Rien de Rien

The deep end is enchanting until you start drowning in it.

We spin ourselves in circles that keep getting tighter and tighter, until we've made ourselves into a coil so tight that we don't remember how to bend, and then a catalyst comes along and stretches out the whole system and the bouncing around seems completely harmless until you hit your last wall and realized how many aches you now have to deal with, and all of a sudden being a neat coil seems like so much of a better idea again,

so I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes we have to forget limits in order to better establish them.

What I'm saying, is that it's okay to make mistakes if they help clear up your doubts. It's okay to try something for the sake of knowing you will never try it again. It's okay as long as you know how to deal with the consequences, if you can handle dealing with the consequences. You'll be okay. Everything will be okay. You can be who you want to be and you can change whenever need be, and you can stop talking to someone if they are not good for you and you can start talking to others in hopes that they will be because that's just life. It's just life to move through people and experiences and learn what you can and just keep moving. It's when we stop that there's a problem, so don't let yourself stop. Don't let yourself get stuck in the past because it will never be as good as you can make right now. Sorry to always turn cliche, but life is a beautiful, blessed thing, and even in the deepest part of your personal deep end it's important to keep that in mind. 

The moon may turn black for a night now and then, but light always seeps back in.

love always, laura elizabeth.

Sun Kissed Bliss.

Because life has never been better and life can only get better.

Find what makes you happy and do it. Find who makes you happy and just be around them, because you don't need the negative energy and neither do they, and we only have so long in this town or in this state or in this world and every second you spend with a frown is one you can't get back, and I know that's just another cliche but cliches are cliche for a reason and that reason is generally because they're achingly true, so don't let the fact that it's a cliche dissuade you from how very important it is,

and now is the time for happiness if there ever was one, stop looking back and saying that was the best time of your life because the best can be right now, make every day your best day yet in all the little ways, and maybe not every day will be in St. George with three fantastic friends and maybe not every day will be reconnecting with an old someone over a stupid movie and maybe not every day will end at a drive in movie with someone you cherish, but every single day can and should have something little and impressive because nothing that happens today is something that has ever happened before

and we keep growing up and seeing the symbolism in movies, we don't take things at face value anymore or even structurally because we can see why a story is so important even if it ends it sadness, and that happens in movies and it happens in life, and it is all so important and happiness is so important and so just keep moving forward, that's what I'm saying. Don't let this be a sad time for you when it is in reality the only time you have. Don't get stuck on someone if it causes you aches and don't let go of someone if that makes you break because we only have so long left, loves. We only have so long left, and people are already taking flight and pretty soon we will all be leaving the flock in a million different directions, and we may never see each other again. We will never have the chance to be eighteen and wild again. We will never have the summer of 2014 again, so make every second correlate with a beautiful song so that when it comes on, you'll hear it and think about what history was made before everything changed. 

We have the freedom of choice dripping off our fingertips like the sunscreen we forget to put on, and we have the youth of every human who wishes they could be freshly graduated again, and we have the imagination of a million children finally being told they can. There has never been a better time to be, so let yourself be.

love always, laura elizabeth.

[Very Personal]

“I don't do drugs. I am drugs.” 
― Salvador Dalí

At 14 I was told to be cautious of drugs, and I took it to heart, but what they didn't say was that there are all sorts of gateways and maybe if I had known that, I would've seen your words as the addictive substance they were, and maybe I wouldn't have let them infect me like they did,

and like the drug they were they seeped through my skin until they were all I could think about and all I wanted to live off of, and I let your words control my actions and I let them derive your selfish pleasure from my quiet desperation-

and like any drug I should have been able to just stop, but the crooked, simple drug of eye contact had already conditioned me into the proper mentality, and you were able to play your games and you were able to play with me

and you were able to take every rotten piece of willpower I had left

and you were able to detach it from soul, and every time you gave me that perfectly worded high complete with its utter destruction, I was a body separated by desire of happiness and desire of attachment being suffocated under your hands

and it's so like an addict to relapse, and I always knew that,

and it's so like the insides of an addict to convulse,

but I don't know if it's normal that the withdrawal symptoms are getting worse as the time grows longer

and it seems reasonable that an addict would fear the substance that fragmented her naivete, but there are many drugs designed to benefit health

and I don't know if it's normal that after all this time, both kinds have the same effect on my well-being

and I guess when I ask if I'll ever find someone, I'm wondering if the two pieces so cleverly coerced apart all those years ago can ever be reattached, and how?

love always, laura elizabeth

Bones to bones.

"Regrets collect like old friends, here to relive your darkest moments."

{Florence + The Machine}

I'm not looking to be dramatic in this post, and I'm not looking to be anything I'm not, which sometimes I am, which is paradoxical and I prefer not to try to figure it out.

This post, I want to talk about something that is scientific in nature, but also just physical, and also emotional and psychological and all the other "ics" and "cals". I'm not talking about love, because that's overdone and I try not to explain things I don't even understand myself. No, I'm talking about the idea of resonance.

In Physics, we learn that resonance is the frequency at which an object is moving at the atomic level, basically. Everything in the world and out of the world has resonance. Trees have resonance. Cement has resonance. Human bone has resonance. If you make a sound at the same frequency as the resonance of a certain object, it causes that object to move faster at the atomic level, which can cause fissures or, in the case of glass, shattering. This is the whole "if I sing high enough I can shatter a glass" idea. Watch this video to see a cool effect that the frequency of some wind had on the resonance in the cement of a bridge, and see how real this idea is.

So, resonance. It's scientific. It's real. The fact that something can resonate with us physically, but also emotionally. Something can strike us as so true that it causes our very being to slowly split. Something can be so real that it goes deeper than skin, that it finds its way through our bones, that it can cause us to break, it can cause us to shatter like an opera singer's glass.

This is beautiful. This is terrifying. The idea that I might someday find that something or someone that resonates so deeply with me, the idea that this something or someone could break me into pieces. Is it worth knowing something so intimate when it could destroy you completely? How do you know it really is your resonance until it begins to shatter you?

And there I was, saying I wasn't going to talk about love and things I don't understand.

love always, laura elizabeth.

Dragging Heels and Time Drags On.

It's right now that is the most timeless, even as the time continues rushing on.

tell me you love me and pretend like you mean it
play around with my heart and try not to drop it
let me go but only if you come too, dragging heels and all
take all that you can and say that it will be enough for now

create these lovely messes with me,
orchestrate beautiful disasters until they come crashing down
fabricate a thinly made web so strong it can hold me captive
and walk away with me still so ensnared

and we tell ourselves that it's fair to be fair to everyone but ourselves
we lend confidence to everyone without strengthening our own
we give and we give and we give and secretly we want to take
and we snap without anyone snapping back, how could we not

it's when every song on the radio is a personal solo and he's sitting right next to you,
it's when you change the "hers" to the "yous" and maybe he doesn't notice but you do,
it's when everything said is a secret message from the past and he's the only one catching him
and all you want is for him to catch them

it comes down to the whole trust thing, people,
it's trusting someone to do no harm though you know everything will eventually cause harm
and it's trusting that with every harm caused there is also joy
and it's trusting that even with the goodbyes there will be a certain happiness
it's trusting that though nothing will last, it can last in the now,
and it's trusting that the now will last you through your life,
and I've never been one for trust but for some reason I trust you

love always, laura elizabeth.

Il pleut et je pleure.

We've got a love that hasn't even begun.

I can't get the thought of what I could've been out of my head, and only just now did it strike me that I should try to notice who I am.

I guess you're supposed to keep a journal of everything you're grateful for, so that on ugly gray days like this Wednesday, you have something to look back on, you have something to remind you of all the things you already have, all the things you already are, you are never "just a" anything, you are never nothing to everyone,

and the important part about keeping this journal is that it reminds you of everything you have in the moments when you can't remember hardly any of them, and you're grasping at straws and you're gasping for air, you're blowing your nose and you're brushing out your hair, you're slipping into rhyme because you can't think of what else to do,

So because I can't think of anything else to do I would just like to say that I'm thankful for French, and I'm thankful for Madame and how much she cares, and I'm thankful for the fact that my current best friend was met in that class, and I'm thankful for all the feelings that another language can inspire in you and I'm beyond thankful for this poem that explains everything better than I can:

Il pleure dans mon coeur

Comme il pleut sur la ville;

Quelle est cette langueur

Qui pénètre mon coeur?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie

Par terre et sur les toits!

Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie,

Ô le chant de la pluie!

Il pleure sans raison

Dans ce coeur qui s'écoeure.

Quoi! nulle trahison?...

Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine

De ne savoir pourquoi

Sans amour et sans haine

Mon coeur a tant de peine!

And I'm so sorry if you don't know French, because when you translate it it loses its magic, but this poem keeps me going and immersing myself in the music of "Coeur de Pirate" today is the only way I made it through, and without French I don't know how different I would be but I certainly would not be the same.

That's what I mean, though- what I could've been. What I could've been had I done Dance Company and not Musical Theater. What I could've been had I tried for student council instead of Drama. And these ghosts of imagination that haunt us even now will only multiply in size and strength once we go to college, once we're in the real world, once we're trying to find our way, and we just have to remind ourselves what came out of the choices we already made, we have to remind ourselves that we don't know what's yet to come because of our choices now,

And of course it's terrifying and of course it's overwhelming but that's the way it is and I honestly wouldn't have had anything any other way.

love always, laura elizabeth.

Fishing Stories.

"I ache to remember all the violent, sweet, perfect words that you said."

Because I am so much better at going than I am at gone

I am so much better at letting go than I am at letting be

I am so much better at being loved than I am at being in love

I am so much better at emphasizing than I am at sympathizing

I am so much better at getting back up than I am at staying fallen

I am so much better at leaving than I am at staying, but
I am so much better at coming back than I am at staying away

If I could talk to myself as I do to other people, I would be able to figure my life out, if I could only step away from my emotions I could tell myself every right choice, but we were born with a brain and heart and the ability to listen to one at a time, and that's why it's so easy to give advice but not so easy to take it,

and I just wish I could keep every fish I catch but I always let them go because I'm scared of getting whacked in the face, and sometimes they stay in front of me and I toy with the idea of continuing to toy with them, but I inevitably let them flop back into the sea and I lay in bed every time with nothing to my name but the slightly fishy scent left on my fingertips and the realizations that I could have kept any one of them,

and that scent doesn't rub off any easier than the scent of the boy you let make out with you that night, and whether you want to or not you continue to smell that slowly rotting scent, the mud is caked onto your feet from where you were allowing yourself to fish and you're terrified of letting that mud contaminate the rest of your skin, you're terrified of looking into the sea and seeing a face that is being taken over by the mud that only you allowed yourself to walk in,

and isn't it so much better to go to bed with nothing to your name other than a slightly fishy scent

love always, laura elizabeth

Golden Days and the Lack of Sleep.

THROUGH THE MIDST OF HARD TIMES YOU CAN BE ASSURED IN HAVING AT LEAST ONE GOLDEN WEEKEND,

AND THIS PAST WEEKEND WAS MINE.

So much love. SO much happiness.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so let's see what you can get from THIS VIDEO.

Keep in mind that if the happy days aren't quite yet here to stay, the time is coming. Whether you be imprisoned in your own house or drowning in East Shore packets, don't forget that things can only get better from here. Chins up, buttercups.

love always, laura elizabeth.

Mahal Kita.

"The primadonna life, the rise and fall."

-Marina

Just let life be what it is and stop hoping for people to be anyone but themselves because the only thing you can change is how you react to things. Stop reacting in ways that create problems and you're golden. Stop letting yourself down by telling yourself you're letting yourself down because you are who you are and you should never be ashamed of that. Stop expecting everyone to care for you when you fall down and just pick your own self back up because that is the only way to get stronger. Stop keeping yourself from trusting others because no lesson in the long run is not worth learning. For heavens sake, just let yourself love yourself. It's okay to call yourself beautiful. Eat healthy because it makes you feel good, not because you think you need to change. 

Stop letting yourself forget things that made you who you are today. If it's too painful now, put the memories in a filing cabinet in your brain, but don't throw it all away because these memories are the important ones. 

It's only okay to judge if you find double the amount of positive as you do negative. It's only okay to compare if you remember all that you have to offer, too. Don't beat yourself up for the way you were born, whether it be gay or too tall or thin haired or with a round face or however else you see yourself because the way you were made was not a mistake. 

Let yourself go crazy sometimes. Let yourself play like a little kid and find the times where it is actually okay to sing in public. Compliment strangers because you know how it feels when a stranger compliments you. 

If you want to travel, why are you buying fast food every day instead of saving? If you want to change the world, why are you not starting with the kid who needs help down the street? Just because not everything is on a grand scale doesn't mean it doesn't mean something grand in someone else's life. 

It's okay to cry but it's also okay to be okay, and it's okay if you're still in love with someone as long as you remember that if it isn't supposed to be, it won't be. It's okay if you forget how much someone means to you only if you let yourself remember someday. It's okay to let someone mean something to you.

Be strong but be vulnerable and happy and ready and confident,

have confidence in the fact that you are more than enough,
have confidence in the fact that your presence is cherished even if you don't know it.

The problem sometimes is the someone that you feel something for, and sometimes they know of it and sometimes they know of only half of it and sometimes they know nothing of it, and maybe you think you're the only one feeling anything at all, and I can relate to that especially currently, and maybe they're feeling something for someone else too, and maybe the something they're feeling is the exact something you're feeling for them except the way you feel has grown stagnant and maybe you told yourself it has to stop,

but the problem is you can't turn off feelings, folks, you just can't. So don't beat yourself up about it and even when you are crying from the frustration of feeling something for someone who feels something else, remember that nothing in life lasts, and these are the vivid emotions that let us be alive, and life is a beautifully, ironically, lengthy, short experience that passes so fast once you get through all the long moments and you cannot end up feeling like it was wasted, what kind of a masterpiece has no color in it?

So when the color is being whipped onto the page, if it's streaked across your vision, if the page is stinging, just remember that the paint will dry, remember that there are buckets of other colors at your disposal, and all you have to do is find a new brush.

love always, laura elizabeth. 

[Not A Real Post]

A very important thing to do if you want to understand what is happening to me right now is if you read it in the way my best friend wrote it and she said it better than I could right now, and of course some of the examples are different but it is so very applicable, and maybe once you've read that post you could read the others and realize why I love her so much, but that's just a suggestion.

http://justbecausesheisaredhead.blogspot.com/

This wasn't a real post, but here's some pictures and my love all the same.

~laura elizabeth

Aching and Breaking and Living.

We want to stay young, but ask yourself why it's called Neverland instead of Foreverland.

The biggest problem with high school is that you see everyone and they all have something you don't, but you always forget that you have something they don't and every day someone sees you and sees what you have that they want,

and another big problem is that sometimes we think we're the only ones hurting, and in some of the other times when we acknowledge other people's hurting we think we're the only ones or that it's one sided, and we forget to realize that we all care in deeply different ways because we are all deeply different in the ways we think and go about things even if all the things are basically the same, you follow? This is very important because I've always known how much I ache for the ones breaking inside my heart, I've always ached for them and lately I've ached for them to see me breaking too, but just because we're all breaking and aching and we think we're alone doesn't mean we really are because really all we have is each other.

And maybe I'm good at explaining my inner dramas but when it comes to telling people how I feel about them, I so often fall short of expressing the tugs and the colors and the shape of my love for them because it's all so unique and I wish they could step into my heart literally instead of just figuratively because then they would know how fantastic I think they are, how I keep urging Kirsten to follow her passions and I keep telling her she's brilliant, and how was I supposed to know she wanted to be told it was okay to break down? OF COURSE it is, lovely, and I envy the strength it took to transfer and I envy the courage it takes for you to accept it and I wish I could assimilate to that because I've pushed myself off the edge a few times this year because I was too weak to realize I needed change, and I hope you know you have me,

and I hope you know you all have me, and I don't know how hurt you are my beautiful Esther but I think you are far more fantastic than I ever could be, and I relish in the happiness of becoming your friend every time we talk,

and Miss Matalyn I worry every day that I'm doing something wrong to you, but I hope you know that I am trying, and I'm sorry that I always give you all of my heart, it's a habit I've gotten into it because you always hold it while I gather myself up again and then gingerly give it back, and please keep in mind that in order for me to reciprocate you have to be willing to open yourself up in the first place, and I hope you know that I ache for you even if I don't know how to manage it sometimes and it manifests itself in other ways, like in the way I needed to give you flowers the same way I think you needed to get them and if I could give you a bouquet every day I would in a heart beat.

I could go on forever, but I won't even though I hope you all know that I don't just ache for my own pain but for everyone who I care for as well, and if you need a personal note of how often I think of you I would be far too happy to oblige.

love always, laura elizabeth.

Don't Expect Much.

Just to make things very clear right here and right now, this is not a poem.

This is not any sort of lovely language and I won't be using even one subtle little rhetorical device. This is not from inspiration but from loneliness and the loneliness is honestly not stemming from the fact that tomorrow is Valentine's Day, one where I am very much alone. Well, it might be stemming from tomorrow just a little but not in the way you think, I promise, because if you could ask me an hour ago how I feel about tomorrow I would have poured my excitement into you like the peppermint mocha I let burn my tongue week after week. But now, now an ice cube has been dropped and it has attacked the heat and while the sweetness is still there, it has gone stone cold.

I was excited, see, because I truly do love love. I do. Ask any coupling of people I find to be good friends, and they'll tell you how much I fawn over their every move. I know I'm alone but I find happiness in others and their happiness, and I was so very excited to share a bit of happiness tomorrow because I have a plan, see, I actually have a few plans but one of those plans has been stopped like a broken heart because you see I always forget to not count too much on the people I am closest to. Why, why, why do I always get closest to the people that will hurt me the most at the most inopportune moments? Or is it they are able to hurt me most because they're the ones I let get closest to me? In any case, they're close to me for a reason and then I am inevitably let down and I guess that's life, you're let down and you have to find your own way back up into their arms because God forbid they know how much you're aching. 

You see, I used to be the person- she is still inside of me, trying to get out- that would've taken all of this pain out on the person who inflicted it and I hate to admit it, but I am rather good at making people feel bad. Oh, how I hate to admit it, but by now you know I manipulate words like any other writer and oh how I HATE to admit it but I have used that to my advantage before. Sometimes it's rather necessary and sometimes it is not, and tonight is one of those nights where it is not, but it's hard to tell that to something so desperate. Even now I almost hope this is read by that person, though I know it will not be because that person never actually bothered to read my writings anyway. Oh, be proud, show me off when I am show-offable but laugh it off nervously when I am not because I am not exactly like you, nor any of your other friends, and that is both why we are so close and why you grow embarrassed of me; please don't pretend otherwise because I know my own roots better than anyone. To gain your approval I almost would have chopped those roots, and truly I almost did a while ago, but I stopped myself because I knew that they were stronger than ours will ever be,

and these roots that have grown since longer than I knew who you were are the ones that keep me going sometimes, though sometimes I trip over them and sometimes I feel as if they're in my way, they are still the gentlest roots I have and this has almost ceased to make sense but stick with me because my fingers are on an absolute rampage and there is no stopping them when they are in this state,

and I think they just want you all to know that this is not what you should expect from them, this tirade of salty, salty tears cascading- literally cascading- down my cheeks and the fact that no one at this moment knows this is happening to me, and I have so much to be happy about and so many people on my side yet why am I so alone? Why does the future scare me so much when it is all I want anymore?

I know tomorrow is Valentine's Day, but it's very important you know that that is not why I have been so upset, because I am not as typical as some would make me out to be and believe it or not, I am still excited for tomorrow. Because even when I'm the one initiating it, the small human connections I have planned for tomorrow will still let me not be so alone, if only for a moment, and hopefully that will make it all worth it; hopefully someday it will all be worth it and I'll find people who care as much as I wish they will.

Honestly, I'm sorry, but it all had to be said.

love always, laura elizabeth.

L E A V E

How in the world did you come to be such a lazy love

and where did you go

[ONCE]

The more you tell me about all the times you almost ran away
the more I tell you about all the times I almost stayed
but the moon was never one for yelling
and I am far better at listening to a whisper than a scream

It took me so long to recognize the two stages of a dandylion
and I'm still trying to put all the wishes back on the stem
I'm still trying to fill in the holes on my eyelash lines
I'm still trying to forget the significance of an eleven

For some godforsaken reason I am still trying to be innocent
and the ensnared hair in my fingers can testify to how well that is working
I am still trying to remember how it feels to not feel
but I am still trying to forget how it feels to not feel, too,

Leave the wishing for the romantics, love,
leave the hoping for the optimists and the complaining for the pessimists
leave the world for the realists and for the theorists
leave the rights and the trees to the activists

leave only for yourself what you know how to do, love,
leave only for yourself who you know you are
and leave what you've done in the past and
leave what you will do in the future
and try not to leave your present

love always, laura elizabeth.

Lonely Parts of Living.

"Maybe this is frustration speaking but time is stealing everything away from me."

-this beautiful human

Maybe my biggest problem is that I was always the stronger and the older and the more experienced and maybe I thought that trying something new would bring new results, and maybe I thought that I would be better at letting go this time around than I ever have been before but if you want the complete and utter truth, this is it, because these nights, these nights of driving recklessly because every time your body shakes with a new sob the wheel jerks just a little bit and because every time more saltwater suddenly wells up in front of your vision everything becomes a blur, and maybe that's poetic and maybe it isn't but all I can think when that happens is how much it's like life, how one moment everything is so clear and clean cut and then suddenly you can't see again and when, when, when will it end,

but if you want the complete and utter truth, it's that just because I'm the one breaking my own heart doesn't mean it's any less broken, and maybe that's something I never realized before but no matter what I always end up hurting myself just as much as I hurt everyone around me because even though someone else's words didn't end things, it's the what-ifs that always and inevitably follow that tear me apart, and they don't tell you that,

they tell you it's so much better to be the heart breaker but what they don't tell you is that no matter what, your heart is going to be a little broken and if not broken then at least bruised because any time you play games with loving someone there's no way you can come out of it unless you were never playing in the first place,

and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that I never finish my sentences or my relationships and I'm so sorry that I'm so much more honest when I can write it out on a blog I started back when I was so much more innocent, and I'm so sorry this is the way you found out but at the same time that's what I wanted, isn't it?

And I will not forget how it made me feel last night, how I keep saying as loud as I could that I'll never be able to get married because I'm trying to hide how scared I am that I'm right in that, I will not forget how I kept almost catching your eye from across the room and how attentive I was to the amount of space between the two of you, I will not forget how I was sitting behind you and I saw the space evaporate like the water off my cheeks, I will not forget how the music that I listened to two years ago was playing and I could hear you singing along to the songs I associate with someone else but similar feelings and,

and oh how I wish I could forget so many things tonight, oh how I wish I could forget it all and go back a few months to before I came to my senses because even though I know what I did was right I can no longer hide my fear of being alone and I can not pretend tonight that my biggest wish is simply to be held again, and that is why when I see you tomorrow morning there will be the slightest of salt residue on my face

true to my own word, like I'm completely unable of finishing anything right I cannot figure out how to finish this ode to loneliness and love and their intimate, abusive relationship, maybe it's enough to say that I'll see you in seven hours and I don't know if I can say that you'll be looking for me or just seeing me because I don't know if you mean to be playing these games or if you're just playing with life, and as much as I profess to hating games I would rather those than what I fear is reality because at least that means you still care and THAT IS ALL I WANTED and THAT IS WHY I DESERVE TO BE BROKEN-HEARTED TONIGHT.

love always, laura elizabeth.

Remembering the Future.

"If you aren't able to depend on people you aren't with the right kind of people."

-this lovely human

Remember, remember, remember, let's play the remember game and remember when we met them all for the first moment, when we were at Benjamin's house for a social and I sat on a blanket next to someone I didn't know and talked about life, and how Taft said he studied ballet and I fell in love just a little bit, how there was a weird asian that kept taking my picture and she later became someone I wouldn't be myself without having knowing, how I went to a dance later that day and Allen, aka the boy that came off a little creepy, came up to me and told me we had met and I honestly didn't remember, who would have thought we would pair together to direct a one act? And how at the sophomore assembly a girl who knew everyone sang the national anthem, and later she was in my drama class and how I just did not like her one bit, I didn't like any of them one bit, I so preferred the company of the upperclassmen who maybe I didn't feel like I could talk in front of but they, for some reason, loved to have me around, I accidentally went an hour early to Connor's party and he took it in stride, he drove me around to pick up pumpkins and people, and I was the only sophomore so many times, remember how Melissa and I became better friends because before that year she was just the girl that could sing better than me (and she is still that girl but also so much more) and remember how much we all hated Preston because he was arrogant and we were so happy when he left and then so much happier when he came back this year a better person,

remember when Benjamin would drive me home, remember when Kristen and I went and visited him at work and he made us that special sandwich, remember all fall break how we watched scary movies and I was so in the loop, and remember when they all left

remember when they left, and remember how they left the same time I broke up with Mitchell the first time, and remember how long that lasted,

remember the girl I disliked so much and who disliked me so much and remember how we became the very best of friends, and how that caused us to lose everyone that we didn't need in our life, and then we even lost each other for a while,

please please tell me you remember everything, because I've never cried harder than I did when everyone left and now I'm leaving, please please tell me you'll remember everything, remember when we got accepted to colleges or received our mission calls? Remember when we graduated? Remember when we all left each other and remember how we have new lives and remember how every now and then we remember?

Yeah, this post is for you, my lovely little red headed best friend that no one could ever forget, someone I can depend on and someone who can tell me who I can depend on, remember when I told you I've never loved anyone as much I love you and how it's still true in a way because no one else has made me love them more in one singular moment like you did, and like you do, and I remember our past and I remember our present and we only have so much future left, so long live us and long live this year and long live right now.

love always, laura elizabeth.

ps. I wasn't in that class and I don't know exactly how this Paris is defined but whatever it means I'm up to go, too.

Because I Am Sorry.

"At night, I have staring contests with the stars."

-this guy

There are so many things that make me dread that I will never find love because as strong and confident as I have come off in many of my posts I am still the same vulnerable human that expressed herself in all the others and I fear not falling just as much as I fear falling itself. I spent so long telling myself I'm a hopeless romantic just to realize, and so recently, that a hopeless romantic wouldn't choose reality over a fairytale, and why did I do that? Why are the important reasons the ones that get lost when you're not just alone but lonely too, or when you're with a million people that will never treat you the way you treat them and maybe you realize you gave up something you couldn't even fathom and you know you'll never find anything quite like that again and that makes you happy and that makes you sad,

and what if you're scared because you can't help but notice all the things people aren't try though you might to not, I notice all the best things but it takes the people that think I'm best for me to notice why they aren't and I am cruel in thought but good in action because these are the people I love the most, I can only accept those with flaws, I can only accept those who make me feel okay with who I am and who I've been and sometimes that isn't who we want it to be and sometimes they try to be and it just doesn't work,

I don't know why I'm telling all of you this when you probably already knew, the people that should be informed are the ones that keep asking why I'm so lonely when I had the chance to not be but they just don't realize that I was never me and he was never him and how do you think we let go so easily if it was actually something and all I know is that I want someone who would see me reading at Starbucks and sit by me without talking,

I want someone who would write pages and pages of beautiful syntax that I would stumble upon and think it's for someone else, I want someone who would pretend to do the tango with me even though neither of us has any experience with that style of dance, I want someone who wants to adventure and I want someone who will take me on adventures, who will drive me to places neither of us knows and we can go to a completely mundane restaurant in this place and laugh at how ordinary and how beautiful life is, and I want someone who wants to know me, who never thinks he knows enough, I want someone intelligent,

I am good in thought because I know these things yet I am cruel in actions because I pretend to myself that I can accept anything less, and I guess what I'm saying here is that every day I lose a little bit of hope that this man exists and that I'll meet him in a completely mundane and cliche way, I lost a little bit of hope that I will find someone even if he isn't at all like this yet I'll still be able to love him because I don't even know what that means yet, how can I love so much and still not even know what that means yet, how can there be someone out there able to teach me, how could there possibly be a perfect person for someone so imperfect?

A good question to ask why I love the idea of going places I don't know, why I love driving until I'm lost and have to use an outside source to untangle myself, I guess I just want my insides to match my outsides and I guess it makes me feel a bit better when I always find my way back home, and I would be able to throw everything I said I wanted in a someone if he could just prove to be as useful as my google maps app in these situations

maybe all I want is someone I want to get lost in and what frustrates me the most is that I don't even know what that means

love always, laura elizabeth.

Le Français.

First to let go and still the one holding on tightest, riddle me that.

You can get large stuffed animals for Christmas and you can trick the naive into falling for you but it will never make you not lonely, we are teenagers and we are searching everywhere for people to understand, we condense thoughts into 140 characters and hope they get noticed or cared about or understood, we take a million pictures and display them where everyone goes but very few care, and we just want to be noticed and we just want to be loved, we just want to be a little less lonely, but we are teenagers and lonely is in our job description,

and I have a problem because nothing worth writing was ever thought of but nothing worth reading wasn't thought out, and tonight I'm having a problem connecting the two, and I keep trying to repair the fuses that broke inside of me all that time ago and I just can't, I'm falling right back into the pattern and all I want is to be pulled out this mold I always conform to, but maybe nothing ever came just because you wished for it, we are teenagers and we are the masters of loneliness and we are all so willing to be noticed that we forget to notice everyone else, and maybe there is beauty in insolence that I never saw before but at least I'm trying to learn, maybe there is beauty in being so alone but I always forget to appreciate it while I'm here,

and I don't know how to handle it when I keep smelling you on my skin because I guess all those months outweigh these few weeks, I don't know how to handle it when pushing only ever brought me closer and we're both free and why did I not see this coming, I could scream and I could pull out my hair but I don't have the time to recover, I think every time it will be different but this always ends up happening and

je ne sais pas ce que de faire

je ne sais pas ce que de faire

mais c'est la vie, il passera, et j'espère que vous irez avec lui quand il le fait.

love always, laura elizabeth.

So-Called Somethings.

"And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that can be."

-Perks of being a Wallflower

There is one quote that always comes back to me and I always thought I understood it, and now I really understand it and now it is teaching me about myself and it is depressing me and thrilling me and most of all, relieving me, because you guys, we accept the love we think we deserve. I want to shout this from my roof with tears streaming down my face, because I think everyone needs to know just how much this is true and how applicable this is and just how relevant this is, because we do, we accept the love we think we deserve. I won't do this, however, and not just because I'm not really sure there's a way onto my roof but also because this is something everyone needs to learn for themselves, I suppose, even if they're the type of people that don't read books and don't think abstractly and don't really think at all (I really don't like these people). But if you're reading my blog, then I feel like we have a close enough relationship that I can tell you a little secret about mankind: we accept the love we think we deserve.

It's terrifying, I know. It's beautiful, I know. But maybe you're wondering why it's so relieving to me.

It's relieving because I guess it means I can justify how I feel. It means I can stop beating myself up for something I can't help, because the fact that I can no longer accept any love from Travus just means I don't think I deserve it. And I don't. What have I done to deserve the opened doors and the time and the food and the energy and the absolute adoration when I am completely incapable of reciprocating? It's been a fairytale, but I have far too much to do here in reality to continue indulging it. I've held on because I've been cherishing being cherished, but I've finally accepted that I simply cannot accept it because I truly don't think I deserve it.

This isn't to say I don't think I deserve very much. This isn't to say I think I deserve more. This is just to say, I think I deserve someone I know how to love. What does that even mean? I don't know yet. I don't know what it takes in a man to let me love them and accept their love because I clearly haven't experienced it yet. Will I experience it? Hence why this idea terrifies me. Hence why it depresses me, but also why it excites me, because there is such a variety of personalities in the world and I intend to encounter as many of them as I can. I truly don't believe I'm going to find it where I am right now. I have an ember of curiosity buried in the heart of my heart that cannot be doused, and all I want is to feed the flame and I don't know how yet but I know, I just know that someday I will. And that's why it's so necessary that I get out as soon as I can, without a backward glance, and when that day comes I don't want to have to think about all the love I wasn't able to accept. So this is my post saying that this so-called ending of a so-called something doesn't make me sad, though it certainly doesn't make me happy; it makes me motivated. So in the coming months, if you hear indistinct shouting from my general direction you'll know I'll have found a ladder, and in the coming months I hope you realize what love you deserve and are able to accept it, and in a few years time I'll send a postcard from wherever I'll be and let you know what else I'll have discovered. Until then..

love always, laura elizabeth.

oh, ps. Happy New Year.