Grace.

I'm in Minnesota until January 3rd, visiting friends and spending time with family. If my blog could dance, I'd ask it to do a jig for you while I'm gone.

But it can't, because it's just a blog. And I am just one human. With a blog. That can't dance.

Shake it down.

I assume that all the stores are closed because there are no cars on the roads. I can't be sure because I haven't gotten out of my pajamas yet (or put on a bra, for that matter). And it's 2:00 PM.

I have managed to take a picture of my mom's and dad's lonely sock collection. Like lonely Jews on Christmas, they hang around the house, waiting for something exciting to happen.

That's me, the exciting thing. I took pitty on these guys and gave some of them dates. Others weren't so lucky.

The ones that didn't get dates were thrown back into the hamper, to be washed an untold number of times more.

I then baked a couple of batches of cookies, while my laundry swirled around in the washer, shirts mingling with friendly pants, underwear discussing the latest gossip about where its been.

Here's half of what I baked.

Even my roommate's cats have each other.

I hope whoever is reading this isn't lonely on Christmas, even if you're spending the day by yourself.

I've been reading a book called Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman.

Amazing book. Nothing about it makes me want to vomit, which is really the ultimate sign that the book should at least be skimmed.

I'm not really alone. My brother is in town, and I've spent most of the weekend at my parents' house. So, I'm not whining.

I hope you're all well.

I used to love standing at the big window in your apartment, looking down at the snow-covered world from the thirty-second floor. I’d watch the lines of red and yellow lights, barely moving down 94, as I stood at the cold glass, wrapped up in warmth. The smell of your cooking wafted in from the kitchen, and you’d have your favorite singer blaring through the speakers in a language I didn’t understand. But I saw how it affected you, and it added to the twilight blizzard.

You’d serve homemade fries with chutney, kofta and rice with nan. Your hands sprang from chopping cilantro to washing the cutting board like you had done it since you were a child; feminine traditions made masculine by how sure each gesture was, how absolutely certain, wet forearms glistening, how you’d let me sit in the dining room and watch you do the work. Like a hungry child you’d found on the street in a Dickens novel, you fed me and made me feel safe.

We’d sit on the perch above the snowy, freezing world, gazing at the life outside we were safely avoiding for the moment, and I never questioned what I was doing there.

It made perfect sense to me, the way your hands knew their way around each [serrated] edge, each crevice of a drawer, each plump curve…of cellophaned ground beef. I loved watching you, tasting what you’d worked so diligently preparing.

And when I’d had enough, you set me free into the cold world outside, cleaned up after me… and I never looked back.

More...

More still...

Relationships with a capitol R. I wonder what the point is sometimes. I used to jump head first into committed, standard relationships. Even the ones that weren’t standard were standard.

I now wonder why I felt the need for them—and why I don’t know anymore if I miss them. I used to love the idea that someone was waiting for me at home, even if I was bored to tears with him. I used to like the predictability of him watching basketball and spending hours on the phone with his family and friends, yelling in the next room. I got used to having to put my book away and turn the lights out at 10 PM; I found that I had a bedtime as an adult, and I never did as a child.

I got used to family politics, what I could say to his mom, and what was off-limits. I could tiptoe around family faux pas, shopping trips, vacations. I learned how to manage my life as if it was a blow that was dealt me—and I started hating it and him. And me. I had become boring. I’m not sure if I’d be friends with the old me, and I’m not sure if I’d be friends with him all over again.

I have a distinct feeling now that I can only really depend on myself. I leaned on him for everything: forcing me to go to the doctor, dealing with cell phone companies, booking plane tickets, making returns at stores, signing leases and contracts. I think he was live-in counsel, comfort. He was built-in support, like built-in shelving.

When things ended, I didn’t miss him the way I’ve missed other men—I didn’t miss the friendship. And I think that’s a travesty. I’ve thought about what it implies, how I could’ve deceived myself into thinking of him as my best friend, when I can’t even remember his phone number half a year later.

It wasn’t him—it was me. I should have had the strength to follow through with what I had been feeling for a long time. I was a coward.

To say that there’s someone out there for him, someone perfect, is such a cliché. The very subject bores me.

I now find myself doubting everything I always relied on as Truth. Just because a person picks up your prescription at the pharmacy doesn’t mean that he fills the emptiness you still feel. And when you think of him with a dull aching, a sort of disappointed bluntness, then maybe you shouldn’t spend another day with him.

A true friend will be missed, and they’ll be cherished. You’ll make cookies for them because it makes you happy to do something nice for them. You’ll wash their dirty dishes and pick up after their guests. You’ll worry about giving them enough space, and you’ll want them to be exactly who they are, even if it means that they’re hurting themselves in the long run. You’ll let them make their own mistakes, follow their own paths, feel what they need to feel. You’ll let them walk all over you. You’ll love them for every imperfection that everyone else picks up on.

I know. You’re still hung up on “you’ll let them walk all over you.” Well, get over it. It’s the same thing as the stupid phrase, “No man is worth your tears, and the one who is will never make you cry.” There are people out there who are worth your tears. Their presence in your life may have been very brief, but years later you still think of them, and you remember every detail about them—the way their hair smelled in the morning, the shape of their fingernails, their phone number. Some people leave imprints on your life, and some people maim you and scar you until you’re no longer recognizable. But you still love them. And you love who you became because of them. So you cry, and you laugh while you’re crying, because you cherish every moment you got to spend with them. You’re grateful for the chances you had to do nice things for them when they didn’t even ask you to.

There are two ways to love someone: the way they want you to, and the only way you know how. Most of the time, you won’t love your partner the way that they love you. I’ve been thinking about the phrase, “If you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with.” What if you can be with the one you love, but they don’t love you back? What if it’s totally one-sided?

It’s probably torture, on some level. But it’s so damn Real. And it makes you feel alive, to love someone, to take care of them the only way you can, to nurture who they want to become—even if it means that they won’t stay with you forever.

Which brings me back to my original point: Relationships guarantee nothing. And they don’t define anything either. They spell out rules, and rules don’t take into account how much you care about someone, or how much you want to see them happy, even if it means that they’d be happier without you. Relationships imply a certain amount of selfishness. They’re about branding a person as mine and about setting boundaries for their behavior. They’re about forcing a person into a framework and controlling them so that you feel better, less jealous perhaps, more secure, more needed, more settled. On some level, Relationships are about suffocating a person just enough to deflate them and their spirit, so that you can pull them in closer to you.

So why not relationships with a lower-case “r”?

Because maybe you want the person to take responsibility for maiming you, for making you feel certain things, for leaving you so vulnerable, so unable to take care of yourself. So that when you don’t feel like following the rules, you’re reminded that human nature must be reigned in once in a while and that desires must be quelled.

I’ve heard of marriage defined as a “rising above animal nature.” It’s about giving in, and never giving up. It’s about breaking your own will and giving up your own selfish desires for the other person. It’s about making the other person happy before yourself.

I went to my best friend’s church to check out an art show and I found a quote that night: “Marriage is a beautiful paradox in the broken world we live in.”

The perfect marriage is spelled with the smallest “m” possible. Like maybe even a negative font size… in Times New Roman, of course.

I see women on the metro wearing gianormous diamond rings. And I see that their Marriages will have "Ms" as big as the "M" in the word Me. I also see women with the thinnest gold bands...so thin, you could crush the circle between your thumb and forefinger. And these women make me smile. 

Why?

Because the desire to lay yourself down for the one that you love will guide you through everything. Through every fight, every impasse, every daily compromise. The ring you wear has nothing to do with the reality of daily life.

Marriage is the desire to care for someone the way you don’t even care for yourself.

There are no guarantees. No ring will fix how you feel when, one day, you wake up and wonder, “Who is this person sleeping in bed next to me? Who is this stranger?” And you might not recognize them as your spouse.

The scariest part is when you wake up, and you look at the person and you see yourself, just like looking into a mirror. And you still say, “Who is this stranger?”

I used to think that marriage was about curbing your own animal desires in order to grow inwards towards your spouse. I used to think that you shouldn’t wake up one morning and say, “I’d like to move to Shanghai,” and that you shouldn’t drag your spouse with you, uprooting them against their wishes. Now, I don’t think of marriage as a growing inwards, but rather, a growing outwards, even at the risk of growing apart. That’s the only way that marriage even has a chance of surviving.

The old ways that marriage kept people prisoners no longer exist. Women can take care of themselves financially, and their husbands. Women can have children without men. Women can find fulfillment and joy without the presence of men. Societal restrictions no longer require unhappy couples to stay together “for the sake of the children.”

I realize this is sort of all over the place, but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I think I believe in arriage again.

No, that’s not a typo. That’s the smallest “m” in the world. It’s the kind of marriage that doesn’t have a gift shower, a fall wedding, or even a ring ceremony. All it has is the greatest, most freeing love that I know how to give… and no groom. Yet.

Definition: One who neglects his or her blog for days and shows no remorse.

Connotation: Negative; used in a derogative manner to draw attention to an otherwise fruitful blogger who has been massively slacking lately in blog upkeep.

Etymology: The first use of this word was recorded right here, today. Small cheer for everyone who witnessed this small burp in the history of language. No doubt, this word will be used for all of eternity henceforth.

Pronunciation Key: Too lazy for this part. Figure it out yourself.

Example of Word Being Used in Sentence: I'd rather not. I'm busy eating sweets and reading jpost.com.

I know a dog that’s tiny. Her name is Gumball. It might be some sort of strange breed of poodle, but it’s gray and could probably fit into a shoebox.

It squeaks, too. I kid you not. Like a mouse, but louder—it squeaks when it sees a person come to the door. What’s more? It pees too. Just a little bit. From excitement. And then she rolls over on her back and into the puddle, and I love her just a little bit more.

Every time I see this dog, I want to smother her with love in order to heal its leaky bladder and to calm its asthmatic-sounding squeaky goodness. It’s some sort of incarnated Hello Kitty in a dirty cotton ball, with the soul of a two year old girl. And I adore her. I felt that way the first time we met. I couldn’t even pretend to be aloof—I simply didn’t want to. If I’d had biscuits in my pockets, I would have given all of them to her at once; I wouldn’t have waited until she performed tricks. I would’ve just dump-trucked them into a pile on the floor and I would’ve lunged at her to rub her piss-soaked belly. Alas, I didn't come prepared and I had no biscuits in my pockets.

Some creatures have a way of breaking through your guard and you don’t even know how they do it. Humans have a way of doing the same. And they stay with you for the rest of your life, even when some of your emotions start turning away from burning warmth to bleeding hate—you’d still rub their wet bellies and feed them biscuits.

You don’t know how you started liking them in the first place. It just happened. And so you don’t know how to stop liking them, even when you know they’re no good for you.

The line between bleeding hate and Gumball-induced love is so fine that, at times, it doesn’t even exist.

**
Currently listening to Ray Lamontagne's Till The Sun Turns Black. He's quite possibly the most naturally talented song writer I've ever heard.

You know that feeling you get when you realize that whoever you’re talking to isn’t really listening? It’s sort of a mix of disappointment and the question you ask yourself: why do I even bother? Because they never listen, but you keep giving them second chances, and third, and fourth.

They get done venting about their day, gesticulation and all, and then, releasing a huff of air, they say, "So, how are you?" Maybe a plastic smile reveals some pearly whites. And you know, before you even begin recounting your day, that nothing you say at this point could interest them in the least.

But you start anyway, and by the time you reach the end of the first sentence, you hear yourself say, "I guess my day wasn’t as interesting as yours." And you slump your shoulders a little bit, but you can’t see that you’re doing it. You just know that you feel tiny and so insecure.

And you feel sort of embarrassed that you let someone squish you and grind you into dust.

**

I love the sound of a refrigerator starting. You’ll be lying on the couch in the living room, the sun streaming in through the windows, warming you up like a cat on the windowsill, and you’ll be pulling the throw up to your chin, exposing your feet. One foot rubs the other, you turn on your other side and bend your knees. Now, your backside is hanging off the couch, your face is to the back cushions, and you’re breathing your own recycled, humid breath, taking in as much oxygen from those warm exhalations as you can, breathing through your open mouth. Then, the fridge turns off and the kitchen clock starts ticking louder, and your breathing back moves up and down with the ticking seconds.

I love watching you sleep that way. The you that I haven’t met yet, the you I would love enough to get another blanket for so that your feet won’t be cold, the you who would surprise me by wrapping your arm through the inside of my thigh, pulling me towards you and then to further melt me into vanilla sugar, the you that would make room for me on the couch beside you. And now my face is up against the back of the couch, breathing upholstered air, and your warm stomach fits just right into the small of my back, and your lips brush up against my neck.

The clock tick-tocks and the fridge turns on again.

Neither of us are perfectly comfortable, limbs are starting to go numb, parts of me are boiling, other parts are freezing, your back is cramping up and your right sock has somehow turned around so that the heal is on the ankle, and I know how much you hate that. But neither of us move. The sun has shifted and leafy dying rays flow in through the windows. You whisper into my neck, "Where would you like to go for dinner?" And I stroke your forearm with my hand and answer after a few seconds, "Why don’t we stay in tonight? I’m happy here."

Half the Perfect World

Every night he’d come to me
I’d cook for him, I’d pour his tea
I was in my thirties then
Had made some money
Lived with men

We’d lay us down to give and get
Beneath the white mosquito net
And since no counting had begun
We lived a thousand years in one

The candles burned
The moon went down
The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love’s unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found

The candles burned
The moon went down
The polished hill
The milky town
Transparent, weightless, luminous
Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love’s unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found

I got the following email from my cousin yesterday:

"i met him on my way home from school yesterday!!!! too much, right?"

I don't know which is cuter--the actual picture or the fact that my cousin used the word "met" when referring to what looks like a Siberian Dwarf Hamster. To clarify, my cousin was not walking home from pre-school. She was walking home from grad school.

Also, I’m perplexed by what this hamster is doing outside (without the usual ball-bearing water bottle, kernels of corn in thimble-sized dish and peed-on-chewed-up toilet paper roll). I could be wrong about it being a hamster at all, so all of this worrying might be for nothing. If any of you can figure out what this creature is for sure, I’d love to know.

This cousin and I (I'll call her Betty to protect her anonymity—Betty being the least suitable name for someone with her type of non-conventional personality) have had a lifelong fascination with cute things. Of course, our opinions of what actually constitutes cute have changed over the years, and we haven't always seen eye to eye on the matter. For example, when we were in elementary school (or maybe junior high?), Betty got a pet rat named Benny. Benny had one of those hairless rat tails. I didn’t think it was particularly adorable. Alas, when Benny died from mysterious causes (the theory in our family was that he ate laundry soap because he was generally a free-range rat—that is, he was allowed to roam freely in the basement laundry room), I felt a great amount of sympathy for Betty and I understood the pain of her loss.

I wasn’t allowed to have pets bigger than a hamster. Dad didn’t want to have to deal with damaged furniture and scratched floors. Mom always said, “But we’re never home. I’d feel bad leaving a dog home alone for so long.” I settled for random small critters like Beta fish won in cake walks at school carnivals, and the injured, flee-infested squirrel I found one day in my backyard. (Yes, I brought it into the house.)

I was thrilled to baby sit my best friend’s and her little sister’s mice when they went on a family vacation for a week. I also remember that Kali-the-mouse (I can’t believe I remember the name) got really sick a few days later. Cruel fate waited to kill the mouse at the precise moment when Little Sister bounced through my front door, ran to the cage, and swooped the little puff up. Kali took a few more breathes, and then exhaled on her way to heaven, scarring my friend’s little sister for life.

I’m not sure if Kali was buried in my backyard with the rest of the random critters that happened to cross paths with my brother and me.

My brother lived in the basement during his high school days—it’s almost cliché, I know. We had a large oak tree in the backyard that was the perfect resting place for a fleet of black crows. Every morning as the sun came up, these crows would start squawking. Imagine the seagulls from Finding Nemo saying, “Mine, mine, mine,” and you’ll get the general sense of annoyance that my brother must have felt that fateful morning at 5-something AM. He was awoken by these birds, so he naturally climbed out of bed, went out to the backyard, and threw a stone at the tree to scare the birds off. “Success!” As Borat would say. The birds flew away.

Except they returned five minutes later.

Later in the morning, my brother got ready for school and stepped out the backdoor. There, under the oak tree, he found a dead crow and his rock lying side by side. This crow was buried in the backyard animal graveyard.

My brother and I did have hamsters. Siberian Dwarf Hamsters, to be exact, which is why Betty’s snapshot of the fuzzy critter brought back all of these memories. I used to love the smell of clean woodchips. I also used to like watching those little guys run around on their little wheels, and stuff ridiculous amounts of Cheerios behind their cheeks. We weren’t very creative with what we named the hamsters—they were all “Hammy.” One after another, as one died and was buried, another hamster took its place, sometimes with a “I” or “II” after the name, but they were referred to as just plain “Hammy.” It's sort of disturbing.

Throughout high school, my brother walked around with little holes in his T-shirts because he’d let these hamsters crawl on him while he sat on the couch reading, or while he sat at the computer. Generic Hammy had a tendency to burrow into the warmest spot available, and then would start chewing the nearest thing to its face, which was usually my brother’s math-related T-shirt.

These hamsters were also buried in the backyard pet cemetery.

I’ve gotten off-subject here. I was going to say why I love my cousin.

There were also random burials of road-kill animals. Our house was on a corner lot, and we lived by a busy street. As my Minnesota readers know, though, urban sprawl hasn’t yet found a solution for what to do with the suburban deer population. Or raccoons, for that matter. All sorts of animals were run over by cars, and either they would die on impact and be propelled onto our property, or they would be maimed and would crawl onto our land to die (or the nearest ditch), Dad was primarily responsible for burying these poor critters. I was usually the only “friend of the family” that would attend the funerals.

I now realize that this may seem a little bit odd, perhaps sort of Wednesday-ish from the Adam’s Family. Or maybe this story has a twinge of Harold and Maude. In any case, I was glad to know that Dad and I stepped up to the Miztvah (Hebrew for “act of loving kindness”) and gave these animals a thoughtful farewell.

Back to my cousin. Betty and I used to get drunk when her parents went out of town and would leave us home alone. We would do crazy things like play Boggle and put together jigsaw puzzles. Occasionally, we’d watch indie and foreign films, and then discuss them over liquor. Once, we really let lose and went “swimming” on the new hardwood floors throughout her family’s house. We’d lie on our backs and push off the walls with our feet, doing the backstroke with our arms.

I get to see Betty for New Year’s this year, and I can’t wait to see what we end up doing. Whatever it is, we certainly won’t be bored. Maybe we could go to a pet store... or the Humane Society.

My new home.

There's a lot I want to say, but I'm afraid because I don't want to be criticized. So, for now, I'll just say that I'm listening to Death Cab for Cutie. Here's my favorite song:

I Will Follow You Into The Dark

Love of mine some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles brusied by a lady in black
And I held my toungue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It's nothing to cry about
Cause we'll hold each other soon
The blackest of rooms

If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs

If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Then I'll follow you into the dark

Well?

Echo-echo-echo-oo-o.

Over the weekend, a friend from Minnesota came to visit me. We had a great time running around DC, but we decided to throw in some naturey things into the mix. These pictures are of Great Falls National Park. It's on the border of Maryland and Virginia, and the Potomac River serves as the divider. Pretty, isn't it?

Recently, someone from my college days has come back into my life. It’s odd because I’ve never been one to maintain ties with exes. There was a reason the break up happened in the first place, right? I’ve always found it easier to make a clean break and go “our own separate ways,” but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that people don’t fit into crisply-defined roles all the time.

For example, in the junior high dating scene, the most important element of having a boyfriend was being able to call someone a Boyfriend. With a capital B. It didn’t matter that the relationship consisted of passing notes to each other during social studies or being chauffeured to the movies by mom and dad. What mattered was being able to refer to this person by a well-defined title, perhaps as a signifier to everyone around that we were, in fact, receiving some sort of attention from the opposite sex, or that we were popular enough to be crush-objects.

I digress. This person (I’ll call him Jon) has come back into my life. Jon used to be the King of insisting on clean breaks. He couldn’t stand knowing that I was still in contact with exes, or that some of my male friends had formerly played somewhat ambiguous roles in my life. It drove him crazy to know that I had been in love before him, and wanted to live my own life while with him. It didn’t matter to him that as I had grown older (aka, grown out of the junior high mentality of clean labels for people), I could no longer force people out of my life because they didn’t fit a particular, well-defined role.

That’s not to say that I didn’t squeeze some people out of my life to appease this rather jealous boyfriend. In fact, I ditched way too many friends and acquaintances to keep his jealousy at bay. But I knew at the time that I was making a mistake in choosing to mollify the Man in my life, instead of nurturing my own sense of right and wrong.

Life just wasn’t black and white, as I saw it. In fact, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the gray tones of life, how much more difficult it is to navigate moody, ambiguous waters, instead of pretending that the water is clear, or tormenting people with the question: Why can’t you just see things the way that I do? This question is naïve and rather tragic. Anyway, I’ve come to see how much more rewarding life can be if it is approached diplomatically, and not autocratically, as if an iron fist of absolutism guides my decisions.

***
“I’m going to go pick out a plaque for your grandma,” My mom said to me this weekend. In Jewish tradition, there is something called the unveiling ceremony, which is normally held 11-12 months after a person’s passing. It’s where the headstone is “unveiled” at a ceremony once the bereavement period is over. One of the main ideas behind this tradition is that everyone is equal in death, and that there is no place for haughtiness, displays of wealth, or any other mortal displays of life status. That’s right, no crypts, vaults, buttressed marble arches, or any other fancy things.

Most Jewish cemeteries allow headstones. Traditionally, a Jewish headstone isn’t supposed to have a picture of the deceased, although modern Judaism and laser technology have allowed for photos to be engraved in marble or granite. The cemetery where my grandma is buried only allows a small plaque to be imbedded in the ground at the site of the grave. Uber-minimalist, I know.

“And to think that that’s all that’s left of her,” My mom said. “You live a long life, and then this is all that’s left.”

***

I have often thought about what difference a title makes. In the last six months, I’ve thought a lot about why so much emphasis is placed on shaping love within a given framework, or squeezing caring into a mold.

I’ve thought about how little those things matter in the end, and how much it means to have loved at all, free of whys or hows or what-fors. My grandma cared enough to bake banana bread and make Jell-O fruit cups. She kept a candy drawer of blue Brach’s mints, and bought clip-on earrings and imitation pearl necklaces from garage sales. She grew a jungle of plants that have survived her. To have done these things while thinking of others… it comforts me to know that my grandma loved me.

Because of this comfort, I don’t feel compelled to muse in the same way that my mom does. The bold, pastel memories grandma left me are enough, and because of this, the plaque will be enough too.

***

I wonder if Jon realizes that he is now one of those who I couldn’t let go of. That he knew me at a time in my life that I will never be able to forget, or want to forget. He took me to my high school prom. He was the last boyfriend who knew my paternal grandmother while she was alive, who actually got to taste her mashed potatoes, borscht and cheese blintzes. He helped me deal with my cousin’s suicide, with the hours that my dad was unaccounted for on September 11^th, with my parents’ move across the country and the sale of my childhood home. He knew who I was before.

To think that I could have lost this personal history if he had succeeded in changing me, molding me into who he wanted me to be.

I have a title for him—ex-boyfriend. But it doesn’t describe how much I loved him at one point, or how I know that he isn’t right for me. Titles don’t capture the intangibles, and it’s the intangibles that are worth remembering.

Respect yourself. Don't let people shit on you. That means don't let people give you advice. Like what I'm doing now.

No one knows what situation you're in exactly. They may think they have some clue, and they might, but they don't know what you're thinking, feeling, avoiding, praying for, dreading or needing completely. Face it. You don't even know what you need.

Don't worry about what people have to say about you. Stop worrying about society and public expectations.

You will be dead very soon, and you won't care what people think of you then.

If you live your life with self respect intact, you'll be able to respect those around you.

Ladies, don't suffocate your boyfriends.

Gentlemen, trust your girlfriends to make the right decisions when you're not watching.

It's that simple.

In the end, everyone will do whatever they want to do--threats, stomping of feet, slapping of faces, fists, fits and fights... these things don't help you control someone. They only prolong the inevitable.

Have some self respect and understand that you are doing the best that you can. If someone else says they can do it better, don't believe them. If someone else's life looks easier, simpler, or any other "er", then you don't see the full truth.

Nobody said that life was going to be easy. Don't expect it to be. But nobody said that life has to be serious all the time either. Enjoy yourself. Don't worry about how things will turn out in the end. No matter what, you'll be okay. Just don't do drugs or kill people. That never ends well.

Seek love. Learn to respect those you love, and respect yourself.