Messy, Messy, Messy.

I'm sorry to have left you in the dark this past month - in fact I'm surprised it's been a whole month but I am also surprised it's only been one month. I've always played with the idea of time relativity, but this summer has stretched my original notions of it further than any other experience or period of time in my life. For example, Jesse and I broke up on Wednesday, May 13th. It's been exactly seven weeks, or almost two months. I feel like I have PTSD, I feel okay most of the day but something triggers and I fall into depression and I miss him, miss him, miss him, and my friends say, "it's okay, Laura, it's hardly been any time at all, it's going to take a while" and I just want to scream because every single day has felt like such a battle, you know? How is it already July? How is it only July?

 

Not to mention, I've managed to inadvertently make a guy (David) fall for me; a truly fantastic guy that under any other circumstances or with different timing, I would be thrilled to fall into something with. But with my insides as messy as they are right now, I can't even think of opening myself up to someone else... But he makes such a good distraction, and holding him is as close to holding Jesse as I'm allowed to get, and in my weakest moments I have to fight myself to not go knock on David's door and let him comfort me. I've told him so many times that he deserves to be more than a rebound, and he knows that, but he says "whatever you want our relationship to be, I'm just happier when you're in my life" and I truly don't know what to do. I know it's not an easy fix and there's nothing I can actively do to move on, and I'm supposed to "relish" in my sadness and learn to appreciate how "exquisite" and "unique" it is (these are notions I read about when I googled "how to be ok"). But my personality leans so much more on just saying, "yeah, how exquisite that I can feel so much. How amazing that I could care for someone so much that this is how it feels now that I don't have him. Could I please stop feeling it now?"

 

I've been sad, but I've also been happy. I don't know exactly what the ratio is, but I would say it's about 50/50... Perhaps even 65/35, heavy on the happy side. I don't know. When I'm happy, I'm happy, but when I'm sad, I'm very, extremely, heart-wrenchingly sad. So even though I would say I spend more of my day happy than sad, it still feels much heavier on that 35%. Sadness is such a weight. I know I've been sad before, but I've been trying to figure out if it's ever been this heavy before. My heart is a deadweight in my chest, either silent or pounding so loudly I instinctively check for a passing car with their windows down. How exquisite! How unique!

 

Like every good cliché, I see memories everywhere. He introduced me to Electronic Dance Music, which I now love, so all of my favorite artists were also his and of course that means when I listen to music, I think of how we used to listen to it together. When I go to Taco Bell, I think of how back in the day when we were just starting to talk, I brought him tacos in the library while he studied; that was the first time we ever hugged and I realized what a great height he is. When I'm in David's room at the Pike fraternity house, I think of how on New Year's Eve I hid in that same closet to call Jesse in California and wish him a happy New Year. When I drive to Bri's house, I have to take the same route I used to take daily to Jesse's; that's a small torture in itself. I've used the term "drowning in memories" a few times this past month because it adequately explains why sometimes my throat contracts with no warning and I choke.

 

AND THEN I THINK OF HIM KISSING OTHER GIRLS, not mentioning that I've kissed other boys, AND IT LITERALLY TEARS AT MY INSIDES LIKE NOTHING I'VE EVER FELT BEFORE. Because when I kissed those other guys, three to be exact, it felt like I was going through the motions; I felt no fire and no passion, just a slightly enjoyable shadow of a feeling I used to have every single day. But what if for him, it's different?

 

When we "broke up", he promised we would get back together again someday. Last week, he said, "I still love you to death but I could never be with you again". Unfortunately I know which one is more likely, but I can't quash that little voice at the very bottom of my heavy heart that says, "but maybe in a few years..." How dare he promise. How dare I let him. Even now, I know being in a relationship with him (or anyone else) would be very harmful to my psyche in its healing condition, but I still think "what if we let something happen just for a night?" and I know that if he asked, I would go in a heartbeat.

 

It's due to those little thoughts that I have told all of my friends that if we are to see Jesse, we must turn around and run away without any misgivings. Despite this, I hope to run into him everywhere I go.

 

Sadness is important. It's healthy to miss someone. Nostalgia is key. But I would really rather stop feeling so much, please.

 

love, laura

On How To Be Okay.

 

For a long time, I thought blogging was somewhat narcissistic. Like, here's my life and how I feel about it, now read it and care about it. But I kept doing it because it makes me feel good for some inexplicable reason; in my last post, I even said I didn't want to try to figure it out because right now, more than ever, I just want to feel good. Well, it was in the quest for happiness that I think I've figured it out.

Today has not been easy for me. The best way to describe it is that sometimes, I'm very okay with where I am and where it is in relation to my future. Sometimes, I'm not okay because of where I am and where it is in relation to my expectations of the future. Sometimes, though, I'm not okay because I just don't want to be okay. And that's okay, too. That being said, the first half of this day was spent with me not being okay because I didn't want to be okay, not yet. I know I don't need Jesse, that's never been a question. I can exist and I can have happy times without him, this has already been proven to me. But today, I didn't want that to be okay with me because I want to have happy times with him, too. I want it all. I want everything to work out. I want him. I was spiraling down into being not okay and missing him, and missing him, and missing him more.

As it always does, this wave of sadness passed, mostly because I'm learning how to control them better. I find that losing myself into someone else's journey of healing and self-discovery has been the most helpful for me when I'm feeling not okay and not wanting to pull myself out of it. More explicitly, I read "Eat Pray Love", a wonderful book that I recommend to everyone and anyone who asks. It was during one of these therapeutic sessions with Elizabeth (the author) that I suddenly realized why blogging is such an incredible thing.

The best way to describe it is that as a society, it's become difficult for people to admit publicly how highly they think of themselves. We take selfies, find our favorites, edit them to get rid of any insecurities, and post them so that everyone knows how happy we are with the way we've cultivated ourselves to look. This lifestyle takes a great deal of critique; the "she posts a selfie every other day on Instagram, does she ever do anything actually worth posting a picture of, she loves herself way too much, etc" phrases that are thrown around like water off a dog. I myself am guilty of saying things like this, which is why I know it's so prevalent. However, I said these things before I learned how okay it is to love yourself endlessly. It was before I realized that there is a huge difference between narcissism and self-appreciation.

Nature is easy to appreciate because we don't have to put any work into it for it to be stunning. We don't even have to travel anywhere to see pictures of places and understand their beauty. Large cities are easy to appreciate because of just how much work we've put into them. Standing in the middle of the hustle and bustle of somewhere like New York City, you understand how many ideas, blueprints, and sweat it took to create such a fascinating place. As humans, we are both the body we have been given and the ways we've taken to cultivate it. We are stunning because of the miracle it took for intellectual thought as well as how much it takes for the human body to physically work the way it does. We are equally as stunning for the daily experiments we conduct on our lives; "What should I wear? How should I do my hair? How do I interact with others? How do I make a difference?" Every thing about our world is a work of art, and if we can recognize that in the other aspects of our life it's about time we recognize it in ourselves, too.

 

So, that's why I love blogging, along with all the other forms of social media. I love expressing myself. I love sharing myself with anyone who wants to be part of it, because I recognize the beauty in myself and the way I choose to live. It doesn't make me narcissistic or self-absorbed, because I don't think I'm perfect and I'm constantly trying to improve. But I've finally fully realized that the stage of life that I'm currently in is exactly where I should be, and every emotion I experience is a miracle because it's another expression of the divinity that resides within me. That's why it's okay to be okay and it's okay to not be okay and it's okay to be somewhere in between.

love laura

A Non-Explanation

I know this is the part where I apologize for not writing in so long and I try to fill you in on everything that's happened, but I'm just not going to, because it wasn't the time for blogging and now I guess it is again. That's all there is. I'll just say this: I had a boyfriend for the past five months or so, and as of last night I don't anymore. And something I've realized is: I don't owe anyone an explanation.

I cared for so long about what people would think if I said we broke up even though we plan on being together again, because I feel like that's one of those "taboo" things; the ex-girlfriend being devastated over giving up on a relationship that eventually she goes crawling back to it for the sake of normalcy and intimacy and familiarity. Every time I tell someone that I am newly single, I feel the need to rush and tell them that this isn't the case - we aren't together now because we want to be together later, we need to figure ourselves out, and all other sorts of explanations that are really just hours and hours of conversation between Jesse and me that I'm trying to condense into a single explanation as to why this breakup is only sort of a break up because I am still his. And then I want to make sure they know that this isn't one-sided, it wasn't just my idea but he is the one that pinky promised we would be together again, I'm not being the crazy ex-girlfriend that is in denial about letting go. I am still his. I am still planning on being his. We are not together now because we will be again someday soon. I repeat this like a mantra and while it is validated to me, it's not something I can fully articulate to others because they weren't there for all the hours he and I talked about this and refined the details and cried together. All they see is a girl in love with endless amounts of salt water drying on her cheeks, forcefully trying to convince her friends that this isn't a normal breakup as if she needs convincing herself. Well, I don't need to convince myself.

You don't owe anything to anyone. The very first priority in your life is YOU. Do what's best for you, and if trying to explain things is detrimental to your ability to be okay with those things, then stop trying to explain them. Everyone wants details. Everyone wants the whole story, everyone wants to be in the know because everyone wants to add it to their own personal life experience. But none of them will fully understand because none of them have lived it. Sometimes it helps to talk about things and sometimes it helps to be distracted from things. I've talked and talked and talked about this thing, I've spun it in circles and doubted it and defined it and re-defined it, I've put restrictions on it then gotten rid of them and then had them reinstated. I know this thing inside and out. I don't need to talk about it. And I don't need to worry about what anyone else thinks about it because it's what's right for me, my future, and the person I love; it wasn't created for or by anyone else but us.

So I know everyone who finds out that we are not currently together will want to know the details, because if I were in their shoes I would want to know too. But this is my official statement, this is me reminding myself more than anyone else that I don't owe any explanations and I don't need to care what anyone thinks. As to why this is a blog post and not a journal entry, well. I could try to figure out why it feels so much better to put this on the internet rather than hide it away and I could remind myself that not everyone needs to know how I feel or what I think, but I don't want to analyze any more. Writing it as a post instead of entry makes me feel good. Knowing it's out there for the world to read rather than my eyes only makes me feel good (even though my estimated number of readers of this post is three or four). And, whatever. Do what makes you feel good.

So, let this be your explanation. I had a boyfriend and now I don't.

love laura

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