All that glitters is not gold.

I think I might be little bit of a perpetually-nostalgic person just by nature, but sometimes, nostalgia slips into my house and tip-toes through my bedroom door and climbs into my bed with me and we stay there for days, under my covers, nostalgia and I.


I don't mean to. I don't like to, really, but it just happens.


Today, nostalgia and I found a lot of old notes and we cried. There was one from Matt Pockrus where he used the wrong form of their/they're/there, and I had scribbled all over it in red pen, and now I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd have left his improper "there" untouched and kept it forever. (Also in that note, Matt said, "You should get a boyfriend.") There's a note from Avery with a picture of a giraffe that says, "Here is a giraffe for you. Because I love you this much." There's a series of notes from Emily Luse, her crinkled cursive, and when I read through them I relived the too-short handful months we had together. Her car didn't used to lock, ha, I remember that.


And I liked summer a lot. I liked August a lot. I liked Kaitlyn's van and how The Fountainhead brought us Kyle and Matt. I liked how late it got. I liked the way everything felt like we were getting away with murder, but not, obviously, because this simile doesn't make any sense like I meant it to. I liked riding bikes and taking pictures and everything was easy. I liked how we were freckled, tanned and kissed and full and musical and alive.


But I'm pale as ever again, and I have to wear real shoes now, and I don't get any notes in typewriter-handwriting from boys, and I don't control the universe of my math class with Madison. I don't control the universe, not any universe. And then college and Ukraine and Italy and New Jersey and Florida and then I thought I felt it back then, and I wrote about wishing for quality in my motions, and I've tried, but I'm feeling it now. Again. I'm feeling it all now again.


I'm going to have gray hair soon, and no one will pick me up and carry me around and I won't get notes from anyone at all soon and I can't even think about where I'm heading, so I'm trying to embrace what I've got: Golden years. Golden years. Golden years.


Who knew?


I guess I get stuck here with nostalgia because I know where I've been, but I don't know where I'm going. It scares me, because the future isn't predictable, even I know that, with my horoscopes and fortune cookies, I know I can't predict the future. I can't even predict the weather. But I look at where I've been and who I was, and how I became who I am, and the people that got me there, and the way they shape their capital "I"s and their haircuts (or lack thereof), and I remember how I got here. I can't believe it's been a year since... this.


If you need me tonight, I'll be under the covers crying lavender tears with nostalgia. We'll wake up tomorrow, just give us one night, and I'll give nostalgia its suitcase and kiss its cheeks and thank it for its time: I will tell nostalgia that I can't stay stuck there under the covers crying lavender tears forever, it's almost May, I have things to do, thank you very much.


It's almost May, I have things to do, thank you very much, it's almost May.


"And, as I always say, "If it ain't baroque, don't fix it!""
All my love,
Addy

Should we be silent and not speak?

*I really honestly do not have words right now. All of this just stumbled from my fingers and I couldn't stop it. It's a bit of a mess, and I apologize, but also I don't apologize. 

Anyway.*

I don't have words anymore. I just have thoughts and ideas and things to say without thinking, but it only seems to come out as someone else's words. Or just comes out as my words, but they're dumb and awful and exhausting.

I'm not the person I was, and you are not the person you were, and my mom is not the person she was forty years ago today.

And I don't know what it's like to be dry-eyed anymore. I don't know what it's like to be free from my own head and free from my own chains. I know that I'm far from grown up, but I'm somewhere, aren't I? I know I still talk without thinking and procrastinate better than I prepare and care too much what everyone else thinks, but I'm something else, maybe.

And nothing seems to stay inside me anymore. I feel awful when my Complete Works gets handled more than my bible, but I sometimes think they're almost parallel and that's awful blasphemous for me to voice that thought, don't you think?

I wish I had the words for the way I would've looked had you dissected me one year ago.

I'm scared of the things we've let go of -- are you? I'm scared of the things we've grabbed hold of, but they're better things than the things we let go of -- obviously, because we let go of them -- but I'm still here standing naked, "taking guesses at the actual date and time."

I want to be bloody brilliant, like you are bloody brilliant, but I keep getting distracted, and I keep writing things even though they seem to turn out like this.

I'm running thin, but running so fast, and I just keep quoting Imogen and screaming to you, screaming "Here is my heart" and I'm terrified.

But you're here. You're here with me. And sometimes, you are so beautiful that it hurts. And I love you so much. That's the only thing that hasn't changed, yeah? Yeah, everybody? Yeah? 

You are good cats, everybody.

We're still just us. We talked like it was a foreign language -- because it almost was -- and then "best friends" wasn't a lie, and I guess that even though we lost pieces of us, we figured out a whole lot more and that's just crazy.

That's crazy.

I have Coriolanus in my head and Othello behind my eyes and Titus Andronicus at my fingertips, and I'm screaming the facts of Will in my sleep.

All my love,

Addy