This blog is all things I have written myself, unless I say otherwise. I just thought I should point that out, because I was asked.

Last night my boyfriend broke up with me...well, actually I broke up with him. It's all a very long and complicated story. I'm spending New Years alone, probably drunk and crying. I have a drinking problem. I'm dealing with it though. Anyway, I guess there's not a real point to this other than I don't want to trust people anymore. I don't want to move out of my bed. I gave someone myself again, only to get hurt again.

I feel betrayed and hopeless.

You will have an interesting life, I’ve no doubts about that. You will have experiences that some people will never live, because you are free and careless. However, you will never genuinely do anything with it. You will never have a job or be what society considers successful, what I suppose I consider successful as well. Sometimes though it makes me wonder if the real success in life is being adventurous.

It takes hardships, obstacles and character flaws to find the laughs that will echo throughout your lifetime and the smiles that will be eternally etched in to your predominantly fleeting memory.

This is the first time I’ve been able to cry without having to be drunk or high. This is the first time that I have looked in to myself and found something that I never thought would come back. I said to myself, what I would have said to anyone willing to listen, “I never thought I would feel this again. I thought that this was the end.” Despite how cliche it all is and how unbareably infantile my thoughts just so happened to be, it did feel as though I was never going to love someone so deeply agian. I can’t tell myself that I love you as much as I loved him because I just don’t, it’s going to be an extensive amount of time until I love someone as deeply and infinitely as I loved that boy. I still love that boy, not in the same ways as I did but there is love there. I will always store a place in my heart, until the day that I die. When I look at you though, I smile. People don’t think you’re the most handsome but I see so much more in you. You say you’re not smart but I’m fascinated by your quirks, your knowledge of things that I know nothing about. You’ve so much to teach me and you don’t even recognize it. Already you have taught me so much, about myself and about the truth. You make me laugh when for months, I faked a laugh unless I was intoxicated. Now I can laugh, although I am still intoxicated, I am intoxicated with the beauty and the warmth surrounding me. There is a sense of calm I get when I’m with you and for the times that I am not near to you, I am anxious. Not to say that I am so attached to you that I lose myself but I miss you, I slowly get a feeling of unrest that seems to be so deeply seated inside of me. I’m not giving this up, not for the world. I told you I was scared and I am. I am horribly frightened by the idea of falling in love and being thrown to the ground again, I am horribly frightened by the idea of having a home and then being left shelterless. As many people say, things like this are worth the risk. You are worth the risk. So, take all the time you need, I’m going to be right here.

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” -Churchill

I’m afraid that I will never be loved. I’m afraid that I am unlovable. I’m afraid that I will never go anywhere with this blessed, beautiful yet some times painful life of mine. I’m afraid that I will give someone my all again, just as I did in the past with someone I thought would love me for whatever forever is, and I will have nothing left to give when they walk out and they will…walk out, I mean. I’m afraid of being attached again but I can’t help but become just that when it comes to you, you, you, you, you, you, you and you. All of these irrational yet completely rational fears stem from what has happened to me in my life, not to say that my life has been some kind of nightmare because it truly has not as compared the millions of other lives around me (I lead a normal life, to say the least. Normalcy however does not always bode contentment), it is me and myself and myself that has let these actions, reactions and words affect me so brutally and undeniably. As the great journalist, author, writer and human being Fulton Oursler said, “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear for the future.”

Happiness is no journey, happiness is no destination, happiness is a war that we are fighting every day. We are the soldiers of this ongoing trend, this battle that never ceases. To accept happiness, to believe in it’s true existence is to allow yourself to feel the sadness and regret that is the primary symptom of this so-called happiness. In the dictionary, they description for this word (and it is a word, just a word) is, “good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.” I have experienced all of these feelings and not without some sort of painful aftermath. Isn’t it funny though that all of these words having different meanings? Isn’t it funny also that contentment is just the stating of being eased of mind? All of these definitons make up this word, which as I said is just a word, which is a noun that we are all searching for. We are searching for a word, defined by people we do not know because as people we have assumed that we can not live without having or being this. Because other people want this, we want it and therefore go after it wholeheartedly. We do all we can for it, some people fall in to lives of drug addiction, some people fall in to lives that they thought would make them happy and live with regrets. We do not think of the repercussions because we are selfish, because we want what we want and we want it now. I don’t want to be happy anymore. I just want to be the person I am, a person defined by all sorts of words that people may or may not understand. I am a person that most people do not understand but some may. I’m just so tired of this chain reaction caused by this mother fucking happiness, I’m tired of being miserable because I was fucking happy.

I’m sinking. I’ve been patiently waiting for all of this to unfold. I had already foreseen the atrophy of my joy. I had not long awaited the ice to crack against me, for the rocks to hit the hull of my titanic ship and so they have. So I have fallen to my knees once again and in this moment, though perhaps my opinion will change, I feel that I cannot get back up. I can not force myself to stand and walk on, I can not coerce myself in to continuing my walk through the field of smoldering rocks that is this life. I know I have said it many a time before but there can be no hell, there can be nothing worse than living through everything we as humans must endure on Earth. I can not have faith in that place, although some times I wish it upon my enemies.

As I gazed at your body, I had never seen something so perfect, so flawless, so superlative in that moment. I know that I have used that word so much, perhaps it is losing it’s meaning but I mean it in all of it’s entirety in this moment. I love you. I love everything about you, running my hands down every inch of your body, your smooth skin. I kiss every inch of skin, every freckle and I start to love you more in each kiss, with every passing moment. I look in to your eyes and in that moment, I feel more emotion than I have felt in months. Though it may be vulgar, I felt you inside of me and I felt close to someone. It had been so long since I had felt this type of intimacy. In your eyes was more than I had ever seen, more fire, more passion. For a moment, you looked at my body and saw more beauty than you or I could ever have comprehended prior to this moment. For one moment in time, we are in love. Though it may not last the rest of our lives, though we know it will not last the rest of our lives, for this moment we love each other and our souls are intertwined. I lay next to you and stroke your face, I whisper the words that some men fear, the words that most women long to hear and I am no longer afraid. I am only scared of losing you.

I know things now that I did not know before. So, this is growing up. It’s a little scary to know all of the things that I know now, it’s a little frightening to have the perception of the world that I do have. These epiphanies, these revelations have turned me in to the girl that I am and I can not stand here and tell you that this girl is so happy and mature. She is just the same as the rest of you, she just knows more than a good majority of the people in this town. I do believe that too, wholeheartedly. Though I am young, I have lived and I know this world. I know these people and I know the truth about things in this world. I have faith, but that faith is based on something that is inside of me, and not the opinions of my peers and elders. I have opinions but they are not based on my parents. As Chuck Palahniuk said, “I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known,” and I am. I know things now, many wonderful and terrible things and they are based on all of the thing people I know have taught me through those experiences that we have so vividly experienced. I am at a loss as to whether I am happy or disappointed, I suppose I am just this content that everyone speaks of. I suppose I am just human and that is all I will ever be, I’m not really sure what else I expected.

I miss being able to look in to someone’s eyes and know that I could trust them. I miss the days when I felt that each and every person in this world was trustworthy, worth giving that second chance. There are days when I want to trust you, more than anything I want to trust you. I look in to your eyes and I can see the love between us. I can see that you think I’m beautiful, despite your bluntness at times. I can see that you think I’m interesting, though my words are so stifled when I am in your presence. I guess I’m just scared. My sarcasm is my wall, my pain is my tower. I’ve no hair to let down to you. It will take time for me to climb down, no doubt I will not be able to climb down unscathed. I am just so scared of the fall, the plunge that I have already begun to take.

The only thing strong about me is my honesty but it never occured to me that honesty, telling the truth really took courage but now I’m beginning to wonder if I’m one of the bravest and most resilient people I know. I’m not happy about this.

When I look in to your eyes, I see something that I have looked for. I see someone that I do not believe you see, a person of great composition, so beautifully composed. We stare at each other, against each other in one of the most rare, pure and vulnerable moments that this life has to offer. It has not been long but we know each other, maybe not everything but we know. There is a deep-seated love, a friendship that has blossomed. When I look into your eyes, I can smile. I can smile the kind of smile that is only smiled on those days, in the summer, when you’re laying in the backyard with your parents and your friends and you are thanking the world for blessings, thanking your God for remember when you were a little kid. I smiled the kind of smile that was a thankful smile, a genuine smile.

Acerbity coursing through my veins. It is all dirty and ruined, these human beings, this world that they live within and peruse. No words within this speech have not been said before, no feeling has not been felt whether felt subconciously or not I could not tell you. All feelings though come to the surface. One day or another, you will stand as I have and you will scream of your frustration and resentment against the animals we are, all we have taken advantage of.

In that first breath I took before it happened, I let go. I saw you float away from me, although the memories still linger. Hopefully, they will never fade. There’s still a little cut and every time you try to hurt me, it’s like it just gets a little more infected but slightly smaller. In that second breath, I looked in to his eyes and saw something that I had seen in you. I took that last breath and I took that plunge. Parts of you, parts of me, parts of him, parts of her, parts of our pasts fell in front of us and we laid it all out for each other, like a red carpet. I can still feel his hands on my skin, I can feel my thoughts thinking your name. I can feel myself fighting love, feel myself wanting to speak those words but knowing that this is not the meaning of love. This is physical. You taught me that it was so much more, I can’t let myself believe that.

So yeah, I thank who ever is up there all the time for everything I have. Yeah Dad, I know I don’t act like I’m happy all the time but I am. It’s the kind of happiness that is underneath everything. When I’m yelling about how much she hurts me, I’m thanking that God or who ever he is for giving her to me and for her being alive. And those nights when I’m in my room crying about how badly that boy tore my heart, I’m really praying that he ends up leading a blessed life. This isn’t sarcasm or me trying to be rude. I’m so thankful for all of that pain.

Behind every smile, there is some kind of agony. Behind my eyes, there is a story; there is my story. Behind your eyes lies your story. These stories may be biased, they may be slightly exaggerated but it is a compilation of our lives and how we have seen them through these perceptive spectacles.

It’s that warm feeling you get when you’re watching Christmas movies with your parents. It’s that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you’re about to do something that has always scared you, jumping off of the tallest diving board or getting up and talking in front of the class. It’s good and it’s bad and it’s everything you’ve ever liked about life, it’s every thing that you have ever loved. It’s a feeling that all of us are looking for, searching for, yearning for; the reason that each person in this world is an adrenaline junkie.

I have never understood how love could be expendable to some people. Perhaps the people that think they know me and my relationships will assume that I used love in ways that it should not have been used and there are times that I know I took advantage of him but I never did some of the things I have seen the people I know do. You can’t say that you’re not in love with someone anymore and stay. Making love seem insignificant or non existant is making love meaningless, ruining the definition for the rest of the world. It might be complicated to you and you might make excuses, but to me it’s just fucked up. You’re just like the people that don’t understand love, except far worse. You deny it, you stomp on it. I’ve never been so frustrated with you.

As many times as I turn to you and tell you how much you hurt me, you just look away and brush it off your shoulders again. I know I can’t change you, I’ve always known that, whether I wanted to accept it or not. I just wish that on some level I could touch you the way that some of your words have touched me over the years, I wish you could see that I am more than just your daughter. I wish that, even though you acknowledge my accomplishment and so-called insightfulness, you’d see that I am a real person and the life I am living is real. I try so hard to please you and you don’t encourage it, I’ve done things for myself. I’ve built things for myself. I wish you could see that, rather than some little girl. I’m just as much of a woman as I’ll ever be, and more of a man than I consider you some times.

To finish that thought because my brain wouldn’t let me until just now, I want to get out of a place where people can not let go of this perception they have of me. I want to get out of this place where people can not let go of the person that I used to be, a place where I am forever the girl who did those things. My persona here will not change. I am that person and that image of me is stuck still in their minds, like a statue. Frankly, I hate that person. I am not that person. I never wanted to be that person and in those rare instances when I become that person, I hate her. I hate myself. She’s a part of me, yes. She’s always there and there are times when she comes out but I am not that girl and if I could help it, that girl would not even exist.

It feels like I am changing every single minute, every single day. There is always something that about me that morphing in to what I am supposed to be. Whether that person is good or not, beautiful or not, I do not know. Each day I further myself in to this different person, each day I am reminded of the person that I used to be by people around me who hardly acknowledge the woman that I am now. I’m so confused by all of these things going on around me, all of these influences. I want to be one thing but that person is condemned by society because of small actions she makes. There is evidentally some kind of fine line between everything that is good and everything that society considers bad and it seems that each time I reach a point I want to be at, some small thing I do sends a message to my peers that I have overstepped the boundaries they have set for me. I’m frustrated by all of this and while I do love this place, I so desperately wish to be out of it so that I may be my own person and live in my own world.

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be as graceful and beautiful as I once thought I was, all because I based my opinions on theirs. Now that they don’t feel that way, every time I look at myself in the mirror, all I see is an awkward girl striving to be something that she just isn’t.

I lifted my leg up and my body down. I leaned back and someone was there to catch me. Suddenly, I was no longer alone. I was more than myself; we were more than a group of people. We were souls put together, moving towards a common goal; souls moving in perfect synchronization. There were no specific movements, more so bodies all expressing the same feelings. For a moment, we all listened to the same songs and our bodies interpreted them in the same ways. Perhaps it looked odd to you, but it came so naturally to us.

We are all sitting at the same table. It is round, wooden. The table is perfect. There is not a mark or knick to be discovered. You are across from us, laying on that bad. No words are being said, at least not aloud. Our feelings are alive and breathing in our eyes. I suppose we did not have to speak. I suppose you really couldn’t have spoken. So, everything is unspoken but understood. We know you are leaving, we can see it in your eyes. Suddenly, it is all over. It is not as saddening as I imagined it would be. You gave me something that I had never been given before, I thank you for that even if it was the only thing you ever gave me or really to any of us. There was a light for a moment. You were gone. There were no words. None of us knew any words to speak, needed any words to speak. Our prayers were all seen, our prayers all heard.

I keep waiting for you to prove me wrong. Each time you don’t, I do these things for myself and pretend that you would’ve done them if I had hinted better or if I had just told you. I keep hoping for he things that I should expect because I love you too much. I know all of this and I’m still sitting here fucking crying my eyes out because I can’t let you go when you don’t love me anymore. There is no love anymore.

I’m sinking and it’s not the same as all of the other times that I felt like I was losing myself. It’s not the same because every time I got close to the edge, every time I thought I was going to dive in to an abyss that I could never return from, you were there to hold me. That’s all the past. I’ll wait along like a damsel in distress, a damsel slowly slipping in to madness.

I’m so scared of having children and bringing them in to this world. I’m so scared that I will subject them to the same things that I’ve had to deal with in my family, and even though I love my family and I have been given a lot, some times having things doesn’t mean you’re rich. Some times, most of the time, all you really want is to feel like a family but in all honesty, I can’t tell you the last time I was around a family that real was what they called themselves. I can’t remember the last time I knew a family that genuinely liked each other all of the time, or even loved each other. I am so scared of having a child who will go through these same things, falling in love and being hurt. I am so scared that it will be as hard for them as it has for me and that all they will have is a blog to turn to when they’re scared or when they feeling like they’re slipping under. I’m scared that they won’t trust people and I’m scared that they will lead my life. I’m so scared of bringing children in to this place because I don’t want to be here myself. I don’t want to ruin innocence. I don’t want to become everything that ruined me.

we talked on the phone for hours. It is the longest time we have spoken on the phone without (severely) getting on each others’ nerves and without getting in to a conversation that lead to a fight. We talked and we joked and we were real with each other, even if we neither of us were one hundred percent honest with all of our feelings about our lives. I know that I dig myself back in to this place but I just can’t resist you and I’ve been denying that fact, accepting that fact, denying that fact and coming to terms with that fact for so long. I know though, in the deepest parts of my heart and the front parts of my mind, that nothing is ever going to be the same. Never again will we love each other as deeply or as naturally as it used to come and again I have denied, accepted, denied and come to terms with that fact. I’m not sure where I’m really going with all of this but I love you. I will always love you. You will always love me and now I know that you really did love me. I know you did and I know that everything about this was as real as it possibly could have been, as real as the father in front of me and as real as cold outside. At the age of 11 years old, I found someone that I could have loved for the rest of my life, it just so happened that the world and influences surrounding us ended up tearing us apart. That’s a part of life, I will never forget the moments. I will never forget the words between us. I will never forget anything. I’ve said over and over that I knew when it was over but it really hit me tonight, hit me more than it has ever hit me before. We were playing Truth or Dare and you said, “I don’t want to play anymore.” “Why,” I asked. “I don’t know what to ask you anymore.” “There’s nothing you have ever wanted to ask me, nothing you’re interested in about in me,” I said. I awaited an answer that came much faster than I expected it to. “No.”

There’s a lot of things that scare me in this world but falling in love isn’t one of them. I may have been hurt, I may have been ruined for some people as a matter of fact. I’m not scared though. There are days that I doubt love and its existence, there are days that I am horribly frustrated with love and just do not want to believe in it. I’m still not scared, because although I have been injured and I have been scarred by people I have loved, it is not love itself that scarred me.

Growing up is serendipitous and burdensome simultaneously. I am so frightened all the time, yet so at peace in the deepest parts of me.

The moment that I took comfort in your skin is the moment I knew it was over. I laid with you, stroked your chest and held you close to me. I kissed you, with feeling, with more feeling than I’ve felt in a long time. I felt something. I love you, just as I always have but I am looking for safety and ground I can stand on without fear of falling through. I suppose it’s true when they say that love is not always enough. For so long I wished that it wasn’t true, I wished that love conquered all. I know the truth now.

There are many a time when I can not express to you the feelings that I feel. There are many a time when I cannot comfort myself so that you have to do it. There are many a time when I am quieted when my words should be recognized and glamourized. I miss being rude, loud and honest. More so now, I am quiet and subdued. I miss when there was times that I could be myself with you, now there is this vision of the girl you want in front of me. I don’t communicate well enough but that is because I am frightened. I want you but I do not want you. I want all but I want no responsibility. Please come back, become the person that you used to be.

I expect the love I deserve, and I am worthy of the love I expect.

The way they fall out is shameful and so fleeting. There is no thought behind any of it, merely feeling. Consequences are not a concept we have considered in our thinking, because there was no thinking behind the act. They fall like bombs from the air. Before they can be pardoned, they have it. They can never be excused for they meant more than the apology that could’ve come abaft. There was more meaning in that bomb then there was in the whole reparatory speech afterwards. “I love you,” you whisper. Well, that means nothing compared to the explosion of hate prior.

She’s brittle and broken,

she’s shallow and unopen.

She is thinking for her safety,

there are only animal instincts.

Her eyes are fierce, the eyes of a predator

She is staring unwaveringly in to the eyes of her prey.

They offer her a place to stay, a fire and warm embrace

They offer her a place to stay, but she won’t stay

No, there’s no way

‘cause the fire will burn out some day

Out of the trillions of people in this world, we are expected to believe that the person we will spend the rest of our lives with is within the direct area we live in…well, maybe we’re not expected to, but a good majority of the people here believe that. Truth is, we’re all settling for something because we’re too afraid to go out and find our real soulmates. We’re too afraid of rejection to find true love. We mistake true love for a kid with sweet words and a faint heart.

As we walked along the crooked boardwalk, the boardwalk above the sandy beach, we looked in to each other’s eyes. More than faith and love, there was happiness. As I looked in to your eyes though, they became darker. I knew in that instant, under the moon, that this would not last forever. And as this realization swept over me, clouds flooded the moon, almost like an eclipse of the sun. As I looked to the sky, watching this dark and foreshadowing moment, I was pulled back to your eyes. Those eyes. I looked at you once more and saw everything we had ever been, I lifted myself up and kissed you. There was no ground beneath us, nothing under us. For this moment, this rude awakening, we wanted to stay all that each other had but knew we would soon be back in this world; a world that strived to tear us away from each other. We kissed. We kissed, the kind of kiss that is written about in fairytales and romance novels. We kissed with fire, desire, passion, love, selflessness and selfishness. We kissed with a love we know we would never know again. We gave that to each other, if that’s the only thing we ever gave, we gave each other the kind of love we would never be able to forget.

I feel helpless, but not because I can not help myself. It’s all beause I can’t help you. I want to make you alright, that’s all I’ve ever really wanted. I’ve wanted to make sure that you were always happy and it seems like it makes no difference how hard I try anymore, you’re still upset and the distance between us, the circumstances are pulling us apart and making things so much more strained than they ever have been before. I don’t want to let you down, I don’t want to let us down.

I’m just so scared of losing myself while I’m trying to help you find yourself.

I have spent all of my time swallowing butterflies in the hopes that when I see you again, they shall flutter once more.

At first she was alone. As the scene opens, she is laying in her bed alone. She looks peaceful…angelic in a way. A smile slowly slides across her lips. From beneath her, something is slithering up from the sheets. Her smile turns in to a grin as he slips up to kiss her on the lips. He is warm, soft, sentual. It is more than sex that drives the passion between them. It is the perfection that they feel when their lips meet. They’ve kissed many a number of people, hundreds in fact. We have spent our fair share of time with others that were not each other, but in this kiss we found a place to take heed. We found our own oases in the middle of this fucking desert. And although this warmth has become cool, although this fire has slowly started to burn out, there is still a flame left. As much as I say it can’t be, I still spend every night praying on my knees at the edge of the bed that it can once again be rekindled.

I’m just frightened for myself. I know where this road is going to take me if I keep walking it. It’s just that everytime I sit down in this room, I think about all of the things that I never wanted to think about. I think about everything that I shouldn’t be thinking about because I know it just messes me up. I’m living in an ongoing nightmare and although there is happy moments it is always superseded by a horribly depressing time in my life. Everything that is good leads in to something that has become bad. My only true reprieve is when I am here. I inhale, I exhale. For a few moments, I am alright. I am just like those boys in that movie, I am just like those people I talk about but don’t really know. I need to get my fix somewhere or I fall in to the abyss of reality. It all sounds so dramatic, doesn’t it? But that’s this life. We are dramatic. We are all dramatic. We are all waiting for these events that do not happen. We are all living these moments that will so soon be forgotten. We are having these conversations, talking of change, evolution, revolution. Nothing comes from these talks, they are just words. They are meaningless words and although there is good intention behind them, they will not be followed through with actions. We are all wasting away and I’m scared of doing just that. I want to take action, I want to stand for these things that I speak of so often. I want to truly believe in the things I so regularly speak of. I’m scared that I won’t come back if I keep walking down this road, I’m scared that I’ll slip in to a worse place than this.

You’re somewhere other than where I want you to be, here with me. I’m just left behind, like the mud from your shoes.

We sit in these rooms, alone and tired. We are lonely not because there is no one around but because there is no one who understands the trials and tribulations of being someone who has been given every opportunity but is too tired to take them and run. We watch these movies, we live vicariously through these characters. We do not have to go out in to this world and have these experiences because someone is having them for us. They’re right in front of us and we think to ourselves, “Why couldn’t that be me? Perhaps I am them and they are me, alone, sitting on this couch. Perhaps they are tired and I am alive.”

I can feel everything shattering and falling out from underneath me, like I’ve been standing on a sheet of glass for all these years. This sheet of glass is the only thing that keeps me from losing all humanity, all of my sanity which wasn’t in large amounts to begin with. This ice, you see, starts to break. I don’t panic though, I just stand there. I pray to God or whatever is up there, watching over us all, that I’m not going to fall. It starts to really break now, not just cracks. There are pieces of the ice missing. I know I’m going to fall in but I just have to keep this faith that I’ll find some way out of the situation. I can’t look for ways out anymore though, I have to face this head on. If I drown, I drown. If I die, I’m dead. If I’d just remember to stay calm and move slowly, I’ll be fine.

I have so many things that I want to hold on to. I don’t know why I’m so fast to let go. I guess it’s because I figure I either let go now or they walk out later. I can’t take this anymore. Stay or go. Make your fucking decision now. But if you’re going to stay, don’t stay out of pity. Stay if you love me and you’re going to do something about it, stay if you feel the way I feel and you want to be here. There’s something I have always looked for in each and every one of you that this is about. Stay or go. Make your decision, or I’m going to make my own.

There is faces, there is people that we will never forget. We can meet them for one mere moment and their faces, their presence is imprinted on our souls and our lives. It drives us crazy that these people who were such a small part of our lives have become so significant. There is no real rhyme or reason as to why, we just know these people. We love them and we don’t know them. We say we feel like we’ve known them all our lives, it’s because we have. They are inside of us, they are pieces of yourself that you have lost over the years. They are the parts of you that you search for, the parts that could have been perfected that never were. These people are everything you wish you could be, but not in the jealous way you’re assuming I mean.

I’m starting to wonder if any of the things that I ever believed in were just based on blind faith and hopefulness. Seeing these facts, seeing what the world has done to the people inside of it is so shocking to me. It is so overwhelming. I am overwhelmed, stuck under the crashing waves, heading towards the rocks.

I’m so goddamn exhausted. I’m tired of fighting for something that no one else is fighting for, for taking the bullet every time I’m asked to do so. I’m tired of pushing myself to the very brink and then having to hold on by a thread for my life, I’m so tired of those situations and yet I’ve put myself in them for you over and over again. I can’t do it anymore and if you prove nothing t o me, I will step away. I know you won’t come after me and that’s what hurts the most, after everything. That’s what will always hurt the most about this all.

You feel nothing when you cut yourself, the point of it all is numbness. No one seems to grasp that concept, mostly the people who do it for attention. The point of it all is to prove that you are so oblivious to it all, that you can mutilate your body and feel nothing. Do not tell me you cut yourself to feel nothing, because that’s where I have been. I have traveled up that road and back, I knew every day that I was hoping someone would look at me and see how deeply I was hurting. I was never, though, hoping that they would look at my wrist to find out.

The teenage years seem, by far, to be the best and worst part of life. They are the best because we are experiencing and learning things that we will never have the chance to do again. We have so many opportunities. They are the worst because of the pain, the suffering, the loss of self, the realizations. There is so much that is so hard and these tall, long bearded, short fused, small minded elders of mine tell me not to take it for granted. Well, I don’t. However, don’t ever tell me you’d come back here if you had the chance.

There is one way that I can step, the only place I can go is across. The rope is so thin though, how am I to hang on? I am holding so much on these shoulders, I am so top heavy. What will happen if I slip? There is so much I want to be. There is so much I want to tell you I want. You’re not listening though, none of you. I put on this mask, sometimes if I wonder that’s who I am. I want to run, run away with these things that pull me from this universe. I want to leave and stay gone. I want to get away. I want someone to save me.

I can’t quite grasp what it is about you that always draws me back. You’re the bad boy. I’ve been there, I’ve dealth with that whole scene. I’m still dealing with it. I don’t know why I would ever consider going through it again but I would for you, I really would. I just don’t understand why, it is quite literally so far beyond me. You’re everything I, for the most part, stand against. We argue. We fight. I’ve fucked up with you. I don’t understand. We’re different people. I don’t trust you, I know you don’t trust me but I fucking miss you when I’m not with you. You were the only person that ever got close, the only person that almost pulled me away from him. I just love the way you smile, the way you giggle, the silly faces you make. You’re an intellectual but you’re funny, you can take a joke. I just, I’m so scared of leaving this comfortable place. I wish I could live another life and find out the truth about what we’d be like. I don’t think you even have these feelings or thoughts. Just be here now.

No words, no line. She thinks eccentrically, she thinks with her body more so than her shallow mind. Her skin is tight and sallow. Her bones are brittle and achey. She is cold in this weather, this rain, and yet she wears no jacket. So many others offer her warmth, a home to come in to. She declines, only because she knows the fire will burn out.

As the paint brushes splatter the page with the paint, I am seeing your face. I am seeing their faces. I am seeing every experience you have had, and you in that story, and you in the real world. I am seeing what you have seen, I am living through your eyes even if you don’t know I am doing so. There is red, there is pink. There is black. There is a multitude of contrasting colors. They are all flying, there is no real chronological or even logical order to how I am moving my arms, how I am throwing the paint brush against this page. In the end though, there is so much meaning. There is meaning behind these dots, these splashes. There is meaning to these marks which to the naked eye would mean nothing.

I complain about these things, although I don’t consider them trivial. It is not infrequent that I realize how lucky I am, it is just not an every moment thing as it should be. There are times when I am ashamed of myself for not being there for everyone, not spending every waking moment of this life trying to make a difference as I have, since so early in life, longed to. It all began with you, taking care of you, loving you with everything I have but you ruined that for me in some ways. In others, you taught me so much more. I can forgive you but I can’t, it is such a hard thing. I’m sorry to all of you that I haven’t spent the right amount of time listening to, I’m sorry that I can’t do more. I could apologize for years and rant about how much I wish I could be there for you, how much I wish I could take every burden off of your backs and put them on my own. I mean that in all of it’s entirety too, some people don’t. I do. Please know that. I am just damaged.

Sex is more than sex to me with you, with him. We are against each other, there is more than skin, there is warmth. There is more than breath against my neck, there is strings of words and in these words, I find that our brains have become intertwined. It is more than just our bodies against these sheets together, it is more than just physical beings doing what we were made to do. There is something inside of me that I have longed for, that I have begged for. There is a piece of you. There is a piece of me, they are put together and in turn, the world is turned upside down and we are together in every sense of the word and in every aspects of ourselves. Love has never been so prominent.

It sincerely bothers me when so-called adults say that teens can not be in love. They say that we do not understand things, this world, certain concepts, people, flaws. They say we are incapable of reasoning and true feelings. If you look at society and how life was in the past, at this age we knew the world. If we didn’t not have these medicines, these technologies that keep us life so much longer than we ever used to, our lives ended around 30. Like we used to, we would have been considered adults and have known most about this world.

Youth is beautiful because there is a sense of openmindedness that you never experience again. You are so open about all of these things because they are new to you, they fill you with thought. They teach you these lessons. You will never experience this again, this is the first time to have a first time. I have heard from reliable sources that you never love as deeply as you love now, I guess I would be one to vouch for that fact. I respect my elders because they have had experiences but they are rock solid on a majority of them. After so long, they will never change these opinions of theirs.

There is no God who is superior because he made things happen, because he made the human race occur. I believe in evolution, it is logical and there is no one in this world who could convince me that it didn’t happen. I won’t get in to that though. This God of yours was superior because he was not judgemental. If there was this God, he gave himself so freely for people he did not know. He gave himself without hesitiation and that is why he is your God. The perversion of his name is unbelievable to me.

An expansion of the mind is an opening of the mind, an opening of the mind is to lose ignorance and selfishness, to lose these traits is to learn and accept others, to learn and accept others ends conflict, to end conflict is to find peace, to find peace is what we are all searching for

There is a difference between looking and seeing, there is a difference between hearing and listening. I walk down these halls every day and look at these faces. There are times when I look at ignorance, inside of me it stirs rage and anger. Rarely though do I ever get to know these people and see them for what is under the surface, if anything. Rarely is it that I take the time to know these people, their circumstances and see their realities. I hear these people, as I walk past them in the hallways, in classes, in my own home. I hear them but I am not listening. I am so filled with the stresses of this every day life that I am consumed by my own thoughts. I can not comprehend your problems because I can not even take the time to deal with my own. Even with my friends a lot of the time, I can listen and I can make small quotes or strategically planned gestures but I am not listening. If I am honest with you, I am there but my mind is not. None of us are taking the time to see each other, to listen to the truth. We are blissful in a state of not knowing and not worrying about anyone but ourselves. Sure, it’s easy…and I suppose in the end, we really are we have left. However, seeing and listening to someone else is the most beautiful and selfless thing you can do. I am not preaching this to tell you are selfish, we are selfish creatures. That is how we have been raised, that is how society has taught us. A lot of us can take care of ourselves, but sit down some time and think about how often you wish you didn’t have to take care of yourself. Do you remember when you were five, crawling up on the counter to make your own soup? Do you remember when you were fourteen and your boyfriend broke up with you? You laid on that couch crying, praying that your Mom would walk downstairs and just understand. I prayed that she would just hold me and understand. Do any of us see anymore, do any of us listen?

It is so often that I feel like I am never doing right by you. It is so rare that I feel truly loved anymore. I know all of the trials and tribulations of this relationship and yet I still stay. I keep telling myself that I love you and I just don’t know how much longer I can do it.

There is a difference between smart and intelligent. Smart people, of which I know many, could answer any question from a textbook off of the top of their heads. They could recite the Declaration of Independence to you. They could solve algebraic equations. Intelligent people however, of which I know very few in this general vicinity, can form their own opinions based on small piece of things they have learned. They base their opinions on what they believe from what they know. They are not ignorant because they do not make decisions or form opinions on things they know nothing about. They make these…judgements isn’t a wonderful word but the only one that seems to make sense in this context…anyway, they make these judgements about things because they have taken the time to gain facts about them, to hear other experiences, to see things from an outside perspective and make their own decisions or analysis. After they have made this assessment, they stick to it unless they are blatantly proven wrong. And if they are proven wrong, there is no defense mechanism, there is acceptance and open mindedness. Intelligent is based on the word intellectual, a person of superior intellect. I, personally, feel that intellect comes from within and from knowing yourself before you can make . It does not come from learning things, although education is highly valued in my book.

In these moments, there is realization. For this moment, there is an understanding. She is stepping back and seeing more than just herself. She is no longer seeing just her own problems before her or sweating the small things. She is stepping back and seeing the world as a whole picture. She is seeing this painting. She can see the beauty, the vibrance, the obstacles, the reality. For this moment and from now on, to a degree at least, selfishness is not an attitude or way of living that she understands.

Sometimes there is Love. It is small and begins as nothing, it blossoms in to a beautiful flower. Flowers always die though, just like everything. Although they can be rebuilt, they are never the same as they originally were because it is not the same time and it is not the same place and it is not under the same circumstances. It will never be the same once it is over. These songs, they are that story. They are our story. No matter how cliche they are, no matter how over-used the material is, this is our story. This is so many stories.

Little fire place, little house in the woods

a little space in your heart, a warm place to roam

Mr. Perfect, you’ve already got my heart

take my hand and guide me home

I’m not afraid

All I want is right here, what is there to fear

I’ve nothing to lose but you

I’ve no worries, I won’t let this fall through

Little fire place, little house in the woods,

a little space in your heart, a warm place to roam

Mr. Perfect, you’ve already got my heart

so take my hand and guide me home

I’d follow you with my heart on my sleeve

I won’t look back if you give me the okay,

I love you, no matter how cliche

Your lips are so close, but never close enough

You seem so fragile, like you were made of porcelain

I long to kiss those lips, every goodbye, just once again

Little fire place, kids in the backyard

a little space in your heart, little dog to keep guard

Mr. Perfect, you’ve already had this heart

take my hand and guide me home

Somewhere, deep inside of me, I really missed being a night owl. My mother always used to call me that when I was little, I’d stay up with her (my mother, who I am basically estranged from if you don’t know me, is a flight attendant and that’s why she’s up constantly because that’s just how her schedule is) and we’d watch movies. She’d tell me things Dad wouldn’t tell me and be my best friend. I really miss that time, before I knew something was wrong with her. She was a great Mom, despite the small things she did when I was little. I don’t understand what happened to the both of us…sometimes I don’t say the both of us and I just blame it all on her, but I did do a lot wrong. I can’t lie to myself about it. Not only that, but I grew up and saw her for what she honestly is. She didn’t want me to do that, I guess.

Everything used to be what it was supposed to be, now it has been warped in to exactly what it was never meant to be. So, all that it was meant to be is nothing and all that it was never meant to be it is. Altough, it was like that the entire time, wasn’t it? We all just had a false perception of the truth. So truthfully, it never changed forms. Everything has always been what it is, we just never saw it for what it is and has always been.

Well, you’re a mystery to me

The story starts off with us living happily

Fairy tales don’t last a life time

This love is much past it’s prime

Well, you were beautiful to me

so awkward and artsy

now we’re nothing more than roomates,

this must be our love’s fate

It’s over, can’t say I’m too upset

It’s not suprising, we both have so much we regret

Threating to leave isn’t much of a threat

We’re both trying to make it a bet

Try and paint me a picture

of what you see.

You can’t, I’m sure.

There is no future

We only have past,

a past that we can’t base a future on.

There is no change in us, we are outcasts.

You write songs and I paint the pictures,

we live by different sets of strictures.

It’s over, can’t say we’re too upset

It’s not suprising, we both have so much we regret

Threating to leave doesn’t hurt

We’re just waiting for the other to desert

wouldn’t it be wonderful to waste our time pretending that we’re fine, oh we’re fine?

and wouldn’t it just make you sick to hear what you’ve been screaming all along?

Take another step, my love. You have nothing to let go of.

Take the last step, doll. I’ll still catch you if you fall.

Your ignorance inspires me. I am warm with thoughts of you ruining yourself and failing due to your stupidity, your lack of responsibility and your lack of ambition, you lazy fuck. I’ve hated you, with a hatred I’d never felt so deeply. You’ve ruined so much for so many but I know, I believe that we will all get our revenge. We will live these lives, these beautiful and inspired lives and you will fall. I promise you no one will be there to catch you, because I will tell each and every human being on this earth what you truly are until my very last breath.

It is shocking to me how often I use the words, “I want,” and how selfish I can be sometime. I try so hard not to be, but I am. We all are. It is a natural human tendency, just like everything else I feel. Everything I am going through is supposed to be natural. We have all gone through it supposedly. Everything is natural…if that’s true, why doesn’t it feel like it?

I want one of those movie moments, that’s all I want. I want you too look at me during a sunset, with the sun illuminating all of my best features. I want to look down, shy and coy, and I watch you to see the light in my eyes. I want you to notice every detail of me and be able to recite specifics that no one else could. I want my smile to gleam, and perhaps frighten you because you’ve never seen something so beautiful. I just want you as enthralled in me as I am in you.

My animals desires are taking over once again. It seems so often that this wolf that I truly am inside comes out. She wants, she will take what she wants. She needs, then it is obviously already under her claws.

When people are ignorant, they are afraid. When then they are afraid, they do not take the time to try and understand. When they do not try to understand, they become more afraid. The more afraid they get, the more violent they become and the more ignorant they become. When all of this has happened, they find an outlet to take their anger and repression out on. They find people that seem different than them and because they are so different, they do not accept their ideals and they attack thembecause they do not understand. The cycle of ignorance is vicious and does not seem like it intends on ending anytime soon.

Music is the only thing in this world I will always depend on and believe in. It has never let me fall down, unlike religions and previous things I’ve ever believed in. All of it should be appreciated and worshipped.

The first time I ever knew I loved you was such a sad day, one of the saddest in my life. Why? I knew I could never fulfill that love and that you would be damaged for it.

The first time it ever happened…we had done it so often and so many times, I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t happened before. I guess I thought it had always been happening, but I didn’t know it until then. Your skin had never been so warm, your touch had never been so passionate. They all make it seem like such a dirty thing, such a disgustingly sexual thing. It is more like, a miracle had just occured. I felt all of my beliefs, I saw every promise we had ever made. I saw more than just what was in front of me, although you were still such a big part of it. I loved you. “I love you,” I said it over and over. We both knew how different this was then every other. I never really realized how much I loved you and how desperately I needed you until that moment.

The circles are surrounding the stars, like your eyes. The fire is burning so brightly with lies. I see nothing more in this small, little town. I see nothing more, now that you I have found. If life can be rebuilt than so can this love. There is nothing more in this world that I care for more, none that I could think of.

I want to get high every day and all the time. My mind is clear, perfect and never interfered with. I know it all, not in a conceded sense but I know the earth, the meaning of every large or small part of our insignificant lives. I am clean, pure. I am back to the child I used to be, so innocent. I am seeing everything with new eyes, seeing it all for what it is. Most of these things are so beautiful, but I never knew until now. Because I pull it all apart, I am the one to put it back together and it is unruined and unmolested. Everything is rebuilt, back to it’s orignal form and the very best parts of beautiful, advancing ideas of the beautiful, understand minds behind them. Drugs…no, not a drug, a part of this earth brings me back to this earth after being burned, ruined and rebuilt in me. Not a drug, an answer.

Love is a belief in something, just like faith. Love is not provable. What is real is your skin on mine and words that spew from your untouched and innocent lips.

Everything in this world is living together. What is happening with all of us is intertwined. I can see it all. I am no God, perhaps Goddess but I will never know. If you know me, there are always deeper meanings in my words than just the words meanings.

I trace your skin, every mark on your face and every line, espeically that of your jaw. You are beautiful and you look like you were carved from marble, stone. I know how often I say it and I know that I tend to say the same thing but you are beautiful. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. You are my angel. You are my home and my heaven. You are the light that guides me home. And I as I trace that ever so soft, and ever so perfect skin, I wish that God would stop time, fore this is the most beautiful moment of my life. Your skin breathes life changing epiphanies and love.

All I want to do is open my mind to you. I want to give you all of me, for all I have is my thoughts and my voice to give to you. My body has been yours since birth, for eternity. I want to remove my skull and give it to you. Blood and thoughts, I would give it all. Your disinterest is unsettling.

I don’t know anything about this world. I don’t know much about religion, although I have my opinions on it. I don’t know anything about whether or not we were put on this earth for a reason or not. I don’t know if what I used to believe in is right or not. I don’t know if I still believe in it or not. I don’t know if I ever believed in it at all. I don’t know whether faith is just something we all have to make ourselves feel safe. I don’t know whether faith is something we all need. I don’t know whether I am a hypocrite or not, although it seems like that in some ways. I don’t know a lot. I don’t know who I am or what I’m doing.

I know what I want to do. I know the person I want to be. I know that I love you. I know that I am beautiful. I know that, despite it’s flaws and how it makes me feel sometimes, this world is beautiful. Despite it all, there is an artistry in this world. I know that I can believe and take faith in art, marijuana and some kind of dysfunctional, defective, broken love.

I have no clarity, I have no peace. All I have is what is around me and that is all I can depend on for the moment.

This world is a structured chaos unlike any other. These people, these humans, on this earth, in this country, in these states, in these small towns, they are all working based on structed systems no matter if they are doing nothing or they are changing this world. I don’t know anymore if we were made to do things or if we make these choices on our own, I don’t know anymore whether or not I was given a path or if I am just another waste of skin on this earth. We are all just a movie that your God, your Buddha, your Allah, your anyone in this universe is watching. We are broken records, cassette tapes, dvd’s. We are all changing and we are all becoming more efficient, just like the technology.

So, there it is, there’s the dissolution of every opinion I have ever had. Every belief I have ever had is contradicted every day. As a teenager, you expect to have things that you lose faith in but it is so odd to think that perhaps each and every opinion you have ever had is wrong, or inadequate. I feel as though I am inadequate. All of us have formed these opinions based on movies we have seen, songs we have heard, the people around us. All of these opinions are wrong and the only true faith that we can have is in ourselves, ‘cause there is nothing that stays in our lives or on this earth for as long as we wish it too. Everything disintegrates and everything that you have ever though, all the morals and ideals that you live by are bullshit. The only things that matter are the things that are neccesities and the two things you know you could’ve live without. What those are, is up to you.

I let it all roll off of me, every unkind word and every small gesture that hurts me. It still hurts but I still try and let it go. I put up with so much from you, we all know that.

I missed that feeling, the danger and the risk. I missed the feelings that I had with you. I missed being able to sleep and think without being scared or second guessing myself. I’m sorry I’ve neglected you. I guess, maybe, in some way, it’s sad that I came back to your warm and loving arms. For now though, everything is going to be just fine with you by my side.

I can not explain this feeling, the reason it makes me this way. I am refreshed, brought back to the balance I have needed so much lately. This can’t be bad, it’s just natural. The earth gave this to me and I shall recieve it, as a gift should be.

Your mangled, decrepit hands are grabbing me, maiming me. I am tormented and pulled, your arms rap like vines around my ankles. Slowly, you pull me farther under with each tug. Quickly, you tell me of your rebarbative plan to humiliate and ruin me. I will not be ripped apart again, I scream to anyone who can hear me. I am forever the beginner and builder, never what is being torn down. I am forever the reinvention. I am forever the realest reality that anyone could ever tuch, the voice of reason for these children so devoid of feelings. I will not fall in to my bed’s arms, curl in to myself and be taken twice as many steps back as I have stepped forward. I will escape the torturous fate of this small town atmosphere. Triumphant, always

My body is exhausted, I feel as though I cannot move it or it will fall to pieces. My mind is exhausted. I am worried, anxious, stressed. I am everything that makes life difficult and all at the same time. Sometime I wonder if I’m going crazy but I simply I can’t be, I am not my mother. Sometimes I worry that I’m turning in to her. I feel achey and worn, like my body can’t take it anymore. My mind has ruined my body. I just want to be held.

I want to believe that I am this beautiful person that will do everything she ever wished to but if I’m realistic, there is a large chance that I will never go anywhere. There is a large chance that this person that I believe in so much is just a figment of my imagination. The truth is, perhaps, that I’m really just a fucked up human being just like everyone else. I’m just another teenager, with the same problems and the same dreams as everyone else. I am just fucked up and that is all I will ever be.

It has been said, year and years over, but still holds true that if I could touch you just once more than everything bad would fall away. All of those things that so softly whispered their way in to our lives, so swiftly slithered in and ripped us apart with a final roar would be forgotten. If I could just touch you once more, perhaps I would find a truth in you, a truth telling me that all that had been, all those problems we had faced were no longer unquestionable. Perhaps I could reach out to those problems and they would crumble as ashes before us, even if only to give us a little more time to love each other as we have loved each other. If my hand could reach out and touch you once more; your skin that so precisely resembles marble, your perfect body, the body that fit so perfectly against mine that I doubt I’ll ever find something that even slightly resembles, your moonlit eyes that could light up the nights of my life even until after your nights were over, your soft lips, your lips that moved so faultlessly against mine that I knew more love in that kiss than had ever been spoken to me in words. Most of all though, above all of these things-above every facet of your truly angelic and divine body, above every perfect feature that lies across your seraphic face-I will remember the fact that you loved me with a love that I never do believe can be conquered or have a counterpart. You forever gave me a part of myself that I never knew existed, and a part of you, the most pure and undiluted parts of you will live in me. I will take what you have given me and I will never let it go, because you’re the best person I’ve ever known. Every day of my life, I will wake up and I will thank who ever so happens to be watching over us for you. There is not a day that I will not thank someone for you, because you are worth being forever grateful for.

The idea of you loving me is such an absurd concept to my mind.

There are times when I can sit down and think, those moments are rare but they are real and they are what keeps me going. In these moments, I know what I want. I know how ot get what I want. I know that if I could just keep pushing, I could get everything that I want without even hardly breaking a sweat. Just push a little bit harder, that's what I tell myself.

Joni Mitchell - All I Want (with lyrics)

Were he real, I would fall madly in love with Steve-O from slc punk.

My animals desires are taking over once again. It seems so often that this wolf that I truly am inside comes out. She wants, she will take what she wants. She needs, then it is obviously already under her claws.

Punk music makes me feel strong. Hardcore makes me feel powerful. Rap makes me feel cool, like I’m accepted. I fit in. Alternative music makes me feel understood, like it actually knows something about me. All these lyrics are words that have been in my head for so long. There’s so much more. Music is real.

This is Home.

IT'S PARTY TIME MUTHA FUCKA

“I learned to let go. It was the hardest lesson of all. But I gave you my love, in silence.”

Silence -Selena Cross

I have no clarity, I have no peace. All I have is what is around me and that is all I can depend on for the moment.

So, there it is, there’s the dissolution of every opinion I have ever had. Every belief I have ever had is contradicted every day. As a teenager, you expect to have things that you lose faith in but it is so odd to think that perhaps each and every opinion you have ever had is wrong, or inadequate. I feel as though I am inadequate. All of us have formed these opinions based on movies we have seen, songs we have heard, the people around us. All of these opinions are wrong and the only true faith that we can have is in ourselves, ‘cause there is nothing that stays in our lives or on this earth for as long as we wish it too. Everything disintegrates and everything that you have ever though, all the morals and ideals that you live by are bullshit. The only things that matter are the things that are neccesities and the two things you know you could’ve live without. What those are, is up to you.

Ah, what a beautiful morning. Ah, what a beautiful day. I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going my way.

slc punk

I can not explain this feeling, the reason it makes me this way. I am refreshed, brought back to the balance I have needed so much lately. This can’t be bad, it’s just natural. The earth gave this to me and I shall recieve it, as a gift should be.

I just want to get gone, go to college. I want to party my fucking brains out, drop acid, drink beer, do body shots, smoke a pack, smoke a bong. I want to dance, I want to fight. I want to punch someone until they stop moving. I want to scream and throw my middle finger up. I want to fuck. I want to be fucked. I want to get out of here and do whatever the fuck I want, to literally be on the brink of losing everything and pull myself up.

A secret? I still think about what it would have been like and how people would have reacted if I had succeeded in killing myself.

The bigger secret? I still believe everyone would have been happier.

The power of music is incredible to me, but not nearly as incredible as the power of kindness.

I love you so much but in the back of my mind, I have so many back-up plans. I think about these back-up plans so often too. As much as I say I trust you…well, I do with certain things, but I don’t trust you with not leaving me. I feel as though you could walk out any minute, I hate that I’m the one always on my toes. You just, you just don’t even care, do you?

I’ve never felt as good as I feel on stage, other than when I’m with you of course. The nerves, the adrenaline. It’s almost as good as sex, as good as your lips on mine. I could live on that stage, I could stay in that place forever. The stage literally feels like my second home and I love that feeling. I love the smells and the sensations of that place. I love that, no matter who I am there with and whether I have known them for a long time, we are best friends. We are family. I love the person I become. I love the person I am, the real person that is underneath it all. I am positive and loving, witty and real. I love being an actor, I love being a performer. I don’t care if this is a far off dream, I’m going for it. I’m going to go so far. As long as I believe in myself (and yes, I know there will be times when I really just can’t) then I can make it through anything.

I feel like a soldier walking down these halls, I suppose war and heroism is a somewhat large theme in my life lately. I am always on my guard, I am always ready to attack before I am attacked. I put up a wall, a wall that would separate me from the people I try so hard not to look down upon. I tell myself that I am no more superior than anyone else, that on most levels we are all equal. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I can not bring myself to believe that anymore. I can not even tell myself that as a lie and expect myself to believe it as truth. My mind has begun to work against me. All of these beautiful realizations I have made are no longer what I am sure of. All of these beautiful moments have faded, like a rose that has wilted. All of these beautiful people have turned in to dark shadows of what they used to be, including myself. I may regret little, but there are days that I do truly regret loving the people I have once loved. For now, I can never give up on them, notwithstanding how much I would like to. Like I've said many a time before and will say many a time after, love is an eternal bond in complete defiance of your will.

There is no line to be drawn, no lines that can be crossed. As they trudge through the mud, wearing their hearts, all that they are and all that they will ever be on their sleeves, they are blindly handed their fate. There is no saving them now whether the bullets penetrate or not. Their souls are lost, along with their minds. No change will come from them after they have gone. They will never come back to you, it is no matter if their bodies are here or not. They are stuck on that field and in those places. Their minds are stuck on the destruction and horror that this world truly has to offer, the kind of destruction and slaughter that we believe could only happen in movies. Some call them crazy, some say they are lost. Most of all, what they really are, is all-knowing and accepting. They have accepted this world for what it is and in their failed attempts to conserve it, their vague attempts to turn it back in to what it was, it has driven them mad.

This place makes me feel like I am worth something. Maybe all of my dreams can come true, at least for these few hours. This studio is my family, the stage is my home.

I tell my love to wreck it all, cut out all the ropes and let me fall.

And as I walked down those streets, I felt a sense of self-awareness that I had never felt before, as though I were suddenly real and alive for the first time. I was scared and warm, bewildered and fearless all in the same moment. It’s funny how these small places remind me so much of the place I wish to call home, this downtown is so alike to the place I’ve always longed to be. So, what is so different if they are so alike? People are all the same, really, no matter where you go. Maybe it’s the fast pace of it all there, yes, maybe that’s it. I just long for what I felt this evening constantly. I long to feel, as I did on this night, that although the people beside me do not know my story and do not know the person I am, we are the same. We are blood and flesh, we are real and we are all three realizing it in this moment. We know and love each other although we do not at all. I am accepted, although I am odd in alll ways. I am equal. And as we stepped in to that car, I felt more adult than I had in such a long time. I was not intoxicated or under the influence of anything, I was just having a mature evening with mature people who were not afraid to tell me about my flaws. I took a risk tonight in coming out, since I so rarely wish to be in the company of people lately, and it worked out in my favor. For one night, I am renewed. For one night, I have felt emotions that I forgot existed.

I think you are beautiful, in every way. I think your smile is wonderful, I think your voice is beautiful. I think the way you think, the way you judge, the way you dislike people and the way you are so true to yourself is beautiful. I am just not sure of how to tell you.

I can be angry and I can hate you. The best revenge, how ever, will be watching you fall to your knees and your life crumbling before you when I have had no hand in helping it to do so. The best revenge will be when I help you in the end. The best revenge is being given something to believe in, especially when that is myself.

Every comment, every harsh word, every thing makes me so much stronger…or can’t you see that.

I have found no hero in you. What I built you up to be, the pedestal I put you have been broken and lost. You will still matter, you will always be in this life. There is still love, although it is not so burning and true as it once was. Loyalty was lost and therefore trust was as well. I will no longer walk a mile to save you from yourself, I will no longer waste my time to be the friend you should’ve been. I’m not going out of my way for something or someone that consistently lets me down.

These are the same words with a different beat. This is the moment when dreams become reality, when you finally accept that what you wanted to believe were dreams were always reality.

I'm so scared of losing you. You're the only one I have faith in anymore.

I feel like you died. You’re not here, you’re not real; because of all of this, I am not here. I do not feel real. I feel alone, left behind for the wolves to feed on. The vultures crawl up on me and devour what is left of this carcus. And yet, although there are bits of me being ripped off and apart each moment, I am still waiting. I’m waiting. I’m always…I will always be waiting.

I’ve been there, when all you want is that person’s skin against yours. It is not sexual or meaningless. You just want them. Their skin is all you will ever need as soon as you touch it. You are whole when you are with them. There is nothing you can not do when you are in their prescence. Without them, you are nothing. With them, you are invincible. I have been there, to that place where your skin is all I feel I will ever need. I have been there, to that place where life is meaningless unless I am in your warm and true arms. I have been to that place where I would give it all up to save you. I have been to hell and I would gladly walk there again, with no shoes and with a lost soul. I will give you all, until I have nothing left to give.

Love is a funny thing.

I am lost. I am lost in you. I am lost in the idea of you. I am lost in the past and the person that once stood before my eyes. All of these writings and all of these words, they all have the same meanings and ideas behind them. I must be intoxicated, with violence or alcohol, to have these real thoughts flowing around me. I can not tell anyone how I feel without feeling bad anymore and it hurts so badly. Today I wanted to hit you, although you were already in pain. I cried for so long, wishing it had been me in that car. I’m still crying, truth be said. I can not tell you anything though, in fear that you would leave. Perhaps you should leave, perhaps then I could breathe. Somewhere deep down though, I feel like I need you. I feel like without you my world will shatter. The truth though, you ask? Without you my world would shatter but I believe I could also pull it back together, and it would be so much strong.

I just don’t want to be strong. I want you.

It’s funny how you can stand so tall and so perfect even when you’re injured. My knight in shining armor that has slowly become to the bane of my existence. I have never felt so lost, I have never felt such longing. I have never had such tears.

I've never been so relieved. More so though, I've never been so mother fucking angry.

These are all of the thoughts that I do not wish to enter my brain. I shove them away and push as hard as I can and yet they seem to come back. They are pests that I can not find an insecticide for. They are words that my brain can not push out. My walls will break as soon as all of this is mentioned and unlike China, my great wall will npt stand. I miss yesterday when you loved me and I loved you. I miss when loove was real, when what we felt was not mere physical attraction. I miss your words in my ear, your heart in my hand. I will never forget those sweet moments we spent.

My emotions go in the same cycle every few weeks

I will embrace that for now though and I will not give up. I will push myself as far as I can. I will do everything I need to do and even more so than that. After I have been pushed to my limits for this thing we call work, I’ll party just as hard.

I do not know what I am doing or where I am going. I do not know what you expect and I am not concerned. I am stepping where my feet fall, there is no map in front of my face. This life and this world are not something you can prepare for, no matter how much you try. I am living for the now and making myself happy. No more stress, no more worries. I just want to live and remember the life and legacy I left behind. These are supposed to be the best years of my life and I will make them so. I will do what I want, I will live for myself each and every day.

I will never forget this. I promise this to you, my soul, for the rest of your ever lasting days.

When I see your name, you horrid face, then there is violence and extensive rage inside of my small and breakable figure. There is anger and vengeance in me that I have never felt before. I have never wanted to physically harm someone so much as I wish to rip, tear, beat and bludgeon you. I hate you, despite my hatred of hate. I would kill you were I given the chance, no remorse and no regret. You are worthless and do not deserve to be.

I refuse to be a sheep, no matter if it is in your God's flock or just high school.

"Fuck society. Fuck normality. Get piercings. Get tattoos. Do drugs. Get high. Drink 'till you pass out. Have sex. Love with all your heart.

Play the music loud. Live your fucking life. Fuck what people expect of you. Do what makes you happy"

This is what my life has been reduced to, my subconcious whispers, but it has not been reduced, my brain retorts, for you are succeeding.

I am a shameless liar, but only when it comes to you, and only when it is to myself.

I have written it all before. You are my love, my light. You have helped to guide me through some of the hardest moments and have even put me in a few of them. Forget all of that though, each path has led me to you and I will stay by your side until the end of time. We will walk the road that is paved in gold and memories, righteousness and beauty together. Hand in hand, we will pull through this dark tunnel of life and find absolution. I will look in to your eyes, I will kiss you. I will love you, no matter if it is wrong or right. I would waste a lifetime, an eternity on loving you. It’s easier to believe that this is infatuation but I accept what it is, whole heartedly and will deal with the fallout and consequences of it all. For you, I would suffer. For you, I would live. Oh my sweet divinity, my forever is yours to keep.

I respect those that have lived longer than me because they have seen and have known. No matter if they have truly lived, they have regrets and can list them in order and can tell me what I am doing wrong. I may not like you. I may not enjoy your company or think about you often but I respect your age and I respect the wealth of knowledge that you are.

I want all of you. I want to know that I have all of you, with no sense of hesitation and no wonder in my mind. I want to be able to shout at the top of my lungs that you are mine and mine alone. I want to ruin you so that no one could ever want you but me. All I want is you. I would ruin you to have that. I want you to yearn for my skin and mine only. This is my dying wish, to love and be loved in return. This is my wish, to know that you love me as I have loved you.

I want to crawl out of my skin and be someone else. I want to get the fuck out of here. I want to get the fuck away from everything I have ever loved and everything I have ever wanted. I want to get the fuck away from the people who supposedly care about me.

I want to be gone and forgotten.

I don’t really have words for the level of annoyed and disgusted I am. All you have gone through does not give you the right to be this judgemental person. Nothing we all have gone through gives us the right, but especially you. Nails on a chalkboard, over and over. Your hate is fueling my own. Perhaps this world would be better without me, aggravated and ignorant as it is. It would have no one to challenge and discourage it’s corruptness. I am tired of wanting to give up, especially on you.

Annoyance creeps over me, I am tired and frustrated. Your voice like the cliche nails on the proverbial chalkboard. Please stop speaking or I do not know what my heart will desire me to do.

If you can push through my layers and be a person I admire, I will never let you go. I will admire. I will sit in awe of you. The rest of you are worthless, simply flesh and bones. You are a shell. There is nothing, nothing to respect and nothing to love both of which I didn’t intend on doing in the first place.

I am finally mature and self-aware enough that I can accept you for who you are and continue to love you righteously, as I should, without worrying myself. My mind may still conjur up horrifying and upsetting scenarios but that is only in weakness. I love you enough that I can stand firm and trust you, despite the fact that I wish to trust no one. I can sit here, as frightened and unconifdent as I always have been, and know that you love me even if you don’t show it the way I wish that you would. Perhaps one day I will receive the over affection that I long for but loving you is easy.

I don’t really have words for the level of annoyed and disgusted I am. All you have gone through does not give you the right to be this judgemental person. Nothing we all have gone through gives us the right, but especially you. Nails on a chalkboard, over and over. Your hate is fueling my own. Perhaps this world would be better without me, aggravated and ignorant as it is. It would have no one to challenge and discourage it’s corruptness. I am tired of wanting to give up, especially on you.

High school feels very lonely sometimes.

I want to tear you apart, destruction will become the only thing you understand. And then, after you have fallen to your knees out of alienation and mortification then I will help you to rebuild. You will become someone new, with parts of you old and unchangingly perfect. Recreated and finally reaching your unsurpassed glory, the glory I always knew you could be. Your wings will open and your eyes will sparkle like the way a fire glitters when it is right in front of you.

There is no respect here, no respect and no love. There is no anger and no pain. There is no feeling, none at all. We will not waste our time on these petty feelings because we realize that these outsides are just veneers and masks. We are just shells, with parts that our breaking each and every minute. Since the day we are born, we are dying. There is no need for emotion, it is just a trivial part of this pointless existence.

I have spent all this time, yearning, praying and begging. Now that I have you and all that I have ever hoped for, but is that what I truly wanted or is it the past?

Writing down another human beings life, making up a story about a name you have never known, is scary and sometimes brings out more of my demons than writing about my own life.

chemicals -tigers jaw

All Social Change comes from the passion of Individuals.

I have written it all before. You are my love, my light. You have helped to guide me through some of the hardest moments and have even put me in a few of them. Forget all of that though, each path has led me to you and I will stay by your side until the end of time. We will walk the road that is paved in gold and memories, righteousness and beauty together. Hand in hand, we will pull through this dark tunnel of life and find absolution. I will look in to your eyes, I will kiss you. I will love you, no matter if it is wrong or right. I would waste a lifetime, an eternity on loving you. It’s easier to believe that this is infatuation but I accept what it is, whole heartedly and will deal with the fallout and consequences of it all. For you, I would suffer. For you, I would live. Oh my sweet divinity, my forever is yours to keep.

The painting, full of colors and creativity, on the wall speaks to her, “smile young child, for your dreams have all been fulfilled.” These dreams, these hallucinations are nothing close to what I expected them to be. All the worries that occupy my mind, some are my dreams and aspirations, but I do not consider them fulfilled due to smoke in my lungs and life in my heart. Passion is what I need, this will guarantee me nothing. To lie down is what she prays for her, and yet her mind reels with thoughts of the faces on this wall. “You are all posing, you are not real. Your lives are based off non realities, because all of you look happy and this is just not so.” She does not respect them, and yet she wonders why she placed the pictures there herself. Perhaps in this alternate reality, the real reality that for the moment she does not and does not want to know, she loved their smiling faces. Perhaps it is what she expected her life to be. She knows, with her mind clearer than it has ever been and with her concious completely aware of what the subconcious told it, these faces have no control over her happiness and will neither encourage nor discourage it. She will make herself happy of her own volition, happiness is a journey and she has begun to tread the path. These faces are nothing.

I am so unbarealy stifled in this place. I understand why people leave, especially intelligent people. I am so thirsty for knowledge, as though my hands are reaching out and begging. My brain is begging but yet I must follow their curriculum. I must stay inside, confined in the walls that were built for me, both metaphorically and the literal structure. I look outside and see the sunlight, I know what they are teaching. I do not want to be here.

Breathe. Breathe, Move. Breathe. Think. Do not want to think. Live. Breathe. Breathe. I am always living. Pulsating in my ears, sentual and unforgiving. I miss your skin. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Do not cry. Do not want to think. I am living, but I do not feel like it. I just want to live. It has not stopped since it started, the music is just like me. Changing and unforgiving. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I see them marching back, muddy and disgruntled…I see the blood on their clothes, their faces and skin. Some are wounded and injured, some smell like death. I can see the blood, wet and warm. I can taste the blood in my mouth. I see the men, sitting around the tents they have set up, talking and rousing around with each other. I hear their stories, the men’s aspirations that will never be fulfilled and just ramblings of the men. I smell sweat, grease, blood, and soil. I don’t taste much, except some of the food that they describe and grease.

This is what my life has been reduced to, my subconcious whispers, but it has not been reduced, my brain retorts, for you are succeeding.

http://www.last.fm/listen/user/haaayeliseee/personal

high, on a Tuesday afternoon, listening to Tigers Jaw, Mr. Tambourine Man and every beautiful song that plays on my last.fm, watching Law and Order: SVU with pie, grilled cheese and my teddy bear

Perhaps it is within myself that I search for the answers I need to give to my mind, perhaps it is within my soul and true self that I enclose and am subconciously aware of the truths, lies and hopefulness that make up my existence.

Since I was born, I have lost all innocence and sense of true simplicity. My mother once read to me, of chicken soup and monsters that miss young boys, I would smile and stare at her as though I were being given a gift. I would drift to sleep, in the hopes that perhaps tomorrow she would read the same stories. I fall asleep now, thinking and worrying. Simplicity has become social networking. Happiness has come from a book and a juice box to sex and what we believe to be love.

Innocence lost, complications gained. These are the best years of our lives.

I look upon these nights and smile. Although I am alone, I am with you, in heart and spirit. As my eyes look on, my heart is the one that sees. I see beyond the heartlessness nature of those who follow each other. I see beyond the pain that has been our past and parts of our present. No matter if you walk away or your shoulders turn to ice, I will wait as I have waited. Where there is Love, there I am.

Chapter One

I met him on a Summer night. It was warm outside, so warm that the heat seemed as though it was becoming dew on my skin. I felt like a glass with heated water in it. I felt stuck. I wasn't comfortable and the girls I was with...well, their presence left something to be desired if you know what I mean but I suppose that's the price you pay for popularity. I never was able to share the thoughts I felt, it was always about the latest diet trends and all the bitches we went to school with. The truth is, we were the real bitches but we were also the sad cases. I think that somewhere deep below the surface (because they push it so far below) they had real emotions and legitimate thoughts about things that weren't just materialistic and monotonous. Anyway, we decided to walk down from one of the girl's lake houses to the lake and meet some of their friends from the football team. Although I was new to the school, I had gotten in to this group by sheer luck. I had always had a nice sense of style, or at least kept up with the trends, and one of the group's many peons had noticed me and immediately accept me as one of their own. I guess we sound a lot like a pack of wolves, and honestly, we were a lot like a pack of wolves. I've always had this deep perception of people, and it has led me to see and accept that we truly are animals. We may speak and walk but we are no different from animals. We do what suits us and what needs to be done for ourselves, above anything else, other than when a parent may tries to save their young or something along those lines. The one thing we do have over wolves, dogs, monkeys, etc...is a clear knowledge of what we are doing. They kill simply because they need food. It is not an act of cruelty, whereas we kill simply to kill. We are a world that longs for destruction.

Now, as you can tell, the inner monologue in my head is rarely about boys or why I'm not as thin as the girl on the cover of that one magazine with that one article about how she lost weight which will probably be totally contradicted by another article in this week's magazine about how "what's inside matters." If what was inside mattered, I'd be a hell of a lot farther than where I am in the middle of this small town, with people I don't even remotely care to be around, walking down to a lake filled with trash to meet boys that probably have the IQ of eight year olds. I was destined for so much more. However, I am a realist.

Unchain my heart and open the cage doors to my soul.

Embrace all of me, said my voice in your ear like a summer's night under the stars.

All Quiet On The Western Front

I see them marching back, muddy and disgruntled…I see the blood on their clothes, their faces and skin. Some are wounded and injured, some smell like death. I can see the blood, wet and warm. I can taste the blood in my mouth. I see the men, sitting around the tents they have set up, talking and rousing around with each other. I hear their stories, the men’s aspirations that will never be fulfilled and just ramblings of the men. I smell sweat, grease, blood, and soil. I don’t taste much, except some of the food that they describe and grease.

What I am with you is comfortable, content in a state of knowing and not knowing. I know that you love me, I do not know how deeply that love goes or how brightly it's fire burns. I analyze every word you say and each gesture you make, I am trying to blindly assume what you will do next but you continuously suprise me, though I can not differentiate between whether these suprises are good or bad. Black and white. There can never be a gray with you because we can never find a balance. We are all the way, inhibitionless and filled with passion or desolate and distance. As much as I say I will not wait, I will, until the end of time.

On days like this, I feel like I’m in touch with this earth. All that is around me is a part of me and part of the life I lead, along with every other human being. I was given all I needed and need by this earth and for that, I am thankful and appreciative. For that, other worries and material things in life fade for only mere moments but what seems like an eternity of carefree living.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder than beauty is subject, it is one’s perception of what is beautiful. So, who are we to decide what beauty is if we all have different opinions of it? Not only that, but the mind can imagine. To imagine is to see things that are not there or to create a larger story around a completely non-complex object. People say they do not understand what I see in you, perhaps I am blinded by Love; perhaps I imagine you being the utter perfection that you are when you are not truly that. Because I have created this inner beauty within you it is reflected in your exterior. When they look u[on you, they do not see what I see. I know, in the bottom of my heart and from the middle of my soul that no one has ever seen you as I have seen and continue to see you. Sometimes I wonder if you can even be real when all of you, all of your beautiful mind and all of the beautiful moments you have created seem so surreal. If that is true, I am no John Nash and I could never forget you.

As it rises, I rise with it. It falls, I fall. My world consists of adrenaline and horror for a few mere moments. Despite all of this, I’m not afraid and this moment is not the immediate thought in my head. I am ready. As my life passes by before me, almost movie-like or river-like I suppose in the way that it flows and suddenly ebbs, I have not accomplished much. I have accomplished, however, unconditionally loving someone, unconditionally loving you which has been enough for me. The music is stilll playing, “Forever is a promise I am willing to make, as long as I always find beautiful oblivion when I touch your lips. It’s a promise I will give as long as there is untamed fire in this kiss.” This love song is to you. I am fine now, I will wait as I have always waited. And as I draw my last breath while careening towards my fate, I smile.

The bar is underneath my fingers; sweat on my hands, adrenaline running through me. I am looking in to eyes, all full of emotions but none of them the same. My hands begin to slip, only because my mind is occupoed by the audience watching. Life is a stage with my downfall as the main attraction. I will not faulter, I’ve never been one to let go. I apologize for not giving you a downward spiraling show.

Stop saying you miss the people we were. People grow up, people change. That’s why it is called a life cycle, that’s why they talk in your science classes about Growth & Development. From birth, we are made to grow and change. Not only our bodies, but our minds as well. Humans just coincidentally have opinions that change in time as well. To beleive that we should not change is to close your mind and end your spirit, long before it was meant to be ended. To close your mind is to end your life, despite whether you are still breathing or not. You can go through your life each and every day and never be alive. Do not forget that, or you will sleep beneath the cracks and fall under the feet of those who walks those sidewalks with liveliness and vibrance. You’re as good as dead right this moment.

There she goes, walking in to the same darkness, although she knows her heels will be snapped at the mouth of the trap. The wolf is ahead of her, inside of the woods. His eyes glow in the starry night, his glare is inescapable. As she walks towards him, certain she is walking to her death, flashes of what her future could have been and might have been flicker in her mind. She sees a child, a boy who could not be older than 5. He is sweet and fragile, the most innocent thing she has ever seen. He will never exist. She sees her daughter, sympathetic and aweinspiring. Her conception, birth and life will never occur. She is letting each and every promise be broken with each step she takes. While she knows this, she does not care. She continues walking, he snarls. He is preparing for his attack, she is nowhere close to cowering or hesitating. She comes closer to the wolf, and she sees bits and pieces of her past play in her mind. She sees the happiness and sadness she has known. She sees her greatest downfall and she sees what he once was. She sees Love and as she takes her final steps toward him, she is not afraid of the monster he has become because she truly believes that allowing him to ruin her will bring him back. She will sacrifice herself, as she has before. The last step is taken, she is beyond the point of no return. There is no more past or future. As he opens his massive jaw, she sees a glimpse of his eyes, he looks as though he is going to kiss her and she lifts her arms to the sky in acquiescence. His teeth snap shut.

My mind compensates with questions when I am upset. Nothing in this world is black or white, it is gray. We are all gray. What matters to you does not matter to the girl in her Bentley or the girl living down the street from out of a box. Although the word unique has never been a part of my vocabulary or seemed relevent to anyone to myself, our m minds are each unique. To hear your thoughts, to know your mind is to read a book that I have not before.

Physical attraction is merely a concept. Attraction is based off of thoughts and opinions on what is beautiful and what is this word, "attractive." I am physically attracted to both men and women. There are reasons for both, some are contradicting and some are the same. Always however, he is somewhere in the middle. He finds a midway and is perfection in my eyes. ~ Women are soft. They are warm and soft. Their lips are comfortable. It sounds odd but when I am kissing her, it reminds me of happier times with my mother. It reminds me of childhood, the good times in it at least. On the inside though, they are hard. They are harder than anything I have ever known and stronger than anyone could ever comprehend. Men rarely show their true emotions, at least the men that I know but women force themselves to have none. We love you but we force it under the surface. You would never know half of the thoughts that race through our mind each and every moment because we do not show you. We wear eternal masks, perhaps a different one for each day of the week. Strength, softness and elegane wrapped up in to a beautiful, thoughtful, obstinate women. Men are strong as well, but only on the outside. They seem to lack self-restraint, or in some ways notably much more so than women. They are violent, powerful but always in a different way. They are physically powerful but mentally, it is rare that possess and accept knowledge of themselves. Their desire is rageful, they would use us until we could no longer be used if they had the means to do so. I love that a man will force me in to submission, albeit I need not be. Over the years, the English word "man" has had many different meanings. It meant the one, husband, human, adult male, person, love, etc...The men are the hunters, they are the first humans that are always noticed. Words have been derived from man, it is a prefix and suffix. Despite the fact that there would be nothing in this world without women, there would also be nothing without man. With him though, he is soft and he is strong. I have seen feelings, that other "men" rarely show. He is this society's definition and perception of a "man" and what a man should be in my eyes, more than anyone else I have ever known, even my own father.