On the Outside

I see the people walking by, in their clusters of friends.
I hear them talking, laughing, arguing. Everyone contributing to the conversation, making it a noisy mess of words to an outsider.
I see them on their phones, calling, texting; oblivious to everything around them except their friends in the device.
I see all the habits of people; biting their nails, playing with their hair. Tapping a pencil while reading, listening to music to help them concentrate.
It's amazing what you can observe when you're on the outside looking in.

I see people at meals, sitting quiet and alone. Until their group comes along, and the talking, laughing, yelling begins again.
I can never quite make out the specific conversations from the various groups around me. It's all a mass of noise I am not involved in making.
Even at my group, I still notice the little things people do. The awkward laugh when someone says something uncomfortable, the rolling of one's eyes at an idiotic comment.
Even among people, I am still on the outside looking in.

All around me, people carry on with their conversations. They're oblivious to everything else, including me.
My friends are oblivious too, they carry on conversations I can't contribute to without a second thought.
I sit by them in silence, hoping the conversation may shift to something, anything, else. Yet it never does.
I am on the outside looking in. In every situation, I am on the outside.Be it strangers or friends, acquaintances or family, I am on the outside of every situation.

I wonder what the inside feels like. I guess I'll never know.

Days on the Lake

I stare at the lake and blink. Suddenly I'm 14 again, during the long summer days that we spent at the lake. Hours upon hours spent lounging on the beach, though there were so many we hardly took count. Oh how I wish I could get one day back.

Blink. I'm 10, awaiting my first night fishing trip. Sitting on the porch watching the sun set, the trip being the only thing on my mind. My hopes were high, my excitement spilling over. Little did I know just how boring that trip was to become.

Blink. I'm 8 again, sitting by my grandmother as we cross stitched the day away. We didn't talk, but rather listen to the sounds of the lake swarming around us. These were my favorite moments; the lake in its mysterious beauty, and us in our most natural forms.

Blink. I stare at the cottage, falling to shambles. The bathroom molding, the siding falling off, the porch con caving. And yet the memories come flooding back. The cottage was full for so many years, housing the memories from all the days by the lake. It has served its purpose; time to let it rest.

Everyone Leaves

Everyone leaves, it's a fact of life. People move away, people die. You can't stop it from happening; these are inevitable actions.
But you, leaving me when I'm still here, is a fact that I can change. A fact you could change. If you cared enough to do so. I want to fix it, do you?
You don't seem to care if we're together or apart. You've got your new friends, why should you need me? I'm not as important, not as much fun, as them.
So you leave. And here I am, left without one of my closest friends. Because I was too scared to try and stop you, and you didn't care enough to stop yourself.
I've lost friends before, they meet new people and forget I exist. It's been a fact of my life since I was little. It used to hurt so much, to be put behind the back burner in someone's mind. But over the years it's hurt less and less. I've pulled away from people so it won't hurt as much as it used to. If you don't get close to them, it can't hurt when they leave you. Right?
Wrong. It still hurts. It's just a different kind of hurt. When you're close and they leave, it's like ripping a band-aid off a wound. The abrupt distance is painful, but will subside. When you're not close to them, however, the pain is like a bruise. Dull, almost unnoticeable. But it stays around for a long time. The feeling of not having someone close enough to tell your secrets, your fears; no one there to help battle the demons you keep in your soul. Sure, you may not feel the sudden heartache of them leaving you, but you will always feel the throbbing of having no one on your side.
I thought this time it would be different. We're close, but not too close. The grey intermediate between the heartache and the throbbing. I thought being in that area would make the pain less intense, less apparent.
Turns out, I was wrong. The grey part hurts the worst. There's the dull pain of not being super close, but when you left the heartache was almost unbearable. The pain is always there, with the added burst of pain. And I don't know how to fix it. If I even can fix it. If you even want to fix it.
Have I lost my chance at being your friend? Have you replaced me with someone more exciting, more interested? Someone better than I ever could be? I've been replaced time and time again, but I never thought you would replace me. Guess the grey area is the worst place to put a friend. That's the area where you get hurt the most.

A Place for Me

I have always tried to be there for my friends whenever they need me. Throughout high school, I was the person everyone went to for unbiased advice on countless situations, from boyfriend advice (which I was surprisingly good at giving despite my never having had a boyfriend before) to family advice to a ranting session. I was their outlet, though I never had an outlet of my own. I suppose them telling me their trials and tribulations was somewhat of an outlet for me. As I heard their problems, my own became minuscule and insignificant. As nice as it would've been for one of them do reciprocate the action to me, I found comfort in being able to help them through tough times in their lives.
Looking back on those times, however, I realized that I may have spent too much time thinking about their problems and not enough time dealing with my own. I started many a bad habit in high school because of this process, like taking on my friends' struggles as my own. I would spend so much time trying to help them through something, that I always pushed my personal problems onto the back burner; sometimes even behind that, if I had a lot of friends coming to me for advice. 
 I never really noticed this as a problem until later in high school, after I had been doing this for so long I couldn't stop. I tried to pull away from peoples' problems, but everyone came to me with theirs and I couldn't stop trying to help them.
Writing has always been my outlet when times get stressful, and because of this habit I've developed an outlet couldn't be more crucial. So I think I have finally found my outlet: my blog.
I never thought about doing a blog until this creative writing class, and I must admit I was not excited to start one. By doing one, however, I have found the beauty and serenity of letting go of all your frustrations; putting them down on paper (even virtual paper) has been a key element to helping me sort through all the thoughts, feelings, and scenarios that race through my head everyday.
So here goes; my blog will become a place of serenity for me. A place to express everything going through my head, and hopefully make sense of it along the way.
For those of you reading these: my thoughts rarely make sense to anyone but me, so if it doesn't make sense sorry. If you find a post of mine silly or strange, that's fine. They mean something to me, and that's all that really matters. If they do help you in some way, I'm glad. Writing has always been my way of interacting with the world in a way I understand. So I hope that my writing can help anyone, if they need some help. At the very least, I know it's helping me.

Blank Page

I stare at the blank page, nothing worthy of being written coming out of me this time. The blank page could become so many things, so many stories.
          The prince and princess... The day they went to space... Vampires in the city... Witches...
So many possibilities, and yet it's a blank page. How can I choose what to write, what will be good enough to grab someone's attention and never let it go. Will I ever be able to write something of such extravagance? Such beauty? Such sadness, happiness? How can I even begin a story that will be compared to the great works of Shakespeare, of F. Scott Fitzgerald, of J. K. Rowling, and all the other timeless treasures we all know and love. Compared to them, all my stories are just blank pages.

While ominous, the blank page is also comforting. I know I can put anything I want down onto the page, fill it with the stories buried deep inside me. And if, after I write them, I realize they're nothing more than chicken scratch, I can delete them. Revert back to my blank page. Start the process over and over, again and again until I write something worth being shared.

The blank page is a comfort, a terror, an escape, a nuisance, a pleasure, a headache, a pastime. And everything in between. It is ever present, and though at times it is menacing, it is a part of me. An eternal blank page is by me, waiting for a story to be inked on its pages.  

What story will come out today?

Freedom

Is anyone truly free?
Free to do what they want, say what they feel, no matter the repercussions.
Free to be who they truly are, down to their very core.
Free to tell their family what they think of them, why they don't trust them with the secrets buried inside of them.
Free to speak their mind during class discussions, even if people don't agree and try to argue a different perspective.
Free to go wherever they want to go, whenever they want to, even when they have no reason to go.
Free to wear what they find comfortable, even if its not the popular style.
Free to go after their dreams with every fiber of their being, not to be afraid of failure.
Free from fear. Free from sadness. Free from anger. Free from people. Free from choices.
Free from life.
We claim to be free, to have the freedom to do what we want to do.
But do we really have that freedom?
I know I don't.

The Hanging Tree

This song has been playing over and over in my head for days. So, I thought I'd share it with you all to hopefully get it out of my head.
This song is full of sorrow and beauty. The meaning of this song can be so many things, depending on the person who reads it and the experiences they've been through. That's one of the beautiful things about music, and art in general; what one set of lyrics, paintings, words mean to me can mean something completely different to you.
To me, this song is about loss, death. Someone is waiting for their loved one to come home, though I don't think the loved one ever will. I think this song is about losing someone due to some type of self harm, be it suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc. The pain and sorrow the family/friends are feeling is catastrophic, and all they want is to see their loved ones ones last time.
The midnight line always leads me to this type of feeling behind the song. Midnight can also be called the "witching hour", when spirits, demons, ghosts, and other supernatural beings can appear. If your loved one is dead, midnight is the perfect time to meet because that's when they actually can come and see you, and maybe help clarify why they did what they did. So many times, we never really know the true thoughts and feelings of the people we love until after they're gone; sometimes we will never know. Getting a chance to meet with them one final time, and find out what they were thinking/feeling/going through that led them to this would bring about so much closure.
Unfortunately, that is something we may never get to accomplish. We can speculate, but never truly know how they felt after they're gone from our lives forever. The beauty of this song, to me, is that it captures the sorrow we all feel after we've lost someone incredibly important to us. The shock that they're gone, sorrow of them leaving, the anger that they left so suddenly, the sadness/depression that lingers. Each stanza has a different emotion tied to it, and each emotion I've felt after losing incredibly important people in my life.
To me, this song is so many things. Sad. Beautiful. Emotional. Painful. Real.
What is it to you?

The Snow

The snow can be a wonderful surprise, or a painful experience. I had thought, hoped, that the snow would be done for the season. Oh, how wrong I was.
The snow was falling, cascading, down from the skies in an intricate, chaotic pattern. The wind howled its monstrous howl, and screeched the snow at us as we walked to class. Oh, how empty the wind can make you feel.
The amount that can fall in an hour; from as few as flurries to much more in inches, feet. The snow is an ever-changing mystery. How each snowflake can look so similar, yet is so different and unique from its falling mate. It is a wonderful, sometimes unbearable, mystery.
Yet last night, as I walked from building to building, I experienced the true beauty of the snow. Normally, I see the snow for its chilling appearance it takes most often. Last night, however, when all was calm and quiet I saw the beauty. There was no wind, no person out, so animal to disturb it. It was just the snow, like a fallen blanket across the earth, and myself, but a minuscule being in this vast expanse of a world.
As I looked around, took in the exquisite beauty of the fallen snow, I started to understand why some people love the winter. The snow, though sometimes cold and cruel, was in that moment peaceful and inviting. Looking across the patches of undisturbed snow, no wind there to blow it all away, it looked so serene. Though the beauty only lasted those few moments between the buildings, it was more than enough for me to start to appreciate the winter for the mystical beauty that it truly is.
And in the morning, when the wind was back and fearsome as ever, still I remembered the beauty of the night before. Though the wind may howl and the snow may freeze, always will I remember the peaceful moments of that night.

Eleanor Roosevelt

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
"Do one thing that scares you everyday."
"Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes."
"Justice can not be for one side alone, but must be for both."
"The giving of love is an education in itself."
"Do what you feel in your hear to be right- for you'll be criticized for it anyways. You'll be damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Eleanor Roosevelt has man more quotes than these seven, and they all seemed to be as relevant today as they were when she wrote them.

Perception of a Person

     It's interesting to think about how every person views the world, views their life. Even if we think we know their life, we will never truly understand because we are not them; we don't view the world through their eyes, walk life in their shoes. Though we can relate to experiences they have had that are similar to those we have seen, we cannot fully experience what they saw, touched, heard, felt at those moments. We will never know what they truly experience; we can only know for sure what we experience firsthand.
     No one can ever really know what's going on in your mind, what you think and feel on a specific topic. Sure, we can share our opinions on various subjects, how different topics make us feel. One can never know, though, if that's how you truly feel or if that's what you want everyone to believe you feel, because you're scared of how they would react to what you truly think and feel.
     Everyone has secrets, past events they don't feel comfortable sharing with anyone. Some could be things that happened as a child, or as a teenager, or as an adult. Whatever the event was, whenever it happened, it changed you. You may not notice how it changed you; to you, you still act the same as you did before it happened. Externally, you're like you always have been; inside, you're falling apart. Though you may not know personally what demons everyone is facing, everyone has them.

The elderly man at the grocery store, he fought for our country and still has nightmares of the things he saw and did overseas.

The single mother of two, she lost her husband and now works as hard as she can to keep food in her children's stomachs and a roof over their heads. 

The super jock, his father will only talk to him if he brings up sports. 

The head cheerleader, her mother won't listen when she says she prefers choir to cheer. 

The band nerd, he needed a place to be where he wouldn't be bullied for being different. 

The theater performer, she lives the lives of countless characters so she can pretend she's someone else for a while, rather than the outcast she has become. 

The girl with her nose constantly in a book, she grew up reading because she was the awkward youngest child who didn't fit in with her siblings. 

The boy who's constantly punching whatever he can, he needs to build up his strength so he can one day stop his dad from abusing his mom. 

The girl working a full time job in high school, she has to make money to provide for her younger siblings and her mother. 

The girl who always looks pissed off, she's still coming to grips with her grandmother's sudden death.

The boy who always talks in class, nobody at home will listen to him.

The girl, the boy, the mom, the grandparent, the child, the person...

He's angry, she's sad, they're overly preppy, they've never said more than two words in class...

     Everyone has a past. Events and catastrophes that have had a role in shaping them into the man, woman, child we see before us. The person on the outside doesn't always reflect the person on the inside. Rarely ever does it truly represent who we are; it's easier to put on an appearance of who we believe people want us to be, rather than being ourselves. Our perception of people may be right, and yet they may be incredibly wrong. 

Do your perceptions of people match who they really are?

Do peoples perception of you match who you really are?

What's behind your facade?