all questions, no answers.

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Kim and Kanye might be getting divorced– I snapchatted, tweeted, and FB messaged all my friends about the shocking news.

This is what I had become.

My Kendall and Kylie app runs in the background of all my other social media platforms as I left swipe, right swipe away the next poor sod I let into my room but not quite into my mind. I’ve aligned myself so closely with pop culture that I often forget I actually hate everything about it. But why? Why chase the ideas/ideals on UsWeekly, Popsugar, or whatever other vapid publication still manages to churn out print magazines with TIME’s finally bitten the bullet and gone digital?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning pop culture; people want what they want, and everyone wants something to pour themselves into to forget how hollow they were to begin with.

I.

I’m uncomfortable with my choices, with how I seem to settle into every space that will accommodate me, regardless of whether it’s in line with who I want to be or not. As told by Tinashe, her voice amplified over Snake Hips’ production: All my friends are wasted and I hate this club. Man, I drink too much.

Who are we trying to impress by showing up to all these events dressed exactly like Rihanna the last time she was caught by the paparazzi or donning the newest drop?  Who are we trying to let know that we’re cool enough to be here when we pretend to be unimpressed by the DJ, and completely unaffected by the overpriced alcohol that the bartender is seriously under-pouring?

Does anyone really even give a damn?

I’m convinced that we’re all self-absorbed, and we find attractiveness in the people that will look good next to us, in our squad, our crew, our whatever-the-fuck-we-call-it. Maybe I’m just keeping terrible company.

II.

I’ve been questioning everything lately: the need to be mindful of how we’re perceived, the reasons why I want to return to a university that kicked me out, the path that I’ve chosen to follow through for the rest of my college career, and the company I keep. Everything is up in the air and the plane I’m in has failed, I’m going to plummet to the ground with only my questions to cushion the fall.

The truth is I don’t have anything profound or new to say, I’m just talking to myself on another introspective Friday night. I’ve become a platitude monster, approaching you with thoughtcatalog articles and misquoted Marilyn Monroe lines– but at what cost?

I feel myself getting dumber, even as I try to open my mind to new perspectives and new ideas. I feel myself growing restless every time silence settles over me. I don’t know who I am without the anchor point of other people, sometimes. I just become strange when I keep to myself.

III.

I know there is quality out there, but I seem to attract the kinds that value quantity over the other q. I want to be discerning, firm with what I want and do not want, but my heart is as mutable as the water, which molds itself to its container. I want to be steadfast, balanced, I don’t want to be where I am or who I am anymore.

I’m stuck between chasing what I believe is my growth versus staying and continuing to operate under the guise of “normal.”

I don’t even have the fucking words to express these thoughts in the same beautiful way that would lead people to become enamored with me. I am just a lost almost-twenty year old that publishes her thoughts on an anonymous platform. I am so frustrated.

 

Old Times.

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It has effectively been two or three years since the last time I’ve decided to ruminate over the minute details of my life– and the truth is that I no longer have the same drive to write as I used to. Perhaps I’m a little less self-obsessed.

I once wondered, aloud on the internet, how people can continue to create beautiful things, because I only manage to birth onto the world a gift of mild literacy when the notches on my soul can no longer hold the anguish I let sit. A friend responded, “the ability to create even when uninspired separates the professional from the hobbyist. That’s why I keep myself sad 7/11.” It dawned on me then that the sadness and the emptiness I feel, as an individual, is not a wholly unique or special experience. The truth of the matter is that everyone feels the same sadness, some people just allow beautiful things to arise from the murky waters of their humanity.

My frustrations today are mainly that I am much less creative than I have ever been, and I struggle with the mutual exclusivity of happiness and grayness, sadness and art. Maybe I’ll figure something out, maybe I won’t. Until then, however.

I guess I’ll indulge in a little memory-writing.

why you should never love me (old post)

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I will love you, and I will break my own heart.

I will find you, crouched in the back of a bookstore situated along the busiest road, your legs folded over one another, and you’ll be looking down at your phone screen. You’ll be expecting me, and it will be the first time we’ve seen each other in almost a year. I’ll smile at you, a smile you later come to tell me made your heart skip a beat– and I’ll never believe you. I’ll ride an escalator up a few floors with you on a hot saturday in June, trying to break the awkwardness between us. I’ll poke fun at you and tease you about “remember when you used to be shorter than me?” And you’ll smile, but you’ll never let me know what’s going on behind those dark eyes of yours.

I will fight myself daily over talking to you first, because I can’t stand the thought of going through a day without bothering you with one or another meaningless happening in my life; I will do this only so I have an excuse to remind you that I’m here, that I exist, and that I want to be a part of your day. 

My heart will race when you touch me, and my body will go cold when you try to hold my hand because I still won’t be able to believe that I have you with me, I’ll shake when you wrap your arms around me in a hug goodbye, and threaten to evict my heart from my chest when you kiss my forehead because it drowns out my thoughts and I’m afraid of losing control when you’re around. 

I will realize I’m slowly falling in love with you when your name meets the tip of my pen several times a day, and my ink spells it out in poetry and prose. My soul will ache for you on cold days when the rain beats against the glass of my window, and I will tell you so. I will tear up when I think about the way your rough hands feel against mine, and how frustrating it is that I can never capture how it feels to have my skin against yours.

My breath will hitch when we kiss for the first time on the same street that we met, in the bookstore you said you’d never come back to– you never had any shame. My fingers will try to find an anchor to hold on to in the stubble of your crew-cut hair, because I’ll be losing myself in the feeling of your chapped lips against mine. I will always bid you goodbye reluctantly, because it always feels like farewell to a part of me that I had been waiting years for.

I’m in love with you, I shout to the world as I toss aside darkness.

And then we don’t see each other for nearly a month, I will break my own heart. I will convince myself that you are better off without me, that you are too good for me, that you will find someone prettier, smarter, more perfect for you than I will ever be, and I will push you away. I will try to protect myself because I’m afraid of you pushing me away first.

I will cry on late nights about things I can never explain, I will convince myself that you once needed me, but now you don’t. That I had used up my usefulness. 

I will reminisce about your voice and the way you moved, the way your glasses slip off the bridge of your nose every now and then. I will smile when I remember the way your lips curled up at the sides whenever you would show me that awkward smile of yours, and I will lie in bed hugging my knees when I convince myself that it’ll never happen again.

So by the time we see each other again on the very same street, it’ll be raining. We’ll spend most of our meeting making awkward conversation and every little thing you do will supply the demon-tongue in the back of my mind telling me that you don’t love me anymore. Then you kiss me, and the chambers of my heart beat against the cells in my body, screaming one thing at one another. 

I will become a yoyo, happy and sad and happy and sad because you say you aren’t ready for a relationship, but you will always be there. And I will be confused.

I will try to fall in love with someone else and fail miserably because no one understands me like you do, no one can suck me into their stare with the same power. I will try to fall in love with him after we kiss in the theatre on your birthday, because by now I am doubting you all over again. I will be the death of everything beautiful we had.

He will ask me why I chose you over him, every single time, especially since he’s seen me cry over you. Each and every time I will respond, “because without him, the stars are nothing more than lights in the sky.” And he’ll never understand what I mean, because he does not think like you do. He doesn’t know that my heart is black and white, pen and paper– and he will never understand my poetry because each stroke comes together to illustrate you: my breath of life behind the stars, willing them to grow wings and form a bridge between you and I as we both drift off into sleep. 

So do not love me, for I do not know how to love myself.

Blasphemy

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“Bless me father, for I have sinned”

they taught me these words

uttered as my nails slide along the left

and right of our savior’s emaciated

body etched into wood 

but the blood seems no less real

piled up under my fingernails

 

“My last confession was…”

I don’t remember, I don’t know

when the last time my heart ever

bent to the idea of popping a vessel

to an old man behind the screen

when all the demons I have 

wear masks with my face and mock me

with my childlike voice, with my

vicious tongue 

 

How do you explain this

to a face behind a blackened screen?

 

The kind-faced teacher in an all-girls’

institute urges me on,

“God will help you.”

So I choke out years upon years of

debauchery, lies, attempted murder

and with each syllable with each

l e t t e r i feel her hands clamp around

my neck, wringing me and threatening

to flush all of hell down my

dirty little mouth, whore, that’s what you like

keep going, worthless blasphemer

you’re a liar through and through

and she mocks me with the patterns

I would draw on the virgin’s shoulders

angel-kissing him to the brink

of temptation where the mind and

morality separate into roads of

heaven and hell

and I am so gone down the icy road

that he’d have to run to catch up with me

because these demons that wear

my face inside out have my by the hands

I spit at them but they laugh

because I still taste of sin

It’s in my teeth, father, they’re in

my mind 

 

The demons tie strings around my 

fingers, father, sometimes I can’t tell

the difference between loneliness and

being awake because whenever 

someone gets too close they

whisper things into my ears, father

they punish me for my transgressions

I will never be allowed to be happy

as long as they pick pieces off me

and let the hell-hounds memorize me

so they know, when the time has come

that their sinner, long awaited

has finally slit her wrists deep enough

to fill the mouths of those she hurt

with enough satisfaction

to have them sail through life

 

“Go in peace,”

he’ll mutter, the years of his body

weighing down on him as i get off my

tired knees feeling the Nothing i have

come to know as normal.

Nothing tucks me into bed at night

and Nothing greets me in the morning

So I turn on my heel and press on

knowing that

today will be the day I die.

 

“Amen.”

25 Things To Know Before Dating Me

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  1. I’ve had a colorful past, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes; but if I say I’m working on it– then I really am. 
  2. I am dramatic.
  3. I’ll introduce you to everyone as “This is ______, and he’s lame.” Don’t take this the wrong way, I just love pushing buttons.
  4. Poetry? Oh, expect lots and lots of poetry about you.
  5. Especially about your jawline or your eyes.
  6. I will be your biggest fan, and make banners on demand.
  7. During shark week, or Satan’s Sacrificial Waterfall of Blood, I often have crying fits– But I try my best not to get other people involved.
  8. Sometimes I’ll want to take you out drinking and take stupid photos with you.
  9. I’ll suggest a million things that we can do, and want to do them all at the same time. It’s okay to tell me to calm down.
  10. I love giving gifts. It doesn’t matter how much it costs me, material gifts are one of my favorite things to give.
  11. I will love you with everything that I have.
  12. I can be a huge fucking idiot sometimes.
  13. I swear excessively.
  14. I will want you to communicate with me, tell me the things you don’t like and I will find a compromise.
  15. If I agree to date you exclusively/suggest dating exclusively, that means I’ve written at LEAST three poems about you.
  16. Sometimes I worry I’m not feminine enough, especially on cold days when all I want to do is sit around and watch porn.
  17. I can’t stay mad. Trust me, I’ve tried.
  18. I have crass humor, and will make dirty jokes occasionally. 
  19. I will cry over books and repeatedly suggest that you read them too.
  20. Sometimes I will quietly question your choice in clothing/hairstyle, but I’m not dating you for either, so feel free to dye your hair pink.
  21. “Meeting the family” scares me more than it might scare you. I’m insane, where do you think I got it?
  22. I will try almost anything you suggest, within reason. 
  23. I will poke fun at you from time to time, feel free to do the same.
  24. Something important: I will tell you about things that bother me, and repeatedly apologize for bringing it up.
  25. In short: I’m a huge, awkward, dork; but I will love you like a fat kid loves cake.