Off My Chest

One of my biggest fears is that I'll get sick one day and lose my voice and it'll never come back. When I do lose my voice I spend days with a knot in my stomach and quite often cry myself to sleep thinking about it.

The first time I realized how much I loved you was when I woke up bawling from a dream where you got killed in a car accident and couldn't stop crying for almost an hour. The next day when I saw you I nearly tackled you on the spot.

My daddy used to sing me to sleep with "Desparado" and Take It Easy" by The Eagles. He'd play with my hair and sing real soft. I miss that a lot.

I also miss sitting in my grandma's living room on the floor in front of the couch when my dad would brush my hair. This was when it was still straightish. You can't just go brushing curly hair.

I miss my grandma. She died this September. I don't think I came to terms with it until recently. Like, she's gone. For good. I wasn't ready for that.

My favorite pair of sweatpants has a hole in them.

I'm scared to move forward. I'm more afraid of the past.

I wish you could see the truth for once. I wish you weren't so blind. I wish you could see everything you're worth in my eyes. I wish you could see yourself the way I do. I wish you could see me, too.

I like to paint my nails pink every once in a while. It makes me feel pretty.

When I get engaged I'm gonna go and buy a pair of white chucks and wear them till my wedding day. A few days before the wedding I'll ask my fiance if he could write anything on my shoes what would it be. Then before the ceremony I'll have him write whatever it is on the white chucks. I'm gonna wear 'em down the aisle.

I wish that for once that you'd tell me I'm beautiful instead of "so pretty."

Those people were never worth my time. I just failed to realize it for the last decade.

I wish I had a super power. I'd really like to control electricity. When I got ticked off little streams of electrical current would run over my skin and jump from fingertip to fingertip. My hair would get real big and staticky.

My best friend is a boy who wants to run around in an aviator cap and goggles and I love him so very much for it. To be honest, I wouldn't mind running around in an aviator cap and goggles either.

My other best friend is a boy who lives in comic books and draws pictures of himself as a Calvin-like character only instead of a stuffed animal tiger named Hobbes, he has a stuffed shark named Howard. And I love him so very much for it.

I can quote "The Road To El Dorado" like nobody's business.

At one point in my life I was capable of reciting The Lord of the Rings movies in sync with their soundtracks.

I could also speak rudimentary Elvish. Sindarin Elvish.

I don't like painting my toenails because me legs are so long that my knees get in the way and I can't see what I'm doing.

I have a habit of naming inanimate objects. My cell phone is Count Darwin Ferdinand Zanzabar. I have two pairs of boots, one named Delilah and the other named Ramona. My guitar is Danny. My keyboard is Jason. My iPod is Evgeni. The list goes on.

I like symmetry.

I also like right angles.

Despite the last two facts, my room often looks like a cross between a train wreck and what I imagine the unabomber's home must have looked like. Whenever I picture the Unabomber the image that always comes to mind is this hairy man in an aviator's cap and goggles. Which just adds a whole other layer of amusing to the friend who wishes to don such apparel.

I think about life in terms of a comic book a lot. Which of my friends would be villains, which would be heroes? What powers would they have? Would my best friends be leaders of the heroes group or the reluctant bad guy turned good? For the record, the one with the aviator cap would be the all around hero--Captain America only wittier and more sarcastic. Good to the core, he will do anything to refrain from killing an enemy in battle and sticks to his moral compass always- sometimes to a fault. He's incredible. Shark boy over there would be the slight rebel of the group. He would have a bit of a past and no one would know quite whether to trust him or not. But when it came down to it he would pass their test with flying colors, proving once and for all that he was beyond trustworthy. He is beyond trustworthy. I still don't know what I would be in that contingency...

I'm a nerd.

I just accidentally snapped myself in the hand with a rubber band and it hurt like you wouldn't believe.

I'm also a bit of a human mishap.

I have contacts and glasses but sometimes prefer the world a little fuzzy round the edges. It keeps things interesting.

I love color.

If I had to choose between giving up my sight or my hearing, it'd be sight. It'd also be possibly the most painful decision I ever had to make.

Music is my heartbeat.

I'm still not sure how to turn the oven on.

I'm not vain, but I love my smile. In fact, it's the one part of my appearance that I'm truly proud of. I have nightmares where I look in the mirror and there's a gap between my two front teeth. I usually wake up crying.

I can unwrap a Starburst with my tongue.

I'm bored of labelling and being labelled.

Some of my favorite memories are those of lying on my bedroom floor with an old friend and just listening to music or singing along as she played my guitar. We used to spend whole afternoons doing just that. It was peaceful in a way nothing has ever been before or since.

You say so many of the same things she did and it still scares me, even though I know you won't do to me what she did. You'll never go behind my back like that. Still, it's a scary thing.

Sometimes my eyes turn orange. Few people ever see it, but it happens.

I can wiggle my ears.

I used to be terrified of spiders. Like, absolutely, completely horrified at the mention of them. Then, one night this summer I was sitting in my living room and the light from across the street was shining on our window so I noticed something moving on the outside of the pane. I took a closer look and it was a rather large, orangey-red spider about the size of a half dollar, spinning her web. My first reaction was to recoil, but something else in the back of my mind was pushing me to stay, to watch her. I spent nearly a month watching that spider spin and respin her web outside the window. I kind of miss her, to be honest.

I've loved more in the past year and a half than some people do their entire lives. I've also probably lost a little more. It's worth the experience.

Carnegie museum is one of my favorite places on earth.

I love flannel.

When something bad happens I figure "Worse things have happened to better people." Life has been pretty good to me. I just don't always remember that.