I take comfort in small things, these days. A soft pillow. A favorite sweater. A jacket that feels like a hug. Those few moments in early morning when everything is silent except for one bird. I surround myself with these comforts, so that at the end of the day, I'll still have something left to take comfort from...

People tend to strip my comforts away, with their harsh words of a harsher reality. If only I could spend all my time in blissful solitude, I'd be happy.

No, that's not true. I could never be a hermit, because I need human contact. But I also need silence and peace, sometimes. If I could surround myself with people that know when and why to be silent, then I'd be happy.

I have a doll's cookbook, somewhere. It's full of menus and elaborate recipies for dedicated little girls to make for their dolls. Every recipie consists of weeds, rocks, grass, dirt, and other things one might find in their backyard, nothing special. But they're no ordinary mud pies, no, only the best for these dolls.

That's what I feel my life is like, now. I'm a little girl, scurrying around with a bucketful of weeds and rocks, putting so much effort into something that it seems no one ever knows exists, except myself. Everthing just seem so futile, right now. I'm trying to make something beautiful out of nothing for these people, but their doll's eyes see nothing, and their painted mouths have no words for me.

One of these days, I'll take all these dolls out for a picnic in the woods, and leave them face-down in the dirt.

I saw a strange movie once, when I was eight or nine. It was pictures and soundless movie clips, placed in no particular order, with a soundtrack of one word, chanted over and over. It was a word in a Native American language that means “crazy, mixed-up world.” And that’s what it was. Scenes of nature’s beauty, and then tenement apartments, rows of marching soldiers, tanks, wrecking balls, traffic jams. I got sent to bed before it was over, but I got the message. The world wasn’t crazy or mixed up before we made it so.

I’m sure we could all add a few scenes to this movie by now. I know I could. The world hasn’t gotten any less crazy or mixed up since I was that age; if anything, it’s escalated. I can’t help but think of how this latest crazy, mixed-up development will affect me. It’s a hard thing to be in love and believe in peace and good, when so many thousands of voices are crying out for retaliation, violence, war.

I’m not as scared of that prospect for myself, but I am scared for others. I doubt any country is stupid enough to start a nuclear war that would destroy the world, so it’ll be combat conflict, and most likely there, not here. So I won’t have to be part of the violence unless I choose to. As a female, I am exempt from the draft. But most of my small group of friends are males who will be eligible for the draft within the next two years.

If it even comes to that.

And that’s the thing that’s most crazy and mixed-up about it. Everyone is speculating, including me, leaping and bounding to conclusions. Even with our fabulous information network, most people still do not have a clear idea of what’s going on, who we’re outraged against. They’re just angry at having allowed this to occur. As if they could have prevented it. Nobody saw this coming.

So we’re a bloodthirsty mob, but we don’t know whose blood we’re really calling for, or from what we want to protect our loved ones.

Crazy, mixed-up world.

This is what it's come to. Are you ready?

I used to believe that weekends were gifts to overworked kids and adults all over the world, days where you slept until noon and "dressing up" was when you changed out of your pj's, except for maybe Sunday. Which is supposed to be a day of rest, anyway.

Now, however, weekends are dawn-till-midnight, doing everything you can't do during the week because you "don't have enough time" then, and you're supposed to go back to school or work on monday and say, "Yeah, my weekend was great! How about yours?" as if you really did rest and recouperate over the weekend.

Bah. No wonder my hair's falling out.

Oh, would that dying could solve all my problems. But it won’t, and I know it won’t. Yes, it would remove me from my mother’s influence, but it would also remove me from the one I love. I cannot abandon him like that. I have too much love for him to leave him. Yes, I could prove my freedom of choice by choosing to die, but what would I choose, by choosing that? I have no way of knowing what waits for me on the other side of that choice. That unknown scares me almost more than the thought of losing my love.

So what is left for me to do? I cannot kill myself to end all my troubles, I cannot even deaden my sense of self so that I feel no pain, and therefore feel as if I have no troubles. I have tried, god, how I have tried. I don’t want to hear, or see, or feel anything, but I can’t stop myself from it.

Perhaps it’s better that way, though. My mind is not at peace, and, god knows, it probably isn’t a good place to be, alone. Perhaps I just don’t need the escape badly enough, yet. I’m not angry enough, desperate enough, stupid enough, or insane enough, yet, to hurt anyone but myself.

Hurt myself? Oh my god, what am I thinking? But it’s true. Every day that I continue to hold it all in, every day I continue to bear it, I hurt myself more. My health is deteriorating, I cry too much, and I always feel that I haven’t had enough sleep.

Sleep. Is that the answer? To sleep, perchance to dream, forever and ever and ever? It’s almost too much like death, except, in sleep, I know what to expect. And I would not want to wake up.

My thoughts run away with me too fast for me to write down, but at least I now know what they mean: Depression. But will anyone believe me? And, even if they do, will anyone care? I have a strong feeling that my mother, at least, will only blame me.

I need help…

What I wouldn't give for more lazy mornings like this... Sleep as long as I want to, eat whatever, whenever, for breakfast... Ah, screw breakfast, I'll just sleep through that to lunch...

Absolutely perfectly languid, stretched out on the sofa in my PJ's, looking at nothing, and thinking of someone...

I love to live, I live to love, and I love it...

Popular culture lies so much. It portrays teenagers as individuals, pursuing their own paths in their own lives, and no matter who tries to stop them from living this way, they always seem to prevail, come out ahead, or at least break even.

Just once, I'd like to come out ahead. Just once, I'd like to have that privelledged single-mindedness they all seem to have, which would enable me to just think about myself and my problems, and not be needlessly burdened by those of others. Just once, I'd like to be just what I am, fifteen, not "almost grown up."

Almost! That's bullshit, and you know it. Please, people, decide what I am, and treat me that way! Don't give me the responsibilites of an adult, and expect me to handle them as an adult, when you've put the restrictions of a child on me. I know it's hard to pin down exactly where I am between child and adult. I know it's easier for you to treat me as the child I was, but you expect me to somehow act as the adult I will be. You can't do that. If you want me to act as an adult does, you need to give me room to learn how. I don't know about you, but I wasn't born knowing.

Just because I don't live up to your expectations all the time, just because I occasionally act like what I am, a teenager, just because you've forgotten what it was like to be my age, doesn't mean I can't learn how to grow up. You just need to give me the chance.