Strange Little Girl

And at once I knew, I was not magnificent

[hopeisacarrot]

[hopeisacarrot]

Letter from Dad

Dear Jess,

  I am very happy to hear from you. Andrea and I were talking about some events from your earliest years back in Lake Panamoka. I told her about the time I was taking your temperature and you bit the end off the thermometer. I can hardly describe how terrified I was that you had perhaps swallowed mercury and broken glass. Twenty nine or so years later I still relive those moments in post traumatic form at least once every month or so.

No matter now old you get, you'll still be the baby I held upside down by the ankles, desperately swiping your tongue with a paper towel.

Keep your eye out for a birthday gift, but it won't be on time. I'll go now and pray you don't have mercury poisoning.

Love, Dad

[hopeisacarrot]

Hope Is A Carrot On A String

Now each time I hear the train charge through the night, I think of the one that carried me back to his arms,and wish I could live it all over again. On the fourth and last morning of my visit back to the beach, I lay folded up under blankets with him as light crept into his bedroom, as did the doom of the impending goodbye . I listened to his steady breath and pressed every inch of my exposed skin to his, toes to cheek, and felt teardrops drip from my eyes. The Tears for Daniel, there is no end. My life has been divided into two worlds, and there is no inbetween. There is color and light and laughter and giving a shit. And there is life here, life without him.

How can I find a way to live in this beautiful world with this amazing person? I've tried to give it a go on my own, but everything feels utterly pointless. I'm living day after day as if I am asleep. In seeing him this weekend, I finally woke up, and at the same time found myself in a dream. THIS is where I'm supposed to be, THIS is what I was put here for. To simply and purely love him, and in that sole endeavor, my life now has purpose.

But the cruel truth that is reality says, "This may be what gives you meaning and happiness and purpose, but it's not the same for him. He has his own vision of happiness, and it isn't you."

Maybe it partly is, but I'm not buying the 'you're too good for me' bullshit that he is selling. So my raging self doubt tells me that I am not pretty enough, not smart enough, not young enough. Not enough. I could walk to the ends of the earth and it will never ever be enough.

The hope that he offers is a carrot dangling on a string, and I want to, HAVE to believe in it.  I guess I just don't care if I'm a fool anymore, I've come this far, and The Pursuit of Daniel has become my life's mission. 

Still not giving up

[hopeisacarrot]

Storming the Palace

So, this Sunday is my birthday. I'm spending a lot of money this weekend to travel back to the beach, and see my friends. To see Daniel.

Over the course of the past month or so, our relationship has again morphed into something brand new, confusing, impossible to label, but I let it happen, WANTED it to happen, and he still can't tell me it's really over.

So once it was established that we wanted to see each other, he at first proposed traveling here for the weekend, which would have been fine with me, but ever financially fickle, he couldn't get the funds together, not even close. I've been working as a waitress, and aside from the few pleasure purchases of a small tattoo, and a gratuitous meal, I've managed to save quite a bit in really no time at all. So plans change and I tell BA I am going to visit my friends for my birthday. But that is a lie. I could die right now and my friends might be sad for a day, but I have realized that they honestly don't see a void in my absence. It's not their fault-that is life, and I'm gone. I am going to the beach in pursuit of a love that has consumed me for 4 years, that I simply refuse to get over, and nothing else really matters to me at all.

Everyone has an opinion but I'm through with other people's opinions. I want to live in his arms, and at very least just try and forgive him for everything, and love him again. It's what matters, and I've tried to move on. No one compares to my beautiful. No one ever will. He is perfect. 

By tomorrow at this time I'll be in his arms, and beyond that, I just don't care. I'm storming the palace and I'm not leaving without him.

Happy Birthday to me...

[hopeisacarrot]

count every beautiful thing

I can now sleep at night for the most part, save a few random nights here and there when I’m missing a warm body to cuddle up to.  Part of me wishes I’d meet someone I suppose, but it’s not time for that right now. Sadly I still don’t think anyone can compare to Daniel looks-wise, thus eliminating even the prospect of random sex with a beautiful stranger. They just wouldn’t, couldn’t be beautiful enough, not for me, not right now.  

So, considering the fact that the pursuit of love right now is utterly hopeless, I am spending a lot of time with myself and realizing I am actually amazing. One month ago I was afraid of my own shadow, and wanted to shatter every mirror I looked into. After a month of a brutal organic diet, barely any alcohol, no drugs, semi-nightly runs, and daily meditation and exercise, I look at myself in the mirror now and I suddenly remember how lucky I really am to be me. I am still here. I am able to finally laugh again. I am singing along, and dancing like a fool to music again, as opposed to crying, and feeling like a fool while James Blake, A Case of You plays on repeat.

This weekend some of my friends are making the pilgrimage from one coast of Florida to the other for our Daytona Beach weekend. As I pulled my bikinis out of the back of my dresser drawer, I was reminded of the night I arrived, when thunderstorms raged through the night, not unlike tonight. I’d angrily unpacked them, wadded them up, and shoved them way in the back with tears in my eyes, thinking I’d never be happy again. I remember thinking that I’d never wear them again, never be pretty again. My sunken in, red-rimmed eyes, my unwashed, forgotten about hair, my pasty skin with bloody cuts up and down my bony arms, all screaming “GIVE UP!” at me from the mirror.

Now, you can’t even find the scars unless you’re looking for them, but I run my fingers across them a few times a day to remind myself that they’re there. To keep myself in check, and out of the dark, terrifying woods it was so easy to get lost in. 

And here I am a little more than a month later, planning a weekend with the friends that refuse to give up on me, and I have tears on my cheeks for a whole other reason. I am still me, and they loved me the whole time, until I was able to love myself again. 

And that is good enough for now, I guess. 

[hopeisacarrot]

This My Excavation

Tonight is beautiful warm and windy. As the gusts whip my hair across my shoulders every few minutes, I find myself closing my eyes, the beginnings of an almost smile coming across my lips. This weekend showed me breakthroughs of epic proportions, and I can only take tonight as a sign that things really will, in fact, blow over.

This weekend was filled with an onslaught of emotions, but not in a bad way. Suddenly I was able to reflect on what actually happened here in an honest and real way. My new and insanely unexpected friendship with Heather I think has made me realize that that this all has its process and its purpose. She is actually great, and a lot like me in more ways than I would have ever wanted to notice last month when I was trapped in the bell jar, stewing in my jealousy and heartbreak. How crazy is life?

And now finally, as the pain in my heart subsides, my mind wants to know: What Happened Here? and Why?

The answers to those questions have been written on the wall the whole time. As soon as we started, we were ending. The relationship started off with the odds stacked against us, and I now know that it was always doomed for failure. But we did try. I maybe tried harder than he did, but there were some major cracks in the foundation.

There was no balance. I loved him way too much, and he loved me barely at all, and that's being generous. I was the girl who saved him, but to him I could have been anybody. I wasn't special to him because of who I really am, I was simply ink on paper, a dollar sign, a way out. I'm through with waiting and wishing and begging the sky to change it. 

The winds are finally shifting now.

[hopeisacarrot]

home.

[hopeisacarrot]

Running

While Valentines Day is without a doubt commercially-driven, and downright made up, it still tugs at the heartstrings of the broken and lonely. Last year I was one of the 'lucky' ones, proudly brandishing my overpriced "OMG! IT'S LOVE!" balloon and "I love you beary much" stuffed panda bear around like a complete and total goon. This year, Valentines Day wasn't even halfway over, and I already had a cell phone filled with unanswered outgoing text messages to Daniel that ranged in conviction from sad to pleading to angry, and back to pleading. I had puffy eyes and a heart-shaped box of chocolates purchased for me, by me with my food stamp card. I had wine for dinner, and self-loathing for dessert.

And for all I know he could have had a similar experience, what with his brand new dose of unrequited love administered by Heather, who while 6 years younger is a hell of lot tougher than me. Or maybe she's not really as tough as I think and they spent the evening feeding each other candy and listening to Bright Eyes. Either way, I somehow made it out alive, and even had a few un-official 'valentines.'  

Yes, it's true, I'm just as surprised. Decent guys are showing interest in me, and I actually am re-discovering the ability to be attracted to them back. Sadly, I'd have to go back home to do anything about it. [the one and only suitor I have here, is Brandon, who I am quickly realizing is more trouble than he's worth.]

Home. I hardly even recognize it now in the after-math of love gone wrong, through the eyes of a girl that was addicted to pills and then wasn't. I took a chance and it payed off, but now I'm stuck here. I am running out of money at an alarming speed, and can't find work. As February winds down, and the nights turn from chilly to balmy, I find myself aching for the paradise that I was so desperate to escape from just one month ago.  I know that with the season looming just ahead, my friends are replacing bonfires with beach nights, jackets with bikinis, kareoke with drum circles...

I guess it really was Daniel, and Daniel only that I was running away from. But there was a beautiful life there before him, could there be life again after what's happened?  He was my world, the sweetest love my lips ever tasted, and the ghosts of us haunt every inch of the beach. I loved it before him, but I loved it infinitely more when we were an 'us.'

I remember the summer when I first brought him there. It was early August, 2010, and he had just been released from prison. I couldn't wait to bring to life all the places and people I had written about in my letters, or to press my body to his, dancing wildly together to the tribal rhythm of the drum circle. I had been attending this epic weekly celebration for 10 years, and I remember leaning against him as the sun melted into the sea thinking I could finally really enjoy it now. Now that I had found my person.

Thinking on it now, it still feels like that could be happening again this weekend. But it isn't. It's gone forever, and I can never get it back. Could I be that happy again? Could I possibly fall in love with someone else, my 'person,' only this time do it the right way?

This is precisely one of my biggest problems. I can't get out of the past. I'll never be able to go home if I don't just let it go. It's fucking so over, he's already heartbroken over somebody else, and I'm still dreaming about 2 summers ago, and balloons screaming "OMG! IT'S LOVE!." But it wasn't. And it never ever will be. I have to find my way now. I can never run away from him, but maybe I can run back to myself finally.

And then, go home.

[hopeisacarrot]

and then you realize

I went for a long run as a last ditch attempt to escape the poisonous thoughts that have again taken over my mind. I lunged past the well manicured lawns, and expensive cars, my ears stinging and my heart aching, wondering if the tears were from the cold or the perpetual sadness inside me. 

He never loved me, of this I am now absolutely certain. While incarcerated, Daniel’s girl and I somehow became each other’s temporary confidant, each girl anxiously on either end of the phone sharing pieces of stories and truths, secretly hoping that she is the one he really loves. This strange relationship revealed to me what Daniel is like when he’s in love. I never saw it before. Not once in the 3 years we had together.

And then he got out. Bailed out by his brother, and it was a shock at very least. Upon his arrival home it was a systematic backlash of excuses and misdirected anger that resulted in one huge shit-storm. Angry gchats between Daniel and myself, supportive texts between myself and Heather, pathetic, pleading emails addressed from him to her, with plagiarized lines he had lifted from my blogs about him…

It’s hard to even talk about it. It’s hard to fucking think about it. As if the pain of love gone wrong hadn’t almost killed me, and now all this. I had reached a level of semi-acceptance and had even started to find myself halfway attracted to other guys. But in the Wake of Hurricane Daniel, I am left feeling even more alone, and humiliated than I had in the beginning, and am barely a shell of my former self.

I didn’t sleep last night, or the night before. I finally drifted to sleep after choking back a loose Tylenol PM I found at the bottom of my purse around 6am. Three hours later, I was startled awake by BA calling to me, cheerful as ever, wanting to include me in her Saturday projects. At this point, it’s too late to even be allowed to be sad anymore. How can I explain that I was almost fine until I had one conversation with him? And that the only reason we even had a conversation is because he’s too paranoid to email me anymore because I might forward it to Heather?

How do I explain that I just now realized after 3 years that this person never ever loved me and never will and that it makes me want to fucking carve my face off and stab myself in the heart?

Please make it fucking stop.

[probably-dead-blog-blog]

[hopeisacarrot]

Sometimes I still need you...

[hopeisacarrot]

Fuck the Big Smoker's Oak Tree/ The Saddest Chat Ever

Daniel: alright

so

no talking, right?

lets just be clear

and stick to it

me: you stick to it

I am sick of this!

everytime I think you've hurt me as much as you can

BAM

the floor falls out from under me to a whole new bottom

go find yourself a new girl, we already know it only takes a couple hours

for you to 'fall in love'

fuck you for existing

fuck Todd for bringing me to Ocala in the first place

Daniel: okay

me: fuck Strategic Marketing

fuck that fucking note Melissa found in the mailbox

Daniel: fuck the Sacramento Bee!

me: fuck me for loving you

Daniel: with your two point comission scale!

fuck the big smoker's oak tree!

jesus

i really am

fucked up

arent i

you know, id kill myself but it wouldnt mean anything

it's like a

paradox

do you remember

that time

we locked ourselfs up

to finish LOST

&

we went out

to get rockstars

at the SUPERmarket

and

i remember

the clouds

the sky

coming over johns pass

in the passenger seat

of the KIA

they were

immaculate

and

we were laughing

and saying

we must

get back

to the island

do you remember

me: of course I remember

Daniel: things like that, jess?

does it

make you cry?

me: what the fuck does it matter now?

Daniel: like me?

me: yeah it does

congrats

i havent cried in a week

[hopeisacarrot]

So I got angry today...

I don't even know how to say it without just saying it.

He plagiarized my writing and used it in a love letter to her.

Wow.

It's official: nothing can ever surprise me ever, ever again.

I have to let this process. More on this topic later. 

[hopeisacarrot]

Early Spring Till

I've been going crazy tonight. It's raining and I can't find a clean copy of Nathaniel Rateliff's Early Spring Till. It's one of those times when only this song will do. I've watched Daniel and Robby perform this song together a number of times with heart-wrenching perfection. It makes me wonder if they'll run into each other behind the walls and sing it while tapping their feet. How sad.

[hopeisacarrot]

ghosts.

[hopeisacarrot]

Repeat Offender

With a heavy heart I report the latest goings on in a life that is never without dramatics.  I hardly even know how to feel about it, but something has happened, something serious.

A little back story is mandatory for this one. Daniel suffers from a severe addiction that has held him hostage for most of his teenage and 20something life. I'm talking about serious drugs, heroin and oxycontin, most times administered intravenously. And with most addictions of this severity, he's been plagued with a life spent behind bars when the rest of us are enjoying being young. I met Daniel four years ago when he was in between jail sentences, and fell in love with him as soon as the first few words tumbled out of his lovely mouth. Always having been the type to see the beauty in all human beings, I made it my life's number one objective to show him love, and life, and essentially fix him. We fell in love, but for him, it wasn't enough. Tragedy struck him again, with the sudden death of his mother, and his addiction spiraled out of control, to the point of which it even terrified the likes of me.

Next came the prison sentence, but I wasn't giving up. This person, was special, not just another state-issued blue uniform with a number attached. For a year, I faithfully wrote to him, and visited him, and supported him. And when his name got called, I was there to pick him up. I brought him to my beach, and introduced him to all my friends. I bought him clothes, a cell phone, found him a job, and it all felt so worth it. He was clean, and we were in love.

It worked-I fixed him.

Even in the end, I took inventory of our romance, start to finish, and decided that at least it wasn't for nothing. At least his father not only now speaks to him, but is actually proud. It was still worth it...

Yesterday, the first indication that something had happened was a Facebook message from his lover, glaring at me from my inbox mid-day. What the hell does she want now? I decided I didn't want to know, clicked delete, and went about my day. Later, a mutual friend that works at the same restaurant that Daniel recently got fired from, posted this on Facebook:

"How do you work somewhere, get fired and break into someones place that you worked with? IDIOT!"

My intuition told me that this was no coincidence. I checked the county jail's website, and there he was staring back at me. 

BURGLARY-DWELLING UNOCCUPIED

BOND AMOUNT DUE: $10,000.00

The words screamed at me from my computer screen. I stared, dumbfounded for a full 20 minutes. This cannot be happening. Everything in his world seemed to be going so perfectly. New girl, new beach bachelor pad, I could literally map out his happy times based on Facebook check-ins alone. 

I reach for the phone and find myself dialing his girl's telephone number. She answers, and "What the hell happened, Heather?" comes out of my mouth, a little harsher than I had intended. The girl described to me her version of the days events, and I realize he has played her for a fool. I hang up and call Chris, the person behind the Facebook post, and now I have the real story. Daniel broke into his next door neighbor, and former co-workers house, and was caught red-handed stealing cash by her boyfriend who had happened to come back home to retrieve a forgotten sandwich. 

This misadventure has Daniel's addiction written all over it. How could he throw it all away? First our love, and now his freedom? Considering his impressive rap sheet, and the fact that no one that can afford an attorney is going to retain one, my best guess is that we won't be seeing him for at least a year if he's very very lucky. The girl called me this morning again, I'm not sure exactly what she wants from me. She told me that she doesn't want to abandon him, but that she 'cannot deal with this.'  I started to write him a letter, but I crumpled it up and threw it away.

As friends are finding out, my phone has been ringing all day. I feel pinned to the ground, numbly listening to their cheerful voices talking about 'karma' and that he's getting what he deserves.

But that is my beautiful boy in there. How is it that I'm still not angry? After everything, the girl just walks away. So I wonder, could I do it all over again? Get older and older waiting for Daniel? And then what? What if he gets five years this time?  Won't there be another young girl for him to leave me for again, how smart would I feel then? What a fool I am for even considering it!

Plain logic says "Forget Him. They're right. He hurt you, and now he's going to suffer because of it."  That idea seems so vicious, and not in keeping with my convictions whatsoever. 

I really need to do some serious thinking. My next move can define my entire life.

[hopeisacarrot]

Visit Original Link

Daniel gave me a link to Sharon Van Etten's 'Tramp' in his farewell/don't contact me again email. He specifically requested that I listen to track 5, 'Leonard,' and included a lyric from the song: "Well, Hell, I am bad." Perhaps he finds this to be a sort of soundtrack to his guilt. I didn't listen until today, maybe I was trying to save it for the right moment, when I could get lost in my masochism. Her ethereal drone has pierced my heart today, and it leaves me breathless, wondering how he can write our story with songs alone. 

[hopeisacarrot]

when we are cats

I want to get angry. I want to hate him. I suppose a part of me hates what he's become, but the problem with that is that I can't completely accept that this is really his personality now. The boy I met four years ago was shy, and sweet, and refreshingly unaware of how beautiful he was. The new model is arrogant, and alarmingly mean, and obsessed with being cool, and I want nothing to do with this person. 

I guess people would refer to my current state of being as 'recovery.'  The recovery from benzo addiction is like yesterday's news though, at this point. The residual depression may or may not have a thing to do with xanax, of that I can't be certain. The Recovery from Daniel, however, is a slow, and miserable withdrawal that I'm not entirely sure I'm going to walk away from. I assume people do this, that I'm not the first to have my heart flattened out on the pavement, and then pissed on. But it's been two months, TWO FUCKING MONTHS, and still no end in sight. In fact, I actually feel worse now, if that is even possible.  I came home Tuesday night in a great mood, having spent the entire day like an actual human-I went swimming with Brandon, submitted job applications, and went out to dinner with BA. 

But anything positive I had done with myself became moot point upon arriving home. There was a gchat message form Daniel to check my inbox, and when I did, the smile was wiped from my face instantly, my heart sank straight to the floor, where it remains to this very moment. 

It was something of a goodbye letter stating his lover had taken issue with our spotty communication. We hadn't even exchanged but maybe a 20 line gchat conversation in weeks, instigated by him , not by me. This is fucking crazy. He's really hers, now. It's strange how a bevvy of weekly Facebook uploads can't make the message hit home, how reported sightings from friends doesn't even do it, but this email...nearly fucking killed me.

I got angry, and needed to hide from BA, who still happily chattering, still buzzed from our dinner cocktails. I grabbed my cigarettes, and sat in the furthest corner of the garden, a private little escape covered by big mulberry branches where I could sob freely into the darkness.

What followed was an exchange via text between myself and this person he's chosen to replace me. I kept my temper and simply warned her that trying to own a man will only drive him away, I should know. What followed was relentless antagonizing on her part that left my head spinning as far as why I'd opened the door to this sort of intimidation in the first place, and exactly what he saw in this illiterate child anyway.

But, again, I don't know him now. My sweet, beautiful Daniel is gone, and in his place stands a man I just don't recognize. If only I could get angry enough to fall out of love with him, I might have a chance to be something besides a red-eyed waif on suicide watch.

But my big stupid heart won't allow it. For the past two days I've been listening to every song that sings the tale of love lost, frantically adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing the factors of our 'great love', only to be left with the sum of it's parts equaling me: alone. It courses through my blood and takes over my body. I can't move, I can't speak. I halfway listen as BA cheerfully rambles that I am so lucky to have escaped the poison of Daniel, and of her son. That I will find a great man, that I will have a great future, and I nod,  even though I don't believe any of this. I obediently chew and swallow without tasting my organic chicken and organic collard greens, and organic steamed sweet potatoes, choked back with acai juice. She's still talking but I zone out and wonder exactly how sad she might be if she were to come home and find me hanging from the mulberry tree.