Animal Crackers & Love

Hello Beautiful, I'm Erin Brice. Sometimes I don't like my name. Sometimes I'm annoying and I will not shut up to save my life. Sometimes I don't think hard enough about the decisions I make. sometimes I'm really obnoxious. I run through grocery stores screaming about WHERE ON THE EARTH THAT IS THIS WALMART ARE THE ORGANIC COTTON BALLS because yeah, I want organic cotton balls. Fake cotton just won't do. Sometimes I'm quiet, and all I really want to do is sit in my bed in the quiet and read books. forever, just books and books and books, and never look up. but eventually I do look up, and I see the sun sparkling through my window. It tickles my toes sticking out from underneath my blanket. I hate that, so I tuck them back inside. But then they get too hot, so I have to take them back out and the cycle repeats itself because I am just never satisfied. Sometimes I build up walls so you can't get to me, but behind them, I am just as vulnerable and small and warm and empty and wrong and loud as you. I love bright colors and things that make reality seem more whimsical than it is. I have a collection of ribbons and headbands, and I love them all the same. I over-think and over-plan and over-organize. I've been like this since I was a baby, before I was gigantically tall and over-talkative. I am a dynamic person, and I like dynamic people. I like myself. I love the world. It is a beautiful place. I'm a very religious person, and sometimes, I'm judged for that. I believe fully in my savior Jesus Christ, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. He's helped me through some seriously hard times. Psalms 139:14 is my life verse, and I believe heavily in everyword of that. I don't believe in judgement or bullying because I've been victim to both. I believe that everyone is beautiful in their own way. We are built in the resemblance of our redeemer ♥. I'm, by far, not a perfect christian, and God never said we had to be. His grace is there for something. :) I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses and putting makeup on for no reason on rainy days. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love the idea of freedom & living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your best friend. These days, I've been trying to classify my thoughts into two categories: "Things I can change," and "Things I can't." It seems to help me sort through what to really stress about. But there I go again, over-planning and over-organizing my over-thinking! Love is a tricky business. But if it wasn't, I wouldn't be so enthralled with it. Lately I've come to a wonderful realization that makes me even more fascinated by it: I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to love. No one does! There's no pattern to it, except that it happens to all of us, of course. I can't plan for it. I can't predict how it'll end up. Because love is unpredictable and it's frustrating and it's tragic and it's beautiful. I think it's important that you know that I will never change. But I'll never stay the same either. I'm pretty stoked that you read this whole thing. I commend you for that. This was ridiculously long, and you probably have other stuff you could've done in the last four minutes. So to you, or anyone else who has spent four minutes on me in some way.. Thank you. I love you like I love animal crackers and having the last word. And that's real love.