Number 35.

It has been a long time since I have written on this blog.  I don't really know what to say.  Things have changed.  I don't feel like such a nomad anymore.  I've been here in Michigan for almost a year and a half, and no one has said anything about moving.  They don't even want to travel to Louisiana for Christmas.  It looks like the family of nomads has finally found a home.

Knock on wood.

I remember saying the same thing in Georgia right before I started ninth grade.  And look what happened.  As soon as the standard two years was up, guess who showed up?  Relocation.  That word is my mortal enemy.  I hear it and I cringe.  I see the trucks and I cry.  Fuck you, relocation.

But all good things have to end, right?

Lookie there, I can make it sound optimistic.  I'm good at that.  But there's an element of sarcasm to my words.  I wouldn't be surprised if another six months passed and my father told me and my sister and mother, "Oh, they offered me the job and we're going to Los Angeles!"  Because he will do "what is ultimately best for this family" no matter what my opinion is on the issue, because he doesn't care anyway.

So there.  That's my biggest fear on this whole damn earth.  I'm not afraid of dying.  I'm not afraid of being alone.  I'm not even afraid of the dark.  I'm afraid of starting over yet again.

I don't want to leave.  Things just got good.  A few months ago, when I felt like digging a hole and burying myself in it, I just kept chugging because I knew I owed it to someone.  That someone may not be my parents or my brother and sister, or even my closest friend, but I knew it had to be someone.  And I may not be right, but I think I may have found them.

Again, knock on wood.

With my luck, even this good thing will end.  But I sure as hell hope it doesn't.  I like him.  I think I love him.  He is the greatest thing that has happened to me since I moved here.  That sounds a little cliche that a boy is the greatest thing that has happened to me.  It makes me sound like a real girl.  But I feel like he is.  He likes me for who I am and not what I look like, mostly.  Ha ha.  Anyway, he's legit and I really really like him.

The moral of all this babbling is to just keep going until the going gets good.  Keep your fears at the back of your mind and just live your life.  If I woke up every morning thinking that I only six more months to live here, I wouldn't do much of anything but feel sorry for myself and cry all the time.  I'd fall apart, and I just got myself back together from the last breakdown.

So I wake up every morning with the (possibly false) knowledge that I will be living here in Michigan until I graduate.  I just don't think about the "possibly false" part.  I try to keep things in perspective and remember that no one has said anything about interviews or Los Angeles or anything else.  The doubt is there in the back of my mind, but every morning I tell that part of my mind to shut the fuck up and let me live.

Anyway.  I just don't know right now.  My thoughts and emotions are all weird and I feel funny.

I think it is depressing music/stare at nothing time.  Possibly read, or write some cliche love story to get my mind off depressing shit.

I just thought I was getting better.

As always,
Jules, the High School Nomad.

Number 34.

It's just one thing after another.  When am I supposed to catch a break?  That's all I need.

I just feel like shutting down.  I feel like getting in my bed underneath all my blankets and pillows and hiding for a while.  Just hide until everything goes away and my life is normal again.

Unfortunately I can't.  I still have to get up every morning and go to school, then come home every afternoon and do homework and practice.  In between that, I have to listen to all the yelling and nagging and carrying on.  Which sucks.  It's always the same, just on a different day.

It all just needs to go away.

As always,
Jules, the High School Nomad.

Number 33.

My sister... Ohh, my sister. What would I do without her? She is my world.

But she can be a real pain in the ass. She never listens to me no matter what I tell her. Just tonight my dad texted me from the neighbor's house and told me to make sure her television was off. I go into her room and she is watching Netflix on our mama's laptop. I tell her to turn it off and go into the bathroom. When I come back, it's still on. "Turn it off now," I say. She says she will turn it off when the show is over. "No, now. Daddy said so."
"But it's almost over!"
I say once again for her to turn it off and she says no. At this point we are yelling and there is a four year old sleeping in the next room. I try to take the computer but she snatches it away. I am left with the strong urge to hit her, but I resist. That would only get me in trouble, even though she is being a flaming bitch. So I stand up, say "whatever," and go into my room closing the door. When I am calm enough not to throw a punch, I go back to her room and say,
"I don't know where you get off thinking you're allowed to be such a bitch. No one ever let me get away with that kind of behavior when I was fourteen years old, so I don't know why you think you can. Turn off the damn computer and go to sleep. Now."
She slams the computer lid and puts it on the floor, glaring at me. I say "goodnight," sharply, and go back to my room and write this.

What. A. Bitch.

Despite all odds, I love her with all of my heart. I just wish her PMS wasn't so... Violent.

As always,
Jules, the High School Nomad.

Number 31.

It has been a long time since I have written anything, and a lot has happened.

My older brother graduated from high school.  My little sister "graduated" from the 8th grade.  Me?  I moved up from sophomore to junior status at high school.  Win!  Ha.

It's difficult to say whether things are going good or bad.  The oil spill in the gulf prevented my family from going on vacation to Alabama like we have been doing every summer since I can remember.  We then planned a trip out west, which fell through, then a plan up north to the Upper Peninsula, which also fell through.  Now, we are taking a drive to Louisiana to stay with my grandparents.  This is good.  All that other stuff?  Bad.  But ohh well.

And then!  (I also cannot decide whether this makes me happy or sad...)  My mom told me today that she is thinking about flying me down to Georgia!  All by myself!  This makes me happy.  But then my dad said that he doesn't know how comfortable he is with sending me all the way to Georgia by myself.  Bummer...  So my mom came up with a scheme to (possibly) get my BEST FRIEND up here for a week or so!  (But shh!  Don't tell her yet.)  Personally, I'd rather I go to Georgia than she come here, because then I can see a whole bunch of other people that I haven't seen in a year.  My mom knows this would make me the happiest, and she said she would talk to my father about it.  But having Peyt come up to see me would be a fair compromise, I suppose.  I've missed her so... I guess this news makes me both happy and sad... happy for the possibility of both situations, but sad at the possibility of not going to Georgia.

Well, this is all I have for tonight, but I think I will write a bit more fiction...

As always,
Jules, the High School Nomad.

Number 30.

Like Ice, Like Fire.

Your arms are around me, my heart beating fast,

I know just what you are thinking, yet my mind will not process.

Your hand touches mine, your fingers like ice,

"Your hands are so warm--" Your whisper gives me chill.

Your shirt covers us both, the night is so cold,

The stars, though, are bright; such gifts from the heavens.

We stare at them together, and I am glad for your presence;

Your cheek touches mine, it leaves a feeling like fire.

A touch, a kiss...

I don't know what to feel...

Don't know what to think.

Although the night is like ice, your touch is like fire,

Keeping me warm on the short winter nights.

============================================================

It's nights like tonight that give me inspiration to write again.  This is the first decent poem I've written since before the end of freshman year.  Thank you, kind young man (whose name I shall not reveal... not yet) for giving me this inspiration to get rid of my year-long writer's block.  =]

As always,

Jules, the High School Nomad

Number 29.

If all human beings are the same anatomically, why do I feel so different from every one else?  Why do I feel like an outsider all the time?  I think people are different geographically, and anatomy has nothing to do with the relation between people.  Sure, we look the same; underneath the layers of skin that make us look different on the outside are muscle and bone that make us all look slightly alike.  We were made that way, as a group of a species, so we could be compatible with each other and reproduce.  I mean, you don't see any hybrid species running around here, do you?  No bird-dogs, or rodent-cats, or anything like that.  It's simple: there are is a specific species of everything around here.  

But the question still remains:  if I am a member of a specific species, why do I feel so completely alienated from the rest of them?  

My mom thinks that, subconsciously, I am driving friends away from me.  They have been asking me this entire year to find a girl I can be friends with.  I have been trying, and I keep telling them that.  What they don't understand is how hard it is to do what they're asking me.  They're asking me to find a new best friend because I'm not going to be in Georgia to see my best friend anymore.  I have tried.  No one I have met so far even compares to the random craziness that is Peyton.  I love her to death and no one can change that.  I have a bad history being friends with girls.  There tends to be more drama involved with that business.  I like hanging out with the guys a whole lot more.  But I can't even find guys that I can be friends with.  No one compares to Peter or Alec.  Peter was and still is my best guy friend, and Alec is just the one I can talk to about anything at all.  Mom and Dad say all I have to do is  be sociable in class and talk to people but what they don't know is that I have tried.  I try to be like every one else and all it does is make me feel so much more different.  I feel like it don't fit in with my generation at all.  

The catcher is that I have tried telling them all this!  They just don't listen to me.  They just keep saying "You've got to trust us one this one and find some friends."  Well, guys, news flash: what you are asking me to do is proving to be nearly impossible, and if you would listen to me you would know that I have tried.  

This sucks.  

So I'm done with it.  I'm going to go to sleep.  

As always,

Jules, the High School Nomad.  

Number 28.

I have a bad feeling that I might be experiencing depression.  Not in the "there was a sad moment and it is depressing" kind of way.  The for real way.  I read about it.  They say that people with depression oversleep, don't sleep enough, eat too much, or eat too little.  People lose interest in things they once found pleasurable.  They have constant feelings of sadness or anxiety, or just plain emptiness.
I can sleep for a half a day if people would let me.  I have a large appetite.  But what bothers me the most, because the other two symptoms are symptoms of another thing I am dealing with, is that I don't have any interest in the things I used to love doing just a few months ago.  It's not that I don't have any time to do them... it's that I don't want to.  I've lost interest, I guess.  I don't write fiction anymore.  I have many unfinished stories and pages of notes that are just collecting dust in a notebook in my closet.  I don't really pick up my violin unless it is in orchestra class to play with a group.  I just got my new cello not a month ago and I haven't played it in two weeks.  I don't know what's come over me... but it bothers me that I can't do the things I used to love without feeling like I don't want to do it anymore.  It's a hard thing to admit, saying you hate something you used to devote every single moment of spare time to.  But I want to be able to love these things again.  I want to enjoy picking up a violin or cello and feeling music flow through my veins.  I want to put my pen to my paper and feel a story flow from my brain out through my fingertips, the ink darkening the page with a promise of success.
I once told a friend that music was my drug; that music kept me alive.  And it does.  But not like playing it used to.  When I was playing music, I could feel what the composer felt while writing it.  I could feel his (or her) sadness, anger, love, or joy.  I could feel the chaos.  The calm.  The storm.  The victory.  Now, I just listen absently to the music playing from the iPod headphones.  I don't feel the rush it used to give me.
I used to say that writing gave me a sense of calm; that each word that left my head gave me a sense of ease, like everything in the world would one day be okay.  I used to feel the wheels in my head turn as I thought of a plot to add to a story about a girl and a boy.  I could feel my imagination visually giving me the story, waiting for me to add the verbs and adjectives and pronouns to make it into something real, not just something imagined.  Now, I don't get that feeling.  I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling... trying to will myself back into normalcy.  I don't know what's come over me.  But I aim to find out, however I can.

Even though it almost feels helpless to try anymore.

As always,
Jules, the High School Nomad.