Just imagine.

I haven't had much to say lately, I guess, but I feel like I should write just to keep up the tradition.
Tradition. Ha.

I'm changing my classes around at term. I'm incredibly excited.
I'll have AP World History now, and I'll be able to drop Sports Medicine.
OH, JOY AND RAPTURE.
Seriously.
My Sports Medicine class consists of the most annoying, inane drivel I've had the ever-so-concentrated patience to sit through without being taken away in a straightjacket.

For a taste of the torture, try not only forcibly removing your brain, but then pushing it through a fat, pink sieve where all the holes are filled with sharp little rocks. Next, douse the lacerated pieces in oil and set them on fire, preferably using an acetylene torch. When operating the torch, do not use protective gear. When satisfied (in other words, when your flesh has been thoroughly melted off), toss the burning, bleeding, oiled brain pieces with some mayonnaise to make what may vaguely remind you of a salad. Then, eat it, or (better) force someone else to. When you/they throw up, use whatever's left as face cream and go on an important date. Hide the car keys so your date has no way to get home. He will scream that you're out of your mind. You are then allowed to take this quite literally, because what is left of your mind is now cooling on what is left of your face.

Don't get me wrong-- it isn't the subject matter that's so terrible. Sports medicine could really be an interesting topic to study if we had a teacher who could string a halfway coherent sentence together and didn't misdefine medical terms, poorly manage his time, read straight from a lesson plan he obviously didn't write (because he can't pronounce/spell/use/define half the words) or otherwise demonstrate every single symptom of a severe concussion: vacant stare, spasmodic body movements, emotional state out of proportion to a situation, incoherent speech, stumped expression when asked to answer an obvious question...
Let me give you an example.

GIRL (ME) IN SPORTS MEDICINE
Day 1
Mr. XXXX: "Can anyone think of any uses for athletic tape?"
Girl: "Prophylaxis?"
Mr. XXXX (characteristic vacant stare): "Well, at least we know someone can read out of the book. What about 'prevention?'"
*Girl looks down. First of all, she does not have a book. She becomes very frustrated, partly because her pet peeve is gross incompetency, but mostly because prophylaxis happens to MEAN prevention.

Now, imagine variations on this same scenario (or the one described in detail above) occurring every other day for two full months.

Do you understand why I'm euphoric to transfer out of this class?!?
I'm also excited to join World History.
I love history.
I find it totally hilarious.
I'm finished blogging.

Something's up.

It’s been a couple days since I’ve written.
The SAT stole my weekend.

I’m still not sure what happened last night.
I woke up (or should I say, became conscious) twice, in my bathroom, at 3:30 and 4:30 AM, standing in the middle of the floor, staring at myself in the mirror.
Talk about creepy.
Apparently, I sleepwalk these days.
Apparently, I don’t sleep these days.
I almost passed out at the hospital this morning. I honestly had to excuse myself, walk out of the unit, and literally collapse until I could get myself together well enough to pass for “conscious.” I was able to make it back in, but my eyes kept closing and closing of their own accord while the neonatologist was discussing necrotizing enterocolitis.
I really couldn’t help it.
This is getting pretty bad.
The other day, my mom said she walked into my room at around 2 AM to check on me, and I was sitting in the middle of my floor, staring straight ahead.
I have no memory of that.
I think something might be seriously wrong.

I DON’T have panic attacks.
I’M NOT consumed by anxiety.
I DON’T stress out over everything.
I DO sleep at night.

I wish.

Why now?!? My school life is much easier than last year, my social life is going relatively well, my job and my internship are both fine—I don’t know what’s happening. At least nothing happened to me on the SAT. Though I did take my carotid pulse while I was waiting for everyone else to finish a section, and it was 24 beats above the high end of normal. Acute tachycardia’s a pretty crazy stress response for something like a test. At least my blood pressure didn’t drop. I hate that.
The thing is, though, I’m not a hypochondriac. Really. Right now, though, I know there’s something wrong, and it’s scaring me.

Help?

More about me than you wanted to know.

I don’t understand why the Bible caught on.
I don’t feel like expanding my views on that sentence.

We had the most disgusting Bible lesson in seminary today about gay sex and incest.
It was sickening (and we say Hollywood’s corrupt).
I understand that sick, gross things happen and have happened, but seriously, I don’t want to read about it with a room full of freshmen who need terms defined.

I cried in seminary today.
The teacher told us about his disturbed youth phase.
It reminded me of mine.
I felt like an idiot, and my makeup smeared all over.

The year I was 14 was my most traumatic so far.
Imagine paranoia as a constant, physical sickness. Imagine an all-consuming preoccupation with thinking someone’s going to FIND OUT, and fearing the consequences so much that you endanger your own life to protect a secret.
I lost many friends, in the most literal sense.
I think it’s also why I’m so messed up when it comes to guys.
I was insecure as a freshman girl. I turned to people who’d accept me no matter what, no matter who they were, no matter who I was. I found them, and it didn’t matter to me that they didn’t care about me, because I’d finally found boys who’d use my name when they talked to me.
I felt stereotypically hardcore.
I wore black, heavy eye makeup and streaked my hair pink.
That’s where it started.
Reality followed.
Every single boy I hung out with was into heavy drugs, and my life transformed into a constant cover-up. They’d come over stoned or drunk, and it fell to me to hide them from my parents and keep them from destructive behavior when they couldn’t control their actions.
One time, I had to physically fight to wrench a prescription bottle from one of my best guy friends because he had gotten into my friend's medicine cabinet and was taking pain pills, one after another.
I got hurt.
Nobody knew.
I made sure of that.
I was more involved than I’ll ever admit, even here on the Internet where nobody knows who I am.
I did some things I’ll never mention again.
I needed an experience, something to transcend what was here, because I realized that I’d never be satisfied, that even my beloved Equilibrium was a creation of my own mind.
It wasn’t real, and neither was I.
In reality, I was miserable, but I was so caught up in the cycle that I never dreamed of leaving it.

Then, I got an idea.
While everyone else fried their brains, I started to do what I do best—research.
I became an illicit mini-doctor.
People came to me for advice that could ultimately concern whether they lived or died.
At 14, this was both extremely dangerous and extremely exciting.
I used to be so good that I could watch a stoned kid for a few minutes and tell you what he was on, how long ago he’d taken it, what it was doing to his body right at that moment, how long it would take before it’d be out of his system enough to pass a drug test, what best to do to hide it until then, and what to do to ease the “comedown.”
I memorized narcotic chemical structures and perused medical studies on the computer after my parents were asleep, applying the concepts to my own ready-made “control group” of druggies and using the results to form conclusions on which to base my advice.
I could tell my friends which amounts of which drugs (prescription, illegal, or both) would combine well together and which would be too harmful to even try.
I gave mini-lectures on alcohol poisoning (acute alcohol intoxication) and what to do when (not if) it happened. I made them promise to call 911 if a friend’ respirations fell below 13 per minute, but I don’t think they listened.
At least no one died.
At least, not physically.
Drugs suck out your soul and replace it with the burnt ashes of the person you used to be.

Don’t do drugs.

Appeal

I watched House tonight.
I love House.
Mostly, I love him because he can get away with being a caustic jerk.
I find it surprisingly endearing.
That's another thing about me. I admire strange things about people.
For example, what I call "deserved arrogance" is a definite turn-on. When a guy is exceptionally good at something (whether it's school, athletics, music, etc.) and he knows it, I think it's totally attractive. The catch is, traditionally defined complacency and overconfidence really get on my nerves. For me to be sufficiently intrigued, a boy has to know his limits, as well as his strengths; what makes him interesting is the fact that he knows his limits are much higher than everyone else's.

I wish I was more precise in speech. Since I generally keep my thoughts to myself, I sometimes struggle to say what I mean in conversations that aren't between people I already have a relationship of trust with. For example, in class, I have lately found myself mixing up my sounds and words when answering or asking questions because I know that once I open my mouth, the pressure's on-- there are forty others in the room scrutinizing everything I say, magnifying my words a thousand times to find the slightest flaw. And pressure really does get to me these days. I'm serious. I haven't had any kind of trouble with anxiety until this year, but it's really kicked in all of a sudden. I had an anxiety attack and honestly was unable to breathe at work the other day after my fifth hour of homework. I didn't even know anxiety could induce an asthma attack (and I don't even have asthma!), but I looked it up, and Wikipedia says it can. I've also had an attack during class, in the middle of a test. Everything tensed up, my brain literally froze in place, I started to hyperventilate, and my hands started to physically shake. I couldn't concentrate on anything but the time and how little of it I had left. It was the strangest feeling because it was completely new to me. I've never experienced anything even remotely like this before; it felt like my thoughts were going through a high speed blender or something. Of course, I stressed about the test all week long (as if I need more cortisol in my bloodstream), but it ended up being all right (94%). The whole experience honestly frightened me, though. I don't understand why all this anxiety is building up now. It's my senior year. Apparently, my limbic system just wouldn't feel complete without throwing one heck of a graduation party.

Plus, I have a crush on a neonatologist.
Awkward, I know.
He's relatively young (30s?), endearingly intelligent, and has a sweet accent.
I can't believe I'm putting this out there. XD

Implosion vs. explosion.

I was listening to two kids argue philosophic theology this weekend.
There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching an intellectual argument.
Blood vessels dilate, the intensity of the subject matter nearly induces pupil mydriasis, and it’s almost like the impulses that make up pure thought are visible as each person tries to prove the ultimate supremacy of their own ideas.
Nobody wins, of course, because there’s no arbitrary entity with the authority to say, “You’re right, and you’re wrong.” Except God, but I guess that’s where argument begins in the first place, and that’s how it’s doomed to end. It’s all up in the air, maybe even more so than before the conflict started.

I don’t usually argue with anyone.
I’d rather listen than talk, because I value a chance at observation over anything I’ve got to “prove” (which, as we’ve just covered, would ultimately get me nowhere).
It’s not that I don’t have ideas or beliefs that I’m passionate about (far from it), it’s just that unlike most people, I’m my own little AP Bio example. Forcing my random, rapidly firing thoughts inward, I increase the entropy of my total consciousness, but decrease the entropy of the universe because they’re all going inside of me and not out into the open to collide with the thoughts and ideas of others.
To satisfy the second law of thermodynamics, I think I am eventually doomed to implode.
Of course, I’m familiar with a kid who is pretty much my polar opposite in this area, and sometimes I think he might EXplode.
He’s so vocal that whenever he has a thought/idea/problem/comment/conflict, everyone has to know about it.
I think this must be lonely.
Everything you said would be released out into the open, beyond your limited sphere of control, and you’d burn your fingers trying to clutch the white-hot wisps of radical thought that were once yours as they ultimately escaped you. You and the world would stand as helpless spectators while mutations of the same idea contradicted themselves, zooming around in directionless frustration as they tried to hit something—somewhere—that resonates with the pure frequency of truth, which might not even really exist.

This is intellectual torture.
No one can escape it, but I can contain it.

I’d rather implode than explode.