bc and photos.

My brother, Johnny baby, lives in Vancouver. This means that he gets to be in cool pictures all the time (like the one below.) He asked me to creep his pictures and use them in my blog. So johnny this is for you. I will be in Vancouver sooner than you know it. And i want to be in a ton of cool pictures too. Word. ps since when do you wear plaid shirts?!

"there's a place i'd like to go somewhere out west, it's not specific, and the pictures show it best.

i know there's trees i know there's sand and i know there's grass, i know it's somewhere in the past.

there's a girl out there who's lookin for it too, she's not sure when she'll go or exactly what she'll do.

am i doomed am i the first one of the last? am i just someone from the past?"

I cut all my hair off. I think it makes me look like 20 years older. Too old. I started buying more sophisticated clothes, but i realized i could never really be sophisticated with the stains all over them. I will always drop my food everywhere. I will never be able to wear heels. I will always wear un matched clothes. More importantly, i am terrified to turn 20 years old this summer.

"I may still not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know that someday I want to live in a house filled with my books and travel souvenirs. And the walls that aren’t covered in bookshelves will be covered with photos of my family and friends. When I leave the house I will be going to a job I love, and I’ll return to a person I love. So, that’s the dream I’m working on."

time.

'All those evenings on the back deck of our first apartment. They meant everything but the wind just carried them off. '

                    I got a phone call from an old friend from my highschool-ish years. It's always bitter sweet to hear from them because its sad to realize how you hardly talk anymore, but its nice knowing that you can always pick up just where you left off. I like having friends that you have known forever, because they just know you. I am kind of seeing where things go with this new guy, and he's mentioned once or twice that he "likes me". This frustrates me because he doesn't know me.  He knows nothing of my past of my family or my friends, he really only knows this person i am at university. I've always wondered if you can get to know someone without first knowing their past, i guess for some people it's possible but not for me. Who i am is so deeply routed in the places i have been growing up and the people i spent those years with.
                  I always feel a bit lost when i don't have a piece of home with me. It's hard to explain living in a small town has had such a large impact on the person i am. I love coming back to where i've been. I love coming back to the people who have always been there. Time after time, it's always the same. Whether its the times we've sat around and remembered our old adventures, or the times we're back out there relieving our old adventures. It's who we are. It's who i am.

My family & I got separated in New York City when I was little. Scared, I sat crying on the sidewalk as tons of people passed by. A homeless man picked me up, comforted me, & carried me to a police officer, who found my parents. He had a long beard & I asked if he was Jesus. He laughed so hard he cried. He GMH. http://www.givesmehope.com/

people always leave.

I am the kind of person who always remembers their dreams so vividly. I am that person who wakes up and has to text someone immediately telling them about what i dreamt. It happens all the time, it's soo annoying. But it's cool because i think dreams can tell you a lot about your unconscious self. Last night i had such a bad dream, not the scary kind, but the kind that makes you cry in your sleep. I wont go into detail but it basically had to do with four of my closest guy friends and all of them eventually telling me off and completely leaving me for different reasons. The one was really stressful because he left without saying goodbye or giving me a chance to even explain myself, he just peaced... and it was so painful.

I had the chance to hangout with good freinds from my highschool days tonight. I brought up my dream and they told me what they thought, and we all kinda made fun of me and ended up talking about pretty much everything. The topic of how our freinds moved out west was brought up, a familiar topic, one that has changed and effected all our lives. However i shut it down before it had the chance to flourish. They asked me why i always do this, and i tell them that i can't talk about it without being upset. That move took something so important away from me, something that made me so happy, something that i was now where close to being ready to let go of. It took it at the worst timing too, the time that it was crucial to my life. I remember the feeling before and after the move, the one of complete longing for something but knowing that you'd never be able to have it again. I can't really put that feeling into words; there are none that can describe it. It was almost as if half my self was split in two, the other half was taken far from me.
I realize now what my dream was about, my fear of people leaving. Peyton from one tree hill had this little saying, "people always leave." and thats all i've known so far. I know this world is a good place and i know there's plenty of people who do stay. But the experience of this one person leaving, this one very important person being forced out of my life unwillingly, has had a profound effect on the way i now see things. I guess that's why i now hold on as hard as i do. It makes sense.

girl says:

I know,

I just wish that I had met him in like, a year, and I would have all of this behind me, but that isn't how it happened. I just don't know what to do...so I am not going to do anything

raaach. says:
exactly.
this is either gonna make you and him stronger and make you realize how much you want him, or its gonna make you realize you want to be on your own
like right now being on your own seems so... amazing and free and wonderful
but its an awful lonely place out there.

girl says:

yeah, it really does

raaach. says:
but he is a rare one in a million

girl says:

I know!

raaach. says:
i just dont want to see you let the best guy go and you not be ready for it.

girl says:

I know

raaach. says:
you can let him go, but only if you realize all your letting go.

girl says:

thats why I can't let him go right now, because I am not ready to

girl says:

but I wish I could have the chance to experience that for myself, I feel like this is an important part of life that I am missing out on.. going through finding out who I am without being attatched to someone,

raaach. says:
very true
raaach. says:
well its kinda like, you either miss out on this part of your life, or you potentially miss out on the best part of your life... him.
but not really.

girl says:

I know

raaach. says:
i dont want to be biased here
im playing devils advocate to your thoughts

girl says:

I just wish I could have found him later in life when I was ready for him

raaach. says:
well you could always ask to put things on hold...
but speaking from experience
i think he will end up being too hurt to get back into a relationship w you

girl says:

I don't know, He was saying last night how he would wait for me no matter what

raaach. says:
thats how i feel  sometimes. as much as i want that guy back... i could never go back.

girl says:

But I don't want to hurt him. And I son't want to be the person who can't make up their mind, and it going back and forth

raaach. says:
exactly
so its like once you make up your mind you gotta stick to it

girl says:

exactly

so I don't want to end things with him unless I am sure that is what I want

raaach. says:
good idea.

girl says:

I know, I am so smart

raaach. says:
S-M-R-T

 Why can't we just know these things! Why does it have to take forever, why do we struggle so much with knowing the difference between what we want and what is good for us? Why do hearts always break in the process?! It's because it's our journey. It's how life goes. If everything was for certain this world would be an awfully boring place. There would be no adventure, no beauty in uncertainty, it just wouldn't be life. We always live for some ultimate goal, as if certain steps will lead us up to everything that we've been looking and striving for. But in life, the process is the product. These little steps mean everything. These conversations, these decisions... this is the product. Embrace it.

  I just noticed this today... One of my biggest flaws is the fact that i am so so pessimistic.

"I’m afraid of time… I mean, I’m afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I’m afraid of the quick judgments or mistakes everybody makes. You can’t fix them without time. I’m afraid of seeing snapshots, not movies."

I think that the word love, and i don't mean eros, but brotherly love, is a tricky word. I think that this word often falls victim to being over used and never really meant. I also believe that love is not just a "feeling" or some thing you feel for people, but it has to have some sort of action attached to it. I feel that love can be expressed in words but it is often best expressed through actions.

Girls use love as means of gaining popularity. I see this so often, girls being all 'i love you' to their friends, because when you say you love them they feel all validated and known and it's like "yeah i love all my girls"... But really they just say that so that people will like them and want to be their friend too.  I can't explain that very well. I would just rather be shown love through actions like, taking a friend out to lunch, helping them write that essay they just remembered was due tomorrow, staying in with them when their too sick to go out. Love speaks volumes through actions.

                 Particularly, i don't want to have to go through all the effort of getting to know someone new. I wish i could just meet someone from my past, or someone i already know, and be with them for the rest of my life. I just want to be comfortable. I don't want to have to explain why I am the way I am to that guy; I want him to already know everything. Like, how could i explain to some guy that my irrational fear of the dark/monsters/serial killers stems from back to back weekends of my brothers babysitting me and telling me about the boogie man who lives in the downstairs closet? Really, try explaining that to a 20 year old man without having him run as fast as he can away from me.
                I want to have someone who just knows, he'll check in my closet and under my bed for me before saying goodnight. I want to have someone who knows that i shouldn't be allowed to eat popcorn without supervision otherwise i will eat multiple bags without even realizing. I want a guy who understands my inability to sit still and do homework, who will literally duck tape me to my desk chair until I am done. I want that guy who best understands my past to carry me to my future.

"I was at a funeral the day I realized I wanted to spend my life with you. Sitting down on the steps at the old post office the flag was flying at half mast and I was thinking about how everyone is dying and maybe it is time to live."

redemption.

I had the biggest battle with myself this morning over being human, and the reality of the human condition. For me it all comes down to the fact that we're all incredibly flawed and painfully broken.It just kind of hit me that i am part of this race who's genetic makeup somehow makes it impossible for us to exist without ultimately destroying every good thing around us. Not to be pessimistic, but i mean we walk around all day unintentionally wounding the people around us. I think its because we have small brains and not big enough hearts or something, but we all have these desires to be greedy, to backtalk our closest friends, to basically live focused on ourselves. I mean, we have a drive to do good things as well, like we want to love and be loved, we long to be known and to know people, we want to have friends, good friends that have your back, we want to love and support our families, we want to make things change for the better. But more often than not we fall subject to the demands of our bad desires.

It's funny, and ironic, how so many of us want to be loved unconditionally but fail to show that love to others. It's funny, and sad, how after one fight you can turn around and without thinking bash your best friend, which so often leaves giant emotional scars on that person's life. One bad action can forever change the way a person views themselves, but one good action has limited effect. You never know how big someone's scars are until you hurt them. I hate the cold reality of this world. I hate how divorce leaves tremendous effects upon an innocent child, i hate how one person's mistake effects so many others. I just hate and hate and hate, but all i want is LOVE. I want to be an exception, i want to tell people that i will love them unconditionally, I don't want to be jealous, or angry, or hurt, or willing to hurt others. But i always will be these things, simply becuase i am human.  I need to see a lot less giving up, and a lot more redemption. 

"I don't know what to do anymore. Life seems like a series of infinite nothings. It's not that I'm unhappy. I'm just lost."

My favorite moments are always the ones that occur in ridiculous hours of the morning. You know, those 2am car rides home, the msn conversations that lasted till 4am, the camp fires that kept going till we were too weak to fight sleep off any longer. How I Met Your Mother (the best tv show ever) says that no good decisions are made after 2am, and although i agree with that, nothing tops those late night / early morning conversations. Maybe cause they make no sense but so much sense at the same time.

It probably was never the best decision to go on the 2am skinny dipping adventure, or that midnight hike for some unknown destination that left us lost in the country for hours, but they were the best memories. I could use more of those.