When I was in high school---fresh outta middle school, just entering the scary world of 2000 plus people milling about in super small hallways, yelling things, bumping to music, seniors pushing past still snot-nosed fourteen year olds, scoffing on the way to their cars in the senior lot down at the bottom of the hill---I used to blog. Almost every day. I would allow myself to care, allow myself to bleed, to show emotion, to cry, to be sad over the people and the things and the places that I missed. I never felt apologetic. I never really worried if someone saw me crying.

I'm twenty now. I'm supposed to be moving into adulthood. Every one around me has a grown-up job. And I am ashamed to cry.

I am scared to show weakness. I am scared to grow up and most importantly, I am scared of being alone. Even as I pray to the god I choose, I am scared of being alone. My phrase this year has been "What's easy is not always right." The choices I've made haven't been easy. I don't know if that makes them right but I don't care to analyze data in search of regret fragments. Did I choose based on other people? Did I choose based on what I wanted?
How can you possibly separate out those things? But those questions I ask.

I think of her face. The fourteen year old girl...pensive, now, not because of the algebra but something she won't say and instead she hides behind slightly caustic, sarcastic comments, and she reminds me of my fourteen year old self. Perhaps that is what takes me back, or I'm just prone to nostalgia....

I write to survive and nothing less. I write to live life the way I want to live---both painfully and joyfully aware of all of the ups and downs it has to offer. How do you choose without looking to others? How can you stand on your own two feet, refusing to lean on anyone, without missing something? P.D. used to say you must avoid dependence, and independence, and work towards interdependence. He won't even meet with me now. I don't care. I will love him until the day I die--the professor who helped to show me the light of the world, helped me to believe that the written word can ignite the fire in the soul, can breathe life in God's words, and nothing less.
But only if they're written right.

I am scared to make bad choices. I am scared to give in. I am scared to not give in and let the outside make my choices for me. I only speak of high school so much because it's not where I am at right now. When I was in high school, middle school was where it was it. Fuck man...in middle school I was probably talking about how great elementary school was. Sentiment--it'll get ya.

You know that one Vagina Monologue? where she lists the memories?
"Memory: five years old. The pretty lady....."

I have those. that is the order in which I often think.
Memory: 17 years old. I am driving down the interstate I frequented every damn day. There's the bronze dome. Why do they say it's ugly? It completes this city. Bitterness ekes out the side of my beloved car. My runaway car. My escape car. My everything car. I live in him, think in him, dream in him. He is part of me. He can span a state in a day. With him I can go anywhere. Bitterness runs down the sides...becomes a part of the oil and the tire grease left on the road. It is nothing and of no comparison to what I experience now: a greed-less power. An effortless and want-less existence. And I zoom away knowing I have deep black coffee to look forward to and hours of mix cds. Goodbye. If you didn't want to say goodbye you didn't have to.

Memory: 17 years old. Three black coffees later. I am ready to see this new town. Village, as I think of it. Global wanderer, proudly stamped on my chest, but ready for a humble abode. It is nothing. All of a sudden...where is this place? Is that the mall? Is this it? a Meijer? Too small to be acceptable...but i'll wait...Flash forward to first day of school. Matching North Face backpacks. Blond, flowing hair. (why are they all blond?) pavement leading up to a beautiful glass structure. (how is this a high school?) Perhaps everywhere is like this. Small town midwest. Africa. Asia. Europe. Perhaps everywhere there is cattiness...there are hierarchies....there are people who'd rather blow each other off. There are structures you cannot disentangle. There are mean people, there are nice people, there is everyone in between, and there are only a few with whom you feel a spark in your chest and feel the need to latch on, sharing with them an invisible cord that you don't want to let go of your grip on.

Perhaps you cannot help it.