Never You Mind

I've almost finished my exams. In fact, in exactly 9 hours, I will be entirely finished with the IB. Strange, two years of work will all be finished tomorrow.

And what do I feel? Relieved, obviously. Happy. Exhausted. Exams have been annoying and tiring. Not especially difficult, just a pain in my ass. Maybe I haven't done my best, but I haven't done my worst either. So that's okay.

The end is coming up so quickly. I can't believe that this is me, that I am now what my second years were last year. I can't believe I'm here, ready to walk out of this place in a matter of days. It seems impossible, but it also seems right. It needs to happen.

The end does, however, beg the question: how do you want to be remembered? Apparently, some of you wish to be remembered as gossip-mongering liars (oh, that was harsh). But it's true. I am so disappointed with so many people. I am actually in disbelief, I am shocked that any of you could and do believe something so illogical and ridiculous and stupid.

I'm going to be honest, it hurts. It hurts that people would rather lie about something at my expense just so they have something to talk about. It hurts that people can speak behind my back but not to my face. It hurts that everyone is so quick to assume that I am a certain way even though if you all took a minute to consider everything, to consider me, you would think differently. It hurts because only very few people know that I couldn't do such a thing even if I wanted to. So all of you gossiping about it, laughing about it, judging it...you should take a second to consider how absolutely painful it is for me. You are judging something that I am literally incapable of. And all of you make it so much worse. You are adding insult to injury.

This is part of the reason why I am ready to leave. I feel like I have outgrown this place. I feel that I really cannot be bothered with the high school gossip and the back-stabbing and the strange alliances any more. I want to be back in the real world where people think normally and clearly and for themselves. I love Flekke but to be honest, it is full of far too many sheep (both literally and figuratively).

Now this may all sound harsh or bitter, but I guess it's really not. It is the truth, but I am not exactly angry about it. Instead, I would say that I'm sad about it. It is sad to realize that two years have come to this, that some people have not grown up very much at all. It is sad that so many of you want to be remembered like this. It is sad because I have cared so much, because I have believed in all of you, and it apparently hasn't amounted to shit with any of you.

I guess in the end, we all reveal our true selves.

"Are you sorry that you treat me unkind? Never you mind. Are you sorry that you wasted our time? Never you mind."

Oh Semisonic, thank you for writing the soundtrack for this exact moment.

Contemplaciones y Mensajes

Yo se que no puedo escribir poesia o literatura en espanol. Pero voy a trater de escribir un poco. Pienso que puedo expresarme un poco en espanol. Somos diferentes en cada idioma, si? Y para este tema, necesito espanol.

Hay personas en este mundo quienes son diferentes. Hay personas en cada vida quienes afectan mucho en cualquier sitio en cualquier momento.

Nuestros corazones son mugrientos con el suciedad del mundo. Cualquier persona tiene una polvareda de su corazon roto. Pero hay personas quienes pueden limpiar el polvo, el mugre, de nuestros corazones. No vamos a esperarlas. Pero son nuestros amores, en el sentido romantico pero en otros sentidos tambien. Los limpiadores de nuestros corazones son la gente que infunde nuestras vidas con razon. Y eso es lo unico que importa. Un poco es mas vale que nada.

Esas personas son esas que recordamos. Es probable que el mundo no va a recordarte. Pero si una persona, un corazon, te recuerdo? Eso es todo que es necesario.

Hace diecinueve meses aqui. Mi corazon estaba roto. Mi corazon estaba reparado. Y en el tiempo intermedio, aprendia mucho. Aunque hay personas que se quedan y hay personas que no se quedan, personas que rompia y personas que reparaba...no puedo olivdar que me ensenaban. No puedo olivdar algo como eso.

Y si tu te quedas todavia, te prometo: te voy a recordar despues de este sitio. Y me vas a infundir con razon, con esperanza, con confianza siempre.

Lost In Translation

I've just realized that any normal person coming across my blog would think that I hate this place and that I am a very unhappy person. That is not the case. We're always hardest on the ones (and places) we love, yeah? I mean, if I wasn't irredeemably tied to this place and its people, I don't think I would find it so easy to criticize everything. So the point is, although I might sound all doomsday/fire and brimstone-like, I'm not. I do care about things. And because I care about them, I'm emotional about them. I'm just afraid that the only impression I give is that I'm emotional and that I fail to convey the caring and meaning behind all of it.

It generally seems like we misinterpret a lot of things. It is this horrible, permanent language barrier caused by the fact that we all speak our own languages. I'm not referring to the problem of me speaking English as a first language and you speaking Russian or Spanish or Arabic as a mother tongue...I'm talking about the fact that we all have our own language that we speak with ourselves. And this language is one that we are completely incapable of teaching to others, one that we fumble to translate into spoken words. But that's the problem. It's always a translation. It's never what you actually mean, it's just a good approximation of it. I know this sounds like a bad summary of Wittgenstein's musings on private language, but it's true. We are always translating ourselves and, as all of us at this multilingual school know, there are always things that get lost in translation.

That is not how it works.

Fuck you for attempting to diminish and romanticize and laugh about something that is anything but eclectic and pretty.

Fuck you for trying to make real life a whole lot shinier and more adorable than it actually is.

And fuck you for not making it worth it.

Fuck you for not giving it all meaning and justification

Fuck you for showing me pretty but giving me ugly.

I am tired.

I am tired of watching the organization that I have put my faith in (and spent the last two years of my life living for) implode.

I am tired of hearing about how much I should be studying.

I am tired of university paperwork.

I am tired of thinking about money and scholarships and how to pay the rent.

I am tired of hearing about how much you all are studying.

I am tired of never really being at peace.

I am tired of people acting less like real people and more like caricatures.

I am tired of any sentence beginning with "This is the last time...".

I am tired of waiting.

I am tired of not knowing the right words.

I am tired of having writer's block.

I am tired of the past.

And for some reason, I don't think that this is all the kind of tired that can simply be fixed by sleep.

The Waiting Place

You know how at some point in every woman's life, she realizes that whether she likes it or not, she has turned into her mother? I realized that I'm my mother today. I think it's too early to be my mother. Or maybe she is just far too un-motherly. But either way, it made me laugh.

I don't know what to do anymore. The end of the year makes people do strange things, doesn't it? I think all the sunlight has made us all a bit crazy. And sometimes it's good crazy, like let's have random dance parties crazy. But sometimes it's bad crazy, like let's all bitch at each other crazy. It's weird how different people are reacting to the upcoming emotional trauma in the form of exams and graduation. But really, haven't we all just become a bit too dramatic for our own goods?

I went for a run today, something that I haven't done in a very, very long time. I thought about a lot of things, I thought about why I went out for a run. Mostly I went out for a run because I was bored. Why was I bored? Because I'm just passing my time, waiting for something to happen. That's really what the majority of life is, isn't it? You find things to do to pass the time in between the real moments, the real things. Not that that's such a bad thing. I've read and written more in the past weeks than I have in a long time. I've spent important time with Maria and Katherine. I've been content. So no, it's not bad, but it still is waiting. I don't know what I'm waiting for, I don't know what you're waiting for, I don't know what any of us are waiting for. But I am pretty sure that most of us are waiting for something.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down.

As I grow older, I’ve come to realize that win/lose isn’t really as black and white, as obvious as I always thought it was. Winning and losing in the traditional sense have no real relevance to daily life, to social interaction, to reality. The greatest tragedy of all is then perhaps that not everyone sees it this way.

I don’t even know how to function in a win/lose world, at least not in a social win/lose world. Of course some things are win/lose, like competition debating, sports, the stock market…but relationships? To make relationships about winning and losing is philosophically perverse. It eliminates compassion, understanding. It eliminates humanity.

It breaks my heart to think that we all are out to get each other, that other people harbor silent grudges for years, that no one can simply accept disagreement maturely. How are we all planning on ever functioning in the real world if we can’t constructively discuss rather than “bitch”, if we can’t disagree about anything, if we all can’t always have our way? I don’t think that “conniving”, “manipulative”, “hurtful”, or “good at bitching” are the characteristics that future employers, Ivy League universities, friends, or spouses are looking for.

How can we expect any country to ever resolve conflict, any company to comply with environmental standards, any government to act fairly? All of these actions, conflicts, etc. arise from self-interest, from individuals wanting to get their way, from people being frustrated with being out-voted, out-voiced. How can we ever ask anything bigger than ourselves to work out disagreements? How can we expect that everyone else should act collectively, put aside self-interest, if we can’t manage to do so in an issue as small as a two-hour dinner?

I am not sure what any of you have learned over the course of two years (some of you, I fear, have not learned very much) but speaking for myself, I have learned a lot about the value of maturity, of dignity, of articulation, of compromise. I have learned that before this place, I over-estimated people. I thought that, with education, anyone could overcome ignorance, arrogance, conceit, and obstinacy. That belief has been proved wrong. It has been hard. It has been long. I have held out, I have been blithely optimistic in the face of all evidence to the contrary. But now I’m forced to look at how the cards have fallen and unfortunately, it’s disheartening.

I am not sure if this is really how you want it to end. If so, then I am heartbroken. I am not sure if you are proud of what has happened, proud of how you have acted, proud of what you have done. If you are, then I am disgusted.

I believed in you. I believed in all of you. You have let me down. You have let yourselves down.

Am I angry? No. Am I disappointed? Always.