Not so much a friend

When Gabe told me that he couldn't be friends with me any more because I was atheist and he was a Protestant, and that I was weakening him spiritually, I was actually not at all upset. Well, I felt a little sad, but only out of guilt for not feeling sad in the first place.

Yeah, I'm that kind of person.

Since I knew he had been having problems with keeping up with the super-devout level of his family, I realized he was just trying to be a better person. So while I didn't agree with him ditching all his atheist friends, I saw what he was going through and tried to support him.

But then something made me lose all respect for him.

I was at Heather's birthday party, rocking out. Heather's Catholic, and we're best friends (though it's impossible to meet this girl and NOT be friends with her - she's constantly happy. A human Prozac). She knew about the whole issue with Gabe - in fact, she'd tried to talk him out of doing what she thought was extremely stupid of him. But anyway, he was still supposed to show up at her sweet sixteen. But he didn't. Even though he promised, he didn't.

So we called him on speakerphone, everybody wanting to tease him for being MIA. But he sounded incredibly bitter and rude on the phone, and when Katy jokingly said, "What's more important than your friend's birthday?" he hung up.

For the first five seconds, it was incredibly funny.

Then the enormity of it all hung over us, and we started gaping at the phone. Heather looked absolutely shocked before she said in a fuming voice, "I can't believe he did that!" And Heather is never angry. Seeing her angry was definitely the equivalent of seeing a diehard Christian burn their bible. It's just not supposed to happen.

Other things happened, of course, but now I've lost all respect for him. And so has Heather, who normally holds everybody in high esteem. I've lost my best friend of four years, and I find that, well, I don't feel very much except for anger at this point. At how stupid I've been to even have had a crush on him in the first place, how foolish I was to blindly ignore his many faults - and these faults weren't small things, they were things that would have turned away many others. But I stupidly stayed with him.

I feel almost disgusted with myself now.

And silly as it seems, it's become my goal at OCS to get a higher rank/position than him, no matter what. I know I can do it. It's not like I'm going to abuse my power when I'm with him, but I know that if he somehow manages to secure a higher position, he's going to abuse the hell out of me. I can't let that happen. This is my small chance to stand up for myself in his face, to stand up for the things he's done to Liz and Heather and so many others. I must be his superior, because we're only going to have JROTC together next year.

Come inspection time, he'll be the one that takes orders from me.

New.....

Blog! Go to teensonparenting.blogspot.com

I passed out!

I passed out at school on Friday.

Since Tuesday night I'd been coughing up blood, but I never thought I really needed to go to the hospital. I realize that that may sound ridiculously foolish of me, but I wasn't coughing up bucketfulls of the stuff, and when I freaked out over the first taste of iron in my mouth, my parents looked at me sternly and said, "Go drink more water, is good for you health." So I did, and it cooled down a bit. But from then on my body began feeling seriously weird, and I had a few breathing issues. My best friend, Gabe, went berserk when he saw me at school, and nearly forced me to go home/to the hospital. But I really didn't think I needed to go until yesterday. I was walking back to school from JROTC and felt a sudden stabbing pain in my head. A friend of mine went up to me, worried because I had stopped walking and was sort of swaying on the ground, clutching my head. Just as he came next to me, I passed out. But he caught me, yay 8D So I don't have a concussion on top of what the docotr later discovered was an aneurysm.

What?

I'm in high school. What am I doing going around with an aneurysm, of all things? It's ridiculous.

On top of that, I took a lung test, and it told me that my lungs were 46 years old. Holy schmoly guacamole. That's older than both my parents o.O I seriously need to take care of myself. Aneurysm, asthma, and possibly some blood/brain disease too. Can't wait to get my test results on Monday. =]

Memorial

So, I'm going to the memorial service for Victor Lozada.


This is the first time I've ever had to do anything like this before, and I honestly don't know what kind of attitude or attire of appropriate. I suppose I'll just act serious and quiet when I get there and see what other people do and decide how to act for the rest of the time.

And I suppose I'll get into a semi-business outfit thing. Formal top plus jeans. This is really difficult. I don't want to act too serious or come off that way, for fear of making his daughter feel awkward (if she wasn't expecting Funerals are only half for the dead - the other half is to support those still living.

Here's to the Lozadas.

Oh dear

A barrage of bad news! D8 I don't know why I'm not going crazy right now, haha.

1. My best friend got dumped by a really nice and amazing girl.
2. My friend got dumped by a......'promiscuous' young lady.
3. I only passed that Algebra exam.
4. I forgot we had Cadet of the Month inspections today.

But then again, I must remember that....

1. That girl was suffering with him, and my best friend realized something important when he got dumped, and is trying to become a better man.
2. Well, he was only dating her so he could get to third base. Taught him a lesson that he can't just use people, because they'll figure out and use you instead =]
3. There were only five A's. I don't know if I got an A....but I know it's higher than an eighty, so I'm a little hopeful.
4.Our sergeant major didn't remember either, so I was off the hook from inspectiong! 8D

So I must remember to look on the bright side of things. To be honest, I began this post with, ARGH MY DAY SUCKS POO. But then I got a-thinking. And hey, it really wasn't bad at all.

Consideration of a Death

How is it that these things happen?

A good friend of mine, James, just messaged me with news that the father of a girl we both know was just killed in a motorcycle accident today. He was escorting presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to a rally in Oak Cliff when his motorcycle hit a curb and he lost control.

For purposes of keeping up the girl’s privacy, I will not mention her name. But she is an incredibly nice, bright, and funny person. For such a thing to happen to her of all people brings tears to my eyes. I don’t even know her that well, but I know she’s a great person that must be going through so much turmoil right now. I realize that one cannot say, “I hope things will get better,” because even though they will after a long period of time, it seems to be an empty statement, somehow. All I know is that I want somebody like her to be happy, and not have to go through a time like this.

So today, I pray in memory of her father - a man that I do not know, but I am certain to be wonderful for having brought up this girl.

Thoughts on a death

There’s something undeniably profound about death that those who have never experienced it near their hearts cannot even explain what it might be. But once such an event happens – whether it is a tragedy or good thing – one cannot stop thinking about it. The sensation is quite different than someone moving away. In the back of your mind, when you think about that person, a little mental map pops up and there’s a little arrow pointing to their location. Whenever I think of Rex, I think of Shanghai and him drowning in all the overly-exuberant natives’ interested stares. Whenever I think of Luke, I think of him shoveling hay in a Illinois barnhouse, wearing overalls and a grim expression. But when somebody dies, where in that mental map do they go?

I’ve noticed one thing about all the globes in my AP Human Geography class. They may represent the world as one sees it from space, but they never represent the world as one sees it from their heart. Where can the little arrow point to once somebody dies? I can’t bury them in Earth’s molten core, or place them in the sky – not only is my mental map sadly two-dimensional, but a little arrow on a cloud looks rather odd and fails to symbolize in any way the feelings I’m going through.

Yet somehow, the sensation I feel seems a lot more shallow. Why am I so shaken? I do realize that if Rex stayed in China, I’d lose contact over the years and would never talk to him again. He might as well be dead. But Chad’s death – the passing of somebody I barely know – affected me more profoundly than the moving away of a good friend.

I am shaken – not to the core, not enough to break down and cry like my friend did – but I am shaken enough to feel grief. I was in the bathroom washing my hands when I heard a girl scream and run down the hallway, screeching, “He’s fucking dead! He’s fucking dead!” Crude as it was, it’s what I feel to be the truest statement of everything I’ve heard about the event. He’s dead, he’s gone, his flesh will not be touched, his words will not be heard. I feel so conflicted about this whole event still, even months later. At first I feel sad that he’s gone. Then I feel shallow because I only feel this grief because he was geographically close to me – I wouldn’t feel this way if another stranger in New York had died. Then I feel ashamed because this was a human being that passed away, and the profundity of this undeniable tragedy is shaking everybody at school.

One thing is for certain, though – death affects us all. Cliché? Yes, but even though I did not know Chad so well, his image keeps floating in front of me. I cannot say here anything about it being sad that such a great person died. I didn’t know him, and comments about the friendly dead tend to be a lot more forgiving than comments about the friendly living. I know I’d shellack one of my friends if somebody asked me about him. But if he had died? I’d paint a glowing picture of him, all the negative details gone. So anything I hear about Chad is probably either exaggerated or half the truth. Either way, his loss is definitely felt in my school. I will say that it is sad – and earth-shaking to my young mind – that someone that I passed in the hallways each day in my school shall never see day again.

Goodbye, Chad. Goodnight.