Author: theycallmedame

Just F–k ’em.

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It’s funny how someone can completely change your view on something by simply uttering a phrase. It’s funny how you can be hell-bent on doing something that you are blinded to the faults of your plan. You want to runaway from a place that makes you happy just because a few things went wrong, and you close your eyes to the bad things about the place you’re running to.

But there is no such thing as a perfect place. There is nowhere you could possibly go to escape everything bad. There is no running away from mean people and unhappy situations. They follow you forever.

But even though they will follow you, you don’t have to let them make you sad, or angry, or feel like you don’t belong. Even when they try to tear you down at the very seams, try to break every thing that is you, they can’t get to you. Because the people who make others miserable are only doing so so they don’t feel as bad about themselves. Because the people who are cruel and border-line evil don’t deserve your tears, they deserve your pity.

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Smile for the Camera.

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Click.
Click.
Click.

He hunches over with his camera in hand, turning at obscure angles to try and get the perfect shot of the two cars.

Click.

He stands on his tip toes, his camera far above his head, trying to see form a view that isn’t his own.

Click

He mounts a jack to his own car before attaching his camera and speeding down the winding roads of a mountain.
I’ll edit out the jack later, he thinks to himself while twisting through the turns.

Click.

He smiles at me as I take a picture of him, a wild horse right out of frame, laughing.
“These things are the spawn of satan,” he says to me.

Click.

He waits on the ridge of a mountain, keeping his camera in front of him and his eyes searching.
My shutter speed has to be perfect, he thinks.
There’s a flash of lighting far away, and a smile stretches across his face.

Click.

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Words

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I always thought of my cousin (Let’s call her Cousin for the sake of her privacy) as a small, slightly pudgy girl with a big smile. She always trailed behind my eleven other cousins, my big brother, and me while we played games, and she always seemed to happy just to sit and talk with us.

I was once told that while she was in fourth or fifth grade, her mother found her in the bathtub with her legs completely hairless. Very confused, her mother inquired about it, and Cousin explained how girls in her class called her legs hairy and gross, so she shaved the hair off.

That was the time that we should’ve started keeping a closer eye on her.

I had heard over the years that my aunt and uncle were worrying about Cousin and peer pressure issues. They were mainly concerned about her eating habits. They thought that maybe girls were calling her fat and she was reacting the same way she did when they told her she had hairy legs.

But when I saw her two years ago, it was not what I expected. The girl I once thought to be radiant and albeit a little pudgy, was nothing more than a shell of a person. Her feet were pressed against each other, as were her knobby knees, but her legs touched in no places. Her shirt rested a bit high above her jeans, her hip bones jutting painfully out and her stomach fat nonexistent. With her back turned to you, you could practically count her ribs and her arms looked no more than toothpicks. Her collar bones stuck out like mountains from her chest and her neck looked to thin to hold her head up. She wore makeup and looked as though she thought the world of herself. Cousin was in sixth grade.

It made me angry. Oh, it made me so angry to see her this way. I wanted to yell at her, shake sense into her feeble little body and watch her as she ate every last thing on a plate piled a mile high. But I sat back and watched as she and her equally skinny friend shared a kids meal, but barely touching the plate at all.

While in the car back to the hotel they were staying at, I casually mentioned how if you stopped eating you would gain water weight as your body tried to counter it’s lack of nutrients and eventually your stomach would start to eat itself. They looked appalled, but recent photos show no difference in her ghastly appearance.

I just want her to go back to the way she was before. I just want her to be happy.
I just want her to live again.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt forever.

In this day.

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For, although in this day and age
in which life and death are questioned,
life and death still go on.
For even the smallest breath
and the most insignificant death,
will steal your marching son.

Every moment, of everyday,
As you wait hopelessly by the door
He marches, unblinking.
And his tears have all come and gone,
They drained them, smiling, it was done.
Empty thoughts worth thinking.

A thousand miles away
Or a single step out of line
All eyes shoot down.
They are trapped in a single frame
The camera and the gun are the same
Death is a clown.

Screeching tires stumble sideways
The car flips, once twice, three times.
The water fails to drain.
A struggled breath lingers
Shivering hands and fingers
Is he in love or in pain?

A sudden blow to the head
No stars, only music plays
A swollen, shifted skull.
Invisible drums, out of time
Twisted tongues, out of line
A hospital life, worn dull.

With a march,
A crash,
A hit,
Even if death cuts in,
Life waits for its next dance.

From the Top

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I smile over my left shoulder at my friend who is hunched over his bass guitar, creating a progression we had only dreamed of. He stops for a moment after letting the last E note ring out from the depth of his instrument. Glancing up at me quickly, a huge smiles envelops both of our faces and we know: We’ve got it.


Mackin playing bass during a soundcheck.

I quickly put my guitar down on the stand next to the amplifier I was sitting on and dive for the open notebook and pen that are lying on the floor.

“What was the progression you just did, Mackin?” I ask, my eyes gleaming with excitement.
“E, E, G, A and on the fourth I added the high D,” He said, playing the notes as he dictated them for me.
“Brilliant,” I tell him, sitting down with the paper in front of me, “I’ve got all the lyrics down, should we take it from the top?”
“Absolutely,” he says, placing my microphone in front of me before he grabs his own.

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Hyperbole and a Half

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I’ve recently stumbled upon another blog that has made me laugh harder than I thought possible. The blogger’s name is Allie Brosh, and she combines writing with creating near stick-figure drawings to help get her point across.

For Example:

Her blog is called Hyperbole and a Half, and features recurring characters from her real life such as her two dogs, Boyfriend, and a much younger, much more violent and hyperactive Allie.

She tends to talk about her past, such as the time her and her young friends violently attacked a teenage boy because they were playing “Wolves” or when she competed in a track meet only to start hallucinating due to the intense heat of Texas.

She has made me laugh out loud or more than one occasion, and I highly suggest to anyone that they should check it out.

End Scene.

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Sing loud.
Keep your back straight.
Don’t look at your feet.
You move stage right, not stage left.
It’s step-ball-change not ball-change-step.
You’re que is before the beat, not on it.
Cheat out and never look upstage.
Memorize all of Act Two by Friday, no exceptions.

Instruction after instruction and command after command is what it takes to put on a production. Whether it be a production of Shakespeare or the newest and hottest musical out there, without the proper director, any show is doomed.

I’ve been doing theatre since I was in second grade, starting off with Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” playing Puck. Then I moved onto Annie, Grease (twice), The Wizard of Oz, Wicked, The Wiz (twice), Damn Yankees, Beauty and the Beast, Pandora’s Jar, Tommy, Come Together, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Every time I meet new challenges that must be conquered, and every time it is a struggle. But there is no feeling that is even remotely comparable to opening night, when the curtains first fly open and the opening song starts. The feeling of being someone else for an hour or two. It’s irreplaceable.

Performing on stage is a hobby I’ve come to love, and it is a joy every time I open a new script to start highlighting my lines for later memorization. Each performance is a journey, and one that always ends too soon.

And I’m Still Alive

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Lesbian.
Gay.
Dyke.
Dyke.
Dyke.

She keeps her head down as people sneer at her, she’s only trying to walk to her next class in peace. Her baggy jacket hides the scars littering her arms and the hood masks the look of utter pain etched onto her face.

“Hey!” Someone calls at her, but she does not know who, “how bout I let you borrow my girlfriend if you return your clothes to the men’s section?”

It was a poor attempt to hurt her, but it did, nonetheless. She moved her feet faster, trying to avoid the people in the cruel jail she knew as high school, but they would never go away. The taunting would never go away.

It wasn’t always so hard, she remembered, back when she wasn’t sure what her hormones were telling her. It wasn’t always so hard when she was in the closet, so far back she thought she was in Narnia. It was when she emerged from the darkness that a spotlight shined down onto her, that people took notice. She was no longer the smiling girl with all the friends, but the lesbian that you had to stay away from. After all, you don’t want to catch their disease, right?

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Roommates.

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When I first went to OVS I had no idea how I would live with another person in the same room as me. The last time I did that was when I was eight and shared a room with my big brother. It was almost a year and a half ago when I met roommate. I walked into the room, number 207, with no idea of who would be in there or how I would react to them: that was when I met Polina.

She was relatively quiet at first, and I only really heard her talk when she was on her phone at night, speaking rapid Russian to her mother. But we slowly grew closer to one another, starting our conversations about music and then leading them on into the unknown. She became one of my closest friends.

When we had separated from each other at the end of our freshman year, her going to Russia and me staying in southern California, I didn’t know the effect it would have on me. I would be talking to my friends about school and instead of calling Polina, “my roommate,” I called her, “my Russian.” (I later found out that she refers to me as “my Aria” when she’s home in Russia)

This year, I was very grateful to have Polina as a roommate again. We already knew each others likes and dislikes, we never had an argument, and we practically knew what the other one was thinking. We had already been through and gotten over the awkward faze of living with a new person, and I never thought I’d be able to get on so well with someone so different than me.

I don’t know how I would have been able to make it through the long years at OVS without my roommate to help me through them.

Я люблю тебя сосед по комнате!

Age.

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Youth is something people long to get and long to get rid of.

I’ve heard people yearning:

“I wish I was eighteen, now.”

“I wish I was twenty-one!”

“I wish I was a teenager again.”

“I wish I could skip high school and just go into life as an adult.”

 

“I wish I could go back to high school; just one more time.”

But why wish would you wish to be another age then the one you are?

If you’re young, a teenager, you have so much of life ahead of you. Every move you make can lead into the next big adventure or the next life-changing event. If you miss those moments then what is life when you’re older? How would you be if you just skipped some of the most important years of your lives when you shape who you are and how you live?

And if you’re older, wishing for the “glory days” of high school and college, don’t. If you’re old, it doesn’t mean you’re uncool, it means you’ve lived through more and seen more than any of us could imagine. If you’re 103, you’re one of the strongest people alive. You’ve lived through both world wars, a depression, countless of economy scares and who knows what else? You’ve lived life, and you shouldn’t try to hide it.

So whether or not you’re old or young or somewhere in between, don’t wish to be another age. Be happy with what you have experienced and what you are about to. Cherish life, because it might be the only one we have.