remember the moment. you know exactly where you're going / because the next moment, before you know it, time is slowing and it's frozen still /and the window sill looks really nice, right? / you think twice about your life, it probably happens at night, right? / fight it. take the pain; ignite it / tie a noose around your mind, loose enough to breathe fine / and tie it to a tree. tell it "you belong to me." // HOLDING ON TO YOU: TWENTY ONE PILOTS
i will be sixteen in five days.
i am a broken record to apologize for my absence on my website. reasons/excuses include: {heavy course load, graphic design business, tumblr, english culminating essay [the causes, effects, and cures for prejudice in to kill a mockingbird, 5 pages]}
i would like to write a series of two in between now and december eighth. the series is called "sixteen before sixteen", and each volume will feature a list of eight entities. i wanted to prepare myself somehow; i want to capture what i was and what i am and what i hope to become. sixteen is just another number of times that i have encircled the sun, but i still anticipate the crossing of a gulf, somehow. i kind of want to cross it, i guess. i want to leave everything behind on the other side. i want to collapse on the other side and lift my eyes to see the light ahead; i want to pull myself back up, stagger back to my feet and begin to run.
SIXTEEN BEFORE SIXTEEN // what she once was.
act i: fond memories
[one] i used to be an ocean of colour and imagination. as a child, i was continuously creating. i made drawings, crafts, memories, friends, stories. i was this sharp and passionate child: erratic and imaginative. she loved dragons, fantasy books, and the colour purple. she was strange and embarrassing, but she made so many stories. i miss her. R.I.P. CHILD ABBY 1999-2012
[two] "it's a beautiful sky i'm under, and since i have no camera and no canvas, i must write. i am come back to the hard rock beaches, the sickened jackpines, the grey depths of raven lake. the sun has broken over the waters. white and yellow chips of light roll over the waves. the edge of the horizon is silver glass, outlined by dark ridges of evergreen. i'm on a pile of rocks beside the shore; my body is strewn across the boulders. if i lean back on the rocks, the ends of my hair are coated in lake. the best part of the sky is behind my back, out of the edges of my eyes. it's azure: so deep and formless that it is terrifying. even when the rest of ontario is dead and wet and clinging to a dead winter, raven lake is beautiful. it always will be." -- summer journal. 19 MAY 2014
[three] it was the end of the hobbit: an unexpected journey. i was thirteen: aflame with ideas and hope. credits began to flash over the screen and neil finn's husky, metallic voice resonated in my ears. the lights in the theatre resurrected, but i was paralyzed with emotion. i stood with my friend for a while, watching the screen, and then we had to leave. "no, let's take the back door," i suggested, walking briskly to the exit by the screen. it led to carpeted steps; it was dark and i could still hear the song playing like a metallic folk battle cry. i ran up the steps and thrust the cement door open, gasping in surprise and exhilaration with the outside world. it was freezing cold, and the alley behind the theatre was paved with snow; the stars pierced my eyes upon looking up, and when i laughed i could see the frosted effluence of my lungs. i continued to laugh, and i wrapped my wool scarf around my neck, and i ran down the length of the theatre. my eyes and soul were shining, and i looked behind to see if i was alone. i was; my friend was sensible and took the front door. i ran to the parking lot, falling in the snow many times, and my face was numb and red and the skin on my hands cracked and i don't know if i've ever felt more alive. 14 DECEMBER 2012
[four] "we should buy an airplane and just fly." -- my brother, 23 AUGUST 2013
act ii: regrets
[five] for a long time, i would close my eyes and shake my shoulders and {tear, scratch, claw} at my mind in fear, in shame, and in guilt over things that i had said and done. i would dream about the things that i had said. one night, i had a dream that i could fix what i had said. he was sitting on the floor of hallway in my basement, and i walked by, and i told him that i admired him and that i was proud of him: that i believed in him. i have lost sleep and gained psychic scars from the things that i overthink; in addition to the things that i regret, i regret regretting them with so much severity.
[six] i regret the fact that i used to hate my pale skin, my asymmetrical smile, my vikinglike physique, my grey eyes, my diminutive stature. i should not have hated these things, because they're pretty cute.
[seven] i regret all of the words that i never wrote.
[eight] most of all, i regret the time that i could have given to Jesus Christ and did not.
