Deadly and Positive.

I feel like bouncing from bullet point to bullet point because that's about where my mind is at. I'm racing at twice the speed limit, and for the first time in awhile, the broken speedometer doesn't have me cringing. Baby cracks its first smile at the man behind the camera, helplessly juggling this week's plush toy. Now there's a story to tell your friends. I swear we're all too wrapped up in our pride to get much of anything accomplished. What would the world be like if no one cared what their friends thought and no one had parents they didn't fear disappointing? Would we all be fifty-five year old fast food employees with a nasty crack habit? Or would survival skills kick in, and our own drive would be enough to steer us to success?

We'll never know because pride is our favorite of the seven deadly. Oops, looks like I just sold out my own, at least. I can't speak for you and you and you, but I've fallen victim to pride since I can remember thoughts racing on paper. I don't know about you, but I don't have the time for the vanity aspect of pride, the stomach for gluttony, the jealous thoughts for envy, the temper for wrath, the drive for lust, the sleuth for greed, or the lack of motivation for sloth. Dabble in each but leave none your vice. We all get wrapped up and stuck here and there now and then. My deadly sin is pride. What's yours?

To you, I allot wrath. You're irraticate and irrational; I've always been scared of you even though I love you. If you think you're slow to anger, you're living in the fast lane, and I'm the grandpa you've been stuck behind for fifty miles on a back country double yellow. What is a limit of friendship, anyway? I never understood the concept of unforgivable sin. It's written that only blasphemy falls in the category, but hearing your speeches promises me that I am guttural and defiled should I fall in step with the wrong sin. it's risky business, and the thin line blurred when I fell and fell hard. Hands don't pick you up when you tripped over your own feet. Tell me, what's it like to be unscathed? Today I told her I feel damaged but I'm in no hurry to cash in my refund. I think I'll take me with one burnt out light bulb and a scratched exterior, so long as something's keeping me running.

You better believe you own vanity and I've spent more than enough time on you, so you should know why. It's an aspect of my own sin with its own worldly spin. I saw the colors of your eyes, as hard to decipher as they were, and swore up and down that they looked at me and the world with a rosy tint. Those some colors are missing and all I see is the whites of the back of your eyes, rolled in for a view of only what you want, what you need. Enjoy the show of your interior while the outside keeps moving and your decisions bring what anyone else would see as ruin. I hope you find out what I wished on your twenty-fifth show of academics, and I'm doubting you are any more than a tool at this point. Would it be out of line, too audacious to say even your second place weakness is another deadly sin? You always did have a thing for killing two birds with one stone, so kill your guilty pleasures alongside remnants of what is good inside everything I once saw as positive. I see lust on your skin and sense it on your mind. You might lose yourself completely when it comes to giving in to its tantalization. Beautiful months spent with beautiful lies and another blurred line somewhere in between. When did every transition in my life become indistinct? You witnessed too many firsts to walk out, but I intend to let you do it anyway. Your poison always will be what makes you feel good.

You're better than falling to envy but I watch you live it anyway. Maybe it's not so much you envy all else as much as you discount everything you already contain. Page after page is marred by a dark edge I can never achieve, and your words to me say otherwise, but I'm in no place to point out a contradiction. I hope you see yourself as beautiful. What is life if not best lived? Are you spending yours in secondhand stores and cow pastures as an aimless walk, or do you have a purpose? Someone's full of questions today; I'll debunk my sin if only for a second and point the finger at myself. Curiosity is running rampant but it's better than anywhere else my mind has been in the past 384 hours, save 4 or 5 where nothing mattered but the sunshine and my depiction of it. Today was a beautiful day. I saw your face in the sunshine and heard your laugh when the CD skipped. You are pure in its most honest form.

Greed is marking your actions when it comes to everything you've left behind, and I can't say I'm not a victim. I miss the way you paused every time you said that one word, and the laugh everyone made fun of. You don't know what you're doing, or who you're doing it to. All for one who is more forgetful than most and the object of a memory I'd normally give you a hard time about. Teenage love is so deceptive and unkind when you're not the one in it. I can say I've missed you more than I do now, and it's a missing you I can deal with as not the least of my worries, but far from the most prominent. All I can reinforce is that I light up when I'm given five minutes of your time. They say you'll effect the way I go about my life. I want so much to laugh at them, but I don't because it's true. I'm healthy and happy in ways people would smile over a newborn for, but the thousand times I've told you not to be a stranger are on repeat and applicable. Send a smile my way, and I'll be alright until the next makes an appearance.

I'd love to pinpoint a sloth and gluttony, but this is America, and anymore everyone has a few extra pounds and a love for something with a calorie count higher than the measure of the nation's tallest mountain. Entertainment industries aim at couches, and we pick out fancy ones from magazines just to glue our tails to them for five years. By then they're worn, and we need Ikea's new line to dictate its replacement. We're all guilty; some more than others. Naturally, we all partake in every deadly sin and none will go untouched in your lifetime. I can count occurances for each in my own life today alone. What a broken child. Aren't you too?

Of course, that's just my token sin talking. Pride. My urge to never be alone in anything, but to never be completely vulnerable in the place causing said vulnerability. I'm holding on to pretty pictures from so many sources so I feel like I still have the haze of memories that used to have me in a trance. I don't let go easy. Not many people do, but there I go again. Everything is harder than it should be when it comes down to it, yet everything is dramatically easier. When did I become the professional at covering the emotional spectrum? I took a lower dosage today and thank god I can feel its side effects already. More than anything I can see my poison in everyone that I am too afraid to tell that I love them. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. To many people, so many different kinds of love, and for so many reasons. I do my best to get caught, but I'm still always coming down from the night before I left you, no matter who you are. I worry about being easy to leave and easier to forget.

But real friends are in awe of everything the other contains, never understanding why the other would find such a similar awe in everything you, a broken, imprefect soul in your eyes, contain. It's supposed to be this way. Respect forges deeper bonds than kind hearts alone. So the devil on my shoulder tells myself I'm not only forgettable, but also not worthy of respect. The angel reminds me of the respect I've already worked so hard to earn. And what can be said of those who have mine? New friends and unintentional trouble that I'm too proud to admit I enjoyed embody my inability to realize yet another fine line between where my deadly sin is wearing me down and where I've begun to overcome it. Who knew my sin and its remedy wore so many faces? I think this is me comnig around. I hurt everyday, but I smile because of it. This is the feeling of knowing what is over and what will see tomorrow. I need to hurt to face the truth. I need to hope to keep enjoying every blessing. How many times today will a smile, a joke, a streetlight, some strangers, a vacant house, or anything unimmune to my spell make me crack a smile, or even a laugh? Today was a good day.

Some days all I need to do is watch the sky. This is knowing I'll be okay.