currently cannot stop listening to:

stoplight.

I'm at a stoplight and it's blocked. I can't see if it's red or green, the truck in front of me is blocking the light. But it keeps going. So I keep going.
Of course, it might be different for me than for this other vehicle. When it goes, the light might be green. By the time I get there it could be yellow or red.
But I go anyway.
I am compelled to keep accelerating forward. I don't even hesitate.
What gives me the trust in this person? What makes me follow their actions? I don't really know them.
Sure, we've been close. Our vehicles have been really close. But these vehicles aren't really us.
The people we actually are, are just residing inside these vehicles that take us through life.
I think you're this person for me. Our vehicles know each other really well. But it's so hollow because maybe the real people inside these vehicles have never met. They've constantly spoken, through the windows. But they've never been able to open the doors and step out, being completely trusting of each other. That would probably be too dangerous, and there's this nagging fear against doing that. And for good reason, because
We're constantly causing each other to run red lights.

Shire. (not in the Lord of the Rings Sense)

I feel like I should explain our usage of this word.
A few months ago, a few of my best friends and I decided that the word "shire", if we're speaking in an onomatopoeic sense, sounds like a knife in the heart. To us, it sounds like a representation of something either really embarrassing, or sad, or scary. So we use it when something in one of those categories happens and we can't think of any other way to describe it.
There are different categories of a shire. You can feel it for someone else when you're embarrassed for them.
You can feel it when you're really sad or embarrassed for yourself.
You can feel it when you have to go to the doctor's office or the dentist and you're feeling uneasy about it.
You can definitely feel it when you have to write 3 papers in one weekend or when you have a general lack of sleep.
I feel like lately, everything I remember doing is a shire.
At night, before I fall asleep, ALL I can do is picture every shire I have ever felt for myself.
I constantly feel embarrassed. I constantly wish to not have said this one thing, or done this one thing.
Am I ever going to figure out how to prevent doing and saying embarrassing things BEFORE I do them?
I honestly hope so.
Hopehopehope.
(I hope your day is not a shire.)