to those of you who heart, comment on, repost or like my work, thank you

sorry for not really being active lately, I've just been relaxing and trying not to feel the pressures of thw=e outside world while I drink coffee and watch the office all day.

As I near the inevitable end of summer break, I am filled with excitement at a new school year..... but I also feel dread at the reminders of student life.
Although I love the poetic justices of 80's movies occupants and their school life, I cannot help but feel cheated.
Watching Molly Ringwald have rad adventures with Anthony Michael Hall, I couldn't help but think that I, too, would get to experience a magical birthday or fall in love or have a wacky adventure.

  I wished to be Andie in Pretty in Pink, or Claire in The Breakfast Club, or Sam in Sixteen Candles.
I longed for the friends who were as weird, or even more so than me.
To have the beautiful boy fall for me in that cliche way we all love.
To be a different kind of unusual beauty in a plastic world.

   I would still love all of these things, HOWEVER, I love my life.
I would not trade my current comrades for Duckie, or ******, or even Sara Baker.
I wish not to change the circumstances or a crush or a mutual liking that may never happen.
I can't, unfortunately, say that I love my natural beauty.

   Even as I long to live like Molly, I long to live like me.

While I cannot say that I have experienced a "true", once in a lifetime love, I do believe that I know what love is.
Love, to me, is not just an emotion, but also a thing or a person or a memory or a place.  

Love can be a memory or moment.
Love can be the blissful lazy Sundays spent with your favorite people after a long night.
Love can be the family meal with sudden, abrupt laughter that just bubbles up from your throat.
Love can be the hugs you never knew you needed and the words you thought you'd never hear.
Love can be that favorite song that makes you want to scream its lyrics until your voice is hoarse.

Love can be a thing.
Love can be the last gift your grandmother gave you.
Love can be a picture of your best friend right after you did the flamingo challenge.
Love can be a book of poems that gave you the start you desperately wanted.

Love can be any place.
Love can be a library that gives you an endless amount of worlds to choose from.
Love can be the school cafeteria where you spend your favorite minutes of every day with the people who make you laugh and not care about how you may be perceived by others.
Love can be the small space in the back of the house where you paint and listen to the rain.

Love can be anything or everything or both.
It can be life, and it can be warmth, and it can be the good standing hand in hand with the bad, and it can be what makes you happiest.

I do not believe that you have to have a significant other to have love, I believe that you can be fulfilled by others and by the things you enjoy.

Love is just, love.