The More I See The Less I Know

_{Where You and I Converge: Reminiscence of Love, Never Grown}



I heard your laughter in the halls today.  It could have been anyone, but it was you.  I would recognize that soft exultance of life anywhere, as close to me as my own voice.  These are the days when I miss you.

It was yesterday when I was trying to cry.  Your happiness stifles me, I can't think of any other way to let myself out.  You are where you are, I am where I am, we are not together but alone in my mind.  I am weary of not knowing.  It stings my eyes and chisels out the indigo bruises beneath them.  I am usually so unmovable, as marble, but you are the craftsman, the artist that makes fluid my stone skin.  

I wonder if I have ever been any different, was made to feel foreign to what I do.  But I know nothing else. 

I will know nothing else, long after we are both passed into the Else that lies before us.

It's only your contentment, your ignorant bliss, that makes all of this OK.  Because you are where you are, and I am where I am, you do not know what I know.  It would only confuse you, distract you from that which is infinitely more important.  It is not the time for anyone to know anything.  It is the time for both of us to grow and let the pieces fall where they will.  I will see where fate leads me, and you will do what you do. 

For now, I will hear your laughter in the halls.  I will move forward, you will come back, and we will see if what we are can grow together.  If not, I will walk away heartless, burning, but you will be none the wiser.  That is better. 

Make no mistake, I will never forget.  That is impossible.  You are me.  All roads lead to you.  But where they lead after that is anyone's guess.

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That's really how I feel.  Just... that.  Stylistic.  Detached.  We learn about Africa in World Cultures, about rape and AIDs and atrocities that seem to be a world away.  But they're real.  They're beyond real, they're life.  They're happening right now.  So much killing and destruction... and not just in Africa.  I can't describe how helpless that makes me feel.  

"going on a college visit" on friday sounds like an adventure.  i need a break at least once a week.  that's how short-circuited I have become.

je t'aime, t'aime t'aime t'aime.

On Being Enough and The Future to Come

I feel the need to share personal things today.  Very personal.  But, although they are sore spots, dampeners on my blustery autumn day, I will not let them get me down.  Because I have to believe that there is a road that leads past them, even if they affect the outcomes of the decisions I have yet to make.

Confession #1.  I am afraid.  I am afraid of growing up.  I want to be like Peter Pan and never, never, never grow up.  The world is so big, so new to me, and I don't know how it works.  I've never had more than $50 in my wallet, I've never owned a car or a house or been responsible for getting myself to class on time.  I've never lived on my own.  And as I was looking at a college application online today, I realised that it is finally happening.  I am Growing Up.

Confession #2.  I am afraid because I have made mistakes.  Many mistakes.  Harmful mistakes.  Since it's only you two reading this, I feel comfortable sharing, because I know the time will shortly come when it will become not just my problem, but a lot of people's problems.  So maybe if I start small, it will make things easier.  Frankly put, my GPA at the moment is a 2.8.  I am not in Honors World Cultures because I didn't get in.  My sophomore English teacher both hated and loved me; hated, because I was an awful student, barely scraping out a C.  Loved me, because I loved writing.  I've had an F for a quarter in at least every year of my high school career.  Usually math.  I have never really studied for a test before.  I screwed around my freshmen and sophomore years, even last year, and now I'm afraid that my awareness has come too late.  That I will not get into the colleges that I want to, that I will be forced to pay for all of my mistakes for the next few years until I can prove that I really have changed.  I've been ashamed of this for a long time.  My unweighted class rank is 276 or something equally as atrocious.  I did not even make the top 1/2.  Every day I can feel this crushing me, my eyes are watering because I've finally realized that I'm in a hole, a hole that I want to get out of, but it's too deep, there is too much wall for me to scale.  I'll never make it in time.  

Confession #3.  I didn't have a testimony until 2 years ago, at Girl's Camp.  I never shared it, never read my scriptures, never prayed or did anything to fix that.  I simply did not know how.  That's why Girl's Camp will always be so miraculous to me.  I've learned more in the past two years at Girl's Camp than I have learned in my whole life combined.  Even so, I can count the times that I have gotten up in testimony meeting on a Sunday and bore my testimony.  Zero.  I have never let the ward know that I know that this church is true.  Often times I still wonder, still worry that it isn't.  I have a long way to go.

Confession #4.  I've felt more love, both in my body and given to me, than I've been able to handle.  I'll never be the same.  Love truly does change people.  I finally know that I am in love, because there are people constantly in my mind that are a definite part of my future.  I'm shaping my dreams around them, not because I feel I have to, but because that is what I want to happen, that is where I want them to be.  I am in love, and it is all-consuming, anguished because I feel so undeserving.  I feel like by thinking it could happen, by daydreaming about what my life could be with the people I love in it, that everything will crash around me and they will disappear from my life.  Do they even know that I pray for them every night, that I will never be the same because I have known them?  I think about that now, more than ever.  Who will I become?  Will they stay with me, or simply remain in my head so that I can measure everyone else I meet to their shadow?

Confession #5.  I love you.  Don't forget that.