Holden Caulfield.

This past week I’ve felt very much like one of my favorite fictional characters, Holden Caulfield from The Cather in the Rye. No matter how hard I try to be perky and see the good in people, give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend like I don’t mind that everyone is putting on a show, at the end of the day I just want to get home and scream. At the end of the day. Every single day. No I don’t live at a boarding school full of pretentious nitwits but I might as well; community college is the next worse thing. Perhaps the most aggravating moment this week came when some twenty-something “I’m going back to school after spending years traveling the country and being better than you” type of guy decided to throw America under the bus in agreement with my professor by loudly exclaiming, “Oh that we were like Canada” and leaning back in his chair. Phonies. I wish I was more articulate and could explain exactly why it makes me so infuriated when people make drive-by knocks at their own country, but instead I’ll just say that I think this guy is a giant prick.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m stressed out because of school or if there is a serious screw loose in my psyche, but I’m ready for college students to cut this “I’m so Indie I wash my clothes in Thom Yorke’s urine” bullcrap. Dear guy in my photo-history class who has to ask the professor if he can share with us his artistic interpretation of every single slide that goes on the screen, I DON’T CARE. Does Huene’s “Izod Swimwear, 1930” really remind you of that one summer in high school when you traveled the Mediterranean coast and survived off the kindness and generosity of others? A) I don’t believe you and B) That’s not at all relevant or beneficial to the rest of the class. Thanks for the good times.

I’m going to come out right now and un-Hipster myself just because I’m ashamed to be associated with “the scene.” Yes, I shop at Nordstrom’s. And yes, I wear make-up that was probably tested on animals. I hope a mouse died so that my lashes look fuller and curl better. I hate mice anyways. Yeah…I do like Radiohead, but I also like The Beatles (sooooo cliché). Sometimes I do feel depressed and moody, but I’m not proud of it and I don’t flaunt it for the whole world to see. Get a grip.

Phonies I tell you.
At least Holden understands me.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

"And I'm not gonna take it back
Oh I'm not gonna say I don't mean that
You're the target that im aiming at
Got to get that message home.."
-"A Message" by Coldplay

In literature winter is representative of death; once again life imitates art because the same can be said about my life. The months of November, December and January are somewhat like musicians. At first you're attracted to them because they are mysterious and they make you want to stay in all day next to the fire and write (write what? It doesn't matter..), but then you realize that they're actually just selfish and have no greater purpose then just trying to meet their own needs. Romantic personality types such as myself get excited for winter every year because it means rain, shorter days and the hope that some artistic inspiration will come as we lay curled up in our beds drinking soy chai lattés.

You can probably predict what I'm going to say next: this idea of winter bringing months of unadulterated romance is sadly a fallacy. You're also probably wondering what the Coldplay lyrics have anything to do with winter. The shoe-in is that I usually do things that other people would deem regrettable just about ever winter since I was fourteen.

The legacy of my winter-idiocy started with me standing in the main hallway of my high school campus dumbly starring at a (dumb) boy trying to muster up the courage to tell him I liked him. All my friends told me not to tell him, but I wanted to do it anyways...I needed to get it off my chest. Fast forward five years to me, once again, telling a guy who I was was bound to get rejected by that I had feelings for him. Winter makes me a social moron. After that last incident it seemed like just about everyone, with a few notable exceptions, was trying to get me to regret ever telling the guy I liked him. The problem was, I didn't regret it for one second. No matter how hard I tried to get myself to feel bad for taking the initiative, I couldn't do it.
Why should we ever feel bad for telling someone that we're fond of them? What's the worst that could happen? They reject us. We cry. We lock ourselves in our car listening to Damien Rice songs on repeat. We change our facebook profile pic twenty times in two days.

And then we move on.

What would you regret? That you made yourself vulnerable in an attempt to see if he/she had the same feelings for you? And maybe they did reject you, but at least you did it! So they don't like you...attraction is a funny thing and few can understand it. I would rather make myself vulnerable twenty times and get rejected twenty times than pine over someone for years without them ever knowing it. Winter this year is going to be great. I have no one to get rejected by. But if by this time next year I have feelings for someone, you can count on the fact that I'll tell them. As Edith Piaf once said, "Non, je ne regrette rien."