Teenage drama.

What with the treachery and vicious backstabbing that I suppose is the trademark of all girl relationships, although I have to admit I never expected it from my friends after all the "I owe you my firstborn," "You'll be my bridesmaids," "I'm hooking up my kid with your kid" and "Friends forever" rituals we went through, I've possibly had, if not the worst, then the second-worst experience of my existence.

Although I have to remain on civil terms with them because, well, they're my ride home for weekends, I've just been ditched by the crowd. I've spent the greatest part of the last two years with them, and now because I happen to live across campus, I am ignored and utterly useless.

No one eats lunch with me, no one eats dinner with me, no one bothers to call me or even email me to ask me to have lunch with the other three, no one bothers to notice me when the club outing that was supposed to be my late birthday party is scheduled and takes place without my knowledge or my presence; when I happen to stumble upon them at lunch, someone always has to go to class and the other one suddenly remembers she has homework; the couple would rather spend all of their time together than acknowledge my existence; shopping trips happen without me; no one asks me to be part of a project, just because I live on the opposite side of campus and they'd rather die than have to walk the distance even though god knows how many times I've done the trek to have lunch with them when they felt like calling me at five minutes' notice. I don't know what I did to make this happen, I don't even know if I even did anything, all I know is that I suddenly lost three of the five people I spent the better part of the last two years with, and the other two aren't far behind just because of distance.

To look on the bright side of it, I guess that I can now live the actual college experience and meet new people, not that any of the others have met more than three people apiece because they spend all of their time together.

My guess is that I'll regret saying this in a couple days, although chances are that I won't, and I needed to blow off steam, and I've noticed that there were a lot of strange things happening lately, and maybe we're just naturally drifting apart, or maybe they had a secret meeting at some point and decided to kick me out because there's this new girl that they spend all of their time with and no I'm absolutely not jealous but I can't stand her and I'm sure she is a wonderful person but I am absolutely not jealous that she is stealing them away from me and she probably has no idea of what is happening but it's all her fault anyway and I am just whining like a stupid, miserable sop.

I had to gripe. I had to blow off the steam. If I let it fester like I've let fester many wounds before, it will turn messy and make me all sour and scrunched up and vicious and evil. I don't want that. I'd rather have complete strangers shake their heads and pity my utter and complete shallowness than never have friends again.

I'll push the arrow in deeper and end this in typical teenage fashion: "Whatever."

Some days...

are great until one little thing happens, and then it ruins the rest of the day, no matter how great it was.

It happened to me today.

And I hate it when that happens.

I hate it.

I fucking hate it.

midnight: all is (mostly) well.

1 am: asleep.

6:45 am: stupid alarm clock.

7 am: aaaaah nice hot shower.

8 am: I actually enjoy my chemistry class. Is that a crime?

9 am: handed out 100 flyers in less than ten minutes. Got plenty of weird looks, but it was an interesting social experiment.

10 am: laundry. Of course, one of the washers takes my money and then refuses to work. Determined not to let it ruin my day.

11 am: had cheese and cookie dough for lunch.

noon: off to German class. Mildly boring, but I like being immersed in the language.

1 pm: next-to-last day of transmission genetics. Finally!

2 pm: show up an hour early at research group because I forgot that class ended at 2, not 3. Stood around for ten minutes, then ran back to dorm, found out that (Oh miracle!) Amazon has shipped my field notebook (due Monday with lab observations) and it has arrived. Might just start believing in a god.

3 pm: go back to research group.

4 pm: still there. Am fascinated by particle physics lecture.

5 pm: fascinated by phospholipids and their roles in T-cells.

6 pm: help clean up, have fun with club officers who all know me by name.

6:05 pm: walk back to dorm, feel like singing because my day was awesome.

6:06 pm: notice three little words in a status message and put together all that's been happening lately.

6:07 pm - 9 pm: possibly second worst evening of my life.

Sometimes I have so much bad luck I wonder what I did to deserve it.

Milestone

Today, I turned eighteen.

My alarm clock rang at 6:45 as usual.

I'd been waiting so long for this moment that I didn't know how or what to feel when it actually got there. The day before, I didn't feel excited and restless like I'd always been before my other birthdays. It's strange, I suppose. Poised on the verge of what has seemed since childhood as ultimate freedom, I didn't know whether to look back or forward.

Why reflect on my life past? On waking up that morning, I didn't feel any different. No magical change occurred over the course of the night. I haven't been a child for quite some time, nor have I been an adult either. Change happens gradually, I've come to discover.

Why face the bright future suddenly opening up to me? Because there wasn't one. There wasn't a majestic stone archway engraved with that strangely exciting yet sobering word "ADULTHOOD" opening up a path into a mystical, wonderful world for me.

Most of the people I know have celebrated their eighteenth birthday before going to college. Maybe for them it was a milestone, maybe it wasn't. College was my milestone. One day, I woke up and had to make breakfast and decide what I would do that day, without anyone hovering over my shoulder, advising, bothering, guiding, and hindering me all at the same time.

In Western civilizations, eighteen is the magical age when suddenly everything is allowed. It's probable that it doesn't apply to me because most everything about my life is unusual.

When you turn eighteen, you get to vote. Not me, I'm not American.

When you turn eighteen, you get to smoke. Not me, I personally prefer living to dying a horrible death choking on tar-blackened lungs.

When you turn eighteen, you can drink in most countries. Not me, I live in the United States.

When you turn eighteen, you can drive in most countries. Not me, I don't have a license.

When you turn eighteen, you get to go clubbing. Not me, I'd never be able to prove my age because my European ID card has the month and the date backwards, so it looks like I was actually born in December.

I was born at 14:01 seven time zones from when I live now. This morning, just to feel special, I ate a chocolate truffle at 7:01, sitting on my bed while my roommate snored.

That minute was special. So was that truffle.

At 7:02, I got up and walked down the hall to the shower.

At 7:03, I came back and got my towel I'd forgotten.

Just another regular day.

Good Reasons

I've decided to write a blog. Not because I want to keep friends updated about what I do. Not because I want to rant on what some person did sometime for some reason. Not because I want to belong to some community.

But because I think.

And because I write.

You see, when I think, I write in my head. Except I don't ever write it down. When I write, I handwrite, and that energy I use to form loops with my pen in order to put meanings on the page keeps me from thinking.

I have recently acquired a laptop and have discovered that I can think while I type. Maybe it's the way my brain is wired. Maybe it's seeing my thoughts arrange themselves as they go. Maybe it's the strange feeling of power that comes with being able to organize your thoughts. Maybe it's seeing the words already there.

I've always thought that words were there for me to use. Somebody once made up words. For years and years and years, those words sat in a book. When I learned how to write, and I don't mean write, I mean write, those words became mine. Like wild animals who gradually become used to a presence, those words became used to me. When I learned to write, I suddenly saw how to place my words on a page to reflect what I thought. Everything that has and will and is being written in the whole wide Universe exists as words. All one has to do is to find them, find the right words, and tame them. Tame them so that they let themselves be laid down to rest on a piece of paper.

Thoughts flow. When I think, I write. When I learned to write, I learned to think.

Thoughts are private. But humans are pack animals, and thus humans thoughts are meant to be shared.

Is it strange to think that I would rather share my thoughts with an anonymous someone whom I do not know and who does not know me, someone whose existence I did not even suspect, than with my closest friends? There is a certain privacy in the omniscience of the World Wide Web.

No one has a link to this page.

No one knows of its existence.

No one knows who the person writing these words is.

And yet they will be read.

The only way to find this page would be to stumble upon it by chance. And that is what I want.

I will have shared my most private thoughts without the need to check what I say for fear of offending someone, for fear of revealing a part of myself I do not want to show to the people around me, for fear of disappointing others.

Isn't this strange? And yet, it works.

These are my thoughts. Read them.