I read once somewhere that putting your hands under cold water will take away the desire to commit suicide and I don't know how many times I've run to the taps in my house and turned the faucet on full blast just because I needed relief ASAP. It's 2017 and I can hardly believes it even though there's only one month left in the year and my favorite color is black again like my undeniably exotic hair. I don't like being exotic but I have no choice but to accept the label. The sunshine here feels sweeter than it did on the edge of swamplands filled with alligators and frogs that might become someone's dinner. Here, people wouldn't be caught dead eating half the stuff on the menu where we were just two short years ago. Two years used to feel like a long time, but now it feels like an instant. I thought I would never grow up but then I started seeing my mother in the bathroom mirror and the little girl I used to see went away. Autumn will always be my favorite season, I'm sure. It's the most poetic one, and anyone who wants to challenge that is free to but I feel that it is. I'm going from bilingual to trilingual slowly but surely and I have good reason to never want to speak any language again but I won't let a guy take that from me. Not languages. I'm the kind of girl who can write an essay in a day and get an A on it but I'm also the kind that occasionally chases squirrels and cats and other small fuzzy creatures and forgets about everything else so you can make what you want of that. It's probably a miracle this hasn't gotten me in trouble yet. It's drizzling lightly and I'm wrapped in a hand-me-down that I'm not handing back up again. This warm shawl is mine, and any returns will be Borrowing. I never thought I would get used to the sound of anger but I never thought a lot of things would happen like they did. Humans don't know anything. Our knowledge is an illusion and it's going to shatter one day, like all illusions do but we like to have control, right? I don't even have to ask. I don't even have to know you to know that. It's just instinctual. Nobody really knows anything about tomorrow-we can plan, we can plan.... But it's not in our hands. It's amazing when someone you had forgotten remembers you but it's even better when you forget someone you didn't want to remember. I drift between remembering and not- the pain I once thought was needless had a method to it, and our ups and downs were curated with love. When I say our, I don't mean one or two people. I mean our. That word is collective. I don't believe someone like someone I don't know and won't mention could be like they attempt to, but I said I wouldn't say anything and I won't. I'd rather listen to rain, anyway. Ten years from now- I won't mention you either-because I am glad to be away from those chains of expectation and disappointment. And, because I owe it to myself to say It's alright. I can walk without crutches.