9-29

It must be raining. There's a gentle noise coming in through the window, like lightly crumpling paper. The cat is pressing his paws into me, one by one, just slowly enough that it toes the line between comforting and irritating. I'm not overly responsive to his requests for attention at two a.m. and sleepily demand he stop, but he purrs and presses, and I'm just on that line where I decide I don't really care after all so he carries on.

There's a comfortable aura in the room and I don't mind being awake even though it is two a.m., because my body feels lax and warm and I like being up to listen to the rain. It will be gone by morning, the pavement will be dry, but I will know that I communed with nature at two a.m. and things were different for her then.  She was open and vulnerable, cleansing herself to make way for the sun, and she let me hear.

I have made way for the sun in me too. It took too long. I've leaned hard on others and become a burden, but I am ready to stand now. I feel guilt for making them care for me, and I feel love and renewed strength and I am ready to be myself again and care for them. That is who I am, not the leaner. I want to open my wings and protect but I suppress my urges to meddle, to mother, to push push push (unless I think they need to be pushed) and try to stand calm and supportive and learn what is needed from me. That is how I grow. That is how they grow.

That panicked urgency he unleashed in me is fading and I am myself again and I do not need to fight, only protect. I must let them have their battles, but I will stand guard as needed. That is how I grow. That is how they grow.

I am letting go of it. I am letting go of him; no more grasping, no more fear as this fades. No more clinging to memories. What's left? Why do I clutch at it?

He leaves my body and my blood and it makes way for new things and old things. Old strength, new comfort and faith, old freedom and desire to love and trust. I am not a girl who reaches, but when someone reaches for me I am there, I want to always be there. That is who I am. I want to be better every day. I want to be someone who is reached for.

My body feels so calm and I hope it lasts. Fleeting concerns swell into me from time to time. My mood flips and I am That Person again, frantic and selfish and grasping at things that do not serve me, but for now I push my mind inside and appreciate my stillness, my slow heart, my loose muscles. I must be kind to myself, I must be gentle when I err, but it is time to be strong again. I must open my wings to myself as well and protect that fragile woman, because she has been through enough, and I am tired of seeing her hurting.

9-28 Writing Prompt

I have nothing to apologize for.

You blamed me for shutting the door

Because I knew in my core

You weren't worth me.


I have nothing to apologize for.

Except coming back for more

Letting you continue to bore

Was beneath me.


I have nothing to apologize for.

My heart's coated in gore.

My dreams you ripped apart and tore

And you want an apology?

9-28

Taking the plunge.

That's what all this hard work has been for after all, right? To get where I wanted.

I've been scratching my way up for a long time, and now I'm at the top. I'm scared to fall backwards, but now's the time to take the chance.

I'm choosing good. I'm choosing small and simple, art, making the world a better place, crying and worrying because not enough people do. I choose to make a small and simple life. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with my choices and I'm only a little frightened to fall.

My body was warm and textured and soft like the tines of a feather as I lay in bed, and I realized it was because my heart was beating slowly. My muscles were relaxed. I did not lie there in a panic. I did not tense and worry. Is this how other people feel? Like the back of their neck blends into their spine and is not wires wrapped around glass? Like their organs are in harmony, not struggling to be autonomous?

What a strange small pleasure most people hardly notice.

I am choosing good, and I have faith I can make it work. I can adapt and adjust and I know now I have the determination to survive no matter what happens.

My heart beats slowly and I know I'm making the right choice. I do not chew the inside of my lips and cheeks until they bleed. I do not sit rigid. I roll over in the bed, delighting at how limber and limp my limbs feel, and I smile and choose good because at my core I am good, and I am happy with small and simple.

9-26

I wrote you a story on the way but I outwalked it. I left it behind me with my shoes in the sand. 

I sit at the end of the pier and remember how you kissed me like you had to kiss me. That was a part of the story. How you kissed me like you'd die if you didn't. And I am a girl who does not like to be kissed or touched without expectation and I was so glad when you kissed me because I thought I would die if you didn't.

Then I wonder who else you have kissed like you couldn't stop yourself, and the brilliant memory fades. I don't have many left, these days. 

I took your hand that first night, do you remember? I lay my head on your shoulder in the rain. I am not a girl who touches. Did you know that when I reached for you? I wonder if you knew that I had never reached for someone's hand before, if that would have meant more to you.

I was writing you a story, a beautiful tragedy, my story, but I walked very far and the cool lake air is blowing it from my mind and leaving only traces. 

I want to look at the timeline and see the mark in black ink where you decided you didn't love me. Somewhere between that time I reached for your hand, and that day I told you I missed you more than anything, you marked the page.

You decided you would go on to love others. Slim girls who love poems and girls with bright whore lips who love music and more - who will they be? What image will they fit for you? What image did I fit - who were you for me, who was I to you?

Somewhere in that timeline you decided my story didn't matter. Where did that happen? Because I never stopped being the girl who reached for you. The girl who fled love wanted to go to war for you. I want to ask you why. It's in my mind from waking to sleeping. Why? Why did I cease to matter?

Would you have been callus if you could have been in my mind? If you felt my insides too when you marked the page with black ink and reached inside and twisted and turned and plucked and pulled because you were bored (I guess?) and it became a game to you. If you could have felt the way everything in me swelled when you sometimes reached for me too, or when you turned to see where I was when I was behind you, or when I kissed the moles on your neck, could you have done that?

You decided I was not your story and so I did not matter, but this story was a girl who does not love but she reached for you that night. It was a beautiful story- a hard one maybe - but my mind reels that you did not see its beauty and importance. That you did not nurture it so it could bloom in a thousand colors. What a gift I tried to give you, Dorian, how could you never see what I was offering?

It is dark and the corn-silk colored moon is slim as your other girls in the sky, and there is a cloud of silence around me. I am a ghost, I can move unseen and quiet and barefoot. I have words in my mind but the wind is blowing them away. Masts are creaking in the water and they are me, they are a part of this, they disguise my silent passing. In the safety of being unseen I am myself again. I sit and stare into the endless water, splashed with moon, and think of all the things beneath and I feel strong, not frightened. 

I am a night creature and this is mine. I am the water, I am the dark and the moon, I am the creaking masts and a million hot particles in the air; how stupid you were to think so little of me when I am the whole night. 

I felt bad for the girl in my story as I walked here, but I walked farther than my sadness, and I am too much wild to be sad when I am free and the breeze is blowing you away. For a moment I wish you were here, being quiet and steady and strong with me, but you wrote yourself a new story to get away, and I like my calm soft night's tale too much to leave it. 

9-26

Just like that, it's gone.

A huge burden that I have carried with me, and pushing always up the hill like Sisyphus. In thirty seconds, eliminated.

Who can I be, now?

This is the year I invested in myself. This has been a year of risks. I tried love and being stupid and being honest and being open and being vulnerable (it was terrible); I started a new career where I feel in way over my head day in and day out and I struggle consistently but I take home thick checks and I have insurance that pays for pills that keep the weight in my chest and my shaking feet and hands under control; I took money and I moved it around and I put it into myself, because it's time to start believing I am worth it, and, lo, some of that money is starting to come back to me because maybe I really am worth it.

This has been a year of growth. I am not who I was when it started. I am excited to see who I am when it ends.

The steps are lain out for me now, and I can see for once they're attainable. Independence. A home. Stability. Friendship. Love. Rest?

It's there, and I edge over them carefully, trying to be patient, trying to keep my footing. I've rushed in the past and I've tumbled over, but I am learning to be cautious- lightly, my darling, lightly- and I move forward.

My excuses have been stripped away and there's some level of anxiety there. Will I fail again? Will I fall back on bad habits?

I pause and look into my options, I weigh them, I step carefully and slowly. Who will I be when the bad habits are gone, when the burdens I've carried with me are no longer weighing me down? I already feel so light and strong. I may be unstoppable.

9-25

My fingers are fast and twitchy with potential.

I hate waiting. Things are falling into place but I hate waiting for them. My future is there and I itch to reach out and grab it, to skip forward.

Waiting builds character. I don't know. I think I probably have enough character. Too much, even. I'm rich in characters.

I want Instant Pleasure. I want to see my life lain out before me. I want to leap ahead to my autonomy and my own authority where I live how I want to and I am at no one's mercy and I make my own choices and I make my own things and in that I build my own life.

All the pieces are around me and they're beautiful and promising. Sun hits them and they dazzle and I am nervous to reach out and take them; they seem too good to be true. I've been in the cave so long the brightness blinds me, but I edge toward the warmth.

Is this what I've been fighting for, all these years of struggling and discovering and experimenting? Have I reached the end?

Then what?

Can I please rest?

I want to sit in the autumn sun on the drying grass and appreciate what's around me. I want to close my eyes and breathe and feel secure. I haven't been still. I haven't felt calm. Briefly, I was able to rest, asleep on his chest, curled up next to him, but that became another war and I'm exhausted, my sanctuary crumbled.

I'm scared to stop. Things click and turn silver with promise and my determination only grows.

He says, sometimes I think you'd break through the wall instead of going around it.

He's right. Damn.

I pause, I collect myself, I close my eyes and picture that moment in the sun when I can sit and my head can be quiet and my body can be still, and I tell myself to be patient, because the wall will fall if I give it time.

9-24

She calls it compounded grief, but I call it exhausting.

I don't want to talk about it anymore. I change the subject. She lets me. I'm lucky to have her.

I am a new person, with bright hair and new roles and a new life and things are good for me. Things are so beautiful. I am tired of talking about my grief. Fuck grief.

I have pulled hands from my throat. I have slept in a tent made of blankets in a rain storm. I have wiped human shit from the floor. I have struck out to defend myself. I have curled leather and metal in my hands as a weapon. I have thought I would die, once, twice, too many times to count, and I did not die, because I fight.

I don't care how much of my life's grief is compounding - I am sick of it, because this is no longer my life. Grief is nothing compared to what I have survived. Fuck my grief. I fought with words and with nails and with fists and with education and by shutting myself off to the words that were killing me and here I stand, and fuck it entirely.

Who would look at me and know what I have come through? It's hidden under a crooked smile and new white hair and a career and motivation and ambition and cool smooth words and I will keep it there, quiet, suppressed, until one day I forget who I was and where I came from and how fucking hard it is to sleep some nights with all of the ghosts that chase me.

I walk in the dark and I hate my smile and I hate my crooked eyes and nose and I pull the new words around me that I have been given. Special. Memorizing. Fascinating. They're beautiful words. I picture myself and my nervous crooked smile and they don't fit. I wonder if they'd seen me crouched over a body I knew was dying, wide white eyes, tense fingers, if they would think the same of me. If they'd seen me rage, throw bottles of pills, beg for an ending, strike out, fight, shake with fright and rage, if they'd call me beautiful words or if they'd recoil in horror or maybe pity or maybe both depending on the day.

Compounded grief. The weight of all of my life, crushing down now upon me. She's right and I hate it.

How fucking terrible. Now, when things are so beautiful and bright and I sleep with the light off without fear, and someone touches me with patience and gentleness and lets me pull away when I need to, and when people open their arms and I know I can go into them and it will be okay, okay, now this is when the weight of my horrible fucking life hits me?

Fuck it.

No, I carry on. This one stupid ridiculous blip in my violent urgent timeline does not define me. I pause and let hands linger, adjusting. I fight my fear of being touched and held. I lean into warm bodies. I listen to their beautiful words because I fought for those words. I fought to be more than nothing. I fought to be more than what they raised me to be and I have come so much further than they, than I, ever imagined, and I will continue on and on and I will grow until they are nothing behind me. Their hard hands and their cruel words are nothing.

Who am I? Who was I?

It doesn't fucking matter. I am now. I am me. I fight and I fight and I fight for the day I can rest.