My best friend texted me Announcing some great news Squealing with excitement She showed me her Babyfilled ultrasound views I knew that she was happy As I should have been too

Talking to my mother She told me about her cruise How my dad and her Would see the fjords and Enjoy the pretty views I knew that she was happy As I should have been too

Seeing all my friends from highschool Who are all so bloody cool Sharing their lives and milestones On their social media And that of their children too And I know that they are happy As I should be for them too

And me I know I’m at a standstill And I know that’s okay too But I have to admit That I am not happy, not as I should For I feel like Instead of moving forwards I am going on a backwards move

Come with me you said That sunny day in August We were young and most of all Unknowing and unaware Of what life would be like What life would bring

I came with you That sunny day in August I was absolutely smitten And most of all in love With the way life was going And I didn’t know it yet then

But I was in love with you That sunny day in August You made me promise you That we would always Be there for each other That we would always stay friends

And so I promised That sunny day in August That friends Was what we would be That friends Was what we would stay

And now, many summers later It’s another sunny day in August And you’re married To a lovely and beautiful wife Or at least that’s what I’ve heard From your friendships that have lasted

We don’t talk anymore On this sunny day in August But all I think about is you And the promise we made years ago When we were young Unknowing and unaware

That life could be so different From that sunny day in August Many many years ago

I wasn’t sad you know Or lonely necessarily I was just- Alone And that was okay for me I had a comfy chair I could sit on all day I had books I could read for hours on end I had me and my thoughts and feelings And I was okay

I also wasn’t happy Nor did I have much fun I was just- Existing And I was okay with that

But then I finished my book And as I closed it So did the sun

——

I had never been sad you know Not really Nor had I ever been truly lonely Not until then Not until I closed my book And the shadows were taken too That’s when I felt lonely

And boy I wished so hard the shadows I once had despised so much Would return to me Because even though all that time I was alone My shadows had kept me company And I was okay with that

But now I was alone And I was lonely too And I wasn’t okay with that Not this time

She asked me what it felt like How a girl like me so chaotically full of life Could survive with a brain so Similar to a wildfire

I answered with the flames Spewing from my brain All going their separate ways I couldn’t finish what I wanted to say As she knew the chaos that next came

A thousand words and a thousand thoughts She cried and cried and then she laughed I forget to answer what she’d asked As the wildfire in me desperately fought To win a place in her heart

I wanted to tell her all there is But I got distracted and I missed The flames succeeded once again In their chaos creating list Oh to be normal, I wished

Marianne opened her eyes, still half asleep she felt peaceful, and calm, like she was still on the beach she had dreamed about. She turned her head to the right and smiled when she saw the back of her best friends head. She felt so lucky she had such an amazing friend that loved sleeping over just as much as Marianne did. It hadn’t always been like this, as Marianne had only met her friend fairly recently. Lynn, as her friend was called, thought Marianne was weird at first and didn’t really want anything to do with her. Marianne pushed the duvet off of her body with her feet and stepped out of the bed, slowly as to not disturb Lynn’s head. She looked over to the other side of the room and smiled, oh how lucky she was to also still have Lynn’s body in relatively good shape. Today was going to be amazing. Today she was going to quiet another friend that would never ever leave her.

Bought by a father for his loving wife Worn with pride by a mother for all her life And then when mother died It was passed down to the daughter - Now a bride Only she, filled with too much grief and pain Couldn’t set herself to wearing it So when the time came She passed it on again To a daughter of the family once more But the granddaughter had no interest As she believed she was not blessed The necklace carried memories Of her mother so depressed and cold And so the necklace was sold By the price of its worth in gold

She didn’t want to be here for the slightest bit and she wouldn’t have, hadn’t it been for all the lies she told her best friend Lisa. ‘Of course I’d love to go! I’d love to see everyone again’ ‘No ofcourse I’m over him, don’t worry about that’ ‘I promise I’m fine, it’ll be fun!’ But she wasn’t fine and she definitely wasn’t over him. Even the thought of seeing him again made her anger rise inside her as well as that immense feeling of jealousy. How could he choose her? How could he just one day wake up, and tell Amalia casually over breakfast that he’s leaving her. For HER? Smile and breathe, Amalia, smile and breathe. That’s all you have to do. Walk in there with confidence and pretend you are not hurting at all. Make yourself look confident. Make him regret leaving you.

Sweat Like the sweat I’m met With every time I’m anxious When people ask me anything I can hear the blood Make ears ring I can feel my cheeks reddening I can feel my words leaving My mind goes blank And I sink until I sank To the bottom Of my embarrassment I want to leave But in that moment I even forgot that I need to breathe So I stop I sweat I’m silent

At least on the outside It’s chaos on the inside My thoughts are there And yet they’re not where I can reach them Form them Speak them I want to speak them And leave then I want to talk and walk Away Way past my anxieties and insecurities But instead I sweat And I say nothing I sweat and I sweat Until a puddle is all that’s left A puddle of silence that smells of sweat

I was young. That’s all it was I think. I wasn’t ill or mentally out of it or just simply weird. I was young and when you’re young, things feel intense. I’m sure you all remember that intense feeling of anger and jealousy you felt as a kid, seeing your sibling getting ice cream while you didn’t. I’m sure you all remember that intense sense of injustice that you felt was done to you in that moment. ‘But you already had pudding dear, your brother saved it for later. For now’. Maybe, if you were similar to me as a kid you would scream and shout and scold about how unfair this all was. ‘If he gets ice cream, I deserve some too!’ I was dramatic, yes I’ll admit that, but I wasn’t sick. I was just a kid. Honestly, looking back at that moment during the years I have questioned whether I was normal or not. Sometimes I couldn’t recall the event without feeling an intense amount of embarrassment and other times all I felt was sorry for little me. Just as kids change into preteens and teens and eventually into adults, memory’s do so too. Now, 20 years after that… interesting moment, I feel peace. It’s bad. I know it’s bad. But it’s easier now to believe it when I tell myself that I was just a kid when it happened and that that was all that it was. I was just a kid. A child. Someone too young to understand reality. Someone too young to understand the consequences of her actions. Especially such far reaching actions. I don’t think I ever meant to actually do it. Yes, I had thought about it. Yes, I wrote about it in my little six year old handwriting and my pink diary with a pony on the cover. But that was all still innocent, though I believe some people might already disagree with me there. They’re saying six year olds shouldn’t even think about those things. But I’d like to remind them that all kids are weird and random. After the no phase and the why phase you get a weird phase somewhere along the line. If you combine that weird phase with the intense all or nothing emotions of a child and you get the perfect recipe for such a tragedy to happen. I don’t remember ever making the plan either. Maybe if I find that pink diary with the pony and can decipher my own handwriting, I can read if I actually thoroughly planned my act or if it was just a kind of in the moment thing. A moment filled with that intense childlike rage. Honestly that’s all I remember, that anger, that rage. When I think about it now, it was the last drop. The drop that started the flood. The spark that ignited the fire. The maddening smile that I knew somehow was always followed by one of his so called pranks. They were never funny. And yet, as far as a six could experience love, I loved them. I loved him. So so much. Just like children feel anger and rage deeply, they feel love deeply as well. Or at least I did. And that hurt. I remember always being the joke. The one people laugh at and not laugh with. I didn’t know that then, but if I did maybe I wouldn’t have acted the way I did. Maybe I wouldn’t be where I am today. If I understood that my classmates were children too, incapable of grasping the bigger emotions of life too, I wouldn’t have taken it so personally. If I understood that they were dramatic too… I don’t know. I was just a child. Now, being an adult and having access to all the words for every emotion I can possibly experience, it’s all so much easier. I can’t get back to my way of thinking back then. I can only recall what I did and all that followed. I can only read what I wrote in my six year old handwriting in my pink diary with a pony on the cover: ‘if he wasn’t going to love me, he wasn’t going to love anyone’.