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          Poems by e. e. cummings

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          My Journal

I'm at a point in my life where I have no idea what I want to do. My life is spend right now following other people's lives, and what their accomplishments are and will be. (Figure skating, in case you haven't figured that out..) It seems kind of surprising, since all my life I've geared myself toward doing well in school. If you're educated, the rest of your life will be a breeze, as the stereotype goes. Well, even now, in the middle of my junior year, I have this uncertainty of what the rest of my life will be like. I'm sure that all teenagers have this coming of age problem, but personally it's making me panic since sometimes I want to scream, "I have no idea what to do with my life right now!"

My cousin already has his whole life planned out: go to John Hopkins and become a doctor. That's all fine and dandy for him, but it only makes me feel more useless, that I'm just extra weight to lug around in this world. I haven't thought about suicide, I'm too optimistic for that, LOL. My family, my dog, the thought of the next time I can skate, LOL, and my other dreams keep me around, plus the people on the Internet whom I'm acquainted with. Junior year is okay, I guess, but most of the time I don't even care. I think that's why I procrastinate so much, LOL. I don't know how I get things done sometimes. I think at school I go into this "good student who must excel - or at least satisfy myself" mode and at home I'm like, "Aaaa who cares?"

I'm scared sometimes; what's wrong with me? By all standards I should be sure of what I'm doing - not everyone has a 4.14 GPA but it scares me still. I'm not perfect, I know that. There are people out there pulling higher grades than me, but I don't care about that anymore like I used to. I understand that people are capable of things that I wouldn't even dream I could do. But I'm me and that's the way it goes.

I understand though, that I have so-called talents that other people wish they had, but they just say that. I really don't think I'm that special. My hands listen to what I want from them, LOL. I think that's the secret. I don't think that I have a prodigal talent in art or music - LOL too old for that. I think I'm just more expressive that most people. If I had a word to call myself, it would be "artist." Not just in art art, but just expressing myself, which I love doing if I'm in the mood. I have to be inspired, like I am now. When I get in the groove of something, nothing else matters until I get everything I can out of it, writing included. This is probably why I'm writing as much as I can now before I fall into the mindless don't-give-a-care rut again. There goes my inadequacy once more.

Actually I wonder why I don't write as much as I used to. In school we always had to write stories and poems and such. I was never good at writing fictional stories; true stories that pull at my heart work for me. I can't stand to just write crap; I have to care about what I'm writing about in order for it to satisfy me. That was rare, though. Every time I wrote something, something would seem to be missing from it, and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. Maybe that was one reason why I stopped writing so much - I just couldn't satisfy myself.

That was the case for that profiency essay test in sophomore year. I wrote the best essay I could under the circumstances; mainly stifled under the "ideal" essay they wanted, and stifled under the time constraint. I'm the kind of person who doesn't do what other people want; I always did what made me content. I never liked the guidelines and grading systems for writing. Writing is a form of expression for me; I don't give a flip if it made sense, as long as it made me feel something, my mission is accomplished. (That's probably why I love e. e. cummings and Tori Amos like I do, LOL) Thus, I did something I never thought I'd do; fail a profiency essay exam. Truthfully, I didn't really like the essay I had written either, but I didn't think that it was below the grade level...it wasn't that bad, was it? Oh, I hated to think it was. But last year, I began to think that maybe I had disintegrated into some freak who couldn't even pull herself up to the kids who never figured out subject-verb agreement. No really, I knew people in my English class who frankly, IMO, had third grade grammar and passed the test. On the other hand I knew another person who excelled in English, but had failed the test as well. Such is the truth of testing, I suppose. Anyway, that inadequate feeling lingered on for the rest of the school year, until the very last day before summer vacation. On that day, I asked my English teacher to sign my yearbook. Keep in mind, I had the "scary teacher," the one whose class people try to transfer out of as fast as the paperwork will go through, LOL. She wrote: "It has been pure pleasure for me to work with such a sweet, talented young woman." This was written to a person who had failed a profiency exam! Did she really see something in me that I didn't?

Maybe she did, I don't know. I was finally redeemed when we took our first essay exam this year in English. It was literature-type essay, the kind where you think up something to write and prove it with a lot of quotes and examples (believe me, the teachers like the last part especially =^) ). It wasn't much, but I can't describe how I felt when I saw that "Excellent" written in red pen at the end of my paper. It didn't matter that I had a perfect paper or even that I had the highest grade on that essay in the class. It was that "Excellent" that really affected me. I almost cried when I saw that. Maybe writing is something I was still good at, something that I could pursue for later. Maybe it will lead my life to something.

Don't start grading on this for relevance or transitions or whatever. This is just what I needed to get out. There. I feel much better. LOL, people were right: writing is therapeutic. I should try it more often.

Anita