The Drama

Do you like the drama? The turmoil? The soaring highs and the bottomless lows? The agony? I have always had a propensity for drama and fervor.

When I was younger and more unhealthy, I’d nudge myself into situations where I knew I’d get hurt just because I liked the intensity of it all. I stared out the window and pretended my life was a movie; I’d even divide it into chapters. When I went through dark and painful times, I would think things like, “This will make fantastic writing material.” And boy, did I write. It was tortured, ecstatic, flowery, excessive.

The height of my melodrama was sometime in eighth grade. I was a painfully shy girl who avoided eye contact and wrote hysterical poetry in a shabby composition notebook. I made every English assignment into an opportunity to talk about how frail and forsaken I was, or how tragic it was that I was born so different in a plastic society. Every moment of every day was like a drop of drama, funneled into a little vat in my thirteen-year-old soul. The drama in that vat was always boiling, boiling, sometimes bubbling over as sonnets into the margins of my math quizzes.

I grew out of it and gained some common sense. You know, like understanding that the world doesn’t revolve around my problems. The drama no longer defines me. It is now more akin to ribbons of gristle in a slab of meat. And just like how a little fat makes a wonderful steak, a little melodrama makes the most splendid writing.

Genuine Melodrama

“Now, who loves me now? Nobody. Forever alone…..

I’m a cold, shivering, helpless, heart-hungry heart tossed in the snow, bruised and bloody and weeping softly to myself. All it needs is a big hug and lots of love. It’s not a greedy thing. It just has a very large heart, and it takes a lot of love to fill it. But for now, it sits in the snow, hugging itself in vain to warm its frozen body. It cannot scream; it cannot cry. So many people pass it by. And now here ends the morning ray; the night must come before the day.
Ooh! Was that a poem? A very bad poem, but it was a poem! OMG!

It cannot scream; it cannot cry
So many people pass it by
And now here ends the morning ray
The night must come before the day.”

I wrote this in seventh grade. It’s just one of the many melodramatic musings that burst forth from me. As I look through those old musings, I find myself chuckling a bit. Some of them were amusingly juvenile–all-caps, fifty exclamation points, excessive use of emojis, expansive drama, and so on. I embodied the stereotypical whiny preteen. My slightly flamboyant tone made me seem almost fake.

But I know I was not. I was only twelve. All-caps, exclamation points, and emojis were the only ways I could express myself. The fury in my soul was real–too real. It was so intense that it could have been misinterpreted as phony.

So when I start getting annoyed with my past self, I remind myself of the stage of life in which I lived. I was younger. It’s impossible to hold my 10-year-old self to a 16-year-old standard. I’ve chosen to let that girl run free.

Needless Drama

I thought that once I’d entered high school, people would have matured and gotten over the need to gossip and stir up needless drama. I thought wrong. So many people are just fake. Gossiping, lying fakes. I can scan the entire cafeteria and find nobody in whom I could trust. I don’t socialize at school, and day by day, my desire to do so lessens. I’m starting to actually dislike people at my school. 

This morning, I walked into my history class for the first time in over a month. I haven’t been to school in a while, and much to my embarrassment, I completely forgot where I was seated. I wasn’t sure if the seating had changed, or if I was simply failing to remember. Confused, I sat hesitatingly down into an open seat.
“Uh, do you sit here?” said the girl next to me, condescendingly. Immediately I felt again like a small little fifth grader. Or sixth grader. Or seventh. Any of the three. I’m not sure why such a simple little thing like that would cause me to become so upset.
“Well, I don’t know. I haven’t been here in a while. Do you by any chance know where I would sit?” At this point, I received the classic mean girl eye-roll. I know, so mature. 
“Why are you asking me? How should I know?” More mean girl looks. Very condescending. Again, I felt small again. I traveled back in time to age twelve–and unfortunately responded with twelve-year-old maturity. 
“Oh, thanks!” I responded, smiling–sarcastically sweet. “That was so helpful!” The girl was alarmed. Why? I guess because I’m the sweet quiet one who always lends her pencils–even when she never returns them. I never speak. I stay on people’s good side, but this time I got a little snarky. 

At this point I remembered where I was sitting and moved at the earliest possible moment. For the rest of class, I felt horribly guilty. I’d acted just as horribly as she had. I also felt conspicuous and insecure. Imagine an accordion in a green meadow. That was me in history class this morning. I felt like the girl was staring at me and secretly planning to ruin me. Then, awful scenarios began to pop up in my head. What if she turns the whole class against me? Or the whole school? What if she creates a website dedicated to hating me? Such irrational thoughts always run through my head in moments like the ones that happened today. 

At the end of class, as she was packing up after the bell, I approached her. “Hey, sorry I was rude earlier.” 
“Yeah. Sorry,” she mumbled. Our eyes did not meet. Later, we ran into each other in the bathroom. She asked me for lip balm, and I said I had none. She seemed sweet–of course, I’ve become wary even of kindness. High school is an ocean of false sincerity. You never know when someone’s a true fish or a shark disguised as one. 

More needless drama happened at lunch. I wasn’t directly involved this time; rather, I overheard. I usually sit with some popular girls. They actually approached me at the beginning of the year and wanted to sit with me–of course I obliged, though awkwardly. Well, after I’ve been gone for over a month, they didn’t give me even so much as a glance. I was expendable to them the whole time. What else could be expected, though? All I did was read while they played Candy Crush on their phones. 

Anyway, I was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of their circle and heard them talking about other girls on their sports team. The insults were flying everywhere. 
“She thinks she’s the best! She’s actually not. Everyone is annoyed with her.”
“I know, right?! And she’s not even that pretty.”
“So true! She thinks everyone likes her! Ugh, I want to slap her.”
“She likes every boy, but has no chance of being liked back.”
“Let’s not talk to her at practice this evening, okay? If she comes up to us, just walk away.”
“Okay!” *laughter*

This is only a very short paraphrase of their conversation. These are the girls who are always taking pictures of themselves with her, hanging out with her, and acting like best friends. In fact, the class period before, I saw them all laughing and hanging out together. And then the chatter at lunch! It made me physically ill to listen to. They’re like black widow spiders–eating their own kind! These are the girls who like all my pictures on social networking sites, including when my caption is “Please don’t talk badly about others. Words carry a great weight” or something. The hypocrisy! 

The drama is needless! I ache for everyone they’ve put down. I mean, I actually feel pain when I hear talk like I heard at lunch, even if it’s not about me. Can’t people recognize that everyone is a human–flesh and blood, bone and marrow? We are all the same! Will this petty talk even matter in a year? No, of course not! It’s pointless and hurtful! I don’t know how to say this any other way: shut up! Just shut up, please! I would rather them play Candy Crush on their bedazzled iPhone 5S than be so low as to trash another human being! 

Yes, we’re all hypocritical. Face it, we’ve all gossiped. And gossip is tempting–not necessarily to hurt others, but out of curiosity. We want to know what’s going on. It’s like news–we want to be up to date on who likes whom, who hates whom, and so on. We crave surprise. Oh my God, she hooked up with that kid?! I never would have guessed! Sometimes we just want some excitement to spice up our lives. (Half the time, the “news” isn’t even true, by the way.) But there are better ways of doing this! When I’ve been tempted to gossip, or even listen to a conversation in whispers, I just turn away and remember that it’s none of my business. What other people do in private, or what they keep secret, isn’t anything I should know. It’s not my business whom that girl is interested in. I shouldn’t care who she’s hooked up with. It’s not my business! 

So instead of putting other people down, or gossiping, try including other people. When we add new people to our “friend groups”, we add variety to our lives! Meet people. Find a hobby. Join a fandom. Do anything, but don’t take your own insecurities out on somebody else. It’s not fair.

This advice goes for me, for you, and for that strange clown statue standing in the corner of my living room. Oh, he’s holding a knife!

I better go now! Run! I’ll see you la–

(Just kidding. There’s no clown in my living room.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My life is a movie?

My life has been an ongoing movie since I was four years old. I know exactly how it started–I was sitting in the car on the way home from church, and I decided that hey, my life would make a pretty fab movie. Well, not in those words, but the same concept. For the longest time, I just imagined it as live streaming, separated into chapters. The chapters were not just a yearly thing–I divided them based on how I was feeling. For instance, a happy day at a birthday party would have been the cheerful end of one chapter. As I grew older, however, I stopped liking the idea of live streaming. Way too creepy. So I started making and editing the movies in my mind–making them black and white, slow motion, etc. My imagination expanded beyond just movies and into autobiographical-memoir-book-things, speeches, and even…blogs! 

This is going to sound really, really silly, but I think even when horrible things were happening to me (cough cough seventh grade), in the very back of my mind was this little thing–voice? sense? I don’t know–that said “one day you’re going to blog about this, and it’s going to be amazing.” Has anyone else had this before?

The fact that my life has always been a big movie has caused me to be, well, maybe a little melodramatic at times. This was a lot more prevalent in my younger years (say, twelve and younger), but never ceases to show its face from time to time even now. Of course, all that melodrama was from my heart–it’s not like I ever made up stuff. I think it’s just something that’s in my personality. I’m pretty good at articulating what I’m feeling–I think, that is. If you ask me what I’m feeling, I’ll almost always be able to tell you in a pretty well-worded way. It’s never been hard for me. So, sometimes I word things a little too well, and it comes out like melodrama. So maybe it’s not actually melodrama all the time, it’s just me being able to express my emotions well. 

The movie thing has really faded in the past few years, though. It’s really turned into speeches in my head. For the past two years or so, I’ve imagined myself giving these speeches to large crowds saying, “Hey, my life was total bullshit. [insert examples of bullshit] But things got better! [insert hopeful examples] [insert hopeful, inspirational message]” Which is weird, because public speaking is NOT my thing. One day, however, I will give a big talk. I will. I know it. 

 

Loving all the enemies!

I really apologize for having nothing to write about other than memories and whatnot. I truly hope I’m not boring anyone. My present isn’t anything to write about–well, nothing I’d put in public or the Internet. My future is too shaky to really discuss. What does that leave? The past.

Sixth grade. Honestly, I still sort of admire my sixth grade self. It surprises me that I actually had that much strength in me. Then I start wondering where all that strength went.
Sometimes bad experiences change us for the better. For me, that was sixth grade. After fifth grade’s terrible experiences, I decided to be the sweetest, most accepting little girl anyone had ever met. I tried my hardest to put kindness into practice and make it a priority, even when people hurt me.
So, in sixth grade, some drama happened with three girls. Two of the girls had been my friends formerly, and one of those two stopped being friends with me unexpectedly. This is where my desire to be kind was tested. I could’ve retaliated to all the hate I got from those three, but I refused. This is where I admire the random strength I had in sixth grade: I still chose to love and care about those girls, no matter how they hurt me. I remember thinking a whole lot about Jesus–how he’d basically been hanging there bleeding and dying for the people who were killing him. I wanted to be like Jesus. I wanted that kind of love and forgiveness. No, I wasn’t perfect–of course I still messed up–but I did my best.
And somehow, through it all, I didn’t completely lose hope. I didn’t really pray all that much, but I do remember this one time. It was a bitter day in December. The only warm thing about sitting out there in the cold was my tears. It was then, while I was sitting on the back of the car, that I started praying–not for my circumstance, but for the lives of those three girls. In the worst months, I sat out there and prayed for the very people who were making those months hard for me. At school, I did my best to be as kind to those girls as I could.
My school had a rule that if Valentines were to be given to one student in the class, they had to be given to all the students in the class. The Saturday before the fourteenth, I spent the whole day making personalized, handmade cards with an encouraging word and compliment for every student in my class. On Valentine’s Day, everyone handed out their cards. One of the three girls (the girls whom I prayed for) had also made handmade cards. I watched her hand them out–they were made of brightly colored foam, and they had stickers and googly eyes on them. Then I got mine.
It was brown construction paper. Black marker. No stickers, no decoration. No smiley face. It read:

abby,
happy valentine day

I felt like crying when I received that Valentine. It was almost worse than if I’d gotten no card at all. But then I remembered–I’d made very special cards for everyone. I passed them out. The very moment after I was given that ugly piece of construction paper the color of dog excrement, I handed the girl the card I’d made just for her–a large purple heart with designs, and a personalized note.
Her face changed.
She stared at it for a very long time.
It was only a matter of days before she and one of the other three girls apologized and asked to be friends. About two months later, the other girl did the same.

Today, I’m still friends with two of those three girls (I had a falling out with one of them shortly after I began the seventh grade), and they are both very wonderful people. I still find it amazing. I mean, how many people can say that? I believe that if I’d retaliated and tried to fight fire with fire, the outcome might have been very different.

I like that sixth grade me. I want to pray for the people who have hurt me more. I want to be kind not only to the people who I love, but the people whom I find harder to love. The easy thing to do when someone hurts us is to find some way to get revenge. It’s harder to keep calm and practice forgiveness. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should be doormats and let everyone walk all over us. It’s important to stand up for ourselves (I’m still working on that one). But standing up doesn’t mean lashing out at the other person.

Again, I find it harder to forgive than to seek revenge. It’s difficult, but it’s so much more rewarding than revenge. And when you think about it that way, being kind is actually pretty badass.

 

Get an imaginary boyfriend!

My dating experience is very limited due to my very young age (a few days from being fourteen), but I do have a few words of wisdom for anyone who wishes to listen.

My simple dating advice to anyone my age or younger? Don’t do it! I don’t care how perfect you say the other person is; I don’t care how good of friends you are; I don’t care if you’re a hopeless romantic like me who wants a knight in shining armor to carry you away to the Land of Blissful Love. Spare yourself the heartbreak and I can assure you that you will thank me later. Please don’t make excuses or exceptions and note your age. You are young. There isn’t even a reason to date somebody. Oh, you really like him? Hm…well in that case…nope, still not making an exception! Go home and write long ballads about the two of you and never show them to anybody and daydream. Anything but actually dating the person. It will most likely ruin whatever friendship you have, and at least one of you will end up in pieces.

However, I have nothing against book boyfriends. You know, dating a book or movie character in your mind. Or, if you’re anything like me, make up an imaginary boyfriend. It sounds a little lame, but it’s really not. Here’s why…

1. Imaginary boyfriends will never hurt you or let you down.
2. Imaginary boyfriends will not argue with you.
3. Imaginary boyfriends can look however you want them to.
4. You can bring your imaginary boyfriend anywhere.
5. You can have an imaginary boyfriend at any age.

So, what do you say? Start dreaming!