My Final Post

Unfortunately, my blogging days are nearing an end. I may continue to post later on but not as much as I have been. So before I leave you until… well the next time I post (probably a while from now) I’m going to tell you how blogging has changed me. At the beginning of the year I had big hopes for my blog, such as posting every day. Later I found that it was better to post when I had something to rant about than to try to 2-3 times a week. Quality over quantity I suppose.

Being able to write out my problems has changed me in many ways, and I thank you all for reading and actively commenting on my posts. It truly has helped me know that I am not alone in this. One of the biggest things this blog has done for me is helped me realize what I want and what I need. I am making a big change in my life and moving to Salt Lake where my dad lives and my horse is boarded. My mom will be renting a house down there and I feel that it is going to relieve so much stress that the stretch of Parley’s canyon causes me. Lately I’ve been feeling like my life is so spread apart, things that I enjoy are mainly in my hometown, Salt Lake. It’s not that I don’t absolutely love and adore all of my friends in Park City, and it will be very hard to not see their faces every day. But I had to realize that this is a change I need to make for me.

So this is how I got to where I am right now. I have learned to share my problems with those I trust, and take action in trying to make myself happier and taking opportunities that I have and letting them prosper.

I hope that you have learned something from my blog too. Or at least been inspired in some sort of way. I do not just write for me, I write for the unwanted, unappreciated, unknown teenagers alike. But remember, someone in the world you might not even know yet needs you. You may feel unwanted, unappreciated, and unknown but your life has purpose. Maybe you will never find out what your purpose is but if you take nothing else away from my blog, at least take away the fact that you are important.

So thank you to all of my readers, you have helped me in ways you may never understand and I thank you for that.

Photo Courtesy: Word Press

168 Hours in a Week

“You’re lazy.”
“You don’t work hard.”
“You think the world revolves around you.”
“You get all of what you have handed to you.”
“You get good grades because of the school that you go to.”
“You ride horses? You must be rich.”
“You’re a selfish little bitch.”
This pretty much sums up what people think of me. This sums up what I hear every week, or even every day. It makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me cry. It makes me feel unappreciated. It has caused me to have depression, at the youngest of ages.

I first experienced depression in sixth grade when people told me “You’re so skinny, you’re going to die.” Or they would ask me “Are you anorexic?” or “Do your parents feed you?” Nearly every day I would go home crying my eyes out because people would bully me about how much I weighed. I began to develop clinical migraines from the amount of stress that I was experiencing.

In seventh grade it only went downhill. First my grandpa died, he was the closest family member I had after my parents and his death rattled me. I never let myself grieve his death. I forced myself to forget that he even ever existed. This wasn’t by choice, it was because at the time I was already emotionally unstable, and I wasn’t about to let myself fall into the deep pit of grief that I knew was awaiting me. But this did not fix my depression, and next my very best friend left me the summer after seventh grade. She went from FaceTiming me for hours at a time each day to not ever texting me back. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, all I knew was that another huge people figure in my life was gone.

In eighth grade I developed what I called separation anxiety. When I felt alone, too alone, I would have an anxiety attack that would begin with me feeling nauseous, then shaking, then full out balling, rocking back and forth on my tailbone as my whole body shook like an earth quake. I got migraines every one to two weeks, and school didn’t help.

I forced myself to forget about all of this, just like I forced myself to forget my papa (grandpa). But it all came back the other day when I was with my friend. We were talking about the sadder aspects in our lives when it all came rolling back into my brain. How hurt I really am, how messed up I really am, how bad my depression actually was and still may be. But I got so goddamned good at hiding it from others that I could hide it from myself too. I had ignored it, shoved it into the very back of my thoughts, but it was still there. School gives me no time to handle my own personal needs. I have no time to have a mental health day. I have no time to waste crying over what my life actually is because I spend approximately 40 hours at school, 21 hours on homework, 12 hours at the barn, 10 hours eating, 56 hours sleeping, 2 hours showering, 5 hours getting ready for school, and 4 hours on the bus every single week. Do you know how many hours are in a week? 168 hours. Do you know how many hours those numbers add up to? 168. This is how I spend my weeks. Do I have enough time to be stressed? To take a minute to just focus on breathing? No. So am I lazy? Is using every single hour of your week that you can for productive purposes what you call lazy?

My cat being adorably lazy, as always.

To the Unwanted, Unappreciated, Unknown Teenagers Alike

For this blog assignment, we were asked to write about our ideal reader, or who we are writing to when we write these posts. “It has to be a person that is famous in their field” reads the rubric. But I do not write for a person that is famous, and I do not write for a person that is professional in what they pursue. I write for teenagers alike to me. I write for the people that aren’t anything special to our society. I write to you because I’m one of you, and I understand what it feels like to be unwanted, to be unappreciated, to be unknown. So if I am given an F on this assignment, I will take full responsibility without regret, because I will not bullshit my way through this assignment, and write to you about someone I don't even care about, to get an A on my report card. So here it goes.

To the unwanted, unappreciated, unknown teenagers alike,
I admire you for putting up with the hell thrown on your shoulders. I admire you for having to listen instead of speak for the first decade or more of your life. But I admire you more if you have found your voice. And I admire you even more if you have found your place and stuck your feet in the ground. But I admire you if you are lost just as well. I admire you for always having to care more about your future than what is happening right now. And I admire you for being so strong when others think you are weak. I admire you for not letting yourself fall when people push you down. I admire you for showing up for school even when you are sad. I admire you for having to deal with adults and often times being expected to be one.

Don’t stop being a kid to be an adult. Please live out your childhood. And don’t let yourself think that you have to be famous or professional (basically and adult) to be appreciated. Because I appreciate you more than I do adults.

I feel that we shouldn't be expected to admire someone for their superiority. I don’t look up to famous people for being famous. I look up to people that really deserve it, I look up to people that matter because they work hard every single day to get to where they are. Teenagers don't stop working off their place in the world, famous people have their whole pretty lives in safe hands. And when us ordinary teenagers age, maybe we will be famous, and maybe we will professional, but we will be adults by then, therefore most of the blood, sweat, and tears will be left in our teenage years. I admire the teenagers that work their asses off even when no one believes in them. Even when no one appreciates it. Even when it goes unnoticed.

So let it be if I fail this assignment. Because it was worth it to tell you the truth.

Photo Courtesy: Stability

The Fault in Your Birthday Cake Candles

When I was little my dad used to say “you’re growing like a weed, goose” and “maybe if I stop feeding you, you’ll stop growing.” I would always react by angrily telling him that he was dumb because I would die if he stopped feeding me and at the time I didn't think that weeds were pretty so I’d tell him that I grew like a flower. But standing here as a freshman who spends most of her time with a junior and some fellow freshman students, I regret how I treated my childhood. All kids want to do is get older and older, they count each and every candle on their cake just to make sure it is just as many as their new age. Those very candles burned out my creativity. Now you can picture yourself, all dressed up perched on your chair, eyes focused and reflecting the small buds of fire melting undesired wax onto your frosting, eagerly waiting for the untuned singing voices to stop. All for what? To blow out those damn candles. To be able to say “I’m six” instead of “I’m almost six.”

Truth is, I would do a lot of things to be almost six again. I would do a lot to go back to the time that I didn’t know what dirty jokes were so I could speak freely without the worry that people would laugh because what ever I said relates to sex some how. But no, I’m stuck here for a little while. I’m stuck seeing people that I love want, and try, to commit suicide. I’m stuck seeing the people that I love cut. I’m stuck here seeing the people that I love drown in their own goddamn tears. I’m stuck here seeing people I love burn in the extra fire those new candles provide because they just can’t blow them out anymore. I’m stuck here. And I’m sick of it.

The ironic thing is, no matter how much I hate those candles, I still look forward to them. I still have hope that they’ll bring me to a better place. That it’ll be better when I’m fifteen. They are a drug. The glory of age is a drug. It makes it hard to stay centered in your life. Its magnetic force pulls me so hard that I have to remind myself that the things I am touching and the objects surrounding me are real. My mind is so busy I forget to “stay real.” I’m so content thriving in my thoughts that I can’t focus at what I’m doing at that actual moment. I work in auto pilot most of the time, so used to my life, so bored, that I keep myself entertained in a separate dimension while I nearly unconsciously do what ever it is that I am supposed to be doing. This is why if you were to ask me to describe what I did yesterday I wouldn’t be able to tell you without struggling to remember what I actually physically did yesterday. I’m constantly trying to escape the now by time traveling into the future. So theoretically, I’m constantly trying to escape my current age, by day dreaming about the next cake full of candles I get to see.

Photo Courtesy: my mom, Kristin (yes, that is me)

The Plain Out, Uncultured Truth of Why School Sucks

Adults seem to have this twisted view of why exactly their kids complain 24/7 about school. “Oh, she just dislikes school because of the homework” or “He doesn’t like school because he’d rather be gaming than learning.” This is not the case for many of these students.

School is cringed upon not because it takes effort or because we have to do home work at night. Kids actually want to learn. They want to have something to do. They want to have something to get better at. School is shamed upon by them because of the way it is set up. The way it is scored. The way it is taught. The way it is shoved into our brains as hastily as a toddler pokes the buttons on a remote. School is hated for its standards.

Standards are set by highly educated, fully matured, adults. The problem? These standards are for kids, not adults. So take the standards crafted by highly educated, fully matured, adults and add these to parent standards. Do a sport, be smart, be successful, do your chores, go to bed at a decent time, and have a social life. And then add the sum of highly educated, fully matured, adult standards and parent standards to sport standards. Sport standards differ due to what sport the child pursues but by high school it’s typically this: two to five hours of your sport at least two to five times during the school week, do well in competitions, condition at home, get good grades in school or we’ll kick you out. Oh, and have fun! If that doesn’t seem hard to you then great! Because there’s one last thing that everyone seems to forget about. Ready for it? Us students have standards for ourselves. Wow! Who would have thought? We have goals? Yes, we all have goals. I have goals, ones that are just as important to me, if not more important, than school standards. WHAT?!
Nope, nope, nope.
That’s not allowed.

School is more important than the way I view myself.

School is more important than what I want for myself.

School is more important than my happiness.

School standards, the standards made by people I don't even know for me and the other 1.436 billion students in the world are more important than my self-standards.

Strangers are deciding the path of my life.

And that’s the plain out, uncultured truth. Strangers rule me. Strangers tell me what to do everyday. Strangers tell me to shut up, glue my eyes to a white board for eight hours, and complete what wasn’t finished in the previous eight hours at home. Strangers tell me to not care about what other people think. And then they tell me to care more about what they want for me than what I want for me.

This is what parents don't get to see. This is what we are told to obey. This is school.

Photo courtesy: Friendship Circle

Stress Pt. 1 (6 Tests, One Day)

Okay, let’s talk about stress. I don’t mind small amounts of stress, in fact, I think that small amounts of stress are good. I would actually rather have minimal amounts of stress than no stress at all, stress keeps me from falling over in life in some ways, but in others it causes me to want to fall over and stay there.

I had six tests today. Six. SIX (please notice the amount of emphasis there.) Let’s go back in time for a moment. Two days ago, October 20th, I began to come down with a cold, I felt dead, literally, and it was the worst cold I have ever gotten in my fourteen years of life. That night knowing that I had a math final and a Spanish exam the next day, went to bed at eight o’ clock, with minimal study hours and my homework unfinished. When I went to bed I began to get a stomach ache. It got so bad to the point that I was physically shaking in bed, teeth chattering, and tears close to shedding. This kind of stomach ache had happened to me once before, we are not ascertain of the cause but it usually lasts twenty-four hours. The next day I typically am unable to walk and it is hard for me to straighten out my abdomen without an abundance of pain. ‘I’m screwed’ I thought to myself while lying in bed probably about five hours later, still wide awake. I got probably around three hours of light sleep that night and my mother didn’t even bother to wake me up at the usual 5:40 AM. That means from 8:00 PM to around 9:00 AM, I spent ten hours miserably in bed out of breath from shaking so hard. The next day, I was on the phone with my dad and he suggested that it might be caused from stress. And he must be right, there’s my little frenemy visiting me once again…

So I stayed home with my favorite reality TV show, Heartland, playing in the background (I was not watching it, I just played it in the background so that I didn’t feel so alone, okay) and studying for all of the tests I would be participating in the next day. First I did some math, then some geography, then back to math to switch it up and keep my ill brain from losing focus. By the time I had finished studying for math, I got a text from a group conversation named “The Hood *insert eggplant emoji here*” which read “I failed the math test” and I immediately started panicking again. Some one who I view as vert good at math is saying that she did extremely badly on the math test which is 100 points in the grade book.

So when my mom gets home I make plans to go to my dad’s house so that I can get extra practice for this apparently really hard math test that everyone I’m talking to is high Cs to low Bs on. I was planning on going to Dimple Dell for a nice trail ride on Cadenza, but little did I know that I was going to have to stay after school to make up a spanish and math exam and won’t even have time for a regular lesson afterwards. Riding is usually my time to unwind and get rid of some stress, but I wasn't even going to be able to have a moment of that. So I’m stressed as all get out is my point, and it’s not healthy. This was pt. 1 of my “stress stories” so stay tuned to that label.

Photo Courtesy to: Free Big Photos

FOREWORD (the birth of this blog)

This blog was born thanks to Mr. Parker, my 9th grade honors English teacher, who assigned us to create a blog as our year round project. We were instructed to make a creative title, an About Me page, and a first post, or “Blog Assignment 1” that has to be 500 words for full credit. Not sure how I am supposed to have 500 words per post but I guess we’ll try. So far I’ve made a title, Classy Calico, and an About Me page, but the 500 word “Blog Assignment 1” is being quite a struggle. Also, before you judge my blog title like a normal human being would, let me explain. Calico cats are a breed of cat that only produces the under-credited females, and because I am a feminist that has a deep affection for animals, I decided that it fit.

I am very excited about writing this blog but slightly nervous that I will mess up. I will have a for sure schedule for Moral Monday's and Trump Tuesdays, but otherwise I will post at random if I have something to rant about. I will try my very best to post on those days although I do have a jumping lesson with my horse, Cadenza, on Tuesdays so I am not positive I will be able to make every one. My schedule will get even more chaotic in the winter time because I will be needing to get out to a place far far away from my house where I will be boarding Cadenza. Chances are I will also be occasionally training a gelding for my trainer to do small hunter and jumper courses so that we are at a lesser lack of horses (plus I’ll be getting more experience for myself.)

 If you were wondering what Trump Tuesdays are here’s a small explanation. Trump Tuesdays are going to be where I talk about everything in the world that sucks equally as much as Trump, Trump himself, and even things that are worst than Donald Trump… if that’s even possible. Moral Mondays are the opposite, they will be the day that I post good things that are going on in the world, things to make you happy on the worst day of the week. Who couldn’t use a nice update on great things happening in the world on a Monday morning to make your day start a little better?

My goal will be to make your Mondays a little better, and well I guess make you Tuesdays a little worse… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If I for some reason can not post I will try to get one of my better friends to log on for me and paste in the post. I don't think I'll have too much trouble finding things to post on my Trump Tuesdays because quite frankly, I have a list of all of the things that I hate that is longer than the school year. All in all, I hope that you'll get a few laughs and maybe even a few tears out of my blog. Perhaps you might even scream at your family at the dinner table after reading Trump Tuesday or one of my rants that anger you just that much. Thanks for reading!

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