This is our Decision, to Live Fast & Die Young

Hello, kittens.

 

I’ma need you to bear with me, as I’m currently lying in my bed drinking beer and feeling sentimental. Last weekend a friend from Hometown, Montana visited. Saturday morning, 7:30am and we were driving north on Naito. Around the corner the trees were blossoming heavy and white against sunrise in a way that made me ache. I didn’t know then those branches would be bare by Monday. I didn’t realize how much I missed her until she was talking Sedona and dog bites, motorcycles and drugs and yoga. I didn’t know I almost lost her until she was talking headlights and emergency rooms, staples and muscle contusions.

It's a strange sensation, talking to somebody from the past. I never realized how deep history runs or how heavy it can be. Like all of your old selves are coalescing into each other because there’s this human being and she knows your mom's name and remembers when your sister was born. She held the pipe the first time you smoked weed on the dirt road. That day J almost singed her eyebrows off when a seed combusted and I didn’t know if I should laugh. I didn't know what "high" was supposed to feel like but I learned about camaraderie.

I know this: we’re the kids who start road trips with shots of vodka and ignore our friends’ crosses on the highway.

Friday I went to a party I don’t remember. I’ve got flashes: an orange dress, a broken toilet handle, shots and shots and shots. Sometimes you pick a stranger's cigarette off the bar because it's the only thing your eyes can focus on. I don’t remember leaving the club, but I made it to the exit/alley/side street. There was a boy with a lighter and nowhere better to be. Eventually C found me smoking and "freestyle rapping" with him. It was one of those nights that make you feel young and stupid like maybe you should have died but you didn't, so you laugh about it the next morning when you walk to get coffee with your friend. She doesn’t know this new you. 

I don’t really know this new me. Lately everything feels temporary, like I’m waiting for something. I’ve been stretching this skin like the last $20 before payday. I’ve been treating this body like I’ll get a new one. I’ve been letting life blur around the edges because trying to focus just makes me dizzy. I don’t know guys. Lately I just want to sell everything I own and disappear. I know, I know. I just moved here a year ago and self-sabotaging security and so on and so forth. But there’s so much world out there! I think I'm making this existence harder than it needs to be. What if this whole life could be an afternoon in the park? 

I love you all. I hope you’re chasing your dreams the way I’d like to be.

-b