The Obligatory New Year's Post.

Who even reads this blog anymore? Who even blogs anymore?

Anyway. There's a part of me that just wants to write about destruction. All I do is destroy. Run things over and absolutely demolish. At least, that's how I feel this week. The thing is, I don't even have the excuse of saying I'm into destruction because I don't like to hurt myself, it's basically just that I have trouble learning from my own mistakes. Basically because I'm 17 and selfish.

Whatever. You live and you learn. C'est la vie. Life happens. Young and foolish. (That's what I'm singing this week.)

But to write about destruction would be close minded. I build a lot of beautiful things this year, even if I managed to ruin a lot of things lately. And I didn't even really destroy so much as misplace a lot of things. The point is, even the things I did really actually destroy are lovely even in pieces. They're smoky and gilded and full of things I've never gotten a taste of before. Yes, I screwed some things up, but I don't regret it one bit -- which is not to say that I would do it the same if I was presented with the same situation again, but simply that I've learned from all of it. I learned from skinny legs and shears and Spanish and silence. The shears are so summertime, back when everything started. I miss the Spanish. I hate the silence. I'm over the skinny legs.

The New Year's post feels even more obligatory to me than the Christmas post. Christmas posts feel too cliche and I can't ever bring myself to write them. I'd rather just celebrate and let everyone else post pictures of angels and tinsel. (I love your angels and tinsel, though. Don't worry.) The point is, I feel like I can really write a New Year's post. It's cathartic on my end. I worry less about being cliche for some reason. I did it last year (you can read it here), and it was good. I'm proud of that. It's so exactly who I was then. So I'm back. This is an obligatory New Year's post. Or something.

The point is, this was supposed to be my year of risks, and I don't think I took enough of them. It's whatever. How many of you actually went to the gym every single day after resolving that? New Year's resolutions were made to be broken. Yes, I took an entire day of ski risks last week, and yes, I spoke French to the Parisian at Zenkoji. I took risks, yes, but I didn't take enough conscious, healthy, in-the-spirit-of-a-new-year risks. That's my resolution for this year, to take conscious, healthy, in-the-spirit-of-a-new-year risks.

It's going to be a huge year. HUGE. It simply doesn't get any bigger than this year. Gradution. Move out. College. Gosh. Don't even get me started on all the things this year is going to bring. I read through parts of my journals from this year and I don't even know how to put this year into words. I didn't know what was coming. And I don't know what's coming this year, either. You just never know what's coming. That's what I've learned this year, pretty much.

This year: Love and loss and heartbreak. Weight gain. Weight loss. Kisses. Lies. Recoveries. Tears. Cancers. Remissions. Iphones. Groundings. Senior year. Blonder hair. Longer hair. Makeup. Snow. Job. You. You. You. A thousand times you and missing you and wanting you back and wishing this time was the right time, but I'm 17. I'm 17 and it just isn't the right time for anything at all it feels like. Spanish. French. Kittens and hoodies and nope, I'm not wearing a bra right now. TMI? Who cares. Rent. Mourn.

This year made me tough. While 2011 taught me to be soft, 2012 taught me to be hard. This year was the year I did whatever I wanted. And yes, that ruined a whole lot of things, so 2013 will have to be a year of discovering how and when to be soft and how and when to be hard. Sandpapery.

"Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art"

This year was combat boots and coffee. Dye my hair, kiss boys, run faster, drive faster, punch harder, yell louder. Defy. Don't answer the phone.

And this year was heartbreak. Both a beautiful year for love and an absolutely awful year for love. Platonic and romantic. June was perfect. A handful of days in December? Perfect. One day in January. But there were some awful heartbreaks and mess-ups and break downs, but at least this was a year of love, you know? At least I had a little love here and there.

And here's a thing I didn't write, but I could've, for the most part. It makes so much sense to me: “We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’”

But this year. This year I will at least resolve (and maybe, if we're lucky, keep to the resolution) to turn soft and lovely anytime I have the chance, but also remember to act my rage. Passive aggression won't solve everything. I can replay situations over and over in my head and come up with the perfect thing to say, but that doesn't change that I didn't say it in the moment. Sure, I was roughened up, but I certainly wasn't the girl who stood up for herself. I will stand up for myself this year. I'll be a New Yorker soon enough and I'll die if I don't.

I have no idea what's coming, I have that much figured out at this point. I have an empty journal, and it's time. I always know when it's time for a new journal, because they come at a new chapter. So here I come. Watch me fly, watch my sky-write, watch me pass the AP Calc test. Combat boots and coffee, soft and lovely, armed with words and hair and all the things my parents taught me, the things I forgot and remembered and destroyed, and here I come, here I go, let it snow, watch the rain, wait for the mail, I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

PEACE OUT.
All my love,
Addy

de Kooning, Amiens, and other places I've searched for God.

I put a lot of Hope in my own future. I think it's because I have a lot of Doubt. Just in general. So I put a lot of hope in myself and the places I will go and the people I will know because I just don't feel like there's anything else I can do.

I put a lot of hope in the fact that someday I will see Amiens and in that moment, I will see the face of God. And I put a lot of Hope in the idea that someday, I will know for sure that "God" isn't just something you throw around in poetry when you want to drive it home, make a point, get people to listen to you. Then again, I might not. Because Faith is not an equivalent to Knowledge. Faith is not Knowledge, Hope is not Knowledge, Belief is not Knowledge, Knowledge is Knowledge, and if you Know God? Kudos to you, because I can only have Faith in Him.

The point is, I have places to go. I don't think I believe in some sort of predetermined Destiny or universal Fate, but I do like the concept. I think it's a creation of your own. And your parents will try to steer you. And the people you fall in Love with help sculpt it. I think we each have this process of unconscious Discovery that starts when you roll over in the morning, in that space between awake and asleep and I'm pretty sure the things that exist in those moments are, like, the rawness of your Being.

In case you were curious, and I don't Know, you might be, in my own space between awake and asleep, there are a lot of words and a lot of Renaissance paintings. A lot of times there's music. In my own space between awake and asleep there is never, ever silence, I can tell you that for sure. My suspension moments are not quiet. You probably could've guessed that.

And here's a truth: Sometimes, what I want to do is simply what I'm told to do, just because I don't like to deal with the debacles that ensue if I don't. I know that's hard for you to comprehend, but that's it. I do exactly what I please. Because everyone has to do what they're told for some amount of time. Really, I think they do. Even de Kooning attended the academy, and you know what de Kooning did next? He stamped out the cubist movement. Even de Kooning did what he was told for a little while there.

Anyway. I have a lot of Hope in Amiens and Botticelli and Victor Hugo and fresh snow and Maya Angelo and airplanes and Christmas mornings and New York City and Sunday afternoons with You and the fact that my life line on my palm is really long.

In my mind, I will never die. I will stay forever, trying to comprehend the mysteries of the universe, convincing myself that these are things I can understand. I never claimed I wrote because I already understood the world. I write because I'm trying to figure it out just like everybody else, and sometimes my figuring comes out eloquently (other times it does not).

But what I think I'm really getting at is this: I don't think I'll ever be able to do the things my mother does. She is more beautiful and more creative and more wonderful than I will ever be. I don't think I'll wake up one day and understand children or suddenly be a the mom who runs every class party, you know? I think the people who already do things like that right now will, though. The student council girls will be able to do that. I will be forever in awe of them.

I will be able to teach my children about Moliere, though. And they will be beautiful and tough and have healthy body images. We'll have an art room where they can throw paint and spill things and make messes and mistakes, because the messes and the mistakes I've made are the things that have made me.

I realize this post is crazy, isn't what I think I've come to let you people expect from me, but I'm sassier than I think you think I am. Passive aggressive? Maybe, but there's a lot you don't know. And I won't ever claim I know you through and through either.

Interrogative pronouns?
All my love,
Addy

The Kinematic Equations

Narcissistic, quick-witted, proud, this is about you, this is a risk, and this is about the first time I feel free from writer's block for the first time in months and months and months. I'm free from the wrath of writer's block and it's like the veins I sliced open and bled words from got themselves selfishly bandaged up and I finally realized I was strong enough to rip off the bandages and bleed again and it isn't like the words are back and perfect, but they're back, the ideas (ce) are back and running and I know I'm eloquent enough to shape them and sculpt them like hello poetry and hello journal pages and hello blogger.

I'm working on telling the truth more -- "to begin with, I should tell the truth more" -- so today I want to write about you. Risky, I know, because you're bilingual and clever and too old for me (as per usual). But you're a misconception and a misrepresentation and I like figuring you out. You make for good material. I had you pinned as an atheist, but not the atheist you are. Your unorthodoxy intrigues me. I did not have you pinned as an artist. This is an honesty experiment.

Darling, I like pet names. I'll be somebody's arm candy because I haven't ever really thought I was built with enough sex appeal to be somebody's arm candy. And I think I want to know you because I didn't ever think I would. I didn't ever think I'd know about your siblings or think that you'd listen when I got my heart broken. The best part is that I can keep up with you, a truth we both admit, and we're more similar than we thought we were. You do clean up well.

I think I want to know you because you cannot be defined by any cookie cutter I've ever seen and you hate bad table manners and I have a thing for smoke and yes, this is about you, because I don't understand you and I'm trapped by your age and vulgarity and you understand my humor, so basically this is all a disaster waiting to happen. A game to see who runs faster (skis faster?).

But mostly I just want to thank you. I think watching you open up and proving that I shouldn't judge books by their covers reminded me that I'm full of books. I'm full of books! I'm full of books to write and it's cool that I cry when I read because passion is cool to you!

Anyway. I fear the oblivion you race against, and now you hold my secrets and I suppose I hold a secret or two of yours. I bet you count things like Connor does. Remind me to ask you that.

So this isn't even a love note, it's just this thing about you, because I think people are interesting. I think people sometimes have a skewed idea of who's going to hell and who's going to heaven. And you're a complex character. I like your unorthodoxy and your table manners and your youngest child mentality because I just don't have that. I like your OCD, because I don't have that. I like where you come from -- not just because I don't come from there, but also because it sounds lovely there.

PRIMA DONNA.
All my love,
Addy

Me and other debacles.

Can I be one hundred percent honest? This is my blog, so I'll do whatever I want, thank you.

But I won't, really. I won't tell you the truth. I'll make it poetic and bejewel it with some sort of beauty that it really isn't. It isn't beautiful where I've been. My stupid feet hurt from the coals of hell or something. Like, it's totally lame because I know people have it a lot worse off than I do, but I still feel this stuff. I don't want to be compared to someone else's sob story. Don't tell me what I'm doing wrong. I just want to be my own sob story for a few moments here and there and then just not have to participate when I don't want to.

And right now, I don't want to. I don't want to participate in anything. Not bowling or badminton or AP French. I just want my own personal libraries of books to read and write in and be the most selfish girl in the world and not care about anyone else at all. Not real people, at least. Book people. Because normal people leave you. They leave you and it sucks a whole lot, and even when you still have a lot of people who love you, after one person leaves you, you start to look at all the other people differently. Like you might not have them for a very long time. Everyone looks like they're going to leave you.

This isn't about a boy. This isn't over a boy. This is over stuck-ed-ness. And how I don't understand math and I don't really understand life that much sometimes, either.

I want to wake up and be perfect. I am wired to be a people pleaser. Which is weird and stupid and something I would like very much to be able to turn my back on. Nature versus nurture.

I am not perfect, but believe you me: I will try every moment to make every single one of you think that I am completely and one hundred percent flawless. Make you think I am the lady in the advertisements who has it all. I will try to write things that will make you love me and call me talented and pinch my cheeks and call me the hope of the future. I will try for the kind of beauty that makes you stop and stare or roll down your window and cat call to, and I will try for the kind of feminism that hates cat calls, but I'm just as ridiculously flawed as every other person out there. I would love a cat call. I'm typical. I'm stereotypical. I just want to be wonderful and breathtaking and really talented and really actually the hope of the future. And maybe I am. Those hopes are the only things that get me out of bed some mornings. Other mornings it's just the fact that I have to. It's like, pardon my French, but quel est le point?

I just want to be perfect! Is that too much to ask?! That's too much to ask.

I'm not depressed, but I'm not exactly jazzed about everything, either. Maybe writing this and putting it out there for the whole world to see will help get it off my shoulders. Maybe it won't. Because I've been here for a while and I thought it would just go away, but it isn't going away.

There are 6,973,738,433 alive right now, and two of them have broken my heart. That feels like enough to last me to infinity and beyond, thank you very much.

I take that back. Three of them. Because I suppose I have to include myself in the heartbreakers. It does take two to tango, you know, and I love you too much to blame you.

Do you know I started crying when I got handed Les Miserables this morning? Because it's 1463 pages long. That sounds like my kind of really gorgeous distraction. I started singing to myself and crying. Ha, maybe I'm actually myself right now after all.

Let me be enough for you.

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

All my love,

Addy

This isn't what you think. Or maybe it is. But probably not.

You: runner, math wiz, apathetic extraordinaire. There are sides of you that no one sees. There are sides of you that I see. There are pieces of you I have fallen in love with, and there are pieces I haven't. The pieces I love sit at my counter, open their cupboard, hold my sisters, drive my car, teach me calculus, tell me the truth. There are things wrong with you. There are things wrong with me. We are very different. We've worked out what to do with all my mother's dishes if we ever got married, but you have all those reasons we never will. Neither of us can remember those reasons. No one else is welcome in my home quite like you are. No one else is welcome as often as you are. My darling, all I worry about is destruction. Destruction with my own lips, destruction without them. Either way, we'll implode, or maybe we won't. Maybe we'll be the only things that never die. Maybe we saved each other. Maybe you'll be my demise. Maybe I'll be yours. It isn't as romantic as it sounds. 

You look lovely just because I know you. I'm careful not to let you break anyone else's heart, but I've never been worried about you breaking mine: I already understand the workings of Pompeii.

Vector arithmetic.
All my love,
Addy