I Paint My Toenails Red

I paint my toenails red

On days when my life falls apart

Carefully and neatly

At least, this is in order

Outwardly, an expression

I have it together

Inwardly, an explosion

I know nothing at all

My red toenails line up in a row

Ten little soldiers marching off to war

The war is really in my mind

The heart and the mind meeting on the field of battle

But my toenails are red

I struggle with chaos and pressure

The world beating me into a pulp

I try to find a way, the way

I know most of it but the details are lost to darkness

It's the details I struggle with

It's my heart that is hurting

It's blood colors my emotions

At least my toenails are red

Today, it's changing

I'm locking my door to pressure

I'll decide when I'm ready

Today I'm growing up and pushing back 

I will decide for me

And not because it's what I'm told

This will lead me on my own path

And someday, when I can see the details

Someday I'll stop painting my toenails red

Vulnerability

This post is so honest I can't believe I'm posting it. Hello world, here's my heart, don't break it please.

I read a blog recently that assigned numbers to the men she'd cared for. Mine are not numbers, but months. I needed to write this. It's like therapy, isn't it, writing.

This is one of my greatest fears. This post. Actually, more like two. The fear of giving too much of myself and the fear of showing others how unsure I really am. How much I have left to figure out. I'm stalling here, writing this. Maybe you'll get bored and not finish reading it. No? Okay.

To my January
We had a fun time, didn't we. The two of us, though sometimes I wonder if you really ever cared or if you just wanted to. You were way too old for me, and I still wonder to this day why you were attracted to me at all, a stupid, immature 16-year-old girl who thought she had beaten her insecurity because you lifted her up.

You did help pull me out of that dark place, those horrible insecurities, the crushing sense that I'd never be enough, the feeling that I should end it all now, before I did irreparable damage to this world I love so dearly. However, relying on you was never the right way. I never even really knew you, but I knew how you made me feel, and little-girl-me thought that would be enough. Even though we barely saw each other. Even though we only talked over Facebook because of my lack of a phone. Or I borrowed a friend's phone, a friend that had known you far longer than I had.

I remember one time you walked to my house to let me borrow a book for AP English. You brought your dog, and we just talked for an hour or two, sitting on the grass. We never even really touched- you never reached for my hand, I never got to lean against you.

One time, I was fed up with my home life. I messaged you and we walked to Sonic and got ice cream. One time, we met up at the park. We always just talked, about silly stuff, about fun stuff. But we barely saw each other for real, except for these few times.

I remember Valentine's Day. Lunch at the Asia Inn. I had shrimp. You brought me flowers and a purple octopus, from an inside joke I barely remembered. I kept him around. His name is Sir.

Then it just ended. My family took a media holiday before I had the chance to tell you, and when I got back on, you were distant. You were cold. And slowly, you stopped responding to my messages. For a while it was simply pleasantries. And then that stopped as well. I have the book you let me borrow, I said. Nothing. Please come take it back, I said. I know you saw the messages (Facebook is a stalker, yeah?) but you never replied and I'm not sure why. And on Thanksgiving, I sent you a letter, about how grateful I was for what you'd been to me. I was over it, long over it, but I wish it had ended better than getting blocked from messaging you again. We died slowly, didn't we, an improbable flame sputtering in the gutter. And though we never would have worked out, though I'm long over you, sometimes, I still find myself searching for that resolution, for that final "this is done" that you denied me so many times.

I still have your book.

To my February
You. Where do I start? You never knew the depth of my feelings for you. It was immensely hard, not to tell you, but it wasn't me you wanted- it was my friend. And after everything, I still think you two would be perfect together, even if you end up as "the best couple who never dated" in the yearbook. It was hard, having to content myself with being your friend. We're still friends, to this day, thank goodness, and you're one of the best people I know. I don't think you ever saw me that way, but either way, you taught me so much.

You were, I think, the first person I ever really truly cared for- no stupid infatuation, no simple crush, and if anything, that made it worse for me. Though being your friend somehow was enough. Enough, but never enough, in a weird contradictory way.

I have so many memories. So many conversations. So few souvenirs from the times we've spent. A couple pictures, and the memories in my mind. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

All those times backstage during the plays-remember the mote and the beam? The picture of you with those glasses that we probably shouldn't have been messing with, seeing as they were a prop. Driving to the gas station, accidentally driving back with the emergency brake on. The long letters on the posters- I still re-read them sometimes, and laugh. You could always make me laugh.

Someday you'll make a great husband for a great woman, probably a girl we've neither of us met. Someday you'll be famous, you'll change the world. Thank you for the time we spent, no matter how you saw me during that time. What we had, what we have, my friend, that is enough for me.

To my August
I don't know what happened with you. I don't know why we were ever anything. Oh, wait, I do. You pushed so hard. You were my first kiss, and all I knew about you was your name and that you played in the band at your high school. But we got along alright, holding hands that first night, sitting outside the church dance when I got sick to my stomach.

Our story is simple. Co-chairs of the Youth Committee. I knew almost everyone, but I'd never met you. We barely spoke before that night, within the meetings, and especially outside them. I knew nothing about you but what ward you were in. Which is, coincidentally, now February's ward. (Geez, just let me completely give away who everyone is. But this is good. This will be good for me.) At the night of the youth conference dance, you somehow always ended up nearby. And I made you laugh. We danced, you pulled me close, and you were my first kiss. Right then, with hardly any warning.

I hardly knew you, and now I wonder why I didn't stop you from taking so much from me. I opened my front door, and you wanted straight to the bedroom, pardon the analogy. I liked the way it made me feel, to have someone to kiss, to hold, but I came to my senses soon enough. It was easy to tell you no after that, easy to stop you. It lasted maybe a month, I think.

I still see you every now and then. I'll spot you, and I'll wonder, what are you doing now? And then I realize I don't really care about you anymore, I care about the memory of the way you made me feel.

I saw you a while later with another girl. I wonder if you're doing to her what you did to me. It broke my heart a little, but not a whole lot, because I realized you aren't the kind of guy I should have serious feelings about anyway. Not a total jerk, which is honestly how I felt for the first few months after it happened. But not worth that much of my heart- sorry.

To my May
Oh, May. My May. Perhaps you'll guess who you are. I know you have read my blog before. But will you see yourself in my words? It's always been a struggle not to give you too much. Nearly a year now, I've cared for you. You were the opposite of August, not pushing too hard, taking what I was willing to give and being okay with it. Not to say you haven't asked for more, and I've said no. But you listened and respected that, which meant so much.

You once wrote me the story of the way we were. I think this might be my version in return. I'm not sure I want you to read this at all, actually. You know what, stop right here. (I know you won't. Wishful thinking)

Gradually this year, you worked your way deeper into my heart than any before. (This will give away who you are if nothing else does). You're my best friend (see?) and I trust you more than I thought I could. I am comfortable around you, physically, mentally, emotionally. You've been a shoulder to cry on. You've seen me stressed, angry, sad, tired (read: loopy), depressed, happy, joyful, eager, in more ways than anyone ever before. You've always been there, and I feel like I know you too, the way I hope you know me. I know the curve of your smile, the feel of your hands, the sound of your laugh, and the way you are when you're sad or tired. I know when you want to kiss me by the way your heart beats in your throat. I wonder if you'll regret letting me have so much of you someday. At least I was your first kiss, though I can't be your last.

I never wanted to hurt you but inevitably, that's what I'll do, and I'm sure you know it too. There's no way around it.

I've said it before that I didn't want a high school relationship. I've said it so many times, posted about it, thought it to death. I've instead said to you "Wait until I graduate." But, now, I'm not sure I can even give you that. I'm not sure it would be right, nor would it be fair to you. Heck, even what I've given you may have been too much. Thinking about it is breaking me in places I didn't know could break, and I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. Being around you feels so right, and we fit together like puzzle pieces, but not the right ones. I know, there's no future in our relationship except for as friends. I know, I'm going away to college in the fall. I'll be on a mission in a year. I know, you're young, and you'll get over me quickly. What I don't know is if I can say no to you again this summer, and it breaks my heart to think about it. But when I think of you, and a future, I know that to make it there you'd have to be someone you're not. And it's you I fell for, and that's the hardest thing, isn't it? That you can at once be my heart's best friend, and my heart's worst enemy. That your choices break my heart and your chances at being a major part of my future.

Where you're concerned, though, I'm weak. I can think about it logically here, in black and white, with a keyboard under my fingertips, but I'm sure when I see you I'll fall again. You're my drug, the thing I don't know how to live without anymore, and I don't know how to just be best friends, and I won't give that up. Even if I can't give you the romantic relationship that I think we both kind of long for, I won't give up my best friend, the person that has been there when no one else was, that I trust completely. I hope you feel the same, and know I'll always be here. I'll be the best friend you ever had. Any further is gray.

We'll see where the future leads, May, though the ending I already know. But the winding path may have a few surprises in its corners before it splits us apart.

Please, please don't judge me too badly on this post. It was what I needed to write, to get my heart in order. Because in the end, I am who I am and that me is wildly unsure

Age of the Heart Growing Up

I'm not at all qualified to say any of this, and I know it. But I think I'll say it anyway, if only to see if I may be right! I'd definitely appreciate a comment one way or the other :)

What age do hearts truly grow up and make that leap between immature and mature, between loving for your benefit, and loving for theirs? For me, it was junior year. The one I fell for first (previously referred to as February) was younger, but definitely an incredible person. However, there was no benefit to me from falling for him. He never reciprocated my feelings beyond that of a friend. To this day, I believe he is in love with one of my best friends, who in turn has a boyfriend. What a mess we all are, huh?

The point is, that was the time that I first truly cared for someone like that beyond for what I thought they could give me. It doesn't mean I was immune to that previous, immature feeling (see August) but it does mean I'd made that leap, and I discovered what it felt like to really love someone. (As I don't think he reads this blog, I feel comfortable posting it. Maybe he'll see it someday and figure it out, maybe he won't).

As I've talked to many of my friends (which are oddly mostly of the male variety) I've seen a pattern. Around the age at which they can drive (16-17) is about the age that the heart seems to make that leap. I'd like to talk to more of them about it, but truly, how awkward would that be? "Hey, what's up? Um, you wanna tell me about the time you first fell in love?" I think for some of my female friends it may have been a little bit younger, but the majority seem to be about the same time. Junior year.

Anyway, I'm not qualified to make any assumptions at all, and I'd love to hear from some other people! Especially stories, if you're comfortable. The stories are always the best part. What age did you first fall in love?

Pushing and Strong Tides

Lately I've been facing down a rather big issue in my life. I won't name it but suffice it to say that it could change the course of my summer. It also, I think, is at the core of me deciding who I want to be.

I think in the end, it comes down to, am I cautious or reckless? Can I take a risk and do something likely entirely pointless? Or will I pull away, pull back into my walls that I built to keep the recklessness out? Either side has its pros and cons, and neither one of them feels totally wrong or right. And no matter which course I take, someone I love will be hurt in one way or another.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the tides that this issue brings up. From both sides of the issue, I have been pushed and shoved and battered around by those who mean most to me, those who know how to use my emotions against me to influence my course of action. It's gotten to the point where I don't want to decide anything, where I want to just leave, go somewhere far away, and forget it ever existed. But I can't do that because I'd leave my heart behind.

Isn't it funny, in this fast paced world, how we're never given time to think? Most of this shoving has taken place over the last two-three day period. It's been "make a decision now, decide, go quick!" Yesterday, I was shoved into action and I do believe that because of that, I acted too hastily. I was not given time to put my thoughts in order and decide for myself. I've been trying to pull back, to figure it out and consider for myself what I might do. I've been trying to take time, moments to think of ways I could act, and of what either path would mean for me. Hopefully I didn't alienate any of my options by my hasty actions. I don't believe I have.

I am still being pushed as I move around. But I have tried, this time, again and again, to say that I will not commit until I can be totally behind it. I will not commit to a course until I know where it will go and what it could do, and my mind agrees to it. I will not commit aloud until I am committed in my head. I plan on taking as much time as I need- a day, a week- until it begins to make sense.

Already this morning there have been numerous quiet moments that allowed me to think about the issue. Already a picture is beginning to form. But I am only coming to understand my options, and haven't decided yet. Hopefully it will come soon, for if it doesn't the pressure will return and I'm  afraid these strong tides will pull my little ship under and drown any chance I have of learning to sail on my own.

Moral of the story, I suppose, is not to pressure people into decisions when they are not ready to make them. I do believe that, no matter which way I choose, if my decision is because I was pressured into it, then I will regret it. I will pull away and take the time and space and actions that I need to make a decision that is entirely my own.

Music and My Life

Today, I got the chance to do something I haven't had a chance to do for a long time: go outside.

It was (mostly) warm, the sun was shining, and I had two of my friends with me. We sat by a tree, one of my friends with her guitar, and we sang. We just sang every song we could think of. We did also talk (that's what girls do) but it was mostly singing, with some basic harmonies. It was a wonderful experience.

While we were singing, I had a revelation. I realized how much music is a part of my life. My soul is embedded, ensconced, irrevocably bound within the music (I actually basically live in the choir room of my school). It is a part of me, interwoven with my identity.

Music is amazing. It contains emotion and poetry, love and heartbreak. It communicates to every stage of human existence, every pain and joy. For me, this is especially true with choral music. I adore the harmonies, the interlacing voices, and most especially the feeling of singing one, of being a part of something bigger. I found a family through music. The words also speak to me many times. There are songs for every occasion and every emotion. Music is a part of everything, if you listen closely.

It Seems

It seems lately I've been facing down my future, right in front of me, nose to nose, and we just glare at each other.

It seems lately that my decisions have been upended beneath me as if I was a glass and sat on the table they were made of

It seems lately that my biggest fear is showing how unsure I really am, how much I don't have it all figured out. Out of comedy and tragedy, I smile on the outside but within I'm dying

It seems lately that I may have to give up something extremely precious and I'm not sure I have the strength to do it. It feels like Sisyphus and his boulder- endlessly repeating, endlessly difficult.

It seems lately I've been facing down my future. Red boxing gloves, and circling, with me on the floor, blood streaming from my nose

It seems lately my future has been frightening me.

Writing

I turned on the computer
This morning, and it sighed
Gentle, like the wind at night
When it's had enough

I yawned
Up late the night before
Probably again tonight
Yet here I am

It's 5:30 and
I'm writing
Fingers tapping away
At the 26 keys

My pajamas shroud me
An XL shirt hanging
Off of S/M shoulders
And sweatpants, too comfy

I yawn again
And it sounds to me
Just like a sigh
A breath from the earth

Like the wind at night
When it's had enough

Things That Are Weird (part 1)

Hands

Hands are just strange. You may not think about it, but really, what are they? Like arm tentacles. Wiggly fingers (ahem, tentacles) splayed out from this strange flat part that sticks out off your wrist. And they grab stuff! How odd.

Just look at your hands. Wiggle your fingers. I mean, they're very handy, but....arm tentacles.

(This one is short- perhaps the other parts will gradually get longer)

Things That Are Weird (an explanation)

So I've been thinking a lot, and I've been sleepy. Never a good combo to be sure, but it came up with an idea for a sort of series. "Things That are Weird" but also normal. Everyday things that truly are kind of odd. I guess we'll see where it goes!

What is Love?

Baby don't hurt me.....

Okay, seriously though. Honest question. What is this love that we feel? What is this all-consuming emotion that inspires people to go to such lengths? Why does it have such an effect on our souls?

For me, love has been a sort of refiners fire- a way by which I discovered more about myself. It has been both a crutch and a pair of wings, gentle, kind, and also not. Ended well and ended horribly, though mostly the second, which inspired my post about people in relationships. Love has been something constant in my life, in ways both bad and good.

Just recently however, I have really begun to learn what it truly is. Or at least I've learned what the feeling is that truly inspires rather than a simple crush. I'll call it Love, with a capital "L" as that's how it feels, like a capital letter.

Love is consuming in a weird way. It's the first thing on your mind, but it doesn't take up everything. The best Love leaves room for the rest of your life and is still there after the day is done. Really, Love is a support, a companion, what is there when you feel all else is lost.

It also is gentle, at least the way I feel it. This Love doesn't push for more than I'm willing to give. It doesn't make unreasonable demands. It makes the other person so real to me, their wants and their feelings become so much more important than very nearly anything. In Love is being all you can for them. It affects you in a fundamental way, making you better. True Love makes you a better person.

Love is letting somebody into the corner of your heart reserved only for the things you hold most dear-that's how I recently explained it to someone close to my heart. That special corner, the one where you keep your treasured memories, and whenever you visit it, you smile. It is full of light and letting them in, letting anyone in, is a huge risk, but for Love, you're willing. For Love, because they're worth the risk.

Love is being broken, being open. It's putting all those hidden faults and cracks on display, in hopes that they can patch it, and that they won't ignore them or break them further.

I once read something that explained life as a puzzle. Gradually we're all putting our puzzles together, but no matter how we try, there's one piece that just won't f fit. The shape and the color, the picture, it's just wrong. So we get on our hands and knees, we're searching under the table and chairs, and suddenly you bump hands with someone. Perhaps you apologize, look up sheepishly and giggle. You discover that you both have the same problem- one piece that doesn't fit. Turns out somehow they must have gotten switched. That's Love, I think. That extra piece, the grand mix-up of the universe. You have my piece and I have yours. I think that truly is Love, being that piece that fits just right.

But Love is also pliable-and I hope my best friend will pardon my kidnapping of his words. I just adore how he phrased it,  "Nobody feels it the same way, it changes through a person's life. Though, difficult to do, you can stop loving someone. Love is life and life is something that you constantly experience and you don't experience everything the exact same way all the time. Pliable is a great way to describe love."

Love is life, shifting. Different for each of us, and yet here we are, living and loving and existing in any way we can. That is Love.

Hands

Hands can tell you a lot about a person. Hands fascinate me. The calluses, the scars, the shapes of the fingers and the nails, each can kinda tell a story.

Some people (including me) talk with their hands. Actually, a whole lot of people do. It's fascinating to watch their hands shape their meaning in the air, to watch them paint words on silence. Sign language fascinates me for that very reason.

Calluses can say a lot too- do they do a lot of hard work that requires hands? Do they do a lot of lifting? Or do they live a softer life, one where smooth hands are normal? I think more people have softer hands these days. It's also possible that they play an instrument- guitar especially creates callused fingertips.

Fingernails- bitten to the nub? Trimmed short or left long?

I especially love to watch people play the piano. This, I think, truly can communicate part of who the person is. I recently attended a piano recital for my siblings, and that's actually the event that inspired this post. I saw a lot of people play at the recital. Some, like my sister, play as if they're afraid of the piano. So delicately that sometimes the sound is hardly perceptible. Some play simply gently, with the music, letting it really flow.Some, like my brother, play boldly, like the music is intrinsic to their being, like the notes, the chords, the sound, like the piano is proof of their being alive. Like the music is proof they exist, an affirmation of a life being lived. Either way, the fingers dance over the keys and the hands illustrate a part of the person attached.

Hands tell brilliant stories.

Moths are the spawn of the devil

Enough said

Congratulations!!!!!!

Dear Payton,

I told you I did it! Here's a congratulations letter from your bestest friend for finishing your homework after procrastinating for like a week. Ish. (Though some of your reasons for procrastinating are legitimate, I doubt napping and Facebook would go over well...) You've worked super hard the last two days, and still managed to get me through all kinds of craziness (dunno how you put up with it! You're pretty amazing like that), so here's a little recognition.

Now I know you said you'd finish it anyway, but it's always good to have it done early! So extra congrats for a job well done fairly early (I think, I don't knew the due date...) ((now I do, you were slacking! But it's still fairly early.)) Just think of all the things you have time for now!

Hopefully your three five-paragraph essays turned out wonderfully, and the short ones equally well! Hopefully they sounded as clever as you usually do (smart aleck). Maybe your group won't be mad, and they'll stop talking about you when you're not in class, like Alex told you they were.

Maybe, in honor of your achievement, you can be a cannibal and eat some of that cake you've got left! Though butter sauce can't possibly live up to you.

Congratulations,
Constellations
(Haha, not giving my real name :D)

Looking For Alaska

John Green, you always make me question my entire life. In a good way.

Today I finished reading Looking for Alaska. It only dawns on me now, writing this, how profound the title is. "Looking" is what we're all doing isn't it? Looking for the ones we think we know, looking for the ones we love the most.

Anyway, as far as the book goes, there were quite a few parts that really pulled at my mind.

"Believe what? I thought, and right then, the rain came."

I loved this sentence. It was like poetry, like Miles was saying believe in the rain and in freedom, in the cleanliness of the earth (as a side note, isn't it funny how characters in books sometimes lose their names? I don't think of the main character, the narrator, as "Miles" or even "Pudge." He's just there in my head as an already complete character, a portrait of a person from a story in my mind.) Believe in beauty, believe in the rain.

"I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to."

There is some truth to this, I think. Some part of the human heart will deny with utmost vehemence the idea that what it once loved has been consigned to oblivion. Some part of the human heart wishes to ease the grief of loss by believing they still live on. How can a heart bear the burden of a complete loss? (More on my thoughts on an afterlife later, it goes better with a different quote.)

"There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow- that in short, we are all going."

This seems to me to be what growing up is, and accepting the inevitable. It is that point when we realize our heroes are human, and so are we. That the flaws we thought were mountains are barely small enough to register in the grand scheme of things. It is that sense of oblivion and inevitability that truly lets us grow up, and though it seems like such a view would make life dark and dreary, i believe it makes it freer. Some things are going to happen. Some things cannot be stopped. We can only do the best we can and make the most of each day because without that joy, what is left? Only the darkness one first sees when beholding this inevitable view.

"And now she was colder by the hour, more dead with every breath I took. I thought: That is the fear: I have lost something important and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without." 

But, Miles, the glasses would come back. They can make more glasses. There is no more Alaska. She is nowhere you can reach her, nowhere you can speak to her and hear her respond, nowhere to look at her and discover her like you never did when she was alive. There are only the clues she left behind, evidence, memories, scraps of conversation. That's loss isn't it? Even if not to death. Even if they move away, or the relationship just falls apart. All of a sudden you're left realizing all the parts of them you never knew. All the parts, good and bad, that went unrecognized. And perhaps, that's the nature of relationships. Perhaps, if we truly knew each others' minds, we wouldn't be able to stand it. Perhaps if we truly, entirely, knew someone, we'd die from the pain of having our own secrets known. Perhaps it is this point of unknowing that keeps the human race living and loving. For do we not all fear our own complexity?

"...that she and I had shared that alone, and I kept it for myself like a keepsake, as if sharing the memory might lead to its dissipation"

Only the most precious memories are like that. Only the memories of those we love. Perhaps it's a first kiss from someone you've cared for a long time. Perhaps it's remembering that smile. Perhaps it's every day they make you laugh. These memories feel as if they'd be lost in the sharing, and perhaps they would. Some secrets are meant to be kept.

"'He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at last reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. "Damn it," he sighed. "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"'"

This question permeates the novel, a quote from one of Alaska's books. How do we get out of the labyrinth that is life? How do we ensure that in the race between our misfortunes and our dreams, that the right one comes out on top? What is the point of it all if the end is only darkness? John Green, you've made me question life itself. Though not the ending, more the in between. I think the question is less what we can do to get out and more what can we do to make it all worth it? There is no way out of the labyrinth, but there can be joy within it.

"A woman so strong she burns down heaven and drenches hell."

The story preceding this quote describes a story of a woman who wished people to love God because He is God, and not for "want of heaven or fear of hell." This is the truth of everything these days: why can we not love something simply for its own sake and not for what it can give or take away? This is at the core of the nature of love. It is a passion so strong, something so firm, and no matter what it does to you, it cannot disappear, for you know what you feel in your heart and it can't be let go. It cannot be changed or moved by giving or taking, only by betrayal, because it is who they are or what it is that you love, and not anything it does for you. Although perhaps all we can know of a love is that, what they can give and take, because we cannot see inside another's mind and we do not know. Perhaps all we can see of another is what they do for us, but I do not believe that to be so, and even if it is, I do not believe that is real love. It could be that the truest kind of love depends not at all on reciprocation of feeling, but rather stands on its own. The truest kind of love is a foundation on which everything can depend.

"...we must look so lame, but it doesn't much matter when you have just now realized, all this time later, that you are still alive."

Life has significance. Living, moving, breathing, interacting- all these things have greater weight than we could ever comprehend, and it is only occasionally that we even come close, and it is those moments when the heart seems the biggest. It is then that we realize what is truly important and what we must do. This, truly, is the acceptance of the inevitable that seems so dark upon first beholding. Accepting what will happen, and knowing it is an incredible gift, this life, and that everything that happens is not by chance. People cross our paths for a reason and it's up to us to figure out why because what else can we do? We are here to live and to love and to make memories. I believe that to be true. We are here in this life, this great gift, this Great Perhaps, to find our own joy. All we must do is take the road that lies before us and journey on into the sun.

The last section of the book is an essay by Miles, and I hope you'll forgive me for typing it out after you've already read so far, but I believe it needs to be read. It truly is the sum of my experience in the book.

"Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied by only the last words of the already-dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life. And then I screwed up and he screwed up and we screwed up and she slipped through our fingers. And there’s no sugar-coating it: She deserved better friends.

When she ****** up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it in spite of having lost her.

Because I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and him and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here’s how I know:

I thought at first that she was dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something’s meal. What was her - green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs - would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke blowing out of some smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe ‘the afterlife’ is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled.

But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take her genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.

Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science class is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if she took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself - those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us great than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful."

Because Alaska is dead and oblivion is inevitable and we are more than the sum of our parts. Because we, as humans, are as strong as we need ourselves to be, and there is nothing we cannot bear if we believe we can bear it. Because life is a gift, and the labyrinth is a Great Perhaps, and the ones we love are not truly gone, are never truly lost to us. Because forgiveness is the way free from pain and free to realizing our own potential, that potential which we fear above all else in this life.

That's Looking for Alaska.

The Fault in Our Stars

This is one of my favorite quotes from Augustus in the book. It is everything, poetic, true, depressing and yet not. It is how love feels, don't you think? Like a falling star into cold, dark space with no hint of a destination, only the courage to go forth with light, leaving only sparks behind.