i'm nothing but bad news.

Dear you,

My name is Heather Chynoweth and my last name is hard to pronounce, but it starts with love and ends with family.

I wish it were as easy to pull the words from my chest and let them spill from my mouth as it is to believe in something greater than myself.

I have never been the right kind of disaster to fit in.

I have been told again and again and again and again and again that if I were prettier I would not be such a waste of personality. But without my personality I am nothing and I'm afraid I never felt so worthless as when I let the thoughts of others be my foundation for my self esteem, even though it's difficult sometimes to remember I am beautiful without being told so every day on an exhale of smoke.

I am 5'0" and I am learning to be okay with this.

I wonder every day if maybe I had more meaningful scars and was messily imperfect in the right way I could be desirable.

I have a habit of rearranging my insides until they feel less like exploding and look more like the thoughts spiraling in my brain, hoping that maybe something will change besides just the placement of my heart and veins on the blueprints to my body.

I am the type of girl who will take walks to nowhere in the middle of the night simply to escape the emptiness of her own bed, who is perpetually sad for no particular reason but every reason in the world, who is angry sometimes for no apparent reason, whose mood can be summed up by stormy skies the majority of the time.

I do not own a pair of shoes that have never had the toes scuffed against something.

I am afraid I will never be worth it enough for someone to stay and I am most afraid of all the things I can't remember to be afraid of until they are bearing down on me with the weight of every panic attack I have ever had the misfortune of knowing.

I have been told I am an open flame and everyone else is dripping gas, that I am too easily provoked, that I should not be so loud.

I worry sometimes that I have lost the ability to feel as much as I should because I have been told by too many people that I am wasting my emotions and I have bottled them up too many times, placing them on a high out-of-sight self and hoping that this time, this time, this time they won't explode.

I sometimes forget that I am not always the reason for why people leave or for why people come to dislike me.

I used to be good at smiling until it was real and now I don't know how to fake a smile correctly without it seeming wrong.

I like to apologize to make myself feel better about my poisonous words and my toxic lips.

I wish I had the confidence to tell more people I'm in love with them and want to get to know their smile better, without being so horrified at the idea of rejection.

I have only ever lied to cover up for all the things I have stolen and I have only ever stolen the things I am afraid someone else will find beautiful.

I make the worst first impressions and try to go up from there, but sometimes only end up making things worse.

I have been taking three pills a day since that day I swore my stomach was exploding and the doctors promised they would make it better, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if they're even doing anything for me at all.

I sometimes wish people would never speak to me again but at the same time all I really want is someone who will hold my hand, who can love me.

I wish I knew you better, whoever you are. I wish I knew your hopes, your dreams, who you were in love with last year, last week, who you are loving right now. I wish I knew you well enough to give you a phone call at three in the morning because that's what time it is now and I get really lonely sometimes.

I have an infinite number of things that irritate me, but one of the biggest ones has got to be when someone mixes up "you're" and "your".

I don't know if I believe in everything I should believe in, but I do know that I'm not going to let my doubts be a damper on my happiness.

I like Sunday mornings in the summer and Friday nights in the fall and sunsets in the winter.

I think the stars were my first friends, before I ever knew how to speak to people. I wish the moon could talk back and I wish I knew the names of more stars.

I want to be an artist who makes people think and wonder, but I don't know how I'd handle compliments if I became impressive enough to be noticed.

I am fascinated by people's hands and the way they are used. I have a notebook filled with sketches of the hands of people who will never know me, even though I hate drawing fingers more than anything else in the world.

I believe the potential in a white wall is infinite.

I don't enjoy beginnings but I really like when something is born.

I wish I were as delicate and pretty as the flower I am named after, but instead I feel as though I am as rough as the trees in my backyard. Sometimes that isn't such a bad thing though, since trees tend to have deep roots and their tall branches were always meant for reaching the sky.

I own more books than I knew I had the money for and more pillows than is sensible.

I have a habit of buying a plant anytime I am sad because life tends to cheer me up.

I love smiling more than anything else in the world and I love to laugh hard enough to snort. I hate crying but have the horrible habit of falling in love with everything that has ever made me shed tears.

I have a weird feeling I am going to die when I am twenty four.

I am terrified of never finding someone who believes I am their ruling planet and is okay with being my sun, who doesn't mind my aspirations and encourages my dreams, who lets me love them with my entire being and some days understands I need to be alone.

I have eternal bruises on the knuckles of my soul and tear stains on my heart, for fighting for what I believe in and not having the confidence to trust someone far enough to give them all of me.

I am addicted to the way lips look when they are exhaling smoke.

I listen to the same playlist titled "songs that make me cry" every time I write one of these letters.

I have a callous on my right ring finger where pens and pencils rest each time I create something from the galaxies inside of me.

I wish I didn't know what regret tasted like and I wish I hadn't wasted my first kisses on people who I never loved in the ways they deserved.

I am really good at biting my lip and nails, rolling my eyes and half-smiles, and making the world better by lending books to people who need them. I'm really bad at interviews and waking up in the morning, unless it's for a friend.

I like metaphors and sometimes I create metaphors not even I understand.

I want to lose my virginity to a boy who smells like desire and breathes like every breath means as much as the first inhalation he took when he came into this world.

I have a swearing problem but that doesn't mean I don't know how to behave myself.

I'm proficient in sophisticated malarkey and mispronouncing words often, which is why I apologize in advance for still wanting to become an English teacher.

I want to go to Iceland, because I hear Icelandic hair dressers are statistically the happiest people in the world and it seems very pretty there.

I never want to grow up, especially since the day Peter Pan stopped in the middle of a parade at Disneyland to flirt with me.

I wish people didn't look down on art majors or English majors or social studies majors in general.

I believe my hair is untamed-able, but I will never give up on trying to make it look presentable.

I am still trying to understand myself and I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to fall in love with whoever I turn out to be.

Sincerely,
xx
Blue