The Interview

Okay, so I'm not exactly COOL and CONFIDENT 100% of the time. Lord knows I'm right fidgety 50%, and a blur of emotions the rest. So today, I have this interview. It's for this summer program I got nominated for, and in order to be a candidate, I had to write an essay, revise it, find out stuff about my family's income. Blah. Blah. Blah. So I have this lovely little slip that tells me when and where my 'view is, at 12:00, during lunch. I leave my 4th class early to get to lunch, and then the interview. It turns out the interview with the previous person will last 20 minutes. Straight into my 5th class, which I love. Oh well.

Miss-Confident-Me gets nervous as time ticks away. Finally, about 15 minutes before the 6th class, which is a pain in the @$$ for me, and pretty mandatory about attendance, the last person comes out. I wait a few seconds, then knock. A muffled voice says something that sounds like "Wait A Sec" but I feel like I've been out there a millennium and start reading this poster and tapping on the wall. A few seconds later Ms. Hoity-Toity herself comes out from the room, obviously annoyed. She tells me to stop knocking after she told me to wait, and I try to apologize, I didn't know I was knocking my fingers on the door... but does she listen? NOO... storms back in her little office and makes me wait. I come back in a few minutes later, and she starts off with this cool demeanor.

So I give it right back to her, naturally. She asks some pretty general questions, just like I expected, but seeing one of my friends come from this meeting crying wasn't doing anything for my confidence. I started to pull on my fingers. She started to get annoyed with me, and it struck me that this woman was reminding me of that lady from Suddenly Susan-- whoever Susan's antagonist was, the blonde-haired woman who she always seemed to hate, who Luis was in love with? Whatever.

So anyway, she started to say I wasn't being detailed enough, that, while I was obviously intelligent, I was giving the info to her "like a ham sandwich." I ended almost every statement with a "Well, yeah." or a "You know..." I thought I sounded like a Valley Girl. And I'm from "Up North". But apparently, I made some big step, according to the same woman later.

I found out that my interviewer was the Exec Director of the program. The other woman in the room was a possible staff member, and the last lady who came in at the end was the founder of the program. Yet this didn't feel like girl talk. So eventually, I discover *SHOCK* I've made it in. Being a third person now, I hear how I made this big leap by being more emotional. The interviewer pestered me about my "status" socially, how I wasn't very popular, but, she pointed out, I was on some "cycle of destruction" because I boxed myself away from others, but ended up regretting it. It sort of overwhelmed me at the end how nice they were acting, after this woman had just peeled me apart like an onion. She was looking HAPPY that I had cried, and I still didn't know why I did. I tell you, interviewers, when they say they want to get into your shoes and find out what it is to be you... damn, they mean it.

Present Tense Note: I'm thinking the "program" in question may have been Digital Horizon or the Beacon/Richmond Review newspaper thing I did. I'm not really sure which, though. Damn, why did I have to be so vague back in high school?

Dark and Gloomy Past

Some people think I'm a bitch, even a shallow one. Forgive the language, people, but it's the truth. Since I have been around 10, I sort of pushed other people away. Some great, patient people, managed to push their way through my invisible bubble and stand up to me, ask me why the hell I was so seclusive, and they became my friends. Everyone else makes it a point to stay away from me.

Of course, there's a perfectly logical explanation for all of this. On July 20th, 1996, my older sister died. In a hiking accident, on a cliff that wasn't very well fenced off. It changed everyone in my family's life forever.

My mom was never as fun to be around. Hardly spontaneous, and never the one to suggest to "eat out", "watch a movie" or anything. Her life became her bedroom, revolving solely around the X-Files. I had been with my dad and his live-in girlfriend when I found out. He was supposed to be the one "comforting" me and all that. Seeing as my sister wasn't his daughter, he apparently didn't think he had to do much of that. When he wasn't not there for me, he was with me, once, when my cousins wanted to go out to eat. Even then, he wasn't all that comforting. He called my sister stupid for what she did, after the fact, and right when no one wanted to hear it. But I suppose considering, his life when downhill from there too.

As far as I'm concerned, I had it the worse. I always held my sister on a pedestal. She taught me morals; principles; everything I know about computers that I didn't teach myself; all about Japanese culture, my #1 passion; how to read, write, send letters, get guys-- EVERYTHING. Like any human, she erred some times. But even after we fought, I still loved her so much. It's hard to think I can barely remember her voice. I tried so hard to be the support for my mom, and that's when my "cycle of destruction" began. I figured I was needed too much by others to let myself feel anything. I lost someone very dear to me without even knowing it. Not just myself, but someone I had grown to love so deeply, that it was hard to recognize as anything beyond friendship. But he was there for me, and I never acknowledged that. I can't now, now that he's moved away.
But after that year, dubbed Year of Hell, I withdrew into myself, albeit the fact I made more friends. But I made even more enemies, and the reputation I had had since middle school worsened. I always had made it a point before to befriend younger students so they would look up at ME as a role model, the same way I did to my sister, but I was too twisted to become anything more than a bad example. I was violent, rude, abrasive, secluded, dark and angry. Part of me still is. I guess I did what I told everyone not to do, and bottled up all my emotions. I have learned, unconsciously, to pinch my wrist before I cry, to bite my lip before I shout, and to punch myself before I speak hurtful words. Yet I somehow manage to do all of them anyway, just as unconsciously.

Without my "role model" who had many a dark secret herself, I found out after her death, I was someone I would have been afraid of in my younger days. My mom revealed a secret of her own, one that I believed would have shamed my late sister. I hated her because of that. It was like dishonoring her memory.

My family died at a rapid rate after that. My grandmother, my aunts, an uncle. One of my youngest baby cousins was left without a father. All of my remaining relatives were slowly losing their sanity, what little they had left after so much devastation.

And throughout it all, I wondered, these visions where I knew that death was coming... would I be next? I always seemed to be able to see bad things happening, and not always to my family. It was true for my family, but also true for someone who I love dearly. He didn't die, but he hurt himself badly, and I knew he would. But I was too afraid, too in love to tell him. Not that I could have prevented it either way, I'm sure. But I still wonder, if I continue to have these flashes of foreboding, will I be next?

Highly Overrated Grossness, aka V-Day

Yes, you either love it or you hate it. It's Valentine's Day. Unlike Mother's Day, it wasn't created by Hallmark, and they don't over-publicize it quite as much as chocolate companies or sleazy "Hard Copy" style shows do. There are two distant origins: one is that it falls around the same time as a Pagan fertility festival. Erm, not quite. Imbolc, the name of the festival, falls on February 1st. Not 14th. Oops. Okay, so there's the OTHER one that we all know, right? During some fantastic war, Caesar prevented all his soldiers from marrying, as he thought that would prevent them from fighting well or some other such weirdness. So a priest by the name of Valentine married the couples in secret. However, Caesar found out and killed the man, forever making the man a martyr of love and a Saint in his name.

Okay, so that's what we know. All well and good, but how did card and chocolate-giving get started? Why isn't some ritualistic day to get married? But no, people get married in JUNE, not in February. While I have nothing against people celebrating their love, some people overdo it. I saw on one particular tv show about how to give the perfect gift. How some guys were inept with the whole Valentine's scene, and others were suaver than soap. While 61% of guys may want flowers from their girls (*cough* yeah right!), only 40% get them, and girls always get the same old: balloons, chocolate, candy of any red, fruity sort, roses, teddy bears. It's all about pink, red, cute, and usually either shiny or fuzzy. Or, in the case of older people, big, gold, and expensive-looking.

Maybe I hate it so much because I used to go through so much trouble making (from scratch) V-day cards, personalizing them and all, and then not getting a single one even close to what I had done back, not even from my friends. Of the people whose few scattered Valentines I still have, they scrawled their name on back so messily that I can barely make it out. Nothing personal at all. So, in 5th grade, I pretty much stopped doing the Valentine thing. Last year, I guy who I barely knew gave me some chocolates with a scrap of paper saying he liked my personality. I was flattered beyond belief, but I was drooling after a senior. I was blind to what was in front of me, and could have made a closer friend as opposed to ignoring it. Of course, I thanked him graciously on a cute pink note, and we're in a class together again. Part of me wonders if he still likes me.

But I just refuse to acknowledge that I am alone yet again one year, and V-day just makes me remember that even more painfully. All my friends are paired off, guys who are usually the obnoxious geeks now have girlfriends, and even the not-so-desperate, semi-guy-hating ones are getting Love Pops and teddy bears from one person or another. Perhaps it's that cycle of destruction deal again, with me segregating myself and never giving anyone the chance to love me. Or maybe I am just unloved.
I wore all black yesterday, and I'm proud of it.