Part One in the Saga of Alexis' Self-Pity: which will get better but not before a few additional rants. I apologize in advance, and encourage you not to read if you find teen angst and dejection to be off-putting.

what I'm trying NOT to be

Brief Note: If you for some reason think you might somehow make things better by reminding me that there are people in the world with AIDS or inoperable forms of cancer, or whose intelligence quotients are lower than that of my dad's goldfish, or whose parents are fighting bitter divorce wars in which they use their own offspring as pawns, or people my age or younger who are literally going to battle in some war-torn section of the world as I sit in my comfortable bedroom typing my woes as though I think I'm a modern-day Anne Frank, you probably should read no further and definitely should not leave a comment. The "you" to whom I address this are primarily my frenemies [God, how I hate that word, though it sometimes applies] from the RFM site. I recently registered there. While most people have been kind (primarily the  people  whom I thought were kind when I was just reading and not commenting [for more than 5 years, by the way] some people there tend to think a person did not exist on this planet until he or she registered at RFM) others have been worse than ugly to me. There are things I've been asked not to explain here or there, but at the same time, I'll pose a simple question. If a person were fortuitous to the extent that one's parents knew a talented photographer, one's shrink's wife knew cosmetologists "in the business" AND,  even before the application of  makeup,  one happened to wake up on the the day of a scheduled photo shoot slightly better than one usually looks, should one take the resulting photograph (which took the place of the"senior picture," which wasn't done at the time it should have been done because my face was swollen and bruised) and burn it? If someone offers a person money for limited use of his or her photo, is it so wrong ton accept the money? (For the record, I thought I was selling to a specific company and not for someone else to have the right to sell the rights to the photo and a couple of others from the same shoot, but in the end it matters little.) Bottom line: People from anywhere  who love to figuratively shout "FAKE" at me: fuck you. 

Please indulge me in a brief escape into the world of self-pity. Another girl who lives in her parents' home in the cul de sac in which my parents' home is also located is hosting a gathering of some sort.  The girl and I are not well-acquainted, although we typically converse at neighborhood events, and we  wave in passing. I will note that the girl is similarly not-well-acquainted with my cousin Josh and my brother Matthew. If anything, she knows them less well than she knows me, as they both live on campus at the universities they attend and come home only on weekends. Even when I was theoretically living in the dorm last semester, I was home more than I was at the dorm, and I've been officially out of the dorm since January.

Josh and Matthew received formal invitations to tonight's soiree. Despite the fact that my brother and cousin were invited to this event, I still don't actually know what it's about, as I do not snoop into the mail of other people. My mother, bless her poor meddling soul, thought the lack of an invitation to me must have been an oversight and concluded that she [my mother] could remedy the obvious oversight by discreetly speaking to the girl's mother. What my mom learned through speaking to the girl's mother was that A) one hosting an event cannot afford to invite everyone living within a given zip code to said event; B) the neighbor girl and I have never really "hit it off," [ the neighbor's actual words]  though no personal ill will was intended by my non-invitation; and C) I am "just a little too nerdy for [her daughter's] social set"  --a direct quote, according to my mother, who is usually neither a liar nor a known trouble-maker, all though she has brought herself precariously close to the level of "stirrer-up-of-trouble" with her involvement in this situation, however harmless her intentions may have been.

So now, even though I have errands to run and things to  do, and my dog, as well, would love a walk right now, I'm self-quarantined inside my own home because this social event is taking place in the home just to the  outside of my home on this otherwise uneventful cul-de-sac. I don't wish even to be seen by those socially adept creatures deemed worthy to attend this event. In my mind they would all be laughing at me even if they had no clue as to my identity nor cared why I was not in attendance. This feels too much like middle school, and I thought I was long past middle school. Maybe that's the lesson of the day: no matter how old you are, you're not as far past middle school as you would like to think.

The girl who is hosting the party is about four months older than I and is just finishing her first year at the community college in our city. It's not her birthday. I don't think she has a highly serious romance in the works, so I don't think she's announcing an engagement, though almost anything is possible. My only point here is that I don't think one of life's typically commemorated milestones is the focal point of this celebration, not that it matters all that much. 

Someone decided to have a party and didn't invite me. It only matters symbolically. Truthfully, I'd probably rather be holed up in my bedroom than at the party, anyway. And I obviously have better things to do, although my own pride is keeping me from doing any of those things right now. I do admit that the invitations issued to my brother and cousin added to the sting of the absence of my own invitation, if only for the idea that I wouldn't even have known about the party until the caterers and other vendors began to make their appearances, which started only an hour or so before the party began this evening. With my brother's and cousin's invitations, I had plenty of advance notice.

I am acting like a martyr in being upset that I haven't been invited to a party I'd rather not attend in the first place. I readily admit this. Still, the lack of invitation was very clearly a deliberate slight. My cousin said it looks like there are more than 100 people there. One more -- especially one more who eats or drinks as little as I do, would not have added much to overall the cost of the event.

It seems from the loudness and raucousness that alcohol at the very least is involved in the frivolity.  I could telephone the police to let them know that alcohol is being served to minors and tell myself that I was being a  be a good citizen in doing so, but I would know perfectly well that being a good citizen was, if present at all, at the very bottom of any existing heap of motives I might have. Still, I

hope no innocent bystander is harmed. All of our cars are parked in the garage. 

The neighbors hosting the party have extra-persnickety neighbors -- think Gladys Kravitz --living directly across the street from them. Those neighbors may very well become fed up and inform law enforcement if the party doesn't wind down soon.  I hope the people on whom a report is made are allowed to know who made any report against them, because I don't need the blame for something I didn't even do. Regardless, it's out of my control.

Alexis, the Girl Who Dresses Like A Slut: A Social Experiment

                                 possibly part of my new temporary "look"

I was considering that between some of the more flexible wardrobe items I own, a few I could borrow, and a few I could pick up cheaply with a miniscule amount of the money I've recently earned, I could make myself look really trashy for the first two weeks of classes next quarter. A few of the other students and professors, particularly those in the music department, will have been in classes with me prior to this and will wonder what the hell is up with my new haute couture, but most will be complete strangers to me, as this is a huge campus. They'll assume it's my normal style of attire. Impressions will be made on such. It will be interesting to see how those first impressions color my classmates'and professors'  perceptions and are or are not altered as I reveal myself to be the achiever that I normally am.

One aspect of trashiness not available to me is prominent display of cleavage. If you don't have it, it isn't an easy look to create on a shoestring budget.

I can store the trampy clothing in my dorm room and put it on at school so my parents will not have cause to wonder what the hell is happening with me. It's not that they would or even could prevent me from leaving the house in such raiment; it just gives them one less thing to gossip about  regarding me with their friends.. My dorm neighbors will wonder why I walk into my dorm room every morning looking relatively preppie and come out looking like a skank, but it will give their vacuous minds something to think about, as God and everyone else knows that they're certainly not thinking about their studies.

There's no real point to doing this except that I'm a bit tired of being invisible. Some might say being invisible is preferable to having everyone think you're a floozy, but I beg to differ. Besides, it's temporary.  I don't plan to dress in this manner every day all quarter. I'll apply the look judiciously if arbitrarily.

Then I'll store the streetwalker wardrobe away in my dorm romm. On random days of random weeks, I'll drag a few items of hussy apparel out and wear them again for no apparent reason. Then I'll go back to my ordinary preppie look. It will cause people to wonder about me, which at least means most of them will at least be aware of my presence. If they think I'm certifiably insane, I don't have a huge problem with it, as I happen to know that several of them are certifiable morons. They may not have been such before they arrived here, but the peculiar combinations of booze and drugs that entered their systems since showing up have rendered them as such.  So if  some of my classmates think I'm bat-shit crazy and I think some of them are idiots, it's a fair and just  case of reciprocal judgmentalism.

If this seems to be attention-seeking behavior, such is probably a reasonably accurate impression. I admit to going through an odd phase. I don't want a professor, when he reads my essay answer aloud, to announce that it was my test he was quoting. I  don't like it when I don't have time to straighten my hair and people comment on its extreme curliness. Not to be racist, but when I was little and my skin tanned in the summer (I no longer tan quite so readily, and I also apply sunblock because I know what the sun can do to unprotected skin) I fumed when people asked or assumed that I was bi-racial. I don't  want anyone to look at the scar that is still somewhat visible on my leg (I'm still applying Mederma faithfully, and I think it's still helping to cause the scar to fade, and at least the bone is perfectly straight now; the surgeons did a very nice job in that respect) that they usually don't have a chance to see, because in regular classes I wear clothing that covers it. I don't necessarily like being singled out by the professor as the only student in my music theory class with absolute pitch.

On the other hand, it doesn't bother me when grades are posted by the last four digits of student ID numbers, and the other students talk amongst themselves and decide the highest score has to be mine.  I don't mind it when the professors only ask me questions if they've exhausted every other poetntial source for an intelligent response. I don't care when the theory prof  writes sets of intervals or a line of  music on the board and asks everyone to come up with the interval or the melody without humming it aloud, but tells me I cannot anwer because it's too easy for me.  I'm not bothered  by being more skilled in a gym full of non-gymnasts.  It doesn't bug me if I get called out of my theory class because there's an accompaniment that the chamber choir accompanist cannot sightread.

There are areas, good or bad,where we all wish to fade into the woodwork, and there are other areas, sometimes not al that different than the ones we do not wish to be recognized for, for which  we're perfectly content to be be noticed. At times there's no logical explanation for the reason for which each falls into its respective category. It's intangible and inexplicable -- partly teen angst and  partly who we are, and that we cannot always impact the way we feel.

We can, however, impact what we choose to do about how we feel. I choose to look like an underaged nymphomanic if I so desire, and it is what I so desire [at school] at this time. I don't particularly want to explain my rationale either to my Uncle Steve or to my Uncle Scott. (Oddly enough, I think my dad would get it, and very little explanation to him would be required.) I think for me, it's really about control. If my classmates who don't know me are going to look at me funny anyway, I may as well control the reason for the discomforting stares.

Classes will start on Monday, and  I'll tell you then about the results of the beginning of my social experiment.

I Need Help

I texted my Uncle Scott at work to tell him that I need help. He texted me back that he's greatly relieved that I'm finally willing to admit I have a problem and that the first step in getting better is acknowledging that one has a problem. Uncle Scott can't hit me because I'm still bruised from my physical therapy massage, so I will say STFU!!! I DON'T need help for myself. DUH! I need it for my brother.

My brother's girlfriend just broke up with him. He's devastated. It doesn't matter to him that the relationship was going absolutely nowhere fast and was doomed from the start. His IQ is probably twice what hers is, and his is nothing about which to boast. He's going to a major university next year. She graduated after summer school (after four years of high school, not early) and is on a wait list for some school that's supposed to teach her to do nails. She wasn't even accepted outright to nail school! She's over eighteen. He's sixteen-and-one-half, as am I. (DUH! We're twins!) That means if the two of them were to boink -- which I'm not advocating -- it would make her a sex offender, hardly better than the King of All Sex Offenders, Warren Jeffs himself. And my brother is sad that this girl wants him out of her life. Go figure.

Still, he's my younger brother (by about thirty seconds), and it is my duty to cheer him up when he is heartbroken. He would do the same for me. Actually, he'd probably beat up the guy who broke up with me, or at least arrange to have him beaned in baseball practice. The girl is not a baseball player. Furthermore, she's five-seven and probably weighs one- hundred-twenty-five at least. I'm almost five-one, and my weight is up to a whopping eighty-three following my pneumonia and appendectomy. I wouldn't stand a chance against my brother's former girlfriend in a physical battle even if I wanted to settle the score in that way, which I don't.

The breakup didn't occur in person. My brother is at some sort of baseball camp that involves traveling around the western states. The former woman of his dreams texted him with the news. He then went out and walked twelve batters, not to mention the three he hit, in last night's game. I told him that at least his part of the game was a no-hitter (no batter can hit the ball if the pitcher either hits him first or throws the ball totally out of his reach) and that it was a compliment that the manager left him in long enough to do so much damage. My dad texted me to tell me that my comments intended to console my brother were pejorative. Anyway, he won't have another start for probably three days. I must get him out of this slump before he takes the mound again.

My Aunt Jillian's brother Timmy, who is typically full of ideas (none of them good, by the way), thinks we should get the girl to take my brother back. He wanted to call that radio program host Delilah and pretend to be my brother. He was going to pour his heart out to Delilah and dedicate some really charged song to the girl. I told Timmy it would never work. Besides, I'm pretty sure those calls on Delilah are fakes anyway. No one in real life could or would call in saying such sappy stuff.

What my brother needs is a new girl, preferably one with an IQ in the average range. It would be best if the girl were based somewhere in the southern California area, since my borther's university of attendance is in that region. If anyone has any good candidates to recommend, please give me a heads up.

The doctor who gave me difficulty is now getting what he deserves. A nurse overheard my earlier conversation with him. He is now being called "Warren Jeffs" by most of the hospital staff. At times Karma can be a female dog.