I Hope It Isn't

It's an ache in the pit of my stomach. It's nestled in that spot between my belly button and my spine. It's like that aching, yearning emptiness you feel in your stomach when you're about to cry. That's how I feel when he walks past me. Like I can't breathe. All the air has suddenly been sucked from my lungs and I can't seem to get it back. Like I could cry or choke or laugh all in the same moment. I don't know what to call it really. My heart speeds up. My head hurts. My plans sweat. I can't breathe. Love? Can't be. Love is supposed to be easy and free and beautiful isn't it? How could this sickening, sinking feeling in my gut be love? I hope it isn't. I hope this isn't what little girls wait all their lives to fall into. It's miserable. I hate feeling so open and vulnerable and dependent when he comes around. I'd like to think I can love someone and be independent too. I'd like to think I don't have to become some needy, clingy woman just because I fell in love. No this isn't love. I don't know what it is. I feel it even now as I write. It's awful. I hope this isn't love. If it is, I feel as though I've dreamt my whole life of something beautiful and magical that is absolutely awful in reality. Please don't let this be love...

What is it about winter?

The winter is closing in fast. Although I know we'll have no snow, and hardly any frost, the chilling air is binding us closer than close. It's "sweater weather" and time for romantic nights by the fire place surrounded by friends and loved ones. I can't help but wonder why it's the winter that brings out our desire for human companionship. Maybe it's the chill in the air that makes us want to snuggle close with someone. Maybe it's the simple fact that we've made it almost twelve months without anyone to call your own. I wonder if the ones we daydream about dream of us. I wonder if they wonder if we're dreaming about them. I wonder if we find solace in cups of tea and oversized sweaters and fuzzy socks and cats because we're lonely on the inside. I know I am. I'm lonely inside and out and while I find no solace in cats in particular, the other things though, they appeal to me. Maybe it's the mistletoe at Christmas and the New Years midnight kiss. Maybe that's what makes the winter so nostalgic for relationships. Or maybe it's nothing in particular at all. Maybe winter is just a more romanticized time of year.

Waiting for Winter

I'm waiting for winter

& twinkling lights

I'm waiting for winter

& icy cold nights

 

I'm waiting for winter

& holding my breath

I'm waiting for winter

& ready to rest

 

I'm waiting for winter

& I'm all alone

I'm waiting for winter

& for your coming home

 

I'm waiting for winter

& for your sunny smile

I'm waiting for winter

& its been quite a while

 

I'm waiting for winter

& still loving you

I'm waiting for winter

& waiting for you.

 

I'm waiting for winter

I'm waiting for you



Bitter Reasoning

I’m bitter. I can own it. And I have me reasons. But if you’re reading this and you know me, and you want to know why, here’s your answer:

1. My best friend of eight years, and first boyfriend decided to turn his back on me in the sixth grade. I thought nothing of it and assumed once we got into jr.high, everything would work out. Fate tore us apart, sending us to different schools but we were determined to stay intact. We wrote one another letters and hung out on the very rare occasion that we had free time and on my fifteenth birthday, I was extatic to get to spend time with him at my party. As the day went on, he became more distant, and began to spend more time with my friends that he’d never met than me. I was hurt. I was embarrassed. Frankly, I was a little angry. At the end of the night, he decided to tell me that he was gay. That was his big reason for spending no time with me, because he didn’t know how I would handle it.

I am NOT going to turn down a friendship with someone, or look down on someone because they’ve chosen that lifestyle. When he told me, I was mostly confused. I mean, hello, we dated remember?  I felt like I didn’t know him anymore. More than anything, I was hurt that he took my friends away from me on my birthday and shared that part of himself with them and not with me.  By the middle of freshman year he was pretending not to know who I was. What friend of eight years drops a bomb like that and then pretends not to know you? He eventually texted me, telling me how I was a bad friend and I was mean and we got into an explosive fight, from which we never recovered. I miss him to this day.

2. The next friendship incident blew up in my face sophomore year around time for my sweet sixteen. I’m picky when it comes to who I want to spend time with, and I’ll admit that. One of my closest friends had a friend that got on my nerves almost all of the time. Naturally, I had no intentions of inviting this “friend-of-a-friend” to the day that was supposed to commemorate turning 16. When my “best friend” found out I wasn’t inviting her annoying tag along, she refused to come to my party. In addition, she told the other girl to plan her party for the SAME DAY as mine, and not invite me. Again an argument ensued and I was left without a few more friends. In case you were wondering, the party went off without a hitch and was spectacular without them, but I digress.

3. Finally, the one that sent me over the edge. I wasn’t bitter yet. Not yet. Until the summer after my sophomore year. This one gets kind of messy, so if you’re still with me, hang on. My best friend (and when I say best friend I do mean soul-sister-other-half-of-me-sister-from-another-mister) had some problems with jealousy. This was old news, I would bring someone around, she would get jealous and angry and we would argue until we sorted it out. That summer, we went on a trip with a whole crew of our friends. One night, we were on the porch and a few of my guy friends that I had gotten extremely close to over the week, came and asked me to go walk and talk with them. I got up, thinking nothing of it. When I got back, my friend was in her cot crying her eyes out. I had a feeling it was somehow my fault when she said “nothing” in reply to my “what’s going on?” I let it go and the next day was frozen out. I spent the last day of our trip on the river with the guys since she wouldn't talk to me.  We all spent the following week together and the entire week she froze me out, laughed at the top of her lungs when she passed me, and made sure I saw her having a good time with everyone except me. I was done. When we got home I called her, she denied it and said I was a bad friend and it was all my fault. Needless to say, we decided to take a break from our friendship. That happened three years ago.

I can’t seem to see what I did wrong in any of these situations, but obviously I either suck at choosing friends or I suck at keeping them.  Either way, this is why I’m bitter. I don’t think I can keep a friend without it going haywire and in turn, I push people away whenever I start to get to close. I do it to everyone, friends, family, guys, anyone who tries to get close is met with a steel wall of opposition because in all honesty, I’m too broken on the inside to try again.

It sucks to be so stone cold.  I’ve gone on one date.  I’ve been single for four years now.  I can count on one hand the people I talk to daily and they are all blood relatives of mine.  I talk to two of my friends maybe once every other week. My life consist of school, home and church, sometimes in that order. And the problem is, though I’m lonely, I’m scared to be surrounded too. I’m so desperately lonely that I cry… a lot…. And it doesn’t help for very long before I start feeling empty again. I try and reach out but I just can’t. I’m no good at it. I’ve gotten bitter and jaded and I’m only 18. Is this the life I would have chosen for me? No, probably not. But it’s the one I got, so I’m trying to work though it the best I can.

Colorblind

They say it isn't good to see things black and white. You're supposed to see the grey areas in between and have a little give and take. You're supposed to see things in full color. The idea behind this is that we don't see two starkly contrasted categories, but a mix of hues and pallets and colors where things can mingle and become one with another. This is nice, I suppose, in theory. It gives a bad man credit for the right he's done in his life. It makes second chances necessary because it proposes that maybe that one instance wasn't exactly representative of how it will be every time. But the way I see it, seeing in color gives all the negative things a foothold. It gives the advantage to the bad and disregards the good.
I'm not talking skin color or ethnicity or anything here, because when it comes to people, I'm a one color person. I don't see the color of peoples skin, I see, rather the color of their heart. And in this matter, I have no intentions of being color-sighted. I believe that sometimes, being colorblind is the best way to protect yourself.
When you see it in black and white, that boy who hit you is scum. He doesn't get another chance. That girl who kissed your best friend is a distant memory. She doesn't get to make a fool of you again. Those people who used you for your money or your fame or your popularity aren't friends. They're users.
Its a harsh way to view things, I understand. But I guess I'm bitter in that way. When it comes to people's intentions, for me, they are very plainly black or white. Good or bad. Wrong or right. I've been hurt too many times to give people much of a grey area to hide in. Being colorblind isn't a very accepted way to see things. We're supposed to give everyone infinite chances and forgive and forget and all that lovely jazz. But here's the thing, at what point do you stand up for yourself? At what point do you stop being a doormat? At what point are we "allowed" to say enough is enough.
Many of you may not agree with my black and white ideology, but for me, its a measure of self-defense. And I refuse to give it up. I used to be the infinite chance giver, believe me, so I wasn't born with mentality. I chose it. I chose to b e colorblind when it comes to other people and their intentions with me. And honestly, its a daily choice I make, some days are greyer than others and some are stark and apparent, but I choose, and proudly so, I choose to be colorblind. For the sake of me. No one else.

Fragility and Strength

I've been thinking a lot about the things our lives are made of and their fragility or, their tendency to shatter or break. We can't survive with out any of them. And almost everything is fragile. Promises are easily broken, and in turn trust. Hope can be torn to shreds in a moment as can plans and dreams and ideas. They all break down. They can all be ripped apart. They're all fragile. Our bones break. Our muscles tear. Our hearts shatter. Our cars break down. Our homes can be destroyed. Our belongings can vanish in a instant. When you begin to think of things in terms if fragility, you begin to realize how unstable our lives really are.
In turn, there are few things I personally can deem as constant.
Air. Air cannot be physically torn or broken or ripped. It can hardly be felt, yet it sustains our lives daily.
The earth, though it may implode one day or crash into another planet or some insane thing like that, is constant. It's not fragile in the sense that something I do could instantaneously destroy it.
The idea that so many vital things are so fragile is frightening yet oddly inspiring. We have been given the gift of perseverance on a daily basis to sustain life though these elements are so unreliable. Life really is a miracle, and I thank God daily for my fragility, for it is through my weakness that his strengths are made apparent. I will gladly be the fragile vessel if it means his glory may be shown through me.

{2 Corinthians 12:9}
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

My Destiny

You can create worlds, lives, love, tragedy, family, hope, dreams, plots, you can create anything imaginable when you write. This is why I fell in love with the art of writing. The fact that one's words can move another to tears or to action is so powerful. I live for those moments where I read a quote and I feel like the author crawled inside my heart and wrote everything I'm feeling. I live for those moments when I read something that give me an instantaneous new outlook on life. I live for those moments when I read something and am suddenly comprehending something that never made sense before. But more than that, I live to write something that gives someone else one of those moments. To think that some mixture of words i could create could resonate with another soul in the way other's words resonate with me is overwhelming and astonishing and it's exactly what I want. I read that a writer doesn't merely want to write, but has to. And I do. In my heart and soul I have an insatiable need to write. My heart salivates at the thought of an empty spiral or sheet of paper. My mind wanders in the wee hours of the morning into places and lands that exist not on this plane. Writing is what I am meant to do. I know, in my soul, in the deepest darkest part of my heart, I KNOW I am meant to write. It's my destiny.