17 things I learned by 17

1. Pay attention when someone is telling you something, it's important to make people feel important. 

2. Talking about people only makes you look bad. 

3. Friends won't always be there for you, and sometimes they suck. 

4. The best thing you can do is be the best friend you can be, even if they do suck. 

5. Your mom knows what she is talking about, she has been hurt too. 

6. Your dad won't tell you that the world has hurt him, but if he does listen to him. 

7. Things happen to you that will change who you are, but always be happy. 

8. Never be nervous to meet someone. 

9. Bad things happen to good people, but that doesn't mean life is worthless. 

10. The church is true. 

11. Always be nice first. 

12.  Being in nature is always a good idea. 

13. High school is suppose to be fun, that doesn't mean it's easy. 

14. Someone always has something they need to talk about, listen. 

15. Don't tell someone else's secret. 

16. Don't do something you don't want people to find out about. 

17. Be a good human. 

You are human

You are human. 

You are lungs, & a heart that beats for someone else. 

You are the time you learned how to ride a bike & the time you fell off. 

You are the time your mom told you everything would be okay, & time that it wasn't. 

You are your favorite color & favorite tree. 

You are the smiles, the tears, & the I don't know if I can do it. 

but you are human, & you are so much more. 

Different

I think we all started out as a blank canvas.
But as we grew and stretched, and crashed and burned,
things got a little different.
Because I have a scar on my elbow from when i was 5, and him a scar on his heart from when he was 15.
& my eyes are blue & his are brown but when the sun hits them, they're gold.
My favorite color is pink, but when I was little I asked my mom what her favorite color was, & she said purple.
I tried to change mine to purple too but I don't think it works that way.
I think we have all been through something that has changed us, some more than others.
But that is what makes us different.

falling

In the dark, I found you.

Torn apart by your friends decision & a girl who just couldn't make one.

I found you just in time before the dark took me too. 

& it was innocent at first, until the day you ran out of gas & me out of excuses. 

Everyone saw it coming except for us,

& that was the beauty of it.

One day the darkness faded,

Because you, you were light.

I don't know if it was in the way you made me  smile, or how you told me everything would be okay.

It might have been the way you would tell me I was cute every chance you got.

But maybe, just maybe, it was the way you made me feel, make me feel every day.

Light in my heart so bright it shined through my eyes, and into yours. 

Slowly & then all at once we  f

                                                   e

                                                      l

                                                         l. 

Not back into darkness,

But into love. 

240 days

It happened when I was just 13 years old.
The I will always love you's came and so did the pain.
& my dad left, and my mom never cried,
I'm still deciding when to stop.
Maybe it was because I was stuck.
Because the oldest, well he was four states away, & he saw it coming.
The next brother had his own internal battle, that he is still fighting.
& the next boy screamed the f word and walked out the door,
he came back, but he was never the same.
& me stuck.

Things got better, the pain dulled.
My mom met someone a couple years later.
I personally thought his biceps were a little too big & his heart, a little too small.
But the backyard wedding still happened, and then eventually she left too.

& here I am 8 months from 18 and still stuck.
A custody battle over a 17 year old girl, who just wants to be left alone.
But its all about the money, I mean me.

Maybe I'm just bitter, or maybe I'm just waiting to be unstuck.

I have a problem with crayons.

I've always had a problem with crayons because of the skin color options they gave you. Tan & desert sand were really your only options. Never realistic & that made me upset. But maybe my first mistake was trying to be realistic. Or maybe my mistake was that I had more than one problem with crayons. 

I have a problem with the way the crayons break so easily. Your concentration can really be broken, when the crayon breaks in half. 

I have problem with when you lift your crayon up after a while there is an extra dot of wax on the page, making your perfectly blended flower, a little blotchy. 

I have a problem with the kid next to me who had a 120 pack of crayons & a sharpener, when mine was only 64.

I have problem with the way my crayons were taken away a little too soon, because I never learned that if you mixed tan and desert sand you got the perfect skin tone. 
Because I never learned that crayons can be melted back together.
Because I never learned that a blotchy flower shows how much that flower has endured. 
Because I never learned that sharing is caring. 
Because I never learned the potential crayons had, and the potential I had. 
Because I'm still a little bitter my mom took my crayons away. 

Maybe my problem came from wanting to be the piece of paper, rather than the one

crayon.

I remember, do you?

I remember the day you told me you loved me in November & then i remember you walking away.  I remember that scaring me because of the rain that fell from my eyes & from the sky, because that was the first time they hit the floor over a boy.
I remember writing about you in December, & about how I missed you in the afternoon when I was busy. I remember that scaring me because of the storm in my chest that never seems to go away.
Sometimes I still get the chills.
I remember you telling me you missed me in January & that the numbers on the calendars were our biggest enemy.
Because you were just a little too late.
& I remember the absence of you in February because it was all just a little too much.
& I remember the absence of you in everything I did, until the day in September when you said "here"
& I hugged you and told you that i loved you.
But my thigh still twitched from the absence of your hand.
Because I know that November will still come, and the rain will still hit the floor.
& December will come around
But i'm still a little bitter about the last storm.
& maybe sometime soon, I won't miss you in the afternoon.

I take my hat off to you

I met this boy who saw my hat and threw it out the window.

He showed me that all hats can be taken off, even though I had worn mine my whole life, and it was on just a little too tight. 

To be quite honest I didn't even know I was wearing that hat, until I saw the hat on other girls who just couldn't seem to look in the mirror.

I realized that all hats are beautiful.

That all hats fit someone just right.

& the hat I was wearing had years of "you can't wear that" & "put some makeup on" 

& that boy showed me the beauty in nature.

& the definition of natural beauty. 

But that boy left and I found my old hat.

It didn't fit like it used too.

So i'm not bitter that boy left, because he showed me the beauty in any hat I put on. 

He showed me the beauty inside me.