(i am flawed.)

08:22 pm - for my almost lovers.

You’ve been absent for days and I’d been worried that you’d fallen asleep in a bed of opiates‘.
For days.
Is it just me or do the days seem all the more shorter. Am I growing up.
Am I afraid to.
Aren’t we all you’d whisper with laughter on your breath.
Like whiskey. The color of fall. the smell of autumn.
I can’t be bothered.
Bothered with so much noise.
With correct grammar and spelling and punctuation.
And you with a red pen. Marking every mistake.
All my mishaps highlighted.
For good measure.
For a good laugh.
And that, you would point out is your favorite word.
I’d be the same girl scared of being singled out.
Outlined in red.
White and Blue. Makes you remember those waves.
Of emotion.
Of salty sea water.
That knocked us both off our sand-smoothed feet.
We were younger then.
Not afraid of growing up. Of being swept off our feet.
Of knowing the rules only long enough to break them.
And we broke. Busted.
Fell apart. and flew away.
And slept.
For days at a time.
In a bed of heroin and lavender tea.
And nobody noticed but me.
And everybody noticed but you.
 

11:57 pm - Roman

11:40 am - Breezy

If I could have just 3 minutes of your time… If for those 3 minutes you would shut out the rest of the world. Ex out the you tube videos…. Take out those ear buds… mute your TV… and give me 3 minutes pure of any outside distraction. I promise a return on your expense of time… I promise not to take advantage of one single second of any of those 3 minutes….

I’ve known for most of my life that not everyone could connect to a song the way I can… I understand E minor in the darkest ways possible and when a lyric makes sense I’ve been known to take a sharpie to my arms and legs and walls and journals… I promise I am going somewhere with this.. Trust me lovers and give me those unpolluted three minutes… There is a song that I heard at a concert what seems like almost a year ago this month. It was one of those songs that you feel like the singer is singing to you. The way we all thought Tom Petty wrote Free Fallen’ about us… Cause we were all good girls… crazy bout Elvis… and how Radiohead understood us enough to write Creep… The way you smile in the car as the wind blows your hair in your mouth while you screaming and I’m Freeee Freeee Falling… or drinking tequila with the boys while Creep plays on repeat in the background… The night at the concert was that kind of moment for me. I mostly remember Conor Oberst looking straight into my eyes while he sang the entire thing… and my husband was tugging at me asking me if I was okay and if I saw how Conor was looking at me… and all I wanted was 3 minutes. 3 minutes to take it in… to devour the lyrics… to play them in my head.. To understand the loss in his voice and the sadness in the words he chose. I left that concert physically shaking… because I knew that I couldn’t just walk away from that song unmoved… I needed to know who this “Breezy” was and how she affected someone so significantly that they would write a untouchably beautiful song for her.

Before we jump forward…. Before we crash into the point… my purpose in stealing your 3 minutes… This Is the piece of the song… that has stuck with me… throughout this entire year… of change.. And loss.. And rejection and growth.. And patience.. And purity.. And silent wars.. And loud ones…

01:24 am - Are you a good person?

What does it mean to be a good person?

I’ve been sitting here for over an hour staring at this page. I even asked Dustin if “I don’t know” was an adequate response and blog worthy?? It’s apparently not.

 I used to be really great at being clever. Knowing how to string my words together to make something make sense. I’ve had people who I forced out of my life with my words. With knowing exactly what to say to break their heart. To remind them that they are temporary. Being temporary seems like such an awful fate. Knowing that eventually you will be replaced… by someone better… smarter… more beautiful. Someone telling you that you are indeed temporary is less of a breaking of ones heart and more of a breaking of ones spirit.  I should say that I was a great breaker of spirits. I want to admit to you that breaking spirits doesn’t make me a bad person… and then again… it doesn’t make me a good one either.

So here I am again.

I’m the kind of girl who stopped watching the news because I couldn’t shake it enough to sleep at night. When I watch the news about men slaughtering their entire families and women raping little girls something inside of me just stops. I get stuck in the victims thoughts. I relive abuse that I’ve suffered at the hands of many cowards and it’s almost as if the news is on some sorta record store loop in my mind.  I’ve cried over many victims that I never knew.  I’ve wondered a million what if’s… What if someone stepped in… What if someone noticed… What if someone gave a voice to those victims. What if I was that someone. So what? Does that voice make me a good person… does the fact that I didn’t save them make me bad..

I am married to a soldier. My husband loves me with an intensity that before him I never even knew existed. He is a hard worker, affectionate, gentle and noble.  He reenlisted into the military so that I would be taken care of. That doesn’t make him any less proud to be part of The United States Army.  He doesn’t believe that our last president lead them in the right direction… or us as country… but he signed an oath to protect and honor The United States regardless.  Fighting a war you don’t believe in doesn’t make you a bad person any more then being a soldier instantly makes you a good one.

This week I start my volunteer position at the Ronald McDonald house. My job is basically to be the first face that these exhausted families see. Most of the families have kids who are suffering from Cancer or Heart defects or genetic birth defects. The Ronald Mcdonald house gives them a place to rest their heads while they help their 4,5, or 6 year old through Chemo or recovering from a heart transplant. Can you imagine… I am so anxious and excited about this opportunity. I am happy to know that I will be making a small difference in someone who really needs it’s life. Then again there is another part of me that feels like this endeavor is selfish. How rewarding is it going to be to be around these amazing kids. I deal with a chronic illness everyday and often I bitch out. I am grown woman who gives up daily. These children have suffered with heart attacks and through their hair falling out. They don’t know what it is like to just be a kid. What an influence on my life. How amazing to even be in the presence of these strong children.
So does this volunteer position make me good.
Or does my selfish longing make it bad?

Maybe that longing for human connection and searching it out is what it means to be good.
Maybe remembering that other people exist outside of your little world means being good.
Maybe small acts of kindness in a world that has become so cruel makes you good.

Maybe knowing the difference between good and bad automatically defaults you to good.

Maybe just wanting it. Wanting to be that girl who makes a difference in any capacity she can.. Wanting to love people in ways that changes the way they think towards love. Wanting to be child-like not childish. Wanting to sit down with every homeless drunk to hear his story. Wanting to get down on the floor and play with a little girl who has lost all her hair to chemo… Wanting something other then pettiness, racism, homophobia, selfishness, and destruction for  my family and for my country… but mostly for myself.
There it is again. A type of selfishness that isn’t good..
    But it sure as hell isn’t that bad either.

10:00 pm - "Substitute People"

Empty Page for an Empty Girl.
Selfish Girl. Broken Girl.

With a make believe god in a make believe heaven in my make believe mind… taunting me with images of the girl I used to be. The girl who didn’t even know what a headache felt like until she was 20... And for all my character flaws at least I had my health. And for all those people I left broken and longing behind me at least my legs were strong enough to help me leave.
And I’ve traded my flaws for perfection. What an ugly mess of beauty I’ve become. A contradiction. And that god who promised me a thousand dreams now forcing me to beg for a moment of his time. But fuck.. I don’t care about his time or his heart or all his saved little lost souls. I’m on my knees begging for a release from a pain as pure as pleasure. From a lifetime sentence.

Not believing in something doesn’t make it real. Like it doesn’t make it work. Like it doesn’t make it matter. And you. A god. That means nothing to an angry little girl like me.
Empty girl.
Selfish girl.

Broken… about that…

Here is a list to mark off. One by one medications added to the pile already embraced in my sweaty palms. Bitter and sweet and a mix of salt. Down in a gulp. And this one causes blindness. And this one destroys your kidneys… and this one speeds that heart up… and this one slows it down.. And this one makes you less nauseous and this one makes you sick as a bitch. And this one will fix that infection while this one shuts that immune system right back off. And here’s a band-aid to cover up your gaping wound like the night he cut his arm to the bone and I cried on the floor in a mess of his blood. God he was proud of that scar… and this god. My god… doesn’t ever allow my wounds to become a prideful scar. Oh no. on your knees girl.
Empty Girl.
Selfish Girl.  A girl who collects her tears for once a month. The way I have learned to cry in the shower to hide the evidence of how selfish I really feel. There are kids dying in Africa from aids… and mexico from the flu and Iraq from our american bombs. And me. This girl. This selfish disgusting girl. This girl who can’t stand living a lifetime of daily pain. This girl who can’t walk most mornings… who crawls to bed each night terrified to fall asleep… because it means waking up. And then it starts again. A body that doesn’t behave. That feels only pain. It used to be safe to give up my months worth of tears in a fetal position underneath my bed or in the shower with it’s steam and safety. The worst days are the days it hurts to cry and hurts to lie down and it hurts to stand up and it hurts to inhale and it hurts to pee and it hurts to grasp a pen or dial a number or when it hurts when he brushes the hairs from their clinging to my face and it hurts to be loved so intensely and it hurts to know that he has this girl.
Empty Girl.
Selfish Girl.
Broken Girl…

Empty Empty Empty
Yeah me. Not in need of your clichés and awkward phone calls and the way I stare into the mirror searching for a moment of hope behind my dark brown eyes. I don’t want to be told one more fucking time that this is my punishment for turning my back on a god that I don’t like enough to even believe in. I don’t want to be told that you are praying for me and that there is this friend who will always welcome me back and that this friend can heal me and fix me and make the pain just stop.
JUST STOP. Nothing you say from your soft lips to your spackled ceiling will ever be like an instant shot of morphine to the most sensitive places of pain. Intense. Instant. Narcotics make it better.

But me this girl. Empty fucking girl… Waiting to be a junkie. Waiting around for a pill to take away my pain. Waiting to crawl back into my hole because I will never be her. You know her. She. My mom. My nothing. There will be a day that I just throw all those pills away the same way I threw away my god. I won’t look back and I’ll let the house of cards just fall. Fade into a collapse. And all of my organs will be fighting each other to be the first to fall. And I won’t feel so empty.
So selfish.
So Broken.

By Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - An experimental treatment for debilitating cases of lupus virtually erased symptoms for 50 percent of patients - but the therapy falls short of offering a cure, Chicago researchers reported Tuesday.
The results provide the first major assessment of a technique developed over the last decade at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Doctors gave infusions of bone marrow stem cells to 50 patients with advanced lupus in an effort to reset their faulty immune systems.
Early results were so encouraging that study leader Dr. Richard Burt speculated in 2000 that, in some cases, "the patient may actually be cured."
That hope has faded somewhat. The new report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concludes that patients have a fifty-fifty chance of relapse after five years. One patient died from an infection related to the treatment.
Yet the stem cell technique allowed half of patients to live normal lives, often after years spent suffering with ineffective and toxic medications.
"In lupus treatment we often reach a wall where we have nothing more to offer," Burt said. "What we've done is hopefully move that wall further away."
The Northwestern findings join a tide of new therapies being tested for lupus, an autoimmune disease that afflicts about 1.5 million Americans. Patients tend to be young women, with a median age around 30.
Lupus is a partially genetic disorder that causes the body's immune system to attack a patient's own tissue, which can damage the kidneys, joints, lungs, brain and many other body parts. Only a small minority of patients die from the disease, but those who survive can face a lifetime of painful symptoms, missed work and high medical bills.
The hope is that such treatments "reboot" a patient's immune system. But Burt has not proved that such a drastic change occurred in his patients, said Dr. Tammy Utset, director of the lupus program at the University of Chicago.
"They're hoping to jump-start the immune system, but they're not really achieving that," Utset said. She pointed out that many patients whose symptoms went away still have to take small doses of medication to keep the disease in check.
"It's not really disease remission," Utset said.
Utset also noted that although the study calculates a 50 percent probability that patients undergoing the therapy can stay disease- free for five years, few of the Northwestern patients have actually been participating that long.
That means it's still unclear how long the therapy's effects last, she said.

Fuck your experimental treatments. Cause I’d be the girl who died from complications. Dead Girl.
Empty Girl.
Selfish Girl.

Broken.
(girl)
 

01:07 pm - Can You?

10:05 pm - Turned On.

" and on the way home held your camera like a bible

                              just wishing that it held some kind of truth."

I've spent months shutting off my brain, as if Conor was right when he mentioned a switch.

My heart has never been as easy and I've lied to a thousand ears every time I promised them they'd be simple to forget.

And I've said it before letting go is a completely different concept than forgetting

                  And I know forgetting is an act I've yet to master.

I can pretty much promise you that your heart and your head were created to work together.

    You can be an Einstein or a Plath.

But it's always better to be a Bukowski.

My heart wasn't made to carry my heads share and my brain would mean nothing if I lacked heart.

                  Tonight I am reaping the consequences of half of a year without my head…

And the lesson learned is not thinking about things doesn't make them go away.

Pretending I am not sick does not make my body feel any less useless.

        Pushing past the diagnosis doesn't change the lighting in the bathroom as I am left throwing up that day's meal.

Still all the while my heart has been on.

Green Lights. Go Ahead.

FEELING the thoughts I've not allowed myself to think.

    Rollercoaster is the most cliché way to describe my emotions these last few months.

And I've let my heart take the brunt of things my head should have dealt with….

Or at least shared the responsibility for.

So as I said in earlier blogs…

     I've felt it all.

But haven't thought a thing.

       And I wouldn't have been half the emotional wreckage if I'd just processed what was happening.

(15 minutes of staring at this page I've come to the conclusion that there is no proper way to end this except to say I am thinking again.)

I want to read every single book I've been neglecting.

           Fill pages with the cleverest of words.

And talk.talk.talk.

   Think.

Not (just) Feel.

Yeah.

Switch on.

"But there's this burn in my stomach and there's this pain in my side
                               And when I kneel at the toilet
And the mornings clean light pours in through the window
                                   Sometimes I pray I don't die
                                                       I'm a goddamn hypocrite"

10:04 pm - Lies.

I woke up this morning with an incredible urge to start telling lies... I wanted to call and cancel my doctors appointment with a lie... and then I wanted to lie to everyone who knows just how sick I have been that my doctor called and said it was all just a silly joke... and there was no need to be seen.

When I was fourteen and fifteen I could make up the most incredible stories... I had an imagination that nobody was tapping into so instead I would waste it on trivial things that wouldn’t mean anything in the morning... I had art in my blood... and words in my bones... and no direction in which to go with them. I decided as I got older that lying was for children... or weak people... insecure girls with too much make-up... lonely boys with too many hormones.

   Weakness was an attribute I usually lied about hating... If I saw it in someone else I would pounce... and if I noticed it in myself I would pretend it wasn’t there with a bowl full of lies. I can look back know and tell you that it was more than just art and words flowing thru my veins that made me lie about my flaws. I am sure religion having me in a chokehold didn’t help the situation all that much... Pleasing a committee of men takes its toll on just about anyone and losing sight of why the hell you got involved in a cause in the first place tends to make you hate the tangible. Still I will admit that lying and stories got put on the back burner because churches frown on things like that...

So here I was a girl of seventeen with nothing left to hide behind... Just because I was growing up didn’t mean that I had any less art underneath my skin... and just because I sat perfectly in my pew didn’t make me wanna hide behind my words anymore.  So instead for years and years I played pretend... It seemed less harmful then lying out loud.. and when I was old enough to realize that it probably wasn’t healthy to pretend... to keep my words and stories at bay... I had a preacher tell me quite publicly that.. "Even a fool looks wise Crystal when they keep their mouth shut" and from then I went on hardly even pretending anymore... when I spoke it was simple... The necessary... Hello’s and goodbyes and how are yous. People couldn’t see my weakness if I kept my mouth shut... If I kept my lies to a minimum.. If I drained myself of art... and god... and words alone... no one would notice my truths.

Mind you it’s been years since I have been that girl... that girl in a chokehold... denying who I was.. and what I loved. Men like Roman and Alan came into my life with force... convincing me that it was okay to be filthy.. It was okay to use that art for something better... It was okay to breathe and live and fuck. (feel in general) There were two years of my life that were spent with people who taught me the healthy balance between not lying and not pretending.

And I really lived... whether that was dragging Alan to the beach at two in the morning because counting crows were singing about the ocean... or driving hours upon hours with Roman drinking whiskey in the passengers seat of his own car... Maybe it was kissing boys whose names wouldn’t sound familiar in a few weeks.. or letting Dustin in... (Really in) but I was living in that sweet place that requires no masks... It’s laying all your cards on the table... even if it seems a shitty hand at the time. If you lose you still have the smiles from the dealer that your jokes caused.

I am not saying that I ever want to go back to that girl before this one. I don’t want to fake my way thru everything.. I don’t ever want to play a part...

   It’s just sometimes I want to pretend like being sick isn’t getting to me... Like dragging myself to the bathroom to vomit thru-out the night isn’t taking its toll. I don’t want to be reminded that they are calling because they are afraid of my being sick... not excited about my getting married. I want to be the go to girl for books and music and not the reason they don’t call late because "she needs her rest." I need a break from compassion... I need a moment of hating this weakness... and a story to tell that sounds better than my current truth.

   (and I am afraid this is always going to make more sense to me then it ever will to you... and that this art and this god and these words will stay shut up in my bones for longer then they ought.)

05:07 pm - I do not remember...

what it feels like to sleep alone...

I am pretty sure it was never easy for me.
I didn't always  need intimacy
   but I also didn't feel whole waking up alone.

It's been almost two years that I've been lucky enough to have both.

Too many mornings with to suddenly be without.
 
   (3 days till he leaves for over a month)
Saddest possible face ever.

09:13 pm - Pt One

I never saw myself here.

I guess it’s unfair to say I saw myself much of anywhere.

Being a city girl was kind of like being 16 and 45 all in one go. Lip gloss and laptops and never looking a man in his eyes. Clinging to that East Coast title and its cheez whiz drenched beef sandwich perfection and our stiletto knee length outfits. There was always a little bit of pride in the flipping of my hair and rolling of my eyes at the scene kids in their flannel costumes. I could be anyone in that city. Any other version of myself at any given moment. For once I was the gorgeous girl. I wasn’t cute… I wasn’t the little sister every man I had ever meant turned me into.

That was a corner this baby would never be backed into again.

I had spent a year quietly studying her every move. Her being the blonde who never quite cowered in the presence of any boy. She who destroyed me in ways that explaining never does justice. Her, like a constant twisted ankle during my junior high dance. This girl if I was required honesty would be rather unimportant to the whole of this story.

It all gets hazy anyway and I am losing track and chasing rabbits down the closest dark hole.

Back to me.

A city girl.

A Ruse.

A fucking fake.

But suddenly in an instant if you will, I was the girl whom the boys would borderline stalk. I’d spent the better half of my life being the girl they would one day marry but never the girl they would fuck. All the great poets whisper about the city being their ruin with its marquee signs and it’s fast, fast food. It’s fast girls. It’s quick luck. Making even the hopeless romantics into cynics and driving some secrets deeper into their pasts. And yet here I was making exceptions and becoming alive. A shedding of the weight of years of expectations and same faces.

I was reborn.

10:02 pm - "Crys"

Part 1

It was one of those days that she tried to handle me. As if
 I'd never seen her filth… Like it sounded natural when she
 called me by my full name rather than the pet names we'd
spent years creating and than consequently perfecting.
It sounded foreign to my ears but it was an act that I
would become familiar with over the years of my knowing her.
 She was my best friend… my confident… my at times only
family, but the truth is she was never anything more than
a stranger most nights. Give me a minute to introduce her
before I sell off her secrets to your uninterested ears...:
She was all legs… but classy enough to wear appropriate
length skirts and fitted pants. Her huge brown eyes dripped
 of cocaine and she would never let you see them cry.
She normally articulated herself well enough to make you
think she had some type of formal education. Still if you
 pried deep enough you would realize she wasn't as smart,
 as she was, well read. If you were wise you would understand
 that these two were not the same thing. She was striking
 but most men would keep her at arms length… though neither
of us could quite figure out why. She had an appetite for
classic rock and a few of the in-betweens. Car rides full of
 "Grace" via Jeff Buckley and Van Morrison to top it off. 
It took her three hours on a good night to get ready to paint
 our town red… and she was insecure about the silliest things…
Life Status. Her choice of shoes. Me.
 
So back to this day in question… It was like all the other
 wasted days that made up our third summer together. Her in
 a tank top and jean skirt… me with my hippie dress, as she
affectionately called them, from time to time. Her back yard
 had become a constant for us… Her family owned this huge
house with the most beautiful backyard. There was a lazy
stream that drifted thru it. We would lay there with old
Hollywood sunglasses and drinks made to ward of hot days.
Even though I hid behind my tattered copy of The Bell Jar 
she would ask me question after question. To most people
this would quickly become exhausting… still this became my
favorite thing about her. "Do dogs speak English? Am I
beautiful? If this river was a color… which one would it be?
 Crys?? Are you listening?" The best part was answering them…
 Her questions though silly to most I would often try to
approach with respect. I would think carefully about the
color of the river or if mans best friend spoke our language.
 I would tell her she was beautiful and follow it with why
and how and where. And yes… Yes I was listening.
 
I listened to most everything she had to say with careful
ears and an open heart.  We would spend this day to it's
fullest. Before long we had forgotten lunch and then dinner
for the stars that were beginning to come out of their
hiding places. She has this way of making you feel like you
 were the most important person in the world to her at any
given moment.  She could name off my favorite foods and bands
 and stores to shop at. She knew I liked my potatoes garlicky
  and my boys tattooed. She knew that I had no desire for
shoes or expensive purses. She could make me laugh with just
 a shared glance and in those moments she owned me.  Then
with an urgency it would change... like on this particular
day that had turned into a night.  She glanced at me from the
 corner of her eyes and called me Crystal… and in that
instant… All those summers were lost… and all the questions
 I had so carefully answered meant little more than nothing.
 Her tone was the same… her face still soft… but I had lost
her. I was sitting alone in her parents beautiful backyard
with their ghost of a daughter. Whatever came after my name
ran together and made no sense and she excused herself to bed.
 
 
I'd be a fool to try and tell you where she went in those
instances…. Most people would never think a thing of it… but
 I knew her like I knew the ocean… and I knew that she came
in waves. I knew that night that she was gone… and I knew a
thousand other times throughout our friendship that she could
 on a dime leave.
 
It hurts when people die… and it hurts when people walk away…
 break up with us… choose someone else… but the worse way to
 miss someone will always be when there sitting right there.
 
She still comes and goes… as a shitty musician once said
like "Neon." And I still allow her that. Because living in
her world for those moments that she is there is worth the
pain I feel when she goes.
 
I used to think I created her in my mind…
The opposite of everything I am… Consistently on the verge of leaving me...
 forgetting me.
 
 Calling me by my real name.

06:53 pm - How NOT to save a soul in ten steps.

1. Keep pretending like you give a fuck about my soul when you are actually more interested in staring at my chest. I am not naïve and I am not a child. I notice how long your eyes linger on my breasts, while asking me for directions to your little conference tonight at Apostolic Worship Center. Disgusting.
2. Gossip in the lobby of the hotel that I work in and allow me to overhear you using the words god bless and "his wife started to slut around all over town" in the same sentence to 4 other pastors.
3. Turn the lobby TV station to the christian channel from the Disney channel those 2 small kids and their parents were watching while they ate their takeout. Then proceed to turn the volume to an unhealthy level, which forces this poor family to come ask me for assistance.
4. Call me Sister Crystal even though I am neither kin nor parishioner.
5. Ask me to go above and beyond my job title and indirectly make me abandon my desk and other guests and then not thank me. Not Even Once.
6. Call Bertha (one of our lovely housekeepers who speaks perfect English) incompetent, in front of her, because she can’t break the rules and turn on the juice machine at 6pm at night.
7. After I find out you are here for a prison ministry conference and I tell you that my dad is a prison chaplain began to gossip. Let me overhear you saying things like " He is probably not state paid, just a volunteer." If you have to know HE IS A STATE PRISON CHAPLAIN and is on government payroll you douche bags.
8. Ask me to charge your personal credit card, and not the direct bill for that late night movie you ordered for after your conference.
9. Be, in general, unhappy and complain about everything including my low-cut shirt to your overweight, sloppy, disgusting looking wife. (After you stared down that SAME shirt for a good 5 minutes while your ‘lovely’ wife waited in the car.
10. After all of these disgusting things ask me if I have found Jesus as my personal lord and savior.

05:42 pm - -

“I'm so tired of me.
I'm always sickly, self-destroy.
So, untangle me from this web of friends.
'Cause I know that things are going wrong when you can't stop making out with all your friends and you did the things you did because you were sixteen and drunk and angry again,
but don't fret and don't lose your head 'cause you can just pack up and leave before we begin to change .”

There is a whole collection of kids who think they know me. Knew Me.

This is the version of me that always gets the time adverb all sorts of wrong.

Grammar school lessons quickly forgotten.

Mumbled lyrics and all sorts of (pre)tense.

Past tense.

Present tense.

Perfect(ly)

TENSE.

I feel uptight about this.

I feel indifferent about this.

You smile and suggest I must be feeling something.

About this.

You know I am not fooling anyone..

but I know I spent most of my adolescence fooling audiences just like you.

I was a makeshift version of something beautiful.

Paint splatters on a crumbled canvas you stole from the parking lot behind your favourite guitar store.

I followed those boys everywhere and pretended to know what it felt like to be loved.

But what happens when everyone loves the act.

The misleading act of a sixteen year old girl.

And what if you were my only hope at family

And what if that meant playing the part.

Parts.

So many different acts.

Scenes.

And cut.

Flash forward.

That moment in the melodrama where you realize you acting skills are bit too refined

And everyone thinks this girl is you.

And what happens when you realize you don’t really like the smell of Gap Blue…

Or God.

What happens when you’ve been faking it in and out of bed.

What happens when you realize they aren’t your friend.

They are her friend.

The actor.

And suddenly no one is really sticking around.

Suddenly this is the list of things you are not:

Pure.

Innocent.

Lighthearted.

Patient.

Graceful.

Naïve.

And suddenly this is a list of things you are:

Misunderstood.

Dirty.

Impatient.

Weak.

Godless.

And there were boys who came along whose touch I wouldn’t regret.

and boys who taught me how to curse.

And how it felt so good to say fuck.

And how it felt so good to be naked the first time.

Not alone in my room

Hiding underneath my bed.

But naked with the lights on and his hand touching my blushing cheeks.

And that first taste of red wine

08:55 pm - -

I am still a rather foolish girl who believes in things.

Things like that and people like you.

I get better with my words everyday
  but all the more clumsy with my hands.

Blacks and blues and skinned knees as if I saw the value in wearing my helmet
                for a bike ride.

You'd say I made sense no matter what language I had chosen to speak to you in.

     It's just how we are.
You were.

I'm not.

  Side note:

  Goy...  I've got words for that girl you handed the phone too darlin.

Coming.
  (soon)

 

Current Mood: curious

06:01 pm - Lovers Turn Into Monsters.

"I just sit and watch the people there. And they remind me of wind up cars in motion.
The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions.
And I want to scream out that it all is nonsense.
All your lives one track, can't you see it's pointless?
But then, my knees give under me. My head feels weak and
suddenly it is clear to see that it is not them but me, who has lost my self-identity.
As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry,
like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve.
And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me.
And everything I made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time."

I sat here for hours staring at a blank page... Trying to leave you with more. Than hurtful words in succession at a blank canvas.

I tried for years. To doll you up. To make you prettier than you really are.

To reason with your dirt. It's like that dress you stopped wearing...
spilled red wine and suddenly its spent.
Suddenly it's not good enough.

To wear.
To love.

But this attempt is a waste.
Because I've hated you from the moment I started knowing you.
And you are all the things I've said.

You're a selfish broken little girl. With her daddy's money. And her daddy's indifference.

With a penchant for needing attention and ignoring what you have.

You are the emptiest girl alive. And alone in every sense of the word. You don't understand suffering.

You've got pills to melt that away.

You've worked for nothing. You have nothing to show for 23 years. And I've been here all along.

I've loved your lies, I've believed in your truth.
I've been abandoned too many times by someone who never once possessed me.

I've laid in bed listening to you cry.
That daddy took away your credit card.
When blood was seeping was seeping from between my legs.
While I was losing my chance at creating something bigger than myself.
And in that moment I had nothing to cradle
      but you.

So sure. It would be ideal to make this pretty.
To mention we had a good run.
To say as you said, that I will always love you.
But I won't.
I will walk away
as I'd intended to do for months now.

I will not wish you the best.
 
I will wish you the worst of all things,
because it is the worst of moments that forge real character.
It is the worst that often reveals the best.

It is everything terrible that makes you cling to the smallest moments of good.

It's those who suffer.

Those who hurt.

Those that feel.

It's those kids that deserve the best.

Goodbye.

(you cunt.)

"and I thought you were beautiful but I wept with each movement"

05:02 pm - Lame.

Current Mood: artistic

07:25 pm - shsh iknow.

I am learning the difference between giving advice and stepping on toes.
I am learning that I often confuse love for maintenance.
I am learning that certain boundaries were set for good reasons.
I am learning how to turn off memories to shelter my heart.
I am learning that it wasn't always as good as you remember it to be.
I am learning how to have a friend versus being a friend.
I am learning that some people will never earn my respect.
I am learning that my creativity is like the ocean and I can't always catch the waves.
I am learning that being his wife means being his best friend.
I am learning that I enjoy stability.
I am learning to be patient with the little things.
I am learning what it's like to not just be beautiful... but to feel it.
I am learning how to grow up... daily.
I am learning to admire people who are whole.
I am learning to not hold so tightly to people who are broken.
I am learning that my parents did they best they could.
I am learning I will never be my mother.
I
Am
Learning.

06:11 pm - Clean.

When I asked if you were clean I didn't expect for you to tell me the truth.
   The same way I never expected to be living in the same city again.

It's different here...
   Hipsters on every corner and not so much lack in everyones eyes.

Portland is foolish in the best way possible. Music sustains these kids and you oughta be ashamed if you haven't gone green. 
Beautiful Music... Talented People... and an abundance of Art...

but you tend to lean towards garbage

and our Baltimore was always pure filth...

   Remember the first time you got clean and you took me on a tour of every corner where you used to buy smack. You pointed out how all the drug dealers tend to  wear the same thing. White Tshirt. Blue Jeans. Black Cap. You were the one who taught me why.  "Crys Crys its simple.... It's for those times that they are running from the cops if all the drug dealers are wearing the same thing...it makes it all  a bit confusing."

and then we fought that night over music. We were always fighting over music you know...This night it was Tupac or Tim Kasher. I argued one seemed more appropriate than the other. You laughed me off, saying, "Oh lover... Don't be foolish... Tim has had his share of pills."

You always made it seem like I was innocent and you were my protection. Against the dirty streets.. Park avenue kids and SALT late night parties. You made sure our friends would "watch their mouths" around me and covered my eyes playfully when a movie got too explicit.
 but that was where the protecting stopped
and I can say with confidence that before you my vocabulary was lacking hundreds upon hundreds of words.

"Black Tar, Mexican Brown, White, Heron, Garbage, Junk, Snow, Smack, and La Buena"

Because of you Charm city didn't seem so charming and everything hidden in some kind of darkness was always brought to the light.

I could tell you what it looked like to "nod" and how speedballs made you fly and then fall  usually into my lap and your slurrings were meant to be romantic and your addictions were meant to make me high.

...and high I was. High on feeling bad. High on compassion. High on cleaning up your messes. High on feeling free from the bondage of religion. High on feeling grown up.

You fooled me into thinking that being grown up was this. Knowing nicknames for drugs I would never taste. Living in our beautiful studio but frequenting the dirtiest of ghettos.

but now... 4 years later... when I ask you if you are clean it's my way of screaming "You can't fool me" and "I finally know what it means to be grown"

My asking you about your  being clean is how I remind you that I have grown up.

I've come to realize that knowing the difference between a nickel and a dime bag doesn't equal love.
I've come to realize I will never allow you back into my life again until you are clean.
I know that being a grown up means denying you my attention until you return to the boy who had every intention of keeping me a "little girl."

04:31 pm - Contrast.

We are everything different. I've been laying in bed for the last hour studying our night stands. Comparing if you will. Mine is a snapshot or imperfection. Everything clumsily thrown together. The lamp covered in semi-political stickers that say things like 'Reading is sexy' and 'Religion suffocates.' Its littered with half empty coke cans and scraps of paper with thoughts I'm sure seemed brilliant at the time. The recent spin magazine opened up to the article about Ms Leslie Feist. Pictures of Roman and Keiko framed in dollar store finds. Bobby pins and collected poems of Sylvia Plath. Glancing at your I find everything in its place. The lamp and alarm clock angled slightly towards each other. One wired magazine. One book pertaining to military life. The same glass you refill every night with water. For the moments in the night when you wake up with a sore throat. Our nightstands only remind me of our life together.The way you like couscous and sushi and can't exist without atleast fifteen cups of coffee a day. Where as i'm happy with bagel bites and popsicles and the way I single handley keep coca cola in business. Or the way I'm too much of a music snob to listen to My Chemical Romance or Taking Back Sunday. Where as you'll always give Conor Oberst and Jeff Buckley a chance because you notice the tears in my eyes when I tell you this music just feels. Maybe its the way you think I'm beautiful and smart and obnoxious when I tend to laugh at my own jokes. Where as on the way to meet your family for the first time I sobbed like a child. Afraid I'd never be good enough for their sailor boy. Or how in bed you kiss my nose and want us close enough to breathe the same air.. And even though I get up fifteen times I always somehow wake up to you holding me still. As where I'm still as wiggley as I was when I was five and sleep never comes easy while restrained. We are DIFFERENT.Your love is honest and loud. You're the kid who was taught how to show every single thing he feels. You're public displays of affection to my tracing the outline of your face once you fall asleep. You're silly to my stubborn. All of this said and with full knowledge of the idea that i'll never be nearly as good at this as you are. I still can't imagine my life with anyone but you. Thank you for being my contrast in a room full of boys who look exactly like me.

06:31 pm - I am feeling...

less Conor Oberst and more Britt Daniels everyday.

   (if you know you just know)

I find it hard to create when I am happy...
 
   (fuck)