I hate Ross Geller but this isn't about him, it's about what's next

I was watching Friends but I had to turn it off because I didn't want to miss anything

I didn't want to miss anything

But I missed a lot of school

I missed soccer games and baseball games because of practice

I promised my friends I would go to the next one

But I missed that too

I missed mission call openings and the Senior Dinner Dance

But I didn't miss my brother's wedding

I didn't miss the chance to kiss the boy who made me realize that kissing while slow dancing in the rain was way better than kissing in the backseat of a douchey and conceited Junior's car

I didn't miss speaking at seminary graduation

And I didn't miss the chance to hug my dad tonight

High school taught me that friends are great but they leave much too soon

And you can yell at your family, but they'll still be there in the morning

It taught me that being valedictorian was never what I wanted and I'm much more of an athlete than a nerd and that's okay too

It taught me how to keep secrets from everyone but my mom

That rap music and country and church music all make me happy in different ways

It taught me that I deserve much better than a boy who expects me to keep our kisses a secret 

And that love is a four letter word I can't pronounce

I learned that I may not know how to pronounce it but love is something I do too deeply

I learned that I care more about kids and animals than I care to admit

That cutting in line in traffic is something that makes me feel really bad because Abby told me how much it bugs her

I learned that I care a whole lot more about other people's feelings than my own

I look in the mirror and I see someone so much stronger than I did at the beginning of sophomore year

I don't shy away from raising my hand to ask questions I want to know the answer to

I have a lot to say and I'm not afraid to say it anymore

I'm not afraid of confrontation and talking on the phone is no longer my biggest fear

I'm not afraid of commitment and I know I'm not a quitter

I found myself

After living in fear of judgment for so long I finally learned that I'm my own biggest judge

my name is Emma Victoria Fruehan and it took me all this time to realize that I'm not afraid of anything but the unknown

and even that is a stretch

because the unknown is beautiful and it's the thing we step into on Thursday at 12;30 pm

and I'll probably cry but not because I'll miss high school or all the kids I never really talked to

I'll cry because I've mastered it

I learned how to miss the maximum amount of school without ever worrying about attendance school

I know every hallway and which streets to avoid in the morning if I'm running late

I know the teachers and how to get an A without any effort at all

This place has been my home for three years and this week we get evicted

I guess it's time to greet the unknown with strong open arms

I'm hoping for a warm embrace

For Isaac

I made you a mixtape and then I got assigned your blog and I think it's fate because I used to have a crush on you
All the girls in the neighborhood did actually and I don't know if you knew or not but your name got brought up quite a bit at summer sleepovers when we were naming who we liked in the ward.
(Please disregard this because we were like 12 and I shouldn't be held accountable for anything I did at that age)

Anyway... I feel like anything I write to you or for you would be inadequate
Your words surpass mine by a longshot and maybe it's because I don't have such a broad vocabulary as you do

Each post makes me wonder about the person behind the pronoun
Because you have to be writing about someone

For the longest time, your writing intimidated me
And it must be because I get lost in the metaphors and the uncommon words tested my intelligence, but your words are beautiful and deserve much more praise

The post I gravitated most towards was entitled Raw and the emotion I could feel as I read it could only be described as just that- raw.


A few favorite lines:

"I guess my clothes are more sorry than I am
After all they speak louder than I do"

"Our hands forming their own opinions"

"Love and leave now synonymous"

"Because maybe some of them are still lonely
Because even death isn't the cure-all we hoped it was"

"And I'm beginning to wonder if it's the person or their feelings that are fake"

"I hate you because that's easy"

"I named it nostalgia
And it smells like my dad"

"But to me, cheeks are the most loving
Cause they catch all the tears of sadness"

"Mixed taped and outerwear are no indicator of identity"



Thank you for sharing your words, Isaac. Thank you for allowing us the privilege of reading them.

Burning eyelids

Head down.

Eyes closed.

Sleeping with an awake mind.
Sleeping, but only to the point where I can still hear what's going on around me.

I've been sleeping for the better part of the past month and I don't think I'll be very awake until May 28th.

I really haven't been trying to miss class.
I haven't been trying to miss my brother either, but he's 5,099 miles away and I can't help it.
I can't help it.

At this point I'm scared of waking up.

I don't fit into Creative Writing 2 and I'm anything but creatively advanced.
I haven't been inspired lately and I've run out of things to say.

I've run out of boys to kiss and tell about.
I've run out of sob stories.
Of rants.
Of poems I don't even understand the meaning of.
I've run out of self-love and I think my writing ability went with it.

The sunny days are burning my skin and making my heart burn for something new.
Something to wake me up.
To remind me why I need to figure out my future.
To remind me that I have a future outside of high school love and high school hate.

I need something to wake me up.
Because the alarm clock ringing in my ears has blended into the white noise that teen angst has embedded in my ear drums.

I stopped paying attention.

Until now.

Chronic

I think this is the first doctors appointment I'm excited about
I finally get to rip these stupid tonsils out and end the chronic pain
But to me it's not chronic
I stopped noticing how much it hurt to swallow
Because it hurts a whole lot more to watch my friends go through things I don't know how to help them with
It hurts more to fall in unreciprocated love
It hurts more to see my best friend cry
It hurts

Illness is nothing compared to heartbreak
And I would take tonsillitis over and over again if it meant I could end everyone else's pain

Your pain has always cut me deeper than my own
These tears were never for me

Happy Valley

I didn't show up to school the next day

I told my mom I was sick

But I think we're all sick with something

Everyone was grieving and I was at home in yoga pants watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians

For some reason their stupid dramatic lives helped me escape for a few hours and all I felt was fake

Fake

Fake

Fake

And that felt better than facing the halls of students trying not to cry

Because we're all sick with something

Someone, please find a cure

There are a bunch of suggested remedies out there, but we've yet to find one that's a cure-all

We need a cure-all

Because I don't think happy valley can handle so much sadness

They'll have to rename it

Someone, please find a cure

speak now or forever hold your peace

if you don't say it now, they wont hear you

they've got things to do and places to be and they've never needed your hand in theirs

you're just a person

a person who doesn't have a place to be or a thing to do

you spend so much damn time following other people that you don't even know why you carry around maps

but somewhere near the end of may you'll be alone without a footstep to follow and you'll be thankful for the maps in your hand

you drew them for 12 years because they told you to and the early ones are covered in crayon and the more recent ones are done in black ink

you'll need all of them combined to get you anywhere

and at some point you'll look up from the maps you drew and realize the world isn't as flat as it looks on paper and people aren't as mean as they seem in movies and someone's gonna love you in a way that Nicholas Sparks could never tell in 300 pages

but you won't see it unless you look up

and they won't hear what you have to say unless you speak up

fire insurance not included

I could write a novel about the reason that goodbye was the wrong choice

But I get it

I knew that sparks weren't enough to keep the fire lit

We needed lighter fluid or flint and steel or just a better stack of firewood

BUT I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION WHEN WE BUILT FIRES AT GIRLS CAMP

I think I was in my cabin screaming because there was a mouse

But shouldn't boys have an innate ability to build fires?

I guess if my plan was to leave it to you then I have no chance at staying warm through the night

Because you weren't prepared, boyscout, and you let me down

But I get it

I knew that learning how to be happy on my own would be good for me and I've proved myself right this time

I'll go back to life without you and I'll forget about the fire you started in my fingertips

It singed my hair and the smell made me sick but I forgot because your eyes were a perfect shade of blue 

The kind of blue that reminds me of Mondays in June

The kind that meant sunburns and open windows in the nighttime and dropped snowcones left to melt

Your smell worked it's way through the fibers of my clothes and it's gonna take more than a rinse cycle to get rid of it

And you smell like campfire and disappointment and every shooting star that just turned out to be a cruel piece of burning rock for little girls to waste their breath on at night

And this time I was a little girl with the naive notion that wishes on stars actually make it past the panes of my window

I just don't remember wishing for blue eyes to break my heart