Top 25 Reasons Why I Have Faith In You

(Plus Three More Because I Couldn’t Choose Which Ones to Cut)

1) You’re pursuing your dream.

2) You’re still nice to Stephanie even after all the drama she put you through.

3) You listened to me sniffle and sob on the phone and didn’t tell me to quit being such an diva.

4) You pretend to not think blogging is uber-lame (and I appreciate that).

5) You tell me all the writing I send you is fantastic which tells me you know when lying is for the best (and I appreciate that too).

6) You know what you believe in and that doesn’t change because of other people’s opinions.

7) You’ve never yelled at me. Well you’ve yelled, but never angrily, and happy yelling is totally cool by me.

8) You talked me through a really awful time, even though I was vague and random and you didn’t really know what was going on it and possibly still don’t. In other words, your ability to wing it is unparalleled.

9) You work so friggin’ hard (no seriously, you should stop, you’re making me look bad).

10) You make friends with authority figures rather than resenting them on principle and that’s why you’re going to be famously successful and I’m going to scribble rants in pencil in a corner somewhere with all the blinds closed when I’m not Facebook stalking you.

11) You tell me to go study because that’s in my best interest, even when I don’t want to hear it (I appreciate that too).

12) You don’t take advantage of your influence over me, like if you convinced me that, seriously, rainbow hair is totally in right now. ‘Cause I’d probably do it if you said so.

13) You laugh at yourself therefore your awesomeness, if it was on y-axis, would have a vertical asymptote with a positive slope.

14) You laugh at my stupid math references (and I appreciate that).

15) You never belittled my attempts at composing even though yours were way cooler.

16) You are the most intelligent person I know. You also coo and use babytalk while playing with cats. This affects your awesomeness. See #13.

17) You have cringe-inducing spelling. This proves you are not a robot. Also, characters without flaws are booooring—I learned that in the class you told me to study for, see #11—so this makes you intriguing.

18) You welcomed me and Sarah into your hotel room on our first band trip, even though we were puny grade eights and you were grade nine.

19) You think you’re fat. This proves you are not a robot. See #17. Not being a robot affects your awesomeness. See #13.

20) You didn’t ditch me when I was dorky and still thought purses were a waste of space.

21) You and I won every single district debate we ever entered (except that one, but that’s because the judge was not aware of how limitless parliamentary style is, pfft).

22) You ordered whip cream at Starbucks with me and it was awesome. See #13.

23) You’re beautiful; society and America’s Next Top Model have convinced me that beautiful people will go far.

24) You support my Post-It addiction.

25) Your courage astounds me.

26) You still think “that’s what she said” jokes are funny.

27) You make me miss you. I don’t tell people that, which shows how awesome you must be to be the exception. See #13.

28) You’re the Meredith to my Cristina. Unless you think you’re Cristina, but Meredith gets the guy so my way’s more logical.

We Are the Champ--uh, maybe not.

Today, I made a discovery.

My friends and I went and saw 'The Invention of Lying' (Ricky Gervais is a genius, especially for a secular audience), and afterwards, we weren't quite sure what we wanted to do, so until we decided, we hung around outside.

And it took me a minute before I recognized it.

We're those kids now.

We're the kids my mom didn't want us to associate with when we were younger, the reason she didn't like us going to late movies, the reason she'd always volunteer to pick us up so we wouldn't have to loiter outside the theatre.

When I was younger, they seemed so cool. They could hang out past eleven o'clock on a school night, at the side of a street, outside of a cinema, totally at ease; they could smoke and glare at people walking by; they could not worry about the 'weirdos' (my moms favourite title).

And now they're us.

But we still have bedtimes, they're just self-imposed now because hello responsibilities, and we're at ease because we have each other. We don't smoke, we only glare if we have reason, and we don't worry about weirdos.

So my revelation of the day: we are the weirdos.

Perspective.

The other day I needed to find a postal code for the SARA Society. They deal with survivors of childhood sexual assualt (SARA stands for Sexual Assault Recovery Anonymous).

See, when I was working with a non-profit group that deals with homelessness, I learnt a lot about other societies and why we need them. There are dozens of crisis lines, for all sorts of reasons, shelters, emergency centres, help lines for families, women, men or children, people with diseases, people that are borderline homeless, people that are homeless, people with mental or physical disabilities... People that need help.

Along with their address and phone number, the SARA Society also had a little blurb about contacting them. If you leave a message with them, you have to say if it's safe for them to leave a message when they call you back.

Not if it's okay, but if it's safe.

And then, if it's not safe, there' s a code.

My mind? Blown.

They have codes. They need codes. There's a need for codes out there! It's one thing to be sneaky planning a surprise party, but to have your safety depend on it? I don't know if I could do that.

I guess it just makes a failed piano exam seem sorta insignificant.

The Pen Is Not Only Mightier, It Cuts Deeper Too.

Sometimes, I scare myself.

I'll get this image, and I'll run with it and suddenly, my pen will slip out of my hand and I'll stare at the paper for a while, transfixed.

Did I do that? Did I create that? (Could it happen?)

I wrote a story tonight.