Murder Murderer Love Inc.

Whether it be the holiday season, the dropping temperatures, or the whispering anthems of the season wafting delicately through the air with faint jingle bells and brass fan fares...I found myself needing to write this. So, please...blame the sentiment on a wintertime hysteria. A crazed lunatic - bare of the usual sarcasm, irony, and general 'assholeness' - that is simply a ghost of what I usually am. Whatever you choose as my excuse, please keep it in mind.

First, I'd like to begin by apologizing. To a lot of people particularly, but each one so particular that they know exactly who they are. For whatever reason or problem, they know. I know that apologies, especially around the holidays, seem forced or expected...but I should know. I've had to force so many apologies in my short life so far; fake or meaningless in one way or another. I know exactly what it feels like to play puppeteer to the truth, and that's definitely not how it feels now. I am truly sorry for any pain.

Whether it be false assumption...true deceit...imaginative confrontations...mistakes that are simply that and nothing more...a teenage wasteland...I wish I could conjur language into something more than just 'I'm sorry'. Sorry, sorry, sorry - the word so far overused that I feel like I'm simply downmarking prices on expired excuses. Another roll from the price gun. There has to be some way to get past those five simple letters and strive for something else!

To Rachel - It was when the amount of times I said 'I love you' replaced the amount of times I said 'I'm sorry' that I knew I would lose you. You know, after a lot of picturesque arguments and made-for-TV-movie drama...only now I wish I could've taken everything back. It took me this long to come to that conclusion. You never deserved the way I treated you near the end of our relationship; you never deserved a cheap defense against my cheap mistakes. In order to not overuse 'sorry' again, let's talk sometime...I miss you.

To Madeline - I wish I could fit into that angsty ex-boyfriend mold a little better, but really it's just me forgetting to check my messages or to call you back. I know it seems like I'm being a drama king, but it's my absentmindedness and nothing more. I still think about you a lot; kind of hard to ignore sometimes. It's alright though, right? "So next time I see you, I'll be pleased to see you. I hope you'll be pleased to see me."


To Elise - We need to get together as soon as possible to write, smile, and make coffee. I've missed too many opportunities to see you; I'm sick of it. Like the lyrics we write, there is something deeper below the surface here. Something more that just words scratched on the page; we hold a connection that could do us well. "Don't you feel it too?"

To Mary - Do you ever think that I'm one of those people that never say how I truly feel about you their face? Well then, I think you're right. A hundred and one times over I wish I had gone up to your face and said: "You're amazing. I'm in awe." I also wish you'd believe me. Your raw talent and lifelong potential; your sharp humor and priceless expressions. I know that we've never been able to be close...what is that? Soap conversations and bathtub confessionals in the near future, okay?

To Alex - I know you'll never read this, but all I had to say is I'm sorry for never being able to say how much I truly love you.

I apologize to Brianna for not talking. I apologize to Tyler for never having enough time. I beg forgiveness from those who knew me well; don't give up on me yet. I'll be back one of these days. A Christmas soon or soon after, I will return after a snowy journey; rejuvenated and renewed. Probably after I've lost you all - to moving and progressing, changing and forgetting - I'll return. To everyone, I hope you have a light hearted Christmas with great friends and family - I hope you are graced with a warmth you only wish you could explain. I hope you overuse the word 'love' as much as I just overused the word 'sorry'...if there is such a thing.

Just going through the motions - every day just a checklist for daily activity. The holidays are sneaking up on me; I haven't really had the time to notice the time of day let alone the time of year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unprepared. I'm actually probably the most prepared person in my entire family - all gifts accounted for, wrapped, placed under the tree - nothing more to worry about. School ends early Wednesday for me (the break really doesn't seem like that big of a deal for me - I barely go to school any day). So, happy holidays and all that tinsel.

I hope to see a letter from her before the week is out. I miss her.

Nights of camouflage, Amazon princesses, and far too much foam core. A few good laughs - "Well, it isn't looking good on the Backwoods...which sucks" - and innumerous good times leads me to not want nights with friends to end. The Faint, victory or defeat, and endless Friday nights. Each night uncovering another buried treasure. Every single night a hunt for the end of the ocean.

Does it feel like we're all going through the motions? Why is it only the late hours of too few nights that allow us to run wild and free of routine? I guess I'm lucky though; not everyone can appreciate those moments...they can't see, so they just pass them by. I'm suffocating every moment with my clinging grasp; I'm draining every memory of all sincerity to preserve them like flowers pressed between the pages of a book. I hope these memories seem as important and fragile to everyone else as they do to me. I mean, we all hate our "shithole high school lives". We all hate the senselessness. We all hate this town, right...? I think that's just the easy way of saying we couldn't live without it...I mean, life moves on, but life would've been a lot different if we hadn't lived through all the things we supposedly 'hate'. I am thankful for this social thirst - searching for an oasis to quench my dreams. I am thankful for every friend turned enemy, or vice versa - who would I be if I hadn't learned from these changes? Ahh, existentialism overwhelms. The questions never cease.

If I'm playing my fate like Candyland, hopefully the next few steps of green, red, and blue will lead me to the finish. Maybe the next step will be with her. Maybe a few more letters sent will unravel more than I can understand. In related, maybe a few phone calls gone ignored will teach me. Maybe they'll be worth picking up someday. Maybe the fate of each step - each day-glo colored square - is worth it in the end. Let's stop striving for anything less than perfection. We know we'll never reach it...but maybe that's the whole point. Maybe the perfection is there all along, but we are unable to understand it. Maybe the perfection is following our fate, or our defects, or our insecurities. Maybe perfection is the inadvertent rules of chaos, discord, and randomness.

So, you step this way, and I'll roll the dice. We'll exchange nervous looks like a seventh grade summer, and we'll hold our hands together in handcuffs forged by rules of completion. We'll be screaming to each other to find a way out. A three. A six. Each step taken forward or backward just as frustrating as the last. A one. Miss a turn. Luck and nothing more. We'll hold our hearts like helium balloons, and conjoin at the tongue to speak in languages never even heard of. We'll be perfection within every single one of our flaws. We will glow.

How much do you feel like a child when a smile or the certain sparkle of someone's eye can lift you out of pointless darkness? Uplifted by a thousand butterflies, the world is your playground...instead of focusing on trivial problems, you can find the remarkable ability to enjoy the day ahead. All I know is, I would love to be a child again. Remember how it used to be easy to figure out emotions? Remember when boys and girls pretty much hated each other? "Wouldn't it be nice if we could live twice in one life? Then we would know what to do..."

Let me just put it this way: My music skips a beat whenever I think about her.

Too many days of needless wondering and boyish fun. I've gone through too many days of dreaming of the road, and sunsets far past New Mexico. I've dealt with too many mistakes of 'love' ridden blindness. Jenna and I were talking today about the uselessness of the word 'love'. Love for family? For friends? For someone? For life? The word is such a generalization of so many seperate concepts (and then each person has their own interpretation of these concepts; then everything is blown to hell). We're all so used to binding our endless lyrical descriptions in single words; streamlining what we really need to say with simple responses. How come our minds can easy dismiss hours of poetic portrayals of reality in short sentences, but we can never think of the right things to say? I can barely read my thoughts, let alone control them. How can we all be expected to conform to this time and energy saving manner? Are we criminal for allowing our words to run rampant and released of petty completion? Speak to the heavens like there is no tommorrow; sometimes there is nothing better moonlit confessions of babbling perfections:

I love you. I need you. I can't dream of life without you.

Dream one thing, say another. It's like stabbing yourself in the hand. Rehearse over and over again what you want to say; you'll lose it all in that one gasping breath right between catching their eye and saying 'hello'. No matter how hard you try, your voice will be stolen away from you and will be replaced with another stupid smile or another awkward facial expression. Ah, damnation. There's no escape from teenage-dom - must we all play parts in this predetermined dance? Every stuttered question with sweaty palms and nervous eyes? Every childish tendency? Yes, I don't think I'm quite done with being a child yet. "When you grow up, your heart dies." There is no love like the fake plastic love we write into beautiful sonnets and sing ourselves to sleep with; there is no love like high school drama. Don't you wish you could be stuck in a romantic comedy of some sort - where fate twists and turns and pulls the characters through emotional hell and back again, but they always end up happily together in the end? Somewhere between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks?

Ah, this must be love.

So, pull up the covers to make a tent at night. Built a fort out of cardboard boxes. Bombard the pretty girls with water balloons. This one's for all the notes passed under desks in class - "I like you, do you like me?" - this one's for all the foolish hearts. This one's for all those school dances we hated but we went to anyway. This one's to hour long conversations on the phone about nothing - just to hear the sound of each other's voice. This one's for all the fake plastic lovers who threw away the words "I love you" like there was nothing else to live for. Yes, you. You and I both.