"rearticulation"

*i'll probably come back to this, add to, take away, respond, since you'll notice it is already the reformation/continuation of a previous entry.

I never have perfect days. I always hear people describe them - these days, so magical, so full of happy memories - and I want them. I want them, but I know they are out of my reach. They aren't out of my reach because of any real reason in particular, except for that the idea of a perfect day is so fundamentally opposed to the beliefs that carry me, that keep me going. I believe that this world is filled mostly with unpleasantries, that few are really as happy as they think. Mostly, I believe that people are so often unaware of what they really want, of who they are, that they are incapable of any genuine moment of happiness. And if that is the case, then a perfect day cannot exist.

So you can imagine my surprise, then, when I become keeper of a perfect day - and not just one perfect day but a few. I possess a few days that succeeded anything I had ever imagined possible. They weren't perfect in a traditional sense - that nothing bad happened, or that every moment was without flaw. They were perfect days because the collection of memories within those days were so full of happiness, so full of joy and contentment and love, that they cannot be described as anything but perfect.

And wouldn't you know, but all of those perfect days are tied to you. I hate to admit that, because it means that, once again, you are so greatly tied to these unforgettable moments in my life. Sometimes I wonder if there will be a time in my life that you are no longer a part of it, and then I realize that, even if that were the case, you are now so tethered to my life that it could never possibly feel that way - that you are no longer a part of it. Tethered because all of these milestones in my life, those moments scattered throughout the mundane - at least the ones so far - those moments are the ones to which you have been inextricably linked. Like prom. What girl does not remember prom? But that moment pales in comparison to others. Like that sunny day in the park, when I realized for the first time in my life that I truly had the capacity to love another person in a way separate from loving family. I know now that the love I felt then was not nearly as strong as it would become, over the years, but that revelation was such a significant moment in my life, in any person's life, because it is when you realize that, although the world does not revolve around one singular person, there is a sense of gravity that exists when you are around somebody you love - you feel yourself being pulled in a particular direction. I felt pulled to you in that day, and it was a brand new sensation. I had numerous crushes, had felt infatuation to the point of ridiculous physical pain, but nothing I felt in that day had existed in my memory. That was probably my first perfect day with you, and right now, seven years away, all I can remember with any real clarity is the light, and the warmth, and your smiling, sweet, soft face.

The last perfect day still lingers on my skin; still, I can taste the lake, feel your skin against my fingertips, hear your laugh ring in my ears. I hope that the day remains with me in that way, but I know it will fade. Not permanently - no, perfect days, I suspect, never fade completely, the way traditional days do, but these memories are so tightly wrapped in my heart that I believe completely they will be hidden from the tainting that happens with age. The day itself started out like any other, except I knew that I would be with you. Days where I know this in advance always seem a bit brighter, filled with an electricity in the air that I cannot see, but know is there nonetheless. Admitting that is difficult in that I fear you believe this false, or that it somehow makes me inferior. But it is also easy to admit because I know, without hesitation, that it is true. I do not know many true things, but most everything associated with you has become so wholly a part of my being (my heart, sure, but also my metaphysical being and - if one exists - my soul) that to call it anything else than true seems like a lie.

The day on the lake was perfect for many reasons, but none of those reasons are so important than that, in the most depressing and isolating of summers in my life thus far, you gave me a moment of peace. You might ask yourself why it was you who gave this to me, when we were not alone in that day. My only answer is this: I do not know. Not satisfying, is it? Trust me, I ask myself the same question pretty much every day. I only know that I have never felt the sense of ease and calm that I do when I am around you, and although I am a person who runs from affection from those that should be required to love me, I find myself basking in that sense of affection from you. Now, to be completely honest, I know that it is not the same love I give (willingly) to you, but it does not matter. Or at least, in this sense it doesn't. I know that, whenever we are together, there is an exchange of these emotions - me to you and you to me - and I feel those emotions radiate through me, in a way that makes me believe so supremely in love and life and happiness. And you know me - I very rarely believe in any of those things.

I have written about these days (like prom) so many times, and it occurs to me now after we spent last night talking about relationships the reason why I continue writing about these same moments. I said how sad it is, to know that you can never know with absolute certainty that what you feel for one person (particularly a significant other) is not returned identically, the 100% carbon copy of your feelings mirrored back. Even if there is no inequality in emotion, you can never be sure, and so there is always (or at least, as I see it - and you too) a sense of fear that lingers, that you are the one that loves more, loves deeper. I know that to be true in the case of me and you, but we also talked about a related issue. We talked about how it was impossible to communicate what you feel to that other person, and this is why it is impossible to know if your feelings are precisely returned. Even when you try, there is something that is muddied in the translation of it all. Except I want to be able to explain it. And shouldn't I be able to - the person who thinks she is so clever and great at writing? Shouldn't I be able to explain quite well the emotions that I have known and nurtured and lived with since I was fifteen-years-old?

"wishes"

i wish that you never know a destructive love, but i know that you will. a few nights ago, i listened as my very dear friend experienced that kind of love, in all its fury, with screaming and crying and name-calling, the kind that culminates in exhaustion, tear-soaked pillows and a massive headache the next day, the way you feel after a night of binge drinking. i wish it were simple enough to just say this: if you aren't happy in a relationship, leave. but stories could never be written if life were like that. or, at least, stories could not be written if people were like that. i suppose that is the more accurate way to phrase that sentence. it's like that line in alice in wonderland, "i give myself very good advice, but i very seldom follow it."

i wish that you never knew the heartbreak of learning your parents are not the indestructible, morally-upright heroes we all believe our parents to be when we are young. i'll never lead you to this discovery. it is unnecessary. we learn this gradually, or in one devastating event, that shatters that perfect image forever. i remember the moment all the walls came crashing down for me. it was a gradual process that began at age eight, but it culminated when i was fourteen and staying with my mother for the summer before i entered high school. but before that, i remember feigning sleep, staring out the window, thinking "only ten more years until i turn eighteen...only eight more years...only six more years." i didn't count down again once i moved in with my grandparents, your great-grandparents.

i wish that you would know my grandparents the way that i do, but i doubt you will. this is too real, too heart-breaking to even think about writing an entire paragraph. except to say something insincere about the cycle and way of life, which i know is the way this whole life thing goes, but it does not make me like it any more.

i wish that you will love your childhood. please love every moment of your childhood. i hope that your first memories are happy ones, and that when you are twenty-four, you have so many precious, beautiful days to point to as tangible proof that you were brought up in a happy life. i hope that you will be brought up in that.

i wish that you will be a good man.

"everything i know about life i learned from the sims"

i have been playing the sims a lot the past few days, because i have no job and no future. it is fun to simulate a lavish, fulfilling life when your real life is in limbo - when it is "flailing," to use a word from augusta.
the game is super detailed. i mean, it's ridiculous. awesome, but ridiculous. and of course the sim couple (they must be married, obvs!) can have a baby. so my couple did. and i do not want children. i just watched my brother's girlfriend give birth, and that didn't make me want a baby. but i watched the little sim man get on his knees to rub his sim wife's simpregnant belly, and i melted a little bit. it was absolutely adorable.
so if i could look like this as a pregnant lady:
SIGN ME UP!
except give me a guy who does not put his hands in the air, as if to say "what is your problem, woman? i worked all day" and a dumb friend that's like "jeez, you look FAT from the back"

here is something real i want to say re: pregnancy/having babies. i really think i don't want to do that. also, i think i never will. not because i don't want to - or at least not completely. i just don't see it ever happening. i can't picture myself like a mom. i don't think i'd make a very good mom. but i still want all of those moments.

maybe i just want them selfishly, because i want to experience everything. that sounds like me.

i also can't picture myself living in a cute little house, all family-like, being happy. a friend told me that being happy and being content are two different things - and that they are mutually exclusive. i have to admit, i believe her to be true, but that is just so depressing. you can't have both? really? and if you can't have both, which do you choose? if i choose to just be content, without ever being fully happy, is that okay? is it okay to be content with my career life, without ever experiencing....motherhood? home life? a family life? i mean, a really family life. i don't know anything about family life right now. what i know about family is that they are fickle. they disappear. they leave. they disrupt your life. they do not care to know you.

they do not care to know me.

sims characters are not like that. they live in cute little houses and will snuggle with each other in bed while they sleep. they miss each other, so much so that their days are ruined if they haven't talked to their spouse in a long time. why do we program these kind of games if this kind of happiness does not exist? do we need simulation games to fulfill this need we have for both happiness and contentedness? is that even a word? there is no red line underneath, so i'm gonna take it.

i think the sims appeals to me because everything i do feels like simulation - feels like make believe. most of the time, i don't even feel like a real person, and any time anything really REAL happens in my life, i tend to ignore it, run away from it, or disengage from it emotionally.
isn't that great?

"favorite"

this is my heart.

"say what you can't say"

today i dreamed about another life.

in this other life of mine, i traveled to foreign places, lived an exciting life, never held back by silly places or cumbersome objects that have little hope of standing the great "test of time." i could speak (even slightly) other languages; i knew what it was like to really live. this dream was prompted, of course, because typically i don't let myself think of such things. lisa asked me where i would like to travel, mentioned a friend she has in france, talked about maybe setting me up with this friend so that i could live and work there for some time. and from those few sentences, my mind caught in this whirlwind of imagination. fantasy. i wrote home to family, posted pictures online for them to see of me - the one who really got away.
but it is just a dream.

my life is very nearly what i want already. i am scared - well, terrified, really - that i won't make it. i am scared that i don't have what it takes to cut it in academia, afraid that i'll be found out a fraud. but still, this is what i've wanted. even when i am afraid i make the wrong choices because i don't know what else to do, i know that is just silly fear talking. this is what i want. but i want more, and am unsure if any of it is within my reach.

i want that life, outlined above, with amazing foreign adventures. i don't want to notch trips on a belt, like a reckless or spoiled american. i want to really live in different places, understand places. i've always wanted to go to south africa. i don't know why. i honestly think it is because of a video i once saw when i was younger about apartheid. the country was broken, but still you could see its beauty. i've been mesmerized by that country ever since.

i want to be successful, mostly because i want to make enough money to buy my grandparents' house. i know why i want this. it is because i am a spoiled american. it is because i am a pack-rat. it is because i cannot let go of the one place in my life that sheltered me, kept me warm and happy and healthy and was the one place that i knew i could always go to - a place to feel truly loved. i never felt unloved in that house, and i don't want anybody else to have that house but me and mine. i can see justin and jessica living in there, i suppose, only because he is my brother. but i do not want a stranger living there. what if they ruin it? what if they don't understand? what if they never know what that house is, to so many people, but to me? that's silly, i know. why would they care? i am nobody to everybody in this world. but that house is still everything to me.

i want so many things for my life, more than i probably deserve to want. but i suppose i've always been a sucker for fantasy. which always brings me to the most consuming want, my best and hardest and most amazing desire. i say that he is my best wish because of everything that desire has brought me. it started so simply, with a little crush on his silly face and large ears and sense of humor. nothing large, something fitting for a sixteen-year-old. i wish i could remember in more detail what drew me to him, initially. he is so far from what i normally want, even still. although, it seems weird to apply that statement to today, since he has been what i want for such a long time, that he should become the norm. but he never was normal.

here is what i am more terrified now than i ever thought i was before - i am afraid of losing him. he's dating somebody now, somebody appropriate, somebody single, somebody probably perfect for him, or at least, closer than he's gotten before. and she's pretty, from what i can tell of the picture i have seen of her. of course, it is a picture of the two of him, her arm around him in nearly the same position as the picture of me and nick. they sit next to each other, the two pictures, on his bookshelf. it's almost taunting, in a way. like, "ha, you think you're special, rachel? well, you aren't."
and i know i'm not to him.

i always feel like i can't say anything about life or love because i'm not old enough, but i want to know - at what age are we able to be taken seriously? what is the age when people understand we really mean love when we talk of it, and not just puppy love, or teen crushes? i'd like to know, although i don't know if it would deter me. if someone said to me that i am not old enough to know this kind of love, i would not believe them. i'd roll my eyes, like that teenager still inside me, and continue this fascination with the emotion. that's kind of what it is, to a certain extent. i am fascinated with my ability to ignore every ounce of logic within me. my fight-or-flight response is in full effect, i know that i'm in danger, not of falling - since that's already happened - but of crashing. crashing so hard that, by the time anybody notices that i'm down or picks me up, i'll be beyond recognition. i'm enamored with this feeling, with the highs and lows that come with it. there are lows, yes, and when i'm low, i feel like i'll never come up. but then he says something, or he smiles, or he tilts his head and gives me his soft eyes, and i'm up again. i've always wished i could fly. the soft eyes almost get me there. that isn't a very good phrase to describe them, but i'm not sure i'm talented enough to describe them any more fully than that. he has such lonely eyes, i think. they're dark and set somewhat deep into his head, but despite the fact that, because of that, they appear lonely, they also always appear alive, lit up, always smiling with his mouth. except when he gives me those soft eyes, when he knows i'm upset, or when he's talking seriously, so much so that he feels the need to lower the natural register of his voice for full effect. so, the soft eyes - they always look so breakable in that moment. i never think he has the ability to cry. sometimes, i almost wonder if he gets emotional at all. but then, when i see those eyes, i see it. i see everything about him that i love, just in those eyes. so fragile. so vulnerable. so amazing. ugh. that is unbearably disgusting a description, also not a very original one. but i think that's what love does to people - turns them into utter cliches!

if, when i'm older, i ever think to rank the moments of my life, he'd without a doubt clutter my top fifty moments, i'm positive. he actually remembers some of them, which breaks my heart a little. or at least, it breaks this world i live in, where i know that he can't possibly care for me even a fraction of what i care for him. he remembers (slightly) the day in the park, with the sun warm against my skin. or maybe i thought it was the sun. maybe it was him. it was always him. and he talked to me about his life, opened up in a way that made him a person to me, not just this silly little fantasy. we were eighteen then, and that was the moment that i think i started to fall in love with him. nearly six years ago. but time doesn't really exist in this world with him. because i have been so many places, have scattered my memories up and down the west coast, and left pieces of myself everywhere - but he is my constant. he feels like he has always been a part of my life, even when i never knew him. it scares me to think there was a time when i never knew him.

and i am scared of the time when i do not know him anymore.

i just know it has to come, because people (nick included) tell me that these things are fleeting, and people come and go from our lives and that is simply the way of things. so shouldn't this be the same way? how can he be the exception to the rule? why would i ever be that lucky, to have this person in my entire life, instead of just a piece of it? and if i knew now that i could only have a certain amount of time with him, i'd wish for it to come later, so i could have him at the end of my life. i could hold onto the memories longer. even me, with the memory i have, i know that when i lose him, eventually the pictures and sounds and everything i've stored away of him will fade, fade like the prom picture i kept on my wall. the sun has already ruined parts of it, my pink dress doesn't look quite as pink, although he still looks perfect in his too-big rented tux. it wasn't even really a tux, now that i think about it. it was actually pretty ugly. i remember thinking that. but nothing else mattered to me, except his being there for me.

that's not to say that nothing else matters to me. i know that isn't true. if it were, i wouldn't have had the strength to leave this town, to be away from him. but i have gone away, and i will go away, if i get into another program. i care about my life, and i care about my other dreams. but he is always there, either in the back of my mind or in the forefront, depending on the day. depending on if he has called me, to lull me into another fantasy, as he talks to me. he talks so good, i can't explain it. not well. good. it's mesmerizing. it's intoxicating. those sound like ridiculous words, inflated in some way, lies almost. but they aren't. it's not hyperbole. it's my reality. the world i live in, where he has the ability to make me weak, just by the sound of his laugh, or the way he says "rach."

i remember when we were younger, we used to fight over the remote at his house. full on fight, as in, he'd chase me around the house, i'd hide in his bathroom - all or nothing kind of fight. or, even though i make him feel guilty about that night, i always remember (somewhat fondly) prom night. being at his house, his mom made us lasagna for dinner. i wouldn't eat very much, because i didn't want to spill all over my hot pink dress. he used to beg me to drive my car or the truck when i had that. i don't know why, and i really don't know why i never let him. there is that beautiful day in the park, and there is the time that i stayed the night at his house with jessa. some of my earliest memories with nick, where i remember feeling so close to him, involved her. staying at his house. the two of them staying at my house. the night that we went over to his dad's house to hang out and visit the hot tub. that was a silly day. i spent hours getting ready for that night - i went through all of jen's bathing suits, trying to figure out what to wear. i wanted to look perfect - just to get into a hot tub! i used to be so nervous around him. i wish i could pin point when that stopped.

but that doesn't mean that i don't get nervous around him at all. i do. sometimes intensely so. but most times i'm alright, can manage a steady pulse, can breathe evenly. except for when he does what he does so well. then i can feel everything about me becoming more and more irregular.

we had a talk recently, about the things we cannot change, about what i wish i could change, and about how completely infatuated with him i am. it's strange, to talk to him about how i feel, when he is the object of that affection, but he seems to enjoy it. or, at least, he seems not to mind it. jen and katie would tell me that he probably enjoys the feeling of being so wanted, so desired, and i suppose that could be true, but i hope not. i hope that his concern is for me, for our friendship, and not for his ego. but it isn't just hope. i believe, with everything i have, that there is more to this than that. more than anything, i believe in him. wholeheartedly. completely. and without strings attached. that does not mean that the cynical side of me, however, doesn't sometimes overwhelm me. and it is difficult to ignore the sound advice of those who also love and care about me, and i know jen and katie do. it is not that i want to ignore them, or that i think he cares about me more than my other friends. it isn't about competition, and it isn't about childish ignorance. or maybe it is ignorance, but in this case, i want to call it hope.

you see, i don't have hope for many things. i certainly hope for a better life, but it is a fleeting hope, one that sees its share of highs and lows - a hope that is barely sustained only by my ability to keep my life afloat. hope feels like a euphemism for faith, and that i do not care to hold at all. i don't know why. probably just my life, but i hate to even say that. it sounds so "oh, poor me," and i refuse to think that way - there's no point anymore. but really, i know that everything i have seen and have done and have seen those around me do has left me this way. i am now a shell, in so many ways, and within me, there is no hospitable environment for faith to flourish or even survive. but the amount of hope and faith i have in him? you'd never believe i'd have the capacity - i don't think i should have the capacity. it isn't fair, all that i get from this relationship with him, even if i don't get absolutely everything i want. the ability to truly believe in somebody, to have faith not only in what they do but who they are, without fail, is amazing, particularly for me. and i believe in him, more than i let on, more than i want him to know, because there are some things i like to keep for myself. some moments i wish i could share with him, but know that i cannot because it just might be the piece of information that drives him away from me. but that's one i wish i could share - that i absolutely have faith in everything he does. i give him a hard time, now and again, about school and his life and the choices he makes, but i know him, and i know how dedicated he is, so i never worry that he will end up unhappy. or unsuccessful. the kind of success he achieves is yet to be seen - only time will tell. but i know that he will be, in some way or another. not because i love him. not because i am blind. but because i am not blind. because i see him. completely. that is why i know that, while it may give him a bit of an ego boost to know that i adore him, none of his actions are driven by a need to be fed by that bit of excitement or whatever you might call it. i know him, and i know he does not operate in that manner. at all. and i know this unconditionally, no matter how my cynicism might want my heart and mind to waver.

sometimes, that feeling scares me. i'm overwhelmed by it, by my love for him, sure, but what that love does to all of the other feelings he brings out of me. my love for him has become so strong over the years that it is impossible for it to leave other emotions untouched. so even the most simple feelings are tainted by a rush, by this flood that has no hope of ever being contained. i'm afraid that it will all go away. all of it - the highs, the lows, his smile, his voice, the heat that i feel whenever he's around. of course, i am afraid to lose that...him. but i am afraid of what it does to me, too. i am terrified that this will be the whole of my life, that i will live only to love him and, although i think i could safely say that i loved enough if he is the only person i love, i know i'm not strong enough to live alone forever. i want somebody to love me at least half the amount i love nick. if i could find that, if i could find somebody who wanted me even a fraction of that amount, i think i could be happy - although, the danger is loving somebody, being in a relationship with that somebody, but always loving another person more. i can't do that....again. i am very afraid of that - of hurting somebody in that way, because of my fear of being alone but my unwillingness - my inability - to let go of the hope of maybe someday, the love of my life.

you probably think that i am far too young to say that this is the love of my life. and you might be correct. what right do i have to say such a thing? yes, it's melodramatic. yes, it is impossible. yes, it is cliche. even nick would probably scoff at the idea, that he is the one person i will love my entire life. he'd tell me that i couldn't possibly know that - that life changes, that people enter and exit your life, and that certainly we're not made to love only one person. and he'd, annoyingly, remind me that i believe that, too. he'd remind me the times i've said that i don't believe in fate, that i don't believe in soul mates, that i don't believe in any of that crap. and he'd remind me how i tell him that i never want to get married, that i don't want a family, and he'd use that to ask me - "so why would you think that you have only one person to love in your entire lifetime?"

i would typically respond to such a question from him with a frustrated sigh and "i just know," to which he'd continually push for a better answer. because he does that. he pushes me. sometimes when he might should stop, but there is very rarely a censor with him. if this conversation were to ever take place, i'd probably win, only because i'd repeat myself, shutting the discussion down.
but if i were to be honest with him, if i were to say what i really wanted to say, i'd say this:

i don't think that i was made to love only one person. i don't think that i have a soul mate. i don't believe in fate. but here i am, despite my cynicism, after everything i've witnessed, in love with completely the worst person for me. you are the wrong person for me because you don't see me (although i think we'd probably work together pretty near perfectly - but that's another discussion and subsequent argument). i've told you that i don't want to marry anyone, and i am still convinced i'd do a terrible job - domestication just doesn't seem like it would work for me. but if i dream about a day where i am walked down the aisle, acting all weird and traditional, you should know that you are the one waiting for me. it is always you. that image never leaves my mind, or my heart. and no, i don't believe that i'll love anybody in this way because you have changed who i am. and you challenge me and push me in a way that only you could do. but this isn't about me. it is about you. i know that i could never love anybody else because, try as i might, i'll never find another you. no other man will be what you are, will be so frustratingly charismatic, will have such an infectious laugh, will have such a beautifully sad "serious" face. no other man will sing to me so mesmerizingly with such awful, mismatched tones (and i can say this with certainty, since you're not the only man to attempt that!). nothing i can find will be enough, after you. i have been so certain for a long time that i never loved aaron, or was never really in love with him, because nothing in my life has ever come close to this feeling. and i know that nothing ever will.

and if you ask me how i know for sure, i will have to say that i don't. but i will have to say, just stick around, and we'll see together how the story ends.

ELECTION 2008

i still don't believe it, but i am happy happy happy! i can't believe this is really going to happen. we wanted it, we wished for it, we hoped for it more than we dared hope for anything, AND IT HAPPENED.

here's to hoping we can all live up to the fantasy that we've had the past 22 or so months. it isn't just on him. WE HAVE TO CHANGE, TOO.

"giving up and letting go"

i'm glad that i wasn't asked the question "have you ever loved something you felt foolish for loving?" because i'm not sure i'd have the answer to that...for a few reasons. i don't think i've loved much of anything in my life, and i don't know if i'd feel truly ashamed for any of it. i like to joke that i'm embarrassed over certain parts of my life, obsessions i have, weird habits, etc, but in reality, i don't really care what people think of what i like and love. that sounds much stronger than i think i am. it makes it sound like i'm this tough woman, independent, without a care as to others' thoughts. that's not true. but i think my love of something would override my care to appease other people.

i grew up in a lot of places. i grew up in medical lake, in a house wedged between my best friend becky's house and only a few short blocks from the police department. down and around the corner sat the grocery store. i can't remember its name anymore. i used to walk there, day or night, to buy food for the family, snacks when we were bored, or call my mom on the pay phone when she didn't come home. i can remember one particular night calling her in the snow. i also remember my friend becky showing me how to call a phone sex line on that pay phone. we laughed and hung up and dialed again. on the same phone i called a phone sex line and cried to my mom, begging her to come home because the baby wouldn't stop crying.

i grew up in one summer, in las vegas, where i remembered instantly what it was like to be a grown-up. i think i reverted back to childhood, if that's possible, when i moved in with my grandparents. or the growing process slowed somehow. but that summer, in las vegas, i felt older. i watched harley and hayden as my mom would go off doing....whatever it was that she did. i've often wondered what. i try to imagine it. was she sitting in front of a slot machine, chasing loss after loss with free drinks? was she laughing with a stranger, while i tried to keep harley and justin calm when hayden cracked his head on the corner of the air conditioner and had to be taken to the emergency room of some hospital in vegas by the ambulance? i really wonder, but she doesn't remember. she doesn't even really remember that event, which is sad, because it was one of the scariest moments of my life. i think i grew up more in that moment than i did the second day in vegas, when i first heard art slap her. i used to think that was the moment, but having to be steady and calm when three kids are crying around you...that's more of the growing up moment, i suppose.

i grew up in olympia, in that first year at evergreen. that seems silly to say, considering i spent the majority of my time falling out of windows, drinking a ridiculous amount of booze, and running around campus with evie from vending machine to vending machine. but i definitely grew up there. i didn't realize what i wanted there. i still don't know what i want - for my life, anything. but there i knew what i didn't want.

i grew up in pullman. this place has forced me to grow simply because time has moved so fast. and that is apparently what it's going to keep doing, people tell me. the older you get, the faster time moves. or something like that. and i suppose that it's true, and life is fleeting and whatnot, but i think that pullman is kind of a vaccuum, and time just runs faster here anyway. at least, that's what i'm going to tell myself.

but i really grew up on lee street, in moses lake, in this white house with blue trim and shutters and a pretty green lawn. there used to be a brick flower garden, but my grandma tore it down awhile ago. i forget why. i can walk around that place in the dark, before my eyes have adjusted to the lack of light, without hitting anything, without my hands feeling around in the air. she's got the living room and kitchen covered in disgusting brown panelling that i know is hideous but love all the same. the smallest bedroom has pink (yes, pink!) carpet. the kitchen's countertop is yellow. most of the backyard is covered in rock because my grandma hated to mow the lawn. the patio in the backyard is cracked because of the tree next door. the roots grew beyond the neighbor's yard into our own, and i guess the force of those roots pushed the concrete up. i used to use that slope to push my little tri-cycle on - brandon and preston and justin and harley and hayden did, too. and my bedroom - the biggest bedroom of the house, which used to be the den room, also has that brown panelling. but my grandma let me do whatever i wanted in that room, so for the longest time, it was wall-papered with pictures from magazines. literally, the entire brown panelling wall was covered. it was pretty amazing. the white wall wasn't always covered, and you could tell, because i would put my feet on it when i would be on my bed. one summer, my grandma made me wash it. i stopped putting my feet on the wall.

i grew up there. in that house. and i love it. and i love all the really tacky things she's done to decorate that house. and now it's being put up for sale. because my grandparents have moved on. moved away. and retirement is supposed to take you to new places, but i didn't want it to take them away from me. and i definitely didn't want it to take the house away from me. i cried when my uncle disconnected the house phone over a year ago. it was just a phone number, but it was probably the first phone number i ever memorized, and it was constant. i knew it would never be shut off because grandma forgot to pay the bill or something. it was always there. they were always there. and that house, i really love that house.
and i couldn't tell you if it is just the slow movement of time that has taken it away. i don't know if this is just the natural course of our lives or if ...well, i know the world isn't against me on this. but sometimes, when i forget that i'm nearly twenty-four and feel still thirteen, scared, but relieved to feel at home for the first time in my life, i think that maybe the world kind of hates me a bit.