Breathe (2 AM)

I always want people to win. Maybe win isn't quite the word. I find this feeling especially apparent in movies. I always want the characters to come out on top, clean, successful, whatever. Oh wait, the term I'm looking for is happy.

I remember speech class in high school. It was a good class. I can't recall who taught it, but he said that, in general, people want you to succeed. It's just as embarrassing to watch someone be embarrassed. You're always rooting for whomever you're watching to come out of everything happy.

That's what I want. I want to come out of everything happy. But here's the catch, I'm not really sure what makes me happy. Or who makes me happy. I have lists of things that make me happy, but they're one time instances. You can't rely on mac n cheese your whole life to make you happy and keep your quality of life where you want it.

I've come to this conclusion: I don't like drugs. The illegal ones. They scare me. Not just "Oh my what's around that dark corner," but seriously scared. I start thinking about one mistake and how it can lead to every other mistake that will eventually ruin my life.

I did that once, the predicting of the rest of my mistakes. It was a car accident. It was raining and I had had my licence for...not very long. I rear-ended a van who in turn rear-ended a truck. Of course, none of our bumpers happened to be at the same height so they proved to be completely useless. I was on the way to some marching band event and I was supposed to pick up Adrie. I showed up a little late and I was an absolute wreck. Adrie sat me down and asked me what was wrong. She knew something was wrong from the messages I left her. I told her about the car accident and by the time I was done going through all the mistakes that I was going to make based on this car accident, my life was turning out pretty bad. I had this image of me when I'm upper-middle-aged, I work at a fast food restaurant and I live in a squalid apartment. (Yes, I actually know the word squalid and I did not use a dictionary or thesaurus). Thanks goodness Adrie has this uncanny ability to talk sense into me. Somehow, she convinced me that I could still go to college even if I got in a car accident. Yeah, sometimes my brain works a little fast and connects things without telling people what the connection is.

That was a fun anecdote. Main points to take away from that story: My brain sometimes thinks too quickly, my brain thinks very far into the future, my brain makes connections that most people don't follow and I don't usually take the time to explain them.

I think I need to stop seeing 3 am so often. It's around 3 and 4 that I start feeling weird. Like I'm not good enough. And really scared. And tired of doing everything that I do. Then I start to hate things and worry and miss people. I wish I had known my parents when they were young. Or known them on a non-parental basis. I thought about that today. Do your parents ever stop being parental? I assume no since at any time in your life, whatever you're going through they've already been there...twice. I like that. I always want to be able to call my mom and have her listen to me. She won't give me advice unless solicited, thank goodness. But every time she does give advice, somehow it's right and it works. Freaky.

The End. Good Night.