Extrema

Testing for extrema sucks. At least we got an A- on that quiz.
KEPT AN A- IN CALC. One happy moment in a sea of pain.

Just kidding. Maybe a couple more than one happy moment.
In the past week, I've managed to fall asleep during class four days in a row, lose a toenail, eat more ice cream than I thought existed in my immediate threshold, and run 38 miles.

Today, on the edge between September and October, also feels like the edge among three different lives. Physical, social, academic elements of everything are starting to trip me up. I feel naturally but uncomfortably unstable. It's like a triangle... if you change one point, the entire center of mass will change and I'll cry hard. Or I could stop being a sandbag. I could stop building on eroding glass and continental shelves and live on the rock of Jesus. So many things have changed in the past month... so many priorities, so many people, but I think that's all just one crazy revolution in my mind. What's going on.

Equinox

It's such a blessing to be able to share the last day of (the Gregorian calendar) summer, running the rain through, actually, multiple forests, quite literally frolicking in meadows full of flowers-- coincidentally, standing at the intersection of two paths, one that's less traveled than the other. Absurdly, continuing to run faster as it gets colder and farther from home, where the graffiti beneath the train tracks becomes unfamiliar and the sight of buildings equates to civilization, compared to where we stood, wondering, how much yolo is buried inside the magnificent human body.

I beleaf.

Dry.

605 am, 20 minutes late, my raw cotton tshirt brushes roughly against my skin. Breakfast crumbs crunch down my throat, relentlessly grating the arid plains of my esophagus, all the while trailing a thick, tired saliva in the roof of my tongue. The skin peels off my scratched cheeks and tickles the threaded scar that never healed through my chin. My front tooth is plastic and I forgot to wash the conditioner out of my hair.

When the tide of guilt and humiliation crawl up my bruised and bloody toes, I notice the purple scabs and bruises pulsing in an eerily poisonous rhythm. The reddening keloid at my poptilial fossa (knee pit, for lack of any other accurate name) emulates a slaves infected back, minus ninety percent, but still repulsive and irritatingly pressing with blood that was never needed. My second toe might as well be declared an avulsion fracture. The hatred rushes through my arteries and my fingers involuntarily grab at my imperfections.

The 36 24 36 rule is an impossibility for my people, but my natural lenses make a plank of my torso. I miss the visible planes in my elbows and knees and the weak coldness shooting through my airy lungs. My calves sink and I carry my legs rather than having them confidently hold my tight spine in a pseudo casual slouch. My skin overrides the most beautiful mists. I itch. I punch the walls and grab my pants, white and pink cuticle less finger nails pressing fiercely in sync with my cracked knuckles.

I am restless, afraid, disgusted, until I pound in the rain, from speckles to strokes of the flashing clouds tears. The thunder emits a low moan of caged power, and God sends the might of his creation flooding through the air. I am blinded, weighted, miming the trees in my powerlessness to pity myself. I am humiliated and humbled, overwhelmed by even the symbolic presence of the great I am. In my dissatisfaction, my mind spins a 180 for the thousandth time. Humility is not beating myself, but lifting everything else upwards.

Dulled.

It's only been a month of school and I can feel the heaviness encroaching my summer lolzies. Suffocating fumes of winter and insecurity and food and running and muscle are approaching the corner and I hate that the cycle is rolling again. The monotony of the mechanics will be geared into motion once again. My stomach unhappily testifies to this truth.

I am tired. Sometimes I still hate myself. Most of the time I lack the mood to write in good prose and almost always my most intense thoughts whirl in the car, where I wonder if parallel universes exist in this universe and why people are so similiar. Why do the spaces between your fingers fit perfectly to mine? Just kidding. Hanky panky has not yet made its way into my clumsy questionably existent and much frowned upon romantic life.

Its so wonderful to understand. Sometimes I like people because they're so different from me, because they're fascinating anomalies in my one track mind, yet even when we are mutually interested (it happens sometimes...maybe), our diverging views are lost in distaste and confusion. Even if it was an attractive boy. Even if it was an admission officer from Yale. Sometimes even hours and hours of talking and flirting won't cut it.

But then sometimes someone comes along and grammar is forgotten. Words and thoughts and puns and  punches just reel and roll off my fingers and on some rare and blessed occasion, off my tongue, because cursed school prevents actual human encounters more often than not. Its like the God shaped hole everyone has, but a person shaped one for worldly angst and love and relationships. This is someone who could be your best friend and someone that fits like the satisfying click of a ballpoint gel pen.

It's all about the connections. When we talk I forget I hate myself. I forget to try to find the strengthening dullness and see once again how beautiful is Gods creation.

Uptight.

Admittedly, I have been uptight as well. Due to a severe bombing of a calculus test, an unwittingly erroneous chemistry test, and a slowly choking hate for BS (brain storming, Mr. Wright said. Why the face.), my handwriting has degenerated to a tense scrawl and my incessant doodling has expanded to illustrating the workings of the universe (and I almost never dare to probe those fabrics...).

I'm almost fascinated by the genius inside me when what my body needs even more than many packets of instant coffee is a week of sleep. My depressing pseudo Chinese calligraphy might be able to pass of as flairs of expert minimalist design, and truly, truly, the truth inside every lie just bleeds itself onto my APUSH notes that I use to not fall asleep. I'm writing poems and puns off the top of my head and as I read my friends' college essays, I become the boss of epigrams and wit and wisdom.

Just kidding.

But honestly, I feel like my brain is working on double speed on everything except physics, french, math, chemistry, critical reading, and history, which are basically the only things my parents and school actually command me to know.

And so I thank God that its absolutely beautiful outside. If I couldn't run off this insanity, there would be no being still. In a way, its not okay that I depend almost exclusively on a particular 5 to 8 miles every day to ground my prayer, yet I can't help but think this is God's way to humble me. At my proudest moments, He breaks me (so cruelly with that calc quiz today...) and shames me until I learn the disciplines (which I seem to after years..), but at my worst, the pound of the gravel (actually, it should be the elasticity, not pound, because pound implies heel-striking) has always been available with the lilac sunset or otherwise refreshingly beating sun and woolen clouds.

So goodness, calm down. I can't tell you this over and over like I want to because no one listens to anything except experience, because the important life lessons are ones that have to hit you hard first. But man, I know life might be hard sometimes, but a harried rush to class to get there three minutes before it starts and constant drowning in chemistry homework won't fix anything. As unmanageable junior year seems, trying to avoid the teacher's irkings (which by the way, are directed towards the entire class, not you or anyone in particular) and beating yourself up is probably one of the worse ways to calm down. Chill. We're all in this together. I lost an electron, I'm positive. Peeta kneaded the dough. I tried to catch some fog but I missed. Life is so very good, and this isn't even the real one.