Today ...

... I will not care. Today, I will have a good day. My day will be amazing. I will not need to cry, or be sad, or be unhappy, or be stressed. Today, I will have the strength to stand up for myself, the wisdom to know when that is appropriate, and the courage to speak my mind.

I will stand up and say, "Hey, can I please get a break soon?" But I will remember to be polite, because I know that my friends have not made these same promises and their days might just be bad. I will face those bad days with a coffee and a smile and a shoulder to cry on and an ear to scream into because today, I will not be selfish either.

Today, I will create, elaborate, dedicate, recreate, and all those great things ending with "Aey"-"Tee"-"Eee" because today, I refuse to be two-dimensional, hiding in the background, fading and falling and waiting and calling out into the silence of my own creation.

There are people out there, somewhere -- everywhere -- who consider living a job. To those people, I say, "You're right." Specializing, focusing, eating, breathing, we're being paid to do them. We've got the privilege of being on this earth and when we screw up big time here, we get fired and we lose that privilege. Nay-sayers will say and neigh that we've all lost that privilege already, but we are not a singular unit. We are not the Borg, we are not Legion -- we can't even tell what's going on in our own heads sometimes!

We're only paid with a short amount of time here on this earth. Some of us will go straight for that golden chalice and spend their entire lives trying to stay young so they can keep hold of that gaudy golden chalice. Some of us, well, we'll go for the carpenter's cup and be happy with ourselves for our whole lives. Most of us will fall somewhere in the middle.

Some of us won't get the chance to decide where we fall. We'll just ... fall. And when we do, we'll pray for somebody to come along and pick us up, offer us a dirty penny or share their meal with us, but few will.

Few will because they think that we made this choice to be out here, freezing in the wintertime, trying to keep a grip on our privilege until the next winter rolls around. We're not people to those people, we're not even animals. We're filth because we're not reaching for that golden chalice and we can't even seem to hold onto our carpenter's cup.

So today, I will stand up straight and tall and proud and be happy with my carpenter's cup and my small little shelter, no matter what happens or who happens or why happens, I will not care!


~Emily Grace
~Isaiah Moretti