terrified.

Onset of panic: I've lost my nearly full Moleskine.

Biggest fear: Who has found it?

strikethrough.

You should really try sleeping with a lump in your throat.

(I hope you fucking choke.)

Hmm. I've been writing a lot, but it's all fallen into two categories: super angry, hate-filled pieces. Or what I like to call 'sad bastard' things. Which kind of makes it all hard to share, to put it out there in the world. Because A. Brutal honesty runs the gamut of mean, hurtful, exposing, embarrassing, pathetic and just really profoundly sad. And B. Hard to really get a feel for something without some sort of background story/information. Which, frankly, I am terrible at sharing.

Of course, the 'sad bastard' area is what I do best. Most of the best things I've written are from that mindset.

My internet being "out" for 3 weeks has also hindered my posting. I suppose I'll be back, now.

And also:
I have so much to look forward to in the Summer Months that I can't help but be a little... Excited.

zipped.

(Writing this while baking my blackberry in an oven preheated to 200 degrees. a web forum trick, what's the worst that could happen?)

I have been shut off from the rest of the world for a few days. By choice and also by circumstance, I suppose. My internet has been down for a bit (verizon/frontier/whatever will fix it tomorrow). Also, my phone has been partially (now fully) not working for 3 days-ish.

So no internet, no netflix, no calls, no texts, no facebook (which I rarely use anyway..). It's been interesting. Nice, even. Except when I receive texts and I am unable to read them. THAT drives me nuts. Of course, I wouldn't respond given my behavior and actions lately, but I still am curious as to who is wishing to speak to me.

I think I've spoken to two people outside of my family this week. Maybe 3-5 texts at most. No calls.

And in my latest cave adventure (black hole entrapment, deaf and mute episode, angsty depression-like mood,etc Call it what you wish) I've wrote a lot. Read even more. And watched a ton of movies.

The writing: well that's been all over the place. High and low. Sarcastic and meaningful. Downright nasty to sickeningly optimistic. You know, the norm for me. But it's all from outerspace. It means nothing to everyone else. I guess that's okay. There's a time and place for everything. Maybe right now is the time for a solo trip around the milky way, plunging into deep, desolate space.

The reading:
I finished two books I'd started. One is a drama set in France in the 80's. Sort of a tortured love affair kind of thing. I think I could read a french cookbook or a shopping receipt from a french convenience store and be Enchanted. Really. It's fucking France, ya know? So beautiful. I just love everything about it. (I miss learning the language).

The 2nd book I finished was called Wasted: a memoir. It's a book about a woman's lifelong struggle with anorexia. SUCH a good read. The author really showed all the ugly (and the pretty) sides of her lifestyle. I was thoroughly sucked in.

I also read through two entire issues of Vogue. Cover to cover. Both really inspired me in different ways. Not even talking about fashion/style. That's a given. But the stories were about ordinary people who came from all walks of life who ended up doing these extraordinarily amazing things. One person was running the MET by herself after becoming widowed and bored, another was this great artist who is currently filming a documentary or an artistic piece where he RUNS into the middle of a tornado with his camera. So awesome. Just people doing things they love and ending up living spectacular, fulfilled lives because of it.

I. Want. That.

The watching:
So without netflix, I've had to resort to (dare I say it!) TV. I found a little show called "Taboo" on NatGeo and quickly became obsessed. Okay, so I happened upon a marathon, don't judge me. But it's super interesting. People who eat glass, weigh 75 pounds, involuntarily orgasm all day, skydive in dangerous places, suburban moms who have sex for money. It's great. I love watching stories about people who are creepier than me. Ha. Anyway, the next and newest episode is about a woman who claims she is in love with a cement WALL, and a man who kisses automobiles, obsessively. Um, I can't miss this.

I also finished season 3 of Dexter. The best so far. Very hooked.

Moviewise, I've been busy. I watched Love and Other Drugs, Tron (second time), No
Strings Attached (aka Natalie Portman in a romantic comedy. Ugh.), the social network (3rd time, 1st @ home), the Secret Garden (1993!), Eclipse (lol, yes that eclipse), Moon (!!), and Roger Rabbit. A wide range there.

Of course I let movies, music, books and tv affect me more than they should. So, I've been kind of crazy. Added to all the other things on my brain this week I've been kind of a mess. But the good kind of mess. A creative mess!

I have this idea in my head about letters to boys. Reasons I can't marry them. A bulleted list. or aka it's not me, it's you. I don't know, just something I'm thinking about.

But then again, what am I NOT thinking about lately?

starch.

A study in contrasts.

Ant hills of half-chewed fingernails.
Charred tips of skirts and shirt tails,
Lightning in technicolor.

(ghosts can do most everything)

A vial of sand hung round her neck,
Fillet of weeds upon her head.
But who can sleep with such adornments?
Oh, these things only pretend to fill the empty spaces.

(arsenic should do the trick)

You whispered that love was a revolution,
How I hid my face for fear of weeping.

great estates.

Perfectly symmetrical pools of water. Five hundred, at least. With irrelevant teal peninsulas wedged between them creating a lawless maze around the water. Not man made, no, the signs proclaimed otherwise. Tiny insignificant signs declaring a natural disaster transpired beneath my feet. This information could be easily overlooked if your eyes were fixated on the bigger picture. Thousands upon thousands of miniature lakes, filled with gray unremarkable water. Birthed from a lightning storm, an earthquake, a tornado? God's form into fingers, the master puppeteer, with a penchant for balance. Liquid so still it produced a slight suffocation in my chest if I gazed intently for more than a mere second or two.

I remember feeling a similar reaction, before.

Meandering along the edges; I am lost, but unconcerned. Withdrawing from my reflection in each pool of water, dismayed by the sight of my own empty eyes. Slate blue today, mirroring the sky's palette, like always.

There are no fish.

And that's not all.

Interference.

Why do I continuously believe I can change people? No, change is the wrong word. It’s more like I hope to make them recognize the best versions of themselves. I need to cause that blur. I want to be vital, an essential element within someone. I want to be the reason someone breathes, not for me, but because I exist in their world. (And because I choose to remain there).

Everyone wants to stay miserable. What is there to say when you’re happy? What is there to fucking feel when you’re happy? It’s such a joke, this endless quest for bliss.

I need to feel alive. I want to be challenged intellectually, overcome with physical emotion. I want to burn from all five senses. Set me on fire, I don’t care. I promise I’ll reciprocate.

Justine told me that she stopped hating people when she met Dan. “I just love him so much, and have so much love for him that there isn’t room to hate anyone anymore.”

I want to be sleepy. Or drunk. Or nothing.
Something other than this.
Oh, the possibilities. What happened to freewill?

crutch.

So indecisive.

and I've had 2 Bad Days.

I thought i'd have words when I came here.

I don't.

There was that moment while watching Easy A when Death Cab was playing in the background. It made no sense.

And then when I received the news today. (discouraging, crushing, disappointing. whatever.)

And then: school.

And oh. My Mother told me the reason that nothing ever goes right for me is because I don't go to church. (She doesn't go, herself.) Which, caused me to scream things i've never heard myself say before. Things I wasn't even aware I felt until they were delivered by my own voice.

Then there's that song on the new Fleet Foxes album.

And driving at dusk last night.

So that's... six.

Well, seven. Counting the thing I refuse to directly think about, but I am nearly always indirectly thinking about in some form.

So seven times.

At least the weather is on my side.

steps.

With proper perspective:

Be quick,
but don't hurry.

two questions.

How do you measure my intentions?
My prudish words
The arc of botched inventions.
Vessels traverse the miles,
Expand dimensions.
How do you measure my intentions?

Our intimate positions
deliberate brigade,
substantial flickering, then
The morning hour fade,
Beyond the scope of towers,
encompassing man-made.
Our intimate positions
deliberate brigade.

If I am amiss,
I stand to be corrected.
Your fingertip pulsations,
The venom they injected.
The hands and hearts
Of others,
Discarded and dissected.
If I am amiss,
I stand to be corrected.

Do you stack my hunger up beside your bed?
Like magazines,
with all the words she’s said.
To keep, to keep, to keep,
But mine’s to shred.
Do you stack my hunger up beside your bed?

A real letter.

The final time we had sex you lasted about a minute and a half. I can’t say that I was disappointed.

I was nowhere close to being naked. You were too hasty to remove my panties. Just hiked up my jean skirt and shoved them over to the side. I only recall the way the bristly hair on your legs felt working between the smooth, silky skin of my own.

Did you kiss me on the mouth? If so, it was unremarkable. But, You never were much for kissing. I remember that first drunken one you bestowed upon me in that parking lot last summer. Back when I was resistant, before I’d decided to try you on. Before your persistence stuck to me, like the grass clinging to our wet feet and bodies the time we had sex in your backyard. Before I squandered all of my Summer Fridays in your bed, sleeping but not embracing, like two strangers required to be bedfellows by circumstance.

Before all that.

That first night, I loved the taste of beer on your lips, your tongue.

10 months later; I loved nothing about you. Nothing outside of your latest stint with expeditious climaxing, that is.

You finishing that quickly felt like a godsend. The soft hand of a higher being patting my shoulder and gently saying “There, there, now that wasn’t so bad. Was it?”

I guess what I’m trying to say here is: You mean nothing to me. And you never will.

approval.

This weather brought a thought to my mind:
Last year, while working at the Country Club, I had some sick, twisted crush on a man who was a customer there.

He was married, and I never yearned to touch him. God, no.

He wasn't intelligent or very attractive or even polite. In hind sight, he was actually quite obnoxious most of the time.


But when he'd tell a joke, he'd glance over at me to see if I was laughing or trying to hold back a smile.

And that...
That's what I think I liked about him.

spring.

It happens so gradually, you don't even notice it

until

the trees are tufts of green,

the tulips are blooming,

and you're contemplating killing yourself again.

runaround.

Pay attention to this because I won't admit or say it often, but:

I am actually feeling.. something. right now. FEELING. Alive.

Not faking. Or lying. Or pretending. Or acting out of obligation.
It's simply happening.

There's no suffering involved. No starving. or skin scratched out. or trying to die. or placing myself into horrid, miserable situations just to experience the slightest stir inside of myself.

(There's a me that isn't a character. Don't worry. I don't know her that well either.)

I just read something that literally knocked the breath out of my lungs.

No one can keep up with me. At least, that's my assumption at this point.

There is this huge gravitational pull on my body. Just stretching me out in all directions.

Waiting to lose an appendage is like any other sort of waiting.

Last week I told Dan the one thing I wanted to see most in the whole world was the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights). That dream of staring at something not made by man that blows my mind. I've never told anyone that before. The small circle of people i'm surrounding myself with are slowly tearing down my walls. I wonder if people who watched the Berlin Wall feel the same. Did they immediately walk across into the newly found territory? No, i'm too hesitant. It will require some Time.

I've had a moment from the movie 'Timer'. Short summary: Set in the future where everyone has a timer implanted beneath the skin in their arm that begins zeroed out. When their soulmate also has a timer implanted both clocks start counting down to the exact moment they will meet each other. I think you receive your implant at like age 15 or something, and it's mostly voluntary. But the point of the story is, the main character's timer NEVER starts to countdown. Just sits at zero for years and years. So, she decides to buck the trend and date someone who doesn't have a timer, who doesn't believe in soulmates.

More often than not, I am involved with a "nothing" and faking for their sake that it will magically transform into a "something." Now there's a "something" that in the final dramatic scene will go up in a poof of "nothing" smoke. And, i'm okay with that. But God.. what's the lesser of the two?

I knocked some of my books off the shelf today and as I was picking them up I found a piece of paper peeking out of one of my favorite books, The Bell Jar, by Plath of course. I'd written in really tiny letters:

"I'm nothing, If not vaguely cryptic."

I don't recall writing it. EVER. The note seemed recent enough, though. The paper still white and crisp, scented with the faint scent of my sweet perfume. My memory is outrageous. Embarrassing at times even. (You know, when I remember some minute detail and it makes someone feel special when they actually aren't.) But this note? I don't know. I just don't know.

I'm freaking myself out.

Oh, and I smiled.
The genuine kind.

Withdrawing from the fight.

more.

I am fascinated by the things you discover about people’s relationships after they are finished. The details and circumstances you’d never utter about your lover when your partnership is still intact. The push and shove. The downright heartlessness that occurs daily, weekly, monthly. Perhaps it’s that one colossal battle that sends you packing. Maybe it’s the substantial stacking of day to day inadequacy.


The thing is, no one discloses these instances, words, hurts until it’s over. And even then, they must be miles and months away from the relationship .The cuts scabbed over and itching during the middle of the night.


I can’t even begin to elaborate on the things I’ve heard this week. Just another reiteration that no one truly knows a relationship except for the two people involved. Love, in any fashion, is so difficult to comprehend.

stay.

Today I wrote one of the prettiest things i've ever written. 

in red ink.
in haphazard cursive handwriting.
in a parked car, the windows open, the April breeze swirling my hair around my face.

Sharing your air,
the deepest inhales.

This week has been such a good one for me.

poetry, lately.

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms; but i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut quietly) almost,
your kiss.

-e.e. Cummings

...

How do you kill a ghost?

Love Letter.

Dear Parker,

On the eve of you turning 5 years old, (actually, in 20 minutes it will be midnight.) I got the inspiration to write you a letter. You’re sleeping now, snoring just the tiniest snore. From time to time, I watch you sleep. Your chest rises up and down gently with each breath. Your breathing, more often than not, sends me to sleep. Like a neighboring lullaby just close enough to perceive and feel. After I finish this, I will lift you up from your “bed” on the floor (blankets upon blankets, 4 pillows, 2 stuffed animals!) and I’ll place you in bed alongside me. Even when you’re not here for the night, I position your pillow beside of mine. You are an immeasurable comfort object to me. Occasionally, I wonder if our roles have reversed.


It’s peculiar for me to believe that you will not remember much from these days of your life. Looking back, I recall bits and pieces of my 4 year old self. Mostly minute things. Injuries. A frightening experience. Haphazard things that had no significance. If you remember anything at all, I hope it’s the way that my love felt. Larger than the ocean, stronger than the thickest steel, everlasting and undeniable. These days, you and I talk and talk and talk until you can’t talk anymore. But trust me, you can. You always have words to say. You are unlike any other 4/5 year old I’ve ever met or even heard about. Everyone says how intelligent and sophisticated you are. I am bursting with pride, continually.


I keep asking you “Can’t you just stay four forever?!” and you’ll laugh and say “Mommy, I can’t. I gotta grow up. That’s just what happens!” And then other times I’ll say “Parker, will you be my Baby forever?” and you will say “Even when I’m old. Even when I’m 192 and you’re an old woman. I’ll always be your baby.”


I know it might be silly, but I think we have a bond unlike most other parents’ bonds with their children. We are connected, attached. I want to reveal to you all the paramount parts of this world, not just pacify you until Kindergarten and beyond. I plan to experience things WITH you and learn along your side. Nothing on this Earth is better than viewing the world through your eyes.


When you’re reading this, I can’t envision what age you will be. Certainly a teenager would cringe and throw this paper onto the floor. 20 something? Would you even comprehend it then? Maybe I will show you this the night you embrace your own newborn baby, the night your heart swells up and spills over, filling your entire being with the love I feel for you now. (and always will.)


I am having a challenging time with allowing you to grow up. You are my miniature Best Friend, for now. There are issues I sincerely regret, such as not ending up with your Father. That’s a hurt right now that still stings me profoundly, deep inside my core. I’m dealing with that now, ongoing and rebuilding. Truthfully, I wished for that for you. The happiest of cheerful families, that unattainable unit you read about in books or see in the movies. I know, it’s crazy. But, I just wanted to give you It All. Currently, it’s just the two of us. I’m okay with that. Dissatisfied at times, and lonely, yes, but, we are enduring and living and for right now, it seems… right.


My love has developed for you, each year, each day, each hour. I can’t even glance back into my past and see if I loved you this amount, as much as I do now. I can’t imagine that I did, though I loved you with everything in me from the first night I met you. I recall the nurse carrying you to me, and I had not a clue what to do with you. It was just the two of us. I carefully laid you on my chest, and you slept. I could feel your warm heartbeat on top of my own. I was 21 years old, and I thought to myself “Oh wow. So this is what LOVE feels like.”


Even now (the clock just struck midnight. You are five now!), You will ask me to “hold you like a Baby”. And I do. You will suck your thumb and snuggle up as close as you can. You take the deepest sniff of air through your nose and say “Ahhhh, the Mommy Smell.” Sometimes you’ll drift into hazy slumber. Other times you’ll pretend for a minute or so and then burst out laughing when I catch you with one eye open. We laugh the best laughs together.


These are the times I won’t forget. The days I get all to myself, because you will never remember. But this letter.. I hope that it illustrates all the love and devotion that I pour into being your Mother. Out of all the things I could (and want) to be in this world, that is the most rewarding.


You are my light in life, my Sweet Baby. Happy 5th Birthday.


I love you, “bigger than Jupiter!”

I need a muse.

Still.

Several things on my brain today:

1. I am having major twinges of guilt. This is a recent occurrence in my life. The Best Friend said she was “flabbergasted” that I felt this way. To hear of me not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings, or my refusal to be cold hearted and malicious. It will take me a while to adjust to this new me. (and everyone else will need some time too, apparently.)
2. I’m not enough, period. Inadequate. Foolish. Dim-witted Girl.
3. I am obsessed with a song by the Civil Wars. It’s so pretty, and I really just love the feeling it ignites inside of me.
4. Being in the presence of my Best-Friend-In-Love, is completely different than being around my Best Friend. Not in a bad way, just ODD. Both of my closest friends are now in committed, healthy, Happy relationships. It’s lovely to see. I keep tossing away feelings of being legitimately lonely. I despise confessing any form of fragility.
5. Still [Stil]:
Adjective:
- remaining in place or at rest; motionless. to stand still.
- free from sound or noise, as a place or persons; silent. to keep still about a matter.
-subdued or low in sound; hushed. a still, small voice.

Ridiculous.

I, for some reason, receive these really outlandish astrological emails. My only guess is that someone signed me up for them as a prank. I have attempted to block them from coming to my blackberry more times than I can count. Mostly, they freak me out. From today’s email:

Kaleena, The Universal Protector Must Be In Your Possession Before April 2nd.

Dear Kaleena, it’s now way after midnight and I’ve been thinking all evening about how I can alert you to a rare planetary occurrence on April 2nd. I feel the need to inform you that you may want to surround yourself with extra protection on that day, as there is a higher than usual risk of negative planetary energy impacting on our planet because of this occurrence.

There is a high risk of minor events suddenly going out of control. For example, routine actions could be transformed into blown-up conflicts, while careless actions could be transformed into major incidents.

Okay. Yeah. So this is a scheme to scare me into buying some ridiculous something or other called : The Solid Silver and 24 K Gold Universal Protector.


What freaks me out about it is this. WHO is sitting around creating this shit? Who has the occupation of terrifying thousands of paranoid grandmas and 20-something single females into purchasing these factory made trinkets of good fortune and security? WHAT IS THIS JOB TITLE CALLED? Really. I have so many inquiries regarding this topic.

This isn’t what I intended to write about today, at all. But it correlates in a way, I suppose. Or at best I’ll thread it together with bread ties and scotch tape. It’ll do.

The point is, somewhere out there someone is believing in this nonsense. But can I judge them? Is this any inferior than the lies I tell myself every day? I don’t know. I like to consider myself as sharp, but when it comes to believing things in an ignorantly blissful nature, I am guilty.

What am I using as my Solid Silver and 24 K Gold Universal Protector?


I am my own enabler. I entitle it dreaming. Or possessing an imagination. Or just the capacity to think BIG THOUGHTS. I splash blame onto others; they’re monotonous. They are simply unable to see the bigger picture, the potential.


I panic to my Mother: You can’t just place me in a box, Mom. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.


I say to friends: I don’t know. I just can’t envision having a Real Job. That sounds so repulsive, like stifling suffocation. Do you think that’s for me?

I shriek at my ex boyfriend: YOU did this to me.

I think to myself: Grow up. And Fucking soon.


But here’s the deal, before I can sort through any of this.. Before I can take a step into the shitstorm I’ve hoarded, and toss out the self-enabling rubbish… I’ve got to figure out what to do about April 2nd. I know, I know. Funny. But maybe i'll just sleep the day away. JUST IN CASE.

melting.

I am fucking distracted.
 I have walked around numb for three days now. Just not feeling anything, frozen. More “oh that’s nice.” and “I see.” And “I am trying to pretend like I give a shit, but it isn’t fucking working. I’m sorry.”

Maybe I’ll marry a surgeon. He’ll discover me perfectly suitable, once he extracts my foot from its permanent dwelling in my mouth. A lot of men perceive me as Perfectly Suitable. I can’t appreciate why girls settle for that. I don’t know. I just Can’t settle. For anything less than THIS IS IT. All capitals. Permanent marker. Tattooed behind my eyes and burning into my skull. Yes, that.

I’ve realized that I’ve never actually been in love with anyone. There’s been unrequited, yes. Lust. Purely sexual adoration and longing. Obsession. Idealistic over-romanticizing. Tortured and controlled, mentally and physically abused me chalking it up to love and calling it a day. But the real kind of love? Nope. Don’t think so.

It’s peculiar. I need to use two hands to calculate the number of boys/men who have professed their love for me. But, I don’t even require one finger to count the number of men I’ve loved. I don’t believe I ever really had the capacity to love anyone until recently. Something about my heart being Broken. Cue the montage of me wearing my pajamas, dirty hair, huge bowl of cereal, romantic comedies on a 24 hour loop, yelling at the television. But no, that wasn’t me at all. It’s just that the only thing I could ever count on, that I kept on the backburner, had vanished. And I didn’t know how to DEAL. So, I did what I do best: to wholly pretend like it wasn’t happening. Ignorance isn’t bliss; it’s how I get by.

Ultimately, I had to beat it into my thick skull. THIS IS HAPPENING WETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. (and it’s for the best, silly girl. It’s for THE BEST.) So dust yourself off, and get moving. Start living. Remember what that’s like? Oh no, you don’t. Well, you’ll learn. A girl like you has her wits about her. Just watch what everyone else is doing. Mimic. You’ll figure it out.

… and I am.


It’s strange to feel my icy exterior melting. I’m quite sweet underneath, and annoyingly fucking sensitive. There are times when the open air touches lightly on a part previously kept behind heavy, impenetrable walls, and I recoil, shocked into my bones. (It’s exciting. I smile. I laugh.)

There are also times, like now, that I retreat. Unwilling to feel for a second, a day, a week. Truthfully, that’s my gut reaction to anything new. A person, words, a situation.. will stun me for a moment, that proverbial panic will explode in my chest, my heart will miss a beat, and I’ll hide. Except now, all the good hiding spots are taken, or they’re filled in with cement. So I freeze briefly, processing. The numbness, it will subside.


…maybe tomorrow.

fuck.

I just wrote at least 10 paragraphs and deleted it all.

In short, I had an odd conversation with my best friend today. A conversation in which she kept dropping these one line LOADED sentences.


I couldn’t be sure if she WANTED me to be truthful in my answers. Or if she wanted me to claim her suggestions ludicrous and “Absolutely not!”. I chose the latter. She seemed disappointed.


Time passes and she texts: Well I wouldn’t blame you if you did. That’s all I’m saying.


JESUSMARYANDJOSEPH!
I have no response.

overwhelmed.

So, I’m driving today and I get the thought “If you just take your hands off the wheel for just a moment, you would drive over the cliff.” I envision the guardrail bowing courteously to let my vehicle through. The tumble. The impact. I’m jarred back to reality, where I’m still driving, hands on the wheel.

Then I’m going to school. I’m waiting to cross 5th Avenue’s 4 lanes of traffic. A metro bus is whizzing down the lane closest to the sidewalk, to me. Unexpectedly, the notion of lurching in front of it pops into my head. My mind plays the situation out once more.

Today, I realized that daily life is chock-full of death scene opportunities. They’re everywhere. Just staring me in the face, taunting me. My brain is an unvarying revolving wheel of choices. Do you want to die this way? How about this? “Choose me, and no one will ever know you did it yourself at all!”

I’ve been fixated with death and dying since at least the age of 11 or 12. Maybe forever. Sometimes I wonder if other people have this problem. If there are others similar to me, do they still exist and breathe? Or have they succumbed to the steady pressure? The thoughts appear so swiftly, I can never recognize what caused them.

 It’s just me. I HAVE A GLITCH. My brain is a fountain that constantly emits unwarranted Exit Strategies.

 No, I don’t want to die. But, it troubles me that these thoughts are my most inborn nature. The deepest kind, with no trail of thoughts conjuring up these images. Just boom, “Wanna die?” It’s as if death were blasé.

 Death is the EASY way out. I observe all the people around me, Living, with no difficulty at all. Living, just as simple as they’re breathing. But, Living is the tricky part. Or, at least it is for a girl like me.

sidetracked

You’re a routine person. You pump gas at the same gas station and pump every day. You attempt to park in the same parking spot. Your feet move in an even, precise dance, so comfortable and easy you could do it with your eyes closed. But one day you veer off course. Perhaps it rains and you’re caught without an umbrella. Maybe you're forced to hurriedly alter your path, trudging through the mud, entering through the back. Your hair is dripping, and the goosebumps have raised on your arms in tiny, perfect rows. And you come upon this face. A face that holds your attention. And there’s a voice. And you say hello maybe. Your shirt is stuck to your chest. Your books are soaked from giant raindrops. You're a mess. But they smile. And you smile. A chance meeting, of sorts. A fleeting feeling. But you won’t chase the way it feels. Just let it fade away, slowly, until the only remembrance lingers in your fingertips and you struggle to put words in its absence. You recognize you’re living on a dull rectangle you’ve retraced time and time again. You put pen to paper and your hand aches from writing, but you’re fond of the pain, it feels WORTHWHILE. So, maybe tomorrow you’ll discover a way to get lost all over again. To deviate. Maybe being lost is the essence of having something to say at all.