• I love going to the fair. Maybe it's the lights; that bright glare that makes you kind of squint really hard to see. Or maybe it's the wonderful smells of deep-fried everything, machine oil, and other places that still cling to the rides and Carnies. Maybe even the squeal of gears, the taste of cotton candy, or how easily you can loose yourself--every worry, every thought, every feeling--to the wonders of an exhilarating ride.

    My favorites are the ones that spin you around so fast, that everything around you melds together; sound, smell, sight, all mashed into one brilliant blur. I usually can;t go a minute without thinking about guys who have slipped from my fingers, or mistakes that were so very stupid of me to make. But when I sit down on one of those rides, and feel myself start to turn, faster and faster, around and around and around until I can't think straight, everything goes poof!

    All I feel is that weightless, breath-taking tickle that starts in my stomach and flutters up to my chest. What some call "the butterflies," the one way people say they know if they're in love. And slowly, after everything has started coming back into focus, I start to feel heavy again. I feel my burden weight me down, the burden of forbidden love, of strained friendships, of hard times, of tears and pain, of sadness. But then I look to the side and see somebody else next to me; somebody who knows what I'm going through. And when the ride stops, we all get off, and go back in line for another go. The people around me, they are no strangers to fear or pain or sadness, they've all been on this ride a thousand times.

    I am not alone, and neither is anobody else whose ever spun around with their face to the sky, arms outstretched, until they get so dizzy they fall down and everything starts to come back to them. Life is just a long ride, that spins around sometimes so fast, that we cannot see anything clearly. But every ride stops, and you can make out the things and people around you, until the next ride starts.

    Maybe that's the real reason I love the fair so much; it reminds me that I'm not the only one on this ride.