Hello, O Little Ones (I discovered this wonderful nickname in Confucius' Analects today, I enjoy it and plan to use it regularly!) Today we are going to have a bit of a grammar lesson. Let's start with the word 'wordism'. It comes from the root -ism, Eg: communism. And what does communism mean? Well, it means total and utter control of a place or situation. That is just what Microsoft Word did with my computer! I arrived home one day, looking forward, or rather dreading, to catch up on my two weeks of forgotten blogging. But as I cheerfully turned on my computer (which is green, and mine- I got it for my birthday, Yay!) I witnessed a blasphemous act: Word had taken over my computer! All the little images that appear in the menu, desktop, and taskbar were gone, forcedly replaced by little Word symbols. They seemed to be crying out 'Save me, save me!' like in Spy Kids- the movie- but like the Floopies they too were trapped. Everything I clicked opened a Microsoft Word document, only I couldn't even type because it was blocked by some kind of Ukrainian code. It was chaos inside my screen and I could just imagine a little Bill Gates sitting on a throne while being fanned and served by stolen icons- my icons! I was on the verge of opening the computer to squish that little man with my mere thumb, when my sister suggested a much more… passive and rational solution. She said the words 'System. Restore.' I heard 'Explosion. Of. Computer.' Well, I decided to take her advice and did the System Restore process and everything was magically cured. Oh how I love my wonderfully smart sister! I got Worded, I guess, just because I'm ME. Allez le coup d'état! PS: Now that were on it: No, Microsoft Word, I did not spell my last name wrong!
The assignment for today was to 'write one reflective blog entry'. We had various doubts as to what we should reflect on, and how reflective we should be, but since we got no responses, I have decided to reflect on my life. I have everything one could ask for to live happy forever, a good house, food for every meal, a loving family (even if we don't realize it all the time), caring friends, a good education, IQ points, etc. But there are very few people who are able to always be happy- you know, without the help of …um… happy pills. So this eloquent introduction gives way to my thoroughly, at least to me, complicated life. Even though I have all these things that should make me content, I am not entirely happy. I might be joyous at times, but I still always feel this kind of emptiness, a feeling that a part of me isn't there. For my mental sanity and to give me a little hope that everything will not always be like this, I pinpoint this as being the fault of the atmosphere I am now. Our school, the situation with my family- having to go through three different teenage phases at the same time, plus a family crisis on the side-, the fact that I have lost more than half of my closest friends in the past two years. That atmosphere. I have already found the problem or a replacement of it until I really find what it is, but I cannot seem to find the solution. Every time I feel overwhelmed or just plain blue I think that I would like to pack everything and go to Australia for a year, Australia being my latest ideal escape place (yes, this does have to do with the hot boys who have the even hotter accents. I may be sad, but I'm still me inside!) I think that if I could go to another place which had nothing to do with here for some time then I would find what I'm looking for. This may have to do with the fact that last year I was living in France in an exchange for the whole year. I know I felt like this there too, mostly in the beginning of the year, but I think I have blocked all the bad memories out, another strategy to keep on waking up every day to face my life. I mostly started seeing how good I had it there when I came back, when I started feeling like this again, a feeling of being stuck inside the boundaries of my former life here, when in reality I had changed. I still tried to come back with an open mind to a new kind of life here, but as you can see, it didn't work. I also feel completely alone. I know I'm not, but I cannot escape the idea that everything is fleeting, that if I suddenly left nobody would notice it. I am overwhelmed by the concept that life always goes on… even without you! I feel like I'm trapped in between the walls that I've built out of my bottled up and misunderstood feelings. They are separating me from the rest of the world and even though I pound and pound on the walls no one can hear me, no one comes to help me. I need help in knocking these four walls down, to let the world in, but there is no one here. I am alone. Walking away from everything, escaping, probably isn't the answer to this problem, but the idea of it is what keeps me going forward, towards a promise that something better will come along. Speaking of promises, the other day a girl read my fortune- out of a chocolate sticker kind of thing (a mona from a Chocolatina Jet). Even though I don't believe in that stuff, from fortune tellers to ghosts, she told me something that was scarily accurate. She said that in this moment I was feeling lost, wondering where I was going and if I should change roads. This exactly how I am feeling, like I need an exit to get on a different lane, it's a good thing that someone knows without me having to tell them, because, frankly, I wouldn't be able to explain it. She also said that someone would come along and would make snap out of it, telling me: you are on the right track, you are going somewhere with your life. She told me I was just going through a though time, I like to explain it as a kind of one-eight-of-life crisis, but that a new person would come into my life and end the toughness. One thing I cannot remember is if she said soon, that all this would happen soon. Oh, how I wish she did say soon. This probably wasn't at all what my teacher had in mind with this assignment, really it just makes me sound like a suicidal Dr. Phil case, but that's what he gets from not being clear. Here's a piece of the real Daniela Berenguer for whoever wants it (though I really doubt he does!) PS: The title of this is forty-two because, anyone who has seen or read A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will understand this, forty-two is the answer to everything. It is the answer to The Ultimate Question-which is itself unknown. Right now, forty-two is all that I need.