this girl is back

with the light i've been missing these last few months.

you can find us at the park. 

scars

why do we tell little kids not to pick at their scabs? we say "don't pick at that, it won't heal as fast and it will scar worse."

but we do the same thing with our hearts. we reopen the wound before it heals, sometimes over and over again.

in the end, though, scars are preferable. they mean the wound is closed, not forgotten but definitely healed.

born to run, born to love

I haven't been to a lot of places in this world, as my travels have been confined inside of the United States. And while it has been worth it to cross experiences off of my list, i.e. seeing the space needle or going to the DC temple or running around Chicago and pretending to be Ferris Bueller, this thing, this need to go go go that has been shifting around inside of me for the last several years is poking and prodding at my very surface so much that any day it might explode out of my core. I want to run, I want to see, I want to breathe and laugh and feel and explore and take everything, everything, in all at once and then slowly and mechanically, letting it soak into my pores like a sponge that never ever gets full. I want to meet strangers on the street and listen to their life stories, their heartaches and their experiences that weaved the inner workings of their souls, and I want to meet the people they love. I want to speak eat breathe and dream Spanish and struggle and fail my way through Arabic while glorying in how absolutely beautiful it sounds to my ears from someone else's mouth. I want to be hugged by an old Greek woman and I want to eat straight-up Italian pizza until my stomach feels like exploding. I want to see pyramids and camels and make friends with an elephant. I want to lose my breath on the Rock of Gibraltar and I want to hold my breath while standing in the middle of Machu Picchu in fear that if I make a sound or even blink I might wake up from a dream. I want to visit the families my dad served in Uruguay, I want to see the beaches of Kuwait where my best friend spent her favorite afternoons as a little girl, I want to find Peter Pan in his park. I want to stand in the streets of every third-world country and cry. I want to experience this life and this world and love more people than I ever thought imaginable. I want to teach and I want to learn, I want to love and I want to feel the love of strangers who don't speak the same language as me but who share the understanding that we, we are human and we are connected to one another. I want to feel that connection and be consumed by the knowledge that there is good in people and that all of us have the capacity to love. I was born to love, of this I am sure.

date a girl who reads

“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

― Rosemarie Urquico

image via

oh leo.

somewhere, inside of me, is my 13 year-old self whose heart just skipped a beat.