writing myself out

poetry, prose, rants, and anything else

[gloriousmoments]

it is exhausting to be sentimental. sometimes i feel like i have been writing the same piece over and over since i can remember. flawed moments that the smooth brush of passed time has mended, perfect snapshots in between all the reasons we ended. a broken record that i keep playing anyway, keep finding a new reason to capture that sound. keep looking for a fresh interpretation of the memories i’m wearing down. 

i feel like i am writing fiction about our lives. keeping you here with me long past your allotted time. changing a few words here and there to make the details sound right, until it’s folklore, it’s my dreams, it’s not you but who you were to me.

[gloriousmoments]

sometimes a relationship is a relationship and sometimes it is the proof i looked for for years that someone could want me who makes me valuable and worthy. sometimes you were a boyfriend and sometimes you were every insecurity i’ve ever had burning behind a face that could kill me with its beauty. sometimes i think of you as a boyfriend and realize what you were lacking, and sometimes i i think of you as a symbol, as a series of touches, as everything i’ve ever wanted.

we were too young and i felt too much and sometimes it was for you, and sometimes it was for what you had to be for me to save me from all the ideas i had about myself. sometimes it was for the way i felt when you touched me and sometimes it was for being able to hold the memory of you touching me like glass in my hands. knowing that i was always on the verge of shattering, but i would rather let you break me than give up on you.

[gloriousmoments]

i am here to learn what i love, who i love, how i love. spending thousands a year for a glimpse of self discovery. i am eighteen and brimming with self loathing. i try to write down my intrusive thoughts, to break it all down into recognizable parts. i feel it has invaded me. sepsis. i have spent years terrified to ever look inside myself. never even known what i wanted to find. do i want to be genuine or did i never learn how to lie?

[gloriousmoments]

i’ve been trying to say goodbye to you since july. my dreams of you abandoning me became a dream that you died. i know i will let go eventually. i always do. but as always, it will take a shamefully long time.

i know now that going back to you would be bad for me. i’d still do it if i had the chance. sometimes things that are bad for us are worth it just for the thrill of burning. it’s only a dream, anyway.

[gloriousmoments]

it’s five am. my life changes forever tomorrow, but it doesn’t feel real yet. i’ve been counting down to this day for months and now i’m terrified of it.

i want to burn down my past and rise from the ashes and that scares me too. what if i am self destructing. what if letting go of my old crutches only leads to my ruin. maybe a friendship with someone i don’t actually like, existing only to stave off loneliness, is better than no friendship at all. who says i can replace her?

that line from jane the virgin lives rent free in my head. “am i being practical or brave?” she asks her lover, and he says, “be brave.” every time she needs a push, he’s there to give it to her. i want to be brave, but my mind tells me that i’m terrible at knowing whether i’m acting out of courage or self-loathing. it is easier to stay the same. it’s always easier.

[gloriousmoments]

i am haunted by the artifacts left by people from my past. even though i don’t talk to him anymore, i still have the sweatshirt i stole that smells like the night we stayed up until four a.m. a year ago. long after our friendship dissipated, i can breathe in the traces of his old cologne and remember driving with him down midnight roads. i have two books from a guy who swears now that i hate him; one was a gift, and one i refused to return after we’d taken a turn for the worse. i saved the one love letter from february eighteenth from a boy who i still have to try not to care too much for. i’m taken back to our awkward kisses each time i see the underwear he touched me in. all of them are ghosts, now, faded into the background of my existence, but i remember.

[gloriousmoments]

i thought about you while i put the dishes away. what it would be like if we had our own place. if i’m honest, i know you’d be the boyfriend who didn’t pull his weight. that i’d be stuck resenting you not noticing everything i’d do to make your life easier. but i still wish i was rinsing the plates with you right here. i wish we’d had a chance to build a life together, even if it would’ve crashed and burned in the end. wish i had more real moments with you so i didn’t have to waste my time playing pretend.

[gloriousmoments]

all i want is to not be special. i want to have the exact same problems every other human had before me. i want it all to be fixable. i want to be happy sometimes and for my darker nights to not leave me feeling as if i deserve to die. i want to have a job, a partner, some friends and a life. i don’t want to hurt anyone terribly, including myself. i want to figure out how to make my mind stop creating my personal hell. i want to be back in the real world, not stuck at home and isolated with self destruction calling my name. i don’t even want things to be good anymore. i just want to be okay.

[gloriousmoments]

i imagine running into you on the street. you grabbing my hand and saying i’m so sorry. explaining everything. asking me to try again and saying you’ll do it right this time. no more half-hearted apologies that feel like lies; no more short-term change. then kissing me like you did on the lawn that day, your hand gentle on my waist.

i imagine us in a place far better than here, lying in a bedroom next to an open window. the smell of lilacs drifts in, and you say, i told you we’d get here someday. i’m sorry i made you doubt me.

[gloriousmoments]

i wish i could expedite the process of getting over someone. send closure via priority mail. i’m sick of waiting for time to heal me; i don’t want to get over him bit by bit, backslide, and spend months pining. i need these feelings deleted. clear out the storage space for someone who will be better for me. fuck the five stages of grief. being human and oversensitive is an annoyance that needs an opt-out option.

[gloriousmoments]

i tell myself, over and over again: love is not emptiness. love is not only the longing that comes when the person you want can’t be with you again. love is not always doomed, and love does not always destroy you. love can be you and the new album you have on repeat. love can be confronting your demons and knowing you’ll outlive them. love can be an afternoon in the park with your friends. and love can be the times he built you up, the times he made you feel wanted, the times he painted you golden; love can be when someone else does those things better than he ever did. because someone will.

[gloriousmoments]

i’ve started taking seven hours to reply to my friends; it’s half spite and half exhaustion. quarantine seems to have taught me that i’m not particularly vital to multiple people i thought i was. we’ve been drifting away in weeks without seeing each other and the disappearance of the activities we used to share. it’s not anyone’s fault, really, but it’s hard not to feel a little angry.

maybe the problem is that i chose the most unreliable person to be the one i most depended on. maybe the problem is that i expected the impossible; i should’ve known that by now he’d be gone. maybe it’s a good thing that i’ll be moving two thousand miles in two months. there is little here, now, except myself.

[gloriousmoments]

i dreamed that you had a secret twin, unconsciously splitting you in two. the person i know would never do this to me. but in the daylight you are the same person who was never there when i needed you. i spent more time missing you than feeling safe in your presence. if that is love, what can i ever count on?

[gloriousmoments]

i tried to move on. talked to boys i don’t know who don’t care about me and thought of you. talked with a friend about how we didn’t break up the right way and felt guilt, heavy in my chest. it’s fun to imagine being with every pretty girl whose pictures i see. but i still want to be with you.

i keep trying to distract myself so i don’t have to process this. switch from angry to resigned to still in love with you every three hours. imagine that you hear how i’m trying to move on without telling you, imagine you hating me. tell myself i gave you every chance and you threw it away. but i don’t want to dispose of us.

i don’t let myself feel real emotion anymore because it all turns into pain and wanting you. i know we didn’t work that well and we certainly can’t now, but i still have a bit of stupid hope. i don’t feel like a person anymore. i wish i did. i wish i knew the right way to deal with this. i wish none of it had happened this way.

[gloriousmoments]

i will myself to go when there’s nothing left to leave. write coldly on a blank page. curse your name months after you’ve stopped listening. try to pull the last shreds of meaning out of cloth that no longer covers me.

you’re gone. you never waited to hear what i had to say. you stopped caring while i was still dreaming of us, writing letters i thought i’d show you someday. i thought you were holding out too, just waiting for the moment we could be what we were before. but you give up far more easily than i do. leave me feeling like a fool, empty and ignored.

the truth is i could fight for us with all i have and you’d turn my efforts down. i could lay my plans out at your feet and you’d leave them on the ground. i thought if i tried hard enough, i could fix us. but there’s nothing to repair. can’t put my soul on the line for a love that isn’t there.

[gloriousmoments]

the times i try to fix myself are the times i’m holding myself up by strings. i feel as if i’m missing a soul, missing a purpose, missing everything. i apply to jobs i know i won’t get during a pandemic-slash-recession and beat myself up for laziness. i imagine what i would be doing with this time if the universe hadn’t ruined it.

[gloriousmoments]

i listen to the song i played in my earbuds on the way to our first date. you made me feel as if the world was opening up. then circumstances slammed you shut, and i caged myself in with you. wondered why i wasn’t satisfied going wherever i wanted while wishing only that you were with me. i will never forgive how much we missed. how much more we could have been, if only, if only.