Friendships come and go

You know whats a weird feeling? Having a friend move miles and miles away and the first time they call you since the big move, to actually want to click “ignore” on your phone screen. I’ve never felt it before, not with this friend, but i’ve definitely wanted to. Her names Kristen, or at least, thats what I’ll be calling her on here. Kristen was one of my first female friends that i’ve felt this close to. Sure, i’ve had other girl friends in the past but compared to Kristen, they all felt like mere acquaintances.

When you watch tv, you see all these female friendships. and as a girl growing up, i don’t give a shit what you say, you wanted a girl-on-girl friendship like you see in tv shows and movies. and honestly, with the increase in technology, that seems to be less and less possible. and in this girl, Kristen, i felt i’d found that tv perfect friendship. I could go over her house whenever, any time any day and her family would welcome me even if she wasn’t home. I could call her family with problems and she could call mine with hers. Her and i saw each other generally a few times a week and had sleepovers most weekends,.

but she started changing. She got more selfish, more self centered. When i went over her house to talk about stuff with her, she started just changing the subject back to her, she started to get into different sorts of things. She started going to high school parties, and not inviting me. She started hooking up with guys and i’d hear about it in school, not from her, but from rumors that Kristen was an easy lay. She started doing naughty things for weed and attention. She started hanging out with shady people in shady parts of town. and nothing i said mattered.

My opinion didn’t matter, it didn’t count. I knew nothing, i didn’t know what she was going through. I was the curvy mixed friend. She was the skinny blonde. I was “just jealous” that she was getting attention. and it just escalated. I wanted to get out of the friend ship, but what if something happened to her?

What if Kristen needed me and i wasn’t there? At this point, her family had stopped trusting her – she was stealing money from them and lying constantly. And what was i supposed to do when they called me, her best friend, to make sure she didn’t lie when she said she was going to my house and i had no idea where she actually was? I felt guilty, like i had to be there for her because if i wasn’t, who else would be? She had made it so she had no one else. and with the path she was headed down, i couldn’t very well abandon her.

It was a stressful experience, being her friend, and she started making me feel bad about myself. A friend is supposed to be someone you go to to get encouragement and to help you feel confident and happy in your own skin. She was doing the exact opposite. I came home from seeing her every time feeling worse about myself. I felt like the ugly friend, always. Like the fat friend, always. Like the one who wasn’t worth the time of day. All i wanted was a friend. and i had one, only to have her change into a completely different person throughout high school.

After we graduated, neither of us went to college right away. I had hoped, so much, that we would be able to part ways after high school peacefully and naturally, and that i wouldn’t have to be the douchebag friend that “needs to talk about something” with her. but that never happened.

Now, a year after high school, shes finally finally moved away. Not for college, but for personal reasons. I’ve never felt more relieved. Shes been gone about 4 days and contacted me directly for the first time after various instagram tags. I was at work and had to ignore it but when i texted her asking if it was something important and she said no, it felt good. It felt good to know that if i don’t want to, i don’t have to call her back.  I don’t have to keep in contact with her. I can be my own person and make my own friends and i can once again feel good when i look in the mirror. I feel good. Its a nice change.  But it is weird. I don’t feel like its a big loss. Sure, i cried at first when i thought about my best friend leaving. but I’m actually happy. and not only for myself, hopefully, this will be a good change for her, too.

I want everything to work out for both of us, But i think that for everything to work out for both of us, our friendship needs to end. I’m ready to leave it in the past and i feel like finally, Kristen is too.

Anna

writers block

I wish i could still write like i used to. I used to have such great ideas for all kinds of short stories and books i wanted to write and now theyre all *poof* gone. I couldn’t sit down and write a decent story if i tried and believe me, i have. its like ive had terrible writers block since about age 16. I once went to a book signing at a local library around when i stopped writing and i feel like it just pushed me further down into this rut i seem to be in. The intention wasn’t for that to happen, but i feel like it did nonetheless.

A girl, a year or two younger than i was at the time, was doing a book signing for the book she had published. It was a fantasy book, and i remember there being faeries, but i don’t really remember much else. I just remember sitting there in the audience as this girl and her family talked about how long it took to get it published, the process and how difficult and expensive it was because they basically had to get a small publishing company and then essentially pay for the entirety of the book. It was around then that i started to feel that i’d never actually make it as a writer like I’d always hoped.

I knew my family would absolutely no doubt help me with every part of the process but thats not what i wanted. I wanted to do it myself. And i knew i could always just go online and either write a blog (hehe…) or try and publish it as an e-book but that never appealed to me either – i wanted a physical copy of my book. Of my work of art, my personal accomplishment. I wanted to be able to carry around my book with me, with my name across the cover and say “I wrote this. I got this published. This is my brain-child. ”

Somewhere along the way, i got discouraged when i figured out i wasn’t too good at writing full stories. I tend to get too into the descriptions and lose track of where i intended the story to go. I am, however, really good at poetry. But that was discouraging to me, for some reason. I didn’t want to publish a book of poetry, i wanted a story immersed in a fantasy world of my own making. and no matter how hard i tried, i couldn’t manage to do it. and i can’t really explain why i was so against a book of poetry except that i myself hate reading poetry and felt I’d be unsuccessful in that field because if i hated it, i for some reason assumed others hated reading it as well.

In the end, i put my dream of writing a book on the shelf for a while. For now, I’ll stick to writing this blog and sharing with you my attempt to get back into writing. who knows, maybe you’ll be browsing the fantasy section at your local book store and see Anna Lee Williams on the cover~

(or, you know, my real name. who knows if you’ll know it by then or if i’ll use it)

Anna

Anime reviews pt2!

Just going to finally continue reviewing the remaining animes in my previous anime reviews post. I apologize for not doing it sooner, things got a little crazy and i totally forgot aha. so today ill be going over Noragami, K/K Project, Samurai Champloo, Elfen Lied, and, High School Of The Dead. You can find and watch all animes listed on http://www.animefreak.tv, http://www.crunchyroll.com or just googling them yourself. I have only watched them all in japanese with english subtitles so i will be going off that.

Noragami 

Description: This show is a bit difficult to explain because 1) its fairly short so a lot of what goes on, you learn throughout the show and 2) theres a new season coming out. However, I’ll try the best i can to give a decent explaination. Essentially, the main character is a guy named Yato. Hes just goofy and immature and ridiculous but hes actually a god. A god that no one really knows of anymore. Throughout the show, we learn that Yato used to be a God of Calamity which is essentially a God of War. In the show, however, we often see him writing his cell phone number in various public places telling people to call Yato with their problems – he only charges 5yen for any project! aha but yeah eventually, as the show goes, Yukine and Hiyori join him on his adventures. Yukine is his regalia, his weapon, which is created from a pure soul and can be in both human form or weapon form. Hiyori is a regular student who for some reason can see Yato and tries to save him from being hit by a bus, unintentionally making it so she herself is between worlds.

Pros: Unique story line and characters, characters you fall in love with and a catchy intro song

Cons: can be confusing as its a short show and doesnt have as much time for explanation, and it is too damn short

Length: short, 1 season with a second season coming out

Do i recommend it? definitely, i love it nonetheless!

K (Otherwise known as K Project) 

Description: There are 7 Kings who all correlate with a color. In the show, we primarily focus on the red king, the blue king, The silver king, the gold king and the colorless king. Each of the kings range in power with the Silver being the first king, the gold the second, the red the third, the blue the fourth and colorless being the seventh. In the show, the red king and all his followers are by far the most “gang” like however theyre all good men who just want to have fun and act more like a family than the other followers of other kings. The blue king and his followers are more like a police force, focusing more on keeping their area under control. The gold and silver primarily stay out of things, with the silver king not even being seen till the very end of the show. Essentially, the show is about a teenage boy who goes by Shiro. Shiro goes to high school on this island and a video comes out of someone who looks exactly like him murdering a member of the red kings followers. Needless to say,  the red king is after him. In the video, he calls himself the next colorless king as the previous one has passed away. So the show follows Shiro and honestly goes off in some directions i didn’t expect.

Pros: gorgeous gorgeous graphics, unique storyline, unique characters

Cons:crappy intro song, a bit confusing and therefore hard to get into, the graphics draw you in more than anything else

Length: 1 season

Do i recommend it?: if you have the patience, do it up. its really unique and different but then again, also fairly difficult to get into as i said in the cons. you have to pay attention to everything thats going on.

Samurai Champloo

Description: Fu, Jin, Mugen. Fu is a girl looking for the samurai who smells of sunflowers. Jin is this super badass samurai who no one can beat however, Mugen is also a super badass swordsman. Mugen’s fighting style is very untraditional. Mugen and Jin have both never been beating however, continuously come to a draw when fighting each other. In the show, Fu gets both of them to help her try to find the samurai who smells of sunflowers and we follow them on their journey to do that. Its an amazing show.

Pros: music is a huge part of the show and they implement it very well, and the sword fighting is just so well done everything is fairly accurate not to mention a good storyline and characters you can easily connect with

Cons: different drawing style then most animes, especially compared to ones in this list.

Length: short, only 1 season

Do i recommend it? yes yes yes yes yes

Elfen Lied

Description: A girl named Lucy/Myu who is actually not human is taken in by these human cousins. Shes super duper adorable when all she says is Myu, like a little kid who doesnt know any better. When shes Lucy, shes a psychotic killer. Literally, has psychic “hands” that she uses to rip people limb from limb. Its an odd show. But very popular in the genre. Very gorey, yet still quite “lolli”-like.

Pros: gore. lolli. gore.

Cons: i found the storyline to be rather lacking.

Length: 1 season, short.

Do i recommend it? if its your thing. i had a lot of people recommend it to me because i like thriller/horror animes but i didn’t find it too interesting. Just a cute girl who did naughty things like ‘forget’ to wear a shirt and such and who would then turn around and rip heads off.

High School Of The Dead

Description: its a bit of a silly show but good nonetheless. its more of a show that tried to put as much in as it could to appeal to people. it has zombies, guns, and lots of lady bits. a group of high school kids are at school when their school is rapidly taken over by a disease that turns people into zombies shortly after they are bitten. we follow this group as they go across the city, trying to find their parents and to find somewhere safe. buuuut the zombies are taking over the city so everything is insane. one girl has a kendo stick, the rest pretty much have guns in the end and they fight their way through everything. with, again, an abundance of flying lady bits.

Pros: lady bits errywhere

Cons: i mean, if you dont want lady bits, weapons and zombies~~~~

Length: short, 1 season. 2nd season was in the works but put on hold and they have yet to start working on it again, as far as i know

Do i recommend it?: definitely, if you like lady bits, zombies and weaponsssss

as i continue watching more animes, ill continue with these reviews 😀 at the moment, im watching Inuyasha….which is fab.

anyway, let me know if you have seen/ are watching/ or start watching any of these animes and what you think (:

Anna

The thing about people is

Disclaimer: There will be profanity in this post. Read at your own discretion. 

I can’t stand them.

Now, i know this isn’t facebook. and this rant might be a little biased seeing as I’ve had a pretty terrible day of people just jerking me around. But honestly, has something changed? Is there something in the air making people nowadays just complete assholes? I’m serious, here, is it something in the water, maybe? Whatever it is, I’m getting alll set with it.

I feel like this is a new thing. Sure, people were bullied and there were always some bad seeds in the bunch but i feel like people weren’t this rude to one another. We didn’t go out of our way to put others down. We didn’t have any type of shaming, whether it be body shaming or something else. We didn’t care what you did with your life, its your life, you do you.

Now, though, i feel like its all changed. We look through girls on facebook and instagram either looking for a flaw on them or a flaw in ourselves. and our “Friends” don’t stop us. They dont tell us girls “you aren’t fat” or “youre crazy, you dont look like that!”. they go “hm. i dunno. you could lose a little weight. i mean, look at me!” or “haha look at how funny you look what were you thinking when you did that?”. theres no such thing as friends anymore. no one treats eachother equally nor even how they want to be treated. Everyone thinks they are in some way better than everyone else. and its absolutely ridiculous.

This society, this generation of people we are breeding. To put it simply, they are fucked. You know why? Because no one wants to hear your whiney excuses as to why everything should be given to you. No one wants to hear your drama. No one wants to hear fucking any of it. Not in the real world. In the real world, you arent the center of everything. You can’t look at your boss and say “haha look at you why would you wear that it looks horrible!”. You cant expect to keep a job. You can’t expect to have a social life.

But thats the issue, now, isn’t it? there is no longer such a thing as a social life. its all on the fucking internet. Now i am a huuuuuuuuuuge pc gaming nerd – its what i do with 90% of my time and id be a liar if i said i wouldnt be sad if the internet suddenly didn’t work however i feel like technology is doing a whole lot of terrible terrible things to the world as a whole.

Does technology do good things? yes. But that isn’t the argument we are discussing here.

Thanks to our dear friend technology, people dont have to socialize. we don’t have to learn social skills like how to talk to others or how to treat our fellow human beings or what constitutes as the right thing to do vs what constitutes as the bad thing to do. We just use our iphones or androids and look it up. and now children are doing the same thing. it disgusts me to see parents giving in to the technological world and training their kids to be the part of the mindless zombie-like society we are creating.

it needs to be stopped

but it wont be

we will continue, as humans, to think we’re doing a world of good

as the world around us crumbles

because, the thing about people is, they don’t give a damn about anything but themselves.

A very agitated Anna

**sorry for how horribly written this is. like i said, its more of a rant than anything else**

Anime reviews!

Basically just going to be reviewing the most recent animes I’ve watched and what i liked about them, what i didnt like about them, and if id recommend them. The animes I’ll be talking about today/tomorrow are Blood+ , Naruto/Naruto Shippuden , Darker Than Black, Tokyo Ghoul, Deadman Wonderland,Noragami, K/K Project, Samurai Champloo, Elfen Lied, High School Of The Dead. You can find and watch all animes listed on http://www.animefreak.tv, http://www.crunchyroll.com or just googling them yourself. I have only watched them all in japanese with english subtitles so i will be going off that.

Blood+ 

Description: A girl named Saya awakens from a 30 year sleep living with an adoptive family. She is walking home from school and she hears a violin playing and looks over to see a nicely dressed pale man with his dark hair strung up in a pony tail playing a familiar melody. She cannot figure out where she knows it from or why it sounds familiar. We learn about Sayas long past and her trying not to relive it as well as her trying to change the future for the better. the only problem being, theres a time limit before she goes into her next 30 year sleep. If she doesn’t fix the future now, there will be no world to wake up to.

Pros: unique storyline, interesting backstories, lovely music, characters you fall in love with. also, great intro and ending songs.

Cons: sometimes theres a bit too much backstory

Length: medium, not too long but over 2 seasons long

Do i recommend it?: Most definitely. definitely expect gore though. and a pretty badass katana.

Naruto/Naruto Shippuden 

Description: NARUTO UZUMAKI IS GOING TO BECOME HOKAGE ONE DAY, BELIEVE IT! now, i know i said i watched all these in japanese but i started naruto in english and couldnt handle it because of how utterly obnoxious narutos voice was. however, in japanese its actually an amazing show. theres very little i can tell you as the show has so so so much going on but its about a boy name Uzumaki Naruto whose training to become a ninja. His ultimate dream is to be recognized by the people of his village, Konoha, and he thinks the way to do it is to become the Hokage which is essentially the “king” or “head” of the Hidden Leaf Village of Konoha, where Uzumaki Naruto lives. the problem being, he sucks and just goofs around. we follow naruto through his childhood and his ninja training.

Pros: everything. weaponry, storylines, amazing character development, in both looks and personality. you feel for every character encountered. its like a world is built around you, like a really good book. you feel as though you, too are in the ninja world with Naruto.Also, some great intro and ending songs.

Cons: lots of filler – but all of it relevant.you can skip parts of it but its best to go back. i havent watched all the filler myself however.

Length: long as hell, still not done. Naruto is about 200 episodes and Naruto Shippuden is still chugging along at 416.

Do i recommend it?: most definitely, its worth every second. Naruto is more of a family show, Naruto Shippuden is more serious and more bloody.

Darker Than Black (this is including all 3 seasons, including the ova)

Description: Human-looking creatures called Contractors exist in the world. Each contractor has a super power of sorts but after using it so much, they have to make a payment in accordance to their contract. No one knows who the contact is for or to, all they know are contractors are bad news generally as they have no feelings and are most certainly not human despite their looks and that they only appeared when the Gate appeared. We follow a contractor named Hei/Li, a man who is as merciless a contractor as any and more badass than most.

Pros: Very unique storyline and a surprising attachment to certain characters.

Cons: the ending was highly disappointing. Not even remotely as expected. which could also be a pro, for some.

Length: medium

Do i recommend it?: If your looking for something that you have to pay attention to, yes. but you have to expect twists and turns everywhere.

Tokyo Ghoul

Description: (a bit of spoiler but only from the first episode i suppose) Its Tokyo and Ghouls walk the streets. They look exactly like every other human except they feed on human flesh. They are seen as bad guys by the general public. as one who feeds on human flesh is very similar to vampires and theyre typically bad guys who can’t control their appetites. There are bad ghouls in this world but also good, who just want to blend seemlessly with humans and not kill to get their nourishment. We follow a boy named Kaneki Ken as he realizes that after a chance encounter and accident in which he nearly gets eaten by a ghoul, he himself has turned into one. He is not pleased by this at all and we follow him as he tries to figure out not only how to live his life but also how to live it as a ghoul. Honestly amazing, well thought out and just all around outstanding.

Pros: amazing intro song for the first season, amazing character and atmosphere development. gorgeous graphics, you connect with every character on a personal level. makes you think and is a show where there really are no true bad guys. Just a bunch of people trying to coexist.

Cons: none….but needs to continue because screw where it ended and screw a ova

Length: 2 seasons, ova to come out

Do i recommend it? yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

Deadman Wonderland

Description: (a bit of spoiler but only from the first episode i suppose) There was an incident in the center of Tokyo a few years back in which a red hole opened in the earth. Tokyo is generally abandoned until an amusement park buys the land in the center and opens up Deadman Wonderland, a prison/amusement park hybrid meant to bring in tourists in which prisoners worked at the park and lived in cells beneath it. In the show, we follow a boy named Igarashi Ganta, who is the sole survivor when The Red Man, a man in a red cape that covers all of his face but his smile, massacres his entire middle school class. Needless to say, Ganta is sent to Deadman Wonderland to serve his death sentence when hes found guilty due to video evidence of him admitting it to his lawyer. We follow Ganta as secrets about the prison, and new secrets about himself are revealed. Warning to all, it is very gorey.

Pros: very good, interesting show. different than anything else ive seen and very psychological.

Cons: i Wish the second season hadnt gotten put on hold as it leaves off at an unsatisfactory spot.

Length: 1 season

Do i recommend it? most definitely worth a watch. great intro.

I am going to stop here but will continue reviewing the rest of the animes listed at the top in a new blog post tomorrow. Thanks for reading – let me know what you think of these animes!

Anna

The unconscious mind

Nearly all of my childhood nightmares revolved around my grandparents house. I lived in an apartment with my mother for a year or two then we both lived with my grandparents till i was 8 years old. They had built themselves a big house in a very small woodsey town about 4 years before i was born. While i consider their house the house i grew up in, it always terrified me on some level. I had a great many nightmares revolve around being inside of or outside of the house and most of them were recurring.

The earliest one i remember was before i had my own “big girl” bed. There was a full size bed in the center of my bedroom and i had a little red toddler bed against the wall. More often than not, i would sleep in the full size bed with my mother or grandmother, them sneaking off to their own beds during the night after i’d fallen asleep. I was sleeping and felt heat as though the sun was beating down on my bare skin. The bed underneath me no longer felt comfortable but more like rocky earth. I opened my eyes and i was on the edge of a cliff side with a long drop into a river of lava. on the opposite side of me were dinosaurs, t rexs and the sort. i fell off the side and it felt like i fell for an eternity before i woke up with my foot on the floor. Needless to say, i didn’t like sleeping by myself after that.

Another dinosaur dream i had, because those seem to be my thing, was including dinosaur characters from my favorite show, Rugrats. I dreamt that beside my rural house was a city and my family was driving into it right off my road (which was a dead end, for the record) and behind us in the rearview mirrors, we saw Reptar destroying the path behind us which had suddenly become city as well. Alongside Reptar was the pink Reptar (i cant recall if she had a name or not) and we panicked full out and were driving around the city as the two Reptars stepped on us.

My last dinosaur related dream was swamp related. Now i had this dream multiple times and i always knew the night id have it because id drive by the swamp it took place in. The swampland was on our way home but a different way involving different back roads that we didn’t often use. I’d look to my right and see the murky water and the thick mist with the tall trees barely visible beyond, and i’d feel my stomach clench, knowing that night the dream would occur. And each night, it did. There were dinosaurs, so so many dinosaurs, overtaking the entire town and all emerging from the swamp. I ran to it and tried to figure out how to stop them from exiting the swamp and got sucked down into the swamp and drowned/got buried in the mud.

Another nightmare i often had included the snake from Aladin. Now, i have only seen Aladin once but that snake obviously scared the everliving shit out of me because in my dream, id awaken in bed with him wrapped around my body smiling at me with his huge fangs out, inches from my eyes. Somehow, id get him to loosen his hold on me and id get out and start running up the hallway – turns out, hes a fast snake and hes on my tail the entire time. I run down stairs and do a lap around the house, closing doors as i go. But the doors don’t stop him – they merely slow him down. he comes under the door and squeezes his whole body through. I run up the stairs, thinking maybe they will slow him down and surprisingly, they do and i make it into the upstairs bathroom. i slam the door shut and stuff a towel under the door jam. its quite for a few minutes and everything is still. then his head pops up from the side of the door and he bites my face and the last thing i see is him lunging at me.

Theres a few other recurring nightmares but i’ll go over those in a “the unconscious mind, part 2”

Anna

the black sheep

I remember my art teacher with the huge mole by her nose and how i felt that she never liked me. One day, in her class, she brought in a book to read to us about a man who photographed snowflakes. I loved the descriptions and the photos that were in the book but i didn’t get why people thought snowflakes were so beautiful for being different and thought i was weird for the same reason.

i wanted to join band so badly. when they gave us the option, i remember debating whether or not i should sign up or not. throughout elementary school, i did try to play the guitar, violin, trumpet and flute but i could never do it because i was too shy to play in front of my class mates. i felt like they were all watching me, judging me. besides band, we also had to learn how to play the recorder – it was mandatory. i failed every test for the same reason i didn’t join band – i was too shy to play.

Library was my favorite. at this point in time, i wasn’t very interested in reading primarily because there wasn’t really anything that interested me. there was a book with a dragon on the front but the words were too big and i couldn’t get into it at the time. i was jealous at the kids with good reading comprehension who all were reading and raving about the harry potter books when all i could read and comprehend was Junie B Jones. on the good days, when the librarian wasnt paying attention, all us kids would have races around the back room of the library. we would zig zag between shelves and duck and hide as the back room was out of the librarians line of sight. eventually, she would catch us and tell us to knock it off. and we did. i remember seeing two of my classmates playing a Dr Seuss game on the computer in the library when the newer Cat In The Hat movie came out – the creepy lookin one with actual people. I asked them again and again to let me play and they never did, and when i went home and tried to find the same game i never could. a lot happened in that library and though i wasn’t good at reading at the time, i feel that my love of books came from being there, surrounded by them.

Computer lab was probably my least favorite class of elementary school. My computer teacher hated me, absolutely hated me, and never tried to hide it. he was rude to me and wouldnt ever help me when i asked for it. I had trouble with the class not because i wasnt good at typing as i did type fast and accurately but because i  dont type properly – i dont use both of my hands entirely i use my left hand and my middle finger on my right hand. if youve ever taken a typing class, you know how horribly incorrect that is. In the end, before i left elementary school, the teacher who hated me while trying to get me to type “properly” ended up marrying my guidance counselor, who was one of my favorite two people at the school. i didnt know how i felt about that when it happened, because she was so nice and he was so so rude. i didn’t understand what she saw in him or that maybe he wasn’t rude when he was with her.

Gym class they lumped with health as the teacher was the same. i don’t remember much from health class except that we kept the lights off usually because it was so hot on that end of the school. In gym, i have a very specific memory of playing with another girl by the bleachers and looking for the monsters that lived behind them. there was a red one and a green one. this girl was nice to me at times and rude to me at others. she picked on me for how i looked often but way later in high school i figured out she tried to cut her hair short because she wanted short curly hair like mine. i was flattered, but wished id known before, when i felt horrible and ugly, that someone thought something about me was beautiful. There was also a father daughter dance in the gym. my grandfather brought me because my dad wasn’t around. i was glad he did because i really wanted to go and had a really fun night. hes more of a dad to me than anyone else.

i don’t remember much about my actual kindergarten class. i remember my teacher and i remember that on one of the counters by the window, we had a piece of glass that threw off rainbow prisms. I remember that there was another boy who had behavioral problems who people always lumped together with me – i never felt we had anything in common. i always felt he was purposely being a bad kid and i never wanted to be seen as that. i didn’t know how to express my feelings and i was very confused as to how the whole school thing worked. i had gone to daycare but my mother worked at it so i was still spoiled there. in my family, i was the only child till i was 4 and therefore spoiled rotten. in school, i didn’t know why people didn’t spoil me. and i didn’t know why they avoided me. i later found out that i looked different from them, and they weren’t used to it. and when they asked their parents about me, their parents simply told them not to speak to me – that i was bad. i don’t know where the parents got this idea. all i wanted was friends, but all i felt was exiled.

There was a teacher at the school with the same birthday as me. They announced birthdays with the morning announcements and i remember always being so excited when i heard her name. then, i figured out she was the special education teacher – after they tried to put me in her class. i wasn’t good at mathematics. however, they were teaching us multiplication in first grade. i wasn’t special, i just had never seen numbers before and my mind was too underdeveloped to understand them. i fought tooth and nail to not be in that class – i was exiled enough already and i didn’t want to be seen as any more different then my skin color made me appear.

My guidance counselor and the principle were my two favorite people at that school. they were there for me throughout everything. when i got kicked out of class for being too loud, i was typically sent to one of them. instead of punishing me, they would try to talk things through with me. and they didnt try to do it in the condescending way that adults usually do either, they would take out toys and talk to me like a normal adult. my guidance counselor had a teddy bear and my principle had blocks and dinosaurs. If i was ever to visit people from that school again, it would be those two.

we’ll stop this here, at kindergarten, and i’ll continue to write another time about the rest of school. as you may have guessed, i am not white however i grew up in a small town where essentially everyone else is. i believe that was one of my biggest problems in school. if you see “the black sheep” in the title line again, it will just be more about the public schooling i went through.

Anna