Heartbeats- Jose Gonzalez

immediate love, is the most dangerous kind.
you fall in love with someone before you can stop yourself. it just happens. it's that instant connection, that silvery spark, that unstoppable need.
but then you get to know them. and you see that they aren't the person you thought they were at all. and you're stuck, being in love with someone who does not exist.
we often cling to the person they became, because they are the closest thing we have to the person they were.
don't do this.
they will never be enough.

Center of Attention- Jackson Waters

I realized something today.
Running away isn't going to help anything.
Going to Spain, is not going to change things for me. It's just going to make me more lost. I have a home here, a life here. True, I don't like some of the people around me. I don't like the way most of the people at my school act. They way they are. I don't like how everything is so fake in high school, the way parties are the highlight of a week. I don't like the way people turn on each other so easily, and the way girls allow themselves to be used.
But that's just life.
It's going to be there wherever I go. And here, I've already established things. I know who and what I need, and who and what I don't. Going somewhere else will just require me to find it all over again. I went through that process last year, finding myself in high school. It wasn't fun. It basically just one big struggle, flitting from thing to thing, person to person, trying to find where I was supposed to be.
And now I've found it. I have a boyfriend that I love. We haven't said it yet, the I Love You's. I promised C once, that I would never tell anyone else that I loved them. I always thought I would be betraying him by doing it. But now I see, that I'm betraying myself by not.
Because I think I do love him. In a different way that I loved C, and S. C was my one love, maybe my true love, my soul mate. S was my comfortable love, my brother love.
And G... G is my smiling love.
He makes me happy. I am happy. So why run away?

Moving Forward- Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.

it's valentines day in a week.
last valentines day, i was talking to c. i remember just feeling so desperately sad. it was the first time i was with someone i loved on that day . and i couldn't even be with them.
but i got over it . looked past the sadness and moved onto the next day. like i always did. just overlooked the fact that i was not happy. accepted it. dealt with it. embraced it, even.
not this year. this year, i will be with G on valentines. we agreed not to do presents. it's basically just a holiday for the greeting card companies anyway. i don't want any chocolate that will only make me fat, or some cheesy teddy bear. instead, he's going to make me crepes.
G and his crepes . he makes these crepes at night sometimes. they aren't very good. but i love them anyway. he fills his with peanut butter and bananas and a mix of things just to prove to me that his is better than mine. since i fill mine just with chocolate chips. milk chocolate ones , the kind they only ever have at his house. and then he ends up eating half of mine anyways.
he's making crepes. and i'm making him a cd.
it sounds to me, like a pretty damn good valentines day.
heres to being happy

Lua- Bright Eyes

I got an email from C last night. It was just an attatchment. Two songs.
They are heartbreaking of course. I sat on my floor, hestitantly eyeing up my computer, hovering over the play button. When I got up the courage to click it, I found myself crying in seconds. I cried the entire way through each song. For eleven minutes in total. I waited until they were both finished, then I exited iTunes and put away my computer without listening to them again. I dried my eyes and climbed into bed, and texted G. I was happy within seconds.
It's amazing, how much I find myself liking him. I love his crooked smile and his warm hands and the way he looks when he plays basketball. I love the way I can spend endless hours just sitting on his couch with him, without ever getting bored. I love the feeling he gives me. Warm and stable and bubbly, like a smile on the inside.

Fast Car- Tracy Chapman

Sometimes I think that the only way out of everything, is to just leave.
I just want to start over sometimes. Clean slate, fresh plate.. all of that.
I have a good life. I can't complain. I know this, and yet I cannot understand why it does not make me happy. I have a good family, a nice house, a good school. I have amazing friends and a boyfriend who makes me smile everyday. I have everything I always thought I would want.
Except for one thing.
He made me sad more than he made me happy.
But our future. The idea of that made me happy. I know it would have been amazing. It would have been everything I wanted out of a life. There would have been strawberry poptarts for breakfast, and a house by the ocean. There would have been years and years of travel. Dreams would have been followed. Love would be everywhere. There would been Lilly and Madeline. Noah and James. There would have been red silk sheets. There would have been music. Fights over whether we would listen to Neil Young or Billy Joel. There would be songs written for me, and novels written for him. Maybe about him.
It was all ideas, dreams, thoughts. I know this. Yet it's still hard to let go of it.
When you spend your whole life wanting something, and then it's given to you just for a moment. Just long enough for you to see how amazing it really is. How much you need it. It fills that part of you that you never knew was missing.
But now that part of me is gone. He is gone. I can't spend my whole life waiting for him. Yet I don't know what else to do. My purpose, has always been to wait for him. To be here when he comes. And now he is not coming, and I don't know what to do with myself.
Then I had my idea. I would leave. I would go somewhere where everything is different and new. Somewhere far away. So far away, that it will become impossible that I ever even knew him.
I know he will never disappear.
But I will get myself as far away as possible. Try my hardest.
This is why, I am applying for an exchange to Spain.

Far More- The Honorary Title

The heartbroken.
They are everyone. I am one of them. My friend, D, is one of them. My sister, J, is one of them. The man you pass on the street is one of them. The woman working at the grocery store is one of them. Your boss is one of them. That girl who always looks so perfect and is constantly surrounded by her pack of perfect friends, is one of them. The boy with his face constantly hidden in a book, is one of them. We are all over the planet. We are in the lighted windows you drive by at night, in the tiny lego block buildings you see from an airplane. We are sitting through classes, and watching hockey games, and reading textbooks. We are talking and eating and laughing. We are going through the normal steps of life, through everything we have always been doing. Through what we have been told we are supposed to be doing.
But, if you look closer, you will see the signs.
A tear forming in the corner of an eye, brushed away in a second. A song coming on, and that lost look that flashes across their face before they quickly glance away. A smile that never reaches the eyes.
Everywhere you look, you will see a broken heart.
Everywhere you go, you will feel it. It doesn't go away. It doesn't let up. Sometimes, if we're lucky, it numbs. But when it comes back, it's almost worse. It's crushing. It pushes into your heart, snaps it merclessly in half again and again. It knocks you to the ground over and over.

The important part, of being heart broken, is knowing how to get up again.
It's an art. It's hard to learn. When you've got, you've got it.
But if you see someone struggling to help themselves back up, do them the favour. Extend your hand. Pull them up again. Show them the blue skies. Show them the real smiles. Help them find their happiness again.

We Never Change- Coldplay

There's times, when things just seem so pointless. So hopeless.
C is gone. I break down and e-mail him sometimes. I might get a response. I might not. By next year, I won't even know what country he will be in. He could be across the world, and I won't know. Right now, when the weight of the loneliness crushes into me, I can picture him sitting in that blue bedroom. His hair disheleved and his earphones in, or a guitar cradled in his arms. I can picture those sleepy eyes and his paintings in the background.
By next year, I won't have anything to picture.
I wonder sometimes, if he is simply my security. The person I want when everything else goes wrong.
That is when I feel like I need him the most. When everything else crumples around me. It happens sometimes. Where everything just goes wrong, and nothing seems to fit together anymore. The moment that sometimes just hits me, full force, and all I can do is lay in my bedroom with music on and let my thoughts flow. In this moment, I want him. Need him. He's always been my stable. My rock. The person that holds me down.
Or, if I'm being honest, he's the person who picks me up and flies me away. Takes me away from all of this and brings me to where I need to be. He levels me, calms me, then carefully places me back into real life.
But not anymore. Now, when things fall apart, I have no one.
I have a best friend. Two, to be more accurate. There's A. She's the one who always makes me feel better, the keeper of my secrets, the one who listens to my pointless stories. She's the shoulder I cry on and the other Hostess cupcake. She's been my best friend for five years. I depend on her. This is always a bad thing, I know. When you depend on someone, they tend to disappear. But we've had five years going strong, so I like to think that maybe A is the one person who will stay.
Then there's S. He's tall and wide and has a wild mop of curly hair. He wears baggy t-shirts and has the loudest chuckle I've ever heard. He listens to up-beat music from the eighties and is always ready with a bear hug.
Or used to be. That was the S I knew and loved.
He's not like that anymore. Now, S lost all his baby fat and became surprisingly muscled, thanks to countless in the school gym. He bought a new wadrobe, and covers his curls with a hat. He's smoother and cooler and more polite. His hugs are a little more tenative.
I know what happened to him. S, fell in love with me. I saw it happen, and I let it happen. It was a crush at first. It used to flatter me. But then we became best friends, and I wanted it to go away. I thought it did. But this summer it came back, full force. He told me once. That he loved me. I pretended I didn't hear. Me and S were close. We had a connection, a bond. We had our fights but nothing could really come in between us.
Except for this. His love. It was bigger than us. Neither of us could deal with it.
Then, before I knew it had happened, we stopped being friends.
It was slow, gradual. Then, there was the cincher.
I started dating G.
What is essential to understand here, is that I am not in love with G. I like him. A lot. I'm comfortable with him, and he makes me laugh, and our hands fit together naturally. We're a good couple, on the surface.
I didn't think about it, when we started officially dating. It just happened. We were with each other every weekend, and he walked me to class, and called me baby, and eventually it just happened. We already acted like a couple anyway.
I didn't think about S. I don't know if it broke his heart. I don't know if he even had feelings for me anymore. All I knew, was that my best friend was pulling away from me, smoothly and steadily.
It happens more and more everyday. I watch a little desperately, a little unsure. I don't know what I can do to stop it.
But like everything else, it just happened.

I sometimes wonder, if I am in love with S. Not in the way I love C. In a completely different, opposite way.
But still, in a way.
I can't be in love with S.
Yet I wonder...

Stay Away From Me- The Honorary Title

He scares me now.
I have felt many things for him, but this has never been one of them.
There has been attraction. Compassion. Curiousity. Intensity. Depression. Connection. Understanding. Wanting. Longing. Needing. Hopelessness. Dreams.
And always, always, love.
But never before, has he scared me.
I used to be scared of myself, of the things he made me feel. The overflowing emotions that followed me everywhere. They were around every corner I turned, every road I walked. In every cloud my eyes traced and every smile I saw. In every couple I passed, and every moment I spent talking to him. They smothered me, drowned me. Pulled me under.
What is essential here, is to understand the fact, that I loved being pulled under. I loved the ocean he pulled me into it. Vast and deep and complicated, a swirling and tumbling mass of turquoise and sea green waves. I used to follow them, let myself float where ever those waves took me. Because that ocean was the only place I wanted to be.
Until I realized I was drowning. That instead of washing me closer and closer to the shore, they were dragging me deeper and deeper under. I didn't realize it until I looked up one day, and saw that I could no longer see the light filtering through the glass layer of the surface. It was just dark around me. And it was cold. Colder than anywhere I had ever been. More lonely than anything I had ever expeiranced. And suddenly, all I wanted was to be back on the land. Back where the sun shone and the wind blew and laughter rang like echoes. Back to my past and my childhood, and away from this love that was suffocating me.
Yet, I was scared to be saved. It seemed that all I knew now was the depths of this ocean. All I knew how to do was float and flounder in those waters. I had become used to being weightless, to being nothing. What if I didn't know how to walk? What if I couldn't live outside my dark blue hell?
I didn't think I could do it by myself. So I waited for someone to come save me.
As children, we're taught that we are going to get our happy ending. That our prince charming will come sweep us off our feet, away from the evil stepmother or the gruesome witch, and bring us back to our castle.
When it came to my life, there was a few problems with this.
1- My prince charming, was the one who had thrown me into this ocean. My prince charming, was swimming somewhere in it, always promising that he would come get me when he was ready to get back to the surface.
2- It didn't seem like he was going to be ready anytime soon.
3- The prince charming of my story, is also the villian of my story.

Let's call him, C.
If you are reading this, and are intending to read any further into the soundtrack of my life, then you will become increasingly familiar with this boy. You might hate him, you might love him.
Or like me, it might be both.
I love him, for the fact that he is C. He is many things. Amazing. Ocean eyes. Freckled. Flowing. Thoughtful. A little bit lost. In love with me. But most of all, because he is C. Enough said.
I hate him, because he left me in that ocean all by myself. He left me in that ocean, with a dream of being rescued and no intention of ever doing so.
I didn't want anyone else to save me. I didn't want another prince charming. I already had one. So I finally realized, that I was going to have to save myself.
I began to swim. A little more towards the surface every day. It was an excrutiatingly long process. I hadn't realized how far done I really was, until I tried to come up. And the whole time I was still looking for him, still searching through the waters around me for C. Those waters were endless. I went out of my way, swimming horizontally some days instead of upwards. Just in case he was near.
It wasn't until I finally reached the surface, that I knew he had never been near.
Heck, he might not even have been in the same ocean.
He might have been across the world. But the fact that he was out there, somewhere, was what had made it so hard.

The surface. I landed there spluttering and coughing and spitting out water. Faded. A little pathetic and desperate and lost.
But I was there. I was finally, finally there.

It was here, where he beugn to scare me. It was here that I realized just what C had done to me. Who he had made me. What he had become.

He scares me now. Now, I don't like to think about him. I don't like him in my mind, or in my dreams, or in my pictures. I don't like him in my life.
But the thing about C, is that he always comes back.