The keys are so unfamiliar underneath my fingers. I haven't posted in livejournal since like...forever, and so I guess I'd actually try to get started on blogging about my life instead of my feelings (which are so jumbled up currently I don't think even I'd understand them if I were to write them down).

I've been wrong to say my friends have changed. It seems like all they've done is become more like themselves. A few weeks ago, I went up to visit Deanna in her mother's classroom (since her mother is one of the 10th grade science teachers), and found her just like I remembered her from those mornings spent in Mrs. Jones's room. If anything, she is much much happier. She still cracks those jokes Haleigh snorts at. She would still ignore what everyone says about her. And she has made a lot of friends. Just last Sunday, she turned 15 and got her driver's permit.

When I look around me, I see molds of what I could be, but never will be if I continuously hold myself back. Anna's working at this Fright Factory and meeting so many new people. Emily has tried a hand at dressage and scored a 64%, which I learned from her, was pretty good. Haleigh's been the exact paragon of a "band nerd". Every weekend, she's at some music competition--or anything to do with band. Angela's been hanging out in the courtyard with others, while still managing to be herself. Yes, I was wrong when I said they all changed and drifted away. If I hadn't been so scared to pursue the new positions they put themselves in, I might laugh as easily with them as their newfound friends.

So I'm trying to branch out... I guess you can call it that.

For the first time in Creative Writing, I walked up to the front of the room and read my poems out loud for this voluntary competition we are to have. For Algebra, I walked up to the board (something I would have shirked at before), the first one, when we played this extra credit game. Inside I was shivering and dying, but I managed to retain a calm facade until I sank back into my seat. In Spanish, I'd actually struck up a "friendship" (can I call it that?) with the same teacher I had feared and loathed at the beginning of the school year. There's just so much to him I didn't see before. Haleigh had told me back in Echols that he was freaking hard, and he hated literally everything and everyone. When you meet him, he's actually this huge teddy bear of a man who needs love. And being in his classroom means being stuffed with more than enough information. Not only does he know Spanish; he knows Vitamenese, Latin, and German! Also, it doesn't take much for him to go rabbling on and on about a historical event or his own life--while he was studying for a language. Out of all my teachers, he is the easiest for me to talk to, both about Spanish and other things.

And before this week is over, I intend to sign up for some volunteer working at the library. After telling Emily about it, too, we agreed to turn in the application together. After this post, maybe I'd ask my dad to print out the forms. I'm crossing my fingers that Emily and I may get shifts together. It'll be a great way for me and Emily to know each other out of school (an hour and twenty minutes at Creative Writing and lunch is not enough)! As with all my weird cases, I'm afraid to invite my friends over to my house because I fear I'd always be too dull and too unimaginative. I'm slow, too, and so dead of wit and humor. I can't fire back with sarcastic comebacks--I'm not like them--and coward I am, I am afraid if they find out, to a deeper degree, who this girl is. They wouldn't like her at all. Still, hope keeps on pulsing.

I am much better than last year. No longer known as "the smart girl" or "the shy, quiet chinese girl." People call me "Merry Christmas". The other Mary is "Virgin Mary". Today--those of us who didn't go to the staff-team volleyball game--stayed in the classroom, cleaned desks, threw "stars" around, joked about "getting a room" since this couple was set on being Romeo and Juliet recarnate. Finally I find out what I've been missing out on when I buried my head behind books. Now I rarely ever read novels.

However, I did finish Inkdeath! It's the last book to the Inkheart trilogy. Since I started it back in 4th grade and have been waiting anxiously for over THREE years for the last book to come out, it meant a lot to me when I finally got my hands on it. Cornelia Funke is indeed a miracle! Her books are "clean" enough for children, but as this reviewer said, she has enough material to captivate even the oldest of readers. There's this innocence in there we can't stop pining for.

Another event I look forward to is NaNoWriMo in November! I haven't written for decades it seems like. This is my case with writing now: I'm scared to miss out on things. I don't want to be the living copy of other authors who spent so much time writing they forgot about their own lives. So I stopped altogether at one point. Now, I'm only waiting for the red flag to drop and the race to begin! 50,000 words shouldn't be that bad? Or would it? Uhh...0.o

How was your week?