“No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed.”

I’m going to introduce this post by saying that it’s not meant to be a complain-y or negative post. I just want to make people think a little, and I’m going to try not to swear very much. This could be difficult. Again, this is NOT meant to be a negative post. It’s just me vomiting my thoughts to cyberspace as usual to try and clear my head.

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As I start the end of my junior year of high school, I can’t help but look back on the rest of my school years. If you know me personally, you’ll know that I don’t like talking about them. Tonight I’m feeling introspective, so why not? I came back to Indiana at the start of 6th grade, having left when I was 4 and completed elementary school in Iowa. Everyone stressed that middle school was going to be a tough time and that friends were going to become very important, so of course I was starting out at a disadvantage. The first day of school, I had my mom walk me to the bus stop because I didn’t really know our neighborhood and I wasn’t sure where the bus stop was in the first place. The first kid to come up after I got there turned out to be Justin, but at the time I was just a nervous little kid with a bad haircut, bad glasses, new braces, and a fashion “style” ripped straight from Limited Too’s catalog. Some girls were there too, but it was a girl in my grade and her older sister so I was intimidated. The biggest thing that I remember from my first week of school was finding out there was a group of guys that lived in my housing edition and since my best friends in Iowa were guys, I should try to make friends with them. I was really, really wrong. These guys didn’t like me. Actually, it seemed like it went deeper than just normal dislike, but I’ve never been sure why. Regardless, they were pretty mean to me. Justin was the only one who was ever nice.

School wasn’t much better, the guys were all the same and the girls were mean to outsiders. I dropped to the lowest rung of the social ladder and stayed there. I got a little group of friends going, but we were the lowest ones in everything (guys, if you’re reading this, you remember that it’s true and it sucked). In 7th grade, we read Twilight right before the popularity boom and really liked it. Since middle schoolers are some of the meanest kids you’ll ever encounter, we were suddenly dubbed the “vampires” because by reading Twilight we OBVIOUSLY thought we were real vampires. Duh, that’s how it works, everyone knows that. So we fell even LOWER. Guys didn’t like us. Everyone kinda acted like we had the plague. I got a little reputation as a smart girl, but it got me nowhere. I only developed crushes on guys who were either so far out of my league they were on completely different planes of existence, or guys who genuinely did not know I existed. I got shot down every time I tried to act on one. Things started looking up a little bit in 8th grade, Justin was still my only housing edition friend and people at school were still nasty, but at some point that summer I figured out how to dress myself and straighten my hair, maybe add a little lipgloss sometimes, and people started noticing me. Maybe it’s because I got boobs that summer, too. Either way, I felt better about myself.

Then freshman year came. WOW. If that doesn’t shoot a person back down to nothing then I have NO idea what does. To be entirely honest, I had a lot of personal issues that year and it’s sort of a blur. I remember a lot of problems with my little group’s internal dynamics and the addition of someone who was certifiably bat-shit insane (whoops, there goes not swearing) who stalked some people and got expelled for stabbing people with a safety pin, but everyone who matters knows that story and it’s not worth rehashing here. I can safely say that freshman year made me feel worse than I ever had to that point. Sophomore year opened with some more personal issues and a bad break-up (again, everyone who matters knows that story and I DID get an informal Cease-and-Desist regarding talking about it on this blog, so it’s an O-LT), but I also started dating Justin, which was a good thing. The second semester of sophomore year was when I decided that I would try to fix myself and my image, and it went pretty good.

So here we are at junior year, and a ton of the people who called me a “vampire” and totally shunned/bullied me in middle school want to be my friend. I’m not entirely sure who they think they are that I would just forget all of that and be like “Oh, sure! You’re right, we DID go to middle school together! No, I have NO idea why we didn’t talk more, we should TOTALLY hang out sometime!” I mean, it HURT to be on the bottom and have people just keep stepping on your fingers every time you got a grip somewhere. When people hate you for no reason (because it DEFINITELY went beyond basic dislike) and then only want to gain your friendship because you’ve made a name for yourself and become a really interesting person, how ARE you supposed to take that? If I told them what I think of them, I would be RIGHT back on the bottom with some potential defamation and/or “OMG SHE WAS SOOOO MEAN AND I HAVE BEEN NOTHING BUT NICE TO HER FOREVER” counselor cases against me.

I’m so glad I graduate in December. I’ll be out before the senior-nostalgia sets in. You know, where it hits everyone that most of us are getting the hell outta Dodge as soon as we can, since everyone secretly hates everyone else, and people get all teary and “I’ll probably never see you again! Let’s make the most out of the time we have left, I always regretted not getting to know you!” I’m out. I’ll be starting my college classes as the halls of my school are filled with the anxious cries of the people who realize that the number of Facebook friends you have means nothing when you have to start over in college. But you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Vegetarianism, or Why I Have to Cook at Home

Vegetarianism has its pros and cons. Pros include weight loss (if done correctly, because it turns out potato chips and pizza are usually vegetarian), improved health, and all that fancy pretentious stuff. The biggest con is the fact that it’s hard to find things to eat sometimes. I went vegetarian about 9 months ago, and since I’m ovo-lacto my food choices haven’t changed all that much. My parents, however, are only semi-vegetarian. This means that I’ve had to start cooking family meals.
This isn’t a bad thing! Meat substitute is easy to get and use, and I got two cookbooks for Christmas that I really recommend (“Good Housekeeping Vegetarian Meals” and “CookingLight Ways to Cook Vegetarian”). Normal recipes are easy to mod and most of the new ones are easy to cook.

I made soup from scratch for the first time tonight. It was pretty good.  I needed to say that =)

Scholastic Poetry, Here I Come!

I found out in December that I can submit things to the Scholastic Writing Competition, but that if any of it reaches the National Competition level, I’ll lose the publishing rights. Therefore, this is a Very Special Blog Post. I’m posting all 5 of the poems I am submitting right here, so that I can show them off easily AND so I have evidence that they are MY work. If I win anything, I really hope that it’s for “I am a Unique Creature” because I think it’s my best work. Enjoy!

 

Song of the Misfit, by Marissa Menge

No such thing as beauty, only the concept of attraction.

No longer do I fit your standards, my locks are shorn and dark.

I’ve never been a fixture, only overlooked,

I’m lower than the low and I can’t escape my fate.

My clothes are all too big, belted pants and wrinkled shirts.

My makeup stains my face like the emotions that came before

 

The Veil, by Marissa Menge

Decay is the essence of beauty,

For what are we but the dying alive?

Every day the same desolation.

The veil draws closer yet,

And still we wander mindlessly.

 

What I Was and What I Am, by Marissa Menge

I used to be

A coloring book page

With the lines drawn and the colors still blank.

Now I am

A Pollock painting,

All color and no lines, making something beautifully strange.

 

 

 

Black is…, by Marissa Menge

Black is the mystery I shroud myself in,

Like blankets.

Black is dark, reasonable

Where people are not.

Black is an elegant color,

Like dresses in satin, silk, velvet.

 

So why does it get a bad reputation?

 

Black is the color of death,

Of decay and rot.

Black is the color of a moonless sky,

Silent, threatening.

Black is anger and rage, black is

Desolation.

Black is the thing that consumes us from within.

 

I am a Unique Creature, by Marissa Menge

I am a unique creature,

A homemade creation in a pre-packaged world.

I’ve embraced MYSELF,

Now the rest of the world needs to learn.

I may be different, but

I am a unique creature.

I present myself as I am.

No facades, no illusions,

No stupid little gimmicks.

I won’t try to trick you and I won’t try to charm you,

I say what I mean and don’t sugar-coat it,

I am a unique creature.

I’m a limited-edition one-of-a-kind.

Don’t like it? Then leave it.

There’s no “tone it down”, there’s no “turn it off”,

You get me as-is, no returns,

No money-back guarantee.

I am a unique creature.