You're only free when you're asleep, baby.

In the wake of what feels like my world crumbling around me, I am faced with a very difficult question.

What do I want to be?

I thought I had figured this out.

I never much worried about the meaning of life when I was young. It was always a non-issue to me. It's funny, looking back. How often I saw things like that.

At the age of 12 I thought I had my life figured out. I guess we all do.

I thought I understood things. I thought that things like songs and books that didn't resonate me were because I was above them, but they were above me.

"Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage" is a lyric I have heard since my youth. But it never spoke to me until I was an extremely angry young adult realizing that my anger could never itself change my circumstances.

I never understood so many songs. I never understood what it was like to be so angry at an unfair system. To be in love. To be lost. To feel trapped and not by school, or curfew, or lack of a car.

I could get in my focus right now and drive. But where would I go?

California. Chicago. New Orleans.

And then I would be somewhere on the road. Penniless. Unemployed. Lost.

Alone.

I never anticipated I'd be at a point in my life where I had a boyfriend. And we loved each other. And were adults. And still couldn't just get married on a whim.

He asks me what I want to do. Kids, right? But what about before then? What am I going to do before and during and after motherhood? Who am I?

And I don't know.

Anyone who knows me is going to say CAKES. CAKES, IDIOT.

And I like cake.

But I also hate cake.

I am good at cake decorating. Not incredible. Better than you, probably. But it is not my passion. And sometimes it makes me a little angry that people assume that about me. You know me so vaguely that you think all I am, all I can be is a cake decorator.

But how can I blame you? What am I without it? Who are we without our vocations?

I made $11.38 an hour as a decorator. For a full shift I consistently worked 9:30-6. Occasionally 7-3:30. Never closed. Never stayed later than 8pm (except for one very strange overnight shift where I worked from 5pm-1:30am, but we don't talk about that. It was exceptional.). And I got to be creative. And I got to make about $800 a month, part time, after taxes.

I also used to have panic attacks in the morning before work. And those went away, mostly. But sometimes I ran late despite living down the street, because I couldn't get my emotional shit together and be normal. And I had constant anxiety over the inconsistent schedule. Because while 9:30-6 is a constant, I had to come in on unscheduled days regularly. They paid me. I'm not saying I was exploited. It was fine. But it was overwhelming, and since we were only scheduled a week at a time anyway, it was very very stressful to receive a schedule I couldn't trust. On top of that, I highly prioritize having Sundays off of work. If you don't, that's fine, but that's one thing that is very important to me for a number of reasons. And weekends are the busiest time for food. And as a decorator I needed Full Flexibility, which basically meant I had to cross my fingers and trust my boss every week.

I haven't had a full-fledged panic attack since I quit my job a few months ago. I have come close. I have gotten overwhelmed, and I have felt anxious. But I have not had a huge meltdown in a shockingly long time for me.

I loved my job. But I also hated my job. And you need to understand that. It's not that I worked with bad people - I really loved all of my co-workers and enjoyed our time together. And I was patient with customers. And I made beautiful cakes and had a great time. But for a few reasons, it was really hard on me. So I am hesitant to go back, regardless of my mental state.

I have a wedding to pay for, and I am in no shape to work. And i feel helpless. And I feel trapped. And I feel lost.

I have $800 saved up. Even the cheapest weddings in the world are more expensive than that. And certainly the cheapest apartments.

And I used to trust God. Because God has a plan. And God works miracles.

But I trusted God. And I trusted his miracles. And death won anyway. And my faith lost against cancer.

I am in the midst of the biggest depressive episode of my life since I was hospitalized at 15. Which is fairly normal, given the circumstances. But every day is a fight, and so far I am winning, and yet I still feel like a loser. Because people ask me what I do, and I don't know what to tell them.

I don't know how to make money. I don't know how to feel better. I don't know what that thing is going to be that gives me purpose. I always put love in that space, I guess. And now I have it and it's not enough. And when I am married, I will have a lot of time by myself. And I don't know what I'm going to do with it.

And if you tell me to decorate more cakes I am going to snap.

I don't really want to talk about it. But I am continually discouraged by people assuming all is well when I feel like I am drowning.

I love music. But nobody is going to pay me to sing fall out boy in my bedroom. And I love travel. But nobody is going to pay me to go on road trips. I am a flighty, fickle, artistic person. And I feel trapped in a world that measures my worth quantitatively, by the tangible. But I'm not tangible. I am a great mess of feeling and confusion. And maybe this is what it means to be almost 21. Maybe this is what it means to be me. But I am exhausted and discouraged and I have no answers, only fear.

7/24/2015

I am so fatigued, I don't know how to put it into words. I feel like I'm living a dishonest life. I try to deal with so many surface issues. And then they are gone. And I'm still unhappy. So i focus on the next one. But fundamentally i still struggle. Because fundamentally there is something wrong. I don't think i'm good enough. I don't like myself.

I try really hard. And i can say a lot of true things. I truly believe my body is beautiful and valuable just as it is. I also know that i am funny, that i'm a good singer, that i have a way with words, and makeup. But all of those things pale in comparison to the fears that tower over them. The fear. That I'm not good enough, and never will be. That people don't actually like me but are very polite. That people have a better time when i'm not there or talk shit or don't miss me the way that i miss them.

It permeates every relationship i have. Even with dan, lately i am asking him every few minutes if he's upset at me. Because he's sleepy or quiet or i'm just feeling sensitive. And if he were upset with me, it would shatter me.

People get upset sometimes. And people certainly get upset when they are being pestered about their state of mind. And it wouldn't mean he loves me any less. It would just be a feeling, but i can't handle it. Sometimes i get bitter because i feel like i'm always the one apologizing. In reality we always talk things through and meet in the middle. But it is true that the second he or anyone on earth is unhappy with me or in anyway related to me, I am falling over myself to apologize because i want to fix it. I am SUCH a big believer in bandaids, you guys. I have stock in the emotional bandaid business, and I'm set to make a fortune.

If I'm not apologizing, I'm trying to make people laugh. I am funny. I have a sense, I feel the energy of a room in a tangible way, and i can feel their interest wax and wane, and i feel the exact moment to strike, the exact pace at which to tell a story. I started telling a story at work once, and as soon as I started she was smiling, and I felt that timer start and I could feel that i only had 30 seconds to finish that story and have her enjoy it. And I didn't get nervous, but I had to make a conscious effort in that moment to cut and drag pieces of my story so i could tell it just right. Maybe everyone has that sense, I have no idea. I'm not trying to win the special snowflake olympics. I'm just trying to say, I am incredibly good at being funny and engaging. It is a gift of mine. And i abuse the hell out of it.

It's great being able to make people laugh and have a good time. But i use it as a mask, like, 100% of the time. Or, maybe mask is the wrong word. I use it as a crutch. If everyone is laughing, I am okay. I am valuable and I am appreciated and I am worthwhile and people like me.

If you're new at making friends, I highly reccomend being funny and engaging. It's a great way to enhance interactions and make friends with people. It's what I did, but somehow my social skills basically grew in that direction. Exclusively. And it's so great as a socially awkward teen to feel that sense that those people are on your side, that you made them laugh. It's so reassuring, it's almost addictive. And that's the problem I have now. I am a people pleaser, and I want to please the people endlessly. I don't think there's anything wrong with joking as much as I do or close to it, but I don't think I do it for the right reasons.

In between those times of laughter and feeling like everything is okay, I often wrestle with a lot of feelings internally. I'm not good enough, I shouldn't have cut that person off. I didn't mean to... Especially right after something got away from me. I got riled up about something and it stopped being funny, because I was showing too much emotion, or because I was being mean.

Some of the wrestling is not even with words but with feelings. That anxious doom cloud that sometimes hangs around no matter how much fun I'm having and makes the line between mental illness and social fear become so blurry. Some of the feelings do have words, or images. I tell a joke, or I tell a story that I thought was interesting, and I notice that maybe i have told too many stories that day because the interest is more polite than genuine, and so I think profoundly about my darkest temptations, or I just think about and feel that gloomy doom cloud for a while.

I try to listen while others are talking, and normally it comes easily. I genuinely care about what people have to say, and how they feel, and what they think. But I care so much about what they think of me that sometimes I barge in with a story or I am always responding and not giving anyone else any room. I want to share and be validated because I need external affirmation to function.

There comes a point at any party where I start to withdraw, and there are people who think this makes me an introvert, but i'm not sick of people. The thoughts in my head are getting too loud and too frequent and I'm sick of lying. I would love to engage in a real way, but I have this funny mask on and it's only fun for me for so long. But I can't stop it, so I want to leave the interaction. An introvert would crave solitude, but all I want is Dan. Because I can stop with him. And I can tell him I've been super anxious all day and I said this thing and it was so embarrassing, or I almost cried, or whatever i need to get off my chest. And he tells me I was fine and sometimes i believe him.

I don't know if i would love to sit down over a sandwich and tell a friend how i feel lonely and inadequate and want to hurt myself. But i would love for them to care, and i guess i'm afraid that they don't. And i'm afraid that i don't know how to interact that way. I can listen to people and give them pompous empty advice so i feel valuable in the interaction. But i dismiss my own emotions and to have a friend look at me with concern instead of amusement is horrifying. I want it and yet it would confirm in my mind that i am weak.

I am so willing to share about past experiences and even some current experiences, but only as long as i can share my words from on high with the wisdom of my great age and experience, to help others and tell them to be more open. Not to be vulnerable myself.

For ALL have sinned

I have something to tell you all. I have tried to keep the boat from rocking but I'm drowning and I can't do this anymore. Every time I think about the fact that I haven't done this yet, I feel like I am suffocating, and it's killing me.


I am not heterosexual. Full stop.

I am equally attracted to men and women.

I am also a Christian.


I have bent myself into every shape you can imagine over very many years in denial, trying to make who I am sync up with what other people told me my faith had to look like. The standard, as far as I was told, is that experiencing attraction itself is sin, and also SOOOO GROSS and wouldn't it be weird if one of us liked girls???

So I was faced with a choice. Either I was a good Christian who was going to heaven who had a lot of intrusive thoughts but totally didn't like girls at all, or i was one of the rampaging homosexuals who was going to lead this country to hell in a handbasket.

It took me so long to come to terms with myself.

No one taught me a third option. No one said there's a way to look at yourself truly, not squinting between your open fingers in fear, and not embrace every piece. A way to say, that girl is fine, and I am not going to think about her any further.

I feel I was dealt a double-blow growing up in the church. I was bi, and I was sexual. And as a girl, the Lust Talk was not for me. I was once given a very gentle warning about The Dangers Of Erotica, but most of the time we talked about high school musical or something. The boys talked about porn and how to avoid it and what it means to you. The girls talked about boys.

I don't think I was the only 15 year old girl in my church who had a sex drive, but I certainly felt like it. Mix that together with people saying in what they felt was a safe space things about how gay people are so gross and need to die, and you may begin to see why there was a little closet in my soul that was boarded up, day by day, every time I went to church.

But I grew. And I learned. And I researched. And I realized that women are allowed to want and enjoy sex. That it's okay for me to not think masturbation is sinful. That I really did like girls, and I really did love God, and I had to look at both of those things in daylight and figure out what they meant to each other. I couldn't live two lives. I couldn't put God in the closet while I thought about girls, only to act like it was this sudden deviation that never happened before or since.

The issue I have come across the most in my heart is whether or not homosexual desire is itself sinful. And I have a concise, well thought out answer for that.


I'm just kidding. You should know me better than that.


I'm still sort of searching about that. I've wanted to share this for months, but held off because I don't have easy answers. I've come to realize I may never have them. But here's what I do know. A pornhub search for James Deen is not a less sinful search than one for Sasha Grey (If you know who either of those people are, you are just as much of a dirty dirty sinner as me. I'll pray for you.). Lust is lust. Me being attracted to women is no less sinful than you getting white girl wasted at your stupid christian college. Me being bisexual is no more damaging and misses the mark of perfection no more than my lifelong battle with food and self-image.


Sin means to miss the mark. It means that God hit a bulls-eye and I am somewhere off in the weeds. I am off in the weeds in every way! If only you knew. This is just one of my many ways, yet for some reason people like to act like it makes me less valuable,  one of "those people".


I am dating a wonderful, Godly, supportive man. I love him intensely. I am going to marry the crap out of him, and we are going to procreate. I don't think my attraction to women is going anywhere, but I am going to live the life, at least as far as anyone can see, of a heterosexual, God-fearing woman, in a fruitful marriage as the good lord intended. So if you're outraged at my very existence, please understand that I do the best I can, my plans for my life happen to coincide with how you think I should live, and there's not much more than you can ask for. If you desire perfection from me, I will turn right back and ask it of you. Neither of us will ever measure up. Thank God for grace.






OK. So now the weight has been lifted, but I'm not done. I have something else to share.

I have been in your churches all my life. When you spewed bile about "THE GAYS", I heard every word, and every one made a mark on my heart. I have forgiven you, but the scars are still there. I have given you grace as God gave me grace and as I am asking you to give me now.

But I'm sure I wasn't the only not-straight kid in the room. And I might be the only forgiving one. And I might be the only bisexual christian who was fortunate enough to find a soulmate of the opposite sex, relatively early in life. It has been an impossibly hard journey for me, and yet compared to others I know, it has been a walk in the park.

It's a sticky issue. It has been for me. And when I imagine what it would be like to not be attracted to men at all, and grow up in that environment, it hurts my heart. I can't imagine what it would have done to me to be condemned all the time, to have no one talking about a middle ground between heterosexual perfection and homosexual trash.

If you gain nothing from this, I pray that you guard your tongues. I pray more than anything that your hearts become tender to people who are not like you, because your anger doesn't help. Your condemnation is not novel. It is one of a thousand words of pain and hate in an endless pile on some poor kid's back.

Sin is sin. But grace is grace. And grace can cover my sexuality, and it can cover your alcoholism, and it can cover her divorce, and it can cover my road rage. By putting one sin on a pedestal and throwing stones at THOSE PEOPLE, you are doing so much more damage than you realize. Because the effigy of a deviant that you are talking about with such anger might not feel it. But the quiet kid in the room hears you, and knows they are not welcome.

I wish you could see the damage this can cause. I wish I could show you the scars on my heart, but maybe you should look at the scars on my arm instead. I think that if you were to take some time and actually cross the metaphorical tracks, and have an actual conversation with someone who is gay, you would learn a lot. I think you would be surprised by their humanity. I think you would find that they, like you, are just doing their best to navigate this world.

I'm not interested in fighting. I never am. I don't have all the right answers. I never do. But in light of the recent SCOTUS decision, I had to speak up. I have been here for years, listening, suffocating, pretending to understand why you hate THOSE PEOPLE so much. If I were to condense everything I am trying to say into a neat couple of sentences, they would be these:

I am bisexual, and I am here. I love Jesus, and he forgives me for all my sin - sexual and otherwirse. You have hurt me, and I forgive you. Please have compassion in the future. I love you. I hope this doesn't change your love for me.

Response Paper: Deviance

This is my favorite paper that I wrote in college. I wrote it for my sociology class, and after taking the final, my teacher stopped me and told me that this paper was one of the funniest things he's ever read, and that he and his wife read it over and over with tears in their eyes. He said "You're a great writer. Genuinely." Not to oversell myself, but that was a very encouraging experience for me and it's why I care to share a random piece of writing from several years ago. I still think the conclusion is weak, but I wasn't trying very hard to write this, I just had a minimum page requirement to meet. So the fact that it was so well received was even more thrilling.

I am a goody-two-shoes. There's a part of me that feels very rebellious, but the rest of me knows better. My “rebellion” extends to listening to 90's punk bands and thinking about doing things. If I break a rule, it's because I think that a) I have a good reason to, and/or b) I won't upset an authority figure. I have always been that kid. I feel that if I get less than the highest possible grade on any assignment I have personally failed my teachers. They are authority figures, I did something bad, and I should feel bad. I also feel incapable of being deviant. If I have no respect for someone in authority, I will argue with and possibly disobey them, but that is the exception to who I am. I am not deviant. I have difficulty believing that a car can move without my seatbelt being buckled. It's kind of a strange kink of who I am. I will talk about doing rebellious things, but unless I am given the green light by someone in authority, I will rarely do those things. My kind of thrilling deviancy is walking on the grass. You aren't supposed to do that, you know.

When I got this assignment, I actually gasped. Out loud. I would never dream of taking anyone's seat, and I knew that I was having ankle surgery during the time we would be working on these papers, which complicates tall building escapades. This left me with imagining it, or using my hands to eat something. I chose the latter. I found it so devilishly exciting, because I am so profoundly vanilla. It is worth noting that I hate having things on my hands. I love me some french fries, but eating them means rubbing my fingers on my jeans to get the salt off. It drives me crazy. When I was very young I would tentatively play in the mud, and then run inside, frowning, to my mom, hold my hands out, say “dirty!”, and wait for her to clean them. All this added to my excitement to eat something with my hands. Most people don't do that, you know.

The night before I had talked to my sister about my plans, “I'm going to eat pancakes or something with my HANDS! Isn't that crazy?” as I grinned and told her of my planned deviancy, I started to realize how silly it was to get worked up about eating with my hands. How silly it is that someone my age considers syrupy fingers deviant and exciting.

So Easter Sunday, post-surgery, I wheeled into an IHOP with some devilish smirk on my face. Everyone was looking at me, because I was in a wheelchair. Some people kept looking as I very excitedly discussed Portal 2. But slowly, most of them started to look away, onto their own breakfasts or a child making noise. After our food arrived, I almost immediately had to explain myself to my breakfast date. I am completely transparent when I'm up to something. “Ok! So, I....nevermind.” I wanted to keep it a secret and get his response, but of course I suck at that. Some skeptical prodding led to me finally admitting that I had to be deviant for a class and was going to eat my french toast with my hands and wasn't that so crazy? The official response from my companion was a laugh and an eye roll. I tore my french toast into small pieces and dipped them into syrup. The whipped cream and berries caused me wide eyes and giggles because I had to directly touch things that were “messy”. Again, I received smirks from the other side of the table.

We continued talking as we ate, and I tried to surreptitiously observe anyone's reactions to me. Before I did this experiment, I assumed that everyone in the entire world would stare at me. Because who does something so crazy? Eating with your hands. Ridiculous. I looked around for evidence of that, and found the woman seated at the booth next to our table was giving me a disgusted look. Because I have poor impulse control, I loudly and immediately said, “I think that chick hates me.” in order to freak her out and/or make her stop looking. However, further investigation proved that that was just her face, and she was probably looking at me because I kept looking at her.

At the time, our server also seemed a little off-put by my shenanigans. However, looking back on it, I think I was just projecting my own feelings of doing something strange and being afraid of people confronting me.

Other than the wheelchair, I did one other thing that got me many more strange looks than eating without utensils. I stared out the window for a couple of minutes. People started to glare at me. No one was even sitting where I was looking. Why they cared about this, and not my attempt to be deviant, I will never know.

I had expected this assignment to be a great lesson in human behavior, and why innocuous things are considered deviant. For example, there is no law enforcing silverware use, but it is extremely strange for an adult to eat many food items with their hands. I was quite surprised that no one cared, but I think that had a lot to do with the fact that out at an IHOP on Easter Sunday, everyone had bigger things on their mind. Another thing that is frowned upon in society is staring at people who are behaving oddly, and so it is possible that some people noticed and discussed my behavior, but were just stealthy about it. I think that this would have turned out to be a little bit more enlightening if I hadn't told people beforehand that I would be doing this. But in my defense, I assumed everyone on earth would care, judge, and give me things to write about. I was also super excited about being “bad”, if only for an hour or so.

Despite the lack of response by my my fellow restaurant patrons, I did find this very eye-opening. Talking in elevators and eating without “proper” utensils are not inherently bad. They aren't wrong. They're just different. This means that the fact that my sister's boyfriend eats pizza with a knife and fork isn't bad, just different. I think it's weird. But why? It can be a messy food. I have just been socialized differently, and that isn't bad. Another implication of this assignment that I found was that I have no reason to not do some things. So why not talk to cashiers, or change seats? Being deviant is not always the same as being “bad”. If I'm not breaking any laws or moral code, then it is only my self-conscious, goody-two-shoes attitude that is stopping me from walking on grass and climbing trees and having adventures. Because when you are that strange way that I am, adventures can be found in things like french toast.

Greeting Death like an old friend.

Why do we, grown people who should know better, who should know what things make no difference, still hold our breaths when we pass graveyards and make wishes on the tips of our cheesecake?

Or is it just me?

All my life I have been extremely supersitious. I was that kid, battling my own obsessive need to put the arch of my left foot on the crack in the sidewalk with every step, with my terror that I was the reason my mom had back problems. I made wishes on every necklace charm, graveyard, and star that I saw.

As a child, of course, I thought I could pray to Santa. Now that I am an adult,  I have put away childish things.

Mostly.

I still make a lot of wishes, which I guess is silly. But only on things that really make sense, like birthday candles and pie slices and build a bear hearts. And more than anything, I ascribe power to words that they just don't have.

For example. As I'm sure many people have, I have spent the last few years of my life dealing with death. Not coping with the loss of loved ones so much as really wrestling with the idea that someday I am going to die, I and everyone I've ever loved and hated. For a while I chose to stare death in the face, looking at the morbid reality of it all and seeing my friends and family and being able to see that they were just fragile animals, sacks of meat and bone and blood held together by flesh.

My other main strategy was avoidance. Somehow being able to shut my mind to it all....but not quite. Because even with my eyes closed I could feel death looming somewhere. "It may not be today, it certainly wasn't yesterday, but someday when you least expect it, I am coming for you.".

The idea that someone could be unprepared for their death, that a sixteen year old can be killed by a drunk driver on a street I could have been on, is terrifying. I think about that girl all the time. She died one major street away from the street Dan lives off of. And I never take that street. I never have. I almost always turn to go to his house a block north or south of the stretch of road where she was hit. But I've taken it before. And I almost went to Dan's house that night. And there is a possibility, however small, that it could have been me.

I still hold my breath a little bit when I drive past the area where she was killed.

Sixteen is so impossibly young to die. She had plans. For college, for true love, for a family. She was sweet and everyone loved her and was so excited to see what she had planned for her life, and one night that was supposed to be so much like any other was her last night alive.

I always coped with death by telling myself that I would be ready, that we all would. But tragedy is tragedy because we aren't. The people in that awful, murderous plane crash screamed for several minutes before they died. And I bet all of them wished it wasn't happening.

If my coping mechanism, that death is something I will be ready for, is gone, what can I do? The obvious answer is to make peace with it in my life now, and I have. I assume I will be ready, or make peace with it very quickly, and either way the experience of dying shouldn't last too long. I had a near-death experience just after christmas last year. Dan was passing someone on the way to South Dakota, and the road had a weird dip in it. It looked like you could see for miles, but he couldn't see that there was a car coming straight for us. I looked up when he hit the brakes and saw the car and made a sad little noise. I blinked and my brain refused to accept what was happening for a second, and then I had a definite moment of "this is actually happening. That car is going to hit us, and we might die. Okay, God..." and braced myself emotionally.

The car didn't hit us. We both slowed down a lot and Dan pulled off onto the shoulder. I had panic attacks for the rest of the day. I wanted nothing more than to be done, to get into a bed and cope, but of course we still had hours to drive before we got to Rapid City, and that helped nothing.

The fact that I had a brush with almost-death and felt peace is one of the most encouraging experiences I've ever had. The day it happened I was upset and wished we had driven there as normal, but it was a really good experience for me. I feel like I have come to terms with the fact that we'll all die.

And that, dear friends, is where superstition enters this post yet again.

I have refrained from posting anything about death, or saying anything too ominous, out of fear that they will be my last words or my last post. Not because I'm afraid I'll die any day now and something has to be my last words and won't that be sad. Out of fear that the words will cause the death. I have seen too many reddit posts of "Look at this morbid thing my cousin said before she died in a freak accident". So I held off on finding real closure with death out of a vain hope that it would prolong my life.

But here I am now. Writing this with the intention of posting it.

I read an excellent book recently. It's called "Smoke gets in your eyes and other lessons from the crematory".

I checked it out from the library with that same dark, morbid fascination with which I read all those reddit posts. And at the start of the book, she is exactly that kind of person. She works in a crematory because she wants to be the person to look death in the face and not flinch. Over the course of the book, however, it becomes less about gory details and how unusual she is, and more about how unusual society is. Modern society is strange in the way that we want to sanitize death.

Nothing is scarier than a skeleton. When someone dies we need to remove the body right away. Bodies must be created or embalmed. Your fish is just sleeping.

We want to remove death from our minds, so we obsess over aging. One of the richest men in America is pouring tons of money into life-prolonging science because despite all his wealth and privilege, he is terrified to die.

But he will. And so will I. And so will you. And there's something beautiful about that. About clearing the world so that new life can explore and discover and care for each other. About how we have a finite amount of time and it's up to us to make it matter.

So here I am now. Posting a long, circuitous blog post about death. I feel pains in my chest. It's probably my heart. Or maybe it's just my constant anxiety about my heart. I'm about to drive to boulder, and I may get in to an accident.

Or maybe, just maybe, I will show this to my grandchildren someday.

Life is beautiful. Death is beautiful. And if this is my last post or not, I hope it encouraged anyone who read it. You are not alone, and it's okay to not be afraid.