Epiphany

[raven]

I always finish the holidays in a pleasantly upbeat sort of mood, then go back to school and fall straight back into whatever I was trying to escape three weeks earlier. In case I didn't make it clear the first hundred or so times, I hate school with a passionate and fiery hatred; I hate uniform and rules and having my red and black scarf confiscated (twice this year already) and timetables and the continuous background noise caused by the drivel spewing out of the mouths of the sixth form. I hate getting up at seven am when I could stay up three hours later and sleep till ten; I hate examination briefings and constant registrations; I even hate my precious library. I don't, actually; I hate that everything else around it conspires to make me hate it when it's the only place I've loved in six years. I hate that everyone else got to bounce off to college and I had to stay.

I find it hard to believe I'm seventeen years old and still get screamed at for wearing the wrong scarf. And the scary, unforgivable feeling is, simply, fuck that; there's nothing they can do to me any more. They can't give me order marks or detentions, they can't write me bad references or bad reports, they can't do a thing to touch me any more and maybe it's time I got out of a place that makes me behave like this.

I had a plan, back in December, about the two modules coming up - I was going to revise such and such an amount, and it would all work out in the end. I had yet another mock this afternoon and I don't know how everything started going so wrong, because it seems so easy to do A-levels when you have to cope with interviews and UCAS on the side, but I'm reaching the conclusion I'm setting myself up for resits. Because Chemistry module four is an hour and a half, I had a half-hour to finish off Section B tonight. I stared at it for half an hour, wrote the answer to one question, crossed it out, began again, drew mechanism, stared.

The other thing I find it hard to believe about being seventeen years old is that I have no money, no job, no boy/girlfriend, no respite from my mother's constant carping, and I'm so pathologically lazy I don't deserve any of the above, I know. The great thing about all this is it's now exactly two weeks until my eighteenth birthday, about which I know nothing. I decided this year not to wait for the day and just get depressed because my family don't care that much. So I broached the subject, being careful to be tactful in stating that it has upset me in previous years that they don't mark the day. They said, "We always get a card."

"I want a cake!" I wailed, pathetically, pathetically, because that is all I am today. Pathetic and useless, awash in a sea of other people expertly spinning employment and education, happily financially empowered and independent, while all I want is a cake for my birthday (I'm a legal adult, which is frankly hysterical), two pennies to rub together and not to be so down deep and hormonal, fucking useless and spoilt.

Comments

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

*huggles*

Job does not equal financial security, not the wages we legally earn.

Life sucks at the moment. Be happy - nine months to go. Nine months.

I will bake you a cake.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Blah. It's just the sudden realisation that I have £2.50 and when that's gone no money at all, and it makes me feel low.

Nine months. Less time than it takes to be pregnant. I'll remember that.

I'd love a cake, you know, just for the sugar rush factor. I'm sorry to hear you're feeling blue, too, and I'm guessing it's a similar feeling. How a certain person enjoys school so much is something I can't understand.

Hope there are no more fights with sister nor illness for dog. *mwah*

[balthaser.livejournal.com]

I am coming to visit you on your Birthday, in the morning in school if needs be.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'd love you to. Thank you. *mwah*

[balthaser.livejournal.com]

On that note, what time do you arrive at Crosby on the train? Or what time will you arrive on your birthday do you think?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

My birthday is an ordinary school day - although I have the afternoon off to revise - and I arrive at Crosby at about ten past eight, generally. If I don't catch that train, then twenty past.

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

:'( this sounds like me at A-level. *hugs* i hope it gets better sweetie.
xx

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

"I want a cake!" I wailed, pathetically, pathetically, because that is all I am today.

Of course you want a cake! It's your 18th birthday! Suddenly you have the legal right to vote, get drunk, get married, and join the army. (Please don't do them all at once, though.)

Do I have your contact details? Will send you a cake.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*smiles* I hereby promise not to do them all at once.

It's terribly sweet of you to offer me a cake, but you really don't have to! *mwah* Thank you muchly for the thought.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

The school-hating sounds very familiar; I felt the same way last year. (Now, of course, I would cut off an ear if I could go back, but we'll overlook that.) Not too much longer to go, right? And then all your work pays off and you get to go where you want.

The other thing I find it hard to believe about being seventeen years old is that I have no money, no job, no boy/girlfriend, no respite from my mother's constant carping, and I'm so pathologically lazy I don't deserve any of the above, I know.

You deserve whatever you want, and you'll get it; maybe it'll just take a while. If it's any comfort at all, I'm in essentially the same position, despite having had an extra year to fix it.

...I forget why that was supposed to be a comfort, but it was. *hugs* I would tell you a joke like your Burns unit one, but alas, I have nothing so funny and literary in my repertoire.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Getting out of here is a light on the horizon; I'm hoping it will make a lot of the basic-level things that bother me better, and then I can focus on all the other stuff. Yep, that was articulately expressed.

The memory of the Burns unit joke (and the fact I actually inflicted it on you) is enough to make me smile a bit. *loves you*

[julianelupin.livejournal.com]

...they don't even get you a cake?

WTF??? >:O That makes me mad. For your sake. Everybody deserves SOME recognition of their birthday.

*HUGS YOU* Chin up. When I was 17 (a year and a half ago) I was in the same situation. No significant other, no job, no money, getting ready to go to college and refusing to do ANYTHING to prepare for it... so my mother bought everything for me and got all my financial aid in order and stuff. THAT is spoiled. Not you.

You're going to get out of where you are now. You're going to make it. People like you do. Don't let them get you down, hon.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It's not as if they don't recognise it, as such, it's just that making them do anything is an uphill struggle and I always feel that if I push them, they're getting me a cake and suchlike because I'm making a fuss, not because it's my birthday. I gave up some time ago.

Getting out of here is the plan. I think I'm letting a lot of stuff get me down at the moment, as there's still several months of school to go and it always brings out the worst in me.

*hugs back*

[language-idling.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

One thing that I have come to realise over the course of my Years in Crisis (TM) or Coming of Age, or whatever you want to call it, is that it is not necessary to have it all together right away. Things fall into place eventually. Things will be changing a lot in the next while and maybe it's better not to have to worry about maintaining all of those things while you're getting ready to go off to school. Maybe when you get there, you'll meet the perfect person for you, and find the perfect job and make loads of money... who knows? You certainly deserve all of those things. Do not for a second think that you don't. When you leave, mother's constant carping can be switched off. Birthday cakes aren't just for children, you're not useless or spoilt or anything, and I assure you that many if not most people do not have it together at seventeen, even as well as you do. So there.

[chains-of-irony.livejournal.com]

Girl, you sound like me at the moment. My only love at school is the library!

Just think, nine months and one day, then we both get the Bodleian. ^_^

Your family don't mark your birthday? No presents or anything at all? That sucks.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

They do mark my birthday, and get me presents and stuff - only, they do it in March and April after wondering why I'm pissed off.

We will have to meet, you understand. It will be of the fun.

[chains-of-irony.livejournal.com]

We will have to, yes! I'm already an honourary member of the Oxford fanfic society, (I spend too much time hanging around the city already due to older friends there, so they let me join) you will have to join too!

[amchau.livejournal.com]

From my vast store of wisdom and experience (I've been nineteen since December), I offer this: I'd send a cake if I thought it would survive the post. I'd come and visit if I physically could. As it is, I'll be thinking of you, I fully intend to send a postage package, and if at all possible we'll have a good long phone call.

And, for the record, I'm pathetic, useless, going to get Bs, unemployable, unfinanced, unempowered, sickeningly dependent, and only not hormonal because my hormones are fucked up (polycistic ovary syndrome). So, you know, you've got company. Okay, I'm not *good* company, but still. Together, and all that.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

A mis-spelled lj comment. Now that's a pointless offering, isn't it?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're thirteen months older than me. Clearly that is the sort of gap that allows one a huge reserve of wisdom and experience. :)

I am just down. Ignore me. You are excellent company and I have still not picked up the misspelling in the above, so I'm going to assume it isn't there.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

At the very least, thirteen months has to have some sort of mystical significance. :)

(It was meant to be 'postable' not 'postage'. No matter.) I hope you feel more, well, up, soon.