“You don’t really mean that.” Abby said as she sipped the red wine from the bottle by the sink, her hip leaning against the counter.
“I know I don’t. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Riley glanced up from the photographs on the polished wood table. “Just as I suspected.”
Her eyes flashed him a glare. “What do you mean by that?”
“You built a wall again, Abby. You shut me out. You don’t want to share your emotions because you feel the irrational need to put up a strong front, to be strong for me.”
“Who gave you a degree in psychology, Dr. Phil?” She drained the remnants of the wine from the bottle and set it on the tile counter with a bang. “I’m going to bed.”
Riley rose from the kitchen table and crossed the room to catch Abby by the waist. He gently touched her cheek to make her look at him.
“You should talk to me about this. You are not the only person in this house who is upset.”
“I know that, Riley. I just have to deal with this by myself first.”
He stepped away from her. “You are doing it again.”
“Doing what?” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
Riley moved back to the table and picked up a picture. His voice was calm and slow when he spoke: “Just talk to me, Abby. Like we used to talk. We could tell each other everything about everything. Now, you never say anything.” His hands shook as he handed her the picture.
Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m angry,” she murmured. “I know it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t have controlled it. I know that. But I’m angry that it had to happen to us. What did we do to deserve this?” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping onto the front of her black dress.
Riley wrapped his arms around her. “I know, baby. I know.”
Abby began to weep, tears and sobs shaking out of her like wind rattling through a broken window. Her tears soaked the front of Riley’s dress shirt, staining black mascara on the white fabric. Neither one of them cared.
Riley wept too, drenching Abby’s dark curls. They both wept for what they had lost and what they had never known.
When Abby couldn’t cry anymore, she leaned against her husband, breathing him in. She let the rage she felt eat into her, devouring her reason. She glanced at the photographs that she had dropped on the floor. Anger sparked inside her, fueled by the incessant flow of alcohol that she had been drinking for the past week. Her fingers balled up the hem of her black dress and she stepped away from Riley. She watched him like a scared cat watches someone who only wants to pet it, with wary eyes.
She made a break for the stairs, running up them as quickly as she could, her bare feet pounding against the hard wood. Time began to slow down as she sprinted into the unfinished room on the second floor. Abby couldn’t contain herself: she snatched up different objects from around the room then ran down the hall to the bathroom, throwing things in the trash careless of what the objects were.
“Abby! Abby, stop!” Riley clutched her wrists, making her stop her frantic mission. Dark curls had come unpinned in her rush and her eyes were wild.
“I can’t look at that room anymore! I can’t! We have to get rid of everything. Everything!” She fought against Riley, desperately wanting to set fire to the green room just down the hall from where they stood.
“I understand that, Abby.”
Abby couldn’t stand anymore. Her knees buckled under her and she sank to the plush gray carpet, barely aware of Riley’s arms around her. She touched her stomach, cramped with her emotions and the bottle of wine she had consumed.
“He’s gone, Riley. We had to bury our child today. He had a name. Ethan. I carried him for six months and now…he’s gone.” Pain shone in Abby’s eyes but her voice was devoid of any kind of emotion. She shattered Riley’s heart when she gazed up at him.
“I know, baby. We are going to get through this though. I promise. You just have to trust me. Do you trust me enough to get through this? Or are you going to completely break down on me?”
Abby couldn’t breathe. He was asking too much of her right then. She had watched her child’s body be lowered into a dark hole in the ground. How could he ask her to move on, to go with her life as though Ethan hadn’t existed?
Riley saw the look of disbelief on her face. He had always had an uncanny ability to read her emotions when they played across her face. “I’m not asking you to forget Ethan. I am asking you to heal from his death, Abby. Heal with me. I love you and I need you here. All here. Heal with me?”
She swallowed the lump of pain in her throat. She really looked at Riley’s face, saw her own anguish reflected in his strong features. He was being strong for her right now. They both had to learn to lean on each other now. Ethan wouldn’t become just a memory. He had affected their lives forever in the six months they had known he existed. Nothing and no one could take that from them.
Riley lifted her up and together they walked down the hall to the green room.
Abby touched the dark wood of the crib in the corner while Riley caressed the soft green blanket lying inside it.
He kissed her cheek and her fingers twined with his.
They would heal together.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Secure...
So. I know that nobody reads this, and that is perfectly fine, I just feel the need to type.
I have this friend. I used to believe that she was perfect and I wanted to become like her. Now that I really stop and think and watch the way she lives her life, I am very very happy that I am not like her. She is ungrateful, unappreciative of the amazing things in her life, spoiled, materialistic, what most would call a skank. She is insecure.
I used to believe that this girl had everything all together, but really, she doesn't. She's a mess and she can't see it. Will I point this fact out to her? No. Why? Because I have tried in the past and it has led to nowhere. She fills some kind of void in her life with men. Men and possesions. When things don't work in a relationship, which they inevitably don't, she runs into the arms of the next man waiting in the wings. Does she truly love these guys? I can't say for sure. She gets with them and then dumps them like yesterday's newspapers. Is she happy? Not by a long shot. I am more secure than she is. I can stand on my own two feet without a line of men supporting me. I've had to. I am more secure in myself, in my own attributes than she is in hers, which is astounding because she fits the description of pretty, whereas I do not.
I feel secure right now when I look at my life next to hers. Odd.
I have this friend. I used to believe that she was perfect and I wanted to become like her. Now that I really stop and think and watch the way she lives her life, I am very very happy that I am not like her. She is ungrateful, unappreciative of the amazing things in her life, spoiled, materialistic, what most would call a skank. She is insecure.
I used to believe that this girl had everything all together, but really, she doesn't. She's a mess and she can't see it. Will I point this fact out to her? No. Why? Because I have tried in the past and it has led to nowhere. She fills some kind of void in her life with men. Men and possesions. When things don't work in a relationship, which they inevitably don't, she runs into the arms of the next man waiting in the wings. Does she truly love these guys? I can't say for sure. She gets with them and then dumps them like yesterday's newspapers. Is she happy? Not by a long shot. I am more secure than she is. I can stand on my own two feet without a line of men supporting me. I've had to. I am more secure in myself, in my own attributes than she is in hers, which is astounding because she fits the description of pretty, whereas I do not.
I feel secure right now when I look at my life next to hers. Odd.
Monday, December 20, 2010
A Scene
This is a scene from a possible story that I am thinking about continuing. Any advice or direction for where to go? I kinda like the start; it works, I think, because it starts in the middle of the scene, makes you wonder what they are talking about.
“You don’t really mean that.” Abby said as she sipped the red wine from the bottle by the sink, her hip leaning against the counter.
“I know I don’t. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Riley glanced up from the photographs on the polished wood table. “Just as I suspected.”
Her eyes flashed him a glare. “What do you mean by that?”
“You built a wall again, Abby. You shut me out. You don’t want to share your emotions because you feel the irrational need to put up a strong front, to be strong for me.”
“Who gave you a degree in psychology, Dr. Phil?” She drained the remnants of the wine from the bottle and set it on the tile counter with a bang. “I’m going to bed.”
Riley rose from the kitchen table and crossed the room to catch Abby by the waist. He gently touched her cheek to make her look at him.
“You should talk to me about this. You are not the only person in this house who is upset.”
“I know that, Riley. I just have to deal with this by myself first.”
He stepped away from her. “You are doing it again.”
“Doing what?” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
Riley moved back to the table and picked up a picture. His voice was calm and slow when he spoke: “Just talk to me, Abby. Like we used to talk. We could tell each other everything about everything. Now, you never say anything.” His hands shook as he handed her the picture.
Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m angry,” she murmured. “I know it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t have controlled it. I know that. But I’m angry that it had to happen to us. What did we do to deserve this?” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping onto the front of her black dress.
Riley wrapped his arms around her. “I know, baby. I know.”
Abby began to weep, tears and sobs shaking out of her like wind rattling through a broken window. Her tears soaked the front of Riley’s dress shirt, staining black mascara on the white fabric. Neither one of them cared.
Riley wept too, drenching Abby’s dark curls. They both wept for what they had lost and what they had never known.
“You don’t really mean that.” Abby said as she sipped the red wine from the bottle by the sink, her hip leaning against the counter.
“I know I don’t. I just wanted to see your reaction.” Riley glanced up from the photographs on the polished wood table. “Just as I suspected.”
Her eyes flashed him a glare. “What do you mean by that?”
“You built a wall again, Abby. You shut me out. You don’t want to share your emotions because you feel the irrational need to put up a strong front, to be strong for me.”
“Who gave you a degree in psychology, Dr. Phil?” She drained the remnants of the wine from the bottle and set it on the tile counter with a bang. “I’m going to bed.”
Riley rose from the kitchen table and crossed the room to catch Abby by the waist. He gently touched her cheek to make her look at him.
“You should talk to me about this. You are not the only person in this house who is upset.”
“I know that, Riley. I just have to deal with this by myself first.”
He stepped away from her. “You are doing it again.”
“Doing what?” She threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.
Riley moved back to the table and picked up a picture. His voice was calm and slow when he spoke: “Just talk to me, Abby. Like we used to talk. We could tell each other everything about everything. Now, you never say anything.” His hands shook as he handed her the picture.
Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m angry,” she murmured. “I know it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t have controlled it. I know that. But I’m angry that it had to happen to us. What did we do to deserve this?” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping onto the front of her black dress.
Riley wrapped his arms around her. “I know, baby. I know.”
Abby began to weep, tears and sobs shaking out of her like wind rattling through a broken window. Her tears soaked the front of Riley’s dress shirt, staining black mascara on the white fabric. Neither one of them cared.
Riley wept too, drenching Abby’s dark curls. They both wept for what they had lost and what they had never known.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Star's Wish
What many of you little people on Earth don’t realize is the fact that there are resplendent things down on your solitary planet. All of you gaze up towards the unknown, striving to reach higher and higher for something you have no hope of ever finding or wrapping your greedy little fingers around. You do not stop to gaze around you, to let yourselves see the world at eye-level. Take a moment to do so, please. What do you see?
Do you see a cold dorm room with cinderblock walls countered by bright, cheery bedspreads?
Do you gaze out the window and see the snow swirling gently to the frozen ground?
Do you see someone you care very deeply about?
Take a moment and be grateful that you have the ability to see. Color and form are things that humans take for granted, I’ve noticed, as I gaze down from my perch in the cosmos.
I see things that you mere mortals cannot fathom; I see the depravity of the human soul; the listless motions that most would not notice; the unspeakable violence of the world that your fragile forms cannot handle.
We watched massacres of millions of people, silently aching for the will to crash to Earth and destroy such malevolent beings.
But we do not control our movements, like humans do. We stretch out our fingers of light, hoping that feeble human eyes may gaze up at our beauty and wonder what we are thinking.
When hopeful minds wish upon us, we hear these things. Did you know? The only tangible things that stars can hold are the whispered hopes of hearts too full to contain them. I bottle mine, stow them away. They come to us like snow falling in reverse, like gravity beginning to pull in a different direction. They shine, shine almost brighter than we do in the darkness, illuminated by the hope or desperation that each person wished with. Some wishes glow a deep blue, wishes for themselves. Others give off a yellow pulse, like a candle flame, wishes for someone other than the wisher.
I also witness the most gorgeous acts of kindness; of love in all its forms. Though it may be hard to spot upon first glance, the human race is by far the most amazing of any kind in the universe because they can love. Even the stars weep to know that humans are more perfect than we are.
The stars, the silent observers, can name the panoply of emotions that can sprint across a human’s face in a matter of seconds: happiness turns to jealousy which turns to hurt which turns to self-pity.
Can a simple mind even comprehend how blessed the human race is? The stars gaze down on you with envy written in light around them. We envy humans for the gifts that the Creator gave them and not us.
You can smell the rain as it falls like shining diamonds.
You can hear the solitary sound of a dove as it passes over the frozen lake in the middle of the woods.
You can touch another person’s hand.
These things are what the stars envy.
We hang here surrounded by light and long to move, to breathe, to sigh.
The stars are also gifted with the ability to wish, though. Among us, the wish we most desire is not for ourselves. We hang in this vast ocean of perpetual darkness, never being able to love, truly love. The stars desire the human race to love. All problems could cease if the human heart could embrace unconditional love.
So many people walk past others, never noticing faces, expressions. Next time you walk down the street, the stars dare you to tell someone you have never met ‘hello’, with a smile. The stars dare you to show caring, a feeling ingrained in every single body on the planet.
Love starts with a simple smile.
Next time you walk under the star-laden sky, wish for unconditional love.
We, the stars, are wishing for it too.
Do you see a cold dorm room with cinderblock walls countered by bright, cheery bedspreads?
Do you gaze out the window and see the snow swirling gently to the frozen ground?
Do you see someone you care very deeply about?
Take a moment and be grateful that you have the ability to see. Color and form are things that humans take for granted, I’ve noticed, as I gaze down from my perch in the cosmos.
I see things that you mere mortals cannot fathom; I see the depravity of the human soul; the listless motions that most would not notice; the unspeakable violence of the world that your fragile forms cannot handle.
We watched massacres of millions of people, silently aching for the will to crash to Earth and destroy such malevolent beings.
But we do not control our movements, like humans do. We stretch out our fingers of light, hoping that feeble human eyes may gaze up at our beauty and wonder what we are thinking.
When hopeful minds wish upon us, we hear these things. Did you know? The only tangible things that stars can hold are the whispered hopes of hearts too full to contain them. I bottle mine, stow them away. They come to us like snow falling in reverse, like gravity beginning to pull in a different direction. They shine, shine almost brighter than we do in the darkness, illuminated by the hope or desperation that each person wished with. Some wishes glow a deep blue, wishes for themselves. Others give off a yellow pulse, like a candle flame, wishes for someone other than the wisher.
I also witness the most gorgeous acts of kindness; of love in all its forms. Though it may be hard to spot upon first glance, the human race is by far the most amazing of any kind in the universe because they can love. Even the stars weep to know that humans are more perfect than we are.
The stars, the silent observers, can name the panoply of emotions that can sprint across a human’s face in a matter of seconds: happiness turns to jealousy which turns to hurt which turns to self-pity.
Can a simple mind even comprehend how blessed the human race is? The stars gaze down on you with envy written in light around them. We envy humans for the gifts that the Creator gave them and not us.
You can smell the rain as it falls like shining diamonds.
You can hear the solitary sound of a dove as it passes over the frozen lake in the middle of the woods.
You can touch another person’s hand.
These things are what the stars envy.
We hang here surrounded by light and long to move, to breathe, to sigh.
The stars are also gifted with the ability to wish, though. Among us, the wish we most desire is not for ourselves. We hang in this vast ocean of perpetual darkness, never being able to love, truly love. The stars desire the human race to love. All problems could cease if the human heart could embrace unconditional love.
So many people walk past others, never noticing faces, expressions. Next time you walk down the street, the stars dare you to tell someone you have never met ‘hello’, with a smile. The stars dare you to show caring, a feeling ingrained in every single body on the planet.
Love starts with a simple smile.
Next time you walk under the star-laden sky, wish for unconditional love.
We, the stars, are wishing for it too.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Brick by Brick...
I'm scared to talk to you because I'm afraid you will be just like him...
I'm afraid to start something that won't go beyond a lie.
I'm frightened of believing that you really are the way you act, and not a shadow of reality.
Time heals all wounds, supposedly.
I am healed completely, though imperfectly. I know that.
The faultline that he left is still visible, ready to open up and swallow me if I make one wrong step.
"Time is short," as THEY say.
I just can't do it.
"Live life to the fullest," as THEY say.
I try. Sometimes it doesn't work.
I stuck my heart back together after he ran it through the shredder. I won't have that happen again. I can't. I fell apart the last time, self-destructed, imploded.
I built my walls high since then.
They can't crumble now, not after all the time I spent building it, brick by brick.
In the words of Paramore:
"Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick
or the wolf's gonna blow it down."
I'm afraid to start something that won't go beyond a lie.
I'm frightened of believing that you really are the way you act, and not a shadow of reality.
Time heals all wounds, supposedly.
I am healed completely, though imperfectly. I know that.
The faultline that he left is still visible, ready to open up and swallow me if I make one wrong step.
"Time is short," as THEY say.
I just can't do it.
"Live life to the fullest," as THEY say.
I try. Sometimes it doesn't work.
I stuck my heart back together after he ran it through the shredder. I won't have that happen again. I can't. I fell apart the last time, self-destructed, imploded.
I built my walls high since then.
They can't crumble now, not after all the time I spent building it, brick by brick.
In the words of Paramore:
"Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick
or the wolf's gonna blow it down."
Friday, December 10, 2010
Paperthin Heart...
I have been continuously told that I have to be "open to love".
I believe that I am open to it.
In fact, I am so open to love that I wear my now paperthin heart pinned to my sleeve.
I pray that a breath of wind will blow and tear my paper heart off my sleeve, blow it around and let it fall into someone's waiting hands; someone who will trade me for his paper heart.
My wrinkled paper heart is creased and has been folded and unfolded many times.
It has holes in it.
Ink smudges the paper.
Watermarks mar the lines.
This is my fragile paper heart, that I hold in my palms.
I'm not sure I want possesion of my paper heart.
I haven't taken very good care of it.
I feel like I am going to drop it again soon...
I just hope somebody will be there to catch it.
I believe that I am open to it.
In fact, I am so open to love that I wear my now paperthin heart pinned to my sleeve.
I pray that a breath of wind will blow and tear my paper heart off my sleeve, blow it around and let it fall into someone's waiting hands; someone who will trade me for his paper heart.
My wrinkled paper heart is creased and has been folded and unfolded many times.
It has holes in it.
Ink smudges the paper.
Watermarks mar the lines.
This is my fragile paper heart, that I hold in my palms.
I'm not sure I want possesion of my paper heart.
I haven't taken very good care of it.
I feel like I am going to drop it again soon...
I just hope somebody will be there to catch it.
Monday, December 6, 2010
This whole concept is irrational...
The way I feel about this boy is irrational.
The way anyone feels about anybody on the planet is irrational.
The whole concept of lust, love, envy, anger, aggression, acceptance; is completely and utterly irrational.
Why do I feel so irrationally linked to this boy who doesn't even acknowledge my existence?
I can admit that if I were asked to pick the single most attrative guy out of all the ones here at Grace, I am not sure I would pick him. He has incredible buff arms and is attractive in a scruffy-football-player kind of way. He is shy and sweet and funny, vulnerable and strong at the same time. He seems like the kind of boy who would be the protector, the strong tower in the face of adversity.
I have realized that the above qualities are my type. Odd.
Last night I spent more time talking to a good friend than I did on my homework, and I am very glad of this fact. He gave me some of the most beautiful words I have ever read. Check it out:
If he looked into your eyes… he would see something not reflected in anyone else’s eyes he has ever looked into. He would see the twinkling, the honesty; your heart. He would not only see your eyes, but in a strange way hear every one of your heartbeats as they steadily get louder and more frequent. He would gaze into them and get lost; it would be as though the chains of time no longer held him and all that would matter would be that moment. All that there would be was that moment and in that moment, he would feel everything, and nothing. He’d have the whole world in his hands and it would be such a powerful thing that tears would be shed because they weren’t ready for it. I mean that. :D
I agree with all of the above because I am completely irrational.
The way anyone feels about anybody on the planet is irrational.
The whole concept of lust, love, envy, anger, aggression, acceptance; is completely and utterly irrational.
Why do I feel so irrationally linked to this boy who doesn't even acknowledge my existence?
I can admit that if I were asked to pick the single most attrative guy out of all the ones here at Grace, I am not sure I would pick him. He has incredible buff arms and is attractive in a scruffy-football-player kind of way. He is shy and sweet and funny, vulnerable and strong at the same time. He seems like the kind of boy who would be the protector, the strong tower in the face of adversity.
I have realized that the above qualities are my type. Odd.
Last night I spent more time talking to a good friend than I did on my homework, and I am very glad of this fact. He gave me some of the most beautiful words I have ever read. Check it out:
If he looked into your eyes… he would see something not reflected in anyone else’s eyes he has ever looked into. He would see the twinkling, the honesty; your heart. He would not only see your eyes, but in a strange way hear every one of your heartbeats as they steadily get louder and more frequent. He would gaze into them and get lost; it would be as though the chains of time no longer held him and all that would matter would be that moment. All that there would be was that moment and in that moment, he would feel everything, and nothing. He’d have the whole world in his hands and it would be such a powerful thing that tears would be shed because they weren’t ready for it. I mean that. :D
I agree with all of the above because I am completely irrational.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
***STILL NEEDS A TITLE***
Callie Daniels settled down into a chair at one of the few remaining tables in the crowded café. She set her steaming coffee cup down on the marble tabletop and dropped her bag into the empty seat next to her. Shrugging out of her red pea coat, she pushed her dishwater-blonde hair out of her eyes and pulled a notebook from her bag. The notebook was nondescript: a blue leather journal about the size of a wallet. She glanced around at all of the people around her, chatting over lattes, loudly gossiping about the newest celebrity scandal, scurrying in from the snow falling delicately to the earth.
Her gaze landed on a man in the corner of the café. The man was older but she could still see the remnants of a handsome face in the laugh lines around his mouth and the way his eyes shone as he quietly read his paper, pausing every so often to drink from a dark green coffee mug. He wore an old black blazer, worn threadbare at the elbows but still elegant. Callie could tell right away that this man was intriguing, like a James Bond in the role of grandpa.
She sipped her peppermint cappuccino, a drink her own father called ‘a lame frou-frou drink’, and began to describe the whole scene in her journal: the bustling cluster of well-dressed ladies at a large table in the front, shopping bags creating a sea of color around their feet; the young couple by the windows, their fingers twined together; the middle-aged man grading papers with a harried look on his scruffy face. Callie described the teal blue walls and the smell of fresh brewed coffee and newly baked muffins wafting through the room.
Her gaze drifted again to the man in the corner who would occasionally glance up at someone entering the café through the revolving door, always with a look of disappointment scrawled across his features. His eyes turned to look out the window for a long moment then he pulled a pack of playing cards from a briefcase on the floor next to him. Carefully, he shuffled the deck then arranged the cards for a game of solitaire. He finished the game and drank the rest of his coffee, all the while looking as if he were waiting on someone to come in the door with the cold breeze.
Without being noticed, Callie watched the man. She noticed that he bit his lip when he looked up at people entering. She watched him tap out a nervous rhythm with his feet between games of solitaire.
Callie noticed the tiny details. She was a writer at heart and had need of an interesting person for a new story. She had finally found the man of her story.
~*~*~
The next Thursday afternoon shone bright, but cold and Callie stepped into the café with a feeling of excitement. The man sat at the same table, the green mug in front of him. Callie planned to maybe introduce herself. She found that the people you least expected to be interesting were the ones with the wealth of secrets stockpiled in their minds. Callie took her place at the same table that she had occupied the week before, pen in hand and blue journal on the tabletop.
The man again looked as if he were waiting on someone to breeze through the door from the cold. He kept glancing at his watch and shaking his head in obvious frustration. Callie sat for half an hour, observing, before she got up and made her way to his table.
“Hello.” She murmured happily. “Is this seat taken?”
The man looked up at her in a startled manner, wrinkling the newspaper in his hands.
“Oh, yes. I mean, no. Please, sit.” He stood and moved to pull the chair out for her.
“Why, thank you!” Callie was impressed. Off the movie screen she had never seen an actual man pull a chair out for a woman. She immediately liked the man.
“Well. Whatever made a pretty girl like you decide to sit with an old geezer like me?” The man’s eyes were a slate grey color that matched the snowy sky of the December day.
“Good question. My name is Callie and I like to think of myself as a writer. I was wondering if you would like to contribute to a story, Mr…?”
“Taylor. Quinten Taylor.”
Callie smiled. Even his name sounded like one out of a James Bond film.
“Are you going to change my name for your little story?” He stared at her intently. There was no trace of him needing contacts or glasses. His gaze pierced her like an arrow and she found that she wouldn’t be able to lie to such a gaze.
“Not unless you want me to.”
“Nah. My name is cool. Keep it.” He said with a smile.
Callie scribbled in her notebook.
“So. I saw you here last week. It seemed as though you were waiting for somebody.” She probed.
“I was. But I know he isn’t going to show up. He never was good with keeping appointments.”
“Who? A friend? A sibling?”
“Both, I suppose you could say.”
“What is his name?”
“Frankie Marks.”
“How did you meet him?”
Quinten settled back into his chair, taking a sip of his steaming coffee.
“We met…Oh, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Callie pursed her lips. She thought to herself that this guy was going to be harder to get a story out of than she had anticipated. Her fingers twisted the pretty silver ring on her right hand.
“Try me.” Callie said, determination glinting in her blue eyes.
Quinten shuffled his deck of cards and began to speak in his deep, refined brogue.
“I met Frankie Marks by accident. Frankie lived in the same neighborhood that I did, growing up. We knew each other only at school. I was the brown-nosed cookie-cutter preppie and Frankie was the stereotypical bad boy. We had never spoken two words to each other until the day that he got arrested.”
“For what?” Callie studied the old man’s features, trying to read the lines in his face like a street map.
“I had just walked out of the museum downtown and was headed home. I had a job as a curator there. Frankie barreled toward me down the sidewalk, not stopping or looking up from the concrete. I had my nose in an art book and didn’t notice a thing. He ran straight into me and knocked me to the ground. He yanked me up by the arm and didn’t let go. He pulled me all the way down the street and we ducked behind a dumpster in a deserted alley, though this move was unnecessary. Apparently he had stolen some jewelry and the cops were chasing him. Eventually, they caught up to him, after he made me swear that I wouldn’t rat him out.” Quinten chuckled to himself as Callie frantically tried to get the whole story down.
“We have been best friends ever since.”
Callie smiled. It was a nice story, but there was more to it than he was telling her. “And then what?”
“And happily ever after. Are you really that unlearned?” He grinned like a mischievous child.
“Lies and deceit. Tell.”
“Frankie and I were both very good at keeping secrets. That was why we were recruited for jobs under Joseph McCarthy. We were both basically spies for the United States in our own country. Every couple months we would pack up and relocate to another small town, trying to find Communist sympathizers to turn in. In the time we worked with McCarthy, Frankie took a bullet for me and I had helped him find the girl of his dreams. We got paid a LOT of money for ratting people out, enough to pay for a whole life twice over. But it wasn’t a life. The only thing both of us craved was to settle down. He had his dreams of owning his own bookstore. I wanted to write for a local paper. We both wanted to plant roots somewhere, with wives to cook for us when we came home from work and kids to play in the yard with. The ridiculous ‘American dream’ was what the whole country wanted.”
Quinten sat back in his chair, remnants of the past darkening his eyes.
“Did you get your ‘American dream’?” Callie whispered.
“Eventually. I did start writing for a paper in Orlando, Florida, covering the police beat. At the office I met a woman. Her name was Sophie. We got married in the fall, on a rainy day on the beach. She loved the rain. Still does actually.” His eyes filled with a love that words could not express and he lovingly caressed the band of gold on his left hand.
“We had three kids: Mark, Christopher, and Jane. I loved my life. I had everything that any man could ever want: healthy kids, a wife I loved with every fiber of my being, a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table. I had a job that I loved, faith in my Creator that no one could ever take from me, and a best friend that I am not sure I could have gone a day without. I am utterly positive that I was the luckiest man in the whole universe.”
A waitress stepped up to the table and politely asked if they needed anything. Both of them declined, waiting for the waitress to depart and bother other customers.
The odd pair sat in comfortable silence for a long moment, both contemplating what was said and what was yet to come.
“When were you born?” Quinten suddenly asked.
“September of 1990.” Callie answered.
Quinten tapped his finger against his chin. “Frankie was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of 1990.”
Callie’s lips turned into a frown. She had seen the effects of cancer in her own family and instantly felt sympathy for anyone who had witnessed it firsthand. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured and reached out to cover his hand with hers. She had spent a whole hour with this man and already she felt as though she had known him for years.
The man before her didn’t cry, didn’t even blink his eyes. He was silent, stoic, strong, for the man who wasn’t there right now, stronger than he ought to have been.
“Frankie was stronger than me. I broke down when he told me the news. I had seen people waste away, fold in on themselves from cancer, a disease that no one knew how to treat. To say that I was simply afraid for my best friend would have been the worst understatement in the cosmos. Petrified, terrified, distressed, and panic-stricken: I was all of them at once. Frankie had always been the absolute epitome of strength. It was unfathomable that a tiny speck inside his lung could lay him so low. The cancer set in fast. He started to shrink. It broke my heart to know that I could only sit back and watch as my best friend grew so weak that he couldn’t breathe without the aid of a machine. He couldn’t go for his daily run, which he was so rigorous about. It physically pained me to go and visit him and Carina, his wife. Sometimes, when I allowed myself a weak moment, I cried in front of him.” Quinten stopped his reverie to take a small swig from a miniscule flask he inconspicuously slid from his blazer pocket. Callie caught the sharp scent of alcohol as it wafted across the tabletop.
She didn’t know what to say, though she knew the intense feeling of helplessness. Her own grandfather had contracted a tumor at the base of his brain and he had slowly folded in on himself, losing his memories as he shrank away into nothingness. All she could offer the now crumpled man in the now sad blazer was her silence, her understanding, the knowledge that he was not alone with his feelings.
“He’s the one I’m waiting for, actually.”
“He conquered his cancer?” Callie took the risk and hoped that this man’s story had a happy ending.
“No.” Quinten sat stoically again, not allowing himself to show such weakness as tears for a man who was long dead and had been stronger than he. “Frankie died less than six months after he was diagnosed. I was there when they turned the oxygen machine off. I watched his chest stop moving.” The secret government official that he had been years ago showed now in the hard steel of the set of his eyes. “I still wait for him. We used to come here and have coffee and discuss the news. Call me crazy, but I feel like if I keep coming back, he will show up, that I will have dreamed this whole terrible scenario up, that none of it will have been true and we can return to our lives.”
Callie sat in calm silence. She could grasp why he did it, why he waited every Thursday afternoon for his dead best friend to come see him. Molly Shay had been Callie’s best friend for six years and not a day passed that they didn’t speak. It was easy to imagine that when she was older and if Molly wasn’t around, she would keep on hoping for a miracle.
Quinten turned his wrist over to take a glimpse at the simple black watch there. “Miss Daniels, I am afraid that I must request a leave of absence.” Here his gray eyes took on such a delightful look that it infected Callie and she smiled back at him. “I have a date with a very good looking girl tonight.”
“Oh, well, I mustn’t detain you any further, Mr. Taylor. Thank you so much for talking with me today.”
The man studied his hands on the tabletop. “I haven’t told anyone that story. Nobody except my family knows how much Frankie meant to me.”
Callie stood and moved around the table to hug the man. “I am glad you told me.” He hugged her back before she sat down in her seat again. Her notebook sat in front of her, untouched since she had recorded the events that lead up to Quinten and Frankie meeting for the first time.
Quinten stood and picked up his briefcase. “Maybe I will see you here again sometime soon.”
“I’m sure you will.” Callie smiled, genuinely happy to have met this man.
Callie watched the figure she described as James Bond as a grandpa move fluidly out the door and into the cold gray day.
Her gaze landed on a man in the corner of the café. The man was older but she could still see the remnants of a handsome face in the laugh lines around his mouth and the way his eyes shone as he quietly read his paper, pausing every so often to drink from a dark green coffee mug. He wore an old black blazer, worn threadbare at the elbows but still elegant. Callie could tell right away that this man was intriguing, like a James Bond in the role of grandpa.
She sipped her peppermint cappuccino, a drink her own father called ‘a lame frou-frou drink’, and began to describe the whole scene in her journal: the bustling cluster of well-dressed ladies at a large table in the front, shopping bags creating a sea of color around their feet; the young couple by the windows, their fingers twined together; the middle-aged man grading papers with a harried look on his scruffy face. Callie described the teal blue walls and the smell of fresh brewed coffee and newly baked muffins wafting through the room.
Her gaze drifted again to the man in the corner who would occasionally glance up at someone entering the café through the revolving door, always with a look of disappointment scrawled across his features. His eyes turned to look out the window for a long moment then he pulled a pack of playing cards from a briefcase on the floor next to him. Carefully, he shuffled the deck then arranged the cards for a game of solitaire. He finished the game and drank the rest of his coffee, all the while looking as if he were waiting on someone to come in the door with the cold breeze.
Without being noticed, Callie watched the man. She noticed that he bit his lip when he looked up at people entering. She watched him tap out a nervous rhythm with his feet between games of solitaire.
Callie noticed the tiny details. She was a writer at heart and had need of an interesting person for a new story. She had finally found the man of her story.
~*~*~
The next Thursday afternoon shone bright, but cold and Callie stepped into the café with a feeling of excitement. The man sat at the same table, the green mug in front of him. Callie planned to maybe introduce herself. She found that the people you least expected to be interesting were the ones with the wealth of secrets stockpiled in their minds. Callie took her place at the same table that she had occupied the week before, pen in hand and blue journal on the tabletop.
The man again looked as if he were waiting on someone to breeze through the door from the cold. He kept glancing at his watch and shaking his head in obvious frustration. Callie sat for half an hour, observing, before she got up and made her way to his table.
“Hello.” She murmured happily. “Is this seat taken?”
The man looked up at her in a startled manner, wrinkling the newspaper in his hands.
“Oh, yes. I mean, no. Please, sit.” He stood and moved to pull the chair out for her.
“Why, thank you!” Callie was impressed. Off the movie screen she had never seen an actual man pull a chair out for a woman. She immediately liked the man.
“Well. Whatever made a pretty girl like you decide to sit with an old geezer like me?” The man’s eyes were a slate grey color that matched the snowy sky of the December day.
“Good question. My name is Callie and I like to think of myself as a writer. I was wondering if you would like to contribute to a story, Mr…?”
“Taylor. Quinten Taylor.”
Callie smiled. Even his name sounded like one out of a James Bond film.
“Are you going to change my name for your little story?” He stared at her intently. There was no trace of him needing contacts or glasses. His gaze pierced her like an arrow and she found that she wouldn’t be able to lie to such a gaze.
“Not unless you want me to.”
“Nah. My name is cool. Keep it.” He said with a smile.
Callie scribbled in her notebook.
“So. I saw you here last week. It seemed as though you were waiting for somebody.” She probed.
“I was. But I know he isn’t going to show up. He never was good with keeping appointments.”
“Who? A friend? A sibling?”
“Both, I suppose you could say.”
“What is his name?”
“Frankie Marks.”
“How did you meet him?”
Quinten settled back into his chair, taking a sip of his steaming coffee.
“We met…Oh, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Callie pursed her lips. She thought to herself that this guy was going to be harder to get a story out of than she had anticipated. Her fingers twisted the pretty silver ring on her right hand.
“Try me.” Callie said, determination glinting in her blue eyes.
Quinten shuffled his deck of cards and began to speak in his deep, refined brogue.
“I met Frankie Marks by accident. Frankie lived in the same neighborhood that I did, growing up. We knew each other only at school. I was the brown-nosed cookie-cutter preppie and Frankie was the stereotypical bad boy. We had never spoken two words to each other until the day that he got arrested.”
“For what?” Callie studied the old man’s features, trying to read the lines in his face like a street map.
“I had just walked out of the museum downtown and was headed home. I had a job as a curator there. Frankie barreled toward me down the sidewalk, not stopping or looking up from the concrete. I had my nose in an art book and didn’t notice a thing. He ran straight into me and knocked me to the ground. He yanked me up by the arm and didn’t let go. He pulled me all the way down the street and we ducked behind a dumpster in a deserted alley, though this move was unnecessary. Apparently he had stolen some jewelry and the cops were chasing him. Eventually, they caught up to him, after he made me swear that I wouldn’t rat him out.” Quinten chuckled to himself as Callie frantically tried to get the whole story down.
“We have been best friends ever since.”
Callie smiled. It was a nice story, but there was more to it than he was telling her. “And then what?”
“And happily ever after. Are you really that unlearned?” He grinned like a mischievous child.
“Lies and deceit. Tell.”
“Frankie and I were both very good at keeping secrets. That was why we were recruited for jobs under Joseph McCarthy. We were both basically spies for the United States in our own country. Every couple months we would pack up and relocate to another small town, trying to find Communist sympathizers to turn in. In the time we worked with McCarthy, Frankie took a bullet for me and I had helped him find the girl of his dreams. We got paid a LOT of money for ratting people out, enough to pay for a whole life twice over. But it wasn’t a life. The only thing both of us craved was to settle down. He had his dreams of owning his own bookstore. I wanted to write for a local paper. We both wanted to plant roots somewhere, with wives to cook for us when we came home from work and kids to play in the yard with. The ridiculous ‘American dream’ was what the whole country wanted.”
Quinten sat back in his chair, remnants of the past darkening his eyes.
“Did you get your ‘American dream’?” Callie whispered.
“Eventually. I did start writing for a paper in Orlando, Florida, covering the police beat. At the office I met a woman. Her name was Sophie. We got married in the fall, on a rainy day on the beach. She loved the rain. Still does actually.” His eyes filled with a love that words could not express and he lovingly caressed the band of gold on his left hand.
“We had three kids: Mark, Christopher, and Jane. I loved my life. I had everything that any man could ever want: healthy kids, a wife I loved with every fiber of my being, a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table. I had a job that I loved, faith in my Creator that no one could ever take from me, and a best friend that I am not sure I could have gone a day without. I am utterly positive that I was the luckiest man in the whole universe.”
A waitress stepped up to the table and politely asked if they needed anything. Both of them declined, waiting for the waitress to depart and bother other customers.
The odd pair sat in comfortable silence for a long moment, both contemplating what was said and what was yet to come.
“When were you born?” Quinten suddenly asked.
“September of 1990.” Callie answered.
Quinten tapped his finger against his chin. “Frankie was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of 1990.”
Callie’s lips turned into a frown. She had seen the effects of cancer in her own family and instantly felt sympathy for anyone who had witnessed it firsthand. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured and reached out to cover his hand with hers. She had spent a whole hour with this man and already she felt as though she had known him for years.
The man before her didn’t cry, didn’t even blink his eyes. He was silent, stoic, strong, for the man who wasn’t there right now, stronger than he ought to have been.
“Frankie was stronger than me. I broke down when he told me the news. I had seen people waste away, fold in on themselves from cancer, a disease that no one knew how to treat. To say that I was simply afraid for my best friend would have been the worst understatement in the cosmos. Petrified, terrified, distressed, and panic-stricken: I was all of them at once. Frankie had always been the absolute epitome of strength. It was unfathomable that a tiny speck inside his lung could lay him so low. The cancer set in fast. He started to shrink. It broke my heart to know that I could only sit back and watch as my best friend grew so weak that he couldn’t breathe without the aid of a machine. He couldn’t go for his daily run, which he was so rigorous about. It physically pained me to go and visit him and Carina, his wife. Sometimes, when I allowed myself a weak moment, I cried in front of him.” Quinten stopped his reverie to take a small swig from a miniscule flask he inconspicuously slid from his blazer pocket. Callie caught the sharp scent of alcohol as it wafted across the tabletop.
She didn’t know what to say, though she knew the intense feeling of helplessness. Her own grandfather had contracted a tumor at the base of his brain and he had slowly folded in on himself, losing his memories as he shrank away into nothingness. All she could offer the now crumpled man in the now sad blazer was her silence, her understanding, the knowledge that he was not alone with his feelings.
“He’s the one I’m waiting for, actually.”
“He conquered his cancer?” Callie took the risk and hoped that this man’s story had a happy ending.
“No.” Quinten sat stoically again, not allowing himself to show such weakness as tears for a man who was long dead and had been stronger than he. “Frankie died less than six months after he was diagnosed. I was there when they turned the oxygen machine off. I watched his chest stop moving.” The secret government official that he had been years ago showed now in the hard steel of the set of his eyes. “I still wait for him. We used to come here and have coffee and discuss the news. Call me crazy, but I feel like if I keep coming back, he will show up, that I will have dreamed this whole terrible scenario up, that none of it will have been true and we can return to our lives.”
Callie sat in calm silence. She could grasp why he did it, why he waited every Thursday afternoon for his dead best friend to come see him. Molly Shay had been Callie’s best friend for six years and not a day passed that they didn’t speak. It was easy to imagine that when she was older and if Molly wasn’t around, she would keep on hoping for a miracle.
Quinten turned his wrist over to take a glimpse at the simple black watch there. “Miss Daniels, I am afraid that I must request a leave of absence.” Here his gray eyes took on such a delightful look that it infected Callie and she smiled back at him. “I have a date with a very good looking girl tonight.”
“Oh, well, I mustn’t detain you any further, Mr. Taylor. Thank you so much for talking with me today.”
The man studied his hands on the tabletop. “I haven’t told anyone that story. Nobody except my family knows how much Frankie meant to me.”
Callie stood and moved around the table to hug the man. “I am glad you told me.” He hugged her back before she sat down in her seat again. Her notebook sat in front of her, untouched since she had recorded the events that lead up to Quinten and Frankie meeting for the first time.
Quinten stood and picked up his briefcase. “Maybe I will see you here again sometime soon.”
“I’m sure you will.” Callie smiled, genuinely happy to have met this man.
Callie watched the figure she described as James Bond as a grandpa move fluidly out the door and into the cold gray day.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
The Heart Knows No Reason...
Apparently, neither does the mind.
Are dreams connected to a person's heart? Or are dreams soley flecks of real events splayed out into a movie reel of sequences that could never actually happen? Are dreams only what a person WISHES to happen?
If dreams are the latter of the two, I basically want the same thing to happen all the time.
If anyone could explain to me how it is that a person can dream of the exact same person for a full week, I would be eternally grateful. If the dreams I have been having are any indication of my "heart's desire", then I am in BIG trouble. Are dreams flashes of the future? Part of me hopes yes and the other half says "NOOOOOOOOOO!" (I really don't want to be in a boat with a giant talking banana. But that is a different story.)
Seriously though, there is a theory that states that if you dream of a certain someone it is because they thought about you before they fell asleep. I am very skeptical of such a theory, although I dearly hope it is true. To go with what the amazing female-Buddha-like Autumn Ladyga said in a blog, it is very hard to find something to believe in.
Are dreams connected to a person's heart? Or are dreams soley flecks of real events splayed out into a movie reel of sequences that could never actually happen? Are dreams only what a person WISHES to happen?
If dreams are the latter of the two, I basically want the same thing to happen all the time.
If anyone could explain to me how it is that a person can dream of the exact same person for a full week, I would be eternally grateful. If the dreams I have been having are any indication of my "heart's desire", then I am in BIG trouble. Are dreams flashes of the future? Part of me hopes yes and the other half says "NOOOOOOOOOO!" (I really don't want to be in a boat with a giant talking banana. But that is a different story.)
Seriously though, there is a theory that states that if you dream of a certain someone it is because they thought about you before they fell asleep. I am very skeptical of such a theory, although I dearly hope it is true. To go with what the amazing female-Buddha-like Autumn Ladyga said in a blog, it is very hard to find something to believe in.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
my as yet untitled story...
Callie Daniels settled down into a chair at one of the few remaining tables in the crowded café. She set her steaming coffee cup down on the marble tabletop and dropped her bag into the empty seat next to her. Shrugging out of her red pea coat, she pushed her brown hair out of her eyes and pulled a notebook from her bag. The notebook was nondescript: a blue leather journal about the size of a wallet. She glanced around at all of the people around her, chatting over lattes, loudly gossiping about the newest celebrity scandal, scurrying in from the snow falling delicately to the earth.
Her gaze landed on a man in the corner of the café. The man was older but she could still see the remnants of a handsome face in the laugh lines around his mouth and the way his eyes shone as he quietly read his paper, pausing every so often to drink from a dark green coffee mug. Callie could tell right away that this man was intriguing, like if James Bond was a grandpa.
Her gaze landed on a man in the corner of the café. The man was older but she could still see the remnants of a handsome face in the laugh lines around his mouth and the way his eyes shone as he quietly read his paper, pausing every so often to drink from a dark green coffee mug. Callie could tell right away that this man was intriguing, like if James Bond was a grandpa.
Revised ending to Like the Sun...
“You idiot,” she gasped out as tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.
“You still love me right?” Icarus’ charred skin split around a slight smile, his eyes gleaming up at her.
Robbed of the ability to speak, Kyra could only nod her head, crying still.
“Good. I can’t live without sunshine.” He took a deep shuddering breath and coughed up more brackish water. “Help me up?”
“No, no! Lie still! I’m not going anywhere. Ever.” Kyra smoothed a lock of his wet hair from his forehead.
“Stay here.” He whispered, his strength nearly gone.
Kyra nodded her head vigorously and swiped at her cheeks. She couldn’t tell if her palms were wet from sea water or her own tears. Her gaze roved to the cliffs and the rocky path that wound up through vast walls of granite, leading to the sanctuary of the city. There was no possible way that she could drag Icarus all the way there without hurting him further. Of the ideas that miraculously popped into her head, only two she would even consider: waiting for help to come to them or heading up the path to get help by herself. The latter of the two she nixed in the space of a heartbeat. She settled into the sand, her fingers in his, to wait.
“Kyra…” Icarus murmured.
“Hmm?”
“Will you marry me? I don’t want to wait for our parents to decide things. We are getting married, not them.” His face was now twisted with a mix of pain and determination.
She laughed then. He looked so serious and she knew that he was serious about the whole thing. He did want to marry her. “You already know that answer.” Gently Kyra leaned over and pressed her lips to his burnt cheek.
Her heart couldn’t bear to hope at that moment, though, as her eyes wandered to his beaten form.
A commotion sounded just down the beach. From her vantage point, she could see a crew of four fishermen, pulling in their boat and attempting to haul their day’s catch to shore. Kyra jumped to her feet and raced towards them.
“Oh, please help us! Help!” she shouted at the men.
The men turned towards her and she knew that all they could see was a crazy, wet girl with feathers in her hair running around on the beach.
“My fiancé. He…he had an accident. Please, I need help getting him back to the city. He’s hurt very badly and I can’t get him up there myself.” She found that she had started to cry.
The men never said anything other than a few muffled “yes, we will help you”s. Kyra led them back to Icarus who had drifted into unconsciousness from pain and shock. Kyra’s didn’t know what to do other than reach for Icarus’ hand and hold his long fingers tightly in her grasp, her an anchor in the storm of her fear.
Icarus woke soon after the men had taken him to the infirmary, though he didn’t seem to see anything around him. The doctors attended to great burn marks that covered his skin and the mess of his broken leg.
They asked questions that Kyra was not comfortable answering. She wished to keep that day’s occurrences secret. All through the long nigh that Icarus silently wept in pain, she savored his words, locking them up inside her ears, hearing his voice repeating them back to her.
Sometime, in the middle of the night, Icarus fully woke up. Kyra hadn’t been able to sleep; she had been praying to any and all gods that would listen, praying with her lips and her soul for Icarus to live through the night.
Tiny streaks of light filtered through the doorway, lighting up Icarus’ face.
“Hey, sunshine.” Icarus whispered.
“You still love me right?” Icarus’ charred skin split around a slight smile, his eyes gleaming up at her.
Robbed of the ability to speak, Kyra could only nod her head, crying still.
“Good. I can’t live without sunshine.” He took a deep shuddering breath and coughed up more brackish water. “Help me up?”
“No, no! Lie still! I’m not going anywhere. Ever.” Kyra smoothed a lock of his wet hair from his forehead.
“Stay here.” He whispered, his strength nearly gone.
Kyra nodded her head vigorously and swiped at her cheeks. She couldn’t tell if her palms were wet from sea water or her own tears. Her gaze roved to the cliffs and the rocky path that wound up through vast walls of granite, leading to the sanctuary of the city. There was no possible way that she could drag Icarus all the way there without hurting him further. Of the ideas that miraculously popped into her head, only two she would even consider: waiting for help to come to them or heading up the path to get help by herself. The latter of the two she nixed in the space of a heartbeat. She settled into the sand, her fingers in his, to wait.
“Kyra…” Icarus murmured.
“Hmm?”
“Will you marry me? I don’t want to wait for our parents to decide things. We are getting married, not them.” His face was now twisted with a mix of pain and determination.
She laughed then. He looked so serious and she knew that he was serious about the whole thing. He did want to marry her. “You already know that answer.” Gently Kyra leaned over and pressed her lips to his burnt cheek.
Her heart couldn’t bear to hope at that moment, though, as her eyes wandered to his beaten form.
A commotion sounded just down the beach. From her vantage point, she could see a crew of four fishermen, pulling in their boat and attempting to haul their day’s catch to shore. Kyra jumped to her feet and raced towards them.
“Oh, please help us! Help!” she shouted at the men.
The men turned towards her and she knew that all they could see was a crazy, wet girl with feathers in her hair running around on the beach.
“My fiancé. He…he had an accident. Please, I need help getting him back to the city. He’s hurt very badly and I can’t get him up there myself.” She found that she had started to cry.
The men never said anything other than a few muffled “yes, we will help you”s. Kyra led them back to Icarus who had drifted into unconsciousness from pain and shock. Kyra’s didn’t know what to do other than reach for Icarus’ hand and hold his long fingers tightly in her grasp, her an anchor in the storm of her fear.
Icarus woke soon after the men had taken him to the infirmary, though he didn’t seem to see anything around him. The doctors attended to great burn marks that covered his skin and the mess of his broken leg.
They asked questions that Kyra was not comfortable answering. She wished to keep that day’s occurrences secret. All through the long nigh that Icarus silently wept in pain, she savored his words, locking them up inside her ears, hearing his voice repeating them back to her.
Sometime, in the middle of the night, Icarus fully woke up. Kyra hadn’t been able to sleep; she had been praying to any and all gods that would listen, praying with her lips and her soul for Icarus to live through the night.
Tiny streaks of light filtered through the doorway, lighting up Icarus’ face.
“Hey, sunshine.” Icarus whispered.
Monday, November 29, 2010
'Call Me Crazy'
So. I like to write short stories. I know there is at least one other person that reads my blog that is an awesome writer and would like to maybe be part of a short story collection. I have been mulling over the phrase 'call me crazy.' I can work it into a few of the stories I currently have. If anyone would like to join this absurd venture, go for it! I need some co-writers! Anyways, the lineup that I have so far, in no particular order is as follows:
Magnificent Miranda + Powerful Jimmy by Autumn Ladyga
Shoreline: A Play by Autumn Ladyga
Like the Sun by moi
Woman Sells Hubby's Organs in Online Auction by moi
and possibly Pancakes and Poppies, also by moi.
MORE WOULD BE EXCELLENT!
Thanks!
Love, me
Magnificent Miranda + Powerful Jimmy by Autumn Ladyga
Shoreline: A Play by Autumn Ladyga
Like the Sun by moi
Woman Sells Hubby's Organs in Online Auction by moi
and possibly Pancakes and Poppies, also by moi.
MORE WOULD BE EXCELLENT!
Thanks!
Love, me
Friday, November 26, 2010
Dresses
I have recently discovered that I absolutely love to try on dresses; every type of dress imaginable. I love little black dresses and dresses that hug my curves, sweater dresses, sundresses, long/short dresses, strapless dresses, off the shoulder dresses, dresses with crazy patterns, et cetera. I love dresses. I love dresses that normally you would never ever pull off the rack and you find that they make your hips look fantastic. But more than looking good is feeling good. I put on a clingy red dress at T.J. Maxx this morning and knew that it didn't look good on me because I didn't feel good in the dress. Later, at Kohls, I put on this black and pinkish-red silk strapless dress and knew that I looked really good. The dress fit me almost like a second skin and it accentuated all the good things. More importantly, I NOTICED the good things. (And the fact that I have extremely pasty white legs.) I noticed how tiny my waist is and my strong shoulders and toned legs. I noticed that I genuinely smiled at myself in the mirror, all the while thinking 'Hey good lookin!' I was happy to look at my reflection today which is something I cannot ever remember doing. Crazy how a dress can change your day.
Like the Sun...
Like the Sun
“Are you ready for this?” Icarus asks his best friend, gripping her hand tightly in his and curling his toes on the rim of the cliff.
“As ready as Persephone is to go stay in hell for half a year. Are you?”
“What do you think?”
Kyra turns her gaze up to the sun and then glances back at her best friend.
She takes a deep breath and holds onto his hand like his fingers are the only things keeping her afloat in the sea of her doubt.
She nods.
“We go in three…two…ONE!”
They leap up off the edge of the cliffs, hand in hand, toward the sun.
~*~*~
“Hey, Icarus, look at this one! It has purple in it!”
“Nice. That will look good on the wings. If we can find more.”
“Where there is one, there is more. A bird has more than one feather on its body. Or did you not know that?” Kyra smirked at Icarus and placed the feather in the basket she carried.
Icarus smiled at her and rolled his eyes. “Who is the bird specialist around here?”
“That’s what I thought.” Kyra shaded her eyes with her hand and stared upwards at the sun. The giant glowing orb had halted its ascent at the very top of the sky, baking the earth and the people below it. Kyra’s fair skin tingled with the heat.
Her best friend dropped down and laid on his back in the soft, green grass, his long arms stretched out to either side of him. His curly brown hair looked golden from where she was still standing. From his spot on the grass, he looked up at her then patted the ground beside him. She rolled her eyes at him and plopped into the grass, her purple and blue dress fanning out to cover the tips of his outstretched fingers.
Icarus tugged on the hem of her gown until she laid down next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
“What is up with you today?” she asked him as she watched a large fluffy cloud skitter across the pale blue, almost white, sky.
“What do you mean?”
“Just…this.” She held up their hands, which had been joined without her notice.
Icarus rolled over onto his side and looked at her with eyes so green they resembled the cut emeralds in her mother’s diadem. “Ya know, we have been ‘betrothed’ since we were little kids, right?”
“How could I forget?” Kyra had to physically yank her gaze from Icarus’. Even though they had been best friends from practically the moment of their birth, he still had no idea that she had been imagining their combined future for the past nine years. “My mother has talked of nothing but our inevitable marriage since I became of age to marry. Six years ago.” She removed her suddenly sweaty hand from his, not wanting to make things awkward with her wet hands. Kyra’s mother had constantly been pushing for Icarus and Kyra to get married. Neither one of them had been ready for that kind of step. They had an easy friendship; his outgoing, people-friendly personality created a perfect balance for her shy-but-caring type. She had dark features that complemented his light ones; her dark brown hair and hazel eyes created a gorgeous contrast between his green eyes and cinnamon colored hair.
For an odd moment, as she gazed up at the clear sky, she saw Icarus’ hand hover over her cheek. She was certain that he would touch her but he moved away and flopped back into the grass beside her.
“We are going to get married someday.” He mumbled as he watched birds wheeling high above them.
“What was that?” Kyra had heard him perfectly. She wanted him to say it again.
“We need to get back. We have work to do.” He moved to his feet like liquid light and Kyra admired his grace, a grace that she had never, and would never possess. Icarus held his hand out to her and she took it, loving the way her soft palms rasped over his callused ones. They peered over the side of the cliffs where they had dived so many years ago before heading back down the path towards the city.
~*~*~
They jump straight up and Icarus stretches out the fingertips of his free hand, straining towards the rays of gilded sunlight that seem to be just outside of his reach.
Kyra grips his hand and feels the air rush past her, whipping her hair back from her face. The glittering blue water gleams up at her, inviting her in with its cool, calm waters; a shelter from the oppressive heat of the day.
Icarus laughs wildly for a moment.
The water envelopes the flying pair in an instant, swallowing them like some great beast welcomes its prey into its hungry maw.
~*~*~
“Open the door! It has been days! Open the door now or… I will never come back!” Kyra slammed her fist into the door, pleading with her best friend. He had been working on a so-called ‘new design’ that he didn’t want to show her just yet for the past week.
The monolithic wooden door creaked open and Icarus’ tired eyes peered back at her. “Oh, such worthless threats.” He grinned at her, his grin showing that he knew that she would never leave him, and motioned her into the cool room, bowing as she passed him. “Your Majesty, pardon my humble abode.”
Empty plates were stacked everywhere and crumpled balls of paper were tossed about haphazardly. Kyra headed straight for the tidy table at the center of the room, and scrutinized the paper spread out in front of her. Her breath caught in her throat. He had spent so much time, time away from her, sketching two different, simple pairs of wings.
The wings were ordinary, sparrow-like. Words were written around them in Icarus’ messy scrawl, some hardly legible. “THIS is what you have spent all of your time on?!” Kyra gestured to the paper in front of her, outraged at the obscene amount of time spent on ridiculous drawings.
“No, Kyra. I have been building, too.” He took her by the wrist and led her to a dark corner.
Stretched on a low work table were the sets of wings shown on the paper. Glossy black and purple feathers were held to sturdy wooden frames by globs of creamy wax, one frame larger than the other. Kyra immediately reached out to touch the feathers, feeling the silky strands beneath her palms. “You did it.” She breathed, hardly daring herself to hope.
~*~*~
Kyra’s head breaks the surface of the water first. She coughs out lungfuls of bitter, salty sea water. Her gaze swivels back and forth as she looks for Icarus. When she can’t find him, she begins to scream, a long, almost inhuman note that seems to soar to the top of the cliffs and carries back to her on the breeze, finding no other ear to rest in.
She floats there, never willing to leave her best friend, dreading the swim back to the beach that now looks desolate instead of serene. Something touches her ankle, a brief touch, light as a feather or a soft kiss. Her instincts tell her to paddle with all the force she possesses towards the shore and she attempts just that.
Before she can get more than a few feet, a mysterious hand latches fully onto her ankle. Icarus.
Her hands search for him and yank him up by the front of his shirt.
He coughs out tepid water and gives her a glittering smile before paddling for the rocky beach.
"Call me crazy, but that was pretty amazing." He calls over his shoulder.
~*~*~
“I am very skeptical about this. I just thought I should tell you that.” Kyra stood with her hands on her hips, her long, bare toes gripped the hard gravel of the cliffs.
“Ya gotta have faith, Sunny.” He winked at flapped his arms at her, the wood and feathered structure strapped to his back fanning her hair from her face. Icarus had affectionately given her the name when they were younger. Her name meant ‘like the sun,’ though her mood was dark.
“If we die, I am going to make Cerberus eat you slowly for the rest of eternity.”
Kyra watched the waves below them crash to the shore. Her pulse beat against her skull in a rhythm that matched the waves. Her fear threatened to swallow her; not fear for herself, fear for Icarus. Her dreams the night before had been terrible and she did not want them to come true before her eyes.
“Come on, Sunny. It is going to work. It HAS to work.” His gaze traveled across the unthreatening blue landscape. Nothing could shake him from his decision.
Kyra took one step back from the edge and fluttered her own pair of wings, feeling like a mythological creature. She watched Icarus testing the direction of the wind, the speed of the breeze, the temperature. Icarus looked back at her.
“You aren’t going to back out on me are you? Make me do this by myself?”
Truthfully, she had thought of tearing her wings from her back and sprinting down to the city, safe from the crazy ravings of the boy she was in love with. Her heart could never take that though, and she found herself pulled towards the boy on the cliffs testing his homemade wings.
She fluttered her own wine-colored wings. “You know I could never leave you alone.” Her fingers reached for his and she nodded her head once, her feet finding purchase on the stony edge.
“We are going to reach for the sun in three…two…ONE!”
They leapt.
He had gotten it right; Kyra’s wings caught a current of air and instead of spiraling into the depths below, they rose higher and higher.
Icarus’ face could have melted ice, he looked so ecstatic. Her face betrayed her own delight at feeling the most awesome sense of weightlessness. She fluttered her arms just slightly and she sailed upwards, coming ever closer to the golden disk of the sun. Icarus spun above her, a great raven in the heavens.
Kyra gazed down at the water and was amazed at the clarity of it. She watched fish swim below her before turning her face towards the sun. Her eyes followed Icarus as he glided through the clouds, soaring ever nearer the sun.
She was content for a long while. Then Kyra noticed something. As Icarus drew nearer the sun, and she flew below him, always the one to keep her feet close to the ground, she noticed drops of molten wax dripping past her. Feathers spun past her on the breeze.
“ICARUS!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, flapping her artificial wings as hard as she possibly could to get to him. As she watched and desperately tried to reach him, his wings disintegrated, the sun melting the wax and singeing the wood frame. Feathers rained down on her in slow motion, like rain freezing before it hits the ground.
Nothing held Icarus in the air now. She watched helplessly as his body hung in the air like a string-less marionette, an imaginary puppeteer pulling invisible strings. A force that she couldn’t see grabbed his body and pulled him down, fast, past her, towards the waiting maw of the dark ocean. Kyra pulled her arms into her sides, collapsing her wings to make her own plummet faster.
He didn’t scream as he fell. He hit the water like a boulder crashing down a mountainside, his limbs splaying out in a way that made panic well inside her chest, make her breath feel sucked from her body, her lungs constrict in on themselves. She braced herself for impact with the opaque water, straining to keep the place where Icarus had crashed in sight.
The water caught her in its embrace and she fought to free herself from the wings that dragged her down instead of lifted her. Still with her head under the waves, she glimpsed her wings drifting away from her into sea.
All Kyra could see when she broke the surface was a feathered landscape. A trail led straight to Icarus’ limp body, his skin singed and bleeding, his legs at odd angles. Her arm wrapped around his chest and she started to paddle directly for a gnarled tree growing into the sand. His weight made every breath painful, but she wouldn’t let him go, ever.
Her arms cramped and her eyes burned with salt as she continued on. The shore grew incrementally closer until sand slipped under her toes and she was able to grasp her footing. Kyra began to run now, knowing that in his injured state, water had probably forced itself between Icarus’ parched lips and into his chest. Carefully she laid him on the beach and opened his cracked lips, breathing into his mouth until her own lungs ached. She hammered at his chest with her hands until water streamed down his cheeks and into the sand. His eyes reeled in their sockets, seeking something.
Kyra knelt by his head, swallowing all of her fears so as to keep her thoughts clean.
“Sunny,” Icarus murmured.
“I’m right here, right here.”
His clenched fist found her hands and dropped a crushed black feather onto her palm.
“You idiot,” she gasped out as tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.
“You still love me right?” Icarus’ charred skin split around a slight smile, his eyes gleaming up at her.
Robbed of the ability to speak, Kyra could only nod her head, crying still.
“Good. I can’t live without sunshine.” He took a deep shuddering breath and coughed up more brackish water. “Help me up?”
“No, no! Stay here! I’m not leaving. Ever. I jumped off that cliff with you when we were eight and I would do it every single day for as long as I lived only if you were by my side and holding my hand.” Kyra smoothed a lock of his wet hair from his forehead.
“Stay here.” He whispered, his strength nearly gone.
“Are you ready for this?” Icarus asks his best friend, gripping her hand tightly in his and curling his toes on the rim of the cliff.
“As ready as Persephone is to go stay in hell for half a year. Are you?”
“What do you think?”
Kyra turns her gaze up to the sun and then glances back at her best friend.
She takes a deep breath and holds onto his hand like his fingers are the only things keeping her afloat in the sea of her doubt.
She nods.
“We go in three…two…ONE!”
They leap up off the edge of the cliffs, hand in hand, toward the sun.
~*~*~
“Hey, Icarus, look at this one! It has purple in it!”
“Nice. That will look good on the wings. If we can find more.”
“Where there is one, there is more. A bird has more than one feather on its body. Or did you not know that?” Kyra smirked at Icarus and placed the feather in the basket she carried.
Icarus smiled at her and rolled his eyes. “Who is the bird specialist around here?”
“That’s what I thought.” Kyra shaded her eyes with her hand and stared upwards at the sun. The giant glowing orb had halted its ascent at the very top of the sky, baking the earth and the people below it. Kyra’s fair skin tingled with the heat.
Her best friend dropped down and laid on his back in the soft, green grass, his long arms stretched out to either side of him. His curly brown hair looked golden from where she was still standing. From his spot on the grass, he looked up at her then patted the ground beside him. She rolled her eyes at him and plopped into the grass, her purple and blue dress fanning out to cover the tips of his outstretched fingers.
Icarus tugged on the hem of her gown until she laid down next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
“What is up with you today?” she asked him as she watched a large fluffy cloud skitter across the pale blue, almost white, sky.
“What do you mean?”
“Just…this.” She held up their hands, which had been joined without her notice.
Icarus rolled over onto his side and looked at her with eyes so green they resembled the cut emeralds in her mother’s diadem. “Ya know, we have been ‘betrothed’ since we were little kids, right?”
“How could I forget?” Kyra had to physically yank her gaze from Icarus’. Even though they had been best friends from practically the moment of their birth, he still had no idea that she had been imagining their combined future for the past nine years. “My mother has talked of nothing but our inevitable marriage since I became of age to marry. Six years ago.” She removed her suddenly sweaty hand from his, not wanting to make things awkward with her wet hands. Kyra’s mother had constantly been pushing for Icarus and Kyra to get married. Neither one of them had been ready for that kind of step. They had an easy friendship; his outgoing, people-friendly personality created a perfect balance for her shy-but-caring type. She had dark features that complemented his light ones; her dark brown hair and hazel eyes created a gorgeous contrast between his green eyes and cinnamon colored hair.
For an odd moment, as she gazed up at the clear sky, she saw Icarus’ hand hover over her cheek. She was certain that he would touch her but he moved away and flopped back into the grass beside her.
“We are going to get married someday.” He mumbled as he watched birds wheeling high above them.
“What was that?” Kyra had heard him perfectly. She wanted him to say it again.
“We need to get back. We have work to do.” He moved to his feet like liquid light and Kyra admired his grace, a grace that she had never, and would never possess. Icarus held his hand out to her and she took it, loving the way her soft palms rasped over his callused ones. They peered over the side of the cliffs where they had dived so many years ago before heading back down the path towards the city.
~*~*~
They jump straight up and Icarus stretches out the fingertips of his free hand, straining towards the rays of gilded sunlight that seem to be just outside of his reach.
Kyra grips his hand and feels the air rush past her, whipping her hair back from her face. The glittering blue water gleams up at her, inviting her in with its cool, calm waters; a shelter from the oppressive heat of the day.
Icarus laughs wildly for a moment.
The water envelopes the flying pair in an instant, swallowing them like some great beast welcomes its prey into its hungry maw.
~*~*~
“Open the door! It has been days! Open the door now or… I will never come back!” Kyra slammed her fist into the door, pleading with her best friend. He had been working on a so-called ‘new design’ that he didn’t want to show her just yet for the past week.
The monolithic wooden door creaked open and Icarus’ tired eyes peered back at her. “Oh, such worthless threats.” He grinned at her, his grin showing that he knew that she would never leave him, and motioned her into the cool room, bowing as she passed him. “Your Majesty, pardon my humble abode.”
Empty plates were stacked everywhere and crumpled balls of paper were tossed about haphazardly. Kyra headed straight for the tidy table at the center of the room, and scrutinized the paper spread out in front of her. Her breath caught in her throat. He had spent so much time, time away from her, sketching two different, simple pairs of wings.
The wings were ordinary, sparrow-like. Words were written around them in Icarus’ messy scrawl, some hardly legible. “THIS is what you have spent all of your time on?!” Kyra gestured to the paper in front of her, outraged at the obscene amount of time spent on ridiculous drawings.
“No, Kyra. I have been building, too.” He took her by the wrist and led her to a dark corner.
Stretched on a low work table were the sets of wings shown on the paper. Glossy black and purple feathers were held to sturdy wooden frames by globs of creamy wax, one frame larger than the other. Kyra immediately reached out to touch the feathers, feeling the silky strands beneath her palms. “You did it.” She breathed, hardly daring herself to hope.
~*~*~
Kyra’s head breaks the surface of the water first. She coughs out lungfuls of bitter, salty sea water. Her gaze swivels back and forth as she looks for Icarus. When she can’t find him, she begins to scream, a long, almost inhuman note that seems to soar to the top of the cliffs and carries back to her on the breeze, finding no other ear to rest in.
She floats there, never willing to leave her best friend, dreading the swim back to the beach that now looks desolate instead of serene. Something touches her ankle, a brief touch, light as a feather or a soft kiss. Her instincts tell her to paddle with all the force she possesses towards the shore and she attempts just that.
Before she can get more than a few feet, a mysterious hand latches fully onto her ankle. Icarus.
Her hands search for him and yank him up by the front of his shirt.
He coughs out tepid water and gives her a glittering smile before paddling for the rocky beach.
"Call me crazy, but that was pretty amazing." He calls over his shoulder.
~*~*~
“I am very skeptical about this. I just thought I should tell you that.” Kyra stood with her hands on her hips, her long, bare toes gripped the hard gravel of the cliffs.
“Ya gotta have faith, Sunny.” He winked at flapped his arms at her, the wood and feathered structure strapped to his back fanning her hair from her face. Icarus had affectionately given her the name when they were younger. Her name meant ‘like the sun,’ though her mood was dark.
“If we die, I am going to make Cerberus eat you slowly for the rest of eternity.”
Kyra watched the waves below them crash to the shore. Her pulse beat against her skull in a rhythm that matched the waves. Her fear threatened to swallow her; not fear for herself, fear for Icarus. Her dreams the night before had been terrible and she did not want them to come true before her eyes.
“Come on, Sunny. It is going to work. It HAS to work.” His gaze traveled across the unthreatening blue landscape. Nothing could shake him from his decision.
Kyra took one step back from the edge and fluttered her own pair of wings, feeling like a mythological creature. She watched Icarus testing the direction of the wind, the speed of the breeze, the temperature. Icarus looked back at her.
“You aren’t going to back out on me are you? Make me do this by myself?”
Truthfully, she had thought of tearing her wings from her back and sprinting down to the city, safe from the crazy ravings of the boy she was in love with. Her heart could never take that though, and she found herself pulled towards the boy on the cliffs testing his homemade wings.
She fluttered her own wine-colored wings. “You know I could never leave you alone.” Her fingers reached for his and she nodded her head once, her feet finding purchase on the stony edge.
“We are going to reach for the sun in three…two…ONE!”
They leapt.
He had gotten it right; Kyra’s wings caught a current of air and instead of spiraling into the depths below, they rose higher and higher.
Icarus’ face could have melted ice, he looked so ecstatic. Her face betrayed her own delight at feeling the most awesome sense of weightlessness. She fluttered her arms just slightly and she sailed upwards, coming ever closer to the golden disk of the sun. Icarus spun above her, a great raven in the heavens.
Kyra gazed down at the water and was amazed at the clarity of it. She watched fish swim below her before turning her face towards the sun. Her eyes followed Icarus as he glided through the clouds, soaring ever nearer the sun.
She was content for a long while. Then Kyra noticed something. As Icarus drew nearer the sun, and she flew below him, always the one to keep her feet close to the ground, she noticed drops of molten wax dripping past her. Feathers spun past her on the breeze.
“ICARUS!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, flapping her artificial wings as hard as she possibly could to get to him. As she watched and desperately tried to reach him, his wings disintegrated, the sun melting the wax and singeing the wood frame. Feathers rained down on her in slow motion, like rain freezing before it hits the ground.
Nothing held Icarus in the air now. She watched helplessly as his body hung in the air like a string-less marionette, an imaginary puppeteer pulling invisible strings. A force that she couldn’t see grabbed his body and pulled him down, fast, past her, towards the waiting maw of the dark ocean. Kyra pulled her arms into her sides, collapsing her wings to make her own plummet faster.
He didn’t scream as he fell. He hit the water like a boulder crashing down a mountainside, his limbs splaying out in a way that made panic well inside her chest, make her breath feel sucked from her body, her lungs constrict in on themselves. She braced herself for impact with the opaque water, straining to keep the place where Icarus had crashed in sight.
The water caught her in its embrace and she fought to free herself from the wings that dragged her down instead of lifted her. Still with her head under the waves, she glimpsed her wings drifting away from her into sea.
All Kyra could see when she broke the surface was a feathered landscape. A trail led straight to Icarus’ limp body, his skin singed and bleeding, his legs at odd angles. Her arm wrapped around his chest and she started to paddle directly for a gnarled tree growing into the sand. His weight made every breath painful, but she wouldn’t let him go, ever.
Her arms cramped and her eyes burned with salt as she continued on. The shore grew incrementally closer until sand slipped under her toes and she was able to grasp her footing. Kyra began to run now, knowing that in his injured state, water had probably forced itself between Icarus’ parched lips and into his chest. Carefully she laid him on the beach and opened his cracked lips, breathing into his mouth until her own lungs ached. She hammered at his chest with her hands until water streamed down his cheeks and into the sand. His eyes reeled in their sockets, seeking something.
Kyra knelt by his head, swallowing all of her fears so as to keep her thoughts clean.
“Sunny,” Icarus murmured.
“I’m right here, right here.”
His clenched fist found her hands and dropped a crushed black feather onto her palm.
“You idiot,” she gasped out as tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.
“You still love me right?” Icarus’ charred skin split around a slight smile, his eyes gleaming up at her.
Robbed of the ability to speak, Kyra could only nod her head, crying still.
“Good. I can’t live without sunshine.” He took a deep shuddering breath and coughed up more brackish water. “Help me up?”
“No, no! Stay here! I’m not leaving. Ever. I jumped off that cliff with you when we were eight and I would do it every single day for as long as I lived only if you were by my side and holding my hand.” Kyra smoothed a lock of his wet hair from his forehead.
“Stay here.” He whispered, his strength nearly gone.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
My awesomely awesome day...
Wow. It is so weird to think that I had a really good day. Nothing amazing happened. It was just good. I went to class and got free cinnamon rolls. Then cleaned my room for checkout and spent some time with my roomie and the girls on the hall. Then my last class got out early. My dad picked me up for the break and I am at home. On our way back, we stopped at Walmart in Plymouth. And who should I see there? Think about it. Bet ya can't guess. Go on. Take a wild one. Is the suspense killing you? Ok, I saw Josiah Schaefer there! In Plymouth! At Walmart! I was just walking down the aisle and saw him and his brother out of the corner of my eye and did this bizarre, crazy-looking double take and I was like "Hey Josiah!" and he was like "Hey Megan!" and it was just crazy! He was on his way home to Wheatfield. (Yeah, I don't know where that is either.) But it was just so crazy to see him there! He was the last person I expected to see at Walmart! Anyways, on the way home I heard my favorite Christmas song (Last Christmas by Wham!) I sang it very loudly and very offkey with my dad. :) After we got home, we picked my brother up from school then went to see my aunt. She let us borrow my uncle's truck to go get a Christmas tree! (My dad works this weekend and my bro and I are at my mom's till Sunday and then I have to go back to school.) My dad and I decorated the tree and watched Charlie Brown Christmas. Now I am just happy. And content. :)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Icarus and Kyra
I have always had a fascination with Greek mythology. The love and lust and incredibility of the world that the Greeks believed in is just amazing. So many characters and awesome things! I love it! I wrote a paper on the Trojan War in high school. I love all things Greek!
Icarus: Son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Daedalus had been imprisoned by King Minos of Crete within the walls of his own invention, the Labyrinth. But the great craftsman's genius would not suffer captivity. He made two pairs of wings by adhering feathers to a wooden frame with wax. Giving one pair to his son, he cautioned him that flying too near the sun would cause the wax to melt. But Icarus became ecstatic with the ability to fly and forgot his father's warning. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.
Kyra: Greek girl of my own imagination.
Icarus: Son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Daedalus had been imprisoned by King Minos of Crete within the walls of his own invention, the Labyrinth. But the great craftsman's genius would not suffer captivity. He made two pairs of wings by adhering feathers to a wooden frame with wax. Giving one pair to his son, he cautioned him that flying too near the sun would cause the wax to melt. But Icarus became ecstatic with the ability to fly and forgot his father's warning. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.
Kyra: Greek girl of my own imagination.
Stomping and Rain...
Yesterday was just not my day.
Firstly, Mondays are always evil. I woke up and started straightening my hair while I was still half asleep. I pinched my neck with my flat iron. Yes, I have a bruise on my neck. Then classes where I daydreamed the whole period. Definitely NOT bad. Just wait. It does get worse. I came back to my room to finish a paper and what do ya know? My battery is dead and when I go to charge it, I find that the inside of my computer where you plug the cord, is completely gone. So, my dad came and took me to Best Buy. I won'd have my laptop for 2 to 4 weeks. I am going to die! It has barely been 24 hours and I miss my laptop! :( I was utterly freaking out. If they do a diagnostics test on my laptop and something is wrong with my hardrive, I am going to lose all of my pics, documents, music. My life is on that computer! Ugh. Then I realized that I had a night class. Three hours of pure boredom. On the way there, my roommate told me to stomp out my anger. I did. I stomped across campus and people probably thought I was insane. Who cares? It made me feel better. During class, it began to rain and thunder. We ran back to our dorms, a mere 100 feet away from the class and were completely soaked by the time we got there. Once upstairs, we decided to go puddle jumping with our suitemate. We walked all over campus trying to find the deepest puddles to splash around in. After about 5 whole minutes all three of us were soaked through. Then we ran into another group of people who had the same crazy idea we did. Two of the guys in the group were guys that Ashley and I knew, Mike and Caleb. The guys looked at each other and then looked at me and Ashley and looked back at the HUGE puddle (I really mean lake) that they had just climbed out of. Mike picked me up and Caleb picked up Ashley and they ran with us across the parking lot and dropped us in this puddle. It was FREEZING! But it was oh so much fun! We stayed outside for about 45 minutes and then we saw lightning and thought it best to head back inside. I literally had to peel my clothes off, they were so wet. It was utterly worth it though and I recommend puddle jumping to everyone! The next time it rains, go get wet! It was a great way to end a terrible day.
Firstly, Mondays are always evil. I woke up and started straightening my hair while I was still half asleep. I pinched my neck with my flat iron. Yes, I have a bruise on my neck. Then classes where I daydreamed the whole period. Definitely NOT bad. Just wait. It does get worse. I came back to my room to finish a paper and what do ya know? My battery is dead and when I go to charge it, I find that the inside of my computer where you plug the cord, is completely gone. So, my dad came and took me to Best Buy. I won'd have my laptop for 2 to 4 weeks. I am going to die! It has barely been 24 hours and I miss my laptop! :( I was utterly freaking out. If they do a diagnostics test on my laptop and something is wrong with my hardrive, I am going to lose all of my pics, documents, music. My life is on that computer! Ugh. Then I realized that I had a night class. Three hours of pure boredom. On the way there, my roommate told me to stomp out my anger. I did. I stomped across campus and people probably thought I was insane. Who cares? It made me feel better. During class, it began to rain and thunder. We ran back to our dorms, a mere 100 feet away from the class and were completely soaked by the time we got there. Once upstairs, we decided to go puddle jumping with our suitemate. We walked all over campus trying to find the deepest puddles to splash around in. After about 5 whole minutes all three of us were soaked through. Then we ran into another group of people who had the same crazy idea we did. Two of the guys in the group were guys that Ashley and I knew, Mike and Caleb. The guys looked at each other and then looked at me and Ashley and looked back at the HUGE puddle (I really mean lake) that they had just climbed out of. Mike picked me up and Caleb picked up Ashley and they ran with us across the parking lot and dropped us in this puddle. It was FREEZING! But it was oh so much fun! We stayed outside for about 45 minutes and then we saw lightning and thought it best to head back inside. I literally had to peel my clothes off, they were so wet. It was utterly worth it though and I recommend puddle jumping to everyone! The next time it rains, go get wet! It was a great way to end a terrible day.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Well. That's..odd.
Today has been an extremely odd day. I am not sure I want to discuss details. Just know that it was extremely odd and random and crazy. Hopefully tomorrow will be less crazy. Oh wait. I am going to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part uno! So scratch normal on that. Lol. I am very incredibly excited. Today was an odd day. Just saying.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Intentions...
Intentions, intentions.
This morning I rolled over at the sound of my alarm clock with the intention of getting up and going to breakfast. I didn't go to breakfast. An extra 15 minutes of sleep is much needed for this college student. After I finally rolled out of bed, I got dressed with no intentions at all other than comfort. I pulled on my skinny jeans and my comfy grey sweater and put my furry Uggs on my feet and went to class. I wasn't dressing with the intention of impressing anybody. I dressed for me. I can't remember the last time I wore something just for myself other than my pajamas. For some strange reason, my brain is wired so that I think that if I don't wear the 'right' clothes, I am going to be looked down on, be made inferior by the stares of the people around me. Is this a completely irrational thought? Well, yes! In an ideal world, people, especially teenage girls, wouldn't care what others thought of them, of the way they laughed or talked, the way they dressed. It is too bad that our society basically frowns on individualism. We see ads and commercials for how to look like these supermodels or be as cool as these people. The media blasts images of the way we are 'supposed' to look. But who sets these standards? Why should we limit ourselves to these standards? I am most definitely NOT a size 2 and yet I still like to buy designer jeans. (They are comfy and make my booty look good. :D ) Still, the intent of the designer is to showcase their ideal picture of 'pretty.'
Wow. I just went on a rant. My purpose for writing this is to show that you, my lovely reader(s?), should have the intent of doing things for yourself. Its alright to be selfish sometimes. Go intentionally be selfish!!!!
This morning I rolled over at the sound of my alarm clock with the intention of getting up and going to breakfast. I didn't go to breakfast. An extra 15 minutes of sleep is much needed for this college student. After I finally rolled out of bed, I got dressed with no intentions at all other than comfort. I pulled on my skinny jeans and my comfy grey sweater and put my furry Uggs on my feet and went to class. I wasn't dressing with the intention of impressing anybody. I dressed for me. I can't remember the last time I wore something just for myself other than my pajamas. For some strange reason, my brain is wired so that I think that if I don't wear the 'right' clothes, I am going to be looked down on, be made inferior by the stares of the people around me. Is this a completely irrational thought? Well, yes! In an ideal world, people, especially teenage girls, wouldn't care what others thought of them, of the way they laughed or talked, the way they dressed. It is too bad that our society basically frowns on individualism. We see ads and commercials for how to look like these supermodels or be as cool as these people. The media blasts images of the way we are 'supposed' to look. But who sets these standards? Why should we limit ourselves to these standards? I am most definitely NOT a size 2 and yet I still like to buy designer jeans. (They are comfy and make my booty look good. :D ) Still, the intent of the designer is to showcase their ideal picture of 'pretty.'
Wow. I just went on a rant. My purpose for writing this is to show that you, my lovely reader(s?), should have the intent of doing things for yourself. Its alright to be selfish sometimes. Go intentionally be selfish!!!!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Mortality and Emotions...
"Our human desire can go wrong in two ways: when we stop desiring anything outside ourselves and fall for the pathetic illusion that we are sufficient in ourselves, or when we desire such things as fame, riches, beauty, wisdom, and human love that are as finite as we are and thus unworthy of our absolute devotion." -- Os Guinness
Pouring our whole beings into finding something that we 'think' will make us happy never works out. We strive for ideals that we don't fully comprehend. We seek the things we think are what we need, but really are not critical to our lives. That doesn't mean that we can't find happiness for our time spent on this dirty, decaying planet. Our Creator gave us such things as love and wisdom and hope so that we could find them waiting for us at the most opportune (or inopportune) moments in our lives when we needed them most. But those things do die. Love dies, and certainly hope does too. They fit into the moment when we most require them to be there. We lean on emotions like love and hope to break up the monotony of this life. But they end, just like us. They crash and shatter to the floor like a mirror you accidentally knock off the wall and reflect back to you all of the thoughts you had stored up in those feelings. Even our emotions are mortal, just like our soft, fleshy selves. Hope is a bright and bubbly girl with blonde hair and freckles, quick to laugh and easy to please. Love is dark and sultry and easy disguised: to some, he may appear as a man with strong arms and an easy smile; to others, a woman with long sooty hair, wrapping herself in a black scarf. People can personify emotions any way they want to. Regardless of how the emotion is viewed, it is still finite, mortal, transient, frail, earthly.
Pouring our whole beings into finding something that we 'think' will make us happy never works out. We strive for ideals that we don't fully comprehend. We seek the things we think are what we need, but really are not critical to our lives. That doesn't mean that we can't find happiness for our time spent on this dirty, decaying planet. Our Creator gave us such things as love and wisdom and hope so that we could find them waiting for us at the most opportune (or inopportune) moments in our lives when we needed them most. But those things do die. Love dies, and certainly hope does too. They fit into the moment when we most require them to be there. We lean on emotions like love and hope to break up the monotony of this life. But they end, just like us. They crash and shatter to the floor like a mirror you accidentally knock off the wall and reflect back to you all of the thoughts you had stored up in those feelings. Even our emotions are mortal, just like our soft, fleshy selves. Hope is a bright and bubbly girl with blonde hair and freckles, quick to laugh and easy to please. Love is dark and sultry and easy disguised: to some, he may appear as a man with strong arms and an easy smile; to others, a woman with long sooty hair, wrapping herself in a black scarf. People can personify emotions any way they want to. Regardless of how the emotion is viewed, it is still finite, mortal, transient, frail, earthly.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Give a smile. They are cheap and awesome at the same time.
It is incredibly funny how such a simple, small, smile can make someone's frostbitten, murky, decayed heart start pulsing with such an amazing intensity. Imagine the dark haired girl in the black hoodie sitting at her desk, her face rapt with attention, as she listens to the boy prattle on about watching the Detroit Lions lose every year on Thanksgiving Day. It isn't so much WHAT he is saying, just that he is talking at all. Talking to HER, his eyes on HER, waiting for HER reaction, a smile tugging up the corners of his lips, and at the same time, pulling her chilly core from it's icy winter, into the spring of his smile. (Does all this sound cheesy? Why, yes it does. Does it illustrate my point? Of course.) The thawing has started and only time will tell if it starts to freeze again. It has been a very long time since her heart was actually palpitating instead of just shivering with the cold. Just an uncomplex moving of facial muscles can thaw a frozen heart. Incredible.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Change Part Dos
I admit it. My changes were not for me, although I do like the end result. I changed the color and style of my hair, all the while praying that it will get me noticed. No one ever, EVER, takes a second look at me. Just once, I would love for a guy to do a double-take when I walked by. No joke. It would be even better if it was a certain someone... But that isn't going to happen. I can feel it. So my changes, while looking very good, are worth nothing. Because I screwed it up last week when I gave him my number and then when he didn't do anything, said 'the point of having somebody's number is to use it. ;) *hint hint*" I screwed it up. :( Sad day... But yeah. Those are my changes. I do like my hair, though.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Change...
Change. Such a simple, uncomplex, monosyllabic moniker for turning a normal thing into something abnormal, for making your life just a tiny pinch spicier. Change is unprecedented sometimes. Or it can be completely meditated. The reasons behind a change are vast and differ from one item to the next. I changed the color of my hair this morning. My reason for the change wasn't simply just because my roots were showing. I had a crazy preconceived notion that if I made a small change, not a drastic one, maybe your eyes would actually meet mine... But that is a big hope to rest in a bottle of liquid change. Change for others could be choosing to put their right shoe on first instead of the left. Change could be abstaining from drinking Coke for every single meal. Change could be realizing that the media's attempts at forcing fake images of perfection down teenagers' throats and believing them up until NOW. While watching What Not to Wear last night, I witnessed women who thought that they could never attain a positive image of themselves but, with a simple change in clothing, realized that they were perfect all along. Change doesn't have to be that profound. It doesn't have to happen at all. If you feel a need for a small change, order a chocolate ice cream cone instead of a vanilla one. Make your life spicy! (Just don't get spicy ice cream. That sounds pretty nasty.)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Control...
My body had rejected my mind's overbearing ways.
The mind supports everything else; telling my lungs to pump air to my fragile heart where it gets churned into my blood, surging around my listless body, circulating in my hands and feet.
The body is not meant to control the mind, but that is what mine did, whispering hateful nothings to my blank chalkboard mind.
My body contaminated my mind with tainted images of what my body thought it should look like.
My body told my mind that my thighs were too chunky, that my hips were too wide, that my stomach was too pudgy.
My mind started to believe it from looking around me and seeing fun-house distorted images of 'pretty'.
My body is breaking away from the distortions.
I am not going to be controlled by airbrushed, fake, cosmetically appealing people that are not real and the standards they set that can never be reached.
I am healthy and that is all that matters.
Even if I can't wear a size 0, I look good in my jeans and I wear what I am comfortable in.
Why sacrifice myself for the distortions of the media?
It shouldn't matter what size a girl is in order to have a positive image about herself.
As long as you are healthy, be happy.
(What brought this around was a body image seminar I went to last week. And also complete boredom in psychology.)
The mind supports everything else; telling my lungs to pump air to my fragile heart where it gets churned into my blood, surging around my listless body, circulating in my hands and feet.
The body is not meant to control the mind, but that is what mine did, whispering hateful nothings to my blank chalkboard mind.
My body contaminated my mind with tainted images of what my body thought it should look like.
My body told my mind that my thighs were too chunky, that my hips were too wide, that my stomach was too pudgy.
My mind started to believe it from looking around me and seeing fun-house distorted images of 'pretty'.
My body is breaking away from the distortions.
I am not going to be controlled by airbrushed, fake, cosmetically appealing people that are not real and the standards they set that can never be reached.
I am healthy and that is all that matters.
Even if I can't wear a size 0, I look good in my jeans and I wear what I am comfortable in.
Why sacrifice myself for the distortions of the media?
It shouldn't matter what size a girl is in order to have a positive image about herself.
As long as you are healthy, be happy.
(What brought this around was a body image seminar I went to last week. And also complete boredom in psychology.)
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Well, that's just great...
how can life be so unfair sometimes?
i just dont understand.
a person can try to make all the right decisions and follow the right steps and still end up with less than they deserve.
it is not fair that the people that make the wrong decisions still seem to come out on top, being all happy and everything and you sit there and wonder what went wrong for you.
you cant stop your mind from contemplating whether there is actually something wrong with you or not.
and you never get an answer, do you?
i know i never have.
i always wonder what is wrong with me.
everybody will tell me im wrong.
don't do that.
it is irritating.
i like to be told the truth, even if it really does hurt, even though that is a little masochistic.
i say all of this because sooooo many people that i know are changing their relationships from single to with somebody.
i want to know why i cant, why i have to sit here and feel bad for myself.
could somebody just explain to me how you can have a relationship with someone without ever actually meeting them?
that would be great to know.
i just dont understand.
a person can try to make all the right decisions and follow the right steps and still end up with less than they deserve.
it is not fair that the people that make the wrong decisions still seem to come out on top, being all happy and everything and you sit there and wonder what went wrong for you.
you cant stop your mind from contemplating whether there is actually something wrong with you or not.
and you never get an answer, do you?
i know i never have.
i always wonder what is wrong with me.
everybody will tell me im wrong.
don't do that.
it is irritating.
i like to be told the truth, even if it really does hurt, even though that is a little masochistic.
i say all of this because sooooo many people that i know are changing their relationships from single to with somebody.
i want to know why i cant, why i have to sit here and feel bad for myself.
could somebody just explain to me how you can have a relationship with someone without ever actually meeting them?
that would be great to know.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
I've Never Heard A Silence Quite This Loud...
How is it that some people know exactly what to say no matter what you are feeling?
Taylor Swift is one of those people.
For real, the new cd Speak Now is absolutely amazing.
I love the song Enchanted.
It describes me right at this moment.
Then again there are some people you really really wish would just say something.
Any single word from that person could make your night turn to day in the space of a heartbeat.
You pray fervently for that single word, maybe a short hello or in answer to simple question about a homework assignment.
They are just words but how much they mean is incredible.
Did anyone ever know how loud silence can be?
Let's do an exercise:
go sit in your room with no music or tv.
Turn your cell phone off and just sit there.
It may take a while but after a little bit the silence becomes too much, doesn't it?
I can't take too much silence.
It messes with my mind and I need to have noise.
I have come to realize that unless I am sleeping, I need some kind of noise.
So, to tie all of this together, there are people that can say the right things that need to be said to fill the silence that everybody encounters.
Finding the people that say the right things is incredibly difficult.
Let people fill the silence.
That's the whole point of being able to speak.
Even though some words are meaningless and some hurt, YOU are the one that has to decide what hurts you or slides past your heart. YOU make the words meaningful. You or the person who says them with the right intentions behind them.
Taylor Swift is one of those people.
For real, the new cd Speak Now is absolutely amazing.
I love the song Enchanted.
It describes me right at this moment.
Then again there are some people you really really wish would just say something.
Any single word from that person could make your night turn to day in the space of a heartbeat.
You pray fervently for that single word, maybe a short hello or in answer to simple question about a homework assignment.
They are just words but how much they mean is incredible.
Did anyone ever know how loud silence can be?
Let's do an exercise:
go sit in your room with no music or tv.
Turn your cell phone off and just sit there.
It may take a while but after a little bit the silence becomes too much, doesn't it?
I can't take too much silence.
It messes with my mind and I need to have noise.
I have come to realize that unless I am sleeping, I need some kind of noise.
So, to tie all of this together, there are people that can say the right things that need to be said to fill the silence that everybody encounters.
Finding the people that say the right things is incredibly difficult.
Let people fill the silence.
That's the whole point of being able to speak.
Even though some words are meaningless and some hurt, YOU are the one that has to decide what hurts you or slides past your heart. YOU make the words meaningful. You or the person who says them with the right intentions behind them.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Enchanted...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw0fETc9XEE
^lyrics to Enchanted by Taylor Swift.
Its funny how after all the things I have been through and how many times I have raised the tainted white flag, sooner or later, my heart starts beating again.
Somehow I start to feel again.
Somehow I get my hopes up all over again.
Hes a football player from Michigan.
Hes quick to smile and has an easy laugh.
He spaces out in psychology.
He usually drops his pen at least once per class period in effective writing.
He has a scar on his hand from slipping on ice and falling on a cd.
His eyes get lighter when he smiles.
He made my heart start beating again.
Somehow...
I still can't figure it out.
And magically, my least favorite has become the one I look forward to.
Somebody come down here and slap me, tell me to not make such a big deal of things.
*This night is sparkling, don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
This night is flawless, don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
I was enchanted to meet you
Please don't be in love with someone else
Please don't have somebody waiting on you*
^lyrics to Enchanted by Taylor Swift.
Its funny how after all the things I have been through and how many times I have raised the tainted white flag, sooner or later, my heart starts beating again.
Somehow I start to feel again.
Somehow I get my hopes up all over again.
Hes a football player from Michigan.
Hes quick to smile and has an easy laugh.
He spaces out in psychology.
He usually drops his pen at least once per class period in effective writing.
He has a scar on his hand from slipping on ice and falling on a cd.
His eyes get lighter when he smiles.
He made my heart start beating again.
Somehow...
I still can't figure it out.
And magically, my least favorite has become the one I look forward to.
Somebody come down here and slap me, tell me to not make such a big deal of things.
*This night is sparkling, don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
This night is flawless, don't you let it go
I'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew
I was enchanted to meet you
Please don't be in love with someone else
Please don't have somebody waiting on you*
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Fallout...
So I am utterly in love with Ellen Hopkins' books.
(Thank you Sarah. :D)
Anyways, I was reading the newest book this weekend and one page in the whole book stood out to me.
I love it so much!
This is it down there.
'Falling in love with someone is the surest highway to hurt that I know. When the door to love opens, the window to control closes. I have little power over my life as it is. The portal to pain is caring too deeply about anyone. That includes me, myself and I. It's scary to think I might never take a deep drink of forever love. Scarier still to gag on yet another deception. Too many lies in this frozen world. And too few destined mergers of the heart.'
That is just so beautiful to me.
I can 100% relate to that....
(Thank you Sarah. :D)
Anyways, I was reading the newest book this weekend and one page in the whole book stood out to me.
I love it so much!
This is it down there.
'Falling in love with someone is the surest highway to hurt that I know. When the door to love opens, the window to control closes. I have little power over my life as it is. The portal to pain is caring too deeply about anyone. That includes me, myself and I. It's scary to think I might never take a deep drink of forever love. Scarier still to gag on yet another deception. Too many lies in this frozen world. And too few destined mergers of the heart.'
That is just so beautiful to me.
I can 100% relate to that....
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Surrender...
I am done.
I give up.
I surrender.
The white flag is waving.
I can't keep picking my heart up off the floor every day like this.
I can't keep looking for you every single time I leave my dorm room.
I just can't.
I have to be numb to you and all the others, because you all are the same; you make smart girls like me fall for you without even realizing it and then you don't even notice we exist.
A snow ball in hell has a better chance of making it to the artic than I do of ever being with him.
How fair is that?
Well. I am done with it.
I can't take it anymore.
I am not going to keep piecing my heart back together after I see you smile.
Its not worth it is it?
You don't acknowledge my existence anyways.
Besides, she makes you smile.
Might as well have her instead of the unworthy, right?
I give up.
I surrender.
The white flag is waving.
I can't keep picking my heart up off the floor every day like this.
I can't keep looking for you every single time I leave my dorm room.
I just can't.
I have to be numb to you and all the others, because you all are the same; you make smart girls like me fall for you without even realizing it and then you don't even notice we exist.
A snow ball in hell has a better chance of making it to the artic than I do of ever being with him.
How fair is that?
Well. I am done with it.
I can't take it anymore.
I am not going to keep piecing my heart back together after I see you smile.
Its not worth it is it?
You don't acknowledge my existence anyways.
Besides, she makes you smile.
Might as well have her instead of the unworthy, right?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Withdrawal...
My dictionary says that withdrawal is the act of taking back or away something that has been granted or possessed.
I was granted with a smile, a glance across the room, a singular moment when everything in the world felt in line.
So why do, on the days that I don't see you, I feel like an addict coming off a high?
Why do I need those smiles to get me through the day, from meaningless class to meaningless class?
Why do I ache when I can't catch a short glimpse of the perfection I think you are?
On the days when I don't see your face, I am like a starving woman crawling through the desert in search of water.
Why is this?
I believe it is because I am an idiot who just entertained the notion for one brief moment that I could be perfect for you.
Know what?
I am not.
I am not your kind of perfect, the perfect that would allow me to fit my jigsaw-puzzle edges to yours and make a perfect picture.
I know that my fears and insecurities are holding me back.
But I also know that that is not the whole truth.
I realized it early on; I desire the stars when I can only bend down and reach the grass...
I was granted with a smile, a glance across the room, a singular moment when everything in the world felt in line.
So why do, on the days that I don't see you, I feel like an addict coming off a high?
Why do I need those smiles to get me through the day, from meaningless class to meaningless class?
Why do I ache when I can't catch a short glimpse of the perfection I think you are?
On the days when I don't see your face, I am like a starving woman crawling through the desert in search of water.
Why is this?
I believe it is because I am an idiot who just entertained the notion for one brief moment that I could be perfect for you.
Know what?
I am not.
I am not your kind of perfect, the perfect that would allow me to fit my jigsaw-puzzle edges to yours and make a perfect picture.
I know that my fears and insecurities are holding me back.
But I also know that that is not the whole truth.
I realized it early on; I desire the stars when I can only bend down and reach the grass...
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Strengths...
So, for my freshmen foundations class, we have to take this... personality test online. It is supposed to determine what your top 5 strengths are.
My top 5 are:
Empathy
Adaptability
Developer
Positivity
Input
For those who really care, I only agree with the first two and possibly the last one.
The website gave this description:
Empathy: You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective. You do not necessarily agree with each person’s perspective. You do not necessarily feel pity for each person’s predicament—this would be sympathy, not Empathy. You do not necessarily condone the choices each person makes, but you do understand. This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions. You anticipate the need. Where others grapple for words, you seem to find the right words and the right tone. You help people find the right phrases to express their feelings—to themselves as well as to others. You help them give voice to their emotional life. For all these reasons other people are drawn to you. (If people are drawn to me, why am I lonely ALL the time?!)
I don't know. I have been in a crazy crappy mood this week. Hope it gets better by tomorrow. I actually have plans....
My top 5 are:
Empathy
Adaptability
Developer
Positivity
Input
For those who really care, I only agree with the first two and possibly the last one.
The website gave this description:
Empathy: You can sense the emotions of those around you. You can feel what they are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through their eyes and share their perspective. You do not necessarily agree with each person’s perspective. You do not necessarily feel pity for each person’s predicament—this would be sympathy, not Empathy. You do not necessarily condone the choices each person makes, but you do understand. This instinctive ability to understand is powerful. You hear the unvoiced questions. You anticipate the need. Where others grapple for words, you seem to find the right words and the right tone. You help people find the right phrases to express their feelings—to themselves as well as to others. You help them give voice to their emotional life. For all these reasons other people are drawn to you. (If people are drawn to me, why am I lonely ALL the time?!)
I don't know. I have been in a crazy crappy mood this week. Hope it gets better by tomorrow. I actually have plans....
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Mindless...
Love is mindless.
For a brief, shimmering moment you can actually think that something good will come of it. But then your mind falls out of your butt and pretty soon your heart will follow.
It is pointless and stupid and the most lethal emotion.
Love is anger and lust and jealousy and passion and forgetfulness and, the most evil of all, hope.
Love is a full syringe of evil straight to the heart.
Love is fine while it lasts but when it ends (and it will end) all that is left is regret.
Love isn't eternal, so if it sticks its foot out and you trip over it, make sure you fall hard.
Make sure that you scrape your knees and rub your hands raw.
Gotta make the most of every experience, right?
Because it is the greatest mistake.
So if you are smart, you will learn from that mistake.
Learn to not take a shot of evil straight to the bloodstream.
That evil thing can bring the strongest person to their knees, make them sob; with longing, with envy, with skepticism.
It can bury you in agony, make you scream with it, crush you with it.
Some feel like they can pull down the moon when they are in love.
Some feel as though they could move a mountain.
Others drown in their love. Drowning can be good or it can be bad.
It can move you to rescue yourself.
Or you can let it suck you down.
Its a choice that is difficult to make.
Personally, I would rather save myself than go down with the ship(heart).
I don't want to feel anymore.
I don't want to let myself hope and have them crash down on my head.
I want to be numb.
I want to not have to deal with this every single day.
I don't want to walk down the sidewalk and see hands held together with love and almost burst into tears, longing for something I can't find.
I don't want to be told that I am wrong, that I am only 19 and have the rest of my life ahead of me.
I know that I can't find it like I know that gravity is real.
I want to be mindless by choice, not by a feeling that could slip through my hands like water.
For a brief, shimmering moment you can actually think that something good will come of it. But then your mind falls out of your butt and pretty soon your heart will follow.
It is pointless and stupid and the most lethal emotion.
Love is anger and lust and jealousy and passion and forgetfulness and, the most evil of all, hope.
Love is a full syringe of evil straight to the heart.
Love is fine while it lasts but when it ends (and it will end) all that is left is regret.
Love isn't eternal, so if it sticks its foot out and you trip over it, make sure you fall hard.
Make sure that you scrape your knees and rub your hands raw.
Gotta make the most of every experience, right?
Because it is the greatest mistake.
So if you are smart, you will learn from that mistake.
Learn to not take a shot of evil straight to the bloodstream.
That evil thing can bring the strongest person to their knees, make them sob; with longing, with envy, with skepticism.
It can bury you in agony, make you scream with it, crush you with it.
Some feel like they can pull down the moon when they are in love.
Some feel as though they could move a mountain.
Others drown in their love. Drowning can be good or it can be bad.
It can move you to rescue yourself.
Or you can let it suck you down.
Its a choice that is difficult to make.
Personally, I would rather save myself than go down with the ship(heart).
I don't want to feel anymore.
I don't want to let myself hope and have them crash down on my head.
I want to be numb.
I want to not have to deal with this every single day.
I don't want to walk down the sidewalk and see hands held together with love and almost burst into tears, longing for something I can't find.
I don't want to be told that I am wrong, that I am only 19 and have the rest of my life ahead of me.
I know that I can't find it like I know that gravity is real.
I want to be mindless by choice, not by a feeling that could slip through my hands like water.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Conversations...
this conversation occured on facebook between me and Josiah...
thoughts...?
Megan Snyder
I had a lot of fun playing Apples to Apples, even though what I thought was funny really wasn't. :) I even asked my parents to get me the game for Christmas. We need to have breakout group stuff like that more often. It was a great game to get to know people by.
Josiah Schaefer
Yeah it is :) I'm glad you had fun. And don't worry, you were doing much better that I was, I only had two cards at the end. I'm actually terrible at the game haha.
Megan Snyder
I am not sure its about skill. Its just a fun game. Anyway, you were sappy. That is better than dead. :)
Josiah Schaefer
Ha yeah that's true. Anyway I will definitely make sure to schedule another event like that soon. Maybe we will just play Apples to Apples again.
Megan Snyder
I am perfectly fine with that! That was so much fun! :D
Megan Snyder
Why are you never on chat?!?! lol.
Josiah Schaefer
That is because I am not a big fan of chat ;) I prefer emails or talking in person, makes for higher quality interaction I think :)
Megan Snyder
Good point. ;)
thoughts...?
Megan Snyder
I had a lot of fun playing Apples to Apples, even though what I thought was funny really wasn't. :) I even asked my parents to get me the game for Christmas. We need to have breakout group stuff like that more often. It was a great game to get to know people by.
Josiah Schaefer
Yeah it is :) I'm glad you had fun. And don't worry, you were doing much better that I was, I only had two cards at the end. I'm actually terrible at the game haha.
Megan Snyder
I am not sure its about skill. Its just a fun game. Anyway, you were sappy. That is better than dead. :)
Josiah Schaefer
Ha yeah that's true. Anyway I will definitely make sure to schedule another event like that soon. Maybe we will just play Apples to Apples again.
Megan Snyder
I am perfectly fine with that! That was so much fun! :D
Megan Snyder
Why are you never on chat?!?! lol.
Josiah Schaefer
That is because I am not a big fan of chat ;) I prefer emails or talking in person, makes for higher quality interaction I think :)
Megan Snyder
Good point. ;)
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Trees...
When you walk past a tree in the fall, you don't think 'oh, this could kill me.'
Do you?
You walk past and gaze at the crisp leaves that are sure to fall soon, bringing snow flakes shortly after.
You think of pumpkins and apple cider and Thanksgiving Day with your family and about how you should have worn a sweatshirt today.
Never would you think that a tree could kill you.
Today was the memorial service here on the campus of Grace College for freshman Mallori Kastner. She was buried yesterday in Wabash.
Last Friday, Mallori and her boyfriend Jeremy were by the lake laying in a hammock.
Apparently the roots of the tree were unstable and the tree fell on the two of them. Mallori died instantly while Jeremy was paralyzed from the neck down. He was airlifted to Fort Wayne and is still there now, though he is alert and is able to move his head. While it is a tragedy that Mallori is dead, I mourn not only for her family and friend but for Jeremy in particular. After he was roused from a surgery on Sunday morning, his parents turned on the radio. The dj was the one to break the news to him that Mallori, his girlfriend, had died. What a terrible way to find something like that out.I can't even imagine something like that. I would be utterly crushed and devastated.
Please, pray for Mallori's parents and for Jeremy's physical and emotional recovery.
Do you?
You walk past and gaze at the crisp leaves that are sure to fall soon, bringing snow flakes shortly after.
You think of pumpkins and apple cider and Thanksgiving Day with your family and about how you should have worn a sweatshirt today.
Never would you think that a tree could kill you.
Today was the memorial service here on the campus of Grace College for freshman Mallori Kastner. She was buried yesterday in Wabash.
Last Friday, Mallori and her boyfriend Jeremy were by the lake laying in a hammock.
Apparently the roots of the tree were unstable and the tree fell on the two of them. Mallori died instantly while Jeremy was paralyzed from the neck down. He was airlifted to Fort Wayne and is still there now, though he is alert and is able to move his head. While it is a tragedy that Mallori is dead, I mourn not only for her family and friend but for Jeremy in particular. After he was roused from a surgery on Sunday morning, his parents turned on the radio. The dj was the one to break the news to him that Mallori, his girlfriend, had died. What a terrible way to find something like that out.I can't even imagine something like that. I would be utterly crushed and devastated.
Please, pray for Mallori's parents and for Jeremy's physical and emotional recovery.
Monday, September 20, 2010
it was definitely a case of my wishful thinking...
he is just chivalrous.
it had nothing to do with me or interest in me.
at all.
because when we were playing apples to apples this evening, josiah gave his hoodie to another girl.
i know im reading way into the circumstances, because it was freezing in the sub shop today.
but i felt my stomach drop into my toes when he handed her his jacket.
the same jacket i wore...
it was chivalry.
it was courtesy.
it was nobility.
nothing more than that.
how could i ever think a guy like him would be interested in a girl like me?
after writing all kinds of papers this week, my brain must be fried...
it had nothing to do with me or interest in me.
at all.
because when we were playing apples to apples this evening, josiah gave his hoodie to another girl.
i know im reading way into the circumstances, because it was freezing in the sub shop today.
but i felt my stomach drop into my toes when he handed her his jacket.
the same jacket i wore...
it was chivalry.
it was courtesy.
it was nobility.
nothing more than that.
how could i ever think a guy like him would be interested in a girl like me?
after writing all kinds of papers this week, my brain must be fried...
Apples to Apples...
so.
earlier today, i saw an ad on facebook for the game Apples to Apples.
i have never played this game before but almost all my friends love it.
i posted as a status that i 'really want to learn how to play Apples to Apples!!!!!!'
as if in immediate response to this, i notice that i have a message notification.
i click on it thinking, oh, its just Tasha.
but instead, it is from josiah for my whole breakout group...
and it says 'Hey guys,
So in order to give our group so more chance for bonding, I was thinking we could play Apples to Apples Monday at 7 pm at the sub shop. Let me know if you are interested in doing that.'
i was very happy to say the least.
then i realized that i have class from 6-9 on mondays.
boo.
so i replied 'i so wish i could, but i have class. :('
his reply, 'oh ok, how about 9?'
he changed the plans to accomodate me...
is this a good thing?
no matter what, i am still going.
i still want to learn how to play this game that i have heard so much about...
any thoughts on this?
earlier today, i saw an ad on facebook for the game Apples to Apples.
i have never played this game before but almost all my friends love it.
i posted as a status that i 'really want to learn how to play Apples to Apples!!!!!!'
as if in immediate response to this, i notice that i have a message notification.
i click on it thinking, oh, its just Tasha.
but instead, it is from josiah for my whole breakout group...
and it says 'Hey guys,
So in order to give our group so more chance for bonding, I was thinking we could play Apples to Apples Monday at 7 pm at the sub shop. Let me know if you are interested in doing that.'
i was very happy to say the least.
then i realized that i have class from 6-9 on mondays.
boo.
so i replied 'i so wish i could, but i have class. :('
his reply, 'oh ok, how about 9?'
he changed the plans to accomodate me...
is this a good thing?
no matter what, i am still going.
i still want to learn how to play this game that i have heard so much about...
any thoughts on this?
Friday, September 17, 2010
Stagnant...
ugh.
life is completely static right now.
not moving forward and certainly not going back.
i dont like this at all.
i keep staring at my phone and wanting it to show a number that i havent seen yet, with a text that says 'hey, its josiah. wanna hang out?'
just the way he says my name in class gets to me.
sad isn't it?
i would love to have one thing go right in my life.
that would be more fantastic than i could imagine.
oh well... doesn't look like that is going to happen any time soon.
life is completely static right now.
not moving forward and certainly not going back.
i dont like this at all.
i keep staring at my phone and wanting it to show a number that i havent seen yet, with a text that says 'hey, its josiah. wanna hang out?'
just the way he says my name in class gets to me.
sad isn't it?
i would love to have one thing go right in my life.
that would be more fantastic than i could imagine.
oh well... doesn't look like that is going to happen any time soon.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Well, nevermind...
his reply:
Yeah I wouldn't mind a break from homework sometime. Maybe we can invite other people from our Break-out group and play apples to apples at the sub shop sometime. How's that sound?
meaning that he doesnt want to hang out with just me.
he wants to have other people there.
how sad is this?
Yeah I wouldn't mind a break from homework sometime. Maybe we can invite other people from our Break-out group and play apples to apples at the sub shop sometime. How's that sound?
meaning that he doesnt want to hang out with just me.
he wants to have other people there.
how sad is this?
My Stomach is in Knots...
i am really nauseous.
i only ate a lil bit of mac and cheese today and a granola bar.
i almost regret sending that message last night.
the anticipation is practically gnawing away at my nerves.
yup, that is right.
i took a risk last night and messaged josiah.
did it work?
no reply as of this moment...
i did give him my number tho...
maybe later...
but...
here is what i said:
So. You are cool. I can be cool too. Sometimes. :) We should get to know each other. Maybe. If you want to. Because I do. And I feel like I am babbling right now. I do that when I am nervous. Hopefully it will be seen as endearing rather than idiotic. :D Anyway. Um, if you need a break from studying... My number is 5743601540. :D
was it cheesy and lame?
pretty much yeah.
but if it gets me somewhere, who am i to complain?
i would really love some 'confidence in a box' from walmart right now...
:(
i only ate a lil bit of mac and cheese today and a granola bar.
i almost regret sending that message last night.
the anticipation is practically gnawing away at my nerves.
yup, that is right.
i took a risk last night and messaged josiah.
did it work?
no reply as of this moment...
i did give him my number tho...
maybe later...
but...
here is what i said:
So. You are cool. I can be cool too. Sometimes. :) We should get to know each other. Maybe. If you want to. Because I do. And I feel like I am babbling right now. I do that when I am nervous. Hopefully it will be seen as endearing rather than idiotic. :D Anyway. Um, if you need a break from studying... My number is 5743601540. :D
was it cheesy and lame?
pretty much yeah.
but if it gets me somewhere, who am i to complain?
i would really love some 'confidence in a box' from walmart right now...
:(
Monday, September 13, 2010
I Wanna Learn With You...
so.
my roommate, Ashley, and i were listening to her ipod in our room before she had to go to work.
this song came on:
How to Fall by Josh Wilson.
if you have not heard this, go listen to it.
NOW.
it describes my situation right now.
i love it.
Lyrics time now!!
It was prettier than poetry
The first time you said hello to me
Call it crazy, call it meant to be, yeah
But it didn’t take me long to see
That you mean more than anyone
I’m running in circles, jumping over hurdles
Working on a song to sing
I want to tell you how I’m feeling
Finding it hard to do
Cause I don’t know how to say it, don’t know how you’ll take it
Don’t know how to fall in love
But I want to learn with you
My friends say I should take it slow
But my dad says when you know, you know
So maybe I’ll just rent a car
And I’ll drive right back to where you are
Cause you mean more than anything
I never thought I’d drop my guard
Then you broke into my clumsy heart
my roommate, Ashley, and i were listening to her ipod in our room before she had to go to work.
this song came on:
How to Fall by Josh Wilson.
if you have not heard this, go listen to it.
NOW.
it describes my situation right now.
i love it.
Lyrics time now!!
It was prettier than poetry
The first time you said hello to me
Call it crazy, call it meant to be, yeah
But it didn’t take me long to see
That you mean more than anyone
I’m running in circles, jumping over hurdles
Working on a song to sing
I want to tell you how I’m feeling
Finding it hard to do
Cause I don’t know how to say it, don’t know how you’ll take it
Don’t know how to fall in love
But I want to learn with you
My friends say I should take it slow
But my dad says when you know, you know
So maybe I’ll just rent a car
And I’ll drive right back to where you are
Cause you mean more than anything
I never thought I’d drop my guard
Then you broke into my clumsy heart
Sunday, September 12, 2010
A Sign...
it was selfish.
and stupid.
but i did it anyway because i am human.
i actually prayed for a sign.
a sign to tell me that who i wanted wasnt going to waste my time.
a sign telling me that who i was falling for wasnt a bad choice.
i think i got my sign.
maybe. or was it wishful thinking?
i will never ever know.
i would like to believe that i got a good sign.
but it is so hard to tell with something like this...
anyways, what happened was that i fell for my breakout group leader, josiah.
he is a junior majoring in psychology and he is gorgeous. and nice. and sweet. and a Christian guy. which makes him, in a word, perfect.
so yesterday was a little thing called 'The Hike.' it wasnt a hike but all the freshmen have to do a scavenger hunt around campus, make cardboard boats, and become team players with their breakout groups.
after the scavenger hunt we went to eat dinner. here is where i prayed for a sign, a billboard letting me know that taking a risk would be worth it this time. i prayed so selfishly. it was terrible. after dinner, we headed down to the lake and it was misting and i freeze VERY easily. this may be a bad thing at times, but yesterday it was ultimately a good thing.
on the way to the lake, i was walking with josiah and shivering. he asked me if i wanted his jacket. i felt like such a jerk but i was so cold my hands were turning purple. 'are you sure you don't need it? it might start raining any second' i said.
'yeah im sure. here.' he said and unzipped it and handed it to me.
needless to say i was warm on the inside as well as the outside.
he didnt ask for it back. but i returned it later cuz i didnt want to be a thief. after my suitemate joy and i went to watch toy story 3, i came back to my room and thanked him on facebook. if you want to read it, look it up. is that flirting or is it just me who sees that?
so. maybe this will go somewhere. maybe not. i have no way of knowing.
and i hate uncertainty.
grr.
but also
yay!
and stupid.
but i did it anyway because i am human.
i actually prayed for a sign.
a sign to tell me that who i wanted wasnt going to waste my time.
a sign telling me that who i was falling for wasnt a bad choice.
i think i got my sign.
maybe. or was it wishful thinking?
i will never ever know.
i would like to believe that i got a good sign.
but it is so hard to tell with something like this...
anyways, what happened was that i fell for my breakout group leader, josiah.
he is a junior majoring in psychology and he is gorgeous. and nice. and sweet. and a Christian guy. which makes him, in a word, perfect.
so yesterday was a little thing called 'The Hike.' it wasnt a hike but all the freshmen have to do a scavenger hunt around campus, make cardboard boats, and become team players with their breakout groups.
after the scavenger hunt we went to eat dinner. here is where i prayed for a sign, a billboard letting me know that taking a risk would be worth it this time. i prayed so selfishly. it was terrible. after dinner, we headed down to the lake and it was misting and i freeze VERY easily. this may be a bad thing at times, but yesterday it was ultimately a good thing.
on the way to the lake, i was walking with josiah and shivering. he asked me if i wanted his jacket. i felt like such a jerk but i was so cold my hands were turning purple. 'are you sure you don't need it? it might start raining any second' i said.
'yeah im sure. here.' he said and unzipped it and handed it to me.
needless to say i was warm on the inside as well as the outside.
he didnt ask for it back. but i returned it later cuz i didnt want to be a thief. after my suitemate joy and i went to watch toy story 3, i came back to my room and thanked him on facebook. if you want to read it, look it up. is that flirting or is it just me who sees that?
so. maybe this will go somewhere. maybe not. i have no way of knowing.
and i hate uncertainty.
grr.
but also
yay!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
a new path....
i am an official college student and am in the second week of life on campus.
its a huge change but i love it.
i love that im at a Christian school.
we actually get to pray in class!!!!!
and chapel is muy fantastico.
i wish it was everyday.
and i met a boy.
who only knows i exist because he is my freshman breakout group leader.
hes a junior.
i fall for the guys i cant have.
lame.
oh well.
more homework to do!
its a huge change but i love it.
i love that im at a Christian school.
we actually get to pray in class!!!!!
and chapel is muy fantastico.
i wish it was everyday.
and i met a boy.
who only knows i exist because he is my freshman breakout group leader.
hes a junior.
i fall for the guys i cant have.
lame.
oh well.
more homework to do!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
One Chance...
just once i would LOVE to have a chance.
a chance to prove myself.
a chance to show people that even tho im not perfect by myself, i can be perfect for them.
a chance to make them love me.
will i ever get a chance like that? no.
im not that lucky.
everytime i see a chance, an open door, it gets slammed in my face, and boarded up.
just once i would like to show that im not invisible.
i could have sworn that i saw a crack in the wall just big enough for me to slip thru.
but that was sealed up before i could get in.
nothing ever works out for me.
ever.
i see this beautiful ray of sunlight and then in a blink of the eye, its gone, covered by a bleak gray cloud.
is there anything i can do?
if there is i have no idea what it is.
a chance to prove myself.
a chance to show people that even tho im not perfect by myself, i can be perfect for them.
a chance to make them love me.
will i ever get a chance like that? no.
im not that lucky.
everytime i see a chance, an open door, it gets slammed in my face, and boarded up.
just once i would like to show that im not invisible.
i could have sworn that i saw a crack in the wall just big enough for me to slip thru.
but that was sealed up before i could get in.
nothing ever works out for me.
ever.
i see this beautiful ray of sunlight and then in a blink of the eye, its gone, covered by a bleak gray cloud.
is there anything i can do?
if there is i have no idea what it is.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Love Looks Not With the Eyes...
but with the mind....
this line is from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream", spoken by Helena.
i love this play. it is my favorite Shakespeare play.
but thats not always true is it?
no. no matter what some people say, the very first thing anybody notices about anyone else is their looks.
if you like a person's looks, then you are more likely to get to know them.
today's society is all about the physical appearance.
and thats all people notice.
if somebody passes you when you go into walmart and just keeps walking, they didnt notice you no matter how hard you wish they would.
i would kill to be pretty, fix the imperfections.
i wish appearances were contagious like an illness, so that i could be pretty like every single one of my friends.
sad and pathetic right?
and i know no matter how much my awesome friends tell me im pretty, i wont believe it.
i cant believe it because the mirror and the scale tell me otherwise...
this line is from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream", spoken by Helena.
i love this play. it is my favorite Shakespeare play.
but thats not always true is it?
no. no matter what some people say, the very first thing anybody notices about anyone else is their looks.
if you like a person's looks, then you are more likely to get to know them.
today's society is all about the physical appearance.
and thats all people notice.
if somebody passes you when you go into walmart and just keeps walking, they didnt notice you no matter how hard you wish they would.
i would kill to be pretty, fix the imperfections.
i wish appearances were contagious like an illness, so that i could be pretty like every single one of my friends.
sad and pathetic right?
and i know no matter how much my awesome friends tell me im pretty, i wont believe it.
i cant believe it because the mirror and the scale tell me otherwise...
Monday, August 16, 2010
HELP!!!!!
ok, so at my brother's bullriding thing where he goes to practice, there is this guy named Brandon.
i know his first name and that he is a bullrider.
o and that he is very very attractive.
i wish i knew if he was single.
i wish i could just walk up to him and be like 'hey, i think you're cute.'
but that is way beyond my conversational capacity.
i freeze whenever i am in close proximity to an attractive member of the opposite sex.
it is so very ridiculous.
i can make eye contact and smile. that is supposed to be the invitation to come talk to me.
hasnt happened.
dont think it will happen because i am such a wimp.
if i could change two things about myself they would be: 1.) make myself skinny and 2.) make myself able to talk to boys without screwing up.
its not going to happen.
but...
any advice?
muchas gracias.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Silly Fantasy...
so my mom and her bf have been planning on getting married for, like, 3 years.
she is such a procrastinator.
my mom and i have been collecting Brides magazines.
i buy the new one every month.
its so fun to sit down with my mom and just flip through the pages and pages of white dresses.
is it so silly that i 19 year old girl is planning her never-wedding?
i think no. :)
i know (relatively) what style of dress i want.
i know what kind of ring i want. (altho if some guy actually proposed, i would take a plastic ring from a claw machine. lol)
colors are still a debate. (possibly emerald green and cerulean? or a bright, sunny yellow and a sparkly silver? the debate still rages!)
i want a five tier, multi-flavored cake. (one tier will be red velvet. no compromises on this one.
i want a medium-sized wedding with family and friends and nobody that i dont like.
i want a wedding somewhere non-traditional, but with a traditional service.
i have my first dance song already picked out. (i've had it since freshman year. one listen and i knew it would be the one i wanted to dance with my 'possible' to.)
its so unrealistic, but i love tearing out pages from magazines and keeping them in my purple wedding folder.
just dreaming about it makes my head feel light.
its a silly fantasy, but its MY silly fantasy.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
My First Kiss Went A Little Like This.....
:D
i am obsessed with the song "My First Kiss" by 3oh!3. :)
so, i am going to tell the story of my first kiss.
it was towards the end of 8th grade.
my bf then was in the band and it was the night of the spring concert.
he had told me that i didnt have to come to concert but i went anyway.
the gym was hot and crowded.
he had no idea i was there though i tried to catch his eye throughout the whole thing.
after the concert, the band was released and he was swallowed up by the swarm of people that moved to exit the gym.
he never saw me as i slipped my hand into his and gave his fingers a squeeze.
his whole face lit up when he saw it was me.
"where did you come from?" he asked with a silly grin on his face.
"i've been here for the whole concert. you didnt see me?"
he laughed and shook his head.
the band moved toward the band room and still we held hands thru the whole evening.
my mom came to pick me up and he walked me out to the front of the school.
we were the only ones out there that night.
the stars above us were beautiful, like little sprinkles on a navy blue cupcake.
he squeezed my hand and pulled me towards him.
he kissed me so softly and sweetly, that i will never forget that moment for as long as i live.
ever since then i have longed for the same feeling that he gave me.
i dont think i will ever find it...
Monday, August 9, 2010
Lights...
some people say that when you have a near-death experience, your life flashes before your eyes.
my dad, brother and i were on our way back from taking one of michael's friends home after leaving michigan. it was about 11:30 at night and we were less than a mile from our house.
i was in the front seat, acting goofy like i normally do when i am so tired that all i can do is laugh. but i was alert enough to see the deer's eyes flash in the glow of our headlights. i pointed and my dad slowed down. it just stood there for a moment. as we went to drive past it, it just ran into the road. we couldn't avoid it. we hit it with the center of the front of the car. it tried to get away but fell and was stuck in the front tire on my side of the car. i didnt scream but i moved to cover my face. it didnt work. i watched the deer's body get slammed into the ground and thought for sure that we were going to run off the road. but thats not all i caught sight of. i could fireflies dancing in the cornfield and the stars twinkling above us in a mirror reflection of the fireflies. i saw lights all around. the glare from the car's headlamps shining back from the reflectors on the road. it was so crazy and it scared me half to death. my fingers shake as i type this.
Friday, August 6, 2010
You and Me Got Lost Somewhere....
he used to be my best guy friend.
i could talk to him about anything and everything and he would always be honest.
we would talk basically everyday.
now, its all different.
he's with her and i think that because of her, he is different.
and because of Promises, promises.
he used to love me.
or at least thats what he said.
i think that maybe he was just in love with the idea of love.
he wrote me a 101 Reasons Why I Am Amazing list.
he wanted to be with me when i wasnt sure of where my life was heading.
i was denying everything back then.
now, its all different.
i saw them together the other day as i pulled into dollar general.
i ducked down and pretended to be digging in my purse.
facing them together like that would have been torture.
i was greatly relieved that he didnt see me, and also a little shattered too.
how could such a great friendship come to that?
i know why i felt that way now.
i asked my sissy why i couldnt look at his name without feeling sad.
she told me, quite simply, "because you love him."
well, of course i do.
he was my best friend.
now, i dont want to even text him for fear that he is with her.
i envy her and wish it was me holding his hand.
but that cant be. ever.
wanna know how i know this?
because i asked him point blank.
no matter what i do, it wont change things. ever.
we got lost somewhere and cant find our way back....
if you can find your way to me, i will be waiting.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Rambling...
i definitely have nothing to talk about.
but i am bored.
so i am going to ramble.
when i went out with sarah and crysania, i bought a cupcake cookbook. my mom laughed at me because my first cookbook was all about cupcakes.
it had recipes for different kinds of cupcakes (like Pink Lemonade and Chocolate Chip) and it showed you how to decorate different things. there were instructions for how to make a hedge-hog and a moose and a fish and a mouse and a turtle. i want a cupcake day just to make cupcakes! :)
o and the blog i wrote about promises? sometimes they turn out for the best....
hmmm. what else? i am addicted to Cafe World on facebook. its pretty ridiculous.
ummm.....wow. im boring.
ok, bye! :)
but i am bored.
so i am going to ramble.
when i went out with sarah and crysania, i bought a cupcake cookbook. my mom laughed at me because my first cookbook was all about cupcakes.
it had recipes for different kinds of cupcakes (like Pink Lemonade and Chocolate Chip) and it showed you how to decorate different things. there were instructions for how to make a hedge-hog and a moose and a fish and a mouse and a turtle. i want a cupcake day just to make cupcakes! :)
o and the blog i wrote about promises? sometimes they turn out for the best....
hmmm. what else? i am addicted to Cafe World on facebook. its pretty ridiculous.
ummm.....wow. im boring.
ok, bye! :)
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Destruction and Redemption
wow.
church this morning was amazing.
my pastor preached about the 7 Trumpets in Revelation.
Revelations, as a whole, is a story, not about the destruction of humanity, but of the redemption that lies in God. we, as His followers, must have faith that for all the crap we have to done to earn ourselves a hole in the pits of Hell has been forgiven as long as we place our faith in Him.
intense isn't it?
but finding hope in a sea of death and destruction isnt the easiest thing to do is it?
no, not really.
but it can happen.
so, hope lies in a person's redemption. if you are not redeemed, do you have anything to look forward to when the whole earth crumbles around you? nope.
but for those who have been forgiven and who have belief in the One True King, then all's well that ends well. kinda amazing, huh?
after the message, we sang a song: "I Give You My Heart" by Hillsong.
i havent felt so in touch with my Savior in so long as when i sang that.
i sang with passion in my voice and it made me feel alive.
incredible.
here are the lyrics.
This is my desire
To honour You
Lord, with all my heart
I worship You
All I have within me
I give You praise
All that I adore
Is in You
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my song
I live for you alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I'm awake
Lord, have Your ways in me
so simple and still so powerful.
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