I just remembered those silly stories I used to tell you when you were half-asleep and I

I miss you.

I have no one to tell stories to anymore.

Sometimes I strongly wish that you lived next door and that I could win you back with sunflowers and piano serenades.

But there are so many wrong things with that idea.

For one,

I still can’t play piano.

(via the-iceprince)

Via: viridiannightmares

airsickness.

Conniving
Manipulative
Underhanded
Liar

And I’m wondering how many times I will be told to pack my bags
How many times I will be told to pick up the phone
Call and ask for the soonest flight out
Go away!
Go across the country!
Go far from here.
Everything I own is in suitcases and boxes.

Again.

Again, again, again!
And don’t I get to shout?
Where is my temper tantrum? What can I break?
Get out get out get out.
Wait, we’re just kidding.
You can stay.

You can stay.

I am so weary of being expendable.
I am tired of being told things about myself I don’t believe are true.

Unless they are?
Am I lying to myself?

I cannot swallow this feeling that no matter where I go, I must always keep suitcases close.
Might as well live in an airport -
- such sickly places!
They are
Emergency rooms, hospitals.
I am only ever flying when I’m dying.

Perhaps I’ll save the time and sleep in the luggage.
That’s where everyone wants me!
No one wants a
liar,
manipulator,
conniver,
in their midst.

I am so tired.
I am so tired.
I am so
so
tired.

I have been told that it’s okay, to unpack my bags now.
They’re sitting on the floor.
I’m scared.
I want to keep them as they are.
It’s not safe to put it all away.

I don’t think I can handle packing it all up again.
No,
No, I know I can’t.
I don’t want to say that I know
know
know it will happen again.
But
It will, won’t it?

It will.

07
January

525,600 minutes.

How do you measure a year?

And here we are.
Another year, another new beginning.
Another permanent dawn,
Another permanent sunset.

Countdowns til midnight are always the best for mirrors (and
year after year, I’ve always
been good
with
metaphors and mirrors)

So here’s to the big, universal, annual backwards glance - and oh, so few regrets, for once! 2010 was a beast I beat into a coffin. 2011 is a quiet sort of lonely thing I’ve laid to rest. But this year has, above all, taught me much about myself.

How strange that 365 days ago, I was a withered, miserable mess of a human being! How strange how much a person could be. 365 days, to the date, marks another awful moment in my life - losing a home again, a brick through the window of every promise ever made, losing faith in my father. If someone had told me, 365 days ago, that I’d be sitting here smiling as I think of the year in hindsight, I’d have spat in their face.

So much has changed.

I have suffered heavy losses this year, that’s undeniable.
For better or worse, I gave up on a beautiful girl.
My mother moved across the country and I -
I had to make a choice.
I don’t know if I really had that much power in the choice, anyway,
but it stands that the summer pulled me apart, stuck pins in the stretched surface.
And here I am.

But this summer,
That must have sparked the change in me.
An overwhelming love, something powerful and all-consuming hit me when I saw the friends that had been stolen from me.
We weaved together the most amazing summer of my life and hope hit me in the mouth, a lead weight in a boxing glove
I swallowed it whole.
It dawned on me that the rest of my life will be like this.
All this is only the waiting in between.
This summer broke my heart, but not without compensation.
That hope has taken residence in my heart and I know it will carry me home.

I have learned how to be happy.
I’ve learned to smile more.
I learned how to turn my pain into something good, to help people and listen when no one else will because once upon a not-so-long-ago, that was me.
I’ve learned to see the potential for beauty in every living being.
The cynical me from a year ago would laugh at the notion that the world is beautiful, yet here I am!
Declaring it as fact, sharing this fact vehemently with others.

So much has changed.

I am happy with who I am, now.
I am happy with how I know my future’s headed.
2012 is going to be the year that my life finally falls back in order. I am ready to fit all the pieces together again.

02
January

“Life’s best medicine, she is. My Victoria.”

I’m sorry,
I’m sorry,
Oh, I’m sorry.

And I know I’ve said it again and again but it comes in like waves, this horrible guilt. And this sea is so calm, it’s a pond - so waves are tiny hurricanes. I’m drowning, I’m drowning - I’m sorry.
And you won’t hear this apology,
you’ll never hear another, will you?
You’ll never hear another word from me.

And I’m reading! and reading and “I miss her laugh, the way I could hear her smile through her voice!” and I know that it was true and that’s a wave in itself, pressing on my chest. So here’s apologizing to your laugh.

And you would think by now I’d be out of sorry’s -
And sometimes I think that I am!

And then sometimes I hear, “I thought I heard a plane crashing, but now I think it was your passion passing”
And La Dispute knew us better than we did.
Somewhere at the bottom of this river was our prophecy.

Oh, you.
You’re one hook I can’t let myself off of.
~~Won’t.~~

And mostly this music box makes me happy, looking at it.
But I don’t play it.
I wonder what would happen if I did.
Would it burst into flames?

… Would I?

If I could scribble out every forever and always in this tiny notebook I could breathe again.
But I can’t.
~~Won’t.~~

I wish I could call you up,
say I’m sorry again and again, til my mouth is dry and your ears bleed
But I can’t do that to you.

Can’t.

31
December

Sleep.

I am jealous for hibernation.

While I preach betterment and happiness, the truth remains that I am fragile china in a newspaper-lined box. Safe from turbulence but ultimately unable to withstand a fall from a high shelf. This is tentative enlightenment. This is an arrogant teapot who is not quite as lovely as she thought.

I rarely raise my voice, but when I do I’m a serpent, poisonous, horrifying. I mirror my dad at his worst and the very thought is like a demon dragging my heart to my stomach and pulling my stomach through my skin. When I raise my voice I destroy things.

I try valiantly to control my temper. Ninety-nine percent of the time I do - but that’s not enough. Scum creeps under the surface, ever present in the tissue behind the exterior and eagerly awaiting the few moments that cut through the exterior and ruin everything. I cannot escape who I am behind my naive belief that I am someone else, now.

I wish for sleep.

Eternal sleep - but you mustn’t think I’m miserable, depressed. It is a strange feeling to explain, for I am often happy, debatably more often than not. It is not suicide I crave, for the implications of it are murder of oneself, awful feelings and loathing and rage and I possess none of them. I have no desperation to be free from some throbbing pain.

… I just wish for rest. Being human is taxing; being myself is so tiresome, so overwhelming at times. I am not a good person, despite how many people argue to the contrary. My flaws are so vicious, scathing, that they choke out and consume everything else. I get few glimpses of that side of myself, but when I do I’m overcome with disdain. If I were someone else, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me. Even to know me.

So I sigh and sigh and think of bears and squirrels who can close their eyes for a season as the world around them changes. Lucky things, granted for some reason what I’d give anything for. To shut my eyes as everything else shifts, to wake up as a different person. Someone better.

This trembling teapot is sitting in a box on the floor of a great, dirty attic. The newspaper was ephemeral.

This too, shall pass.

But oh, what I’d give for some sleep.

02
December

I am learning not to be codependent.

Teaching myself!

I have learned so much this past year,

so many lessons.

The biggest of which is about rear-view mirrors

wipe the grime from the glass and use it as a tool

always, always

learn from your mistakes