I love words. I love how they fit and what they do and I love the way they can echo and create. I remember one time when I was in elementary school and I first heard the saying, “sticks and stones will break my bones but words could never hurt me” ; i remember hearing my teacher try to comfort us and i remember getting in the car that afternoon and telling my mom i thought she was wrong. That words could hurt you. Because you can mend a bone and you can fix something broken but try and find the recipe to forget hurtful words. Try and find the remedy. There isn’t. All we have are stories. All we have are experiences. All we have is hope.

And just like words can break, words can heal. Words can create new hope. Words can create new ideas. Words can comfort ideas that are alone, ideas that were stagnant because no one else looked at them and said, “hey… that’s something.” Words can bring direction.

I’ll tell you a story of a time I was in Houston, TX with my best friend in October a few years ago. I’ll tell you that that night she was out on a date and I was in Starbucks with 2 people I met half an hour ago, and we were having conversations about life and tomorrows and God and the right nows of it all. And i’ll tell you they told me something to this day I carry with me. To this day I remember those words, because they were like swinging lamps. They told me, “we can’t worry so much about what what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go… what we need to focus on is who we are going to be. thats what we take with us.” Um, yes.

Tonight the weathers perfect and class was dismissed early and I drove home with the radio low after dropping a friend off somewhere and meeting some pretty amazing people, and I thought about that conversation. I thought about how my mind is always running faster than the clock and i’m trying to squeeze in all these dreams into a calendar but when you drive the streets at night, you’ve got a soul to deal with and a heart to dig through.

I want to be peace. I want to be open and accepting and I want to love people, every single one of them, like if they were mine. Like if they belonged to me. Because we belong to eachother. I want to say words that will give strength to hope and words that will heal old wounds and I want to give of everything of myself. I want to know about the world and I want to hold every corner of it deep in my heart and clear in my mind and I want to be someone who gets excited about every inch of it. The beautiful parts and the forgotten parts. I want to be someone who believes. Who believes in love and God and hope and happy endings and in my dreams and in your dreams. I want to be the listening ear when you need to talk and I want to be the words when you just can’t find them. I want to be pure and I want integrity and I want to be someone who is not afraid. I want to be love. To know it, to show it, to give it and receive it. Even when I’m scared. Even when I’m undeserving. Even when they are undeserving. I want to be free.

xo