when the numb feeling settles in and
i don't wake up to any of my alarms anymore
when dinner is after ten pm or not at all
i find myself wondering if i'll ever actually succeed at anything.
am i the fool for letting myself trip face-first into this
downward spiral?
i walk around with a blank expression
but i'll still smile when i catch your eye,
because if you worry i feel guiltier than normal.
what if i die and nobody remembers my name, my story?
what if i make nothing of myself, finish nothing?
what if my life ends up meaningless, and this suffering
wasn't worth it?

gardening has taught me a gentleness that no parent ever could.
the way my hands work roots apart to make space for new dirt
shows me that i have the capacity to be soft, even when
the world has given me an exoskeleton of impenetrable emotion.

i have days where i can’t imagine doing anything except laying in the dark, but my plants need the sun just as much as i do.

there’s this appreciation of small things that comes with gardening, this ability to notice even the tiniest changes.
cheering on the little new leaf of a plant that hadn’t grown anything in months. flowers blooming to prove you’ve done a good job.

the world is dissolving but they just keep on growing.

there are snapdragons outside my window and though the cold weather killed the rest of my garden, they are thriving. pushing out the brightest colors i’ve seen all season.
nothing will work for every plant, the care i provide is vastly different even among two that sit next to each other on the shelf.
nothing will work for every person.

the gentleness i’ve learned keeps my hands soft towards others, like when i put bandaids over scratches or zip up dresses or intertwine our fingers.

we could all stand to learn something from nature. how forgiving it can be, how gracious, how bright. flowers are what we wish on, representations of the best and worst moments of our lives. our successes, our losses.

nothing is forever, but god does nature sure last a while.

you look so much like your mother! oh, you look just like your mom when she was your age! you have your momma’s eyes, her nose, her lips! you and your mom are just like twins, aren’t you!

i look like my mom. my mom doesn’t like the way she looks.

she’s too heavy, the diets don’t work, she can’t lose weight, she doesn’t want to be in pictures, she is uncomfortable in her own skin.

if i look like her, what does that say about me? will i end up in the same boat as her, unhappy and projecting my insecurities?

i look like my mom. my mom doesn’t like the way she looks.

i don’t think i want to die.

but i want to escape and i want to be different and i want to feel something and i want to do better and i want to breathe in and out, stretching my lungs.

there’s this numb feeling in my bones and it’s starting to make my emotions seem artificial, staged, timed. smile on in three, you’re supposed to be enjoying the conversation! i don’t know how to fix it. i don’t know how to feel anymore.

a lot of my life has been spent doing things for other people even when it wasn’t good for me. i’m a people pleaser to my core. my heart aches for who i could’ve been, for who my parents could have been if they didn’t have me.

being the oldest means a childhood that none of your siblings will live exactly the same, responsibility they will never have, expectations that are never going to be set on their shoulders. you’re the experiment, the one who made your parents who they are. everything they do wrong with you is fixed and improved for the next child.

i don’t even think i can blame them, it’s their first time living too.

the sun is setting and i just want to do better but i don’t know how. i’m surrounded by people who love me and i don’t know how to see them. life is passing me by and all i have to do is pull the cord to stop the train i’m on, but i can’t reach.

i was so excited to grow up but it’s nothing i ever imagined. i remember it all; every age and every wish and every idea and every tear and every scrape. nothing feels the same as it did when i was six, or nine, or fourteen.

it’s my first time living and i don’t know what to do anymore.

the night after the covenant school shooting, i was at work.

a man comes in and is very kind to me,
seems kind to his wife as well. but he turns and i see something on his hip, a holster. and the gun.

now, i live in tennessee. the sight was not too strange, but so unsettling after what had just happened. how could he walk around openly carrying the same weapon that had killed people just hours before?

how could he bring a firearm into our store, after hearing about those deaths?

these prayers to gods who don’t hear us are not working, and our government does not know how to protect us in ways that matter. we can scream at the top of our lungs that it isn’t fair, but it will fall on deaf ears.

as a child in america, i am terrified every day. terrified that my brothers will not make it home after i drop them off. terrified that my mom will pick up the wrong substitute teaching job. terrified that my best friends will not graduate with me because this country is more focused on how people represent themselves rather than what is killing us.

i am seventeen and i am so tired of being scared for my ******* life. there is blood on the floor and on our hands and in our memories and we practice hiding in our classrooms and workplaces because it is real. these kids were real and now they are dead.