Nothing

This is something that isn't anything.

This is where I ask a boy why he would let me think we could love each other.

This is where I wonder what reality is, because someone has deconstructed it. And everything. With single words, with "I can't talk about this now."

This is the moment when I wonder why any of us are where we are, because why are we why, because when are we when, because what are we?

What!?

This is nothing.

This is where I stop letting myself love.

This is where you break my heart...

where my heart breaks all which loves it.

This is something and nothing and everyone who knows what I have not yet been allowed to understand.

This is conspiracy.

This is dogma.

This is life.

This is.

I don't know what is tonight. The things I believed are no longer believable.

This is a man sleeping on a mattress. This is a girl waking in the night.

This is a boy not knowing what love is.

This is a girl who is not the boy's own to love.

This is how a girl hates him for no promise he made.

This is nothing.

This is everything.

Relationship. Words exchange.

This is no poem; this is no cry.

This is what falls out of my mouth as I think about carelessness and novels and song lyrics, the mix CDs made for me, and the city streets I cannot face, for love has paved them, and I do not seal its tar.

I am forbidden from the paths the men have laid. I am restricted from the asphalt under my feet.

This is nothing.

So on I'll drift to nothing else.

How Important is the Who?

I've started five or so posts in the last week, and haven't finished any.

I've started a lot of things, and only finished some.

There's an incompleteness, a sublimity. Something to do with Spring not being quite here yet, with Summer feeling so far, with so much left to do.

And life is changing all the time but some days we feel it more than others, and right now I feel it everywhere and deeply.

I've been particularly afraid of things lately: death, love, the future, uncalculated change.

All of these play into who I am, aside from what is happening to me.

Someone pointed out to me recently that these words, these thoughts--they're coming from some place far inside my head. I think that got to me a little bit.

I'm thinking about how many things I can say before I run out of anything I can even put into words, because we do run out and quiet down and fall apart.

Why do we listen? Why do we ask questions? Why do we give up moments for some people, things, places, experiences---and not others? Is that who we are, or just what we do?

I don't mean that in an apathetic why do anything at all kind of way, but as a serious series of questions: how do we decide what to spend parts of our lives on? What is our currency, and are we responsible in our spending?

My time is undoubtedly the commodity I trade with most. It is the most valuable thing I share without great restriction, and I think I do so generously. I love giving my time to people. I much less like spending it on tasks: cleaning, driving, working, studying. Writing and reading are exceptions.

I wonder if that's pretty average, if most people find that time is the best way to show a person love, or at the very least, concern.

I don't much like talking on the phone, and I like texting even less. But spending a few minutes with a friend, even just in passing on campus or at work--that I love.

So I'm spending time with these words to let you into some far space in my mind and I'm not quite sure how to feel about the lack of time spent with you. Do you feel like you've spent time with me? Like you know me any better for having giving moments of your day here---for the sacrifice of time you're giving?

Because I want these things to be worth your time, to be worth the trip into my head without my knowing who you are when you enter.

I read Virginia Woolf for class last week. In her piece titled "A Sketch of the Past," she makes a comment that strikes me:
"Here I come to one of the memoir writer's difficulties--one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being... I do not know how far I differ from other people. That is another memoir writer's difficulty. Yet to describe oneself truly one much have some standard of comparison."

Woolf was writing about memories, and I do a bit of that, but hardly.

But it makes me wonder. How important is the who of the what that happened, if it's only me. And here I am, saying what's happening. And nothing of who I am. I think the who is irrelevant, but I also think I may be wrong.

I think I'm too far into my thoughts, and wrapped in myself tonight. I think I've asked plenty of questions and that I need to answer to myself.

There's something in the way, I feel, of connecting to people in these words. I believe I am capable. I am unsure of any success I may have had of late.

I am not a memoir writer; this I know.
I started with intentions, well-defined.

Those goals might be changing.

How important is the what here when the who is staying the same?

Are you here for the words, or are you here because they're mine?

And you. Do you wear your hair the way you do because it's easy, or looks nice--because it's you? Or is it you because it's cool? Hairstyles don't define who you are.

Nor do fads or clothes or accessories.

Are you letting anybody in your head? Or just trying to get them to turn theirs in your direction?

How important is who you are? How important is what you do?

Today, I Believe It

I've just started, and I'm already pretty encouraged. So thanks, everybody, for reading, following, commenting, and so on.

I had a great day with the roommates today. We went shopping up at Flatirons and I got a dress for Leigh's wedding. It didn't feel all that special, really, when we were standing at the service desk in juniors with a crazy woman named Sandra who had the glitteriest (made that one up) nails I've ever seen in my life, along with at least eight rings on her hands. She was crazy.

But as we walked out to the car, I had a moment--one of those, when did I grow up? And how? thoughts. My best friend is getting married. I'm an aunt. I'm deciding what city is the best place to plant roots in for my next move, which has potential to be the last for a long time.

And I'm finally getting my ears pierced. (No, never got to that before, but we're going in a little bit.)

I'm a person who pauses to think about life pretty often, but I'm still pretty shocked at how much of it has happened. Every time. Seasons, moments, songs, births, photos...

It just gets me.

But it's exciting: the scary kind.

Leigh will get married and slide right into the next phase of her life--newlywed-student-teaching-dom. And Concha's going on a date, a double date. And Kris is working and Chip is graduating. Annie's in college. And all the CCU freshman year friends are around, or not. Dating or single or getting engaged or whatever it is they're doing.

It's all still happening. And I'm here in the scary exciting part, watching them, waiting with and for them. Waiting on love that might someday come, or not. A career, or an opportunity, or a chance at some way to impact a world outside my own. Scary exciting. And beautiful.

My sister said something to me today that meant more than she probably realized: "You're not the kind of person someone can just drop without a thought."

I take a healthy pride in the fact that someone would even say that. I'm worth investing in, worthy of love. I forget that sometimes.

There's been cuts in these years--in my skin, at my pride, of my teammates--but I realize that I'm not a part of what's been left behind. I'm here, right here, in these places: my room, my senior year, Colorado, about to start a second job, writing, finishing. I've made the cut in a lot of people's lives, even if I got cut from the eighth grade soccer team. And I'm more beautiful for it.

I love my sister. And my mom, who made us the way we are. And the rest of my family. And my roommates. And my best friends. And everybody I've ever met really, even the ones I wouldn't say I even liked.

That's cheesey, I know. Dr. Woodruff would have a fit and write "TRITE" -- just like that, but bigger, if I had ever handed those words in for an assignment in her class. Maybe even with an explanation point. But I can laugh at it, and this: Life is trite. We live in cycles and make choices day in and out that put us where we are, and a lot of times, we repeat the same mistakes, but eventually, we learn and look at ourselves in special moments when we say, "I'm beautiful, and today, I believe it too."

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A new poem coming shortly too! Thanks for loving me, each of you.

And as always, thanks for reading.