Kylie hands me a sparkling, white pill and asks, Can you keep up? The fabric of reality, so sheer she can slice it with her dagger nails. We sit semi circled around the marbled table to eat our lunch. We sit quietly, taking a full five minutes to shake the shit out of our salads. So guys, Kim says. We need to talk about mom. I’m thinking that we should like, totally throw her a party because she lost five pounds. Khloe passes down the double-chin exerciser to me, the anchor of the relay. She says, Here, it’s your turn now. I’ve had one in my Amazon cart for three weeks. Kim tells me, You know, I know the most amazing doctor and he could, like, suck out the fat from your jaw line and totally inject it into your ass. I tell her, If I were going to do something like that, I would take it from boobs, Kim says, Oh my God I know, your tits are huge! We all laugh. Kris pours us white wine for breakfast. We sit outside to watch the sunrise. It’s 72 degrees and Kris says she is cold. I grab her a fur blanket. We sip our breakfast while her BlackBerry buzzes next to her iPhone. The doorbell rings. Kris asks me to get it. The security guard hands me a pre-inspected and approved package. Inside of the box, there is another box. Prettier. Velvet. Vuitton. As a gift, Kris has bought LV facemasks for everyone. Custom made, and collectively could pay off my student loan debt. After everyone complains that they wanted a different luxury brand, we prepare for a photo-op. I say, You don’t even leave the house. Khloe says, that’s not the point. We want to support wearing masks to the general public. Use our platform. Whenever Kourtney feels like crying she meditates at the far end of the yard. The thing that we have in common is we are both the oldest child. I tell them about the protests how we lay on the road for eight and a half minutes, cheek to concrete, hands behind our backs. I tell them that each time we’ve done this I cry. Kendall says, So, wait, like you actually lay in the street? Like where the cars drive? Yes, I say. Kim swipes through snapchat filters until she finds one that makes her chin even skinnier and her eyelashes longer. She says, I’m sorry but I wouldn’t do that. Like, my Yeezys are brand new. Kylie turns her glossy eyes to Kim and says, Yeah, there’s like cigarette butts in the street. I wouldn’t do that either, Kim. Kourtney’s vocal fry buzzes through the chatter, Kim, there’s people that are dying. Then she returns to her meditation corner along the thousand-something-dollar glass wall. You know what’s been so crazy, Kim says. Is I’ve been having, like, anxiety lately. She sits in her designer sweatpants reading TMZ while I coat Kourtney’s face in foundation. The hue is lighter than her skin tone and thick. Liquid prosthetic. Why? I ask Kim. I look back down, foundation turning facemask. Green. Gooey. I’ve gotten it in her hair. I’m sorry, I say. Kourt says, It’s okay. I didn’t really want to go out today anyways. I’ve corrected her grammar about the S at the end of anyway, but it never sticks. I’ve been hiding the pills between my lips and gums. When I agree to do an Ancestry DNA test with Khloe, she laughs, I literally thought you got botched lip injections. The pills scatter across the floor. She hands me a little pink pill and winks, These are better. The house feels alive when the windows are open. Kim tells me to close them because, Why would I pay to have this whole place air conditioned if you’re just going to open the windows? I say, Why would you put windows that open in your home if you never intend to open them? Kim takes this to heart. She sneaks around me for three to five years hiding blueprints and timberland boots. After the three-to-five-year period is up she brings me to her new house made mostly of marble, featuring windows that do not open. Kourt, Khloe, and Kendall go to the next protest with me. Sporting their LV masks. It took convincing because, You aren’t famous. You wouldn’t get it. Kendall refuses to lay down on the pavement. She throws a fit. Storms off. The camera crews follow her because this will make a good scene for the next season. I cry again, like I did before.
Tag: personal writing
Cigarettes
I run my thumb over the wheel of the lighter, catching the nearly unnoticeable notches of my fingerprint in the silver ridges. The cigarette dangles from between my dry lips. Unlit menthol toxins flirt with my olfactory bulb, flipping the switch like a light. I can feel the tip becoming soggy. Light me, it dares.
So I do.
Cli— click, whoosh.
The orange cherry bursts to life. I inhale deeply, letting the familiar chemicals fill the empty spaces inside of me. A gentle burn trails down my throat. I imagine the smoke swirling within my corrupted lungs, adding to the thick charcoal wall that cases them. I release my head, shut eyes to the sky that I envision above me. Darkness. Soft glow of the city not so far away. Sirens. Car horns.
Exhale.
I remember my days as a young girl in the midwest. A night like this would be captured in a different light. No light. Just the stars that shine from a million miles away and a single street lamp . The rattle of unknown creatures scampering in the brush. Cicadas humming a tune to the heavy summer air. Crickets and frogs chirping back and forth, communicating a language that humans have assumed onto them. Fireflies dancing in the distance. Dew accumulating in the soft, lush grass. A light breeze awakening a tired soul.
I lift the cigarette to my cracked lips.
Inhale.
Something brushes up against me and catches me off guard. I snap my head to the left— it’s a young man hurrying down the fire escape. Relief floods over me. I nervously look around. The metal of the stairs digs into my tender skin and I quickly wonder why it’s even worth it to crawl out of my window for five minutes of vulnerability for a cigarette.
Exhale.
Flick.
The ash tumbles down half of a flight, falling through the holes in the stairs, barely catching the stranger I just encountered. My body shudders at the thought of him. Silent, fleeting. A tear stripes my cheek with wetness. I wipe it away with my tattered sleeve.
Inhale.
The almighty tobacco buzz creeps to my head now, numbing my brain. Don’t think so hard, the smoke echoes in my mind. The tears continue. I glance downward and see the man from the stairs hit the pavement. A girl runs up to his side, a graceful collision, and he holds her almost as if he thought that he might never get to do so again.
It must be nice to live in a relationship without fear. To not have a constant shadow of the past lurking around every corner, waiting to jump out at you with teeth bared, snarling. Look at me, it demands.
Exhale.
I watch the smoke roll over itself in the glow of the street lamps until it is just another piece of the negative space. I notice that I’m shaking, I slam my sweaty palm to my forehead.
I have always hated the term “fucking”. It sounds dirty, emotionless. Even when there is no love present there are still feelings— although I’ve only ever experienced displeasure and disconnect.
Even through the hatred and animosity I have towards the men that use me, I continue to make broken love to them. Giving myself away like a box of free kittens. One after another, I tell myself that I don’t deserve this. But it’s hard to keep that mentality. After all this time I have just become so desensitized to it all. I’m like a puppet being controlled by the terrors of my past.
Inhale.
Short exhale.
Inhale.
Any shrink would categorize me quicker than I could get the first sentence out. They would open to the “Managing Sexually Abused Patients” chapter of the diagnosis manual and spit out text book explanations as to why I have these “symptoms” of self loathing feelings, why I sleep with any man that shows interest, why I can’t find security within myself. Then they would use their ball point pen to write me off a prescription that is just as slimy as their morals. Pills. Pills are the answer.
Exhale.
Flick.
Inhale.
I bounce my legs fast. I look down at my stained hightop sneakers. A little piece of ash sits upon the rubber toe.
There is no chance of me finding someone who can put me back together, I’ve been knocked off of the wall far too many times. It’s a miracle there are still pieces of me at all. Shattered glass still sparkles, but if you get too close you’ll bleed.
Exhale.
I smash the fragile cigarette to the dull brick wall, kick the ash from my shoe, and climb back through the window of my apartment praying for the strength to make it through just one more day.
4:42 AM
I was dreaming of war, something that I didn’t do often. Now, I have never killed anyone. Not even in a dream. But, I found myself with a gun to a stranger’s chest and an increased heart rate reminding me that I needed to make a decision.
How does someone who absolutely detests violence come to be dreaming about being a soldier?
I tried to reason with myself and the others around me. “Kill her,” her own brothers even said. It seemed to be that I was the only one who was really debating sparing her. Tears began to stream down my face. I knew that I had a job to protect the woman that everyone was shooting at, amazing how she hadn’t been shot already.
I also knew that if I let this soldier live, she would just go back to doing the same thing. And it would show the other soldiers that I wasn’t, in fact, cut out for this. We would probably wind up in a similar situation down the road. Having so much power over another’s life terrified me beyond a point of reason.
I will never know what my dream self did, because I awoke to a sun barely rising on a foggy Thursday morning. 4:42 AM. The heat of the June night would soon evolve to a greater humidity when the sun crept up over the full tree line.
I rolled over in the gray tangle of sheets that I had created in the night. I rubbed my eyes so hard that I began to see stars in my head. I breathed in two deep breaths before hitting my feet to the carpet.
My rheumatic legs began to wake up when I walked over to the windows that dripped with perspiration. I looked out into the distance only to find fog and a dark blue sky with an amber ombre beginning. Everything looked so peaceful. Birds chirping came into my ears. I felt a small comfort in my hollow heart, knowing that my reality wasn’t how it seemed to be in my dream.
Tiny bumps arose on my bare skin, reminding me of the warm bed I had abandoned. I crept away from the window to wrap up alone in a bed for two. I found no solace when the bed had gone cold so quickly.
I hoped to dream of a time when there would be someone to keep the blankets heated when I got up for a moment in the night, or someone to hold me when I dreamt about a war I did not want to fight in.
I closed my eyes and tried to beat the rising sun with sleep. With another deep breath, I was quickly falling back to unconsciousness.
The Parasail Tragedy
I remember the day we met like the back of my hand. That phrase is funny to me, because the back of a hand looks about the same on everyone, so ordinary. Her’s was different, though, she had a scar on her right hand from a campfire incident many years before we’d met. She was a child then, scars only on her skin, not between the curves of her mind.
If we make it out of this alive, I’m sure we will both have scars to tell this tale.
…
The first time I saw her she was relaxing on a patio of a local bar, El Parapente. It wasn’t the nicest scene to look at, but it was welcoming with the warm glow of Christmas lights as a canopy over the outdoor tables.
The weather was evolving from Spring to Summer, with every day inching closer to my senior year I was desperately trying to grasp whatever adolescence remained in me. The dying sky was still emitting heat. My friends and I were up to nothing important, like any other Thursday evening when on of them pointed out this girl he’d fucked the weekend before sitting on the patio of the bar.
That’s when I saw her. Light freckles kissed her tan skin. Baby hairs that rebelled her hair tie were matted against her damp neck. For a moment, I forgot just how humid is was. She tossed her head back in a laugh then caved into the table. Her long, blonde ponytail flipping up over her shoulder revealed a black inked sun and moon balanced between her shoulder blades.
After the laughing was over, she lifted a perspiring bottle of Corona with a lime to her full, pink lips. Then she blinked her dark eyelashes over to me. I looked away in a panic. Shit, I thought to myself. I probably looked like a loser bumming around with his immature friends finding trouble to get into.
My childish friends and I were now walking by their table for the third time when she winked at me. My heart dropped to my stomach.
“Hey,” she yelled over. I looked to my left, then to my right. “You,” she said, and she pointed a red painted finger at me. “Are you gonna come talk to me or are you just gonna walk by three more times and call it a night?” I was embarrassed that she was counting how many times we had strolled past her and her friends. But she was counting, and that means that she noticed me if it even stands for anything.
Something about her pulled my timid soul from the shadows. I walked over to the cheap looking patio furniture, my heart rate increased with each step. My idiot friends were cheering me on from the sidewalk making me feel more awkward than confident.
“What’s your name,” she spoke with a rasp that suggested a long day being put behind her. She lifted the tip of the glass bottle to her bottom lip.
I find it hard to imagine that she sits at the same outdated desk, five days a week, clicking computer keys and emailing people who weren’t personally important to her. I wondered what kind of classes she was taking, if any. She looked like someone who spent a great number of days writing in journals and sketching little doodles on the corner of napkins at coffee shops. I bet that is where she spends most of her time, in coffee shops waiting for the perfect man to come along, a man that is nothing like me.
“Ben,” I said all too plain. The Corona made a soft pop as she pulled it away from her mouth. She set is down and reached a scarred right hand out to shake mine.
“Ben,” she smiled. “I’m Leah.”
…
Her hair is sticky with blood now, clinging to her smashed skull. She is too beautiful to be this broken. And she is so silent, I can hardly tell that she is suffering. The scraping and glass would suggest otherwise.
“Leah?” Nothing but heavy wheezing. “Leah, we’re going to make it out of this sweetheart, just hang on.”
…
Leah wasn’t like any other girl I had ever been with before, or even been acquainted with for that matter. She was sarcastic, she knew how to take a joke, not just try and make them. She didn’t believe in traditional dating. We would go out to dinner and she would pay sometimes, she didn’t want any gifts— ever— unless they were homemade or sentimental. I liked that about her, she didn’t spoon feed the fragile egos of fuck boys and she didn’t put up with bullshit. She had depth to her.
“Let’s go,” she half squealed. She laced her fingers with mine. It was quite uncanny how our hands fit like a lock and key. Her arm yanked mine and my body jerked to follow her path.
“ Where?” I questioned. She was always off on another adventure. I would say that she dragged me along, but I went willingly to whichever death trap she had planned for the day. There was an invisible rope tied between us, one that resembled tug-of-war. A war that she certainly won every time, I didn’t fight it, though. I gladly let her win every battle, because even when she’s wrong, she’s still right.
It didn’t make me mad, but I didn’t like it when she got her nails done. The red shellac was entirely provocative, but her nails didn’t scratch my skin the same when they were short.
We found our way to an empty space where the pavement ended, it looked so lonely at night besides our company. We parked the car and pulled out an unnecessary number of blankets from the trunk. We walked to the middle of a small wooded area and made a small fire. We seemed to have just lucked out that night because there was a clearing in the tree line that allowed us to see the night sky. She made a perfect bed of old blankets that reminded me of sleepovers as a little kid. We laid in our juvenile bed together by the fire, I rested my head on her sternum and she played with my hair like it was he only thing that was innate to her.
“Oh I wouldn’t mind,” she said confidently.
“You’re honestly telling me that you could die tomorrow and not be upset?”
“Mhm.” She bothered me, but not really. Just when I thought I had her all figured out she opens some trap door to another tunnel un-lit, filled with mystery and questions. All the signs point you back the other direction and forebode of an otherwise undesirable discovery to lie ahead, however, I found the bread crumbs in the map of her mind to be addicting.
Seconds turn into minutes of me pondering why anyone would want to die so young. She must have picked up on my confusion because she started slowing her circles on my head. “Think about it,” she prompted. “I have lived to have plenty of satisfaction with my memories and experiences… and you leave a beautiful corpse, something that people might actually enjoy seeing in a funeral home.”
After the last sentence left her mouth, I regretted not listening to the metaphorical signs. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying I want to die tomorrow, Ben. I’m just saying that if I died tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind because I would be happy. Look. Look at us right now.” I pulled my mind back to the here and now. “We are doing something so simple, but it’s so special.”
If there was an eighth wonder of the world, she would fall nothing short of it. Our conversation carried on through the soft breeze of an ordinary night. Soon we found ourselves so lost in our words that we couldn’t even trace the path back to how it had begun.
“… And if I lived in another galaxy?”
“I wouldn’t know what I was missing,” I said smoothly. It didn’t impress her. “Not because I wouldn’t want to know you— because believe me, I totally would— but I literally wouldn’t know,” I said calmly. She pondered it for a minute, then gave me her look. Completely stimulating, it made me weak. I had to look away.
“Why did you do that?”
I grabbed her right hand and ran my thumb over the maroon skin that coated the side of her hand, back and forth, thinking of the words to say. “You get to me sometimes.”
“Meaning?”
I didn’t exactly know how to tell her about her face, or her mannerisms. The structure was nice, nut it was more than that. She licked her bottom lip, then sucked it under her top one. Biting on the flesh that was fragile. But it wasn’t even the level on the attractiveness scale that her looks fell upon. She is beauty and she is grace. I knew her soul— at least as much as one could learn about something so mysterious— and I think looking at her face comforted me because it was a portal into a deeper realm of beauty.
…
Time stands still.
It’s like a dream, hazy and surreal, but I know I’m not sleeping.
Sirens slowly fade into my hearing, taking away the deafening high pitch that resonates in my ears. The wind whips my face, reminding me that it could sweep us to our death at any time. It wasn’t supposed to be this windy today, a light breeze was all that they forecasted.
Leah tries to lift her head, shattered glass falling from her shoulder makes a sound that brings me back to the reality of our situation.
“Leah, don’t try to move,” I heave.
“Ben,” she chokes.
“You don’t have to say anything, just sit still. We’re gonna get help.”
“I’m—“
“Don’t,” I say, pleading. “Please do not tell me that you’re sorry because this is not your fault.” I think I can see a tear drop from her left eye, she has always been a silent crier, I can honestly say that is something that I wish I never had to find out.
…
Leah didn’t cry much, hardly ever. Maybe when we watched a sad movie, but she would laugh at herself while crying because of how ridiculous she felt at her emotion of a fictional story.
We rarely fought, maybe three fights in the two years that we’ve been together now, but when we did she never shed a tear. Maybe it’s because she knew she didn’t need me to be happy, she knew how to be happy on her own. I envied her for that, I knew that if she ever left me I would fall apart.
She became Mrs. Benjamin Emery on a beautiful June evening. The sun hit her skin in the dying hours of the day, making it glow. When our first song came on she lit up, almost as if she had forgotten that she picked it out. I never really liked to dance, but for her I did. She laughed and smiled and spun in circles until she almost fell over. We were drunk on each other, and I knew it would be the sweetest hangover.
We had talked about starting a family a couple of times, I never pushed it even though I really wanted to have a baby. “Not yet,” she’d say calmly. “There are still too many adventures to be had.” She was right, we had only been married about a year and as anxious as I was, I knew that we didn’t need a child to be a family.
We found out that she was pregnant— unplanned— during November. It was late in the month, just after Thanksgiving, but there was still no snow. I couldn’t complain about the fall thunderstorms we were having here in Washington though, neither could she.
She wasn’t mad, but she wasn’t thrilled either. I think my enthusiasm pulled her on board because soon enough she was more excited to meet this tiny human than I was.
It was just after we made the announcement that our family of two would become three in May when she woke up late on a stormy night in a panic— she was bleeding. I had no fucking clue what to say. Hell, I had no fucking clue what was happening. We didn’t speak on the car ride to the hospital. She wrapped her arms around her tiny belly, I rested my hand on her thigh but I knew that wasn’t anywhere near the reassurance she needed in that moment.
I remember how she crumpled in silence when the doctor said that they couldn’t find any tiny swoops of a heartbeat. My heart shattered into thousands of unrepairable pieces as I held her shaking body. It was cruel the way that life teased her. She fell in love with a child she didn’t want, one that she never got to meet.
The fetus wasn’t far enough along to have a medical removal. Leah felt sick carrying around our miscarried child inside of her until it just “exited the body with menstruation”. She wanted the gender to be a surprise, and now we will never know.
I crawled into the hospital bed that offered no comfort to either of us and wrapped my arms around her. I could see her reflection in the window illuminated by the harsh, white lights. Silent tears. I locked my fingers with hers and stared down at her perfectly imperfect hand. “I love you, Leah Grace.” Her sobs gained the tiniest vocality. “We’re still a family, we’re going to make it through this.”
“Look,” she whispered. The first snow of the years was falling, it was then that we both knew Baby Emery made it to Heaven safely.
The week after, I asked her how she was doing. “I know I’m going to be okay, Ben. And so are you.” She said it free of fear, and I wondered how she could still be whole in broken pieces.
A tear escaped from my eye without warning. She placed her mulberry colored hand on my cheek and gently kissed my forehead, “Life is for the living, honey. Not the dead.”
…
“Ben,” she starts again. The sirens are below us now. “I’m so— I’m so— sorry.”
“I told you not to say that—“
“But it’s my fault.” She starts coughing, she doesn’t sound good at all. It hurts me to hear her trying so hard to apologize for something entirely out of her hands.
“Leah, please, si— sit still and don’t apologize I wanted this just as much as you did.”
“I was the one who wanted to go parasailing today,” her voice croaks.
…
I felt long nails on my bare back calling me away from my dream. I turned over to see Leah smiling gently at me. “Good morning, my sunshine,” her voice was so sweet I thought I might still be in my dream. She had one hand tangled in her messy waves, red nails protruding in several places. Her tank top slipped off of one shoulder, revealing her freckle dabbed collar bone. My eyes moved to hers. Their pigment was composed of all colors, but mostly green. Then my eyes fell a little lower, the tan tank top gapped away from her chest due to the fallen strap. Obviously, it was not something that I hadn’t seen before, but she looked different today, more alive in a way; like God himself had breathed fresh air into her lungs this morning.
Leah was not twig skinny, but she wasn’t big either. She was enough to wrap your arms around without having to strain to make your hands touch. I swiftly pushed myself up from my sleeping position and rolled over her, throwing her down on the mattress. She giggled and began to run her ruby nails through my short shags of hair. She looked like an angel of the morning. The sun shone through the large window to the right of our bed, disheveled from sleep, and illuminated her skin.
I kissed her, gently at first, then not so gently. Her long nails scraped from my shoulders all the way down to the dimples at the bottom of my spine. I kissed down her neck, then her chest, then her stomach. I found her scarred hand and kissed the violet skin. “I love you, Leah Grace.”
“I love you too,” she whispered breathlessly. Her cream tank top slid effortlessly off of her silky skin, soon clothes seemed such a foreign concept to us. I ran my hands around the curves of her waist. Her body sunk into the burgundy sheets with my weight on top of her.
There was nothing comparable to the sound of her voice. I imagined that many years into the future there will be a museum of auditory art, and perhaps her noise would be played in a room where the folk of the future could come to take pleasure in the sound the way that I did.
Leah’s lips parted at the increased need for air. My name slipped out in between breaths and while we laid holding each other in a sweaty tangle of skin and sheets, that was the only sound we bothered to make. Breathing.
I listened to the slow and steady inhales and exhales that she took, I laid my head on her chest and listened to her beating heart. I never thought that I could be so satisfied with the thumping organ of another. It seemed strange to me about how little we acknowledge our own lives. When we are healthy and vibrant, living in the moment, it’s hard to remember how it could all be taken away from us in a second.
…
“We’ve already been parasailing before—“
“Leah. Stop.”
“Ben,” he breaths are becoming shorter, I start to worry that she isn’t doing too well. When our sail flew into the building, glass cut much of our bodies. Leah looks like she’s been mauled by a bear and I wonder how she’s alive.
…
After we found the energy to leave our bed, Leah told me that she wanted to take an adventure, and who am I to deny one? I asked her what would fulfill her wandering needs, “Parasailing,” she said, emerald eyes lighting up. So we packed an overnight bag and hopped on a plane. When we arrived on the California coast, the wind was at a minimum and the men at Ackerman’s Parasail said that the breeze wouldn’t be a problem. However, they didn’t think about intoxicated crew members.
When we trudged through the slightly chilly ocean waves to get to the boat, we could already smell the beer. I just assumed it was from the people before us. We were all hooked up in harnesses and ropes like patients in a hospital close to death. Everything was connected to the appropriate pair… except for the main line to the boat.
The wind had begun to pick up by then and when the boat took off at full speed we were carried right away. Being close to the city didn’t help when the wind carried us toward the concrete jungle. Once the wind began to calm, our parasail nose dove into a balcony that hung off of glass office walls.
It all happened in about five minutes. We didn’t have any time to really comprehend that we were heading for our deaths. Maybe it was meant to be that way. So we didn’t have to use our last few breaths screaming in a panic, begging a mysterious God to spare our ordinary lives. Leah was always off on an adventure, but anything could be an adventure to her, especially the ordinary things. I wondered why she cared so much about ordinary things, perhaps it’s because that is where the most living takes place.
…
I grab Leah’s damaged hand and look through the blood in my eyes to try and find the green in hers. Everything is scarlet. Screaming sirens and officials on speakers slur into an internal echo. One big gust of wind comes and knocks us straight out of our glass nest. Humans were never made to fly, I suppose we should have headed the warning signs. We are too disoriented to say any goodbyes or “I love you’s” but we both know that the other one does.
I died young, but it doesn’t bother me because I died happy. Even in ordinary life we can find unparalleled moments of wonder, but it does us no good to linger there because life is for the living, not for the dead.
Haunted
And when he said goodbye, I thought that everything about him would change. I thought that the him I had found myself so wrapped up in would remain as so only in the stardust of my memories.
But I was wrong.
His eyes still pierce mine with a deadly hazel stare. His smell still entrances me every time I catch a hint of it. His voice still makes my heart jump every time it spills out of his smirking lips, giving me hope that maybe someday his words will once again be meant for my ears.
I won’t forget the things that only I knew, they will remain trapped in my mind. No matter how many times I set them free, they will always come in with the rain and flood the empty heart where flowers once bloomed. Maybe at one time I was special, I was different. But things change and people do— I guess — too. Not their mannerisms but their desires. And how painful it is to be unwanted. To know that someone who was once addicted to every single piece of me, now craves a new taste.
The things that once surrounded me with comfort are now haunting me in my sleep. I thought at least I would have some freedom when I shut my eyes, but every time I close mine, I see yours. Taunting me like emeralds behind a glass case, reminding me that I can look all that I want, but I can’t touch.
In the end, I just want him to be happy— even if I can’t be. I want him to find what will fill him with joy when the sun rises and hold him at night when it sets. Now I can’t stop thinking about how ironic it is that they tell you to find someone who makes you happy, but not to depend on others for happiness.
Dear Old Me, Please Come Back.
Dear Delany,
In the prime of this seventeen and a half year life you have lived so far, you were innocent. You loved everything and everyone. You couldn’t quite wrap your naive mind around how you did, but you just did. You knew that love was the only thing that was universal and maybe the only thing that could last.
You were the band-aid that covered the scraped knee of a friend, the chocolate that filled the cracks of a broken heart, and the ears and arms to listen and hold the issues and feelings of anyone who needed to have someone actually listen to them for once. You were the long-legged girl that so desperately wanted to break the triple digits when you stepped onto the scale after every shower that you had taken. You were the solid stone that knew your morals and your range of comfortability. And you were the bright eyed spirit who longed for nothing more than freedom.
When you start to get older you are exposed to the harsh truth of life. You see things that normally you had been sheltered from, you hear things that you only wish you had misunderstood, and you experience pain that you wish was just a nightmare, hoping to wake from it at any moment, but you never do. Your world will be rocked and you’ll find it hard to believe some of the things that go on the minute you turn your back.
It’s true when they say that everyone’s a critic, but it’s also true that you’re the hardest on yourself. It’s true that girls are mean and that boys are stupid. It’s true that you’ll meet you’re lifelong best friend sophomore year and she will remind you of who you are when you’re lost. It’s true that you will fall in love with a boy younger than you and go through hell and back just to be with him. It’s true that junior year will be your hardest due to outside factors that you will not be able to control. It’s true that you will have the best summer yet. It’s true that you will meet another boy who will open your eyes and pull you out further than you’ve ever swam, but you’ve always been good at swimming, so don’t you worry about that. It’s true that you’re perspective on behavior, drugs, alcohol, love, and just life in general will be changed. It’s true that your relationship with the younger boy will end and he will betray your trust and it’s true that you won’t be healed for a long long time. But above all of these truths, it is the most true that you will discover some of the most amazing people through all of these ups and downs.
Honey, I can’t promise that your life will be the perfect life you’ve always dreamed of, but I can promise you it’s going to be one hell of a ride. And that’s what you’ve really always wanted anyway, right? Freedom. So take in all of this and let it hurt you, let it move you, let it open you. You will love the person you have grown to be don’t get me wrong, but while you’re shifting through all of this and coming in and out with the tide, if you come across the innocent you, invite her to sit down and stay a while, because you’ll miss her when she’s gone.
Love,
D
P.S.
So if the old me is out there somewhere, I promise I didn’t forget about you. I love who I am but I just need that little part of me again, please come back.
Off of the Deep End 