Dear Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

I just finished reading your book: Infidel. I couldn't put it down. I read it on the bus, I read it at work when I wasn't supposed to, I read it standing up and walking down the sidewalk (Which, in truth, is not very wise).

As a young white woman who has grown up in Canada, your story both humbled, and deeply inspired me. I'm eighteen years old with an interest in politics, human rights, and the future of our world. Never before has something moved me this much in the direction of wanting to make a difference. Your book has made me think, even reconsider some of my attitudes on the multicultural policies that my own country hold.

I cannot thank you enough for sharing your story. I wish I could write more but there is so much that I don't know how to say. (And the chances of you reading this are pretty slim).

Inspired and sincerely,
Paige

Life as I may know it.

This is from my other blog, but I'm deleteing my other blog and moving  it here.


A short story about a point in my life.

I graduated the sixth grade with no friends, but I was twelve years old and that didn't bother me much. To be totally honest I thought I had friends, but I served no purpose to them except to give them someone to passively-agrressively make fun of or have run around for them. I worked tirelessly to gain their approval, even though somewhere I knew that they wanted to look good and date boys and "hang out" while I still wanted to play pretend and pokemon. Still, they were all I had, and I clung to them like glue as I graduated that day. We took pictures and laughed and smiled and reminisced about the "Good 'old times". Yeah, good my ass. The conversation went a lot like this:
        "Remember when Camryn sneezed a big boogie onto the table in third grade?"
I laughed and pretended not to be embarrassed, like it was all in the past now.
"Yeah, that was almost a gross and funny as every time she blew her nose"
        I again, waved my hand in a way that signified "That used to bother me everyday and make me feel like an outcast, but when you put it like that, it's hilarious" and smiled, determined to make the best of my big graduation day.
Despite my so called friends, my sixth grade graduation was a big deal. I was picked to sing our national anthem to open the ceremony. One by one I watched all the people I had grown up with get a diploma saying they'd succeeded. One kid from another class made a big deal of going up to get his piece of paper with a loud and enthusiastic "OH YEAHH!" but otherwise it was a typical event. I won an award for being an upstanding citizen and I looked like a sweet little girl in my pretty blue dress. I was confident that day.

            I don't remember much about the summer that followed. I'm sure there was a flurry of "She's so grown up" and "Straight A's. How wonderful" and "She's looking like a lovely young lady." For the most part, I agreed, but looking back I was most certainly not blossoming into a lovely young lady. I was tall for a girl, with long gangly arms and legs, flyway frizzy hair that I was too lazy to figure out how to fix, like the rest of the girls my age, and teeth that screamed for braces. Not to mention my classic nerd glasses, but by then they had just become part of my face. I was acne less for a while, my one redeeming quality, but that wouldn't last long into junior high when puberty finally hit full force. I was over opinionated and loud, with a hate on for politicians, Christians, and anyone else who would tell me I didn't know everything. I would have been the most annoying thing in the neighborhood had it not been for the fact that I spent most of my time inside playing video games and browsing the blossoming internet.
        In the middle of the summer I went to week long sleep away camp and made tons and tons of friends. There was such a diversity of kids there it was easy to find some with similar interests as me, as opposed to school where I was confined to the same class of twenty people for six hours a day. Unfortunately for me none of the friends I made at camp were anywhere near my school, some lived hours away from my hometown. We vowed to keep in touch through the internet and MSN messenger (c) but like most camp friends, we never really did.
   In September, school started again, and despite my obviously lovable personality, proved by all the people I had befriended away from home, I entered Junior high in the shadow of the people who I'd known for so long,

Has Been Said, Could Have been.

I was just thinking about the effect one decision can have on the rest of everything. I remembered/thought this up.

"Soooo.." she said, with only a slight twinge in her gut, a slight thump of her heart, a subtle shake of her nervous legs. She was much more calm then she had originally anticipated being, felt that the words that should come next would come, even though there was something inside her telling her not to speak, the urge to vocalize what needed to be said was greater.
   She had deliberately waited until this moment, it was inevitable, after a long evening out eating and laughing and joshing, they would always return and collapse on her bed, it had been that way for the last few months, constantly building to this moment, despite her silent struggles. Now, laying here again, she waited for her dearest friend and companion to leave the room before she spoke out loud. Now that she had begun speaking, there was no turning back, she couldn't leave the word 'so' hanging in the air for much longer. The words to follow escaped her lips, sounding exactly as they had when she repeated them in her mind.

"Was this a date?"

The male figure laying there next to her turned, his arm still stretched around beneath her. She figured that he probably hadn't expected her to say anything at all. She would have rather said nothing at all but the rational side of her had logic'd out the fact that the game she was playing could not be played forever. She couldn't keep closing her eyes to the feelings being sketched out on the page in plain blue pen. She couldn't ignore the lub-dub in her chest where she joked that her central processing unit should lie. The subtle looks and the elongated hugs and the hand on her shoulder couldn't be ignored. Not to mention the urging of her peers and close friends who had just today urged her to take his hand in hers, the simplest of gestures. 

     The question hung in the air for a moment, passing silently, the answer clear, the future uncertain. He responded softly;

The nonfiction conclusion to this, along with the fiction part of it (alternate ending lol) will be posted on my other blog, Alternate Parallels, where I'm supposed to post this creative writing shiz. This might also be a shameless plug to go to my other blog, because if I had posted this there, no one would have read it. (Aka: YOU: "eeeeeeeh, not interested *shameless chuckle*") Also, the end will be posted when I get around to it, eventually. Which should be soon because that's where shit diverges and there are those alternate parallels (like the title of the blog, y'getit?) so if I don't finish it, it's just me being self centered and talking about myself even more so then it already is. 

I guess this is a blog, created with the intention to talk about myself.

I'm talking about myself to preserve it for posterity. That's why I started this in the first place. god.

FUTURE ME, DON'T KEEP WRITING OBNOXIOUSLY LONG AUTHORS NOTES TYPE DOODADS AFTER WRITING A CREATIVE/AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PIECE, YOU JUST LOOK LIKE A CRAZY PERSON. (As opposed to a ninja, which is subtlety different then a crazy person)

I'm making obscure references now. Bed time.