. Not by teachers, of course. I remember distinctly being eight years old and in class at my old school. We were working on drawing this ridiculous picture for a cookbook we were making as a class. I remember talking to the kids seated at my table. I asked to see their drawings. Each and every single one of them, when they held theirs up, said, "Well, it's really ugly, but here it is." And when they asked to see mine, I held mine up and said, "I like mine." And the expressions on their faces! As if I'd made some terrible faux-pas, by admitting I liked my drawing. It made me wonder...

And then I began to understand later that all their compliments, too, were false. We were taught to "be nice"-- and just where do you stop with that? People out and out lie about their opinions of things. I have. It wasn't generally accepted to say anything but "Oh, your ENTER SCHOOL PROJECT HERE is sooo nice! You're going to do so much better than me!" If you didn't say that, you were mean. If you were mean, you had no friends. For a while I had no friends, because I said what I thought. I eventually learned, though, to see and compare for myself while smiling falsely and saying how lovely everyone was. Comparing unbiasedly? Maybe, maybe not. After all, who can I ask about it? Has no one else but me noticed? I don't want to ask.

Besides that, I am completely analytical when it comes to my opinions. I can pick apart my thought processes. I can be extremely objective when it comes to what I think (especially when I try to decide my opinion on something). It's sometimes almost scary. I can at one time be extremely practical, almost to the point where it's not practicality anymore, and extremely empathetic and sensitive. I don't know how that's possible, but I am like that. At other times I just can't be hard and objective. I am actually very, very sensitive and sometimes that part of me comes out and won't go away. I am vulnerable, and it pisses the analytical part of me off.

I am having an extremely hard time living with myself right now. I am not self-loathing. It's just that I have so much to think about and decide and there is not a single person on the face of the planet that I can tell everything that is on my mind. Not one. How is one 15-year old supposed to deal?

I suppose that's why I feel like I'm older than I actually am. I feel old inside, like an adult more than a child. And I wish I were a child again, in some ways.

I am not in despair. That's the wrong word. I guess the word is alone, and feeling helpless. It would help so much if I had some self esteem, but I don't. So I will manage. I will make it. I will try.

~Annabel

Has it really been only a week?? It seems so much longer...

I'm sorry for not writing for a while. It has been incredibly hectic and troubling and just plain exhausting around here for a while.

Hmm... what happened, what happened.... last weekend I went camping. It was terrific and I had so much fun with my friend Grace and the other boys (and girls: Juliet and Arianna) in my camping group. We are all different ages, but we get along well. Grace and I are oldest, so we had to look after the other kids (none younger than 11, which made life easier), but they're a good group. There was no trouble from our kids. The trouble came from others.

It was Friday night and we were setting up camp. Grace and Michael had gone to get food with the supervising adults (of course there were adults!) and I was the only senior left--the one next closest in age to me was Alex, who is 13. We were having a lot of trouble with our kitchen tent, and some other campers who were nearby saw us struggling came over to help. They were Americans. One of them actually introduced himself to me like this: "Hey, I'm Nathan. My friends call me Nate. I'm pretty much a hillbilly." I. Nearly. DIED. Laughing. Internally, of course. I wouldn't laugh at him to his face. But I could forsee trouble. The weekend we chose was popular with the campers, so there were plainly many boys there (that is not a comment on girls and camping--I camp, don't I?) and girls camping drew boys like dog biscuits draw particularly dumb golden retrievers. Nate wasn't even that handsome or nice, for God's sake. He was incredibly immature. I am sure that had I been wearing anything but a super-loose flannel button-down shirt his eyes would have zoomed to my chest. So even as I was enduring darling Nate, poor Juliet (11) was dealing with an admirer of her own. He was flirting ineptly with her, and eventually she became so mortified that she edged over to me and urgently muttered "SAVE ME!" So I told the boy that she was busy and had work to do and tried to imply, thanks for the help, don't bother stopping by again. Heartless? I don't think so. He really was being very forward, and he couldn't have been older than she was. This little conversation, however, was a kind of foreshadowing to the role I would play at this camp: Spokesperson. Even in my blackest moods, even at my most antisocial, I would be expected to be the group's voice. How I got saddled with that role kind of escapes me, but that's what it was.

That night, little Juliet stalker boy showed up OUTSIDE OUR TENT. Thanks a bunch, David, for pointing him in the right direction. He was there whispering "Juliet? Juliet?" And I once again spoke up for her (at her prodding--she absolutely point-blank refused to. She also begged.) and told him to go away and leave us the hell alone. He complied.

The next day, during the activities we'd organised with some other campers, Nate came to talk to me again. This time Grace and one of the adults, Harry, were there. He approached me and asked if I wanted to meet him later at his campsite. I am pretty sure I looked horrified. I am fifteen. For me, that is YOUNG. And here I am, at CAMP, and for the first time a guy asks me out (in any way). Seriously?! Seriously?! Talk about one screwed up first-time. And the worst part is, during ALL of this, Harry and Grace were smiling vaguely into space and sauntering away, pretending not to pay attention. Some friend YOU are, Grace. I'm not that mad about that part, but I wish she had helped. I ended up mumbling something about being on supper detail that night and something about busy and not allowed to date, and then running away. I was mostly traumatised, though. Meu Deus. Later, Grace and I came up with a story-- I had with me a very pretty sterling silver ring I had bought recently (I know, taking a ring to camp, not the brightest idea) and I was going to wear it on the fourth finger of my left hand. If I saw him and he asked again, I would tell him it's a promise ring from my boyfriend, and that I was sorry, but I wouldn't cheat on him. This was a flawed plan (seeing as I'd already told him I didn't date) but we were very teenage-girl-ish and immature. Luckily for us, we did not see Juliet-stalker or Nate the rest of the weekend. (What's that you say? Of course I didn't hide. I just avoided him.)

The actual camping was fun, however. I met up with some friends that we had met the year before and we cheerfully re-exchanged emails (apparently theirs had crashed, or something along those lines). It was very funny. I didn't even know they were there that weekend, until a woman I didn't recognise yelled "Annabel!!!" very loudly from across the campsite. It scared me witless. Some random woman yelling my name and waving to me? As we began talking she told me who she was, though, so it made more sense. And I visited her group's site and got reacquainted with her son (who Grace later pointed out was very attractive.) and stared at by everyone with a Y chromosome. Grace came too, and she got the same. Seriously. You'd think that all the boys get locked in girl-proof closets. I don't consider myself that attractive, but I got stared at. Weird, no? It was very uncomfortable.

There are many, many more camp stories, but I will save them for another day.

This week is "Arts Fest" at my school. Our band performed last night. We did great.

Aside from that, I am drowning in work. The stupid French project is nearly done. Talia's contribution was hours of arguing over nothing and typing up part of the finished copy. On top of that I have several more projects due next week--though thankfully no team ones. One Spanish, one History (Mao Tse-Tung, anyone? Don't quite know how I ended up with him), and one English. That last should be fine... I hope.

On top of all that, I was chosen as a judge for a writing competition for stories written by the teachers, so I had to read and judge about 10 stories. Some were good, some... not so good. The winners deserved their prizes.

Charlotte's aunt's funeral went on while I was camping. After it, 15 of her relatives went over to her house (Charlotte's) and got drunk. She said it was interesting being, along with her little brother, the only sober ones in the house.

And, beneath all this, underlying all this ridiculous complication, resides the persistant obsession. It helps me when I'm sad, it creates conversation with Char, and I love the books, but still, I know it's unhealthy. One day I will stop obsessing. I know it. Just not one day too soon.

Book suggestion: I am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak. Decent.

If I am not completely overwhelmed, I will write again soon. And, who knows, maybe not complain as much.

~Annabel