intimate.

what did that word even mean? she wondered. intimacy, how do you know when you are intimately with someone, how do you understand that the moment you are living in is a moment of intimacy?

she didn't mean intimacy in a sexual way, though the word commonly referred to moments such as those.

no, the word intimate meant so much more than the animalistic nature of simple sex.

the way she saw it, intimacy meant getting close and personal with someone, seeing the side of them they tried to keep hidden from the windows of the world.

I just got a new computer and i am in the mood to write and without microsoft word

This post is about self-respect.

As a child, i always respected my elders. Looking up to adults, understanding that those older than me were those wiser than me, that those who had had more time to grow were often those who had obtained more knowledge than me.

respect was always easy to give, it still is. Do something to impress me, be kind, be good, be intelligent, thoughtful, anything honestly, and you will probably earn my respect. it doesn't take much, but it must be significant.

however i never really put together the understanding that in order to gain respect you must give it; not only to other people, but most importantly, you must give respect to yourself.

why this has and is one of the most difficult things for me to grasp, i will never understand. I am a person deserving of respect, i know i am.

When i was younger, i always used to obsess about what things felt like. some of my favorite things to ponder were what did it feel like to be in a relationship, what did it feel like to hold hands with someone, to kiss someone, what did it feel like to have the word boyfriend come out of my mouth in a possessive tone of voice.

i still wonder about feelings, but now they are different. 

i have kissed boys before, i have held hands, i know all the aspects of relationships and i know what the feel like. but here is what i still wonder: 

what does it feel like to have someone gaze into my eyes and care about the ocean they see? 

what does it feel like to have someone 

I was sitting at the top of the stairs, hugging my knees and trying my best to stay quiet as i held my breath and waited for the moment to pass. It was my shoe, there was not anyone who it would fit as perfectly as it would fit me. I tried my best to reassure myself, but it was difficult as i watched. My stepsisters always got what they wanted, and i found it quite difficult to believe that this time would be any different.

I'm sure you can imagine my feelings when the shoe didn't fit my first stepsister's gargantuan foot. It wasn't surprising, really, she had never been the favorite. Higher than me in the ridiculous hierarchy that was my inherited family, but still not the top of the chain. The prince smiled at her as he reclaimed the glass shoe and moved to my second stepsister. She smiled with eyes sparkling green and evil as the prince caressed her with his kind gaze.

he slipped the shoe onto her foot, and after some wiggling it was apparent that the shoe....fit. I blinked a few times to make sure i was seeing correctly, and each time i opened my eyes the scene became more and more hopeless. My stepsister jumped out of her seat, she hugged the prince, she hugged my stepmother, she smiled wider than i've ever seen, she glared at me.

challenge.

I just want to start this, don't know whether or not i should do the entire challenge so

day 1: hopes, plans, and dreams for the next 365 days with a picture of you.
first of all, here's the funny thing and here's what i said just about 365 days ago--

okay, well, i haven’t really been thinking about the coming really soon future, as in the future of the next few days, i really am just focusing on what i want to do with the very distant future, as in in college, after college, etc. i really should be focusing on my direct future, because that is what is going to lead to all of the stuff with my distant future.
REGARDLESS, here it is.
Hopes for the future:
I hope to make it through the week. i hope that i don’t completely die in swim practice after a full day of school and track. I hope to be called by Rock Spring and be told that i received a job. i want to do really well in long course this season, and i want this summer to be the best on i have had so far. i hope to earn enough money to go to France this summer, and i hope to get a pair of Dr. Martens for my birthday. i hope that i get to go to the beach this summer more than i got to go to the beach last summer, and i hope that summer comes really soon. i hope that my grades get much better this quarter, and i hope that finals go really well. i hope that i am genuinely happy for the rest of the year, and i hope that nothing will be able to take away my happiness. i hope that everything goes well for me, and i hope i can handle next year, in all of its crazyness that i can already tell it is going to be. i hope i can handle the SATs, and i hope i can handle looking at colleges. i just hope i can make it through the next 365 days without having a mental breakdown.
Plans:
i plan to have a great sweet sixteen, but i don’t really want a party. i plan to celebrate in France, with my grandparents and whoever chooses to come to Paris with me. I plan to go to practice everyday, and i plan to sleep all weekend in order to catch up on all the sleep i will be missing during the week. i plan to get better at planning things, and i plan to start thinking more about my future, one step at a time.
Dreams:
i dream of having a fantastic rest of the school year, and i dream of a fantastic swim season in which i make long course states, which actually exist.i dream that my summer will be fabulous, full of a great job and lots of money and great birthday presents and great clothes. and i dream of continuing to write and getting a book published, and doing really well for myself. andddd i’m really done with this. i dream of bigger and better people places and things. the end.  

And now let's see what i would say today, just for comparison's sake.

hopes: I agree with the beginning of the first answer. I hope to make it through the week. I hope i do okay in swim practice, and i hope that i can keep up with my homework as well as i am already, though it is so early in the quarter to really tell. I hope that tonight i will be able to get to sleep at a relatively reasonable time, and i pray that somehow practice gets cancelled so that somehow i will be able to sleep in on saturday. I don't need to hope that Rock Spring calls me back with news that i got the job, i already have a job at the arena club. ummmmm i hope that i find a date to ring dance. and SOON. I hope summer is amazing, i hope i swim well, and i hope that things just go well for me. i hope to go back to paris reallyreally soon, i miss it so much i can't breathe.

A third time coming back to look at this challenge, and now i will explain what i hope, what i plan, and what i dream of.

Hopes for the future:
i hope that tomorrow i will wake up, and i will go to swim practice and one of the kids there will smile at me, or thank me, or someone will make me feel confident that though i am not the strictest of the coaches, that i am still doing a good job, in my own way. I hope that during championships i will talk to many different people from many different teams that i have lost touch with because i quit swimming, and i hope that when i finally finish the swim season this year i will have good feelings about it and happy memories.
i hope that on august 24th my mom will not cry excessively. i hope that i do not forget anything, and i hope my dog doesn't forget about me. i hope that i make lots of wonderful new friends, and i hope my roommate is someone i will feel comfortable around. i hope that college is the type of wonderful experience that everyone has been warning me it will be.
i hope that i find my passion. nevermind find, i believe writing is my passion, and i hope that i find a way to utilize it, to improve it, to learn from it. i hope i can travel, i hope i can learn, i hope i can experience. i hope i can go back to paris because i miss it wonderfully.

plans:
i plan to move into college on august 24th. i plan to make new friends, i plan to do my homework, to become more organized, i plan to eat healthier, i plan to work out more. but most of all, i plan to work on my image of myself. i plan to gain more self-confidence, to respect myself so that people respect me.

dreams:
i dream of a better world. I dream of my mom being happy again, i dream of a world where i can talk to both of my parents again, i dream of living only with the stresses of a normal college student. i dream of traveling, i dream of saving the world, i dream of writing, i dream of living. i dream of happiness, i dream of constantly avoiding settling, i dream of ups and downs. i dream of life itself, and everything everyone has told me about it.

I've always liked to pretend I am an incredibly independent person. It's a wonderful idea to flirt with, to sit alone in a secluded area and think I am here and I am by myself and I am happy. 

And sometimes that is nothing but exactly completely true. Sometimes all I want to do is walk outside and sit down on grass greener than my eyes and stare at a rippling pool of water and wonder how long I can enjoy the scenery before my mind will start to wander.

There really isn't much more beautiful than a small stream, at least I have never believed so. There is so much life, so many things that are small and insignificant and....independent. It isn't difficult to be a small bug or a fish or a frog and to wake up in the morning with only the thought of one's own selfish needs.

How do I know when I am happy? Because the type of person I am is not synonymous with the type of person I would like to be. And I know that the most important thing in my life, and especially at this point in my life, is to love myself for who I am. But how am I supposed to do that when I don't really believe I know myself? Everything I say seems to be to please others. I want people to like me, and it is more difficult to be honest than it is to make friends. I do not lie specifically to people, I am not the type of person who paints myself in a different light in order to make myself seem more appealing. But instead, i am confused as to when I hear myself speaking and when i feel the words leaving.

When I was younger, I wasn't sure about other people, but I know that I was sure about myself.

Sometimes I just wake with a feeling that I know I am a writer. And this feeling stems from something truly, deeply inside of me.
Yesterday I was drunk, like I usually am on friday nights because I am in college and I am a usual American student. And like usual, I was upset. About god knows what, something irrelevant. And I was crying, by myself, embracing in my solitude that I was truly alone, in every sense of the word. I was happy to be alone, to not have someone restricting my tears, but yet, being alone was the very topic I was crying about.
And somehow, I found a comfort. And that comfort stemmed from my spoken poetry. I looked out the window at the stars and the grass that was made up of ten million little blades. Little green blades that believed in all their essence that individually they meant nothing. And that's not really what I thought, that's what I'm thinking now. But I did just talk to myself, I told myself poems and poetry phrases that I just came up with on the spot. And I felt so much better. It just feels so so good for me to articulate my thoughts through a keyboard, to write things down so I know that they are real and they are there and they have happened.
I want to be a writer. all I have ever wanted is to write. It is what I love to do.
Because when I live through a moment, I feel it in a way that a lot of people don't. When I walk outside, i take notice of exactly where the sun is. Because it is really important to me, what position the sun is in when I look up at the sky and notice it. and the exact shade of the sky is very important. Whether it is a deep blue or an azure, or whether it is breathing in the setting sun, inheriting the orange, or the purple of the sunset, or whether it is overtaken by wispy thick white clouds.
I notice when the buds of flowers just begin to peek through the dead branches of trees. I notice when little blue and purple flowers begin to poke their heads gently through the dead gray grass, and I notice the first yellow dandelions and the first buttercups, and I count how many petals are on the first clover I see inhabiting the new grass.
When I see a clover, I picture the cow that wishes to chew it. I picture the spots, and I picture the gentle pink tongue, and I picture how the cow would react if it saw me walking through its field. And all of a sudden, that's where I am, I am walking through the field.

I listened to a new song for the first time a little while ago, and when I closed my eyes and accepted I was in the dark of my college dorm room, my mind allowed me to travel to a tightrope overlooking the grand canyon. and it