There's Something To Be Said For Growth

At this point, I could cry. I spent almost an hour pouring my heart and soul into a piece on why I hate graduations, and the internet crashed two seconds after I hit the publish key. Now it is lost. I hate that more than anything else on the planet. When you are able to produce a work that is actually good and then lose it before you can ever make it count. The funny thing is, I never realized how much my writing pieces meant to me until now. So, until I can find the ability to re-write it, I figured something would be better than nothing.

At Mr. Rainey's request (see, I said Mister. Aren't you proud?), I was digging through my really old essays from past years, and I found this. I was unsure whether to laugh or cry. So, I'm posting it for nothing else than to please the afore-mentioned party, and provide you as a reader with the amusement of how awful it really is. Feel free to mock, just keep in mind it's really old, and was a school assignment. *blushes miserably* Really, no offense to Germany, I think it was my misguided, failed attempt at early sadistical humor or something. Are all eighth graders this bitter, not to mention corny with their conclusions?

My name only consists of eight letters, but over the years, it has begun to encompass who I am as a person. As a little girl, I always hated my name. My brother, being two years younger than me, couldn’t manage to pronounce it until he was almost four, so he just called me "Muh-lah".
Before I was even born, my name was a controversy. My dad wanted to name me Crystal. My mother is entirely superstitious and refused, because the only Crystal she ever knew became a heroine addict. So, instead she picked her favorite name as a child, and I was thus dubbed. To top it off, my grandfather insisted that I have the same middle name as my mom. This is how I became Michelle Lea Hensler.
It’s amazing how irritating an eighteen-letter title can become. My surname has very little meaning for me. I know that it is of German origin, but obviously my family has very little ties to its roots. Michelle Lea Hensler always struck me as generic, making me picture a pathetic white picket fence in suburban America. I always felt so deprived of culture. I know nothing of German heritage; my knowledge ends at the capabilities of Nazi’s. It doesn’t help that I now live in a bland state, situated in a country that starts wars over oil, and for the last four decades has idolized a boy-band group that was constantly on acid and sang about yellow submarines, and girls with kaleidoscope eyes.
It’s difficult for me not to have issues with the Beatles. Their song, "Michelle", is famous, and has come to cause many problems. I suppose it is, at times, flattering that everyone associates my name with those French lyrics that when translated mean "my beautiful". However this has recently been shattered by how common the name Michelle has become. I despise everything common, so I have a tendency to gravitate towards more unusual names, like Kyler, or Romiette. My kids will not have to endure the all too annoying issue of having four other students in your class with the same name as you.
I quit letting my name irritate me a while ago. After time, it started to feel right. Now, when someone says my name, it’s like those two syllables hold all of my life experiences; every laugh, every tear, every smile, and every frown. It is almost as if those letters are able to encompass the person I have come to be, as well as the potential for what may lie ahead. While the name itself may be generic, it has come to suit a person that is far from it. For this, I may take pride.

Disgraceful Presence

I am in no mood to write anything but elementary thoughts currently consuming an already confused mind. I suppose the inadequacy of this selection or entry or whatever the term that is most properly fitting is of no significance, because I let myself go somewhere I shouldn't have. Again. I let myself be proud of something. I had faith in myself. I had faith in people; a few members of the male gender in particular. That's where it all went wrong. Maybe childhood determines everything. Then, from that point on, you've already been dealt your destiny and the next 80 years are just a matter of running through the motions, pretending we have some variation of a grip on reality, making choices and living independently. When, in truth, our paths are already laid before us. Rejected in childhood? Yup, it's going to happen time and time over again. Thus, there's no way you can win. If you close your heart off, you subject yourself to a life of misery and suffocate your soul. If you open your heart, then this is the result.
I've been thinking a lot about childhood. Rather, about the difference between a father and a dad. I suppose some people would consider them synonyms with the exact same meaning. I know better. Any John Doe can have a fun night and serve as sperm donor. With the exception of disabling medical conditions, any guy can father a child. However, in this twisted tale known as life, it didn't take me long to learn that not everybody is competent in parenting a child. You can live in the same house, go through the daily routine of "hey, honey, how was your day? Let me know if you need anything" and then not be seen for the rest of the night unless some common happening produces a rant of rage directed at whomever is most convenient. Children whose fathers abandoned them are considered fatherless, so what word describes someone with the possession of a father, but not a dad?
Once more, a shotglass was deemed more worthy than family. To live in a house, not once building a relationship, or even more accurate, building it in tiny segments and just when everything is looking productive and well, the small progress is destroyed and one is left to stand in the rubble, full of questions and "could-have-been"s, is a situation more commonly represented than society may realize. It's surprisingly easy. Everything looks pristine and happy in the family portrait, but behind closed doors it is evident that while there is no doubt of love, the home somehow remains a miserable trench of forced conversations and hidden pain. This is the path that carves all others. From then on, one is cursed.
This time, the heart is opened to love. Real, true, butterflies-in-the-stomach, catch-in-the-throat, bite-your-lip-to-contain-the-happiness love. Then...MISSION FAILED.
Fine, recuperate, heal, and move on to the next attempt. This time allowing yourself to trust friends. Then, because all is going so well, branch out farther and take a leap of faith. Going so far as to trust people when they say you have a talent. This is always a mistake, this business of trusting people. If a pattern hasn't been noticed in previous situations, then it at least ought to be blatantly clear by now. You trust this talent, you trust yourself, you trust your friends. So you do it, you reach out to the world and spread your wings and you are free until...Splat! Well, for once I am at a loss for adjectives. Not only has all hope that you may be good at something, something you love with such a strong, unabashed passion, all hope that you might possibly possess the power to make somebody feel something, inspire something within that person, bring to life something that had remained dormant...Not only has all of that disintegrated into a whirlwind of torment and anguish, but an innocence was lost in the process. The respect and love once deemed so great, for which this is felt I am not entirely certain, has been irreparably damaged.
Even that is not all. Also managed is to make an apparent disgrace of yourself and the anguish of a nation, even if that was not your intent. Even if you were finally writing something true and harsh and real. Writing something that was meant to initiate that spark in others, because it was the first time it awoke something in the writer. It takes skill to be so bad at something. I don't mean so bad at writing, however true that may be, but bad at life. It takes some skill to be this bad at life and relationships and clarity. Perhaps it's the one skill obtained in childhood. Others got great gifts, I got the ability to screw up. A predestined path of failure and heartbreak and pain and everything else that I hate myself for feeling. Never before has the fine line between love and hate been so clear, made prominent by ever-powerful frustration. Considering the horrendous failure at the leap of faith, I wonder if maybe I'd be better off trying just the leap. It's an alternative that sounds better every minute. So, fair audience, I am sorry to disappoint. I tried.