First week of 12th grade

I decided that this weekend I want to focus my energy on something throughout, and this is a good place to start. I just finished my first real week in person at school since March 2020. It was about as close to normal as anyone could hope for with COVID protocols. I'm a senior this year and that's definitely strange. I don't feel confident or advanced in my abilities, especially in writing or art. In fact my only improvements since tenth grade appear to be in mental wellness. Which is very good! But creatively I feel like there is little I am capable of doing, and a lot expected of me.

madeline took this :o)

The first day had me sort of worried. It was nice to sit in classrooms, and to see the neighborhood of my school again. I was really excited to notice which rooms had a direct view of the Q and B train. If I look over to the left in my AP government class I can always spot one passing through. At the same time I felt a little nervous because of this tension that I had by being in the building, and there was a hum of anxiety about how my clothes were sort of uncomfortable, I was too hot, I had sounded dumb, talked to someone who did not want to talk to me, I didn't even want to talk to them, or I was impolite. I wasn't freaking out but I had to reacquaint myself with the physical discomfort that school gives me. 

By day two I was mostly feeling better. I'm lucky to have almost every class and all of my free periods with Madeline, so I get to talk to her a lot, have lunch with her, and we walk from class to class together. Our OPTAs have been pretty interesting actually: people I half-knew from classes in the past have started sitting at our table in the student suite thing. Mad and I have 3 OPTAs (not all 3 every single day), and so the earliest one is usually just us but the second and third we have company. We've already chosen a table as our own, so it feels to me like we are having guests at our house for card games and crosswords and lunch.

In the middle of the week I was pretty tired and my initial concerns were replaced by new ones. I don't think I know where to start with my AP art project and I don't think my teacher will like it. I may have inadvertently, silently caused beef in my art history class. In memoir & fiction, we're starting with college essay stuff, and I don't really care if "every other 12th grader in the country" feels this way, I know my essay will suck. Italian IV, I'm so sorry, I truly remember nothing from the past three years.

Once again, these are like low level stressors that pop up in class. It's like a basis of facts that I should be immediately worried about but instead make me slightly less happy. Every time I have felt inadequate in the past I haven't flat-out failed, to be fair. I usually coast in school with grades in the 90s. But with things like art class, it isn't a secret that the goal is to be very good. The goal is to make multiple pieces of art that are skillful, original, and visually interesting. I have failed at this in the past. It just doesn't show on my transcript, because I'm a good student otherwise. Maybe it's useless to complain about, but there is a very self conscious spot within me that is constantly bruised when the teacher alludes to the abilities she "knows we all have" or to the skills we have all mastered by this point through the art program. I am not a good artist and I'm not looking forward to the difficulties I'm going to start having, probably in the next week when we have to start working on specific pieces.

Thursday was Yom Kippur so there wasn't any school. I went to IHOP with Madeline, and it was super sweet and fun. She got pumpkin pancakes, which I unfortunately forgot to try, and I got the tres leches ones. I spent some time with her before she had to go to work, and I read a little on the bus, and it was a lovely break to have in a weird week.

School on Friday was pretty lax, since I didn't have gov or Italian. I had a surprisingly nice time in yoga class, this being the first day we actually did any movement. My teacher is really sweet and friendly to her students, and so it was low pressure. We didn't do any poses, just seated stretching, but it was genuinely calming and it felt pretty good. I didn't even feel that weird about being one of the only people who actually changed for class and wasn't sitting cross-legged in tight jeans. I had ice cream and looked in a bookstore in the afternoon with my friends but there was a scrabble argument in the evening and I'd rather not get into that. I'm happy to report I have a set halloween costume plan now though and I slept shockingly well on this night.

My sleep schedule has been really strange and bad for most of the week. I get tired pretty quick after school and dinner, so I usually fall asleep between 8 and 9. I try to take a melatonin supplement to secure the sleep in a way. But I consistently have been waking up sometime between 12 and 2 AM, then staying awake for another two hours or so before falling asleep again. In the end I sleep something like two blocks of 3 hours on average. Sometimes one block is only one hour, or even 30 minutes though, and one time this week I only slept two hours all night. It's so, so weird. My guess is that a combination of nerves and the fact that I overused OTC diphenhydramine (it says non-addictive!) for sleep a few weeks ago has screwed with my body. I'm fine enough with some caffeine at school but I really do hope to figure this out in a healthy way.

One weird thing I wanted to mention that happened to me over the summer was this detaching from my emotions. Especially at the very end of August, I realized that I had no urges to cry for any reason, personal or movie/music/book induced. That is super weird for me! I don't cry everyday (though there have been periods of time when I did) but it happens more often than for most. I cry out of frustration a lot, I cry in awkward situations, I cry when I'm sad for someone, you know? But for a while nothing was making me feel very much. It was very good in some ways because I really haven't been super anxious since June or July, and this could be seen as proof of that, but it also concerned me that I felt sort of numb in place of having any emotional release. I felt that reading and music and all those things weren't making me very happy by early September, either, so I was indifferent in two directions. It didn't apply to everything, but I was starting to worry that I was going to be stuck feeling numb. Now I've cried three times in the past seven days and it felt like a relief! Yes, I am still very much myself and still possessing a functional, sensitive heart.

red uakari monkey <3

I may have lost my footing during that time partially because this boost of happiness I had been riding out via my Martin Sheen shows (The West Wing and Grace & Frankie) had run its course. I ran out of episodes. I have seen a few good movies in the meantime- like The Dead Zone, an adaptation of a Stephen King book about a man who can visualize future disasters by shaking someone's hand. I'm a sucker for the sleazy, evil politician character Martin Sheen plays. I love the iconography of his campaign buttons and posters, which depict the candidate with this ridiculous construction hat on his head. He wears it during rallies and public appearances as a shameless, lazy grab for the working vote. There's something about the theater of American politics that is disgustingly enjoyable for me. I'm starting to even like the red-white-blue color combo in this part ironic, part guilty pleasure, campaign-core, articles in the New Yorker from 2012 about Obama v Romney, type of way. It's an imagery, and a form of complicated celebrity with complex partisan backgrounds that really fascinates me. It's entertainment! As a far left person politically I don't have any love for this system, and I certainly do not feel patriotic in consuming its real or fictional media. I do feel lucky to have such a wealth of similar content to enjoy and analyze for my personal enjoyment, though. I tried to watch The Candidate, starring Robert Redford as a good-faith liberal Senate candidate (sort of an antidote to Sheen's Greg Stillson) but I was bored partway through and didn't finish it. I have higher hopes for All The President's Men.

Along with the more domestic political media I'm really enjoying old army stuff. I'm reading Catch-22 and loving it, though I admittedly find it hard to read more than a few pages in a day. I may just be out of practice, but the confusing dialogue and sheer amount of characters makes me physically shut down and fall asleep. Somehow, I had my best luck reading it earlier today while walking in the cemetery. Maybe as elementary school kids we were onto something when we tried to continue reading while walking to the lunchroom, it occupies my body while keeping my brain awake. I'd have done it for longer if there were less people I worried were looking at me and less speeding cars to dodge. I started watching the TV series M*A*S*H a few days ago, which I had previously only known from those green t-shirts. It's such a sweet show. Hawkeye, the main character is played by Alan Alda- I knew him as Senator Vinick from The West Wing. I wasn't crazy about him in that, but here he's this cynical and conniving army medic in the Korean War. I get him, I love him, I see his star power without a shadow of a doubt now. And I love his voice, for some reason! I'm so grateful for many things about this show: one is that it's about doctors and nurses in the war, who seem to have at least a bit more of a clear moral standing than if it were about a group of silly combat soldiers. The other is the consistent level of funny but kind homoeroticism throughout the show (at least up to where I'm at- many seasons to go).

 Hawkeye and Trapper have this friendship that lends itself to a romantic viewing even when they don't do the slow dance themselves, or hold hands for a gag. There are so many instances with Hawkeye and another male character where he says something to indicate his affection, and yes it's a joke, but I don't know how to explain how genuinely gay it feels without just making you sit down and watch it. The others are flattered or confused at his teasing comments, never disgusted or offended. And the show itself has such a golden, warm core to it! The first few episodes didn't fully hook me, just because they were so heavy on the sex jokes and ogling women factor, but even those elements are balanced in a way by the rest of the ridiculousness that goes on. Some of my favorite moments so far have been ones of seriousness or grace from Hawkeye, who seemed through and through a little menace to everyone. He can be so so sweet, especially when it comes to his devotion to nursing or to Trapper or Radar or anyone in need. M*A*S*H is my show for the moment and I'm so happy I started watching it.

Also: I am so in love with the specific military costuming in this show. And all of Hawkeye's robes and sweaters and shit too. I want to go to the army surplus store so bad.

couldn't find many good full body images but: fuck, those pants!!

What else! I haven't been listening to much music aside from Simon and Garfunkel. They really have a hold on me right now, especially with Bridge Over Troubled Water. I can't believe how much I like it and how long it took for me to get into their stuff. "El Condor Pasa (If I could)" and "The Only Living Boy in New York" have affirmed themselves as my comforts and observational-mood songs during the school week, and "Baby Driver" is a track that is mine and is about me even if that makes no logical sense.

I think that's all I have to share for now! I'm not doing a thorough edit of this post because I think it's fine if I treat blogging more casually. Less pressure? In any case, have a beautiful rest of your day and thank you very much for reading.