These L.A. lights
     There's smoke, everywhere.
     Laughter, everywhere.
     "Pokemon! Remember Pokemon? And Dragonball Z!"
     People talking over each other in their eagerness. Everyone listening to everyone.
     "I don't want them posed!"
     "You don't want the Fire Queen to pose?"
     Arms outstretched to hold the fire, the brilliant bursts in the sky, in my hands. I feel like I could, now.
     It's impossible for me to be this happy two months later. But I am.
     "Come with me to the store."
     Not a suggestion, not a question, because I don't want the answer to be no. So we walk and talk, you puff out your chest when a male walks by. You're protective and endearing and I want to hold you close, ruffle your hair, tell you a joke that makes you smile in that way that shows all your teeth, that way that I love, that way that is a real smile.
     We blow breath in each other's faces accidentally. Our cigarettes whisper to each other, silently, quietly, a hush in the breeze from the ocean.
     What do I want to say? I feel the urge to say nothing except what is between us now. Silence. Let me tell you my life story. Let me tell you what I love. Share, it flows as light through each other until we're filled with it.
     A quick one-armed hug on blacktop, a sweet text in the car, a moving conversation on the computer. Life is electronics, we make it fit our needs. Our needs. That sounds too nice.
     "This is my inner self I'm revealing to you."
     My heart softens a bit. Despite my tactlessness and your unloveable band, there's something. Even if it's not our hearts, it's something. A vital organ, perhaps. Our kidneys, lungs, livers. We're sharing what we have, working our way towards what will be, something neither of us can predict.
     "Good night."
     "Good night."
     Neither of us mentions that it's morning. When we wake, that will be enough reminder of the night we spent, exchanging our beliefs and wishes, neither able to easily walk away.
     In the morning I will have an unread text and I will go to school smiling.
     Halfway through the morning I will worry what that smile means.
     By the afternoon, I will have overthought.
     And by tomorrow evening, when we speak, when we lay down ourselves before each other in a sacrifice older than time, I will have forgotten everything.
     They don't shine quite as bright as back in 'Frisco
     Still wanna go?

I feel empty, though in a way that lets me know it's over, I'm okay, and I'm standing in the light at the end of the tunnel.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     It's hot in this living room. I feel my face becoming wet, salty, the fan turned where it cannot flap the pages of my book. I sigh as my notes fill another line, and lay my head back. The ceiling stares at me.
     I've tried to remember what your face looks like. It's difficult. I can remember individual parts: your eyes. That your nose was large (this blessed to me by Jimmie, who took one look at a picture I had and proclaimed I should never date someone with such a "huge schnozz"). Your lips were full. Your lips hurt the most to remember.
     I see the curve of your hip flowing into your full ass as you curled next to me on Jackie's couch. Not really next to me, you were far too full of frustration and anger for that. But it was a night we were speaking, and you had a sweatshirt on against the cold, and it had ridden up to expose a sliver of skin, and I wanted to make love to you right then, but I knew it was hopeless, for you were lost in your own world where you were drowning. Eventually you could breathe no longer and I was cast on a distant shore.
     A week ago I tried to remember what it was like to kiss you. It shocked me to know that the next time I kissed someone, it would feel different; it would be new. I vaguely remember the taste of your kisses (a whiff of a Camel brings back the taste, still raw, on your tongue, mixed with Miller and sunshine) but the feeling is no longer there. Not the long, passionate ones we exchanged, smiling afterwards, out of breath. Nor the short, sweet ones that I thought would continue forever, and then I told you to be safe and locked the door against the night.
     It's still hard to go through anything big, life-changing, and not think of you and your reaction. How you would be proud of my enthusiasm for college, happy for my joy over a potential job. I am thankful for what you did to me and my life. I've learned valuable lessons, and if we had stayed together, or even if I had stayed in my own place in my own city, I would have been behind a desk, greeting strangers and acting like I wasn't always thinking of you. Now I have a plan, a purpose.
     I cried to my mother, asking for the life I was promised back. The life with the lesbian power couple, the life with a cute house on Queen Anne and a dog in the backyard. The life of growing old and grey together, grandchildren running through our home. But that life, she told me, is no longer mine. That life was not the life I was meant to lead. I try to remember something I figured out late one night, looking at the big dipper and blowing smoke into its gourd: I am living the life God promised me. He has plans, and I am living them, and I will know later why I was sent in the midst of heartbreak to California to become a Registered Nurse and save someone's life.
     I have a fish who is wriggling in the pond beneath my feet in Washington. I have a fish that is nibbling my finger cautiously before retreating to the shadows in California. I have a large building I enter with books and paper in hand, and by the time I leave I feel as though all the knowledge I knew until this point has been pushed out in favor of what I just learned. But it piles on and builds itself. I have a coffee shop down the street where I know the manager by first name (and most of the cute female baristas, who are unfortunately married, but that never stopped anyone before). I have sent my application in and am waiting for a call.
     I don't wait for much anymore. I waited for two years for your call and apology; it came too late. I waited three months for a better life; we never made it. I waited to die after my heart cracked a third time; it healed instead.
     I need pills to sleep now, but as you need them too, I doubt you'll judge me much. I still take my anti-anxiety medication, but no more Xanax for me, not without you here, scaring me into submission and changing me at your whim and will. I tell everyone the truth and those who love it stay; those who don't leave, and I am better for it. I read voraciously, I text like crazy, I call my fish and best friend and talk until the sun has been gone for several hours. I am missed by those a continent away and those a half hour's drive.
     There are hours, good parts of days, where I do not think of you. There are 24-hour periods where you do not cross my mind. When you do cross, traipse through the footprints you have already laid, it does not always pain me. Sometimes it is good, remembering the sweet times we had, or thinking of the awful week that preceded my expulsion from all I knew and counting the blessings I've had since leaving. But other times, yes, it does hurt, thinking of your sweet sleepy eyes as you told me you loved me more than everything else, because I know it was not a lie, and that hurts the worst. Knowing that you loved me, and knowing I could do nothing to stop you ruining the beauty we fought so hard for.
     I do hope you are doing well. I hope you are not sick, and if you are, that you can visit a doctor. I hope you've had your wisdom teeth out and your abcess looked at, since I can no longer worry for you. I hope you're happy, or at least content. I hope you think of me sometimes, perhaps in the way I think of you, where it can hurt, but where it can also bring joy that is surprising in its coming. I hope you have started school or will soon. I hope you get your degree and accidentally email me an announcement when you send it to everyone on your email list. I hope that is the last contact I have from you and I can believe you are successful and living the life you always wished for.
     I hope you read this, and I hope you smile through the tears you are unable to spill.

     I wonder sometimes, very very late at night, the only time I'm vulnerable enough to allow you to creep into my mind, if you find it difficult to listen to some songs. If you have to switch out your CDs for new ones, or change the radio channel when you're driving.
     I'm amazed at how long my Xanax lasts and how much is left once I've left the person who probably stressed me out enough to need it in the first place.
     Sometimes I feel like you got to "keep" my friends...and then I realize that with your utter lack of friendly personality and inability to love, you need all the help you can get in the relationship department, platonic or otherwise.
     I've stopped drinking as much as I did when we were together. Now I get drunk off her voice when she calls me late at night. It's low and soothing, telling me the god's-honest truth no matter what, and I drift off to sleep with it still ringing in my ears, a smile wide on my face.
     My mother's been on a near-murderous rampage since I first called her and told her what happened. We may be visiting my brother soon. She hopes you continue looking over your shoulder for her or hired hit men every time you leave the house.
     I want to wash you and our shared memories from me, but I know the latter are a part of me, as you used to be a part of me, and they are what will keep me from giving in the next time you make the mistake of contacting me.
     I've found another fish, the same one whose voice makes me higher than I can ever remember being. I simply threw my line into the sea, not even knowing she was already on my boat. She and I have showed each other our faults, the parts of us that are raw and painful to even the slightest breeze. She knows who I am, and who I'm becoming, and she thinks that that person is gorgeous and intelligent and funny, a person who makes her smile, and I love making her smile because her smile is the most beautiful I can remember seeing in a long time.
     Every morning, I wash my face and get dressed, I read and text my fish. Every evening, I take a shower and some Benadryl and fall into my dreams, remembering how she said she loved that I knew and acknowledged I wasn't perfect. I'm finished trying to be perfect. I tried too hard for you. That's enough for a lifetime.
     Some days it gets hard, but at least once every day I remember that I'm strong, a Smith woman kind of strong, that I have dozens of people who love me beyond all that words could say, and that I am so much more without you.

She dumped me, and now I am in San Diego with my mother, staying here as long as is needed, possibly permanantly.
   
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


     I wake up in the morning, in the Southern California weather, that's so nice to my skin and hair, and after throwing on whatever clothes I have lying around, I'm the hottest thing most of these men have ever seen.
     I have at least five different people who will pick up the phone and listen to me rant, or cry, or will distract me, and then tell me they love me a million times before hanging up the phone.
     I talk to God, and though He hasn't answered, I know He hears me.
     I have a foundation of myself that she didn't like, and I'm using it to figure out who I am again. What I want. What I feel. My beliefs and dreams, separate from another's.
     I baby-talk to the cats, who follow me around like puppies, and they purr so loudly that all my sad thoughts are chased away.
     I sleep with a stuffed Eeyore under one of my arms, and unless I'm in a chemically induced sleep, I wake up between 3 and 4 every morning, but I believe that one day I will sleep alone through the night again.
     I'm working my way through Sex and the City; my mom owns all the seasons. I'm currently on disc three, season two, and just remembered that at least two of the women end up marrying their exes in the end, but I'm trying to not let that bother me and just enjoy knowing that for now, every relationship on there ends, no matter how great it seems.
     I hang out with Jimmy and my mom every other night. He cooks and plays the drums and sings and I think that if I have to wait until I'm 44 to find a love like that, it's worth it. He picks me up off the ground and gives me a bear hug and tells me my ex left what was the best thing in her life, and I smile through a vodka haze and tell him she was a slut anyways.
     I smoke Marlboro Lights on the apartment terrace and don't miss her all that much. I watch life happen on the street below me (there is always life to watch, it is a street of apartment buildings only ten miles from the border). Sometimes I hurt, but more often I think of my freedom, my plans to make myself and my life better than ever, how I will dye my hair bright red and get contacts and smoke Marlboro Lights outside of a bar on Hillcrest, because I am 19 and too young to have the bright-red-hair part of my life over.
     I try to remember that life can't be figured out, that there are more fish in the sea, that there are fish who are willing - no, happy - to take me as I am, no changes needed, that I am surrounded by love, that I am lucky to wake up each day with the ability to breathe, and that I am a Smith woman, I am strong, and I am all I need.

     I'm next to you on the couch, my feet tucked under your leg, your brow furrowed in some intense concentration, when I notice it.
     "Um, honey?"
     You turn away from the screen, briefly. "Yeah?"
     "You have...um..." I trail off as you see where my eyes are trained.
     "You did not." Your eyes widen as you touch your neck.
     "I didn't mean to!"
     This last part is shouted after you as you run to the bathroom. I hear a groan from behind the door as the two perfectly formed crescents on your neck are bathed in flourescent lighting. You yell, "Hooooneeeey!" making it into a three-syllable word.
     "I honestly didn't know I was biting that hard!"
     "Now I have to go to work with this!"
     You give me a glare as you walk back into the living room, my wide-eyed innocent look not as convincing above a smug, teasing grin. "Oops."
     "I am so getting shit about this."
     "No one'll even notice."
     "I haven't had a hickey on my neck in...years! I feel like a sixteen-year-old!"
     "Well, technically it's not a hickey, it's a bite mark." I become quiet as you glare again, though I know you're not angry at me. "You can hardly see it."
     "I can see it! That's bad enough!"
     I sigh as you gather your things for work. In the morning I'll ask you if anyone noticed, and you'll say you showed it off, as I knew you would. We'll laugh, and tease, and in three days it'll be gone, your first bruised neck in years.


     I stare up at the ceiling, praying for air in my lungs, as breathing doesn't seem to be a bodily priority at the moment. Your head is on my stomach, where your hair would be tickling me if I was feeling much of anything at the moment.
     You shift, grey eyes staring at my chin. "You okay?"
     I give a vague nod, blinking my eyes in rapid succession. "My eyes aren't focusing."
     You chuckle, pleased with yourself. You kiss my hip, the inside of my thigh, my stomach, then come to rest your head in my shoulder, laying your body across mine. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
     I shake my head slightly, amazed to be able to bring my hand up from where it was flung from the bed, and rest it on your back, drawing small circles with my thumb. "I'm fine. Better than fine. Fabulous. Amazing. All those other synomynyms...syno...those other words that mean the same thing."
     You chuckle again. "Want a cigarette?"
     At my vigorous nodding, you lean across the mattress to grab the ashtray, lighter, and pack from the nightstand. You hand me a cigarette, and my hands shake as I light it. I'm somewhat aware that I should not be smoking in bed in my weakened state, but I'm too exhausted to care. Too blissful.
     "I have to pee."
     I swear I can hear your eyes roll as you shift to the other side of the bed. "Alright, go pee."
     Using the walls for support, the muscles and joints of my legs liquid, I stumble my way to the bathroom.
     Later, I will lay beside you, struggling to keep my eyes open a bit longer, to have more time than the little I have to memorize the shadows in your body, the lines your eyelashes make across your cheeks in the candelight. I will see you exposed and vulnerable as we talk of dreams, and I will fall in love with you more than I thought was possible. You will tell me you love me more than life itself, and I will believe you. And then we will sleep, and we will not dream, for we have what we desire, and not even our creative minds could think of more.


     We're in the setting light, trucks and four-door sedans in the next lane. The sun flashes through the trees, bounces off your tanned skin, making it almost glow.
     "You're gorgeous."
     You spare me a glance as you change lanes. "You're crazy."
     "And you love me. What does that say about you?"
     "I don't even want to know."
     I settle back in my seat, comfortable in our two-year banter that has never changed, never will change. Opening up the center console, I search for CDs.
     "Where's the Taylor Swift CD?"
     You look down to where my hands have come up empty. "Um...in the cover thing. That you took out. Yeah, that thing," as I finally find it.
     I turn the volume up, sing along to the chorus. My hand plays with the wind, content without a cigarette for now. Besides, we smoked our last two on the freeway.
     Thinking I heard you say something below the Southern fiddles and country twang, I turn to find you smiling, wide, open, looking straight at me. "What?"
     You turn your head away, think better of it, continue to stare with that off-center smile I love so much. "Nothing."
     "What?"
     "Nothing!"
     I shake my head and grin, go back to teasing the wind. A warmth grows in me, starts in my chest and travels to my solar plexus, seems to spread through my bloodstream as it overtakes me. Being with you, I have learned, gives me this feeling. Loved. Happy. And the both together make a sweet gold mixture that never fails to give me a heady high.
     Later, I will watch you walk back to the car from the store. You will climb in and suggest pasta for dinner, having no idea that I am thinking how lucky I am, how beautiful you are, how much I love you. I will respond that we have no bread, and as we follow the winding road home, we will speak of gas and groceries, budgets and paychecks, and I will be the happiest I have ever been, for every moment with you surpasses the one before it with an intensity heretofore unknown.

     She grabs another flower, almost losing it to the wind as she holds it up for my approval. I smile and take it through the chain-link fence, adding it to the bouquet that's already wilting in my green-stained hand.
     I motion to the other side of the field, where the opposing coach has finally convinced the batter to stop picking his nose. She whips her head around, shaking her waist-length hair that she refuses to let you cut. As the ball slowly rolls to the outfield, I watch the dimple above her right eyebrow appear as she bites her lower lip in concentration.
     I search the stands for your face, seeing the same look reflected there as you watch her again become distracted by the cluster of daisies at her feet. You catch my eye and give a small wave, smiling; I return it and look back at our daughter just in time to catch her lopsided grin. Her knee-length T-shirt has been pulled up like an apron to aid her in collecting more flowers.
     Chuckling to myself, I remember our conversation yesterday:
     "Alexandra Lyn!"
     Her head turned, a guilty look on her face as she balanced on the edge of the porch.
     "You know better, young lady. Use the stairs."
     She heaved her patented five-year-old sigh and made her way down to the yard safely.
     I heard the front door open and close, your footsteps approaching behind me. You stood beside me, wrapping your arm around my waist and watching Alex traipse through the grass, stopping occasionally to look down before picking up a flower.
     "What is she doing?"
     I turned to you and smiled. "Picking daisies. I taught her how to make daisy chains." 
     You jokingly rolled your eyes and groaned. "Our house is going to be overtaken by flowers, I hope you know this. You got her started on something."
     "I know," I reply, my smile growing, "she is your daughter after all. With your deadly concentration and inability to focus on more than one thing at once."
     I got a playful punch in the arm for my tease. I laughed and grabbed your hand, kissing your fingers.
     I'm brought back to the present by a loud yell from the stands. I recognize our neighbor's voice, cheering on his son. You haven't moved from your spot. Alex's concentration is back on the game, which is nearly over.
     After dropping off the wilted flowers in the car, I carefully step over food, drinks, and people to sit next to you in the spot you've saved. You give me a quick kiss hello.
     "I just called your mom, she says Michael's tugging at his ear again."
     "Damn." All we need is another trip to the pediatrician this month.
     "She said she called the doctor, he said it should be fine. Probably just the antibiotics haven't fully kicked it yet."
     "Okay," I sigh.
     You take my hand, rubbing your thumb over my knuckles. "He'll be alright, sweetie. He's got his mom's toughness," you say with a smile.
     I smile back. "Yeah, and his mama's horrible immune system."
     We're distracted by Alex catching a ball and throwing it over into left field, about five yards left of her goal of first base. She looks into the stands and sees us, waves, as we yell encouragement.
     Sitting back down, a breeze has begun. You automatically wrap your arm around me to stop my shivering. I huddle into your side, kissing your cheek before laying my head on your shoulder, cringing as your yells travel directly to my ear.
     I look up at your face from my awkward position. Your dark hair, just beginning to get bits of grey around the temple. The lines of your face not completely disappearing when you relax. Above it all, the beauty I have seen since I first knew you. "I love you."
     The response I have heard a million times before, but that never seems to have a lessened effect. "I love you too."

She's in love with me.

=]

Today she asked why I loved her.
I thought it might be important to save the following in case she, or anyone else, ever wonders why again.
This is not an exhaustive list.
But it is a true one.

Because you make me happier than I've been in years. Because when I'm with you, you make me want to do better, make me believe I can be better. Because you make me feel like the most gorgeous being on the planet. Because I act like an idiot around you and you still love me. Because you love to read. Because you challenge me. Because you're as stubborn as I am. Because I believe with all that I am that your arms are the arms I'll sleep in, dance in, make love in for the rest of our lives. Because I don't know how to do anything but survive without you. Because after two years you still give me butterflies. Because you smile at me like I'm all you've ever wanted and all you'll ever need. Because the scent of your skin makes me high. Because your eyes say a million things to me about how much you love me. Because every time you touch me it's easier to breathe.

Because you're meant to be mine, and I'm meant to be yours, and I'm meant to love you.


Today I asked why she loved me.
I thought it might be important to save the following in case I, or anyone else, ever wonders why again.
This is not an exhaustive list.
But it is a true one.

Because you make my life so much brighter. Because you're so good to me. Because you're smart, sexy, daring, and pretty. Because you make me feel and believe things I have never felt. Because you are my best friend. Because you can deal with my attitudes and call me on my shit. Because you make me believe that all my silly dreams can come true. Because not being around you and the thought of not being with you makes my chest tighten. Because you laugh at all my jokes even when they're not funny. Because when you smile and look at me I cannot help but smile back. Because you know all of my secrets and all the bad things about me and love me anyway. Because you and I never run out of things to talk about.

Because you are you.

[Originally written April 8th]



     flash
     A car parked at the top of a hill. Lone figure in long shorts, hands in her pockets, shuffling towards me. Sweetest lips, sugar-sweet.
     flash
     Can't disconnect from each other, hands like magnets from polar opposites. Hands intertwined. Nervousness, stickiness. Music changes, DJ plays our songs.
     flash
     Freedom is so new to me, to us. I hold you close as we walk down golden streets. Exposed lighting. Flouresence isn't nice to anyone's complexion. Chivalry isn't dead.
     flash
     Delicious, falling into you. Memorizing your skin under my hands. Contours of your body, pressed together as we are, thrown into soft relief. It's impossible to be close enough.
     flash
     Up stairs, close as we can get to the lights floating on the water. Let's ride to Bainbridge, baby. Craved abandonment, finally given, their quiet footsteps fading.
     flash
     Yelling out loud, rhythm counting our precious seconds. The world should hear us, tires rolling over the pavement of my neighborhood. Point out brick buildings, try to find the slow way home. We attract each other; I feel your smile when you think I'm not looking.
     flash
     Sensation, lovely sensation, the warmth spreading from your fingertips to crowd my body. Coals burning low in my stomach. Focus on the words. We're so limited, but so limitless.
     flash
     Laughing close to midnight. The rustle of curtains. Let them look, let them see my smile. I'm flying. I've been set free.
     flash
     Goofy grin. Early morning, red flowers. Memories flood me like a dream I'll never forget. Small teases of scent, long washed away, tricked by a not-so-subconscious yearning.
     flash
     Show me what forever feels like.
     flash

[Originally written April 1st]



     I want to feel the heat of a thousand candles.
     I want to feel the chill of a million rivers.
     I want to explode in your arms
     and be sheltered in the aftermath.
     I want to look over the edge with you -
     and jump.
     I want you to invade me until the sweetest soap and harshest brush
     couldn't wish you away.
     I want to shiver from only your voice, edgy and low.
     I want to memorize how the shadows fill the valleys of your body.
     I want every morning light that floods the bed to be interrupted by an angel's unruly hair
     And slow, sleepy smile.
     I want to feel the air taken from me when you're near.
     I want to always forget where I was going,
     forget three days in a row to buy shampoo;
     I want to always be caught up in the sweet distraction that is you.
     I want whispers in my ears
     and breathless praises in the black of a still summer night.
     I want to not remember how it is to be whole without you.
     I've always wanted you;
     I still do.

                           Let's run away to Phoenix, baby.

[Originally written March 24th]



     Suddenly there's a pot of coffee brewing brewing on the kitchen counter, its scent permeating rooms, reaching the space where I lie beside you, curled under the safety of your arm. You sleep soundly; I am able to pour us large mugs of unsweetened caffeine before I sit beside you on the bed and begin the arduous task of waking you.

     Suddenly I feel the wind whipping past me, turning my hair into a mess of knots and tangles. The smell of heat rises from the asphalt, the smell of greenery comes from the numerous unnamed plants beside the road. My senses are filled as my hand plays with the wind, teasing it so it never can make it stay in one place. When I turn, you don't notice the smile, a real one, that grows on my face, nor the camera that I pull out, so focused are you on the road. I silently capture a moment when you're beautiful to me.

     Suddenly the carpet is plush beneath my feet, goosebumps rising on my bare legs as I shut the sliding glass door in the bedroom and slowly wander towards the living room where you should be. You immediately put a finger to your lips and point to the floor, indicating the apartment below; we don't want to wake her, ruin our perfect moments. Tiptoe, quiet quiet, I carefully make my way to the couch and fall into your side as though drawn by magnets I cannot control. I take your coffee cup in one of the rare times it's not glued to your lips, but you cannot protest, so wary we are to make noise. My eyes meet yours as I hand it back; we say a thousand words without taking a breath.

     Suddenly there is light glaring brightly in my eyes, forcing me to shade them with my hand. My back is against cool metal; I am so close to you that I can't help but shiver. It causes a grin to grow on your face which does not hide the trepidation in your eyes. In my search for words I fail, but I'm saved by you tripping me, and I fall so hard and so fast that I don't know where I begin and you end, I don't know whether I'm standing or sitting, I don't know whether I'm dreaming or if all of this is real, the smell of rain and a car door slamming and everything that is now so acute and so faded.

     Suddenly your voice fills my ears as you tell me for the first time that you have never stopped loving me. My breath stops. I freeze. My mind runs to the time when you denied it, but there was so much pain that it has forced me to forget. When you repeat it, oxygen fills my lungs in a painful and relieving flurry. I don't know how to respond, how to tell you that you've missed your chance. How to tell you that I stopped loving you twelve weeks ago for the first time in the longest eighteen months of my life.

     Suddenly, I am promising to love you again.
     Suddenly, I am hoping for new memories.
     Suddenly, for the first time in twenty-one months,
     I begin to feel.

I have recently discovered that I was in such excruciating pain the two months after Krishel left me the first time that my brain has blocked off those memories.

I can't remember two months of my life.

My life,
for lack of a better term,
is a tad bat-shit insane at the moment.

But a lot of it is in a good way,
which hasn't happened for awhile,
so I suppose bat-shit insane
isn't always disaster.

I have not posted and will probably not post again for awhile because I am busy with:



and



and



and



and

I can't really remember what really started me on this train of thought today, but I was sitting around with Kaila and I talked about how, just...life is now. And it just really, really hit me. And it scared the shit out of me.

Life is what you make it, right now. People play it safe their entire lives, save up hundreds of thousands for retirement, and then die before they get a chance to use it. Can you imagine how much more living they could have done if they hadn't saved that money?

( It is late, and I am rambling, but I still think it's worth reading )

I'm breaking my own rule and actually making one, due to recent studies that show if you make one you're more likely to stick to it, especially if you announce it to friends and family.

Here it goes.



My resolution for 2009 is to move to Manhattan, sometime after completing DBT in August and before the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and to live there for at least three months.

Thanks to some prodding - some from my brain, some from my friends - I've decided to take a big ol' leap and put up a few parts of my novel up here for you to read if you like. Perhaps I'll continue if I ever get around to actually sitting down and writing again (besides, y'know, LJ posts and such XD).

Now, my huge disclaimer is two-part:
a) I have never written, as those of you who've read my writing know, purely in a "novel format." I don't like dialogue. Or interaction between people that isn't vague or that I don't have to explain. As I keep writing I'm getting a tad better, but I'm still stuck for the most part in my "old" writing mind.
b) This is a rough draft. I stress the rough part. Hopefully, if I ever get it to the point where I want to publish it, it will be cleaned up through several drafts and this one will become ancient history.

And with that...

( Le Novel! )