Good Morning, Midnight!

I've never been much of a concert-goer. I went to one concert in 6th grade with my cousin and our parents, and I really went more for the music than for the concert experience. I have been to a Christian youth conference called Acquire The Fire, and that was something of a concert experience.

On Thursday, I had another concert experience. A few people from my youth group went to a Stellar Kart concert not too far from here. Stellar Kart was good, yes, but what I really enjoyed was the more local opening band, Good Morning Midnight. I loved them before I heard them, just because I loved their name. But I also loved their music. It was lovely, as far as rock goes, and so easy to relate to.

But I am getting ahead of myself. There is a girl in our youth group called Kind. She is tall, thin, and blonde. She's quiet and nice. And she is good friends, of late, with Han. This occurred while I was out of attending youth group. When we got there, he started talking to Kind. This wouldn't normally bother me so much, but for two things: The first is that I'm extremely sensitive lately, more so than before, to his interaction with girls. The second is that his back was rather turned to me, and if it wasn't, they are both so tall that they talk to each other right over me. Then when we were on the bus, he wouldn't let me sit by him. He sat in the two seats in the back, and Kind sat in front of his seats. I sat in front of him and to the side, as there were no back row behind me. I was upset that he'd somewhat ignored me, and also that he wouldn't let me sit by him, and that Kind was closer to him than I was. So I wasn't overly responsive to his little attempts to speak to me. In fact, I faced the window and tried to keep from crying.

Let us pause to examine this need to restrain tears. I've seen my psychologist a couple of times now and the 'diagnosis' is Major Depressive Disorder, which I in no way doubt. Depression or not, though, I'm incredibly sensitive and he knows it. I hate to say this, because it sounds so overdramatic, but this is all considerably due to my feeling completely worthless and inept. And part of that feeling came from the entire Cheer situation. Actually, a lot of it did. That, and his associated hate for any sign of upset from myself. Which was something I couldn't help. Believe me, I tried. I don't think I've every tried harder at anything my entire life. I literally could not keep myself cheerful for any significant length of time, and thusly, I could not keep him happy with me for any significant length of time. Which made me feel like crap, let me tell you.

And that feeling of crap comes up at any time when I feel ignored or unimportant. Which Han doesn't seem to understand. So my moodiness only proved to further agitate him. Which only made me feel increasingly worthless. I didn't even hide it after a while. He reminded me that I was making him look bad and ruining the night, which I hadn't done yet. But since he was going to be upset about me doing something, I figured I might as well do it, so I cried and didn't hide it. Eventually, I forced myself to calm down somewhat. But for some reason, half-way through the concert, I couldn't any more, so I left the concert and went to a back hallway and sat in a window to cry. I didn't think anyone would be there while the concert was going on. One man did walk through, though. An adult man wearing a name landyard walked through and asked if I was okay. My answer was of course an affirmative. Even though of course it shouldn't have been. He asked if he could do anything (a negative) and if i was sure (an affirmative). He told me that if I needed to talk, to let him know. I said okay, even though I had no idea where I'd find him.

And that got me to thinking. My parents are always upset at me when I am unhappy about something they want me to do. Han is always upset at me when I cry for any reason, especially related to him. Everyone is upset at me when I am upset. And this one man that I don't even know is the only one so far who has kindly offered to help without any kind of condemnation. I have only two theories for this:

1. Everyone has their pre-determined ideas of what I should be and what I am capable of. They don't seem to comprehend at all the lack of control I have on my emotions, and maybe they should. And the man who offered to help didn't have those standards already set. He didn't have before and after photos to look at. He didn't see a selfish attention-hungry brat, and he didn't see a pitiful oversensitive nuisance. He just saw a scared and hurting little girl sitting in the corner of the window. It is probably the most obvious thing to see, but no one else seems to look at it that way.

2. Everyone who gets upset at me for my feelings knows how ridiculous they are and how wrong I am for having the feelings I get. They know I'm wrong and messed up and oversensitive and the man that offered to help didn't know me well enough to know that the feelings I had were wrong.

The man left me with those thoughts. And I remember also thinking that Han wouldn't look for me, much less find me, and that he might not even notice if I had left. I didn't really want him to find me at this point, because I knew how upset he would be if he found me crying. But I wanted him to at least look for me.

He did find me. He found me and he hugged me and tried to get me to stop crying and told me he wasn't mad and he was sorry for earlier. All I did was cry more and tell him that I was sorry for ruining the night and that he should go and enjoy the rest of the concert. He did go back to the concert, but made me go with him.

The rest of the concert was good, until the ride home. Everyone had said they wanted to go to McDonalds except our youth pastor, who wanted to go to Burger King. Kind was going to McDonalds. I didn't want to be around Kind. Not then. So I said, "Hey, we should go to Burger King to keep our pastor company." So we went into Burger King, and when the youth pastor came in, guess who was with him? Kind. She had talked the whole night about wanting McDonalds, but as soon as Han and I went to Burger King, what did she suddenly want? This did only bad things to my mood.

Han and I sat by each other on the ride home. He talked to me a little, but he talked to the pastor and to Kind more. The radio was on, and I sang a little, but only to myself. I had my head on his shoulder, and I looked at him a lot, hoping he'd feel my eyes and look back and smile. He didn't really. But it's silly to think he'd know to do that.

I cried when I took him home, I think. I can't remember why. All I remember is him going inside and telling me that he couldn't handle much more of me crying, that he just couldn't. That didn't make it any better.

So, along with at Good Morning Midnight shirt and cd, I was left with this:

Would you tell someone with cancer to just get better? Then why would you tell someone with depression to just cheer up? Do you think I enjoy this? I don't. If it were that easy to just 'be happy,' then believe me, I would be. You don't have to tell me.

I love Han to pieces. I do. But I've become more fragile and he's become less gentle. I don't know what to do anymore.

I've always believed that if I had an incurable disease, I would cut off ties with people I knew and cared about. Because I didn't want to upset them when everything fell to pieces. But for some reason, I now have depression, something I can't get rid of, and I can't bring myself to get rid of my friendships. I feel like I have to. I have to stop making everyone miserable with my misery. But I can't. I want to run off without any warning or explanation and leave them alone, because they'd certainly be better off without me. But I can't. I care too much about them, especially about Han, and I also don't have enough money.

I did run away, though. Last night I dropped Han off at his house a little early and went to the park. Where I cried. This was in part because I didn't want to cry around him. But once I got there, it was largely because I wanted someone to come and find me. No, here's what it really was (to me) :

There was a princess suffering a great tribulation. She was all by herself. She had tried many times to end her suffering and her situation, but she couldn't do it by herself. Her only hope anymore was for someone to do it for her. But no one wanted to rescue her. She was the princess who wasn't worth rescuing.

So eventually I got off the swingset and walked back to my car. I started to heat it up and I kept crying. And lo and behold, a car pulled up. Yeah... it was a cop car. Telling me that no one was supposed to be in the park past 11 p.m. The only person willing to get me out of the park was someone who has to because they are paid to.

But, it is late. Good night, everyone. And good morning, midnight.

<3 o.

One of the Worst Friday Nights Ever. No, Really.

Exhibit A: When I went to Disneyworld, I spent a couple of days in Epcot. On the first day, I was heading back to our cabin/rooms to put something up and rest, because I hadn't slept well the night before. On my way towards the park exit, I saw a woman sitting by herself on a wall next to a garden. She had her head in hands, and I saw a few tears hitting the ground. In my opinion, no one should cry at Disneyworld, and I was almost certain that someone somewhere deserved to be punished for making her cry, but that wasn't my focus. I hung around that area for probably ten minutes trying to decide if I should do anything, or what I could do if I decided to. I eventually did ask her if she would be okay and if I could help her in any way. I will always wonder what happened to her. I wish I had been able to help her.

Exhibit B: Haleigh loves animals. She loves them so, so much. Not long ago, one our cats had caught a butterfly by the wings. Haleigh loves our cats, but she doesn't like to see anything in pain. She retrieved the butterfly from the cat's mouth as carefully as possible so as not to hurt it. I had huge holes in its wings from the cat's teeth, and I don't think it could ever possibly fly again, but Haleigh put it in some flowers out of the cat's reach anyway. She doesn't like to see any animal in pain. She is the main caretaker of our cats. She plays with them, feeds them, knows all their personalities and the differences between cats that seem otherwise identical. The only thing she won't do is give them medicine, because if they fight it or meow, she gets very upset and afraid that she will hurt them.

Exhibit C: I will not go into the nitty-gritty details, but I have an uncle who used to (and may still) grow, use, and deal illegal drugs. He sold these to my cousin, the son of a different uncle of mine, and he would get high in the basement while leaving his elementary-aged daughters upstairs by themselves. He's not a good person. He refuses to work, and so does his wife. He is thirty-some years old, and his entire life, my grandparents have payed for his food, clothing, water, electricity, taxes, housing, everything. He doesn't have his own money. He spends it on other drugs.

Exhibit D: Tonight was a Friday night. On most Friday nights, I go out with Han, because we don't see each other too much during the school days. Tonight, however, my parents went to help Emily with her house, and they were spending the night there. They asked me to stay home with my two younger sisters, Haleigh and Annalisa. I don't know if I have ever used a fake name for them before, but this is what I'm calling them now. They said I could go out Saturday night, so I said that was fine. I decided I could write a little, I could draw a little, get my room clean, relax... just take everything easy. It was going to be a good night.

But it was not to be. Because I get jumpy alone at night sometimes, Mom and Dad had Grandma and Grandpa come in and check on us, which is fine. But then, my cousin, the young daughter of my bum uncle, called my grandpa. My grandparents recently acquired a kitten, and she wanted it. Hers was sick, and her parents didn't have the money to take it to the vet. Grandma asked if she could have one of ours instead. She asked Haleigh this. Haleigh knows that their house is not a good place for a cat. We have kittens to spare, but we want them all to go to good homes, and Haleigh wants that more than any of us. In Exhibit C, I think I clarified that this does NOT qualify as a good home. So this was very, very awkward for her--she said she'd ask Mom and Dad and she came up to me to ask me what to do and see if she could call them. I could tell she was upset. She didn't want to tell Grandma and Grandpa, "No, we don't trust them to take good care of our cats, and we only give them to good homes," but there was no way she'd ever be able to let a kitten go to a home that would be unable to take care of it.

I call Mom and Dad, because I can tell she is too upset to do anything. I talk to them a little bit, told them that even though they don't mistreat their animals, they can't take care of them if they get sick or hurt, and pointed out that they have a habit of own multiple large, violent dogs at a time. They said that if we were really uncomfortable with letting them have a kitten, that was okay. Grandma eventually decided Zora could have her kitten.

Now, Haleigh was still kind of shaken from the stress of having to say "No" to Grandma, but she also felt bad--Grandma doesn't like animals very often, and she felt awful that Grandma was going to give her kitten up, and she also didn't like the idea of any kitten living there... Recall Exhibit B. Haleigh loves all animals, anything that is alive. She hates for them to be in pain.

After Grandma left, I tried to calm Haleigh down. She was upset about the kitten and felt guilty about Grandma giving hers away. She was doing okay. Her voice was a little shaky, and her eyes were moist, but she was doing okay. I suggested that she call Mom and Dad and give them an update, and told her that they would probably be able to help her feel better. So she did.

Ten minutes later, I walk into her room, and she is on the phone with Dad, in tears. And I am about to explode. Not only do I hate to see people cry, especially my little sisters, but I have spent over an hour trying to keep her calm, reassuring her that the kitten will probably be okay, and here she is, talking to Dad, whom we had relied upon to make things better, and it feels like all my efforts to calm her down have been wasted. Because now she is in tears. I felt so let down and betrayed--my parents are always saying to come to them with their problems, and here, we had, and things had only gotten worse.

So I probably over-reacted. That part doesn't matter that much. I got into it a little bit with Mom and Dad, but we smoothed it over.

But I cried. And Haleigh and Annalisa saw me. And I hated it. I can cry, surely. I can cry by myself, no problem. I can cry with my friends around. I can cry in front of my parents without too much problem. But crying in front of my little sisters--they're relying on me to be in charge, to be calm, to be able to handle whatever problem comes up. When I cried, I was not showing that I was going to be able to handle problems.

And Annalisa, who is ten, didn't know what to do. Both her older sisters were crying. I could tell she was confused. She just walked back and forth between our rooms, never looking at us, but obviously focusing on us. Now I will refer to Exhibit A, because she looked just how I felt when I was watching the lady crying in the park. Just wanting to do something, trying to think of something, not sure if she will be able to help. I felt so bad, and I felt like I had let her down. I know I always felt helpless and confused if I saw Emily cry... how must Annalisa have felt when she saw both of her older sisters crying?

So I felt let down by my parents, I felt stressed by Haleigh's distress, I felt as if I had let down my little sisters by crying when I should have been being an adult, and I feel disappointed in myself for not getting anything done. I also feel guilty that Grandma is giving away her kitten, and guilty that I got so angry at Dad when he wasn't being that mean. (At least, not as mean as he normally is.) There was not a single good emotion this entire night.

All in all, I would say this Friday night was a complete disappointment. Someone somewhere owes me a new Friday, I'm pretty sure.

<3 o.