Thrills, Kills and Sunday Pills

Waiting with John Green

Reef should be coming at any time now, so I'm sitting in the hotel lobby just waiting with a book. Looking for Alaska, by John Green.

It doesn't make you cry as much as The Fault in our Stars, but it gives you heavy feels. It's about a guy named Miles who's pissed off with his boring life, so he transfers to a boarding school and meets Alaska. He's not safe with her, so technically he's getting what he wanted.

I'm getting to a really intriguing part, which means I'll probably be reading in the car with Reef. That's a flaw I have; if I get to interested in something like that, like a book or something, I'll stop at nothing to work out what's going on. The thing is, I'm not even that hardcore of a bookworm. I only read stuff by John Green.

When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

Shit, that part gets me so hard.

It's not relatable, and it doesn't even occur to me.

It just bites.

I'm not exactly a teenager anymore, because I'm 18, but it still hits somewhere, maybe in a place some part of me that's still a teenager. The small compartment in my head that holds all the remaining angst and the edgy thoughts I used to have, and they all get triggered when I read those sorts of phrases from any John Green novel.

I used to be like that. Angsty, kind of like Reef. It was the initial reason I spoke to her in the first place, was because I felt like I could help her out of that place. Not exactly lead her to where I am now, but just out of the depression. I'm not assuming she has any mental health disorders, but when I was in the phase she's in now, I was suffering from depression. I know how I can help out with everything that's going on just by giving her the same advice I lived by for myself.

I took quotes from people I liked, like Alex Turner and John Green. Alex Turner said 'You can't worry what people think'. The thing I like about that quote is that he didn't say 'don't worry' but 'can't worry', like it's a physical impossibility to care what people think. Something for me is when someone says 'don't worry about what people think', it's a bit hypocritical. It's like a demand someone's giving, and I don't like it.

See, they think you should forget what people think. But then they're instructing you to care about their thoughts because they think you should stop. It's hard to explain to someone, because they aren't in my head. But again, I suppose that's just how I personally work.

So yeah, Alex Turner is making the aspect of it seem like you can'tcare. As in not possible. That's why I like the quote so much.

I'm not sure if that's the case for Reef, because she seems pretty independent from the hours we were together. When she saw blood on her earphones, she was verging to freaking out, and when a lady gave her a concerned look, Reef shot back a look to the woman that kind of said 'let me react however I want to react'.

There are plenty of things I could do with Reef to help her out, but for today I'll just see how she acts in an openly public area, when she chooses herself to buy things and talk to people. I was going to suggest something like catching up and hanging out, so I was pretty surprised when she bought it up herself.

I've only known her for a day or so, not even, but I feel like my job is to be like a role model figure. The motivational big sister. I just want to try to get her to look up to me.

That's kind of what I always wanted. I feel like I have some sort of story, numbing my depression without taking the medicine and the citalopram and everything.

"Sometimes I don't get you," I said.

She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, "You never get me. That's the whole point."