As is often the case, there are too many thoughts in my head tonight. Mich said, Be happy. Don't think; be happy. But telling me to not think is like telling me not to breathe: futile. Because, as she says and has said for years (and rightly so), I overthink everything. I think too much. I don't remember a time when I haven't been so analytical. Correction: so over analytical. Sometimes it bothers me. And not even so much the thinking-too-much part of it, but the there's-too-much-in-my-mind part of it. Probably one of the reasons I write so much - to get some of the stuff out of my head and somewhere else where it can stay.
I've been keeping a journal since I was in fourth grade, and it's a pretty in-depth journal. I mean, I'm kinda anal about it. I have all these lists, and detailed crap about my feelings and what's going on in my head and in my life. Honestly, I can go back in my journals and know, pretty much to the day, when certain things happened. When was that awful sleepover? When did I go see Stranger Than Fiction with Meggo and those guys? If I wanted to, I could find out right now. But I digress. Until I wrote that essay, the one for RED, I didn't really realize what a release it could be writing about my life in a coherent fashion, something other people could actually understand. After that, I started writing more essay-type things about my life. About my friends and my so-called friends, my cousins and the move, and, of course, all the drama and the people involved. I found out that I like doing that, making the words about my life better than a journal entry but not as good as the essay I wrote for RED. Getting what I feel out on paper and looking at it, trying to make sense of it.
I read THE BOYFRIEND LIST a long time ago, and it was really good. It sort of changed me, which probably sounds stupid to say about a YA fiction book that could easily be percieved as nothing but fluff. But it did. From reading the book I came to the same conclusion that Roo did: emotions are not in any way controlled by logic. I love this quote, from THE BOY BOOK,
My problem is I can think whatever I think but I still feel the way I feel.
And isn't that true, so completely true? I can think that it's stupid to compare myself to others, or to listen to what that one person says about me, or like that one guy, or whatever the issue may be. But knowing it's stupid doesn't change the feelings. So I decided I needed to make peace with my feelings. And I have. Mostly.
I'm still working on it actually. It's a long process.
Okay, question. I have a question, unrelated to anything else this blog is about. You know how in books the main character's thoughts are in italics? Okay, right. So when you read that out loud, how do you make it apparant that it's the character's thoughts? You can't exactly "show" italics with your voice, can you?
I'm confused.