To WishingForYou - Oh golly, Mel. I'm really sorry. That's horribly sad. Resist those urges and try to remember that Jesus is the only guy you really need. You don't need to hear that, I'm sure. But I'll be praying for you, and I hope you'll be okay.

Kristen is still ticking me off now. I've got four bulletins, a message, and a comment about the two songs she composed on her keyboard. She's so hyped about them - "they're part of my soul," she says. They'd take an eight year old about three minutes. There's no singing, there's only broken chords on the left hand and very simple, slow melody on the right. I ended up denying her comment on my myspace - I don't feel like letting her use my myspace as an ad service. That's just absurd. I wish she'd just get off the fence - could she choose to be obnoxious enough to get us to kick her, or try to be reasonable again? She wouldn't have disrespected Mark this way, which frustrates me. We're not seven years older than her (only 2), but we are still the leaders. If she doesn't respect that, we have a right to get rid of her. Pray for me tomorrow - I'm carrying a song on the piano that's a little hard to work. It's not a hard song, but keeping it steady even when the vocalists are singing could be difficult. And then Alyssa won't have the harmony, and I can't play and sing at the same time.

More ranting. This is an excerpt of what a friend of mine posted to the entire world on Myspace today, addressed to this guy that hurt her: "Now I seek love in God. God has always been there. And you? Not so much. The people in my world, now they're what I have, what I need. Unlike you, I think they really care. Thank you for teaching me: LOVE doesn't abandon, LOVE doesn't change, LOVE cares for others more than themselves, and LOVE knows what LOVE is. TRUE LOVE, on the other hand, does all this, and if it's meant to be, it will happen. You weren't it. But I LOVE you. Not in the same way. TRUE LOVE is mutual. This is just hopeless. So I don't. The others that I've loved, don't know, or did, or won't, or can't." What the crap, Kristen? This ticks me off on so many levels. First level - I've been here for her, loved her more (albeit in a different way) than frickin' London boy, treated her well when he wasn't, let her cry on my shoulder. *Now,* when London boy finally breaks her, like we all knew he would, she's going to turn to her friends, to God? Now that she feels the void where he was, she wants me and her other friends to fill it? Way to make me feel like a good sister in Christ. She's blown us off, talked our ears off, sobbed dramatically in public, and made a fool of herself while we stood by her. And she only realizes she loves us when he decides to stop standing by her. Nice. Second level - she's such a frickin' drama queen. She always has been, but I've put up with it well. She's over two years younger than me, so I try to be like a big sister to her, set her a good example, what have you. So London boy deserts her, and she makes it known to the entire stinkin' world. Now lately her drama has gotten annoying - she'll call the band to a different room during Chris's message, making us all worried, to tell us basically that she's conflicted about the vocals and wants us to know that she's having trouble. Tell us at practice the week before, not halfway through the set. I cannot believe her sometimes. I keep reminding myself that she's only 15 . . . she's over two years younger than me. I need to cut her slack - not that many 15-year-olds are even as deal-with-able as she is, I guess. I'm used to my other friends, though, who are over a year younger than me and act the same age I act - about 20. We get along well like that. It whacks me out how she can act the way she does.

This whole situation is ridiculously frustrating, and getting more frustrating by the hour. I've gotten more cynical lately, I know, but I have come to a realization: people are, by their very nature, liars. Thus any attempt at figuring out my problem with Ms. Cindy is met by failure. Here's how the conversation would go with Chris as the mediator: Me: "Ms. Cindy, I feel like you're not actually questing to understand me. Rather, you're trying to prove that I'm angry so that . . . I don't know why. It still baffles me. But your questions aren't meant to help you understand me, they're meant to psychoanalyze me. I don't need a psychologist, Cindy. What I needed was someone who treated me like an equal." Ms. Cindy: "Rachel! I love you so much, honey, and I don't understand how you've gotten to that conclusion. Of course I want to understand you! Something's been effecting our relationship, and I want to know what it is. I was asking questions to find out." Chris: "Rachel, you need to listen to Cindy. You're being immature. She's trying to reconcile here, and all you want is to be angry." Liars. All of them are liars. Maybe Cindy doesn't even realize that she's lying anymore - it wouldn't surprise me. Maybe her idea of caring *is* psychoanalyzing, rather than being there and supporting me. You know, support comes from the sides or from below. Support doesn't come from a distance where you're trying to figure out why I used this word instead of that. Yes, I'm angry. I'm not denying that. But that *doesn't* make my feelings and thoughts irrelevant. I hate it - I want to be honest, to lay my cards in front of Cindy and Chris, but I know that everything I'm feeling would be "pooh, pooh" to them. Then literally two minutes later they'll be espousing OSV, a former hellion in our youth group standing for Oriented, Save, and Valued. Am I feeling valued right now? Oriented? Safe? No. And in other news, I'm ticked at myself too. Mark came in to my workplace today, and I didn't say anything particularly intelligent, poignant, even especially nice. What was I thinking? I didn't freeze up, I guess I've just forgotten how to act around him. Dang it all. I'm given another chance, and I don't do anything with it. I had no chance anyway, I know, but why the heck couldn't I make the best of it? I almost think he wanted to talk with me more than he did, but I just couldn't figure out how to do it. Idiot. I might not see him for another six months, and what do I do? Act like he wasn't even a non-romantic part of my life.