Last night, I scared myself. I scared myself in a way that made me so numb I couldn't even cry, and in trying to grasp onto these other feelings, I lost that one. A while ago, I made a post about perspective. About how any person can see something in a different way. About how a thousand people can look at the exact same object and see a thousand different things. About how you can tell me, maybe one day I will hold your hand, and all I can think is about how absolutely perfect you are. I think this, this blog - simplistic, I know - is me in pure form, not faking, not scared. This is what I am inside, amd has been for years, because maybe I give the link to some people, but it is still just for me. My personal journal.

There's a doll sitting in the corner with pale skin and bluegray eyes that see nothing. Her hair is fire and her soul is coal. Can you see her? She watches, unblinking, unflinching, and the fabric of her clothes and skin is torn and tattered. It didn't used to be. There was a day when she was new, and someone stuck a pin into her arm. And she pulled it out amd kept walking. And then another, and another, in her chest and her back and her head until it all just hurt so bad she needed to rest. Amd now this doll, she's lost in this attic room, tossed the the corner and sore from pulling all those pins out. Now she does it to herself sometimes - listen up, this is the important part - she does it to herself sometimes now, sticking pins in just hard enough to remember how it feels, but her stuffing is falling out and the fabric is stretched and torn, and she's a mess. It takes her time to notice, to realize that the more tattered her skin gets, the less anyone will want to play with her. But those wide eyes won't shut, no matter how badly she wants them to.


This time, baby, I'll be bulletproof.

I tell myself all the time that one day I'll meet someone who will take my breath away and make my world spin so slow again, the way it has in the past. I tell myself it's not just a matter of growing numb to those feelings, the way your muscles tighten up amd your skin callouses from overuse. I tell myself that's not the case with my heart, but I stopped believing that in the fall of 2009. It's easier not to feel if you accept that you can't, see, and that's why I need some medicine, some pills just to make the pain come back, the way they used to white it out, and THEN. And then and then and then. You were there. With your pretty words and your magnetism and your crypticness, which I will always hate, but why you? I have grown so accustomed to sitting out of the game, on the bench rooting for the other players that I forgot how it felt to be on the court, to feel your shoes on the court and the sweat on your forehead and the catch in your breath when maybe that didn't go the way it was supposed to.

I don't know why I'm writing this, but I think it's so that I can remember later. Nothing ever makes me feel this way. Nothing. And all this fighting, it's not me. It can be. Sometimes, it can be. But really I am just kicking and fighting my way from this while my head gets reaccustomed. Patience. That's all I need.

One Step At A Time.

I fell into a dark place. Again. I do this to myself, and I don't kick and scream and fight it like I should. I'm scared of taking help from people. I'm scared of everything. I'm trying to pull myself back up, but the bottom line is that when all the ground falls out from underneath you and there's dirt under your nails from trying to hold on, all you can really do is smile and say 'Oh, I'm fine.' Let's backtrace every connection in my brain. Let's slice open our entities and rework them. Let's, for the sake of our sanity, take off all our clothes and pull our hair back and paint a mural on each other. This is not a conceptual happenstance. I am not the lost soldier returning home through snow and sea, miles behind the rest of the troops. I am still in battle. You see me, but you don't. And sometimes, if I'm counting, my breath slows down and whenever I see couples holding hands, I think, there. There is what that hole in me is, because no one tells me how pretty I look in the morning, and no one asks me how I want my eggs or makes me sundaes when I ask. Visceral encompassment, swallow me whole.

You keep my heart b-b-b-beating, like the pull of the universe is dragging me closer into you. You are an island, and I am the breaker waves, keeping every part of you held together and eroding the outlines of your shoreline. More than that, you are the moon. Dragging me in when you're close and, the further away you get, the harder you push. Why can't I be eighteen forever? Life was so simple then. Before I grew my hair long and filled up an entire room with my words. Absolution starts with a breaking away of every layer, and I am inbetween layers. Too far down from the last one to pull myself back into it, but not close enough to the next to start peeling it away. And this version of me is not really me, this shell of insecurities and doubts that has become a room where I sit and stare at the wall for hours and think thoughts in triple speed. You do not understand, because no one ever has or ever will, but I need you to slow me down. Be my safe place. Be my room and my blankets so I can shut the door on everyone else and crawl up under and into you and breathe.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. And let me be the one who calls you baby all the time.