I'd love to say my life is interesting, but it's not. But, let me tell you how I got to the place I am today. You might find it interesting to listen to my memories and my complaints. I don't usually do, but maybe because I've already lived it, I remember the stuff I'm talking about. It gets kind of dull to hear the same painful memories over and over again. It's just not pleasant. But maybe you'll find them entertaining. Who knows, you're obviously somebody I'm not if you're even reading this. Oh well, I guess I might as well start now. At the very beginning.
It all began when I had a normal house. Normal though, what a shallow thing to say. Normal is really whatever you're used to. It's also used by people who either can't really remember or don't feel like going into details. I have a lousy memory. So, I guess I'll say I led a very normal life. I was a fairly happy child. My parents got divorced around the third grade, I can't remember much, I just remember some huge courtroom where my parents argued until they were both hoarse. Then, for some reason, I had to say goodbye forever to mommy and go live with daddy. Thinking back now, it was probably some huge lawsuit for custody over me. I don't really remember. All I know is, my dad won. He had a lot of money. My dad made me leave my old elementary school, I think it was called Laurel Elementary (I was very young, it's quite difficult to go that far back). I transferred to Crystal Springs Elementary, an entirely different universe with a new set of kids and social quirks. As I said before, my dad was quite wealthy so I had pretty much everything I wanted.
During middle school I remember having a lot of friends. I was pretty popular. I was one of those girls that, looking back, if I was smarter, I should've hated. In other words, I was a cheerleader. I always had these huge parties on the weekends because my dad and step mom were hardly ever home. They were so immersed in each other they only paid attention to me around other family. We had to look like the perfect family; a hard working father, a stay at home mom, a popular daughter. What a load of crap. It was like in that play, "Smile", where they won 'Family of the Year Award', but the mother was an uptight cheater and the son was always taking pictures of girls in the shower and then trying to sell them to his friends. God, wouldn't it be great if you could have a picture of your perfect family do all the your entertaining for you? You wouldn't have to act so fake and you could walk away and lead a real life while it projected that 'perfect image'. It was always especially fake around the holidays, when you had to be perfect for company. I remember coming home and feeling so drained, so emotionally and physically tired, after pretending to be someone I wasn't for two weeks. Even four days of a perfect life just about killed me. It was always kind of a relief to come home to my friends, even though they were fake and liked to look perfect themselves.
God, I hope I wasn't really as superficial as them. They only cared about guys and what people thought of them. They were constantly going to the mall, and complaining that they were fat. That's one thing that really bugs me, because not all of them who said they were fat actually thought they were. They were all just afraid that if they didn't think they were fat, everybody else would think they were conceited. But of course, no matter how much someone insisted they were fat, you always told them they were skinny. And then, while one was saying how the other wasn't fat, the one girl wouldn't want the other girl to be the center of attention, and so she would turn it around to herself, while at the same time, trying to make the other girl feel better. "You're not fat, I'm fat." Two birds with one stone! And then, they contradicted themselves so much. I remember talking to this one girl, Stephanie, and telling her she wasn't fat. I told her she sounded just like this other girl Isabel. They were also about the same weight. She insisted she was different, "Isabel's not fat, she just has self-image problems." And you don't? Stephanie also bit her nails, especially when she got nervous. It's such a disgusting habit; it makes your nails all grody and it makes you seem like you have no self- confidence. That's what bugs me; people always assume that just because someone is popular, they have a lot of self-confidence. They may look perfect, but they're really not. And another thing, everybody always assumes popular people are superficial and mean and conceited. Of course, they can be, but so can anybody else. Besides, it's not like I was conceited or anything.
I was the smartest one of all of us. Everybody would always ask for the answers, especially in English. I don't exactly remember when I got into writing plays, probably somewhere around high school. A play is so much better than a book, if it's well written; the feelings of the playwright will come through without being directly stated. Not like most of my early writing. I ended up burning most of that stuff, along with a lot of schoolwork from elementary and middle school. Boy, was that a nostalgic and depressing day. Looking through my old stuff always makes me feel like I want to be younger again, it makes me think about what I did and how much fun I had, and then I get to asking myself why I don't do anything like that anymore, and then I realize it's because I'm in my thirties and I have a job. But it always makes me depressed. Jobs aren't fun at all, except for when I was a playwright. After high school, I left my "perfect" family and came east to write plays.