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Name: sharla
Birthday: 3/18/1988
Gender: Female
Interests: music, video games, socks, art, movies, writing, reading, photography, pyjamas, driving with the music up and windows down, psychology, languages, history, that cute guy down the street....
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
MSN: flying_ninja_treefrog@yahoo.ca
Member Since:
12/23/2004
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| I wonder if my chemicals
evapourate to make rainclouds
melt to make salty oceans
sublimate to make inspiration
depose to make achievement
I wonder if I condense
ionize
deionize
crystallize
I wonder if I become
wise or
anything at all
without first freezing
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| My god I'm finding it easy to be content lately. Of course I have my sad days--I will always have those--but they are muted (like an Indiana fall?). I'm realizing now how free my life can be, how free I can be. And that yes, for pete's sake, I AM good enough for the life I have.
Really, honestly, my life right now feels like a moment I remember from grade 8. I'd had a history test, and it was Mrs. Wells so you know it was hard. I remember how much I studied for that test, how much stress I poured into preparing for it. I remember Heidi shaking because she was so afraid of Mrs. Wells; I remember our collective fear of the woman and my personal fear of failure. I took the test, trying not to leave blanks even though I didn't know all the answers, scribbling frantically for the entire hour.
I got a 74%. And as Mrs. Wells handed back my test, she said congratulations sharla, you got the highest mark in the class. Almost everyone failed. I was so proud of that 74, because that test was supposed to be impossible and I passed it.
Then I took it home and no one saw how much work had gone into the preparation. No one appreciated that it was the best mark of the class. It was a 74, not a 94. What happened sharla? Didn't you study? We're very worried about you. You aren't the kind of student who gets 74s. Just, try harder next time.
And that's where my life is right now. I'm getting a 74 and no one understands how fantastic and freeing it is to have changed my life the way I have. No one appreciates how much work and stress I've put into the past 4 years. Into myself. How happy and proud I am of my 74. How much more AUTHENTIC I am now than I was with the 94 I didn't earn. What happened sharla? Aren't you thinking? We're very worried about you. You aren't the person you're acting like right now, you never were before. Just, try harder.
I am this person. And I like her. I'm happy with the road I've taken. Even the mistakes, because they were hard and real and I've learned so much. I've EARNED the person I am today.
And just like in middle school, if no one else is proud of me for this, I'll just go ahead and feel proud of myself. | | |
| Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to quit everything and just be poor and write all day. I like to imagine that I'd feel more accomplished. I'd hone the skills that are important to me.
It's all imagination though, and my responsibilities will also hold great importance.
But still.
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| Indiana has a certain yellowness in the fall. I've never seen an autumn so muted, although I've only lived in two places for this time of year. I remember how much I hated Indiana, the flatness, the feeling of insecurity you get from endless straight lines and expanses of land and sky and the lack of any differences to keep you from floating away. What I wanted was mountains and hills, to break up all the solid lines and keep me grounded and prevent me from blowing far far away into the matte scenery.
But in Indiana there is no claustrophobia. Everything is open to you and honest; it has nothing to hide and therefore has no need for lies. So very linear, and safer than I originally thought.
It's a shy place too. The yellowness. The autumns of my past are rich with intensity, with expensive reds and oranges giving away their green for free. There's an excitement on the stage of the hills; the colours dance where I come from. Gracefully, beautifully; elegant but without a hint of snobbishness or spoiled, put-on airs.
In Indiana, the land is afraid to stick out. Even the sky covers itself with a thin grey muslin, so that even on its bluest fall days, you are aware that the hue is holding back. Nothing dances. The trees huddle together in their little yellowed cliques and would never dream of performing. Everything is the same, the straight roads, the flat corn and soybean fields, the stretched, veiled sky.
And like the wallflower at the party who is afraid of a too-pretty dress or too shy to say anything but "hello," Indiana grows on you. Maybe it goes no deeper and has nothing to hide, but you begin to love it--maybe because of that.
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Somehow talking about love--whatever it is--fits in here.
It is so nice to find someone who loves nearly the same way I do. With an edge of fear you attempt to hide in every step. With a desire to make the other happy, a desire that is dangerously strong and causes you to lose yourself in the fear and the trying and the focus on what SOMEONE ELSE WANTS. I see this in him and hear my own words coming out of his mouth, unbidden, and I think my god I UNDERSTAND you, I know who you are! You are so much of me in that different little shell of yours.
And this is why I am here with my tattooed, beer-loving, swear-like-a-sailor, solid little man. Because we may be so different in our lives and our thoughts and our pasts and our families, but there is a familiarity of feeling there, of the emotion under all of that. Serious or not, full of future or not, I am here with him, because somehow he makes everything simpler for me. Somehow, with our similarities deep inside, we are balancing.
I'm too old now; he loves better than I do. I remember how that used to feel. Full and sharp: a pang of love in the heart.
I can't give much of myself anymore, and he knows this and sticks around anyway. I keep a tight fist on myself and my independence--always have--and he knows this, and instead of trying to pry open my fingers or force me to open them myself (while he waits), he slips sweetness into the other hand and says talk to me baby if you're sad talk to me I'll take care of you. I expect nothing from the future of these things anymore, and he knows this and says we're happy now let's keep doing what we're doing.
We may be crazy, I say, trying to love like this.
It may be a lunatic you're looking for, he says.
I don't know what love is anymore, I say, I don't know if I can do it.
That's ok, he says.
I do know you make me smile and feel better, I say.
Maybe that's love, he says.
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| I can't say I melted
but I got lost a little
in your warmth
(still am, a little)
in the taste of your
minutes-ago cigarettes
rum and cokes
in the way you
bit my lip
sucked out all the slippery words
I'd been tripping over all evening
worrying, like I always do.
you don't have to love me,
you said. I'm not asking you to;
just be with me right now.
And I was.
(still am)
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