(no subject)
This tale is true, and mine.
What great words to start a poem with. They're from Burton Raffel's translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Seafarer. The first half is about a man's maddening love for the sea, unforgiving, frigid, lonely, and ever-calling. I love it - his passion for something he'll never understand and is irrevocably tied to, the dispair with the sea and the hollow restlessness without it.
I wish I was passionate about something. That there was something in my life, something I do, that I couldn't live without. Not just the people that I love, but something that I do that is so much a part of me that I would be utterly lost without it.
There's things I enjoy, don't get me wrong, but if I think about it, there's, let's see...reading, acting, writing, and drawing. And everything else is people. Would I keel over and die without reading or acting or writing or drawing? Hard to say. I'd have nothing to do, certainly, but would it take away part of who I am? I don't think so...Reading helps me *not* be who I am, to become someone else who can have adventures and be lovable and endure through things and have a happy ending. And it's the same with acting, except that it's Let's Pretend for the entertainment of observers, which is a way awesome concept, by the way. And writing I enjoy because it flexes my brain; it lets me create something, from myself, and tease and erase and edit and start over. And there's always something to add, something more to make it fuller. It lets me feel like I'm doing something constructive about becoming who I ought to be.
Someday someone ought to give me a map of myself. A sort of index so that I can actually see what's there. And how to find it, should I need it. But mostly I just want to know what's there, what potential I have, what I should focus on, what to correct and what to improve, what I can aspire to be that's actually in my reach. I'd really like to know. See, when you're drawing, it's all laid out in front of you, plain to see. You don't always know what to do to make it better, but you can see what needs improving. It's simple, unless you make it otherwise, but even then it's in your control. Mostly. But sometimes things just end up there and you have to embrace them or work around them. There's an instant result, whether you like the result or not.
~
A boy told me I was pretty today. This is a landmark occasion; it's never happened before. I'm still a little awed by it, having lived all of the life I can remember minus a few months not thinking I was at all attractive. And then a few months thinking I might be, but not thinking anyone else saw what I did.
What's the point of a male-female relationship that won't end in marriage, anyway? Friendship, I think. Getting to know people that are different than you and learning how to get along with them and finding out what you like and dislike about them, and about yourself. And to have fun, of course. So is that all I have in mind, about He Who Shall Remain Nameless? To be friends, and to find out what's to like and dislike, and how he makes me feel about myself, to have fun? I'd like to think so. But then there's the fact that I wouldn't really mind holding his hand, and sitting next to him, and being hugged, y'know? Not that I would really truly care if that wasn't any part of it. Seriously, I'm happy being able to play with his hair, just little things like that that friends would do, that I like to do because I know it feels nice and because he's cute. That's all I ask for.
~
Thank goodness for long weekends, when I can go to bed at 8:30 and not have to worry about getting my homework done. I have to clean my room, go shopping with Dad for Mom, who is out of commission because of the surgery on her shoulder, and study for an English test. It's going to be a nice weekend, all three days of it. Mmmm. Three day weekend. Yeeeeeees.