12

I’ve started this letter at least 3 times in my head already.

I remember you loved beautiful music. I was thinking about this today, as I listened to Carpenter’s Yesterday Once More. Her voice is beautiful. It’s deep and solid, rich. You liked songs like that. Voices like Jane Carpenter and Jim Reeves. Those voices are beautiful ones, huh. Beyond subjectivity. Or maybe it’s because I’m your daughter, so our sense of beauty is somehow so deep that it feels like unshakeable truth.

Do you think our sense of beauty was somewhat truer when we had less music? We have more varied wonder, music for all perspectives and tastes and occasions these days. But back when the occasion was the music, and not something else, was it more itself? I’m thinking about instrumental classics, and how I always fall asleep at orchestral performances. Opera, even. It was about the sound, the sound. Like how they built churches, like how they sculpted and painted God, and people saw that and knew God must exist. Maybe we have too many gods now. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But there’s something that seems unalienable, indisputable about beauty. I don’t know.

In some ways it feels like the last year didn’t happen at all. There was, and is, still a virus in the air. I think in some ways I grew up to be a heartbreaker. This last year I had my first romantic relationship where we both called it that. It ended before the year was up, and now I feel like a fool for being in the relationship that long. He wasn’t a bad guy, and I think he liked me and wanted me to like him, and I was so ...stunned? excited? bewildered? pleasantly surprised? that someone actually liked me that much, so I let it happen for too long without wondering if I actually liked him, too. I didn’t. But I still feel foolish. I think I broke his heart when I ended it, but maybe that’s presumptuous of me. I just want a friendship that lasts, and that’s something he didn’t have in him after I told him I didn’t feel any romance towards him, and that’s okay. He wanted to try again, but I don’t think he even knew what he wanted to try, so I was firm. I think what’s most surprising about this time in my life to me is that it wasn’t memorable at all. Maybe that’s cold. But the memories don’t bring any pain, or even bittersweetness. This is how I know I made the right decision. I know when I hear Danny Boy, I can’t help but tear up because I think about you, because there is some real feeling there. I don’t feel any of that towards this relationship, and that makes me feel like a monster. I guess I can commend myself for realizing, at least. 

I say heartbreaker, because in an ill-guided attempt to not be lonely, I started talking with someone on a dating app, and we got along well playing video games together. He reminded me of all the things I enjoyed in high school, all the excitement I had for shounen manga, the enjoyment I got from playing video games with friends. Listening to him and his group of friends banter felt right and good, something I haven’t had these last couple years. I don’t know if I have that kind of romance in me right now. I want to be true and honest and I want to be a good friend. I think I can lust and play that game, but when it comes to romantic love, I just don’t know if I have it in me. I want so badly to be a friend. I don’t think it’s fair to anybody to be in limbo while I am figuring that out. I feel badly about not giving the romance more of a chance to develop, but it felt wrong to do that if my heart isn’t there right now. I keep saying “right now”, because I tell myself maybe life is a matter of timing. Maybe this isn’t true, maybe my heart will never be there, but I think it’s easier to talk about the present than about my eternity.

I started working this year, but I don’t really want to tell you about that. I need to start looking for a new job. At my current work, my coworkers are amiable and are kind to me, but it’s too distant, and this is very clearly not a line of work for me. I think that’s all I have to say about that.

I think about you, Dad. I still miss the same things. I miss the way your stubble brushed my face when you kissed my cheek goodnight. I miss the expanse of your back when I went to you and Mom’s bed on weekend mornings. I miss pinching your nose so you’d wake up. I miss your bruised teeth. I miss the bald spot on the back of your head. In a lot of ways you are a ghost to me. I see you standing at the elementary school. I remember your blue Camry, but I hardly remember what you looked like as you drove it. But I can remember what it felt like to be in the car with you as we cruised through the neighborhood by the school. I remember what you looked like pulling my softball bag out of the trunk. I don’t have much memory of your voice. When I reach for those memories, I hear it through the static of recordings. I don’t remember what it sounded like in person. Time is like an ocean tide on the beach in this way, I think. My memories are sand, washed in, washed out, broken down. That’s the imagery that comes to mind.

I thought about this today, too, how memory is practiced. I was walking with Mom. I didn’t know how to bring you up. I didn’t know if I wanted to. Memory is practiced. I don’t know who to practice your memory with, so I just practice it on my own. I suppose the photographs, the recordings, they help, but I wonder if sometimes the pictures become the memories. I try to remember different things, so the memories don’t become the memories. Does that make sense? Some of the images don’t change. It’s always painfully blue skies with wisps of clouds over the softball fields at Niguel Hills. It’s always you in your hat, cracking sunflower seeds. I don’t know if this is recent, but recently it’s you sitting on the floor of your closet, half-heartedly packing a bag after a fight with Mom. That scared me, when you started getting more resigned in your fights with mom.

It’s you in your sunglasses in your soccer referee uniform. Sabo loves your flags. I don’t know where they are right now. It’s you dribbling circles around me with the soccer ball, and when you got too showy, the ball would get away, and this troubled you, because you had fuller command before your stroke. Still. It was impressive to me, though I knew it hurt you when you lost control during these displays.

Do goodbyes matter? I don’t know. There never was a goodbye to say, was there? When i got the phone call in Sunday school, it was over.

It’s terrifying to me that I have become a person without you. That I can become a person for whom life went on. I suppose this is a good thing. I think a lot of the past twelve (12!!!) years I wished I was someone for whom life couldn’t go on. But it did, I went on. Maybe too much of me wishes I didn’t. I imagine your life, now. It’s strange that I can do this, now, and how I could be totally and completely wrong, and you couldn’t correct me. The absence of you is big because it is unknown. But there’s always unknown, though our actions in life make a space around us that feels rigid.

I don’t imagine what you’d think of me now. I have no idea.

I’ve been saying I don’t know what love is, if I have love, but when I tried to type that I don’t know what love is towards you, I knew that was wrong. If I could give you peace. If I had a chance to spend any amount of time at all with you, I would just want to tell you that I am okay, and mean it, and hold myself to that statement, which is a promise, forever. I would tell you that my life went on, and hope that it brought you peace. That’s what love is, I think. Not that life goes on, or that I am okay, but the desire to tell you something that I will spend my life holding myself to. Promise doesn’t feel like the right word, because promises are broken, life falters around them. Resolve, maybe. Love is a resolve. That feels right to me.

I think about the hill where you are buried often. I imagine the warm breeze that blows there, the hardy grass. The sky is always blue there, to me. It’s the place I imagine most in California. Being there gave me a sort of peace, like air filling my lungs. I love you, Dad.

love is a dog

specifically love is my dog, my lovely boy, my Sabo.

i have spent a long time wondering what love is, if i love things or if i love people and if what i feel towards any something is love

but with Sabo it is so obvious

i look at him and the shape of his happy ears from the back from the front. i see his curious snout, his silly tongue, his small sturdy paws. i love him when he sleeps and when he scratches himself. he radiates love. it can only be love. it is too obvious.

he loves me, and i know this because it is one of things that i could never know, but i know. i can see it in his eyes when i cry or when i leave, i can see it in his whole body when i call his name, when i scratch his head.

i love him. maybe there are different loves, different intensities, false loves, learned loves, but this one is the platonic ideal love. i just know. this is a love i know.

i love his belly, i love his excitement for airplanes, his unrelenting hopefulness for some of what i’m eating. i love the way he reacts to the word “outside?” and the way he waits for me on the porch step to make sure i don’t leave him outside. i love the way he stares out the window, and the way he sleeps. i love where he sleeps. i love his soft breathing.

i love his wet nose. i love his kisses and his endless affection. i love him because he loves me.

11

hey dad.

time flies, huh?

today i missed my commencement. the school year isn’t over yet, but we’re all being sent home in efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 or Coronavirus, the world’s latest pandemic, which had its origins in Wuhan, China. Anyways, Olin decided to honor the class of 2020 with a pre-emptive commencement ceremony today, just in case. Like I said, I didn’t go. I went to my Wellesley math class, Galois Theory, instead, because it is probably the last math class I’ll get to physically sit in. That experience was ultimately more important for me, I think. My math classes have offered me a place of peace, a true place of luxury in my time here. I guess I should say that I’ve been deeply unhappy in college, because I feel saddled with a responsibility that I do not want, of having the capacity to move to action instead of pursuing the subjects that I find most interesting. Which of course is selfish, but it’s another version of myself that I feel obliged to say goodbye to. 

I also didn’t make connections to my classmates that I felt were meaningful, and in a feeling that is only accompanied by guilt, I resent them for not being a community that I connected with. I did build connections to mathematics; somehow I found a sort of satisfaction, or fulfillment there. 

So I didn’t go to my commencement, but I will still graduate at the end of this semester. Can you believe it’s been 11 years? Can you believe that I’m going to be a college graduate? It’s long enough that it’s hard for me to tell the years apart; the gradient is beginning to fade. It almost feels like you were blinked away, rather than the slow transition of fading memories that has occurred in your absence. I suppose that now I’ve spent a greater portion of my life without you than with you. I don’t really know who I’ve become. 

I don’t have too much more to say. I wish you were here. Sometimes it feels like no time at all. Other times it feels like a different lifetime. I should have bought you flowers. It’s been so long, sometimes I’m not sure that the flowers are for you anymore, but for me. Still, I should have bought you flowers. 

I feel that I have been holding onto the shards of your memory for so long that they are simply a part of me now; I do not know where they end and where I begin. What I’m trying to say is that these shards do not hurt me anymore. What I am trying to say is that I miss when I thought I could still piece them all back together to get you back. I realize that now I can only appreciate what I have of you, and that these things have become something new on their own. 

I love you, Dad. I may not know what love is anymore, but I know that I love you.

3:00 PM 11/12/2019

when i think about the future it feels like i am falling apart

like a pillar of sand, or maybe a pillar of salt, that looked forward instead of back

there is nothing there after all

the smell of rain

what the world smells like when it is wet. not of the rain itself, just its influence on everything that it touches.

pause

we’ve come so far. our understanding of reality is more clear than it’s ever been. that’s incredible.

5.1.2019

today flew by. every time i looked up it had been hours since i last did. i think im burning out a little.

today i ate a banana with peanut butter, a raspberry-rosemary-brownie from fekete while working on homework with eli and catherine, a shwarma pita from hummus bar while chatting with eli, then i came home and ate the rest of my pasta, half of my grapes, a lot of emily’s peanut butter, two pieces of toast with honey, and a bowl of chickpeas.

i wrote up all my discrete and convex geometry homework, though i don’t know if i did a very good job. i made some paper cranes, and i watched two episodes of street food. i think every day people are remarkable. every day we must do our best! 

i am tired. barr testified in front of congress today. i feel insane when i think about big things, but comforted when i think about how remarkable every day life is. that is where i am at right now. i want to draw.

4.30.2019

i ate so damn much today:

-banana + peanut butter

-poppyseed strudel

-half-kilo of strawberries

-most of my pasta

-remainder of my chocolate bar

-chinese cabbage n chickpeas

i gotta do some fuckin homework, man. i just wanna reconnect with my old friends. guess i’ll message them later.

4.29.2019 (or until it gets better)

we’re gonna try out this journaling thing again. 

we start with facts:

today I woke up at 8:15 AM, and then I went back to bed until 10:30 AM. I ate a peanut butter/honey/banana sandwich (two slices of toast), and then I ate half of a box of grapes. I sat down for a bit, and finished my notes on Rota’s 1997 essay on Mathematical Beauty. I read some Jagaaaan, then cooked lunch: Bon Appetit’s Healthyish recipe for Brothy Pasta with Chickpeas. I started around 11:20, and finished lunch around 1PM. Then I caught up with Jagaaaaan (to chapter 69). I briefly looked at my Discrete and Convex Geometry homework, but didn’t really get anywhere with it. I should ask people if they want to work on it tomorrow. At 4PM, I went to the grocery store and bought two chocolate bars: one dark chocolate and one milk chocolate with peanuts and raisins, as well as another box of green grapes because they were on sale. I ate the milk chocolate one on the walk to the Budapest Semesters in Math building. Then from about 4:30 to 7:30, I worked on Graph Theory with Nika, the tutor. I felt pretty stupid, but I am glad for the help. I came back and heated up half a head of broccoli, and finished the box of grapes. I ate 40% of the dark chocolate bar. Now I am journaling; I will shower, and then I will try to write up some of the graph theory problems.

I feel empty or sad or lonely again, or maybe all three. I figure I should journal so I don’t feel quite as useless and so I feel like I have some control in my life. I feel like I am disappointing someone again, though I am not sure who. Most likely myself. I feel kind of fat, but that’s to be expected after eating so much chocolate. I can’t seem to shake how much I like eating sugar. I also felt kind of greasy today. Anyhow, today hasn’t been so bad. I have a vague fear creeping up on me, but I have time to start trying to better myself (before shit really starts to hit the fan. I should try to exercise more. 

Things are going to be okay. You need to do your best every day. 

god fucking dammit.

it’s a pattern, crying in a school bathroom stall. 

holding the phone, not prepared to explain to mom that you’re scared something in you is broken, because every time you breathe you want to cry, and all the news in the world pulls at your strings in a way that the dams behind your eyelids are thoroughly demolished. it’s a free flowing river back there, goddammit. 

how any time anybody thinks of you, it breaks your heart a little more because in your mind you’ve crossed over to the realm of “i don’t deserve kindness or love. i’m not worthy.” it’s a pattern, when “how are you” and “are you okay” are proof that something is not at all okay. 

it seems you’ve forgotten how to empathize with yourself. again. and again. and every time you end up in this room it gets a little bit worse. because we’ve been over this, god fucking dammit we’ve been over this. we always go over this and it’s the same fucking thing. it’s time like this when the old demons really start to come back, when you can remember all of the reasons that maybe you just didn’t want to see another day, because it’s so goddamn shameful that you’re back in this fucking hole again.

it’s like knowing the answer but still getting the question wrong somehow, over and over and over and over again. i guess it just means that you never really learned your lesson. it’s getting stuck at the same door on a level you thought you’ve been through time and time and time again and goddammit maybe i just don’t want to go through this floor anymore. that’s what the old demons say.

but everything is fine and the sun is shining and there are good things in the world; so many good things but somehow every last thing is stained by your sadness. you start missing things that are still there.

10.

It’s kind of like running laps, it turns out. In the second half of the first lap, my body starts rejecting reality. In the second lap, I am more aware of my body, and I need to start focusing on my breathing. In the third lap, I need to ignore the pain, just push through. And everything after, I’m aware that I’m running, but my present state starts to fade into the background. There’s a rhythm to it, it turns out, but I’m looking towards an end. 

I guess that’s where these things start to differ.

10 years is a long time, and I guess I can’t really hide my obsession with quantifying the passed time. 10 times I’ve been past this point relative to the sun on a rock hurtling through space. I guess that’s all it means, quantified by the years. In more concrete terms, I’m 10 years older, which is something I never really even stopped to think about. It’s a doubling. The last time I saw you, I was 10 years old. 

I was pretty small then, at least relative to now. But maybe less troubled. Who knows? They aren’t wrong when they say that it’s the what-if’s that hurt most. I know the past couple of times I’ve written to you, I talk about how much letting go and forgetting is troubling me. That hasn’t changed. There’s a dull acceptance that’s growing now. I guess I’m growing into my life a little bit. 

I’m in Budapest, now, studying mathematics. I think I do want to go back to engineering, though. I’m ready to come back to earth, in some sense. I want to work to build a more beautiful world around me, and in some sense I feel some responsibility. Math is incredible and beautiful, but I can’t shake the sense that it’s a luxury. I think I want to be out among the people, because mostly I am tired of being alone. Perhaps do something for the environment, perhaps do something to make peoples’ lives brighter. I am tired of being alone. I do feel that the world is a wonderful, beautiful place, and I want to experience more of it. I do miss home, though. There is a piece of my heart (or my soul, or some otherwise metaphorical part of me) buried in that hill with you, and that’s home. There’s some of it in the house on Country Lane, there’s some of it that Mom and Aaron and Mr. Carl carry around with them, that grandma and grandpa and grandma carry with them. There’s some of it with Sabo, and some of it in every place I’ve stayed for a while. 

That’s changed, too. I’ve been so many places, so many temporary homes. I’m beginning to appreciate what it means to have a permanent home, and I worry that I won’t have one for a while. I’m appreciating more what it means to be able to come home to something every day. I want a home. I want certainty in my life, because everything feels so uncertain. 

I’m starting to learn what it means to get older. The passing of time scares me a bit. I started seeing Levi this year. I think we’re both a little lost, as people, but at the same time it feels good to hold on to somebody, a chance to be somebody a little bit new with somebody else. I don’t know that you’d approve, but I guess you aren’t here to give your approval. That’s the real passing of time, isn’t it? I stopped wondering whether or not you’d be proud of the way I’d be living. It’s a little bit freeing, shouldering one less expectation, and I suppose that makes me more myself, or whatever they say. But putting it that way puts a sort of dull ache in my chest again. It feels pathetic not just missing you, but missing...missing you. 

It’s been 10 years. I don’t really know how long of a time that is, to be honest. I also don’t know how much of myself I’ve built upon the rock that is your absence, which is kind of a strange foundation to have. Almost as much of myself as I built up with you around. 

I should tell you about who I am, or at least who I think I am. I’ve spent long enough waxing poetic about abstract things. 

Today, I am a math student studying for a semester abroad in Budapest, but I attend Olin College of Engineering, a small, new, but well respected institution at the front end of experimental engineering education. I like to draw, listen to music, and play video games. I love most forms of art, though I think I can be too strongly affected by stories we tell each other. My dream is still roughly the same; I want to move the world in a positive direction. I have been depressed for an amount of time that I cannot quantify. A constant feeling of inadequacy plagues me, and doesn’t really ever go away. I am lonely, most of the time. I can feel how easily I would send myself down a path I couldn’t afford to follow. I think I can behave recklessly, especially when I just want to be held by someone. I can feel my bonds with other people growing weaker. I do know I need to work on that, maybe individualism isn’t everything it’s cut out to be. 

Maybe I should start reminding myself to live as a daughter you’d be proud to have again. 

When I think of you, it’s still the same couple memories I keep referring to, but maybe I can dig up some new ones this time, too. It’s you at my softball game, eating sunflower seeds and changing the scoreboard. It’s you in the downstairs office, it’s the top of your head as you carry me on your shoulders. It’s you getting in the car to go referee at a youth soccer game on the weekend. It’s you helping out at the computer lab at the elementary school. It’s the handprints my classmates left for you after your first stroke at Mission Hospital. It’s you playing catch with me in the park by the elementary school with the big green softball. It’s you sitting on the floor of your closet, brokenly packing your things. It’s you on a ski slope, stiffly turning your way down the mountain. It’s you lying in a bed, missing a quarter of your skull, a church outside the window. It’s you sitting at my third grade spelling bee, tears coursing down your face, you laughing at the jokes in Spongebob with me and Aaron. It’s me preparing for your funeral, not fully aware of what’s happening, me crying in the laundry room, thinking that it was almost a performance, because that’s what I was supposed to do. The loss didn’t hit me till later. It’s your rhinestone studded glasses that you wore to pick me up at the elementary school, your blue Camry. Your jackets, your tennis shoes. Your maneuvering of a soccer ball. Your go-to dish to cook, pork with potato strips. There’s you telling me to keep running around the track at the elementary school, me throwing a tantrum. There’s me throwing away all your playboy magazines that you had at your desk and upstairs. I don’t know if anybody else knew about them, but I threw them away for you. It’s your smile, your teeth, your handwriting, the way one side of your face would pull up first. Your yellow shirt that I wore for a month after you were gone. Pinching your nose on weekend mornings to wake you up. 

It’s not enough. I wish there were more, so many more memories. I wish there were 10 years more memories than I have with me. I feel greedy. 

I’m appreciating more now how difficult it must have been after the first accident. But I’m also learning how strong mom was, and how hard it was for her, too, for years. But I don’t blame you for anything. I hold every memory close to my heart, and time has washed them into a sort of beige, tinged with fondness, radiating nostalgia for days gone by. 

I just wish you were here for me to talk to. I wish I didn’t have to write you these letters, and I wish your presence in my life was defined by action, rather than absence and yearning. I wish you were here to watch Aaron grow up. He’s seventeen now, and you’d be so proud of him. He’s hardworking and wicked smart, and he’s attending Carnegie Mellon University in the fall. He’s competing in various national academic competitions this semester, and graduating high school in June. Mom has mellowed out a lot. She’s grown a lot, too. I think you’d be proud of her. I appreciate her more every day as a hardworking woman who really did her best to hold our family together. That’s an unfailing strength. 

I love you, Dad. I should have been home to bring you flowers today. I love you. 

rossz versek

It’s funny how life shakes out. It took a trip halfway around the world, two Hungarian films, a brief introduction from a mental health professional, and about 12 download-deletions of tinder for me to start to try to figure out my shit.

bad poems. that’s what i’ve been writing. i feel like this realization has finally gotten me somewhere. through these poems i had this pretentious idea that i was somehow expressing my “true” feelings in this flowery language. but i was just glossing over the truth. i think there’s something to be said for a less rose-colored version of the world. 

maybe truth is just a long hard look until the colors in your eyes readjust. there’s something to be said for plain stated ideas and saying things in their most basic possible terms.

now that i look back at those poems, i can see that they ooze depression. they put my sadness on a pedestal, and feed into my admittedly massive ego. i’m this beautiful person, with extraordinary beautiful thoughts, that other people don’t have. it’s my way of making myself feel special. and don’t get me wrong, i haven’t crossed over into cynicism. i have a deep, perhaps unfounded, pride for who i am, and i do think i am special. but not in the way that those poems frame me. as some tortured misunderstood alone artist. i see all this beauty in the pain, and that glorifies it. but i don’t want to be there forever. i understand that about myself now. the romantic view of the world is a beautiful one, but i think it’s like a sickly sweet ooze. eventually it’ll eat you until you’re a shell of yourself, grasping at ghosts and unsure of what was real out of that shimmery evanescent mass of memory. see? it’s beautiful. it really is. 

but i need to refocus on the present. it’s hard to tear your eyes away from the past and even harder to stop projecting some unattainable fantasy. 

what was my fantasy? i had a fantasy that i would get into a forever relationship with Levi. I was projecting my want for this sort of relationship onto the closest possible candidate. his quiet truth in the car was true (we move on. as much as we’d like it to, this isn’t going to work out, and we’ll ease ourselves out of this), and i can’t confuse that for love. as much as i want to paint it that way, it was honesty. 

so what sort of relationship do i want? I want companionship. someone to slowly share myself with and to learn more about, to support, to grow accustomed to. someone i enjoy being around. someone that i don’t feel hopelessly insecure around. a lot of that is going to come on my end, and then it’s just about finding a person who i...like. that’s about it. i want to face people i become romantically involved with in honesty. i want to be able to say, yeah, i feel like we’re good for each other. and i don’t want to lick my wounds around them. i am not this romanticized broken person who is fucked in the head and needs to be tolerated. i have a lot of good points, i’m far from perfect. but once i said i wanted to be a person who could take responsibility for all my actions. so i want to act purposefully and thoughtfully. 

slowly i’m coming to understand myself through the lens of companionship. I crave companionship, and can get pretty desperate for it. there’s a lot of ugly sides to this. i am not above attention seeking, but i have to be special, so i can’t even do it like a normal person and just take pictures of myself, because i feel so ugly most of the time. low self esteem in self image is not great. i think that’s one of the biggest things i have to work on. i have to remind myself that social media doesn’t help, and i just have to be happy with what i look like. otherwise do something about it. it’s that simple. beating myself up for how i look or not looking like some “ideal” is no way to go about living my life. 

on that note, i make sort of a mental deal with myself, like my instagram is just art because that’s what i’m proud to post. but i am vain. god. i look in mirrors so often because i’m so insecure about how i look. like having that vanity is bad, or something. i don’t really know what my logic about it is anymore. but this bad self image thing...it’s not gonna fly anymore. just sit tall, proudly, and actually do the exercise you say you’re going to do. eat right. 

you’re gonna be fine. you really truly are going to be fine. act in a way where you can be proud of your actions. that’s the main thing, right. live your life proudly. 

can’t get it out

it’s like a firm knot, sitting in the middle of my head and in the middle of my chest, something heavy and weighted that every thought must squeeze past, every breath must push past. 

it feels like the only way to get it out is to scream and to cry and maybe, maybe then it’ll just go away.

but it doesn’t.

i have to keep trying though. i have to keep trying.

winter

summer was a dream; i thought i’d never be depressed again. in the fall i changed color with the leaves and was swept off the trees when the wind came back and whispered, which way is forward? you are lost.

i am alone again, and i am lost. i want to lie down. i am unsure if i want to get back up again. the world feels so big, and so empty. it all just slips through my fingers, and i’m not sure what i should be watching or looking at anymore. 

today, in your bed, everything felt okay again. your soft snoring, a light breeze carrying a dance through the pine needles, cars flying by on the freeway. and you, nestled in your blankets and pillows. and again, when i was nestled in you. it felt like a connection in the universe that was finally right. finally right. and then it was over. those are moments that i will hold on to. 

but they are not mine. you don’t love me. i want so badly to love someone and be loved. i am jealous. i am possessive. i want to hold on to the beautiful things in my life, and i want certain moments to be mine, and mine alone. but they are not. 

i don’t know who i am anymore.

suicide season

it’s red-orange-yellow against gray, and it’s as empty as an exhale. the air around whispers that today, today would be as good as any to die. nothing suggests it; but everything suggests it. it’s the only natural thought to have, really, when you’re standing here, you’d understand. 

something is gone forever today, and since that something is gone, everything might as well go. 

it’s a feeling of numb before the feeling comes back. the pause between tides is a time as good as any to disappear. 

past present future me

im a piece of shit. it's just true. maybe some people aren't meant to be good people, but I want, I want so badly to be good. is there redemption for the bad? is there forgiveness? is there ever truly moving on? i am tired of being bad. i visited my home, my childhood self, and those parts of me came back. a lot of them were very ugly. a lot of them still are ugly. a time when i felt the familiar feeling of being alone. there are good parts too. there are laughs that I truly would not be able to have anywhere else. I have not laughed like this in a long time. It's true that none of it ever goes away. we carry that forward, old sins and regrets and embarrassments and we truly hope we can change, be better, but it's hard when you're staring down relics of your past. But it's endlessly important, I think, and vital to your growth. That we can see these things with clearer eyes, that we can see that things are going to be okay. That we carry our weights forward, because that truly is the only way to get stronger, no matter how painful it may be. And you must move forward. You cannot forget, but if you cannot move forward it makes no difference.

reflections/refractions

all trying to catch some perfect form, something real, some truth. but each one is real in its own right. 

the shadow, the photograph, the video, the living breathing, the impression, the dream, the memory, the uncountable reproductions

all are some version of the truth, but all are true, until some become more true than the rest. 

a god, a devil, a person. who is more real to others, who is more real to themselves. a thousand different versions of the same story, so really a thousand stories that are somehow one. 

maybe there is one, wavering, shimmering, ethereal, and can only be seen as different lights are cast from different angles. there are endless lights outside, and there is a light within, all casting shadows all over until some of these shadows merge and overlap, then fade in and out of existence. they are all trying to show themselves something, something to grasp at and to hold on to. perhaps all trying to find some truth.

but maybe it’s all true. can light be cast wrong? or are the impressions and tricks of the light all as real as long as there is light?