Updates at the bottom. Wow, what an interesting idea and conversation. My first thought was that I don't have a box! But then I read my AllSoRad page, and yeah, I guess I do. But the thing is, I like my stereotype a lot better than I like the rest of me. Because what people think I am is certainly a part of what and who I am. My stereotype: friendly, outgoing, fun, thoughtful, happy, popular. Yes, this is who I am... at camp. This is who I want to be. In normal everyday life... I try to be friendly. I'm not outgoing. Ever. (well almost) I'm a complete introvert and avoid getting dressed whenever I can. I wish I had more friends who lived near me, but I do nothing to go out and make friends. Which I suppose doesn't make me very friendly. I don't go up to people. If someone comes up to me and starts talking I'm fairly friendly, but I tend to stand in corners a lot. I like watching people more than interacting with them. Unless they're really seriously cool people. Like you lot. Fun... yeah, I'm ok with that. Thoughtful... yes. Definitely. My best friend is myself, no doubt about that. Happy... Of course, I'm depressed sometimes, like everyone. But I prefer being happy, and do everything I can to be happy. I really don't know why everyone isn't like me on this... isn't happy a good thing to be? Popular... Several people have told me I'm popular since camp... I have a problem with this one. I don't want to be popular. I want to have good friends, but to me being popular means more people want to be your friend than you want to be friends with. I don't want to be that. At camp, sure, I knew a lot of people, especially at second session when I was a PA and really went out of my way to learn peoples names. But in normal every day life... not in the least. Popular? Who, me?? Not at all. I'm also surprisingly (to me) dependant on people, on what people I love think about me. The one thing that never fails to make me cry is when my mom gets angry at me. When people don't like me, I seriously re-think myself, and try to figure out whether they're right and I'm not likable, or whether I'm right and I am. About this general subject, I don't think that boxes are nessesarily bad things. I love my stereotype. I love relaxing into it, being who I want to be. When people won't let you move out of your box, that's bad. I like boxes. I like that people see these things in me. I like that I can see such-and-such in other people. I do try to keep a completely open mind, though, so I'll never do more than blink if someone acts out of "character". I think that's part of the fun of life, constantly re-evaluating people. Certainly there are a lot of girls at camp who are bisexual, don't shave their legs, and wear funky clothes... but there are a lot who are straight, shave, and wear brand names. Like me. Well, I usually don't wear brand names. About AllSoRad and MetaphorWhores, that's just seeing what other people think about you. A way of telling what your box is. I've said it before, if only a few people have written on your AllSoRad page that doesn't mean you're unlikable!! Just the same, if people write things on your AllSoRad page you don't think are you, well, tell them so. Think about it. They must have a reason to think that of you. I believe we all create ourselves every day, choosing who we show to the world. And just because someone writes something that's just the surface of you, does that mean it's not you? Heehee, I love the idea of Camper Bots... LOL... Right, guess that's it. Good idea for a page, even though I don't really feel like I need it. Good idea period. I think I want to keep adding to this page... it seems very nice to just have a ME space on wiki where I can write whatever I want as long as it has something to do with me. Lately I've been feeling like I'm putting myself in a box. Acting like someone else to please others, almost... except I really really like this person I'm making. She's thoughtful, witty, always has something interesting to say, is interested in other people, knows what she's doing, creative, motivated... I really like her. But she's not me, really. I am thoughtful, sometimes boring, sometimes bored, have no clue where I'm going most of the time, and am an extreme slacker. Should I stop forcing myself to be this better person? I want to be this person all over, I want her to be my reality. But she's also very dependant on what people think of her... she's not me. She's not the essence of me. So how do I combine the wonderful person inside me with the wonderful person outside me? Also, it seems like lately the name 'Marina' isn't me either. Maybe because i've been spending too much time on IRC... ;) but RainMa isn't me either. I like being nameless. That girl. The one with the purple sweater, the one who wrote that poem. Who is Marina? I don't know. I'm basically just writing as I think about this... Updates later! Will Marina find out who she is? Will she get off her bum and get a job? Later.. on Who Is Marina! ;) Well... whoever that cool girl was, she's gone... I have regressed. Or something. It's so odd... during the day, I never do the things I need to do, like call a teacher when I can't make it to a class, or wash the dishes or something. And then at night it makes me feel awful. Like, physically sick. Last Friday night I was feeling really bad because I needed to go to bed cause I had a class at 9 the next morning, but I didn't go to bed. And I felt awful about it. But I didn't go to bed. It was really weird. I officially have multiple personalities. Not MPD... but there's definitely quite a few seperate people in here. How else could I love myself? I sang "You've got a friend in me" to myself the other day. It's kinda nice, if confusing. I wrote a poem the other day, and I really like it... but I have no idea what it means. I'm going to be 16 in a couple weeks. Weird. I don't feel 16. I don't feel 15 either... Since I'm feeling egotistical, let's make a list of Wiki pages I've written interesting things on, or that have interesting things abotu me...
My signatures! Woohoo!
I was going to write down "Woah, total meltdown tonight" except that is disclaiming what I'm feeling in this moment, making it lighter... which is one thing I want to talk about. But first... my Not Quite All So Rad side. I am bossy and manipulating. I don't care enough about my friends to follow them into deep places. I don't care enough about my family to even try to notice when they're in deep dark places. I hide myself from people who might make me feel better. I don't physically hurt myself but it's because I feel like I shouldn't. I make my own hurts lighter than they are, and I make my friends' hurts lighter than they are. I care about myself far more than I care about anyone else. I am mixed up about sex and relationships and I have a seriously hard time talking about it. I try way way way too hard to be perfect. I try to be so normal, so balenced, so giving and taking and helping but not too much and silly and serious... I feel guilty more than I admit to myself. I hate myself when I'm not happy and reasonable. I'm too fucking reasonable. I feel proud of myself for the wrong reasons. I don't know what the right reasons are. I won't cry loud enough to be heard in the next room. I won't ask for help. I don't believe I need help. I believe I am self sufficient. Completely. I don't talk to my parents. I flirt with my father. The fucking RamblePage won't save. It feels so weird to not be perfect and balenced. Or rather, to admit to myself that I'm not. To be stupid. It's stupid to feel the way I do. It was stupid to say that. One part of me says to paste this into an e-mail and send it to every person I know. I won't. There is no way I could do that. E-mail me if you have something to say to me. Please do not if you can't think of anything to say. Who I Am: the definitive version as of 2/5/01 My favorite thing in the world to do is learn. I learn best intrapersonally, by watching someone do something and then doing it myself. Failing that, I learn by reading, by just puzzeling things out in my own mind. I have an extremely holistic view of the world. I relate everything to everything else in my search to understand. I feel guilty about feeling guilty. Every once in a while I completely melt down and cry in my bed for several nights. And don't tell anyone. Sometimes I write poems. I write poems. I write poems about love, mostly... the most confusing, wonderful, horrible feeling in my universe to date. I write poems about people, I write poems about images, and I write poems about emotions. I love love love metaphors. I love music. I love playing music. I love rhythms and dynamics and patterns. I like being ditzy and saying "Oh my god" and "Like..." a lot. I like being scholarly and 'adult' and using long obscure words. I like being funny and sarcastic and ironic. I like being silly. I like metaphysics and other meta-stuff a whole lot. I like words. A poem by Billy Collins: My life is an open book. It lies here on a glass tabletop, its pages shamelessly exposed, outspread like a bird with hundreds of thin paper wings. It is a biography, needless to say, and I am reading and writing it simultaneously in a language troublesome and private. Every reader must be a translator with a thick lexicon. No one has read the whole thing but me. Most dip into the middle for a few paragraphs, then move on to other shelves, other libraries. Some have time only for the illustrations. I love to feel the daily turning of the pages, the sentences unwinding like string, and when something really important happens, I walk out to the edge of the page and, always the student, make an asterisk, a little star, in the margin. A slightly edited, pretty rambly journal entry, March 23, 2001 It's funny, when I think about it... I am two completely different people. I'm comfortable with both, and I think I need both in my life. When I'm with friends I'm happy and outgoing and radically honest and funny and all that stuff... and when I'm by myself I'm shy and closed off. The second one's older... I haven't really had good friends til this past year or so. Although I remember being really hyper at [local homeschooler get togethers] and everyone looking at me strange. ;) It just seems strange that they could both be 'the real me' when they're so different. I feel so contradictory. It's so cool. I take completely selfishly and I give completely unselfishly. Example: money. I take what people lend me and don't intend to pay them back, and I give my money not expecting or really wanting them to pay me back. That could just show that I don't value money that much though... I'm very egotistical, I'll talk about myself for hours if I could. And I'm one of the best listeners I know. I love debating and hate fights. I have lots of fun insulting people... even people I truely care about. I'm obsessed with radical honesty, but I lie to my parents, little white lies anyway, all the time... I'm clean and dirty, young and old, super organized and super messy, I love late nights and sunrises... 6/7/01 Sometimes I'm stunned that I'm 16. That I'll be 17 in 6 months. That I'll be 18 (!!!) in a year and a half. I can't believe it... wasn't I just 15??? And sometimes I'm stunned that I'm only 16. Most of my good friends are older than I am. That's a reversal from how it's been most of my life... although not with really good friends. But most of my life I've always been the older one. The oldest of my cousins, of my homeschooling group, I've always been one of the older kids in most plays I've been in... until I came to camp. And now a lot of my good friends are 18, 19, 20, 21... they're worrying about jobs and living on their own and serious relationships and what they're going to do with their life, and I'm worrying right along with them. But I'm only 16! I'm just starting out. I have 8 years before I'm "supposed" to start working full time. I have 8 years before I'm "supposed" to figure out what I want from life. But everything feels so much closer than that. 9/25/01, 11:11 pm (make a wish!) I feel like I've grown into myself a lot over the past three weeks. I am proactive. I see things I want changed and I change them. I am lazy. It takes me months to write letters I actually want to write. It takes my mom yelling at me three times to do my chores. I am a loving and caring person. I love my friends and want to take care of them forever and would do anything for them. I am antisocial. I would be perfectly willing to be locked in a box by myself with a notebook and a few books for years. I don't say hello to people I know on the street. I am a bitch. I tease people to within an inch of their lives and don't care if I hurt them sometimes. I am a flirt. I like flirting. I am a feminist. I feel uncomfortable learning programming because it is a male-dominated task. I am talented in many areas. I am extrordinary in none. I am not honest. I am very honest. But being very honest is a habit, not a personality trait. Hopefully someday it will be part of me. I know myself well. I confuse myself like nothing else. I can't stand my city, with it's asphalt and stores and cars. I can't stand camping with bugs. I'm 16 biologically. Most of the people I feel comfortable with are around 19. Yet I feel uncomfortable with them because of my age. I don't have a crush on anyone. I love the world. I'm looking for true love. I don't expect to find it. I am optimistic. I am cynical. I agree with everything. I listen. I want to tell everyone I talk to everything about me. I don't want to be the kind of person who does that. I don't tell my parents hardly anything. I know I'm contradictory sometimes. Being everything I am makes sense to me. I'm curious to know what other people see in me. www.livejournal.com/~whetherwoman NBTSWikiWiki | Recent Changes Edited 12 times, last edited on September 25, 2001 by toodamnperky@nbtsc.org. © 2000 NBTSC Webmasters |
