I have a mad mad song addiction. Secrets by OneRepublic is one of those songs that comes along every blue moon that hits so close to home it can only be described as an expression that defines me. Whenever I feel lonely, trapped or angry in life, and whenever I want someone to notice me, the one desire that ALWAYS comes to mind is to tell my deepest secrets, write them down or divulge them to someone I want to connect with. It’s the only way I know how to get attention. But it’s so much more than that. I want to say what no one else is saying. I want to say what you are too afraid to. I know how powerful words are. I know how to affect people with them.

I’m standing in a room packed with people and the secret to life is written on the ceiling. No one is looking up but me.

As terrifying as it can be, the truth can never really bring you guilt or shame. The act you’ve carried out can, but the words will only release you. If any action results from the truth being told, it was meant to be. There is one right answer to everything, no matter what it is. This you can rely on. There are so many truths I wish that people would have told me. I’ve spent far too much time dwelling over worries or holding onto people that I could have moved on from if the truth had been spoken.

When it comes down to it though, I just want someone to talk to.

Just don’t let me disappear
I’m going to tell you everything

It is impossible to embrace one idea without experiencing the other.

This unavoidable principal has caused my own endless fascination with opposites because I constantly find myself truly believing or wanting two opposites at the same time. I always want to define myself and live what I stand for, but as often as I do I find myself becoming the opposite. The beauty of this dilemma: I can be anything. I pride myself on my ability to see both sides. Without this ability, the whole world becomes one-dimensional. All the corners meant to peer around, become walls. All that is animate, static.

Animate. Create.

But besides my own hyperactive emotional state, I also tend to be pretty sensitive to others’. I have a desperate desire to not only avoid conflict but to not even be around people who are in conflict. The stress of it makes me feel panicked, like if they keep arguing something terrible is going to happen, like somehow the earth just can’t handle that kind of altercation between two people. I also hate disappointing strangers or doing anything that might make them upset. It usually causes me to end up in a state of regret and frustration and I find it hard to focus on anything else for at least a half an hour afterwards. I tend to avoid being around people as a result.

I usually avoid mentioning this out of embarrassment over my own geekiness, but now is as bad a time as any. For a very long time I’ve had this theory that if something like the x-men and their mutations really existed, my ability would be to absorb emotions. They would transfer into me and come back out in another form of energy. When I absorb the emotions they would be taken out of the original possessor and when they were transferred into me they would be magnified to the point where they manifest as physical pain.

I think that idea is really just me trying to display the way that I am in a more pronounced and obvious way so that people can understand it.

Ever since I graduated college and have been living with my parents again, I’ve been having short bursts of extreme frustration and anger. I grind my teeth, I clench my fists and I’ve even been known to throw a cell phone a time or two. I know it’s wrong and immature but sometimes it feels like the anger just has no other way out of my body. Half the time I don’t even know where it really comes from.

Since i started doing this I’ve developed a tremendous sympathy for people who do the same. Someone could yell as wildly and rudely as a monster but it would just make me terribly sad because I don’t hear the yelling or the words anymore, I hear the pain and suffering behind it.  It’s made me learn one very important message in all this. It doesn’t matter how scary someone looks when they are really angry, it’s the amount of pain in their voice and in their eyes that matters. Pain is pain and when you hear a two year old wail to kingdom come because they’ve dropped their popsicle on the ground you really grow to understand that. If they are really devastated, you won’t be able to tell that cry from one that follows finding out a loved one has passed.

Don’t ever dismiss someone’s pain and most importantly, if it comes across as wild anger don’t dismiss the pain behind the act just because the act hurt you. Whenever someone expresses such extreme frustration there is an elephant in the room. Deal with the elephant, not the episode.

I constantly find myself playing defense for my actions and my choices. I live in defense now and have for quite some time. There are some people who undeniably bring it out in me more than others, but right now, there are very few people who don’t. I wish it were all of their faults. But I think this is a predicament where Occam’s razor is the unavoidable answer. The simplest answer is usually the correct one.

It’s me.

Not only is it a good break up phrase, whenever you get tired of yourself, it’s a good way to get depressed without anyone’s help.

Why do I constantly feel like other people are judging me, talking behind my back or thinking I’m a failure? I’m always so aware of my own failures when I know I could be doing more. I’m just as aware when someone has differing beliefs about something that I am afraid to question. That’s where that whole fear of judgement thing comes into play again.

It’s hard to imagine a worse feeling than the one you get when you’re surrounded by people who all have the same idea about something that you could never share… and they’re all staring at you… already assuming you are going to object… already annoyed… because that’s the way you are. My usual instinct at that point is to shove said onlookers out of the way and run, or sock them all in the face… because they’ve made me into the bad guy with their eyes simply because they don’t understand, and you have no control over the matter. I’ve never actually punched anyone in the face or literally run from a situation, but one of these days… I just want to make a statement right now that I refuse to defend myself anymore. Since no one is literally punching me, I should be ok. I wish it were that simple, I wish it were a shirt I could just take off. But I struggle to shake it off constantly.

So here’s my prayer for the night… God, grant me the strength to exercise the phrase “screw you”… internally. I’m going to be in a wedding in a couple of weeks and black eyes don’t go well with pink dresses… amen.

There are two kinds of people in the world. People who watch the news and people who watch thet Lifetime Movie Network. Ok, that’s not exactly the distinction I mean but you get the idea…

What I really mean to say is that some people instinctively pay attention to the world around them. To them, reading or watching the news is as basic as eating and using the toilet. And it’s not just the news, its pieces of information pertaining to just about anything. They might watch a movie about a golfer and when they are invited to play golf one day by a friend they have a basic understanding of how to play.

And then there are people like my mother. You could sit her in front of an hour long news cast about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and she still couldn’t tell you what happened. She would probably say “Why would I know? I don’t understand what’s going on.” She could hear it a thousand times but due to some mixture of disinterest and lack of self-confidence, she doesn’t try without even being aware that she’s not trying. The result is maddening to someone like me, who, god forbid, listens to things.

Believe it or not, paying attention is not that difficult. It’s not like you have to try particularly hard. I’m not a walking encyclopedia and there are loads of things (especially pertaining to politics) that I don’t understand, but it is amazingly easy to gather information and connect dots if you don’t push them away because you think you won’t remember or decide that you can’t understand. I have a habit of equating awareness with intelligence and when I hear things like “what is Apartheid?” I can’t help but judge. I was four years old when Nelson Mandela got out of prison, I don’t remember any of it from when it was actually happening. My mom was an adult and Apartheid had to have been getting massive global attention. How does she not even recognize the word?

My real question is: how can anyone be indifferent to what is happening in the world? It is everything. It is the story of this planet, what could mean more? How could you turn your head and turn on the vacuum instead? These events make our own trivial qualms about ourselves look like dust and the act of paying attention to them shows that we have respect for something bigger than ourselves. Paying attention is an act of humility and character and so much more.

Do people slowly slip off an edge of learning after they finish school? Am I going to be stuburn and guarded from the world when I get old? I think I’d rather go back to school for the rest of my life.

Too much hotness was my reason for avoiding Smallville. Well on a dark January night I found the first season dirt cheap at a used movie store and my guilty pleasure began. The first episode felt just like I’d feared, too much hotness, too strange a plot, and it didn’t feel like Superman to me, at all. Kryptonite effects humans too? Little boy Lex has bizarrely unnatural red hair, and there is a full on meteor shower when Clark comes to earth? Don’t even get me started on Lana’s annoyingly soft spoken voice and disastrously stereotypical weak little pretty girl vibe.

I was beginning to wonder what I had done. There were so many other things I could have bought with 12 dollars. Food, water, paper towels. But somewhere between the second and sixth episodes the Smallville vortex sucked me in. I wasn’t watching it because it was the story of superman though. I was watching it because I enjoyed it for what it was. As I got to know the characters my black and white image of Clark and Lana fell apart and I started seeing the real people. To this day Tom Welling never ceases to impress me as Clark Kent.

And then there is Lex. The single-most important reason for any lover of the Superman mythos to pay attention to this show. Never ever have we seen Lex’s character played out with such rich chilling detail. As each season plays out you can see the light leave his eyes and the reasons are enough to make you believe you could have done the same thing.

The enjoyment I got out of Smallville in the earlier seasons could be related to that of Buffy. Clever, slightly ridiculous, humerous baddies. And then there is the sexual chemistry, the deeper insight that catches you off guard, and the general pleasure of a sci-fi universe where you can imagine anything happening.

Some of the best earlier scenes come from episodes where Clark gains new abilities, like puberty times 1000. Endlessly entertaining, one of my favorite moments is in the episode “heat” at the beginning of season two. There is a shot of Jonathan Kent, with a priceless “I have an incredibly weird life” look on his face as his son sets a scarecrow on fire with his eyes in the background.  The show only gets better (ok, there are a few bumps along the way) and now I find myself watching a completely different show that I still love just as much for different reasons. For anyone who stopped watching early on or stayed away for similar (stupid) reasons as I did, you would be confounded by what Smallville is now. It contains a darker, metropolis based, superhero focused world now, with an impressively creepy Zod and a nearly finished vision of Superman, working at the Daily Planet with Lois.

Lois is another reason to love Smallville. I could compile a never-ending list of hilarious Lois/Clark bicker quotes.  Lois: “We’re like hot fudge and halibut.” Clark: “Let me guess, I’m the halibut.” Lois: “Naturally.” The guest stars are endless and impressive. Although it really is hard to top Christopher Reeve in season two telling Clark where he came from.

My point is, Smallville is a really great show. It’s a ride. And I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Whether you’re are girl who’s not even into superheroes or a guy on his high horse embarrassed to watch Tom Welling play Clark Kent on a CW show with a bunch of romantic mush in it. Trust me, you’re going to like it. There is a reason it is approaching it’s 10th season, where it will break the world record for longest running sci-fi show. Plus, I’d really like someone to talk to about it, besides an IMDB message board.  It astounds me how many people are missing out on this great show for stupid misguided reasons. Don’t be one of them. As Jonathan Kent would say, “you always have a choice.”

The dream was about a cooking competition. My old printmaking professor was the teacher of this cooking class (why cooking , I have no idea) where there was a competition that narrowed people down one by one based on the quality of their work until the last person left won and was given this apprenticeship/job at this incredible restaurant that my professor must have owned in my dream… (I’ve been told this is very similar to an actual cooking show I’ve never actually watched)

I was the last one left. I won. But I felt no struggle, no stress, no drive. It was almost as though I had pulled my head out of what I was doing only to realize I had won. People started congratulating me and talking about the kind of money I was going to make and how lucky I was and I started feeling elated and proud that finally my time had come, finally I was the lucky one.

But then a rumor started spreading that my professor wasn’t necessarily going to choose the winner as his apprentice. I saw him glance at me, just a face in the middle of a big crowd with that look that always scared me half to death in real life. He was disappointed. When he finally came and talked to me he told me he might choose me but he had to review everyone’s work and make sure it was the right choice. But I could see right through his words. He was disappointed that I had won, when he was expecting someone else.

I could do it, I could pull it off, but only by accident, not because I really had talent. I never found out who he chose in my haunting dream, but the feeling of how he looked at me will never leave me. The truth is (in real life) he was the only teacher I ever had who saw real potential in me, he was the only one who expected great things of me, the only one who pushed me, the only one who believed in me, and I couldn’t handle the pressure. And so he was the only one who saw me for what I really am, lazy and scared.

I could do great things when I wasn’t thinking about it, when I had no direction or intention. But when I really wanted it, my talent was nowhere to be found. All that was left was forced ideas and fear of failure. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the frustration of those printmaking classes, how I wanted so badly to do something great, how strongly I knew I could, but I just never got it out of me. The truth is I needed many more classes and opportunities to develop but it’s just not going to happen now and I have a very hard time coming to terms with that, even two years later.

When I came to work today, my co-worker asked me how my day was so far and I said it was sort of uneventful, but I moved around some furniture in my bedroom. I said it completely seriously and she laughed. Why would someone laugh at that? Is the way I talk funny? Am I amusing?

Do people see me as this silly little girl, saying strange things and acting shy? I try so hard never to come off weak or shy there and somehow they always see it and treat me differently than they treat each other. The effect is absolutely maddening. What do I have to do to get them to stop?! Start cursing all over the place or just start acting like a jerk, like I so easily could if I started expressing how I really feel about them because of the way they treat me?

This is especially frustrating because it hasn’t been done to me by a whole group of people before. I feel respected at my internship, I feel respected for the most part around my friends and family, I felt respected at school, and was partly respected at my previous job, but this is impossible.

When nobody takes you seriously it feels like everyone speaks a different language than you. Like you can’t communicate. You could be screaming and no one would listen, because you aren’t a real person.

I hate that anyone sees me that way because every time I hold back from saying something bold or doing what I believe is right or I back away from a fight because I want to keep peace, I’m doing it for the sake of the other person, because I want to respect them, especially at a new job where they’re more knowledgable. I ‘ve held my tongue so many times in my life and all its left me is very angry and feeling walked on.

There are many specific moments in my life that, when I reflect on, I picture myself doing something much different… Two events in particular bother me all the time. But it doesn’t do me any good re-writing a memory. The moment is gone.

I found some old pictures from IMTA today. I participated in the LA IMTA in January of 2004, I was seventeen at the time. I didn’t know it would hurt so much seeing those pictures. That was almost exactly six years ago and I could clearly tell I looked younger. What has happened since then? I went to college/blinked and it’s six years later. I don’t know what 24 is. I always thought it was something else. Have I not achieved enough since then? Have I not grown enough?

I’ve had so many beginnings and ends to things, It’s all I’m made up of. My memory is made up of so many flashes at beginnings and ends that I’ve never been able to comprehend while they were happening. I just knew I had to burn them into my brain because someday they would mean something.

I remember a lot of pride starting kindergarten, I wondered why other kids cried on our first day. But I also remember feeling terrified to ask to use the restroom.

I’ve mapped out my old house in my mind a thousand times since we left it. The huge basement. The fuzzy tan carpet in the living room. Good for digging fingers into. The forest behind the house, sitting in the treehouse with my brother, a bag of chips, the rain, and this stupid book that supposedly contained a role playing game, it was a superheroes game and my brother always wanted to play it.

Running toward my grandparents after getting off the plane in Appleton, a thousand times over, impossible to wipe the smile off my face.

Walking onto the plane in Appleton in tears a thousand times over after saying goodbye to my grandparents. 

Walking away from Discovery after fifth grade graduation, sad that I was leaving something forever.

I couldn’t get my locker open when my bus dropped me off late to my first day of middle school. Panic.

The smell of the Armani perfume samples they passed out at the Ricky Martin concert I went to in 8^th grade. My first concert.

Chris Frickland yelling at me when I spilled soda on his backpack at lunch in 11^th grade. The furious look in his eyes. The anger I felt when he told me he wasn’t going to hang out with us anymore.

Discovering a cold Burger King bag in front of the door to my dorm in Johnson the day I arrived on campus the first time. The heartbreaking feeling I had when I realized my dad had gotten it for me after all the parents had to say goodbye.

Talking to Jessica the day I met her- all the way back to Whittier from Venice beach on one of those free bus trips fall of freshman year.

The smell of the printshop.

Staring out the window in the old QC office at the beginning of junior year, listening to people laughing, feeling nothing but good.  

Having nothing to look at but a corny landscape scene of a country cottage in the hospital room I was stuck in for three days, wondering if there was a cottage somewhere with a picture of a hospital room hanging in it.

Throwing my comb across the room after I had a tangle in my hair…after there was no warm water in the shower… after a two-hour car ride from Big Bear…after I hadn’t showered in two days… after I had a blinding migraine from the altitude in the mountains…after a long stressful night of drawn out arguments between friends… after feeling like I was just going to be brushed off for the rest of my life.

Walking from the TI to Mendenhall knowing that as soon as I reached it and found my mom standing there with her suitcase, college as I’d known it for the last four years, would be over. I would never again wander into the Ci/Ti…whatever… to find bad food and good friends sitting there to have casual conversation with. 

Nothing I’ve done since then has felt memorable enough to talk about. It’s potato chips. Paper cups. holograms.

Trying to grasp something from nothing.