You know.

I've always wanted to imagine this, that I'm like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. You see, Elizabeth really has no remarkable quailty about her appearence, only that she has fine eyes. And I know people are more then just appearences I'd like to think I have fine eyes, or at least eyes that like to see. But really, I'm not here to talk about appearences.

Let me let you know what is happening right now. I am in Orange Beach, in a cozy little house that belongs to John's family. It's half past midnight and in the twin bed beside my bed John is trying to sleep. I am trying to type lightly as not to wake him. And I could sleep, I really could, but I have these feels, all these feels. And I don't know what to do with them other than write. It seems that there is no other option. At least not for me. And I wish it was like that way for the rest of the world. Because really, I admire anyone who can quantify their feelings in the written world. And because it helps me understand myself, and surely if other people wrote then I could obtain a better understanding of them.

Okay, concentrate. There is this. When I was younger and in elementry school we had this kind of festival every year. It was a thing were the playground was turned into something spectacular, filled with little games that gave you prizes and stands that fed you hotdogs and snowcones. Of course, though, you had to buy tickets to do these things, four tickets per dollar. I remember so clearly the raw, unadulterated jealousy I felt for kids who would bring in twenty dollar bills like it was no big deal and walk away with a handful of tickets. I always had five dollars, twenty tickets to spare. I was an organized kid, just like I am an organized person now (okay, I admit, not exactly organized, just OCD to an extreme level) and I tried to balance my tickets. I spent about 75% of them on games (where I could earn back their value in prizes) and  about 25% on food (a corndog, snowcone, and drink.) But I always saved three tickets for one particular thing. Something I did for the first time in kindegarten, and something that became a tradition for my next five years of gradeschool. I got a balloon. The balloon stand was near this little red shed we kept on the playground. A red shed which at anytime in the year could be opened by a magical set of keys owned by the P.E. teacher, hidden in it jumprops, hulahoops, basketballs, scooters, and other toys that told us we had a free day in PE. But the balloon, getting back on subject. Every year, I got a different color, and I can only remember the color the first year, it was a bright emarald green. I remember loving the helium tanks, how they were like big, tube shaped, silver robots who could fill the balloon until it could fly. But its flight was stopped by a ribbon attatched to it that was then given to the secure hold of your hand.
That first year I got my green balloon and went out to this little field beside our playground. It was the place where we would sometimes have kickball matches. And when I was in the field, I let go of the balloon and I watched it rise, it's greenness bright amoung the pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds. And I watched it, as it floated further and further. I watched it until my eyes watered from looking so hard and it became a tiny black dot on the skyline that dissapeared suddenly, sucked up by the vaccumm that was the sky and my vision which couldn't hold out longer. And somehow I did this again next year, and the year after that, and so on and so forth.
I remember the feels I had when I let the balloon release. How it wad the immiediate sense of loss, how for one scrambling moment I wanted to jump out and grab the string just so the balloon would be mine again. And then the wonder, wonder as the balloon dance and and bobbed in the wind as it carried on higher. This was followed shortly after by jealousy, jealousy because I wanted to float away like the balloon. And then there was a peaceful happiness, happiness because I had set the balloon free to the world. And finaly just the desperate looking, the struggle just to keep the balloon in my sight. I never wanted it to dissappear. But it did.

You know, I really have no idea what I'm saying with this. Don't pay attention to me.

Fin.
Keshia

Currently Reading: Holes by Louis Sacher