[nicisalive]

Life can be a lot.

It helps to know with great certainty that you are the chooser, the path straightener of your own world. Shitty garbage happens, but I am the fucking sun. I burn it all away and am only made shinier. Stronger. More fiery.

[nicisalive]

Warm fuzzies are very real

Feelings bubble up

Gurgling stream up tight trachea

Squintsqueezeshut

Hurry

Pull close gated heart

And I will not shed a tear.

Not for cliffside cabins, or piles of thank yous, or missing lovers, or far away sisters.

Security is tight.

Only allows through sneaky feelings,

Like spilled coffee and pop songs on infinite loops and commercials about snowmen.

Sly feelings slip through the bars and tears are allowed.

Today it was sneaky tears.

[nicisalive]

Maybe if I say this like I belong in a theatre I can trick you into thinking I am important:

I am no understudy, Heart fluttering, knotted gut, yearning for opportunity to impress. I do not stand on the broken bones of those loved better than me. I am not wearing a headset. I am not in blacks. You do not have the power to put me on standby, Waiting and waiting and waiting, invisible, frozen without your word. I need no direction. I am not your last minute plan. I am not your last choice. I will not lay down flat to create space for you to choose. I am important. I am needed. I am loved. I will be my own priority, even where I am not yours.

[nicisalive]

An Open Letter That Was Supposed to be Cathartic but Actually Just Made Me Feel Bitter and Alone

I am not broken glass, fragments of hopes and hapinesses shattered and poorly glued back together, fingers shaking with self-hatred. Self-love does not mean giving up. I have infinite worth, but that does not mean I am good enough. I am not yet finished. I have flaws, but I need to work on lessening them. I also have beauty, and THAT is who I really am. I am all the perfect, gorgeous parts of myself.

So when you say that you are made up of just imperfections, I don’t see how you could possibly love yourself. Thinking you are nothing but a mosaic of flaw is just an excuse to keep hiding in a bed of self-loathing. It’s lazy and self-indulgent. It is a choice to believe you could never be better, that you were designed to be unhappy. That is a lie.

I’m sick of the romanticization of sadness. There is nothing beautiful about the way I wanted to run a red light, or how I was so afraid of myself that I would try to rip out my own hair. For an entire year I sobbed so hard I felt like a black hole was opening up inside my stomach, and I tried to fill that hole with anyone I could get close to.

So when you act like depression makes you more unique, or more artsy, or more soulful, or more fucking intelligent, I want to punch you in your stupid face because you are better than that. And it’s offensive to me that you would think the hell I was trapped in is a place that you’d like to make a home.

It’s startling that as I’ve freed myself, as I’ve discovered that I can choose my own happiness,  as I’ve become a generally more cheerful and pleasant person, you have spent less and less time with me. Am I less interesting to you now that I am well? Did our friendship need anxiety attacks and suicide scares to hold us together?

I’m dissapointed that telling the truth made you leave. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad, but how can I let you willingly jump into the hell I just escaped? I’m happier to stay at home on weekends while you go dancing than to pretend I’m okay with your choices. I’m not.

Happy Halloween. I hope you invite me out next time, but I know you probably won’t. Sorry if I hurt your feelings. Hope you feel better.

Nicole.

[nicisalive]

Sorry I Couldn't Say This To Your Face...

I want this to be more than just a drive-by kissing, more than frantic hands moving desperately to plug the gaping holes in our hearts leaking car oil and black blood. To me, conditional love just feels like abandonment. I don’t want you to fill the holes and then leave. I want you to fucking live in them, and your spirit will fill me up like helium in my chest, and whenever you are down I will fill you up too and make you soar, or we can sink in our emptiness together, afraid but never alone, a patchwork quilt of missing peices and ratty edges and colors that radiate the depth of my love for you. I want to be so, SO much more than a down-day support system (although I love being that too). I want to be your every-day support. I want to bite your lips in public and hold your hand and twirl around in circles until we collapse into the desperate puddly mess that we are. I want to holler at every person who dares to finger your heart that SHE IS MY OWN BRAND OF IMPERFECTION AND YOU CAN LOOK BUT YOU CANNOT TOUCH. I want to put up big ol neon signs around you that say “Nicole Only Zone” and guard you with tigers and slingshots and harsh words so that you never get hurt, and I never have to worry about you ever dissapearing. The thing I want the most, though, is for you to want all this too. Conditional love is better than none at all, and if I can only kiss you as a means of coping, I will beat myself black and blue so you can touch my bloody face and make me feel at home.

[nicisalive]

Am I even capable of being okay?

I was happy for a month. One month of thinking maybe I had found the exit. Or at least the exit sign. But my pink-orange glow proved less neon and more manic. I guess being busy isn't the same as being content. Which fuckin sucks, because I always have a ton of shit to do and no understanding of how to calm the hell down for two seconds. Every now and then I open my eyes and realize I've been standing with my head in the fridge for a half hour, open-mouthed, empty-handed, and still very, very hungry. I think you made me realize that the last month has been just one giant fridge coma. I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. ...It sure doesn't feel good.

[nicisalive]

Dear Mom:

You will never read this. Not because you don't care, although there's that too, but mostly because I would be way too scared to show you. Thinking of being open with you makes me feel like some tiny-ass ant in the shadow of some asshole kid's shoe. You are not a mother. You are a grade six boy sneering at his friends and shouting "hey look at this tiny dumb stupid worthless little ant. I'm gonna put it out of it's misery." Of course, you would never say that. But sometimes I can feel you thinking it. I'll say "I love you mom" And you'll look at me and frown and your eyes will narrow and wrinkle and you'll say "Sure you do." And that's when I shrink down until I'm crumb-size and I grow some extra legs and I crawl around until you pity-kill me. Which, like, doesn't feel good at all. I hate that every time we talk, one of us ends up in tears. And I wish you would believe things I say. Then maybe I'd be more inclined to tell you the truth. Maybe if, when I said "I love you" or "I think I have depression" or "I need help" or even "How was your day?" Maybe if, when I said those things, you didn't think I was trying to trick you, and you assumed that I meant what I said, then I wouldn't be fucked right down to my core. And neither would Katelyn, or Dad, or you. Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind. Lilo and Stitch always makes me cry. Maybe if you would give me a hug sometimes, I wouldn't have to seek warmth in the pants of ignorant teenage boys, who leave me worthless and unsatisfied. Maybe I would think that I am more than a fuck-and-chuck. Maybe I wouldn't be afraid of literally everything - the dark, ghosts, crowds, strangers, rapists, rejection, commitment, myself, you. Especially you. Maybe if the blanket of depression that's wrapped around your bitter face was translucent, you could at least see that even though it's scary under there, at least there are people standing right outside, fighting to help you untangle yourself. But "maybe"s don't get us anywhere. Because depression isn't see-through at all. It's fucking opaque. And you are so blind. And that breaks my heart as much as it withers yours. I am really scared that you're going to kill yourself. You've been really bad the last couple months. I've been cleaning the bathroom lots to keep you happy, have you noticed? I even bought a new fish. I know how much you liked the last one. Please don't go. Please at least try. I'm scared that you're going to leave us without ever knowing how badly I want to love you.

[nicisalive]

Not right now.

Tonight, when my ghosts are singing sirens songs and razor blades, I will stuff my ears. I will close my dad's medicine cabinet, I will not run a red, I will step out of the car. I will be more than my illness. Stronger than tinted glass, I will hang myself in molasses instead of barrels of your sweat. I won't need you to fuck me into something beautiful. Tonight, I will paint myself brave.

[nicisalive]

George Shrinks is cooler than I am.

Springtime is supposed to be green and lush and full of life, like in cartoons where flowers are growing and there are little hearts floating around everywhere and people's eyes are popping out of their heads going A-WOOOOOO-GA! because love is in the air. Springtime is not like that where I live. Here, winter throws snow at the groud like one of those tennis ball machines that won't stop shooting balls at you even if one hits you in the head. Snowplows have to drive around scooping up the giant tennis ball mess, clearing paths just so people can walk down the road. The April sun is supposed to melt the snow, water flooding down deep into the roots of the earth, waking it up from it's giant planet nap, and making it open its lush green eyes. The Earth is supposed to have eyes so green and flirtatious that I swoon just looking at them. I am supposed to say Oh, Earth, stop it! And when I fall, the Earth is supposed to catch me with it's big, strong, earthy arms and say It's alright baby, I got this. And I would be really impressed by it's earthy heroic-ness. But there is no sun here to wake the Earth up, so nobody ever catches me when I fall, and all the winter plows scooped up the sidewalks too, so when the snow melts, there's just mountains of gravel suffocating dead grass, towering over my head until I feel like some sort of helpless mini-person, like George Shrinks. Except George Shrinks had some balls at least. George Shrinks would have stood right up after falling on his ass and picked up every single piece of gravel and threw them all in his garage and the grass would have grown long and happy and said Thanks for saving us George! And later he would have gone back to his house and built a spaceship out of the rocks he collected. But I'm really bad at standing up on my own when I fall down. And I don't know how to build a spaceship out of rocks. And I don't have any balls. Here, I'll even check. Nope. None.

[nicisalive]

I wish I was an iPhone 5.

When I’m sitting at home by myself, I’m usually in my underwear and sometimes my landline rings. I like when it rings because it sounds like someone laughing really really hard and that makes me smile. And sometimes I laugh along with it and me and my phone ring and snort and roll around on the ground and cry because our stomachs aren’t used to this much laughing but our secret joke is so funny that we keep going until the answering machine picks up and Tim From The Bank says I need to call him. And then both of us go Hooooooo, that was a good one. Hooooooooooooooo. Sometimes I think maybe I should ask my phone on a date because we always have such a good time when we’re together. We could go to dinner and laugh and ring and hooooooo all night long. We would be happy, me and my phone. But then I remember that my phone is one of those nice new ones that you can walk outside your house with and you don’t lose the signal. And that I'm from the 90s and I have an old tangled cord and buttons that don’t work and I’m covered in dust and sticky leftover jam. And what’s worse, I’m not even a phone. I’m a human being with broken buttons and a tangled cord and a dusty leftover jam coating. Ewwwwwwww. Yeah, my phone would never go on a date with me. I understand. I’m not really a catch. Maybe I’ll stop paying my visa bill so Tim From The Bank calls me every day and me and my phone can laugh all the time, but my phone won’t feel awkward because it has to reject me. That’d be nice.

[nicisalive]

Sometimes harmonicas understand me better than men with sideburns do.

Today was a sad day. Not because anything bad really happened (nobody died or anything), just sometimes all the air in the world turns into this giant puddle of sludgy nasty-ass mud that makes even walking down the road feel like the hardest thing you've ever had to do, even though it's sunny outside and you should be happy. As I was fighting through the sludgy mess of my life, I started hear this weird little harmonica solo trailing along behind me. Obviously I was a little sketched out because hearing harmonica music following you around is not exactly normal, so I kept looking back at the guy behind me to see if he could hear it too. I could tell he couldn't cause he gave me a funny look, like he thought I was checking him out, even though he was like fifty and had sideburns the size of Saskatchewan. So I tried to ignore it but I could hear the harmonica getting louder and louder until it was wailing as hard as it could. And it made me kind of angry because it was so passionate and so soulful and so heart-crushingly sad and that dumb old sideburns guy couldn't even hear it. But it also kind of made me feel better because my little harmonica stalker understood that sometimes the blues follows you around and it sticks to you even when other people don't notice. But it also understood that sometimes you just need to rock out to a weird harmonica solo to feel a little better because even though the guy behind you is daft and keeps raising his eyebrow at you and thinks you have the hots for him and makes you feel crazy, you aren't really alone because at least you and the harmonica solo can be sad together.

[nicisalive]

I Am A Lost Boy

Sometimes I feel like this is deja vu, a creepy little feeling tickling the back of my scalp, reminding me that I am incapable of change. Every Monday I decide that this week is going to be different. This week is going to count. By Tuesday afternoon I am sitting alone waiting to be saved, day-drunk and desperately clutching a 6 inch steak and cheese to my nervous chest. I know I am a hot mess. I recognize that. And I want desperately for you to be able to look me up and down, sloppy and useless and afraid, and love me anyway. I try, I really do. Sometimes, though, self-indulgence, panic, existentialism overwhelm and then here I am, knowing you deserve better. That doesn't mean I want you to make the right choice. I need for you to be as incapable and mistaken and afraid as I am. I need you to at least understand the way the back of my throat itches when I tell a lie. I need you to know that I am fibbing when I say that I'm a grownup. I want us both to be honest as we embrace our inner Peter Pan. I'll be your Wendy if you refuse to grow up with me, if you rebel against responsibility, against pretending to be perfect, and we can just huddle in blanket-forts of our own misguided innocence, holding hands and knowing that everything is bound to repeat again.

[nicisalive]

I'm Going to Try to Trust You So Please Don't Eat Me Alive

I've been doing some calculations and I've come to the conclusion that I spend about 50% of my time worrying that you are a cannibal. I hope that love for you means more than push-up bras, hair-grabbing, and the twisting of tongues. You wrote your name in child's cursive on the blackboard in the back of my mind, and even though some greying woman's velveteen tracksuit is marching around my frontal lobe, god-awful heels clicking against research papers and parking tickets and productivity, everything is Charlie Brown teacher drone, because my mind is focused on the sloppy handwriting that seems just too casual and too aloof and too charming to really care. I spend the other 50% worrying that I am a hypochondriac. Unfortunately, my brain can't really comprehend anything outside of itself. That's not how brains work. If empathy really existed then I wouldn't need to spend hours staring at my feet wishing I could know what you think of me and whether or not you like nail polish. I know me and my own thoughts and the way that the alphabet swirls around inside my skull, torrential rains of letters that pierce my self-confidence and make me realize my own failings. I can't say the alphabet backwards. Nothing makes sense the other way around. So if Freaky Friday body-swaps are out of the question, and if I don't have any secret telepathic abilities, then I guess sympathy is my best bet. In the real world, you probably also have hours of foot-time scheduled into your day. You probably also think you are broken and unlovable, and are terrified of opening yourself up just to be shut down. Maybe you even know that scar tissue never goes away, that it just builds up on your heart until it isn't heart-shaped at all. Dysfunctional. Inaccessible. In short, 100% of my time is spent worrying. I want you to know that I am more than my own self-doubt. I want you to care about everything I love, and to argue with me even when I'm right, and to keep a map of my brain in your front pocket because you like the way it feels against your chest. I want you to be able to lay naked on the floor with me watching bad cartoons, because we know clothes are just another way of hiding. Mostly I want you to know that this is more than just some stray-eyelash wishlist. You are worth more than groceries, waiting to be crossed off and consumed. I actually just really like you.

[nicisalive]

Shiny soap-bubble uncertainty (life is always cool)

Sometimes I think maybe my heart is a floppy, plastic, dollar-store balloon. And that once,  long enough ago that no one remembers, some dirty-kneed, pig-tailed little girl blew it up,  attached a string to it,  and tied it to my ribcage for safekeeping while she played and stretched and her hair grew long. And so, as balloons do, my little plastic heart withers and sinks to the ground lower and lower Until some patient dog-walker wanders through my chest and blows it back up so it can float again, just for a little while.

But today the string broke away, Worn and weathered from years of supporting the endless up-and-downs of my heart. So my heart, filled right up, SOOOOARED, straight up my throat, out my mouth, and into the cloudless blue.

And suddenly everything was all dirty napkins, and banjo music, and the bitter tightness of tea just drank. It was old magazines, and surfboards, and strangers with beards that never end.

Because sometimes little things get thrown together just right,  and everything is frozen in perfection. And balloon hearts can’t be contained by yarn tethers or chest cavities,  because they are just too full, and too connected, and too endless to let the world pretend to be anything less than beautiful.

[nicisalive]

This is me thinking too hard (about you) (about beige) (about us).

Sometimes the beige of my walls is too quiet, and I get stuck six people to a bed in my own brain  (someone is always hogging all the blankets and I  can’t breathe.) Loneliness aches like a bruise on my knee from falling once every four seconds on the ice trying to get to you. Ice queen has ice walls. They do their job, sparkly strict. And she doesn’t communicate.

Sometimes it’s not quiet enough, and I can hear the buzzing of fluorescent lights  and water heaters  and mozzie thoughts of how sometimes you take this little plastic spoon and carve open your heart for me to climb into and make into a candle-lit pillow-fort home, And how inevitably your heart beats one beat too hard and you punt me out, bony barricades laughing at me on the outside for thinking I ever belonged.

Once I put brie in the fridge with no saran wrap on it  and it got this crusty yellow layer all around it which honestly tasted fuckin terrible. Why do things need to be covered up? Does being vulnerable make us rot?

Because now whenever I look at you, and your comfy little heart home, and how fucking beautiful you are,  it devastates me.  Because I know your stupid yellow crusty ribcage coating will never let me back in. Because you will never be able to understand the way that watching you talk with your hands melts me like a stick of day-old summertime butter.

Or maybe you do know, but you just don’t want me squatting in your heart when you could let someone in there who actually pays rent and doesn’t light incense and stink the whole place up or wake the neighbors at three a.m. playing the ukulele and screaming mushy stalkery love songs at your window.

Maybe you just don’t want me.

[nicisalive]

Attack Of The Killer Eyebeams

In the 1600s they had this theory about sight. They thought that it was active rather than passive, Something you did rather than something inevitable, And that seeing had the power to make things happen. They thought that everyone had these little lasers of sight called eyebeams that you could send out  And when two people’s eyebeams touched, Not only did it cause them to see each other,  But it caused a change.

Sometimes I think that when I look up at you through my eyelashes, It does cause a change.  I get this kind of sexy superpower That lets me leave Clark Kent behind and become invincible.

Sometimes I think I could use this superpower to shoot laser eyebeams at you, That zap through your chest cavity, And lassoo your heart, And squeeze it so tight that it explodes into a million billion tiny mushy little peices that shoot out  your eyes  and ears  and nose  and mouth  So that you become a volcano of love.

[nicisalive]

Stage 2: Anger

You treat me like an ugly old spoon,  One that your aunt gave you for Christmas four years ago and good God does she ever have appalling taste in silverware. Why does she think a spoon is a reasonable gift anyways? She must have regifted it. So I got hidden away in some unopened drawer filled with whisks  (you don’t bake) and used batteries (why do you even keep those?)  and my own loneliness. And then every now and then you get too lazy to do the dishes and you run out of spoons and you want some soup goddamn it so the drawer gets opened and here I am in all my spoonish glory, for you to use once and then  shove  back  in my stupid dusty old battery drawer.

So I am refusing to shave my armpits, Because the hairier I get, the less I give a fuck what you think of me.  I am free spirited,  Carefree, Independent, Wild. That’s what I tell myself.  It’s my once-a-minute-mantra. And it’s been a week since a razor has touched the fuzzy caverns of my pits, And I love it. Fuck shaving! Hell, fuck makeup, fuck wearing a bra Fuck being ladylike, FUCK YOU!  Because there’s a rebellion, No, a fucking REVOLUTION going on in my armpits right now and you haven’t even noticed  Because all you think about is how badly you want some soup.