shh

It’s not my place to say that it hurts, but it does. They’re both leaving. Only one of them even begins to show signs of caring, and they’re both making the best. Resiliency amazes me, creativity and the ability to be used to the constancy of change. But the words “hurt” and “amazed” will stay out of conversation. Not my place.

I picked a buttercup yesterday. I put it in a tiny purple bud vase on the windowsill. It’s still there, shiny and bright, and it looks like it belongs.

“and maybe music wouldn’t be / the only form of therapy / that I could afford”

But here, my world, we all can afford it, we do afford it, we go to the doctors because sadness is a disease and the happiest girl I know needs it now. I’m wondering if her “moodiness” is my fault, for making her “jealous” and “angsty” and “lonely”.  Maybe she’s just sad, and I can understand wanting that to be over. But what if it’s just because sometimes the world feels ugly and she needs to be sad about that? What if it’s just because she has a messy girlfriend whose indecisive drama rubs off on her? I don’t know.

I’m wondering if all the doctoring will really make all the people around me healthier. What will it be like when we all get better? Is that how it works, do we get better? I don’t know what to expect. All I expect is for something to happen. Maybe nothing will. Maybe things are just the way they are, or maybe it’s temporary and therapy is irrelevant. Maybe all they need is love and for the world to wake up again, their happiness is sleeping like all the plants, but as the buttercups start to bloom, so can their smiles. Maybe? Maybe this is how things are supposed to be. But a dependence on paid confidantes and prescriptions doesn’t strike me as right.

And meanwhile they stop telling me things, stop needing me or wanting me or something. Conversation devolves and friendship dissolves, or so it seems. I liked being needed. I like watching my fingernails bleed. I like trying to glue someone together with love. But I don’t get to, which is really a good thing. Except I become useless and helpless, and I’m just that freshman in the corner with three lines and a lollipop.

waiting

“you start trippin’
and I start slippin’ away
I was taught to zip it
if I got nothin’ nice to say
and down in the texas of my heart
driving a really big truck
headed down a dirt road
my love is scrunchin’ up its features
the really big eyes
big lips, big nose

just show me a moment that is mine
its beauty blinding and unsurpassed
make me forget every moment that went by
and left me so half-hearted
’cause I felt it so half-assed

you are an unruly translucent
a dirty windshield with a shifting view
so many cunning running landscapes
for my dented door to open into
I just wanna tune out all the billboards
weld myself a mental shield
I just wanna put down all the pressures
and feel how I really feel

just show me a moment that is mine
its beauty blinding and unsurpassed
make me forget every moment that went by
and left me so half-hearted
’cause I felt it so half-assed

spring is super in the supermarkets
and the strawberries prance and glow
nevermind that they’re all kinda tart and tasteless
as strawberries go
meanwhile, wild things are not for sale
anymore than they are for show
so I’ll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty
it takes more than eyes to know

just show me a moment that is mine
its beauty blinding and unsurpassed
make me forget every moment that went by
and left me so half-hearted
’cause I felt it so half-assed“

I want to run in the rain again. Sit at picnic tables or in trees again. Skip in the sunshine, play in the snow. I want to sing and scream and terrify the birds into flying from the tree branches. I want to see a snake on the sidewalk and jump back from it, then stand stock still to watch it slither away. I want to draw and laugh and dance. I want to twirl. I want to cook. I want to eat and drink. I want to sparkle, want to hold sparklers. I am ready to live again, return from dormancy with all the other things growing on earth.

room without a door / 1/5 / 6

I am once again fucking with everything. Ironically, by being truthful, I am messing everything up and people’s only solutions involve honesty. I forget to tactfully talk about other things in consideration of moods. I forget that the best solution involves mutual happiness, not mutual not-being-completely-unhappy.

I am unreasonably upset with you for two words that we’ve probably exchanged a million times. All of a sudden it seems to matter, and yet how do I really know it was any different from all the other times? And why do I mostly feel sorry, and not mad? It’s only partly my fault. My stupid honesty getting in the way, when it would have been the perfect time for a quietly reassuring not-quite-lie.

Meanwhile you are beginning to confuse me and hurt me as much as I appear to be confusing and hurting you. I was trying to be honest! I was being true to myself! I wanted to hide so I hid. That’s what I wanted. I forgot you would care so much. I’m not trying to drive you crazy, but I did warn you that I would. I know myself well enough to give fair warning, but not well enough to stop it from happening.  Why do you care so much? Why are you agonizing? I wanted this to be easy, carefree. But I have to match your worrying with my own or else I end up feeling like a player. . . again. I can’t put less in than you or I am inadequate. However you’ve got a lot more to give and I wish you would see that I can’t keep up. Can’t keep up appearances because the truth is I mean more to you than you do to me and I think I understand you better than you do me and I think I need more than you do, and more than you can give me. Or, I need things you don’t have. I need life, experiences, understanding…I crave these things. I suck them from others who have more than I do. Maybe you’re doing that to me, or maybe you don’t even care, I don’t know. But I have a much lower tolerance for it than they do.  I’m not good at educating. I’d rather be educated. People who know less just make me crazy, especially when they think I know more than I do, am better than I am.

All these games of give-and-take. Haven’t we already established that I don’t know how to play?

it won’t be long

denial.

i am staying in bed forever, and hopefully i will melt, disappear. hiding behind the blinds, if i am quiet, they can’t find me. she can’t find me. i can ignore text messages and phone calls and pretend to be asleep. i partake of my addiction and ignore the things i need to do.

sick days aren’t long enough. my mother doesn’t go out enough. my keyboard isn’t quiet enough.

maybe if i steam the life out of my body, i will be able to do it all. maybe not, maybe something else will happen. i am so tired of maybes. i want something to be certain and i want it to be me.