“I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

-Augustus Waters (The Fault in Our Stars by John Green)

The bright lights rushed through the ceilling and landed right on your scars, right on your left wrist. And I looked. It was one of those looks you didn't think about, you just looked there and you saw something you shouldn't of seen. Like when your roomate is undressing and you turn around and accidentily get a glimpse and you just feel so bad because some things, really, should just be private. But then you get that glimpse. Of the parts they have only seen themselves, and maybe you even get a glimpse of the parts they don't even show themselves. But you saw, you looked. And I saw. Those deep, almost faded scars and it told me everything that I needed to know: you are damaged goods. But then everything felt right, because then I showed you me too, all the dirty laundry, all the damaged goods. And thats why, that's why all this happened. That's why I'm marrying you tomorrow, and that's why I let you meet my family, even though you're not what they want for me, and thats why every tuesday night we go get doughnuts and thats why I haven't sacrificed anything for you. Because I didn't need to. You wouldn't let me.

And that- and this- is why.


Side note: I started looking through some of my drafts and found this and thought it was beautiful and its fiction but its me and I wrote this and this is something I tried to say so I should let myself say it. 

I feel like, sometimes, life starts to come full circle. And now that I'm approaching my senior year of high school, and in a little less than a year I will be forced to move on from 18 years of my life, everything has started to spin. Who I was back then, who I am now and the path between those two people. I've fucked up. I have. These past few years- this blog- has been my sincere documentation of that fuck up. And thats why I love this blog so much. Because every time my heart is just bursting- I blog. I write it out as eloquently as I can. Because I want somebody to look at it and read it and I want their heart to burst in ways they would never normally let it. And then I want them to squeeze the heart-bursting emotion right up close to their chest and feel its breath. I want to make the world come alive within the deepness. I want everybody to feel the tradgedy and the glory and the movement of life. I want people to observe as much as they live. I want people to feel. Because we all get so cold. We get bitter and our breaking hearts freeze into place and we stop trying to put the pieces back together. And then we go on autopilot. And I have struggled everyday of my life to continue to feel. To get mad. To be joyful. To breathe in fresh air. And everyday, as I continue to feel, my heart breaks even more. And maybe thats all life is, our hearts breaking more and more fully everyday in empathy for the world and its people. Atleast thats how I feel. I feel broken and incomplete. Rejected and failed. Sad and anxious and mad as hell. I am mad as hell. I'm mad he left so freely. I'm mad she let herself go so far. I'm mad I lost my sense of myself. I'm mad I'm never good enough. 

I'm so mad. And sometimes, anger comes out differently. Anger is not all fists and screams. Anger is insane empathy and tight hugs and gained weight. Anger is overslept teenagers and gentle kisses and full laughter. Anger is our life. Anger is life. We are angry at God and angry at humanity and angry that we aren't perfect. We are angry we are the problem instead of the solution. And at the core of ourselves, we are angry that we can't ever control that. 

A List of Beauty: 

Gmeiner Road

 perfect downward dogs

the Chicago skyline 

fudge

inclusion 

Grand Central Station

my dog sleeping in my room while i read

the perfect cup of coffee

watching the sunset as I work in the McDonald's "drive thru" 

financial security 

dinner at Five Guys

sex

the baseball diamonds at Palisade's Park

a mutual "crush" 

libraries 

curly hair 

a drive down the coast of Claifornia 

autumn 

the mall at Christmas time

falling asleep the night of my birthday 

a really good television episode

people that don't wear makeup 

passion

the sound of tennis balls

a family that gets along

my dog listening to me play piano 

Door County 

So last night a freshman girl at my high school committed suicide. And it's an eerie feeling. Because I've been there. And we've all been there. But she actually did it, you know? I've thought about it and planned for it and it was very, very real to me- but I didn't do it. I didn't commit suicide. And even though I didn't know the girl personally, it still feels very, very raw. And all day I couldn't help but thinking, is this what my friends would feel like? Is this what would happen if I had done it? Because I was so close, so many times. So close it hurts. This whole thing really, really hurts. And the problem is, I don't feel justification in this hurt. I don't feel like I'm allowed to hurt because I didn't know her personally. And that's so wrong. Because if I'm feeling something, I should be allowed to feel it. And really, that's why people commit suicide. Because they don't feel like they are allowed to feel. They are forced into thinking that they aren't allowed to feel what they are feeling and so then it all builds up, this terrible great big amount of sadness and anger and joy and frustration and life gets really, really hard to live. So hard, that there is no choice but to take the easy route. And I know this because I've been there. I've been told over and over I'm not allowed to feel unhappy. I'm not allowed to be pessimistic. I'm not allowed to feel anything but happy. Nothing. But the fact is, life is not all happy. Life is sadness and anger and hurt and frustration and passion and compassion. Life is more than one overrated, socially acceptable mood. And from this whole suicide, and this whole rebirthing of my own personal darkness, I've grown thankful. I am so thankful. Because about two summers ago, there was this one night that I was at my best friend's house. And we were laying on her bed reading magazines and eating oreos and she was going through a rough patch with her boyfriend. (Very teenage girl-esque, I know.) And we started talking about me, and I was talking about how hopeless I felt and lost and confused and wrong and all about the molesting and the anorexia and I said to her, "To be honest, I'm really not sure I'm going to make it through high school. I'm betting on 20 max." And she looked at me and said, "What do you mean?" And I told her about the suicidal thoughts I had been having and all this stuff and blah blah blah. And she said back to me, "Last night, when we were on the phone having that huge fight, well, afterwards, I wanted to kill myself." That was the best thing she could have ever said. Because it gave me justification. She, in that one statement, allowed me to feel the way I felt. Miranda let me feel lost and sad and happy and angry and courageous and beautiful and ugly and all these things. She let me feel them. She didn't tell me to fix them, or throw them away or look on the bright side. She would look me square in the face and allow me to feel the way I did. My one wish for that girl is that she would have had a friend like that. Because my friend saved my life. She gave me two years. And I'm still not through high school. But I've made it this far. And it's been really, really hard. And all I can really say is I wish I had known that girl personally so I could have looked her square in the eyes and say that she can feel however she wants to and that she can do it, she can make it, she can get out. 

I'm so tired. And not in the whole, I haven't slept for the last three weeks kind. But in pure, and utter exhaustion with life. My life. It has been so terribly long and untrustworthy and unhappy. And now my only goal is to survive it. My only goal is to find some way of life, some path, that happiness can actually sprout from. The only thing I care about is the feeling that life is worth it. But I'm tricky. Because I have to believe it, and fully and it can't be based off of anything except myself and my beliefs and my goals and my cares and my needs. My life has just got to start being about me. And that's hard, making your life about yourself. That is the most incredibly difficult thing to do because you have to give up everything and everyone else in order to do it. In order to fill yourself up, you've got to empty everybody else out. You have to depend on yourself. A responsibility to life that is beyond any other. I have depended and lived off so many other people throughout my 17 years. Their values, goals, humors, tragedies. I have eaten them up, choked them down and breathed them deep. But now, I'm vomiting them back up. Because within that whole process, I've forgotten the most nourishment I can possibly feel is from myself. Life, itself, is the most outward experience one can encounter and in turn be forced to have. But then life goes up a level and whispers the secret of the inner, of the soul. It crawls up on your shoulder, and then, only if you listen very, very carefully, it will tell you that the key to life in its most purest form, is to live for yourself and develop your own, values, beliefs, goals, disappointments and then to love all of them and accept them so fully that it doesn't matter in the slightest what anybody else thinks about them, thinks about you. But thats all so hard to do. Life is so hard to live.

Watch out for the people who come and leave your life quickly. Watch for the fleeting, the ones who don't last. It's too easy and meaningless for a person to stick around forever. Because its the ones who come and go quickly, not always quietly, but without an outward care that teach the lives they move though the greatest lessons, give the greatest reasons, and share the greatest blessings of themselves. These people, they will never give you everything. But they will give something even greater than that- they will give you a piece. The exact piece you need at the exact moment you need it in order to greater complete the puzzle of our life. And while the people that stick around forever help you complete that puzzle, the ones that come and go give you a piece in which to complete it. And while you could complete the puzzle without help, you will always and forever need the pieces to do it.

You need the people that leave. You want the people that stay.