in which I start with a quote but am not an exam

The fascinating Edith Piaf once said, "As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face." 

I really hope she was wrong.  I hope to god she was wrong. 

I've been thinking about La Mome Piaf a lot lately because of this French project thing I'm doing, and her life scares me.  Horrible things happen to everybody (right?), so why not me?  Couldn't I get addicted to morphine and die at forty seven? Why not?  I'm sure she didn't predict that as being her future when she was my age.  

I figured that it's about time that I write an entry I actually publish, instead of ones that I don't, where I write things that I would never tell anyone, things that I am afraid to tell myself.  I think I've written about how writing things down makes them less real before, but I didn't realize the extent of this idea until recently.  It makes things more okay, less scary, because the words are physically there; you can see them marching across the page in neat rows.  Rows--these rows could say anything if you just glance for a second, rows holding symbols that form words that each mean something to form ideas.  If you squint, and look at them through your eyelashes, they are only blurry shapes.  Shapes aren't so frightening.