这几天，我会用华语写博客。我决定在平常生活中尽量用华语是提高话语水准的不二法门。（其实我这个早就知道了，只不过是我一直太懒惰罢了...）。比较喜欢用英语的人，忍耐一下吧。(:

生活是高潮和低潮的统一，而这几天绝对是低潮。我又不是发生了什么事，又不是特别多烦恼，我只不过是开心不了，无法找回以前那种积极的态度与精神。大概是因为各种比赛都结束了吧。现在没什么特别有趣的东西发生，因此我觉得每一天都很无聊，很闷，很长。对了，我总是觉得时间过的很慢。我一直等着夜晚的到来，夜晚代表一天结束了，我能休息了，不用再坚持下去了。

可是躺在床上时，我又发现，我想回去，再次度过刚过去的一天。时间的倒流是个无法调整的东西，时间一过去，永远就不会回来了。我们随时都可能被死神夺走。我们应该珍惜每一天，因为今天可能就是你生活的最后一天。没有好好珍惜刚过去的二十四个小时，感觉好像失去了，错过了些什么。

我对我的未来开始有疑虑。大家都以为我什么都很好，什么都做得了，也许他们没错。但是我这几天总是觉得，自己到底有没有那样地利害？成绩方面上，我有什么能炫耀的，有什么值得骄傲的？是的，我最近赢了两个非常盛大的讲座比赛，甚至有机会代表国家到美国去比赛，但是这些都是多余的。唯一最重要的，果然还是成绩。成绩搞得不好，也考不到哪里去。

我只好更努力，更用功。我发现，其实自己以前也蛮骄傲的，总是以为自己能行的，自己能帮自己，不需要别人的指导。现在我承认我错了。我愿意比以前努力两倍，三倍，四倍，因为我其实一早应该那样地努力了。

我觉得自己越来越自私，总是顾着成绩，没什么时间为别人着想了。但真正是朋友的，就会明白，我是学生，我有责任搞好学业，崭露头角，为自己创造美好的未来。如果连这个责任也负不起，我能算是个好孩子吗？我们始终还是要为自己着想一下，为自己的决定负责任。

今天就这样吧。明天再说。

Kieran lay on the mats, her blanket over her and her hands running themselves through her tousled hair. It was perhaps midnight, now; but for some reason she could not sleep. Tobias had spent most of the day avoiding her, and she was beginning to wonder if kissing him had been a dreadful mistake. But then, someone like Tobias did not seem capable of understanding the significance of the action. Kieran sighed. Being in love was difficult, and very tiring. Being in love with someone as silent and as clueless as Tobias was double the trouble.

But again, she smiled to herself, it was all worth it. Love was sort of like chasing a butterfly—it was almost always out of reach, always flitting tantalizingly close to her hands, but never quite close enough for her to catch in her cupped palms. It was beautiful as much as it was small and fragile. And yet, in spite of their fragility, butterflies were always around. She saw them everywhere, around the house, in the grassland, in the forest. It was as though the death of one butterfly was always compensated for by the birth of another, and so butterflies were forever in abundance, never absent. Beautiful butterflies, some the color of the sun, some the color of the ocean, and some the color of the night.

Kieran giggled when she thought of how Alexander would react to the metaphor. And then she wondered if Alexander had ever been in love before. Had any of them been in love before? What about Demetrius? Kieran fingered the end of her blanket. She knew Alexander’s story, but no one else’s. Had they had their families, then? Were they in touch? Most likely not, she presumed, but if they had the chance, would they return to the place from which they had come?

It occurred to her that one person can have many connections. He can love many people. There are many kinds of love, after all. That person would be the centre of it all, the centre of the delicate web of loved ones. If, say, he were to die, all the connections would be broken, just like how the silvery strands of silk break apart after the spider’s web has been disturbed.

It was as though she had been thrown headfirst into a tub of icy water. Kieran sat bolt upright.

It was so delicate! It was so easy, so simple to break! All it took was one moment of hesitation, one moment of mistaken judgment, and all the strings in the web, every last one of them, would be torn wide apart. If she died in her impending battle with O’Conner, the strings connected to her existence would fall away; following her death, the rest of the Breakers would die, and the strings connected to each of their existences would also be destroyed. The web that had taken so many years to build, so many times of hardship, so much trust, so much love, so much pain and joy, would cease to be a beautiful, intricate sculpture of a thousand silvery strands; it would become a loose, broken, tangled mass of dull strings that meant nothing, nothing at all. And all it took was one failure, one death! The fate of the web lay in her hands alone!

Kieran shuddered and then bent forward, hugging her knees to her chest. She was not fighting for five people, then. She was fighting for the tens, perhaps for the hundreds of people who knew them and loved them and would cry for them when they died, fighting to keep them from the pain of loss. So much depended on her.

She looked up helplessly, and then caught sight of an unfinished spider’s web constructed just near the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The spider hung from it, constructing the very last few strands that would make the web whole.

The wind blew—a strong, icy wind. In a single, hot, blinded moment, Kieran bolted to the window and slammed it shut.

But when she looked up again, the web had already been blown away. So had the spider.

Well, this is what's happening in my life right now.

Competitions are over (although I have my individuals...but what are the odds?) so it's back to schoolwork and stuff like Scholar's Cup. I have tons to do so I'm having to stretch my limits here--having to do lots of things in very little time. I'm doing okay. I think it's under this sort of pressure that I understand just how focused I can be and how much I can cram into this tiny head of mine in a given period of time (which, by the way, is insanely short). Being busy means having less time to talk to friends and boyfriends (well, boyfriend), but it gives a grim sense of satisfaction at the end of the day, when you realize you've managed to somehow restrain yourself from chatting to a thousand and one people in one day and have instead managed to concentrate on homework. Life's good like this sometimes. Just not all the time.

Kekkaishi 255 isn't out yet. Hurry up, penguin! I want to know if Hiura really does attack Karasumori. He's not going to walk up to Yoshimori and say, "Hey, sorry about this, chap, but I gotta destroy your school 'cause I was ordered to"...is he? (Yoshimori, that was a really stupid promise you made with Hiura. I suggest you go to him and take it back right now.)

NFL went well. Surprisingly, amazingly well. Moving on to Alabama (if nothing preparation-wise goes wrong). Only some of the elation's gone already. Because I'd rather not go at all if it means losing a friendship with you. You're the older, wiser one, so you can probably read me like a book, and I'm the younger, dumber one, so obviously I can't do the same. I guess you know things in me that I'm completely unaware of, and evidently you don't like what you see or hear. I don't know what they are, so I can't apologize for them--that would be very heartless and unsincere--but I do wish you would tell me. To drop it and move on would be to try and forget things that will forever be in the back of my head. It seems like I keep doing or saying things to offend you nowadays--and this time I don't know what it is. If I knew, I could apologize for it. But I suppose there's nothing to do now but to move on.

My personal life is getting increasingly tiring nowadays. It's not anyone's fault; it's just that I'm still reeling from all the roller-coaster ups and downs that have happened recently. The breakups, the makeups, the anger, the guilt, the exhaustion. I never knew allowing myself to get close to other people--allowing myself to love--could be so tiring. It's like, I solve one relationship problem, and then another goes and throws itself on the rocks almost immediately. Can't there just be a time when everyone around me--everyone--is on good terms with me, isn't mad at me, doesn't hate me, and just keeps me safe? Can't everyone be a constant and not a variable?

Of course they can't.

So life goes on like this--on, off, up, down, and then you fall splat on the ground and you're so bloody tired you don't want to get up anymore.

At the worst of times, I just feel like I want to lock myself up in a room and break up ties with everybody. That would be a lot easier, wouldn't it--you don't get mad at yourself, and if you find a reason to, it's easy to make up. Allowing yourself to get close to someone, to trust someone, would be to make yourself susceptible to breakups, misunderstandings, more breakups, betrayals, more breakups...all of which are unfairly tiring and taxing. Because that's what relationships are, aren't they? The process of trusting, not trusting, and then trusting again. That's how you build a stronger relationship with someone: you have an argument, and endure it. No one is a real friend if he or she hasn't had an argument with you yet. That's a fact.

The worst part? No one ever says what they really think.

If they did, I wouldn't be emo-ing about this now.

There you go: today's slice of teenage drama. It's what I've found out from life as a near-sixteen-year-old. The good part? My portfolio's building up in all areas. The bad part? It seems my ability to get along with people--even though I LOOK fine on the surface--is getting drained away.

Why do I always end up pissing people off when I feel like I've done absolutely nothing wrong at all?

But that's just it, Jennifer. Maybe if you kept your mouth shut and didn't say anything at all, people wouldn't ever have a reason to be mad at you. Maybe that's the best safety net of all: to take away every possible reason.

Worth a shot.

We've been in the same class for donkey's years, and yet it's only now that I really begin to understand who you are.

When we were 13 and 14, I never really knew you. You were just the kid sitting behind me, the one teachers always tirelessly chased for homework that never appeared on their desks (actually, they still do! AHAHA). The one who knew everything and could switch from English to Chinese like a radio switches from one channel to another. The one who had a wacky, off-tangent sense of humour (by the way, you STILL do. Only now, it's worse! :D).

When we moved on, though, I guess it was because we were one of the few people from 207 that ended up in 309 together. I began to get to know you a little better, and then eventually we became good friends. We spent a lot of time bickering about weirdo stuff (I don't know. You remind me. What useless conversations do we normally have? The Babaland thing?) and arguing about things that actually matter (e.g. homosexuality--but let's not go there). We also ended up doing more things together (e.g. like all those SIAs--Physics, LA, Chinese, uh...). We had our little, uh, clique--you, me, Stella, Jingyi. I don't know about you, but I started seeing the four of us as a block unit. I mean, Stella, Jingyi and I sit together and everything and you don't, but you're always in the vicinity (HAHA) and we still do a lot of stuff as a block unit (LIKE CHINESE SIA). And you always end up somewhere in our conversations, anyway. (:

I guess it's because I've recently been going through a lot, and I tend to rant about them. You should know I'm the sort of person who needs to let things out, so naturally I tell the people I trust about the bad stuff that happen to me. It seems that I'm doing a lot of taking and very little giving--I always tell you all the bad stuff in my life, and you always end up trying to make me feel better (like on Friday--thanks for that). You have this weird way of laughing everything off, which makes me feel better for a while. But you never tell me about your problems, or at least the bigger ones (or if you do, OMG I'M SORRY NEVER LISTEN PROPERLY!). But I don't think you do. It seems like I'm always relying on you and you're never relying on me--or anyone, for that matter.

When I was in 207 with you I thought you were the cold heartless kind. I'm serious--I thought you were very evil. :D Because you never seemed to emo or anything. But I've realized that you're very soft inside (SORRY--very "uhhh" way to put it, but I can't think of anything else!) and you care a lot for the people around you. On Friday, your trying to comfort me helped a lot. I never knew when I was in 207 that you were like that. I suppose you have to take the time to get to know people better before you understand their layers. People are like onions, remember. (:

I read your blog (honestly--you have the most random of thoughts!). I just realized that you probably have your ups and downs too. I never knew, because you never really showed it. Maybe they're not HALF as dramatic as mine (me drama queen) but they may be equally draining. I know you sleep at weird morning hours and wake up at ungodly moments. I don't know why, but you just do and sometimes you seem awfully exhausted in school. Dunno how you do it.

I think what I want to say is, I'm relying a lot on you now, so if you like, you can rely on me. I don't know if I'm the most reliable of people (or indeed the kindest), but I know I would want to help you if I could. If you need notes or help with homework (but you smart lah!) or my printer (never mind the number of pages, my printer damn pro one k), just ask. If you have any ups and downs in your life and you want to talk things out, I can listen (but I can't comfort people to save my life, so sorry ah). And thanks for everything--for being there and for being a great friend.

And in case you're wondering, Jennifer can be very mushy when she wants to be, you know. (: