You deserve
and yet it is
painful reminder
dialogue unspoken.

Asterisk mark next to
belief
holding space for
retraction.

I fear for you.
I love you.

Knowing things
aren't so clear
quite blurry actually
taken aback by reality.

Terrified of a potential
as yet unfulfilled
looming.

Staring at you
taunting its own presence
as an absence.

Holding places
in the curves of your
cheeks
the dilated pupils
of your mouth
crevices so deep
still all too
shallow
to see anything
clearly.

She made

dialogues

made vacuous by

repetition never

fulfilling them

selves. I can’t

seem to reconcile

what is

what think it might

be.

He makes

palindromes of

sexuality read it

backwards and

forwards

the same

way.

Everyone is

making

big mistakes and

littler white lies

whited out

truths

dried in

air conditioning

melted again back

down down down to

tears in heat shallow

breathing.

We make ourselves

inflections

of voices a whole

world embodied in one

body

too many bodies

anybody out there?

She makes peach

pie lips fuzzy soft

sweet sing song words

giving her soul cavities for their

sugar.

He made promises

of cherry pit stomachs turned

rancid before

could even step

out the door.

We all make

too much

and

create so much

and

wish so much

and

want so much

and

repeat so much

her dialogues

made fluffy soft landings

for the crushing blow

of what the

connections always

turn out

to be.

I don't have anything to write about.
Empty inside and out.
Not really though.

Imagery pops in my head
soap bubble phrases
catacomb caterpillars
kaleidoscoping wings
butterflie tangerine taste
gossamer
blah blah blah.

Nothing to think about.
Confusion.
Aggression.

So tired, wired wide awake.
Afraid
of my own head
Tired.
Instead sleep,
or don't.

I love you.
Even tho
I know it hurts you
when i write this.

Through your Eyes

You say "I love you"

In my head I am asking "Why?!"

Instead I say "I love you too"

And I do. I really do.

I look back on the last year and wonder at how far I've come from where I was and how little acknowledgement I still don't give myself.

A year ago I was engulfed by my demons and couldn't even imagine a way out. 

I am lying in your bed wrapped in your arms.

"I just wish the voices would stop. I'm so sad."

There is so much more I wish to say, to pull you into my self-hatred, my depression, begging you to pull me out so I don't have to, begging you to save me while I secretly dig myself deeper for the sake of something I don't even truly believe in anymore.

Instead I let you hold me. I pull you closer.

I ask myself what I am feeling, how to get through it. All that responds is an angry, insidious voice I've gotten to know all too well. A voice which just repeats the same boring horrible things over and over again. I am so tired of this voice.

I think about what I've been aspiring towards-- Trust, Freedom from Guilt and Envy, Compassion. I get angry because those concepts seem so distant in this moment, angry because their palpability comes and goes and doesn't seem to stay. Angry because I've been in therapy so long that introspection is almost more of a hinderance than a guide.

suddenly it dawns on me.

Maybe the person I can trust, if not myself, is you, them, those, who see me the way I've only glimpsed myself as. Maybe freedom from guilt can come as catharsis through the forgiveness of all these people who love me. Maybe, just maybe, for now I can see love for me in your eyes and have that be enough. Maybe, this time, I don't have to destroy your image of me because I can't reconcile it's existence with my convictions of what everyone else should see me as.

Maybe, just maybe, it's time to start seeing myself the way you see me instead of fighting to change your eyes. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to start letting go of my own skewed vision.

I am afraid, apathetic, judgmental, angry, depressed.

I am also loving, creative, thoughtful, brave, and beautiful.

I ruminate over my lying next to you. You couldn't say more to my words except that you love me no matter what.

Maybe it's time I start allowing that to be enough. 

No more fighting against you about me and making my emotions the center of everyone's fears and worries. No more ruminating endlessly.

Maybe it's time I start trusting that every single person who loves me is wrong. 

It is evening now. Dark. I am afraid to be alone with myself, afraid for you to leave, even more afraid of my inability to be alone. Afraid you've 'missed the point' or that you 'don't care', but that's the voice talking because we kiss and you ask me,

"Please try to be nice to yourself"

And in that tiny sentence, I know you understand and hear me as much as you are capable and that I deserve what you say. That being kind to myself isn't about just me, its about us, my family, life.

In that tiny sentence the voice finds faults--

'why would you?', 'he doesn't really care', 'he doesn't know you like I do'

In that single sentence I hear 'I love you for trying' and 'you matter to me'

and maybe, for now, the most powerful way I can be nice to myself,

is to see myself the way you do.

No more doubt, no more questioning, no more denying,

just acceptance, however insurmountable that may seem.

Anxiety's a fickle creature

We all talk about anxiety and know it and feel it and contemplate it.

I get so frustrated how quickly it sneaks up on my consciousness and taps its little fingers on the windowpane of my mind.

So confused why its sudden on a razor sharp edge tension teeters me so closely to the oblivion it promises I am accelerating so quickly towards yet does not exist.

Anxiety bubbles up like a silent cancer, the victims of it as much afraid of that by which they create it as the things which it creates a fear of.

I am as much afraid of my hopes and dreams never coming to fruition as I am that those hopes and dreams are rested too precariously upon a mind which, as often as not, convinces itself those hopes are futile, weak, in jeopardy.

I am as much afraid of being alone as I am afraid that my fear of being alone is completely unjustified and constructed by chemicals gone awry.

I am as much afraid that love is false as I am that my believing in it's falsity has always been what makes it so.

Anxiety's a strange and fickly creature, prone to secrecy and quickness of heartbeat. A wishbone sudden snap crackling which shatters that which is not broken and calls attention to the lack of brokenness as proof positive you must be afraid it shall soon become so.

Sudden and all encompassing intensity of that simple 'wrongness' of simply existing in the moment is the epitome of anxiety. Conviction something terribly horrible is happening right now.

I am as much afraid that something is wrong as I am that my feeling of something being wrong is simply an illusion I am too crazy to stop believing.

But I do catch myself as I push myself over the edge.

Anxiety's a fickle creature, one moment quiet and withdrawn the next fullthrottlescreamingbloodymurderintoyoureyelids aggressive.

I wait. Wondering which right is wrong and how wrong it is to feel okay.

I catch myself as I watch myself falling and ask myself why I am like this-- 'what is wrong with me?' has been a mantra I am as of late consciously trying to say less.

Because nothing is wrong.

I am anxious that in asserting this anxiety will rear its insidious little head to remind me of all the reasons something IS WRONG, IS NOT OKAY.

But I accept it. I listen now, instead of trying to escape from something that just needs to be seen and heard to know it can go away for a while.

Anxiety's a fickle creature.

So I'll become its friend and observer, not a passive bystander being acted upon by it.

I am becoming too strong in myself and my higher consciousness (or something like that) to continue to be usurped by a little mean monster like anxiety who really, is just trying to tell me something I already know but is afraid to say it and scared I won't be able to handle it.

'Come here, tell me your story and I will listen but I might not agree and I probably won't act upon your words' I say to those emotions which used to paralyze destroy and cause me self-doubt up the ass crack.

Come here you silly little things, sit a while, tell me what you are so afraid of.

Come here so I can remind you who knows what's right.

So I can remind you that I'm much stronger than we've always been afraid I wasn't.

But even then,

I find I am as afraid to be right as they are profess I am, sometimes convincingly so

that I am wrong.

Hello there. Nice to meet you.

To the Girl I think I’m supposed to Be…

Should plus A equals…

A slang term for the conjunction of should

plus the past tense have, that,

when combined with ‘woulda’ and ‘coulda’

reminds you,

‘but you didn’t…’

To the girl I think I am supposed to be—nice to meet you.

I am endlessly envious of your self-assurance and grace, your self-acceptance in the face of all your flaws, and your hair looks so fucking healthy!

To the girl I think I’m supposed to be… I always think of you when I regret who I am.

You would not pity yourself as I do.

I often attempt to use this as motivation to remove myself from indulgent self-hatred, but this often backfires and perpetuates an even more vicious cycle.

Loss only has value of there is also something to be gained.

I feel in a constant state of mourning for the loss of you because I believe becoming you is something I must gain.

Maybe if I didn’t know you

I wouldn’t have to be reminded of my lack of being you

—but you?!

You have found a way to simply be you, irrelevant are loss and could and shoulds—

I envy you your erasure of hierarchy within the soul.

To the girl I’m supposed to be because

I’m supposed to be you eventually you can deduce from the chronology of my not being you to my becoming of you that I’ve acted out of fear.

A lot.

You respond, instead of react, with wisdom—how are you so fucking calm?

You can write poetry that takes breaths away

I am still frantically trying to catch my own between choking on cigarette smoke

and

lungs constricted by self-doubt.

To the Girl I think I am supposed to be…

You are teaching me

there is nothing wrong

with being yourself—

you’ve come into acceptance of such

your demeanor is as graceful as

as my listicles obsession preoccupation with ‘things you need to read if you’re a struggling 20-something’ is desperate.

You take in love and give it, willingly and whole-heartedly,

because you have enough within yourself to feel safe in someone else.

Body size and shape don’t contour who you are.

You’ve let go of obsessions.

You have in no way completely eliminated these negative thoughts

Yet you have gained freedom from them—

Can we just skip over how you got there so I can join you in this one?

Girl I Believe I am supposed to be

you are teaching me

Happiness is

what you’ve made it,

make of yourself,

happiness is when YOU

have made YOU

into a sacred home within your soul—

you promise one day I (we?)

will become secure enough

to let in those who deserve it.

Girl I believe I am supposed to be,

you promise me that pain is still part of our experience.

But you allow yourself to feel it, embrace it, and allow catharsis to heal it.

I am still terrified pain is the only poetic thing about my existence and thus seek it out as a means of self-created artistry, however frivolous and insincere and inconsiderate this logic is, it still dominates my psyche.

You promise me,

‘The future is promised to no one’ and you have

released idealized tomorrows

for the sake of not blindly living through todays.

You’ve chosen to live in each moment genuinely,

trusting THAT will create the tomorrow you need,

THAT will give you yesterdays worth remembering.

Girl I am supposed to be—

You value try to teach me that

passion, reciprocity, creativity, being mundane and average, bored and frantic, profound, angry, overly simplistic, Netflix benders or kicking some serious academic ass are not mutually exclusive.

I still call bullshit.

You try to tell me

being proud of yourself is not the same as an ego trip and being strong does not rule out moments of weakness and emptiness WILL FILL ITSELF UP when you give it the time and honor is deserves.

You tell me time is precious

but never wasted if you simply allow yourself to inhabit it.

To the girl I believe/ think I am supposed to be, hope to become, wish I already was, regret not being, might possibly kinda be capable of becoming…

Nice to maybe

Finally meet

Us.

she was, she is

was a lost configuration amalgam of heart spaces and too many nights spent agonizing over too many nights spent alone

was a particular friend to her worst enemy of herself, the lover of her own dramatized existence

was a perpetuator of her own subordination to inner turmoil

was a mis-directed mental contortionist rebelling against the very cause she kept fighting to believe was worth dying for

she is

a parallelogram fragment of simplicity
a judgement of ignorance wrought in endless confusion and apathy
a desperation of spirit asking itself why it keeps doing that which does not serve itself
a writer going on rambler trying to make something out of nothing in her head

This is not an apology, nor is it an answer.

Climbing the mountains of your self only to reach the top and still not know where else to go is difficult, confusing. Should do this, should do that, trying to figure oneself out in the midst of everything that could or should be I run myself ragged in my head running nowhere instead hoping for some sort of answer not yet (most likely never) forthcoming.
Professing love isn't so simple when love is convoluted into itself over and again. Love isn't so profound when you've lost the meaning and meaning keeps itself protected in its lack of structure. The structure defines the meaning and the meaning lacks itself an understanding to really come together within. Reflect on reflexivity and action breaking waves across histories of life in past and past creating future, present creating future lost and prison gained constructed into ideologies personified and personalized. Please leave satisfied in love. Just let it go. Just let it be.
Watching mindless mentalities re-invigorate themselves.
Wishing for meaning from something greater than who you are. Wishing for meaning in yourself that you cannot possibly define anymore because you are weighted down by the weight of all the judgements on yourself your brain keeps telling you you are the composition of your thoughts.
But you are more than that. You are not your thoughts, nor your actions, nor your past, present future as it unravels becoming and creating.

was a broken record playing albums of self-deprecation and unwillingness to empower herself
was a stagnant wish for something better constantly perpetuating something worse

is a person sitting a wondering how in the hell she can feel so powerless to her own powerlessness
is a numbed spirit here sitting reflecting on dull edged memories
is a 'healthy' 'well' woman body uncomfortable with itself

I am afraid because I spend so much time wishing to look a certain way I do not do anything to actually change that all this same energy could be going somewhere 'better' 'more productive'

is a girl who still calls herself ugly and fat and doesn't believe it enough to change it, doesn't disbelieve it enough to stop the internal repetition iambs of wasted emotionality

write a haiku go smoke your cigarettes and erase everything you've ever thought

become anew again, start over

she was

she is

still.