When I Fall...

Nine-point-eight straight down, I can't stop my knees...

My style of blog writing has changed dramatically since I first started this blog. It went from emotional writing to posting songs to religiosity to poetry to pictures to philosophical musings to insignificant babble to updates on my day.

Can't look below me or something might throw me...

Lately I have been all about snapshots of the happy times in my life and brief expressions of the upcoming excitement in my life. It has come to this because this is how I want people to see me. Honesty is overrated in the blogging world. In fact, you can invent a personality online. No one needs to know if its true or not, if the smiling faces are just an early Halloween mask. Even closest friends and family can't tell. It sounds like Laura, it looks like Laura, it must be Laura.

Look straight in the mirror, watch it come clearer...

This is not to say that I've been lying. The smiles have been and are real. The good times have happened, and they are continuing to go on. The internet is a strange vortex of information that sucks everything into it and never lets it out. What I write here will be accessible years to come. When I become Prime Minister, cheap journalists will reach back into the Internet Archives to retrieve what I said on October 30, 2006. And what did I say? What do I say? What do I write when what I say makes people believe they know my innermost thoughts? How do I portray who I am through a few words and snapshots?

Curse at the windstorms that October brings...

What do I have to say to be worthy? What is it I have to write to be respected and loved and taken seriously? What do I have to write to stop being a disappointment? I can't stop assumptions people will have. I can't help it if someone looks at a snapshot from my life and jumps to conclusions. This is why my blog has become somewhat vague.

I wish I could step from this
scaffold onto soft green pastures shopping malls or bed with my family
and my pastor and my grandfather who's dead...

I want to be known for my smile. I want to be remembered for the laughs.

I wish could fly

From this building, From this wall...

What would I do if I could fly? Where would I go? Would I escape this?

The painting's creating, and I'm just erasing. A crystal-clear canvas is my masterpiece....

I'm not four years old anymore. I don't have the pigtails or the innocence. I don't play with dolls or preach to teddy bears. I am not a six year old girl anymore. I don't have the mushroom cut or the buck teeth that were just too darn adorable. I do not wear underwear that corresponds to the days of the week anymore. I am twenty. I am twenty. I am twenty and yet still a child? Who am I? Do I know yet? Do I have the choice? Am I free to take responsibility, am I free to be Laura?

They're frightened of jumping in case they survive...

I don't want to write about the elephant in the room. The beauty and tears and the sweat and the pain are sitting in some pit waiting to be told in a story. Will I tell it? Will it be adopted? Why can I not tell the story I am yearning to tell? Who do you want me to be? Tell me and I will invent someone that you can be happy with. You can come and read about her every day. She'll be happy. She'll have wonderful relationships. She'll talk about the things you want her to so that you can believe that she is really and truly who she says she is. Do you believe her? Will you believe her? Will you stop assuming?

And if I should try
Would you catch me
If I fall?

What are the words I need to say for you to believe that I am she? What pictures do I need to post? What stories do you want me to tell? When will love finally mean respect and support and trust and belief. I need to be believed in. Because without being believed in, I become just a fictional girl whose story is told on some fictitious blog. Believe in me. This is me; Halloween costumes removed. This is me, naked and aching and ever so tired.

When I Fall...