you can find me in the empty street of your local alley, hiding in the crevices of the broken pavement that has its **** together more than i do, and you can see me cowering in the corner of a party too loud for me to feel comforted, and you can see me fighting back tears after every single conversation and shout of you're stupid and you don't know what to do and how will you ever make it out alive

you can't see my hands tied behind my back and my mouth taped closed by the words that hit my throat and sting my ears and make my life seem worse than the world i thought it was, and you can't see my mind racing at hundreds of miles per hour hoping that there is a way out, that blood dissipates into water, that i'll be okay, and that i need to take every **** word out of my letters who reassure me that yes i am worth it and yes my mind and my freedom is all intact unharmed and not damaged

some days i feel broken, but not the mirror that shattered into seven years of bad luck. some days i feel broken like that little black duckling that never quite got it right or that baby bird with a broken wing who doesn't know where its mother is and who looks at everyone with eyes full of sympathy because every story is worth listening to unless its my own

and other days i just want it to stop, and i want to sleep, and i want to do nothing and enjoy the sheets of my bed and the comfort of my tv and the soft pillow that supports a head too tired to hold itself up because they do not judge me
          
        they do not tell me words that push through my armor and tear me *apart

I think I have finally found the culprit, the reason why we cannot let go as easily as we would like, why we romanticize the past, why we look into the mirror and wish we could rewind time. It goes by the name of sentimentality.

A slip of the memory and you're back to where you started from, your thoughts. Granted, thinking the past is better than it was is something even your most esteemed writers are guilty of. But perhaps our problem lies in the fact that we put too much human in humanity, too much sentiment into sentimentality. If we take it drip by drip, instead of one full shot, maybe we can detach ourselves like we've always wanted. But...perhaps not. I cannot look at a single star in my dreams without thinking that it isn't real because I would remember those moments, wouldn't I? And he cannot go a day without looking into the bottom of his glass remembering it was the same one she drank from, the same mirror she looked in, the same bed she slept in.

We cling for words hoping they will be enough but really nothing can ever fill the excessive emotion we put into our hearts, no words, no lyrics, no poems, no Christmas trees, no lights in your room, no fuzzy socks, no cocoa, no snow, not even an airplane ticket. What can help us is love, but what destroys is love, and we get thrown into a backwards whirlpool of thoughts until eventually we become sentimental to either the past, the present, or even the future. We either loath it or we reminisce or we cry but we never, never march up to the things, even the people, that we miss and say "excuse me, you ruined my life." Or, "excuse me, I wish I could erase your memory" or "excuse me" or even "***** you."

If you take the square root of sentimentality, at least in my life, somewhere along the way you will get falling for him, winter storms, and perfume. You'll find me walking down the road thinking that things can not get any better, or can not get any worse. Something tells me I'll find someone else there too, and I'll find summer weather or the leaves in the fall or starbucks drinks or that bar where you two met or a glove that you gave back to her or a text message that began it all. But I think the most important thing I'll get is humanity. Because for everyone walking on that path to sentimentality, they are all human. And we can't change human nature, can we?

I've always been one to talk about change as if I was immune to it and it would never happen to me, but looking back on it I realized that not only has it happened, but I feel so alienated from what I used to be that old pictures seem to be a stranger staring from the frame into my own eyes from a fog of the past that I can't seem to recollect

I have to learn to make it on my own out there in a world full of people that can tear me down more than pick me up and it's going to be a process not easily overcome and impossible to avoid but for some reason the fear inside me is starting to melt away at the thought that these worn out eyes can finally breath in the sunshine, or lack thereof, of another country

There was a question that asked how I feel I've changed since my Freshman year and all I could say was that my eyes have become ones that back then were not capable of seeing the reality I was living in everyday, but now they can see, and they take note, and they see those looks that you give them and they write down in their memory carved with the scraps of past ones that I should be invisible

I realized in two weeks that I mourn by not mourning, because I avoid crying now that it's all drained out of me, and with the death of a best friend, I haven't shed a true tear that was not under the influence of the fluids they were pumping in me through an IV system, and I don't know what's the matter with me, but I just focus on the happy happy happy because if I don't the world knows that will be the end of me

I'm sitting in the room I've been sitting in for over seven years writing about change. I never thought the day would come when it would be about myself, but it is, and here I am, and I have changed. I over think things, I question, I observe, I'm careless and careful and confused and lost and searching somewhere inside of me for where I'm going and who I'm going to be but the answers haven't come yet so I'm forced to be patient and wait for them as long as I need to because without a sense of self, I am no one.

let me tell you something about regret

let me tell you something about being saturated with your thoughts, about being completely above your thresh hold of absorption and trying to desperately figure out how you can get out of it

it's a delicate game between i hope he gets it and he never does, a fine line between texting him at 1am trying to apologize for what you've been doing wrong and realizing he's just a boy and he can't handle that

we cling unflinchingly to the memories of our past until eventually we are tunnel visioned by them, unable to move forward because they are the quicksand in our mind forcing us to stay

and let me tell you about trying to do texts at midnight drunk on the absence of sleep telling them that they surely understand, trying to get closure to the fact that no you are not the only one who feels like this, he feels it too, but it will always be about someone else  

and i could give you countless essays on replaying images of their tears, on wishing that you were never in a ******* hotel corridor spilling your heart out to stain your dress with red memories, red red dark red memories that will always stay there

or the time, perhaps, when you were not freezing because he was there next to you to heat you, because the sound that escaped his speakers were melodies that comforted the both of you through the tidal waves of something larger than you and something able to engulf you with a single blow

but let me tell you how it all ends, how you think you can never go back to the feeling of mistakes when you aren't making any, when you're stuck alone in this big world without talking to anyone because it only causes trouble doesn't it? but it always swings back around and there isn't a cure for it

i could write a million and one essays explaining how i have felt the past two years of my life, how from the moment my thighs were frailer than my wrists to the moment i couldn't fit back into my favourite pair of pants, from the time i first saw all of their brown eyes to the time i last saw them, from the awkward moments in the hall that are filled with void and anger and tension to the moments when i would beg to see them again for just a little bit more, but i have realized that i can never make you get it

the only way to get it is to experience it, and for those of you who understand what i'm talking about, try to get some sleep tonight, try to keep the memories out of your dreams

They always compare love to a burning fire
And say, " you ignited my heart into flames"
But you were the frozen furnace
The ancient stove that no one ever bothered to heat up
You were cold down to the core and I had electrical heat running through my veins
And everytime I touched you you gave me frostbite
I tried so hard but you were too numb
And sooner or later,
I ran out of match sticks to keep this pathetic excuse of a fire alive
Because I was the forest fire and your were the water that drowned me