@owlcity

I own about ninety-five percent of the music produced by the electronic music project Owl City. The reason I don't own a hundred percent of it is because they (he) sometimes have (has) special tracks for different countries or because sometimes they (he) have (has) random singles written for movies or whatever. Also, I am poor. That contributes.

Generally, my musical preferences involve a fairly heavy bass line and fantastic percussion. I don't even care what the genre of the song is, if it's got a good bass line and percussion, I will listen to it. This explains why I like Muse, which always has killer bass, and why I like Imagine Dragons and Bastille, both of whom generally have sick percussion. (Bastille also has the added benefit of occasional but always-on-point harmony under the singer's melody line, and I do love me some good harmony.)

Owl City has neither consistently excellent bass lines or awesome percussion. Instead, it's a mish-mash, depending on the album in particular. It's not really a band, given how there's only one consistent musician involved. The genius behind Owl City is Adam Young, a Minnesotan singer/songwriter/composer/what-the-heck-ever-er. Owl City is far from his only musical project, but it's the biggest by far.

The easiest word to describe the Owl City sound is electronic. The sounds are usually produced by computer programs (my experience with such being Logic Express and Audacity) or by synthetic sounds from keyboards. Young experiments with different kinds of microphones and amplifiers in order to get the kind of sounds he wants. I'm a little more familiar with his work regarding synthetic keyboards, as I've done similar work in high school. I played keyboards for my high school musicals during my sophomore, junior, and senior years. Generally, my role was to duplicate an organ, a small string orchestra, or a guitar; but occasionally I got to make bass sounds, or weird synthetic environment sounds. So I have that as a basis for understanding the sounds produced in Owl City's albums, and it helps me to enjoy it more.

Young got famous through MySpace and iTunes. He created the first tracks of the Owl City sound in his parents basement in 2007 and promoted himself through social media. It worked, and he became something of a MySpace phenomenon. He released several EPs before signing officially with Universal Republic Studios as a major label, but Owl City didn't become a big name until the first full-length album, Ocean Eyes, premiered in 2009. Three of the tracks on Ocean Eyes were released as singles: "Umbrella Beach," "Vanilla Twilight," and "Fireflies," which reached the Top 40 in the US and Canada. "Fireflies" is Owl City's most famous song to date- most people have heard it at least once and recognize the tune when it's played or sung.

While "Fireflies" isn't my favorite song by Owl City, I appreciate it a lot because it is not a love song, and it's relatively rare that a Top 40 isn't focused on love or sex. In that sense, Owl City has retained an innocence in the sound. Young has written songs about love (notably "Vanilla Twilight", "The Saltwater Room," "Lonely Lullaby," and one of my personal favorites "Bombshell Blonde"), but the overall content matter is weirdly philosophical, which is why I like it so much. Another contributing factor to the innocence I personally associate with Owl City is that of Adam Young's own Christian faith. While very few of the songs he has produced mention Christian themes explicitly, many of the ideas are associated with the moral values taught as part of Christianity. A prime example of a song that does mention Christianity is "Galaxies," another favorite.

I could wax rhapsodical about this project for several hours, honestly. I'll spare you the pain of reading through that and provide you with listening basics. There are three main albums: Ocean Eyes (2009), All Things Bright and Beautiful (2011), and The Midsummer Station (2012). A fourth album is in the works, but has not been given a release date or a name. My personal favorite album is The Midsummer Station. There's also a variety of EPs, including Of June (2007), Maybe I'm Dreaming (2008), and Ultraviolet (2014); and so many singles. SO MANY SINGLES. The singles include tracks produced for Wreck-It Ralph, The Croods, The Smurfs 2, and VeggieTales.

If you haven't got the time or money to buy all of the things but are curious, here's a list of songs I recommend for starters. They can be listened to in any order, but they're among my favorites.

• Of June
• Hello Seattle
• The Saltwater Room
• Ocean Eyes
• Early Birdie
• Meteor Shower
• Fireflies
• Vanilla Twilight
• Hot Air Balloon (deluxe edition)
• All Things Bright and Beautiful
• Deer in the Headlights
• Dreams Don't Turn To Dust
• Kamikaze
• Galaxies
• Alligator Sky (feat. Shawn Chrystopher)
• Lonely Lullaby (deluxe edition)
• The Midsummer Station
• Dreams and Disasters
• Shooting Star
• Gold
• Dementia
• I'm Coming After You
• Speed of Love
• Good Time (in collaboration with Carly Rae Jepsen)
• Embers
• Silhouette
• Metropolis
• Take It All Away
• Bombshell Blonde (iTunes edition)
• Ultraviolet
• Beautiful Times (feat. Lindsey Stirling)
• Up All Night
• This Isn't The End
• Wolf Bite

...Why, yes, I did just recommend that you listen to the entirety of The Midsummer Station and Ultraviolet. Hey, it's good stuff. It's all excellent.You really should listen to all of it. Dooooooo iiiiiiiiiittttt.

Given my musical background, however, I'd expect some people to say really ignorant things like "BUT ELECTRONIC MUSIC ISN'T REAL MUSIC" or "WHAT'S WRONG WITH CLASSICAL CONCERTO BY BACHTOVEN NUMBER FIFTY BAJILLION" or whatever. To that I have only one response: it's really sad that you can't recognize music if it's different from what you're used to. Yes, there's weird background synthy sounds. Yes, Adam Young has a really uniquely weird-attractive voice that sounds nothing like regular male pop artists. Yes, the bass and percussion aren't always consistent from track to track. Yes, one of the songs I recommended on the list is rap. Yes, Bombshell Blonde has that screechy bit in the middle which serves to remind everyone that dubstep also started out as electronica, but bypassed soft and pretty in favor of loudness. But you know what? I don't care. Owl City is my thing, it's my niche. I'm probably going to love it forever, no matter what happens or how it changes. It's something I have that's mine, but that I want to share because it's too good to keep to myself.

Also, Adam Young has the best Twitter account. The best celebrities interact with fans. I rest my case.

Rational and Irrational Fears

Being up front about my mental illnesses is something that did not take very long for me to do. It sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm not. Thankfully, I was born in an era where having depression and anxiety wasn't a reason to lock me up in an institution- at least not unless it gets really bad, and I have no reason to think it will.

Some people were raised in a time where the attitude was, "We don't talk about that sort of thing," but I've made it a personal goal of mine to be open about it. Mental illness is just that, an illness. Sometimes it's like a cold- you treat it and it goes away on its own eventually, but there isn't a known, permanent cure. Sometimes it's like having arthritis- you have to deal with it whenever the weather is bad, or whenever something in your environment happens to trigger pain. And sometimes it's like being terminally ill. You have to live with it, knowing that you can't do anything about it, and you just have to wait for it to end.

I don't, of course, mean to say that depression and anxiety are fatal. They don't have to be, and many people live with them successfully. But it is fatal for some, when the sickness becomes so bad that it alters the way they think and they find that dying sounds easier than living.

I've had those moments. I've had majorly suicidal thoughts at least twice in my life. But by calling my parents at three in the morning or by curling up in my bed with my bears and some music, I've been able to stave off the urge.

(Please note that I'm fine at the moment, and that you don't need to talk to me about it because I am thankfully not at a point in my life where dying sounds better than living. It's a relief, to be honest, because somebody else would have to clean up the mess it would make and I really don't want to burden anybody else that way.)

I did, in fact, have a point with this. What I'm trying to get at, in my spectactularly long-winded way, is that mental illness, both depression and anxiety, are like any other illnesses, and that they have parts that you can't just explain away.

Anxiety, specifically, has some unpleasant parts that have no reason to them. For instance, I am afraid of a lot of things that I wasn't, formerly. Some things do have vague reasons behind them, but some don't.

So here's a list of my irrational fears, some with possible explanations and others with nothing at all.

1. Opening the oven and getting things out of it when they're hot. I don't really have a clue about this one. I don't have any traumatic childhood burns, mostly because I was a good child and listened to my mother when she told me that the oven was hot. But I really don't like to open the oven and get things out. I can do it, but I really, really do not like it, and it always takes me a minute or two after I've opened the oven to try and get out the thing inside of it. It's dumb, I hate it, and it's one of the primary reasons that I don't like baking or cooking as well as my mother does.
2. Talking to boys. This one has a logical reason. About two years ago I was an idiot about a boy I knew and got my heart broken, which was one of the major catalysts for my depression and anxiety. They would have happened anyway, but I stupidly invested a lot of emotional energy into the relationship and when it fell apart, I became unglued at the seams and I cried and worried all the time and slept a lot and then one night I thought maybe dying would be better than living, and then I realized I had a problem so I called my parents at 3 am and sobbed at them over the phone. In retrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to leave college at that point, but the boy in question was at home and I was not, and I wanted to keep my distance. This resulted in me staying at college and only coming home for Christmas, for the next two years. And that resulted in me having a mental breakdown and not being able to finish college. Basically, talking to boys ruined my life, and I'm not terribly eager to start that whole thing up again.
3. Walking on busy roads. I lived in a college town, and this was something that annoyed me more than it scared me. I used to have a job where I got up at 4 am to make sandwiches, and one morning I jaywalked across the street at 4 am because there was no traffic, but it turned out there was and I came within two feet of being hit by a minivan. The driver apologized profusely, but I was just kind of in shock and I was like, "Nah dude, it's okay, it's fine," and ever since then, the sound of a car behind me makes me all tense and jumpy. I hate it and I wish it would stop but it hasn't yet in three years so it looks like I'm stuck with it.
4. Being in crowded places. I go to church every week with my family. I go because I believe and because it does me good and because it's somewhere I want to be. But despite the comfort I get from my faith in God, it's sometimes really hard to be at church. There are too many people. There are social pressures. People want to ask me what I'm doing with my life, a question which frustrates me almost as much as it does my siblings, and they want to tell me about their own lives, and I wish I could apologize in advance for this but with like ninety-five percent of the people who want to tell me things, I don't care. I have to not care about things, because when I do, the anxiety gets way, way worse. But people are sometimes too close and too loud and they want to get too personal and it's just like being stabbed in five different places at once. If I want to talk about what I'm feeling, I do it. Usually on the Internet or with people I consider important enough to share with. If I don't want to talk to you, I will smile vaguely and push you away with polite verbal nothings.
5. Bugs. We used to have regular ant infestations in our house. I am a bajillion times bigger than an ant. The little suckers scared the daylights out of me. I do not like ants, bees, wasps, hornets, stinkbugs, cicadas, or gypsy moth caterpillars. I can deal with flies and mosquitoes, but I am of the opinion that God could have left those out of the life cycle and nobody would have been the worse for it. They probably have some sort of purpose, but I honestly don't know what it is and I don't think it's more important than so many people getting malaria every year. I can deal with butterflies, but it feels irritable, like my skin is itching even if I'm not touching them. Moths just make me shriek and cover my hair and cry. Irrational, as I said. Spiders I can tolerate, due to the fact that they eat other bugs and also because they don't like people and I also don't like people. We have a lot in common.
6. Playing video games. Now don't get me wrong- I happen to love playing video games. But sometimes I'll be playing a game and something happens and my brain goes, "Aaaah. What is happening. This is hard. My fine motor skills have all committed seppuku. The graphics are so good that things are getting scary. I don't know if I can do this. I'm freaking out." This happens most commonly when I'm playing Zelda games, especially in a dungeon with wallmasters... Ahem, moving on.
7. Being alone. On the one hand, I don't like people and I hate being around them most of the time, with the exception of my immediate family who don't count as people people. On the other hand, I am really scared that someday I am going to end up as the last one in my family to be alive, ancient and a hundred and moldering with good health and forty cats. I would really not like to outlive all of them, because that would be sad and stuff. I also would not like to die as a single woman and I would also not like to die without having been kissed at least once or without having gone to England. I don't want to spend my life as a sad, lonely girl who worries too much. It would be nice, if not literally necessary, to be married and have kids.
8. People don't like me. Despite the fact that I don't like people all of the time, I am convinced about ninety-nine percent of the time that the people who say that they like me are just lying to make me feel better and that they actually only tolerate my existence because murder is illegal and because I don't have the resources to go somewhere else. I used to get especially paranoid about this in college, because I sort of followed my friends to whatever apartment complexes they wanted to live in, and I always felt like I was tagging along or that I was annoying or childish or that they didn't like me. This is something that used to compound with the depression and made my brain decide that nobody loved me and that I was worthless, and that led to the second occasion where I strongly considered suicide, which was approximately in late-August, early-September of this last year. Thankfully, I did no such thing.
9. Pain. It's safe to say that I have so far avoided most major pain in my life. I have never been bitten by any animal, I have never broken or sprained or twisted any limb of my body, I have never been stung by a bee, and I have never had kidney stones or given birth. But the ideas of them are things that I can imagine, and I have a very low tolerance for physical pain. My whole mind just goes, "NOPE, LET'S NOT," whenever I try to think about it. This is also the basic reason why I haven't ever given in to suicidal urges- because it would probably involve pain of some kind.
10. Driving. I held a driver's permit at the age of eighteen for approximately a year. I was able to learn the basics of driving a car around the neighborhood- steering, braking, gas pedal, turn signals. However, my teacher was my father, and any environment that is stressful to him causes him to radiate stress like a beacon. We tried leaving the neighborhood exactly once, and I almost steered into oncoming traffic. I promptly had a panic attack and refused to leave the neighborhood, and I pulled over (through the grace of God, I suppose) and made my father drive me home. I haven't tried to drive since. I'm going to be working on that next, hopefully with a driving school rather than my father. I love the man, but he is an impatient and worrisome driving teacher, and it was extremely scary and stressful.
11. Trampolines. My family and I went to a trampoline park in Utah once. Everything made me bounce too high and since I was two hundred and twenty pounds it felt like everything was going to break under me. There were also foam block pits, and I jumped into one like once and it felt like I was drowning and it took me like five minutes to get out. I would like to never experience that again, thank you.
12. Men in general. I'm not a feminist because I'm scared of men or anything like that. I'm a feminist because women have ample reason to be scared of men, with the whole, you know, terrifying statistic of one in six women being raped, higher numbers outside of America, and the whole thing where that Elliott Rodger dude wrote a manifesto about why women were inferior and then went and shot up a sorority, killing six women and five men- all because he was too much of a jerk to get laid. It sounds vulgar, but the reason that man killed eleven people is because women wouldn't sleep with him. I wouldn't say I'm scared of men specifically. I would say that it's really hard to feel safe when you've lived in a college town, carried pepper spray at four in the morning, and have occasionally indulged in late-night walks to the local elementary school to use the swings. It's really hard to feel safe in a town that jokes about a dude dressed in black who would run around groping women while they were exercising or who broke into a women's dormitory at three am and was, uh, touching himself, in front of girls. It's really hard to feel safe and secure when there's no way to tell that a man won't rape you, because most women are raped by somebody they know. It's really hard to feel safe and secure by being unattractive, because attractiveness has nothing to do with rape. Rape is an act of violence. It's hard to remember that being raped would not make me less of a person or less worthy, because there are people who blame women for being raped or who look down on women who have been raped, as though they were unclean or filthy because of a man's decision to commit a violent act for the sake of feeling powerful.
13. Nuclear war. I'm not afraid of dying of radiation sickness, funnily enough. I'm afraid of what happens if life as we know it comes to a shrieking halt and nobody can produce my antidepressants anymore. What do I do in a post-apocalyptic society without my medicine? My mother has a thing with her thyroid and has taken the same medicine for like twenty years. What does she do if nobody makes her medicine? My sister has epilepsy and takes like ten pills a day to keep from having awful seizures. What happens if nobody makes her medicine? The answer to that last one is the most traumatic, because my mother and I can live without our medicine- we'll just be tired and unpleasantly cranky all the time. But if my sister doesn't have her medicine, then she has lots and lots of seizures and it all results in brain damage and then one of those days she would choke on her own tongue and die or something, and I really have to stop thinking about this one right now.
14. Getting into a fight. On the one hand, I have theoretical knowledge of how to disable somebody. Knee to the groin, stomp on the instep or kick the shin with the point of your foot or your heel, dig fingernails into cuticles, pinch the web of skin between the forefinger and the thumb, smash the heel of your hand up into their nose, gouge eyes, etc, etc... but on the other hand, I have no idea how to actually deal with any of those things, really truly and physically. My brother took karate lessons and he could probably actually kill somebody if he needed to, but I probably couldn't even defend myself against a wet quilt, to be honest.
15. Flooded toilets. This used to be a regular occurrence in our house, mostly because there were three teenagers and everybody eats and we all ate a lot and there was consequently a lot of poop- but also because two of said teenagers were girls and girls use way more toilet paper than boys. My mother gave us all lessons on how to stop the toilet from flooding when it looks like it's going to flood, and I have used this practical knowledge many times, both at home and at college. I am practically a plumber, I know so much about toilets. But I still panic if one does flood, because my brain starts yelling, "EW GROSS THAT'S A LOT OF PEE GET AWAY GET ALL YOUR THINGS AWAY EVERYTHING IS GETTING GROSS AND GERMY NOW EW EW EW" and the rest of me is like "OH GRACIOUS GOD WHAT DO I DO AT A TIME LIKE THIS" and my body is caught between my brain and its natural reaction, which is to jump up and away and swear profusely. It's a very panicky feeling and I don't at all like it.
16. Throwing up. It's happened before, and I know the sensation fairly well at this point. But it really hurts my stomach and makes my mouth all raw and everything tastes gross for like an hour, even after you've brushed your teeth. I hate it and I'm afraid of it because of the pain.
17. Disappointing people. I used to be like, really good at existing. I was smart in high school, I was talented and learned things and remembered them, and I didn't have to study a whole lot because I was good at remembering things, and I did just fine. Depression and anxiety have changed that, and now I'm really bad at remembering things, at concentrating, at paying attention to what other people are saying, at paying attention to what my own body tells me beyond panic or emergency signals. And some people do not understand why I can't just fight it off. It doesn't work that way. I don't have control over my body. My thyroid has control over my body, but my thyroid is flawed because it doesn't make enough happy chemicals. And so people are like, "Oh, Sarah, you're so smart and talented!" And I'm like, "Yeah, no, I'm really not, I used to be really good at faking it but I have no actual idea how to do things." And nobody seems to believe me, until I try something and fail spectacularly and then they're all like, "I don't understand, you failed me, how could you fail me?" and then I go, "I TOLD YOU I WASN'T GOOD AT THINGS ANYMORE NOW PLEASE BELIEVE ME." They never do, of course, but I'm still afraid of it.
18. Getting my period in public. I've gotten to the point where I can tell instantly when it's started, and usually it happens at like four in the morning and I wake up and my brain goes, "Oh, great, that's more underwear ruined." But I'm still irrationally afraid of having my period and wearing pants and what happens if it soaks through... yeah, I'm not going into this anymore. I think there are some boys who might read this and I don't want to gross them out. (Not that they should be grossed out, due to the fact that it's a natural bodily function and we don't get grossed out at them when they stand up to pee. Except when they miss and get stains on the toilet or the floor. Blech.)
19. Really loud dogs. I don't mind if the dogs are small or big. I just hate when they're too loud, because my brain can't focus on anything else and I worry about presenting an unnecessary threat.
20. Anti-Semitism. See, the thing is that a lot of countries in Europe and even in South America have some political party or other that is basically neo-National-Socialism. Despite the fact that less than a hundred years ago the Nazis killed six million Jews. Anti-Semitism is still the most common form of hatred out there, more prevalent than hate crimes against women or persons of color or gay people. It might not seem that way in America, but it sure is that way in the rest of the world. And you know who gets targeted for Anti-Semitism? People who have Jewish names. And my name is Sarah Abramson- literally about as Jewish as you can get. If I were to live in Europe, I might be the recipient of hate crimes. The Holocaust was seventy-odd years ago and we're still doing the exact same crap, but pretending to be more horrified about it. How about no.

I am afraid of a lot of things. Some of those things make sense. Some of them do not. I can't really control what I'm afraid of and what I'm not, despite the whole not-making-sense thing. My soul is rational. My mind and body are not. 

What I am most afraid of at this point is myself. I am afraid of my own feelings of helplessness and sadness, of the quiet waves of dark and fog that threaten to overwhelm me at a moment's notice. I'm afraid of losing myself to this illness, and I'm afraid that I can't properly tell anybody about it. I'm afraid of the shadows of my soul, the dark places in me that rise and loom over my bed at night. I am afraid that I am not enough to overcome it, and I am afraid of what will happen if I cannot learn to cope with this.

I think it will be okay, though. Being afraid of myself means that I've learned how to live with fear, and it's entirely possible that someday I will be able to look fear in the face and say, "I am done with you," and watch it shrink and languish away into nothing. I think that someday I will remember how to be fearless, and I look forward to that day.

this is a blog

See, I had a blog. And it was pretty decent. But there was stuff on it that I look back and cringe at. I have outgrown that blog, and it will remain an accurate depiction of my life between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. I have changed since making that blog, and I am a different person. I am grumpier and grouchier and more tired, and I am more experienced but less bitter. I have chosen a path of forgiveness of those who I've felt did me wrong, and I'm all the better for it.

So it's time to start fresh, with some new adventures. Not that I adventure all that much anymore. I'm a bit of a homebody. I like to be at home, safe, in my bed and the blanket fort I have created since I came home. I like to play video games with my siblings and sit in my bowl-chair, writing, as my sister sits crocheting on the bed. I like to go downstairs and drink sugar-free lemonade. I like to listen to my little brother practicing the trumpet. But I do not like to leave these safeties, these people I call home. I am more afraid than I ever was, and I have been gentled and humbled by my fear and my grief.

I am new.

Both the title of this blog and my URL come from lyrics. The URL, "my midnight melody," comes from a song called "Kamikaze," by the musician Owl City. I really kind of adore Owl City. It's not just because the lead singer is cute (although he certainly is easy on the eyes) or because I can dance to the songs; it's because the lyrics are sweet and complex and gentle, and they often reflect things that I feel. And the title of the blog, Let Felicity Fly, comes from a song called "Galaxies," also by Owl City. I've included the definition of the word "felicity" in the description. It's not just a name; it means happiness. But it also means the talent for speaking or writing in an effective way, which is something I hope to accomplish here. I'm looking for both kinds of felicity, so it seemed fitting.

If you know me in person, you may know some of my story; if not, then I'll provide a short description of who and where I am and what I'm doing with my life. I am an almost-college-graduate. I literally have four credits left of classwork before I am finished. I meant to finish in December of 2014, but due to depression, anxiety, homesickness, and general panic about what I was going to do with my life, I was unable to do so, and instead of trying again I decided to go home and finish my work with independent study courses online instead of living on the other side of the country from my family.

I haven't started my classes yet. I also do not know how to drive, despite the fact that I am twenty-one years old and I should have known how a long time ago. So my life, at the moment, consists of a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. I'm okay with that. I need a little nothing in my life, so that I don't get overwhelmed by all the somethings around me. I have a problem where I can't fall asleep until around three or so and then I don't wake up until twelve or even one. I write a lot, read a little less than I used to, spend far too much time doing stupid things on the Internet like watching videos of my friends' babies on Instagram and Facebook, and think about how I've failed at various points in my life almost constantly.

Some of you might think, "Wow, what a waste of space and resources this girl is!" Yes, you are correct. I am not contributing much in the way of productive activity to society at large. However, I am at home, recuperating after long trials with mental illness. I am changing medications so as to retain greater control over my condition. I am learning to forgive not only those who I feel have wronged me, but also myself. I am writing every day and growing better at it as I do so. I am on a diet with my parents and my sister and I have lost fifteen pounds already, and I plan to keep losing weight until I am no longer obese according to American health standards.

I don't feel as though I personally am worth all that much, but I have a little brother who needs and loves me because I am patient and kind with him, and I can see some of my demons growing inside of him as well. He's going to need me now and later.

I have a little brother who is sweet and kind and innocent and who struggles with the way he perceives the world in comparison to how others perceive it, and he needs me because I have always been there and I always will be there, and if I were not there it would be a bad sort of change.

 I have a little sister who moves through life a little more slowly and gently than those around her, leaving less bruises but more color on the world around her, and though she might not want to admit it, ever, she needs me too, more as a friend than anything else, because all of her friends are away, doing things, apart but not past her, and she misses them.

 I have an older brother who is doing his best to help, teach, serve, and improve the lives of others, and he needs me to be healthy and happy so that he doesn't need to worry about me and he can focus on his service and goodness.

I have a mother who is worried about me and who believes I take too many burdens on myself, that I bear too much sorrow when I don't have to. I know that she is right, but it's not something I can help, exactly. She needs me, too. She needs me to be happy and loved and safe.

I have a father who loves me, and who wants me to be healthy and doesn't quite understand why I can't function the way I used to, but is willing enough to accept it and to do his best to help me. He needs me because he loves me, and so do all of the others.

I wonder, sometimes, why they need me so badly. But then I remember that out of our seven, I am fourth, exactly in the middle, and I am glue to hold them all together. I am peace-maker, diplomat, the bridge between childhood and adulthood. They do need me, even though I can't quite see why. And I need them, because if I don't have them I will drown.

I never said this was going to be a happy blog. The last one started out happy, and rapidly got more depressing as I became more depressed. For this one, I offer no disclaimers. It is what it is.

Despite the fact that I am a deeply flawed, broken, unhappy person, I still retain some sense of hope for the future. Things are looking up. I'm on a new medicine, I don't have to worry about paying rent and grocery money, I have people who love me and are willing to hug me every day- something I needed at school and didn't have. I've lost fifteen pounds and it shows in my face and legs, two places I wanted it to show the most. I'm still scared of talking to boys, most bugs, and the sound of moving cars behind me, but I'm working on that.

It is in no way midnight, but this is still my melody. This is a song I started to sing twenty-one years ago and I haven't stopped yet. There have been times when the song has faltered, when the violins stopped and left me to try and sing alone. There have been times when I felt that the peanut gallery was throwing things at me to try and get me to leave. But it is in no way the end of my symphony, and I will keep singing until the song is done.