This Little Bird's Things

This is going to be comprised of my original content and probably many sad posts that I need to shout into the void of no one seeing.

[this-birds-things]

Sometimes I wonder if the you I’m missing

Is the you that walked out that one night

Or the you I’ve built up in my head

In all these years of mourning

Are you nestled away 

wrapped in layers of my pain?

Is the real you

The imperfect, lovable, you

Still there?

Or is she gone too?

[this-bird]

The Absence of You

You are the space between the lines the empty margin edge the slivers of white within a word

You are the emptiness the void in which I breathe and write

You are the foundation the white blinding grief that I pour my soul into

Whisps of nothing that I pound out letters onto trying to soothe the gaping hole you left in me

I have nothing left to hold no body to burn or bury just white nothing pages reminding me of the absence of you

[this-birds-things]

Mess and Mourning

I call out to you in the night

Hoping you’ll hear and come home

Every rustle every sound

Is you

Coming back to the heart that misses you

It beats still

But it aches

It aches to smell you, to touch you

To love you once again

Missing

m i s s i n g

you’re gone

from me

from my arms

from my love

You were alone and scared

Hunted in the night

And I cried waiting for you

I cried for your warmth

For your love

The years were not enough

I wanted to hold you as you passed

Old and grey

Into the brilliant oblivion

So you knew you were not alone

So you knew you were fiercely loved

So I could say goodbye

But you were gone in the night

Only things left were pictures and my memories

Neither will ever be enough

Not without you

Not without you

Breathing is hard without you

I don’t know how life goes on

Without you

Still I wait for you

Holding onto a tiny shred of hope

That you’ll come home to me

You belong with me

If I never see you again,

I hope that when I die you’ll be there with me

In the brilliant oblivion

And I will hold onto you

Forever

My soul howls into the sky

Mourning in hallow notes

Pleading the gods to bring you back

But my heart knows they will not

So I scream into the heavens

Devastated and alone

Without you

[this-birds-things]

Depression

I see the passage of time only in pain

Happiness is the pin pricks in a sea of black

Far too few stars in the sky

Too far apart to light up the night

But we hold on

And point our ships towards the lonely stars

Sending us towards home once again

[this-birds-things]

Anxiety

They said listen to my heart

And I listen too closely

My heartbeats turn into alarms

Blaring DEATH DEATH DEATH

is coming for you

I listen

Hanging onto the space between the beats

The moment of waiting

Between the waves

Between the beats

[this-bird]

Here Too

Terrible news lines the pages

But always somewhere and someone far away

But today

Today

It was here

Here too

Here too

It happened

Here too tragedy stuck

At the end of a metal barrel

Held in the hands of a man

Who thought he was entitled to take people’s lives away

To break families into pieces

To hurt

Here too the hurt visited

Here too innocent lives were lost

Here too

And I ask,

when will it change?

Once it visits your town?

Or will we fight this, continue to fight this before it reaches your town

Before it reaches any other town

Before you have to say

It happened here too.

[this-bird]

So my life immediately following graduation, while everyone else will be starting jobs or finding jobs, I won’t.

I will be:

Finding a birth control that my body doesn’t hate more than my normal awful periods.

Trying to wean myself off my antidepressants to see if I can handle it.

If those two things don’t stop my chronic headaches, go to neurologist.

Redoing the shitty insulation in by bedroom.

Help my dad finish some of the projects he’s left half done around the house.

Be a bridesmaid in a wedding.

Fly out to see the boyfriend then drive cross country with him for a week.

Edit my novel, send said novel to my old Oxford tutor, find agent to help publish book.

I keep telling myself that these are valid things, necessary things, but I still have that nagging, aching feeling that I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t even know if I can get a part time job because all of these things, but I have to make money some how to start paying off my student loans. Sigh. Graduating is a mixed bag. Not ready for the real world.

[this-birds-things]

That moment when you realize that Word knows how to spell many of the names from the Lord of the Rings...

[this-birds-things]

The Last First Day of School

My last first day of class, probably ever, and the thought is mildly terrifying and also a relief. My entire life has been school up to this point and no one ever really teaches you about what to do when you're no longer in school. I still have a few months of papers and readings to do, so I have time in the familiar world of academia to mull over the open-ended question that is the rest of my life post-graduation. The end of homework is in sight, though, and that is comforting in itself.

[this-bird]

I got bored and put a filter on my picture.

[this-birds-things]

You finished the novella, which is huge! I know the SMP seems huger right now, and it is a bigger project, but you'll make it. I believe in you... it'll be okay. Maybe not ideal, but you'll make it through. :)

I’m just stressed and stuff. I know it’ll be alright, it just doesn’t feel great right now.

[this-birds-things]

Back to the SMP

After finishing my novella for my senior seminar, I can now take a look at my senior thesis project for the first time in two weeks. I am 14,000 words behind on my goal schedule. I feel like a failure. I wanted so much to stay with it because I was doing so well in the beginning. Maybe I will get back on track, or maybe find out that I don’t need to reach my goal word count. I don’t know. It was tough putting my project on hold for my mental health. I want to keep writing but my sinuses hurt and I’m just very meh. I just want one whole day where I do nothing of any consequence. Maybe just look at and think about my project, but not have class or work, and I can just vegetate and watch tv.

[this-birds-things]

Yeah, so I also got accepted to Towson. That's a "medium" sized school though. So maybe I shouldn't go there if their help isn't that good.

It sounds like you have some good options. I wouldn’t base your decision off of how difficult the academics might be, because that’s all relative. Choose a school based on what you want out of the school. SMCM is a small community that really focuses on academics, and ensuring class sizes are small. Larger colleges have their benefits, like more options for majors and minors. Some people go stir crazy being out here in the middle of no-where so they go to schools in bigger towns or cities.

Also if the one you pick doesn’t work out for you, you can transfer to another. It’s not set in stone.

[this-birds-things]

Hello! I was wondering how SMCM is? I got accepted there but I also got into Salisbury University. And idk, I feel like SMCM is way more difficult, more rigorous work. And I really need help in my academics. I think going to college will be hard as it is. What do you think?

SMCM is wonderful, it is a lot of work that sometimes is challenging, but the thing that offsets that is the small class sizes. You actually know your professor so you can ask for help and they will honestly care about you and your well-being.  The thing with bigger colleges is that it’s much harder to get help when you’re struggling. Also if you got accepted here, they think you can handle it.

My experience here as an English Major was that I had two mildly difficult classes but that was it. The rest were all pretty easy, just varying amounts of work.

[this-birds-things]

What advice do you have for a first year who feels like a complete fake and like they've tricked everyone into thinking that they're intelligent and worth knowing?

I’ll answer this in two parts. Firstly, my dear first year, you are intelligent, perhaps not in the ways that you’d like but intelligence isn’t just one thing. Like I’m a pretty average student, and I don’t ever feel particularly smart. The intelligence that I excel in is emotional intelligence, which isn’t very useful for school but ya know, it helps in some things. But my point is, who cares if you’re not good at some aspect of college academics? I’m an English Major and I am absolutely horrid at writing argumentative essays. You have your strengths and weaknesses and after awhile you come to accept those weaknesses, and learn not to beat yourself up over it.

Secondly, you are definitely worth knowing. Everyone is their own little universe, filled with imagination and dreams, and are infinitely interesting. If you are basing your worth in relationships off your intelligence, my first suggestion is to not to do that. Relationships, even with professors, are based off mutual respect and no one should think any lower of you based on your strengths and weaknesses. 

The first year in college is always hard because suddenly you’re not around the same people you’ve been with for years and you get the chance to make your own reputation. No one knows, or cares, what disastrous person you dated in ninth grade. You are allowed to explore who you are, and how you want to present that. Making friends is hard and it wasn’t till my second year here that I found the group of friends that I really belonged in. Good friends can help you work on your self-esteem and remind you often that you are intelligent and worth knowing. Just hang in there, things will get better.

[this-birds-things]

Dear Diary,

Senior year sucks. Depression sucks. Nothing makes me happy anymore. I struggle to do my homework, to write. I feel numb. I’m not in pain, but I’m not happy either. I feel like a black hole is sucking everything in and nothing is left for me.

[this-birds-things]

Halfway Mark

40,000/80,000 words!