Falling, falling
Deeper She grows
Outside to inside,
Freezing my nose.
–
Shaking, shivers
My body grows cold
Covered in White
The clouds, they unfold
–
Revealing the pure
The icy, the young
Frozen breath in the air
Winter’s child Snow is here
Well, guys, I’ve gotta be honest.
College sucks.
This past semester has been a near hell of stress, busywork, sleep deprivation and frighteningly low grades in Biology. Needless to say, between studying, stressing, nervous breakdowns and maybe just a little bit of crying I haven’t had much time to blog. I have good news, though, something that makes all of that worth it.
It’s over.
Finals have been completed and grades have been posted. (Side note: after all of the crap I went through stressing over it I still got a B in bio! That’s pretty much a miracle for me. )
I never have to do any sort of science EVER again. I’m free! You have no IDEA how happy this makes me, you guys. I can LIVE again. More importantly: I can SLEEP again! *Cue happy dance*
Now to spend this Christmas writing my butt off to make up for lost time.
-Faith
My mind won’t let me rest
Can’t express it in the light
It’s ridiculous at best
But I write my thoughts at night
I pen the words I want
And they come the way I need
It’s harder than it looks
Writing something others read
I wish I wrote the same
No matter what the time
But things don’t work that way
i swear that I’ll be fine.
Sleep is overrated.
Something only children get
My mind becomes un-faded
i never will regret
All the hours spent awake
slaving over keyboard tiles
It’s worth it, every second.
to see my family’s smiles
and the looks on people’s faces
when they read something they like
I wrote it, I made it.
In the darkest of the night.
Gather round, children, close to the fire. It’s time to hear a story. Come close, sit down. Are we all settled? Okay, then. Let’s begin…
This is a tale that began one summer only a year ago, in a quaint little village that, for the sake of anonymity, we shall call Arendelle.
Within the walls and among the modest population of Arendelle lived a teenaged girl called Faith. Faith had barely been living in little Arendelle for three months, and one day she heard of a free concert happening by the river the next week, by her favorite Christian band no less! She was so excited, and she wanted to make the best impression she could on the people of Arendelle, so she bought a new pair of shoes just for the concert. They were simple black flats, suede, with a pretty little bow on each toe. They were absolutely beautiful, and Faith just knew that they would be perfect for her first real social event since moving to Arendelle.
The day of the concert dawned bright and sunny, seemingly perfect. The whole day passed in a blur, and finally Faith was arriving at the riverside venue, jittery with excitement. She rushed to find her seat in the near-empty amphitheater, a needless thing to do since she had arrived nearly two hours early, anticipating a much larger turnout. As she sat down on the front row, right in front of the stage-the best spot in venue-she noticed a shadow on the horizon that looked suspiciously like a storm cloud. It was so far off, though, that she was sure she’d be long gone by the time it reached the river.
Two hours passed more slowly than expected, and all Faith could pay attention to was the slowly moving storm cloud, growing closer and closer by the minute. It was moving disturbingly fast, and Faith was growing increasingly nervous. Soon the storm was practically upon them, hovering ominously and darkening the sky to a depressing gray but not letting loose its obvious wrath. Maybe it’ll hold off until after the concert, Faith thought.
Her optimistic wish turned out to be just that: a wish. No sooner had the concert started then the rain began, harsh and sharp, stinging her face and blurring her vision. The band continued playing nevertheless, not ones to be thwarted by a little rain, they claimed. They’d played in worse conditions.
But Faith couldn’t see.
She could barely hear the music over the din the storm was making.
She couldn’t sing without inhaling a mouthful of water.
She was quickly soaked to the bone and shivering in the cold the storm produced, but she gritted her teeth and sang along to the barely audible music anyway, enjoying the concert in spite of the rain.
Eventually the band cut off the electric instruments, picked up a hand drum and an acoustic guitar, and headed to the covered awning that led to the amphitheater to continue the concert acoustically, with the crowd circling around them like a bunch of friends at a campfire.
There was a certain closeness Faith felt with the people around her, a camaraderie, something that can only be formed from a real shared experience. She was laughing and singing with perfect strangers, and within this moment everything was perfect. Despite the rain, despite the cold, despite everything, things were good.
She smiled as she left, replaying the music that she just heard in her head. She was absolutely freezing, but she didn’t mind. Her clothes would dry, she would warm. Everything could be mended. She walked to her car quickly and reached out to open the car door.
Then she remembered her shoes.
Her lovely, gorgeous, perfect shoes.
She glanced down at her feet and her fear was confirmed.
Her perfect shoes were ruined.
Faith closed her eyes to keep back a tear. They’re just shoes, she told herself. Just the most beautiful, expensive, gorgeous, amazing, perfect shoes ever.
She slowly got into the car and kicked off the soaked shoes. The lining in both shoes was completely separated, they were both flattened completely, and Faith had no idea where the bow on the right one had gone.
When she got home, she reluctantly threw them both in the trash.
She never found another pair of shoes as beautiful as those again.
Flash forward one year: The same band has chosen to perform in Arendelle again the following summer. The past year has been a great one for Faith, and she’s made many good friends, a few of whom she invites to go to the concert with her.
The day is a sunny one, less than a week before the fourth of July. Faith, her siblings (Belle and Kristoff), and her friends Merida, Rapunzel, and Silvermist are sitting on the third row in the concrete amphitheater. They’re listening to the concert, talking, laughing, enjoying the annoyed looks from people around them when they say something a little too loud, and the bewildered ones they get when they make odd references to their fandoms that the eavesdroppers don’t understand. They’re all truly having a good time together.
Eventually Silvermist’s friend Mickey shows up and they leave, and Merida and Faith go to get ice cream and water for themselves and the others in their group. Afternoon fades into evening, the concert ends and the girls get autographs from and pictures with the artists. They leave laughing and joking together, recently arrived parents trailing behind, talking to each other about who knows what. They reach the parking lot and stop. This is where they must part ways. The girls say goodbye, but don’t actually leave yet. They continue talking, despite the parents ending conversation.
Suddenly, Merida slips on the curb and falls on her side, mud from the previous weeks’ rain splashing all over her clothes.
And ruining her white flowered shoes.
Merida stands up slowly, looking at her feet in disbelief for a second. “My shoes!” she exclaims. Then she bursts out in laughter, pointing at Faith. “It’s you! You lost your shoes last year, and I guess it’s my turn now!”
At a mother’s suggestion, Merida, Belle, Rapunzel and Faith race to the decorative waterfall at the entrance to the riverside amphitheater and hold the shoes underneath it to rinse as much of the mud off of them as possible. They do what they can for them and laugh about it for another few minutes. Eventually they go their separate ways.
Upon further discussion, Faith and Merida came to the obvious and TOTALLY rational conclusion that the concert, and maybe even the band, are cursed, so that someone always has to ruin a pair of shoes during or after the event.
It makes absolute sense.
The girls labeled it “The Curse of the Christian Concert”.
Beware, all who enter such events, and please-don’t wear new shoes.
Who never fails to jump right in
When things don’t go my way
I’ll hide with you, dear Netflix,
And life’ll be OK.
Even on good days,
When I celebrate,
I do so with your aid.
Oh, Netflix, dear, dear Netflix.
Let’s honor the glory you’ve made.
`
You’re everyone I want you to be
You consist of geeky fandoms
And my fake reality,
The Doctor has arrived
He will always save the day.
Merlin (secretly) helps Arthur
Could it be any other way?
Make it so, the Captain says,
And they whiz across the black
At the click of a button I save the world
Netflix… you did that.
`
Now, I admit, you’ve had your faults
All those movies you chose to release
That nobody ever heard of.
or cared to see, at least.
You bored us for a while
Made us think your good was through.
You even scared the fangirls
By threatening Doctor Who.
But the movies were removed,
And The Doctor still remains.
You even added Friends,
So the parents want to pay.
`
So I thank you, dearest TV show service,
For helping me through every boring phase.
The times when so little was going on,
Without you I’d have READ, for days!
`
Oh dearest, Netflix,
You can do no wrong,
Inventor of binge-watching pride,
I salute you, darlingest Netflix.
May forever your flag fly high.
Random acts of kindness. You’ve likely witnessed one before. You’re in line at Starbucks behind a few other people, the person currently at the register hands a piece of paper to the cashier, whispers something to him, and leaves. The line moves up. You listen to the woman in front of you order her coffee, and when she goes to pay you hear the cashier tell her that it’s already paid for by the man before her, and he hands her the piece of paper he was given by the benefactor.
Maybe you’ve been the generous person to pay for somebody else’s drink, or food, or heck- even somebody’s groceries.
Maybe you’ve been on the receiving end of one of these acts.
Random acts of kindness affect everybody. It’s an amazing thing that really proves to me that people still care for each other. That we’re all still in this together, and nobody’s ever alone.
Recently my friend (let’s call her Merida) and her sister (how about Rapunzel for her) were at Target shopping when a couple of girls about their age approached them with four Starbucks drinks, offering one to each of the sisters.
“Why?” Merida asked them, not a little confused by this odd gift.
One of the girls smiled, re-positioning the Starbucks cups she was holding.”Well, we got too many of the wrong kind by accident. We didn’t want good coffee to go to waste, right? So we’ve been walking around looking for someone to give these to.”
The other girl spoke up: “Yeah, and you guys looked…well, like us, and we figured you’d like them. Sorry if we’re weirding you out, I swear we didn’t, like, poison them or anything. And we didn’t drink them yet either.”
Rapunzel and Merida glanced at each other warily and then took the free Starbucks drinks, thanking the girls and walking away fairly happily.
The sisters died of food poisoning two days later.
Okay, so I admit I was kidding about that last part. Merida and Rapunzel enjoyed the free Starbucks, finished their shopping and continued about their lives, healthy and breathing as always. No tricks played. Just a couple of girls who decided to bless someone with their mistake instead of throwing it away, like most people would do.
My question for you: Would you do the same thing those stranger girls did for Merida and Rapunzel? I’m sure it was awkward for them, and to be honest it wasn’t even a huge deal, just a couple of frappes. Nobody would’ve missed them if they were simply thrown away and forgotten about. And yet the girls still gave.
That’s a pretty cool act of kindness right there, those girls took extra, unplanned time out of their day to do this. To bless somebody with a Starbucks drink. (which, in my mind, is TOTALLY equal to happiness. These girls were giving away HAPPINESS, people. STARBUCKS BRAND RAINBOWS AND BUTTERFLIES AND HAPPINESS. Why couldn’t I have been there when this was happening???)
Would you do the same thing they did?
It’s the quickest ones
They sting hard when they’re spoken
And stay forever.
—
Never truly heal
May get better, be okay.
But I’m always scarred.
—
Everybody hurts.
The bees, they strike everyone.
Never relenting.
—
We have power, though.
Power to just love instead.
Destroy our own hive.
—
Bees, they live always
We can’t stomp them out for good
But always we love.
I’m about to say a dirty word. One that I never dared say until this past spring. A dark, mean, horrible, intimidating word.
College. *Insert Psycho music here*
Just the sound of the word makes me shudder. It’s such a huge thing in my mind, and something I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with for at least another year. I thought I had time.
Had.
As fate would have it, my local community college happens to offer concurrent enrollment, essentially a chance for a high school junior or senior–me–to start gaining college credit whilst simultaneously completing their remaining high school work.
I guess I should look at this as a good thing. I’m basically doing almost half the schoolwork for twice the credit that I would get otherwise, and getting two years of college and an Associates out of the way before I’m even eighteen. Good, right? Great, even. Awesome.
So why am I unsure about it?
It’s not that I don’t think I’ll do well or anything. I believe academically I’d be absolutely fine. Great, even. I’ve been doing college-level work in school for quite some time now. I guess it’s more of the idea of college being a “grown up” thing, in my mind. Something that you do when you’re ready to be an adult.
And…to be honest… I’m not. I am by NO means ready to be an adult, and college is this huge step that feels like it’s pushing me that way, and fast. I’m at a point now where I need to make a plan for my-here comes another freaky word-future. I need to narrow down interests and talents to what I can plausibly make a living from. I need to learn things that will benefit whatever path I choose, and help it along.
Oh, did I mention I need to choose a career path?
Yeah. I don’t even fully know who I am now, let alone who I’ll be in two, five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years from now. How can I be expected to make such a huge decision that will affect all future versions of me when I’m still in one of the dumbest, least knowledgeable stages of my life? For all I know, future me has NO interest whatsoever in web design. Future Faith could hate writing, or singing, or music in general. I could pick and pursue a path now that could be useless to me in twenty years.
And it all starts right now, with the “C” word.
This is gonna be fun.
-Faith
Aloha beauties! Guess what? I’m back, and better than ever! 
Okay…that’s a bit of an overstatement. Yes, I’m back. Probably not much better than before, though. Apologies for that tragedy.
Anyway, I guess I owe any readers I still may have an explanation for the sudden MIA status. Long story short, there were some personal issues I was going through, I took a break to sort it out, and now I have returned. And boy, am I glad to be back. You have no idea how much I missed blogging, though I really wasn’t at it for too long.
Now to spend the next few hours checking up on what’s changed here at WordPress.
Love to you all *Kisses*
Faith
A: Don’t take this the wrong way, but messes are absolutely my thing. What can I say? That’s my element. My mess reflects me.
When I say mess, though, I don’t mean apple cores and year old pizza hiding in a corner with smelly socks and other absolutely disgusting things. That’s what I like to call BOY mess (though I don’t discriminate. Girls can absolutely have that kind of mess, too. I’ve seen it.). My mess is more of a cluttered confusion of books, papers, purses, shoes, a potato smasher (I don’t know how that got into my room. But it’s there.), NON-smelly socks, etc.
Some people, to relax, like to read.
Others have music.
And some like to-shudder-clean. If you are one of THOSE people, we cannot be friends. (Unless you’re willing to do my chores for me…In which case you’re forgiven.)
Me, I unwind best in a mess. I sleep better with my clothes strewn about on a chair. (of course I’ll pick them up…eventually.) I concentrate more easily if I have pillows and blankets piled clumsily around me. I prefer having my shoes in a pile in front of my bed. That’s just how I think.
But, of course, my room isn’t a COMPLETE mess or anything. Half of it is my sister’s side. And she’s about the cleanest and most organized person you’d ever meet. So…if you were to enter my room, you would encounter one spotless, pretty-looking, organized half, the half you entered through-we did that strategically-and one chaotic display of books, stuffed animals, crumpled up paper, and clothing.
My sister hates my messiness. She’s constantly harping me about it, and with good reason. I don’t seem to listen. I grudgingly clean it every 3 weeks or so on my mom’s command, and it takes about a week for it to get back to its original state. I swear, it’s not on purpose. It just…happens. But, ya know, I’m in no hurry to fix it. As I’ve said, my mess is my element. I relax there. I get some of my best writing done in that mess. Should I really change that?
-Faith.
Faith...Literally. 