Bend & Snap

May 6 2015

The moments. The ones when we are sitting on beds and laying on floors or fields, listening to music and absorbing each other’s presence, and the presence of the universe. Talking about, thinking about, and dreaming about what it’s like to be in love. And realizing that friends change and people change and the person you love when you’re 16 won’t be the same person they are when they’re 21. And you won’t want the same qualities in someone when you’re 16 as you do when you’re 21. And we dream about, and think about, and talk about the concepts and ideas and feelings of love. While love is changing, and we’re changing within and without love. And love is all around us. Love is in the sunsets and the stars and the moon. In the early morning coffee, and the friends that stay all night so you’re not home alone. Love is in those sitting on beds and laying in floors and fields. Love is in the music you hear when you’re going through large events or small events that become the most important memories. We don’t need to be searching for love or thinking about it because we are love. We are the love that the soul the world provides for us. Love is within you and without you.

us ,

High school consisted of us. We were the girls that everyone hated and pretended to love, or loved and pretended to hate. We didn’t care about what they thought about us because we were doing what we loved and life was loving us back. They were our friends when they needed something: people to party, a place to sleep, or someone to sleep with. And we loved them. We loved everyone. We loved everyone when the sun went behind the mountains and there was too much blood in our vodka system. We became the girls that our parents warned us about. The night was always young. Sitting out sunroofs to feel the bite of the cold mountain air, running under the streetlights topless, dancing and screaming and singing on tables, taking hits, getting hit on, and doing everything because we could. Sleeping at parks, in cars, on couches in stranger’s basements, in stranger’s beds, with strangers. The strangers that became less strange when the sun came up and we had to roll out of bed, and put on our pants, and wipe off our smeared makeup. And when we got bored, we left. No reason to stay is a good reason to go. We would pack up our bags and head for the sea. They would say that we’re crazy, but it didn’t matter because we were, and we had always been. We would do anything to get away from the problems of reality and sit with our toes buried in the sand. 17 hours of Ke$ha and Beatles, changing drivers and fighting over shotgun, red bull and talking. Talking about what had happened and what was next, and how small we are but how big we feel. And when there wasn’t talking there was sleeping, and silence, with nothing but the Lumineers playing and me thinking as I drove through Arizona, in a car with the people I loved the most, driving for the west coast, the best coast. We only had two rules: no being sober, and no being a bitch. Whenever the first rule was broken, the second was usually too. And we met strangers there as well. Other kids in our hotel who wanted to get away from their chaperones, kids who were too afraid to step out of their comfort zones, and kids who didn’t believe in comfort. We firmly believed that we were limitless. The limits came back as we crossed the Colorado border, coming back to parents and school and the people who thought we were too insane to survive. And the people that hated us when we left, hated us even more when we came back, and we didn’t care. We didn’t care because we were wildly in love with our crazy, beautiful lives. And we continued to dance and scream and sing.