Rose Petals

(This is a post I started writing a little over a month ago and never finished. I finally got around to writing more of it and I thought I would share it with you)

Friday afternoon.
Had a hard time. Felt like crap, and all empty inside.
So I went for a walk.

As I was walking, I started thinking. But they weren't happy thoughts. It was like, having a voice inside my head, that I know doesn't belong to me, whispering all my insecurities in my ear.

Worthless. Stupid. Ugly. Fat. A failure. Useless. Shit artist. You should just die.

It's hard to ignore yourself.
I angrily snatched a rose from off its bush, and kept walking.

But I heard music. Somebody was practicing. It wasn't piano, or guitar, or any other western instrument. It was a huge, Chinese stringed instrument. (I looked it up, its called a guzheng.)

The musician wasn't old, as I had expected. As I walked past her house, where she was playing in her garage, I saw that she was a teenager. No older than I. And that seemed to make her playing sound even more beautiful.

I wanted to listen more, but I didn't want to seem creepy and stand in the driveway, so I sort of stood behind a hedge. yes, I do know that's still pretty creepy.

I stared at the rose. It was beautiful. It was the colors of a sunset, red at the base that faded into yellow.

You'll never be that beautiful, whispered the little voice. "I'm not ugly..." I whispered and tossed a rose petal to the ground. The voice stayed silent. I tried again.
"I'm not stupid." Still nothing. I threw down another petal.

It made me feel stronger.

I kept going, throwing down the petals, and contradicting my previous statements, until I had changed them all. I felt bold. I tossed a petal in front of me and quietly whispered "I'm beautiful. I'm smart. I'm talented. I have a purpose."

I threw the rest of the rose to the ground and ran all the way to the coffee shop without looking back.

I'd like you all to meet someone

As you may have noticed I mentioned really briefly in my last post, I have a boyfriend! I would like to introduce you to The Terrorist. He picked it, okay? He plays a lot of Counter-strike...
I was going to draw a picture of him but it wasn't good.

Nice things:

He's really sweet

He likes cuddling

He has gorgeous eyes

He's funny

He wears cool t-shirts

He's an awesome kisser

He sometimes wears glasses, but he usually wears contacts

He makes me smile even when I'm just thinking about him

He likes playing videogames and doesn't mind that I'm bad at them

He likes a lot of the same stuff as I do

He understands how forgetful I am, and always knows when I can't find my phone

He's absolutely wondertastic

Soapbox: Feminist Equality Colors Rant

Today in french class we were playing Hangman. Hangman is difficult in french, because every word basically ends with "e."
That is not what this rant is about.

If you didn't already know this, my French class is an online one, so the students comunicate mostly via chat box and microphone, and our teacher has a webcam. It's pretty cool.

One of the students, Monique I believe, (This is her "French class name." We all have one basically. Mine is Déesse.) was picking the word, so she got to use the whiteboard application thing to do it.

She drew the little hangman thing, and seven letter places. The first person guessed a letter, and she filled in a letter space in a different color. Then from the chat box  one of the boys said "Woah those are girly colors."
She was doing it in purple and teal.

It's not that I have a problem with being girly. Often people think feminists are man hating tomboys in pantsuits and tight buns. We aren't. I'm a multicolored haired, long skirt wearing, teenager with an awesome boyfriend. I only have a problem that he was using girly to describe colors.

People don't seem to get that colors are not inherently connected to a specific gender. Not purple, not pastell teal, not pink, not blue, not rainbow. None of the above.

I mentioned this, and somebody else* said that I was right, but pastell colors are calm and relaxing and welcoming. Like women I guess was the point he was trying to make.
Women aren't inherently calm and relaxing either. I mean, just look at me!

Of course I got kind of angry. I do that. I will freely admit that it pisses me off when color and gender based (or really anything based) stereotypes are called in as a good argument. But you know what's better to do than shouting angrily in all caps into a chat box? writing a reasonable blog post.

The issue kind of disappeared before the end of class, drifting away into the back of our minds. But it still bugs me, because this was something I've brought up before in class. I guess it's no wonder her word was "mauvais."

PDS, Lady E

* I would like to point out that not all the guys in my class were on the other side of the argument. I have mad respect for the guy who changed his chat color to bright pink after this conversation. Good on you, B.K.

Valerie Speaks her Mind.

Woooooah, two posts in one day? Yes. But this one is a real post and the other isn't even a paragraph. So it's all good.

Here is a snippet from my novel for NaNo :D

“Oh. My. God.”

Yes! He thought. She would admit her love for him, and that Andrew was just okay. He would be her boyfriend. 

“I cannot believe you Alex! Really? Now?”

Okay, this wasn’t how he’d expected it. “I spent the past two years waiting for you to man up and ask me out!” she shouted.

“But… You’re all about empowerment. I thought you would…”

“I knew you liked me! You just didn’t have any guts! You never have!”

“Valerie…”

“No! You missed your god damn chance. I gave you every opportunity, and you only muster up the courage when I’m already with someone else!” 

“I just wanted to wait until the right time.”

“And the right time is now?!” She breathed a deep sigh. “Look, Alex. I moved on. I decided that I’m too strong to sit around pining after a child who refuses to be anything else. Now Andrew is here, and I like him. I really really like him, and he likes me. I deserve this okay? I’m not going to ditch someone who appreciates me, and I appreciate, just because you decided jealousy was the right motivator for honesty.”

Yep. Valerie is awesome. I'm going to go a write a crying Alex. Bye!

P.S: Have you checked out Pickle And Potato? Because you should. 

P.P.S You know you're best friends when you're deciding to make a large block of text in Times New Roman, and you catch yourself thinking, "This is Potato's favorite font!"

I can haz teh pretteh blog?

I think I'm going to redesign this mess of a blog... It's going to be gorgeous. Or stupid looking, but let's hope for the first.

This Happened A Month Ago...

 ...And I almost fainted and I'm still quite happy because I my comment was well thought out even though I used the wrong form of "their" but shush because Bing replied to my comment and two words made my day super awesome.

The Video (It's one of my favorites)

And yes, that comma-less mess was going to be the title but it looked silly. And I'm totally not a silly person. Ever.

Excited for NaNo

(Partially writing so you know that i still exist)

NaNoWriMo is coming up and I am HUMONGOUSLY excited.

This year I'm writing a mystery story within a mystery story. This will be my first year writing from a single character perspective, and (unless you count Nate Blackwall, and really, who does?) my first time writing a male character in first person. Oh yeah, it's a really complicated plot too.

This might be a travesty. But it could also be glorious. Anyways, I thought I would give you a brief introduction to my characters (sorry no pictures, my scanner hates me):

Alex Cohen

Our hero. A sixteen year old boy who is really into detective novels and mysteries. He's a member of several online mystery forums. His favorite series is about a Private Eye named Jack Flint, and his sidekick Arthur Johnson. He thinks Arthur Johnson is kind of stupid. He has always wanted to investigate something, but he doesn't want anyone to have to die first. His best friend is Valerie Sun, and he's had a thing for her since fifth grade. She knows this.

Valerie Sun

If Alex Cohen is quirky, Val Sun is downright weird. Her hobbies include playing the violin, keeping a  top secret daily journal for the best eight years that she allows herself one sentence to describe each day,  and drawing dead people. Yes. She enjoys watching the news and drawing people who died. This hobby disturbs her friends, of which she has four. She could have more friends if she wanted, but she finds most people uninteresting. She is completely aware of Cohen's little crush on her, and she thinks he would make a great boyfriend, but she spends a lot of time denying this to herself.

Jessica Barret

Known to her online friends as "irene_addled16," Jessica is pretty shy. Her most prized possession is a striped scarf in Ravenclaw colors that she got signed by Evanna Lynch at a convention. She really enjoys speculating about TV shows online. She feels braver on the internet, anonymous. She's really funny when when you get to know her. One of her closest online friends is "jflintfan." They met once at a Baltimore meetup at the Washington Monument (not the big one in DC, the littler one in Baltimore. Duh.) She learned that his name is Alex, and that they lived on opposite ends of the city. She collects fossilized shark teeth.

Lilith Sun

Valerie's younger sister. She finds her sister's hobbies strange to say the least. They usually get on pretty well, unless Lilith's had a bad day, or Val has one of her kooky friends over. She's fourteen, and in a punk band called Gray Night with Symon Cohen and Lani Walsh. She's not overly fond of Lani, and thinks she can't play the guitar for beans, but she puts up with her because she's Symon's girlfriend and Symon is an awesome singer. Lilith is proud to be the only punk rock cellist in her school. She dyed her hair black for her fourteenth birthday, and ended up really annoyed that it wasn't much darker than her natural hair color. She gets really happy when someone notices her jet black hair, but she doesn't show it externally.

So these are just a few, but needless to say, they're pretty important :)