sincerely, me

I am usually a pretty cautious person. I look both ways a few times before I turn left. I consider the consequences of doing something before I do it. I think way too much. In an episode of How I Met Your Mother Barney tells Ted to stop thinking and to start doing. Of course, he meant it in a perverted way, but the point is still valid. Maybe that's not being brave. Maybe you have to think about it. Maybe you have to consider not doing it. Maybe being brave is thinking that you can't do it, and then doing it anyway. Maybe doing instead of thinking isn't brave but fearless. Still, I think sometimes I'd be better off if I could do rather than think. But I'm not brave enough to do. I'm not even brave enough to say what I want to say. I can't stop thinking about what would happen. What if they laugh at me? What if they say no? What if he rejects me? Sometimes I think of life in terms of old high school movies. A particular scene comes to mind from Never Bee...

I asked my mom once for advice on how to handle my new crush on a friend. I was afraid that if I told him what I felt, he would tell me he didn't feel the same way. He would tell me he didn't want to be my friend anymore. But that's exactly what she told me to do. She said to ask him out for coffee and to tell him I kinda liked him. I said, Uh, no way, Mom. No, no, no, no, no. No. I am heartbroken. Just so you know, it is very possible to have your heart broken and yet never have given to any one person. Because I never have. My mom told me I am afraid to let people in. As you might guess, that shocked me to my very core. Not. What shocked me was that she had noticed. It must be pretty obvious if someone I've lived with for, collectively, maybe two years out of the past ten had noticed. What I've done instead is read all about love and watch my favorite characters fall in it. I was there, rooting for Chandler and Monica's unexpected romance, and slapping...

I hear that so often, how can it not be true? And when has life ever proven everybody wrong? Or just me? Maybe to be fair means something different than what we always wanted it to mean, what it must mean for that phrase, that Life is not fair, to be what it is. The last word. Maybe meant to make us feel better. Because Life is not fair, not Life isn't fair for you. Maybe to be fair means life has to be evenly balanced. An orphan is accepted into Julliard and given a full scholarship. A well-off socialite is convicted of a DWI and given jail time. Even, balanced, with equal measures of incredible, mundane, and awful thrown in. If that's it, life is fair. But let's assume for a moment that we've all had it right all along. Life is not fair. So I shouldn't be surprised when it isn't, should I. When everybody else seems to have everything, and I struggle to remember that I don't have nothing. When I have to remind myself, constantly, that it'll get be...