Finding the Words

There are so many things I want to talk about. I am nearly overflowing with topics, with thoughts that would do better on a page than in my head. But...I don't seem to have the words. Anyone who knows me can tell you that that's a rare thing, I can talk about nothing forever, and when I actually WANT to talk? You've got no chance of getting me to shut up. I'll tell you what I'm thinking whether you like it or not. Apparently I intimidate people with how vocal I am about...just about everything (pardon me if I think that, perhaps, those people NEED to be intimidated, so that maybe they'll learn to speak up, too).

But today I just don't have the words. Today I'm tired. Two weeks ago I fell off of a horse, all that remains as evidence is a scar on my face and a lingering sprained ankle, but healing is tiring. My heart hurts, because caring is tiring. People are strange and complicated animals and understanding them, or at least trying to, is tiring. (I don't think I'm ever going to perfect that skill, but maybe I'll learn to find an off button for whatever makes me want to understand people.)

If I was going to try, I could write about: the mustang roundup (though I already did that, and I just need to edit it from an essay into a blog post), my accident and how much I hate hospitals and bitchy ER nurses, the damned horse that hospitalized me and how much I love him, or how much fake concern from people who hate me annoys me and has made me want to hit something in the past few weeks. If not those, then I could write about how I've been reminded lately why I haven't consistently watched the news in years and why I stick to abstract concepts of social justice rather than current events, because the world makes me sick and I like to cling to what little faith in humanity I have left. Or I could be a bit less tragic, a little more hopeful, try to remind myself that there are things worth paying attention to by talking about the It Gets Better Project (and how much I sometimes love Dan Savage) and all the amazing people who have already participated in it and who are spreading it to reach those who need it. I could say that sometimes Violet Blue, or maybe The Rejectionist, say really cool things.

Perhaps I could try grounding myself in real life instead by writing about Beth DiCaprio who runs the Grace Foundation and continues to give me amazing opportunities to do inspiring things (and has really cool dogs that I want to kidnap).

I could meander into discussing music and how much I love it and need it and really need to acquire more of it. I could tell you how cute my puppy is at great length, because she's damn cute and and a really good foot warmer to boot. Had I the words, I could probably go on about books forever because, you see, I have so many and they're all pretty wonderful. Maybe even a mention of Banned Book Week and how ridiculous banning any form of literature is, though I haven't bothered to read a banned book this week even despite having meant to.

But, see, I don't have the words. I have all these really cool words, strung together in sentences and mashed up into paragraphs, but I don't have the right words. I can't find the ones I want. So I guess that will all have to wait.

I don't wanna grow up...

My sister is obsessive. Painfully so, in fact. She watched one documentary, decided she wanted to become a Marine Biologist, and has since researched colleges and requirements for the programs and already begun having a panic attack about how much work it will be. My sister, by the way, is thirteen.

This makes me feel guilty. This makes me feel like, perhaps, I should go about researching college requirements and where I want to go beyond the vague idea I have always had. After all I'm 16 and college, with all its requirements, is beginning to loom over me. Inevitably this will all end in a panic attack (because I'm already tired, stressed, and in pain--on a side note, I just had oral surgery to remove a benign tumor in my gums that was formed by inflammation in my gums that was caused by a bone spur on my jaw, and they also took out that bit of my jaw, and there is now a giant goddamn hole in my mouth that is slowly healing. That was last week, and while I'm off the vicodin I'm still sleepy and downing motrin by the fist full, and trying to get back to regular life is Not Working Well, and I hate everything and need a nap.)

But it's something that needs to get done. In fact, I need to start taking community college classes in the fall semester to finish highschool with any sort of passable education. Where I will find time for this with any possibility of continuing to have a life I do not know. Oh lovely science and higher maths, you bitches, I am not looking forward to you.

I'm off to research college :(

The Musings of the Sickly

I feel the need to post something. Not because, at this moment, anything particularly interesting is happening, but because I just feel the need to put something down in words. That's not to say that nothing interesting has been happening--it most certainly has been!--just that right now I am laid up, high on Vicodin, after having oral surgery. And there is nothing that can make the world interesting when your jaw is aching and you can't focus your eyes for an extended period of time.

Of course, this gives me time to catch up on my blog and book reading, and maybe write a bit. All of these things have sadly been falling by the wayside of late, as I have been running from pillar to post doing all sorts of crazy things (learning to bellydance! watching my sister learn parkour! taking horseback riding lessons! volunteering at The Grace Foundation of Northern California, which is a truly lovely place, and helping school some of their horses! hanging out with friends! taking pictures of dead cows ! getting in shape for the summer! trying to fit some family time in there somewhere!). Such is Unschooling life.

Several times recently I have been asked 'how do you fit school work in between everything else you're doing?' (mostly by kids I know who go to school, and envy all the time I have to run about doing things while they sit in class rooms). The answer to those questions is: I don't 'fit schoolwork in' anywhere. Living my life is 'schoolwork', and yes, occasionally I have to break out the math textbook (which I really need to catch up on in preparation for taking a community college math course next year), but that's part of my life too. One of my friends, who is a homeschooling mom and also the mother of three of my friends (yes, shocking, children can be friends with parents!) put it best in a conversation I had with her awhile ago. She said that the word school really has no place in the description of what we're doing, we're learning by living our lives. I wish I could remember her exact words, because they were much more eloquent than that, but it gets the point across.

I agree with her to an extent. School is not a word I associate with what I'm doing at the moment. School is a word I associate with institutionalized education, with spending the majority of my time being force fed useless information, with discomfort and lack of personal expression. None of that has anything to do with the way I am currently living my life. I'm learning useful things, I'm re-learning how to be a functional member of society (and the ways in which I don't want to be what is thought of as a normal, functional member of society), I'm comfortable with my life, I'm capable of expressing myself through words and humor and physical appearance in ways that would not be thought of as 'acceptable' within a school environment. I'm not sitting in front of textbooks, learning the same thing everyone else in the country is expected to learn, and not really processing any of it.

So School is not what I am doing. School, really, has no place in a description of my life. And my life is how I am learning. Un-schooling is not really a full or positive description of that, but seeing as it's the best one we have I'll continue to use it to find people like me, and to explain myself to people who don't understand it.


I hope this is a coherent expression of my thoughts, though I certainly didn't start writing with the intention of going off on this tangent. I guess I'll have to check back when I'm sobered up and no longer in pain.