Do Stupid and Terrifying Stuff

Now, my motto definitely isn't "live life with no regrets" because frankly that seems like a set up for failure. But lately I've been thinking about the stuff I did and didn't do when I was younger, and how the stuff I didn't do eats at me way more than the stupid stuff I did do, and how immensely bummed out and old this epiphany made me feel.

One of the mildest examples is the time me and my buddy were seriously considering getting dreadlocks. Would they have looked ridiculous on two country-drawling shrimpy white boys with Trip Pants and Etnies? Definitely. Am I glad we let my friends dad talk us out of them by explaining how dirty they were (I think he even said they required feces just to hold- that man was a circus)? Definitely not. I can't get away with that shit now, I'm not 15 anymore, and I definitely regret missing the opportunity to add more color to my youth. Looking back it just feels like a half-finished coloring book of chicken-outs and fall throughs.

The biggest example I have is my freshman year, when I fell into high school love with a girl in my computer class named Haley. My computer class was actually a computer program to help you make up missed classes, and Haley missed a lot of school because she'd been really sick. And I never knew what she had, because I never talked to her. She was older than me and I was painfully shy and inept in the midst of beautiful girls, but I just fell in complete love with the way she moved her long pale fingers across the keyboard, or how she skirted the edge of the school corridors walking with one foot elegantly extended before the other like a slender and timid ghost coasting down the runway. You could tell she was sick, from the way her lily white skin stretched tight over her thin bones (I had never seen skin so pale, so much like paper or snow or clouds), and her hair was thin and brown beneath the beanies and hats she often wore. She was taller than me, too graceful to be lanky but her arms and legs stretched like miles of a narrow highway all the same. I used to relate every song of longing to her, I used to write her love letters with the intention of slipping them beneath her keyboard before she sat down, but I never said anything. I might have said hello to her once. We smiled at each other a few times. We just looked at each other more. I stopped seeing her, because I got out of the class, but I still looked for her in the hallways. Sometimes I'd see her, sometimes I wouldn't, until they made an announcement over the intercom one day announcing she'd lost her battle to brain cancer. I can't remember if I cried or not, but I've cried for her since then. I don't know if she ever had a boyfriend or a girlfriend or anyone. I don't know if anyone ever told her they thought of her while listening to a certain song. I don't know if anyone ever said her hands were beautiful, or that the shape of her mouth was branded across their memory. I don't know if she ever got a love letter, but I know she should have gotten one from me. I can't remember the color of her eyes but I think they're brown.

So yeah, I really just wanted to pin those thoughts down about her, because she's been on my mind lately, but the moral of the story is do things that terrify you. Dont be afraid to be stupid.