A Letter To Myself In Hindsight

2013 is almost at my back, and with that, the memories of a year spent either torturing myself, having others torture me, or having a ball. It is one am on December 29, and now is as appropriate a time as ever to write this. I have kept in a mason jar scraps of paper with things that happened this year that were positive. I will pick four at random, because there are hundreds in there, in exchange, since the tail end or freshman year and the beginning of sophomore have gone less than swimmingly, one negative will be included, accentuate the positive, right? Let's begin.

Slip of paper #1: Started internship with SATV: Do not let this opporunity go to waste. Enbrace every moment you have with a camera in your hand, editing the mornings news, fumbling with the tricky dvd player. Not everyone gets to do what they love on a Wednesday afternoon. Keep at this, you love it.

Slip of paper #2: Went camping with Cristina, Chase, David, Ian, Connor, and my mother: When you are in nature, be one with it. Use the car only to bring you to an unknown swimming spot. Fish with ham and a homemade fishing rod, and cook your catch over a fire. Take the time to wander at two in the morning and admire the stars. You might hear an owl. Do not record it's noise, keep it for your own ears. Contemplate where the universe ends in the dark. Get mosquito bites. It is summer and you will recover. Fireflies are magical, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Slip of paper #3: Passed algebra: Bridget, do the same for this year. Do not aim simply to pass geometry. Focus on what confuses you. Ask for help, it will not lessen your intelligence. It will feel better to get a 80 on a test you studied and worked hard for than a test that you went blindly into and guessed, yet came out with a 75. Learn your strengths and weaknesses. Do not take 5 AP classes next year. There are limits to yourself, even if your friends are taking them. Know your own, and you will go farther.

The Only Negative (that I feel comfortable writing about): Yes, that is a good book: I know that you like reading, because I am you. Put that book your nose is buried in down until your schoolwork for the day is completed. Yes, your geometry homework is easy (you hope) and you can (hopefully) do it during lunch. You have a project due tomorrow, and a French test. Study for it. You know Shakespeare, you can do well, but put down Alice In Wonderland, it won't do itself. Your geometry is harder than face value. You need to eat at lunch, or else you will be tired in n geometry, and get even less accomplished. The book will not punish you for not reading it, your homework will.

Slip of paper #4: Painted yourself like an Amazonian queen: It is ok to stay up until three am making grilled cheese covered in paint, as long as you are not disturbing anyone, and it is not a nightly ritual. Go outside and take pictures with a pro grade camera half naked. It's three in the morning. No one cares. Look back at those photos fondly. When you remove the paint, make sure to wash out the bathtub, unless you are aiming to make it a rendition of van goghs "starry night."

Let 2014 be worth it. Embrace the friendships that will come, and let go the ones who left you this year. You will learn to drive, and will finally be an upperclassman. Good luck, kiddo. You'll do great.

Christmas Eve

For as long as I can remember, on Christmas Eve my little brother and I would have a sleepover in his room. I would drag my mattress from my bedframe and throw it on the floor in his room. This is one of the only times of the year where the two of us get along. The rest of the year we bicker and fight like cats and dogs, but worse because we have words and I am stronger.

Every year since it came out, our whole family (aka me, my brother, and my parents) will receive a new set of pajamas and watch the Polar Express. This is after we are filled to the absolute brim with chinese food. Every time, all of us gasp when the train derails, and every time, we laugh at the silly engineers, and every time, I hide my face at the part where the abandoned marionettes stand hanging. I never understood that part, maybe tonight I will.

My brother, Brad, and I then head into his still outer-space themed bedroom, though he is thirteen, we just never got around to redecoration. We promise each other that we’ll go to sleep but never do and usually end up giggling until one of our parents comes in and tells us to stop. We then spend the rest of the night staring at each other and watching Alice In Wonderland. Then 7 am rolls around. Good morning.

I Skip Down The Hallways Of High School

Proudly.

Usually in the five minutes I have between first and second block, where I have to get from the far end of the top floor to the other side of the bottom floor. I started because I needed to move fast, and my daily dose of coffee or tea is beggining to kick in. I’ll turn the first corner sharply and usually end up bumping into someone. “Hi I’m Bridget and I’m taking the world by storm” is what my face reads, because I am not smiling. Internally I am leaping with joy, and begin to hum the tune of the day that is stuck in my head from the moment I wake up.

My best friends name is Niamh, and it is pronounced like sleeve. Neeve. Spelled Niamh. She puts up with me and I will be eternally grateful for that. We’ve known each other since kindergarten and have evolved alongside each other. We like the same music and comedians, take mostly the same classes, though she switched into Mandarin Chinese while I kept with French. Sometimes we carry out our conversations in French, not using proper grammar or verb tenses, and sometimes saying an English word with a French accent if we don’t know the right word. This is the type of friendship that every person can only hope for, but I have it.

I have my second block class with her, and she will “be forever judging me” for skipping and humming, and then proceeds to tell me about myself, age twelve. I smelled like candy, and was eternally high off the constant sugar feed, despite being 5’3” and weighing less than 80 lbs. I loved the Jonas Brothers and Webkinz. Niamh has always been much more mature than I am, was, or ever will be.

I don’t think I will ever stop skipping and humming in merriment, even when I graduate. I will skip around my college campus, and skip through the building in which I will end up working.

I will be a constant song.

Waking Up

I’ve never been particularly good at waking up. My alarm clock always beeps and buzzes at 5:45 am, my phone chirps to life at 6:00, then 6:15, and finally 6:30. I slam my fingers around on top of it’s keys in a futile attempt to shut it off for eternity. Here’s a hint, it doesn’t work. 6:53 usually rolls around with my hips, as my eyes lay sight on the clock. I murmur obscenities while throwing on the nearest clothes to my bed, not stopping to brush my hair, swinging the toothbrush through my cheeks and shoving my feet into winter boots, sometimes forgetting a coat in late December. I leave the house by 7:00, class starting precisely 24 minutes later. I’ve showered before school approximately four times this year.

At the beggining of each school year I make a promise to myself that I know I will not keep. I will wake up on time. I will get dressed properly every morning. I will eat breakfast. This is silly because I know that I will never accomplish this goal, and will always curse the principal for starting school at such an ungodly hour.

On weekends I find myself tossing around under the covers before sunrise, and eventually giving in to my ridiculous circadian rhythms. I’ll dull down my music to merely a humm and tap my toes around the chilly floor. Sometimes I’ll make a cup of tea or coffee, being careful not to make noise in the kitchen. My house is now well lit with the orangey light of the early winter morning. I’ll whistle a melody to myself, and wake someone up.

I have become very comfortable with my singing voice as either a contralto or high soprano.

Tea Cookies And Their Relevance To My Father In Ice Skates

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. A flurry of snowflakes drifts past the window as if they were being chased. A large amount of snow-ice mixture slides off the roof. So that’s what they were being chased by. My fingers are still stiff with chill because my high school seemingly does not provide heat.

Cream together one cup of butter, one cup of white sugar, and 2 ½ teaspoons of finely ground tea. I do not own a tea grinder. I will just have to put the dried tea leaves in as they are. This is probably a really terrible idea, I think, even though I proceed to dump a total of 7 bags of green tea atop butter and sugar in a sunny yellow bowl. I wonder when my brother will be home. I am not playing music, how out of character.

Beat in one teaspoon of vanilla extract, and two eggs. In English today we discussed the poem “Where The Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein. When I was little I used to think that the place where the sidewalk meets the fantasy land was hell. I was correct in a way, but now it’s more metaphorical and I understand what he meant now. Poetry is one of my favorite things. When I was young, my favorite poem was “A Light In The Attic,” which is incidentally also by Mr. Silverstein. My favorite line was, “Put something silly in the world/ That ain’t been there before.” Ten years later, my favorite poem is “My Fairy” by Lewis Carroll.

Sift together two cups of flour, two thirds cups of cocoa powder, and two teaspoons of baking powder. Lewis Carroll is one of my favorite writers. “My Fairy” stands out to me in particular because it embodies a feeling that I think many teenagers have. “‘What may I do?’ at length I cried/ Tired of the painful task./ The fairy quietly replied/ And said ‘You must not ask.’” It’s a lost thought on me, but it seems as though it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. I learned that from my father.

Drop cookies by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. I’ve always felt closer to my father than mother. I guess it’s triangulation and that I don’t really have very much of a memory of him until around third grade because he worked really weird hours. I have one very specific memory of going into his work when I was three. He worked as some sort of electrical engineer who fixed medical equipment. Or maybe he tested it. I don’t really know but he tells me the story of setting the dog food on fire on a couch soaked in kerosene a lot. That’s besides the point. I remember walking around his work and having everything towering over me. This memory is unusual because I usually adjust my memories according to my height now, (roughly 5’6”) but for these purposes I was likely around 2’9” and there was a tall lady who probably isn’t that tall with black heels, a pencil skirt, and bright red lipstick. She leaned down to me and called me “Miss Bridget,” which is a name no one called me other than my uncle Mike. She then asked my dad if I could eat hard candy and he said yes. This is the first memory I have of candy, as well. Come to think of it, it’s probably my first memory period.

Bake for eight minutes, cool before eating. Years later my father took me ice skating at Shebako lake. I was probably somewhere between 6 and 8, but it was before we moved, and my brother was still too little to go with us. We slid around the lake, me fumbling around on awkward seemingly homemade ice skates specifically made for my little feet. My dad was wearing his big brown skates that he likely got sometime between when he graduated high school and when he got married to my mother. He glided across the ice like some sort of gawky swan, and I stood there in amazement, slowly sliding forward, digging the blades into the thick ice, afraid of tipping over and bruising the gloved palms of my hands. I’m sure I fell many times that day, but I don’t remember. On the car ride home, he gave me one of those candies that old people always had in their house, but no one really knows where they came from. This one was orange creme and I’m fairly sure he took it from my grandmothers house. I placed it on my tongue as I had thousands of times before, and climbed into my booster seat in the back of my dads black Volvo. We lingered along the rural road, and I gasped at the sight of a deer. This lead me to inhale the orange creme candy, and I was afraid to eat hard candy for at least 2 years after.

The moral of this post is that there are whole tea leaves in my cookies, and you should definitely follow directions to the Q or else something will be badly screwed up.

On another note I am planning on going ice skating again with friends next week. I am always more graceful on skates than I am on land, likely due to the fact that I have two large pieces of metal attached to my feet and if I fall I’ll probably just hurt myself badly.

I'm 15 And Can Walk Home Without You

When I walk home, I often find myself thinking that there is a person walking beside me, I’ll usually pick someone that I wish I was closer to and pretend that they’re walking along with me and I’ll take the time to get to know them in my head and I’ll pretend to hold their hand and when we get to my house I’ll take an extra tea cup out for them and then it hits me that they’re not really there so I drink my tea alone and think that they’re with me when they’re not and I think it’s kind of a cute concept and that’s probably the main reason why I have weird expectations for people.

This person is someone who I want to get to know better and a walk home is the perfect time to do so. I’ll hold their invisible hand in mine, we’ll giggle and they’ll answer my questions on my accord. Once we reach my house, I’ll take out an extra tea cup for them, and then I will remember that they are not genuinely present.

As I leave the school, I’ll take their hand and intertwine our fingers. We’ll walk through the parking lot like this, persevering the cold together. He’ll talk to me about how he likes to swim and walk through the woods. I’ll trip over my own two feet and he’ll catch me and we’ll laugh. My nose will turn red with the cold New England air and he’ll call me Rudolf, leading to me playfully punching his arm.

We’ll comment about the grey blue sky, and how we’ve come to know this color as “snow storm blue.” He’ll mention a song that I’ve never heard of, but will eventually come to love, and I’ll shoot one back at him.

Mine and his frozen toes shuffle into Jo Freedom, our favorite coffee shop, located downtown. I’ll order a sticky-bun coffee and continue walking on. It’s then when we realize that we are both vegetarians, and chuckle at the fact that we’re just coming to know this. He’ll talk about the pro’s and con’s of tofu, and I of garbanzo-yam pasta. By this point we are one block from my house.

I warn him of my over friendly dog, and he admits his love for dogs, and a small debate breaks out betweens us over which is better, cats or dogs. I side with felines, him opposing. Climbing up the steps to my abode, he slips on the thick layer of ice, but catches himself on the railing. I fumble with my keys for a period, because I cannot feel my fingers. The doorknob twists and a fluffy lightning bolt rushes past us and down the street. He begins to chase after him and I tell him not to, because it’s pointless.

He waltzes back across slippery flagstone with a grace that can only be described as a gymnast with ice skates. We step into the welcoming air, fragrant with tonights squash soup. Taking out two tea cups, I realize that he is gone. He has not left, simply has never been there. I’ve walked home completely alone, but with a companion. My mouth has not opened to ask him anything, the dialogue has been in my head.

I set his teacup back in the cupboard, and boil half as much water, make half as much tea, and have half as much enjoyment. I settle myself in the folds of our loveseat, meant for two, yet only one ten fingers linger around my knees, two feet collapse on the armrest opposite me, and one set of eyes no longer sees another pair the color of the sky.

This practice often leads me to have great expectations for him, when in reality I’ve barely held a conversation. I tell myself that I am fifteen years old and don’t need a make believe friend to keep me company while making a twenty minute voyage across the town, but I don’t believe myself.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

I like to think of myself as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG), for no apparent reason. It’s not a particularly positive thing to aspire to be, but I strive for it anyways.

An MPDG is a girl in a work of literature or media that exists to give the protagonist something to work towards. She usually has low self esteem, and is riddled with quirks and usually can’t keep track of her thoughts. I was reading an article on MPDG’s a while back, and realized how much I needed to fit this description. She has low self esteem so that the (male) lead can make her have a purpose, leading to an endless spiral or resistance and pursuing, until the MPDG cracks, leading to the climax and falling action.

My version of this is lacking in one key area. The protagonist. I have friends, many of them male, yet none of them need to help me in order to succeed in their stories. Why? Because this is real life, not a world of books and movies. If there were to be a boy who came out of nowhere to piece me together like a jigsaw, I would likely make an attempt to decapitate him.

The other areas of my MPDG-esque mission are all in place. I have Christmas lights strung upon my bedroom walls constantly, I pause everyday to sip a cup of tea while in an oversized sweater, I beat myself up over little petty things, I study too hard, then don’t apply myself, I push people away, and ponder common thoughts. Last summer I chopped my hair off in an act of so-called rebellion, leading to me being annoyed at myself for doing it. I don’t like “popular” music, and call movies “films” for no apparent reason.

I try to impress myself, and convince myself that I am worth the other peoples lives, when in fact, that’s what everyone thinks of themselves.