Maybe it was the superficial love I used to be attracted too. In love with the idea of the person, not the person. In love with the idea of being someone’s, anyone’s number one.
Not to say the boys I have been with aren’t special to me, because they are; they always will be. But, I’ve just never felt the way I do now about anyone. I didn’t know I could.
I never understood what people meant when they talked about being in love with someone. When they said they would want to spend all their time with their partner. When their partner would do something so unattractive and they would still be so in love with that person. I always kind of either thought they were faking it or it was something that grows over a lot time.
I understand now.
If I could, I would give everything to this boy.
All we’ve ever been was close friends, but I don’t mind.
I never wanted to lose him. Just being friends was enough for me.
That’s the worst part of it all; we don’t talk as much anymore.
It hurts the most when I know he can see what I said, but doesn’t respond.
It hurts the most when he made me call him when I got home, so he knew I was safe, won’t respond to a stupid message.
I just want to know he still cares about me.
Even when we live hours apart, I want to know he would still see me if he could.
My go-to response to something like this is usually to get angry and cut him off. I say “he isn’t shit” or “screw him” but, I could never be mad at this boy.
“i’d probably still adore you with your hands around my neck”
It seems as if, no matter how much I try to hold on to something, I can’t. I don’t even have time to wrap my head around anything.
Everything is moving faster than me and I can’t seem to hold onto the present. Right when I start to settle in, everything changes.
I got used to letting everything slip through my fingertips, until I met you. When I met you, I finally felt as if I could hold onto something.
But, I was wrong.
I should have known that I couldn’t hold onto anything, let alone you, but I was young and foolish.
Photo Credit: Pinterest.com
I got used to your arms. I thought they would hold me in the present my whole life.
Then, one day they were ripped away faster than I could blink. The one place that I truly felt safe was taken away. It hurt and was scary. I thought it could never get worse, until I realized you meant more to me than I could have ever meant to you. I seemed to be something that you wanted to forget and you wanted to erase me.
You ripped me apart and made me feel lower than I could have ever imaged, but I had my best friend.
At least, that’s what I thought, until she found a new boy who was better than me.
Then, I lost another close friend. It felt as if he dropped off the face of the earth. He never texted me and I never even saw or heard anything about him, until he was on my friend’s story. This friend thought we had drifted apart and no longer wanted to be my friend as well.
So, I laid in my bed all day with nothing to do and no one to do nothing with.
All my friends did things with their summers, they posted it, too. I watched them have fun and get tan as I laid in bed and let the present fully slip from my grasp.
Now, I have to grow up, vote, apply to college, and survive my senior year. I have to do this while faking to everyone I have a grip on the present and present myself as put-together.
I’ve slipped like this before and somehow I was able to make it out, but sometimes it really seems impossible without you.
Why wasn’t I enough for you?
Why did you let me slip?
Why wouldn’t you let me make things okay?
Why should I try to make things okay when you’re the one who fucked it up?
So many things I want no one to know, but I want everyone to know at the same time. I want to scream them out into the void and have someone find my words and listen. A complete stranger, one who won’t judge me, though, I wouldn’t really care if they did.
I have so many things I want to write out. Emotions, frustrations… life. But, I can’t formulate the words to say to the people I want to listen, nor can I figure out how to write them on here.
So, I bought a journal. A small, leather journal that I write all my thoughts into.
I tried journaling a number of times in the past, but it only lasted two days maximum. Now, I can’t put my journal down. I write and write, sometimes words of gibberish, but they fill pages of my thoughts, pouring out of the pencil and onto the lined pages.
Now, I make sure to grab my journal and pen every night before I go to bed and I write. I write until my fingers feel numb and the lead wears down.
I guess it feels nice having an outlet to express myself. One that feels like I’m talking to many, when, in reality, I’m the only one who gets to read it. It makes me feel safe and exposed all at once, a type of feeling I never thought would be so rejuvenating.
When I say I miss you, it’s not you that I miss. I just miss the memories and I miss what we had. I miss the beach and Mongolian BBQ. I miss all the things I will never experience again.
Photo Credit: art-en-provence.com
When I say I want you back, you have to understand I don’t want who you are now. I want who you used to be and the way we used to be.
When I say I love you, I hope you know I am not in love with you anymore. I just have love for you. I want the best for you and hope you’re happy, but I don’t look at you and become filled with happiness and love anymore.
I hate when I hear bad things about you. I hate to see you struggling with something, but most of all I hate that we don’t even smile at each other anymore.
I will always care, even if I don’t want to be with you.
I could never say any of this out loud to anyone, so I hope you read this and know who you are. Maybe, one day, we could go back to that beach and be happy again.
Sixty-six thousand dogs and twenty-one thousand cats are used for testing makeup, pharmaceutical drugs, carcinogens, and much more. Within this testing, animals are burnt, abused, and even killed. Many pregnant animals are slaughtered so their fetuses can be used for testing.
Many ranchers use the cheapest ways to kill animals, such as electrocution or injecting them with insecticides, which take around three minutes of pain before the animal will die.
Footage of leading fur producing industries showed the animals being slammed against the floor to stun them and them being skinned alive.
A beef company in Texas was reported twenty-three times for cutting the hooves off of live cattle. No notifications to stop or police punishments where placed upon the company.
Videos of the slaughter house which supplies KFC with its chickens were released showing employees slamming the birds against walls, stomping on them, and kicking them. They twisted the chickens heads off, ripped of their beaks, and pulled them in half, all while the birds were still alive.
An employe from Butterball slaughterhouse in Arkansas was shown punching and stomping turkeys, slamming them against walls, crushing the bird’s skulls, and bashing them on metal handrails. All of this was done to the turkeys while they were still alive.
Animals in fur farms are kept in extremely small cages and are killed around the age of six months. The animals are kept in extremely cold conditions, so they will grow the thickest coats as possible. Many of them freeze to death, yet the industry couldn’t care less, because the fur can still be used.
The shark fin soup business kills over one hundred million sharks per year. When the sharks are caught, fishermen just cut of the fins and throw the shark back into the ocean. Without fins, the shark is unable to swim and will sink to the bottom of the sea, dying a slow, painful death.
The Humane Society of the United States discovered police officers in uniform betting on animal fighting in Kentucky.
Over 2.7 million cats and dogs are euthanized in the US due to the lack of space in shelters.
These are few of the many injustices and cruelties that animals face.
Ignorance is bliss, but ignorance won’t change anything.
In order to help, adopt animals from shelters instead of breeders or puppy mills, buy products that are not tested on animals, stay away from purchasing leather or fur.
There are many more ways to help end animal cruelty; for more, visit:
I suppose there’s something sort of compelling about them, being a glorified, rebellious accessory of sorts.
I used to love the smell of smoke. It reminded me of when I was younger.
Now I never trust anyone who likes cigarettes. Cigarettes kill people.
They do it slowly, squeezing the air out of your lungs little by little, until one day, you can’t breathe at all. They burn holes in your throat and melt your skin, but, at that point, you’ve grown so used to the feeling that you’re convinced it makes you feel better.
In the beginning, before it becomes a problem, you can still decide when you want to smoke. You know it’s addicting, but you tell yourself you’d never let it go that far.
But, after a while, when your first urge after you wake up is to go outside and smoke or when a meal never feels complete until you’ve finished a cigarette- that’s when you really have no control at all.
Cigarettes kill and if you still smoke that either means you just don’t care or you live under the false pretense that young people are invincible. Either way, you’re foolish.
Maybe I’m wrong. I probably shouldn’t be so judgmental.
But, there are plenty of other ways to be fascinating.
In middle school, I was in a friend group with all girls and sometimes I think that was the happiest I’ve ever felt and sometimes I think those were the best friends I’ve ever had.
We did everything together: went to Palm Springs, got ready for stupid dances, cried together, more often laughed together, and sang together.
Everything we could do together, we did.
I remember being so sad when they graduated and went off to high school because I was left behind without the people I have grown so close to. I was also sad because I knew that we would never be as close as we used to be. I was right.
After middle school, some of us went to public school, some of us went to the expected high school, some of us started at the expected high school and switched, and one of us didn’t even go to high school in the same town.
Fast forward three years, I am a sophomore and they are juniors. I knew we would be different, but not this different.
Don’t get me wrong, change isn’t always a bad thing. It’s just different, and, more than usual lately, it’s been scaring me.
I don’t want to lose my people, but sometimes i’m afraid I’ve already lost them .
Sometimes I worry about them a lot and sometimes a little less.
Sometimes I get sad when I hear one of them did something big I had no idea about.
Sometimes I make myself so nervous I start shaking.
Sometimes I realize how selfish I am, but, sometimes, most of the time, it all comes down to: I wish that in a room full of people, we would still go to each other first.
Isn’t it ironic how, being so far away from home, I have never before felt closer to my country?
9,338 kilometers, to be exact. That’s how far away my childhood home is. My best friend, my room, my horses, the forest by my house. I haven’t looked back a lot in the past years; I don’t really miss it all that much. But, from time to time, I wonder how my life would be if I had never left Germany.
Photo Credit: mapio.net
How would it be if I would still come home every day to my dog barking and my mom talking on the phone? How would it be if we still had our family dinners every day, with the good, old German Wagenradbrot and Kochkäse. If we still went to the Biergarten after spending all afternoon at the barn; then, we would walk home, probably fight a little bit as usual; and, then, watch some sort of wildlife documentary together because we couldn’t agree on a movie we all liked. What if I still woke up to my dad feeding my dog every morning and the rain bouncing against my blinds?
I’ve realized that this part of my life is over. I haven’t spent my birthday at home since I was thirteen. My siblings are both legal adults now and go to college in California. Next year, I will too, and I will leave another home. That is okay, though, that’s how it goes. But, there isn’t a single day I don’t feel as if I owe an apology to my parents: for taking their daughter away from home too early.
OVS Journalism Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.