thank you Paris

i've been thinking of this day for months now and i've been sitting in front of this screen for the past 2 and a half hours and here i am with nothing. 

so i guess i'll just indroduce my self

my name is amber essie tillotson

i've lived in utah my whole life but my heart has been in paris long enough to feel comfortable calling it home

i'm 5'4" and i fell in love when i was 16

my bedroom is filled with dead flowers which is both beautiful and sad

i love to dance & i live for the days where i leave the studio breathing heavily, damp with sweat and my muscles aching, because i know that i gave the music all i've got

i have a different style everyday but that doesn't mean i'm not being myself

i love chai tea & it's my 'senior year' but i still have days where i sit alone in my car for lunch, but i don't mind it sometimes

the first thing i usually do in the morning is go back to sleep
it frusterates me so much when people arnt themselves

it took me until my senior year to find a real group of friends, and they mean a lot to me. i wish i would've met them earlier but they came into my life at a time when i needed real friends the most

i love going on motorcyle rides with my dad and i love that he raised me in that

i'm a firm beliver in writting in journals, the thought of my children or my childrens children being able to read about my life from my perspective is so incredible to me

leftovers freak me out most of the time & i regret most of my summer between freshman and sophmore year

i cried when i read 'dear mom & dad' aloud

i think that love is truly an incredible thing 

i'm terrified of driving through intersections or at night or in general & i rarely ever order eggs from resuraunts

Nettie Luella (Johnson) is my great great great grandmother

i'm thankful for everyone who every read any of my posts or left comments and thank you to those who came back consistantly - thank you

writting has always been sort of theraputic for me, but sharing it has always been so hard, so i thank you for your open minds and open hearts.

and thank you for letting me into your hearts as well

& thank you to Paris for letting me stay a while

music

this song has always managed to break my heart and some how pieces it back together all within 4 minutes & 3 seconds. close your eyes, listen to the lyrics & enjoy the beautiful pain that comes along with it

"im scared of being scared and that scares me"

i stopped writing because i was scared;

scared of boys wanting to hang out with me on the weekends but not wanting to talk to me at school

scared of getting pitty compliments from my friends after we reveal

scared of my mom seeing my blog

scared of my eggs not being cooked enough

scared of saying hi to someone and they don't say hi back

scared of nelson not liking my writing, yet i'm scared of him liking my stuff because:

i'm scared of people having too high of expectations of me

i'm scared of listening to my heart because it's the most honest part in my body

i'm scared of the top 5 and i'm scared of not being on the top 5

i'm scared of curling my hair because i don't want people to think i'm trying to 'dress up' because i'm not

"i'm scared that one day someone is going to ask how i am and i'll tell them"

i'm scared of people thinking i'm depressed

i'm scared of the fact that i have a place in my closet for clothes i'm waiting to wear
because i'm not confident enough yet

i'm scared of people thinking i'm weak

i'm scared of proccessed foods

i'm scared of driving

i'm scare of how many poems i've started but haven't finished

i'm sacred i'm scared i'm scared, i'm scscaredscaredi'mscaredi' mescaredi'mcsare dimscaredimc'esredim'cesrerd'eimm'cscaredi'mescare.di'misacred.sim'secared.im'lesscare i'am me slielm.im'cesaredi'mecared'mcaed'amcekjalsk dlkfnskdfnwajwp oeraposjndgklajrptapojglkdnlgsndfj lkjlskaj;ieja'mc,a /e/ajsldjfla ca .sjejijasd,

i was once told that fear can control you 

and that scares me
and that modivates me.

          -N.L.

God, stars and scars

I walked into an empty room and things became more familiar to me.
the plain white walls glowing under florescent lights reminded me of maps and where they started.
all on a blank page.
desolate land untouched by the human hand.
each step I take... am I changing the world?


I can imagine the sky at night,
you didn't have to go deep into the mountains to see unpolluted skies.
we saw the stars but the stars never saw us.

holes poked into the lid of a small box that held humanity
each star was only a source of oxygen that seeped through hand in hand with beauty.
only I'm scared of what's on the other side

I've been to the top of the Empire State building and to the peak of a mountain,
but I never saw God until I was on the ground long enough that the dirt under my palms stopped the bleeding and  my shoes were filled with regret so heavy that those holes in the sky seemed to be the only way out.

no matter how much I feared the other side.

i stand tall but gravity  still takes its toll on me.
my hands and knees have met the ground more than once
but those conversations still come with painful hellos
and prolonged goodbyes
there's no scar tissue, no callouses to lessen the pain

guilt made its home on my shoulders
occasionally spilling his blistering hot tea down my back.
trickling down my spine & ice cold by the time it got to my feet
an ocean of pain
and i'm too tired to swim

it turns out God was just as much in the dirt as he was in the stars
and i'd only turn back to see the flowers that followed me.
my head mapped all the wrong turns into my heart
& i haven't lost hope that i'll find the right way

history

i think we can all agree that the worst part of being a senior is the haunting question: "so what are your plans after high school?"

sometimes i wonder why i'm even trying to figure it out
i'm never where i thought i would be 8 years ago

i thought i would be a cheerleader
or on student council
i thought i would be a 4.0 student
i thought i would be popular and date a football player

but i was never any of those am i'm okay with that.

at the end of the day our grandparents lives are just our history classes and our parents lives are our children's history classes and we're all just history with heart beating, nerves streaming, eyes looking for someone to remember us.

history.

we're all just kids with history we don't want to remember

history books with chapters to skip and blank pages waitin for some life


our yesterdays are today and our present is our future and soon enough our future will be our history and our kids future is present in today because what we do today matters.


our names may not go down in bold but we'll be a apart of someones history and we can at least hope that it will matter. fill your books with memories of pain and love and heart break and let your kids know that it's okay to mess up, it's okay if you don't know what you're going to do after high school. you didn't know either.


how to answer that question:
1. ask them if they knew exactly what they were going to do after high school when they were 17