Bending

There are so few people that really listen to you without any kind of judgment, however subtle. Everyone seems to have their own beliefs about what is right and what is wrong and the proper way to live life; they also seem to have very strong beliefs in things and argue for them passionately and have all sorts of explanations for things. No I don't necessarily agree with most things people say, but I appear to agree or to have no opinion because I don't say anything to the contrary. Most things are not worth arguing about, because it is very unlikely that you will be able to change someone's mind. I wish I was able to say what I believe, but I have not always formed words to express it. When I am with people, I find myself bending into their lives - not asking them to bend into mine, but wanting all the time, someone to bend too.

*Why can people not just experience you for who you really are?

A Chance

You have to keep starting over, at square one, because there is no such thing as getting better, unless you're always getting better, and not feeling worse, or worse than that, not caring that you aren't getting better.

There comes a point when you realize that there is no bottom anymore - that the pit is bottomless and you could just keep falling.

Then you have to learn how to be alone again - really alone, with yourself and then how to live. And then there is always something to remind you of who you don't want to be - there's always a part of you that is wondering if you'll be okay and if it really matters.

Because it's not feeling bad or being depressed or hating life or any of those things you and I and everyone has felt before...it's some of that but also: it feels like you are poisoning yourself, or slowly killing yourself; it feels like drowning but not in water; it feels like you're not even there; and the worse thing is: that isn't even what makes it feel bad, because you can't even feel bad; what makes it feel bad is that you know you could be doing something else and being normal and wonderful, but you aren't, and you don't know how to be like that again and it hurts because even though people care, they are always just out existing and being normal and what do you have to do with any of that? You're not even really alive.

You feel a little bit like you've been spilled over. You feel messy and uncareful. You can't contain anything except the one thing you have to.

Kinds of Tired

You get tired at 8. And then more tired at 9, and 10, up until when you fall asleep, if you can manage that tonight. That's the kind of tired that just keeps growing, like a tree it grows old until it strikes the clouds. That's what you're wishing for...the clouds.

There's the kind of tired you lose when you stay up too late; you missed your hour and now you're body thinks its a whole new day. There's the kind of tired of the morning after, when you're feeling oh so tired because you only got this many hours of sleep but really part of the reason you are so tired is because you are thinking that you should be tired after only 4 hours, approximately, of sleep - though maybe you are not as tired as you think you are...you can maybe think yourself out of tired.

But then why is there the kind of tired you are the day after 10 hours of restful sleep and you didn't even get up to go to the bathroom at 3 AM; there's no reason you should be tired - you didn't run 10 miles or lift heavy boxes today or yesterday nor did you take care of any children or shovel the snow that's not falling- you didn't actually, if you remember correctly, do much of anything. It's the kind that makes you putter around the house and act mopey and some people will say it's boredom and you used to think it was that, but then it doesn't really make sense that you would be bored when there are so many things to do that you don't find boring- and sometimes you find downright exciting, but when you are tired, all you wish is to not feel so tired so that you can be downright excited!

So it is really the fault of the tiredness itself, because if you weren't so very tired, then you would not find the need to always say you were tired, nor would you be so very tired that you could not do all the things that you need to be untired for. All those things are also called living but you are not sure you are actually doing that now, even though technically you are, and it tires you.

Compulsion

You have compulsion. And obsession. You have that full feeling, and the other one. You have that empty feeling, that nothing feeling, that tired feeling--the one where you're exhausted, sometimes sad and mopey, the loneliness. You have the opposite of love, but not hate, but also anger that reaches out towards hate but can't get there. You have the opposite of energy - the lack of things, you want something you don't know what but you know you don't have it because you just know this isn't it. You have love. You have it. Somewhere.

My Life

I had a bad day. Not bad like the way everyone else means "bad," but bad like I can't say its day 21 anymore, or whatever day it is. Because it's not and maybe it wasn't even day 20 yesterday. Maybe I'm always in the middle of falling, or in the middle of getting up, never really walking the beam like everyone else, or vaulting it the way brave people do. I'm one of those people who can only balance a book on their head for 2 seconds, sometimes, when all is well. Now though, I need recalibration.

I feel lost and unbalanced. I'm the girl whose fallen off the beam onto the blue mat, and the hole hasn't opened up beneath her feet yet, but she can feel the floor's fragility. She can feel it gaping.
She'll ignore it for as long as she can.

Cereal

I am definitely: Puffed Rice

Pay me

for my thoughts.

Or else give them back to me.

You're tired

of always being the one.

I'll live in mine, but thank you anyway.

I am tired of having to always worry about doing the "right" thing, of having to wonder what you want from me, whether you will be mad or frustrated or miffed, because of what I do which will never be enough but always requires me to be fine, too rare you know, but do you know me enough to know that I never do the thing that everyone else does just because,
that I'll never succumb to your words; they won't sway me
the measliest bit, unless you flavor them with knowledge, with something like love but calling it love would make you misunderstand; of course you love me, you say, of course of course. And I say, in my parenthetic way,
don't lace your words with disappointment, with judgement, with your thoughts that look and look
anywhere
but me. I say
don't concern yourself with right
I mean
don't concern me with your definitions--your effort that you use in all the right places, you don't know that it isn't what's right that will feel right, but the reverse or that life is never that easy...so you go and live in that bright and shiny world and I'll
wait and I'll wait
to feel.

I'm afraid

of everything.

Ok. No.

I'm afraid of being incapable of being.
I'm afraid of being
no good.

I know

I have to start taking better care of myself. I know my troubles and my limitations - what I can handle and when and what I Absolutely cannot.

Me

You don't even want to become that person, but you find yourself turning into her, by degrees and against you even though you lean, some other way and in another direction - still you learn to become someone else, and not yourself, AND where do you go for you?

Change

Things can change in an instant. In an hour-in that moment and in the next one-in those series of moments when you're not looking at the clock or hearing its hands move like the tick tick of the metronome. You think back, back to that person you were just last Monday and you wonder: Where did she go? Why is she not here?

She didn't go anywhere.
She stayed.