Stories From a Hat

So, I just wrote 2000 words for my NaNo in less than an hour*, so I’m pretty sick of typing right now. So here are small updates.

1) NaNoWriMo

It’s going surprisingly well in the sense that I actually like the story, but one of the characters (Stan) is starting to annoy me**. It’s also not getting written very quickly, which is also a problem.

Thanks, by the way, for all the good feedback I’ve gotten from that snippet I put up earlier in the month.

I mean, no zombies have showed up yet, so that’s good.

I’ve got 5702 words right now, by the way.

2) School

School sucks something hairy and unpleasant. I’m not going to talk about it.

3) Band

Going well, I guess. Nationals on Friday.

4) Phone

Got a phone on Election Day. It’s pretty exciting.

5) Election Day

Obama won. I’m happy about that and everything, but I really hope that we don’t just sit around waiting for this “change” thing to happen, because we have to actually make the effort people! Voting was a good step (record voter turn-out! Yay!) but we need to take it a step further.

6) Hair
Getting a hair cut tomorrow before band.

7) Argyle

I got an Argyle hoodie today. It’s pretty much the coolest thing to happen to mankind.

That’s all. Goodnight.

-Laura

PS- You’ll see more writing later, just not right now. I’m sort of not in the mood to talk about myself.

*Thanks goes out to the Write or Die thing Hope told me about. That put me under a lot of pressure to write.

**People always complain about their characters just doing things without their consent, and I never got that until Stan Morrison. He just goes and says everything to everyone all at once! I mean, it moved the plot along, and I’m happy about that, but seriously?

Public school is incredibly unfair and unreasonable. I hate every single aspect of it. I hate waking up at six in the morning for five days in a row. I hate scribbling “Brian Monday” at the top of my papers, right above the date, and period number. I hate the people in the public schooling system, which includes the students, the administration, teacher, guidance counselors, etc.

The only consolation is that this is my last two and a half weeks.

Thank God.

I mean, I don’t consider myself to be particularly religious. I mean, technically I’m a confirmed Christian in the Methodist church, but I don’t think I believe in all that shit anymore. Maybe I did in seventh grade, but definitely not. It all seems incredibly random to me. If I had been born to a different family in a different place, my religion would be different. I’m just outrageously skeptical of the whole thing.

I do, in fact, believe in fate. There are just too many coincidences in which fate can’t exist. I also like to believe that all of this happens for a reason.

So, as much as I hate public high school, I continue to put up with it. There must be a bigger reason why I’m here. I mean, besides the whole learning thing, which is basically a load of crap. Too many times, I’ve found myself smarter than the teacher himself, so the whole “expansion of knowledge” gig, doesn’t really convince me.

But like I said, I tolerate it for the sake of fate. I woke up at six in the morning, wrote an essay for my AP history class, most likely failed an AP Economics test, and dutifully graded papers for the English teacher I aide for. I scribbled my name on top of my papers, and I blissfully stumbled into band class half awake.

Such is the life of a high school student.

Thankfully, band class is pretty low impact. Its only downfall is the fact that I can’t sleep in it. I sat next to my friend of many years (we both play saxophone, and we specifically planned it out that he would be first chair, and I would be second) and the hour and a half block of time consists of the yelling at of freshmen. Sitting behind the oboe “section” (there are two of them) is another downfall of band class, but it’s tolerable.

On this particular day, I had only gotten about four hours of sleep the previous night, so I felt pretty wasted. I mean, I hadn’t had any drugs or alcohol or anything of that nature, but I still felt wasted. I sort of felt like I was in a dream, and I was expecting something weird to happen. Like, the sort of weird shit that only goes down in dreams. Or I would wake up, and I would have to do this all again. The mere idea of that made me groan is displeasure.

“Dude,” Stan looked at me while putting together his saxophone, “Stop imitating your mom when she sees my face.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled my saxophone out of my locker, “You’re a pervert.”

“Um, it’s band. We’re all perverts.”

I sighed, “I guess you have a point.”

“Fuck yeah I have a point. Dude, did you hear the new Lizzy Borden Experience CD?”

“No Stan, I didn’t.”

“Dude, it’s fucking awesome.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You don’t sound particularly enthusiastic, Brian.”

“It’s hard to be enthusiastic about a band that doesn’t have an intelligible lyrics.”

“They’re not supposed to make sense! It’s art, man!”

I rolled my eyes again.

Stan Morrison had been my friend since the fourth grade. He had been a music freak out of the womb. I mean, I guessed he was. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me that he recited the circle of fifths right after he was birthed. I don’t know if it would true, since I was thankfully spared from the witnessing of Stanley Morrison’s birth.

I pulled a chair behind the row of oboes/flutes already set up and set my sax on it. I left to go get a music stand and I saw Stan practically making out with Desiree McIntyre.

Don’t get too excited. Desiree is Stan’s girlfriend of practically forever. There was a small period of high school when Desiree dated some other guy whose name I’ve forgotten, but it was short lived. They were essentially made for eachother; the couple that everyone was jealous of, because they always seemed so happy.

“God, get a room. Jesus.” I said pulling a stand off the rack.

“Dude, you just said to Christian deities in vain in one sentence!” Stan said, pulling away from Desiree.

“Is that against the rules or something?”

“Technically, yes. I believe there’s something in The Ten Commandments about that.” Desiree took the stand from me, and I got another one.

“Shit. Looks like I’m going to hell.” I said, as Stan took the second stand.

“Dude, all the awesome people go to hell,” He tested the stand’s ability to actually stand up, and the top popped off, “Motherfucker.”

“Awesome people?” I pulled two more stands off the rack and carried them to the sax section, “Like, Hitler?”

“Dude,” Stan grabbed the second stand from me, “If you had time traveling abilities, would you go back in time and murder baby Hitler?”

I looked at Stan, “Are you on something?”

“Not right now.” He looked at the clock briefly, “twelve hours ago is a different story though.”

“God, Stan. You’re a freaking-“

“Awesome dude? Fuck yeah I am.”

I sighed, and plopped all of the music on my stand as the band director started spewing out some pointless dribble about graduation band rehearsal (which I will, blissfully, not be a part of this year. Grad Band sucks something hairy and extremely unpleasant) and something else that I didn’t care about.

Eventually we started playing actual music, and that went rather well, if not dull. After an hour and fifteen minutes of that, we packed up our instruments and shoved all of our crap in our band lockers and prepared to sit in the band room for thirty more minutes to wait for all the traffic to clear out.

“So,” Stan said to me, throwing his backpack over his shoulder, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What was your question?” I asked, saving my pens from the depths of my band locker.

“Baby Hitler? Dead or no?”

“Oh yeah.” I pondered for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know? It’s freaking Hitler!”

“It’s not Hitler, it’s Hitler as a baby. Technically speaking, the baby has done nothing wrong.”

He looked at me.

“Wow,” he sighed, “What a fucking killjoy.”

“Not wanting to kill a baby makes me a killjoy?”

“Precisely.”

We were silent for a while because we had run out of things to talk about. Stan and I never really had any real conversations, just ridiculous ones like this one.

“So, The Lizzy Borden Experience. Definitely one of my top five CDs.” Stan wasn’t just talking to me, since Desiree had joined in as well.

“Would you call it a ‘Desert Island’ choice?” Desiree asked.

The “Desert Island” choice system has to do with the ridiculous question, “If you were stranded on a desert island, what would take with you and why?” I would obviously take a helicopter, and I would take a guy who knows how to fly a helicopter, but that’s just me.

“Eh, I don’t know,” Stan said, “It depends on how many CDs I get.”

“Five. That’s the standard,” Desiree started picking at her blood red nail polish.

“Then no. Those seats are always filled with The Necrotic Neurotics, The Greatest Vagrants, The Hyperbolic Paraboloids, Evil Lasagna, and The Frumentaceous Miscreants.”

“Do you even know what ‘frumentaceous’ means?” I asked, heading toward the band room door.

“No, but that’s hardly the point. They’re fucking good.”

We trudged toward the senior parking lot, exchanged our goodbyes, and slid into our respective cars. I sat in mine with my eyes closed for about thirty seconds, and then finally shoved the key in the ignition, and drove off.

Ten more school days until I was finished with it all.

As much as I hate school, it seemed unreal that it would be over. There would be college, but that’s a whole other experience entirely. I was going to Penn State in the fall, and it would be a lie if I said that I was excited.

I couldn’t care one iota about going to Penn State in a few months. It would just be another pointless school with stupid people, and stupid test, and stupid little stresses. Every day I stepped into that high school I though about all the things I could be doing with that time. I could be actually living, not just breathing and blinking, but living. Life is less than a one hundred years, and I’ve wasted about fourteen of them sitting in classrooms being yacked at and being put under unwanted pressure by peers and teachers alike. I suppose one could argue that I’ve met some of my best friends, and these are the so-called “best years of my life”, but I’m not buying it.

If these are the best years of my life, I think I should just kill myself now. There is no way I could stand worse than this.

“Forever is composed of nows.”

-Emily Dickinson

One: Pulling a Margo Roth Speigelman

I’m going to do that. Yeah. I would tell you about it, but that wouldn’t be in line with the rules of Margo Roth Spiegelman.

Two: NaNoWriMo

Still not sure, but I can tell you there are going to be A LOT of hypothetical bands. These will probably be (but not limited to) the following:

• The Necrotic Neurotics
• The Revolutionary Razors
• The Bizzaro Pizzaros
• Air Heads and Skittles
• The Stand-Up Comics
• The Prom Queens
• An Abundance of Katherines
• HTMK
• The Spanish Inquisitions
• Aunt Elizabeth and the Anagrams
• Evil Lasagna
• The Greatest Vagrants
• The Liar and his Friends
• The Eels and Octopi
• Badminton with Electric Tennis Rackets
• The Lizzy Borden Experience
• Julienned Carrots
• Royal Tenenbaum and the Fracas Monsters
• The Potentially Potentials
• The Hyperbolic Paraboloids
• The Blast-Ended Skrewts
• The Cross-Dressing Giraffe Herders

There will probably be a lot of references to actual bands as well, like The Mountain Goats who wrote that fabulous lyric I used for the title.

As for the story, I’m a little up in the air about it. We’ll see what happens.

Homecoming dance tomorrow. I am going, if you’re wondering.

That’s all.

-Laura

If you care, this is one tiny spoiler in this near the end. Just saying.

“‘I like the strings, I always have. Because that’s how it feels. But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is, I think. We’re not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me to imagine you as an actual person. But we’re not different sprouts from the same plant. I can’t be you. You can’t be me. You can imagine another well-but never quite perfectly, you know?

Maybe it’s more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen-these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel cracks open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into other through theirs. When did we see eachother face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of eachother, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.’”

-Paper Towns by John Green

So whenever I read a book, I think about whether or not it taught me anything. The books that I like the most are the ones that teach me the most. To make a list of the things that John Green’s Paper Towns has taught me would take thousands of days, thousands of hours, millions of words, and possibly some unitelligible gibberish. It was seriosuly that good.

I just don’t know what else to say. It’s just…perfect in every single way.

It’s weird though, because usually when I read books that are just perfect it makes me hesitant about my own abilities, but this one reaffirmed them. I want nothing more than to make an impact on someone’s lives.

Part of the reason I like books is the not knowing. You’re never going to know which book is going to change the way you see things. Whether that be the world around you, other people, yourself, it doesn’t matter. They can change you, and I want to be a part of that process.

“‘Nothing ever happens the way you imagine it will,’ she says.

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. ‘Yeah, that’s true.’ I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, ‘But then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.’ Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else. I could never have imagined Margo’s anger at being found, or the story she was writing over. But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It’s the machine that kills fascists.”

-Paper Towns by John Green

So yeah. If you’re only going to read one book that’s as hilarious as it is profound this year, this is the one to read. I would put some more quotes, but I’ll let you find the ones you like.

I love how Pandora radio always knows what song I want to hear, even if I don’t know it. This time it’s “Down on the Corner” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Hmmm….what can I talk to you about today?

Well, I can’t decide so here are some basic ponderings for you to ponder and for me to ponder some more later.

Pondering Number One: Being a fan

Apparently there’s some discrepancy about what consititutes a fan of something. Let’s take bands, for example. I always thought that if I liked a few songs, I could call myself a fan. Okay, maybe I don’t have their entire discography memorized note-by-note, but I doubt anyone does. And if I’m not a fan, what am I? A casual listener?

(Side Note: I don’t love it when Pandora radio freezes. Darn technology.)

I mean, does the same principal apply to other mediums like books? Do you have to have read every Shakespeare play to be a fan of Shakespeare?

Pondering Number Two: Loneliness

I think we’re all lonely, but we’re lonely with other people. Does that make sense at all? There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. I think I’ve always been lonely, but I don’t think I’ve ever been alone.

Pondering Number Three: Inspiration

With NaNoWriMo coming up, I’ve been trying to think of what to write about. Mainly if I want to go the silly route* or if I want to try to, you know, unlock the secrets of being human** (not to be confused with The Secret Life of Bees***). Nevertheless, whatever I do write about, you’ll probably see alt least a little bit of it, I don’t know about all 50,000 words of it.

I feel like I’m expecting some idea just to jump out at me and I’ll run with it. I’m still fascinated with Jocelyn Gindlesperger, but I can’t finish it, it’s against the sacred NaNoWriMo rules. We’ll just have to see I guess.

That’s it with the ponderings! Here are some other things that you don’t really have to ponder, but I want to talk about.

Thing One: Paper Towns

Paper Towns comes out…almost tomorrow. I AM SO EXCITED. John Green read chapter two during one of his live shows, and I’ve already fallen in love with Margo Roth Spiegelman. Since he read that chapter her line “Bat Mitzvah money bitch!” has been running in my head. I love her, and I don’t even know anything about her yet.

Thing Two: PSAT

I take the PSAT tomorrow****, which should be…fun. That’s all I have to say about that.

Thing Three: Band

The marching band is owning it up this year. Just saying.

Thing Four: The End.

That’s all I have for you. Goodnight and good luck.

-Laura

*If I do choose this, it’s going to be the saga of a certain suburban punk rock group known as The Necrotic Neurotics.

**I have some ideas about this, but, with all ideas, they’re all a little fuzzy.

***That sounded a lot funnier in my head, sorry.

****I disapprove of all this “PSATs”, in the plural, business. It’s only one test…

So here’s a post because I feel bad that I’ve neglected this for a long time. It’s not that I’m out of ideas*, it’s just the construction that takes time. So here are some things that I’ve been up to lately. This might interest you, but it probably won’t.

1) High School

If you’ve been keeping up with my Facebook statuses, you know that high school is well underway. By high school I don’t mean the schooling as much as the other things that come with being in high school. Y’know that stuff. Though, admittedly, it’s died down quite a bit, but I see many opportunities to get it started again. Not that I will, I’m just preparing myself for the future. I’ll keep you updated on that front.

But on the actual schooling…it’s going well, for the most part. That’s all.

2) Marching Band

We owned on Saturday, just saying. I would go on about how awesomely fantastic that night was, but I’m afraid that the Internet would explode.

3) Cell Phone

I know I just talked about anticonsumerism in the last post, but I can’t help but think that I might want one. I’m not really sure what for, but I think I might want one. Is that odd? I think it’s odd.

4) Paper Towns

One week.

5) NaNoWriMo

OH MY GOD NANOWRIMO IS NEXT MONTH.

This is a problem.

I mean, I think I have an idea, but it takes a lot of pre-planning, and I haven’t started that at all. Oh bother…

And…I don’t feel like writing anymore. I’m going to watch The Office.

-Laura

*I am most certainly not.

Good evening all.

One: Apologies.

I seemed to have exploited this form as communication as a way to deal with my personal problems. I’m sorry to the readers, but my opinon still stands.

Anyway, on to part two.

Part Two: Back to Business.

So the new year is quickly approaching. There are a few key components of the year are still remaining*, but they’ll be done before you know it and we’ll be ringing in the new year.

I assume the phrase “ringing in the new year” has to do with the ringing of bells, but that’s just an assumption. I digress.

So with the new year coming, I have a lot of potential projects putting themselves out there, just begging me to start and not finish***. Here they are, laid out and explained in as much detail as I can spare.

Project A: I have no idea what to call this project.

The lack of name gives this project little promise, but we’ll talk about it anyway.

This project entails a lot of pre-planning, which appeals to me. It also entails doing something new next year, as well as each month, week, and possibly each day. I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve wanted to do, a timeline in which to complete these things, and when to do them. It’s a project to be more productive and less stagnate.

Project B: The Buy Nothing Year

This is based off of Buy Nothing Day, but multiplied by 365. I want to start with the number of possessions I currently have (plus the ones that I will inevitably gain in the coming months) and then get rid of them slowly and surely to a goal number**** that would be ideally reached at the end of the year.

Too quixotic? I don’t know.

Project C: Wasted Energy

This is simple: for every second I spend on a computer or watching TV I spend outside. This is the one that I think I could accomplish, and that I want to accomplish.

Even when I’m just sitting outside I feel healthier, and better. Headaches disappear, and I feel content. Even though I’m allergic to most things*****, I just feel better.

Anyway, that’s all from me. I’m going to do my math homework and go to sleep. I’ll see a lot of you tomorrow.

-Laura

*NaNoWriMo, election day, Buy Nothing Day** Christmas, etc.

**Yes, I put a footnote in a footnote. Deal with it. Anyway, Buy Nothing Day is the day after Thanksgiving (also known as Black Friday). It’s a day when you, get this, buy nothing. It’s supposed to raise awareness of anti-consumerism, but since I’m at home most of the time the event really has no impact on me. It has good intentions, though.

***I seem to be notorious for starting things and never finishing them. A for effort?

****Ideally it would be 75 to match my fictional soulmate’s but I think that might be a little difficult for me. We’ll see.

*****Do I need to get into this? Maybe I’ll talk about it in another post. I think it deserves a separate post.

Well, it seems that my post yesterday created a bit of a ruse among some people.

I’m using the term “people” loosely, because I’m not entirely sure that term applies to them. Does that sound cold? It should.

To keep my little tirade organized, I’m going to break it up into separate categories:

Category One: The Whole Story

Here it is, with some specifics taken out for your sake. Trust me, this things was a lot more complicated than even I give it credit for.

So I told a massive, huge, and gigantic lie to some of my friends. This wasn’t the first one, and I genuinely think that this will not be the last. After said lie, I became pretty sure that I was a compulsive liar. I apologized for the lie as illustrated in this message to two friends:

<okay, I don’t have it, but believe me. I apologized, and it was beautiful, heartfelt, and all that jazz>

Myself and Sarah* patched things up rather nicely, no thanks to Danya, the other so-called friend at the time.**

Anyway, this thing has seemed to blown up to include a lot of people it shouldn’t have. People who know things about me that they don’t deserve to know because they’re not people I trust.

Yes, I may be a compulsive liar. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you leave.

So after Sarah and myself patched things up, we began to ignore Danya. She noticed, and asked me about it to which I said:

All right, I’m just going to be honest with you here.

This will inevitably lead to even more drama, but whatever. Things need to be said.

We have some problems with some things.

We both feel like we can’t trust you anymore. We feel like we’ve said things to you that we assumed would be just between us, and you’ve just gone and told other people. And we’re pretty sick of it.

Exhibit A would probably be last year when you told both of us that we hated eachother. We’ve both dissected that is pretty much the reason we didn’t talk to eachother for a week, and the whole thing could have been avoided.

We both feel like our relationship could have been ruined because of that.

That said, I have some of my own problems as well.

I feel like you’re not taking my problems very seriously.

You seem convinced that a) I don’t want to change and b) that I’m incapable of change. You constantly make jokes about it, and at the time I say I’m okay with it, but when I think about it, that’s a totally sick thing to do.

I don’t want to portray myself as if I’m some troubled teenager, but I am. Just because you think you understand what I’m going through, doesn’t mean you do. The fact it, no one can, and I get really ticked off when you think you do.

On the same topic, I need to know if you’ve told anyone at all that I’m compulsive liar. I want to know everything you’ve told other people about me. I feel like I have the right to know, and you never had the right to say it.

So to answer your question, yes we are trying to ignore you. And on some levels, we think that you deserve it.

That may sound harsh, but we’re getting really sick of this.

<end>

This traded back and forth for quite a while. Here are some gems that I think people need to see.

“Another thing you should know that the time I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT CONTROL MY MOUTH is when I’m pissed.” -Danya

Hmm, a lot like how I can’t control my lying? So you’re allowed to use your “uncontrollable mouth” as an excuse and I can’t?

“This is exactly like if a person came up to me and said ‘hey I’m gonna commit suicide’. Would I keep my mouth shut? NO. Would you? PROBABLY NOT. Would any other person on this fucking earth? NO.” -Danya

I have a lot of problems with this. Because if that person confided in you that they were suicidal and you told everyone, that just gives them more reason to kill themselves because a) they’re suicidal and b) EVERYONE KNOWS.

“Also, I did some research, and I feel your more of a pathological liar than compulsive. Or maybe your a little of both. Pathological liar is just more fitting with you. Espcially because a compulsive liar doesn’t seem to be capable of telling the truth, and at the moment, you apparently are. According to my research, a Pathological liar comes off as manipulative, cunning and self-centered and has little regard or respect for the rights and feelings of others. Sound like you much?” -Danya

I think this one speaks for itself.

The argument inevitably ends with me picking fun at Danya’s poor grammar.

There. Now you have the whole story. If you want more of these fun-filled quotes, just e-mail me (lauranicoledean@gmail.com) and I’ll be happy to send them along. Seriously, they’re really fantastic, I wouldn’t miss out on them for the world.

Category Two: Me.

I am who I am. Nothing less, nothing more. If you have problems with that, I don’t care. I might be a compulsive liar, I might be a narcissist, I don’t care. I am Laura Dean, and if you don’t like that, you need to never talk to me again.

Throughout my research on my (possible) mental disorder, I feel that too many times people with these illnesses are not treated like people. They’re treated like words on a page, or perhaps worse. One article even suggested that people who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder are “parasites who will suck the life out of you”. I find it pretty ironic that no one seems to care about people who don’t care about other people. Just a thought.

By the way, I’m never coming to another Wednesday Club again. I’m sorry Hope and Courtney, but I can’t be around “people” who treat me like that and the “people” they gossip to.

Have a lovely evening.

-Laura Dean

PS- How does it feel to have everyone read what you said? Don’t tell me that you don’t care because I know that you do.

Please, don’t hesitate to e-mail me or do the Facebook thing. I’m also open to more sniping on the subject.

Also, don’t steal my idea and implement it in the worst way possible. That was insulting.

*I was going to protect identities, but I really don’t think some people deserve it. Heck, they didn’t protect my identity when it was important, so why should I care?

**She opted to tell both of us that we hated eachother when, in fact, we did not. Seems a bit counter-productive, no?

Dear Person 1,

Sometimes I think that everything bad that’s ever happened to you ever was because of me. I don’t know if that’s narcissistic or selfless. I’m sorry that I can’t trust you more, but please do know that I love you and I always will.

Dear Person 2,

I hate talking to you, and I don’ t think that’s ever going to change. I would say sorry, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s my fault.

Dear Person 3,

Don’t flatter yourself. Trust me, the things I talk about have nothing to do with you. I could care less what you do. Don’t be so scared all of the time.

Dear Person 4,

I think you’re more complicated then you give yourself credit for. Embrace your complications, for that’s what makes us unique. Of course, it’s quite possible that I just made that up. Just put that disclaimer on everything I say, and we’ll be good. Sorry, thank you, you’re  welcome, I love you, and other things I can’t say out loud.

Dear  Person 5,

I think you were the first person to ever compliment my writing, and that’s probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you.

Dear Person 6,

You’re probably the only genuinely unique person I’ve ever met. Sometimes I think our relationship is merely superficial, and that makes me feel like I’m missing out on something.

Dear Person 7,

Thanks for writing the book that changed my entire view of the world. Seriously, it’s amazing. And even though you’ll never read this, I’m going to make a promise to you: I’ll be more than the sum of my parts.

Dear Person 8,

I was going to write a letter to you, but I really have nothing to say. Well, nothing that you don’t already know. Scratch that, nothing that you won’t find out in due time.

Dear Person 9,

You remind of Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. Believe me, that’s a bad thing.

Dear Person 10,

As much as I pretend to not care, I’m worried about you.

Dear Person 11,

Your nosiness is the most annoying aspect of your personality. It wouldn’t be so bad if you were discreet about it, but you don’t even try.

Dear Person 12,

Stop worrying about everyone else, and worry about yourself.

Dear Person 13,

The mere thought of the sight of your face makes me want to burn you in effigy.

Dear Person 14,

You’re a jerk, and the sad part is…you know it.

Dear Person 15,

You don’t exist, but I think we’re soulmates. That sucks.

Dear Person 16,

You ruined everthing.

Dear Readers,

Don’t stress out about what letter, if any of them, are to you. Some of them are to multiple people, some are to everyone, some are to me. Don’t worry about it. You are welcome to make your guesses, but I’m not going to tell you if you’re right.

This felt good. I feel vindicated, somehow.

From,

Laura