So look: There'd be this movie and they'd call it "All my Love, Addy" (runner up movie titles would be "Ashtanga With Addy: An At-Home Yoga Practice for Yogis Who Just Can't Get Enough: Yogi is the New Sexy" and "The Only Thing I've Ever Really Loved is Semi-Colons (and also my Family and Boys)").
The soundtrack (in no particular order) would be as follows:
1.) "Squealing Pigs" by Admiral Fallow
2.) "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers
3.) "Rivers and Roads" by The Head and The Heart
4.) "New Soul" by Yael Niem
5.) "Naive" by The Kooks
6.) "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend
7.) "Killin' It" by Krewella
8.) "Bad Karma" by Ida Maria
9.) "Blood" by The Middle East
10.) "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens
11.) "My Body" by Young the Giant
12.) "Sister Rosetta" by The Noisettes
13.) "Good Day" by Nappy Roots
14.) "Take Me or Leave Me" from Rent
15.) "Fluorescent Adolescent" by Arctic Monkeys
16.) "A Beautiful Mess" by Jason Mraz (This song is about me. No joke. Go look up the lyrics. Especially if you know me. It's about me.)
Here's the thing: I wish I could cast this movie or name this movie or even tell you a real soundtrack for this movie (all I was really doing up there was naming my favorite songs), but I can't. I wish I could name my Love Interest (Ryan Gosling (See what I did there?)) or tell you how it'd go, but I can't. I'm only 17 years old. I have my whole entire life ahead of me. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow until it happens, and then if we made my movie today, it'd be outdated and inaccurate by the end of tomorrow. "I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
I can't tell you about my movie, but I can tell you what I hope it will be, what I'm going to make it be, and something I can tell you is this: I'm going to be an English teacher, that's what I've finally figured out, because Shakespeare? He wrote with the beat of your heart.
William Shakespeare wrote because of your heartbeat, and that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
The Olympics in 1942 were in Berlin.
All my love,
Addy
I used to think you got to choose who you loved. Aside from your family, of course, because with your family, God just gives them to you and you have to love them, no matter what. But I thought that everybody else who came prancing through your life was a choice. I thought you got to say things like, "Eh, you're not that funny; I don't love you," or "I just don't think you're very interesting, so I don't love you," or "You are beautiful. I love you." But that isn't the way it works.
God just gives you people and you have to love them. No matter how much you try not to or just try and deny it, you can't. That's just not the way it works.
And your life is so full of people, some of them you love, some of them you less love, but you didn't get to decide that. That wasn't your choice, because you didn't mean to love that boy with the nice feet who sings out of the side of his mouth and shrugs his shoulders lot. Quite frankly, you said, "But he sucks!" and God said, "Too bad. Love him anyway." And you didn't mean to love blonde hair and blue eyes and new glasses, but she was so beautiful three years ago, and when she put things on paper, you didn't want to throw them away, and you've never stopped loving her, even when you denied it.
And he wields sarcasm like a lethal weapon; he can be a little daft sometimes, and you didn't mean to love him, but hats look nice on him, and his house always smells the same way, and two Decembers ago, in a thrift store, he proved he knew something about Emily Dickinson. There are times when you've looked at him and thought that you've literally never loved someone so much, which is crazy, but that's a real thing, you think.
And as much as you try to control who you love and who you less love, that's just not the way it works. God gave you Avery and Kaitlyn and Matt and Kyle and Benjamin and Morgan and Emily and Autumn and the rest of the gang and you never tried not to love them, but you never really made a conscious to love them. It just happened. That's just the way it works.
You don't get to choose who you love. That's how it works around here.
Passion fruit.
All my love,
Addy
