Re: Anxious Toasts.

You can't go wrong with making a toast, even if it's made with cheap bottled-water you poured into a red plastic cup, because the world doesn't revolve around you and you don't actually drink. Listen up, this is toast to the present day, the present hour, even if you spend a few hours crying; darling, you don't need to cry, you just need to breathe. (Trust me on this one.) I can't recall the exact moment the universe began to hate for the sake of hating, but I can recall the exact moment I knew we had all the potential in the world to become something great.

The day my car battery died, I had somewhere to be for the first time in a long time. This isn't my idea of spectacular, and this isn't your idea of fun, but what do I know about the inner workings of your mind? I'll tell you what I know: I know you're obsessed with the north, and you can't stop the poetry from bleeding out of your fingertips; words are the same as blood and I still can't write on the walls without punishment. You created a world of perfection, and my bus stopped there, the guards let me through and I still don't understand why.

If you knew me the way I wish I knew you, I think the stars would start shining brighter and I think I might quit writing about death and lost hope, even if all the world went dark and you were the only thing left. Sometimes my world does grow dark, and you are the only thing left, but you don't know that and I leave the road with skinned knees.

Your collarbones, your hair, the way you whisper my name when you think no one can hear you. The moment you showed me my potential and I believed you. Tuesday, and I still hear your voice reading and re-reading – perfecting.

Is this the end of something and the beginning of typos, errors, mistakes? I'll figure it all out one day, but for now, I'm going to worry about my soul being taken by money and bank statements. I'm going to worry about the possible spiders in my closet that could kill me. I'm going to worry if I can spend my life searching the corners of the universe trying to find the meaning of everything, without ever finding anything. I'm going to worry about what we could have been, because I was too big of a coward.

You win, fear. You win, anxiety. You win, shaking hands, closed up throat, messed up fantasies. You win this round.

But I want to remind you that this is a toast made with cheap bottled-water, and this is a toast for the little things that make you tick, because you wouldn't be you without them. Here's to anxiety-ridden daydreams and trembling knees. Yes, I know I'm messed up, but that's what makes me, me. And if you can't accept that, don't bother pretending you 'get it'. You don't, and that's what makes you, you.

So thank you, society. Thank you, anxiety. Thank you, flaws. Thank you, wild hair and soft hands. Thank you, boy full of dreams – boy who taught me everything without really knowing it. Thank you, for making everything come together, to make me, me.

One day, it will all make perfect sense.

Forever Yours,

Rachel.