:)

when she was just a girl, she expected the world

the sun must set to rise.

This post is dedicated to my best friend. I would say you were my rock, but to tell the truth, you're more like my helium balloon. Yes, I know this was meant to be a birthday post, but let's face it, that was months ago and in light of yesterday’s celebrations I couldn't help but reflect on a multitude of things. But anyway, Happy Birthday! However belated it is - it's the thought that counts, right? And to make up for being such a terrible person I'm going to try to make you cry instead. (Irony?) Here's hoping it works.

Words can't really express how much you mean to me, but here I am, using words to do just that.

Basically, I can’t imagine my life without you. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s true, and I realised it all yesterday when the balloons went up and everyone was hugging and crying as if it were the end of the world. Nobody was crying because they were happy to leave, or because they never wanted to leave. We were all upset because it had taken until now to realise that the wonderful people we had grown up with weren’t always going to be right there, forever there to talk to, to care for and depend on. We realised that at some point, we would have to let them go. And that’s something that nobody wants to accept at any point in their life.

I feel like I’ve known you for such a long time that I can’t remember the point in my life when I didn’t know you existed at all. If I had never changed schools, all I can think of is how empty I’d be. Not knowing what I was missing out on.

Because honestly, I’ve grown up so much since I first came to the school, and I know that a lot of it is due to you. I mean, I’ve made an attempt this year to get on better with, and try to understand my mother for the reason that I’ve seen how well you get on with yours. You’ve let me see the world in a different way, you really have. And a lot of the time I’m still a stuck up prick – and I hate to admit that - but I’m learning.

The way you still put up with me despite how irritating and unnecessarily argumentative or hypocritical I get, how do you do it? If I met me I’d probably have to fight the urge to slap myself in the face every minute or two, no joke.

You are so generous and selfless that it astounds me. The same goes for your daredevil, risk taking nature. It’s as if you’ve seen how life is too short to have regrets, whilst I stand here too scared to do anything because I’ve got so many already.

Like I said, you're my helium balloon, and in the last three years you've lifted me so high into the sky that I can't ever let you go; because if I do, I'll fall.

Essentially, I never want to say goodbye. Because goodbye means the end.

So until I see you again, I’m leaving you this message:

a nagging sense of emptiness.

it's part of me, apart from me.

maybe i have said something that was wrong.

my head is a jungle.

When it's your turn to go, when your time is at its end,
what kind of mark do you want to leave on this world?

And at once I knew I was not magnificent.

And so we're broken.
But maybe, just maybe, we could be fixed.
Is it bad then, that I'm not sure that that's what I want?

baptism.

Eyes closed, head bent, and limbs shaking,
she stands ready;
feeling the menacing and chilling wind
as it spirals around her, on her, through her;
lifting, off the moist earth,
all the leaves and twigs that once had branches to cling to;
trees to call home.

Her feet are bare;
the wet soil slides, snake-like, up between her toes,
and her night-gown, once softer than down, once as stark as fresh snow,
is drawn by the wind, and wraps around her form
trying to pull her with it, leaving her
uncomfortably exposed.

From here on the edge
the water is black, deep, still.
The light of the moon,
creeping through the arms of the aching, dying trees
makes the surface serene and unpenetratable.
And she knows that underneath, the silence will be loud enough
to block out the pounding voices in her mind,
to bring her back, out of the darkness.

So in she goes, feet first, and her hands on her heart,
that beats slower as she goes deeper, and the water gets colder.
The silver chain and cross encircling her neck, buoyed by an unseen force,
seeks to pull her up, and out, not realising that as it does so, it merely tightens.
Tearing it off, she nestles herself into the floor of this world, and waits.

A minute later, when she is still alive,
she can feel, in her blood, an overwhelming sense of belonging.
Finally.
And when she breathes, the world breathes with her.

never let the fire in the lamp burn low.

"Those not busy being born are busy dying." - Bob Dylan

Remember that day, when the leaves crunched between our bare, naked toes and we could feel the earth shift and heave beneath us as we walked, and ran, and jumped? Remember how we felt that day, as if nothing was ever going to change, as if nothing could tear us apart, with that soft, damp breeze whistling through the trees and the sun slowly sinking out of sight? We were like children again, with the promise of tomorrow hovering in the air, waiting for us to catch it, waiting for us to take the one thing that belonged to us. Hope. Hope for more days like this. For new life, new beginnings, for sunsets like fireworks.
And finally, when we lay in the shade, my ear pressed to your heartbeat, you said you had never felt so alive.
I wanted to lie like that forever, just me and you and the whole world.

shed your love.