a letter

 you're not reading this, but if you are, when you see it, can you tell me if you think you did the right thing? is this what you wanted? I felt so powerless when it happened, and I feel remorseful and ashamed of the last 7 months, the months when I tried to love you less. I sometimes sit and wonder if you feel like I do, broken up inside and worried, and worthless, alienated, and I sometimes even hope you feel those things, but I end up imagining you feeling nothing but indifferent and apathetic. I'm sorry I was withdrawn. If I could change things about how I behaved the summer of 2017, I would. I don't know how life works, and it's hard for me to understand that one day you have someone and the next day you don't. I didn't know you were feeling this way, I didn't know this was an option you were considering. Maybe if I had, I would have tried harder. I blame myself for thinking you'd stick around, like you always did, but as soon as I stopped fighting, stopped the outrageous fighting that I had continued for the last four years, the fighting for you and the intense grip I had on everything. as soon as I stopped, you stepped away. Was I blind to this inevitability? If I had known, I would have given you a hug. You know, that last day, when you came over, and you needed someone, and I wasn't the person you needed me to be. We went through the drive-through and I complained about your dog in defense of my own vulnerability. You remember, when you were leaving, and we looked at each other, and I knew you wanted a hug, and you knew I didn't want to give you one. I can't reach out to tell you this. I don't feel like I'm allowed to, like suddenly you've created an invisible boundary that neither of us defined but that I think would be crossed if I tried to define it. I wish I would have said more. I wish it could have been different. I keep replaying it back in my mind; if I had known, I would have pulled you in and held you, at least one last time, to send you off with some semblance of love instead of all the cold I shot at you. 

thanks

6 years

74 months

323 weeks

2,259 days

54,215 hours

3,252,955 minutes

195,177,313 seconds

you said forever

witchcraft

my stomach's a crystal ball--it can tell the future

it turns, and I'm reminded of the worry today, when you told me

and it settles into a dynamic flurry that loves to reject everything I give it. 

it tells me the future, and I think I can feel you; 

I can feel that you're hurting, and I can feel someone else holding you,

and I wish I could change this but I can't. 

did you know, nonbiological twins exist?

cut of the same heartstring, forever before the womb, forever before today,

I didn't know.

maybe it's just our stomachs tied together, I'm not sure

nothing seems to cure it, not time, not distance,

not talking,

not un-loving,

not even Pepto Bismol,

I sigh 

How can this be, that you experience things, and my body moves with you,

sinking when you're low, and becoming defensive when you're in trouble,

aching to envelope all your feelings, all my feelings, until we become whole again?

but you don't feel it. you can't allow it, 

because you don't know,

and I always expect you to--because I know, long before I ask,

somehow, I know, and somehow, you don't. 

it's witchcraft, this. have you voodoo-ed me? 

I haven't been writing.

I haven't been writing.

Maybe it's because I'm supposed to be writing, or because I've found other ways to expunge my emotions, but I haven't been writing, and I think that's okay.

It's okay because I lost you. I lost you last week and I knew it was coming, like the aftermath of the year's biggest hurricane, predicted on my local weather station. I had my 72-hour-kit, I did my research, I was ready for the power outage. I held my breath when you told me the news, and my voice was so shaky--I told you I was cold, and you believed me.

It's okay because I'm hurting, and I'm hurting everywhere in a way I haven't before. Some of it is because of you, and some of it is because of my own external recklessness, but maybe that is in some ways also because of you. I had to find ways to live, ways to move, move away from the kinds of hype I used to get when I thought about you or when I imagined myself close to revealing my feelings. I knew my highs needed to come from somewhere else, or at least I needed to distract myself.

And now I'm here with nothing to distract me and I feel it in my stomach, a kind of curdling that leaves me tossing with disgust and discomfort, and I want to escape it. My stomach is boiling. I can't get away.

love letter

honestly I never imagined it would get this far, that I would feel this way, 17-year-old me resurfacing to make yet another dramatic comeback. I'm not just habiting the same sunsetty parking lots and drifting away in my own boredom, but I'm starting to wish for impossibles and nevers, and most of all, I'm starting to think of you. I'm starting to think of you like I have a mad middle school crush, a fluttering heart without any kind of cage to hold it back, and I'm happy to let it float away into nothingness like a helium balloon set free by a toddler--up, up, up into thin atmospheric hiding places.

This isn't just a love letter to you; I mean, of course it is, with your eyes that reflect all my laughs and the way you tangle your thoughts up with mine. But it's also a love letter to me, to myself, whom I often believe to be completely confused and without any sense. It's a love letter to myself because over the last few months, I've been surprised by how many times I've been right when everything seemed to be telling me I was wrong. This is one of those times, when I feel I've been right this whole time despite everything telling me that I'm confused, or misunderstanding, or illogical.

So, this is an "in-your-face" sort of confrontation, an "I told you so," a reverse confession, I suppose. I reflect towards others the way I'm treated by them, and I'm completely in love with you. Everything reminds me of you, and I want to talk to you when my day is good, or when my day is bad, or when nothing has happened at all.

I can't finish this, because I can't write what I'm feeling. It's unusual for me, to not be able to write it. But I can't. Where are you? Why can't you help me?

do what you want

this whole time, you've asked me for forgiveness, and I've given it to you.
I asked you for forgiveness, and you gave it to me, but for what?
for asking you to stay?
for wanting you here?
for begging you to help me?
for loving you more than you wanted?
and now, what, now you're here, and you're asking me to do those things,
to hold you and comfort you,
to tell you that I care,
but I'm tired of forgiveness and I'm trying to prevent needing it,
and I'm not allowed to do those things, remember?
I'm so tired of letting people control me,
I forgive faults so easily,
and the people I love tell me to stop allowing the way I love people to poison me,
but I guess I have a death-wish,
because I keep finding people to dose me with arsenic little by little,
I keep finding people who I can love and lift by giving them my wings,
and I'm suddenly realizing that yes, it is my fault.
It's my fault for wanting to be the person you cared about,
and it's my fault for believing that people will love me the way I love them.
leave me alone.
do what you want,
I'll say it and I'll keep saying it, and every time I say it it bores a hole into me and I've
become a sponge that soaks up more bleach every time I see you
bleaching myself free of emotions until all that's left is a half-eaten rag
I don't even know what I want anymore, because that's been taken away from me,
so do what you want.

you

you're breaking my heart so slowly
I didn't even realize it until now
blinking back wetness
I'm consumed by you
and it really hurts




thanks a lot

it's a-me

I am compelled to write, if not to inform myself, than to deposit the heaviness that presses on my insides constantly. I feel myself shrinking under my own inclinations, slicing myself into pieces, digesting my own thoughts and turning them inside out, thinking so much that I don't have room to think. And so, I must write.

I need to write about so much that my fingers freeze in hesitation and pause to grasp for a moment at the whisper-strings flying about behind my eyes, only to break them in their delicate existence. I cry out in frustration like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, thwarted by the loss of my own control.

And so I'll start, like humans tend to do, with myself. My own impatience is sending me tumbling into non-productivity. Frankly, I want to be someone that I'm not. Wisdom tells me to be content with who I am, to change myself step by step if I wish to improve, and to take each step with a happiness and joy that propels me into a greater step of being. I can say it, but I can't do it, and I want to be lighter today, I want to reverse decisions I've made, I want to be able to complete everything in one fell swoop and become perfection with a simple nod of my head. If I can't perform perfectly in any aspect, how will I ever become as perfect as I hope to be? I can't change my face, and I can't seem to change people's perceptions of me. I found myself pulled by patience at this time last year, and I'm struggling to find the vein that I happened upon and took for granted. I try to draw from my strength, but I just feel so weak and want gratification, now. I'm tired of being patient. I'm tired of waiting.

I feel like I've wasted time. I'll talk about him, about his non-productivity, even worse than mine, stuck with no drive. Have I caught his disease? Is he as overwhelmed as I am? I curse myself for the instincts I have to take him into my heart to keep him warm, like Han Solo stuffing Luke into a TaunTaun to keep him warm and save his life. But my heart's not a freaking TaunTaun and I need to chill, or rather, to let him chill, to leave him to die in his own pathetic wasteland of "I can't" and "I don't want to." I'm finished being an unrecognized stilt and I seethe at my own commitment to he who can't even recognize my functionality or strength. So, I've wasted time and I hate wasting time, and I've gone backwards in patience and forwards in my downhill descent, and I'm leading my heart into a broken wasteland to die, if not for eternity, then just for a few minutes.

I thought I had more to say, but I guess I feel relief already and I'm less involved in myself now that I'm on the page. Forget about the finances, about the obligations, about the snowflakes still threatening to keep me cold, about the food, about the men, about the schoolwork I'll have to do--I'll manage somehow, just as I always do. I assume it won't be the end of me, and if it is, I guess things could be worse.