I'm that Friend, the girl

I don’t know how to be anyone else. I’m just me and me doesn’t know how to flirt, be sexy, or even dress in high fashion clothes.

I can’t be the girl with the huge tits, perfect skin, or mesmerizing eyes.

 I can’t make men fall in love with me with just a smile.

I can’t be that beautiful girl you saw walking down the street that you just couldn’t take your eyes off of.

But I can be the perfect friend.

I can be that friend who makes silly faces at you when you’re feeling down.

I can be the friend that rubs your back when you’re heaving your guts out in the toilet.

You see…I’m that friend, that girl that you always call when life is dreary and its 28 degrees outside and your gorgeous girlfriend cheated on you for like the millionth time.

When you have a dirty little secret…

When you want to dance in the rain….

When you want a shoulder to lean on….

I’m that friend, you know, that girl.

The friend who never has a boyfriend.

The friend who didn’t have a date to senior prom but went anyway.

The friend who hates being a third wheel but tagged along on your dates just because you asked.

The friend that smiled at your girlfriend even though she doesn’t deserve you.

I’m that friend, you know that girl who sits alone on rainy nights and stares at the stars.

That girl who keeps telling herself that maybe, just maybe he will want me.

The girl who is strong in her faith, but weak in her spirit.

I’m that friend, that girl.

So remember that when she breaks your heart again and your falling asleep on my couch in a drunken slumber whispering how great of a friend…girl, I really am.

Tess: A short story

Been working on this short story for a year in a half....please read and tell me what you think


 http://www.bukisa.com/articles/430367_tess-a-short-story

The Ebbing Tides of a Relationship

Jonathan and Ruby meet at a three-week Marine Biology Research station. Jonathan is a married man with children who is a botany teacher. Ruby is married with kids as well and teaches invertebrate zoology. On this three-week trip they grow close and have an affair that changes their lives forever. Andrea Barrett’s short story The Littoral Zone starts off by telling the readers the beginning of Jonathan and Ruby’s story fifteen years later. Throughout the story, Barrett switches from past to present and ends the story with the beginning. The chronological order of the story plays a pivotal role in showing the significance of the setting, analyzing the characters, and revealing the theme to the audience.
Jonathan and Ruby are surrounded by ocean. It is throughout the different lectures that they here from fellow teachers that they remember their first conversation. They both agree that their first “real conversation took place on the afternoon devoted to the littoral zone.” The idea of the littoral zone is crucial in the story because it symbolizes their relationship. Andrea Barrett describes a littoral zone as “that space between high and low watermarks where organism s struggled to adapt to the daily rhythm of immersion and exposure.” In a littoral zone when an organism is struggling to adapt they sometimes die. The relationship between Jonathan and Ruby does just that. In the beginning their relationship was like a high-tide rushing in and full of excitement and the low tide is like the end of their relationship, fifteen years later, dull and full of guilt about their past. The tides also play a role because they mimic the chronological order of the story. Like tides, the story goes back and forth and without the past and present switches throughout the story the readers would not feel the emotions of excitement and loss that the characters convey.
Jonathon is flat and one-dimensional. This is demonstrated after Jonathan and Ruby have sex. Ruby wakes up and describes Jonathan’s sleeping form as of that of a “child.” While he is sound asleep not even seeming to be dwelling on the seriousness of what they did, Ruby is up cleaning up the mess they made. She is the one who wakes him up so that they both can go back to “where they are supposed to be.” He is struggling internally with his adultery which is a characteristic of a three-dimensional person but what makes him ultimately one-dimensional is the fact that he does not do anything about it and just wallows in his guilt.
 Ruby as well is a flat one-dimensional character because she, just like Jonathan, is upset about their choices in the past but chooses not to do anything about it. What is different about Ruby, which actually makes her not so likeable, is that she realizes in the beginning of their relationship her disappointment. As I mentioned before a good example of this would be when Ruby is sweeping up the glass they broke earlier while Jonathan is still sleeping. Instead of staying next to him and still feeling the passion that they both just experienced it seems that she realized that the moment they had together was gone. Why else would she describe the man she was in love with sleeping position as looking like a “child?” Barrett gives a hint through this statement that Ruby begins to feel her disappointment long before fifteen years go by.
The theme of The littoral Zone is that people will risk everything just for a moment of excitement. Barrett conveys this theme to the reader by showing them sitting alone together fifteen years later, disappointed and unhappy. Jonathan and Ruby tell each other the stories from when they first met because they “struggle to conceal their disappointments” of how life turned out for them. Ruby and Jonathan both divorced and separated their families just to be with one another because of this moment of excitement that they experienced on the three-week trip. “But all they have lost in order to be together would seem bearable had they continued to feel the way they felt on the island.” Barrett throughout the story gives different hints of the theme. People today will risk their jobs, their marriages and sadly even their kids to feel just a little passion. They then will think this lust is love and ruin their entire lives by marrying the person only to find out later that the excitement is gone. It then becomes a motif in people’s lives, doing the same thing over and over to feel some type of thrill in their mundane lives.
The ebbing tides of Jonathan and Ruby’s relationship mimicked the tides of the ocean. Jonathan and Ruby are both one-dimensional characters who now live in disappointment because of a poor choice. People always want exhilaration and some will risk everything to experience just a little like the main characters of the story. Andrea Barrett does a brilliant job of illustrating to the readers the aspects of the setting, characters, and the theme of her story with stunning diction and brilliant story telling


Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/380838_the-ebbing-tides-of-a-relationship#ixzz16ggRctrR

My Experiences with learning how to read and write

The first time I heard a poem by Langston Hughes I was in fourth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Marks pulled out a large book filled with poems and had us sit around her as she read. I do not remember what the poem was called, but I know how it made me feel. It actually made me feel like crying. I really did not understand the words that Mrs. Marks was saying but I knew they were beautiful and by the looks on everyone’s face I could tell they felt it too. I felt like Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption, listening to a gorgeous Opera in a language he could not understand. It was that day that when I found out what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. I wanted to make people feel the way Langston Hughes made me feel. I told my teacher later that day and she said “Then write,” and I did. I wrote poems, little stories, and I read. In fourth grade my eyes were opened to the wonderful and creative world of writing and I have been living in that world since I was nine.
            Langston Hughes did not teach me how to write and Jane Austen did not teach me either. It is something that comes from deep within me. I write words that feel and words that I want to feel. How can anyone teach a person how to do that? There is no way to teach someone how to write beauty. Of course teachers can teach someone how to spell and how to form complete sentences. Teachers can also teach how to read. Reading to me, is something that can be taught. When you are in Elementary school they teach you how to read and when you get to high school and college, they teach you how to annotate and understand themes in things you read. It is different with writing. You can teach a person how to write an essay or a summary but can you ask that same person to sit down and write a story like Steven King or J.K. Rowling would. Neither can a person think that they can teach another person to write. To learn how to write I simply did what everyone told me to do. They told me to write and read. The more I read the better I get at not only reading but also writing. I learn different styles of writing from authors. Sometimes just reading another author’s work inspires me to try something new. This is pretty much how I learned how to write and how I hear a lot of writers learned how to write. Also I carry around a notebook with me everywhere I go and in this notebook I write down things that I see. I have been doing this since I was eleven and this too has actually helped with my writings because I would have to describe things and people I saw and this gave me practice on being descriptive when I wrote.
            Some little fourth grader is going to be reading an article or a poem by me someday and I hope that I can inspire them to write just as I was inspired. Creative writing is something that can never be taught. Reading enables a person to see the beauty of writing and with that comes the inspiration to be creative and write. That is all writing and reading does, it simply inspires and there is no one who can teach that.


Read more: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/376536_my-experiences-with-learning-out-to-read-and-write#ixzz16WcJysmC

The Three Ways your Body Reponds to Stress

Ever had those days when you just wanted to pull your hair out? You felt like you had weeks of work to do but only one lousy day to complete it all. Whether you’re a student or a parent, sometimes life can get overbearing. You then begin to worry and worrying causes you to stress. According to the Oxford Dictionary, stress is to subject a mental faculty to strain or to overwork it. When you stress out it not only affects your mind but it also affects your body as well. Your body responds to this stress in three stages, the mobilizing of energy, the consumption of energy, and the draining of energy.  
The first stage of the stress response is the mobilizing of energy. In this stage your body discharges adrenaline and your heart begins beating faster. This can happen during a good and bad situation. For example, in a good situation, the moment before you walk out to perform, your palms are sweating and you feel like you are going to be sick. You are nervous about your performance therefore your body is reacting to your stress. In a bad situation, like the running from something that frightens you, your body pumps adrenaline and this causes you to run faster than you usually would. The first stage of mobilizing energy has been experienced by everyone whether in a bad situation or a good one.
The second stage is your body consuming energy. If you cannot get away from the first stage your body has a backup plan. It begins releasing “stored sugars and fats.” During this time you “feel driven, pressured, and tired.” A person may also find themselves drinking soda, coffee, and smoking more than they usually do. You can also catch the flu and feel strong anxiety. For example, if you have a huge test to study for and you only have three days to study for it because you procrastinated; your first stage kicks in. If the mobilizing of energy is not working your body goes into the second stage and in this stage you have more anxiety and you find yourself feeling sick and exhausted. It is usually not good for your body to get to this stage because you are causing your body to feel stress and get sick as a result. This leads to the last stage.
The last stage of the stress response is the draining of energy. At this point, if you are sill stressed your body’s energy is drained. The more energy your use the harder it becomes for your body to produce it. You are “chronically stressed.” You may go through “insomnia, errors in judgment, and personality changes.” This is a very serious problem because you can also develop “serious sickness” like heart disease, ulcers, or mental illnesses.” A good example of this is a man who lost his job and has a family of five to feed.  He ends up getting really sick because he is stressing about how he is going to feed his family. If this stage happens, it is extremely dangerous to not only your physical health but also to your mental health.
The three stress responses from your body are mobilizing energy, the consuming of energy, and the draining of energy. If not properly handled, these three stages can have a monstrous effect on your body. So next time you’re stressed, think about the grave consequences of it and don’t let stress get the best of you.
Works Citied
Yourself, By Understanding. “Stress.” Canadian Mental Health Association. Web. O8 Nov. 2010. 6 November 2010.
"Stress." Oxford English Dictionary: The Definitive Record of the English Language. Web. 12 Nov. 2010.