I googled “how to grow up” and it wasn’t super informative.

I get it. I do. I don’t know what to do about it, but I understand.
Everybody thinks I have to be a big girl now. So I guess I do. Stop causing my own problems and stop whining and do what’s actually right. I hear you. I understand. But any suggestions on how to actually DO that would be welcome.

“you’ve stooped to my level, i am your mangy little whore”

You have stooped, indeed. To my level, yes. To the level of throwing angry words across cyberspace, vindictive, cruel and truthful words.
But I am not your mangy little whore. You do not want me any more, I suppose. I wouldn’t want the girl you described. I wouldn’t respect her, much less love her. When I read your words, I want to kill her, in fact. She doesn’t belong on this good earth. “She” does not exist, however. You have taken all of my bad qualities and condensed them, and implied the whole is the sum of those parts. It worked for a while. I believed you. It hurt. I suppose that was the intention.

But I have good friends, wonderful, wise women who know the truth. They reminded me that I know it too. I am a whole person, flawed and perfect, exactly like everyone else.

You are a whole person too, and as much as I want to resent you I can’t. You are a good person, as much as those same friends tried to tell me you weren’t. You are. You may be manipulative, a snake-charmer, a little bit robotic. But these are your flaws, only your flaws. You are kind, observant, incredibly thoughtful, caring, considerate. You are honest, exceptionally so. You are demonstrative. I cannot begin to thank you for all you did for me, for all the ways you loved me and made me know it.
As for this, those true words you wrote… it was not the first time I had heard those things. I am still not immune to the pain they cause. It is low of you, very low, to turn like this, from kindness to anger, love to ostensible hatred, but you were angry, and I was cruel. You feel awful and it is my fault; there is no denying this. I did not do this to hurt you – it would have hurt you more if I pretended like everything was the same and I loved you and then you found out it wasn’t true. At least, I think it would have. If I am wrong I am sorry. Because I hurt you, I am sorry anyways.

Does that change anything? Does that make anything any better? No. I know this as well as you do. You resent me and I want to resent you. But I desperately want to be forgiven. I desperately want you to be happy again. For a selfish reason, yes. I am selfish. Everyone is selfish. I want you to be happy so I don’t have to feel guilty. But I also want you to be happy because I care about you.

I hurt you. I had to. That’s that. You turned your strengths, the ones I had feared, against me. I knew you would. That’s that. You don’t respect me any more, it seems; you don’t love me any more. I find it harder to respect you because of this. Nonetheless, a long time ago you told me that we would be friends after this happened. You told me, when I told you I was afraid to lose you, that we would not lose each other. I respect you and I care about you and I trust you. Much as the words you wrote make me feel like I can’t respect you or trust you anymore, I still care. I want to rebuild and repair and you said you won’t help me.

You and I are not constants; our minds and hearts are always changing. Soon I hope we will be able to be friends again, you will be able to respect me again, I will be able to trust you again. Forgive me. Please. Gods and goddesses have done worse and they are forgiven, they are venerated. Judas is only chewed up by Lucifer, and that could be worse, and he sold out Jesus Fucking Christ. All I sold was your ticket to a dance, and hardly even did that.

I am not sure whether I am asking for another chance, but if I am, don’t grant it until you’re ready. If you are never ready, then you are the one who’s turned, by breaking that promise of closeness and caring and friendship.

darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable, and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear.

Today we had the Thanksgiving Convocation. It made me want to cry and shout and cut my skin and run out of the room. I didn’t. I just dug my nails into my arms and into that soft flesh in my palm (still red).

The girl who is practically-perfect-in-every-way was commissioned to write a poem for this, and it was practically-perfect too. I could barely listen to it. I hate that I am so jealous. I should be inspired or feel good for her but I don’t. It is all I can do not to run away to hide from the fact that I can’t write.
The string ensemble played after that, and mediocre violin always makes me tense. The dance piece and the chorus made me think of her.

I am a mess again. I am doing everything in order to avoid doing what I want to do and it isn’t working. I don’t know who to talk to or what to say, and I am terrified I will start lying again. I get into ruts where I lie and lie and bleed and lie. I don’t want that but I don’t know how much truth to tell, or how to settle it with myself before I share. I don’t even know where to begin. This situation is a little bit overwhelming. I don’t know what I want, much less how to get there. Much less how to get there without harming anyone – including myself.

This morning I shaved the skin off my knuckle by hitting my sister’s razor. I am not used to it being there anymore. It’s weird that she “doesn’t live here anymore” and weird to have her back.
It is weird that I am loved and yet the odds seem to be stacked against simplicity.
It is weird that I don’t have school for the next five days. I can’t foresee this going well.

“You can stand there and agonize till agony’s your heaviest load…when you’re learning to face the path at your pace, every choice is worth your while.”

expanding exponentially, consciousness without identity

I am not entirely sure what is going on. Things keep happening; people keep saying words that are so full of meaning and feeling but these words do nothing. There is a girl who says “yes, please, any way we can” but makes no move to help me make things happen and another who says “no, it’s not fair to my boyfriend” while her finger traces her lips in a pretty sexy pout. Meanwhile there is a boy who is faraway and kind and caring and still loves me and I don’t know what to say. It’s gotten to that abstract place again, where I feel nothing and forget how to love him.

All the time my moods are swinging, up and down and back and forth. My heart always feels a little sore, like a few more buttons pushed will make me cry. I don’t know how to handle any of this. I am not upset. I am not happy. I am just confused, I think. But I try not to think too hard.

Instead I do my work. I write poetry in English class and speak French in French class and attempt to turn copper pennies gold in Chemistry. I crunch frosty leaves with my feet in the morning and squish damp ones in the evening. I watch the sky change colors and look for hawks out the window. I cuddle in my bed and sing with my sister. It’s all I can do.

“it is like fucking a corpse. I am getting very frustrated.”

Being a woman and a friend to women or a girl and a friend to girls or whatever it is that I am, in this inbetween-place, is sickening me.

I am full of rage and fear and exhaustion and despair and still there is this flame of determination in me. Determination to make a healthier world, a more real world, or at least a real, healthy chunk of it. I crave authenticity, but more than authenticity, I crave acceptance. Acceptance of reality and real people.

Real people have opinions. Real people have fat on their bodies, cushioning and curves. They have angles too. They have squish and they have hair, all over them. They can make art and music with their minds and souls and hearts and hands and lips and bodies. They can have energy and coordination and drive and use it to compete or to learn or to create or to perform. People have their own favorite colors and patterns. People don’t all have white teeth or perfect eyesight or clear skin. They have thoughts in their minds and they are capable of enjoying life. They are capable of enjoying reading and writing and using their brains, as well as their bodies, or even abusing both.

This world keeps telling us no. Even the strongest, sassiest, most confident of my friends believes some of the “no”s.
But I want to say YES.

I want to say that you can have hair on your legs, you can bleed onto or into whatever device you choose, you can think, you can speak up, you can be mean. You can tell somebody the truth about what you think and that is OKAY. It doesn’t make you a bitch, it doesn’t make you unacceptable. You can have zits on your face or fat jiggling on your thighs and that is OKAY. It doesn’t make you ugly; it doesn’t devalue your humanity in any way. You can make art or play sports, you can hand out food or read books. You can wear whatever you think is pretty, not just what is “attractive” or “fashionable.” Who do you want to attract, anyways? Why should you devote the clothes you put on every day to “attraction”? Devote them to someone else? Why should they matter? Why should they care whether your clothes or your hair or your skin or your room’s decor or your music or your opinions are “right”?

What does it matter to you what they think?

The problem is that it does matter. It matters so much. Most of these insecurities do not belong to me. But they belong to everyone around me and it makes me sad, so sad. I want to throw these words in the faces of the people I love, the ones being eaten away by this acidic world. I want to throw them because I like pretending that could fix anything. It couldn’t. I don’t know how to fix things.

I love, and I am aware, and I try hard to open up people’s minds, and I suppose that is all I can do. Still I am filled with frustration and a burning need to try and make things better.

listening to chicago.

two things I never noticed: 1. the way Sufjan Steven’s voice gets choked somewhere around 3:00, and 2. the way women’s voices come in softly in the background near that same time. It truly sounds like he’s going to cry. As for the women, well, I thought I was having auditory hallucinations, for a minute. of the memory-induced variety. Maybe the reason I never noticed before is because I thought it was in my head. I can’t decide if I feel achey because I miss summertime and camp and the girl there, or because the song is simply beautiful. It makes me a little confused, the way this song blurs the distinction between imaginary and real.

Anyways, the song is still beautiful and the girl is too. I hope for a visit sometime soon.