It is almost like the noise surrounding me encompasses all of the past and everything else inside of me that does not remember the child I yearn to be. Forgetfulness is pounding and it is happening. It is on a tether. It lacks encompassing. It lacks her - because now suddenly she is 17. Suddenly 5 is so far behind. Suddenly the little one inside is hard to look in the eyes. I know now so well it simply needed the little girl in the mirror to remind her that there is life in goodbyes. There is hello in goodnights. There is light when all else denys. My favorite thing about Disney? The light and joy and laughter and loud contentment in all of the chaos of everything that takes place. Maybe something that holds all of that is the “World of Color” water show. The water is the chaos and the sea. It needs the hold to breathe. So effortlessly the chaos is graceful. So kindly the light overpowers. So like life is; the light is the center of attention and it is beauty. Little me sensed at such a young age, “maybe the light is all that needs to be seen, and yet the chaos behind the scenes pushes meaning" so, "maybe there are two ways to look before crossing". Maybe because the water is the chaos and the light is the little girl I find so hard to see now. There are days I can not find her. I am lost in a sea and the light is not on. There are days she is not considered. Yet I still see her - in the pictures behind the glass frames in my hallways, I recall her. The 5-year-old little girl I used to love so effortlessly. Suddenly 7 said hello but 17 said goodnight. One day 9 said good morning and 17 pushed and shoved goodbye. I think all the sirens of due dates and piles of history lessons suffocated the childhood out of this 17-year-old child trying to find a hold. I would only be able to find her locked up behind the glass of the frame Age put her in. A smile that now is not to be considered consistent. I was wrong to think she was gone for good. I was wrong to think she outgrew the smile lines that 5-year-old me knew she never could. I find her. In the place that she knows so very well. I find her in the crowd of so many souls, in the laughter that holds, in the talking that grows, I find her soul and it is so loved. It becomes loving. It is found. In this place 17 year old me knows quite well. Here, I find her in every corner of this cobblestone road. Here, I find her smiles and the places she once laughed so well. Even all the different laughs and chats own this home, for it is so known. In Disney all the faces have a place, every part of who I am has a home to call her palace. In Disney, she is home. The little girl I assumed ran away with age. She comes back when we come here. Suddenly this is no longer a place. This is her home and I know the marks she left here quite well. Here she is held. My favorite thing about Disney? It does not know of age. It does not know a face. It knows of warmth and kindness and remembers those loved souls like they remember their home.

There is this beat - this pounding in my head. There is this constant thought I carry to bed, “Am I out of it yet?”. I guess “out of it” to me means something very different to most. To me, it holds no shape, no specific place. It does not just stay in one place. To me, I suppose “out of this mess” fits the description best. Am I out of the thoughts that haunt me and they yell constantly I am not doing what I should be and although that is what it tells me I still have not found out what it is… yet. To me “am I out” is a constant chase and I am not running because there is no escape. No safe place. There are no shadows just an empty place with trees and mud that stings when things are not the way I have outlined my life’s meaning. You see it is not so much a question as it is a scream when the mud does not let go of the thing I want most. Silence. Am I out of this repetition in life that so desperately clings to me and forces my mind to be full of all the nonsense my body does not want to be a part of? Am I out of the woods? Am I out of the woods? Am I out of this place? Am I out of this place my mind is a part of? A constant question that sticks with me like the anxiety I can not leave. It is gripping. A constant repetition; you see it is a question in the song asked over and over and over again. It is a lyric. A thing to sing along to. It is a commotion. It is silence bottled and shadowed in yells. In my mind, it is the soundtrack to this little life of mine. Will I ever be out of this haunting of mine? Anxiety holds no end. No strings can be cut off and therefore the questions are pointless. I suppose it is human nature to ask them…until answers come out of the mud. Until there is a light at the end of the last tree I will gladly leave this wooded scary place one day. This song to me is more than just a favorite star on my liked playlist. It is more than an album I will forever connect with. It is the pounding rhythm I hold a little bit too close inside of my head where the question so strongly resides. Am I out of the woods yet? Am I out of the woods yet? Am I out of this mess yet? Soon. So soon, there will be a little bit of silence.

I have this mind that speaks louder than my mouth can keep up with. I have this echoing that runs inside my bones 24/7 and it has to hold. I know - I know the words will be taken and trashed because they do not understand. They can’t. They do not know where my mind comes from and the beauty it is trying to convey. That, or they do not care, and in case they do not deserve the words I have so desperately to share. It is the thing I can say is my favorite part about myself. The way in which I speak and see the simple things in this life. I have this heart of mine that sees so much more than what most people seem to go for. I have this soul of mine that loves deeply and a body that is so sensitive it falls every now and then. I have a strong mind and a weak heart and when I was younger I wished they would switch. Now I wish for nothing less. For it could never be different. I am unique in the way I love, so strong, so effortless. I am so much more - than anyone will ever know. I used to think they would never get to know. Never get to know how my mind speaks or what it thinks where the sidewalk ends and a suncatcher meets me. No one would ever get to know the way coffee means so much to me or the way my heart overflows when my emotions are considered for. This world would have failed to know the way I hold onto things that need to be let go of, the way I fall apart when I fight really hard, the reason I am still present, the way in which I am so many more places than home. I was wrong. The world will know, and those who feel the way I used to feel will get a hold of this little soul of mine. It is so much and yet so simple. It is easy to understand and there is so much at hand. It is power, that those who have faced this weak soul are anything but alone. I think my soul and theirs make up for all the times and days at sunset when solitude started to feel like home. The world in which I am present will get all my words. All my stories will soon unfold between pages. In the middle of the ink and the whites, there will be tragedies and comedies intertwined with growing and loving the person who looks back at you in the mirror. It is the redoing, relearning, and reloving. It is the book and all the pages that held me by the thread of the spine. I just pray one day they will be able to save others. In releasing all the stories of me this world will be able to connect with a soul of their own kind and they will learn to feel more. They will be able to see all the emotions that so many people could not in between the space of the pages and themself. As another sensitive soul that is so courageous and strong I will know - know that all my struggles and all the times I have ever felt so little - I have saved someone else. The stories I have created that once consoled me will be my way of giving back to all those who have ever been taken from.

"Little Women". The pure and ever-so-classic movie. A story told through centuries and yet continuing to be told. This is one of the movies that so strongly moved me with the message of women who feel so small and yet are anything but that. A world and society that attempted to create their mind and life to be a simple women and fought the barriers to show who they truly are. The way their story and their emotions were portrayed, and the impact it carried within me. The impact and change within myself to not take the words of others and the way the world tells me, I cannot, I want to fight against that tide just as these women have. To carve my path and do what so many said I cannot or should not because it is too hard. This is a movie that taught me at a time when I needed it most that life is simply too short to follow what others believe to be right. This is a movie that tells the movement, the very story of youth and a woman's why? Why am I doing what I am? Is it for me or them? This movie to me showed how hard one can try to be something they are not. How very hard one can fight their mind to fit in a standard they do not wish to belong to. That fight, you will always lose, because you will always have in the back of your mind, "what if?". What if, you had chased your dream? What if, you hadn't listened to everyone? What if, you took a chance on yourself? Would things have been different? Would the life that you live have been altered to everything you've ever wanted? The women and even the men in this movie try to fight the mold, and when their life strays from the happiness they go against it. They find their way, their fight. This movie showed me to always go in the direction of what I want to fight for without the questions because if I do not I may always have the questions at night. There will always be hardships and obstacles and now I believe that is the beauty of it. The beauty and grace of fighting for my life. The life that I want. The beauty and feeling and being able to say you rose again. The beauty in obtaining it after so many battles and proudly being able to say you fought for it and now it is yours. This is the impact "Little Women" had on me. An impact I will forever and proudly carry.

2020. The year of the pandemic. 2020. The year of finding me. For many, it was being stuck inside not knowing what was next or where the tides would turn. Wondering for the tsunami or the calm sea to take its course. Being stuck inside, for me? For me, it was being away from the world, and not seeing any other exterior soul. I was kept in my keep-safe box of the perfect unsymmetrical four walls of my childhood room. The one I had always returned to from school, the same room I would run into and throw my bag on the floor and faceplant into the embrace of my pillows. It soon became the four walls that no longer spoke to me. The walls that always had a remark for me no longer had any. Or perhaps one day I simply stopped carrying to listen closely. I no longer had anyone to compare myself to. All of a sudden I was not too tall, too big, too brown, too much, too loud, too ugly, not enough, not pretty, not small enough, and not who I was supposed to be. All of a sudden I had no reference to a teen girl I was supposed to be competing against. I no longer had a dream body I was to be fighting for to be a perfect fit into the empty spot I made for myself next to the other models. It was just me. Alone. Suddenly, I was pretty enough, just the right height with the right smile and eyes and foot size, I became just enough...for me. Alone, I saw I was just enough for myself. So maybe 13-year-old me wonders why? Why did I not like myself when I saw other eyes that were different from mine? Why did I like skin that was lighter or feet that were smaller? Why did my heart or mind or something within me decide to make that a factor that put me lower than others? I wonder if I felt like they were my reference image, a way, and a type I was supposed to fit into. I wondered if the world was no longer watching who would I want to be? I know now, so plain and simple, me. I no longer look for an image, a type, or a look. No longer do I see another's beauty and immediately feel less than myself. I still may have days I do not feel the best, but never do I ever again question my worth. My walls now allow me to see another's beauty and no longer frown upon my own. 2020. The year my walls no longer spoke.

It was us - It was face times that started at sunrise and we hung up at midnight at the same time while saying goodbye Phone calls talking while we walk looking crazy to every stranger cause we laugh non-stop in a random shop Your hand in mine because now you are mine but that's it. It became - "I don't want a long list." I'm actually still trying to erase a lot from my mind's storage It isn't fair you gave me so much to remember and I prayed when you left you'd take all the moments too but of course they stayed of course they did of course you didn't Its not fair Not fair I don't remember most things but I remember every single moment of you and me. I'd say I'm proud of cut the list down to one but I think this hurts more it's not fair who would have assumed this story was just a segment in my series I'd say I'm ok slowly finding my way away from you - because my list only has one but this 1 is not progress it is destruction the 1 Box left is titled... "You" "You" entailed Us. The pain, the made up fairytales I've made. I am the poet Yet this pen only bleeds words that are about you. I am the creator. And you are my reference damage. Our short story gave me 100 pages of pain But time has gone and now It is like you no longer exist You no longer have a page in my ripped book Your name no longer breaks my walls Your place no longer has a space where I am So if I were to see you again I imagine I'd be ok Because when I think of us I no longer think of anything. 2:45am I won't promise to love you I won't promise to try I won't promise to text you everyday Because out of nowhere you came back Just to say "hi." I've learned in the time of your absence I don't owe you any promise. This - Was 1 out of 1 hundred pages Of us.