I’m stronger than you believe me to be.
Fuck an apology, I’m not sorry for anything.
I trust the wrong people. I get stepped on. I get used. I get hurt. But I don’t get bitter. I don’t get angry. Because I know that for every one person who’s hurt me, there’s two that will fix me. I don’t need a perfect life, I need a real life. I’m glad I can feel these ups and downs, because it means I’m alive.
It’d be great to always be happy, but then I wouldn’t appreciate it unless I had been sad before. I don’t really know how to explain it. Because coming to terms with things is strange and confusing. But everything happens for a reason.
The soul is forever hungry, like the light from a candle.
It constantly craves adventure. It loves getting lost while driving with friends in the middle of the night and taking until dawn to find the way home. It loves drinking all night and screaming and yelling at the top of its lungs. It loves dancing without pants on. It never takes the beaten path. It loves laying out on the grass and watching the sun set and night overwhelm the sky. It loves counting the starts until it falls asleep. It loves old jeeps and bad boys. It loves late night kisses and doing stupid things. It’s daring and indecisive. It breaks walls and rebels. It wrestles with dreams and hopes. It’s brave and beautiful.
\When the soul is finally full to the brim with memories, happiness and love, it fades away like the light from a candle.
And the world is forever just a little bit darker without them.
I want someone to walk with me back home and shyly ask to spend the night. I want someone to hold me close when we sleep so I wake up feeling safe and warm in the morning. I want someone to kiss my forehead and ask to take me to breakfast. I want someone to tangle their fingers with mine. I want someone to make cheesy jokes with me and play pokemon on Saturday afternoons and to walk with me in the evening to get pizza. I want little games and stupid puns. I want someone to have arms to keep around me. But I don’t want him to be innocent. I want late night blunt rides and a few black and mild’s. I want shot after shot after shot, red-faced confessions and slurred I love you’s. I want 3 AM sex in the back of a car. I want angry and passionate arguments that end in furious kisses and tight hugs. I want to go to parties and go to clubs. I want to live my life. But I want that someone with me.
In the last 18 years, I’ve learned a great deal about life and, as I am young and still naive, I know I will continue to learn much much more. But this is life from my 18.5 year old eyes.
If you haven’t had gay/lesbian moments with your best friend, you really aren’t best friends. I’ve realized after six years with my best friends from high school and twelve from my best friend in my neighborhood, no real best friendship is complete without having absolutely ridiculous and slightly homosexual moments with one another. Me and my friends joke and kiss each other, we titty slap each other and crotch tap each other almost constantly. We pretend to sext with each other and laugh all the while. If you are THAT uncomfortable with your best friend that you can’t slap his or her ass when you walk down the hall or hold hands walking through a crowded mall, you really aren’t that great of best friends.
You’re going to break promises you make to others, but most promises you break are ones that you’ve made to yourself. I made so many promises to people growing up, and only a few of them I have really broken fully, but I’ve broken nearly every promise I made to myself. I promised myself I’d lose weight, only to achieve my goal and gain it all back. I promised to finish my paper a week in advance and I found myself rushing to get it done an hour before the deadline. I promised I wouldn’t drink until I was 21 and promised I would never smoke weed. Ha, that was a funny one. To be honest, these aren’t promises that I regret. I can lose weight for the rest of my life but I’d rather go out to friendly’s with my friends right now and split a sundae than sit in my room eating celery sticks and counting calories constantly. Although the stress killed me, I aced that exam I studied for instead of finishing my paper in advanced and although I had absolutely promised myself I wouldn’t drink or smoke in college, doing so gave me the best and most fun experiences I’ve ever had and I wouldn’t give that up for the world.
You will become the person you swore you’d never be. Again, I never thought I’d be a drinker, let alone a smoker. But here I am, reminiscing about drunken friday night adventures I had in college and, again, I don’t regret a thing. Now, the person you swore you’d never be might be the person who’s most happiest with themselves, or you might hate yourself in the end. This is your journey and your journey alone. But explore all your possibilities or else you’ll be living an unfulfilled life.
Being a part of a cause much greater than yourself fills you with strength, hope and positivity. Nothing makes you feel greater than the idea of you being a part of a cause and actually making a difference. Whether it be by planting a tree, taking care of animals at a shelter or helping to feed the homeless, your work will not go unrewarded.
Karma exists! Praise God, praise Allah, praise Jesus, amen! Karma, indeed, does exist my friends. And it comes full force. Let me tell you a short story of how my friend got a nice fresh cup of instant karma. One late afternoon he was making a nasty joke about me and how someone hated me for being bitchy and less than two seconds later, as he was swinging his lanyard with his keys attached, they flung and hit him in the eye. Immediate payback thanks to karma. Leave your payback to karma because she does come and bite others in the ass and she does treat you with kindness when she knows you didn’t try and bite their asses for her. ;)
Nothing quite beats the the first shot of Jameson on a Friday night; it burns like wildfire down the back of your throat. But it’s pleasant, and it makes you gasp and smile a little. After a long week, it reminds you that despite the stress, the frustration, the exhaustion, you’re still standing. That you’re still alive. Your eyes gloss over and your cheeks redden with the soft glow of a buzz coming on. You feel strong again and for the first time in a long time, you breath without effort. Your laughs come with ease and the unmistaken shimmer of happiness overwhelms you. One, two, three, four, you lose count. But you can’t say that you care. You dive head first into every drink; everyone suddenly becomes your best friend and your therapist and your mother and everything that comes in between and suddenly, everything feels great. For the first time since you can remember, everything really is okay.
I find pictures of you every now and then. Tucked away in the very corner of my closet, the same closet I swear I’ve cleaned dozens of times. But there you are. Covered in a thin layer of dust. Smiling at me with a little chubbier and younger me tucked tightly under your arm. I tilt my head and allow myself a smile and suddenly the sun shines brightly through my window. A bright white glare forms over your face, I can’t see your eyes and the way they wrinkled slightly whenever you smiled. I can’t see the couple of curls that always fell over your ears.
But I can see me. I’m still smiling, even as your face is whited out by the sun. I’m still grinning like a dork, with autumn leaves tucked into my hair. I’m still smiling.
I can feel the sun warm my back, now, the goosebumps that I once had when I found your picture are gone now and all that’s left is the light out my window shining over me. I tuck your picture back into the corner of my closet, like I had tucked you back in my heart a long time ago. And I feel a soft release of closure, a closure that I was almost sure that I had before. But this feels much different. I can feel my smile coming a little more naturally. And for some reason, I can’t remember your face. Your smile. I can only remember that bright white light and me smiling away without you.
As a teenager, you’re expected to be and do a lot of things. You’re expected to act like an adult, even though you’re still treated like a child. Your parents expect you to play sports and get straight A’s. Society expects you to go out and party like a wild child, smoke some herb and run free like the young little rascals you are. But, let’s face the facts that you and I both know are true, this rarely ever happens. There’s a lot of drama and a lot of tears, there’s a lot of days that you’d like to go out with your friends, but you aren’t invited. There are a lot of nights you stay up until three just to get homework done, and you’re still expected to get up at six and be ready and attentive for classes at seven thirty. There are nights, more often than not, that you’ll listen to your parents fight with each other and scream at you for your subpar grades and your lack of interest in anything going on around you. You don’t get a word in: you never really do. Some of you go out and drink and smoke and live, but you’re still lost. You’re still confused. You’re living the dream, but you have no direction. And you don’t know why.
You’re exhausted and looking for some salvation. You’re looking for some sign, from God or anything else out there, that you aren’t alone, that you aren’t the only one suffering through this every day. Well, if you were looking for something…
This is it.
