@Driftwood: Pardon my late reply, again. Had a friend over. And I ran all across town with another friend, yesterday. More on that later.

With the future visit/vacation, I already feel like I’m going to go into it negatively. What goes up, must come down. The vacation will start, but it will also end. I also feel like I’ll be too deep into my self-conscious thoughts to actually enjoy the experience. If I smile, I’ll be worried about how yellow my teeth are. If we converse, I’ll be worried about how much eye contact is too much eye contact (and which eye I should look at). I’m also worrying that my anxiety is going to go overboard, and I’ll be a shaky mess for the entire trip. But I still anticipate it, because I know there’s memories to be made. Plus, it’ll be something out of the norm. A little reminder that I’m not just stuck in a perpetual loop of misery.

How would I see myself living without anxiety? Fearless. (Was that a pun? That felt like a pun.) I want to be able to keep a conversation going, instead of being a brick wall. And I want to be able to hold confidence in myself, along with my artwork. Really, I just want to be able to value myself as a human being, instead of a waste of space. Instead of “how can I make [task] more convenient for [someone else]?”, I want to be thinking “how can I make [task] more convenient for me?”. I don’t want to spend my entire life putting off my rights as a human for the satisfaction of others. (But I don’t think any teenager, even I, has any right to talk about “the rest of their life”, since they usually make it over-dramatic; only basing it off of the short amount of living experience they’ve had.)

Time ticks, and the seemingly regrettable choice of the charter school looms over me. But I’m hoping it’ll do as much good as you say it will. It’s become obvious to me now that online school does a lot more harm than good for me. (And that I never actually care for doing artwork during school hours, anyways, which was my initial reasoning for switching to online school.)

Baby steps in counseling. I’m having a hard time mentioning anything serious, because it makes me feel degraded, somehow. Maybe degraded is the wrong word, but it makes me feel more like a patient. Less like her and I are on the same level, and more like she has to poke me with a stick from a 20 foot distance, whilst in a biohazard suit. But there is progress.

I never realized I haven’t mentioned the repetitive sleepover tremors to her. It never dawned on me because most everyone I know usually gets to hear my nagging about it. Her and I tried to do some troubleshooting on the subject, with no results. She only suggested doing what I’ve been doing, which is loading up on sleeping/allergy pills. Whatever works, I suppose. I’m hoping that next time, I’ll jump into the subject of compulsive picking, in hopes that we can look for a solution together.

—

Finally finished that commission painting. (Did I mention my friend commissioned me? He did. Here it is. https://s22.postimg.org/s0cda22tr/17_02_11_12_20_39_082_deco.jpg ) We were planning to go out to a café, only to realize that my mom dropped me off at 3:59pm, and the place closed at 4. He brought his cousin, and I brought along my friend who decided to come over the night before. His cousin is a careless, stoned bastard, but also the only one who kind of knows his way around the town. Long story short, (I’m on hour 3 of writing this post) we get stuck outside of his cousin’s dealer’s apartment, then in a foresty area (where he takes a leak), and then at a store (where he loads up on energy drinks), and then a viewpoint (where he smokes cigarette after cigarette). Phone says we walked 8 miles in total, but my legs are short, so it was probably 6. And I’m certain that 4 miles of it was uphill. Anyways, at least I got out. And I got 10 extra dollars, to add to my savings. Plus, my friend’s father now wants me to paint something simple, for $40.

(Here’s a random bonus doodle. Hopefully you’re alright with suicide jokes. https://s21.postimg.org/dnn8liio7/17_01_31_22_05_18_358_deco.jpg )