Light

I never cease to be amazed at the way light can change the look of things. If you get used to driving down a road at a certain time of day and suddenly change your habits, you notice new things or feel as if you are in unfamiliar territory. Light has the ability to make old things seem renewed, or give a hint of grandeur to something new.

The only thing that doesn't change is the face of the one you love. From first glance in the glow of dawn to the pink and orange rays as the last vestiges of daylight slip away, that face remains the same. It reflects your love and magnifies it in return. I will never forget the look in your eyes as you look at me.

Summers in North Carolina are akin to having a fever. The heat is palpable. You walk around with a fine sheen of sweat on all exposed (and sometimes unexposed) skin. The air is so thick you could cut it with a knife and that humidity never abates.

All summer you live for that last day, the day the fever breaks. When the mornings have a chill to the air and the humidity disappears so completely that you forget it was ever there. Sometimes the fever returns, but never as strong. Gone are the days of 24/7 AC, the nights and mornings of open windows and crickets singing have arrived.

I didn't realize that being alone sometimes wasn't perfectly ok until I wasn't anymore.

Kudos to you if you can pull my meaning out of that sentence.

What I was trying to say (in less words) was that a few months ago, I was perfectly happy in my existence as a single person, just working and hanging out with my roommate and other friends. But after the past 2 months, I think I must've been temporarily insane. Especially considering it took us a year to get around to it.

Oh well. The error has been rectified. I am utterly delighted with the results.

What is it about moving to a new place that gets you so psyched up? I've already gone out and bought new sheets and a bedskirt for the new room. All new bathroom accessories (minus the shower curtain and mat, I'll never give mine up) were procured yesterday. I even still have a trip to Ikea in the works for a few more storage bits.

Does any of this really motivate me to clean or decorate the room I already have?

Heck no.

But under threat of death from my parents, I have made a rather large pile of things to throw away in the corner of my room. I really need to take it out to the trash at some point. Maybe tomorrow because I'm always a procrastinator at heart.

Working for Metropolitan Organizing has really helped me at least see the things I need to change about how I live day to day and I'm going to try very hard once I move to enact those changes and maintain them as well. I'm kind of tired of living in a mess, even if its not that bad. I can still find everything I look for or need!

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Eve

We will celebrate your memory later today. I already checked the forecast and the sky will be that perfect shade of blue that we all love. The Clefs will most likely sing "Carolina in My Mind" and the last lines will make me cry, they have every time I've heard the song since it was sung at the original memorial.

How do we continue to say goodbye without forgetting? It is a blessing that you were so high profile. You had interactions with so many people that your kindness and desire for a better world are easy for us to embody within ourselves.

What still touches me the most is your father's speech/letter. It has amazed me every time I read it, to see the hope and optimism for my generation, written while mourning his baby girl.

I will never forget the last time I saw you, dancing into the banquet to pick up the Nikes we were all so thrilled about and merely 72 hours later, I was holding a candle in one hand (that I will never throw away) and my friends with the other, watching pictures of your life flash before us on the screen.

Thank you for choosing us to receive the gift of your short but well lived life. You are the embodiment of our school motto "Lux et Libertas" and the Carolina Way will never be forgotten.

When I am older, and am getting ready to have my first child, will someone please remind me what I thought tonight. If it is a girl, her middle name will be Eve and if it is a boy, perhaps Carson. If only I could embody her spirit by just giving her name, the world would be a better place again.

When was the last time I even cared enough to get mad about something? My life is pretty apathetic most of the time; nothing inspires a serious emotion in either direction. It’s actually a little shocking to try and remember the last time I got truly upset about something. That wanting-to-cry out of sheer frustration and not just out of hormone induced craziness.

Realllly not something that I am used to. Always been the level headed person and friend. I don’t make snap judgments. When I decide I love my friends, it’s unconditional. They will always have my love and support.

But every now and then, I wish I could care more. Everyone needs something to care about in life that way (besides Carolina Basketball of course).

And life deals another blow…

For every friend I have, there is a different kind of friendship. All of these have developed for different reasons. None of these friends are worth more or less in life because at some point they will be the friend you need the most. Your best friend that has known you so long that they just understand you to the core, the friend that you had to work for that you may appreciate more for that very reason, the friend who can always be counted on for advice in tough situations or a shoulder to cry on when you need it, and the friend that appeared one day, the one that you can talk to about anything until you've worked all your problems out.

We all have the best friend, the one who loves you unconditionally; who never thinks less of you, and who you can go a year without really seeing each other and not skip a beat when getting back together. Mine is sixty miles away, teaching math at our local high school. We’ve been best friends since we were in the 1st grade and I invited her to an imaginary slumber party that I made up. Oops. I haven't seen her since July but next time that I do, it will feel like I just saw her the day before.

Then there is that friend that you kind of have to work at making the friendship. You have to allot time to spend together, get lunch, go shopping and other things so that you learn to hang out. Nothing wrong at all with this, sometimes you just can’t see how amazing a person is from that first impression and you have to look a little deeper. I think this is how a lot of college friendships are because you meet in class and get to know people in that way and then maybe you start grabbing lunch and doing other things and you discover this whole other aspect of them when you are both outside of academia. This friend is probably appreciated most, because of the effort invested in planting the seed of friendship, but also this is the friend that can be lost the easiest. It just takes the end of the semester or the skipping of a few lunches and there is always the possibility that it will disappear.

Of course there is always the friend that you bond with over tough situations. That advice offering friend who never thinks less of you either, no matter what stupid shit you’ve gotten yourself into this time. Sometimes you have to work on that friendship too, so that you can still be friends when there isn’t any drama to discuss. But when you’ve seen someone through a tough time or two, you’ve generally got them for life or at least a long time.

But lastly, there are just those immediate friendships. You meet someone randomly and start talking. The talking never stops, there is never that awkward silence where you are struggling for the next topic to discuss. You feel like you can confess your secrets or your dreams without judgment. I’ve met a select few people that could simply amaze me with all the things they had to say and sadly I don’t get to talk to them much anymore because of some changes in our lives. I really treasure someone that can have so much to say and be so willing to put it out there and share it.

I am really sad that my computer crashed a month ago and I lost a phrase I wrote once. Here is the best that I can remember, just the first part of it. This was not directed towards anyone at that time, and isn’t now, it’s just the truth. “I want to fall in love with someone that I can stay up all night talking to”. It is so important to have that ability to communicate and the connection that allows you to never run out of things to say. That connection is always one that amazes me because I'm not always the best conversationalist and I appreciate it when it occurs. It reminds me of a discussion I had once on whether it is better to fall in love with your best friend or become best friends with the one you fall in love with. Whichever happens, it still shows that there needs to be a deeper bond than just one of the two.

And now that the sun will be up shortly, I'm going to bed.

I miss home in the summer time

Here's to screened in porches in the spring time. Where you can sit in a swing in the twilight coolness and listen to the rain, the frogs, or even the crickets as you read or lay back and relax. Here's to rocking chairs and sweet tea. To cool leafy forests, ponds, and creeks to fish in. Here's to carving initials on trees by the creek banks and rolling your jeans up to go wading to pick up those pretty smooth stones. Here's to flying kites in cotton fields. Here's to the smell of tobacco curing because that’s so much better than the smoke it ends up as. Here's to winding country roads where you break all sorts of laws to pass 2 tractors and a combine in a curve cuz you've been stuck behind them for 2 miles and you just can't go slow anymore. Here's to riding in the back of a pickup truck with the wind in your hair. Here's to grandmas who really know how to cook. Here's to "Who's your daddy?" being a way to identify people rather than a sexual comment. Here's to exploring woods and old farm buildings. Looking for adventures and having treehouses and forts made from tree branches and playing for hours with your dog. Here's to being a girl and still having your own workbench and set of tools. Here's to climbing trees and spying on the neighbors (even if they are your family too). Here's to planting flowers and trees and knowing all the names for them. There is nothing like sitting on a back porch in the evening and catching the scent of confederate jasmine and gardenias on the breeze. Here's to the sun setting over rolling farmland and another day has passed that you know you'll never forget.