Reverse Prejudice

Every year I have been in school, I have learned about prejudice throughout human history. I have studied, again and again, about the most referenced example of prejudice: that against black Americans on the part of white Americans. What no one tends to talk about is this: there is a counter-prejudice to this. I call it reverse prejudice.

There are actually two kinds of reverse prejudice as I see them.

Reverse prejudice #1: Black Americans (not all of them, obviously) are sometimes against white people, as if every white girl and white boy they deal with is responsible for the god awful shit that some old racist white people put them (well, usually their ancestors) through. I have never been prejudice and I have never made comments about someone's race or anything like that. This has always hurt my sense of justice, that people could lay blame like an oversize quilt over the whole of a race. It does not seem fair at all.

Reverse prejudice #2: This has only really come to my attention lately. It is when a white girl or white boy dates only black boys or black girls. How weird is that? Vin finally, after MONTHS of flirting with me, told me that he only likes black girls. He is Italian and English and Scottish or something. It blows my mind that he is only into black girls. (Not that there is anything wrong with this, it just blows my mind!) It has occurred to me that maybe he lied. Maybe he just said that as an easy out. But I would rather just believe him although the truth seems so twisted in my mind.

This Rose Has its Thorns (A Letter)

This letter is for all prospective suitors so that everyone one of them knows fully what they are getting themselves into, although I guess one could argue that because I do not plan on delving into the more positive things about my person that I am not keeping them fully abreast of everything.

******************

Dear _________,

I feel I must apologize for the fact that I am a mess. I am, simply put: intense, emotional, feisty, occasionally vindictive, introspective, inquisitive, occasionally stubborn but generally not, intelligent, dark, quick with a "burn," and I see too many flaws in people to be completely trusting or sociable.

One problem is I do not know who I am, or at least, I feel like I do not and so I will probably be constantly searching for who I am. As long as I feel like this, I will probably always question who you are and what I am doing with you and where it's all going. It will probably be very tiring for you and it will surely be tiring for me whether you notice me doing it or not.

Another thing is I really do not know what I want from a guy. It's the result of a lot of personal history. After all of the times I have been hurt by a guy, and after seeing all of the women I love get hurt by guys, I honestly distrust guys in general and, mostly, I distrust myself when I am with a guy.

Sure, you are not all the same. Sure, you are not going to hurt me. Sure, you love me or care for me or just think you could. Whatever. Whether you do it on purpose or not, you will hurt me. You will ignore me for a week or cheat or dump me for your ex or just leave when I need you and I will feel like I could die. I will ask myself how I could have let my world revolve around you. I am a lot stronger than I used to be, but not half as strong as what I need to be to be good in a relationship. Or maybe I am underestimating myself. Maybe I am too strong and I will not be the kind of girl you want. I used to be too amenable and self-sacrificing. I think this time, I will stick to my guns and I will not give in to anyone else's desires unless they match mine to the letter.

See, whichever way it plays out, I will be all wrong for you.

Also, I have a problem with letting people in. Either I will reveal too much too soon and you will run or I will wait too long to let you in and you will run away before I can (or you'll run away after I do and after you have determined that it wasn't worth the wait). My mom says I have not let anyone in lately and I do not understand. I have tried to be frank and still funny and I have tried to be understanding and fair and calm and it has gone awry. People always run from me.

My luck, you are the best kind of guy. You are the one (ONE!) guy on earth who knows how to respect a girl and how to love her and when to put her desires before your own. And now that I have found you (or now that you have found me), I have been through a bunch of bad ones and I no longer know how to be the right girl for you. Just my stupid luck.

Well, maybe I am all wrong as I sit here writing this. Maybe I am complete in your arms. Maybe I am the good girl I have always been. Maybe with you, unlike with anyone before you, I have figured out the perfect balance of slow and quick, or emotion and calm, of serious and fun. I kind of hope that this is all true, but I don't know if that's good enough for me. I do not think I can be okay with figuring out that it takes a man to make me a better person...

See what I meant about how messed up I am?

Sincerely,

Vered

Repression and Double Standards

I have been thinking lately about how repressed female sexuality is in today's society. It really should not come as a shock; the hypocrisy of lauding men who have sex freely and in turn criticizing women who do the same is fairly well noted, I think. But it goes further than that.

Young women are called promiscuous and are deemed to be "asking for it" if they are at all sensual or even just exploring the full meaning of their sexuality.

Furthermore, young women, most of whom are probably confused about their sexuality, can never be sure of what men want. Some guys want a girl with promiscuity out the ass and these same guys won't take seriously the same girl. It makes me think of Jena Malone's line "It's all too much to live up to," in Saved! She was referring to the strict rules laid down by the Father who was principal at her school and his interpretation of Christianity, but her words could truly apply to male expectations of women.

Other guys just screw you over, play games with your head and throw you away like a dirty tissue. I haven't yet met a good guy who was honest from the start about what he wants. I honestly do not think they exist. Mom said even at her age, male-female relationships are more about game-playing than they should be. It's sickening because I know what I want and I do not hesitate to go for it and I despise games, so obviously I have no luck with guys.

Honestly, and Dad, you can stop reading now, I just want to mess around a little bit. I want the freedom to explore my body and the bodies of others. I do not want to be labeled in a negative way for something that is completely natural, nor do I want to live a life confined to the expectations or limitations of others. That would be living a stunted, boring, noncreative life.

I am frank and I want to explore things and I refuse to be apologetic anymore... Just some thoughts.

By the way, that jerk Vin never called and did not reply to my text today. I am done being played with. I am not a toy, nor should I be. I do not exist to be his or anyone's play thing. I may have many queries about the nature of existence, but this is one thing I am positive of.

I just wish above all that there did not exist this double standard for men and women and that women did not have to quiet things like their sexual identity. That's the world I want to live in.

This is Dangerous

I am dangerously close to wanting nothing more than a boy... a certain boy with a cute smile, a nice body, and the rare ability to make me laugh, really laugh. It is beyond taboo for me to like him since he and a certain one of my ex-best friends went on a date once or so I've been told. It isn't even completely clear whether this guy--I will call him Vin, short for "Vincenzo" and evoking the image of Vin Diesel (just about the sexiest man on earth)--thinks I am anything special. See, he is totally the kind of person to flirt with anyone and everyone, but he has been flirting with me for nearly 9 months! If he's not at all interested, he would have stopped flirting quite some time ago, no?

Last night, I was out with friends and Vin was working. At our table, there were my two friends Tanya and Amy and Tanya's friend Kurt and his friend Brad, both of whom are Coast Guards. Vin kept flirting with me in front of all of them and I can't help but flirt back. I felt guilty because Brad was supposed to be my date, although I've never met him or Kurt before. Vin asked what we were doing or maybe it was Twin, another server I know who asked, and when I said we were going to the movies after dinner, he asked why I never ask him to the movies. That is such shit, too, since I asked him to see The Dark Knight and other movies and he would consent but never actually go with me.

Eventually we were heading out and Vin asked me about the day that I had my breakdown in the restaurant. He said he had seen me and didn't realize who I was until he was driving away and Twin told him it was me... The rest of our party went out to the doors and I lingered for a few moments to talk to Vin. I tried to talk seriously to him about his movie comment and he just made jokes.

When I got home last night--er, early this morning--I was texting while exhausted (probably nearly as regrettable as texting when intoxicated though I wouldn't know a single thing about that) and sent Vin a text asking him to call me today. Then I slept till noon and now it's 9:15 pm and he hasn't called. I am trying to remember that Vin has probably been working all day, is still working, and does not want to call while he is at work, yet I cannot help feeling like he will not call because he doesn't like me.

I hate these mind games that I feel so much the victim of. I am a beautiful, intelligent girl who should be worshipped and adored by a million guys and my ego is seriously wounded that I am not worshipped and adored, let alone that I never get the guys I want. I don't even want a serious, till-death commitment. I'm not looking for marriage. I really just want a friend I can have fun with and kiss and the fact that I even want or need this much from a guy scares me. So why in the hell would I want commitment?

Maybe all of this is just the innate desire most humans feel for that which they are not supposed to want, need, or have. Maybe I should stick with this thought and I will eventually overcome my want for Vin.

Rasa

I have been reading about this viewer-response theory of art called rasa in Vidya Dehejia's Indian Art book and I find it so fascinating. According to Dehejia, the concept originated some 1,500 years ago and was written in Bharata's work titled Natya shastra (which means "Science of Dance"). Basically, when it comes to art, "aesthetic experience rests not with the work of art, nor with the artist who created it, but with the viewer." The responsive viewer is called rasika.

Dehejia goes on and says, "Literally, rasa means the juice or extract of a fruit or vegetable; it implies the best or finest part of a thing. In the aesthetic context, rasa refers to a state of heightened awareness evoked by the contemplation of a work of art, drama, poetry, music or dance. A performance is criticized as ni-rasa (without rasa) or praised as rasavat (imbued with rasa)."

Further on: "The erotic sentiment of shringara, described as king of rasas, has a high visibility in the fine arts. The other eight rasas are the comic or hasya, the pathetic or karuna, the furious or raudra, the heroic or vira, the terrible or bhayanaka, the odious or bibhatasa, the wondrous or adbhuta and the quiescent or shanta."

In the context of Indian history, Dehejia writes, "The cultivation of rasa seems to have been an intellectual and emotional experience that was completely available to only the sophisticated segment of the population."

It occurs to me that most people today have the opportunity to experience this heightened awareness just by reading a book or watching a play or staring at a piece of art and so many do not appear to take advantage of it. I wonder if so many of the people who appear to me to be very shallow and unquestioning, even sometimes unfeeling, could really be so. If fewer people than I think are really so shallow, unquestioning, and unfeeling, then too often people put on unbecoming charades.

I wish I knew more people who are forthright about their appreciation for thought-provoking art and who could shed some light on their own awareness of life and the world. Am I really so different a kind of creature that few others feel the way I do?

Sometimes I am tempted to say, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Autobiography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "I am not made like anyone I have seen; I dare believe I am not made like anyone existing. If I am not better, at least I am quite different. Whether Nature has done well or ill in breaking the mould she cast me in, can be determined only after having read me." Yet, I do not think I could say this with a conscience, because my sole proof for saying it would be, as it appears Rousseau's sole proof was, that I have not met anyone quite like myself. Just because there is no proof that something exists, whether it be another being like myself or something else, does not ergo mean that it does not exist.

Back to the subject of rasa, I find it intriguing to try applying the concept to life in general. The aesthetic experience of life really rests in the person taking action and living that life not the person watching this other life. Then, again, who is to say that the beauty of one life does not lie in another's perception of it? Hmm...

Crisis and Change

Lately it has occurred to me, whenever I hear mention of it, that the economic crisis which is happening is a necessary force of change.

The Wilson & Dilulio American Government text (Wilson, James Q., and John J. Dilulio, Jr. American Government, 10th Ed. 2006. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston.) says "American elections, unless accompanied by a national crisis such as a war or a depression, rarely produce changes of the magnitude of those that occurred in Britain in 1945." An economic downturn with the highest unemployment rates since the depression of the 1930s qualifies, I think, as a "national crisis." 

So here is what I think: The depression is supposed to provide inspiration and pressure for great changes in our political system. I have always believed that even if ALL things did not happen for specific purposes, at least some things happen for specific purposes. My first sort of conclusion in this respect is that the economic downturn was destined to happen for at least these two reasons: (1) as a force that pushed the greatest majority of the U.S. population to elect Barack Obama as president (which in turn has given the people hope for the future); and, (2) as a force that will push the many cogs in our political system to put in place the new policies that are needed.

I admit two faults in my theory: the primary action required to make changes is reliant upon the many incumbents in Congress, some of whom are responsible for the same bad policies for which we are currently suffering; and, my theory requires hope that it be done so.

Abbie Hoffman probably would have agreed since he wrote (in Soon to be a Major Motion Picture) that "There are lots of secret rules by which power maintains itself. Only when you challenge it, force the crisis, do you discover the true nature of society. And only at the time it chooses to teach you." He was writing more about political activism done by an individual or group of individuals, but it could very well apply to that about which I write now.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is common among my classmates and some of the adults I know. By hypocrisy I am simply referring to a major contradiction between their actions and their condemnation of those same actions when done by others. It seems possible that hypocrisy is the result of the ability of men to change and of their inherent state of immaturity, as Immanuel Kant defined it in his essay "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" Kant's definition in the very first paragraph is this: "Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another."

There are so many hypocrites among my schoolmates. Eris exclaimed her agreement when, one day last week, I deplored the opinions of our peers and the pompous opinion that their inconsequential thoughts matter so greatly. Eris is perhaps one of the biggest offenders of my belief that opinions are meaningless and that they should not be presented as fact when there is no proof of their correctness. In class shares her green opinions with the room in a loud, obnoxious voice as though she were some mortal goddess and her words ought to be carved in stone. I really ought to give her the benefit of the doubt; Eris probably does not realize that her opinions are so foolish or that so many of the rest of us in class are bored to death when she talks.

It appears that, based on other conversation with Eris, she does not feel compelled to come to her own conclusions using her own understanding, in such a way that Kant would define as maturity, and Eris is more comfortable agreeing with the statements made by others even when her agreement contradicts her behavior. It also seems possible that because people have the ability to change (one of the categories or universal characteristics of existence according to Archie J. Bahm's Metaphysics: An Introduction), and some people are more moldable or gullible than others, and maybe this is why Eris and others are willing to agree with something that sounds like truth when it benefits them (i.e. when agreeing will put them in another's good graces) and then they backslide into the very behaviors they've just criticized.

I know many others like this, who act one way and in time, openly denounce the very same behavior. It is quite silly that I should be so annoyed by it when it is hardly a new experience but it is one of those things that retains its ability to bother me.

Motivation Without Direction

After talking to Dad about his participation in various activist protests in the 1970s and about his political hero Abbie Hoffman (pictured above), I was left feeling empty. I have never done anything amazing. I have not been even a silent participant in a historical event; I was not even of voting age so I could vote in the 2008 election in which my political hero (the only one I have so far) Barack Obama won the presidency.

Dad squatted during the Tocks Island Dam battle between the U.S. Government and an environmental activism group; granted, he was only there for three or four months while some squatted for years, but he participated! And Dad participated in anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. and in doing so, he actually met his hero Abbie Hoffman! I am amazed at this because very few of my friends have parents who have been involved in great historical events.

The idea of political activism has been slumbering in the rear quarter of my mind for some time and now I feel very motivated. I do not have direction though. Motivation without direction can be worth nothing.

Furthermore, this knowledge that Dad has done such cool things and my desire to do similar things have aggravated my already restless quest for identity and sense of belonging.

On a final note, I will quote a short passage from Abbie Hoffman's autobiography Soon to be a Major Motion Picture about his college years: "The quest for identity became paramount. 'What' became replaced by 'why.'" It just seems to fit so well with my mood.

Love?

Today's Valentine's Day, obviously. It's depressing. The world, or at least America is obsessed with love, and I question the actuality of "love."

My doubt arises from the logical conclusion that love could very well be a simple illusion, created by some natural chemistry or physicality, to make people couple up and procreate. I want to believe in familial love and love between friends, but there are times when I doubt these as well. That old phrase "Sometimes love just isn't enough" has proved true again and again for people, otherwise it wouldn't be a much-used maxim.

People are often selfish and shallow. There are many whom I have met who do not understand how to love, if love really does exist as more than a mechanism to preserve the species and if it is defined as the following: the state of appreciation for another's strengths or beauties as well as his or her flaws, and as the state of acceptance of his or her feelings and needs. Love, in any sort of relationship, is not nor should it be conditional. "Love" is a word too often thrown around in conversation between two people who have not achieved love as defined above. The word "love" is too often bandied between two people who do not equally take part in the relationship or who do not help or even genuinely care for each other in times of dire need.

My other problem with this large, scary concept of love is that for some, it is the sole reason and purpose of being alive. There are people--or empty shells that look like people--who care solely about how loved they are. These people fall in love, often times too easily, and let the other person become the sun, moon, and stars of their private galaxy. The fault in this is such that people are unreliable--I have learned this the hard way, several times--and to let one's life revolve around another, even if this second loves the first in the greatest sense of the word, is negligent. It has been said before but it bears repeating: If one makes another his or her whole life, what does he or she have when their "love" is gone?

I am pretty sure that I have found more holes in this "love" idea, but I am at a loss currently. Should I think of more, I will post again. Till then, question everything and do not, please, give your faith (or love) blindly to a thing or a person...

Who Am I?

I have been asking myself for the longest time what it means to be a self and I've been asking myself who I am. I do not know the answers and so I started digging around in boxes of Dad's philosophy books from college. One of his book's, Nozick's Philosophical Explanations, has a chapter in the front about the self. Although I've not read the chapter in its entirety (it has a lot of variables that seem very dissimilar to their close cousins, the letters of the alphabet; no, variables take on a much more sinister appearance, which is why, despite my being fairly good at mathematics, I despise the subject), I skimmed a bit and talked it over with Dad. Nozick suggests that the self is anything with the capacity for reflexive self-reference.

Reflexive self-reference means the ability to look inward and to distinguish that, for instance, I am a different being than you are. It also means the ability to question what we do and who we are. This theory makes sense, but it seems to me to be lacking something. I have the capacity for reflexive self-reference and yet, I constantly feel like a piece of the puzzle is missing. I don't know what it means to be me. I don't know who I am. Is it just a series of adjectives that describe the way I act? Or is it what I value? Or what I want to do in life? Or how I view the world and its populace?

I do not know!

A teacher told me once that I over-think this question of "Who am I?" He said I need to just relax and have fun. Every time I try something similar, though, I end up asking questions about myself or the motives of people or why things are the way they are. It seems natural to me. Maybe this is who "I" am: a philosopher, a questioner, a metaphysician (I'm also reading Metaphysics: An Introduction by Archie J. Bahm)... And the pondering continues.

Final note: You may have marked the absence of the previously mentioned cast... I will write about them as I see fit, and soon, most likely. I have been somewhat remiss to mention them or to delve into my thoughts on their actions and reactions because I do not want to stir up trouble. In that vein, here is just a warning: If I do delve so into those sorts of discussions, it is only because I think about such things ALL DAMN DAY LONG.

On the Value of Opinions

An opinion is meaningless and yet, the bearers of opinions hope or demand that their words carry the weight of the world for those who hear them. I have often said in conversation that I do not understand why someone would think that their opinions should carry that much weight but in fact I think I might... 

No one's opinion should matter more to me than my own and my opinions should not matter to another more than his or her opinions do. I understand why, in academic writing, one must state all opinions as fact, but in daily conversation, one really shouldn't go around spouting their opinions like water burbling from the Fountain of Youth or like the message of a god passing through a prophet.

I believe I understand why people think this way--it is because of ego. I am not referring to Freud's concept of the ego, but rather the concept that one is more important or correct or more worldly or more knowledgeable than those around him or her. Granted I possess a slice of this kind of ego and I hope that my writing will be read and loved by people in the future, but I try to constantly remember that my opinions do not or should not hold all the merit in the world for the people who hear them. Others might do well to try remembering the same.

Cry Ophelia

I have learned today that I have wanderlust. For a girl with a love of words, it's funny that I have heard the word 'wanderlust' quite a few times, without any comprehension of its meaning, and never looked it up. Today, though, in the car with my dad--yes, I get rides from my daddy!--we were listening to 60s on 6 on XM radio and this song about traveling to San Francisco and my dad told this story about having wanderlust as a kid, hearing this song, and how he dreamed of getting out of the small town he grew up in. Then it clicked! I am the poster girl of wanderlust. Truly, I have not grown up in small town America, but my life in Philadelphia does not mean I have seen that much.

I grew up in a household with two parents who constantly prodded my sister and I about getting good grades, going to bed on time, playing nice with people but knowing when to say no, etc. I don't mean to devalue what they did for us and the values which they instilled in us are far from wrong by normal societal standards, but I have lived very little, I feel. Most everyone I know has been to a party with drinking and drugs involved. While I don't believe in doing things just because other people are or they expect you to, I believe that you have got to explore the world around you. You've got to throw yourself into situations that differ from the things you are used to.

I want to do more than party though. I want to travel the world. I want to run with the bulls in Spain, to attend the Berlin Love Parade, to climb the Eiffel Tower, to sit quietly in a caravan hoping the lion 20 paces to my right won't attack while on safari in Africa, buy weed in Amsterdam's red light district just because I can, and to walk through a concentration camps, moved to tears for the loss of all the people who'd been through there during the evil times. I want to meet a million different kinds of people. Just as much, too, I wish to meet a bunch of people who think and hope and dream and talk like me. I want to travel the world, drink it all in, and finally figure out where the hell I belong.

A teacher of mine suggested I read Reviving Ophelia, which I have not done yet, but it's all about how girls are raised to follow rules and be "good" and then they loose themselves. They loose themselves, I believe, because they have not had the opportunity to try things for themselves (without the constant fear that they will get in trouble with their parents or the law) and they've not had the chance to react to situations that define the character of others. You cannot become who you are meant to be if you are sheltered all of your life or if you don't make your own decisions, etc. This same teacher said I have the Ophelia complex (named for Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet who is lost in the end for similar reasons), and I really believe I do from what little she told me about it.

There has to be something I can do to keep from losing myself, but sometimes I feel in terrible danger of it. Our society does not value self-expression or self-exploration the way it should. According to the way people around me live and expect their children to live, a good citizen in our society will go to college after completing high school so that he or she can go on to have a well-paying job with security and benefits. Ultimately, it seems to me that this system values only building a good life for one's future children. People live to work. I do not want any of this, but society casts one out if one tries a different path. How does one reject this bullshit when the people he or she loves having always willingly accepted it without question?

My mom would have a bird if I did what I really wanted to. I would love to just not go to college--or at least take classes but not declare a major and with no real intention to finish a degree--and wander the world and write about it. I am supposed to go to college, study abroad in school, get a degree, and get a good job. I hate to disappoint her but I really do not think that's necessarily for me.

What could keep me rooted safely in sanity while allowing me to fly free and explore? I don't know. The answer may be family, but there are so many familial problems (for me as much as anybody) and who is to say that they will keep me grounded when no one in my family understands that I long to break free of convention and to find a way of living that makes me happy. I don't want to be a conformist anymore, but to break out, do I really need companions?

Limbo

Sometimes I feel like life is limbo, or at least high school. In this vein of thought, I will quote Sylvia Plath.

"when the face of god is gone and the sun pales behind wan veils of chill mist, she vomits at the gray neuter neutralities of limbo and seeks the red flame and smoking snakes that devour eternally the limbs of the damned."

Sylvia Plath wrote this in a letter to her friend Richard Sassoon. I hope to be able to write someday with the same intensity and dark beauty with which she wrote this sentence. I am still working on memorizing it. I have always wanted to memorize great lines of writing and to keep them in my head for use in conversation, given the proper context, the way some people do...

Cast List

When seeking an understanding of someone's values, goals, fears, and such, it can be helpful to look at the people around them. The oneness he or she feels with another person is as indicative of these things as a comparison of him or her to his or her enemies.

I am changing names and keeping some identifying facts vague so I can protect the identities of people and hopefully not inspire anger on anyone's part. Just to be clear: my intent in this is not to make anyone feel belittled or ridiculed; everything I write here will be fact or merely MY opinion of these people. I do not wish to inspire ill thoughts about any one of them in your mind, I just wish to show you my world and its populace, the way I see it.

Mom--She and my dad had been married a long time before I was born. They had had trouble conceiving, so I was kind of a miracle baby; the pregnancy gave her no trouble though, so depending on your definition of "miracle baby" you may not agree with my assessment. After my parents seperated, Mom started dating. Now she's in a serious relationship with Zebediah, who lives and works in Delaware. He's here at the house almost all the time though. Frankly, I do not like him much, and for several reasons. She is a fantastic writer but will not listen to me and actually write a book, although I think she would pen quite a few bestsellers.

Dad--He is still single although my parents split about 2 years ago. Mom and Dad maintain a mostly friendly relationship. Dad runs his own business. He talks about politics and philosophy like an expert although my judgement of his expertise may be clouded because I know considerably less in politics and nothing about philosophy (although I guess I am somewhat of an accidental philosopher with all the time I spend questioning life and trying to find the answers). I love talking to him. I learn so much! It has been amazing over the past month or so in beginning to learn how alike we really are.

Grammy--My mother's mother; my only living grandmother. She lives in the country, quite a while away from home here in Philly. We don't get to talk as much as she or I'd like because I'm forgetful and slightly phone-phobic. When I spend time with her though, it's like she just understands me. And I never question whether she loves me; it's great to feel that secure.

Opa--Grammy's ex. He is married to a woman barely older than his eldest daughter. He's a hypochondriac. He's 1st generation German-American. He is a year or two younger than Grammy. He wrote sappy letters to her while he served in the Vietnam war and at the Hawaiian base. He cheated on her several times when they were married and he and Grammy finally divorced when all their kids were out of the house.

Vienna--My sister, 17 months younger, love-hate relationship. She wants me gone from the house and I don't know if I blame her, because I can't wait to be out of the house (not that this is anyone's fault, I just want breathing room, growing room). She is also very possessive. Keep your hands off of her things, or she'll have fits.

Selena--Class president, sweet and lively, she's the perfect listener. She is the one whose shoulder I could lean on when I cried about home problems to the counselor.

Uzima "Zim"--Eighteen and a senior. She is an actress who has appeared in plays at a theater in downtown Philly, worked on small films with her friend Villain (whom she's been in plays with), and wants to be an actress in Hollywood. She focuses a lot on making her acting dreams come true. She's good at her schoolwork but usually procrastinates and rushes to get stuff done. She's got many siblings. The name Uzima means "Full of life" in Swahili because Zim is certainly full of life.

Bell--Single child, divorced parents, senior, works on newspaper with me. We were "best friends" last year and she stopped texting/calling around the time I did a summer program she did not bother to apply for. Now, we exchange pleasantries sometimes, but I am pretty sure I mean nothing to her, and I am pretty sure she means nothing to me now. Bell is named for her laughter; once the intoxicating sound of friendship, now it sounds like plaster church bells--intended to sound true and beautiful, but really: flawed and fake.

Amber--Fellow senior. She talks about people all of the time, even the people who are her supposed "best friends." Amber is disgustingly self-important and self-centered. She loves male attention far too much for it to be healthy. Really, she is not much different from many of the girls with whom I go to school.

Eris--Fellow senior. Has many home problems, which I do not discredit or invalidate. Always dramatic. Claims to dislike opinions, but has many. Talks a lot, about things of very little consequence. "Eris" is Greek and means "strife."

Caresse--Temple University student, journalism major, 21 (as of tomorrow). We met at UJW this past summer. We haven't gotten to hang out very much at all (two afternoons since the end of UJW) but when I do, I don't feel so alone. She lets me vent my problems and concerns and she tells me that she's felt the same way about a lot of stuff and she's just fun. It's like having an older sister when we get to hang out. Caresse, according to Babyname.com, is American for 'Beloved' and it is derived from the French for caress. Fitting for my friend whom I wish had more time for me!

Anyone else who pops up will be properly introduced, do not fear. :)