It's Been a Rough Week

It's been hard this week, yes. I started dancing at a new studio, which, while lovely for my mental health, has not been particularly good for my physical or emotional health. God help anyone who happens to encounter me and try to talk to me or to get me to move. Yes, my muscles are sore, no, I'm not religious, and yes, I'm certainly some kind of outcast/loser/friendless lonely person at this new studio. Most of the other people are on the competition team, so I'm a bit of a stranger. It's tricky. But it's good to dance. Follow me on Twitter @hsherwoodreid if you're interested in that kind of thing. Have a wonderful weekend! Maybe I'll post again after my choir concert, which people referenced in the previous post will be attending. :)

I Hate Love

Just love me. Yes, you, with the mismatched clothes and the kind of hair color that can’t be described. Yes, you with the acne on your chin and the beautiful eyes and perfect hands. I just want you to hold me in your arms and to tell me that I’m beautiful. I want to describe the way that our lips will meet and linger and I want to explain the magnificent way you look at me. I want you to whisper in my ear and kiss my neck and I want you to drive me home and tell me that you’ll miss me. I want you to call me in the morning just so you can talk to me and I want you to never want to cheat. I want you to tell me that you love me and I want to tell you that I love you too. I want to hold your big hands as we walk down the hallway and I want people to tell me that we’re cute together. I want to call you when I’m sad or lonely and I want you to make it all right. I want to take your face in my hands when you’re sad and I want to tell you that it’ll be ok and I want to kiss you to explain that it will. There’s something in my chest that aches for you. You’re the image of a perfect human being, despite your flaws. So maybe you don’t always do your homework, and maybe you sometimes get drunk, but I don’t care. It’s the flaws in people that make them wonderful, and I know that somewhere inside of you, you’re really good. So please, when you see me, talk to me and tell me about your life, or ask me a question, and I want you to see in my eyes that I love you, and I want you to realize that you love me back. And from there, and from then on, just love me. But you won't. 

Going Crazyyyyy

Since my decision to quit dancing with my old, corrupt studio, I've been struggling to find somewhere new to dance. I tried a new studio, but that didn't go over very well, and I'm looking at this other new studio. I talked to the manager, and he seemed like a great guy, but it hasn't opened yet. This means that a) I haven't danced in over two months, b) I'm going crazy (see a), and c) I NEED TO DANCE (see a and b). Apparently this studio should be open tomorrow (it is just opening), so hopefully, I will be dancing tomorrow. However, this lack of dancing is making me absolutely insane, crazily tired, and woefully evil. Today I said something quite horrible to this poor kid who sits next to me in AP Human Geography that I didn't even realize until the girl who sits on my other side commented on it. I don't even remember what I said. I think I'm going brain dead. BLECH. Maybe the next time I post something, you will be significantly more interested and satisfied since I will have something to talk about and I won't be absolutely crazy. I hope you're enjoying your dance-free day, just like me!

An English Assignment

On Friday, my English class was assigned to write a short essay similar to one called "Football," by Elizabeth Crane. I don't know if mine is any good, but I particularly enjoyed writing it. So I'm posting it. Tell me what you think, if you're interested, because I'm interested. Anyway, here it is:
In my next life I want to explain homecoming to someone, enthusiastically. I want to be able to explain football and cheerleading to my younger brother named Sam who will nod at me in awe as I explain the strangeness of high school to him and I want him to think of me as the coolest person alive just because I’m his older sister. I want to feel the same way about my older brother, Mark, when he tells me about grown-up stuff like trying to get into college and worrying about if our parents will find out about his secret girlfriend. I want to be the kind of girl who everybody kind of knows, through someone else, and I want to wear my school colors as often as possible and maybe I even want to be a cheerleader. I want to be invited to parties and say I don’t want to go because my parents won’t let me, but then I want to sneak out anyway wearing a skirt that’s too short and I want to lose my shoes at the party and rip my skirt climbing back through my window and have to tell my parents that I accidentally threw it all out. I want Mark to go to Harvard on scholarship because he’s forgotten about the secret girlfriend and because he is practically a genius and I want to go visit him and brag about it to all of my friends. I want to inherit my grandfather’s ancient blue pickup truck with a bench seat and I want to kiss the first boyfriend my parents let me have in that truck when I drop him off at his house after the homecoming game and I want him to say I can’t wait to see you even though I’ll see him tomorrow. I want to not worry about anything because I’m a teenager and I don’t care, and I want to be angry sometimes. I want Sam to suddenly become gigantically tall and to go missing on occasion and I want to wonder where my little brother has gone. I want listen to him argue with our parents and I want him to lock the door to his room and play loud music because he’s angry about how bland his life is, and I want him to come home smelling of smoke until our parents send him off to boarding school in Connecticut and I want to miss him terribly. I want Mark to introduce us to his girlfriend over winter break and then I want him to come home over the summer with a fiancée which surprises us all, and I want him to end up breaking it off because he wants to finish school before he gets married. I want the girl to be upset but to understand because she wants what’s best for him, and I want him to go to medical school and become a doctor. I want him to move to New York and live in a tiny apartment but I want him to be happy because he knows he’s saving people’s lives. I want him to call me and tell me when he has a hard day, like when he almost loses the girl who was in a car crash and whose face has been ripped to pieces by the glass, and I want him to cry even though he’s too old and a boy, but I want to tell him that it’s OK. I want our parents to be concerned because he doesn’t have a girl and I want him to tell them that he’s too busy and that it’ll happen eventually. I want Sam to finish high school and come home and be the smiling boy he used to be, because he’s changed back, somehow, and I want him to decide to not go to college because he wants to stay with our parents, and I want him to work at an auto repair shop and love it. I want him to then meet a pretty girl who brings her beaten-up Honda into the shop and for him to find her credit card and have to call her, and then I want them to end up falling in love. I want him to propose to her after a year of saving up all of his money to buy a ring and I want to cry at their wedding because my little brother is getting married. I want my mother to cry too and to have my dad rub her back and nod approvingly at my brother and I want my dad to tell him that he’s proud. I want to graduate from high school with decent grades and I want to go to a state school and realize that I really should have been working harder earlier in my life. I want to decide that I want to learn French and then I want to realize that I’m really into photography and that I want to see so many things, and then I want to spend a year traveling around the world with my camera and taking pictures of everything with my parents’ money because they’re glad I’m finally interested in something that’s actually important, according to my dad. I want to forget to graduate from college even though I really want to because I decide to become a photographer for international news. I want to get assigned to a war zone and I want to have to witness horrible things but I want to win some sort of award for my pictures. I want to meet a reporter in the war zone who happens to be a really nice guy and I want him to tell me that he’d take me out to dinner if there was anywhere to go. I want him to be named Nick and I want him to have kind of crooked teeth but for him to speak so beautifully that it won’t matter. I want him to be monstrously tall and have glasses and brown hair that refuses to stay flat. I want him to tell me that he loves me as we lie on his rickety bed in the half-light of early morning and I want to kiss him and tell him that I love him too. I want to decide to move back to the States together and to instead report in the nation’s capitol, and I want to spend a week getting lost in Washington, D.C. with him but not really care because we know we’ll find our way back eventually. I want to take him to see my parents and then when we get back home to our tiny apartment with one dusty thrift-store couch in the living room and a funny smell in the kitchen I want to open up my camera case and to find a ring sparkling beneath the camera. I want Nick to get down on his knee and ask me to marry him and after I splutter for a moment and say yes I want him to explain that he asked for my parents’ permission when we went to visit and I want to call Mark and when I tell him I want to be able to hear him smiling over the phone. I want to marry Nick while wearing the simplest white dress I can find and I want to be able to see my mother sobbing in the front row and I want my father to smile in the way that only fathers whose daughters are getting married do and I want him to gruffly wipe away the tears that threaten to slip into his moustache that I can’t stand. I want my best friend to be my bridesmaid and I want her to call me a week after the wedding and to tell me that she’s dating the best man. I want Nick’s older brother’s four-year-old daughter to be my flower girl and I want her to wear pink because she refuses to wear any other color. I want to move into a slightly bigger apartment and to buy a slightly newer couch and I want there to be a slightly less funny smell in the kitchen. I want to spend the weekend painting our bedroom and I want to end up having a paint fight and I want Nick to be pulling flecks of paint out of my hair when I wake up in the morning on the couch because we don’t have a bed yet. I want to fall into a happy, married routine in which Nick leaves me wonderfully written, slightly dirty love poems in the kitchen drawers and I want to have a too-big table with two mismatched chairs where we eat breakfast and dinner. I want to take beautifully lit pictures of him while he’s sleeping and I want him to become an editor and have to buy a suit because the one he wore at our wedding wasn’t his. I want to go to the park by myself one day because I have nothing else to do and I want to swing on the swings and to realize that I desperately want children. I want to get pregnant and smile as the other women at the grocery store stare at my protruding belly and murmur supportively. I want Nick to tell me to quit my job because he can support us now and I want to protest but eventually give in. I want to have a son who we name Andrew and who looks at me like he knows everything and I want him to wave his tiny fists in the air. I want to paint the room that used to be my office blue and I want him to beg for one more story when I tuck him into his rocket-ship covered bed at night. I want him to run from his room to our apartment door when Nick gets home and I want Nick to scoop our tiny boy up in his arms and to kiss me as he sets our son down and I want Andrew to make a face when we kiss and I want to not care. I want Andrew to complain about eating his vegetables at dinner and I want to almost cry when I watch him go off to kindergarten. I want Andrew to play soccer and I want him to be good. I want to start a photography business when I realize that I’ve read almost every book in the library by our apartment, including the non-fiction ones and I want to love cradling my camera between my hands again. I want Andrew to become remarkably good-looking and I want him to be the kind of boy that the middle school girls watch longingly from the stands as he plays soccer on the field. I want him to be on varsity and to yell at me when I tell him he can’t go to practice because he’s failing his classes. I want him to almost not graduate from high school but to end up going to college anyway because he’s an incredible athlete. I want him to take a nice girl to prom and I want to take beautiful and heart-wrenching (for me) pictures of him standing in front of the school with his arm slung casually around her waist. I want for Nick and I to start sleeping in different rooms when Andrew leaves because things just aren’t the same anymore and I want to remain loyal only because Nick is the same nice guy he was when I met him and I just wouldn’t be able to deal with the guilt. I want to wonder whether I should have had more kids, and I want to go to the grocery store and feel sad because I’m only buying groceries for two people again. I want Andrew to finish college but end up playing for the US soccer team and I want to him to go to the world cup and I want to cheer for him in the stands even though he loses. I want hold my mother’s hand as she dies of old age and I want my father to die two weeks later after he breaks his hip and is in the hospital anyway. I want Andrew to become the manager for the soccer team after he can’t play anymore and I want him to end up married to a Hollywood star who I don’t really like but tolerate because I’m glad he’s happy. I want to cry at his wedding because my little boy is all grown up and I want to clutch Nick’s hand and I want him to pat me affectionately as tears gather in his own eyes. I want Nick to divorce me after admitting that he’s been seeing the secretary at the paper and I want to not really care because I more or less saw it coming. I want to keep the apartment and my camera and I want to enjoy being single and free and in charge of my own life. I want Nick to die the week after Andrew’s daughter turns ten of anything but cancer or a car crash and I want Andrew to tell me how much he loved Nick, and I want to agree. I want to spend the next year taking pictures and trying to sell them in art galleries and I want to visit my brothers and I want to feel old and tired. I want to fall asleep one night in the bedroom that I painted with Nick after having eaten dinner with Andrew and his family and having called Mark to tell him about the sky that evening and I want to die quietly without any tearful last goodbyes or heartfelt last words, and I want my obituary to be written by one of Nick’s old friends and I want Andrew to find the letter I want to write to him about how proud I am of him. I want my next life to be simple and poignant and I want it to be calm enough but I want to struggle a little bit so I remember that everything isn’t easy. I want it to be beautiful, in the end, and I want to recall the curve of Nick’s shoulder and the way Andrew once fit into my arms as I fall asleep on that last night, and I want to be able to tell people that once, I went to homecoming, but that it wasn’t nearly as important as everything else.

I'm One Messed Up Kid

For some reason I’m suddenly convinced that none of this is real. No, I’m not high or drunk, because I’ve never touched any of that stuff. Well, as far as I know. The darkness behind my eyelids seems far more real than these keys that my fingers appear to be tapping away on. I’m somehow convinced that it is not nine fifty-two on this Sunday night, and I’m strangely certain that my nausea is false. I don’t know where I really am, or what’s really happening, but I am almost certain that none of what is happening right now is real. This feeling of being trapped is fake, the way that I almost feel like I’m going to vomit is unreal. It’s not true that I’m pressured beyond belief, and the boy who captivates me certainly does not exist. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Maybe I’m cracking- under the pressure and all. Or maybe none of this is real. When I was little (if I was little), I imagined that none of this was real and that instead we were all the dream of a giant, who was temporarily sleeping. Unfortunately, it didn’t help with my shyness or my fears or my extreme lack of self-confidence, and it doesn’t help those things to think today that this is all faked. Although if it is, I don’t know what or who I am, but it would mean that I wouldn’t necessarily have to turn in my newspaper article on Tuesday. Which sure as hell would be nice.