find a rhythm

the first drops of rain felt like a mistake. I thought it was the trees dripping, and I wiped them off my face with a nervous laugh of disbelief. it was beautiful out. a perfect summer night; not humid, warm enough for me to be comfortable in shorts and a tank-top but cool enough that I didn't break a sweat as I rode my bike. the spattering of wet on my face took me by surprise. for a moment I wondered if someone was spritzing me from a balcony. the drops got fatter and closer together, making me glad that I was already on my block. I pedaled faster, matching the pace of the rain. I laughed again as I jumped from my bike and onto my stoop. it wasn't raining very hard when I plopped my bike inside, so I hopped over to the house next door so I could look at their curbside couches. the cushions on the makeshift couch under my loft could use some plumping, and the ones outside on the sidewalk looked pretty good. I sniffed them, knowing I had to take action now just in case the rain got worse and made up my mind for me. I plumped some pillows and decided to just go for the largest cushions. I heard coughing from the second floor window. I looked up, laughing again, feeling foolish, as I pulled the over-sized couch cushions to my front door. up the stairs, up more stairs, and then to the landing outside my apartment. there I set the cushions to air out while I cemented my decision.
inside, I decided that bourbon and iced ginseng tea made a fine combination while I wrote about the rain now gently dancing outside my bedroom window.
it was a good night.

truth is harder than fiction

here I am, back in rhode island. for a little over a week I got to trespass in another world. I got to see what it's like to live without concern. I was in a big house with amenities. I was cared for. it felt like I was a child again. the feeling was heightened when I went to stay at a resort with my sister and her family. I will always be her little sister, and in that way I become a child. I relate more to the actions of her daughters, and I build sand castles with them and make stupid jokes. it is comfortable to be young. it is always nice to have someone else take care of things, pay for things, lead me around.
it is painful to realize that I would rather have that in my life now than to take control. that I fantasize about leaving school and just curling up in fig's bed to let him take care of everything. I want to withdraw completely from the world. I want to just make papier mache masks and art all day. I don't want to have to think about anyone or anything outside of my tiny bubble of him, and me, and my cat, and my itty bitty sister-family.
everyone else is a disappointment. but these few people are the only ones I feel I can love and forgive unconditionally. I am terrified of the people outside of my little circle. and even they are given limits. I don't let any of them in too far. who can?
I want to withdraw. Sometimes I think with longing of mental wards. I think of the schedule and stability and the total lack of individual decision-making. it is so comforting. it was 12 years ago but I still remember the starkness and fear, and over top of it the people telling me what to do and what not to do. I should recoil, but instead I miss it. and because I want it so badly, I must fight it. but sometimes independence is such a struggle. I just want a break for a while. I just want to relax in reality instead of having to find stability outside of daily life.
I want my basic needs to be met. stable housing, stable job, stable school, stable friends, stable food, stable family, stable partner. I long for stability.
it is, consistently, the thing that most frequently eludes me.

I can only cry when I'm alone now

dear mom,
it was over a year ago that you died. 368 days since my sister called me and told me. since then I have spread your ashes on the grave of your beloved horse and scattered them into the ocean where you got married six years ago, just as my own marriage was disintegrating. you were starting while I was ending. and when you died, you took my finally quiescent life and turned it upside down. every aspect of my life has changed since then. it has taken a year for it to start to settle down, and even that is nothing consistent.
I have no internship for fall, not sure where I'll be living, and the person that I'm dating lives over a thousand miles away. sometimes I get so angry about you dying, as though it were something anyone could have prevented. as though things would be different now if you were still alive. I just want to be angry at someone. I want there to be a reason for all of this. I want there to be a reason that you're dead, and for everything being in turmoil. for my life utterly changing. I don't see the point in going out to meet people, or in initiating plans. I don't look for as much comfort in others as I used to. People die, or they go away, and it hurts just the same. but I was finally getting to know you, and I know I've said this all before, but I just hate how much time I wasted not loving you. how much time I lived in shame or fear or guilt.
and I hate that your husband has abandoned us because we remind him of you. and I hate that he never seemed to like me. and I hate that your friends all talked to my sister, but not to me. and I hate that I just got pushed to the side because I wasn't strong enough to take everything on my shoulders like she could. and she knew you better than I did, because she was more like you. because she remembers things. there is so much I never knew about you; so much that I will never know about you. and there is so much you didn't know about me, too.
we both gave up for a while. I stopped answering your calls because I was tired of feeling guilty and you stopped calling because you were tired of me not answering. I wasn't a great daughter and you weren't a great mom but I guess we did the best with what we had.
I'm not as strong a person as I would like to be. I have a lot of trouble doing things, like paying bills on time, like handling stressful situations, like getting shit done on a deadline, like making phone calls or talking to strangers in power. I want someone to take care of me so I can just live in my blissful bubble. I think I got that from being the youngest. I think I got that because I always had someone else to do all the shit I didn't feel like handling. so yeah, you're a little to blame, but I'm the one that kept doing it. and now it's turned into some hardened anxiety that I can't seem to fully break apart.
mom, I am still angry. and I still hurt. I wonder why you gave up on me. why you didn't keep calling me. I wonder why you had to be so inconsistent. I wonder why I had to mirror that. sure, I would like to have done things differently. I would have liked to know you better. I would have liked to have called you more often, and seen you more frequently. I would have liked for you to have wanted to understand me, or shown that you did understand. or asked me questions. something deeper than what was there.
I miss you, but I think I mostly mourn the loss of what will never be. because we had finally started off to something new, and it was truncated before it could lead anywhere. I am so sad that we never got to really be friends. I am sad that we didn't get to be adults together, and I never really felt at ease in your presence. we never taught each other how to really listen and not judge. I would have liked to teach you how to meditate. I would have liked to learn it myself.
mom. the loss of inertia is painful to feel. it is running into a brick wall without slowing down. it is the slice of an axe through a watermelon. it is suddenly, alarmingly, over. the lost future aches inside my chest. my inability to connect is tangible. I don't feel you anymore. when dru died, I still felt him around me. but with your loss, all sense of spirituality fled. I want to believe that you live on in the bumble bees and elephants that I see. but I just don't. you are gone and it is like a chunk of lead in my rib cage. there is no undoing this. I am not sure what to do. I have gone through art project after art project, trying to find some peace. it has come in small bursts. but now I am stuck on the precipice, looking down into uncertainty. I miss you and I want you to tell me it will be ok, because you were my mom, and you were pretty much always right.
I wish I had done more for you. I wish I'd done more with you.
I wouldn't call these regrets. just notes for the future.
I love you, I miss you so much. I hope I didn't hurt you too badly when you were alive.
love,
me.

an even trade

most of the time, I am not fully aware of my grief. but occasionally, the enormous weight of it is felt all at once and I find myself emotionally borne to the floor by it. sometimes physically. I am held still for a moment and everything inside of me tries to break all at the same time. I can't control the muscles of my face, but am simultaneously rigid. it is that weird conglomeration of too-in-control and totally out-of-control. instead of breaking down into tears, like I would have a year ago, I just feel my face crumple and I cannot cry. I am so overwhelmed by emotion for that moment, that nothing can even happen. I have gotten so used to not letting go, that even when I feel the need to, I can't. So I just walk on with this heaviness in my chest. I continue on with what I was doing, because what else can I do? My mom is dead. no amount of crying will bring her back. and I don't want to cry with no one here to comfort me.

I remember sobbing on Shiny at two in the morning. I remember his little sad sounds, and the warmth of his torso as he enveloped me. I remember how lost I felt when he left me. I remember the stillness I found in his presence. I remember the emptiness he gave. but I loved him, and for his part, he loved me. it just wasn't enough for either of us. and it always bothered me that he wasn't more affected by my mom's death. it bothered me that he didn't cry, too.

this past year has stretched me in ways I'd hoped to eventually reach, but not like this. I have become more patient. I have gotten used to solitude. I remember, years ago, how I could not be alone. now I'm not sure how to be around people. It becomes a game, where I put on my charisma and people fall for it. I'm fine with that. it makes things easier. we all get to feel good about ourselves and in the end, no one has to give away anything real or frightening. I feel hollow at the end of it, but I had a good time. I have so few people I can talk to about anything, with honesty, who listen without judgment, and will give back in return, who ask for nothing. I can think of two.
I still feel this guardedness with Fig. I can read him but he can't read me. I still keep up barriers. I still can't entirely feel what I know to be there. and I wonder if this is what it was like for shiny. I can't bear to contemplate putting Fig through that. I don't think things will happen that way. we're very different people, this is a very different situation. but I believe in balance. in my life, all that has hurt me has turned itself around so that I could understand it. or if I hurt someone, I had something like that then done to me. it doesn't mean it was the same situation, but I've had to understand so many different points of view. it hasn't stopped me hating, but it's helped me move on to other things. I still hate ex-otter. but that's because of him, not necessarily what he did to me. he hasn't learned. he just speaks the words. he doesn't feel them.
so just because I have this emptiness inside of me, that doesn't reflect on Fig. the things I say I feel for him, I do. it's just harder to completely feel it sometimes. it has been a long time since I've had someone so completely adore me. and he thinks he has baggage, but it is nothing in relation to other people I have known. he doesn't know that his inexperience is his saving grace. he doesn't know that it has made him strong in ways that I can't comprehend.
what he lacks in experience, he makes up for with an enthusiasm that I personally haven't been able to feel in years. he is able to appreciate things that other people started taking for granted a long time ago. he sees in me what others never noticed, or mentioned. and I'm not sure that would be the case if he were as jaded by love as I am.
if he were as jaded by loss as I am.
I am hoping that prolonged exposure to his adoration will help to revive the parts of me that have been withered by neglect. I am hoping he will be the rain-fall I have needed. he has already been blossoming under my attention. I have been giving him experience. can he hand me hope?

caught left-handed

the most difficult part about having a journal that everyone can read is that everyone can read it. my mom used to read my old website. my sister reads this one. so do strangers. so do lovers. so do exes. so do friends. I keep track of the IP addresses of the people that visit this site but that doesn't necessarily tell me who they are. sometimes I can make a good guess. other times it stays a mystery.
the only person that regularly brings up the things I write here directly to me is Fig. people feel the things I write about are too personal to actually talk to me about. I think it's strange that someone would be willing to read all this and then not want to say anything to me about it. that makes you a voyeur. but I know that you're watching me. so if you don't want me to know, then find a better way to spy.
of course, on the flipside, I'm an exhibitionist. I know that anyone, absolutely anyone, could find this site. that is both terrifying and exhilarating. I suppose that's exhibitionism for you.

but the point that I'm getting at here is this: I actually do limit what I put on here. I didn't used to, before I knew who read this. but my readership impacts what I write, and that was not my intention when I started spying on visiting IP addresses. the reason I signed up for the service was to see if Pants was reading my page. I'm not kidding. he wasn't. I'm not surprised.
but knowing that Fig reads this has kept me from talking about how I think I'm falling in love with him, because I don't want to say it first, but he's not going to say it first because he'll think he's pressuring me or something. and because I previously said, on this site, that I didn't want to hear or say it. Oh, the dilemmas of the modern world.
knowing that my ex-girlfriend reads this keeps me aware of the heterosexual nature of my serious relationships since her. but dating dudes doesn't make me any less attracted to ladies. guys are just easier for me to approach and relate to. I know I'm not the only bisexual to feel that way. and dating men doesn't make me any less bi, no matter how guilty my lack of girl-play makes me feel. this is just the way things are going. not a hell of a lot I can do about it. maybe if guys weren't so easy and girls weren't so clingy ...
not you, von, of course.
as for my sister reading this, I feel good about that. she gives and takes. she doesn't make her private life public like I do, but she lets me know what's going on with her in her own time. that's important to me. Chick also keeps in touch with me. so it's not all a mass of silent voyeurs.
and besides, I see you looking.

I try

I am waiting for the world to end. I want all my debts to be erased. I want everything that has gone before to not matter anymore. I want all the things that I have done, and that has been done to me, to become equally meaningless. I want oblivion more than I want anything else. But because I am selfish, and others are selfish, I want it to be total. I want everyone wiped out together.
I have talked to people about how I long for a pandemic to kill us, how I want an apocalypse. I want an excuse to give up without it being my fault. and if no one is around to feel the loss, then all the better.
destroy everything. Not a war, not a massacre; just a total cessation of all human life. Let us leave. But turn the reactors off, first.
I told Fig that my cat has saved my life since I had her, that there were times I didn't kill myself just because I wasn't sure who would take care of her when I was gone. Right now I am the most content I've been in a while, and it terrifies me. Luca doesn't sleep with me anymore and it saddens me. Everything changes and this is also frightening. Now I can't die because of what it would do to my family: my nieces, my sister. Before I wouldn't die because of my cat. At least I'm making progress.
It's not that I'm actively suicidal. I'm not. That changes when the spring comes. I love life right now, despite my gnawing fear, but that adoration is always tinted by the memory of winter. It is my lurking shadow, waiting to strike. The days are getting longer, and it is wonderful, but I know they will shorten again in just a few months. It is this inability to live in the present that fuels my depression. It is the knowledge that, no matter how good things are now, they will get bad again, that keeps me from fully embracing anyone. In the winter, in the throes of that darkness, I can only vaguely remember spring. Winter feels never-ending. Spring/summer feels ephemeral. Why the difference? Maybe because there's so much more to lose when the sun slips away. The winter envelops me in static and keeps me seeing beyond itself. Spring opens me back up again.
here I am, on the cusp of summer. not sure what anything means. terrified of my future, but abundantly excited at the same time. I could fall in love. I could fall apart.
there is so much promise in the world.
no wonder it's so easy to wish it away.