That is as honest as it gets.

And I'm not talking about all the political BS and how the world becomes more and more broken each day.

I've already put that in a spot in my mind where I don't venture often.

I try not to venture at all really.

Most days, I am awake but not conscious.

I am eating and not filling.

I am composing and not thinking.

Very much has changed about my life and I do know that most of it was my own **** fault. I have been there.

I have one person I wish I could talk to always.
She is close to me and not close in range.

I am sometimes the embodiment of a donut.
Sweet on the outside with no center.
No soul.
Nothing there deep down.

I am sometimes a corpse who hasn't yet realized its full potential.

A bed is no resting place for a lazy student turned zombie.

I know these things.

So why did 2017 make me this way?

Well... it didn't.

A year by itself cannot make you do anything, it only marks the time that I marked day by day in hopes that the next day would be harder to hate the last.

It is a constant reminder that time is the only thing you know when you don't know God.

It is an epitaph to your future saying "I'm sorry I knew the way out and just didn't take it".

It is to shove in your face that sometimes no resolution is the only kind of resolution you really like to hold.

If only for 365 or 366 days you didn't hate yourself for it.

That you are not only lazy, but self loathing and lazy.

I didn't come home from a war or natural disaster, but I came back a changed person.

And as the clock proceeded to march forward to midnight.

I felt nothing.

This was the second year in a row where my family didn't celebrate with another to bring in the new year. No, they went to bed.

Or at least, most of them did.

2017 was 2 parts trauma, and 1 part self concocted pathological fear of everything.

Eleven... out of twelve months... were disastrous.

And I did not even try to make it better.

Lying is not my strong suit.

So I will once again pass with the resolutions nobody tries to keep.

Somethings are supposed to get better.

This may be the first year when my birthday is once again a forgotten 24 hours nobody knew was important until I said so.

So yeah, 2017 was the worst year of my life.

I just hope it wasn't the worst year of my life so far.

I wish I was in love.

I wish that a lot.

I wish most days that someone would love me.

But it all seems like so much to ask of a person.

To love a broken person like myself.

I won't bother giving reasons to love this empty shell of a body.

Most days I just want someone to hold.

Or perhaps... someone to hold me.

I think it is easier to love after pain has been brought upon you.

Because people will tell you that love can bring pain.

So if you have already experienced such pain...

It cannot be much harder to not only love, but to love someone with pain.


I wish so much that I would be swept away with the blissful thought of another in my head.

But such things do not come to the broken hearted.

Big house, big family, big heart.

Something like that, I remember.

But clearly, I am the uncivilized person at the table as I hold out the salad bowl, asking for the main course.

All eyes turn to me as if I am foreign.

Now it is just a simple mistake. I won't make it a big deal.

But when you're as much of a perfectionist as I am...

You seem to hate these little things that get in your way.

Things that you just didn't do right the first time.

Being so hypercritical of myself just magnifies the things I do wrong.

So something as stupid as a salad bowl got under my skin.

I don't think I envy your family.

I don't even think I envy your lifestyle.

I won't call it rich, or comfortable.

I'll simply say that it's not mine.

And that is reason enough to not feel at home in it.

The night was long, and the conversations were longer.

My ultimate honestly always hanging around like a sad puppy.

And yet, I can't help but think of how you could be ashamed of me.
Or embarrassed by me. My ways, my habits, my lifestyle.

My awkwardness, my jokes, the things I do in default.

I wish I were a better spectacle to show off sometimes.

Although most days, I talk more about you than I do about myself.

Often talking to myself.

How sad is that?

To feel all of this in an instant at a supper table.

But there's no time to be sad.

Be a part of the conversation, don't faze out, act like it's all okay...

And pass the salt.

I felt so sad as I took a jar of paper stars from the top shelf of my school locker and held it close to my chest as I walked down the halls and I knew you were watching... Arden.

You just didn't do anything.

You knew what it was like to cling to life the same way you hung from death, like it was some kind of sick game. However, this is not a one player kind of match now, is it?

I powerwalked through the halls once, wanting so much to die. I had no plans, just a few ideas. You know, I didn't consider hanging myself in my mind to be a "plan to die" because I didn't actually write out the plans, I just thought about them a little too much.

I answered "No." when asked if I made plans to **** myself, because in my mind, I really didn't make plans.


When asked if I was homicidal, I don't remember what I said, but I remember not saying "no". I remember that I've imagined punishing people, but never killing people. I want to hold their lives in my grasp and hear them apologize like they actually mean it.

But I am too nice for that. Too Christian for that.

It takes a strong person to lift weights, but a stronger one to lift the personal weight off your own back.

I've thought about retiring my poetry career 10 years too early, not even making it to my mid-twenties before quitting simply because there were too many people too eager to get offended at my work.

I will not play innocent to your sickly made games.

I am no fool.

Although, I will not retire my poetry career just yet. Because every time I feel the urge to quit, I am here at 3:22am writing long strings of poetry.

Arden's gonna have a fricken sleeve of tattoos.
Alex is gonna have pain.
Baer is gonna have me taking care of her sister.

But who really cares about that? Because Arden's gonna have something.

Arden has friends,

education,
teachers,
a job,
a life.

Arden's gonna have love.

Arden's gonna have ******' love.


Alex is not going to beg for my jaw unhinged from all the fighting.
Alex will not bend.
No sir.


Baer has hired me as the worlds worst babysitter, and her sister, only a few years younger than I already holds me to a higher standard than most.

But Arden has more to life than me.

There's no comparison.

I too, want to die when I'm not staying up this late to escape my thanatophobia.

I will not live to see Arden's graduation.

But I will live to see the hurricane that comes after it.

I don't feel special Baer.

But no one really needs to know that.

Music is not a weapon I wield with such grace these days.

It's mostly a necessary thing I try to master in the comfort of my own room.

A new year, a new start. Or at least it seems that way. I don't really care to know where I'm going to start over in this new year.

My hands feel frail and coarse, like they've never gone swimming, or like they've always gone swimming.

I barely type with the swiftness I used to. My arms grow tired, and I grow just as tired. I am not myself these days, but these days are getting longer and longer.

I fear my death most nights.

Thanatophobia is a type of illness unlike insomnia, but similar no doubt.

Every day I wish you were here to hold my hand, but when I ask what will I do without you here, you tell me "I'm honestly going to be fine."

What part of that is fine anyway?

But you're right.

I shouldn't cling to you as much as I do.

I said before in a previous poem that I didn't want to scare you away while trying to be a friend.

I just hurt so often and pray so little.

Falling apart while you move away and yet, there is no safe haven for people like me.

But people like you seem to think the I'm okay.

And I wonder every day...

Why you think so.

I can't tell you how much I miss you.

And I feel awful because you'll never miss me.

You broke my heart, and maybe it's my fault for not noticing sooner.

Or it's my fault that I let you do it.

I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, but I did.

And you didn't say anything but that you were able to excuse my character.

I guess I deserve that.

I'm not myself.

I don't like change.

I make no progress.

Self?


Self image?


Self worth?

What even are those things?

Wears "Beware of Dog" sign