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.