xingmyheartout
and i ran off, and ran on, to something... that i swore was everything, but beautiful. i only say that word for you.
if i were to write in banded cliches, i suppose i'd reach a more finite conclusion, but a cheated understanding. if i were to write of 'you' and 'i' and 'love' and 'loss', you'd find a little love story left in me, a little peace i stumbled upon. they say i'm lucky, and they tell me i'm beautiful. they hold me at nights, and wake me up to talk at me in mornings, and they swear they're jealous. and whether i can't tell them, and if i can, and if they just know one way or another, they promise they love me, and they stroke my hair. they let me breathe.
i'm not jealous of anyone anymore. and if i was, if i was, i'd be jealous of the things in them inherent as chromosomes.
if you'd told me this could be my life. i would have done anything for it. if you'd told me that i could have everything. i would have fought with my last dying breath for this life, and now i'm drowning in it. if you'd told me i could have friends i could have everything with, laughter and love and so many plans. if you'd told me i could have my own house, stuffed with the bright and the beautiful, and so many people skidding into my life i'd be tripping over their messages cramming my phone. if you told me that i could be young and beautiful and full of everything... that everything i'd ever cried for, could fall away. if you'd told me that i could be who i wanted, be who i was, and be loved, and be all of it, and have all of it; if you'd said that i didn't have to feel this burning inaction, this searing loss and this terrible, disillusioned, disappointment. i would have gasped at your feet; i would have begged at your heels. i would never have believed you.
i think, maybe, i've been a little in love with someone my whole life. i grew up a hundred or so metres away, and grew with. he now lives twenty-two hours away.
he wandered into my town, barely knowing me at nineteen, barely remembering who i was. and when he kissed me, i was surprised. surprised, most of all, at how it was everything. i would have never thought it made sense. he threatened to kiss me, and, somehow, it made sense. we made sense. i've been telling people stories, always; stories about me, half-fictions, embellished truths, so they'd love me, and i would. this is the base of every love song ever penned, but even before he kissed me, it made sense that he could know me. know me, and not walk away. at the very least, not because he wanted to.
we spent days talking. well, we spent days laughing, and kissing; speech just bridged the gap. i cried when he left, the first time. i cried more when he left the second time, the last time. we abused each other mercilessly; we shook away taboos, and long-hidden stories, and learnt each other all over again. he struggled for words, and, towards the end, i couldn't say any at all. "you know what i'm trying to say," he kept saying; it wasn't perfect, it's not exclusive, and it's hardly everything. but it's him and i, and it is like nothing i expected, nothing i knew i wanted. frankly, it's like nothing else. it is a place i know i want to go towards, and this is a person i refuse to lose. so, i'm lucky. they tell me i'm lucky, and yes, for the first time in a long, long time: yes, i'm lucky.
i wake up to letters in calligraphy and wax seals. i wake up to friends banging on my door, wanting more from me. i wake to texts and messages, to love and approval. i run about seeing people, lending them what i can, laughing as much as i want. i have never found it so easy to be myself, because i have never been less rejected. i have plans, all the time, and more available if i wanted them. my days are full of girls that laugh with me, who know me, and who care. i have people i believed i never could; i spend nights in ways i once only dreamed of, and, jesus christ, i used to only dream. i know how much i have, because i know how much i have to lose.
and all i want to do is rest.
i've been grinding through days, systematically working towards this sort of peace, for years. it's here; it's time, it's my moment. it's my life. and i struggle to know how to maneuvre it. what i want, now that i have all i need. all i want to do is sit here, in this peace, in this winter cold, and listen to broken beats, and feel this stillness, this completeness, i've wanted for so long.
this is it, this is everything. and all i want to do is rest.
let's go out and dance, darling.
our last of days...
grace the game, with a blindfold on.
the cheaters came, to play.
and, outside, the soft-handed boys.
screaming cars, and all their speed
music, math, the hero begging chance
his sword, across his knees
let's go out and see, darling
what shines, tonight.
temper your dream about the dying horse
with traffic; noise; and light.
and somewhere, the soft-handed boys
bleeding hearts,
and worker bees...
iron & wine - beneath the balcony
- Touch (6)
- Bang (11)
leave notes behind the paintings in dirty motels, explaining why you can't, why you can't
out of the blackness on blackness and the failed and disintegrating hopes... hopes ever more abstract, more necessary, more illogical, and more slashed... i fell, ever acting, into a light of sorts.
i fell into your life. i fell, beside you, drunken and laughing, and talking you to sleep... and, quietly, stealing from you. stealing your life, borrowing your boy, listening to your friends, and falling into a sphere ablaze with shiny hair and glinting vodka, glowing limbs and sleepy eyes; with skinny off-white lines, topped with pills like exclamation marks. i held your hand and i loved you all the time, and in return you let me fall beside you, into the life that you, beautiful and adored you, tired and wired and ruined too easy you, so hated.
i borrowed your boy. i knew that he was your friend, that he had been saving you... just like i have, all these years, even separated by miles on miles and necessity. but, that night, my heart was pumping ragged and my brain soaked in vodka, and what he said. oh, what he said. i'd have been a liar if i'd denied him at all; and you, i suppose, had to let me.
"if someone else leaves me again," i told him, candid and raw, sitting on the ground, smoking his cigarettes. "if one more person walks away... i'll lose faith. i won't handle it, i can't. you don't understand; everybody's said this before, everybody's said.... everything, and i don't think i..."
said he: "i would never hurt you; please, please, just give me a chance, because i'm not, and i won't."
and later, when the alcohol hit the lines somewhere deep in my body, and i was staggering, breathless and nauseous, he looked after me, and held me, and kissed me until the room was hurricane-twisting. "i could do this for weeks," he said. "weeks."
and so, of course. we slept, we danced, we kissed, we held and we talked. and he promised, and i believed. until, maybe eighteen days later, he was, of course he was, and he did. three in the morning, and he couldn't: i can't, i tried, i wanted... and i can't.
and i would be bitter without parole if i hadn't been surprised; regretful if i hadn't comforted him; in denial, if i hadn't cried later. but, shock? no. never. i'm too old for that; it's been too many broken and beaten nights. i was so used to it, in fact, that i comforted him almost wearily, and told him all the things i thought i should. after we held each other in the cold, i walked away, in a straight line, without looking back, without betraying a thing. but, no. i was not okay. not for weeks, not anything close. my body closed up like the blinds during daylight, and pumped, drunk and hungering for escapism, to shattering music with the girls i never, ever thought i could be, at nights.
and, somehow, after drinks and laughter and such company somehow paved my escape route. i came, with muted surprise, to accept such a life as my due; after these girls had clarified it, after we'd shared lines and drinks aplenty, after we'd discussed moving in together, after they'd offered me their cigarettes, their attention, and their secrets. the bittersweet night that i realized the position i'd fallen into, the sphere of the beautiful and the damned, i watched him kiss someone else, once more with feeling, once more like he meant it. i watched, calm, for a moment. composed. later, with the drugs and alcohol waning and complaining in my system, walking home, i began taking swings at brick walls. every wall on my way home took a hit, or three, until my knuckles dripped blood to my wrists, until they were black with blood and skinless, until blood dripped onto my doorstep and keys. two and a half weeks, two trips to casualty, a hundred questions and horrified looks later, i can still barely bend some of my fingers, and i can't make fists. and i can't regret it, and i won't. it was, if you can believe it, the cleanest, purest way of expressing exactly, precisely what i was feeling that night.
perhaps, perhaps, because, somebody i'd been kissing (for a while, in fact, and never even a little sober) had said: let's spend some time together in daylight, in real time, talking about things that make sense; some real time. and my expression twisted until it looked like i'd just funnelled a pitcher of tequila; it held, intoxicated, until he laughed, and understood.
and because, someone else i'd been kissing (not much, and, if possible, even less sober) said: let's hang out, let's go out, let's drink, and let's... and i said: i can't. i can't put myself into the position where i could get hurt again, because, last time (and all the times before), because he said, because he promised, and then he....
he said: why am i paying for someone else's mistakes; why can't you, please, just, give me a chance?
and i told him: can't you see, can't you see that i can't?
(with all the things i have now, and could lose, and how much that dulls my tragedies into small, laughable misfortunates; can't you see that this isn't something i want someone to take away from me; that i can't?)
something went haywire, off-centre this semester, and i think we all felt it. more, i believe, as the days became shorter and our nights became endless. we snorted spirits out of belly buttons, we took off our clothes and downed shot after shot night after night, we threw powders up our noses to dizzy us into peace; we cried at night and slept all day, and we learnt about emotionally hypercharged evenings through bleary-eyed reminiscing in the morning. we were honest and we were liars; we laughed and we danced and we lay on old sofas holding one another, and it was darkness and it was stars. if you're asking me, i loved it. i needed it. but i'm not surprised it was your dark place, my darling; i'm not surprised we needed to leave by the time we did.
the semester's over, and my life has stilled to a contemplative peace. somehow, boys still ask for time together, time spent, time not wasted; time i can't bring myself to hand over to them, because, even if it's partly just a cover-up for other excuses, it's still, very, true: i can't hand over the ability, even a little, to break me once more. not again, not this year. call it fear; call it self-preservation; call it logic, intelligence, submission. it's very new, this suit of armour, and it's constituted, really, of a layered, hard knowledge: i don't want to hurt again, i can't go through all that again, i won't, i can't, idon'tknowbut i, i, i, i, i, i.... no.
you can call my life what you want, and people do. sometimes i find it intimidating, crushingly and suddenly so, almost impressively; sometimes i find it weak and lacking. sometimes i feel friends everywhere, and sometimes they're buried so deep in layers of the distance between us, what i'll never be able to say or be, that i can barely see them at all. you can say i've sold my soul, for fame and company... submitted to intellectual mediocrity, to worthless hedonism, if you like. but, yet, here's what i know: if being a part of someone has failed me, so many times, because i've failed them... being a part of something, something intelligent and beautiful in its own replicated way, could be the only thing to save me. something to rob me of worthlessness, of crinkling and dying in obscurity, of drowning in could have been, should, would... of this chronic hollowness, of being alone, regretting, questioning; lost.
for now; i wait and watch.
i remain,
yours,
limbs bent and awkward, curious and bruised, and ever,
alone.
"i've been catching all your ghosts for every season/ i pray to god you won't come back here anymore./... cause i can hardly see, what's in front of me, these days./ and those days, too." manchester orchestra - where have you been?
i fell into your life. i fell, beside you, drunken and laughing, and talking you to sleep... and, quietly, stealing from you. stealing your life, borrowing your boy, listening to your friends, and falling into a sphere ablaze with shiny hair and glinting vodka, glowing limbs and sleepy eyes; with skinny off-white lines, topped with pills like exclamation marks. i held your hand and i loved you all the time, and in return you let me fall beside you, into the life that you, beautiful and adored you, tired and wired and ruined too easy you, so hated.
i borrowed your boy. i knew that he was your friend, that he had been saving you... just like i have, all these years, even separated by miles on miles and necessity. but, that night, my heart was pumping ragged and my brain soaked in vodka, and what he said. oh, what he said. i'd have been a liar if i'd denied him at all; and you, i suppose, had to let me.
"if someone else leaves me again," i told him, candid and raw, sitting on the ground, smoking his cigarettes. "if one more person walks away... i'll lose faith. i won't handle it, i can't. you don't understand; everybody's said this before, everybody's said.... everything, and i don't think i..."
said he: "i would never hurt you; please, please, just give me a chance, because i'm not, and i won't."
and later, when the alcohol hit the lines somewhere deep in my body, and i was staggering, breathless and nauseous, he looked after me, and held me, and kissed me until the room was hurricane-twisting. "i could do this for weeks," he said. "weeks."
and so, of course. we slept, we danced, we kissed, we held and we talked. and he promised, and i believed. until, maybe eighteen days later, he was, of course he was, and he did. three in the morning, and he couldn't: i can't, i tried, i wanted... and i can't.
and i would be bitter without parole if i hadn't been surprised; regretful if i hadn't comforted him; in denial, if i hadn't cried later. but, shock? no. never. i'm too old for that; it's been too many broken and beaten nights. i was so used to it, in fact, that i comforted him almost wearily, and told him all the things i thought i should. after we held each other in the cold, i walked away, in a straight line, without looking back, without betraying a thing. but, no. i was not okay. not for weeks, not anything close. my body closed up like the blinds during daylight, and pumped, drunk and hungering for escapism, to shattering music with the girls i never, ever thought i could be, at nights.
and, somehow, after drinks and laughter and such company somehow paved my escape route. i came, with muted surprise, to accept such a life as my due; after these girls had clarified it, after we'd shared lines and drinks aplenty, after we'd discussed moving in together, after they'd offered me their cigarettes, their attention, and their secrets. the bittersweet night that i realized the position i'd fallen into, the sphere of the beautiful and the damned, i watched him kiss someone else, once more with feeling, once more like he meant it. i watched, calm, for a moment. composed. later, with the drugs and alcohol waning and complaining in my system, walking home, i began taking swings at brick walls. every wall on my way home took a hit, or three, until my knuckles dripped blood to my wrists, until they were black with blood and skinless, until blood dripped onto my doorstep and keys. two and a half weeks, two trips to casualty, a hundred questions and horrified looks later, i can still barely bend some of my fingers, and i can't make fists. and i can't regret it, and i won't. it was, if you can believe it, the cleanest, purest way of expressing exactly, precisely what i was feeling that night.
perhaps, perhaps, because, somebody i'd been kissing (for a while, in fact, and never even a little sober) had said: let's spend some time together in daylight, in real time, talking about things that make sense; some real time. and my expression twisted until it looked like i'd just funnelled a pitcher of tequila; it held, intoxicated, until he laughed, and understood.
and because, someone else i'd been kissing (not much, and, if possible, even less sober) said: let's hang out, let's go out, let's drink, and let's... and i said: i can't. i can't put myself into the position where i could get hurt again, because, last time (and all the times before), because he said, because he promised, and then he....
he said: why am i paying for someone else's mistakes; why can't you, please, just, give me a chance?
and i told him: can't you see, can't you see that i can't?
(with all the things i have now, and could lose, and how much that dulls my tragedies into small, laughable misfortunates; can't you see that this isn't something i want someone to take away from me; that i can't?)
something went haywire, off-centre this semester, and i think we all felt it. more, i believe, as the days became shorter and our nights became endless. we snorted spirits out of belly buttons, we took off our clothes and downed shot after shot night after night, we threw powders up our noses to dizzy us into peace; we cried at night and slept all day, and we learnt about emotionally hypercharged evenings through bleary-eyed reminiscing in the morning. we were honest and we were liars; we laughed and we danced and we lay on old sofas holding one another, and it was darkness and it was stars. if you're asking me, i loved it. i needed it. but i'm not surprised it was your dark place, my darling; i'm not surprised we needed to leave by the time we did.
the semester's over, and my life has stilled to a contemplative peace. somehow, boys still ask for time together, time spent, time not wasted; time i can't bring myself to hand over to them, because, even if it's partly just a cover-up for other excuses, it's still, very, true: i can't hand over the ability, even a little, to break me once more. not again, not this year. call it fear; call it self-preservation; call it logic, intelligence, submission. it's very new, this suit of armour, and it's constituted, really, of a layered, hard knowledge: i don't want to hurt again, i can't go through all that again, i won't, i can't, idon'tknowbut i, i, i, i, i, i.... no.
you can call my life what you want, and people do. sometimes i find it intimidating, crushingly and suddenly so, almost impressively; sometimes i find it weak and lacking. sometimes i feel friends everywhere, and sometimes they're buried so deep in layers of the distance between us, what i'll never be able to say or be, that i can barely see them at all. you can say i've sold my soul, for fame and company... submitted to intellectual mediocrity, to worthless hedonism, if you like. but, yet, here's what i know: if being a part of someone has failed me, so many times, because i've failed them... being a part of something, something intelligent and beautiful in its own replicated way, could be the only thing to save me. something to rob me of worthlessness, of crinkling and dying in obscurity, of drowning in could have been, should, would... of this chronic hollowness, of being alone, regretting, questioning; lost.
for now; i wait and watch.
i remain,
yours,
limbs bent and awkward, curious and bruised, and ever,
alone.
"i've been catching all your ghosts for every season/ i pray to god you won't come back here anymore./... cause i can hardly see, what's in front of me, these days./ and those days, too." manchester orchestra - where have you been?
- Touch (0)
- Bang (33)
nightmares are for dreamers
if you could measure pain, rank it, categorize it; if you could weigh it out and chip it away, if you could put it inside a test tube and watch it squirm. if you could see the grey and gristly little bricks that weigh us down and feed at our cores, shake us and make us, if you could, if you would. someone should write a guidebook, a statute of limitations. something that could lead the way.
i know there are stages of grief; i know there are steps to emotional recovery. but no-one tells you how you're meant to react when you've been knocked down so many times you'd be psychologically delusional if you didn't seriously consider if getting back up was really the way to go.
i know you're meant to suffer through break ups, to want and need and miss, and to not know what to do with the hole someone left when they fell out of your life and into the sky one day. i know that even if someone jerks you around like a rag doll, even if someone doesn't give you a second look because you couldn't grace a magazine spread, even if you get loved, hard, and left, you're meant to rise from the ashes like a co-dependent phoenix. you're meant to leave the users, the losers, the blind and unkind behind you, choking on your dust. because you're better. because they missed it. you're meant to recognise, eventually, that frogs are frogs, and when your prince comes along, saying all the right things and blowing you away with how easily they complete you, jigsaw-like.. you're meant to live happily, even if 'ever after' is a utopian stretch.
but no one tells you what to do when you can see through the frogs like glass, when you're smarter than you are self destructive, so that you don't make cut-and-dry choices and easily recognisable mistakes; when people make them, in fact, by being with you.
no one tells you what to do when the right boys walk into your life, beautiful and kind, and say the right things: i've never felt like this; nothing you could do could make me walk away; you've changed my life. you'll always have my heart. you're so damn beautiful. what do you mean, what do i want? i want you!
no one tells you what to do when it doesn't matter how you react, it doesn't matter what you do, when they walk away from you, time after time after time, and then some.
it doesn't matter if you fight their feelings, if you protest: i don't know if i can do this, i don't know what i want. and it doesn't matter if you don't, if your enthusiasm for them matches theirs for you every step of the way. i expect it doesn't matter if you're honest, if you reveal that what you feel for them goes above and beyond what they'll ever feel for you, either.
no one tells you what to do when your track record portfolio looks like a model casting, when the romantic moments in your life in the rain, in the middle of the night, in the dark and in the streets, screen like cinematic love stories. and when, yet, you still find yourself alone, left and hurt like a little kid, lying awake in the blackness just thinking: how? why? when? what did i do? what didn't i do? what the hell am i going to do?
nobody tells you what to do when your closest guy friend tells you that he's always been in love with you, always will be. and when, eventually, you fall in love with him, too. no one tells you how you're meant to react when it's too late. when you say i love you, and he says: i love you too, but i can't. when it's been right for him for so long, and right for you in ways you'd never have admitted to, and then, for him: suddenly: it's wrong. skewered, somehow. promises broken and dreams shifted. and you'll never know.
nobody tells you what to do when your friendships fall apart, when years pass and people change until your relationship is that of two ghosts. nobody tells you what to do when your best friend's mind is lost to drugs, when she becomes a senseless, desperate fruitcake. or what happens when you don't speak to your other best friend for one month of every two because no matter how much you try to understand each other, an enraged failing bubbles through, pinches below the belt, and erupts into circular arguments. and when your remaining best friend's relationship with you is glued together mostly by the damage you share.
when you worry that your friends could never be enough for you, that you'll never be enough for the life you crave and can't visualise, and that you'll never find somewhere, something, you can melt into as perfectly as everybody else seems to. meld into the formation of something real, like you were never absent in the first place. when you're just a lone, shaking sculpture. bending and twisting to try and be all these things we know you'll never be.
nobody tells you what to do when the right boys pile in, one to eight, trading ideas and secrets with you. when, instead of relationships, you just have blimps, things, dates. when you have to act, all the time, like somebody's wanted more than that from you, when they haven't. when you keep believing, because your rational mind's insane, that this time, it'll be different. it has to be. and then, of course, it isn't.
nobody tells you what to do when boys take you on grand-gesture dates, paying and slaying your inhibitions. when you have some of the best first dates anyone's ever had, the kind that starts off the most epic love stories. when you're both so aware of that, of the weight of what, it's emerged, you have together.
i could never sleep when i slept beside him. i couldn't allow myself to be that vulnerable. four evenings, and four long, long sets of eight, ten hours; i lay awake and listened to his breathing, watched a fly buzz around in perpendicular triangles, watched lightness seep into the room from behind the curtains. i was barely lucid in the morning, barely human. sometimes it had been days since i'd slept, knowing i'd see him.
he tossed me against walls in my kitchen, the same walls i'd left dents in where i smashed jars for the loss of my ex, friend and love, the summer before.
we spent hours in bars and pubs, in houses and gardens, under sheets, on balconies and in cars. talking, and laughing. "i've never laughed with anyone," he told me, "like i laugh with you." we talked of cabbages and kings, and i don't know what we didn't talk about.
and i asked him if the secret i'd told him would make him walk away, and he kissed me until i couldn't breathe: "does that answer your question? does it?"
i don't know why i asked; i had to know that it would happen anyway, sooner or later. i'd be a lot less smart than i like to think if i hadn't learnt that much by now.
but, honestly: i didn't know, i didn't.
and: it hurts.
when whatever you had fades as fast as twilight into the pitch black. when you can sense the rejection like a sonar beam, because it's so repetitive. exhaustingly repetitive. and when, because it seems like the logical next move, you turn the hate and disappointment inwards, pin your crushed dreams on the weaknesses that are as inherent in you as eye colour. until all you are is a gravestone of the loved and left, with lines cracking around your eyes, not sleeping or eating right, and utterly directionless. it's not so much that i don't have a direction i want to stumble towards, it's just that every direction i've committed to has blocked my path, dismantled my footing, so many times that all i'm committed to now is staying on the shore, trying to breathe.
everybody knows what the whole and supercharged and loved do when things take a downturn; suck up the losses, and plough into their next move. because things are never as bad as they seem, because you've got so much more in you. because we love you, and because you're everything.
and yet, nobody ever tells the ever-left, ever-rejected, ever-sad what their next move should be.
and... if paths are truly blocked, damages truly done. if there's too much to ever heal, really. if you simply can't be what everybody wishes you were, not because you don't wish it too, but because you just can't...
when you've been walked away from so many times, left out in the cold for too many nights, to ever really stand a chance anymore. because, even if there was someone out there that could handle the sort of damage you carry around with you, you've aptly proved your ability to push them away, anyway. and at this point, you're too broken a package to look like a case anyone could want to take on anymore...
and so: what now?
it's all suicide if i hide, because you are everywhere i look. you're in my skin. and i taste your neck and lips... just by breathing in.
you said: it's such a life to remember, so come away, and we'll sleep away december. lydia - december
i know there are stages of grief; i know there are steps to emotional recovery. but no-one tells you how you're meant to react when you've been knocked down so many times you'd be psychologically delusional if you didn't seriously consider if getting back up was really the way to go.
i know you're meant to suffer through break ups, to want and need and miss, and to not know what to do with the hole someone left when they fell out of your life and into the sky one day. i know that even if someone jerks you around like a rag doll, even if someone doesn't give you a second look because you couldn't grace a magazine spread, even if you get loved, hard, and left, you're meant to rise from the ashes like a co-dependent phoenix. you're meant to leave the users, the losers, the blind and unkind behind you, choking on your dust. because you're better. because they missed it. you're meant to recognise, eventually, that frogs are frogs, and when your prince comes along, saying all the right things and blowing you away with how easily they complete you, jigsaw-like.. you're meant to live happily, even if 'ever after' is a utopian stretch.
but no one tells you what to do when you can see through the frogs like glass, when you're smarter than you are self destructive, so that you don't make cut-and-dry choices and easily recognisable mistakes; when people make them, in fact, by being with you.
no one tells you what to do when the right boys walk into your life, beautiful and kind, and say the right things: i've never felt like this; nothing you could do could make me walk away; you've changed my life. you'll always have my heart. you're so damn beautiful. what do you mean, what do i want? i want you!
no one tells you what to do when it doesn't matter how you react, it doesn't matter what you do, when they walk away from you, time after time after time, and then some.
it doesn't matter if you fight their feelings, if you protest: i don't know if i can do this, i don't know what i want. and it doesn't matter if you don't, if your enthusiasm for them matches theirs for you every step of the way. i expect it doesn't matter if you're honest, if you reveal that what you feel for them goes above and beyond what they'll ever feel for you, either.
no one tells you what to do when your track record portfolio looks like a model casting, when the romantic moments in your life in the rain, in the middle of the night, in the dark and in the streets, screen like cinematic love stories. and when, yet, you still find yourself alone, left and hurt like a little kid, lying awake in the blackness just thinking: how? why? when? what did i do? what didn't i do? what the hell am i going to do?
nobody tells you what to do when your closest guy friend tells you that he's always been in love with you, always will be. and when, eventually, you fall in love with him, too. no one tells you how you're meant to react when it's too late. when you say i love you, and he says: i love you too, but i can't. when it's been right for him for so long, and right for you in ways you'd never have admitted to, and then, for him: suddenly: it's wrong. skewered, somehow. promises broken and dreams shifted. and you'll never know.
nobody tells you what to do when your friendships fall apart, when years pass and people change until your relationship is that of two ghosts. nobody tells you what to do when your best friend's mind is lost to drugs, when she becomes a senseless, desperate fruitcake. or what happens when you don't speak to your other best friend for one month of every two because no matter how much you try to understand each other, an enraged failing bubbles through, pinches below the belt, and erupts into circular arguments. and when your remaining best friend's relationship with you is glued together mostly by the damage you share.
when you worry that your friends could never be enough for you, that you'll never be enough for the life you crave and can't visualise, and that you'll never find somewhere, something, you can melt into as perfectly as everybody else seems to. meld into the formation of something real, like you were never absent in the first place. when you're just a lone, shaking sculpture. bending and twisting to try and be all these things we know you'll never be.
nobody tells you what to do when the right boys pile in, one to eight, trading ideas and secrets with you. when, instead of relationships, you just have blimps, things, dates. when you have to act, all the time, like somebody's wanted more than that from you, when they haven't. when you keep believing, because your rational mind's insane, that this time, it'll be different. it has to be. and then, of course, it isn't.
nobody tells you what to do when boys take you on grand-gesture dates, paying and slaying your inhibitions. when you have some of the best first dates anyone's ever had, the kind that starts off the most epic love stories. when you're both so aware of that, of the weight of what, it's emerged, you have together.
i could never sleep when i slept beside him. i couldn't allow myself to be that vulnerable. four evenings, and four long, long sets of eight, ten hours; i lay awake and listened to his breathing, watched a fly buzz around in perpendicular triangles, watched lightness seep into the room from behind the curtains. i was barely lucid in the morning, barely human. sometimes it had been days since i'd slept, knowing i'd see him.
he tossed me against walls in my kitchen, the same walls i'd left dents in where i smashed jars for the loss of my ex, friend and love, the summer before.
we spent hours in bars and pubs, in houses and gardens, under sheets, on balconies and in cars. talking, and laughing. "i've never laughed with anyone," he told me, "like i laugh with you." we talked of cabbages and kings, and i don't know what we didn't talk about.
and i asked him if the secret i'd told him would make him walk away, and he kissed me until i couldn't breathe: "does that answer your question? does it?"
i don't know why i asked; i had to know that it would happen anyway, sooner or later. i'd be a lot less smart than i like to think if i hadn't learnt that much by now.
but, honestly: i didn't know, i didn't.
and: it hurts.
when whatever you had fades as fast as twilight into the pitch black. when you can sense the rejection like a sonar beam, because it's so repetitive. exhaustingly repetitive. and when, because it seems like the logical next move, you turn the hate and disappointment inwards, pin your crushed dreams on the weaknesses that are as inherent in you as eye colour. until all you are is a gravestone of the loved and left, with lines cracking around your eyes, not sleeping or eating right, and utterly directionless. it's not so much that i don't have a direction i want to stumble towards, it's just that every direction i've committed to has blocked my path, dismantled my footing, so many times that all i'm committed to now is staying on the shore, trying to breathe.
everybody knows what the whole and supercharged and loved do when things take a downturn; suck up the losses, and plough into their next move. because things are never as bad as they seem, because you've got so much more in you. because we love you, and because you're everything.
and yet, nobody ever tells the ever-left, ever-rejected, ever-sad what their next move should be.
and... if paths are truly blocked, damages truly done. if there's too much to ever heal, really. if you simply can't be what everybody wishes you were, not because you don't wish it too, but because you just can't...
when you've been walked away from so many times, left out in the cold for too many nights, to ever really stand a chance anymore. because, even if there was someone out there that could handle the sort of damage you carry around with you, you've aptly proved your ability to push them away, anyway. and at this point, you're too broken a package to look like a case anyone could want to take on anymore...
and so: what now?
it's all suicide if i hide, because you are everywhere i look. you're in my skin. and i taste your neck and lips... just by breathing in.
you said: it's such a life to remember, so come away, and we'll sleep away december. lydia - december
- Touch (0)
- Bang (0)
it's been such a long time coming, i thought you'd understand
"i know you thought i sold my soul, but you never said it to my face... i just had to leave you cold, blow this shit away."
i met someone recently: tall, a smile that reached his eyes. and while we were talking, the world disappeared. i was vaguely aware of my best friend to my right, murmuring to another girl about how oblivious he and i had become, but we were laughing too hard, sharing too much and being too young and too smart for our own damn good to notice. and then, before either of us knew what was happening, we were being moved to another pub where a boy, the boy: my ex, my ex best friend, my other half and my worst enemy... was, just sitting, and drinking.
"you like him, don't you?" said my best friend of the boy i'd just met; she can take one look at my eyes and see into my soul, i swear to you.
i said, "no." i said, "yes." i said, "shit, i can't handle seeing this guy at the best of times, and you're right, and oh shit, i can't handle this..."
"what the hell did you just say to me?" said the tall, smart boy to my shorter, girlish ex-everything.
and: he cowered. i'm standing a few feet away, blinking dazedly, drunkenly, watching it happening. he'd been cowering all night, looking hard at me, and looking anywhere but me. whispering to his friends, standing by himself when they spoke to me, with this angry, miserable look on this face i'll never forget, like confusion, like history. as i flirted with this boy, flirted hard and deliberately because i won't spare an ounce of energy if he's in the same room, talked, smoked, laughed with this good-looking, confident boy who's probably not like anybody he's ever really known.
and he cowered. "nothing, man. i didn't say anything. i didn't say anything." he submitted, he lied, and then he left.
and every time i see him.
look, i've changed. i'm not scared anymore. i'm not scared, because everything i was scared of happening has happened, and i'm still here, and laughing every day. i've changed because i've met every kind of person, taken every kind of risk, and i'm braver because i had to throw all my insecurities to the wind and become swept up in being myself, in a city full of other selves. other selves who don't hate me, who think bright superlatives of me. other selves i refuse to be intimidated by; the most beautiful girls straight out of glossy magazines, who accept me into their ranks, the most beautiful boys who put their arms around me, because i'm too brave and too smart to let on that all i am, really, is damaged, awkward, and afraid.
all i was, really.
all i've been.
so every time i see him. i'm laughing, and i'm making bright, friendly conversation with all these people i was so scared of last year, after he ruined me for them; i'm laughing, and i'm running around the place, spinning everyone into thinking i'm different. different to how they thought of me, and maybe different to how i am. the latter worries me more, because he knows who i am, presuming that it's also who i was... and he'll be able to tell if i've sold my soul, or am just everything he always knew i could be.
"do you want to do this again?" said the tall, pretty boy, gently, after. "with more flowers, and dinner, and that sort of thing?"
and i wasn't surprised, but a part of me was, and still is, shocked, and quietly bemused.
"if you're going to bring him," i told a boy i knew, about a month ago, and about a week before all this, "i'm going to bring her, and we'll have a great, awkward time all round."
the most immediate image that comes to mind to explain this is last summer, and a double bed. the boy i was talking to is on top of one of my best friends, head buried and bobbing in her neck, and his best friend, who proceeded to end our summer of hooking up a week later, kissing me, almost like he meant it.
so, twenty-four hours later a month ago, he's there, with a drink in his hand; his best friend, hair a little longer, sits down in front of me and makes my heart ache.
and, four hours later, four hours of unnatural civility towards him and a little necessary overfriendliness towards everybody else, he's next to me, after i forced his arm off my shoulder hissing with pent up energy "don't touch me", and he's just talking, and talking.
"i made a mistake. everybody said, what are you doing, and i don't know, i don't know what i was doing... i really liked you; you were the best part of my summer; i haven't been able to eat all day, knowing i was going to see you, i've had butterflies, i've been so... i couldn't handle it, i liked someone else and that's why i did it, but i knew i'd made a mistake, i just... i liked you, i did like you, i do now." and he starts kissing my shoulders, my neck, reaches my mouth.
i got up. walked away. i couldn't not; he walked away from me, i had to have a moment, my single moment, where i walked away from him.
i came back.
i think i yelled. he says i yelled. i don't remember. i kissed him, eventually, after i was done yelling at him, hitting him. i kissed him because i was angry, because i was so relieved, because i still cared, and because none of my feelings had changed.
a few days later, we found ourselves on his sofa at three in the morning on my nineteenth birthday, stretched out on opposite ends, holding hands. "i don't like feeling vulnerable," he said, hesitantly, after i'd spent hours getting water out of an emotionless nineteen year old stone. "and i'm just going to say it: you're really, really hot, i never thought you'd go for me, i never thought you'd like me. and after what happened, i thought you hated me."
i said, "i never hated you."
he said, "i know, but in my eyes, you don't like me, you never did, and everything i do wrong is another reason for you to not like me."
i nearly kissed him, but i needed to know, so i just asked, "how could you possibly think that?"
he looked at me, looking like he'd never told anyone quite so much before, and just said, "i choose to think that. i don't like being vulnerable."
so i kissed him, hard, to tell him what i couldn't, because i didn't have time to push past his tornado of haphazard emotions to begin to address mine. took his head in my hands, and kissed him, and let him kiss me back, because that's as vulnerable as he's ever going to let himself become.
i left to go back to university in the morning. he calls me when he's been drinking, though he never says much; slurs through voicemails, talks about what bothers him. i can't tell you how he feels about me, or how i feel about him. i can't tell you if we miss each other, or want one another. there's an understanding, an odd, poignant understanding, that we still have, and still don't know how to explain, or if it's worth a damn thing.
i like someone here, too, i think. i think. i liked someone else, a beautiful, poetic type who took me on twelve hours of dates, tearfully declared he was wrecked, ruined and screwed up, and has been looking through me ever since. recently, he's been twisted around a bone thin redhead. it hurt, so i kissed someone, and then someone else. one of them asked to get to know me better, but i was hung up on the wannabe wordsworth, and i'm sure it showed. i was comatose-level drunk most of the times he saw me, which can't have helped. the other i've continued to kiss, to my surprise, and only recently has it occured to me that this could be something, that i could actually like him, that he could be worth something. of course, as soon as this occured to me, as soon as he started asking me about past relationships, real feelings and sexual experience, i went cold. i think i hit him, and we definitely argued. i was drunk, and... i don't know. eventually, i took his face and kissed him, because i meant it, because there are things i can't say because i don't want to get hurt again, and just because i wanted to kiss him. but i wish i could have held myself a little better, acted as though i was a little less damaged, a little more sober. i think i might have ruined it, because that's probably what happens when you start to abuse, start to argue with, somebody you've kissed for just four nights, someone who you don't know the first thing about.
but, like i said. i'm bemused by all this, impressed, but utterly confused. after seven hard hitting rejections and endless aching, after the car crash that is my relationship with my parents, and the hell that was this last school year, i can't help thinking that these people have got the wrong person. every time someone calls me beautiful, every time i realize that this life is coming to look like something i'm proud of. my best friends here, who are beautiful, hilarious, and utterly adorable, and every time they tell me they love me. all the people here who think i'm worth something, who want me, tell me what they love about me, all the beautiful boys that kiss me. the shiny, magazine cover girls who seem genuinely pleased to see me. me? seriously? i'm damaged, scary damaged, awkward, and i think i could be acting a lot of the time. and every time someone acts like i'm worth a damn thing, i think they're wrong about me; every time they don't, i respect them for being right.
"i know you thought i sold my soul..." - pendulum
i met someone recently: tall, a smile that reached his eyes. and while we were talking, the world disappeared. i was vaguely aware of my best friend to my right, murmuring to another girl about how oblivious he and i had become, but we were laughing too hard, sharing too much and being too young and too smart for our own damn good to notice. and then, before either of us knew what was happening, we were being moved to another pub where a boy, the boy: my ex, my ex best friend, my other half and my worst enemy... was, just sitting, and drinking.
"you like him, don't you?" said my best friend of the boy i'd just met; she can take one look at my eyes and see into my soul, i swear to you.
i said, "no." i said, "yes." i said, "shit, i can't handle seeing this guy at the best of times, and you're right, and oh shit, i can't handle this..."
"what the hell did you just say to me?" said the tall, smart boy to my shorter, girlish ex-everything.
and: he cowered. i'm standing a few feet away, blinking dazedly, drunkenly, watching it happening. he'd been cowering all night, looking hard at me, and looking anywhere but me. whispering to his friends, standing by himself when they spoke to me, with this angry, miserable look on this face i'll never forget, like confusion, like history. as i flirted with this boy, flirted hard and deliberately because i won't spare an ounce of energy if he's in the same room, talked, smoked, laughed with this good-looking, confident boy who's probably not like anybody he's ever really known.
and he cowered. "nothing, man. i didn't say anything. i didn't say anything." he submitted, he lied, and then he left.
and every time i see him.
look, i've changed. i'm not scared anymore. i'm not scared, because everything i was scared of happening has happened, and i'm still here, and laughing every day. i've changed because i've met every kind of person, taken every kind of risk, and i'm braver because i had to throw all my insecurities to the wind and become swept up in being myself, in a city full of other selves. other selves who don't hate me, who think bright superlatives of me. other selves i refuse to be intimidated by; the most beautiful girls straight out of glossy magazines, who accept me into their ranks, the most beautiful boys who put their arms around me, because i'm too brave and too smart to let on that all i am, really, is damaged, awkward, and afraid.
all i was, really.
all i've been.
so every time i see him. i'm laughing, and i'm making bright, friendly conversation with all these people i was so scared of last year, after he ruined me for them; i'm laughing, and i'm running around the place, spinning everyone into thinking i'm different. different to how they thought of me, and maybe different to how i am. the latter worries me more, because he knows who i am, presuming that it's also who i was... and he'll be able to tell if i've sold my soul, or am just everything he always knew i could be.
"do you want to do this again?" said the tall, pretty boy, gently, after. "with more flowers, and dinner, and that sort of thing?"
and i wasn't surprised, but a part of me was, and still is, shocked, and quietly bemused.
"if you're going to bring him," i told a boy i knew, about a month ago, and about a week before all this, "i'm going to bring her, and we'll have a great, awkward time all round."
the most immediate image that comes to mind to explain this is last summer, and a double bed. the boy i was talking to is on top of one of my best friends, head buried and bobbing in her neck, and his best friend, who proceeded to end our summer of hooking up a week later, kissing me, almost like he meant it.
so, twenty-four hours later a month ago, he's there, with a drink in his hand; his best friend, hair a little longer, sits down in front of me and makes my heart ache.
and, four hours later, four hours of unnatural civility towards him and a little necessary overfriendliness towards everybody else, he's next to me, after i forced his arm off my shoulder hissing with pent up energy "don't touch me", and he's just talking, and talking.
"i made a mistake. everybody said, what are you doing, and i don't know, i don't know what i was doing... i really liked you; you were the best part of my summer; i haven't been able to eat all day, knowing i was going to see you, i've had butterflies, i've been so... i couldn't handle it, i liked someone else and that's why i did it, but i knew i'd made a mistake, i just... i liked you, i did like you, i do now." and he starts kissing my shoulders, my neck, reaches my mouth.
i got up. walked away. i couldn't not; he walked away from me, i had to have a moment, my single moment, where i walked away from him.
i came back.
i think i yelled. he says i yelled. i don't remember. i kissed him, eventually, after i was done yelling at him, hitting him. i kissed him because i was angry, because i was so relieved, because i still cared, and because none of my feelings had changed.
a few days later, we found ourselves on his sofa at three in the morning on my nineteenth birthday, stretched out on opposite ends, holding hands. "i don't like feeling vulnerable," he said, hesitantly, after i'd spent hours getting water out of an emotionless nineteen year old stone. "and i'm just going to say it: you're really, really hot, i never thought you'd go for me, i never thought you'd like me. and after what happened, i thought you hated me."
i said, "i never hated you."
he said, "i know, but in my eyes, you don't like me, you never did, and everything i do wrong is another reason for you to not like me."
i nearly kissed him, but i needed to know, so i just asked, "how could you possibly think that?"
he looked at me, looking like he'd never told anyone quite so much before, and just said, "i choose to think that. i don't like being vulnerable."
so i kissed him, hard, to tell him what i couldn't, because i didn't have time to push past his tornado of haphazard emotions to begin to address mine. took his head in my hands, and kissed him, and let him kiss me back, because that's as vulnerable as he's ever going to let himself become.
i left to go back to university in the morning. he calls me when he's been drinking, though he never says much; slurs through voicemails, talks about what bothers him. i can't tell you how he feels about me, or how i feel about him. i can't tell you if we miss each other, or want one another. there's an understanding, an odd, poignant understanding, that we still have, and still don't know how to explain, or if it's worth a damn thing.
i like someone here, too, i think. i think. i liked someone else, a beautiful, poetic type who took me on twelve hours of dates, tearfully declared he was wrecked, ruined and screwed up, and has been looking through me ever since. recently, he's been twisted around a bone thin redhead. it hurt, so i kissed someone, and then someone else. one of them asked to get to know me better, but i was hung up on the wannabe wordsworth, and i'm sure it showed. i was comatose-level drunk most of the times he saw me, which can't have helped. the other i've continued to kiss, to my surprise, and only recently has it occured to me that this could be something, that i could actually like him, that he could be worth something. of course, as soon as this occured to me, as soon as he started asking me about past relationships, real feelings and sexual experience, i went cold. i think i hit him, and we definitely argued. i was drunk, and... i don't know. eventually, i took his face and kissed him, because i meant it, because there are things i can't say because i don't want to get hurt again, and just because i wanted to kiss him. but i wish i could have held myself a little better, acted as though i was a little less damaged, a little more sober. i think i might have ruined it, because that's probably what happens when you start to abuse, start to argue with, somebody you've kissed for just four nights, someone who you don't know the first thing about.
but, like i said. i'm bemused by all this, impressed, but utterly confused. after seven hard hitting rejections and endless aching, after the car crash that is my relationship with my parents, and the hell that was this last school year, i can't help thinking that these people have got the wrong person. every time someone calls me beautiful, every time i realize that this life is coming to look like something i'm proud of. my best friends here, who are beautiful, hilarious, and utterly adorable, and every time they tell me they love me. all the people here who think i'm worth something, who want me, tell me what they love about me, all the beautiful boys that kiss me. the shiny, magazine cover girls who seem genuinely pleased to see me. me? seriously? i'm damaged, scary damaged, awkward, and i think i could be acting a lot of the time. and every time someone acts like i'm worth a damn thing, i think they're wrong about me; every time they don't, i respect them for being right.
"i know you thought i sold my soul..." - pendulum
- Touch (0)
- Bang (0)
i dealt with this years ago; i took a hammer to every memento. but image on image, like beads on a rosary, pull through my head as the music takes hold: and the sickener hits: i can work til i break, ...
...but i love the bones of you; that, i will never escape.
people skip in and out of my life, throw themselves around, leave an impression. sometimes there's too much to forgive, ever, really. sometimes we know, all along, that we were never built to last. sometimes we fade, sometimes they scarper, and sometimes i do. sometimes, they leave a mark.and these marks, in truth, are scattered all over me; i wear them like war wounds. i don't know what else i am, or who i was unscathed. i don't remember a time where i wasn't scarred, in honesty. further back than i can remember, i lost something, and it took me until i was eighteen to ever really, truly realize. to know what i now know. the truth is a keystone, the missing part of a jigsaw; it stayed hard to find, it's still hard to know, but i know, all the time, that: i'm damaged, i'm hurt and i have been for a long, long time. and it's time i fought the hell back.
when i was younger, i lived underneath the pain. i gave in to it; i curled up and allowed it to destroy me. i was so young, and i was hit full in the face with the kind of dismembering, shell-shocking, gasping, gaping pain that nobody should have to know, for this long, for those reasons. i dragged myself through months. i kept breathing. i found refuge in starving myself, in hurting myself, in silencing myself. i was young, we were all so young, and i'd watch these girls flitting around me, tossing their lithe selves around the city, and i'd think: really, did you ever hurt at all? how could you ever, really, understand me, me who will never be able to find what i need, will never be able to regain what i've lost, take back these scars, these terrible marks?
but sometimes i forgot, too. sometimes, nights when towns became circuit boards and shiny eyes told me i was everything, and days when i mattered, i forgot. i lived like i was good at it; loved like i'd never hurt; danced like i meant it. people believed me, for those moments. i believed it. and yet, eventually, always, things came back to me and i was unhappy; lonely; afraid. i hurt people; i hurt myself. i was always so slightly lost, so half alive. sometimes, not alive at all.
i fell in love, twice, when i was at school. okay, more than twice, but i'll only admit to two; the others were juvenile, redundant.
once was a love story, a short story, a beautiful, tragic story (i was tragic; he was beautiful); he was well on the way to becoming my best friend, the best part of me. i was frightened, and clumsy with his feelings. what we had, it emerged in the year after he ended it, didn't happen anywhere else, with anyone else. it tore holes out of me; loving him and losing him was hard enough, but the depth of the loss of him suffocated me for months after. the second time i fell in love, it was with a boy who'd known me for years; liked me for years; a boy i'd devalued and used, but appreciated and come to rely on as somebody who would always be there. one day, i forced him so far away that he never came back. i told him i loved him, and he told me he loved me, too, always would, but: he never came back.
i saw him last night; we haven't spoken, at all, in six months now. he's older, but no different. he would probably say the same about me. i made peace with our separation a long time ago; i took a hammer to the lingering dreams, and moved three hundred miles away. last night, around him, i was laughing, and tossing myself around the city; i don't need saving anymore, and that's when i knew, bittersweet knowing, that: i live without him, i have and will continue to, but that i love him, and i miss him, and i don't know if i'll ever stop.
recently, i met someone i could have fallen in love with. he took me on a first date, and, a week later, to a different city for nine hours of a second date. the boy breathes words, cliches. i told him things, a lot of things, in twelve hours of walking, of talking, of secret smiles. we talked of philosophy, literature, music; of life, and people. something in the air went cold, late in the day, and i knew. not how, or why, but i knew: this wasn't going to... i saw it coming, but it hurt like hell when he ended it. it hurt like hell having to see him in class three days a week. it hurt like hell when he looked through me, when it rained that day and i missed him, it hurt wondering if he even remembered my name. he texted me a couple of days ago, a month after all this, in a club: you're here, how have you been? my reply came twelve hours later, after avoiding him all evening. it was curt, and short. i think he's breathtaking, but i don't think what he did was fair, any of it. and i refuse to submit to pain, anymore; i refuse to sacrifice my self-respect and live under it, the kind of girl you can half murder and she'll come running back.
because i'm nearly nineteen, and i refuse to live my life in pain, or afraid of pain, any longer. i refuse to spend more years of my life missing people who i loved, and lost. i'm an optimist because i know none of this can damage you so much you won't recover; because i see the brightness in what happened, because i've spend so much time with the darkness i've learnt to avoid it. i'm inspired by the love that came before the loss; the connections that pre empted the heartbreak. i'm supported by my best friends, who know it all, know every side of me, and continue to love me, and i them. i refuse to live for anybody anymore; to use pain as my energy, and thus not allow it to leave. i refuse to let it hold me back anymore. i may never be as blithe or as carefree as the girls who continue to amaze me with their supplies of backbone and expectations of love that i was never given; i may never be someone who is happy all the time. i will never speak easily, dance smoothly, or love without qualms. and i hope i can find another person who will love that about me, but in the meantime: i want to be someone who lives for everything, not a single person; someone who fights pain, who rises above it to become better, and more. someone who isn't afraid, someone who truly lives, and someone who isn't alone.
- Touch (0)
- Bang (0)
if you don't want to be with me, just say, and i will go.
i can't be everything you want, but i'll spend night after dimly lit night trying to make you fall for all that i am.
laughing at myself is something i adopted as a mechanism to deal with things that would otherwise shatter me. and it's that that hurts most, sometimes, when heads fold into arms, palms slap against walls and tears soak fabric, the fact that i'm going to have to get up in the morning and laugh about this. shrug my shoulders, turn up the corners of my mouth and say, "what are you gonna do, you know? whatever, it's fine, it doesn't matter..."
he told me, you seem like not much gets you down.
weeks ago, we lay in his bed, his bed with ghosts in it, and he told me he couldn't kiss me any more, and made excuses that became lies, and after i laughed, calmed him, said: relax, it's okay, it's not a big deal, he said... you don't even care that much, do you? you don't seem like much gets you down; you're not that girl, are you?
and i didn't tell him, of course i didn't tell him, that i felt sick, and broken, and tearful, and confused, and lost, and left. i didn't tell him that not much gets you down after you learn to deal with everything destroying you, everything all the time.
out of principle and necessity, i don't have a shell; i'll only put up walls if i believe you can break them. i'm a lover and a whore, stubbornly independent and achingly needy, rich and poor in love and friends all at once. i won't tell you my life story, but i'll show you my scars, and tell you the stories. and we'll stay up through the night, because the world's gone to shit and our lives have fallen apart, with the odd, old, poignant stories, the ones that'll immortalise us as we were in that moment, immortalise every reason for every second that we laughed. all the things that time washed away with the rain; the raisons d'etre that we'll forget, and only return to when the gap between who we were and who were are becomes so spacious we wind up alone, cold, in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, missing, and wondering.
they said, i'll take you for everything you are. and i know, i know they gave up in the end, that i pushed them away, and made it too hard, but sometimes i think: just excuses, just lies, just because it's too hard to say: no more, there's too much, and you're not enough, you're not worth it.
he said, always. he said, i love you for all that you are, i always will. and i told him everything. and he knew everything. my family; my best friends; my darkest times; my dumbest moments. and oh, my boy, i missed you so much.
i blame him for a hundred things, but never for giving up. he loved me the hardest, fought back the longest, but, in the end, he gave up. he left me, too, even though he'd promised he wouldn't, but god love him for trying. and now he hates the feelings he had, because they made him kiss me, which led to his girlfriend breaking up with him. and he loves his ex girlfriend, and he knows it's not rational to hate me for what happened, but i don't think he can help it.
it got easier when he stopped loving me. harder, of course, and it cut sharp as a blade, but still: easier. because once he gave up, i could. i have, i think. and so, we said goodbye, five in the morning, cold and hungover. i said: i really, really loved you, and he said: i did, too. and then, he walked away.
the other boy, the boy who put ghosts in that bed with me, he said: when i like a girl, i'll do anything to avoid those feelings. i haven't felt much in two years, and that's the way i want it. and he pulled me in, and pushed me away. talked for three hours, and then cancelled plans. said, from the moment i saw you... and then, ignored me when i walked past. kissed me like he meant it, held me like he cared, and then looked at me like he didn't. and he warned me, and told me about other girls he'd talked himself out of and treated badly, but i still, stupidly, trustingly, just didn't expect him to say: i can't, not anymore, not with you. and then he, too, walked away.
when university started, i made up my mind to keep them out of my dreams, but i underestimated how much i needed something to hold on to. it's everything here, everything all the time, and there's opportunity in every minute, something every day that can save me. i'm grateful for it, every day. i'm proud of myself, most days. it's been a month, and it's not everything i want, but it feels like: if i can do this right, if i can sort it all out, it really could be. i could have everything i ever wanted, here. i just, don't know if i could be enough; if any of it could be.
i met a boy one night last week, someone friendly, and funny. i approached the friendship with something approaching weariness: another average-looking friendly boy who would use the word 'friends' as an excuse to get drunk and toss himself at my mouth. but, he didn't. we'd just talk. endessly and quietly, so my flatmates wouldn't hear us and try to join in, about my family; his; our exes; sex and love. inside jokes and lying on each other. i realized that i missed him when he wasn't there; that something inside me went a little haywire when someone said his name. he kept coming over; i tripped over words, blushed fiercely and looked him straight in the eye, but: nothing. i struggled to figure out if this was friendship, if he was apprehensive, unavailable or just uninterested. i don't think i've ever liked anyone i haven't spent blurry nights glued to the mouth of; why is it that him holding me is enough for me to think of us as something more than friends?
last night, i met him in a club, drank myself into anhedonia and, when he made more effort with a blonde stranger than me, promptly let his friend kiss me. he was about a foot away at the time.
it's a little comforting that even at university, some things just don't change. this isn't the first time i've done this; the second, third or fourth, even, if i'm being honest.
he helped me walk in a straight line for a while, and when we got lost i basically told him to fuck off, that i'd be fine (that's the independent streak).
and, he walked away.
i picked up my phone and called him, and said "okay, you win. i'm lost. come back." (that's the needy bit.)
and he did,
but...
he walked away.
of course he did.
and, you laugh, you have to. i laugh about these boys, my boys, being gay, being idiots; i laugh about hating them; i laugh about their sociopathic tendencies and the funny stories we lived, words you won't forget and lakes we shouldn't have stripped off and swam in. i've been rejected, i've been blatantly, flagrantly and achingly walked away from, three times in the past five weeks, and maybe it doesn't even matter why; maybe it's the walking away that counts, because regardless of whatever i've done to cause it, nobody has ever not walked away from me, not really.
and so, he's right, not much gets me down; you learn to deal with everything all at once, the tragedy and the irony and the false starts and endless endings, and you keep smiling, and then you find yourself hating the look in your eyes of your reflection, the false grins and empty laughter, and wondering what happened between who you used to be, and what you've become.
if someone took a picture now, they'd need to be told... that we had ever held on tight, and maybe not with arms at night... and now we're unrelated, and rid of all the shit we hated, but i hate when i feel like this, and i never hated you.
poke - frightened rabbit
laughing at myself is something i adopted as a mechanism to deal with things that would otherwise shatter me. and it's that that hurts most, sometimes, when heads fold into arms, palms slap against walls and tears soak fabric, the fact that i'm going to have to get up in the morning and laugh about this. shrug my shoulders, turn up the corners of my mouth and say, "what are you gonna do, you know? whatever, it's fine, it doesn't matter..."
he told me, you seem like not much gets you down.
weeks ago, we lay in his bed, his bed with ghosts in it, and he told me he couldn't kiss me any more, and made excuses that became lies, and after i laughed, calmed him, said: relax, it's okay, it's not a big deal, he said... you don't even care that much, do you? you don't seem like much gets you down; you're not that girl, are you?
and i didn't tell him, of course i didn't tell him, that i felt sick, and broken, and tearful, and confused, and lost, and left. i didn't tell him that not much gets you down after you learn to deal with everything destroying you, everything all the time.
out of principle and necessity, i don't have a shell; i'll only put up walls if i believe you can break them. i'm a lover and a whore, stubbornly independent and achingly needy, rich and poor in love and friends all at once. i won't tell you my life story, but i'll show you my scars, and tell you the stories. and we'll stay up through the night, because the world's gone to shit and our lives have fallen apart, with the odd, old, poignant stories, the ones that'll immortalise us as we were in that moment, immortalise every reason for every second that we laughed. all the things that time washed away with the rain; the raisons d'etre that we'll forget, and only return to when the gap between who we were and who were are becomes so spacious we wind up alone, cold, in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, missing, and wondering.
they said, i'll take you for everything you are. and i know, i know they gave up in the end, that i pushed them away, and made it too hard, but sometimes i think: just excuses, just lies, just because it's too hard to say: no more, there's too much, and you're not enough, you're not worth it.
he said, always. he said, i love you for all that you are, i always will. and i told him everything. and he knew everything. my family; my best friends; my darkest times; my dumbest moments. and oh, my boy, i missed you so much.
i blame him for a hundred things, but never for giving up. he loved me the hardest, fought back the longest, but, in the end, he gave up. he left me, too, even though he'd promised he wouldn't, but god love him for trying. and now he hates the feelings he had, because they made him kiss me, which led to his girlfriend breaking up with him. and he loves his ex girlfriend, and he knows it's not rational to hate me for what happened, but i don't think he can help it.
it got easier when he stopped loving me. harder, of course, and it cut sharp as a blade, but still: easier. because once he gave up, i could. i have, i think. and so, we said goodbye, five in the morning, cold and hungover. i said: i really, really loved you, and he said: i did, too. and then, he walked away.
the other boy, the boy who put ghosts in that bed with me, he said: when i like a girl, i'll do anything to avoid those feelings. i haven't felt much in two years, and that's the way i want it. and he pulled me in, and pushed me away. talked for three hours, and then cancelled plans. said, from the moment i saw you... and then, ignored me when i walked past. kissed me like he meant it, held me like he cared, and then looked at me like he didn't. and he warned me, and told me about other girls he'd talked himself out of and treated badly, but i still, stupidly, trustingly, just didn't expect him to say: i can't, not anymore, not with you. and then he, too, walked away.
when university started, i made up my mind to keep them out of my dreams, but i underestimated how much i needed something to hold on to. it's everything here, everything all the time, and there's opportunity in every minute, something every day that can save me. i'm grateful for it, every day. i'm proud of myself, most days. it's been a month, and it's not everything i want, but it feels like: if i can do this right, if i can sort it all out, it really could be. i could have everything i ever wanted, here. i just, don't know if i could be enough; if any of it could be.
i met a boy one night last week, someone friendly, and funny. i approached the friendship with something approaching weariness: another average-looking friendly boy who would use the word 'friends' as an excuse to get drunk and toss himself at my mouth. but, he didn't. we'd just talk. endessly and quietly, so my flatmates wouldn't hear us and try to join in, about my family; his; our exes; sex and love. inside jokes and lying on each other. i realized that i missed him when he wasn't there; that something inside me went a little haywire when someone said his name. he kept coming over; i tripped over words, blushed fiercely and looked him straight in the eye, but: nothing. i struggled to figure out if this was friendship, if he was apprehensive, unavailable or just uninterested. i don't think i've ever liked anyone i haven't spent blurry nights glued to the mouth of; why is it that him holding me is enough for me to think of us as something more than friends?
last night, i met him in a club, drank myself into anhedonia and, when he made more effort with a blonde stranger than me, promptly let his friend kiss me. he was about a foot away at the time.
it's a little comforting that even at university, some things just don't change. this isn't the first time i've done this; the second, third or fourth, even, if i'm being honest.
he helped me walk in a straight line for a while, and when we got lost i basically told him to fuck off, that i'd be fine (that's the independent streak).
and, he walked away.
i picked up my phone and called him, and said "okay, you win. i'm lost. come back." (that's the needy bit.)
and he did,
but...
he walked away.
of course he did.
and, you laugh, you have to. i laugh about these boys, my boys, being gay, being idiots; i laugh about hating them; i laugh about their sociopathic tendencies and the funny stories we lived, words you won't forget and lakes we shouldn't have stripped off and swam in. i've been rejected, i've been blatantly, flagrantly and achingly walked away from, three times in the past five weeks, and maybe it doesn't even matter why; maybe it's the walking away that counts, because regardless of whatever i've done to cause it, nobody has ever not walked away from me, not really.
and so, he's right, not much gets me down; you learn to deal with everything all at once, the tragedy and the irony and the false starts and endless endings, and you keep smiling, and then you find yourself hating the look in your eyes of your reflection, the false grins and empty laughter, and wondering what happened between who you used to be, and what you've become.
if someone took a picture now, they'd need to be told... that we had ever held on tight, and maybe not with arms at night... and now we're unrelated, and rid of all the shit we hated, but i hate when i feel like this, and i never hated you.
poke - frightened rabbit
- Touch (0)
- Bang (0)
guestbook
Fri.02.12.10 4:55pm
Re: and i ran off, and ran on, to something... that i swore was everything, but beautiful. i only say that word for you.
:) you're amazing! I don't really know what else to say... :)
Sun.02.07.10 7:35am
Re: and i ran off, and ran on, to something... that i swore was everything, but beautiful. i only say that word for you.
Manchester Orchestra!! Ahh... love.
Fri.02.05.10 11:14pm
Re: leave notes behind the paintings in dirty motels, explaining why you can't, why you can't
I adored this post from the get go. You have received all of my touches <3
xingmyheartout
About Me
in a world where you can be anything, be yourself
Real Name:jocelyn
Birthday:
Apr 27 1990
Disposition:
dysfunctional
Sex?:
anybody?
Folders
| public |
public |
| chicken bones |
public |
| twenty nine years |
public |
Statistics
Today:
| Hits | 3 |
All Time:
| Bangs | 23 |
| Banged | 44 |
| Posts | 36 |
| Gspots | 161 |
| Hits | 1,389 |
| Touches | 7 |
| Touched | 6 |
| Karma | 525 |
Details
| Joined | Apr.07.07 |
| Online | Mar.17.10 |
Wow, you write so beautiful, thank you