Winners of the Contest of Various Unspecified Stuff!

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Okay, so I poured all the entries in the randomizer, and I will shortly be contacting the following people for mailing addresses:

  • Kristina Y. Zavala
  • brookea_2006
  • Andrea
  • Meagan L
  • Meghan (@meghan805)
  • Aik
  • Marisa
  • Leigh Smith

After which, they will receive mailings of my choice. (I assure you, whatever I send will be tidy, well-packaged, and tasteful. But of questionable usefulness.)

And now to everyone, thank you so much for sharing your goals with me! It’s really wonderful to see what you all have in store this year—so go forth and accomplish! ♥

That Time When Brenna Was a Small Angry Nihilist

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Last week, we left seventeen-year-old Brenna post-breakup, newly single and increasingly cynical. And I don’t mean cynical in that desperate, idealistic way that her sophomore self was, where the disenchantment really meant just caring a lot about things she couldn’t change.

I mean cynical in the sense of Whatever. This is stupid.

It’s not a good look. It’s not a good feeling. But more than that, it doesn’t make any inherent sense.

The thing is, nothing bad has happened to me. Nothing much has actually changed, and yet I suddenly feel like the whole world is a giant lump of pointlessness. It is completely unprecedented that a non-traumatic breakup with a perfectly nice, perfectly decent boy could turn a girl into such an unrelenting pessimist.

It starts with my ill-tempered crisis about dating and relationships and beauty, but quickly grows to encompass All the Everything. And while initially it still seems recoverable, the situation is then worsened by a variety of factors. By the fact that Jane hasn’t been at school for four days.

At first, I wait by her locker, trying to look casual and like I belong there when Rooster and #4 come to get their books.

It doesn’t work.

Rooster and Dweezil laugh and elbow each other and tease #4 loudly about his inability to get a girlfriend. #4 just shakes his head and looks someplace else. Despite my newfound reluctance to take the world seriously, I feel excruciatingly out of place, and Jane does not show up.

After awhile, I don’t even bother with her locker anymore. She is never waiting for me outside my writing class now. I know that when I pass the speech and debate room after second hour, she won’t be there, and I don’t know what to do about it. It’s like she’s disappeared.

“What do you mean you don’t know her phone number?” Catherine says. “We’ve only been hanging out with her every day for the entire semester.”

I shrug. “I don’t know, I just hate calling people.”

This piece of intelligence is absolutely true. At this point in my life, I have never asked a single person for their number, due to my intense dislike of making calls. As far as I’m concerned, the telephone should die in a fire.

Catherine sighs and shakes her head, but by now, she’s very accustomed to my lax social skills. “Well, Dill used to go out with her, right? He’ll know.”

So I wait for Dill after lunch, leaning against his locker until the warning bell rings and he’s pretty much forced to come over and get his books or else be late. I smile and start to speak, but he just reaches around me to turn the lock like I’m not even there.

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The Break-Up

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Let me just start by saying, this is an uncomfortable one.

There are a billion things that seventeen-year-old Brenna doesn’t understand. And some of them—okay, most even—have to do with feelings. This makes her (me) feel pretty shockingly stupid, because theories and facts are what you’re supposed to work hard to master, and feelings are the things you’re supposed to be born knowing about. Instead, I eat up books with a vengeance, while struggling to grasp even the simplest emotional concepts. I kind of feel like a cartoon character.

Here is the story of how I break up with Dill, or else, he breaks up with me.

I’ve mentioned before that as a couple, we have a tendency to bring out the worst in each other. I wasn’t lying, and the interaction that follows is one I’m distinctly not proud of. While lacking in drama and vaguely surreal, it’s exactly the kind of break-up one might expect from teenage Brenna. Basically, I’m saying you’ve been warned.

*****

First, he picked me fifty violets. Wove them into my hair and around my wrists. The leftovers, I stuffed into the pockets of my hoodie.

Later, we stopped to get coffee. It was a warm night and I asked for ice in mine. I knew the boy behind the counter, a little. He was older and I’d had Spanish with him the year before. Here’s most of what I knew about him: Buddy Holly glasses, nerdy in an ironic, contrived way—and nice, always nice to me, even when the basketball players and the wrestling boys would sometimes take my things and tease me just for fun.

“I like your flowers,” he said. “Hey, you think you could spare one?” He gestured to his lapel.

So I handed him one and he slipped it through his buttonhole, while Dill stood against the counter and squeezed my hand more tightly than was comfortable.

“I picked those for you,” he said, as soon as we were outside.

“Yes.” (Factual, remember—so, so factual.)

“So, I didn’t pick them for you to give to someone else.”

“If you picked them for me, they’re mine now. Anyway, a flower is not the same thing as affection. I wasn’t giving your affection to someone else.”

We were at Dill’s truck by then. He was shaking his head as he unlocked the driver’s side. “You’re unbelievable.”

I climbed in, tucking my hair behind my ears. The violets were tickling me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, I can’t be like you. You analyze everything.”

“Well, it’s a very good way to make decisions,” I said, but I understood suddenly that we were almost to that point where you can’t go back—not ever. “It’s the best way I know of.”

He turned and looked at me, and it wasn’t angry or possessive or aggravated. It was so, so sad. “Are you even into me at all? Because I can’t go through life putting two dollars in and getting a dollar back out. I just need to know if you love me.”

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Happy New Year and Now I Want to Give You Things!

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As you might imagine, I have a lot of books. Which is good, because I love books.

However, what I didn’t really understand until it was brought to my attention by D (who is far, far more organized than I am) is that I have a lot of MY books.

And I have to say, it feels amazing to have all these books—these physical reminders of what I’ve worked really hard on, what I’ve accomplished.

But the thing is … I don’t actually need this many.

So, in honor of my outrageous stockpile of books, I am going to implement what will henceforth be known as The Easiest Contest Ever.

I mean it. Easy-peasy.

Comment below, telling me a personal goal for the year 2012, be able to provide me with a US shipping address, and I will draw some names.

That’s it, the whole thing.

The contest will go for two weeks—now until Sunday the 15th at midnight Eastern—at which point I will draw something like six names, and each of those approximately six will get something in the mail. Probably a book.

(Really, a book)

What you need to understand: I’m not necessarily sticking to English-language versions. When I say I have a lot of books, I mean some that are in a language I can read, and some that aren’t.

Which means that you might receive one that isn’t.

You might receive additional prizes, such as buttons or stickers.

You might receive a book I didn’t write.

Honestly, this is a very freeform contest …

SO. That being said, good luck!

EDITED FOR CLARITY: No need to leave me a postal address here (I’ll get them later, if applicable), but if you could leave an email address, that would be fantastic!

Um, carry on.

Arts and Crafts

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And now for another narrative detour, in which I attempt to explain several things about my home environment, day-to-day priorities, and general upbringing. Also, my bedroom.

The thing is, if someone were to attempt to assemble a clear picture of teenage-me using only my journal, they’d most likely assume that I never did anything but go to school, be at school, and think about school.

This is remarkably not true.

In actuality, I pretty much only ever bother with the journal when I’m at school, because at school, I’m very, very bored.

Because of this desperate need to entertain myself when I’m in class, the entries are often recorded in real-time and capture the at-school portion of my life fairly accurately, but they don’t really reflect my home life at all, since when I’m at home, I’m busy doing stuff.

languid

*Except in this shot, where I am doing nothing

Home is eclectic, full of interesting things like baskets of miscellaneous bones, and animal skulls and vintage chemistry sets and forty-year-old dissection specimens in jars of formaldehyde.

Really, as far as bedrooms go, my bedroom is a very morbid one, and when I’m not watching hyper-violent crime movies, staying up all night, sewing beads and sequins on my clothes, or making buttermilk waffles, I spend a lot of time there.

To be perfectly clear, it’s not actually my room, because it’s also my sister’s room. And the animal room. And the craft room.

Venus

*You can’t really see, but the wall behind me is absolutely covered in homemade masks. Some are for Halloween. Most are Just Because.

The room is huge and drafty, with insanely high ceilings and terrible carpet, furnished with assorted bookshelves, a homemade work table, a store-bought tool bench, and a record player from the 1940’s. Also, two ladders, three aquariums, several hamsters, toads, salamanders, ferrets, and one rope swing.

It is basically the perfect environment—part cozy playhouse, part menagerie, part free fall.

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Joy!

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I’ll be brief today, since there is a lot of leftover-eating and lounging around to be done.*

D gave me these. For writing. Which is awesome.

Photo on 12-26-11 at 12.51 PM #2

Because as much as I like writing in coffee shops, sometimes the noise of them is … too noisy.

And also, if you’re wearing earbuds, sometimes people think that your small, non-confrontational headphones are an invitation to start talking to you right in the middle of a very crucial scene.

These babies, though? These are like a fortress to protect crucial scenes!

What about you? Do you write to music? To noise? In silence?

(And if in silence, HOW?)

*Okay, you got me. I’m actually getting caught up on email, but whatever. Lounge! Eat leftovers!

The Fence

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This is the story of how I did not behave honestly or say anything useful or kiss #4 over the fence, even though I kind of wanted to.

This is the story of how I eventually decided that whatever was happening between me and Dill had to end, and how it still took two more weeks for me to actually do anything about it.

This is the story of how I knew once and for all that I was a bad girlfriend.

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Waffles

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Today I acquired a waffle iron.

I swear I was not going to write about this. I was going to think up something useful to tell you. Something educational and craft-oriented, maybe about plot or structure, maybe even illuminating or totally insightful. But I have to be honest. I am really excited about this waffle iron.

The thing is, I like routine. Even though a lot of times the things I do look chaotic and kind of arbitrary, I do actually have a particular writing routine—I write anywhere, but I’m absolutely 100% happiest with my fingerless gloves and my headphones and a hot drink.

So, a long time ago at my parents house, we had this waffle iron. It was huge and heavy and not pretty, and probably manufactured before I was born. My mom got it from a yardsale or somewhere, and it had that thick, glossy 1970s enamel finish and I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the house who ever used it.

Now, where I am going with this.

Whenever I have to buckle down and behave responsibly and get to work, I like to have a little bit of basic structure to start me off. Back in the day, teenage-Brenna was vague and unpredictable and buzzed around like a hummingbird, making overly-ambitious cut-paper snowflakes, and leaving stray socks around like a trail of breadcrumbs, but for two hours on Saturdays, I can pretty much tell you exactly where I’d be.

Every Saturday morning during soccer season, here is how it went:

I would get up, make a big, fluffy batch of waffles for me and Little Sister Yovanoff. Then, we’d fix our plates, take them into the living room, sit down on the floor, and watch Pulp Fiction.

There. My every-soccer-weekend routine: vintage kitchen appliance, syrup-drenched breakfast food, Tarantino.

And now, I literally have not had homemade waffles since I was in high school. Sometimes I think fondly of them. Sometimes I catch myself daydreaming about them, about violent, convoluted movies and snappy, stylized dialogue. (Wishing for it. Feeling nostalgic and wistful.)

But all that it about to change. Because now I have a waffle iron.

Boy Friends

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My sister and I grew up surrounded by boys.

Okay, so we don’t have any brothers, and hardly even any boy cousins, but still, our childhood was distinctly boy-heavy. When we first moved to Colorado, the kids in our neighborhood were mostly guys, and back in Arkansas, I didn’t have even a single friend who was a girl. (Holly lived close by and was my age, but she wasn’t my friend because she only liked relentlessly pastel things like My Little Pony and I was always accidentally making her cry.*)

What I’m saying is that in the course of my life, I’ve built a lot of forts and bridges, shot a lot of air rifles and BB guns and homemade bow-and-arrows. Gone off bike ramps balanced on the handlebars, poked dead things with sticks, chased the cows in the pasture, walked out on the ice.

I’ve done all the fast, reckless, dangerous things** that girls left to their own devices almost never do. Because yes, you might think of it, but thinking of something is still a universe away from thinking it might be a good idea to try it.

And now, at seventeen, I feel a little bit like something’s missing. I look around at the boys I know and think how weird it is that I only ever talk to them when we’re sitting in class. I have this mute, sneaking suspicion sometimes that it shouldn’t be like this. That I should still be running around in the scrub brush, making up ridiculous games and pulling crazy shenanigans.

It’s not that I don’t love my girlfriends—I DO—but even when we’re all hanging out together, laughing and teasing each other, sometimes I get this mysterious sense of restlessness, like I’m missing some deep, integral part of me. Because even though I babysit and go grocery shopping and spend my spare time baking cookies and customizing my clothes and making lacy headbands and fancy barrettes, on the inside, I’m still a little bit (okay, a lot) of a tomboy.

I design elaborate princess hairstyles that have the structural integrity to stand up to the rigors of sledding or cross-country capture the flag. I keep cigarette loads in my wallet and a buck knife in my backpack. I jump off roofs onto trampolines and shoot bottle rockets and climb anything that looks like it needs climbing. I paint my toenails to hide all the places they’re bruised purple from soccer.

Dill is my friend. He is a boy.

Wit is also a boy. And even though I’ve only known him for a few months, I’m already starting to understand that our friendship is something rare and valuable. But Wit is also less aggressively boyish than Dill. He likes to get coffee and talk on the phone and dissect his feelings, all of which I’m delighted by, but none of which is familiar from the friendships of my childhood.

So when April rolls around and I find myself spending more and more time with Dill, it’s sort of not even that surprising. After all, the good things about Dill are obvious.

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