a year later

last easter sunday i hiked for 8 hours over 19km of mountains. afterwards i slept for three days. i never really woke up.

that was the end of life as i knew it. the sad feelings which had been building up over a lifetime crashed over me that week and i couldn't get up again.

is 21 too young to look back on my life with nothing but regret? will these ghosts haunt me forever? i see pictures of wintergirls - they're 30, 40, 50. hardly girls anymore. i thought i was better than that. i thought i was thawing.

but then i thought, 'what's the harm of just looking down the rabbit hole? i won't get hurt, right?'

wrong. i leaned over, trying to see the bottom, wondering how far down it was.

now i'm falling.

i don't want you to catch me.

concentric

i'm dizzy again. i loved today. nothing exciting happened, but i loved the way i felt. i wore my purple coat and new stockings and i sat in the church hall at lunchtime. a strange man in an eccentric green and yellow sweater sat down and lectured me. when his phone rang, he got up and i closed my eyes and wished to be somewhere else.

when i opened my eyes you were there.

i love the reality of you. it's when i don't see you for a while and i sit in my room and think about you, that's when i feel sad. i don't like the memory of you and i don't like the idea of seeing you, but when you're there i am happy.

i tell you i can't stand miso soup and that i hate the beach. i try and make you fall out of love with me.

we go round and round in circles. i love you. you love me not. you love me. i love you not.

i don't know how i want the story to end.

the game

i use them like tissue paper. the same two. they lie crumpled on the floor where i've thrown them at the wastebasket, but missed.

the two are interchangeable. when one comes too close i push them away and reach for the other. then it repeats.

it's a game they don't get tired of. i don't either. not yet anyway.

i feel remotely sorry that this is what it is has come down to.

i was made for more.

so were you.

wonderland

i feel like alice - standing on the edge of the rabbit hole, about to tumble down. down, down, down. yet again.

i wanted to be better for him and now that he's gone i have no reason to be anything other than what i am. he made me want to be better, but i let him slip like sand through my fingers, not realising what he meant until it was too late.

even now i don't know if i loved him, or if i just loved the idea of loving him. or perhaps more accurately: i loved the idea of him loving me.

but it's over. today i try and be strong. i go downstairs and spoon mouthful after mouthful of cereal into my unwilling body. i make a new pact.

tomorrow i will put on my grey-blue dress and be alice.

this is your last chance to save me. hurry. it's almost too late.

endless blue

even though i am surrounded by people, often times i feel alone. i have seen life from outside the neat borders of sanity and that makes things different. sometimes i miss the reckless abandon of living outside those lines, of having no discernible boundaries, of it not really mattering whether you live or die. it's a risky state to be in, but now that it eludes me, i crave the free falling feeling that it gives you.

i am at the hospital now, for work, sitting under the fluorescent lights and scribbling in my notebook. my uniform gapes at the front. it's still too big.

in my break i walk the hospital hallways, looking for you. i wish that i could see you, but i don't. i wish that i could miss you, but i don't.

i hold you like a kite string, slowly unravelling through my hands.

i don't want to let go.

hot air balloon

balloon festival. my favourite time of year as a child. my parents used to wrap us up in coats and take us to the lake, fog rising off the ground as we watched the rainbow balloons inhale the warm air and lift up into the sky.

esperanza - hope - rising.

i think of that today as i watch the balloons fly higher and higher into the sky.

then this afternoon he breaks the "no contact" rule one too many times. only i am allowed to break that rule, although i don't. it wouldn't be a big deal, but it comes in the wake of my sister contemplating suicide yet again. it's all too much. i email him sharply, staccato bursts, not saying what i really mean.

my dreams rise with the balloons and burst like bubbles in the sunshine.