somewhere in 2003, a girl I am seventeen years old, and I am depressed, and I think it's a cliche. I want so much to be good, but I cannot outrun, outdrink, outfuck this fear, and this fear is making me bad. I can barely get out of bed in the morning. Warning: May…
Writing
The Great Balance
I'm no Rousseau. I do not believe that man in nature is inherently kind or fundamentally good and that it is simply society that corrupts and creates evil. Have you taken a look around at what nature does? It's not just butterflies and watercolor sunsets. Nature is deadly snake bites and decaying corpses, violent hurricanes and ferocious…
Little Children
How often I feel like a confused child, looking skyward for guidance, desperately wanting to be told, "this is why things are the way that they are. This is what you must do." There is no such explicit guidance, except maybe in a god or higher power, but even from that we are never really…
Dear Parents
Although I have left my job as a teacher, I think about my students and their families regularly. I definitely miss the joy those kids brought to my life. (At the same time, I really really really love how...hmmm, what is this peculiar feeling? Oh! Relaxed! Rested. Yes, I really love how relaxed and rested…
If These Comments Could Talk
Each trimester when grades are due, teachers across the country (or at least across the westside of Los Angeles) wither under the writing of ten to twelve sentence paragraphs that must capture the academic achievement, behavior, effort, growth, and 'areas for future improvement' of their students. Some of us write only fifty, some a grueling hundred,…
From High School Druggies to Witches and Queens
When I made attempts at writing novels and short stories as a teenager, all of my main characters were girls in the throes of pill addiction. (Prophetic in a way, as my pill addiction grew to its full force in my early twenties.) They were pretty girls addicted to "Demerol" and "Benzedrine" and "Valium." (The novels of…
Continue reading ➞ From High School Druggies to Witches and Queens
A Full Life 