I get along with my two younger brothers. They're quiet and to themselves. I can get them to talk about the games they're playing and everything. (There's a 5 year gap and a 8 year gap between me and them. Before, I would fight with the brother that was 5 years younger than me, but that's changed.)

But, my little sister is different. She has learning disabilities and maturity issues that don't have a name, but they all stem back from when she fought a MS/meningitis-like disease that affects 1 in 100,000 people four years ago. Since then, she has been slow to develop.

 I have issues with it when my little brother is 11 months older than her and on the same page as me. But she doesn't understand the social cues when someone's getting upset with her and she eggs it on, which is my temper. I've got a temper. A really bad temper not everyone knows about, and it comes from dealing with her.

But there are times when she just pushes me over the edge when she screams at me for telling her to stop, to leave me alone. Of course, I scream back. Then I get in trouble for being older and knowing better, but I don't even get a chance to defend myself-- last night it got really bad, where mom had to separate us and get both of us to calm down, where I explained I cannot deal with it, no matter what I try. She gets I have no tolerance for being talked back to or screamed at, because shopping with her is a pain. She asks for everything she sees and doesn't understand unless it's been repeated to many times, that she can't have everything she wants. But I got things I needed for  my dorm room/school and that caused a problem. Then an even bigger problem when I asked her to get the door for me so I could take a chair inside, we wound up screaming at each other.

Afterwards, mom talked to us both. I found out she's afraid of getting sick again and why everything was "When I was eight years old..." for the past couple of weeks. She knows things changed when she was eight and she's afraid she'll get sick again (when she was sick, the gray matter around her brain was inflamed/gone. She couldn't stay awake, she couldn't move her neck. It took dad a full day to get her looked at by a doctor, which included going to Urgent Care, an adult hospital and a children's hospital until the adult hospital saw how bad it was. At the time, she was close to slipping into coma.). But now we know if she says her neck/back hurts, she needs to go to the hospital.

One of my biggest problems is when I come home with a new piercing or tattoo and she gives me this look, like she doesn't know who I am or wants to have contact with me. If she's around me, she'll suddenly have a desire to go out and modify her body like I have. But the look she gave me was... I don't even know, especially with the tattoo. It doesn't bother her now, seven months later. She's asked questions, why it's faded the way it has, so I guess she's accepted it. (But she still throws fits when 21 year old me drinks while in her presence. I've never been drunk, much less around her, but it's gotten better since I started).  

I've discussed this many times with my mom, in group therapy, but I can't handle being around her.  Everyone's suggested a way, but nothing works, and frankly, I'm disgusted with myself that I can't handle being around her. She might be better someday, or might not. But my family has a history of Alzheimer's and just being...slow. My great-grandmother was both, my mom is in her 40's and having problems with her memory, and my little sister is... This, so it's not in her favor. I'm terrified she won't be able to have a normal life by my own definition (attend college, have a good career, a great family, etc), but be stuck living with my parents for the rest of her life because she can't take care of herself.

Surgiac : If the Killer doesn't even know who they are, that kind of sucks. It's a surprise for everyone (including the Killer)! XD But a rumor's a rumor, I suppose.

I applaud the creators for coming up with the idea though. There are ways to improve the show, but it was a strong start.

We'll see, we'll see. I wish you luck when you try out for the show-- I think it would be awesome. Let me know somehow if you do, so I can root you on ^^

i found my favorite band (Anberlin, for anyone that has heard of them...) via Time Warner's Alternative Rock Music Choice station. I was listening to it one day and a song (like many others) caught my attention. I got the band name and found their album, listened to it and fell in love with "Cities."

^That is how I used to find my music, along with a long gone rock station in my area. That's where I grew my love for alternative rock and why I listen to them.

I still find music on the radio, but not all that often. I take suggestions from people I find who listen to the same kinds of music. Other times, I just hear about a band and get their discography and listen to it (like A Day to Remember or the Maine). Sometimes, I don't even know how I found them (All Time Low.)

Right now, I'm comfortable with what I listen to, but sometimes I do venture out and listen to Pandora or YouTube for new music. It all depends on my mood. 

I enjoy being able to customize FireFox with the Personas and everything. In high school, Portable Firefox saved my life when it came to writing research papers and using two/three computers-- the computer at home and the computers at school. All I had to do was plug in my flash, launch Firefox and I was good to go. All of my tabs were there along with how I organized it.

As it turns out, my school's online system refuses to run in IE, but runs the best it can on FireFox and Chrome. On my computer, I run Firefox and only have problems when their server is down or my Wifi is acting strange. But I go to use mom's laptop, IE won't load any of the school's sites, so I had to pull up Chrome, which it works fine on.

Safari is fine-- I use it on my iPod. Not many fights there or on the Mac's I use sometimes.

My biggest problem with the show is that there's no physical evidence framing one of the contestants as the Killer. No strain of hair or fabric from someone's clothes from someone that could lead them to believe the Killer is one particular person. Instead, it's "well, I don't like this person, so they have to be the killer," and then the supposed Killer dies the next week.

Otherwise, I really enjoy the show regardless of that flaw in my eyes-- I don't know if anyone besides myself or my family thinks the same, but the contestants trying to frame the people they don't like bugs me.

And, I love Giles and his puns.

I remember being a little kid and my gramps (my name for my step-grandfather) giving me a cup of coffee with a lot of sugar. I would let it get cold and I would drink it.

Sometime around 8th grade, I started making coffee in the morning. We would run out of creamer and I would start drinking it without, which started my black coffee preference. (And was about the time I realized I'm lactose intolerant.)

In high school, I would try to drink coffee in the morning, but there's not enough hall passes in the world to match my bathroom need.

When I started working retail two years ago, my boss would send me for coffee. My chai teas were too expensive to pay for, so I started drinking the "Red Eye," which was coffee with a shot of espresso.

Then, they didn't have black coffee, so my boss got me a large Americano (espresso and water) and I was a happy camper for the day. Since then, that's what I've stuck with unless I make my own coffee or if I'm too poor at the moment.

I started college last fall. In order to keep myself functioning, I've become a regular at the Starbucks on my campus. If I didn't have at least one cup of coffee, I couldn't get through the day without a headache. At nights, I sometimes I would make a full pot and drink it by myself and still get in bed by 2am. All because I'm thirsty.

When I got out of school for the summer, I went cold turkey. There's not enough room in our kitchen for my coffee maker, and it's easier to use my mom's K-Cup thing, which I use for coffee or tea every couple of days.

Then when I have to go to work and I only get an hour or two of sleep, I drink three/four cups at a Waffle House before my shift starts. 

But there are days when I can't function without. People have made comments about the difference and I just laugh. If the studies are right about coffee, I'm saving my life later on down the road with my family medical history.

I have the brightness on my laptop completely off. The brighter it is hurts my eyes, and when I have to have my laptop on during class without being plugged in, it makes it so I can sit in the class with it on and not worry about it dying.

I hate looking at my parents' laptops or even any of their other devices. They have their brightness up completely and it hurts my eyes, especially on a white screen.

Jared Westfall didn’t think he live a privileged life. Third oldest out of four, everything amazing had already been done by his older brother or sister at some point in their lives. While Jared didn’t strive for greatness, he was overshadowed by his younger brother, Evan for his athletic talent.
But what Jared didn’t have in athletic ability like either of his brothers, or intelligence like his sister, he made up in creativity. But, that wasn’t as impressive to his parents and their peers when they discussed their children’s impressive behaviors.
Jared was just average to them. They didn’t read his stories, or look at how he handled the art of putting words down on paper, or the way his head tilted to one side when he had a brilliant idea he needed to take care of.
If they paid a bit more attention to their third child, they would see he was just as smart as his only sister, but he didn’t flaunt it. He didn’t join the debate team or the quiz bowl team. Instead, he opted for the writing club, where he felt somewhat at home, writing under the perimeters he was given.
The only time he felt at home, was when he posted what he wrote on a forum. It was where no one would judge him the one Westfall children who didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations, but as a faceless writer on a website.
But don’t get Jared wrong—while he was the odd duck in his family and didn’t fit in as well as anyone else, he still loved his family. Even though he wasn’t as close as he could be to his two older siblings, Jared was close to Evan, his younger brother by a year or so.
While everyone else wrote off Jared as someone who just didn’t care about what was going on around him, Evan could tell that Jared cared. Evan was the one that understood Jared’s love of writing, but his inability to figure out where his niche was, exactly.
Evan had been the one to read through most of Jared’s writing attempts. His attempts included short stories, poems, songs, technical writing, sonnets, screenplays— all different types of writings, to just have to settle with one style of writing.
Jared’s style of writing was much like a memoir style. Taking what he had seen in the past and transcribing it into writing. Jared found it the easiest to do this kind of writing over anything else. All of Evan’s favorite stories came from what Jared did in his memoir style writing.
“I think if you tried writing a character from your point of view, you might have something different than your stories… Being about you,” Evan said one night, when both boys were sitting in Evan’s room, Jared’s laptop between them.
“But I don’t know if I can write from another point of view, other than my own,” Jared said, staring at his screen. “I’ve tried, it just doesn’t work.”
“Write in first person, but where someone would say your name, write their name. Make sure you keep up with pronoun use,” Evan said, struggling to get out of bed to do something. “You can do it, you just have to try.”
“Where should I start? I’ve wrote about everything I’ve done with my life so far. I have no fresh material,” Jared said, getting up and putting his hand on Evan’s arm to help him balance.
“You have to do research. Writers do that, you know. They research what they want to write about,” Evan said. “Can you hand me my oxygen line?”
Thinking about what Evan had said, Jared handed him his oxygen line. While Evan six months ago was a great athlete, today’s Evan struggled to breathe. He was sick. Evan was fifteen with lung cancer.
“But what should I research? There’s so much I want to learn about, so where should I start?” Jared asked, Evan getting the line around his head before answering.
“Remember the Hardy Boys novels we would when we were younger? Write a mystery series. I’m sure there’s a lot of research you can do for that.”
Cocking his head and thinking about it, Jared figured Evan was right.
*
* *
*
The next day, Jared sat in his last class—study hall. All of the planning Jared had put into making sure his study hall was his last class of the day backfired when he found out he wasn’t able to leave at the end of the day. New restrictions within the school prevented him from leaving, even though his Jeep was parked outside.
“Don’t you look bored?” Jenna Two asked, sitting down in the desk in front of Jared as the bell rang, starting class. Jared shrugged, getting out a book and his notebook. “Still not talking to me? How mature. This is getting ridiculous.”
Shrugging again, Jared waved his hand, trying to get Jenna Two to abandon the seat so Aurora could sit down and they could continue their discussion on what it takes to be a private investigator.
One of his constant friends from elementary school, Aurora Lombardi’s father had been a private investigator before they moved into the small town.
Being one of his friends since elementary school, Aurora understood the writer who was known as Jared. Like Evan, she cheered for him, even when he was struggling with writer’s block and had no will to even write. And, she was the one who went with Jared on his crazy adventures that he wrote about.
But recently, they were growing apart. Jared wasn’t sure why.
He wasn’t sure if it was Aurora’s dedication to the drama club that was causing it, or if it was the time Jared was putting into making sure Evan was well taken care of when it came to entertainment, even though both him and Aurora made sure he was amused.
Or it could be the problem that was sitting in Aurora’s seat. Well, Jenna Two was annoying, but part of a bigger picture Jared wished he didn’t see. One that walked in the door the moment before Aurora did, causing Jenna Two to stand up and switch seats.
Freaking Roxanne Stuart was sitting in Aurora’s seat. And there was no way for Jared to ask her to move. That would have been social suicide to ask Roxanne Stuart to move so Aurora could sit in front of Jared. But Jared didn’t care about that.
The only reason why he cared was because his mom cared. It had gotten back to her somehow (from Roxanne to Roxanne’s mom to his mom) that Jared refused to speak or even look at Roxanne Stuart in class, out of class, out of school, or even in his own house.
He just didn’t like her. It was simple as that. He refused to be paired with such an obnoxious girl who thought she was privileged to the whole world, including Jared’s valuable time.
Watching the hurt register on Aurora’s face that Jared refused to even knowledge Roxanne to move, Aurora took a seat close to the front of the room—the only seat left open in the classroom.
Frustrated that Jared couldn’t even move to sit near Aurora, he hunkered back into his desk and opened the book he was reading—a mystery Jared found in the school library. Opening it with his notebook opened to a new page, he wondered what he should even write.
He could make note of all of the clues, the characters—anything that stood out to him. Hopefully what he put down on paper would help him figure out who the bad guy was before the book was over.
With the pen between his fingers and eyes on the book, Jared tried to get himself lost in the text. But, something was bugging him. It wasn’t how loud the classroom was, going unchecked by the teacher in charge of study hall. It wasn’t that Jared hadn’t been careful picking out his book, but it was the feeling of him being watched.
Glancing up from his book, he noticed that Roxanne was watching him. Every moment, every twitch, she noticed. And even when he stared at her, trying his best to make her feel uncomfortable, she wouldn’t look away.
“Let me see your notebook,” she said once his eyes went back to his book. Without hesitating, Jared tried to make sure his arm was firmly on top of the notebook, but it wasn’t working. Roxanne had slipped it out from underneath his arm without a problem.
Putting the book down and trying to snatch the notebook back form Roxanne, the notebook got passed to Jenna Two, who was giggling as Jenna One laughed loudly from his right.
Angry, Jared slumped back in his seat and shook his head. No one was allowed to read that notebook. Not even Aurora, even though she hinted at wanting to look at what he had put down on the pages. She knew he had put things down about her that while they were indeed, best friends, he would rather not say to her.
Not yet, at least.
“What’s in the notebook Jared goes nowhere with? Would you believe how many times I’ve went over to dinner to his place for dinner with his parents, and he’s sitting in the kitchen, scribbling in that? I’ve seen it so many times. Now, I get to see it,” Roxanne said, triumph as Jared flinched.
Aurora turned around to see what was going on. Her eyes followed from where Jared was staring stonily at the stolen notebook, to where Roxanne and Jenna Two were looking through the pages, giggling.
Mouthing ‘sorry’ to Aurora, Jared sat back and waited for the worst possible thing to happen—the girls start discussing what he’s put in the notebook. It would take a lot of flipping through to get to the pages they really wanted to look at, but it wouldn’t take long.
“All that’s in here is notes about a story,” Jenna One whined as Jared shut his eyes and opened them again to see Aurora walking down the row of desk with the notebook in her hand. Jumping up as she passed, Jared shouted for permission to go the bathroom, Mr. Tito waving his hand, granting Jared the permission to go.
Slipping into the hallway, he knew where Aurora would have went to drop the notebook off- either her locker or his, but Aurora’s was closer.
Walking with purpose through the hall to Aurora’s locker, Jared had no idea what he was going to say to Aurora—especially now that she had the notebook he did his hardest to make sure no one looked at.
Approaching Aurora’s locker, Jared took a deep breath and leaned on the locker next to Aurora’s. He didn’t say anything as Aurora rearranged everything in her locker before she shut it and looked at him.
“Thank you for getting my notebook…” Jared said, giving Aurora the biggest smile that he could. “I didn’t mean for the Prep Squad to get ahold of it,” he said, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to—they would have given it back to me, hopefully…”
Aurora shrugged, leaning against her locker. Looking at the notebooks and books in her arm to see if she had put his notebook in her pile, Jared saw that she hadn’t.
“Where’s my notebook?” he asked, looking at Aurora as she smiled. “Don’t tell me you’re keeping it now—I swear, there’s nothing about you in it! Can I have it back?”
“Like the Prep Squad, I wanna know what’s in it, and I have the full intention of making myself a huge pot of tea tonight and finding out what you scribble in that thing,” Aurora said, stepping around Jared and walking back to class. “I’ll instant message you my commentary as I do so.”
“You’re seriously going to do this to me? That’s no fair…” Jared called, watching her walk back to class. “I won’t give you a ride home tonight!”
“I don’t care!” Aurora called back, Jared sighing as he followed her back to class.

Before I post what I have been working on, I would like to give a quick explanation about my characters and why they're important to me.

I tend to write stories I never finish. It happens when I have too much time on my hands. But when I get busy, I stop writing and take care of what I need to do. Then when I start writing again, I start on other stories and don't go back to those stories, even though I meant to work on that story.

When I do try to write about the same characters, I dislike what I've done and where I'm trying to go. What I'm doing now is the second time I've done it-- taken characters I've made and completely change their stories.

In this case, Jared and Evan (the main characters) were in a fantasy-like story I was working on in high school. While I enjoyed the story they were in, it was too much like what I was reading in high school, which I've moved away from. Instead of making these two brothers something other than human, they're human and about as normal as they can be.

At the beginning of June, I started writing Evan's story. Right now, it's 47,000 words long and I don't know when it'll be completely done. When a friend on here suggested I post a story, I figured I could write something about Jared from before Evan's story.

Since I'm focusing on writing Evan's unnamed story, I really haven't worked on Jared's that much, which is currently titled "Ocean and Atlantic," (Props to those who get the reference. It was what I was listening to when I started writing.)

So, I'm going to post the first two thousand words I've wrote and post them on here, with the intentions of updating as I go along.

I guess, let me know what you think as I post! Be warned-- I change the plot around without meaning to O_o

(And sorry to the mods-- I don't mean to post twice in a row, but I had to explain why I had to explain what's going on.)

.:Edit:.

Er, well, I can't post two times in a row-- I did not know that O_o I like that, but... I'll just sit here until someone posts underneath me.

Unless instructed otherwise, I use pens. Sharpie pens, in fact. I'm that picky. Unlike "normal" pens, I make sure I don't lose my good pens.

Mechanical pencils. I have a cup full of them for the times I can't use pens.

Regular pencils hurt my hand. And pencils in general get smeared with how I write-- the heel of my hand drags across the paper. And I don't think my campus even has pencil sharpeners in the classrooms. 

And if all else fails, I type. But I like taking notes by hand. 

UFC : Same here-- I'm not a picky eater by nature, but there are foods that I can't eat without getting sick and it's just easier to eat veggies then playing the mystery meat game at school (Allergic to pork. School uses a lot of pork based products).

And dogs are ^^ My parents have three dogs at home, so I go through the period of homesick missing my dogs. Mom's told me to look into the Humane Society so I can relax.

(Good news in everything is that I am talking to my parents again and living with them now that I've established my own boundaries.)

UFC : I'm writing more and more now that I have time to and don't feel guilty about writing when there are other things to do.

But this fall, I'm going to figure out where the Humane Society is in my college town and start volunteering there to play with the dogs. I'm also changing my diet and going to eat better-- I've done some playing around this summer and the days where I eat just veggies (I plan on going vegetarian for economic reasons) I feel better than when I do when I eat meats.

But through group therapy during the spring, I met a few good friends. I'm going to start joining her "family dinners" once a week so I can just chill and hang out-- I did it twice before school ended and it really helped. 

I hit rock bottom a year ago this spring. My mom wanted the money I was saving for college or a car, or a way out of my backwards town. I got out of her house with a decent savings that I wound up using paying for my first year of college.

When I started school after a year off, I found that I was behind where I felt like I should be. The person I thought would support me started to tell me that I wasn't doing anything right, that it was either man up or quit, which I wouldn't do. In the process, I either lost and hurt my best friend because we couldn't see eye to eye about my life of all things.

"If you can't handle the stress, give up."

I think not.

My lowest point to date was this spring, because I told a friend she was the reason why I fell behind in class, why I was sick because of the stress. I was fine once I moved out of the dorm and got home and put space between us, which has been good.

But, I'm not working enough. My paychecks meant to save for books, school cost, isn't happening. The editor of the paper I work for is refusing to pay me for work for a month because they didn't know how to do the paperwork or even tell me that I had to do paperwork.

Right now, I'm not at rock bottom, but the wrong day at work can send me downwards.

Picking myself up off the floor, my head spun. I couldn't remember the last time I ate.

It had been days, surely. The detox was the worse part. But once I had something in my emancipated body, I would be fine.  All I was, was stick and bones. Nothing more.

Wrapping my arms around my body, I walked into the bedroom, then the living room, then out the door. I was going to stick around the apartment that wasn't mine.

I could find somewhere else to stay. No one would turn me down, Simone Manchester, the singer extraordinaire. My claim to fame was singing and the guitar.

Stumbling outside into the blinding sun, I heard people talking. It was an odd sensation, to hear other voices around me after only hearing my own.

I just couldn't remember how to speak. I was still too weak.

It depends on what stage of my life it was when I had actual support.

When I earned the position of Editor in Chief for the high school paper my senior year, mom told me not to. I had spent the three years beforehand making it so I could become Editor in Chief. She said not to take it because I could be kicked out of the district at any moment because I didn't live in the district I went to school in (long story).

But she was the one that argued that I couldn't switch districts because of my involvement with the paper and the friends I had since middle school. When they moved a town over, I was 16 months from high school graduation.

Then when I got the chance to interview with the local newspaper for a 2k scholarship and an internship, she didn't want me to. Said it would be a waste to do it if I wasn't going to start uni the next fall, even though I did have the funding to do so (as I found out the next winter).

When I started my first job, she threw a fit when I opened my bank account. Said since I was just holiday help, it wasn't something I would stick with after the holidays. But, they kept me on and I'm still working there.

I started off with plenty of hours, since it was retail at Christmas, but my hours weren't steady, but they expected me to pay my "rent" for living in their house. I was happy to comply, but not when my checks were $120 every two weeks. We got into fights over money and how I can't save money if they can't.

It got to the point where I moved out last summer because I couldn't take the fighting. I moved in with a friend, then got myself back into school. We've made up and I'm living with her again this summer. It's nice, but I'm always worried something's going to happen and I can't live at home.

As for my dad, who missed all of this, he's supported me the best he can. Even though he won't say it to me, personally, I've been told he's proud that I've got myself in school, going for my bachelors. He was the one that told me I didn't have to pick up my own phone bill, or move out when I did.

But mom's better now. My first priority is school, even though she doesn't like how much debt it's causing. 

Light Knight : I haven't seen his segment, but I did pull it up. I think I'll have to use "cranial accessories" the next time I talk about my ears.

That's something you don't hear often, nope.

Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

I was reading it when I got too busy with school. I've tried reading it twice, but stopped both times. It's a good book, but I get so sidetracked with projects or books I need to read.

I can't remember if I finished "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte  a few years ago, but I would like to reread it sometime soon.

But both books have been packed away for when I move back to school. There, they'll sit on my bookshelf until dead week or finals week, depending on how the semester goes.

My high school English/publications teacher was probably the kindest teacher I've had.

While I couldn't stand her freshman year, we grew on each other over the years. She understood my problems with my fellow newspaper students, my compulsion for things to be done and put together on time.

When I was going for a scholarship/internship with my local paper, she interviewed me how they would, taking time out of her day to do so. She taught me InDesign, let me use her room when she wasn't in the classroom/before/after school or just when I needed to, even though there was a problem at the time with students being left in classrooms alone.

She pushed me to actually achieve a lot and cared about me-- she's probably the reason why I started college and went into journalism. 

Full body sobs. The cold bathroom floor. Blinding lights. Screaming.

I felt detached. So detached from my own body. My own cries. My own screams.

This couldn't be happening. They took innocent people. People who never harmed another living creature.

To leave me. The bane of existence. The black sheep, who found comfort in booze and drugs. I might be clean now, but I wasn't clean before. I don't know why I was left behind, when other people were taken away. People who would have seen the great age of twenty, if it hadn't been for a sponsor and court ordered sobriety.

Eventually, the full body sobs turned into hiccups. The bathroom floor was too cold. The blinding lights were now watery. The screaming hurt my throat.

"Keep your chin up girl, you can do this. You can keep sober," I was told at my weakest moment. Before, I thought going sober was the worse thing. But this was even worse.

The apartment I shared with my old best friend was empty. He was gone. I was alone.

I needed out of here. The only reason why he had let me stay with him was so I could get better.

I've got no choice but to get better soon.

Er, I hope you're still around to RP. It's been a while since this was posted...

Sometime this summer, I'm going to have to reread this book.

I loved "Ready Player One"-- enough that I'm willing to read it over and over again for the plot, the characters, the Easter eggs within the story. Like a lot of books set post economic crash/world chaos/ etc, it addresses questions people have about what the world would look like if what we know suddenly disappeared.

In "Ready Player One," the only way to cope with the awful truth that is the world, a virtual world exists. You go to school, live and function within a virtual world, where you can be whoever you want.