a drink to your health

Today I cried before ten in the morning. It wasn't much, but my eyes are still damp. It was good.

"I think the new drugs are working," I said, and she said, "Ahh, isn't that awful?" And I knew exactly what she meant.

I am happy for the first time in so long—happy because of coffee, books, friends, good weather, casual adventures, a cat and thoughts about the future. And at the back of my mind there's a worry that none of this happiness is real. A worry that I have myself fooled.

"All right," I said, "I have to go to bed. I've got to be up in the morning." And he said, "Working on your project?" And I said, "No, therapy appointment." And he looked down at me and said, "Ah, right! I forget about that."

It's a Tuesday, and Tuesday are full of classes I hate, but people I don't. The sky is grey and I'm glad to be alive.

light on my shoulders

I woke up too early this morning but I was drenched in warm yellow sunlight, and the dust floated on the heat from the radiator, sparkling like glitter. I think it was a miracle God wanted me to see. The apartment is empty, but I can hear the faintest music drifting in through the window. I got up and took my meds and sprayed the tub with mold killer. I toasted my cinnamon raison bagel.

There's a violent, ugly bruise on the inside of my elbow where they pricked the vein for my blood test. There's sky blue paint in irregular smears all across my forearm from the bedroom painting job of a friend of a friend. There's a slashed pink scar across my wrist, fresh but healing, from what my therapist calls "intense anger turned inward."

That feels like a more accurate representation of my emotions than anything else I could say about them. It's January and I'm still alive. I'm sitting in sunlight.

Don't call back.

I am drinking coffee at 2 p.m.  I should be leaving now but I can't quite make it happen. There are only two weeks of school left, but they seem insurmountable. None of the places I call "home" are home. I'm a migratory bird and winter is biting.

He hung up the phone first last night, and I got that sudden hollow feeling again. It's been gone for so long. Somehow, it's still as familiar as the whistle your dog returns to.

I'm going to grow my hair longer than it's ever been. I'll become Samson in rainbow hues. I need strength to back up this cornered feeling: this fierceness arisen.

The words don't bubble like they used to. The thoughts are short and shadowed. Because they're ugly, I don't express them. I dress silence in smiles.

Two weeks.

(I'm not sure how to end this. Except that the coffee doesn't help the sadness. Things have been hard recently. I don't want to lie about it. But things will get better. I know it. I wait for it.)

everything is jumbled but here's this

I kill all the spiders in the house
because Lauren's too kindhearted and Emily's too scared.

My hair has gotten long again
without me taking notice.

I don't write anymore and I don't call home
maybe for reasons not so different.

(Hey, let me see your wrist! What happened?
deny deny deny)

One missed call from Lindy in Counseling.
You cancelled your appointment, please call back so we can get you in as soon as we can

He doesn't treat me the way I would like
but it feels like more than my just desserts.


The leaves are changing,
my hair color with them.


(It's fine, as long as you don't like anyone else. Do you?
deny deny deny)

A kitten kissed me softly
and I cried real tears.

His hand is on my thigh
and I let it be.

dot-to-dot

The bruise on my knee is gone, has disappeared entirely save for a pinprick scab where the escalator step broke the skin. But it still hurts when I touch it. It's still tender. It isn't healed under the surface, even though any evidence of a wound is gone.

A few days ago, the doctor asked, "So why haven't you killed yourself? What's stopping you?" And I told her the truth. The memory isn't a victory, but it is a comfort.

Today I went to the library, and in the stacks, it felt like I could breathe for the first time in days. Books have always been my safest place. I was just there to get a card, and maybe look around, but I wasn't going to take anything home. I repeated this to myself during the six-block walk from my apartment. I am a master of self-delusion. On the way home, I carried the books against my side, the gold-lettered spines aligned.

(They say college is a good place to make connections. These are the ones I'm making.)

definitions

want n. 1. The condition or quality of lacking something usual or necessary. 3. Something desired: a person of few wants. 4. A defect of character, a fault.
          —"want." The American Heritage High School Dictionary. 4th ed. 2004. Print.

beauty n. 1. The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality. 2. One that is beautiful.
         — "beauty." The American Heritage High School Dictionary. 

space n. 6. Sufficient freedom from external pressure for oneself and one's needs.
         —"space." The American Heritage High School Dictionary.
1. distance extending without limit in all directions; that which is thought of as a boundless, continuous expanse extending in all directions or in three dimensions, within which all material things  are contained.
         — "space." Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged. 2nd ed. 1983. Print.

pain in three flavors

1. He called Friday night, very late, and by the time the call ended I had chewed my lip raw and tangy.
2. Blood on the hand towels.
3. In her dark car, we talked about a boy, and she rubbed at her earlobes, just like I do.

things I can't shake

I hope it rains tomorrow.

People keep asking me "what's next?" and I tell them I don't know, because all I really want is a chance to stop and look around.

Last Wednesday a baby laid her head on my chest and cried quiet, slow tears. I traced my fingers up and down her spine, and rocked, back and forth, trying to soothe her with the rhythm of my breathing. She felt so fragile resting in the curve of my elbow.

Last Saturday my best friend called and we talked for a while. He mentioned that he had read an article recently in which the authors advised new husbands to tell their wives every day that they are capable, beautiful, and loved. "Every day! Isn't that ridiculous?" he said. "That's baloney."

On Sunday, a boy I had a past with wrote me to say happy birthday. We started talking a little. He still remembers exactly what I told him the last time we met. That was always his way: he noticed things I never meant for him to notice, and remembered everything.

On Monday I had two pieces published in a magazine, and it gave me a kick I'd forgotten. It inspired an echo in the back of my mind. It's the same question I can't get away from: what's next? What's next?
(Think very hard. Reevaluate.)

Today is Tuesday. I am twenty years old. I have three holes punched into each ear, and small silver scars on the second knuckle of each hand. Am I fragile? Am I beautiful? I want to be beautiful.

Maybe it will rain tomorrow.

another sad story

11 pm, and I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to eat dinner at this point.

I have too many thoughts for my brain. They're overflowing out my ears.

I need a deep breath.
I need a good friend.

Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.

I was driving home in the dark, with the window open and the air whipping a chill through the cab of my car. As the red light turned to green and I made my left-hand turn onto the highway, that song came on the radio: the one that feels like falling, and getting back up again. The song for letting go.

I don't miss him when he's gone. It's when he's back that I'm a fool again.

It's 11:30. I'm hungry. Time for dinner.

indigo

Last night, as I was in that warm, dozy, dreamy state of half-sleep, my phone buzzed from across the room. It filled the room with a blue glow, but I rolled over and ignored it. A few minutes later, it buzzed again, and this time I stumbled out of bed to see who was inspired to talk to me at twelve thirty in the morning.

It was my best friend. I read the messages, I smiled, and I laid back down in bed. A moment later, I got up to read them again. It felt like he was close for the first time in a long, long time.



(Things have been so odd lately. I talk too much and I still can't manage to say what I mean. Some days I want to drift off forever and never see anyone again. I think I'm a different person than I was at the start of the year, and I'm not sure I like her much at all.)

I went out for coffee last week with a guy who told me he that he "didn't find the Grand Canyon that impressive". Maybe it's shallow, but after that comment, I didn't find him that impressive.


(I'm trying. I'm trying so hard. This semester has been putting me through the wringer, chipping away at the base of my very newly-constructed sense of self-worth. And I'm perpetually coming up short.)

(I didn't mean for this to get so down. But that's all I've got in me, at the moment. Forgive me?)

(Love.)

sick Sunday

Today I took a nap at 11 AM. I've been playing Simon and Garfunkel not too loud. Reading a book I loved in childhood. It started snowing this evening; I'm okay with it. There's a full moon tonight, although the clouds are too dense to let it through. I'm going to make a nest in my bed, and then I'll watch sad movies, then funny movies, and drink lots of tea with honey. Hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow with a neck less sore and a throat less scratchy.

above the ground, pt. 2

Somehow it happened and I was flying east again, losing hours, days, watching the mountains fade away under me. Pike's Peak shimmered in the distance. It was tiny, the only interruption on the horizon. I thought about the last time I stood under that mountain. It had seemed so huge. I thought about the relativity of size, and of distance, and of time. Everything seems bigger from up in the air, even as it diminishes.

The sun doesn't set when you fly east. You outrun it. I watched the sky fade like watercolors, washing from blue to pink to gold to darker blue, all in one broad swath. The backs of the airplane wings shone, gilded.

Ahead of us was darkness. But as we flew headlong into it, the stars came out. First, below us, the scattering of yellow sparks; then, above us, the clouds thinned and the cold silver glittered through. The stars were as far away as ever, one hundred million light-years in the past. Below, whole cities spread out like tea-leaves at the bottom of the cup. To the people on the ground, we were just another glinting light, winking far off. Distance. Time. Relativity. We sailed on, sandwiched between the stars below and the stars above, and we were a star ourselves.

a meditation on breathing, in three parts

I wish it were raining. I wish it were raining and I was driving down the highway, wipers fwip-fwipping across the windshield, with a long way still to go. I can only breathe properly in a rainstorm. And it feels like I've gone a long time without any deep breaths—a tight, cracked feeling in my chest. I need some space and time to exorcise the ghosts from my shotgun seat. I need a reason to be alone.

I can't sleep anymore. My mind spins when I lay in the dark, and I end up turning on the light and reading fifteen pages to still my breathing. In the morning, I drink coffee. It makes my hands shake and my heart flutter, and turns my handwriting spidery. 

Driving home this evening, the sinking sun shone warm and orange through the still-bare trees. It sent shadows flickering over my arms. Out the other window, the moon shone through wispy clouds, almost full. I have too much on my mind, but I watched the rose gold spread over the tops of the houses, and was at peace.

the green eye

The sky glows gold in a strip over the tops of the houses, weighed down by the bruise-blue clouds above. The cat is in my chair, asleep with his eyes open.
Yesterday morning, my best friend texted me a verse of poetry. From the middle of the snow-dusted woods, I sent him back a verse of my own.
[I'm adept with syntax, but can't seem to say the necessary thing.]
The silence on my end of the phone line looks like an ocean, deep and troubling and still unknown. I keep too many secrets. They hold me mute when I ought to speak up.
And now I'm laying on the floor, legs against the wall and feet reaching for the ceiling while the single green eye of the smoke alarm stares down at me in judgment.
I'm trying to be a better person (a better friend). Last spring I let things fall and some of them cracked in the drop. I'm trying to pick them up, trying to repair what I've broken.
I want my friends to know how much I love them
 but in the dark I'm afraid (too afraid) that it's something they don't want to hear.

And so I keep fighting.

scattered

It's raining outside.
I'm trying not to panic over the last of my winter break.
Trying to work out an ending to the comic I'm writing.
I planted new seeds yesterday. Marigolds.
I haven't read as many books as I wanted to. (The book I'm reading now is four days overdue.)
I'm knitting a scarf of cloudlike fluffiness.
Playlisting.
Making phone calls.
Taking photos again.
I've made a list of things I haven't tried yet. I'm planning to try them all.

an ending

I'm not going to do a retrospective. This year was full of growing pains and I'm not quite sorry to have reached its end. But ah, there's another year tomorrow. Fresh, clean, new. Give and forgive. Pray and then move. 

Party riotously, my friends. Enjoy the sparkle, and remember where you've been. 

And tomorrow? 

the gift

Sometime around fifteen, I was at a party. It hadn't really picked up yet; everyone was bored, leaning against the walls, muttering and sighing. Someone spoke up: "I wish they'd just get here already." The rest of the wall-huggers murmured assent. I leaned over to my friend and said softly, sarcastically, "Man, I wish people said that about me!" He turned and laughed and said, "Oh, believe me, we do."

I hope your Christmas was jubilant, if you celebrated, and that you got some sweet and exciting presents. But even more, I hope that somebody reminded you how much you matter, how much you're loved, and how indelible you are.

Love.

Spinach Salad, 9 o'clock

I've been in a bad frame of mind for the last week or so, the kind of deal where I lie awake at night worrying that I'll fail calculus and never find love.
 It's just finals. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I'm stressed and wound tight and not everything I tell myself late at night is the truth.
It's hard, though. I'm dealing as best I can. Lots of oranges, lots of hot chocolate. Flannel every day. In a week finals will be over and Christmas will be on its heels, but for now I am making a salad in this dim kitchen and trying to keep some perspective.

November Fourth

It's forty-five degrees today. Monday afternoon. I wasn't late for class, and I'm wearing the scarf my best friend made me last Christmas. It's my half birthday.

I can't make you understand how much better things are now unless I tell you about the hills, which have turned orange and yellow and red in the last two weeks, as far as you can drive. The setting sunlight hits them, gilding them brilliantly against the heavy clouds on the horizon, and I can almost hear the world singing.

Everything is rejoicing. I've joined it.

these days

So here's where I'm at.

My hair dye smells like raspberries, and turns my fingertips pink. It makes me feel powerful.

I'm making the best grades of my life. Studying so much that strangers have noticed.

And I've stopped pining for him. It was such a stupidly obvious decision, and such a good one. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I still get sad sometimes.

But I feel more like myself than I have in a year.

I'm nineteen and no one's in love with me, and I have freedom and a full tank of gas.

It feels like I'm on my way home.