if poetry could describe the way you made me feel...

A Softer World straddles "pretentious" and "unsettlingly incisive" for me. There are strips less wistful and more sardonic that also apply, but I try to not dwell on my cynicism; the world provides me enough of that on a daily basis.

Sometimes I reread old entries and wonder if I've grown at all, when all my issues - my fears and worries - are still the same. Other times I reread those entries and am profoundly thankful for where I am today and the people who got me here.

Friendship is a funny thing. Every friendship is shaped a little differently, even if echoes of similarity ring through them; every interpersonal relationship is different, after all, rooted at the bottom from two separate people. Some friendships require constant care, though not always the most tender consideration each and every time. Other friendships can pass quietly in the background, faded from immediate occupation of your consciousness, but reemerge as strong as ever when you reach for it.

Some friendships die without the proper care or attention, if you haven't figured them out what they require and how - if - you can give it.

Friendships change, too. New ones and old ones. I don't know how to tell which ones fall naturally into the kind where you talk frequently and share everything and which ones are the kind where you talk infrequently but always with feeling. Always with feeling. Everything with feeling. That's how we do things 'round here. I got a whole bunch of feelings, y'all.

Hope is the worst thing, that treacherous feeling left in Pandora's box, and yet where would we be without it? Grimly stoic, perhaps. Resigned to our fates, for better or for worse.

Hope is a flower I don't know whether I should guard and water and raise, or one I should secret away where no one can see it wither, should I be disappointed.

I'm not a risk-taker but sometimes I want to take risks. I don't know what I'm doing and it's going against every comfortable, familiar instinct I have. My radars are broken and I have no guide.

What do I have but hope? It's too late. I've already planted that seed, built that tree house in the sky. Let's reach for the clouds.

Also: happy fourth of July.