Outside In

"When the sun comes up about ten in the mornin'
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you'll fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinkin'
And you spend your life just thinkin' of how to get away."

Hasn't everyone felt like that before? Like a fly in a spider's web; you get caught, you struggle and struggle and struggle and the web only gets tighter and you just end up in an even bigger mess than what you were in to start with.

Time passes in leaps and bounds, then slows to a crawl and you're left thinking about what it is you wanna do with your life. You start panicking, thinking about all the endless possibilities of the future, about leaving your friends and family.

The thing is, I've spent my whole life thinking about my escape from this town and everything in it. The stereotypes, the judgment, the gossiping old ladies. All the while people are pushing me to do this, do that, go here, wait, come all the way back over here. Well what if I don't want to? Who says I have to conform to life's rules?

Who says I have to be the same?

Who says I can't be different?

Who says I can't be the president, a writer, a doctor, a mum? Who says I can't fall in love with whoever I want to? Who says anybody can't do any of these things?

When life gives you the lemons... squeeze them in people's eyes and run.

Granted, not everything has happened the way I had it planned out. Josh died from cancer (he's been gone a year now; time is relative to suffering) and my other friend killed themselves. I don't know why they did it and I don't think I ever will. I can't imagine not seeing beauty in the world. I am afraid to die. But I'm not afraid to admit it.

But... despite it all, everything has come together. I'm taking it one day at a time. The future isn't so scary if you look at it in increments.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that YOU have to be enough for YOU. Nobody can tell you what you're worth, where you're going or why, except God. So why are you worrying? Who cares what everyone else says? They don't know you. They can't see you. The only people who can see you are God... and you.

How is it that we spend our entire lives worrying about what people think of us? As a race, aren't we past exterior and more interested in interior? Apparently not.

Because the two boys that were taken from me were my best friends. And I tried so hard to hold on to them. It was like holding smoke. it stays in your hands for a while, looks substantial, and once you open your fingers, it's gone.

Don't take anything for granted. Travel, see the world, love with a heart that's full an unbroken because you've only got 100 years to live.

Feels like everyone else's got the answers
You got shadows, they got light
You just got a heap of questions
While they got everything right

Feels like someone made your body
Somebody else your mind
A mismatch in so many ways
You were always one step behind

While the other found each other
You were left alone
A magic ring around their world
That kept you from their zone

You try to settle in your shadow life
Don't know where you end, or begin
But you wonder, sometimes, if they feel it too
Inside out and outside in.

-A Solitary Blue

Broadway is dark tonight

I don't want to go down in history as that-girl-who-could-have-saved-that-person-from-their-own-internal-hell-and-chose-not-to. I don't want to see Gulianna hover near Terri anymore, just waiting for a sliver of attention. I don't want to be wondering in five years how Gulianna's doing. I want to be the person who in the here and now offered friendship where there was none.

[flashes of memory, i see the blue blue sky and i think that's the sun
i think maybe i might love him]

Because at some point in life I think everybody feels like an outsider. Been there, done that, in some ways I still feel like an outsider. I don't know if I'm the only person in my school to feel acutely every tear that Gulianna cries because her only friend has ditched her to hang out with us, the "populars." Oh gosh I don't want her to be alone.

I'm sick of standing by and doing nothing and thinking it'll fix itself. Doing nothing is as bad as doing the wrong thing sometimes. I threw a stone at a hawk today because it tried to kill one of Lenny's lambs. I didn't hit it but I saved the lamb.

[city lights begin to solidify from a messy blur
cars zoom past on the motorway
halfway from nowhere to anyplace]

I hate it when people shrug and refuse to help someone out and say "that's the way the cookie crumbles" or "that's just how it is." If people keep thinking like that then of course that's going to happen. But I'm tired of letting them tell me that I'm too young to understand and that there's nothing I can do. I can save the world - one person at a time.

I'm tired of people telling me that until I experience it I won't understand. Don't they understand I can't experience things unless they let me? A bird can't fly if you clip its wings and a horse can't run on a lame leg. A person can't learn without experience.

[music is too loud
volume's on 76
i can't hear my own voice
i guess i don't have any voice control]

I'm starting to care less and less about what people think of me. If it's not God's opinion why should it matter to me? Another year and I'm out of this town, out of this tiny little gossip highway. Everyone here knows everything about everyone or at least they think they do. The truth is repeated so many times it becomes lies.

So what if someone's new haircut looks terrible! The attitude some people have is terrible too but unfortunately there is no attitude-dye like there is hair-dye. If only. I don't even know if half the people I talk to are real, or whether they're buried so deep within themselves it's like there's another entirely separate person there, trapped.

[i hear a piano ballad in my head
see drops of water floating through the air
laughter bubbles up from all around me
this is happiness]

I know a few real people though. Riz, Enyar, Niknak. Those people are real to me. Everyone else, I don't know. I can see a cling-wrap layer of fake but it's not clear-cut. There are wrinkles so thick it's hard to look past the warped exterior and see the smooth, shiny new inside. Almost like a peanut in its shell.

I wonder how many years of their lives people waste trying to be something they're not?

[he's a shy kid with floppy dark hair
he's a thousand leagues away from the jocks
from the nerds
he's got this thousand-watt smile
he's a social outcast
he smells like summer and thunderstorms
a warm beach towel in the sand
i think that's why i love him]

-a solitary blue.

29/4/10

So here's the thing. I've been in kind of a slump. Josh died on the 29th of last month from osteosarcoma. It's a really aggressive form of bone cancer. He was only a year older than I was and we were kind of friends. He's been fighting it for 4 years and somehow we all figured he was gonna get better.

He was seventeen.

It really shook me I guess, because even though I know it's possible to die before you're even really an adult, I never fully realised it until the sunday before he died, and I was standing on the backstep and it was just a beautiful day, and I just suddenly thought "he's never gonna see this again."

I sort of woke up on Thursday morning, and (I know this sounds corny) but while I was drying my hair I said "this is it." And when I got to school Kelsey told me that he was gone and I was like "I know."

They had an assembly, and me and Riz were holding it together just fine until Mr Browne (the principal) said "he will be missed" and his voice cracked, you could barely tell but it was still there. I tuned out for the rest of the assembly.

Anyway, afterwards I wrote this:

Sixteen, emotion
Love, pain, feeling
I see those too
Seventeen
Snapshot
Not yet there
Moments...
All leading up to this.

the sensational crusader (: