Update (since I haven't been here in forever)

So... I have a new boyfriend. His name is Tim. I met him when we were in sixth grade, right after I moved to Delaware. He was my first friend here. We liked each other, but he moved away. We lost touch and got back in touch and started hanging out again (forty-five minutes seems a lot longer of a distance when you're twelve than when you're seventeen/eighteen) and we've been going out since September 2nd. He's a pretty good guy, we've got some issues to work out but we'll make it.
(Also, while going back to see where I left off I realized that I never mentioned Neil and my break-up. So yeah. We broke up.)

We had to find a new home for Galahad for several different reasons, but we have a new dog now.

Her name is Kylee and she's very sweet. She's a mutt, but we're thinking she's mostly Pomeranian. She's about two and a half. She's the nicest, gentlest thing unless you throw a ball. Then she's vicious xD

Also, Leia's last batch of kittens have grown up and she has new ones now.

I got to meet John Green at the National Book Festival. I was super nervous about how beat-up my copy of Looking for Alaska is, thinking he might think I didn't care enough to take care of it. Instead he said "It's great to actually feel a well-read book." I cried.

I also got the opportunity to meet Fun. I'm a part of my school's new GSA. Fun. just finished up their Campus Consciousness Tour, and one part of it was inviting the GSAs from those colleges to meet the band and attend the sound check and have an ice cream social. UD's GSA offered my school's GSA five tickets and I got one of them (had to do with attendance and GPA and stuff). It was wonderful. The band is awesome and really nice and they were super excited that we as high-schoolers were there. We originally had awful seats, but this really awesome photographer named Tanner got us better ones and tracked us down and made me cry. There's a sticky-note on my wall in my bedroom that says what he said while I hugged him: "Just remember, for every asshole in the world, there's a guy like me."

I've been busy applying to colleges (UD, UVM, RIT, SDSU, WNE, Marlboro College, Kenyon College, William Penn University) and scholarships and working on my senior thesis (rape culture in America). 

I've gotten into more fandoms. BBC Sherlock, Doctor Who, Homestuck, Community, Battlestar Galactica, and Wilfred to name most of them. Definitely has kept me distracted. 

I've been spiraling crazily in and out of depression. I've been in one of the worst and longest depressive spells for the past couple of months. I'm not really talking to anyone and I'm having frequent panic attacks. I don't have the transport for outside therapy and the woman I was seeing at school got a job elsewhere and they haven't found a replacement for her yet. Someone brought up the idea of Big Brothers Big Sisters just for someone to talk to, and I'm looking into that. 

I've gotten into a bad habit of constantly contacting someone I shouldn't, and I am consciously making an effort not to. I'd like to make blogging regular again, so I think I'll keep track of the days I've gone without initiating contact. Right now it's officially a week. 

Anti Date Rape Drinkware

Okay, okay, I know I haven't posted in like six months. I'm probably going to get back to that. Probably.

Anyways, the reason I'm here:

There's a new company called DrinkSavvy that is creating straws, plastic cups, and glassware that change color if a drink has been drugged. There are test strips out there that do the same, but it's so awkward to do that and to be super-safe you'd have to do it repeatedly throughout the night. The fact that the straw or cup changes color is brilliant. They have a start-up here. Right now the goal for the money is to perfect the prototype and be able to offer it free to rape crisis centers, but eventually they'd like to get bars and universities to make it standard protocol to use it. This makes me super excited for several reasons (not the least of which being that I myself am a sexual abuse survivor), and if anyone could donate or just spread the word that'd be fantastic.

Alone

For the past few days, I've been feeling awful alone. People aren't returning my texts or emails, people are viewing and then ignoring my messages on Facebook, people are posting statuses about how wonderful their other friends are, and I'm...kinda...just...sitting...here...........miserable. I feel like lashing out at everyone just so that they'll get mad right back and yell at me because at least they'd be talking to me. I can't be that awful that it's not worth it to keep up a conversation with me... can I? 

I just want someone who will talk to me. Right now I want someone who will make an effort to keep up the conversation. I want someone who cares that much. I need somebody to let me need them. I've turned to everybody I can think of, and almost no one's responding. The one person who's responded placated me for a little bit and then asked me to go away so he could go back to what he was doing before. 

I'm getting desperate. This'll probably be the second night in a row I take a sleeping pill just to make the loneliness go away. Honestly, there are much worse things I could do, and I really want to do, just to make it stop. 

I just want it to stop. 

Here we go again. I'm depressed and thinking too much. This always happens. But I guess I should just be grateful that my incessant thoughts revolve more around how the universe works than how to kill myself.

I've been thinking about "normal" a lot lately. I unfortunately can't say I've come up with all of these conclusions myself; I got some from Moxi's godfather and from Zefrank and Mr. Repzion on YouTube and probably from other places I can't remember right now. 

First off I've been thinking about what exactly "normal" is. How do we decide what's normal? We probably believe everything we do or see is "normal" until we have a reason to believe otherwise. Usually this reason is society. Of course, there's a difference between knowing what is normal and what is right, or at least I believe so. We've all heard the stories of people who lived in a culture and then sought to change it because they themselves realized that what was happening was immoral. However, when it comes what is normal, it's mainly society, and what's normal in one culture may not be normal in another. 

What I want to know is why these things have become normal. Sometimes it's obvious, like when the normal thing is beneficial to the species. It's normal to find a mate to procreate with in order to further the species. It's normal to eat and drink. It's normal to look for a job, which benefits both yourself and society. It's normal to clean yourself (for health reasons as well as social, going with the whole mate thing). It's normal to wear clothes when it is cold (and the rest of the time if you live in a society like mine, but this I don't one-hundred percent understand). It's normal to not take a walk down a dark alley in an unfamiliar city while alone. 

However, there are things that are considered abnormal which don't affect the furthering of our species, and that I don't understand. There are plenty of people on this earth, so you can't say we need everyone to procreate. Why, then, is homo/a/bi/etc.-sexuality still considered abnormal? And why is it abnormal to, I don't know, wear underwear on your head? 

And there are things that are normal for reasons that can be confounding. It's normal to have pets. It's normal to keep trash collected in cans. It's normal to like things that taste sweet. It's normal to sit in front of a box and communicate or kill time. 

Another thing- why is abnormal often seen as bad? I'm not talking about the abnormal things that can be harmful. I grew up both literally and figuratively being beaten to the edge of insanity. I did a lot of "abnormal" things to cope. I have my quirks, and I've gotten a lot of grief over them through the years. It wasn't normal for me to spend a year where my best friend was this apple tree in my backyard whose name was Hope. It wasn't normal for me to carry around a stuffed rabbit for two of my high school years, and now it's not normal that I carry around a white and green ratty old towel instead. It wasn't normal that I spent recesses sitting on the top of the jungle gym, writing or drawing. It wasn't normal that I went to birthday parties and stuck with the parents or older siblings instead of my peers. It's not normal that I still have imaginary friends. But honestly? Who cares? Why is this bad? These behaviors don't hurt me or anyone else. Why are they bad?

I believe that I have two selves- my outer and inner selves. The outer one is quiet, polite, reserved, responsible. She plays well with others and fits in society. But the inner one? Loud, childish, selfish, childish... When she doesn't get what she wants, she'll pout and sulk forever. When she gets what she wants, she still takes more. She likes to dance and scream and feel everything, both emotionally and physically. I don't show her often. Get me to trust you and take me to a toy store and you'll definitely see her. But she's not normal. She's a seventeen year old who babytalks when she sees stuffed animals. "There's a cow, moooooo.... and a sheepy sheep. Puppy! Lion! No, lion needs to go away from the puppy so he doesn't eat the puppy. But maybe he's a nice lion... I don't wanna hurt his feelings, so I'll just keep an eye on him without him knowing for a little bit and see what happens." She pins her arms to her sides and flaps her hands behind her when she's anxious. She sits and listens to Faerie Radio and laughs at herself when she realizes how provocatively she's dancing in her seat and how good it makes her feel. I don't show her that often because she's not normal, at least, not according to my outer self, and she's so fragile I'm afraid she'll be broken into submission the way my outer self was. And I'm not saying my outer self is fake; she's just as much of a part of me as my inner self is. It's like the outer self is my skin and my inner self is my organs and stuff. Both serve a purpose, just one's more suitable for public consumption. Because abnormal is bad.

And why do we feel the need to attack the abnormal? Why is there gay-bashing and why are mentally challenged kids made fun of and why was/is there segregation? Because normal is safe. What is normal, really, at the end of the day? Normal is what everyone else is doing. But why is everyone doing it? Was it normal before? All these normal things we do... where did they come from? How much of what we see as normal now were normal way back when? 

I don't know how to end this, so here's a link to the song I can't stop listening to tonight.

Brother, New Haircut, Kittens, and A Chinchilla or None

Jeez I've been away too long. 

So when my mom was not much older than me she was dating this guy named Bill. Bill was abusive. They had my older sister Molly when my mom was eighteen and still in high school, so my mom gave her up for adoption. Then she had my brother out of a rape. Bill told her that if my brother came home from the hospital, he wouldn't live to see his first birthday. So my mom gave him up, too. 

The Monday before my last post (so sometime in July), we got a call from the adoption agency that my brother wanted contact. His name is Matt. He lives in South Dakota. He got married last weekend. He was a wrestler and a football player, and actually got a scholarship to Notre Dame for football but then blew out his knee and lost it so he never went to college. However, he makes alright for himself as a farmer. His favorite color is green. He likes wolves, cheetahs, and honeybadgers. He has huskies. He's already had to play big brother to me and did an excellent job. 

I cut my hair this weekend for several reasons. The one I tell everyone is that it was for Locks of Love. When I was in elementary school, my friend's sister (who was also my friend) got cancer and went through chemo. She didn't choose to wear a wig after losing her hair, but it still gave me a close-up look at cancer. I can better imagine what it would be like for someone to go through cancer and chemo and have the added stress of thinking they're ugly because they're bald and can't afford a wig. Also, some of the wigs go to trichotillomania sufferers, and I've had my own battles with that. So I've gotten into the habit of cutting it short everytime it gets long enough to donate. 

However, I cut it short a bit early this time. The reason for this is my abuser last summer offhandedly mentioned that he was glad I had long hair because he hated short hair on girls. So now my hair's about ear-length. It was actually like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders when I looked in the mirror and realized I am less attractive to him now. 

The kittens continue to be adorable. 

They're old enough to give up for adoption now, but (thankfully, in my opinion) we haven't found any yet. We've been keeping them in a pen in my room, but they can climb out now. They all have their own little personalities. Smokey's the most feisty. She takes on Vader on a regular basis. Monty's kind of a scaredy cat. He won't climb very high or jump off of the bed or go down the stairs. Oliver's the exact opposite. He likes walking on top of the pen, and was the first to discover the stairs (and nearly give me a heart-attack as he tried to go through the balcony where there would've been a three foot drop). And Thunder's kind of in the middle. He likes pouncing on stuff, especially his sibling's tails. 

I've been wanting a chinchilla since Bryar introduced me to the fact that they could be pets my freshman year. It's always been a pipe dream, though, because they're more expensive than the five dollar gerbils we usually get. As in usually between $150 and $500. However, we went to Pet Kare on the last Friday of June and found a female chinchilla for $75. Since we breed rats for them, they gave her to us for $65. 

This morning I was in the office by her cage when I heard her making this weird cooing noise. I went to check on her and found her curled up in the bedding out of her house and shaking. When I reached in and touched her, she didn't respond. I called my mom, who left work early and drove me to the pet store. By the time our friend there was able to look at her, she'd died.

This is hitting me harder than any of the other pet deaths (and trust me, over the last year and a half there have been a lot) except my first degu and my first rabbit. The degu was because I had him from December until April and we had bonded like I bonded to no other animal at the time; the rabbit because she had developed epilepsy and broke her leg in a seizure and I fed her mushed up food and cared for her for four days before she finally died. I guess it's because I wanted her for so long. And she was special. Bryar always told me to get a young male so I could bond to him and that females were super territorial. And then here comes this adult female who wanted nothing more than to be held. And I named her Annie. After Alice, that's my favorite name. I was saving it for something special. And now she's gone... 

I'm fighting hard not to slip back into depression, but it's really hard right now...

Beautiful

I don't know if it was the happy ending of the book I stayed up all night to read or the fact that I was up for the sunrise or the fact that I've got coffee brewing (never tasted it, but it sure smells good and I need the caffeine), but I am in a wonderful mood. Everything seems beautiful right now. Even just the fact that I'm alive and able to think these thoughts is beautiful. I can't even put it in to words. I'm trying, but it's just... it's just beautiful.

Also, before writing this, I went to Tumblr and lost the feeling. And then I saw a picture of a corgi puppy in a baby swing and regained it.

I'm tired. I'll try again later.

Prometheus Midnight Showing

I went to see Prometheus at midnight the other night with Mackay. It was a stupid decision for so many reasons, some I'll share here and some I won't, but I'm so glad that I did it. Not because I enjoyed the movie, although I did mostly like the stuff my face wasn't covered for, but because I was scared to do it- I was scared to ask for permission, I was scared to go without being able to prove I'm old enough, I was scared to watch it, I was scared to be in a theater with a guy who could overpower me (not because I didn't trust him, but because that's where I was abused for the first time and I was afraid of flashbacks)- and I did it anyway. 

We got to the theater, bought our tickets with no difficulty, and rejoiced at one step down. We waited in line to go into the actual theater. The lady asked for our IDs. Mackay showed his and told her that I was seventeen but didn't have my ID on me. She said that even though we'd bought the tickets, she couldn't let us in without seeing proof that I was seventeen. When Mackay finally gave up arguing, we went and stood in the lobby, trying to figure out what we were going to do instead. Then a guy who had been a couple people behind us in line called us over. Mackay looked at me with half a grin and said "It looks like your luck's about to change." The guy, who looked old enough to be my dad, said we were with him, and she let us in. We thanked him profusely once out of earshot and kept near him until we were out of her sight.

We went into the theater and it was packed. We found two seats near the middle. Mackay took the one next to a guy, I took the one next to a girl. He asked me if I would be okay with all the people around. I told him yes.

The movie was good, although I'm not usually big on that type of movie. I did spend a good majority of it with my face covered. Mackay later said that anytime he heard any sort of whimpering noise, he looked over and sure enough, there I was, spazzing out. He patted my arm several times. It was nice that I could focus on him when I was freaking out, though, because he's probably the person I trust the most besides Neil.

After the movie was over, he drove me home. I thanked him for the movie and then ran upstairs to sleep in my mom's bed, more than slightly spooked. Three hours later, I took a final exam, and hopefully passed it? Yeah, the movie wasn't the best timing, but it was worth it nonetheless.