I didn't think I was going to finish this album. The essays and poems here are the most painful, expensive and personal items I own. They speak for me during my highest, most euphoric moments and at my lowest, most broken, most terrified. At its heart, "Cardiology" is about and for the people who came into my life and taught me how to be honest with my own feelings.

Missing someone comes in waves, and there is something horrendously dangerous and beautiful about understanding the consequences but still choosing to ride on them. I believe this feeling is called "drowning." This word got me in trouble in the seventh grade, when I had blurted it out in front of a concerned school counselor. It is the word I tell all my crushes when I am too terrified to admit that I am in love. It is a word that is imprinted in my cardiology, and it is a word that I cannot give up so easily. I kept writing -- elongating -- this album, because I wanted to feel free, to be a subject of the royal elements of surprise and hopeful plagiarism, forever.

I realize today that forever is not always possible. Every good thing comes to an end, and I have to be able to appreciate the seasons for their lessons, not their colors. And at the end of the day, I am a 19-year-old who still has a lot left to learn. A lot to grow from, a lot of love to share, a lot of beginnings to start, a lot of help to admit needing. 

So, to all my readers, my goal is to leave "Cardiology" and come back in two, five, ten, twenty years when I have matured just a little bit more. The hope, the expectation, the desire is that I will read through the lines and finally think to myself: "Wow, I really was in love.

That was what love felt like."                      Happy reading, everyone. Click on the pictures for full text.