I havn't been on Gaia since school started back up. I'm working full time and going to school full time, I'm just exhausted!

If you ever get the chance, you should read the children's book Paddle-to-the-sea. It's the story of a wooden Indian made by a boy in Canada. The boy puts it in a river that leads to Lake Superior. The little Indian (Paddle-to-the-sea) goes on many adventures. As people find him, they put their name and where they're from on him. Eventually he makes it across the ocean and in France. The boy who made him is a man reading. He reads in the paper about Paddle-to-the-sea.

I always loved this story because of how the little boy touched so many people's lives without realizing it. I used to want to make a treasure map and leave it in my house, so in the future, children living there could find the treasure I left behind (pictures, things that were important to me, my diary) and know what life was like in my time. I wanted to do that because I always thought it would be neat if I found something like that. What an adventure it would truly be...

It's really weird that this is a question and reflextion post because my current situation. I've lived in the house I'm currently in for seventeen years. We moved in when I was three. I hated it when I was little and I am still convinced that it is haunted by an unsettled spirit. I still live with my parents because I'm in college and I'm broke. If I am to finish school I have to live with somebody for way cheap rent or I live in a box. My parents are selling the house, no big deal, I'm twenty and they have every right to do what they want. They are planning on buying a house in Elk Rapids, about twenty miles away from where we live. So for me, it would be closer to school but further from work. No big deal, I'll work it out.

But yesterday I was told I have to find a place to store my belongings or sell them. The house they are buying is too small, so they are planning on buying a day bed to make an extra sitting room/ guest room for when my other siblings and their kids come to visit. So I can move with them, but I can't have any of my stuff because it won't go with their new guest room.

So what do I do when I have a place to sleep, but not a place to call home? I've thought about asking my, for want of a better term, boyfriend if I can move in with him, but we're so up and down I don't know if it will be bad for our relationship. I'll figure something out, who knows the market is so low maybe they won't be able to sell the house until I graduate and have teaching job! hahaha!

It depends on what vibes I get. I say vibes for lack of a better word. If someone just makes me feel...weird, I will probably not pursue a friendship with them at first, but I'll give it more time, because my initial feeling maybe off. It's not judging a book by it's cover. It's just a feeling, like, can I be safe around this person. If been in situations before where I just didn't feel right and I stayed there and wound up getting hurt. I will never not listen to my inner self again, but in good nature I may proceed with caution.

Right now, I'm on my way to the bar (I'm  the designated driver), but I have to work in the morning and I barely know the people I'm going with. (I just know they'd go either way and I don't want them driving drunk!

I'm at the age where nothing makes sense to me. I do not feel like an adult, I am in a sea of information and trying to peice together what makes sense to me. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever find it out, or if this is a phase that will go on for as long as I go on.

I like to draw or watch a light hearted comedy (Stranger than Fiction or Cheaper by the Dozen or my pick up movies)

But what does it the best is sing out loud in my car to something way happy and spunky, like the Kinks "Lola" or the Archies "Sugar, Sugar". I don't just mean singing out loud, I mean belting it out like an American Idol finalist, with the windows down, while stopped at a red light, in the middle of rush hour in Traverse City. The look on other peoples' faces are priceless and garanteed to make you laugh! Instant perk up!

I also like to splurge on expensive chocolate.


Sure beats smoking!

Gerard Schwind saved my life. He led a group called Alternatives to Violence at my high school. At the time I smoked a lot of pot, drank a lot, and cut myself. I was pretty messed up in my head. In a lot of ways I was trying to find myself. I was looking for information on how to lead a better life. Alternatives to Violence was a program designed to help troubled teens by showing them how violence forms, what is violence, realizing the values in yourself and others, helping people around you and much more. There were two groups, the voluntary group and the mandatory group. I was voluntary. I learned so much. The best part was that Gerard was a real human being. He wasn't shallowly preaching to us, he'd been there- to the bottom. He's a Vietnam vet, recovered alcoholic and drug abuser, and admits to abusing his ex wife. He realized his actions were horrible and went down the path to change his life. He formed ATV to help kids before they went too far down that road. The big kicker for me was when he took us down to Farmington Hills to the Holocaust museum. The images I saw and the stories I heard from actual survivers, it was amazing. After witnessing the horror that was the holocaust, these people still had hope for the future, in us, to spread peace. It was amazing and aweinspiring. I became more interested in helping people. We were able to send carepackages to people in India after the Tsunami and to people in need after Katrina. We were a small school with very little money, but we did what we could. I learned that if everybody did what they could this world would be a much better place. I learned to respect myself more. I no longer smoke pot, cigarettes, but I do drink once in a blue moon, not like I used to. It's been three years since I felt the desire to self mutilate (unless you count tattoos, I like to believe that my tattoos tell the story of my growth, but my tattoos need there own section to explain).

I still see Gerard from time to time. Its nice that he still knows my name, my woes, my dreams, and where I'm at in my life. He knows that about all his "kids" (my school wasn't the only school, he worked with five other schools in the region).

If Gerard Schwind did not have ATV at my high school, god only knows where I'd be. Because of him, I saw value in myself and weight in my actions. Because of him, I see the potential in myself to help the world, in whatever I do.

Every one who knows me knows that I'm working to become a teacher. I want to better the world and I believe that it starts with the youth. I want to help kids that no one else wants to help.

Vacation time is good, too. I would get time to travel (somewhat) and be with my family and friends. I will have great benefits.


But my deep down passion, what I would absolutely love to do if I could, would be to act. I love acting, I love playing pretend, I dream of someday maybe being able to be a big time hollywood hotshot. I fantasize about what I would do with the money, help my family, big donations to my home town school (they lack programs that kids need other than sports), charities, places I could go, the people I could meet.

I want to be a teacher, I'm stoked at the thought of once I'm finally able to teach and have my own classroom, how I'll set it up, make lesson plans...but a part of me wishes that I could get discovered. I hope that doesn't sound selfish or conceited, but thats my deep down dream career.

                     I don't like change. I don't mean like social change or anything like that, but if my favorite restuarant goes under I will become one unhappy camper (there used to be a restuarant called the Clock in Traverse City. My grandpa used to take my mom there when they would come up North, my parents went on their first date there because it was the only place open at two in the morning when they got off work, my mom used to take me there after painful physical therapy, a cast coming off, leg braces. I used to get pancakes shaped like gingerbread men with whip cream hair and clothes. My friends and I would go there high as kites and order a hot giant cookie covered in vanilla ice cream, whip cream, hot fudge. Chuck and I had our second date there. Then, after my college orientation, I desperately needed the comfort of the Clock, but it was closed down. After some forty years of business, it took one month to go under and become "G's Pizzeria!". I refuse to eat there, I have a passionate dislike for G's Killer of Dreams.)

                 So I hate change of things of that caliber, but I don't mind changing myself, which has been an ungoing process ever since high school, or maybe before that but I became consciously aware of it in high school. The biggest change I don't like is the way my father looks at me anymore. Everything about me is a personal blight towards him. He goes out of his way to piss me off. I can have some realization about something and in my excitement I would tell him about it, only to have him stab a needle in my balloon.

                First, an explanation. My parents are what I like to call "Super Republicans". They believe that Bush is the best damn president this country has had since Regan. "He will go down in history books and these damn liberals will eat their words." Yeah. They believe Dick Cheney is too liberal. My father hates McCain. He's too liberal to be republican. I consider myself a moderate, because I can understand views on both parties. Things can't ever go right because there is too much party bickering, like kids on a playground. A republican can have a great idea and it will get shut down by Democrats because it was a republican idea, and vice versa. Really I think it doesn't matter. You flip a coin, if it lands on heads or tails it doesn't really matter because it is still a damn coin. Republican, Democrat. Still a politician, still a damn coin. My favorite saying comes from Al Franken "What's the difference between a repubilican and a democrat? Republicans suck and democrats blow." I told my father I was a moderate. He stopped out of the room. Over his shoulder he says "You mean you're a fucking liberal." Ouch.

                 He doesn't believe in Global warming. It's a conspiracy made up by democrats to tax us. M'kay. I started taking out batteries to the recycling center, changed my light bulbs to those funky curled ones that last longer. (By the way, those are hazardous waste when they finally do blow out, so make sure you take them to your local recycling center to be disposed of). I'm a goddamn tree hugger.

                  I really don't support this war. My dad thinks it's the best damn thing we've (a country) have done. I stop talking to him, but he tries to get my goat. He's accused me of wanting my brother dead. I got pissed off and told him Bush wants my brother dead. 

                     Out of five of us kids, I'm the second one to graduate high school. I'm the first to go to college. Anytime I say anything about school, he snaps at me for thinking I'm a well educated snob. I do most of my homework at Chuck's house, because if I leave a book laying around he calls it filth, that I'm being brainwashed. Does he say anything to Steve, who is fighting a war he doesn't believe in (I pervursely wonder if he's killed anyone yet, and I shudder at the thought), Angie who smokes dope in front of her kid and periodically uses the key she still has to steal my moms vicadin? No, lets buy her cars (four since she was sixteen) a washer, dryer, refrigerator. Let's not make her spend her drug money on necessities. Sara, who has three kids all with different daddies? Kari, who spends all her time sitting in front of a tv shoving food in her face? I'm the one who gets the shit. I'm the one who is criticized openly, yet I'm the super daughter. I take time out from school, work to take care of my mom when she had major surgery (which not one of my siblings called. SHE COULD HAVE DIED!). I cancel appointments so my father can borrow my car for a week while his truck was in the shop.

                   Once upon a time he cared about me. I remember once, after being brutally teased at school for how I walked funny, my dad picked me up (because the leg braces meant no walking at night.) "I love you, no matter what. You are special. You are beautiful."


                  If he really wants to blame anyone for who I am today, he can blame himself. He taught me to be myself, to think for myself. He answered a question when I was five that started it all. We were riding in his old beat up ford. It was sunny. We were listening to the Beatles Abbey Road "Octopus's Garden". It was my favorite. Very kid friendly. I remember looking at the cover of the cassette.  I was entranced. Paul's bare feet, George's set face, Ringo's stature (my dad told me he was the one singing Octopus's Garden. I couldn't see that voice coming out of him) then John's white suit and hair. "Daddy? Why is his hair so long?" "Because he's a hippie." "Oh. What's a hippie." He paused. We turned a corner. "A hippie was someone in the sixties that loved everyone and believed in peace." "Oh. I want to be a hippie." I remember the conversation like it was yesterday.

                 So that point on I ate up anything related to that era. As a kid it was music. I pulled out his old records. Bob Dylan, the Kinks, Jefferson Airplane, Tommy James and the Shondells, more Beatles, the Greatful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish. The older I got the more into other stuff I became, simply with this obsession from that time. I would become obsessed on a singular topic for months at a time. Martin Luther King, Jr. Gandhi, Civil rights, civil disobedience (so powerful), the art, Tim Leary, the Diggers, yoga, meditation. I joined a group in high school called Alternatives to Violence. The group was about discovering yourself, recognizing patterns of violence, fighting comformity, helping the community in the name of promoting peace. I loved it. It was taught by Gerard Schwind. An ex-marine who fought in Vietnam by choice, confessed alcoholic, past wife abuser. He taught us a lot. He had been there, he knew anger, hate, love and compassion. He knew humility. My parents thought he was the devil.  

                   Sometimes I think of my dad like Jerry Rubin. Once, very liberal, very hip, growing pot in his broken down AMC Pacer. Blonde hair that went to his ass. I look at pictures of him and see him now. Did that person die? Is this really my father or was he abducted by aliens? My alien daddy, the super republican!  :)

                I don't know why I'm writing this. I don't mean to be so negative, but I feel like there is a vice around my heart and I need to spew my guts to get it off, even if it means ranting online to total strangers. I feel imperfect and I can't change it. I feel like my father is losing it and taking it out on me. I feel like what ever common ground I've ever had with him has eroded and decayed. It used to be that I'd go to my dad for anything. To talk about the mean kids or something my bipolar mother did that I couldn't understand. Now I go crying to my bipolar mother over something he's said. 
               
                I let him borrow my car a week ago. He yelled at me about the "god awful music" I had playing in the CD player. It sounded like shit. How can I listen to shit music.

                It was the Beatles.