Skittles

So many possibilities. I'm full of sooooo many possibilities. It's 4:23am...I've been laying here since 2am just thinking. I can't sleep, so random thoughts have crept into my brain and made nests where they continue to procreate and infiltrate even my deepest dreams. Inside this jumble of thoughts, I got lost in the lies. I've told a web of awful lies in my adolescence that would make a grown man shake his head with pity on my pour soul. I don't remember how many, what most of them were even about, or who I told them to...I can't even remember why. So I asked myself that question: why. Why did I say those things? Why do I feel the need to make up stories to cover up my own indescretions? Sometimes, it's not even about indescretions. It's about making my life more...interesting. In all honesty, my life is very easy. I'd like to pretend it's some soap opera screenplay. I make a big deal out of minute instances because I have nothing else to say. I don't talk about my dreams or my quirks or my observations because I believe, truly, that no one cares to hear. It might all be crazy talk -- talk of loving harder than I can imagine, of being content to just live for other people, of wanting to own a farm, have a horse, travel the country, sing whenever I want, and just become this person...a person who wakes up every morning eager to greet the day's potential beauty. Even when it's raining, I smile. Not because it's funny, but because it's so...perfect. I think things, even people, are most honest when they're at their worst. When the world is closing in around them and the rain doesn't seem to let up. I feel sorry for pavement. It gets walked on, driven on, rained on, snowed on, iced on, beaten, cracked, spilled on, spat on, and lain on....and yet, it's still there. Day after day, waiting to do it all over again and serve it's purpose. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to just...sit around, day after day, waiting to serve my "purpose", or lack therof, as a human being. I don't want to be the A-typical twenty year old who goes to college, drinks every weekend, and avoids all sense of reality. I don't want to be shoved into any one direction by any one person. I've always had a problem with authority. Some would tell me that's a vice, not a virtue, and that may be. But it's part of who I am. I've always questioned why I'm being asked to do something --- why do I have to do this assignment, why do I have to sing that particular song, why did you cast me in that role, why did you choose me to double date with you, why are we friends, why do you even like me, why did you ask me that, why, why, why. I want to understand the inner workings of people's minds, and I'm not talking about psychology. I'm not talking about blaming attraction on pheramones or diagnosing bipolar disorder. I'm talking about truly being interested in those thoughts that never get expressed. The ones people think while they're driving alone on the highway, while they're laying in bed at night, while they're walking down the hill on campus, while they're sitting in their favorite chair, while they're alone. I, for one, have some of the most random, exciting, optimistic, dreamy thoughts while I'm alone. I think up scenarios in my head for certain situations. I play out how things could have been different if I'd just said what I wanted to say in the given situation. I have rhetorical conversations -- yes, out loud -- with people I wished I'd had those conversations with. I say things to people that I want to say to them in reality, but it stays within the four walls of my bedroom (or car, most times). I dream of going to Disney World and meeting Belle, I dream of watching the ball drop in NYC, I dream of just taking a cross-country road trip with a few friends and watching the sun set over the the Rocky Mountains. I think about what it would be like to watch a Broncos game, to make love under the stars, to meet Barbara Streisand, to sing for Barack Obama, to sink my toes into the ocean, to touch a killer whale, to listen to a baby's -- my baby's -- heart beat, to have a simple sort of love without question or expectation, to walk onto a Broadway stage, and to kiss the sky. I can't comprehend why these things are so questionable...why I can't do them all. People ask me what I want to do...."what do you want to do with yourself, Melissa?"...and the easiest, most truthful answer I can come up with is..."everything. I want to do everything." I want to go to cosmetology school, I want to be a CNA, I want to be a nurse, I want to act, I want to direct, I want to sing, I want to love, I want to run, I want to travel, I want to experience live in the most divine form I can. I don't understand what is so wrong with all of that. They look at me like I'm crazy, like I've fallen off of my hypothetical 'rocker', that I've kicked the can. But I'm twenty! I've got so much time to do all of these things. I understand money is an obstacle, but it's an obstacle that is maneuvered and manipulated daily, so I don't see the problem. I am fairly pessimistic, but it's derived not from my own persona...but from my environment. I've grown up thinking I 'can't' do this and I 'can't' do that -- simply because of inane reasons (money, time, etc) that make absolutely no sense in the scheme of things. I was watching TV (something I don't do often) and a Skittles commerical came on -- it ended with it's famous slogan "Taste the Rainbow". I've seen the commercial close to a million times and have never given it a second look. But it couldn't be more right. I'm sure I'm taking it completely out of context because the Skittles advertising team probably didn't think as deeply into it as I'm about to delve, but --- taste the rainbow. Taste every color, every inch, every possibility. Possibility is the key word here. A lot of things aren't probable, but it's up to us...as individuals...it's up to me to make the improbable POSSIBLE! To quote Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, "It's possible...for a plain yellow pumpkin to become a golden carriage." The answers, the 'shoulds', are staring us right in the face and none of us, especially I, are ready to meet its eyes. I'm a good person. I can make no 'wrong' turns --- just turns that will lead me to a dead end, where I will have to pull a U-ey and find another route. I'm stronger than I let myself believe. I'm more talented than I let myself believe. I have more POTENTIAL than I let myself believe. I am Melissa. I am just me. That's all anyone can ever ask of me -- Melissa the dreamer, the cynic, the goof, the push-over, the conceited, the happy, the privelaged, the caring, the crying, the black, the white, the 'mexican', the scared, the weak, the strong, the stable, the woman. That's all I can be, and I'm the first person who has to start believing it. Everything else is irrelavent.