"Reasons To Love You" or "The Best People I Know"

I'm tired of writing about myself. I want to write about you guys.

Yeah, you guys. All those glorious little humanoids that I love so much, and why I love ya, and why we're friends, and why I think you're just so gosh darned cool. This blog is such a monument to my self-indulgence and vanity, let's take a break. I just want to talk to you.

Dear Mom,

There are times when your absolute marvelousness crashes into me like waves on the California shore where you used to live and wanted a basketball for Christmas. You are the smartest person I know, the most level-headed person I know, and you make me feel better about absolutely everything. Sometimes I just don't know how you do it all, or how you manage to express love in such a healthy, beautiful, and balanced way. I hope and pray that I turn into my mother.

Dear Dad,

I tell you, there's just no love in the world like Daddy for his little girl. Things haven't always been easy for you and me, but only because we are so much the same. Chronic extroverts, loud in public, always want to make the whole room laugh. And you certainly do. If I can trust you to do anything, you can always make people smile. While mom is ready to push me out of the nest with my fully-grown wings, you hold on tightly and insist that I'm not yet ready to fly. I cling to you still, as I may well into adulthood, trying so desperately to stay the little girl I am inside. You show me remarkable wisdom every day, while also teaching me so many things about myself. Even when you frustrate me most, it teaches me more about love.

Dear Anna,

Heavens, has it all been said? So many times? We are the wands, we are the vikings. You are my heart and I am yours. You are everything I dreamed you would be the day that you were born, and I love you more every time I think about you. You have saved my life so many times and never known it, and when everything else has seemed collapsing and crumbling, there has always been you. If I knew anyone who deserved to be a Saint, it would be you. Just don't get lit on fire or anything, be the sort of saint who dies of old age while dancing fiercely in a storm of firecrackers and wild swans.

Dear Linn,

You make me feel a little less crazy, and a little more crazy, and you make me laugh like nobody else. You and I come from the same place, and our backpacks weigh as much as our hearts, and our brains never turn off, and we're always caffeinated and no one understands what we mean but us. You are the only friend I can study with effectively. Also, never stop telling me when I'm being a bitch, I need that.

Dear Lindsey,

I've said it a million times, and if anyone has been given love and credit on this blog, it's certainly you. I don't seem to be able to talk enough about how much I love you. You remind me to be spontaneous, that time is a construct, and that yes, we need a baby seal. You put up with me at my worst, and you are always honest with me, and you deal with me being stupid and mean gracefully and kindly. Also, never stop telling me that I'm being loud, I need that too.

Dear Ginny,

You remind me sometimes that I'm not alone. You make me feel less ridiculous, less silly, like I'm not the only one. There are some days where I feel like I haven't learned anything, and I feel silly for letting boy problems make my head spin, and everyone around me is agreeing with me that I'm much too mature to let relationship problems bog me down so much anymore. Then there you are, telling me that it's ok if I still get emotional sometimes, and maybe it isn't ridiculous, but maybe it's okay if I fall in love all the time. You make me feel okay about being in love with everyone.

Dear Alex,

On those nights when only the Christmas lights on your mantle are lit, or you strike a match in a dark room, or all the clocks in the whole house are wrong and you say, "Hey, can I read you something? It's really amazing," those are the nights that I want to remember forever and forever and forever. When you smile and dance around a room, or talk about one single song for thirteen minutes, or read a poem when no one in the room wants to hear it but you read it anyway because I want to hear it and I could have you read me stories all day, those are the best parts about you in the whole world. I wish I read as much as you do. I wish I had a smile like yours.

Dear Daniel H.,

There are certain friends that you have, and no matter how much time passes, or what you go through together, or how much time passes between phone calls, they are always there for you no matter what, and we're those kind of friends. I love that we have managed to stay close over the years, and nobody gets you like I do, and nobody gets me like you do. I like putting up with you. I like watching you get silly perturbed over little things. I like that I can be honest with you, and you with me. I like that we have learned each other so well. I like that we will always, always, be brother and sister.

Dear Cooper,

I say this with complete sincerity and no exaggeration: There is no one else in my life that I can be so completely myself with. I think this feeling is mutual for us. We've talked about it before, but you and I were just meant to be roommates. We know each other like mapmakers know the land, and we've surveyed and drawn borders and we could walk around with our eyes closed. There are nights when we both are saying nothing in particular, but we just laugh and we just get it. And it just works. I know you and all your quirks, and I love them. You know what to expect from me, and you always make me laugh. You and I can always have a silent conversation in a room full of people and that's perfect.

Dear Ben W,

I don't think I yell louder or smile bigger than when you walk through the door at a party. I know that we don't see each other very often, but I think that maybe that's how we're supposed to be. So every time I see you, I yell and get so excited my eyes start to water. I want to hug you more, though. And have coffee with you more, and jump on you more, and dance with you more. So maybe I lied, maybe we need to see each other much, much more often. And also, you're a brilliant writer.

Dear Ryan Spain,

I like that we are friends again, and that we have crossed so many bridges together- even while they were burning. We will always have strings stretching between our hearts, and we'll always have little secrets floating between us that make us best friends. We have been to the edge of the earth together, and we will always keep each other from that edge again. We are the lovers.

Dear Ryan Scruggs,

You and I are the same. We have the same heart, the same sigh when we feel lonely, and I think we will soon be at point where we can hear each other at night lamenting over the same lost things. You can always understand me, and you are always there for me and you always make me laugh. Over the years we've seen each other through so much, and we've always managed to laugh. You will always be a force of optimism and laughter in my life.

Dear Laura,

Goodness gracious you're cute. I love that you have come into my life, and into James's. Your laugh can light up a dark room and you are always up for an adventure. I've never met someone who seemed so at peace that they radiated peace from them- except James, of course. You're always ready to stay up another hour, cook something ridiculous late at night, and go on a big glorious trip for that crazy thing called love. You have a knack for making families everywhere you go.

Dear James,

Can enough be said about you, my dear? A source of strength, wisdom, and endless, endless late nights of ridiculous laughter and absurd stories that no one will understand years from now except the few of us who were there. You can make fun and beauty out of absolutely anything, and I will always be amazed by that. You are one of the most determined people I know, and the amount of knowledge and travel that you have accomplished over the years makes me so proud of you. You and I have been through the fire, and I love you so so so very much for the person that you are. If I could be like you in any way, I would love to be able to have the courage that you have to try new things. Oh, and be good at them. That would be nice, too.

Dear Ben R,

You and I will always be a beautiful thing. You will always play music late at night, and I will always call you while I walk through dark parking lots because I know that you want me to be safe. We will always be friends. One way or another, at one time or another, we will always be friends.

Dear Daniel M,

I smile just thinkin' about you. You can always make the world seem a little more manageable, a little less scary, and a little more musical. You have fun with absolutely everything and god knows we all need more of that in our lives. You live your life as a series of beautiful moments, and I want to be in more of them. Just to see the brightness of it all.

Dear Jeremy,

I wear your necklace for good luck. It means the world to me, still. As do you.

Dear Kat&Liz,

I include you two together because you both are my creative inspiration. Kat, you are my painted bird. Liz, you are my vintage pillbox hat. You are both the artists I wished I could always be but never had quite the skill or the passion, and it delights me to no end that you are both in the world. I miss you terribly and kick myself for not orchestrating trips to see you more often. Have no doubt, I will.

Dear boys: Logan, Morgan, Paker, &Michael

It is so wonderful that you kids haven't gotten tired of me yet, because goodness knows you're the most fun kids on the block. Logan, I'm never going to understand you and that's always going to make me happy and love you more. Your knowledge of music will always absolutely dumbfound me. Morgan, you're a great guitar teacher and I love how much you make me laugh. Half the time I don't understand your sense of humor which somehow, some way, makes it even funnier. Parker, I like that I can look at you from across the room and we shake our heads and think man these people are crazy, and that now I've found one other person that understands how great milk actually is. Michael, get a facebook.

Dear Jennifer C,

Thank you for being such a glorious mother, and such a good friend. I know I have told you again and again, but you have managed to raise two little kids so full of joy sometimes I think they're going to start lighting up from the inside. I always feel comfortable around you and I feel like I've gained a second family. You're one seriously awesome woman.

Dear William F,

Oh, you get it.

<3gen

"I Would Be In Love Anyway" or "You Gotta Love Livin' Baby, Cause Dyin' Is A Pain In The Ass"

Frankie wrote this song for me. He and I, see, we're kindred spirits, and he knew it back then. He knew there would be a girl like me, who needed somebody to croon into her ear something that put her complicated, convoluted, fickle and difficult feelings into such simple little words that it would make her smile.

This song is my life story, and Frankie wrote it just for me.



"If I lived the past over
Saw today from yesterday
I would be in love
Anyway
If I knew that you'd leave me
If I knew you wouldn't stay
I would be in love
Anyway
Sometimes I think
Think about before
Sometime I think
If I knew then
What I know now
I don't believe I'd ever change
Somehow
Though you'll never be with me
And there are no words to say
I'll still be in love
Anyway
If I knew then
What I know now
I don't believe I'd ever change
Somehow
If I knew then
What I know now
I don't believe I'd ever change
Somehow

"The Smell Of Mustard Gas And Roses" or "Valentine's Day in Dresden"

Don't we all have days like this, ladies?

Wrapped up in a down comforter on your couch, a batch of brownies on the coffee table, watching Sex&The City and contemplating what it is, exactly, that got us into this mess? And why, exactly, we can't seem to get ourselves out of it?

And somewhere between the middle of the brownies, episode four of single girls with lots of money and beautiful dating prospects, and whenever you start to think that you may need to venture into the world at some point, you start to wonder why you let relationship stuff matter enough to put you in this couch-and-comforter situation anyway?

Then you sigh, pick up another brownie, and settle in a little deeper.



Fuck you, Saturday.

<3gen

"Let Me Hold My Broken Parts" or "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Violent Crime, If You Do It Wrong You Could Do Time"

Sometimes I feel two things at once.



1. I had the most miraculous birthday. I walked into Lindsey's house for the one millionth time, and it felt familiar. Linn and Whitney were next to me, friends were in the kitchen, everything felt comfortable and at peace. The kitchen door was closed, and the lights were off in the living room. I thought nothing of it. Lindsey's face glowed with that smile. I walked into the living room to have what sounded like a hundred people yelling SURPRISE, and a few loners saying ASTONISHMENT! Thanks, Will Thomas...

I looked around and saw the most friendly faces, faces of people that I loved, and I filled up to the brim with this desire to want to pull them all together in a big hug. We played music and danced all night and I even got a kiss from a boy I like. I felt whole and colorful and that things were just like they were supposed to be. Lindsey let me climb on her coffee table and sing Christmas songs, and then she was the best girl in the world. Everyone was the best everything in the world.

I was renewed.



2. Amidst all the renewal, in the days following my miracle birthday, I also became painfully aware that there seems to be little I can do about my habits with boys. It appears that I will never be able to look beyond "what feels good right now" and see "what will hurt later." I won't be able to hold myself back from "what my heart tells me it wants" and see "what the boy tells me he wants." I seem to be taking carpe diem to a dangerous level (both with my heart and with my liver), and it makes me feel pretty unwanted most of the time. At the same time, I'm behaving in a way that is ensuring I remain feeling as such for as long as I possibly can.

3. Feeling overwhelmingly loved and perpetually unwanted at the same time is very confusing. It makes me need more caffeine and my fingers hurt often. Like they're craving to reach out and hold something but I don't have the direction. Or like I'm in withdrawals.

<3gen

"It Was One Of The Beautiful Girls Who Woke Me Up" or "One Year Older, One Year Closer To It All"

I think actually this time, the morning of my first day of being one year older, I actually felt a whole lot different than I had felt on my last day of being 21.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'm gonna know all the lessons I learned between 21 and 22 until I get to 23. Not to mention that there is a significant portion of blog-o-land taken up right below this entry of all sorts of delicious life stories that just scream of learning lessons and getting to know myself. It's just not necessary for the birthday, thanks for having me in January, mom.

However, there is one thing that is worth noting, and it has been noted several times on this blog, and every other corner of the internet where I go to be compulsively and chronically extroverted:

Lindsey Mullen can not be described in word that I have at my disposal. I have been praying to God, or some form of a God, since I was a child, younger than a child. I have prayed for everything any human being prays for: possessions, love, fixed problems, easier roads to travel, doom on others, ability to remember math problems. Never has a prayer been answered in such bright light, such ineffable wisdom that only comes from knowing all of creation, and with such powerful love as the answer that created, and delivered so undeservingly to me, the friend and miracle that is that girl.

<3gen

"Romanticism Has Never Been Properly Judged" or "Maybe I Was Born To Hold You"

I hate that my birthday is so close to the new year, because I feel like maybe I'm supposed to learn a whole bunch of lessons between then and now.

But I think this time, I did.

22 tomorrow, kids.

<3gen

"God Loved You The Best" or "So This Is The New Year"

Typically for these year-in-review blog entries that all good bloggers must inevitable create, I sift back through all the posts I've had, I read letters I wrote and didn't send, and I turn through the pages of what is usually a 10-inch-tall pile of notebooks so that I can remember what the last 12 months really felt like.

This time, it appears from January to April of 2008, I sailed off the edge of a very flat earth. There are no journal pages, I can't find so much as a scribble in the corner of some class notes about what those months were like. I mean, I remember what they were like: great masses of loss, dreams where I hugged God wearing roller skates, a hurricane of hands and glances that meant nothing to me and something to everyone else. They were a very dense, and very hollow few months.

In April I was a girl growing up in East Germany, until the wall came down and I had to figure out how to live in a country where the signs changed, the borders blurred, and I couldn't go to the grocery store without being reminded of what had disappeared, and what had been gained.

In May I was frustrated when disappointment moved in with something that still looked an awful lot like love, and when I held my ear to the wall they shared I only wished they would quiet so I could get some sleep. They fought every night and into the morning, stomping their feet on the floors and sometimes something that sounded like scratching on the walls.

In June I discovered God in a three year-old boy. I understood that I needed love in my life, but that I had been looking for it in all the wrong places. Because right in front of me, the whole time, was a little boy who thought I could make the whole world better, and I could always take care of him, and when he heard me come in the door he ran to me and jumped into my arms and there was no one else in the whole big wide world that loved me like that. In June, I met the best man I've ever loved.

In July, I became a book.

In August, I had a bubble fight in Lindsey's kitchen.

In September I dyed my hair pink.

In October I ignored everything I'd ever learned in Biology and started to ignore human functions necessary for life. I didn't eat enough, didn't sleep enough, drank too often, kissed too many people for very strange reasons. I slacked on school work, put too much effort into charity work, and lost ground on all of my self work. But I felt whole, and the heartache that the year had plagued me with started fading.

In November, Obama won the Presidency, I pulled off the biggest event for charity in Africa I had ever tried, went head-over-heels for a boy, and began clawing desperately at the end of the semester while trying not to fail out of college.

December was sleep, friends, and not looking back at the past at all.

So here's January, and it's raining, and I turn 22 years old in 11 days. This year was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it.

<3gen