Happy Birthday, Mouq
I'm generally inclined to think that
anniversaries are kind of silly. And besides, I could probably get these few items at any other time of the year, if I actually remembered to ask, which is something I was pseudo-literally forced to do just for this occasion. But neither of those points are reasons not to enjoy what I got...
All of which I am
very happy and satisfied with.
Believe it or not, I didn't start writing this just so I could elaborate on how well-off I am in the Tea&Book Department.
I'm generally inclined to think that anniversaries are kind of silly, but they are
milestones. Right now, I've lived
15 Earth cycles with a high accuracy of measurement.
Last year my birthday was on the weekend, too, and as always it was right before or just barely after school started; I don't remember which, nor do I remember if it was just before or on my birthday that I flew over North America, from
SJC to
PHL with I think a connecting flight- yes, it was on my birthday, because the
minimum age for being able to do that by myself is 14 on
Southwest Airlines.
I can only imagine, because I can't recall, my own partial relief, from the half-contained tensions I faced in California, as I started school, started (badly, at first)
cross country, the first time I had ever taken part in a sport, and my socially lazy and nervously unassertive self got back to the some of the people who thought I was something amazing, even if my oft slipped grades have rarely proved it on paper, accumulating the high test scores and ignored homework assignments. Fall went by too fast, but I remember being wonderfully happy, doing well in school then coming home and staying up far-too-late playing with pages and pages of code, which I had just learned several languages of over that summer with dad, starting with
Perl, going systematically through almost all the examples in the book and putting together my own code between before moving on to other languages. It worked much much much better than trying to teach myself it by forcing myself to read through and memorize a
Javascript book that my dad had handed to me two summers before.
Winter came and filled me with a dread so great that I somehow blocked myself from recognizing it, putting a thick veal over everything I did much like the one I had the year before, when I moved around the same time of the year. My grandfather had been having trouble with
cancer, and they had thought it was gone only months before, but he came back to the hospital with it in an advanced stage and died two days before Christmas. My mom came back from Vermont, where he and my grandmother operated an inn, on the Eve. I smiled and did my best to laugh and enjoy Christmas, but the enjoyment felt
empty and worthless like pretend paper money. The day after Christmas, I flew back over the States, and returned a few days after an unusually uneventful year-change.
*weeping as Mouq presses CMD+R: the page refreshes and he looses half his work*
During that week, I did my best to ignore the
obvious contempt that my step-mother was
trying-but-not-really to hide from me. Near the end of it, my step-brother had gotten upset because he thought he had done something terribly wrong to me, and I tried to comfort him, because I didn't really think that he had. He wanted to go tell his parents so that he could go and get EVEN MORE upset, so I told him not to go, because, as I said, he didn't really do anything wrong, and it was OK. All the stress that my step-mom had built up, apparently on the mostly empty threat of divorce if she hadn't just for that week, was release on this trivial issue of telling him not to tell her and she ended up saying something at one point which I won't repeat here because I wouldn't even write it in a private journal, and has yet to express the remotest regret from saying it, even
if it is mostly baseless...
*Mouq saves right away this time*
I went back to school
in a fog and started
winter track, which I pretended not to consider a
living hell that ate up all of what little energy I had. My grades dropped
from bad to awful, and even though I was actually helped by the lenience and, afterward, the short time of some motivation given by being stuck in bed all week* that pulled my second quarter grades up from what I might have predicted, my third semester was simply terrible, and by the end I was failing or almost failing several classes which I should have been passing easily. The news disturbed my father greatly, but my step-mother claimed that she "predicted" it would happen, because I am so lazy, etc., etc. and she decided that my I would not be coming down that summer, which both caused me to have to finally explain to my parents what had happened that winter break and afterwards, I think, relief from everyone that I wouldn't be going down, even if it meant that nothing could possibly be resolved.
In the fourth semester, I became better and better and better friends with a girl previously acquainted with. After I gave an only half-platonic approach, my head decided for itself that I was
falling in love with this girl. I not sure what she thought of me from herself, she only never said "no"; but our mutual friends said that she definitely had some level of affection for me... after a month or so of trying to advance the relationship beyond 'friendship', she met a sophomore at a school event (while I was with her, I may add) and started going out with him almost immediately. She tried to detach from me, successfully, and I lost
the best friend I had ever had. The school year ended with mediocre grades, and a pair of steampunk goggles.
Somehow, at some point after school ended, I became
incredibly more self-aware and much less ignorant, but this was when I had locked myself away in my room except when we went out, so I don't think it was all that obvious to anyone but myself. It was weird, being at home** during the summer for the first time that I could remember, except small photograph-aided memories of toddler-hood. We spent some time first at my step-dad's parent's (refered to in RL as, yes, my grandparents) in Connecticut, then spent much more time in Vermont with my grandmother and her
cousin-one-removed and relatives. A little more recently, we went on what was called our "first real vacation". We went out to be at my step-dad's
cousin's wedding, but stayed out for ourselves, not to visit a family member. My dad, however, found out that we were right in the Bay Area (well, I wasn't going to lie to him), and I met with him and we really actually talked for the first time in ever, and I'm glad.
Now, it's the day before school starts. A point more important than any other anniversary, and I don't have any plane ride to distract me from my nervousness. However, I think I'm the best equipped to handle this year than I've
ever been.
Wish me luck, guys, and a happy new year!
*I really thought it was a virus, and had my perfectly healthy blood tested, the results confusing to me. They didn't let on, but I think my parents figured it out quickly. Also, the end of the week in bed was when I created my e2 account.
**It's kind of unfair, but I honestly feel much more at home here, with my mom and step-dad.