seven

When things ended with Cam in summer 2011, I was heartbroken. Purely, maybe for the first time (even though I had thought it before). Earlier this past summer, a year after I had last seen him, I remember having a conversation with Marissa in which I said I wasn't sure I was ever going to have feelings that way for someone again. I even remember where we were at the time, walking down the pretty path by the small revine, and up the steep, windy hill that was actually Houston Street behind the house, on the way to play on the swings at the park on Chestnut before sunset.

Granted, I have a very real, very loving relationship with Sascha. But my feelings for them aren't equal to having a crush, or a being in love (or like or lust), dating someone, sort of way. They are the closest person in the world to me, my very best friend, and I am very lucky to have someone who's arms I can safely fall asleep in, or vice versa, when we need it- and even when we don't because sometimes it's just nice. I have someone all of the time that will hold my hand if I ask them to, with reason or with out. And in the past year and a half, I've kissed some people, I've accidentally formed baby crushes- and even told some of those baby crushes about said crushes- but there hasn't been anything real or real meaningful.

I've wanted it of course, not badly, just a thought in the back of my mind. But for the most part I've been pretty okay on my own, as I always have. I have the greatest friends in the world in so many different places, and sometimes I prefer that to just be it, because nothing was better, in terms of reaffirming my ability to be independent, this summer than helping Amanda move to Atlanta, and when she left to go back to Asheville for a bit, staying behind on my own. I met some wonderful folks who I like enough to make me want to LIVE there (among other factors) and that's exactly what my plans are now. Nothing was better at making me feel okay alone than falling asleep on a couch in the humid summer air coming through the windows, alone at five in the morning, after an exciting late night out and a long conversation in that living room with a new friend.

I am always okay alone.

But that doesn't change the fact that feelings exist and are real. And especially when you're capable of doing something rational and healthy, meeting someone you come to care about romantically, and having them seem to return those feelings, is a feeling that is hard to beat.

I came out to California because I was broke and needed some time to get my shit together, which I've barely done but I'm doing alright mentally and emotionally and I feel like I can actually be happy sometime soon and I can't remember the last time I felt that way. I think I know what I want for the first time in a long time and that's more to start with than I have in a long time. Along the way I went to visit a best friend in Portland and was happy just for that, when the thought crossed my mind that I was in a place where there was a slight possibility I could meet someone worth meeting, I don't think I actually expected it to happen.

I knew going into it that regardless of what the outcome was, good or bad, it wouldn't matter because my home is in the Southeast, thousands and thousands of miles away from here. That is where my heart is and I don't know what it would take for me to choose to give that up. There is no telling if that will ever change, but for now I know better than to let it (because I've been there before and it is always a mistake).

But regardless of the unwaivering facts that make up my life, I did meet someone worth meeting.
I felt myself start to feel feelings I told someone six months ago I didn't think I was capable of anymore, partially because I don't go looking for them (because I prefer it that way, and because I might actually be kind of picky), but mostly because I believed what I was saying whole heartedly.

Yet I met someone that made me stop questioning for a minute if I was good enough, someone who I felt comfortable with the first time we hung out (and the amount that happens feels like never), and with that like I could hold a conversation and make someone laugh. I met someone who I have all of the best simliar interests and views with, who I like kissing and holding hands with, who made me feel rational and healthy at the same time my head was spinning from smiling too much, when I've always been so bad at that. I met someone who feels like such a good thing and for once I didn't think I had to question their intentions.

Important enough to also mention, who made me feel like I didn't need some kind of substance in me to have fun or feel nice or hold a fucking conversation. I thought I was falling in love with Cam, and maybe I was, but  the fact of the matter is that our relationship was very drunk. And most of my relationships have been, and continue to be. I can say now more than ever that's not what I want. I've been saying for months now how much I want to remember sober fun. How much I want I want all of my friends to be able to think of things that could be amazing that don't involve bars or alcohol. I bring up 2010 a lot, because things have been so sloppy and backwards and confusing and different since then, and how happy I was then and how that was before we drank so much. The best year of my life was spent sober for the majority of it and that has to say something about something, whatever that means.

Tonight, while driving him back to his parents house, we had a conversation about what was between us and  what to do about it, knowing the smart thing is to not let ourselves grow more attatched. We kissed anyways. I think it would have been unfair not to, to feel all those things and not allow ourselves to feel it at least one more time. But we left on a note of mutually knowing  the circumstances aren't in our favor and there's not much we can do about it. I'll probably see him again before I leave this coast, but I can't help but feel we'll exchange some conversation over cups of coffee and hug goodbye only to watch the short time of memories made fade slowly.

I wonder if we'll ever think of each other as the one who got away. As silly as that may be, maybe there's something to it.
Because that's how it feels to me right now.

hb

I've been overthinking this for weeks, and I'm just now acknowledging it. By this time in my life, almost half way through twenty-two, you'd think I'd have a better grasp of my own personality and qualities or quirks.
But no, I'm still irrationally doing the same things I've always done, even though nine times out of ten, in this sort of situation, over thinking almost always comes to the wrong conclusions.

I just feel like I deserve, not in an entitled way, but in a I'm allowing myself to do what I want sort of way, to pursue personal happiness and it's just always going to cause my mind to spin when it can't just be simple.
And even when it is I'm always scared it's going to change at any given moment.

You'd think people couldn't just stop caring, or change their minds in an instant, but I've had it happen to me so many times that I'm expecting it with out any given reason. I just hope that my fears don't overcome my ability to feel okay in the now and make themselves more real, or some how negatively affects any given situation in which they're relevant.

I also want to say something about how I've never really enjoyed the idea of being into "posi", and I think that's because for the most part those are the people who have the advice when you're sad, to just think positive or just try and be happier. No, fuck you. Unhappy and sad are my permanent states of exsistance. And if I want to think and talk about everything I think is terrible and unfair and shitty when I feel those things, it anything it's going to justify my feelings and make me feel a little more sane. Plus I WANT to be filled with all this hate and rage, its the only way anything is ever going to fucking change. So screw your positive, "be happy" shit. I'm going to cry and break things all I want. I'm going to sit in these feelings and know them and I'll be more of a person because of it.

005.

Sleeping next to the cat with lukemia every night, watching him get sicker, knowing he'll be gone soon when he's only two years old. Feeling guilty when I stop petting him and he looks at me because he deserves to be pet indefinitely.

Crying about my dad for the first time in a long time because this holiday is probably never going to feel special or like it matters again, with the small family we had to start with, we won't ever be unbroken.
I'll never be a woman getting to feel like the little girl when I hug my daddy.

It's coming up on eight years soon.

I'm doing so much better but it's never too hard to remind myself how everything will always be fucked up.
Merry Christmas to me.

rg2

I'm almost sure I've always felt some strange connection to you, that I've always acted on and you've always remained hesistant towards, because for some reason I've always known you, or understood you, far more than I should for how well I actually know you. I'm always going to think there' something to that. There's always something to the feelings I have that are realistically unexplainable.

The run on sentences are forever running with out end in sight.

004.

I came out to California in August because I was broke and didn't really have any other options at the time, our house was ending and I couldn't afford to move in somewhere new. The plan was to go to a semester of school, MAYBE get a job, save money living rent-free, and then move back to the East coast. My mom continually said during our phone conversations, "I wish you would just come live with me".

It's been 5 months now (6 since I left Asheville, and one of those I did spend in Santa Cruz and Portland, plus a few other short trips but) I've finished that semester of school, had a terrible job for a minute that I was so mentally unhealthy during that I couldn't fake that I could handle being there, and spent some time with my best friends that was so incredibly needed to get me out of the place I was in. By the time that was all said and done, it seemed unneccessary to job search again because by the time the interview process, training, and actual work started, I'd be close to quitting to leave.

Other than working on school, I typically keep to the bedroom I have here. I don't have access to a car unless I take my mom to work, and there's not much to do around here within walking distance. The first two months I was here I was in one of the worst places mentally I've ever found myself. Until my best friend came to see me and I went on a little trip, I really couldn't manage to do anything but put all my mental capacity into watching The Office becaue otherwise I'd feel too sick and like crying to do anything at all, even so much as go to the store.

But I'm doing better now, REALLY REALLY better, but my family knows nothing about my life back home and I can't find a way to explain it or why the things they expect from me are never going to be the way I live my life. My mom and her boyfriend have some ridiculous problem with me staying in this bedroom most of the time, I usually leave the house to go for a walk or go get some food most days (and I've been doing things I think are productive, like teaching myself a new language, reading things I think are important, and sewing, things of the life), but for whatever reason I'm still managing to make them mad, literally by not doing anything. And it isn't even like lack of helping around the house, I am soccer mom number two, I do my dishes, I keep my space picked up. I don't know how participating more would change anything, if I went in the living room I wouldn't be able to listen to music, watch a movie, I wouldn't talk to anyone because my mom is never home at night and I don't have any interest in getting to know her macho republican boyfriend, I'd be sitting there staring at children's television or my sister on the internet. So I'm not quite sure what I should be doing so differently.

Last night my mom basically told me to figure out within 24 hours when I could leave. Because kicking me out is going to solve all of her issues, or something I guess. I'm not even upset about it, more so slightly annoyed I'm having to deal with this.

My family are my friends miles and miles away. The people I've lived with that really know me, the ones I cook dinner with, fall asleep next to, talk to, who know that I'm one of those friends that is ALWAYS there if they need me and how important that will always remain. I don't know why I come off so different to my family here, I've always been the type of person that keeps to myself unless I'm with my best friends, but frankly I don't think there's much to blood when I've had and know I'll have something so much more fit to me elsewhere.

My personality leaves me feeling guilty, like I have done something wrong or that I'm a bad person, why would someones mom kick them out otherwise? But I search my brain and literally other than keeping to myself, not changing my personality for someone else (because literally that's what she's asking me to do and when have I EVER EVER compromised who I am becasue someone else told to me, excuse me but that's something people say they respect about me the most frequently so fuck you), I haven't done anything. So good riddance, I don't need or have to deal with feeling uncomfortable and guilty when I haven't done anything to deserve it. I'm sorry I'm not the person you want me to be, but I know plenty of people that like the person I am and those are the ones that deserve my attention.

So I'll go be with them.

here comes

Feeling mentally healthy, and liking music and wanting to read and even having the energy to paint my nails and enjoy going on a walk for no reason, is the greatest and I can't say it enough.

It's always been the little things.

over two

"I wanna talk to you on the telephone but it's cold outside. I just wanted to tell you that I love you so much. Some regular was bein all sappy with me and I explained my relationship with you to him. And hearing me say those things outloud was really special. You mean so much to me and I love what we have, I'm sorry for every hurt I've ever caused. I called you my life partner. What we have is so special. I wanna be near you always."

I write these things here so I never, ever forget.

I am the luckiest person in the world to have the people I love and care about most, feel that for me in return. It's always been hard for me to accept it, the self-depreciating side of me is never be able to comprehend that someone could care that way about me too. Which doesn't make sense, I know, when I have all the love to give in the world and how that's the most important thing to me, but so it goes. 

Regardless, I will never not be aware of how amazing the relationships I'm capable of creating with people are, and no matter how short or long they last- those certain ones that have gotten that close, been that intense, that special, are always and will continue to be so fucking important.

"We've built something really big."

003.

Not being miserable lately is the strangest feeling, I have very little going on in my life and it can literally only get better from here- or at least I'm going to have so many positive additions in the near future/next few months. It's kind of scary though, because there is always going to be the part of me thats waiting for it to all coming crashing back down, I don't want to get too attached.

002.

I don't know how to be the one that makes everything perfect all of the time. I want you to be so fucking happy and I want to be happy too, preferably with you where ever we are.
But I don't always have the answer and I can't take feeling terrible just because I made you feel worse and not better because I was trying to be realistic.

I attract emotionally needy people, and that's fine, that's what I'm here for- to help the people I love in every way I ever possibly can, but I can never promise to fix everything all of the time just in the course of one phone call. I can't figure out the answers to your life when I don't evenk now the answers to mine.

I'm sorry and I love you and that's all I've got.

001.

"You can taste it in the shock and roar of a first, unexpected kiss, or in the blood in your mouth that instant after an accident when you realize you’re still alive. It blows in the wind you feel on the rooftops of a really reckless night of adventure. You hear it in the magic of your favorite songs, how they lift and transport you in ways that no science or psychology could ever account for. It might be you’ve seen evidence of it scratched into bathroom walls in a code without a key, or you’ve been able to make out a pale reflection of it in the movies they make to keep us entertained. It’s in between the words when we speak of our desires and aspirations, still lurking somewhere beneath the limitations of being “practical” and “realistic.” When poets and radicals stay up until sunrise, wracking their brains for the perfect sequence of words or deeds to fill hearts (or cities) with fire, they’re trying to find a hidden entrance to it. When children escape out the window to go wandering late at night, or freedom fighters search for a weakness in government fortifications, they’re trying to sneak into it—for they know better than us where the doors are hidden. When teenagers vandalize a billboard to provoke all-night chases with the police, or anarchists interrupt an orderly demonstration to smash the windows of a corporate chain store, they’re trying to storm its gates. When you’re making love and you discover a new sensation or region of your lover’s body, and the two of you feel like explorers discovering a new part of the world on a par with a desert oasis or the coast of an unknown continent, as if you are the first ones to reach the north pole or the moon, you are charting its frontiers. It’s not a safer place than this one—on the contrary, it is the sensation of danger there that brings us back to life: the feeling that for once, for one moment that seems to eclipse the past and future, there is something real at stake. Maybe you stumbled into it by accident, once, amazed at what you found. The old world splintered behind and inside you, and no physician or metaphysician could put it back together again. Everything before became trivial, irrelevant, ridiculous as the horizons suddenly telescoped out around you and undreamt-of new paths offered themselves. And perhaps you swore that you would never return, that you would live out the rest of your life electrified by that urgency, in the thrill of discovery and transformation—but return you did."


It's never going to be 2010 again, and it makes sense. Everything still makes sense and no sense all at the same time.

moon

Something feels really off today, I'm trying to fight this away but I'm not sure if I'm doing very well with it.