Breathless Behaviour

Part I- Echo Ridge

Alexandra

There are seven rules to life, only five of which I follow.

1. Make peace with your past so it doesn't disturb your present.

It's never good to live in the past, with thoughts that will only make your head hurt. You have to live life as if it were the last day you were living it. Live life as life is supposed to be lived, do everything you might regret not doing the moment death chooses you and takes you with him. Hold off nothing, don't regret anything, don't think too much about the past or the future, just live in the present, in the moment.

2. What other people think of you is none of your business.

They could think shit of you and you shouldn't care. Dress how you want. Talk how you want. Be who you want to be. You shouldn't want to please the world but the other way around, the world should please you.

3. Don't compare your life to others and don't judge them.

Your life could be messy but there's always someone out there with a messier life. Your life could be going up in flames but in the end, the flames always die. And anyways, jealousy was an ugly color.

4. Stop thinking too much.

Overthinking never leads to something good. You only have so much time on this earth, life only gives so many opportunities, limited chances. You only get to live life once, no redo's, no pauses, no second opportunities to do what you want. Once your time is up, once your opportunity has slipped past your fingers, you only live in regret, with the thought that you could have done something different but chose not to because you thought too much about it all.

And lastly, smile. You don't own all the problems in the world.

You could have one or a million problems but in the end, you'll die. In the long run, they'll mean nothing. Life is too short to live with a frown on your face for one small problem.

You can live freely or with restrictions. You can either do what's right or you can do what's wrong. You can let the river take you or you can fight the current.

But you also have to remember that what you think is right, isn't right in everyone's eyes. You have to remember that society has norms and consequences. You have to remember that maybe what you thought hours before, wasn't the brightest idea when you are sober and rocking a headache while waiting at the police station to get bailed out.

I fucked up.

I didn't think when I knew I should have and here I was, banished from the life I knew with a drenched sweater in a town I didn't know nor had I ever heard about in my nineteen years of life. Here I was dragging my luggage across the uneven terrain of Montana to get cover from the rain that fell fast and hard.

It was my punishment for what I did or failed to do correctly. For wanting to do a little good on a whim.

I think if we hadn't passed out, the police wouldn't have picked us up. I think if we hadn't been so stupid, no one would have known it was us. All of us would have gone home as if nothing, we would have resumed our lives but we all screwed up and here I was with mud stained shoes.

Make one mistake and you are standing on the side of the road without reception, rain soaking you and with no clue as to where to go.

When my father sat me down after bailing me from jail, he gave me a whole lecture on being responsible and on being an adult. He told me a whole bunch that I didn't really hear but agreed to because I wanted to go to sleep and shower, not in that order but it had been all I wanted at the moment, hours ago. I hadn't even cared about what he had to say, not when half the time he was gone, not when it wouldn't have been the first time I got into trouble.