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awad: leap – friday.29.2.08.

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I don't feel alive until my life is in danger, and maybe that's a problem and maybe that's a sickness, and I'm not making excuses, but that's how I am and always have been. When I was twelve and told myself that I just gave up and swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin, I changed my mind and panicked. I ran to my parents' bedroom and gave them the shock of their lives.

I remember riding to the hospital, my mother in hysterics while my father drove, and thinking, This is what it's like to feel alive.

Three years later. Sneaking out of the house with just my backpack and my love, climbing into the passenger seat and smiling, smiling, happy, while pink fingers of the sunrise creep across the sky. It's number thirty-five on my list of Things to Do Before I Die: Make a leap of faith.

This should count, I think, and you reach over and stroke my hair at a stoplight. I don't know where we're going or what's going to happen to me or where I'm going to be tonight, so this really should count. Because, I swear to the stars, I feel alive right now.