My favourite songs are those that I keep returning to. I never consciously played them over and over on repeat, they just crept stealthily up my Top 25 without my specific knowledge. It's those songs that subconsciously put a reluctant smile on my face when they come on shuffle, despite the fact that I'm probably barely listening to the music because I'm probably writing a super-important, super-over due essay.
In that way, my favourite songs are like my best friends. I can press skip, I can say "Sorry dude, I'm just not in the mood today" without excuses and guilt. My best friends aren't always necessarily the people I have the most fun with, or hang out with the most. It's the people that are quietly comforting, the people that make me laugh despite myself. I don't have to sing along obnoxiously for everyone to know I like this song, contentment is written all over my face when it plays.

Then there are friends you make because of a certain situation you're in. They sit in front of you everyday at school, they're on the same bus, they're your neighbours. Circumstantial friends, or atleast those that start off that way. Haven't you had songs that you like because the reflect what you happen to be feeling at that moment? Break up songs that seamed beautiful when you were still crying over that boy. Songs about summer that didn't seem so great in the grey of December.

There's songs and friends you refuse to let go of, even though you know things are not what they used to be. I can't bring myself to make that decided and committed click when the flashing blue on the screen asks if I'm sure I want to delete. I thought I was sure you didn't belong in my music library, in my life. But all those good times we had. What's the harm in leaving Barbie Girl there...

On the contrary, there are those songs you've known and loved forever. The people that populate your nursery class photographs, ugly middle school pictures of hanging out in malls and now, your Facebook profile pictures. I've always loved you, Aaron Carter. No shame.

Of course, there's the boyfriends and girlfriends. You're obsessed for a while, and there can be nothing better. Or so you think. Yeah, these are the Ke$has. Because your love is my drug, but I gotta get sober some time.

A lot more Meredith Grey than you know

I'd like to think I'm a selfless, giving person. I'd also like to think that this tub of ice cream I'm eating isn't going to go straight to my thighs. But sometimes, the truth is much too real to ignore.

I'll never put myself out there for you, but I expect your TrueFeelingsAndBleedingBrokenHeart at my doorstep asap, thanks.

I don't want to love someone, I just want to be wanted.
This smile doesn't say I Like You, it says Do You Like Me?

I don't want your drama, I don't want there to be 'our' drama.

My freedom and a few spilt kisses for your complications and compromise doesn't seem like a fair exchange to me.

I really care about you...but I apologise, I don't do EmotionalAttachment.

And you know the worst part? I'm happy this way.

And that's why there will never be a we. Because I'm selfish enough to want these things, but not selfish enough to ask them of you.

It's all about me today. Maybe tomorrow I'll change for you. Maybe tomorrow I'll try and change for you. Because I fear, my dear, I'm already too far gone.

Sitting in a sand pit, life is a short trip

I don't know if I'm growing up, or growing old but I know that I'm growing tired of having my beliefs, my trust and my innocence so cruelly eroded by life. Perhaps I wouldn't be so bitter if it were huge waves of tragedy that were washing away the sand castles in my mind and replacing them with perfectly logical and perfectly ugly two-story houses painted beige, rather than the ceaseless monotony of everyday livin'.

I miss being young - when a cardboard box wasn't something I forgot to throw away, it was a race car, it was a treasure chest, it was barbie's new Malibu mansion.

When happy meals were really happy.

When I could fly, when I jumped off the toppest stair with two feathers and not a clue.

When bruises didn't hurt as long as they were colourful enough.

When broken toys were our greatest anguish, and there was no such thing as a broken home.

When family road trips were about Are We There Yet and not Can We Got Home Yet.

When boys had cooties.

When Full House taught you all the life lessons you needed to know.

When the most gut wrenching deaths you'd known were Goldy the goldfish and Squig the worm.

When you thought the sandpit in school could put the Sahara to shame. How else could you always have so much sand in your shoes and eyes and underwear every day when you got home?

When Fred and Daphane were the most dysfunctional couple you knew.

When you knew that if you tunnel straight down you'd get to China...eventually.

When Breezers were hardcore.

When the most important decision you had to make was which Crayola colour to use.

When long-distance meant his house wasn't close enough to walk to.

When your biggest fashion crisis involved sneakers with lights at the back.

When Aaron Carter rocked your socks.

When you always seemed to be the token mid-blink person in every class photo even though you took extra care to open your eyes REALLY wide every year. (Maybe that one was just me)

I miss my sandcastles. So I've decided that we're going to be the ones that have it all and do it all. We'll do the wrong things that feel right, we'll kiss more frogs than princes and we'll never regret a thing. We'll ride off into our delusional sunsets. We'll be forever young.

Same Old, Same Old

Routine is comforting.

Fall asleep on the right side of the bed, white sheets, blue blanket, alarm rings at 8.30, snooze it three times, wake up at 8.57 on the left side of the bed, get out of bed at 9, Colgate toothpaste, Pears soap, kajal and sleep on the eyes, toast, college, home, read, coffee, tv, dinner, fall asleep on the right side of the bed. Rinse and repeat.

But more often than not, routine is dangerous; or the need to break out of it is. Sometimes I get this unshakeable feeling that every day I'm inching closer and closer to the end of an ordinary life, while I'd much rather be hurtling towards the end of an extraordinary one. Which, though dramatic, is true. And it makes me do small stupid things, this big not-so-stupid feeling. Drive a little faster than is good, be a little more flirtatious than I should, drink more than I can hold and stay out longer than is respectable. And that's what makes life livable. But I'm scared that one day I'll be so frustrated and bored that those small rebellions won't be enough for me. That because I'm scared that I'll end up a traffic jam, I'll go faster and faster till I'm a full blown car accident. You know, fuck the metaphors. I'm just scared I'll do BIG stupid things instead of little stupid things. And my mature and understanding exterior will belie the rash and unreasonable person inside.

Now I don't know if I'm right, and this isn't an epiphany or anything close. It's just what I've been feeling a lot lately, and it's 2 am and I just want to tell everyone on the internet that I've been feeling it a lot lately.

You are the music in me

"You know that Simple Plan song, Addicted? I'm feeling like that song."

"Listen to maneater."

"But I'm not a maneater."

"But you could feel like one."

"But I'd be deceiving myself. I'm not a Maneater, I'm a Addicted."

"You could be a Single Lady."

"But they're supposed to Put A Ring On It"

"They haven't yet. Be a Touch My Body."

I'm more Umbrella than Touch My Body if we're going in that direction, I feel."

"So you're a Hate That I Love You."

"Yeah, totally. With a bit of Where Is Your Heart."

"But you must be a Shut Up And Let Me Go, I somehow feel."

"Perhaps."

My girl, talkin' 'bout my girl

My mother is a tall, elegant, gracious lady.
I, am a small, vicious girl who falls over a lot.

She's a shoe size 9.
I'm a dress size 1.

She always keeps her dignity.
I can never keep my temper.

She always comes out smelling of roses.
I'm always in shit.

Still, we manage to make it work somehow. = )

18

THEY put the Computer Science practical board exam the day before my birthday. How inconsiderate.

If the calendar was a giant cafeteria, my birthday would be on the cool table. And the board exam...well, it would most certainly would not. See, but THEY don't get this. They're putting a nerd on the cool table. You can't just do that, y'know.

So now I can't have a party.

I mean, I could have one all the way in April, after the board exams, but then it won't feel like a birthday party anymore. Not my birthday party, anyway. I mean, my birthday's always been in February. Obviously. But in February, it's cold and a little rainy and most people would wear black. But if I have it after the boards, it'd be all sunny and people'd wear bright colours. Like yellow. Or even, God forbid, orange. But I can't have that, see. Because my birthday is not an April-May birthday. It's a February birthday.