hope the honeybees make it home tonight

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[paragonofperishing]

[paragonofperishing]

its been a long time coming. its hard to be happy at year’s end, even when it’s been a good year, a meaningful year, even when the next year is full of promise and hope and beauty. the last days of the year make it all feel like dust, like crumbling leaves. like a heaviness in your chest that won’t erode no matter how much care you take of yourself.

so be gentle with yourself. let yourself fade quietly into the year after this. you have survived so much. you can survive a few more days.

[paragonofperishing]

december

so this is what i do now: i take everything you did to me and i ball it up in my chest and i do a seated forward fold and try and let it drain out with the tension in my calves. you hit a point where the number of sorrows packed into a single december become too vast for a fixed date of anniversary trauma, when the whole month is a shot just out of focus, a low buzzing in your bones. you hit a point where your body has metabolized so much hurt it becomes moderately more efficient at the process. but you still break down sometimes, get caught in a memory or the way the air smells. every date in december is marked with an indignity, a loss. i want to take back the month but some days im too damn tired. so i fold into heart to earth pose. so i press my heart to the earth. so i miss you every day. so i endure, i endure, i endure.

[reputayswift]

ᵢ𝒻 𝒸ₗₐᵣᵢₜᵧ’ₛ ᵢₙ 𝒹eath then ʷʰʸ won’t. this. diᶦᶦᶦᵉᵉᵉᵉ? ᵧₑₐᵣₛ ₒ𝒻 ₜₑₐᵣᵢng down our ᵇᵃⁿⁿers ᵧₒᵤ ₐₙ𝒹 ᵢᵢᵢᵢᵢᵢᵢᵢᵢ livᶦⁿᵍ ᶠᵒʳ the ᵗʰrill of hittiₙ𝓰 you where. it. ʰᵘᵘᵘᵘᵘᵘʳᵗˢᵎᵎᵎ 𝓰ᵢᵥₑ ₘₑ ᵦack my girl!hood! it 𝓌ₐₛ. mine. ᶠᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦᶦʳˢᵗ!!!

[paragonofperishing]

[paragonofperishing]

one year ago it was the darkest week i’d lived thus far and i didn’t know it yet. driving home in the dark. i don’t know. i still can’t write about it, not in a way that makes it feel real. not in a way that admits it happened. 

one year later and i am happy in the simplest way possible. i am fulfilled, appreciated, loved. i am safe.

one year later, though, i still wonder what could have been.

[paragonofperishing]

a quiet life, something you never thought you’d want. rituals for hair washing, for exercise, for mornings. cups of tea and the occasional apple crisp macchiato. missing people a little less every day. i don’t know. there was a time when this was the worst thing i could imagine, and now it’s all i want; the fragile peace of the morning, walks in the garden, the quiet of your own space. maybe i am not living up to my potential. maybe i am not helping as many people as i could be. maybe i am not making as much money as i could, or as much of a difference in the world.

but the life you save may be your own and this autumn feels like deliverance.

[paragonofperishing]

i want to put on the song that will remind me of the old days, of simpler times, but the thing is all those songs break my heart and that’s not what i want anyway, what i want is to be in those old days without any knowledge of what’s to come. some days all i want is to be certain in the acuteness of the misery of teenagerhood. to be in the days that were before thinking with my full heart that there was nothing good to be remembered. silly girl i think to myself, don’t you know ill look back and you’ll be all i ever want? and of course i don’t ever want to be miserable like that again. it’s just that the person you are when you’re a teenager -- so sharp-edged and true, shaking hands, is the realest version of yourself that you’ll ever be. the spongy cocoon of adulthood, shielded from the realities of the horrors of the world (gym class, other teenage girls) has softened my edges and all at once roughened my spine. because the thing is i was right back then. nothing bad had ever happened to me. and i was right, too, in that nothing would ever be worse, more painful, in sharper relief. nothing would ever be truer. and now im here, and im happy most of the time, and im making a life for myself. it’s not that there’s nothing romantic or authentic about your 20s, it’s just that sometimes, sometimes all i want is to find the song that’ll put me back into the person i really am.

[paragonofperishing]

every few months you find yourself at rock bottom. that’s okay. like flowers through concrete, you will grow again.

[paragonofperishing]

come home to your body come home to your soul allow yourself to shatter again and again and again and coax yourself back into softness. reconcile the cruelty that was done to you with the fact that you need to continue living. and you will continue. it was a place with no mercy but now in return you must bring grace wherever you go. you are better for knowing it. you are better for what happened. you must believe this because it is how you will heal, and you must heal because the world is waiting for you. you are waiting for yourself. i know it was so bad for so long. i know you want to expunge it, grasp it by the root and tug firmly until it comes out of you and all the pain is left behind. but the sorrow is within you now, bone deep, and can only be tempered, never excised. so water your flowers. so bring healing bone-deep too. allow something new to spring forth from all the pain. the summer is long, and you have time.

[paragonofperishing]

in the middle of the night your best friend texts you about her dreams. harry styles croons, they won’t hurt you anymore/as long as you let them go. your dreams are vivid and chalk-coarse, someone familiar is always suddenly violent, you wake up gasping for air. the drowsy heat this weekend feels like it might last forever. it’s not quite summer. you’re a little afraid for summer, for all that might come next, for reasons you can’t quite put into words anymore. you think, they will hurt me forever, wonder how you’re supposed to live with the memories of all that happened. it still lives in your chest. you tell the people you love the same stories again and again until they know them by heart but you can’t excise it all. can’t forget it. so drown it in the creeping summer heat. so lie in the sun, let it seep into your very being from 94 million miles away. so feel your heart beat under your fingertips. you survived to see the spring sunshine even when it felt those winter days would never end. some days it feels like you’ll never escape that meeting, that you’ll be there forever, but it was cold that day and now even at nearly 3 am, it’s so warm you can’t sleep. 

[paragonofperishing]

it’s may. you cut your hair off, fall in love with a new album, paint your nails the same pale pink as december but it feels brand new. it’s may, your hair is short and fluffy and healthy and you can’t tell anymore how much fell out in the autumn. it’s may. it’s starting to feel real, never going back there. you never lost so much so quickly and so permanently. you never changed your life, never made a choice this big. i know you tell yourself you didn’t have a choice but you did and you made the right one. it’s may and you’re just starting to find yourself beneath the rubble. it’s starting to make you soft again, the way the sun shines into an empty parking lot at dusk. perhaps you can become brand new. perhaps who you are tonight is all you’ll ever need.

[paragonofperishing]

late spring rain crashes against my windows. the universe says PAY ATTENTION TO ME but i have lost my way. the universe says DO NOT ENTER and i throw myself in all the same, the universe said STOP and i ran and ran and ran. now there is nothing or something like it. there is very little i have to say for myself anymore. there is very little i have to show for myself this year. i hold out my thumb on the sidewalk and the universe says GREEN LIGHT and i end up walking home alone. there is very little i have to define myself by anymore. and yet, after the laundry is done and i lie in bed the universe sends rain and may blesses me with sunshine. so maybe tomorrow will come. maybe it matters more than my meaninglessness that i am here to see it.

[paragonofperishing]

the seasons are changing and im going out of my mind again. nothing new here, it’s just hard to exist in this same skin year after year even as everything I know grows heavier and heavier within me. i feel i am tearing at the seams, that the edges of me are coming unsewn and yet i remain the same person i have always been. i read somewhere the seven year cell regeneration is a myth. that the cells in the lining of your stomach regenerate every 48 hours but the cells in your teeth are the same as they ever were. that your eyes are the same eyes you were born with until they close for the last time. so maybe in ten years my stomach won’t drop when i think of you but the marrow in my teeth will always know you. remembering you now is like biting into something cold: it hurts, and it always takes me a little bit by surprise. it’s been ten months since we’ve spoken. the lining of my stomach has changed countless times and so has everything else about who i thought i was. i never thought we would be one of the things that might change. never thought there would come a day where i couldn’t text you about the new physiology based metaphor im testing out. ive always said ill be there when you come back and i will be but i don’t necessarily know the person ill be when you do. my teeth will be the same, but maybe nothing else. maybe not even me and you.

[valtsv]

i could escape the narrative actually. rip to the rest of you but i'm gonna get out of here.

[valtsv]

girl help i've become the audience, no longer confined by the narrative yet equally powerless to change it

[paragonofperishing]

i reach towards my body now with gentle hands. i hold my warmth close. i arch my spine in yoga until softness runs through every limb in my body. i whisper, i am here. i am all i will ever have, when it comes right down to it. margaret atwood said when the light fails and the fog rolls in, and oh, wasn’t that just your year. hasn’t it been year after year. you always think now i know what it means to have seen hardship and then every year disproves you. never more thoroughly than this previous year. now you know what is it to be knocked down. 

you do not yet know what it looks like to rise, but you will learn.

[paragonofperishing]

portrait of a girl at rest

flesh and bone, sticks and stones we are so fragile. the whole thing is built on nothing but pretending. office buildings. crooked vase. the same mug i’ve had tea in since i was 14 years old. a forgiving bed. curl creme. i  dont know what im doing but here i am all the same. i step into the crisp march air. i take  a deep breath. i commence a long, quiet walk.