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girl… after you left the party tonight
i found myself thinking about three things:

1. it’s fear that makes me hate it. while we were standing in the cold waiting for our lift, talking about jagged truths… i couldn’t muster up the courage to ask you what made you hate it. it’s not that i’m stressed, burnt out or lonely… they’re just side effects. i’m just scared. it’s not because i make mistakes… it’s because i don’t know when i’m making them. i’m too afraid to look at the mess to differentiate whether or not i’m regretful… in fact, i just become so sure that they will pass. people will keep telling me to loosen up and stop worrying… but that’s because they’re too afraid to look at their own times of self-doubt… and who could blame them? we all feel the side effects of fear.

2. people always have advice. in that one evening, as those kids blended into the lights and the couches they started reliving their days in college. they reeled off their advice… and heck, yes, some words were a little slurred under masks… but the funny part was that two friends (who had similar year 11 and 12 lives) ended up giving me contradictory advice. one said to knuckle down, stay true to the true friends and study hard. the other told me to love everyone, because soon you leave that love, and wonder where the hell love is, or where love went… because it sure as fuck doesn’t find you in the places you go once you leave.

3. you looked so beautiful tonight.