If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

adrienne rich

I want to grow up. I want to be honest with myself, mostly, but I also want to be able to tell the people I love that I love them and the people that hurt me how they hurt me. I don't want to be afraid of what happens when you are honest.

I want the animal inside of me to burn as bright and as hot as this intense summer sun that roasts the black soil that burns my feet. I want there to be no question of who I am, what I am like, what I stand for. I want everyone to know the same Whitney that everyone else knows and who I know. I don't want to be and feel like a smattering of a million different things.  I want to be solid. I want laughter that doesn't come and go. I want reality to be the most real it can be, to not fool myself into false understandings of the people and events around me so that my memories can be true and reliable.

I want to see the sunflowers in the field, and not think jumbled thoughts, but enjoy their mid summer presence.  I want to know exactly what I want to do on July 4th and not care about missing out on anything ever. I want to fully appreciate the relationships I have, but never fully rely on them for a sense of self.

I've never been a place I havent felt like leaving and I havent met too many people who still care about me when I'm gone, but I want to be in a place like that and I want to be with the people who care about me even when I'm gone. I want to find something I love to do deep in my bones, that makes me feel like some prehistoric, ancestoral part of me has ached and ached for this thing. For now, though, I'll just be in my twenties, feeling somehow entirely incompetent at knowing how to make my way through life.