Why can’t you see the beauty in the world? Appreciate the brush stroked canvases? Notice the meaning behind the words? Care about the beautiful broken souls? See more than a beginning and end? Life is colorful, why waste your time only viewing it in black and white?

- Things I say when I'm angry at 4 a.m

Giving Myself Away

I'm growing tired of pouring my heart and soul out to the people I meet in my great life-adventure. It breaks my heart when I suddenly realize that I'm not guarded enough when it comes to people. I'm too trusting in every pair of honest-looking eyes. If someone opens up to me, I find myself opening up back. I give honesty when I get it. I love to trade stories. It never quite occurs to me in enough time that people may not be as they seem. I always forget this important part in letting people in my life. I let myself ignore the small voice in my head that's telling me to be careful. It tells me that if I give up these bits and pieces of myself to people... I may never get them back. The warning flashes in my mind every time and I simply step around it as I proceed to give my thoughts away to another human being. Most times, in the end, these people take these pieces when they leave. It doesn't matter how many memories we've made, how much love we may have shared, the stories we bled out... They still walk away. I know that. I never doubted it by any means.

There was a time we spoke of the world as if we owned it

I have always wanted to write a novel, but I can't.
'Why not?'  I'll ask myself.
'What is stopping you?'
That I never know. I'm not sure why I can't write. Why is it so complicated to magically pour myself into paper?
Maybe someday I will create something great. Maybe I already have. Who knows?

Not Sure I'll Ever Live Here

I'm not the type of person that could ever live in neighborhood like this.

Photo credit: Jasmine Spoors.

Ever felt this way?

I'm all too familiar with that feeling that you get when you've  had a long, difficult, stressful day. That feeling that settles in near the end of this tedious day. The one that washes over you and douses every part of you in exhaustion. It takes every bit of energy you had before. It replaces that long-gone energy with, instead, a heavy weight on your body and your mind.
I always seem to be so relieved when these type of days come to an end. I'm tired, but immensely grateful when I can finally drag myself home to bed. But, when my head hits the pillow, something happens. My mind suddenly throws itself into overdrive and my thoughts are racing so fast that I can't catch them anymore.
Time passes by as I am suddenly trying to solve every problem in my life. I'm planning my week and then I'm thinking of homework. I'm recapping my day or making my bucket list... I find myself mulling over everything my brain can possibly conjure up. It's ever-changing and, most times, forgotten by dawn.
Every now and then my neurotic brain reminds me that I have to be up early on the morning for some unwelcomed everyday obligation. The prompt is burried quickly by hurried distractions.
It takes a countless number of my thoughts before I finally feel my mind blanketed in darkness and I'm ready to drift off.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
My alarm screams at me.
Every fiber of my being is jolted awake as my brain sends out a sharp signal.
'It can't be time, yet,' I think to myself.
But, it is always time. My alarm never lies.
I know I have to get up. I don't have a choice. I struggle to open my heavy eyelids on these mornings. The sun is usually peeking through my blinds. It always makes my eyes ache.
Every time I feel so defeated and I think, 'Get up. The world doesn't care if you're tired.'

In All Fairness... I Never Thought I Would Go To College

When I think back, I remember shying away from the subject of higher education. As I reached my 3rd year of high school my classmates were already pepped up about applying for college. When they were hard at work, putting the effort in to ensure their educational future, I was sleeping through class or not going at all. Did I stop attending class because it was too hard? It wasn't hard in an academic way, no, the problem was actually the complete opposite.
My high school has always been know for its athletics, not its academics. There was no academic challenge. Why? Because they did not want to make it anymore challenging for students to graduate due to the school's faltering graduation rate that only kept declining over the years.
How do I know this? I remember having an assembly in the auditorium and during that assembly our principal sternly warned us about the fall in test scores.
Classes were tedious. Honestly, how many things from high school do I use now? Not many... No, honestly, I did not gather any more than a few life-skills, or retain much knowledge at all, from high school. I only ever grew more and more dissatisfied over time with my classes. Even when it came to the subjects I really find extraordinary and fascinating. It seemed as if, most of the time, my teachers barely made an effort to keep us adolescent minds intrigued, engaged and involved. When I replay my memories from when I was in my high school classes, they are have the same drab setting narrated with the same monotone voice going on and on like the authority figures in the Peanuts series.
Somehow, although I missed a majority of the last few years of high school, I still managed to pursuit higher education after dropping out. Now, I am doing fairly well in my first semester of college, I'm passing my classes and honestly, it's no thanks to my public high school.

Love Without Love.

Have you ever loved someone, but not in the way you're supposed to? It's like when you wake up early to see the sunset and you walk outside to have a smoke and you walk into the warm embrace of the Summer humidity and it wraps itself around you like the welcoming of your favorite comforter. That's what love without love is like; Comfortable. It's nothing like those days you walk outside and find yourself wandering into a brisker air, you've just woken up and you suddenly find your skin suddenly tingling while it's coming to life, you find yourself waking up a bit faster and widening your eyes at the newly risen sun. Those days... Well, those are the days you would closely compare to being in love, not just loving someone.
Surely being comfortable is necessary, isn't it? Of course. But, is there a line in the sand, that you smudge when you step through it, that differentiates comfortable and being too comfortable?
Being too comfortable... Well, that makes you lazy. It really gives you a stability that you're scared of never finding again. You've already found a balance, so why would you ruin it to feel that brisk morning air again, when you could forever and always feel this warm?
The warm, close feeling may wrap you up on the outside, but what about your insides?
They may slowly start heating up, until you feel a knot of a hot, coiled, mess within yourself.
That mess will soon burn away, until there is nothing left but a smoldering pile of ashes. That pile of ashes will soon ignite something else that was laying deep within you. Something that you'd never thought could be lit while you were so comfortable to begin with. Soon, it lights an icier fire, one that not only burns through your veins, but it will also engulf your brain. It will burn you away with a thick gasoline that most would call resentment.