Date A Boy Who Travels

Date a boy who travels.

Date a boy who treasures experience over toys, a hand-woven bracelet over a Rolex. Date the boy who scoffs when he hears the words, “vacation”, “all-inclusive”, or “resort”. Date a boy who travels because he’s not blinded by a single goal but enlivened by many.

You might find him in an airport or at a book store browsing the travel guides – although he “only uses them for reference.”

You’ll know it’s him because when you peek at his computer screen, his background will be a scenic splendor of rolling hills, mountains, or prayer flags. His Facebook friend count will be over-the-roof, and his wall will be plastered with the broken English ‘miss-you’ of friends he met along the way. When he travels, he makes lifelong friends in an hour. And although contact with these friends is sporadic and may be far-between, his bonds are unmessable and if he wanted, he could couch surf the world… again.

Buy him a beer. Once a traveller gets home, people rarely listen to their stories. So listen to him. Allow him to paint a picture that brings you into his world. He might talk fast and miss small details because he’s so excited to be heard. Bask in his enthusiasm. Want it for yourself.

He’ll squeak like an excited toddler when his latest issue of National Geographic arrives in the mail. Then he’ll grow quiet, engrossed, until he finishes his analysis of every photo, every adventure. In his mind, he’ll insert himself in these pictures. He’ll pass the issue on to you and grill you about your dreams and competitively ask about the craziest thing you’ve ever done. Tell him. And know that he’ll probably win. And if by chance you win, know that his next lot in life will be to out do you. But then he’ll say, “Maybe we can do it together.”

Date the boy who talks of distant places and whose hands have explored the stone relics of ancient civilizations and whose mind has imagined those hands carving, chiseling, painting the wonders of the world. And when he talks, it’s as if he’s reliving it with you. You can almost hear his heart racing. You can almost feel the adrenaline ramped up by the moment. You feel it passing through his synapsis, a feast to his eyes entering through those tiny oracles of experience that we call pupils, digesting rapidly through his veins, manifesting into his nervous system, transforming and altering his worldview like a reverse trauma and finally passing, but forever changing the colors of his sight. (Unless he’s Karl Pilkington.) You will want this too.

Date a boy who’s lived out of a backpack because he lives happily with less. A boy who’s travelled has seen poverty and dined with those who live in small shanty’s with no running water, and yet welcome strangers with greater hospitality than the rich. And because he’s seen this, he’s seen how a life without luxury can mean a life fueled by relationships and family, rather than a life that fuels fancy cars and ego. He’s experienced different ways of being, respects alternative religions and he looks at the world with the eyes of a five-year-old, curious and hungry. Your dad will be happy too because he’s good with money and knows how to budget.

This boy relishes home; the comfort of a duvet, the safety stirred in a mom-cooked meal, the easy conversation of childhood friends, and the immaculate glory of the flush-toilet. Although fiercely independent, he has had time to reflect on himself and his relationships. Despite his wanderlust, he knows and appreciates his ties to home. He has had a chance to miss and be missed. Because of this, he also knows a thing or two about goodbyes. He knows the overwhelming uncertainty of leaving the comforts of home, the indefinite see-you-laters at the departure gates, and yet he fearlessly goes into the unknown because he knows the feeling of return. And that the I’ve-missed-you-hug is the best type of hug in the whole world. He also knows that goodbyes are just prolonged see-you-laters and that ‘hello’ is only as far away as the nearest internet cafe.

Don’t hold onto this boy. Let this boy go and go with him. If you haven’t travelled, he will open your eyes to a world beyond the news and popular perception. He will open your dreams to possibility and reality. He will calm your nerves when you’re about to miss a flight or when your rental blows a flat, because he knows the journey is the adventure. He will make light of the unsavory noises you make when you – and you will – get food poisoning. He will make you laugh through the discomfort all while dabbing your forehead with a cold cloth and nursing you with bottled water. He will make you feel like you’re home.

When you see something beautiful, he will hold your hand in silence, in awh the history of where his feet stand, and the fact that you’re with him.

He will live in every moment with you, because this is how he lives his life. He understands that happiness is no more than a string of moments that displace neutrality, and he is determined to tie as many of these strings together as he can. He also understands your need to live for yourself and that you have a bucketlist of your own. Understand his. Understand that your goals may at some points differ, but that independence is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship when it’s mutually respected. You may lose him for a bit, but he will always come home bearing a new story and a souvenir he picked up because it reminded him of you, like it was made for you, and because he missed you. You might be compelled to do the same. Make sure that independence is on your bucketlist, and make sure it’s checked. Independence will keep your relationship fresh and exciting, and when you’re together again it will forge a bond of unbreakable trust.

He’ll propose when you’ve breached your comfort-zone, whether it be a fear like skydiving or swimming with sharks, or sitting next to the smelly person on an overcrowded bus. It won’t be with a diamond ring, but with a token from a native culture or inspired by nature, like the penguin and the pebble.

You will get married somewhere unassumed, surrounded by a select few, in a moment constructed to celebrate venturing into the unknown together again. Marry the boy who’s travelled and together you will make the whole world your home. Your honeymoon will not be forgotten to a buffet dinner and all-you-can-drink beach bars, but will be remembered in the triumphant photographs at the top of Kilimanjaro and memorialized in the rewarding ache of muscles at the end of a long days hike.

When you’re ready, you will have children that have the names of the characters you met on your journeys, the foreign names of people who dug a special place in your heart if only for a few days. Perhaps you will live in another country, and your children will learn of language and customs that open their minds from the very start, leaving no room for prejudice. He will introduce them to the life of Hemingway, the journey of Santiago, and empower them to live even bigger than both of you.

Marry a boy who travels and he’ll teach your children the beauty of a single stone, the history of the Incas and he will instill in them the bravery of possibility. He will explain to them that masking opportunity, there is fear. He will teach them to concur it.

And when you’re old, you’ll sit with your grandchildren pouring over your photo albums and chest of worldly treasures, while they too insert themselves into your photographs, sparked by the beauty of the world and inspired by your life in it.

Find a boy who travels because you deserve a life of adventure and possibility. You deserve to live light and embrace simplicity. You deserve to look at life through the eyes of youth and with your arms wide open. Because this is where you will find joy. And better, you will find joy together. And if you can’t find him, travel. Go. Embrace it. Explore the world for yourself because dreams are the stuff reality is made from.

Date A Girl Who Writes

Date a girl who writes.

Date a girl who may never wear completely clean clothes, because of coffee stains and ink spills. She’ll have many problems with her closet space, and her laptop is never boring because there are so many words, so many worlds that she’s cluttered amidst the space. Tabs open filled with obscure and popular music. Interesting factoids about Catherine the Great, and the immortality of jellyfish. Laugh it off when she tells you that she forgot to clean her room, that her clothes are lost among the binders so it’ll take her longer to get ready, that her shoes hidden under the mountain of broken Bic pens and the refurbished laptop that she’s saved for ever since she was twelve.

Kiss her under the lamppost, when it’s raining. Tell her your definition of love.

Find a girl who writes. You’ll know that she has a sense of humor, a sense of empathy and kindness, and that she will dream up worlds, universes for you. She’s the one with the faintest of shadows underneath her eyelids, the one who smells of coffee and Coca-cola and jasmine green tea. You see that girl hunched over a notebook. That’s the writer. With her fingers occasionally smudged with charcoal, with ink that will travel onto your hands when you interlock your fingers with her’s. She will never stop, churning out adventures, of traitors and heroes. Darkness and light. Fear and love. That’s the writer. She can never resist filling a blank page with words, whatever the color of the page is.

She’s the girl reading while waiting for her coffee and tea. She’s the quiet girl with her music turned up loud (or impossibly quiet), separating the two of you by an ocean of crescendos and decrescendos as she’s thinking of the perfect words. If you take a peek at her cup, the tea or coffee’s already cold. She’s already forgotten it.

Use a pick-up line with her if she doesn’t look to busy.

If she raises her head, offer to buy her another cup of coffee. Or of tea. She’ll repay you with stories. If she closes her laptop, give her your critique of Tolstoy, and your best theories of Hannibal and the Crossing. Tell her your characters, your dreams, and ask if she gotten through her first novel.

It is hard to date a girl who writes. But be patient with her. Give her books for her birthday, pretty notebooks for Christmas and for anniversaries, moleskins and bookmarks and many, many books. Give her the gift of words, for writers are talkative people, and they are verbose in their thanks. Let her know that you’re behind her every step of the way, for the lines between fiction and reality are fluid.

She’ll give you a chance.

Don’t lie to her. She’ll understand the syntax behind your words. She’ll be disappointed by your lies, but a girl who writes will understand. She’ll understand that sometimes even the greatest heroes fail, and that happy endings take time, both in fiction and reality. She’s realistic. A girl who writes isn’t impatient; she will understand your flaws. She will cherish them, because a girl who writes will understand plot. She’ll understand that endings happen for better or for worst.

A girl who writes will not expect perfection from you. Her narratives are rich, her characters are multifaceted because of interesting flaws. She’ll understand that a good book does not have perfect characters; villains and tragic flaws are the salt of books. She’ll understand trouble, because it spices up her story. No author wants an invincible hero; the girl who writes will understand that you are only human.

Be her compatriot, be her darling, her love, her dream, her world.

If you find a girl who writes, keep her close. If you find her at two AM, typing furiously, the neon gaze of the light illuminating her furrowed forehead, place a blanket gently on her so that she does not catch a chill. Make her a pot of tea, and sit with her. You may lose her to her world for a few moments, but she will come back to you, brimming with treasure. You will believe in her every single time, the two of you illuminated only by the computer screen, but invincible in the darkness.

She is your Shahrazad. When you are afraid of the dark, she will guide you, her words turning into lanterns, turning into lights and stars and candles that will guide you through your darkest times. She’ll be the one to save you.

She’ll whisk you away on a hot air balloon, and you will be smitten with her. She’s mischievous, frisky, yet she’s quiet and when she has to kill off a lovely character, when she cries, hold her and tell her that it will be alright.

You will propose to her. Maybe on a boat in the ocean, maybe in a little cottage in the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe in New York City. Maybe Chicago. Baltimore. Maybe outside her publisher’s office. Because she’s radiant, wherever she goes. Maybe even outside of a cinema where the two of you kiss in the rain. She’ll say that it is overused and clichéd, but the glint in her eyes will tell you that she appreciates it all the same.

You will smile hard as she talks a mile a second, and your heart will skip a beat when she holds your hand and she will write stories of your lives together. She’ll hold you close and whisper secrets into your ears. She’s lovely, remember that. She’s self made and she’s brilliant. Her names for the children might be terrible, but you’ll be okay with that. A girl who writes will tell your children fantastical stories.

Because that is the best part about a girl who writes. She has imagination and she has courage, and it will be enough. She’ll save you in the oceans of her dreams, and she’ll be your catharsis and your 11:11. She’ll be your firebird and she’ll be your knight, and she’ll become your world, in the curve of her smile, in the hazel of her eye the half-dimple on her face, the words that are pouring out of her, a torrent, a wave, a crescendo - so many sensations that you will be left breathless by a girl who writes.

Maybe she’s not the best at grammar, but that is okay.

Date a girl who writes because you deserve it. She’s witty, she’s empathetic, enigmatic at times and she’s lovely. She’s got the most colorful life. She may be living in NYC or she may be living in a small cottage. Date a girl who writes because a girl who writes reads.

A girl who writes will understand reality. She’ll be infuriating at times, and maybe sometimes you will hate her. Sometimes she will hate you too. But a girl who writes understands human nature, and she will understand that you are weak. She will not leave on the Midnight Train the first moment that things go sour. She will understand that real life isn’t like a story, because while she works in stories, she lives in reality.

Date a girl who writes.

Because there is nothing better than a girl who writes.

Obsessions

“Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released”
-Natalie Goldberg

I Once Dated A Writer

Writers are forgetful,

but they remember everything.
They forget appointments and anniversaries,
but remember what you wore,
how you smelled,
on your first date…
They remember every story you’ve ever told them - 
like ever,
but forget what you’ve just said.
They don’t remember to water the plants
or take out the trash,
but they don’t forget how
to make you laugh.

Writers are forgetful 
because
they’re busy 
remembering 
the important things.

Lifeline- Suicide Awareness Day 2012

Lifeline

I don’t look down, not yet. The wind is blowing my hair across my forehead, and my fingers are locked tight around the railing behind me. I shuffle my feet, careful not to step too far; the tips of my toes hang off the ledge. I swallow hard, the lump in my throat making it hard to breathe.

I’ve had the most amazing life. My parents are supportive of everything I do, we’ve got a nice house, I’m good at school, I’ve got everything I could ever want. I’ve been able to do what I love every day of my life, but lately, it just isn’t enough. The pressure is too much. I have to hide my hurt, pain and fears on a daily basis, both from strangers and the people I love.

I’m not strong enough anymore. I can’t keep pretending.

The worst part is, I’ve been so lucky. I have an incredible life, much better than so many other people’s lives, so I can’t complain. No one would understand. They’d see me as self absorbed, conceited, arrogant, all because I’m well off and they don’t understand that I feel pain too.

I’m just so tired of being tired all the time. I never get a moment to myself, and I always have to be wearing a smile and acting happy, or people would say I’m just looking for attention.

I just can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. I wish I could tell my friends that it’s not their fault, make sure my mom knows I love her, tell the world that it’s nothing they could have done, because it’s all my fault.

I hear shrieks below me, and I glance down. I see a woman pointing up towards me, her hand covering her mouth while she screams.

“Call the police!”

“He’s going to jump!”

“What room is he in?”

“Get him down!”

It’s now or never. Jump, or suffer the misery.

The doorman to the hotel is clearing people away from the building; more people are staring and screaming.

The height makes my head spin and I glance back over my shoulder. The doors leading from my hotel room onto the balcony are swung open, the curtains blowing in the breeze.

The hotel phone rings, starling me, and I almost lose my grip on the railing.

I refocus on my mission, and glance down again. Below me is the city street, cement and asphalt, ready to embrace me as I leap to my death.

The door to my hotel room slams open. “Hey, some guys going to jump off- Cole?” My best friend’s voice pierces my trance. My head whips around, and I see Luke standing in the doorway, the door swinging shut behind him. His face is covered in shock and disbelief.

“What are you doing?”

I turn my head back to the street. “Go away,” I mutter.

“Cole-”

“Go. Away.” I say, gritting my teeth. Does he not understand that I want to do this?

I hear him take a couple steps closer to me. “Cole… I- I don’t understand.”

I don’t respond. Does anybody ever understand? I’d stopped telling people about my problems a long time ago; they never understood. They always thought I was a moody, hormonal teenager who was overreacting to minor problems.

“Talk to me,” Luke’s voice cracks.

“I can’t do it anymore, Lu,” I say, calling him by his childhood nickname, still facing the street, talking with my mouth to the wind.

“Do what?”

“This! Live! All of it!” I burst out. “It’s too much.”

“Cole, please.” His voice is as raspy as mine. “Please, come back in. Talk to me. Don’t do this,” he steps closer to me, out of the hotel room and onto the balcony.

I blink, my eyes burning, and I can barley breathe. I’ve been planning this for a while, this is my only chance.

“I-I’m sorry, Lu,” I say, and take a step forward, letting go of the railing.

I'm Always Writing a Story in My Head

Hey there!
In the past, I've been asked by people to see some of my writing. Well, today's your day. Here's a link to a site where I've put some of my writing. There are a couple short stories, and one of my novels.
If you go read, please tell me what you think! :)
Love, Nell <3

Far Away

Listen to this while you read! :)

Eleven months. It’s been Eleven months since I’ve seen you. Eleven long, torturous months. Eleven months since I boarded that plane. It’s been eleven months too long. And, love, I miss you. But there’s only a couple more months until I can come home and see you and Aubree, and that’s what keeps me going.

I can’t wait to see her, to meet her, to hold her in my arms. Does she have my curls and your eyes? Or your smile and my dimples? The pictures you send just aren’t enough. How could they ever be enough, when I know there’s a little girl across the sea, waiting to call me Daddy?

I carry the picture you sent me in my boot. You and her. It’s my good luck charm. My two girls. The woman who owns my heart and the little girl who already has me wrapped around my finger.

Every night, I lay awake and stare at it. Shadows dance across the walls and scenes play out in my head, things I’ve missed. I was deployed only a month before Aubree was born, and I kick myself every day for missing the birth of my child.

I can only imagine how that would have gone. I can imagine you waking me up at three in the morning, whispering that your water broke. As we both know, I would have freaked out. You would have been the calm one, grabbing the overnight bag and the keys.

            Her first smile, her first steps, so many things I’ve missed out on. I’m sorry, love, but I’m coming home. I’m coming back to the place I belong. Only a few more months, and we’ll be together again. In just a few months, we’ll be a family.

            I love you. Forever yours, Ryan

            The letter ends, and I smile. “I miss you,” I whisper. It’s been so long since he’d left. I just want to be together again. I want to see his face, hold his hand, hear his laugh.

            I grab Aubree from her crib and head downstairs to feed her lunch. Opening the cabinet, I pull out her favorite snack and set it on the counter, but the sound of the doorbell fills my ear.

            I shift her to my other hip as I head for the entry way. “Just a second, baby girl,” I tell her as I open the wooden door.

I freeze when I see the camouflage that the man wears. His hair is cut short, his combat boots laced all the way up, and dog tags hang from his neck. In his hand is a thin envelope, and his last name is stitched onto his shirt. Johnston. His eyes are apologetic, and that’s what hits me the hardest. His eyes. Deep blue with flecks of silver, and filled with sorrow.

“Mrs. Grace?” 

I can’t answer. I know what’s coming. He’s gone.

“Ma’am?”

“Y-yes. That’s me,” I force myself to choke out.

“You’re husband was killed last week. It was a roadside bomb. Almost every man in the vehicle was killed.”

“What?”

“He’s dead, ma’am.”

The four letter, one syllable word hits me hard, knocking all the air out of my lungs. I lean forward, and place my free hand on my knee, the other still supporting Aubree. I can barley breathe. When I was finally able to draw in a breath, it sounded like a wounded animal. It was a gut- wrenching, broken cry, so desperate and mournful.

I slowly stand upright, hand over my mouth, stifling my sobs, and look at him. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,” He hands me the letter and turns to leave but then turns back around. “He was a very honorable man. I knew him personally, and that’s something I’m proud to say.”

            “T-thank you,” I whisper and shut the heavy wooden door. I collapse on the couch, sobbing. “No, no, no, no, no,” I wail, repeating it over and over.

            Aubree soon joins in, whimpering softy. Whether if it’s from hunger or from hearing me cry, or if she can sense something is wrong, I don’t know. “Shhh,” I whisper. I hold her head close to my shoulder and rock back and forth. “Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry,” I tell her, even though my weeping is louder than hers.

            My gaze catches in the mirror above the fireplace, and I’m startled. I don’t cry often, but now my eyes are red and puffy. They’re full of fear, anger and despair. But the thing that strikes me the most is the full-blown terror.

            “Ryan….” It’s the only word I can manage, when really, I want to say how much this hurt, tell him that I can’t do this, that it was too much. But I can’t. He isn’t here. He can’t hear me. He’ll never be here again. He’ll never meet the daughter who looks just like him. He’ll never get to teach her how to ride a bike, or how to drive a car. He’ll never get to sing her to sleep or kiss me goodnight.

            What’d I’d do for one more chance, just one more day with him.

Inner Music

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” -Sylvia Plath

‎"What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window." -Burton Rascoe

“A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.” -Charles Peguy

“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. “-E.L. Doctorow

“There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” -Walter Wellesley Smith

"There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write." -Mignon McLaughlin

‎"A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order."

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." - George Orwell

"I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head." - John Updike

‎"Books want to be born; I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such." -Samuel Butler

"There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes." -William Makepeace Thackeray

“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.” – Catherine Drinker Bowen

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it." -Anais Nin

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." -Truman Capote

"Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write." -Rainer Maria Rilke

Daydreams

It was sweatshirt weather in Southern Ohio. Not cold enough for us to be able to see our breath, but just cold enough for me to be glad that I’d remembered to grab my sweatshirt, despite my bare feet and ripped jeans. We sat in the tiny ditch on the side of the road in the country, trees surrounding on each side; it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, even though we were only twenty minutes out of town. The occasional pair of headlights would appear at the top of the hill and pierce the darkness, illuminating our faces. A slight breeze made it feel colder than it was, and I felt my hair blowing against his arm, which was only inches from mine.

The breeze rustled the leaves in the trees around us, and suddenly he was jumping up, grabbing my hands and pulling me up next to him. I cocked my head, confusion written across my face, along with a smile, and playful jubilee on his. He wordlessly pulled me into the road, and twirled me around, laughing. I giggled at his spontaneity as we began to dance. We danced and I tilted my head back, smiling. We danced and we twirled and we loved. We spun around the in the middle of the empty road under a sky blanketed with stars so numerous; trying to count them would be like trying to find a tear dropped in an ocean. We weren’t graceful in the least, but there was something about it- him and me, us, together.

I imagined us dancing, this time surrounded by people we loved and who loved us back. Me in a pure white ball gown and him in a crisp black tuxedo, twirling and swirling hand-in-hand around a ballroom, swept away in each other, satisfied in simply knowing that he had waited for me, and I for him. Contented by the fact the God had kept us safe and sound and secure while he was out there and I was out there, and led him to me at precisely the right moment.

I liked the moments like these, the secret, silent ones, where were alone, and didn’t need words to describe what we were feeling, because we just knew. Whenever we had moments like those, I weird sensation always gushed over me, and I knew he felt it too. It was like I was made for these moments. For this moment. The sense of charm and wonder and enchantment that filled the air and swirled all around us.

It was the kind of moment that made you want to relive it later. The kind that made you want to bottle it up and keep it on a shelf where everyone can see.