My dad was stranded in China and then Australia for a few days.

No flights coming into the US.

My mom was ironing and crying and the television was far too loud.

He missed my 5th birthday,

and I refused to open presents until he was home.

At least he came home.

But I emptied more than my share of gas tanks.

I wanted to be good at everything, because when I was 17 I was.

I liked white shirts with collars and jeans with holes but I never liked my skin.

My best friends only spoke to me on Mondays,

I painted high school across their screens and in return they gave me words about next August.

I wrote a lot in my little black book. It sounds cliché but I worry about forgetting. I worry about someday-children being 18 and not knowing whether or not it's okay to love on Tuesdays and how necessary it is to have a friend willing to hate people by proxy. These sort of things are terribly important. 17 I was determined. 18 I was present. 19 (thus far) has a lot of homework and not a lot of empty minutes and she only likes running at night and casual eyes. She still doesn't understand the moon but 19 has a ride to Colorado so it'll be okay.  It'll be okay because I'm not 20.

It'll be okay because I have a little grey book now.

I always knew who her favorite child was,

but that was almost okay because I knew who his was, too.

I fought like a lawyer and I never won, I always drove too fast but so did she.

He liked the windows cracked and the little lamp on.

We danced to "Sweetest Thing", his feet wearing through the carpet and mine on top of his, so I grew up convinced I got cheated out of the brown eyes in the lyrics.

He watched his fingers trace the leather more than the television, and her patience wore through too fast for the figures on the screen.

Never brought her roses, always tulips.

I came home far too late once, and she was waiting up. Green eyes, calloused fingers gripping the sheets. He told me "you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with".

 I walked away. 

She said "good things, bad things, happy things, sad things" and I never grew out of telling her.

My friends call her on Christmas and Mother's Day (still).

He was giddy the day he bought me hiking boots, and I broke them in the next morning.

Because I had so many things to prove to him.

He calls me from China to say goodnight.

She holds my hand from the other side of the mattress, both of us on our knees.

And I am so sorry.

I am so sorry I walked away.

And I love you.

I didn't want Nelson to have the fly the plane on his own.

But I wanted to go to college.

And I wanted this to be good,

But mostly it's just better than an empty page.

And I haven't let my fingers run wild on this keyboard in far too long,

But my thoughts have stamina all their own.

So thank you for the good people, the kind Jack Johnson sings about.

Thank you for the new scar on my left hand and a reason to break curfew.

Thank you for one last everything.

Thank you for walking me to rooms not meant for perfect people.

Thank you for reminding me to say it all out loud.

Thank you for Paris, and thank you for Provo.

It will be my own fault if I forget.

unprecedented: but maybe just because I never kissed a boy in junior high.

and

unforgiving: thanks to all the kids who made me feel like an idiot for not swearing.

and

remarkable.

I wore pink dresses to school but I spent more fourth periods at Snowbird than at a desk third term. I saw my friends break, I saw them drowning in their own beds and suffocating in another's. I fell in casual love and sunday love and hold-hands-while-driving love, but I'm still terrified of grown-up love. I never believed in anything I was supposed to do, but I got a 4.0.  Once my mom was so angry with me she threw my phone and broke it, and half of you refuse to believe that, but I wasn't even scared because I feel like a lawyer when I fight with her. And I love her.  I drove the same people home day after day, but I took a road trip to dance with a boy whose last name I barely knew. I didn't pay bills but I worked three jobs and (real talk) I never really hated slow songs all that much.  I went to nearly every baseball game and I never once got sick of the canyon and I wish I treated curfew as more of a suggestion but to be honest I would never get away with sneaking out.  I loved jeeps and tsunami snocones and volleyball at burgess and hiking and mission call openings but I can't stand farewells.  

And to be perfectly honest,

I have too many people to miss.

And I don't really want to graduate,

I just am done with due dates.

And thank you Paris,

you were more than I deserved.