"A good name is more valuable than precious perfume, in the same way the day of death is better than the day you were born." -Ecclesiastes 7:1
I'm writing this with the sour, raw feeling in my head reminiscent of when I'm trying not to cry. A million little things seem to be dumping themselves one by one into the metaphorical backpack of emotions that I have to haul uphill in high humidity for an unspecified amount of time. What did I call this before? Oh yeah, notsome.
Items in my backpack at the present time:
1) My score on the English test I wrote about two days ago is detrimental to my grade in the class, and as the AP exam is next week, our assignments for the course are pretty much done, and there isn't much more chance to improve. I don't want to turn this into a petty teenaged issue and place all the blame for my inferior work on the teacher, but I've been thinking about my relationship with her lately, and I've had some personal insights. She has me for both AP English, in which we write long, complex essays on a daily basis, and for Newspaper, in which I turn in articles every single Friday, and I have never-- not even once-- received a positive comment on a writing assignment. I've gotten perfect scores on papers, and I've received accolades throughout the school for editorials, and I've led class literature discussions, but I have never-- not even one-- gotten so much as a "nice job" or a "well-written." I understand that if she perceives a cocky attitude in me, she doesn't want to encourage it. But I don't think I come off that way at all! I've never mentioned to her that I'm in a book, or spoke to her about my internet life, or bragged to her about my relationships with authors I admire, or brought up NaNoWriMo. I've made effort not to act bigheaded about my love for writing, because if a teacher thinks I'm talented, I want her to come to that conclusion on her own. But honestly? I've written some brilliant pieces for those classes. It's my passion and reason for living, and this woman, whose passion is to encourage young people to pursue their gifts, has never found a single chance in a whole year to let me know she laughed at a line or liked a point made in an essay. I know that my performance on a test has nothing to do with my personal relationship with the grader, but I think I have reason to be upset about the classes as a whole. This teacher also, for example, thinks I'm an ecstatically happy person, when I did poorly in Newspaper last grading period because I was too miserably depressed to lift my head. She also thinks Jess (who she's had three years) goes by Jessica. So.
2) I started attending my church before I could talk. I've been in the same company, in the same building, twice a week for the past eighteen years. Our pastor is like an uncle to me: he convinced me to go on a bike-riding retreat when I was little and (if you can even grasp this concept) less athletic than I am now. He was present for every single family crisis. He officiated my sister's marriage, and will mine. The man is a wonderful, brilliant, real, flawed person, and I love him dearly. Unfortunately, the United Methodist Church as a whole attempts to work in the best interest of all its members, so when a minister has done great things for an individual church but is, after many years, appearing to flatline, they will sometimes require that the minister go somewhere new where they can be of more assistance. Basically, the higher powers that be are, in a way, asking a sort of retirement of my pastor. This summer, he'll be moving a few hours away to indefinitely work a different kind of job, and it's suggested that his current church family keep contact with him to a minimum for a while, so as not to show an unfair bias against the new pastor, and to not be selfish. The system isn't evil or anything; they're looking out for the greater good, trying to breathe life in new places and not let things get stale. This means, however, some pretty awful stuff for my family. My mother and the pastor's wife have been working together at the church for twelve years, and are best friends with the intensity of me and Jess. And for the "greater good of the United Methodist system in our area," my mom will be separated from her best friend in the world at the same time her last of four children will move out. My mom loves what she does, but she's been working for a long time, and she's exhausted. So now, at the time she needs her best friend most, and she needs her coworker to keep her afloat, everything is going to change against her will and power. It's heartbreaking to think about. On top of that, when I come home from college, my church will not be the same one I left. We'll have a new, young, very different pastor who, if he ever even has the time to learn my name, will have not taught me to ride a bike with handlebar brakes. He won't have seen me lose my baby teeth, or baptized me, or hugged me when my grandpa died. I just feel like... like the government is burning down my house and leaving an IOU.
3) Again, every Sunday night since I was about twelve, I've met at the church for what we call small groups. I've been getting together with my friends (and not just Church Friends-- these are Jess and Lauren and Sarah, among about six others) and my godmother-figure to talk about life, study a Bible verse, and hang out every single week. It's our only absolutely unchanging, stable social date to guarantee each other uninterrupted time, and it's been happening since we all had braces on our teeth. I can't even picture a world without small group. The impact these people have had on my life is positively immeasurable. But alas. We have one college freshman, one high school sophomore, and the rest are high school seniors. Our leader has been far too close with us to take on another group, so Elise, the sophomore, will be groupless next year. Oh, yeah-- and I WILL NO LONGER HAVE MY SMALL GROUP. The most reliable positive influence of my life is coming to an end. Our leader brought this up tonight, and as I walked into my house, I nearly fainted. There are few, few, few things more important to me than my small group. It's ending.
4) Oops, I did it again. I've nearly made myself a Girlfriend, and it's taken me until the last possible second to realize how desperately I do not want to be one. The main contributer to this (well, the one I feel comfortable enough to disclose to my blog readers) is the fact that he doesn't know the deep, intangible me. He knows the concept of Hayley Hoover from School: the girl he's flirted with intently since middle school, his costar in four musicals and six years of choir, the one who bounces up and down over Emily Dickinson in English and ignores everyone else for her tiny circle of friends. But in all actuality? Well, my small group was talking tonight about the different names we all hold. Like, I'm Hayley Hoover at school, and Hayley to my friends, Hayles and Haylsie to my family, Fuzzball to my brother, Miss Hayley at Royal Family Kids' Camp, and hayleyghoover to the internet. This boy knows Hayley Hoover, has a grasp on Hayles, and has a very vauge idea of hayleyghoover. And maybe that's the starting off point when you meet a new boy you're interested in, but that's not a relationship you jump into, thinking all the prerequisites were taken care of in the six years' preparation. If we were going to click on the sublime level of tight, functional love, it would have already happened. It hasn't, and it won't. I've been in love, and this situation has no potential for love. I can't stomach going through the motions of dating right now unless there's a needed give-and-take between us and kissing is intimate. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to break this news to him, having set the stage for boyfriend/girlfriending it. That'll be awkward.
5) I've been accidentally upsetting or abusing a lot of my friends lately. My friend, Sarah, is in a very serious relationship with our mutual friend (He's also our small group leader's son), and I've seen her so scarcely this school year that it's almost unbearable. Trying to make amends, she planned for my date and I to go with her and her boyfriend to prom. Well, the group soon filled up when another couple of our friends joined in, and then a few more, and then a few more... anyway, it turned into a huge event, made up mostly of people I don't know. At the same time, two friends of mine, neither of whom drive, needed another couple to go with, and as my date knew them better and would be more comfortable, we blew off Sarah. I saw her for a total of ten minutes last night. At the same time, I kept putting off recording some stuff for the new Parselmouths album, mostly because I still have difficulty combining Friend Kristina and Kristina Parselmouth in my head, and I was terrified. I'm totally comfortable with Friend Kristina in every possible way, but Kristina Parselmouth is a figure I've been anonymously admiring for years. I forgot about it after a while, even though she made many polite urging attempts to remind me, and it finally got the point that it was too late. I should have decided to tell her I couldn't help a long time ago, and now I've put her in a tight, nervous situation. Graham (my old close choir/musical friend/sort of neighbor) and Sarah Keeler (my old close internet friend/his fiance) came home for the weekend to work on things for their wedding, too, and I've let my prom stress and other problems get in the way of spending time with them. Other things are going on, too, and just... all in all, I'm sort of a sucky ass person right now.
Anyway, there are probably other backpack items I need to bring up, but it's late, and I need to go to bed. I've decided that un/sexy is optional from here on out, because a) it's hard to come up with them sometimes, and b) I'm tired. I'm going to stop tracking my weight because there's very little change in it from day to day, and I don't exactly want to think about that when it's avoidable. Therefore:
Chipotle burritos this year: 15
Subscribers: 15,781
Days left of high school: 16
Bye, guys. Hopefully I'll see you tomorrow. <3
