castles

you know, sometimes the anticipation of something is far better than what actually happens. the dream is better than the reality.

i have this friend. i don't know him in real life, but i feel like i do.

even though we're just friends, somehow i feel like life is worth living just because he's there. i can't kill myself because of the possibility of us. and every day i can wake up and keep going, just because i want to think a little, dream a little, wonder a little about what would happen if we actually met.

i know that will never happen, but i am only young. i can build castles in the air. i can find something that makes me want to stay alive. something. anything. it doesn't matter what or who.

thank you t. you make me hopeful.

wishing

at the mall i see two girls sitting with their parents at a table. the elder girl is maybe 6 or 7. the younger maybe 4. the younger sister is effervescent, alive. she turns to me and smiles. the elder sits and stares at her fries. she pushes them around on her tray. tears drip down her face.

the younger sister eats her chicken nuggets. she smiles at me again. the father leans down to the elder girl. i can hear his voice in my ear, "hush, don't make a scene."

she is the me of years ago. that is not my family, but it is.

they were real. i saw them. they made me cry. they made me remember.

i want to go back in time and be the younger sister.

they know

i walk down the stairs from class. i am very cold, icy even, though the heater's on. my lecturer passes me. he gives me the absent minded 'you're in my class, but i can't quite remember your name' smile. then he pauses and looks back. his smile wavers. i lock my eyes ahead.

he knows.

i hate the opening up of myself to others. and even more, i hate the way they talk - unwrapping me like a present, trying to find what's underneath.

give up. you won't see me, no matter how small the russian doll gets, no matter how many layers are peeled back.

i am locked away in the land of the hundred year winter and you can't find me here.

tomorrow

i often wonder if, in a few years time, i will be proud of the life i have lived.

will i open the box underneath my bed one day and be reminded of the suicide notes, still in their identical white envelopes, date printed neatly in the top right hand corner.

will i be proud of that in 10 years, 5 years, a years time? will i remember that it hurt?

or should i just burn them now? hope my memory is written in sand and not on stone. hope the river washes away the things i'd rather left unfelt.

wasted

"there is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. you want one and i want one, but there isn't one. it comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect.

and yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. there is no other way."

marya hornbacher

i call in sick to work and then i sit in my mothers room, legs outstretched, bones pressing against the floor, sunlight on my back. i read wasted. i finish it in a rush, tumbling over the words, gasping for air when it is over. i read the paragraph above again and again, trying to slow the frantic clattering of my heart, the realisation that this will never be over.

sure, i will get better (if i try). but i will always be different. i have seen the world from outside the tidy box of sanity and although i can learn to eat and live and laugh, i cannot undo what i have seen.

but yet, like she says, i will always be me. when the broken pieces get put back together the picture will be different, but it's okay. i will still be me. you will still be you.

that is all that matters. that is all that we have.