Tears, insecurity, and dangerous mattresses.

I am going to pretend I have kept this blog well. I am going to pretend I have updated it regularly, filled it up with prose and memories, and that I have succeeded at blogging without really trying. I am going to pretend this blog loves me, that it does not resent me in the slightest for how much I've neglected it.

I am going to expect you to pretend right along with me.

So let me tell you about my day.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to drag yourself out of bed with a Good Book Hangover, still grieving characters and missing the novelty of the novel? Because I can now say I do. My mother had to physically drag me out of bed. By the leg.

So it goes without saying that I clung to The Fault in Our Stars all day, tearing through it for the second time and bursting out in laughter and then tears and tears and then laughter and then sobs in the middle of class. This is the cheesiest of cheeses, but it really was even more amazing the second time around.

I'm going to start my third read-through tomorrow.

In the middle of TFiOS, I also did that thing I occasionally do where I actually interact with other humans in The Real World. Pretty crazy stuff.

My AP Language and Composition teacher hasn't been in class lately and she likely will not be able to return for a while, so the AP Lit teacher is filling in where he can. Now, this man is brilliant. Everybody knows it. So, of course, I admire him quite a bit and was mortified at my boundless shortcomings when he began asking questions in class, and I felt that familiar sinking that a wonderful combination of low self-esteem and social anxiety tends to bring with it, and I was convinced I would somehow convey my insufficiency without even talking.

But he wrote a sentence on the board, asked about that sentence, and my bastard-ass hand decided to shoot up and facilitate my imminent death. The teacher called on me and I mumbled something about a shift from active voice to passive voice, a shift in focus and purpose, and he. Complimented. Me. Twice. For some crap answer. And as we left for lunch minutes later, he said "Good job, Claudia!" despite only having heard my name for the first time that day.

And I was so, so elated, but so, so confused.

I'm told this teacher is hard to please, that he's blunt and you should be prepared to have your soul crushed should you choose to take his class. And, again, I admire him. So my mind could not wrap itself around the idea that I had done something, however insignificant, to warrant a compliment, and I was grappling with that when my classmates (who I've grown to love sososo much) started talking about My Intelligence and My Writing and My Words.

Essentially, the things I'm convinced either (A) do not exist or (B) barely exist.

So I told them that, and they argued back, and I was stuck in That Place again.

I am genuinely, cripplingly insecure. My friends and my newspaper adviser yell at me about it all the time, but their efforts are wasted. I try, I really do, to conjure some confidence and walk into the school a new girl with slightly higher self esteem, but my efforts are wasted, too.

And when I vocalize my insecurities, I start panicking and thinking people will think I'm doing it for attention or to fish for compliments or in the pursuit of some sort of validation. Which isn't true at all. Compliments make my head hurt and put me in awkward positions and attention only heightens my social anxiety to an unbearable level. So.

But the fact remains-- I am insecure about my insecurities.

Jesus H. Christ, self. What is your deal?

Anywho.

I got home a few hours after all of this, and that's when I was almost killed by a mattress a few times.

My half-brother-who-is-older-than-my-mother-and-who-I-hold-an-infantile-grudge-against-out-of-so-many-feelings is redecorating his entire home, so he gave my dad lots of stuff. This is part of some new thing they have going on where my half brother actually acknowledges my father exists and interacts with him and what not after a couple decades, but I won't pretend to understand their dynamics. Especially when one half of it is a man who refused to talk to little kid me when all I wanted was an older brother. And I still want an older brother. And neither of the two that could qualify as that talk to me still. So. Whatever.

But I come home to this huge king-size mattress in my living room and I realize-- crap. We're going to have to get this upstairs, aren't we?

Here's the thing about architects-- they fail to consider the mattresses. At least, they fail to consider king-size ones. This leads to a family of five trying to push it up one flight of stairs with two hours using their meager strength and two ropes. And it is agony. Sheer agony.

And, of course, I have to weave back and forth between this side and that side, this corner and that one, and they let go at all the wrong times and I find myself between a mattress and a hard place. The mattress isn't even that soft. It's actually hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and my lungs and bones and other body parts do not take kindly to it.

So I'm screaming "help, help, help, help, HELP, I AM DROWNING IN MATTRESS" for the fifth time, and I wonder if this is what Hazel felt like the night of The Miracle in The Fault in Our Stars. I wonder if this is what it feels like to have lungs that suck at being lungs.

Mostly, I just want to get out from under there.

And that's how I learned that I would not wish mattresses on my worst enemy.

And that's why I'm aching all over now.

And that pain somehow reminded me of this blog, so here I am.

And.