January 12th, Again

Happy almost-birthday, sweet boy. Double digits, they would've been a big deal. I wonder for the millionth time if you would have had Daddy's stunning cheekbones, his dark eyes and hair. Probably, dark genes are dominant. [I am stuck in town, I did not have your necklace, my ring, your candle with me. It felt funny. Kind of okay. But still funny.] I love you, always. Daddy still loves you, too, I promise.

Creeper

Atlas' window glows, it's after 1am. His stairwell light is on. The neighbor's plants have grown tall, filling the shadeless window more than I've ever seen before. I vaguely consider getting out of the car, knocking. Technically unnecessary as I still have a house key, the original mail key also. For what? To pretend, for an hour or so, that the last 6 or 8 or 36 months never happened. To inhale your lips in, into mine. The true scent of your skin muffled beneath the manufactured façade, body washes and sprays. The prickles of a fading shave. Your clumsy tongue. How I miss that clumsy tongue, your uncertain hands around my waist, my back, right now, in this moment. Your cock, shoving into me. Tactile nerves lit up like Christmas lights. If I had snogged so-and-so tonight, would I be thinking of your breath, exhaled with a barely perceptible moan into my mouth (hungry like a starved animal, [apathetic at last])? Probably, I am reluctant to admit, not. But that doesn't change the fact that I am idling in a parking lot 4-ish down from ours (yours--how did I ever believe I would fit into that sparkling, matchy bathroom?). And that I'm going to drive 'round once more. I'd stop for smokes if it wasn't so damn cold. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to act, think, feel, sleep, desire in my life without you. I just don't know.

reprise

Just now, I am sitting on my bed in my little school apartment, recapping a reading selection for class, when I suddenly catch a whiff of you. I don't know whether it is a real scent or a striking memory, and it is only there for a flash, but it brings small tears rising up in my eyes. I close them, scrunched, and pinch my nose. I am always a little surprised at how vividly you are still here. My brain has locked on to little pieces of you in a way that amazes my mind. But I have accepted it, and the feeling recedes into its back-burner throb almost as quickly as it presented itself.
_____________________________________________

My sister's boyfriend dumped her several months ago. She spends an unhealthy amount of time in bed wearing one of his t-shirts. She says she expected him to be there forever. She says she feels like half of herself is gone. She says they are the male/female versions of each other.

You were never any boyfriend of mine, but the only thing I have to say in response is that that might never go away. So my lips, and fingertips, stay still.

Un-PC

MAJOR "is that a boy" at the library today..... I'm so confused. Cute, though, in a hyper-androgynous way.

I think it's safe to say that I am at risk for falling in crush on ANYONE in my age range with a reasonable BMI if they grin at me real big, regardless of style or gender. Or lack of identifiable gender.

Francis Coppola Makes Lovely-Looking Wine Bottles

I have very bad luck, as evidenced by the fact that every time I try to go to the pool, it rains, and also because every man I have ever loved has not loved me, but has instead fallen in love with someone else, who is not as cool as me, although who is also probably not as self-absorbed.


I have missed this little blog. Perhaps I will start writing more.... I've had it since I first moved to San Francisco, which is a long time, and encases all, thus far, of my young adult life. Also, writing is good for me. It gets the weird stuff out of my head and somewhere else, where I don't have to worry about forgetting it but also don't have to think about it all the time. Also, it gives me a sense of camaraderie, however false. Frank Warren said something along the lines of, "All our loneliness is just an illusion," which isn't true at all. It's something you can tell yourself in those dark, suicide-y moments until the sun rises, but it's still a lie. We are nearly always alone, all the time, even when we're not. It's a rare moment to be in true community with another person. I had always thought that when you found someone you could have that with on occasion, well, that was the sort of person you should marry, but now I'm beginning to think I was all wrong about that. At least, for me anyway. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to help convince me that it's okay to marry Atlas.

I'm babbling. I've had most of a rather large glass of cabernet sauvignon, and I'm not even sure if everything in this post is spelled right.

But I think I will start to post more.....I've been depressed, irrationally (is there any other way?), and I need.....something. And most of what I want to say isn't exactly proper to be posting on Facebook, anyway.... therefore, this blog(e).

Okay, till next time then.

five.

Two days late, and guilt.

Saturday I was shopping. I thought about how much easier it was, doing that without you. I thought if you were here, I wouldn't be at the mall. I'd be cleaning up after your birthday party, you'd be playing with your new toys. I would have said, "Your birthday is on a Saturday this year! All your friends will be able to come to your party!"

I thought about you. But I couldn't feel it. It was all in my head. A strange blessing.

The more time that passes, the harder I am finding it to believe that you ever actually

were.


(This is a terrible marking.)

He

It boggles my mind to think there was ever a space in time where you and I were friends. Where it didn't take strength and lies to look you in the eye. Looking you in the eye was something I did repeatedly, on multiple days of the week. (I showed you everything, there was nothing I didn't hold open for you.) When it wasn't weird to see your number show up on the caller ID. I mean, I was always pleased to see it, but it was never a huge surprise. No number connected to you has been on the caller ID for years, now. And the last few times it was, the sight of it make me sick, made my stomach flop, made my heart skip a beat, made my skin buzz and tingle.

I find it hard to grasp that you still exist. That when you disappeared out of my life, and when I finally axed you from my newsfeed, that you continued on. I think that's why I cried on and off for two or three days after I saw you. I had begun to truly suspect that you weren't real, but then you were there. You touched me, you leaned in close to speak into my ear because I said I couldn't hear you. You looked me in the eye. You brought up memories, little things that had happened back then that blew my mind that you remembered. And then you disappeared again. And I left. And that was it. And I was losing you again. The pain of the loss of you reappeared as though it had never truly left, and was just waiting under the surface, all these years, waiting because it knew it had to come back again someday. Oh, wait, you're real, you're there, you can see me. Oh, wait. You're leaving again.

What was the point of that?

Home for Christmas

I am reading all these old blog posts to remind myself how much I hated you and what the blood looked like and all the pain you put in me. I am trying to fortify myself. Because I am scared of what will happen when I see you, and if you smell the same (please God, let him be wearing cologne or something so I cannot smell his skin, oh, God, please don't let him smell the same), if you smell the same I will have no defense. I will crumble. I will run out all over the floor (and someone will have to sweep me up into a dust pan, strobe lights coloring the mush of me blue and green and purple). And you will see it. You will be able to tell, immediately you will know. I can't hide anything from you, you intuitive bastard.

Ohhhh, god. I'm like caffeine: I'm so excited!/I'm so scared!

I don't know if I can do this.

And It Occurred To Me...

The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."

"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

 Maybe that's what's wrong. I don't want happy. I'm always bitching about how I'm never happy, but maybe I am. All accounts would point to it, anyway. Perhaps the problem is not that I'm not happy, but that I don't want happiness. I want grandness.

thanksgiving morning, 2012

I'm eating Gushers, blue corn tortilla chips, and red wine. It's kind of gross, but it works at four AM.

The dog is curled up next to me on the couch. The bunny is upstairs shaking her gate, over and over again.

The man is upstairs, tossing and turning in bed. The girl is on the couch, watching YouTube bars turn red.

And his words are appearing in streams, in this little white box. He tells me about his ex-girlfriend and a girl he hung out with tonight who forgot to mention her boyfriend. He's a little bit bitter and a little bit hurt, and damn! he can't believe she won't even give him a phone call.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

He is using me. Again. To spew all his relationship drama on. He says he is out of old cigarette butts to smoke and must go get real ones, he will be right back. And, of course, I say "okay." And I wait.

Forty minutes pass, and I do not think he is ever coming back. But, "because it is all that I ever want," I wait.

We have changed, we have grown, but we are still the same old people

that we were back then.

Realization & Disloyalty

I've been poking around on Wordpress a bit, and I've come to this realization: I miss the dead baby blogs.

happy birthday

Today is my birthday. I am twenty-four. But, officially, I am not 24 until 1:16PM Eastern Standard.

So I'm still 23. I'm thinking about just staying 23, period.

Atlas and I fought a little tonight and I'm not sure if I/we will be able to get it up to be cheerful in the morning.

I hate this, the passage of time.

Smart Girls Like Me

I read a girly chick-lit book by this title, and I do not know why this is the title, because come the end of the book I realized it didn't tie in at all, but there were a few lonelygirl quotes I liked:

"Let's go back to your place and just hang out," he says. And of course, because it is all that I ever want, I say yes. (159)

The thing about saying to yourself I want to die, I want to die, I want to die is that you don't, of course, not usually: You just want to be turned off long enough so that whatever you're feeling will die. That is the thing you want to kill, the thing that is infecting everything else. But of course, you can't, so you have to let it bleed through your body until it takes hold, like a sickness, because you carry it in you; there is no way to outrun it, to outsmart it, so all you can do is let it take over, like it wants to, shutting down every part of your head except the one you want to switch off. It is like I can feel myself sinking down into the person I was before him, like she has been waiting for me all along, knowing I would return. (162)

 And then it ended like they all end, with two people walking in opposite directions, and only one looking back. (165)

And what do I want? Nothing. If I were someone else, maybe I would approach him with violence, with a bat. Crazier things, crazier women have happened. But all I want are answers, explanations--words--and my own impotence disgusts me. (169)

The lesson, then, was not what I expected: not every squall is as lasting as it may seem. It passes. I am not thinking of the ocean anymore. This is how it is going to be, and this is what I must remember: These storms, these moments of weakness and desolation, are not destined to endlessly intensify. They can blow themselves out, too, one weaker than the next. (236)

 "What about that boyfriend you want back?"
 "There are others," I say haltingly, forcing myself to mean it. I have not missed Ryan for the last time, but there are only so many times I will miss him, and I am one closer to reaching zero than I was before she asked. (254)

She says this just sharply enough for James to look over at her, but he literally bites his lip and softens his gaze and I know why she loves him, as much as she does, and it is because of his patience and his devotion and because he is everything her father is not, reliable and true. She needs him so much more than she loves him, and now that her needs are taken care of, she will find someone else to love, and I don't think it will end well for either of them. (261)

 Bridget sits up on her float and sees James; she glides towards him and then walks up the steps, out of the pool. He is a good man, and maybe she will realize that he deserves her love. (264)

Alone Inside My Head

Sometimes I don't go to bed because I'm sad. Even if I'm very tired and really should go to bed because I have to get up early the next morning. I will stay up and preoccupy myself with something: F.acebook, television, a book, until I am drop-dead tired and can hardly keep my eyes open any more.

This is what I am debating right now. I am very sleepy. I have to be up at 6AM. I should just go to bed, right? Yet here I am, debating popping in an episode of Betty.

Why do I do this? I hate laying in bed thinking at night. I usually start overthinking, and worrying, and then feeling sick. So I wait until I can't possibly stay awake any longer before crawling under the covers.

Well, Ryan Dobson, I think I may have finally become one of those people who is afraid to be alone with her thoughts.

The Usual + News

Too much of my life the past few years has been spent craving and mourning and missing a person I didn't really know very well, who was in my life for a very short period of time, about five years ago. Maybe I just need(ed) something (new) to pin my everlasting pathological grief on, and my brain--for an unknown reason--picked Adam Rose. I have done that in the past....obsessed over other friends, other boys, other family members, other events, other losses.....to fake my soul into believing there exists a legitimate reason it feels this way. The unrequited agony of loving Earth Boy, the missing piece of my soul thanks to the Funeral Service, and the pain, the confusion, even the absence of the baby were all fading into the glass-encased past right about the same time he asked me why I sighed so much. Who knows. Simply unlucky timing, perhaps.

In any case, that's not what I got in here to say, and if anyone ever finds this blog they're going to think I'm the saddest girl that ever traveled the U.S. (I'm not [I cry in protest], I just tend to only write here when I have something to get out that I can't say to anyone else, on account of it being stupid or mad.) What I meant to say was that my school loans aren't going through and my car (the new one, mind you) broke down today and I haven't got any money to fix that either so if something doesn't happen fast I won't be going to school at all. Not Private Christian University, anyway. But my uncle's going to look at the car and we have one more option with loans, so peradventure it might work out after all.

I did mention to God that I was trying very hard to trust Him that all the money and school things would come through, so maybe He's just giving me a nice test situation in order to prove it. In which case, I suppose I will just sally onward. (With a bit of help from Dorito.s, Ugly Betty and chick-lit.)

I remember standing on your bedroom floor, in my naked feet, as you peeled  off the layers of my winter clothes. The light in your face.

Tonight Katy's car smells just a little, teeny bit like you did, for just those few months.

Four, five years it's been, and still I cannot forget you. When will you leave me, when, when will you leave me?

Closure, Evasive

I miss him.

I miss him so much.

I can't believe he doesn't want me in his life anymore, not even as a marginal side character.

This is so pathetic. I am embarrassing, wretched. It's been four years. FOUR. Years! It's absurd. I can't live the rest of my life like this, this has to go away, I have to find a way to deal with this. Of all the shitty things that have happened to me in my life, why is this the one that stuck?

I was thinking about it yesterday and, based on the amount of time it's taken me to "get over" other things, I reasoned that perhaps in another two years he would be gone from me. Maybe in another two years the memories will no longer make me wince, or cry. There's light at the end of the tunnel.

Geez. My soul is seared; he probably can't even remember what my face looks like. Loving someone can get pretty brutal.

That's the thing. If I didn't love him, maybe this wouldn't matter so much anymore. Yes, he was rotten to me, but that's that (like a newborn baby, it just happens every day). But I love him anyway and I think that's the problem. Yes, he hurt me. But the true cause for the distress is not what he did to me, but that he's gone.  I have forgiven him for all that mess. What hurts is the ongoing absence. The fact that I am perfectly inconsequential. I would forgive him for anything. Anything. I just miss him. I love him. I don't want to love him. I can't find the off switch.

I had just always thought we were friends.


Ughh, [self-loathing] .......

Isolated T-Storms

Lately I've felt like each day is a lucid dream I'm wading though. I've been stretching my fingers out to make sure I'm still there. My friends have stopped calling. I dream about Adam Rose, and sit on the floor of the library trying to pick out a fluff novel but am unable to make it through most of the book jackets. I walk around town in the rain.


I guess I'm just waiting to run into you.


I always think of you more when it rains.

August Rush

Today I finally watched a movie we had wanted to see together, but never did.

Today is your birthday, which I had blissfully forgotten until Facebook emailed me a reminder. I watched it today not on purpose/but sort of on purpose.

The movie wasn't very good. It was so cheesy, and unrealistic, and it dragged on a bit longer than I would have liked. The same as my love for you.


Hm. Just as well.

Six Metaphors over Georgia

I am on the commitment rollercoaster. The nail-biting ride up the hill clickety-clickety-click--click---click when you're heart's pounding and you're thinking, "Oh, god, this was a terrible idea, why did I do this, I have to get off!" is where I am most of the time. But then, of course, the track peaks, the car tips, and you're careening down the other side, and even though it's scary it's exhilarating, you feel free and good and you can't help but laugh and shriek in delight. That's the part that keeps me around. But it never stays that way, and inevitably I wind up creeping up the next hill again. It's making me a bit nauseous. I just want to get off the ride and get on with my real life. This rollercoaster can't last forever. Eventually you roll back into the station, climb out, wobble around a bit, and then go buy cotton candy and get on with the day. Sadly the question remains: will I be walking to the Snack Shack swinging hands with Atlas, or will I be walking to the Snack Shack alone?