Illogical Paradox

Dear 2008,

Damn, I don’t even know what to say.

You’ve sure put me through a lot!

In your 366 measly days (leap year!), I have
-found and fell in love with the kindest, sweetest, loveliest person to ever cross my path
-spent six weeks doing a research project in Jerusalem
-taken a week-long Caribbean cruise
-went to my first prom
-got my first B
-won first place in a photography contest
-got my first job, writing for a newspaper
-sacrificed marching band, my favorite thing in the world, for the sake of my future
-met many amazing new people but lost touch with almost as many of the friends I had before
-almost broke down from the stress
-learned how to made tough decisions, let go of what I love, be alone, and handle success
-finally realized why my life’s been so full of pain, and let it all go
-oh yeah, and got accepted to Northwestern, the school of my dreams!

Anyway, enough of the cliche stuff. Sitting here now, I can’t be happier to say goodbye to you. What a trial. You brought possibly the most pain I’ve ever experienced and I don’t want to hold onto that.

Last winter I was still untrusting and suspicious, and it’s amazing I let love into my life at all. But somehow, it happened, even to someone who was as cynical as me. The spring that followed was still tough but magical, too. It was a time of learning, you could say.

The summer was a challenge. I found myself separated by an ocean from everything and everyone I knew. I discovered that, no matter what I do, writing is always what I come back to. I decided then that regardless of what my parents say, I’ll be majoring in journalism, and no matter what it took, I would do it at the best school of journalism in the country - Medill at Northwestern.

Coming home this fall, I felt completely alone. I’d go for hours without talking to anyone, days without speaking to my old friends. Some of these people I still don’t talk to, and that’s fine. We’ve all moved on.

November and December were the hardest of all. I’d made myself so busy that by the end, I was just barely getting up in the morning and dragging myself to school. I turned pale and got sick for weeks at a time. I kept dropping pounds even though I wasn’t even going to the gym. Even after I got into Northwestern, I felt a growing despair and hopelessness, and that’s when I realized that I was letting myself slip back into old habits. And I’m better than that.

Now I’ve had almost two weeks of rest and I’ve used the time well. I finally feel healthy.

But the most important thing? That was the realization I had just a few days ago.
I realized that many of the things that hurt me most come from the years before this one. It’s high school stuff. And for some reason, this hurts me so much even now that I can’t really forgive the ones responsible. I’ve realized that if I’ve let years go by and still can’t forgive, maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe I’m meant to move on from all that instead of letting it stay.

So that’s what I’m doing. This is 2009, the year I’ll graduate high school, go to Northwestern, and leave all of it behind. All the bad memories, the horrible things people said and did because they were so careless. I’ll finally be able to live my life without being haunted by all that.

Truth is, I can’t fight it all. I can’t help that people are cynical to a fault, careless with their actions because they think it’s “just high school” and none of it matters. Yes, it does. It matters when you hurt someone. It matters when you make someone believe that they’re so flawed that nobody will ever love them. It matters when you toss an old friend aside because you’ve found someone better. It matters that you are a bull in a china shop, and the beautiful cups and teapots and vases you are breaking are the dreams, the soul of another person. IT MATTERS.

I’m too idealistic for this. In the world I hope to create for myself, discussions are meaningful, friends share their souls with each other, and lifelong dreams are pursued passionately and finally achieved.

And you know what? Don’t you DARE tell me it’s impossible. Don’t you fucking dare. I don’t want to hear your cynicism. I want to be optimistic. I want to be passionate. I want to be alive.

If you don’t want that for yourself…shut up and let ME achieve it for ME.

So, with that, a word about resolutions. I’ve always made lists of resolutions and worked hard to keep them.

But this year, there will be only one resolution:

“Fix it.”

In 2009, I’m not going to back down anymore. I will be heard. I will continue my relationship with the person I love even when we go to college because I’m not afraid to work hard for it. I will keep writing, and hopefully will finish the novel I’m working on, because I’m not afraid of sharing what I believe. I will make new friends and keep them close to me, because hopefully, this time I won’t have to be afraid of them hurting me. I will keep dreaming, always.

Always.

Love,
Miriam

P.S. It’s not me, it’s you. =)

Yeah, you need to protect your site from bad people. I get it.

But think about it this way. There are bajillions of websites on the internet, so chances are, you need ME a lot more than I need YOU. And if you make registering to your site ridiculously difficult by using a captcha that is illegible or just plain DOESN’T WORK, guess what! I won’t sign up for your site!

I usually give it about five tries, which is five times more than the average person would give. But after five times of being shown flh438gf, typing in flh438gf, and being told that the correct answer ISN’T flh438gf, I get very annoyed.

The worst offender for this used to be Rapidshare, who (for their free service) wouldn’t let you download something without decoding a captcha that consisted of a a bunch of numbers/letters with ridiculously distorted pictures of animals on them, and you were supposed to only type the ones that had cats. All the animals looked more like squiggles than animals. The captcha looked like this:

Rapidshare's cat captcha

As you can see, that would be a problem.

Luckily, they got rid of it a few months after they started using it, probably because it got hacked. I’m assuming it wasn’t because people hated it. After all, who cares if the users are unhappy? We have enough anyway!

So, in the true spirit of the Internet, here’s some free publicity for the websites that can’t make themselves USABLE!

• BlogHub
• Blog Toplist
• Blogarama
• SubmitBlogNow

(This list will grow, trust me.)