A Nameless Story: Prologue

Prologue

                Sooo this is my life. The idea of it is quite comical, but living it—it was fucking terrifying. Once I realized how screwed up my life was I started documenting it in this computer journal. Some may believe every word I say, and others may label me as a good story-teller—but this is my life. Exactly how I lived it. Okay, I may exaggerate here and there. Like when I say my shit don’t stink? It totally does. So there’s a warning….

            Just a little bit about me (so you’re not just, like, creeping on some stranger’s life, or whatever): I was adopted. Sort of. When I was about two years old or something, my “parents” said that I just floated down the river. I don’t believe them but they swear there was a baby in a basket while my dad was fishing. Conveniently, they couldn’t get preggers, SO HERE I AM. Whoever I was before, no one knows. But fifteen years later I am Jacey Stirgo. My parents have an odd idea for good names, I know. But then again they fell into the fate of the last name Stirgo in the first place. Whatever. Anyway, my favourite colour is grey and I enjoy long walks on the beach in the sunset. HAHAHAHA just kidding. I live in a great place called Vancouver, British Columbia. I am a wonderful Canadian that eats bacon and chops trees down and drinks beer daily. Ha ha ha. Another funny. Sorry. Anyway I’m finishing my spring semester of my senior year of high school. HURRAH or something. I’m not super smart with perfect grades or anything, but I’m not a complete failure. I really don’t know what to do with my life. I’m average at many things but other things I just plain suck at. Science, math, and English being just a small part of that. Who am I kidding? That’s practically everything in the world. I SUCK. Cool. Now that we’ve established a basis of my character let’s move on to the actual meat of the story, shall we?

            Let me just reiterate: No matter how comical and great or lame and unoriginal this may sound, IT WAS FUCKING TERRIFYING.

I Choose To Be Happy

I had to do a personal essay assignment in Creative Writing this weekend based off "This I Believe" ( http://thisibelieve.org/ ). It's not the exact same, but my idea was based off choosing to be happy when you can, and I think it turned out pretty well!

                For the past year I’ve been visiting a psychologist about my struggle with depression, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can choose when you’re happy. I often go into depressive states where I can do nothing but lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, and think of sad things. As soon as I realize I’m doing this when I could just as easily be in a better mood I turn on That ‘70s Show and I feel much better.

                But why choose to be happy? Why not be content with whatever mood I’m in just to get it out of my system? I got this idea from another one that I’m pretty sure I got from Forrest Gump: In war, you have to sleep whenever you get the chance, because you never know when your next chance will be. Sometimes I can’t choose to be happy. Sometimes there’s too much darkness in my life and there’s no escaping that. It can last anything from half an hour, to half a year. I once went six months with suicidal thoughts as often as every other day. You can’t turn on the television to climb out of a hole like that. Instead, when I do have the choice to be happy, I choose to be happy. There’s no use wasting a day just to be sad when I could watch a few episodes of my favourite show to perk me up, get any work done I need to, and just be a better person to be around.

                But sometimes a show isn’t enough. Maybe it’s just not the right thing I need to get my mind off things. One option that I always do whenever something exciting or eventful happens in my life: I write it all down in my journal. I explain the event and how I feel about it in the most humorous way I can. I’ve been doing this since my freshman year, and each time I write in it, I imagine reading it out loud to my future kids when they reach the same age. It’s relieving to know that just by writing simple things in my life I might actually be helping someone through their high school years—because it’s hard. Sometimes peer pressure, bullies, homework, parents, the rest of the world is just too much and there’s no exit door with “Happiness” on the front and a television on the other side. You have to face these things.

                Option two is a little harder to wrap your head around. I have this weird thing where I like to be angry. I like to complain. I like to yell. I like to get frustrated. Maybe it’s so I can let out my anger in a healthier way than screaming at a loved one. But when something bothers me even the slightest bit or I just see a good opportunity to see if someone will believe me as a kind of joke I grab the bull by the horns and thrash it against the wall. The other day a girl in the lunch room walked past my friend with pizza cheese smothered in red sauce hanging over her tray and it almost touched my friend’s white shirt. In my head I was cursing up a storm at this girl and after she was out of earshot, I verbalized this cursing-rant to my friend. Usually she gets a little scared when I do these to her (because she still can’t tell when I’m joking) but this time she simply told me that she loves me. I felt proud of myself for literally watching her back. I was happy about it. And it always makes me laugh every time this same friend believes that I’m angry with her, when I pretty much never am.

                Since I’ve realized how much these three techniques have helped, I’m rarely unhappy when I don’t have a reason to be. Other than fake anger and quoting TV shows that nobody watches anymore, I’m a much nicer person to be around. I have stopped making fun of people as much (although sometimes, even the nicest person can’t help it) and I haven’t thought of suicide in almost a year. I am proud to be happy because I choose to be happy.

My favourite thing about this essay is that I took the time to choose to be happy today to write this essay in the first place. For the first time in a while, I worked out, then I took a shower and actually shaved my legs, I put on some of my favourite jeans with my new French belt, turned on my GrooveShark playlist completely made of Billie Piper, sat down on my bed, and simply started typing away on my laptop. I am happy, and I am proud. I see nothing wrong with being proud. Now I'm going to go read my history homework /:

Me and my family part 1

I've always been a misfit.
At school before I moved in 3rd grade.
At school after I moved in 3rd grade.
All throughout middle school.
All throughout high school.
And at home.
I come from a family of the upper to mid-middle class and is now suffering from the economic state our country is in right now.
My dad is a prejudiced.
My mom is a pushover.
My sister is determined to be perfect.
I'd like to start with a little about the relationship between my dad and I.
I never liked him growing up. My dream was to be an actress since 6th grade and it seemed that all he had to say about it was that it was a really difficult field to get into. Everyone kept telling me to have a backup plan. To me, a backup plan sounded and still sounds today like a doubt that you can't make your dream. I'll admit that I'm not sure I want to be an actress anymore. I'm thinking about going to university for four years and major in English and minor in film production, and then move to England (close to London, hopefully) and hopefully become a successful author, make cool YouTube videos like Platoon of Power Squadron by pineappleboyfilms or some other film production with cool effects thing, and if I can't be successful at all that, then I think it would be cool to be a flight attendant. Travel the world and get paid for it sounds like a great idea to me. And lately it seems like my dad has been more supporting of whatever it is I want to do. I can tell already that I'm one of those people that has a hard time finding their right place in life. And I think my dad's finally understanding and accepting that which makes me so happy. But it's still difficult living with my dad. He's always making fun of people on TV when they don't deserve that. He basically doesn't like anyone that's not him or like him. My whole family is against me and my sister dating a guy with baggy jeans, just because it looks stupid to them. But the one guy I like (mentioned quite a bit in my last blog) wears his jeans pretty low. Not so low you can see his boxers or anything, but I'm convinced that he's a good guy and that what other people may see of him, isn't really him. My dad doesn't understand that people can look "unattractive" or however he would put it, and still be good people.
No transition to my mom.
My mom is okay with life and perfectly happy with how things are, except for the fact that I see a psychologist. I'm starting to think that she's convinced I can't be normal until I stop seeing my shrink, which is completely wrong. She's getting mad because I "tell my shrink stuff that I can't talk to her about." But that's the point of a shrink. I can't talk to my family about how annoyed I am by them. How do I tell my mom that I don't agree with her religion? I tried before and she doesn't care. She still makes me go to church. But thanks to my shrink, I only have to go every other Sunday, rather than every Sunday, which makes me feel a bit better. She doesn't understand that if I'm going to be religious, I have to find religion for myself.
And no transition to my sister.
My sister and I are very different. She was in a ton of advanced classes throughout middle school and high school, had really good grades and is studying international business at university. School makes me moan, and the word 'business' makes me cringe. My sister is getting her life all planned out and has been doing this for years. She's twenty and has a really sweet, normal boyfriend that she's pretty sure she's going to end up marrying. She didn't have her first kiss until the night before she left for her freshman year of college, and she's had three official boyfriends since graduating (including the one she's with now) which have all lasted over a month or two or whatever and she had one boyfriend her sophomore year of high school that she broke up with after a week or two. She seems so perfect. But she's always calling me a brat. She's called me a brat for years, since I was in middle school, maybe even elementary school. And a couple weeks ago she was really rude about not giving me a ride home (which I would have been totally okay with had she not been so rude) and I finally summoned up the courage to tell her that I don't like it when she calls me a brat and she was like "Well why didn't you say something before?" I told her it was because I never had the confidence before and she said that was crap. She thinks that I choose to be depressed, have low self esteem, be vulnerable, and be a complete loser to anyone and everyone. But what's funny, is that I don't choose that. It's part of who I am. I was born very sensitive and artistic and that combined with my environment giving me suicidal thoughts. She thinks I chose that. I'm still not sure whether she knows the length of my depression. I never told her and I'm scared that my parents never told her. I know that the last time my mom had a seizure, my dad told me not to tell my sister so I won't freak her out. I know my mom wouldn't remember the seizure, but I'm also afraid that my dad never told her exactly what happened that night.
It's difficult when you live a lie. When your mom doesn't know she scared you half to death just hours before your sixteenth birthday party. When your own sister doesn't know you used to have suicidal thoughts, and yet she's the one person you confided in when you couldn't pull yourself away from mild pornography as an eighth grader.
But there is something I learned in life, that I would never trade anything for: You choose when you're happy.... sometimes.
Sometimes you can't help it if you're sad, and that's okay.
But when you can choose to be happy, be happy.
It's like sleeping in war. You sleep when you can for as long as you can because you never know when the next chance you'll have to sleep is.
I have been choosing to be as happy as I can be lately, because I don't know when my life will fall and crumble around me next.
Right now, I'm choosing to be happy. Unfortunately right now, it's very hard because my sister's on her period.

This guy...

Let's just say that if there was ever such thing as love for the unknown, this is it. I ache every time I see him. I need to see something of his everyday. If I don't see him at school, then I have to look on Facebook. His face makes me feel miserable. But it's the good kind of miserable. The kind that makes you want to feel it for your whole life. The kind that makes you not want to take a chance on him because you're worried happiness might actually come true. You almost hope for him to reject you so you can stay in this miserable comfort forever.
I go to sleep thinking about him every night. And I wake up thinking about him.
But I have no idea who he is.
From what I've seen, he could be one of those guys that gets shitfaced every weekend and fucks girls on the side. Will he leave me in a ditch? Or hold me safe? Maybe I'll be the one girl he'll ever truly care about. That's all I can hope for. I hope that he's the one person who could completely fuck up my life. Then make it all better, just by holding my hand.
What if it comes true? Everything I hope and wish for? Is it a miracle? Or just a coincidence?
What if it doesn't? What if nothing goes right? Is it for the better? Or is it just life?
I need you. You who will never read this. You who I'm afraid to name. Because if I do, you'll know that it's you.
But what do you know? Do you know that I love you? The unknown-mysterious you? You're exactly what I want. Who I want. I've known it for so long, but you could actually be the one to stop my madness. You could be the one to kill the insanity and replace it with a flourishing flower.
I don't like flowers. If this happened, I wouldn't love you anymore. I don't see the point in flowers. Why would you give me a flower? I'd trash everything. I'd ruin everything. I'd destroy our happiness.
But if you're who I think you are, you'd bring it back. You'd throw the flower away and leave me with nothing but desperation. Desperation for you.
Some might say that this is going too far. To talk about you like this. But it's not a crime to tell the world how I feel. It's not a crime to feel like this. But it's a crime to stay silent. How would you feel if I never told you? It's called a secret. Sometimes in relationships, people will call it lying, because the truth was never told. But here I am. Telling the truth. I fucking love you. I don't even know your middle name, favourite colour, or last girlfriend. Did you ever have a girlfriend? Or did you just get on, get off, get out? Or are you a lone wolf? Either way, I'm telling you how I feel. Because if someone felt this way about me, I would want to know. I just hope you feel the same.
I'm a lone wolf. But everything has something to rely on. We could rely on each other. We could be together, just you and me. We could make the world jealous. We could be quiet, and mysterious, and in love. Isn't that what you want? I want it. I want it so much that I'm miserable. Miserable for you.
Do you have pain in your life? I want to take it away. I want to make it my pain. I want to kill it. Kill the pain that fills your heart so all you'll have room left over for is love.
Love for me.
Love me.
Love.