Man oh man, the things that stick with me. The ghost of Crow is still sort of looming around these days, like one of those secrets in your head you try to quiet but won’t shut up. Well, just another skeleton in my closet of corpses. Things have gotten better be-tween us at least. Sometime the week be-fore last, he called out my name from be-hind me and walked me to seventh hour. Likewise, the Thursday that just passed (what is it with Thursdays and amazing-ness?) he playfully bumped into my side to get my attention and again walked me to class. The same day, he came up to me in the bus loop, touching my chin (being ironic as I sometimes greet people that way) and starting up a conversation with me. However, I’m not really committing myself to him right now. I’m not going to close my heart to every other guy out there for this one who will probably never like me again, and, let’s not forget, really, really hurt me. Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming lack of men at my school who aren’t either stupid, total dicks, boring or taken (and sickeningly enough, the vast majority are all of the above). But oh well, romance is not my main concern right now. I have about four-five hours of homework a night, and am barely keeping my 4.0 GPA. For a while I’ve managed to keep an A in my college class all year so far (even if only by a few points), and brought up my Algebra II grade with some help from my teacher and a few good test grades. Right now, I have all A’s, except for my B in Creative Writing, which, to be honest, seems completely ridiculous to me. She gave me back one of my papers and docked off 20 points be-cause she said she didn’t like my writing style, even though grammatically, and even ideologically, I was right on… I’ll win her over. :] De-spite the fact that I barely ever have the opportunity to talk to them at all, my friends are so supportive. Danny is being just being Danny, in all of his innate awesome-ness. I’ve also be-friended Danny’s buddy Hunter, who is really cool and who I’ve been spending a lot of time with lately (unavoidable since he’s almost always with Danny and Danny’s almost always with me). They both help me a lot with not getting too stressed out with school. I wish I could spend more time with them then I’m reasonably permitted, but I’m just really glad to have them in my life right now. Chris is helping me a lot with my AP course (since he’s taking the same one) and gives me some insight on a lot of the teachers I have now (since he had most of them two years ago). And things are basically going great with all of my close – closer friends (Brie, Spencer, Justin, etc, etc).

The problems I am having are, unfortunately, the two I like to consider “best” friends. Lauren is an obvious one. Ever since late elementary school, we’ve had our issues. It was usually just a matter of her screwing me over and me getting unreasonably mad. I’m not going to go into tons of examples be-cause there are tons for me to choose from, one being her going out with the guy I liked the day after he broke up with me (without asking permission or any of that cordial crap) or when she was hard-core flirting with the guy I had been crushing on for months and made me watch. Those are two that just come to mind immediately and I don’t even really care be-cause they were both soooo long ago (the former in grade 6 and the latter, late grade 7) but she sort of did something similar about a week ago. Not as drastic really, but while we were conversing , she called Crow over (she knows about all the drama be-tween him and me) and gives him this huge hug and starts talking to him. Not wanting to deal with it at all, I just turn and walk away. I’m good at hiding my feelings when I’m really pissed off. Later, I call her out on it, and she starts playing the victim card like I’m the villain here. That wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t had texted both Danny and Lamb to tell them to ask me why I was “mad at her” even though she had already admitted earlier to me what was up. I got pretty bitchy both with her and Lamb. Eventually she apologized and we made amends. Spencer tells me to just give up on her, but I don’t want to. I’ve known her basically since I was born (15 months old or something) and I pretty much grew up at her house, with her family. It’s nice having someone who knows everything about you and understands you, and I don’t want to give that up. Maybe we’ve both changed a lot since grade 4 (when we first started drifting apart), but we always come back to each other in hard, and good times, which makes me think we will be forever intertwined. But I promised myself that this is it. I’m tired of letting people stomp all over me. I think she knows I’m not playing around this time. I’ve been sticking up for myself a lot more lately. I might just be in an endless bad mood on account of getting up too early and doing too much work, but I like to blame the bitchiness on some deep internal change.

And then there’s Katy. I love Katy. She’s probably my closest friend, and definitely my closest girl friend (Goddamn my inability to be-friends females!). But she keeps doing this weird drama thing. And it drives me crazy. I try to ask her advice on things I’m dealing with, but she either a) ignores me, b) says “uh huh” and talks about something more katy-related, or c) re-ports everything I say to at least two other people. This really wouldn’t bother me, but then she gets all pissy with me when I don’t tell her stuff. She often asks me for advice and re-lies on me as a listener, and I’ve re-alized something. She really hates being single, like more than is normal for the romance-obsessed teenage girl. First she goes out with James, a few weeks later Billy, a few DAYS later Dillon (who I introduced her to), then she starts to like this other kid and breaks up with Dillon. When she realized things wouldn’t work out with her new boo, she went back to Dillon within the course of one week. And now she’s flirting with a guy in my creative writing class. I don’t really have a problem with that, that whole new-guy-every-other-moment thing, but she’s usually so enthralled in the drama of it all we can never really have fun like we used to…

Oh well.

I’m really focusing on school right now.

And I’m kinda kicking ass, so, that’s good enough for me.

I find myself caring less and less the more days that go by. It’s a sad turn of events, but in all honesty, one I be-lieve that had to occur. But, hey, I’ve come to realize lately, the people I thought would’ve left me long ago haven’t, and the ones I thought would be with me until the end aren’t… Goes to show how crappy my intuition is. However, my mind, unfortunately still wanders to that dark place in my brain sectioned off as “CROW” (yeah, he’s got his own fricking de-partment now, what do ya know?!). I was never good at that “getting over it and moving on” thing, but I think I’m making substantial progress. No, that’s a lie, I still can’t forget about him, but I just don’t express the feelings of regret and guilt I feel as openly. Hurrah for all the introverts out there.

In the friends aspect of life, things actually aren’t bad. I’ve still got Katy, which is a blessing. I don’t even care if she’s enthralled in her own life all of the time; as long as she takes me along for the ride (and hopefully lets me ride shotgun) it’s all good. Unfortunately, things could be better be-tween me and Danny / Butter (yeah, yeah, I said it). We were really close over the summer but now I feel like I’m sort of losing the bond I once had with him… Things are fantastic with Brie and I actually, which is both surprising and re-freshing. It seems like the only friend-esque moments I have with her are when we’re both crying our eyes out, but lately we’ve been having a great time, laughing a lot and sharing a lot of sweet moments. Things are just as they always are with Spencer, and, God, I wouldn’t change a thing about it. I love the relationship I have with him. Justin’s been helping me sort through some stuff lately which I also appreciate. So, well, if this whole Crow thing has taught me anything (be-sides not being so giving with my heart in the future), it’s which of my friends I can trust and rely on. In addition to the Power Five, I’ve been spending a lot more time lately with Caroline which is so great be-cause we always get along and she’s a great listener. And, well, the best and worst part of all of this is Lauren… I’ve really missed having her in my life, and it didn’t really seem like she wanted me in it either most of last year. But now, she’s putting an effort into it, which isn’t expected of her. But, I like it. She’s like my sister after all, and we can always find common ground. Sometimes it’s kind of nice to be with someone who knows everything about you without having to have anything explained to them. I really want to make our friendship work this time (again; I know I’ve said that be-fore) but this whole Crow thing has me walking on egg shells. I thought him and I were going somewhere, and we were, just, ya know, turns out it was a dead end. I really don’t want to go through it again. I can’t re-member ever hurting about something this badly for so long.

And you know what they say:

“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”

It sort of just sunk in at lunch to-day. Holy shit. To-morrow I start high school. This summer felt infinite and endless, like God would put it on loop or something. And I keep imagining I’m going to stay up late watching cheesy game shows, and wake up at exactly 6:45 with no definite plans for the day. Where I can wander be-tween my piano and guitar and go on spontaneous bike rides to nowhere. This summer was weird as anything, sure, that’s a given, but it was insightful. I learned a lot. I think I grew up a little bit too. Which isn’t necessarily a bad or good thing. I’m still really young, so it wasn’t any mandatory “coming-of-age” or whatever, and yeah, I’ve still got a hell of a lot to learn.

But, hey, I got a head start. :]

Well, I know my schedule, and I’m going to tell you now, it’s be-yond perfect:

1.       Pre-AP biology

2.       Pre-AP English

3.       Gym

4.       Algebra II

5.       World Cultures Honours

6.       AP Environmental Sciences

7.       Creative Writing

I really think I’ll get a kick out of the creative writing class. Be-cause I love writing, sure, but also be-cause I’m so curious to the sort of people I’ll meet. I’m hoping they’re passionate people, like me, but I have a feeling the class will be composed of two sorts of people. 1. The kind who took it as a cheese class for an easy A to raise their GPA. And 2. The kind who thinks it gives them scene kudos or indie points. :O Like, I’m terrified I’m going to walk in and everyone will be wearing all black with eyeliner running down their face writing poetry about how much life sucks.

Be-sides that, everything seems as though it’ll work out pretty rad. All of my close friends (Katy, Danny, Justin, Brie and Spencer) are all going there. And basically all of my other friends excusing those younger than me, Ari and Lamb are all along for the journey. :] Unfortunately, I don’t have any classes with my bestie Katy, and I probably won’t with Danny, Justin or Brie, but I have a good feeling I’ll have at least one with Spencey. :]

Haha, we’ll see. :3

I guess be-fore I can rant about all the crap going on now, I’ll have to catch you up. >-< Using past blog posts as a reference, I’ll just write and reply to all the things that were important to me.

Okay, I’ll start with Tadpole. Well, I continued to crush on him for most of the grade 8 year. And just as I was starting to get over him, he asked me out on April 30^th on a school trip. Things be-gan awkward around us, but we got better at the whole “going-out” thing. There were a lot of question marks for me around how much he actually cared about me. Actually, those “wtf’s” floating around are still in the near-most atmosphere. So now, I am planning to break up with him. Mostly be-cause over the summer I’ve changed a lot, and he hasn’t. I’ve be-come a lot more independent, and, if possible, even a little more self-kept. Right now I don’t feel like having anything serious in my life. I just want to spend lots of time with my friends, and hook up with some hot guys. If in the process I find someone I totally connect with (which I’m starting to doubt since I am outrageously picky) hell fricking yes, I’m game. But like I said, I’m thinking that’s not coming for a while. Which I’m perfectly okay with. :]

I guess I’ll then move on to the friends in my life right now. Okay. Bam. You got Katy, Brie, Java, Butter (re-member him?!?! :D) and Spencer. Katy’s my go-to girl, we hang out all of the time and recently just took a suave vacation to-gether with her parents, brother and cousin. :] Additionally, there’s Brie. We just be-came close this year, but she’s like my baby and I love her just oh so much. ^-^ Then there’s Java (a clever nickname if you couldn’t gather that) and uh, I don’t even want to go into that yet. Then there’s my baby boy Butter who I just be-came close with again after he broke up with his long-time girlfriend. :] And, OF COURSE, my favourite! Spencer! My shy, sarcastic little friend who makes my world go round and my heart go bu-bump. :]

Pumpkin…ah… don’t get me started. I want to shoot myself for still thinking about him on a daily basis. I honestly don’t have romantic feelings towards him anymore, be-cause I know it’s completely pointless, especially since we’re not even friends anymore and I barely see him at all these days. I think it’s just that feeling I had with him. Like that: “I could be with you forever” feeling. And I keep comparing every vibe I get from every guy to that one. And none even come close! But, hey, I’m lucky enough to know what I’m looking for. 

Okay, story time over. It’s now time to talk about the here and now. God, uh. Where to start. >-< Okay, so, I volunteer at this summer camp that I used to go as a wee little one. It’s so amazing, like a time machine. I get to be outside in the blazing heat all day wrestling, and running around, and, well, just being a little kid. I would love it so much more if I didn’t have to deal with a certain someone there. You guessed it Java. Sure, he’s a great friend, but he has made my summer SO stressful. Well, alright, so, he likes me, has since the first day we met (apparently, that seems like total bull shit to me though). And he’s not intimidated to say it. Everyday. It stresses me out, be-cause he’s not the kind of guy I’m looking for. And, well, I’m always just at a loss of words at what to say to him. Be-cause if I totally rip his heart apart, I lose one of the closest people to me. But, in all honesty, I doubt he hangs out with me just to be a great guy and help me out with all my issues. It’s be-cause he wants to hook up. It’s totally obvious. It really is. And that really hurts, be-cause it seems like that’s what all my friends want as of lately. One of my best friends told me a few weeks ago that’s he’s been “in love” with me for the past two years. About a week ago, the only one of my guy friends I thought would NEVER be like that with me, told me he’d love to hook up after I break up with my boyfriend. And, well, it’s SO frustrating! Like, I’m not a pretty girl. I don’t have an amazing personality. I’m nothing special at all. Which makes it even worse be-cause I’m sure they’re figuring that I’ll be easy, or something like that. And the ones that don’t want to get with me, try and get to me hook them up with one of my few girl friends.

It’s actually really depressing me lately. Be-cause it seems like no one in my life currently cares about me all that much. And I know that’s a common theme of this angsty little blog, but right now it’s really hitting me.

I’m kind of glad I have Butter back in my life now. But even he, I doubt I can actually trust him with important things.  He’s probably going to be-come one of those friends I can have fun with but not expect a real, deep, spiritual connection with. I help him with all of his problems and whatnot, but I don’t bother him with any I’m having. But he might be coming over to hang Thursday, so we’ll see what happens then. We’ve been texting a lot lately, and he says things like: “Chloe’, you’re like my best friend now, and I love hanging out with you and stuff more than any other girl. And what we have is really special and I’d do stuff with you I wouldn’t do with other girls” and blahblahblah. I’ve been hearing it so much lately it sounds like a load of crap. A big, steaming load of CRAP. I’m not sure how I’m feeling about Butter right now… Like whether he’s trying to be a good friend, or just trying to use me for /something/ (it seems like everyone is). But we’ll see. I think the answer will be-come totally clear in time.

That seems like about it. I’ll try and blog a little more, like at least once a week or every other week. <:]

And, wow, okay, we’ll just see how this all turns out.