T.J. Who - And her memories...

I’ve been watching Samantha Who? on Netflix and it has led my mind right into marathon mode. Racing around and around about what life would be like to lose memories. It’s horrible to think of it, really. To lose all of our memories. Every moment that made you laugh until your face hurt and landed you with the hiccups. Every moment that you felt so loved and so overjoyed because of how something or someone made you feel. To lose each moment your chest fluttered after someone special looked through your eyes and into your soul. To lose every thought of how someone touched your skin and your spine danced like fireworks down to the very bottom of your back. To never remember how it felt to be held by someone who loves you while you cried. These are life. Memories are everything we are. Everywhere we’ve been. Everything that helps us remember where we want to return, and everywhere we want to hide away from for every day.

They are what make me smile when I smell the purple teen spirit deodorant that I used when trying out for (and not making, boo hoo hoo) cheerleader in the 6^th grade.

It’s what makes my heart flutter, still after all these years, when I smell this specific cologne (that I don’t even know the name of) that reminds me of one of my first boyfriends, Matt McClusky.

It’s these moments in mental stone that make me giggle when thinking about the nervousness that once choked me about having to hold a boys hand at the movies and not knowing if my hand was going to feel right or if it was going to be all wrong.

It’s what makes me feel energized and special when I hear the song “I Drove All Night” by Celine Dion, because it was the first song she sang at her concert and it was oh so good! It makes me feel energized because I was so excited and it makes me feel special because the ticket was really expensive and as I sat there, all alone, (among thousands of others but no one I knew anyway) I realized how special I was to my Mom for her to have been that happy just to get to send me to her concert even though she couldn’t go and isn’t really even a huge fan of Celine’s like I am.

Memories are what make my heart smile when I hear the song “Lean Like a Cholo” because it reminds me of a flood of memories, all connected to my best friend, Crystal.

These special past thoughts are what make me feel so elated when I see a Pit Bull because I am immediately overcome by Bryant’s licks and whimpers and sad and happy faces and pounds of food and water demolished and kindness right by my side when he knew something was wrong.

It’s the memory of songs from Junior High, that were THE songs to dance to at each party, that always made me feel like anything could happen and that everyone was born to fall in love.

It’s the color scheme of Black/White/Pink or Turquoise/Brown that takes me to times that I was honored to stand at the front and be witness to three of my very closest friends, my family, committing their hearts and their lives to someone among flowers and table cloths and ribbons of these colors.

Memories are what make me remember all the times I watched, heart in throat, breath at a whisper, while my brother played basketball so beautifully nothing else mattered in the whole world in those moments. These memories are everything that was important in my childhood. These memories are all things beautiful in Ben. The memories are what make me cry as my mind barely brushes across the half court, game winning shots, and his suave smiles when I know somewhere inside he must have been terrified, and the just misses and the unfair calls and free throws that rolled just in and then come out that made for heart breaking ends to such enthusiastic beginnings. They are what remind me, after everything that came between us in the following years, that for those moments our desires were completely intertwined and he will never know how much his basketball meant to me. He’ll never know how his games were the one thing that I could lose myself in completely and forget the torture and torment of being the misfit that I didn’t know how to love being. He’ll never know how I stood behind that post at the Nome Gym and cried when that shot went in, making him everyone else’s hero at that moment too. He’ll never know, but my memories are what remind me of this and I can’t breathe when I think of losing them.

It’s my Mom’s memories that are the only thing that keep my Dad alive for me. It’s the moments when she smiles, tears in eyes, and tells me that something I said or did or looked like or reacted to was just like me Dad’s. Those memories are things that are only mine because they are hers. Her stories are what make me know someone she loved and who helped make me. I was 5 when he died and because of her memories I still get to know that he called movies “flicks” and that we have a favorite song in common in, “I Can’t Help Myself” by The Temptations. Her past moments are why when I ask “do you want to read Walt Whitman to help you sleep” she is able to tell me “Your Dad loved poetry. He wrote beautiful poetry” and all of a sudden I knew where that huge part of me came from when I hadn’t ever known before. Her memories helped make me a little more whole than I was before knowing how much like my Dad it turns out I am.

Most importantly it’s the memories of decorated trees and homemade cheesecake and the smell of wassail and all things Christmas that take me right back to the giddy child, who will forever reside in me, that will always be my Mother and will always be home. It’s these memories that overwhelm me with feelings that words would do no justice that no matter how poor and how hard times were, I always awoke to a Christmas morning that was made for a princess. It wasn’t tiaras and robes and feasts for hundreds but it was my castle for a whole day, every year, and no one ever took it away. It was always my Mom who left the tree lights on all Christmas Eve night and placed presents so strategically wrapped and so beautifully arranged under the tree and filled our home with the smells that will always be known as Christmas. The moments of squeezing shut me eyes and holding my breath and knowing that I only had this many seconds longer until I was to be inaugurated into the seat of Princess for a WHOLE DAY! The attention to desires paid through the leading months and the surprises that were never expected but always adored were always my Mother. The tenderness in the suggested reason for purchase and the questioning brow of the boxes contents acceptance. The mornings spent in PJ’s tearing gingerly through memories to be made. These moments, the ones of love and kindness and thought and sincerity and care… These moments, these memories, are my Mother.

And while these things are the reasons that we all exist, other’s memories so different than mine of course, there are things I’d like to wake up having forgotten. Not just to lose the thoughts but to lose everything those memories make me.

I’d like for a little amnesia to swoop in and knock some things right the hell out.

I’d love to forget the memory of what it felt like when I tried to boil water in the pot in the microwave, because I wasn’t allowed to use the stove when Mom wasn’t home, and the flames that came instead of hot water. I’d probably add days to my life in I could forget that fear.

I’d love to skip right over the moment Katie Brammer called me in 5^th grade and told me that Michael Lowe, my boyfriend at the time, was breaking up with me. And then telling my Mom and her acting as if I had said nothing. Acting as if I hadn’t just told her that the world was obviously ending and that I was dying at this very moment from a feeling in my chest that she was supposed to make go away and just…ignored instead.

I’d love to trot right on past the feeling of terror that I lived when I got caught, with the same Katie Brammer, driving my Mom’s car up and down the street in 5^th grade because I knew at that very moment, which of course lasted for 1.6 decades, that my Mom was sending me to Military Boarding School and that I was never going to see said Katie Brammer or anyone else EVER AGAIN. Another dozen years added on to my life expectancy.

I’d like very much to cross out the moment that I was running through the gym, in Junior High, and my purse (Old Navy back pack purse, denim stunner that it was) broke and my things went flying across the floor in front of EVERYONE. Things including – GASP -  tampons and the loved turned loathed Josh Fore literally screaming, pointing and laughing about “T.J.’s tampons ha ha ha”. Yep, just cross that one right on out.

I’d love to know what my heart may be like if I could forget the moment I was forced to swallow the look in Tyler’s eyes when I asked him who it was that he cheated on me with. What my heart may be like if I could just skip over that life altering, earth shattering, dream stealing look that will always be inside of me. I’d like to not know what it’s like to know that when you swallow something like that, that you’ll carry it forever.

I’d like to eliminate completely the memory of the moments I spent writing, reading, talking, breathing, living Earl William Walker Junior. If I could skip over these memories I wouldn’t call him Earl William Walker Junior because I wouldn’t know that’s how he signed everything he ever wrote. I wouldn’t have the beautiful memories of the things he said and the way he made me feel special even though he was who everyone wanted. I wouldn’t have the moments spent in agonizing suspense in the times between letters from class to class. I wouldn’t have the laughter he instilled in me when everything was gray. I wouldn’t have the moments spent in comfortable silence next to him, feeling his arm move up and down mine as he breathed. I wouldn’t have the moment he walked in after football practice, without a shirt on and knowing I had never seen anything that beautiful and feeling ashamed of that for some reason and not knowing why. I’d lose the memory of the moment he leaned in to kiss me and the sheer panic that turned my head and the connected memory of the nights spent thinking about how my life could have been changed forever if the panic had stayed at bay and kept my face right in his. I’d lose the memory of all the superbly hastened moments that I spent next to him in the hallways and all the hours it took to walk from my classroom to the place in the hall way I knew he would be standing, beautiful, waiting on little ole’ me. But if I lost all these memories, I’d lose every moment, of every day, that have filled every year of the last 13, that I have spent knowing that he will always be the one that got away. My one that just…got away. Not someone’s someone who maybe could have been something. Earl William Walker Junior was my someone and he got away. The age, the immaturity, the person I was then verses the person I am now, none of that matters when it comes to him. The person he helped me become by loving me exactly like I was is something he will never know and I have to live with that memory. While I don’t believe in regrets and I would never truly want to lose memories of the ones I loved and who loved me, the thought of seeing who I could maybe be without that hurt, without that deceit, minus the lies and the memories of pain is ever tempting because I’d like to know the whole me. I’d like to know who I could be if I weren’t in so many pieces. And I don’t think I’ll ever get over part of me wanting to know part of her.

Phone calls of engagements vs. phone calls of betrayal.

Hugs of despair vs. hugs of exhilaration.

Hands touching in desire vs. hands parting in goodbye.

Eyes meeting in anguish vs. eyes meeting in love.

Words exchanged in a fine frenzy vs. weaponed words fighting blindly in rage.

Passion made visible vs. falsely visual passion.

Love vs. hate.

Anger vs. joy.

Fleeting embarrassment vs. motionless shame.

Pain vs. pleasure.

Kindness vs. selfish.

Lie vs. truth.

All of these things, among so many others that can’t be reduced to words, are memories. Some bad. Some good. Some beautiful. Some wretched. Some loving. Some horrendous. Some exhilarating. Some strenuous. So much anger and so much love. These memories are what and who and how and where we are. As individuals. As friends. As family. As significant others. As employees and bosses. As beings in every way. Memories are who we are.

While writing of betrayal and hurt though, I walk away with settled thoughts of those who loved me right, even when I was wrong. Those who hated me even when I was right. Those who talked and those who listened. Those who helped and those who hurt. Those who carried and those who leaned. Those who made me who I am. While I’d like to know the heart that I could hold and the girl I could be unbruised and unscathed I’ll think of her fondly and instead dress the girl I am each day with memories to spare.

Our words in the dark...

Last night, you laid next to me and rocked my foundation, as your presence always does. With all the breaths that happened, with all the heartfelt words exchanged, you made me believe you over and over again. That you did used to love me and that you always will. That it wasn't just me in it alone. You said to me "I wish you could have known me at a different time" and I don't think anything you've ever said to me healed me quite like that did. In those simple words you said that you loved me, love me, and enjoy who I am now.

You'll never have any way of knowing how those words made my heart splinter and ache and leak something out that was filled with all of our memories. You'll never know that my breath still catches when you smile. You'll probably never know that when I told you, last night in the darkness of the room, that "No matter how much time goes by that I'll always love you" how true it is and how much I wish it wasn't. I don't think you'll ever know how I watch your body move when you walk and think how all that you are makes me feel lost and complete. I'll never tell you that last night, in our darkness, that I would have kissed your lips had you leaned in just enough. I'll also never tell you how grateful I am that you didn't. I'm grateful because you'll never know how your kisses stir me and make me desire things that I don't have the strength to want. I'll never tell you that last night, in the words of our darkness, you made me feel beautiful. I'll never tell you that in the few hours leading up to the moments we spent next to one other in the dark how happy you made me feel to know you and how nervous you always make me. It's an odd feeling... being completely at ease while nervous and worried. I don't think you will ever comprehend that those dark moments are something I've thought of for years and that, as of late, haven't been able to get out of my mind. You didn't know that. You didn' know how much I wanted to lie next to you in the dark close enough to touch but much too far away to make your skin feel mine. You didn't know how I wanted you to tell me that "you remember so much more than I think you do"...but you did - you did tell me that. Your eyes meant it and your eyes never lie. Your eyes are always what give you away and they are the reason those moments in our darkness will heal me and haunt me for too many days to come. You're everything. You always will be. You'll never know this because I would never tell you because you don't deserve it and because no matter how much I will always love you... I will never give you that much power again. You've changed. You've grown up. You're beautiful. You make my hands shake in this steady kind of way that I almost find humor in. You make me want to be something that I can't. You make me proud of who I am without meaning to. Your words spoken in our darkness resonate louder than any of the ever falling pieces you left in my chest. Our darkness is the light that I was missing before last night. The minutes that I listened to you breathe. The hours that you laid there next to me. The evening you spent by my side. These things can't happen to anyone else in the same way as they do with us. It's different when it's us. It's something stronger. Something deeper. Something...beautiful and scarred and something that I fear will never happen again. Those moments, side by side, matching breaths, full of memories searching for air... that was it. Just those last night.

When we were talking about my tattoos and he called me a work of art and you cringed, I wanted you.
When you laughed and your hand naturally found my leg, I missed  you so desperately it steals my breath even now - after you've gone.
When you told me "I have nothing to be ashamed of", I felt invincible.
When you spoke of yourself and said "I could be better", I worshiped you.
When you thanked me for telling you that "you're great and that everyone could always be better" I pitied you.
And when your breath caught in your chest when I told you that you would never know the full extent of how you shattered me. That you would never know about the doctors and the pills and the wreckage you left behind... I loved you.

I'll always love you.

I'll always be the pieces that you made and you'll always make me feel whole when you're around. But last night, in our darkness, when your heart ached for hurting me, you changed my life again. Our darkness will always be a picture I wish I had so I know to never forget those moments in which I wanted the whole world to stop so I could feel your words forever.
I'll never hear your breath catch like that again. It's a one time thing and now it's gone and so are you. You weren't supposed to stay. I didn't even know what was left to be said when it wasn't dark anymore. Not because it was light but because there was too much and not enough hanging in the air. There were too many things that were brought to life and laid to rest to have much to say when our darkness was over.

Thank you. For lying in the dark, by my side, and telling me that it wasn't my fault. I always knew it and I'll still never know. Oddly enough, you'll always be my darkest hour and my greatest joy because you touched all of me. Every smile, every tear, every cell, my whole soul, were all touched and moved and manipulated into a form that carries you with it always.
Thank you for always knowing how to make me laugh and never ignoring the beauty of our comfort. Thank you for knowing that I need to make jokes to keep from crying. Thank you for our darkness and thank you for never knowing that from the very first time we ever laid side by side in the dark I made my breath match yours. Thank you for never knowing how lovely and twisted it was to force my inhales and exhales to match yours exactly because it always brought me sleep. Thank you for having not the slightest of clues that there hasn't been a moment in all of our hours in all of our nights that my breath wasn't constructed to match yours. Thank you for lying next to me in the dark last night and allowing me, for the very first time, to breathe next to you, off beat.

Crash into me...

I just finished reading a book. It’s not award winning but I feel as though it is much more inspired than the simplicity of the words may let on.

It’s…powerful.

It’s…dark.

It’s… real.

It’s about suicide.

And off all the things that can sneak into a warped, suicide loving, mind it leads to 10 of the simplest reason to live.

10. Stars in a really dark sky

  9. Driving across the country

  8. Nirvana

  7, My Mom

  6. Our dog pack

  5. Gay Bingo

  4. Mud fights

  3. Kissing

  2. Magic marker tattoos

  1. Pink socks

These reasons won’t resonate with someone who hasn’t read this story because it sounds like a tired band, colored laundry, and all the things we forget to find the beauty in while taking them ever for granted.

The story though… makes it undeniably lovely to think of what stars may look like on a velvet sky that you wouldn’t have noticed before your life was changed. Changed by people, by circumstance, by accident, by love, by fate…

Stars you were covered by each day for all of you life and were never warmed by their light from the inside out until something came along and changed you.

I of course immediately typed up the “My top 10 reasons to live” list from the book, “Crash into Me”, to hang on my wall. I read the book over the course of two days and somehow I feel like I will never forget how these 10 things are simplistic in every way and can actually change a heart that leads to changing a life. It’s splendid even when fiction. It’s the same as commercialized romance… what you see may not be real but the idea… the idea behind these gestures came from someone’s mind at some point in time on this earth that we roam. Maybe it’s not happening to you but to know that it happened, even just to dance, for a moment, across someone’s subconscious, makes it every bit as real and that is something I take great comfort in. The beauty of these “10 things” exist.

Of all the things happening in life right now that I have no control over it’s on the verge of spinning me out of control before I have anything to say about it. I’m impatient and often unkind. I am often unkind because of my impatience. I want to remind myself, even if only by reading what I wrote while on this literary high, to make the bests attempts to stay calm through the things I can not change. Short of going all “serenity prayer” into the “forever” that writing things creates, I want to find a way to remind myself of how things can become something more astounding than I could have ever designed with nothing but my imagination. Imagination is made more beautiful by it’s surroundings and I want to remind myself to take life for what it gives me, Chicago or “pink socks”, I can’t choose what will change my life… I just have to let it.

Forgot it in people...

I walked out of my house one morning and the sky was pink. I don’t mean that there was a glimpse of a lightened red I mean the entire atmosphere surrounding me was PINK. It was beautiful. Really, really beautiful. It reminded me of my Emily and then quickly reminded me that she is gone, as most thoughts of her do…

I was looking for new music yesterday and I came across an album called “You Forgot It In People”. This title moved me in a way that I can’t explain. Something about the way the words read made me have one of those moments when too many things rush in to your mind at once to even have the slightest hope of deciphering what’s what. It all rushed in before I knew what was coming and my mind filled with images of broken hearts and bruised dreams and moments of laughter and singing and it just…locked down. I never started locking down until I lost Emily. She was beautiful and wondrous and held every thing descent in me right in the palm of her precious hand and held everything broken in me inside of her heart. She was completely accepting of me and all of my tarnished misgivings and that is…something. Something beautiful. Something wondrous. She was…… my god, she was Something. When I got the casual text from her explaining that she had been diagnosed with cancer, but not to worry and asked how I was (because this was her nature), I cried until I couldn’t breathe and then I kept crying.......................................................

Not her. Of all the people in this rotten world for her to be struck this way… This had to be a mistake. Check again and keep checking until you find something that shows you how beautiful she is and that you must have made a mistake…

There wasn’t a mistake and then a mere 8 months later this beautiful creature was gone. She has this voice… it was angelic. She had this smile… it too was angelic. She had this way of holding her hands just so that was…angelic. She had this heart…it was far beyond anything angelic had ever seen. I guess I should have seen it coming all along… Of all her angelic ways she was far too beautiful to be here, in this world, with all of us who are merely… people. Even the beautiful ones are not my Emily’s kind of angelic…

I thought of how many things I had “forgotten in people”. I forgot my ability to rely on others in two people – one died and one, while holding me up, still let’s me down. I forgot my heart in a boy who broke it. I forgot my devotion in a brother who ignores it. I forgot my differences in a family that scoffed them weak. I forgot my mind in a world that soiled it. I forgot my faith in God and he ruined it.

Of all the things that I have forgotten in people I still lose sight of things that move too far in. I forgot love in Emily and she never betrayed it. I don’t know how to remember after forgetting it in her. There isn’t another love like that for me and I don’t know how to remember. I don't even know how to want to remember. I think it will always be forgotten in my devastation of missing her.

She never did forget her faith in God and never wanted it back, even after she was sick. Even after she was sicker. She never forgot her ability to care because she cared about my silly life while she was sick like that. She never forgot her devotions to her family and her God. She never forgot anything in anyone and some how… She’s gone. I wish I could say I have the ability to carry her best parts on through the world, inside of me, but who am I kidding… I’m not angelic – I’m just human, if even that, and I forgot the best parts of me in her. I forgot my heart in her heart and my faith was broken in her illness.

There will never be something so beautiful to be forgotten so easily that can hurt this much… It never ends. This kind of pain never ends.

How did I become that person? That girl who forgot who she was in people? When did I become so weak that others were able to make me forget?

It’s a new year. In just a few short days it will have been a year since Emily…well…since she got to stop being sick. I miss her so much but I'm happier for her lack of illness than I am sad for my own selfishness.

This year is supposed to be full of change and excitement and challenge in my life. It’s supposed to be full of Chicago and new people and places. It’s supposed to be full of new things to inspire my eyes and soul. It’s supposed to be filled with new memories and letting go of old things. I didn’t make a New Years resolution. I never keep them anyway, what’s the point. I do, however, hope that this beginning is filled with all the beauty I need for it to be to make my soul mend. I hope all the “supposed tos” are things that I can look back on at midnight at the start of 2012 and know that my life did find it’s way back to beautiful…

Tyler...

You have come up a lot lately. I don’t know why. Of course, this has me thinking of you and the love we shared and you shattered. Invariably, I try and place how to ever love someone, the way I loved you, again. I don’t think it’s there. I don’t think I want it to be.

Skipping over all the details that made me the way I am, well the way I was before you anyhow, the easiest way to say it is that back then, before I was shattered, before you, I thought everything in the world was about falling in love. I thought that every time the sun went down and the stars came out was about falling in love. I thought every event, every day, every moment was about finding someone to love. I never realized what it was going to do to me when someone loved me back. It fucked me up. You…you fucked me up. All these years later and I am still your fuck up. It’s your doing and I can’t fix it. Everything, with you and I’s beginning, was beautiful, and the way it happened was as close to magic as real life sees. You, we, were everything and I just....... lost myself……

When you cheated, you absolutely ruined me. I couldn't breathe for so much longer than I would ever admit to you. Part of me still can't really get there. Get back to where I can breathe easily without focus. When we were doing the whole "still in love with each other while dating other people" thing it made everything awful. That life lived in the shades of gray was my existence for so much longer than it was for you. I don’t think your world ever went gray over me. Why is that? Didn’t I love you good enough for you to miss me a little… I know that we loved each other and it had nothing to do with me when you cheated. It took me some time but I finally figured it out. It wasn't about me. You just wanted to get away with it. Either way, you – our love and what you did with it, was the end of that girl that lived in me for all those many years that believed that love was the rhyme, reason, and purpose for every breath we take. You killed that girl so quickly that I can hardly remember her name. So much of me didn’t ever walk away from our love. It still lays there bleeding. I still worry sometimes that you will always have control over who I am because you made me this tiny thing inside that can't seem to muster confidence or trust or desire to love. I worry that I will always be this shattered excuse of a person because of how you ruined me. When I finally threw the "Tyler Box" away, I cried while doing it. I still lose my breath when I think I see you or see someone that moves like you or smiles like you. Not because I'm still in love with you, it's been so many years, Tyler. I lose my breath because I fear you. Fear seeing you and remembering all those mornings that I couldn't find the sun and all the nights I couldn't find rest after you ripped me apart. Some how though, still to this very key stroke, I feel as if I felt all those moments of pain because I lost you. Why is that? Didn’t you lose me? I’m afraid of you because I fear ever feeling that pain that lived in my chest until I couldn't remember what it felt like to not hurt that way. That pain just became who I am. Cuts salted and veins explode and some how… I fear you. I fear that moment that I lose myself in someone else and they destroy me without my consent and I am left to reinvent myself into someone that doesn't cry until she can't breathe. I don’t want to have to learn, again,  to become someone that doesn’t weep and ache until I can’t recognize those sounds and realize, horrified, when I see these sounds are my own. I know it may sound dramatic but it's the way I loved you. I’ve had too many people tell me that "I've never seen anything like you and Tyler"... Why would they tell me that? Don’t they know you ruined me? Don’t they see how awful it is to make me feel like I will never be loved again and if I am… they’ll all do just what you did. How many times can I be ruined before I just don’t get back up? Obviously, following you with Sergio was….well…. not the brightest idea. I didn’t know, then, though that he would break me too. I have spent all these years living in the shadows. Living as a ghost of the girl you stole. Could anything ever happen that allowed you to give her back to me? I am so tired of being told that it has nothing to do with you and that I have to find a way to be that girl all on my own again. Don’t they know she’s not dead in this world, don’t they know you still have her? How can I create someone new when the old heart lies with you? How many years will it take before I stop seeing our pain in every smile? How many kind words will it take, from the people who love me, to make me see that they aren’t saying it to cover lies? How many moments will I ruin because I can’t just allow myself to be in them because of all the moments you vacated and left me standing there alone with my heart in my hand? Will I ever be someone who is Me and isn’t the one that Tyler cheated on? Will you ever release my soul and allow me to be someone beautiful? What makes it hardest is that you have that girl. She is all wrapped up in every moment, every memory that was us, and you never did know her name. You never did know what you were doing to me or how you were destroying my every fiber. You didn’t care when it made so much of me leak until I went dry. You still don’t know her name, do you? The girl you stole from me. The girl who lives in your smile and your hands and your eyes. The girl who I watched dance across your eye lashes trying to get in and then trying to get free. She’s still locked in there, in your stare and your laugh and your breath. She stopped fighting for release. She accepted that you were now home. She lost her fight… You stole my fight. You stole everything about me that thought love was a color. The color of life. Why didn’t you care that you drained it to white? Why don’t you care that my heart is still white? At least if it had just small shades of something, anything, I could find the right mix to make a new color. Mix the color of the bruises that you left and make something new and, dare I say, better… You though, you drained it to white. White. Just…white. You left me with nothing. How could you do that? How could you steal my color and dangle it in front of me that way? You knew I was starving and just kept lying while you held it up to drain. You knew I loved you enough, too much, and that I would lie there while you took it away. White. I don’t know how to make something new from what you left and make it someone who can love again. I hope you love her, the girl, who used to be mine that you stole. I hope you hear our favorite songs and dance with her as she deserves to be spun by caring hands and held in loving arms. I hope you care for her when she cries and love her when she’s lonely and melt into her when you can’t stay away. I hope, so desperately, that you take care of her because she will always live in you because of what you did with us. I can’t look into your eyes but I think she will always love you and I hope, so deeply, that you will love her better than you ever loved us…

Adam...

I thought of you this morning when first waking. I don't know what brought you to my mind, you were just... there. I wondered how you were, Adam, and if your heart has healed. I don't know what broke it, nor would I ever ask, but I know the pieces of our heart's identify with one another's and know that they have common scars. I know your siblings treat you like mine treats me. Like you are nothing. Like you aren't good enough or smart enough or funny enough. I don't really have a way to tell you this but you ARE good enough and ARE funny enough, and you ARE much kinder and unique and beautiful an individual than most in this world, your brothers included. You have this childlike thing about you, that you are always waiting for that moment that they are going to let you in to their "club". You are in your 30's and somehow you are still waiting for that day. The day you gain entrance. What a beautiful soul you have, Adam. I hope that you find comfort in knowing that your soul is that good. You have made mistakes, many that hurt others, as have we all. I hope that you forgive yourself for those and know that from the time I was a small child I have always looked up to you and still do. Your ability to have that childlike wonder and carry something about you like you do, so buried, I sort of admire. I can identify with it sooner than others, because of the way my brother makes me feel. I see it in your eyes, when we are all together for family things... I see how much it hurts you and how much you wish it didn't. It's held deeper than mine though. You keep it more sheltered from the eyes of observers. You keep it hidden amongst laughter at yourself when a joke is made at your expense because you laugh along and cry later. I can't get mine that deep. I cry at the joke.

I admire you, Adam. I always have. You're beautiful and kind and completely yourself and I love you.

I hope that you have a holiday that has something special. Something that reminds you that you are loved, in abundance, on this holiday, as every other. A small part of me sees you...and recognizes a  hero.

Merry Christmas, Adam, and Thank You.
Thank you for giving me faith to be myself at several different moments in my life that you had no idea you were giving me that unspoken permission. Thank you.

Thank you for being yourself in times you could have "blended in". Thank you for giving me the strength to do that in so many moments that you didn't have any idea that I was watching.

Thanks, Adam. Just for being who you are.

What a beautiful life...

It’s Christmas time and some how I keep feeling like it’s summer (which I hate after about 1.3 weeks). This may be due to the 80 degree weather we are having here… I can’t even go into how angry this makes me. One time, just ONE TIME I would like to have a white Christmas and some how this year it’s 80 degrees. GRR! “Next year”, I keep telling myself, “next year”. Next year I’ll have more snow than I’ll know what to do with!!

Somehow though, while I am not thankful for this weather, for some reason I have been happy about the simplest things over the past few days. I am VERY easily pleased as it is so it’s not surprising that things like this make me this happy but they have been in abundance the last couple of days and have helped me smile while being sleepy and stressed… The list of happy things is as follows:

1.) I love when I pull a rubber-band off of something and it falls on my desk in a shape that is so similar to a treble clef. It’s like a little musical reminder of how lucky I am to have music in my world. It makes me happy.

2.) I love when someone calls on my work phone and knows exactly what they need, how they need to say it, or who they need to talk to. It makes me happy.

3.) I love when my phone goes bliiiing ity bling bling with a text message and I “know” who it’s from and then it’s from someone totally unexpected. It’s a reminder that someone was thinking of me, when I wasn’t around, and it’s a surprise all in one. It makes me happy.

4.) I love when I get new music. Music from a movie that moved me or music from someone because they loved me that much. Most people would think that it’s a cop out on spending money kind of gift if someone makes them a CD. I personally think it’s the best. For someone to hear the beauty and life that is music and think of me while doing so… What a lovely thing to have exist attached to my name and for them to give me music that they own, that they have and love… how special. New music makes me VERY happy.

5.) I love when I am looking for something, usually irrelevant, on the internet and google images gives me this random picture that has nothing to do with anything I am looking for but was tagged in some random way that brought it up in my search. So many times it’s these breath taking pictures that are so stunning that I can’t help but feel like they were a little surprise left there…just for me. The following picture is an example of this (which is now the background on my phone)… Can’t remember what the search was for but my goodness…

 

6.) I love when I expect to wake up sleepy and I wake up alert. Then I go to my closet without knowing what I am going to wear (which causes stress for someone who gets up in exactly enough time to clock in on the very minute she has to be at work) and my mind puts together a bangin’ outfit without me touching a thing. It’s just a better, fresher, start to a day that could have been otherwise meek and dreary. It makes me happy.

7.) I love when I go for a drink of coffee (vanilla chai tea, peppermint tea, vanilla late, ect.) that I know is going to be cold and it still has just enough heat to make it the perfect swallow. It makes me happy.

8.) I love when I find something in a store and it’s more than I want to pay for it but I really want it. I decide to try it on and then it works perfectly. I walk up, ready to pay more and then WHAT?! It’s on sale?! Oh my gosh that’s so exciting. I know that this makes everyone happy but the silly thing about it for me is that it always makes me buy something else. I didn’t want to spend that much and then get a break on it and I think “Well I was going to spend that much anyway so I’ll just get something else”. It makes me happy it the most ridiculous of ways.

9.) I love when I think something is going to make me miserable. Something that I just know is going to make me cry and lose my breath and have the dull ache in my chest that I can’t shake no matter the laughter or the words of love and then it happens and… I’m fine. I don’t know how it happens when it happens and it’s just so beautiful. To expect pain and when it doesn’t come, that relief bringing actual pleasure… It makes me very happy.

10.) I love this most of all… I love when I wake up on a Saturday morning/early afternoon after a relaxing, calm, restful sleep. I walk into my perfect living room in my comfortable sweats and snuggle up in my favorite chair. We (my roommate and I or just me if she's not home) eat unhealthy and delicious food all day long. We watch movie after movie and eat snacks and drinks the stuff we don’t take the time to get in the week before work. We laugh and commentate and just…are. We don’t have anything we have to do. We don’t have anything that even requires us to get dressed or worry at all that whole day. So many people find this lazy and so on. They would feel guilty or totally uncomfortable with just…being. I find it beautiful. We talk, every weekend we have the opportunity to live this way, about how lucky we are. How lovely a leisure it is that we can lay in our apartment, safe from the wild and crime and hunger and severe weather and do exactly what we want to. This makes me happiest of all... 

It’s such a pleasure and such a luxury that too many people don’t pay attention to. Not just take for granted but don’t make enough of an effort to really pay attention to. We all see these commercials or benefits or intense money raising campaigns after earthquakes and tsunamis and war… Every other day though, people just…forget. Take a moment: the next time you have 10 extra minutes to lay in bed when your body is warm and your pillow is the perfect cold -  or you have 30 minutes for lunch rather than a normal hour and you are stressed about it because it’s “unfair” – the next time you run out of shampoo or hairspray or whatever we use every day that seems like a necessity and have to use the back up bottle that we “hate” – the next time you are absolutely furious that your ipod died and you don’t have a way to charge it – the next morning you wake up and (only) have to do laundry that day – the next day that you get to live like you do that allows you to taste what you swallow and see what is coming up behind you and know what is in the bowl you are eating, the next evening you are sitting judging the person’s style choice in the booth next to you (we all do it and bullshit if you say you don’t) while at dinner across from someone you love or even someone you love to hate, the next midnight you are lying awake in your bed…

Really make yourself understand that you could be:

(instead of having to get up in 10 minutes) Paralyzed and unable to feel anything or even gone all together instead of feeling the soft touch of your sheets even if you have to get out of them in just a moment.

Or

(intead of a 30 min lunch) Going hungry. Not just “oh poor thing you are hungry” but really starving. You have that open, burning, empty, aching pit in your stomach that water would hurt in abundance because it’s been so long since your stomach knew what it was like to have it’s walls stretched.

Or

(instead of running out of shampoo)Walking to the community shower, in your shoes because “No one is allowed in the shower without shoes”, where you are washing each limb of your body, every hair on your head, every private crevice of your being in front of 15 others who are doing the same thing. No pride allowed, just hurry to shower in the cold water amongst the others and try your best to keep to yourself.

Or

(instead of having your ipod) Having to listen to the sound of mothers giving birth in a tent guarded by machine guns because the people holding those guns have just been waiting to take the baby from you that you carried because the same guns raped you. Or listening to the sounds of torture or pain without medicine or cries of women who watched their husbands get beat to death or kids that don’t understand where their parents went and why the people with the guns are hitting them so hard… You have the songs of your recently dead ipod in your ears until it’s charged again.

Or

(instead of having only laundry to curse your day) Going to the river to beat your 2 pairs of pants and 3 shirts against a rock naked because you only have a small amount of time to “do your laundry” and you can’t leave your clothes dirty to wear them while washing even.

Or

(instead of living like you get to) Eating whatever can be found while guarding whatever “it” is with your life because you can’t see what is coming up behind you and there isn’t anything that keeps what could be behind you from taking everything that is yours.

My bed, my fridge, my full laundry hamper –that says nothing of the closet and dresser that are still over flowing, my couch that has a snag and my phone that drops calls and my ipod that dies and my job that “doesn’t pay me enough”  and my friends that were too busy to have dinner one night and my vehicle that gets flat tires and has to be washed when it’s cold outside and my food that had a piece of foil in it and my sunglasses that get smudges too easily and my brand new nail polish that chips… What a beautiful life I lead. I’m so glad I have a bed and food and electronic devices that supply me with my “air” and friends who love me and a Mom who fills my fridge when she comes, no matter how old I get, and a job that supplies me with enough income to buy Christmas presents for the ones I love - even if it’s not in abundance, and allows me to eat dinner with these beautiful people I am lucky enough to call my friends – even if it’s just something quick and cheap. What a beautiful life I lead in comparison to the lives that are lead by people across the seas and right down town in every city we lucky people, who bitch about everything we are lucky enough to have – most certainly myself included, fall asleep in every night. What a beautiful fucking life I lead. A merry Christmas it will be in my bed, with my beautiful tree in my beautiful apartment surrounded by gifts and my Mom under my roof and my friends wishing me just that… Merry Christmas to the lucky ones. I’m glad I remembered today, in such a passionate fashion, that I am, in deed, one of the lucky ones. Merry Christmas in deed because of this beautiful life I lead.

  

If it changes your life - Let it.

I thought about him quite frequently this weekend, but it bothered me much less. The idea that I am bothered by this, I have shared with a few close friends, and they tell me it is not insane and that they would feel the same way. Some how, this made it better. It made it easier to not feel so ashamed of the humiliation and the despair that have taken residence in my chest the past few weeks. It made me feel less like it was me than it was a normal reaction. It bothers me still but it hurts less. This was a huge step, resulting in a wonderful Monday morning. Maybe there were things about him that I didn’t see yet that would have appeared too late and I would have been trapped. I’m not good at walking away from things, when I know I should, if I am emotionally involved. Maybe he would have been another heart break that I couldn’t have survived. I will learn to take this as something I wouldn’t have been able to avoid, had he stayed such a force in my mind and be happy that the universe bestowed the kindness that it did in removing him from my path.

I watched such wonderful movies this weekend. Somehow, in all of my thousands of movie mornings, afternoons, days and nights, I had never seen Tuesdays with Morrie. What a phenomenal film. This too, helped quiet the pain in my chest. The wisdom of those whose lives that have already been lived will never stop astounding me. The things that I look back at now and think of how silly and trivial they were to have been fretting over. I don’t believe that it changes how you should have been effected but it does feel nice to look back at how far I have come in 26 years. When you feel like your whole world is falling apart, it’s okay to feel that way because, at the time you are shattering, it is actually the end of your world. There may not be death, their may not be a change in the Earth you walk on, it doesn’t change that it is the end of your world. After being hurt like I was with the loss of my first love, my world was over because it has never, nor could it ever be the same. With the loss of my father, my world was over for so many reasons. My face would never be touched by his loving eyes. My ear would never hear the beat of his heart. My many days to come, so full of numerous important things, would never have his support or kindness or love in attendance. He was gone and so was the world as I knew it. I have to remind myself that it’s okay to have my world changed or even brought to an end. I read something that was so simple and in such few words, changed my attitude towards so many things…

These simple words: If it changes your life – let it.

The anxiety labeled fear, breeds in my blood when I think of ever losing this information that I inadvertently learned and instantaneously fell in love with… if it changes my life – let it. If I miss someone or gain someone or love someone or lose someone or hurt someone or cry until I can’t remember how to catch my breath… just let it happen. Let it change me like it is going to either way. Let it change me like it needs to. I learned that if I take in account all the things I fight so hard against I spend far too much of my time fighting life. Fighting others, fighting myself, fighting situations and feelings and moments. Moments that could very likely take me to some place new and teach me how to be someone new that instead I fight. If it changes my life – let it. Just learn to let it.

It’s odd how such simple words could make me excited to be someone new.

While watching the movies, that I did, this weekend I suddenly felt different. Different about myself and different about the coming months. I have been going back and forth with myself about getting my shit together and losing weight. I’m not a monster but I weigh much more than I should. A couple of the movies I watched were stories of an extraordinary kind of love. Love that, in some ways, actually did create miracles. Love that is something so beautiful and so unique that there wouldn’t be a way to replicate this sort of magic if you wanted to. Love that is built so firmly within the identities of such individuals that it has no choice but to be one of a kind.

So many people that I know, none of which who read this or even know this blog exists, tell me that I am “unique”. I was told once, years ago, before I was even really aware of what a compliment I was receiving , that I was “intriguing because I was unique”. To some, these words are a few of many that could be used to make someone feel the way you want them to that will help you reach the ultimate goal of head fucking them so royally that they can’t remember who they were before your invasion. These words, in the context of the compliment I received, weren’t to get me into bed or to make me feel in any way different that the moment before the words were spoken for any purpose that just providing the information about a feeling. I wish I had housed the ability then to step back and realize what it means to be intriguing, especially if your intrigue stems from originality. In one word you go from being someone, just one in a sum, to being one who stands alone. What a brilliant thing to be. Someone who is unique. I am allowing myself to find the beauty in this, all these years later, because it is something that I was slowly losing sight of. I tend to do that. Allow things, even and sometimes especially, the important things to become smeared into gray when I feel rejected or lose sight of my worth. While I don’t carry confidence in many things, I do own, proudly, my accomplished desire to be someone who is in deed, unique. In all the heartache I have been dealt and all the drama I have been weaved in to and all loss and agony I have survived, I have survived uniquely. I have survived as exactly who I am. Someone the same, someone different, someone weaker, someone stronger, someone bigger, someone smaller, someone broken and someone whole – I have survived as me. This is something that I take great pride in, today more than others for a reason unknown. I am not perfect, nor would I want to be. I am not demonic, nor would I try to be. I am not beautiful, I am not revolting, I am not completely compassionate nor completely hard. I am however, me, and while it may fall in only a moment, I take great pride in me today.

Set fire to water

Have you ever realized, in what seems like all at once, that you don’t have the slightest clue about how to be happy? I tell you now, it propels a heavy rage that, in me is somehow still sort of numbed out. It’s not easy finding cracks behind the cracks you knew were there that lead you to see that you are far more shattered than you could have even placed. It aches. I don’t know when my heart started crying and I don’t know when it lost that ability to do so… I only know that I ache.

I met this guy and he was…so many things. So many things I thought were good. So many things I always wanted to find in someone, aside from my good friend Kyle, who is gay. I couldn’t count the number of times we discussed how exquisite my life would be if I found someone that was just like him but straight. What we didn’t talk about was me finding someone like him that didn’t want me…

Devastation.

I have gained the ability, over the years, to manipulate my feels fairly easily if I can catch it soon enough in. I keep trying to stop thinking, stop feeling, stop wondering and worrying and I can’t seem to get there. My mind still races in circles and ends up at him. My mind races in triangles trying to figure out what was wrong with me this time. My mind races through square tracks wondering what happened and where he went. My mind dives through these octagons of self doubt and internal loathing. If you were to lay these shapes over and over and over again, on paper, at the same speed and with the same intensity that my mind does repetitively like this, you would soon see what used to be this lovely idea in my mind soiled with the ink of the lines crossing each other until there is nothing left but this…void. This space that is never quiet but saying nothing new. Just that it was me that he didn’t want and that it makes it clear that nothing has changed. Crying drown by screaming that’s drown by tears and so on. All the while, in this space, my face smiles. Smiles big and laughs often because this Jekyll and Hyde routine is exhaustingly who I’d like to say I have become but I am fairly certain it is who I have always been. Blackened laughter and bruised dreams. Loveless longing and an aching beat. Just once, I’d like to remember, if I ever did know, that the beautiful things in this world are for people like me too. Just once I’d like to stand on top of my world and set fire to water and know that one moment of that moment was actually, really, wholly, unsuperficially and unscathingly something made of…magic. No rabbits out of hats or flowers from a sleeve. I want that magic feeling like love. Real, unbridled, purely decadent love. That makes you new, for even just a moment. It makes you exist.

Christmas is almost here, and for some reason everything about this season makes me want to feel alive in all the ways that I am dead. The lights and decorations and weather and food and fragrances make it seem like it is the right time to love someone. In the cold, in the snow, in the early moonlight. Somehow, this year, it’s about him. How obnoxious. Of him to have done that to me and for me to be that way. How obnoxious am I... It’s grotesque. Those feelings though, that I usually have such a tight reign on, ran wild for a moment too long because of this or that and now I can’t seem to gain control. Hopefully though, it will subside soon. It’s my last Christmas in Texas, for a while at least. It’s my last Christmas with my best friend in the US. It’s my last Christmas with my other best friend in the same town. It’s the last time that I will wake up on that magical morning and know that they are all so close. These Christmas angels of mine, that make every day something beautiful. These friends of mine will all be so far away this time next year. I know this is coming and I want to cherish every moment that’s left here. He’s tarnishing that with stressful, sadened thoughts, and this makes me furious. How dare he. How dare he set fire to me and leave it to run wild, burning everything that was starting to feel alive again after all this time. How dare he turn me to ashes like that. How fucking dare he…

I spent last week in New York. It was everything I wanted it to be. Busy and cold and beautiful and dirty and made me feel squeaky clean. I live in a small place where people are stupid and spoiled and hard hearted and judgmental and close minded and mean. If you walk alone you are avoided. If you eat alone it happens amongst countless prying eyes. In New York, it was just living. Walking among hundreds of people I felt crowded and still had the comfort of feeling alone. It was magnificent. I can’t wait to get to Chicago. I’m just not made for Texas. I have known that all along but the trip up North made it that much more obvious. It made it that much more real, that places like that do exists and that in just a few short months I will be living in a place where I can be busy and lonely. It's made for me. 

I had jury duty this morning. I have ALWAYS wanted jury duty. I want to be on a murder trial so bad. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think this happens often, but this morning, my very fist jury duty, was CANCELED. They just didn’t need jurors. What the fuck? Who does this happen to? If I documented my wildly bad luck people would think it’s false. It’s like there is something out there… a bitch friend of mother nature… that waits to pounce on each moments she can. Waits for these moments that could be grand or even just unnoticed and makes them something terrible. I don’t really think a lot of it now. I laugh when people ask “Who does that happen to?” because I ask it approximately 75 times a week… Who does this shit happen to? I know it happens to me but does it happens to others or is it something special that I don’t know about just for me? It’s ridiculous. However, I try and be happy with the repayment of some of these moments with excellent rock star parking spaces, pretty much everywhere I go, and really excellent clothing deals. It's something I have, that far exceeds others, so I guess it’s not all bad.

I ordered Eat Pray Love, book and DVD, and I can’t wait. This movie, is the movie, that changed my life. It’s the biggest reason I was open to meeting the pyromaniac that fucked me up. It’s also the reason that I am more comfortable with myself and who I am and the biggest reason I was finally able to convince myself to make the move to Chicago. It made me feel like someone, somewhere, wrote a story – just for me. While other people can see it they don’t know what it was saying because it was written just for me. For me to see and be changed in so many ways that I went home happy to be crying and crying because I was happy. It made me breathe in and find something beautiful about the air. It made me see myself like I want someone else to see me. It made me feel like… Christmas morning.

Years ago, I read something that changed me more than anything I think I have ever read. It was a note from a girl to a boy that read “I love you like Christmas morning”. I knew, at that moment, that I would never be the same. I knew that this line was something that I must feel before it’s love. Real, love. The love that is going to make me new. Give up half of my bed. Share a bathroom. Give up HALF MY CLOSET. Give up my alone time. This love, the one that is my Christmas morning, is different. It’s not built from romance or lust or similarities. It’s a love built of sheer…magic. The feeling like I know nothing can hurt me as long as he’s around. The feeling that no one will see me, breathe me, love me, need me the way that he does. The way that every time I hear his heart beat or feel him cry or make him laugh that I will be made better, stronger, more beautiful because I truly believe Audrey Hepburn… “Happy girls are the prettiest girls”. It doesn’t matter that I look like this and hate it. It doesn’t matter that I cry at this and want to change it. It doesn’t matter that I think like this and don’t understand it. It matters that when, if ever, I love someone like that, how I look and what I think will be something beautiful to someone that makes life magical. What is life with out a little magic. I want to love someone. I don’t know if I can. I certainly don’t know if someone could ever love me. Especially like Christmas morning. I guess that’s my fear… that I will never be someone’s pixie dust. I will never be what completes someone’s masterpiece or makes them feel like every time my heart beats or tears fall or laughter rings that my existence is something…magical. Part of me, that continues to escape all the fires, hope for a love like that…

Can I feel enough, be enough, love enough to find a way to set fire to water...