My Summer List

Things I need to do before I move and start working:

Go to the zoo.

Go to one or more Orioles' games.

Go camping.

Make a day trip to the beach.

Find a color guard replacement.

Clean up my life, literally and figuratively.

Enjoy these last few months of summer.

Stop allowing myself to get dragged down in everything that isn't happening and embrace what is.

Why do I always get so philosophical? :P

old Friday Five

I know it's like three weeks old...but I couldn't pass this up.

1. What do you feel is the most important quality in a close friend?

There are a lot of cliched, abstract nouns running through my mind: trust, loyalty, humor, etc. But these are things I can see in all of my friends. I don't think I can explain what distinguishes a close friend from the other garden varieties. I guess the most important quality is an aura that meshes so well with and complements mine that I can no longer fathom living my life without them.

2. What is the one quality in a stranger you'd just met that would make you want to get to know them better?

Someone with a quiet confidence about them. Not ostentatious, but who knows that they have a lot going for them.

3. What do you think is the most important quality in a good leader?

The ability to bring a group of diverse people together.

4. What is the one thing that makes a child likable to you?

The way they laugh at everything. It reminds me of a time when I thought the stupidest things were funny.

5. What do you think is the one thing that makes a good parent (other than loving their children)?

Loving yourself.

Like Mother, like...what?

"L, honey, don't leave. Stay here tonight."

Friday afternoon, and I am curled up in my parents' bed with my mom, watching her soap operas. I stopped by after work because I needed to feel close to someone. You know those days, where you just need to be hugged, have your back rubbed, fall asleep under an open window, fading in and out of consciousness, listening to my mom make stupid comments about the plots onscreen.

"Why? I can't sleep on the air mattress, and I might be going out tonight."

My mom sighs, rolls over, and whispers: "Because I need you."

When I left, my heart broke louder than the sound of the front door closing. Sitting in my car at the light to turn back home, I felt hot tears burning their trails down my cheeks. I kept asking myself why I couldn't have stayed. Why I've insisted on being out of the house for so many years. Why going home is a chore I'd rather avoid altogether. Why three hours seems to be my limit.

We are so much alike...she and I. Everyone sees the resemblance. I'm a beautiful amalgam of her good looks, patience, and predisposition to stress and panic. But I love her for all of these things. I look at her, and I wonder why she is still where she is.

I know what she did that night. Same thing she did tonight. She warmed up a hot bath, took a trashy romance novel in with her, came downstairs to warm up some milk, drank it, and fell asleep while my brother and dad are downstairs watching TV. She will wake up tomorrow and go to work, or clean the house, and call me just to say hi.

And I will act like it's a nuisance, like my life is too busy to sit down and talk to the one person I admire more than anyone else in the world. And then I will go out with my friends and have fun, pretending I can keep carrying this burden. Like the past 21 years haven't already dented me.

And then it's my turn to come back to my house...and do the same thing I do every night. Throw myself into the lives of my friends because it's so much easier to listen to their cares than acknowledge that I've been ignoring mine.

She needs me. I rarely acknowledge how much I need her in return.

seriously?

So I was on Facebook today and received a notification for my "Honesty Box" application, which I would normally delete, having forgotten that I even had this stupid application installed in the first place. I got curious...and I read this (posted yesterday, from an anonymous girl):

"Maybe if you stopped thinking the world revolved around you, you'd have a bf."

*blinks*

Is this really what people think of me?

Paradise?

The salt-tinged air cut harder than the strokes of my arms as they plowed through the clear blue water. I swam long laps, but still, I felt contained.

You can only go as far as the cove, before the coral melts away into a cool cerulean...palace? Paradise? Prison? Couldn't they all just be one and the same?

Every breath reminded me that I am thirsty. That I am perpetually in motion, swimming for something I can't seem to catch up to.

Yes, it does feel good to move, to feel every muscle contracting, expanding, pulling, pushing, colliding, sliding, grinding, but in the pursuit of what?

Happiness? I have that in my friends. And sometimes in my family. And more often than not, even in myself.
Trust? Love? Faith? I have those too, for the people that deserve them.

What is it, then, that keeps me on this aimless chase? Maybe I just like to feel like I am going after something, even if I have no idea what it is.