What I Thought in the Past..

It always seems like we never remember anything more than what is right in front of us. Is it really human nature to forget, for the very essence of who we are to dissolve and dissapate from our thoughts with nothing more than the alleving powers of time? Days pass whether we count them or not, and even on the mornings where it seems questionable whether your world will continue to roll on, the sun has never failed to rise over the mountains in the east and fade again that evening over the palm trees in the west. Each day itself holds the potentail to be more than one more Monday in the earthly span of worst days of the week.

Some mornings I lie tangled in silky sheets, worry blanketing over my eyes, clawing in the dark to figure out why I should rise from my cozy cocoon of safety. Then I see it. I see it all. I see a maroon gown that swallows me up, and loosely curled hair, and antsy smiles with glossed lips nervously fidgeting with my painted fingers while waiting to hear my name. I see that moment when I rip off the matching maroon cap ladeled with honor tassles, and toss it into the May moonbeam lit night air in the unified symbol of the end, that all of the nothing was never really nothing at all. I see that day in December when I walk to the mailbox, shivering in a sweater and clutching the mail key anxiously in one hand. The moment when I twist the door to the mailbox and I see a innocuous yellow envelope, and how I will sink to the ground with triumphant tears of joy for the toil of four years of sadness. I see a future with autumn leaves, and vivid reds and yellows that remind us that losing everything can be the most beautiful part of all. I see a young lady who still goes by Miss but won't for long, squeezing hands tightly with a young man who's love dismisses all her fears.

 We hold on so tightly to whatever it is that makes us feel safe that we lose the value of the unforeseeable. High school will be over soon. No more will the same ecletic group of individuals parade the halls, no longer will the best friends laugh in the corner or the enemies bicker behind gray desks of academia. There will be no more early release pazooki eating or laughable group projects, no more Homecomings with ill fitting bodices and painful heels. There won't even be going home to a house filled with comforting yellow light and a hot plate of food served next to the side of parental love and guidance. That all will come to an end soon enough, and that's something we all have to accept. Look around and notice that the people you see do not match their image in your memory. We all change, in all the right and wrong ways. Maybe the haircuts and T-shirt choices have improved, and the teeth are all less crooked but the minds will never be the same shade of pure innocent white, unscarred by the bitterness and acidity of youth. The big issues always seemed less important than the small ones, then one day it flips beneath you and getting invited to parties and being accepted and owning the right brand of shoes gets replaced with decisions that impact the rest of your life. Maybe it makes us mad that metamorphasis transpired all around us and we never noticed until it was too late. Maybe the people and way you get used to isn't always going to be that way, but all the best parts of life are fleeting. The truth is we have to forgive each other for growing up. It's just like the leaves of fall, let them drop down around us, each leaf like a memory, whether it be success or failure. The best moment is right before we lose it all.

Irrelevant Truths

1. I really like Jesus music.
2. I'm not a big hand washer.
3. I get headaches multiple times a week.
4. I never forget. Ever.
5. I eavesdrop on everyone.
6. I can hear people talking when I'm asleep.
7. I only dream about being romantically involved with one guy.
8. I pick out my eyelashes.
9. I hate being alone so much.
10. I watched 345 Youtube videos last month.
11. I really enjoy dark books.
12. I love mystery.
13. I'm scared of the dark.
14. I like to text.
15. Sometimes I get acid reflux when I eat certain foods.
16. I've never thought I look pretty in a picture.
17. I talk to myself in the mirror sometimes.
18. I do not sleep with pants on.
19. I like lipstick prints.
20. I am a fruit snob.
21. I've secretly always wanted to look like Lauren Conrad.
22. I get jealous easily.
23. I still get upset about events that happened years ago.
24. I'm scared to go to college.
25. I do not like when people shorten my name.
26. I tend to be naive in my perception.
27. I see the best and worst in people at the same time.
28. I really appreciate people with clean mouths.
29. I do not like being left out of anything, even if there is no reason I would be invited.
30. I relate my life to Gossip Girl.
31. I've always wanted to go to Italy.
32. I miss people I shouldn't miss.
33. I fantasize about scenarios that aren't realistic.
34. That which I regret I pretend did not happen.
35. I do my homework at the dining room table.
36. I've been to 22 states in the United States.
37. I have never been to Hawaii. Or the Dakotas.
38. I have expensive tastes.
39. I've always been a pink girl at heart.
40. I'm a romantic.
41. I love the summer.
42. I'm a summer baby.
43. I love history.
44. I have an intense sweet tooth.
45. I'm not ashamed to not be wearing makeup.
46. I like the smell of a burning paper.
47. Armani Code triggers so many memories in my mind.
48. I go through music phases.
49. I cry until I fall asleep.
50. I use my laptop enough each day to drain the battery.

If Only I Had Known....

The Wink of Opaque Delusion

What would I have done the day I took this picture if I had known that the events of this day would follow me? I look so confident, so composed, so laid back in this picture, because I did not know that I was in the span of five hours going to make a huge fool of myself. Words to live by people: Think before you speak. Delusional ideology can really cause some embarrassing situations if we aren't careful in our lives. Some of the most meaningful song lyrics I have ever heard perfectly explain this. This song is Long Gone And Moved on by The Script.

When's the day you start again, and when the hell does you get over it begin? I'm looking hard in the mirror, but I don't fit my skin. It's too much to take, to hard to break my from the cell I'm in. It's time to get real, cuz I still don't know how to act, don't know what to say, still wear the scars like it was yesterday. But you're long gone, and moved on, I still wear the scars like it was yesteday, still talk about it like it was yesterday.

When's the Day You Start Again?

I always aspired to be one of those mystery girls. The ones you see in the school hallways and as they pass by you that little annoying internal voice of yourself goes, Damn, there struts a girl who doesn’t cry into her bowl of Fruit Loops in the morning.  I am a hot mess by nature, as I have no patience and a tendency to lose it at the slightest disarray.  I have long draping hair that will absolutely never blow out the direction I want it to go, and these two little sticks of side bangs that cling flat to my forehead when I don’t fix my hair properly. To top it all off, my skin is composed of over active sweat glands, my face gets lobster colored when I get flustered, and whenever I try to speak up in class I get this hoarse man voice that often cracks like a prepubescent teenage boy. In summation, I live my life in a perpetual state of calamity.

            I used to really love myself too much. Narcissism was my downfall; I was prideful to the point of looking in the trophy cabinet at school and casually shaking out my curls and knowing that I thought I was perfect. I see pictures of myself from that time, and I was so fearless. No abash for the opinions of others, no concern over what I was or was not doing with my weekends. I felt pretty and because of that I was. I dared other people to doubt who I was and stared them down when they did. I enjoyed the control I realized I could empower over those around me, and I began to realize the potential that simmered through my bones. I knew I was flawed, but I didn’t notice and I just pretended no one else did either.

            Then slowly there was a gradual but noticeable shift, as I began to age and started to truly open my eyes to those around me. With enough time there will be fall out, and there certainly was for me. All of my so-called glorious perfection began to dissolve around me, dissipating into the air and taking with it all of my spunky confidence and joy. It was a sluggish leak, but once the knob was twisted I would never feel the same way about myself again. There was once a light in my eyes, a glossy shine exuded into the atmosphere, but with each tear down and disappointment, the light dimmed.

            I grew up in Louisiana, and spent my summers frolicking up and down the white coasts of the Florida beaches. I had never seen a mountain until I was around the age of seven. I asked my dad as we drove up to Tennessee what a mountain looked like, as I mistook the rolling hills of Georgia for true summits. My dad had laughed and smiled at me. These aren’t the real mountains. The further we drove the more substantial the peaks became, until I truly understood what he meant.  His words launched back into my life as the infinitesimal dilemmas of my teenage life began to evolve. Each new hurdle was a little bit steeper, the rocks fell upon me a little bit more painfully, and the slow leak morphed into a consistent seeping. At first it was just school related, learning to manage high school classes and accept my educational imperfections. Then it was about my friends and feeling lonely, and I’d lose my footing as I climbed the slope, having to regroup on a new ledge. Then I learned what it truly means to lose, and I began to accept a torrential downpour of boulders upon my head. I even learned to open the umbrella to this and shield myself from the bitter stabs. At some point I finally will reach the pinnacle, but I ask myself at what cost? I will reach the top as everyone eventually does, but what will I have lost and suffered along the way? 

The Best Advice I've Ever Given

As you grow up, you learn a lot about the in's and out's of societal normality's and what is expected of yourself as a person in each stage of adolescence. I know that it can be tricky, because most of the time I lie in bed at night reminiscing on the path I chose to walk down and how utterly wrong I was. I can't even tell you how many situations I've handled so poorly and the person I am today would treat so differently. As I learned all of this the hard way I began to compose a list of some of the basic advice that seems super self explanatory, but I had to learn from causing prodigious messes. 

1. People in relationships are off limits forever. You just stay away from them because given enough time every relationship is doomed to fall apart. 

2. The worst is always yet to come, but it always eventually arrives, and at that point you regroup and pull your life together once again. 

3. The possibility of "what if" is strong enough to motivate even the most apathetic of us to accomplish tasks we never believed possible. 

4. The secret to being boring is to tell everyone everything you know. 

5. We compare the lowest moments of our lives to the highlights of everyone else's lives. 

Now is the Start

The path through the pain is forward, to a future filled with corcuscating sunsets

As much as we all like to think we control our own destinies and actions, I feel like a part of us all knows we have limited control over everything. When you do the same things for four years with slight variation as you grow and mature, it becomes hard to imagine the life we don’t know that awaits us behind the veil of misty smoke and clouds. Maybe the truth is it was never so much about the rejection letters from schools as it was that we aren't prepared to go off to college. I think we’ve always known that fact and we just do our very best to deny it. Everyone wants to go to college right? Maybe I don’t. Maybe I don’t belong in a state five hours by plane away from the warmth of family and the soothing knowledge that my mother who loves me so so much will always be there to love me a little more. That Friday when I didn’t get in to what we shall refer to as *dream school*, when I held that rejection letter in my cold shaking hands and when I sobbed so hard that all the mascara just streamed down my face in a very Taylor Momson when Chuck takes her virginity way, my mom held me and it made it okay. I still cry when I think about that day, because it honestly sucked. Maybe when there is more certainty in the solution of the matterr it will stop making me cry. Or maybe it never will. 

It will always serve as a defining day in my life in which that which I had dreamed for myself came crashing down upon my shoulders. In a way, I feel like it was the nudging hand of God shaking his head at me and pointing out that all of the objects of my desires are painfully misguided. I feel like I know what I want, but at the same time sometimes I find myself realizing I’m not who I always imagined myself to be. Today in the the lululemon dressing room, there was one of those three way mirrors that allows you to see yourself from all different views, and I looked at the girl and judged her and then took a long moment to realize that girl was me. Then I just stared at her side profile and tried to imagine other people loving that shell of a body as my soul. All I really feel in touch with is my own mind, and the wavering thoughts that flicker through my brain, and I don’t really know that body. It is mine but at the same time it just allows me to function. I’ve been wrong so much this past year that I honestly believe I’m in a sort of redefinition of all the boundaries and lines I’ve drawn. 

 On a slightly different note, I've begun to consider why it is we always return to the subjects and people who cause us the most suffering. Why is there love lost between some people even when those very people are the reason for pain in our lives? Can we not let go because there is unfinished business, or is it that when you love unconditionally you don’t give up even when the object of your affections is begging you to. There is a legitimate point when someone I know pondered to me why we always return to the people who hurt us most. I thought it over and think it makes logical sense. We return to that which makes us feel alive. Maybe life with those things that hurt us is more painful, or dangerous, but no one would keep going back if they didn’t like the way that thing made them feel.