Delicate subjects

One of the gifts that I did not mention in my Christmas post was the gift of Netflix. I was most happy with this gift, not only for legal access to animes and my so-called "nerd shows," but to a number of other movies, especially documentaries. I love documentaries and all they embody, going out and talking to people and investing time in creating a beautiful or bizarre, but always eye-opening thing drawing from the real world. I just finished marathoning through two documentaries, drinking in about four hours of talk on a subject that I feel can't be discussed in my house--homosexuality.

Allow me to describe by situation. I have always grown up firmly planted in the Church of Christ. Though I haven't always been the preacher's daughter, I have always been a minister's daughter and raised by devout parents and grandparents, who raised my aunts and uncles the same way, who raised my cousins the same way. Granted, there are a lot of us, and not everybody stuck to the "straight and narrow," as it were, but every family member most immediate to me in my life has been on that path. We are a very happy, well-mannered bunch. I would never question the amount of love or understanding in my family on either side. But some things just aren't good to talk about. So we don't.

But now, I am reaching the pivotal point in my childhood where things begin to shift. My environment is different at school; my peers feel differently about some things than their parents do. We are becoming people, and it's exciting and terrifying and infinitely vital. And we are faced with burning questions about opinions, just as all people are. We must be decided about everything; there is no lukewarm among the young just as there is no lukewarm on the Day of Judgement. And one of the most sensitive topics among teenagers today as well as in my family unit is homosexuality. On the other hand, people love to talk about it in school and such. The problem is they don't always know what they're saying. You've got the talkers who fancy themselves Defenders of Social Justice and of Freedom Among People, the ones who will spew every breed of nasty about every gay human to walk the earth, the ones who lamely echo whatever it is their parents/friends/teachers/role models have said, and then you have me. The one who keeps quiet when she can. The one who says, "I don't know how I feel about this yet." The lukewarm.

When did being undecided become a sin worse than the debatable sin which we are so divided on?

Maybe part of my silence is my fear. A few of my friends and the people that I enjoy talking to harbor a bitter grudge towards the church and the people attending. And when they describe the biggest proponents of Christianity in their homes, I don't blame them. The fervor I hear from their testimonies is more fueled by hate than love. But I also don't want to become one of them. I don't want to be responsible for the actions and verbal venom of the bigoted. And it's paranoid to think that way, but heck, I'm fourteen. I'm paranoid by nature, and I may never outgrow it, though I certainly hope to.

But part of my silence is also lack of knowledge. I'm being pelted with a lot of messages without any factual anchors, and still others with factual anchors that are flipped for two differing theories. I've got my friend over here who doesn't even eat at Chik-Fil-A anymore because of that whole mess this past summer, and my friend over there who gets immensely uncomfortable at the very word 'gay.' Division among my family isn't so obvious. Like I said, we just don't talk about it. But I'd assume that my father certainly doesn't approve, displayed by his grumbling and turning the station when the topic arises. My sister doesn't approve, given her desperate efforts to change the subject when I do try to talk about it with my mom, who I think would explain it to me in a less biased way. And I wouldn't even attempt such discussions with my extended family.  So I must extract my information from documentaries.

The two that I watched, One Nation Under God and For the Bible Tells Me So, did a good job of showing all sides of this argument, the extremists and the ones caught between. The religious men and women, the ones with degrees in Bible and psychology, talked a lot about reading with the historical context in mind and knowing that there was no Greek, Latin, or Arabic word for homosexual. It wasn't thought of.
The translation that we know as 'abomination' was a way of saying unconventional, according to them. They also explained the demand for guests at the door in Sodom and Gomorrah as inhospitable conduct, not homosexual conduct. God had much more to destroy the city for than just the residents with different sexual behaviors. And one interesting point they brought up in both movies was the possible motivation to fear gay men was the fear that men have of being "lowered." Being called girly is equated to weakness and inability. And this insult still works! Even women throw it around! But news flash. There is no "girl" role in these relationships. Neither member wears the pants. And because the lack of roles blows our traditional minds, fear is planted. But it is a far braver thing to love.

We are specifically called to do it, love. Not just out spouses, our families, our communities. We need to love the enemies we've created for ourselves, and we need to love the ones we've never known or met yet. I can't tell you what God has to say about this. I can't go out and organize some sort of demonstration of the lukewarm, a public outcry that we honestly don't know what to think about this mess. But I can swear to you that no matter who you are or what you have done, your Creator loves you as a son or daughter. And I will try to give you the respect and admiration that you deserve for being loved.

Good things come to those who read

...especially on Christmas.
I was given not one, but three bookish shirts. Here's the one I'm wearing now:

And as you can see, it is too perfect. I mean, have you seen my posts? My brain has been addled since birth.
And another:

And ANOTHER:

And along with these and a plethora of other perfect gifts, I feel pretty special.
Not that I didn't already, of course. But the gifts give me a more...materialistic sense of specialness. And what is Christmas without materialism? It's just some religious holiday that is harder to celebrate and appreciate. But don't get me wrong, I would love to be at home, at church, by candlelight, hearing that same old story. Now that I know Mary's approximate age, it's even more chilling to me. I'd better put on my new Ravenclaw house scarf to keep warm. Or maybe I'll wear my Union Jack scarf. Of course, I could always cozy up with a cup of coffee made with my French press...

Hello, world!

I checked my stats today, and I have pageviews from all over the world. Places I could only dream of seeing, places that I hear about in AP Human Geography. So I'll say something long-delayed to everyone reading in the US and beyond: Hello there! Welcome to the inside of my mind. It can be easy to get lost in here, but not to fear. Overall, it's a confusing but happy place.

It's amazing to me how simple it is, and I was born into the Internet. This is especially apparent to me on deviantART, where I've been a member for approximately nine months. After somewhat establishing myself as a fanfiction author and occasional artist in the more conventional sense, there are three users that I favor. None of them live in my home country. One of them is a very articulate and polite teenager from the UK, one of them is an up-and-coming deviant from Bulgaria, and one of them is a very nice and bright girl from Vietnam who I always enjoy communicating with.
Well, there's actually four, and one of them lives here in the States...but I'm trying to make a point.

We talk about this globalization phenomenon all the time at school; we are geared towards international studies, after all. But actually experiencing it and being caught up in its tides is an altogether different feeling. It's alienating knowing that we are living in the middle of history, that it is being made every day, even when something exciting or shocking isn't happening, and we continue on as though the day was exactly what it felt like--normal. I learned that there is no real normal, only what we perceive to be normal. It's relative, like time. It bends and shifts in individual cases. And our feeble attempts to track it, to change the other normals to be more like ours are almost always fruitless. How human of us, trying to actually make a universal normal.

And even within normals, things are fluid and change over time. That's how we adjust to our age, situation, environment, and everything else. But I think I'll call it here on the thoughts tonight. Wouldn't want to scare the guests.

Yet another reflection

Well, here's another internet post about the Newtown shootings.

I feel terrible. So many people I know are very angry and very vocal about this, understandably. Parents, teachers, even kids my own age. But I have been generally quiet about all of this. And even when I consider it happening to me or to the people I care about, I have an odd sense of peace. And I feel terrible about that. By all means, I should be enraged at the very thought. I should be horrified and fearful of the very prospect. I should be screaming injustice to the winds and crying out for better laws, better humanity. But no. Here I sit, with a reflective but quiet spirit, and drink my tea as though the shooting never occurred at all.

Maybe it's just my inability to relate. I, thank God, am not a mother at my tender young age and don't plan on becoming one soon. I do not understand the irrevocable attachment and protective instincts that result from birthing and raising a child. I simply don't. I can try to imagine it, but it's not the same. Having a somewhat motherly nature doesn't count, either. I have a natural disconnect because of this.

But I also have an elementary-aged sister, so it's not like there's no attachment at all. She could have been one of those kids shot down, or worse, one of those kids to see it. She could have lost a best friend to a tiny ball of metal blasted through her underdeveloped chest at point-blank range and had to learn to cope. I can see the quiet anger building up inside of her young eyes with no outlet for it to go.

But I also know that whether the event would have ended her life or changed it permanently, both she and I would learn to cope. Our parents, our community, our society, would in time accept the atrocity and learn how to keep functioning. Because,

"Things change. And friends leave. And time doesn't stop for anybody."

That's from Perks, one of the best books I read this year. And it's true. Whether we want it to or not, life will do what it always has and go on until the day He declares it to slow to a stop, then restart as life the way we were meant to live it. And whether we allow ourselves to move with it or not, we are dragged along by its current, sometimes to a rocky sandbar where we freeze until we allow joy back inside and leap into the current once again. And after beaching myself on one of those uncomfortable islands and pushing myself away from it, I vowed to myself to never end up there again. I will keep on being content, and try to have rest in the fact that I am being cared for and loved no matter what happens to me or what stupid choices my species and I make.

I will always have my words. If I lose my voice, I have keyboards and instruments and pens and papers to exude my fleeting human emotions and enduring beliefs onto. My words are my solace. And when I run out of words to say, there are billions more to breathe in and pick new words from. This is my comfort, my strength. The story being written as we live and die will continue on and undulate, rising and falling into the valleys of darkness and doubt, but always coming back out into the stark sunlight. And the people that I pity, more than those grieving the lost, are the people who find no comfort in the promise that the Author scratching out their story is doing everything in His power to write them a happy ending.

So yes, I will keep being a child and dreaming about boys and forgetting to read my textbook assignments while even more innocent children are snatched from us. Because no matter how many times I may beg for a more just world, I can't fix what is already broken. Right now, we are all just doing the best we can to keep our heads up as the world fades out, and we are but mere players in the story we did not write.

My deepest regards to the families of Newtown.

Of Loyalties and Responsibilities

I love school breaks, even if I have assignments to do during them. School breaks allow me a much-needed break in routine, a chance to stop doing what my teachers expect me to do and start doing what they want me to do: thinking, reading, writing, drawing. In other words, expanding the stretches of my mind. I not only have time to do the things I need to turn in and receive a grade on, I have time for the personal projects and little inklings of ideas floating about in my mind. It doesn't matter whether the art or the vignette is with my own characters or not. what matters is I am practicing and getting more skilled the more I do. It's very exciting for me when I am given a copious amount of time to do the things I love the most.

But I can't. Because there's other things to do.

Here is my to-do list:

1. Family. My parents may plan a little outing or have me run errands with them, which I don't mind. Extended family may call on the phone, which I don't mind. My sister will decide that pestering me and anchoring herself to my bed is a lot more fun than her videogames or toys or TV shows, which I do mind. But I know that I can't ignore her indefinitely and keep working, much as I may want to. The fact is, she requires a lot more attention and human contact than I do. Craves it, burns for it. School breaks are not good for her for this reason. If she can't book a playmate, she's scratching at my door for attention and love, and it is my duty as her sister (and the only human present in the house during the workday) to give it to her. But only a little bit at a time.

2. Friends. I adore my friends. But since I myself am not the most talkative or outgoing among my peers, I tend to attract the type that is. And since I myself am not the type that desires human contact all the time 24/7 nonstop happy friendly fun time yay, the type that I attract is. I don't know how this works, but it does. I do not know how to say no to them, but I must when it goes too far. My father commented at dinner last night that it's like my friends have never left because they text me all the time. Take note, I only have two texting friends. The rest seem to leave me alone. So when I try to convince them that I'm not popular, I am saying that the other people who know me don't talk to me a tenth as much as they do.

3. Spiritual obligation. Now, this doesn't ever leave my list. Ever. But it can seem like a rather hopeless effort at times when I don't feel particularly comfortable with most of the people there, and the ones I do feel at ease around are all older than me. Adults, with their own lives and problems. So I feel rather invisible at times, and when I am one of the only ones answering questions during class, I feel so painfully visible and alone. I'm drawing all over the bulletins now so I don't have to socialize.

With these three things factored into my life every day or every week, the time that I can do my favorite thing in the world is precious. I cannot waste it.

I wonder if I can't start blogging again?

It'd be good for me to keep a journal of sorts as I begin the next phase of my life. I'm in the midst of my Magnet orientation right now. I had homework for the first time in three months, and unbelievably, it felt kind of nice to be doing something productive for a change. However, the startling discovery of several summer assignments due in ten days did not feel so nice. I will admit, I broke down on the phone with my dad, who I know fully well is not very happy about handling these situations because I am never happy about having to handle emotional people. I don't know what to say or do, which would be normal, but when someone you know is sobbing over something, standing there awkwardly seems heartless. He managed to convince me that I'd be fine, I won't start freshman year on the wrong foot, and that we'd work through this together if necessary. I still have my doubts, but that's normal, too.

O FATHER, MY FATHER.

Why must thou torment me so? You tell me of your grand plan to venture to England and Wales without a date. I do not even know how long jealousy shall gnaw at my soul. The only thing making me feel better is my impending fourteenth birthday and the completed Civil Wars album.

Ah, well. Life goes on, regardless. Take many photographs and eat bangers and mash at one of the pubs the greatest wordsmiths of all time frequented for me, please. And do enjoy the indecipherable Welsh while you tour there.

The most depressing poem I've ever read

This poem was found in the program for Lost Mountain Middle School's Honors Celebration.

Anyway
By Unknown


People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway!


If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway!


If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway!


The good you do today, will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway!


Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway!


The biggest person with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds;
Think big anyway!


People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs.
Fight for underdogs anyway!


What you spend years building up may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!


People really need help, but will attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway!


Give the world the best you have
and it may kick you in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway!


A woman seated in the center section of the school's auditorium on the left side was seen reading numerous lines of the poem aloud, laughing loudly, and giving her many opinions on the poem and who may or may not have put it in the program. Her daughter, who was seated beside her, has no comment. Her husband, seated beside his daughter, says that perhaps his daughter can use the situation in an essay someday. Let us now turn over the poem to our own lit critic, Darby Franks. Darby?

"This poem makes me want to crawl under a rock and shun daylight. I say 'poem' to be kind; this is no poem. What this pile of dung really exists as is a long series of commands to do illogical things with no reason offered as to why you should do all of these things anyway. The lack of syllabic structure and figurative language confirms it. And then there're the minor grammatical errors making my skin crawl: the comma in the middle of the fourth 'couplet,' the semicolon being horribly abused in the sixth, and the fractured final lines that switch the word 'have' for 'got.' But what really kills me is the fact that this trash was printed in a middle-school awards ceremony program. Many of the students there to collect their little standing trophies and certificates are already incredibly insecure and unsure of themselves. And now you tell them that what they 'spend years building up may be destroyed overnight?!' Some sadistic administrator must take some real pride in how frightened their little pupils are of failure, and slipped this little beauty into the program just to remind them of their own fragility."

Thank you for your input, Miss Franks. That is all for tonight's news report. Thank you, and goodnight.

I really am too analytical, aren't I?

I've found myself really over-thinking everything lately. Take my second viewing of The Hunger Games with my dad. I'd lean over sporadically throughout the movie and explain what was happening or how it differed from the novel in a whisper. And after the movie, since he most likely would not read the books or see the next three movies, he asked for a summary. I jumped right in, of course. And along with the plot, I described the characters' thoughts and how they affected their actions, and the way they viewed the world, as well as their general personalities. Characters are so important to me. If you have flat, bland characters that never seem to change or grow, then I don't like the book half as much as I would when you feel involved. And along with the "charries," I also explained the setting and the general layout of Panem, where we would live inside of it, and where other landmarks that exist today would be. This dragged into about half an hour, and Dad had already finished his sandwich and sees no point in sitting inside of Chik-Fil-A any longer than necessary. But Roxy and Mom jumped in and saved him from my obsessive, calculating, fangirl-y rant.

And it's not just THG. I do this with absolutely everything now, fiction or reality. I'm starting to see my family, friends, and myself as charries in one humongous story, all interacting with each other, growing up, falling in love. We are all drawn to each other because we complement each other, I've realized. The talkative ones (like many of my friends) like quieter ones who will listen; the more reserved ones (like me) enjoy never having to start the conversation or run out of things to talk about. But we also share common ground in a few areas, and that helps us trust and open up to each other.

It's just a wonderful thing when you can see how the world works at last.

*RANT ALERT* I don't have a 4.0. Sue me.

Dear Parents (and all the rest of you),
Let's talk. Or rather, let me talk to you from the comfort of my computer. I know full well I am not perfect. I would be more than happy to declare myself "imperfect" and go and live in Imperfectland with the rest of humanity. But you're saying I can't go there. I'm not allowed to go and live in the Land of Human Beings Who Are Not Gods because I'm too good for that, and I need to prove that to you. I need to show the rest of the world how well I can comprehend things by making good grades.

First of all, do the ratings on that stupid blue paper measure who I am as a person? Do those numbers and letters spell out the value of my character? You insist no, no, of course not, but they still need to be better. If you love me as unconditionally as you say you do, you would still love me the same way you do now if I dropped out of school and went off to follow an insane dream I had after a really bad drug trip. But I have this strange feeling you wouldn't. Those numbers are too important.

Second, you still comment on my brain at times. If I'm as stupid as those pointless ratings make me out to be, why do you still bother to say anything?

Third, one of you has said to me, quote, "A C for you is like an F for anybody else." What makes me so special? There are probably thousands of kids much smarter than me out in the world that don't have these special exceptions. I don't see that much value in me, and I have no idea where you're getting it from.

In conclusion, I would like to say that when I'm buried, nobody is going to care how well I did in one particular class, or how low you had to stoop because of my inability to turn things in on time. I would love to just enjoy life while it lasts and not get hung up on stupid stuff like this. I mean, I have problems as it is. Not to be too whiney, but I have five friends at school. Total. And even then, some of them are only halfway friends. People walk all over me, too, because I don't like saying no and I don't change for them because it feels like I'm lying. There is so much I need to figure out about my faith, my relationships, and myself, and as soon as I feel like I can stand up and breathe fully, then everything will fall into place. You can take IMPACT away from me, my iPod, my freedom, but maturity comes by God, not by choice.

Your daughter,
Darby Kate

P.S: When I handed my teacher the recommendation you made for Honors Lit, she laughed. Laughed.