I turned thirty this year. I was looking forward to it more so than any birthdays past; perhaps because it felt like I was finally shedding the painful early years of my twenties. The words I've written the last decade have only gotten better, more saturated in authenticity. If I'm lucky enough to live this next decade, I plan on living it with full-hearted excitement for what is coming next every day.

I wanted a romance, a life, that was bigger than the one I actually had, but I was too afraid of letting myself have something real. Of being seen. Of feeling so much for someone or something.

"I don't understand why you're so angry," he said. He was leaning against the dresser I hated but he wanted to buy because the old one didn't fit in our room. The old one, stuffed full of a life I could not seem to get away from. The new one I refused to be a part of. It held only his socks, his underwear, his shirts.

"Just be happy, Al."

I was so angry. I was so angry all of the time. To me, the last five years of my life revolved around being sensitive to someone else's feelings, as though mine did not matter.

"I want you to do something for me," Faye, my life coach, said. "I want you to go over to my table and pick up a stone."

How could I have known, if no one told me, that the voice in my head that held me back the most was fear. This gripping fear turned me into a shaking, skittish, neurotic version of myself. This version of myself said you are instead of I am.

On your first day of college you will think you are lost. Do not panic - you are standing right in front of your dorm without even realizing it. You will never forget what that building looks like again, and, in the future, you will smile when you think back on this memory. 

Dear Mom and Dad, 

Last night I cried into my pillow like the child I was once to the both of you, but this time it was not over a skinned knee or a cruel classmate or a book.

I cried because sixteen years ago you gave me a gift that I will forever be grateful for. 

The spring semester of my junior year at Ole Miss brought both fear and hilarity. It was one of those years that made a fool of itself without anyone else's help. I was on the verge of turning twenty-one, and I was climbing back from the edge of a relationship that had broken my confidence into fractured pieces.  

I love words, and when you love words you end up loving sentences. Sometimes I find myself desperately searching  Pinterest  for a group of words that make me feel something. Sometimes I read a book and words just jump up and grab at my throat like these. Then I read lists on Facebook that contain "literary" quotes; however, they never are what I'm expecting them to be.