Feelin' Turquoise

       I believe very strongly in the science behind things altogether too romantic for something so boring and stuffy.  For example, love and attraction.  I like to view both on a molecular level.  But still, there are somethings that I cannot simplify thus.  
      Sometimes I feel lower than indigo, but usually I'm a more cheerful turquoise.  I also like to call it feeling "pleasantly melancholy".  Ever feel like that? Like a sort of depression that's sweeter and clearer than a brook, or like the languidness that gracefully settles over your every expression, gesture, and thought?  Me, too.  To be honest, I don't hate it because I fancy that it makes me throw myself into my work so as to hide a heart broken from all the sorrows the beautifully cruel world throws at a sixteen-year-old girl.  Don't laugh; I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.  It's the sort of feeling you get when something so beautiful makes you want to just die.  
       Imagine the norsemen, stranded in the middle of the north sea, having been unable to outrun the first freeze of Winter.  Imagine their wonder at the crystalline ice that dooms them, that ensnares their longship beyond any hope of escape.  Imagine how they must marvel at nature's cold, austere glory.  Such glory must have touched even the most hardened of the vikings'  hearts.  That is, for the split second before they realized their fate.  That split second is perhaps the best metaphor I can give for how I sometimes feel.  Don't get me wrong, there are times when I wish that I did not live among the race of men, and the realization that I must navigate a path in such a world threatens to crush me.  There are even times when I wish not to live.  But let it be known that however much I revere death, I have no love for the process of dying;  I revere life so much more.  
     However, sometimes I feel less than myself, like a stranger.  This stranger that inhabits my body doesn't feel, she doesn't want, and she doesn't do anything.  I hate that more than anything.  Sometimes I feel less than human, actually, because what sets human beings apart from beasts is the complexity of our emotions.  But I owe a thousand thanks, now, to my dear friends and roomates whose real names I shall not divulge.  I'll call them instead by their nicknames .  You see, there was a big volleyball festival (tournament) in Phoenix, Arizona a couple of weeks ago.  It's typically a week long and Summer happens to be the hardest for me, in terms of...this.  By the last day, I it felt like breathing was akin to drawing fire through my veins, if you will permit me my overly dramatic turn of phrase.  S. Tanaka was never able to break me of that habit, unfortunately.  So, upon our return to our room, I rushed ahead and locked myself in our bathroom.  I allowed myself twenty seconds to come apart at the seams, albeit in silence.  When a little bit of that which corrodes a little girl's heart had spilled onto the tiles, I gave myself twenty seconds to regain my composure.  Then I stepped out and pretended like nothing had happened; in fact, I even flushed the toilet.  But after a few minutes, one asked me why my eyes were so red.  Her worries I dismissed with a flippant wave of my hand.  But another's could not be so easily dissuaded and beneath her clear gaze I crumbled.  I lost my cool.  I confided too many things to them.  I do not regret that now. My thanks to them, to Mo, to Teagan, and to livvy.  
      They helped me to realize that my first duty is to myself.  It does not do to save the hearts of others at the cost of mine (again, sorry...I hope you don't think I'm looking to sound like the heroic martyr...I'm really not).  Then, too, I've been doing too much apologizing.  I see now that people aren't made to please others.  Finally, this stranger that has come so close to conquering me cannot do so without my permission.  I am strong, I don't have to be passive.  
     Friends are great, but great friends are even better.  Never shut them out, and never try to hide yourself from the world.  The world is bigger than you are and you emotions will eat away your insides until one day you'll realize that you have no more emotions to squirrel away.  This last lesson was taught to me by my good friend, who shall be called "lardy" (it has nothing to do with her size...she's quite petite, actually), but sometimes it takes a while to truly learn things that we already know.  


Thanks for listening, internet.

 “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard