reading books, listening to music

How lucky I feel, to be in my body again. How lovely I feel not to have to pretend.

Hayley Williams (Watch Me While I Bloom)

I didn’t want to work out this morning but I pushed myself to do whatever my best is today and I feel soooo good. Like my mood has been so intensely good lately!

This weekend I’m staying home, I got a few books and I think I’m just going to read them all. I know I need to go to the store at some point and meal prep all my lunches for the week or I’ll end up ordering out and feeling like a slug and right now I feel like that speedy snail from the snail mail game. I don’t want this empowering, uplifting feeling to go away.

My local bookstore is back open so I bought one book from each of my favorite authors. If you have a book recommendation please leave it in the comments or send me a DM @prattlepeach on Instagram. I neglected to read as much as I should have been earlier this year so I’m making up for it now.

The books I bought are Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs, Damned by Chuck Palahniuk, and The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.

When I was in high school I read Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and I felt this itch to go explore the world. Not fall in love with a pedophile and live with a crooked therapist and his family, but at least go to New York and stand in the middle of Times Square.

My freshman year of high school I also emailed a fan letter to Christopher Moore and he replied and I have loved him and his work ever since. He writes how I think, or maybe I think this way because I’ve been reading his work since I was 14? I am all of books I’ve ever read, I think.

My favorite band is Panic! at the Disco, and the song Time to Dance is based off the book Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. I met him a couple times and he’s the coolest person ever, and his books are so intricate and I usually have to read them a couple times each to fully understand them.

I’m definitely happiest after I’ve read a book, done some HIIT, and had an iced americano. That’s an ideal day alone with myself.

I also want to go to the beach maybe, or just take a drive on PCH and listen to music. I feel open and excited, after so many weeks of not feeling good. I think there is potential in the air, and I’m going to try and live in this moment as much as possible.

nineteen

I felt you in my legs before I ever met you. And when you lay beside me, for the first time I told you. I feel you in my heart, and I don’t even know you.

I can’t remember the last time I heard a song that really made me feel something so strongly. When I was a teenager, I used to stay up with Panic! at the Disco albums on repeat on my iPod and I would just imagine what being in love is like. I thought if love sounded anything like Brendon Urie’s voice then I must be on the right track. Then I heard this song and it brought back everything.

I remember my first big big crush.

I remember driving home feeling so different, and I was so sure everyone could see it. I drove home and I kept touching my swollen lips and I knew that the world knew that I’d been kissing for hours. That I just had this air about me that screamed I had found the big L-O-V-E.

I was worried about the leaves on my windshield from spending the night at the boy’s house, because they weren’t the same leaves as the tree in front of my friend’s house that I told my parents I would be sleeping over at. I thought my mom would take one look at my windshield and just know.

Then summer passed and I never really felt that way again with him. And I stayed, and stayed, and stayed for way too long. Long after the maybe-love was gone, the butterflies had escaped out of my throat, and the “iloveyous” were preceded by tears and they really just meant “I’m sorry.”

Flew home, back to where we met. Stayed inside, I was so upset. Cooked up a plan, it was good except I was all alone. You were all I had.

I remember heartbreak, and I remember realizing after that it wasn’t a real heartbreak. I just didn’t want to be lonely. I didn’t want to go back to being alone.

I was so so so confused about whether any of it was worth it. The funny thing about dating a stranger (through an app, through a chance meeting) is you don’t really know the other person on the end. You don’t know who they were in high school or college, or if they ever got a detention or if they ever smoked weed.

I think I forced it because I wanted love so awfully. What was maybe supposed to just be a fling I stretched out well past its expiration date.

I think it’s too much for me to meet someone and in one or two months decide that I’m ready to be in a relationship. I don’t even make friends that fast. I definitely don’t love that fast.

But I get so excited and hopeful about love. I love love. I feel like I was meant to experience every single type of love there is and some days that puts me on a rush and other days that makes me scared.

I don’t think I am a faucet. I think it ends at some point.

I was nineteen. How could you blame me?