i can't seem to shake this feeling that i made a wrong turn somewhere recently, and that the direction i chose gave me an entirely different life. i wake up and feel that i'm in the wrong city, meeting all the wrong people. i picture waking up in a different home with a breeze and clouds, and a completely different view from my balcony. i imagine that a typical day would include riding my bicycle to pick up groceries to make dinner for lover and i, and that after my work day, i would be going be sitting outside of a coffee shop, waiting for others to meet me and breathing a sigh of relief that tonight i belong somewhere with someone. i dream of other places. i've been meeting people in my dreams that i've never seen before, in a city i've never been to. i'm beginning to get to know these people because dreams of them recur more frequently. and i can tell it's somewhere other than where i am now because it rains there, and i once caught a glimpse of the skyline meeting the ocean.

i've been catching myself staring out windows again. at times i'll unknowingly spend 15 minutes standing in one place, staring at the wind moving the trees. i find myself listening to the water hit the floor of the shower, and become embarrassed that i've wasted 10 minutes and have only begun washing my face. i can hear myself when i'm laughing, and can feel the smile on my face. it's difficult to maintain. that's how i know it's coming back. when i find myself laughing out loud, my thoughts are not abandoned. instead they grow their loudest in those seconds of laughter. my body is beginning to reject feelings of happiness. it feels as though happiness is becoming more and more of a foreign substance. my body knows how i feel before my mind does at times.

how ungrateful of me, considering life has been so good to me. but sadness does not reflect gratuity. i understand what i have. i understand that compared to most, my life is considered bliss. but i think anyone could agree that even if you had won a one week stay in disneyworld, all would be lost if you were condemned with the flu on your first night's stay. my body feels sick at times, and i think it's gone to my head. depression usually makes its prescence known in my appetite and sleep patterns, and since those are the two things that my work schedule has wreaked havoc on, i simply cannot tell the difference.

music

i find music to be so intoxicating. i become lost with headphones in my ears, my body moves involuntarily, my heart beats accordingly. i can't help but to sing, it sets me free. the music plays to the beat of my heart, and in return my heart plays to the beat of the music. that feeling changed who i was, and defined who i am today. when i felt lost in the world, i found myself in lyrics.

there wasn't a thing i couldn't do when music was playing. and when the music stopped, my motivation seemed to come to a complete halt. i've found that i have't been feeling like myself this year. no matter how happy i was i still remained hollow. it took me weeks to realize it was the dust growing on my cd player. it hardly made a sound anymore; lover doesn't listen to music while he sleeps, and background noise to him has always been the television. i began resenting him for not loving music like i do. the music would play loudly in the car, and i seemed to be the only one singing, or really noticing the music at all.

i can't expect his heart to beat to the same tunes as mine. it's petty to wish that he would sing with me.

when i was a baby my parents would visit a family friend at his recording studio, and they would set me in front of the speakers to sleep. all the while the music flowed through the speakers, i slept through the sounds. my parents were musical. my grandfather was a musician, and my dad followed suit and became a very talented guitarist. to this day, my mom sings and dances consistently throughout her day, and sometimes i'm unsure she even notices she's doing it. as a teenager, i spent most of my time with two boys who practically slept with a guitar in their hand. it seemed fitting to have them so close to me, because when my parents divorced, the sounds of my dad's guitar no longer filled our home. i continued to immerse myself in music whenever i possibly could. i spent most of my time at band practices of local bands, or driving to los angeles with friends to stand in a crowded, sweaty room just to hear music that my cd player had played relentlessly on repeat. i used to close my eyes while the bands played; i could feel the music better.

i remember when i was in 6th grade, i was in love with christian bands. they pulled at my heart strings. they made me happy, and i was surrounded by positive messages. but the moment i hit 14, something was changing inside of me, the christian songs became unreal to me. there were things inside of me that i didn't understand, and those songs never mentioned the existence of. i then fell in love with a band that was the polar opposite of the pop punk christian music i adored. this band screamed loudly, they sang of love and pain bluntly, uncensored. i played the sounds of Bert McCracken's voice until the cd no longer worked. i've burned it so many times throughout the years because i would play the cd until they failed. naturally (and unintentionally) my parents disliked the band i fell in love with and probably grew quite concerned because i don't think they ever heard music like that anytime, much less when it was blaring out from under the door of their daughters bedroom.

i don't know who i would be without that cd and others. i cannot imagine my existence with the absence of music. i know at the end of the day, plenty of people can proudly state that they love music, but i sometimes wonder if they truly fall in love with a pair of headphones on. i can't describe the feeling it gives me. i could only imagine that it is a feeling of ecstasy that some can only manage to find at the bottom of a bottle, in the form of a pill, or maybe in the arms of a lover.

everyone has their vice, and this has always been mine.