Dear Thursday,

Way to exceed my greatest expectations!

Just when I thought the week was nothing more than mediocre, you decided to show up with a bag of awesome and knock my socks off. It's been too long since Thursdays lived up to my love.

To recount some of your joyous surprises:

-Spontaneous and shameless dancing in Creative Writing (in my desk, no less), followed by an outburst of fist pumps and ninja kicks down the hallway because I just couldn't contain the happiness that Olly Murs and La Roux and New Politics had jazzed into my brain through my earbuds.

-Successful wearing of a headband for the first time in, well, ever.

-The incredibly unextraordinary yet thrilling exchange that passed between an attractive boy in AP Calc and I this morning that went something like this:
Me: "How was the weekend?"
Him: "It was really great."
Me: "Good."

-Being informed that at least one of my writings is almost certainly being included in the six pieces that our school submits to a literary magazine for publishing.

-My first semi-professional audition for a play outside of school (for a lead, no less!) in which a charming and wonderfully intelligent old director man named Fred said I had a "lovely" British accent during my read.

-A long-overdue mint chocolate chip milkshake from Wawa.

-My first college acceptance letter, which just happened to be accompanied by a $16,000 scholarship.... y'know, just 'cause.

All in all, you were a beautiful and unexpected gift! Feel free to take it easy 'till you roll around again....you deserve it, grand friend. :)

To the Falling-Apart World,

Can we all just be honest with one another?

We put our trust and love into things that are not God, nor should they be. And it never works out, does it?

They always fail. They always do.

And sometimes, the heartbreak and agony that follows is literally a physical pain, crushing and choking your heart right out of your chest and into your throat. And it's awful.

And where do we turn to put ourselves back together? Those same things, of course.

How silly. You think we'd learn. Ah, irony and it's grim consequences.

There go our hearts.

Why don't we learn to guard our hearts? Let's stop giving them away at every turn. Better yet, let's stop blaming things and people when they don't take care of our hearts the way God is designed to. You can't treat anything else like God. It's not fair.

And let's let ourselves be hurt. But then let's move forward. Out of the things that hurt us and onto brighter horizons. Let's not look back with bitterness and blame the world for our insecurities. Let's take it as one takes a vitamin: swiftly, with a painful swallow, knowing that it's only going to make us better over time.

Now. Let's pick ourselves up like the conquerers we long to be and face the world for no one's approval but God's.

Trials And Triumphs: Thick Hair

For the entirety of my preteen/teenage life, all I've gotten from other girls is:

"Oh my gosh, I'm so jealous of your hair. It's so thick. I wish my hair was thick like that."

And no matter how I protest, they insist it's what they want.

Are you sure?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wispy. What a gorgeous word. Unfortunately, it's one that will never live in harmony with my hair. Luscious, maybe. Maybe even, someday, cascading. But never wispy. Never dancing in the wind. Never gently caressing my arms like flower petals. Never will my braids silkily fold and wrap around my shoulders. They thunk against my chest thickly, stiff and spilling out of my meticulously-tugged plaits. Never will my face be framed by a simple barrette, clipping back a dainty french-braided section of bangs. It takes, on a good day, two or three twisted chunks, pulled back and strategically stuck sharply with bobby pins at intervals. Never will I be able to wake up, wrap a curling iron through it a couple times, and show up to school with perfect shiny, bouncy curls. For a good half hour or more I hold small sections in until my arm aches, trying like everyone else to achieve the impossible.

But the promise of cascading still hangs, tantalizing, in the air. My hair has its moments, I guess. So I'll keep it around.

Dear Put-Together Abby,

I saw you cruise by in a faded blue Jeep Cherokee, long curls dancing in the summer breeze, whistling to Jukebox the Ghost, smiling obliviously, so caught up in your perfect daydreams that you completely missed the house and kept driving.

Um. 

I know you're all caught up in your perfect life and all, and that you're probably really busy packing photos and hip decor into your boxes to take to The Perfect College, but if you could find a minute to come back, we're not doing so hot without you. 

You see, this whole "living" thing requires complete attention, and when we're so busy studying for AP classes and trying to fulfill the American Dream, we forget about that. Gorgeous opportunities for adventures absolutely dance outside our second-story bedroom window and we're crouched on the scratchy carpet, puzzling over a math problem, concentrating too hard to look up. 

But I know you're enjoying yourself. And it's such a lovely picture to just admire, to be honest. So if you don't feel like coming back and dragging yourself through the muck, I suppose messy-haired, scatterbrained, too-concerned, ordinary Abby will just have to do. 

She's kind of cool sometimes, I suppose. 

Anyways.

Send us a postcard! 

The Rainy Song

This will forever and ever be the song that I listen to when it rains.

If you need something to calm you, I give you....Ray Charles. 

You're welcome. 

If Tears Sounded Like Music

So I just found out that you can embed Grooveshark tracks onto here. This means huge things.

One of the wonderful things about Grooveshark is that you can find obscure little songs on there that don't appear anywhere else. You can't download them, but you can make a playlist on the website and listen to that playlist anywhere your phone has WiFi. :)

So a couple years ago I found this gorgeous little tidbit from The Lovely Bones soundtrack (which has hauntingly beautiful music, by the way) and would just replay it over and over again and cry in 1-minute-50-second intervals.

And last year, when I was going through one of the worst post-move depressions of my life, I'd lay in the silent darkness of my bedroom, play this song, and imagine tasting Arashi's fried rice again. And just weep. Like, tears-running-down-my-cheeks cry.

(It gets to the good part at 0:38)

Dear Someday Stranger,

Some days, I catch glimpses of you in carefree laughs that come from others' joy at spending time with me and wonder if you'll really be so bold to sing out of the rolled-down windows.

Other nights, I scroll through pictures from July 2012 and remember the warm and selfless love that filled a tiny village and wonder if it was your dirt-caked sneakers that trekked those same paths with me.

And occasionally, I look around crowded rooms, peering into the shining minds of a select few and just bask in the thrilling possibility that you might be in there somewhere.

But mostly, I close my eyes because I have no idea where to look.

The places I really want to look are the forested mountains of Montana, the gently falling leaves of Boston, the sparkling oceans of San Francisco, and various sunlit libraries. Because somehow I can't get the idea from my head.. it's there that you're waiting, patiently leafing through poetry or shuffling through your playlists until I get there.

I'm coming as fast as I can, I promise.

I just wouldn't want to rush past you by accident.

The Truth About Matt Zimmerman

(Inside jokes will be bolded for your convenience)

They've shipped us, they've gossiped about us, they've pretended to know all about us, individually and together. But they've never gotten the truth, the full truth.

Okay. Here it is.

I met Matthew last year, as one of my first three friends at Colonial Forge. I knew immediately he was a cool kid, I just didn't know the extent of his coolness yet. Several (okay, a couple) people would keep telling me,

"You should, like, date Matt- you guys would be, like, good together." 

Of course I wasn't about to go for that, not at such a rough point in my story. But for the first awful year in Stafford, he stayed a loyal friend. He shared my love of cool words (high five for vocab), we thought the same weird people should randomly date (can we ship that?), and most of all, he was the only person I saw on a regular basis who fully appreciated who I was really trying to be.

So then, in late April, as many know, I finally gave in and realized I was unlikely to find anybody else like that. So we dated. (crossed eyes, apple juice, chocolate chip cookies, Pacific, can we ship our own relationship?)

And duh, it was pretty epic, if I do say so myself. People I'd never spoken to would come up and tell me they'd wanted us to get together since, like, forever. It was actually kind of cool.

But of course, towards the end of the summer, we broke up. What happened was....well, I don't need to put everything out there. I will say that we both knew we were going to have real priorities for senior year, and we promised to stay friends....great friends.

And I was skeptical about this. I hated the idea of seeing him no longer as my buddy, but as my... ex-boyfriend. Ugh. That's an awful term to assign to someone.

But to this day, I'm shocked and amazingly proud of how we handled it. We stayed friends, and became BETTER friends. Like, best-buds-for-life-friends. Um. Who. Does. That.

Oh, and did I mention that he became my official brother in Christ at Rockbridge, in one of the most dramatic answered prayers I've ever witnessed.

And it's never been awkward. (Well, not seriously.) He calls me after he goes on cute dates to bookstores with adorable girls, and I fangirl like they're my favorite TV couple and start planning my toast at their wedding. And whenever I text him screenshots of things cute boys have said to me, he immediately responds with: "Can he just ask you on a date already."

You think I'm kidding

And our conversations. Are. So. Darn. Funny. We have the weirdest sense of humor when we type. And when we get going on a metaphor, we can't stop using it.

Talking about "the show" went on for about four more screenshots

And though we've disagreed on many things, we don't really fight. Neither of us are confrontational, so when we ever get close to seriously disagreeing on something, one of us brings it up and we have a long talk about it, which inevitably ends with us realizing it was stupid. 

How he resolved our last disagreement and yes it worked

In all seriousness, I've never had a friend like him before. Oh, I've had people that I can tell anything to, and that understand what I'm thinking before I say it, and who I have a never-ending arsenal of inside jokes with, and who has a million little things that bug me but I overlook them because they pale in comparison to the awesome things.

But I've never had someone who takes care of me when I can't do it for myself. Who recognizes when I'm too cowardly or weak-willed or afraid to do something, but help me do it anyway because they know it's the best for me.

And the moment I realized I did, I started thanking God for a friend like him. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Matt,

Thank you for never stopping being my friend. Thank you for always caring about what I think, and not being afraid to say when I'm being stupid. Thank you for continuing to look at me and geek when our most sacred ship is in a room together. Thanks for being the only one to notice when I wear eye makeup, and immediately knowing the reason why. Thank you for having more faith in me than I do in myself, and refusing to be realistic about your expectations for me. 

Don't ever make excuses for yourself. Don't ever change for someone. Don't ever comprimise. Don't ever.

You have no idea how extraordinary you are.

Love, the brown-eyed girl from a hotel hallway (Not in that awkward way though-you get what I mean.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So to everyone that's made assumptions:

-His one-act play is not about me. 

-He is totally, completely, without a doubt, STRAIGHT.

-We do not have a constant "thing" for each other.

-He's a best friend to me. So there. 

Why I Stare At Beautiful People

I observe people a lot. I like to watch their hair, their smiles, the way their eyebrows give away their emotions.

It's always when I'm looking at particularly put-together people that I have this realization, and it never fails to startle me.

Everybody cries. 

Everybody gets lonely. 

Everybody something inside them that's sad and cold and it's something that they hide from the world. 

Like....woah.

Do you ever think about that?

Because it's true. The more I get to know people, the more I realize that it's true.

And so when I look at people, sometimes I try to see that thing that they're hiding. Like everyone has this broken secret inside them that if I look hard enough, I'll see. Of course, I never see. Several times, I've befriended someone and gotten to know them, and all the while I've wondered if I'll ever see their secret pain.

Some people, I never do.

And some, when I do, I wish I hadn't because it feels intrusive to have a secret that's so clearly theirs.

Other times, it's breathtaking and heartbreaking and incredible that someone so....neat.....has something like that inside them....

....but suddenly, I love them so much more for it.

And because of that sad, broken thing, I see the whole world a little more clearly.

That's why I love observing people. I imagine what it would be like to be friends with their secret, and maybe make it not so broken anymore.

Reasons

I don't want a boy who thinks I have beautiful hair. One who thinks it's amazing that I love photography and Mat Kearney and Volkswagens and Italian food the same way he does. I don't want a boy who realizes I'm his soulmate when he sees me eat pudding in my cute way, or sees me walk by a green dress, stopping time.

I want a guy whose soul is drawn to my interpretation of his favorite book. One who sees my love for Jesus overflowing from my heart and is speechless because the melody of my praise is in perfect harmony with the one flowing from his own heart straight towards heaven. I want a guy who can sit across from me and hold a conversation for hours without it going stale, eyes riveted with rapt wonder to mine, and then float from the coffee shop euphoric, turning over each tidbit of our conversation in his mind, again and again, like tiny treasures. A guy who realizes he has been made more complete, more himself by my companionship, as I have by his. And one who can't bear to be without me because of it.



I want a guy who likes me for reasons. 

Some Interesting Samples from My Writer's Notebook,

which I keep on my phone to jot down interesting things that I might use in Creative Writing class.

"I'm really good at things that don't matter"- Marshal Nichols

"The problem with BLTs is that I don't like lettuce or tomato, so they quickly turn into me eating a bacon sandwhich." -Sarah Genovese, friend and the author of some of my favorite quotes

I'm a blinking cursor on the computer screen of life. 

Why is his hair gray?

Look up: parachute making (and folding)

Sonnet about hispanic SAT scores (which I actually wrote, and it was mediocre)

Poets have long fingers.....haha, Longfellows

Clouds have gold linings, not silver

Always hurrying

It's kind of a neat little snapshot of my life, and the things that I observe. So there ya go. 

Make poems out of them.