I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together.
For Someone Awakening To The Trauma of His or Her Past:For everything under the sun there is a time.This is the season of your awkward harvesting,When the pain takes you where you would rather not go,Through the white curtain of yesterdays to a placeYou had forgotten you knew from the inside out;And a time when that bitter tree was plantedThat has grown always invisibly beside youAnd whose branches your awakened handsNow long to disentangle from your heart.You are coming to see how your looking often darkenedWhen you should have felt safe enough to fall toward love,How deep down your eyes were always owned by somethingThat faced them through a dark fester of thornsConverting whoever came into a further figure of the wrong;You could only see what touched you as already torn.Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.And your memory is ready to show you everything,Having waited all these years for you to return and know.Only you know where the casket of pain is interred. You will have to scrape through all the layers of coveringAnd according to your readiness, everything will open. May you be blessed with a wise and compassionate guideWho can accompany you through the fear and griefUntil your heart has wept its way to your true self.As your tears fall over that wounded place,May they wash away your hurt and free your heart.May your forgiveness still the hunger of the woundSo that for the first time you can walk away from that place, Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.