"You're such a nice and quiet girl."

WARNING: LONG AND ANNOYING RANT.

I’m angry. I’m angry about a lot of things, but mainly, in the words of Prince Zuko, “I’m angry at myself.”

It’s hot, and I’m angry, and I refuse to go to bed. I must say how I feel.

You see, I’ve come to realize some things. I’ve always been a good kid. Always followed the rules, always been a good student, gotten good grades (at least until the latter half of high school), always respected authority figures, always been a favorite of my teachers. But I’ve come to realize that none of this has really done me any good. All my life I’ve been doing favors for people, never putting myself first. I’ve treated myself like trash, emotionally, and have let myself get pushed aside. All of this rule-following has made me weak. FOLLOWING THE RULES GETS YOU NOWHERE. Nothing gets done. Breaking the rules when necessary is the only way: THE ONLY WAY to grow, or at least a very important part of growth.

What good has it done me that I got an A in Physics? That I got a 4.0 freshman year? That I tried oh-so-hard all the time? ABSOLUTEY NONE. You see, everything teachers tell you is a lie. It doesn’t mean SHIT weather you get straight A’s or not. No matter what they tell you, there’s no difference between a student who get’s straight A’s and a student who flunks every class and skips school. The only thing that matters is that you, Y-O-U, are doing what you want to do. SPEAK YOUR MIND AND DO AS YOU PLEASE, because that is the only way to live. I wish I had been strong enough to live like this growing up, but I was a fearful little crybaby, and I couldn’t fit in with my classmates so the only thing I was good at was following the rules. I was such a model child, the kind of student every teacher wishes all students could be like: obedient and quiet, gets good grades and never talks back. But none of that did me any good. There have been plenty of times where, if I had been stronger, I would have yelled, “THIS IS BULLSHIT!” I got plenty of detentions in high school, but never for the right reasons: I was just late all the time. If one of those detentions had been for speaking my mind, I would have been happy. This brings me to my next thing that’s bothering me...

DETENTION and the reasons kids are sent to it. Any back-talk to teachers gets you a detention.
THERE IS A REASON KIDS BACK-TALK THEIR TEACHERS.

THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE KIDS, IT IS THE SYSTEM.

Why is it that when students speak their mind and call teachers out on their bullshit, they are simply sent to detention? The teachers and authority are too WEAK to actually LOOK AT THE PROBLEM and FIND A SOLUTION. These instances in which a student back-talks, or does something a teacher doesn’t like, should be treated as moments to stop and find out how to change things, instead of taking the lazy way out and saying, “it’s all the student’s fault. DETENTION 4 U !!!111!!11” Teachers and faculty are too high up on their horses to even STOP and THINK that maybe THEY’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM. Take time to find a solution, or at least ADMIT THAT YOU’RE IN THE WRONG. My god, high school is full of the most ignorant people and I am so glad that I am in college now. Though college can have its fair share of ignorant people, too.

It sickens me that in order to be praised and respected by teachers and authority, you essentially have to kill whatever is inside of you, or at least do a DAMN good job of covering it up, like I did. It truly, deeply sickens me. It’s so ludicrous! In high school, whenever someone talked about how quiet and nice I was, I honestly wanted to curse them out and punch them in the face. “FUCK you! You don’t know how I feel! I’d like to show you just how ‘nice and quiet’ I can be!”

To this day, when someone tells me to my face that I’m “such a nice and quiet girl,” it seriously pisses me off. I’m fine with being a “nice girl.” In my mind, there’s nothing wrong with being “nice.” But the word “quiet” is what gets to me.

Yes, it’s true, I don’t deny it: I am a quiet person. But it pisses me off like nothing else when people point that fact out to me. YES I’m a quite person, but could you not state the obvious? NOT ONLY DOES IT MAKE YOU LOOK STUPID, it’s not a very good conversation starter. “You’re a pretty quiet person” is NOT a good way to start a conversation! If you’re trying to get me to talk--and I’ll GLADLY talk to you--why not say something else? Hell, even “I like your shoes” is a way better conversation starter.

HEY, EXTROVERTS, THIS PART IS FOR YOU!! When a person is quiet, like me, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THEM. It does not mean they’re sad, it does not mean ANYTHING. They just have a lot more mental activity going on and therefore don’t verbalize as much because they just have so many thoughts and ideas swimming around in their head. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL. NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE AS LOUD AS YOU, SO BE A BIT MORE UNDERSTANDING. If you talk to them, they will gladly talk to you. They are just less likely to start a conversation themselves because they are already entertained with their own thoughts. You don’t need to point out the obvious fact that they’re quiet. IT PISSES THEM OFF. I REPEAT: DO NOT TELL A QUIET PERSON THAT THEY ARE QUIET. THEY KNOW. YOU’RE ONLY MAKING YOURSELF LOOK STUPID AND MAKING THEM FEEL AWKWARD. PLUS IT’S RUDE, DUH.

I AM a pretty nice person, and I strive to be kind. I would never actually yell at someone, and I would never want to hurt anyone's feelings. But being TOO afraid of hurting people’s feelings has made me TOO cautious and FAR TOO QUIET.

So from now on, I can’t be responsible for how people react to what I say. I will strive to speak my mind, and if I hurt someone’s feelings unknowingly, I am sorry.

Part of what I’m getting at here is that we’re all far too stuck in our comfort zones. I’ve come to realize that too much comfort only makes people weak. It has only made ME weak. From now on I will strive to get to know what it’s like outside of my comfort zone, to live out there and grow from those experiences. I’ll have to get used to feeling uncomfortable, and it won’t be easy, and I might run right back into my little hole of safety and lies, but I have to make an effort. Doing this is actually ridiculously easy on an intellectual level: whenever I feel uncomfortable I just have to embrace those situations. But in reality it isn’t so easy.

SOMETHING ELSE I WANTED TO SAY, for far too long I’ve been suppressing my emotions. It could just be because I’m a highly introverted person, or because I’m too lazy to make a fuss, or because (like I said) I wanted to stay in my comfort zone, or because I’m afraid I might explode if I let them out. Writing this whole thing has really taken a lot of stress and anger off of my shoulders, and I should do this all the time. I’ve spent too much time on the internet and not enough time writing and expressing myself. I think I’ll be a much more balanced person if I let out my frustration this way. Sometimes I just want to scream at people, but I know I would never do that, so this way I can USE ALL CAPS and SWEAR THE FUCKING JESUS all I want, and it’s much more healthy.

Anyway, what started all this was I read Michael Mork’s blog, and that got me thinking about a lot of things, which made me angry, which made me write this. So thank you, Michael. This helped a lot. I feel like a heavy burning mass that was stuck inside of me has been released.