baby sisters

my little sister turned 13 last week, and it terrifies me. i remember realizing a few years ago that she was turning 10 and being freaked out then, but it's worse now because she's only a year away from high school and i still clearly remember the morning she was born. it makes me feel old to come home and discover that she's grown another few inches, or to call and find out that she took the SATs last weekend and is now treasurer of her school's service club. one day next year she's going to start high school, and then eventually go to college, and then graduate, and i am just going to be getting older and older while she goes through the same stuff that i did. i try to call her every so often so that we don't disconnect, and every time i do she talks and talks and asks me for advice and it struck me a few weeks ago that she looks up to me. worst realization ever, especially considering that she's probably smarter than i am. she tells me about the musical she's planning to audition for and i realize that i still haven't watched the video from her last one, this past spring. and then she reminds me that she's taller than i am now, and i think of all the times i used to carry her around, because she was my baby sister and that's how things go, and it makes me a little sad that i can't do that anymore. but then she asks me what to do about the boy that has a crush on her and i remember that i'm still her big sister, because never in a million years would she ever talk to anyone else like she talks to me. i guess i just have to get used to her growing up.

regrets

what do you do when you know you've hurt someone and you desperately want to be friends again?
i dated my first boyfriend for three months, in between junior and senior year of high school. we were good friends all through middle school, and i think that summer might have been the best of my life (not entirely because of him, but still). he's the epitome of the skinny, nerdy white boy, and we were that couple who sat in central park using the uncertainty principle to describe our relationship. and it made sense to us, though maybe not to anyone else. every weekend or two was spent in a different museum, eating gyros and pretzels in central park, pretending to be the adults that we'd eventually have to become; and though we may just have been two silly kids, we were gloriously happy.
maybe i shouldn't have broken up with him when school started again. now i can't remember why i actually did; all i can remember is what i told him instead of the truth, and at that point i wasn't the accomplished liar i am now. he saw through it, we didn't speak for a while, he took me out to see macbeth that spring with some inscrutable reason which i still can't figure out, and then we drifted apart again.
i saw him in april briefly, but we don't talk anymore. maybe i shouldn't bother trying. but i hope somehow he finds this post, because maybe if he reads it and understands then we can go back to being friends.

my ex. again.

i think everyone has an ex that they wish would leave them alone. mine decided to IM me again today. i broke up with him last september after dating for three months, and for some reason he still tries to talk to me.
i defriended him a few months after the breakup, because the temptation to facebook-stalk him was almost as annoying as he was. even after months of my ignoring his messages, he'd still IM me and ask me if we could talk, or if i had a problem with him, or various little things like that, so i did the most logical thing possible: sent him an email. a cold, PR-toned email signed with my professional signature. you'd think that would be some sort of signal, but it appears not. he's IMed me twice more since then, and while i know he just wants to be friends i would prefer not to be. we weren't friends before we dated: why should we be now, when i know that we have little in common intellectually or in any other regard? if it wasn't worth it to me to maintain a long-distance relationship, when i presumably felt something for him, why should it be worth my while now to begin a friendship that can't possibly function?
i understand that it's difficult to have someone drop out of your life entirely, particularly if you dated at some point, but by the same token it's difficult to have someone show up in your life periodically when you don't want to deal with them. and i do realize that this post sounds bitchy, but anything that causes me any stress or irritation gets removed from my life. it's the healthiest way for me to be.

i don't want to grow up.

the phone never rings
because you never call
and everyone's asking why i've been such a mess

it kind of hit me this week that people grow up and go places. a bunch of really awesome people made it up to boston for my birthday this past weekend and set the bar pretty high for my next few birthdays. but now they're all gone, and i don't get to see most of them until term starts again, and it's making me more depressed than end of term did. there's too much permanence to this moving away business. a year from now my best friend will have been gone for absolute ages and he may not feel like my best friend anymore. a year from now i may take an internship in a place where i know nobody, or i may have found another lab to have a love-hate relationship with. i don't know. all i really want is to be with my friends and enjoy life, but the older i get the less carefree i can be and the more our paths diverge: and the more distant we may get. if i could have frozen last semester, to go back and visit it at my leisure, i would spend all my time in those last few weeks of insanity before my best friends had to go behave like real people.

paying tribute where it is due

i'm nominating my high school band director for the annual MIT Inspirational Teacher Award. or at least i'm trying to. the form is harder to fill out than i expected, mostly because i'm in the reading room again and it's seriously undignified to cry in public.

the band room is one of the few aspects of high school i actually really miss. by the middle of senior year i was spending about twice as much time in the band room as i did in class: and not just to get out of classes either. whether i wanted to practice, hang out, sit and chill, or whatever, the door was always open for me and my lunatic friends. and for everyone else too, but especially for us. most of us stopped using lockers and left our stuff hanging around the room on a daily basis. we talked about installing a futon under the table since we all lived in there anyway, we kept more food in the fridge than our teachers did, we really were the resident band nerds.

D and G were two of the awesomest teachers i've ever had, simply because they were real people first and foremost. i really don't know what more i can say. they understood us and our myriad quirks, they really did care for us (wrote me more late passes than i care to think about hehe), and they genuinely did enjoy our company. i've had intelligent conversations with them, i've said some of the dumbest things ever, i've just been me all along and they were always cool with it (enough to write me college recommendations too!).

i cried the night of my senior concert, not because i was leaving the high school, but because it was the last time i'd be playing in the band.

i guess all i can really say to you guys is thank you. for everything.