for those of you who think you know me, i apologize. although you may have been my friend, foe, family member, or that creepy kid that stares but dares not to speak; i’m sad to report that your assumptions are incorrect.

don’t get me wrong, their are a very select view that have the pass-code to my safely locked away brain, and even fewer that know the directions from there to the pile of rubble where my heart used to be. i think they’re building a white castle there now. these are the exceptional people i will never forget.

spread throughout these digital pages are small, foggy windows allowing you to catch a glimpse into the implausibly complex yet incredibly simple library of thought that i like to call my brain. every thought is carefully categorized into their own sections; organized by subject, letter, and number of pages, yet scrambled and unreadable beyond the cover page. i wouldn’t rely on the table of contents if i were you.

so, although i dare not sort out these words for you; i suppose i could take you on a tour of these dusty halls. check out as many books as you like, but don’t expect to understand their contents.

let’s start with my childhood: a vast wasteland of dead trees, family members, dreams, and aspirations littered with prisons full to capacity with child beaters, rapists, and ex-husbands, barbie doll graveyards, and art museums full of colorful yet disturbing drawings portraying the very library you’re standing in right now.

despite the depressing paragraph i was a rather blissful child. with an infantile older sister, a spiteful yet protective younger brother, a downhearted mother, and a basketcase father, i always found solace in the fact that one day i would be far far away from all the chaos i lived with on a day to day basis. constantly venting through lines and colors on paper, because i was too socially awkward and linguistically challenged to have a mature conversation with anyone at the age of five.

i was never a ‘cool’ kid. i have always been and will always will be a plain jane. i always wore blue jeans and shirts my mom bought from walmart. i never cared much for going with the flow of pop culture or what the ‘cool’ kids thought; i would have much rather sat alone with my chocolate milk drawing in one of the many notebooks and sketchbooks i’d beg my mother to get me any time we went to walmart to get a cheesy t-shirt.

up until my sophomore year of high school i was pretty much a loser, nerd, dork; whatever statistic you’d like to group me into that fits those nouns. i like to pretend that my best friend was the mayors daughter before i moved to my current residence. she had the same last name, and i suppose there’s no harm in having an over-active imagination (which i still have to this day). once i moved to the secret city i found three people i spent the majority of my days with, and even now i have two small groups of fantastically unusual friends and i like it that way.

i grew up inside my own head, and formed my own thoughts and opinions about life, love, and anything else i came across in my life, never having any good friends to challenge my thought process or taint my own opinions with theirs.

unfortunately, living inside your own head has it’s downside. the older i got, the more i let my surroundings effect my heart to the discontent of my brain. i let my relationships effect me, and was left alone to sort out the trials and tribulations of the nathaniel era; all of which effected me in a negative way at the time. the past few years leading up until recently i’ve been dejected and extremely depressed due to the childhood section above and what i call ‘the nathaniel era’, along with other things the ghost of these halls have told me over tea party conversation every sunday.

i’ve grown from the negativity, and although it pains me to see my scars every day they remind me how strong i’ve become. “why the scars?” you ask? i can not give you the answer to that question or any other question to which the answer can be found in the ‘restricted’ section. grab your invisibility cloak if you’re fortunate enough to have been given one by yours truly. unfortunately, literally no one is trustworthy enough to receive that gift from me yet, but if you’re deserving and patient enough you’ll get one by owl.

there you’ll find all my deepest insecurities, the reasons for my scars, my deep dark secrets, and the folder i keep all your moms hot and heavy love letters in. this is the compilation of picture books full of mental demons and chapter upon chapter of dark and deeply hidden memories that have made me the person i am today. the words are put into order, unlike the rest, but you will still never understand.

‘it’s bitter baby, and it’s very sweet’ is the quote that best describes my life. i’ll leave it to you and your sense of direction to figure out why.