I was eleven the first time it happened, the first time I felt like I wanted to run out of my life and into another one. I was sitting in a room in a childrens’ hospital in Phoenix, a room with Dr. Suess characters painted on the walls. I was there and my parents were there and my doctor was there, telling us how bad the curve in my spine was.

Talking about options. Talking about surgery. And this, on top of the other surgery I needed to have done - the Fontan - was too much to take. It didn’t seem fair that this was ahead of me. It didn’t seem fair to have my parents sitting there, holding hands, talking to the doctor, looking scared.

Parents aren’t supposed to be scared, not when you’re eleven. They’re supposed to be superheroes, able to save the day in a single bound. They’re supposed to be fearless, brave, have all the answers. They shouldn’t look like they’re about to fall apart like mine did.

And that was it: I wanted to run. I had a visual of me running down the hall in my paper gown, running right into another life, one where these problems weren’t problems that belonged to me. But I couldn’t do that, of course. It was impossible. I couldn’t even run to the end of the hall and cry - I wouldn’t make it that far. So instead I sat there and listened, wiped my nose and eyes with a Kleenex, and when the appointment was over put one foot in front of the other and had to face what came next. Without running away.

Now things are different, but I still get that feeling sometimes. Except instead of wearing a paper gown, it’s jeans and a t-shirt and I’m in my car and I just decide to miss my exit and keep going and somehow I end up in the right place.

Or maybe I don’t end up in the right place. But I end up in a different place. A place where I can start over, because three years into this place and I’ve yet to make a life for myself. Somehow everything I have that should add up to one full life just adds up to pieces of one and maybe if I got some superglue I could make it look halfway normal, but it would never be RIGHT. It would always be a little bit off, because in this place I am a little bit off.

I feel stifled. Like if I stay too long I will get trapped, will be like a fish in a bowl and unable to get out. I’ll stop being able to move around and breathe and before long I will turn into nothing, just an empty shell where a girl used to go. I feel like I am being, daily, pushed away from something, something I am or was or something I need to know, need to be close to. It scares me that someday, if enough days pass, I might be pushed far enough away that I forget the need to push back and I just surrender.

It scares me that I might forget to leave.

My granma, amazing lady that she is, sent me the graduation announcement that was in the paper for the class of 2008. The one with everyone’s photos. She sent it in a manilla envelope, an envelope I had been looking forward to getting.

A few days ago I threw it away, unopened.

I don’t need to look at it. I don’t need to see the smiles on their oddly familiar yet faraway faces. The names of people who have impacted me so much, ones I remember so clearly but who, I’m sure, have long forgotten me. It shouldn’t hurt anymore, but it does. I thought the ache would go away after graduation - the one I was supposed to be a part of. It hasn’t. Instead it sits in waiting for the moment I am vulnerable, and pounces, making me miss things I was never a part of and people I haven’t seen in years.

I must not be normal, right?

When I talked to my dad months ago, told him I was sad about all the graduation hulaballoo, he told me not to be. He told me it was stupid, superficial, that I am so far ahead of those kids what with a whole year of college done already. And I get that, honest I do.

But I MISS it.

I miss having friends, people to hang out with, joke around with. I miss being a part of a group, being a recognizable face. I miss sitting down with a group of people who get my jokes, who understand bits and pieces of me. And this missing piece, this aching feeling, it pulls at me. Tugging. I can now count on one hand - two fingers, actually - the number of friends I have around here. One of them is my sister and the other one is intermittently close then faraway, both literally and figuratively speaking.

I still think about the move quite a lot. I ask myself this question, this question I know doesn’t matter: if I could do it all over again, if I had the choice, would I?

And I don’t know. I can see what my parents see of course, how much I’ve grown since we got here. How my writing has exploded, how I’ve pushed ahead in school, how I would have had to leave all my friends eventually anyway.

But I also see something else. I see all the weekends I spend working and never missing out on any other plans I had because there NEVER ARE ANY OTHER PLANS. I see days spent at the mall-plaza place - alone. And my call list full of my parents’ and sister’s numbers.

I see a girl who likes to be alone, but not this much. A girl who is always, always alone. Who has given up on reaching out to others because she is constantly shot down. It’s always “I’m busy,” or “Sorry I’ve already got plans,” or “Yeah, we should totally hang out sometime,” but then we never do.

For the most part I am happy. School, writing, etc etc. I like how my life is going. But I can’t deny what’s missing: I’m lonely. Friends you can only communicate with because you’re lucky enough to have email and texting can’t fill the space of a few actual, hanging-out-together friends.

And the worst part is that I’ve tried. And tried again. And I keep thinking there must be something wrong with me that this space in my life is still empty. But I don’t know what it is and I’m sick of trying to figure it out. 

It gets difficult to believe that it’s not my fault, that it’s the place not the girl. But I know it’s true: it has to be. I can’t be this horrible, can I? The sort of person who makes others run at the thought of being friends with her. This place must be messed up because I refuse to believe - to really, truly believe - that I haven’t put in enough effort or been nice enough or reached out enough.

This, more than anything, is why the college years looming ahead of me scare me. Five to seven more years of this loneliness, this friendless state, makes me want to run right now. I don’t know how I made it through three years and I don’t know how I’ll make it through so many more.

Hello friendlies!

If you remember, I made a list of goals at the start of summer. And now that summer is rapidly drawing to a close and classes are starting the 26th for me, I think it’s a good idea to evaluate which goals were accomplished. And which were not.

1. Get a new job.
   Accomplished. I’ve been working there for about two months now and it’s not the World’s Greatest Job, but it’s good enough and I really like most of the people I work with. So that’s a bonus.
2. Buy MacBook.
   I still owe my dad about, um, $500-ish dollars for it but I have it now and I’m typing on it. So woot!
3. Go to a concert.
   This did not happen. I considered going to a Boys Like Girls concert with some people, but that didn’t actually happen. So eh, I guess sooner or later I’ll see one. But I’m not really too concerned with it.
4. See Bradison and Madley if at all possible.
   It turned out to not be possible. But we talk on the phone sometimes. BB told me he’s riding his bike to school (EIGHT MILES!!!) every day and that he sets his alarm for 4:30 to get up. Mads is working, sort of, but not really during the school year (I don’t think). They amaze me. And I miss them.
5. Have at least 20,000 words to my novel by the end of the summer.
   Well. I quit the novel I was working on and began a new one (or rather, a new-old one) and I have 11,041 words to it so far. It’s not as many as I was hoping for, but I’m not too disappointed. It’s going well and that’s what counts.
6. Be a better friend and cousin.
   This isn’t exactly something that’s easy to evaluate, but I think I’ve become a better friend to my one socal buddy (or at least I’ve tried to) and am still working on being a better cousin to Bradis and Madis.
7. Call my granma often, like at least once a week.
   COLASSAL FAIL.
8. Stop waking up so late.
   Um. I don’t know. I’ve kind of ended up waking up when I needed too and not worrying about it too much. But worrying less? That’s kind of a huge accomplishment for me, so booya!
9. Work on getting an agent for Dusty Red Shoes.
   Yes. I mean, I don’t actually HAVE an agent yet, but I’m working on it.
10. Try to get into freelance writing.
    Wow this SO didn’t happen. 
11. Make it to the meetings.
    I’m doing a lot better than I was. Still not making all of them, but getting steadily better. I feel as if I am getting back on my feet spiritually and it’s definitely a good thing, even if it takes a little while.
12. Find another TV show to get DVDs of.
    Well okay. I have to get the fourth season of The Office when it comes out, but other than that I think I might try to find the Get Smart DVDs. Maybe eBay or something. I know they exist, they just don’t really sell them in stores much.
13. See Get Smart.
    Done! And so so so worth it. Spectacular!
14. Volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House.
    Um. *Fails.* I still really really want to do this, I just didn’t make it happen this summer. It’s still a goal though, for sure. They’ve helped me and my family out so much I feel like I should give back.

So… 8/14. That’s… okay. Not great, but not too awful. And some of the ones I didn’t end up accomplishing ended up not mattering so much in the end, so that’s okay. And others (like seeing Brad and Mads) I wound up having not much control over. But I tried.

Anyway, the school year is starting soon so I’ll hopefully be making another goals list. These things really help I think, even if you don’t do everything you put down to do, it’s at least a way to keep track.

How did you guys do on your summer goals? If you had them I mean.

The slow-in-coming but finally here third installment in my Years series. This follows years seven through twelve, which follows zero through six.

Year Thirteen.

I am a teenager, but it doesn’t seem the landmark age it is for me like it is for others. I am still a kid. It is seventh grade and though I still have no experience with bras or periods, I don’t actually care. I feel like maybe I should, like maybe the part of me that wants to be grown up as fast as everyone else is missing, but I am concentrating too hard on the day by day for it to matter.

I am alive.

For now, that is all I need.

Year Fourteen.

It is split into two parts: the end of eighth grade and the beginning of ninth. Both are glorious, both are impossible to write about in this small space. They include friends and crushes and realizations and Life Happening and a million little incidents I may write about at length later on.

Year Fifteen.

I am midway between a child and a young adult and the ground is falling away from me. Or I am falling away from the ground. We are moving, me and my family, packing our belongings and leaving Radiator Springs to end up in Southern California. There are sad goodbyes and a sense of bitterness and so many tears I am surprised I don’t run out.

I say goodbye to my grandparents: the grandpa that is quiet always reading, and though he doesn’t know it I can see a tremendous amount of how he is in me, his granddaughter. And the granma who calls me her sidekick, who I have always talked to, who I can’t imagine not being able to run next door to visit. I say goodbye to Brad and Madi, not letting myself cry because we are supposed to be fun and light together to guard from the heaviness. I say goodbye to school friends who fall away and a school friend who will prove a life friend. I say goodbye to a friendship that has long since crumbled and a friend I am just getting to know. I say goodbye to the old haunts, the old smells, the old atmosphere, the old culture.

And I arrive in a place where I know nothing. Where I have no idea who to talk to, what to talk about, even how to talk. I am lost, more lost than I know how to explain. It is a scary year; a different scary than I have experienced before. My school is huge. I feel like the girls around me are speaking a foreign language. My makeup free face becomes a bigger issue in my life than I would have ever imagined possible. I feel life pushing me away at the same time as I am pulling away, and I retreat into the shell that is myself for longer than I’d like to admit.

Year Sixteen.

My first job, because everyone around me seems to have a job and I am doing the homeschool thing now, is at a local burger shop. I am pretty much the only girl and I am around big-personalitied guys which of course makes me retreat even further away. I smell like burgers and fries and depending on where I am standing I’m always either freezing cold or burning up. The food is actually good but the constant smells upset my stomach and on at least one occasion I have to run to the bathroom and puke on my break.

I am there for nine months.

Also, somewhere in this year, a couple of essays are written. Sent in to a lady who is interested in the writing of teenage girls. She wants personal essays, and mine are plenty personal. Awful, I think to myself, but personal.

I wake up this morning, perfectly fine, my long hair everywhere. I put on some jeans and a t-shirt, an orange baseball cap, a hoodie. I get in the car and my mom and I drive Taylor the Lovely to her first day of high school.

Her. First. Day. Of. High School.

My baby sister is a freshman. She is around almost-getting-grown people all day long. She has classes like Study Hall and Humanities.

Ohmygosh she’s a freshman!!

It freaks me out a little. I watch her walk into the school, her just-dyed black hair swinging behind her. I guess she looks like she fits, or at least that’s what my mom says. But there is a part of me that wants to pull her back, that is not ready for her to be a high schooler, in the world of high school. A part of me that sees how little she still is, how big this school, this new world, is.

I think it’s the same part of me that can’t quite believe I have a car, or am starting my second year of college, or am officially, technically, a grown up. It’s the part of me that can’t believe childhood is in the past.

So I watch her walk in the school.

From here, me and my mom finish my school shopping. Three shirts and a pair of white shorts.

We exchange my shoes for a 6 1/2 instead of a 7. I run into Wal-Mart and buy some necessary items. Razors. Deodorant. Kleenex. Hand sanitizer. And then, because something in me feels like it, hair gel and shine spray.

I don’t know why I do this. I don’t use hair products normally, but I still buy them. I think maybe they will be fun and if (when) I get sick of them within the first week, there’s always Mom and Taylor to take them off my hands.

Then we’re home. I’m trying to scrunch my hair up and, while my head is hanging upside down, something in me shifts. I don’t know how or why, but it does. One moment I am messing with the gel and the next moment I’ve suddenly decided to get my hair cut.

And not just cut, but CUT.

And there is no real thought process, nothing that happens that makes me realize I want short hair. I just DO. And two hours later I am sitting in a chair at the salon, showing the hairstylist the cover of Paper Towns.

I want my hair gone, like that. There is no reason, no rationale, and it surprises me but I go ahead. I do it.

She shampoos and cuts and cuts and cuts and the hair is falling to the floor and something is happening. It is a little scary, after all these years of long hair, but it’s exhilarating. It’s exciting. It’s different.

But it’s not until now, until after everything is done and my hair is cut and my sister hates it but my parents like it, that I start trying to form some reasoning for my actions. Because I like to have reasoning. I like to at least act like a logical being. I’m realizing though, that there are lots of reasons it could be and yet, as strange as it seems, I had no reason. I can go back now and come up with reasons, and they might be true and they might not. But the bottom line is that, spontaneously and without thinking, I got my hair - my precious, long, always-a-little-scraggly hair - chopped off.

And I’m really happy about it.

Before

After

Also: I know it doesn’t look it, but my hair is THE EXACT SAME COLOR in both pictures. This has never changed.

Also: Later in the day I went all punky (because short hair’s like that, and I’m sometimes kinda like that… or at least I wanna be) and spiked it.

We are billions of bits of dust, scattered about. 

You bump into me,

and I bump into you,

and we come together, we fall apart.

We leave trails behind us of where our hearts have been.

******

I think the dust metaphor needs work. And I know it’s probably a really cruddy poem, as pretty much all of mine are.

I’m talking to my friend today. We’re walking through the Barnes and Noble, drinking our iced teas and escaping from the heat and talking. She mentions something about people who are sure of themselves, who know what they want out of life, who know where they’re headed.

Like me.

And it makes me think.

I have an answer ready whenever someone asks me what my plans are. I tell them I’m going to school to become a teacher. I say that I’m going to community college but planning to transfer to state in a few years. I tell them I want to teach elementary, particularly kindergarten. I tell them I volunteered in a kindergarten classroom while I was in high school and I loved it.

All true.

But that’s just the answer I give. It’s true, but that’s not why I say it. I say it because it’s practical. Because it’s a plan - methodical, thought out. Smart. It’s not med school but you’re hard pressed to find someone who thinks I’m undisciplined or that my goals aren’t good enough. Teaching is linear. You work hard, you get your degree, you find a job.

Writing, however, is more complicated. Telling people I plan to be a writer gets me raised eyebrows, a look of surprise, and then some possible confusion when I say I want to write novels for teens. People tend to think Harry Potter, Judy Blume, and Gossip Girl while I’m talking about Sarah Dessen, John Green, and Sara Zarr. It’s not exactly a clearly defined career path. Basically you write and write and write and write and hopefully, some day, you’ll make a few bucks. It’s not the kind of job you get if you’re being smart and practical about things.

In fact, it’s probably not the kind of job you can get if you’re not hell bent on it. For most people it’s more of a pipe dream than a reality, more of a wish than a fulfillment. 

Saying you want to write books for a living, novels for teens, sometimes seems akin to saying HELLO I AM A BIG CRAZY DELUSIONAL PERSON. It doesn’t make sense. Writing isn’t the sort of thing where you can get a degree and find a job, it’s the sort of thing where you always have to be proving yourself, where it’s near impossible to make it through the door in the first place, where for every thousand that attempt it roughly two succeed. Or at least that’s what I hear.

But I am determined, have always been determined, to make it.

So yes, in this area I am sure of myself. I am sure this is what I want to do though I see the cards stacked against me. I am sure I will keep writing even if nothing happens, if no money is made. I’m sure this is my dream and I’m sure I want it to be more than that. A reality.

It’s like this:

(Well, it’s kind of like this. I can’t really come up with the best analogy.)

It’s like you’re at an amusement park and your friend says, “Hey, let’s go on the roller coaster!” And you really really really don’t want to because you hate roller coasters, but you go anyways.

So you’re trapped there, in this tiny car on these tracks that you’re afraid are going to break even though logically you know they won’t. And you’re scared to death and you’re just sitting there with your eyes shut, waiting for it to be over, thinking in every moment that it has to be over soon even though it just keeps going on. Like it will go on forever.

And the worst part is that you didn’t have to be there, that it’s not your roller coaster to go on but you’re stuck riding it anyways.

All the news, just one blog.

I have lots of reworking to do to THE NOVEL. My beta reader/writing buddy (ahh! I have a beta reader! How cool is that?) says that she doesn’t like one of the main characters. In fact she says, “I wish she would just act like a biznatch so I’d have an actual reason to dislike her.” So, uh, yeah. I need to work on that.

Also I have a new musical obsession (this one is all empowering and FUN WITH OPPOSITES), the song Big Girl (You Are Beautiful) by Mika. It just makes me so happy inside! I’ll see if I can remember how to get the video in here. EDIT: I remembered, but it’s just not working. Go here to listen to it. 

Also I’ve officially read FOUR of the SEVEN books I recently received in the mail and I should tell you all that When We Were Romans (Not YA and sorry I’m too lame to get up and find out the author’s name) is ENTIRELY CREEPY but so worth reading!

The My Boys season finale is next week. (Sad sad.)

Officially registered for classes. English. Geometry (which will kill me). History (will kill what is left of me). Geology (may or may not add to the killing). Philosophy.

That’s right, friendlies, THE JORDYN IS TAKING FIFTEEN CREDITS!!! Three more than she has to! Stay tuned to see if she can handle it! (And ask her if she realizes that taking fifteen credits right now won’t actually speed up the schooling process, even though it seems like it should. Because I think she’s just a little bit in denial.)

Also, I need new clothes. Oh joy. (Can you FEEL the sarcasm radiating from that sentence?) I take back what I said about Geometry, History, and possibly Geology killing me because buying new clothes is what will actually kill me. Is there some sort of my-friends-and-family-think-there’s-something-wrong-with-me group for girls who don’t like clothes shopping?

I’m at a strange time in my life. A time when other girls around me who are my age are getting married or having boyfriends or being kindasorta engaged. A time when everyone is pairing off. When childhood is being left behind. And I’m not sure what to think of it.

I guess I might have more of an opinion, more solid thoughts on it, if any of the girls getting married were my close friends, or if I had been to any of the weddings, or if I was walking on the same path.

But as it is I seem to, at this early stage in life, be the DIFFERENT ONE. I have no boyfriend, and no potential boyfriends in sight, and I’m definitely not thinking about getting married to the boyfriend I don’t have. I’m not trying to move out of my parents’ house and I’m not even really going and hanging out with people (a different story altogether). I feel defiant. I feel like soon enough people will start asking me if I have a boyfriend (because everyone else will already be married) and I will tell them no and they will not quite know what to say.

I’m not sure how I feel about this, actually.

This is what I know:

I know I’m glad I’m going to school, glad I’m still writing, glad I’m going into the fields I wanted to.

I know I’m glad I don’t have to rush out and become a grownup just yet.

I know that when it happens that I do become a grownup, it will be good and it will be the right time.

I also know it won’t be here. And I know that when I say that people think it’s because I don’t like it here, because I hate it.

It’s not that. I don’t hate it. I tried to explain my feelings about this place to my mom once and she basically thought I was a crazy person, so I won’t attempt it again. But basically, just as a general rule with everything in my life, I don’t want to end up somewhere just because it’s there. I don’t want to end up in a place (whether it be a real place or a career or whatever) because it’s convenient or because it’s the path of least resistance.

I didn’t decide to get baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses because it was my parents’ religion or because it was the simplest to choose.

I didn’t decide to go to college to become a teacher because it was convenient.

So I’m not going to get married because everyone else is.

And I’m not going to live somewhere because I’m already there.

I want to do this right, this whole “life” thing. I want to make the decisions I can look back on and be happy about instead of thinking why was I so stupid when I was eighteen?