Penny For Your Thoughts

 Starting over is beyond strange. I just moved away from home for the first time, and the constant advice thrown my way is to "be yourself." How can I possibly be myself if I am simultaneously establishing who I want to be? What if I don't know who I am, to begin with, therefore making it difficult to be myself? Prior to moving, I felt that I had a decent grasp on who I am as a person, but I've realized that this feeling of security in my identity came from people around me, particularly my family, that have known me for my entire life and therefore did not require me to explain my entire identity to them. Now, I meet someone new almost every single day.  Every time I meet a new person, they want to know who I am. These new people don't know who I am. They do not know the nicknames I had as a child, my favorite color, any of my friends from home, or anything about the major life experiences that have formed who I am. I am constantly explaining layers of myself and...

 Imagine having been the first person on earth to fall in love with someone else. That would have been such a hard thing to explain to another person.  Feeling love for another person is so difficult to explain to another person with simple words. It's easier to explain your love for someone else by showing it. I hope that someday, you fall in love so deeply that you cannot use words to describe it. For those who have not experienced it, words are impossible. For those who have, words are not necessary. -Emma Lancaster

 He really makes me crazy. I can't exactly describe what it is about him that makes me feel this way, but there is something.  He makes me want to go for a walk at two in the morning. He makes me want to fight a seemingly daunting distance. He makes me want to argue about proper usage of the English language until I'm so riled up that I can't speak properly.  He makes me want to scroll through my camera roll every night and smile at the pictures that we have together. He makes me want to fly across the country just for a hug. He makes me want to call every night to say goodnight. He makes me want to tell everyone I know that I'm falling again, but simultaneously makes me want to keep our little romance to myself in a beautiful memory laced with fireworks on a hot July night. I can't exactly describe how this all came to be.  I just know that it is and it will be.  It's the best kind of crazy. When I said I feel alive, I meant it. -Emma Lancaster

 The night before I left, I found myself in an overwhelmed state of mind. I sat on that darn floor. I looked at the suitcase on my bed. I looked at the clothes on my floor. I looked at the college supplies, also on the floor. I looked at the rubbermaid tote sitting next to me on the floor, meant to hold said college supplies. Less than 30 seconds later, I was the one in the rubbermaid tote. Not my college supplies.  It really is hilarious, looking back.  I believe I called that moment a "level seven freak out." I was so stressed out about packing and getting ready for the trip that I forgot to be excited about the trip itself.  I sat in that rubbermaid tote for a good and solid thirty minutes before I finally got out, packed my suitcase, and zipped it shut. I went to bed after that. When I woke up the next morning, I remembered how to be excited. I finished packing everything quickly and was ready to leave four hours early. I took a deep breath as the car pulled out ...

 All the time I have been gone and not writing, I have been living.  I have been living so that I might come back here and write about the things I have lived and seen and done and heard.  There are some lived moments that will remain mine. I don’t think I want to share them, for sharing such things would not make them 100% mine anymore.  Other moments though, have done much good for me. I feel that by sharing them, they may make you smile too.  I hope you are ready for a plethora of moments, my love.  -Emma Lancaster 

 It was without a doubt the best day of my life.  There are some days, some people, that enter your life without the intent of ever leaving. Those are the people that you should hold on to. Those are the days you should write about.  The swaying of a downtown train caused a stumble, a gentle grab, an arm around the shoulders, and steadying a heartbeat. He protected me at that moment, beyond ready to catch me as I fell for him for the rest of the day.  Sometimes we live in movie-style moments that are too perfect to be believable.  There must be something said for fireflies along the shore of a lake, an excuse to run away and be in a moment meant for only two. There must be something said for a surprise kiss on the cheek, and feeling him near me and wanting nothing but to kiss him back at that moment.  The city skyline lit up the dark night, just as he lit up my own dark times. He exploded into a space where I was not looking for him, a firework that mimicke...

A small town will heal any broken heart.  There’s something about riding a bike in the middle of the street after a thunderstorm has painted the sky that feels freeing. It lifts the weight you’ve been carrying.  The rush of adrenaline from a quick turn courses through your body and you pedal until your legs burn. You haven’t used those muscles in a long time. The sun catches the sky at exactly the right moment and you look up, take a deep breath, and take in the orange sky that seems to color the air around you, making your skin glow. You hit a puddle and don’t care when it splashes your white shirt because you’re pedaling and you’re breathing and your weight has lifted and you feel like you finally have a part of yourself back.  I’m healing.  I’m getting myself back.  -Emma Lancaster

 When Ed Sheeran said loving can hurt sometimes, he wasn't wrong. In fact, he was actually extremely accurate.  Love does hurt. Love especially hurts when it is your own love that is thrown back at you in such a way that you never expected.  Love hurts when you look through your photo gallery and cannot find when he started looking at you differently.  Love hurts when he cheats, when he throws everything away. Love hurts when he says he hasn't loved you for a month. Love hurts when you sit on his bedroom floor, sobbing, and he is blank. Love hurts when you tell your little brother that it's over, his best friend can't come over anymore. Love hurts when your little brother doesn't talk to you for three days afterward.  Love hurts when the emotional roller coaster comes down again, then derails, and crashes. Love hurts when you remember a summer four years ago when you first fell in love with him because of Kanye West.  Love hurts when you wake up in the morn...

 Don't say you understand me. Don't say you understand me until you know why I was convinced I was in love with the right person at the wrong time. Don't say you understand me until you know the extent of the mental hell I went through when I was blamed by another for their declining mental health. Don't say you understand me until you know the weight of a broken heart, expected to hide under excitement for another's life path. Don't say you understand me until you know what it feels like to expense others who do not have much to give.  Don't say you understand me until you know the pain of another, crushing you every time they tell you about a nightmare in which their assaulter comes to find them. You do not know me and you will not understand the woman I have built until you understand the woman who was broken in the first place.  Don't. -Emma Lancaster

 Isn't it ironic that the person I'm going to miss the most is the one that I want space from at this moment? I'm going to regret this space someday. Don't console me when I do. -Emma Lancaster