Fail

Today, I  woke up around ten, dressed, got downstairs, got myself some toast and oatmeal, sat at my computer, got up Thinkwell and my research for Student Senate. Then I got bored and got up my usual slew of sites that I regularly check...I used those up, got bored again, and got up the Art of Manliness. Still technically goofing off, but whatever. Mommy kicked me off my computer, I did some chemistry with great grudginglyness...and have to do more, 'cause of the Mission trip.

Why does it have to start on my birthday? Sigh.

And I've got most of Quivie's whole stash playing for me nearly all day long. I want to open my new Sansa the moment it comes, and I've thought of two reasons to...first, counting leapyear days, I'm technically 18 tomorrow. Also, I imagine somehow threatening to play the same music for the next five days unless they let me open it before hand.

What the heck, I might do it even if they don't want me to. I'm not feeling particularly joyful right now, and that just might help.

My life always seems to be a failure to succeed on any significant level, for the pettiest reasons possible, moreover. I scraped through Biology with a 78%, when a few of my fellow students probably managed a score beyond a hundred. Student Senate last year seemed rather a fail on my part, but I'm finally getting a few compliments these days, for some reason. Maybe it's just my perception of what I do...dang, what is real? Am I seeing everything wrong?

Gosh, I wish I had someone to talk to...

I often wonder what the world would be like without me. Not as if I'm contemplating suicide, but if I'd never existed in the first place. Maybe if my third brother hadn't died in childbirth, and I had instead. Would anything be different? Not in his presence, of course, but in my absence...would anything in the world be so terribly different as it happened in It's A Wonderful Life?

I really don't know.

I keep telling myself I have made changes in some people's lives...but the more I consider them, the more I feel they're either changes for the worse, or minute, barely important good changes.

But they're worth it, I might say to myself.

But at eighteen, shouldn't a guy have done something really worthwhile?

Is this merely an effect of the fall? Perhaps it is, but I haven't figured out how to deal with it.

Plus, there is no "mere" effect of the fall.

Is my identity and security so rooted in physical things, the things I do, the people I know, that I can't put any value on my own life? But isn't that it! I don't know a lot of people! I don't do a lot of things! Heck, I don't even say a lot of things! What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to put one foot before the other, a word forward when I should, when I'm so afraid of everything that could happen, or not happen?

I fear to speak, for I may instead misspeak!

I fear to love, for how would I know what love is?


I fear to disagree, for I have few enough friends as it is!

I fear to look, for I know not whether others fear me, or know the foulness within me! In seeing me, might they not see right into me, into my heart, and only fear me as well for that knowledge?

Knowledge.

I'm not sure I want to go to college anymore. I could probably get in, I've probably got the scores, ACT, whatever else I need...

But how can I possibly take on more studies? How could I survive for more years of even more intense schooling?

But you must! How can you think the slightest good of yourself if you won't take every challenge, go through every hoop set up by society?

But how can I! If college is anything it's cracked up to be, it's hard, first and foremost!

But what if this hardness, this difficulty, is because of my mind, some defect, or worse yet, something I've done to myself in ignorance and neglect? How can I even accept pity if pity only confirms I'm pitiful?

What am I doing wrong?


!Noah!