Whatnot

I like listening to songs about Jesus. Even though I don't know him like I used to, I still like to talk about and to him. I dunno if he can hear me, but wouldn't it be nice if he could? Even if I'm just talking to myself, it makes me feel better. I like songs about love, too. Those cheesy ones that people are afraid to admit they like. I like listening to Delilah at night on my radio and singing the cheesy love songs on the phone. I like listening to the problems people present to Delilah, and her polite, honest answers and the soothing timbre of her voice. I like songs that are beautiful and heartfelt. I like songs that are so beautiful and heartfelt that they choke me up. I like crying while I listen to beautiful and heartfelt music. I like books, too. I like fiction and nonfiction and historical fiction and philosophy and poetry. I like books that I can relate to. Sometimes even if it scares me to relate to them. Like, the Bell Jar and Catcher in the Rye and the Awakening. I totally get the characters and they get me, and it scares me how much I see myself in them. I like poems with too much and too little punctuation. I like characters and stories and people and places and things I've never seen before outside of my imagination. However, I love Walt Whitman. Until Whitman, I didn't understand anything about life in the least. I still don't, but it's a little less fuzzy now. I like driving, too. I like riding with the windows down on my way home from work in the winter when it's freezing cold and the wind is biting and I felt more alive than ever. I like listening to music so loud that any possibility for thought is thrust out of my head through my lips singing screaming at the top of my lungs. I like pumping gas and I like burning it and I like the feeling of satisfaction I get when I see the needle above f on my dashboard. I like driving alone and I like driving with people and being driven by people. I especially like being driven by my favorite person even though he really sucks at driving sometimes because he zones out and drives under the speed limit in town. I like my favorite person. I like going to the zoo with him and watching the otters fight and make up, awkwardly watching them make sweet, uninhibited love, regardless of who is watching their display. I like going to the beach with him and looking at the stars like all cliche couples do. I like how he can point out all of these things in the sky that I had never seen before him. I like going to the movies and not watching the movie; I like this particularly because he doesn't try to make out with me the whole time or anything, we just end up making fun of the cheesy lines or the antagonist's hairline or just talking about our day when we could have done that for free anywhere but it's just so much better talking about it in hushed tones in a movie theater. I like browsing book stores and antique stores and consignment shops and cigar stores and shopping malls with him and not buying anything, spending only time, not money. I like this one time we went to a used bookstore for like three hours and just talked and sat and read and discovered and the whole time the owner was watching us like a hawk watches her prey and we felt like we did something wrong so we left. Without buying anything, need I say. I like how he corrects my posture because he doesn't want me to be a hunchback when I'm old and grey. I like it when he plays music, and I like it when he talks about the things he likes and I like how he looks when he is feeling pensive or happy or angry or whatever. I like everything about him, even the things I feel I can't stand sometimes. I like being in love, being a woman, being centered and being imbalanced, being euphoric, being confused, being without purpose,  being "all over the place", being comfortable in my own skin, being.