I am officially done with high school as of tomorrow. It's honestly kinda hard to wrap my head around that fact. But it's over now. I survived what many consider to be the most socially awkward, horrifically embarrassing phase of human life.

Until I remember that the universe is indifferent to the trivialities of mere mortals like myself. P.S: Buckle up. This is gonna be a long journal.

My social life seemed to peak during the last week, only to plateau again. Last Tuesday was my eighteenth birthday so I endured the obligatory family gathering to celebrate. My cousin's boyfriend decided to invite himself without bothering to inform anybody and showed up in the middle of our dinner just to eat our food. He didn't speak to anybody but my cousins and he was very curt when anyone else tried to start conversation. He left without saying a word of thanks, because I guess a nice "Thank you for letting me eat six slices of YOUR pizza" is too much. What a douche.

Easter was going nicely for me. My mom's family gathered at my grandma's house for smoked ham and prayers, as we do every year, and my cousins and I were reconnecting after months of barely speaking. Not out of spite or any disagreements, but they're both...adults now. One's in college with a boyfriend, the other has a job and a girlfriend he plans to marry and I can't keep up. But the boyfriend and girlfriend weren't with us for once, so I had my cousins all to myself for the first time in awhile. So we hung out and it was nice.

I've been getting a lot of extra hours at work lately, which is good. Twenty-three hours this past week, nineteen of which were during the weekend. I like to gripe about it but really it's good for me. When I'm working my mind is only focused on the tasks at hand. It's a distraction. A greasy way to kill time, if you will. Plus the money is nice to have, although I don't particularly yearn for tons of cash. Good news is I can buy books and put more in my pathetically small savings account.

I'm totally aware of the fact that my recent journals have grown repetitive. I just need to write whatever comes to me whenever it comes to me even if it covers the same subject over and over again because it makes my thoughts more logical and organized. For awhile, at least.

Just gonna jump right in to this one.

My braces are gone now. I've had them since freshman year, nearly four years. Feels weird, man. My mouth feels naked without them. My teeth are nice and straight, I can eat corn off the cob and chewy caramel and other delightful foodstuffs. However, I have to wear my retainer for a ridiculous length of time. It'll be going to college with me. Yay. I've been told that if I choose not to wear it my teeth will move back to where they were before the braces and thousands of precious dollars will be wasted. Ultimatums. Yay.

So, I went to the first GSA meeting at my school today. It's too early to form a solid, conclusive opinion, but I'm pretty optimistic. Of course it figures that everybody knew everybody and formed their little groups, me being the only one without a posse. It was actually mostly sophomores, several juniors, and only two seniors, including myself. So I'll have to convince one of my friends to join me at the next meeting. I don't know who though.

So, I'm just sitting in world lit, waiting for our fresh-out-of-college newbie teacher to quiet the class down, when my friend Haylee tells me there's a flyer by the door announcing the beginning of a GSA at the school. So I checked it out. It seems some brave soul decided to establish a GSA, which will meet for the first time February 5th. It's so odd that one of these would pop up in the conservative Midwest, but I'm so glad it did. It kinda gives me hope. Cautious hope, but hope nonetheless.

I...don't even know. So, Brittany and I didn't take the trip to my college. First, we were definitely going. Then in the past couple weeks it seemed like we wouldn't make it. Then she tells me she signed up and we're definitely going again. Then this morning, as I'm sitting by my door, all dressed up and eagerly waiting for her to pull into my driveway, she texts me saying that she woke up puking and is too sick to go.

I have no words.

No.

Words.

That Jennifer Lopez song "Jenny From the Block" has been stuck in my head for three days now. I'm scared.

I just had a really weird thought. Y'know how it's a commonly held belief that in a relationship, the woman is always right? Well, if two girls are dating and they get into an argument, and if they're both women, who's right?! I just blew my own mind.

So here I am. My eyes are blotched a raw pink and my head is pounding, as it tends to do after a good, long, self-pitying sob session.

This is so fucking stupid. The specific reason I've been bawling for the past twenty minutes is so fucking stupid, but its underlying cause runs a lot deeper. This moment of pathetic, woe-is-me whining has also been a moment of sheer epiphany.

My epiphany is this:

My Christmas was dull. I spent half of it at my dad's, where I mostly listened to my dad's girlfriend's dad tell stories to my grandma about how everyone in his family beat the shit out of him when he was growing up. Then I went to my aunt's (mom's side of the family now) which was a bore. It wasn't bad, until my cousin mentioned that somehow a borrowed video game had gotten stuck in his busted-up Wii, and my other cousin added, "Didn't that game belong to Justin? That gay guy?" To which my grandma replied, "Ew get that game outta there!"

Since the college students are back in town for the holidays, our old newspaper staff decided to have a little reunion...at ten o'clock in the morning, which was irksome for me since I had to be at work by eleven forty-five. We scheduled the get-together so early to accommodate my former best friend, Judd, who had somewhere to be late afternoon. And the asshole didn't even bother to show up, or even RSVP at the very least. We picked a ridiculously early time just for him, and he doesn't even come because he was so hungover from drinking and getting high all weekend.