she needed wide open spaces

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about?
Who's never left home, who's never struck out?
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone
Many precede and many will follow
A young girl's dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed
-Dixie Chicks

i found some old videos on my camera yesterday. videos of fun, crazy, spontaneous times with my absolute best friends in high school. it was just the three of us. we used to joke that we would play them at our rehearsal dinners one day...those videos tell more than i can even begin to put into words. we were so young and alive, living and hoping for futures that were going to take us away from each other but loving that very moment we were in enough to record it. we agreed to go away and grow separately knowing that we would still remain close at heart. the strangely distressing part is, though, that despite those words we repeated to each other that last summer before college, as i watch that video, i'm not sure who those girls are anymore. they've been left in time, in life passing so constantly. it's like even though we promised to each other that we wouldn't let the distance between our paths part our strong friendship, we still walked different roads and grew up in different ways- such imprinting ways that are marked so heavily upon us now that it's nearly impossible to make out what was there before...what was there back when moving away from home and chasing career aspirations were merely figments in the far future of what could happen. that's life, though. it happens to us and we're just left to deal with it..to pick up the pieces it leaves behind if necessary and do something positive with the junk it throws at us. all the while, we become more than what our younger selves could even begin to grasp..and what once we understood all too well suddenly seems too faded to comprehend.

we needed wide open spaces, just like we shouted obnoxiously driving to the beach that weekend before graduation..if only we would've been able to fathom the exact toll those spaces would have on us and who we were as people, as friends. as i watch that video over and over, it's not the simultaneous note-hitting, breanne's attempt at driving and dancing, or megan's imaginary microphone that stand out. the only thing that seems blantantly obvious now..the only thing that i can relate to is that the words we sang became our very lives.

quicksand

it's not that i don't have words, it's just that they're all the same. the fact of the matter is that all i have is all the same. and it's smothering, it's deafening, it's consuming in a sickeningly addicting way. i want out, but not more than i want in. i'm caught in quicksand, my friend. and had i known by the looks of it that i'd be sucked in to sole misery, i would've turned. or would i've?

i want nothing more than to be out, free, inspired and empowered again. i want nothing more than a new concept, a better perspective...one that will allow something to click, to fit, to pull me from this entanglement that is weighing so heavily. i want my heart and my mind to be on the same page just for once. i'm tired of listening to my thoughts scream over the tremble in my chest. i want nothing more than for what i feel and what i think to finally dance together magically, perfectly. instead i'm caught, i'm all wrapped up in this web of contradiction between what i know is true and what i feel is good...between being drawn in but needing to turn away; to run away with my dignity and self worth towards what i deserve. but why in the world would i want to run to what i deserve if it has never felt as enticing as what i don't?

quicksand, i tell you. it's quicksand.