Have you ever just felt so lonely, even in a crowded room?

Have your insides ever felt so empty,like nothing fills them but air and blood and you are nothing but meat on a spinning ball in a dying universe?

Have you ever looked at the stars and realized gas can be so magnificent, yet you, conscious, synaptic you, cannot even make yourself special to one person whom you love?

Have you ever felt the benevolence of whatever power above you weighing so heavily on your shoulders, realizing they gave you life and one wrong move and you may be wasting it?

Have you ever realized time is so short, and in the blink of an eye, the toll of a clock, it could all be over and it could all begin and everything could be different in that one second?

Have you seen the look in your mother's eyes when you realize that she isn't wonder woman, and that she is as human as you, as terrified as you, and that illusion is gone and you both are broken and innocence is so lost you spend your whole life trying to find it again?

Have you stared into the face of death and came back kicking and screaming, terrified that the next one in that coffin will be you, and that your loved ones will be the broken ones now, or possibly worse, no one would have cared at all?

Have you ever died a little inside, seeing someone you pined for and had an intense affinity for live and laugh and love in the arms of another and you want to move on but you can't because you cannot let go of the simple maybe that they could make you feel that way one day too?

Have you ever felt the heavy weight of love crush your heart, and either **** you a thousand times or lift you up to the heavens, untouchable yet so breakable, and everything could be forever or fall apart at any moment, and when your naked in their arms and more vulnerable than ever the end could be near, even when they whisper they love you in the way their hands touch your cheek and their lips caress your skin?

Have you ever felt nothing, not even when you should, and could not find the tears or the words or anything really, and become a frozen shell of a human being that feels so alone, even in a crowded room?

I am not feeling all of these right now, but I have at least once before, and they all come rushing back to me like sad songs while I sit alone in a full room, musing about life and realizing though I may be ill, I'm still human too.

Lucky.

Some people would look at this little life of Grace and think, ****, she is lucky. Of course, you know better, don't you, Wonderland? You know what goes on in my hodge-podge head where the rainbows lament and the killers dance.

So come and tell me what my kiss tastes like. I want to know if the poison is evident or I'm just the one who can feel it.

Skeletons twirl on my walls, and that's not a metaphor. I literally have neon skeletons dancing on my walls. That's just the type of person I am.

No where. That's where we're going right now, with wonderful gibberings of a lost cockatoo, so lost she found herself in a young woman's body.

Lost little Grace, trying to find her place in the world, just like her beloved Alice. Yet Alice was always free of Wonderland at the end of the night. Or was she? She did always gravitate towards the insane place, maybe she's just as trapped as Grace.

Musings of the world as I grow, from young little wide-eyed girl to the woman I am today. A young woman, albeit, a naive, wide-eyed woman with too much hope in her heart, but a woman nonetheless.

The scars of your love leave me breathless. Oh no, no they don't. I hope mine have left you dead.

Still bitter I am how my caterpillar betrayed me. Have I not told this story? How in the dark of the night he found solace in the wings of another, to leave me blind to his deception. Thank the gods the March Hare had the sense to enlighten me.

Now I spend my nights in the arms of other, and I could not be happier. Never one solid man, never one stationary enough to become a character of Wonderland. But there enough so the loneliness does not creep up on me in the waking hours of the moon.

Stars are my companions now, yes, that's what they are. I am always stargazing and sometimes, when I'm lucky, I share my pantomimed sleep with them, pantomimed for of course I do not sleep.

So perhaps I am lucky, for I am a Grace surrounded by stars, and at the moment, I would not have it any other way.

There's a feeling I've felt hindering on the tip of my tongue, twirling with sawdust at the end of my bed. Its tingled my toes and tickled my nose and killed all hopes that this is just happiness.

Sleep is for figments and products of sanity, neither of which I can claim heritage. Well perhaps figments in the waking hours of the darkness, but that is a tale for another time.

I can feel his fingertips stroking my sides, reminding me what it is to feel human and vulnerable and perfect. Didn't know he boosted me ego and turned me into the self absorbed maniac you see before you today. Tyrant, remembrr? Oh wait, that's another tale altogether again.

I ramble in the night, in the morning, all the time. My thoughts wander with echoing clarity to encompass the truth about me; not everything is quite right. The teacups are lopsided at the unbirthday table tonight.

Yet again, speaking in riddles and stories unbeknownst to you. Stupid me, stupid Grace, stupider you. Why are you so open to my madness anyway? Maybe you're the crazy one.

This sick godlike embodiment I feel is one I forget isn't real, isn't me, isn't life. But wait. Its a part of me, so perhaps it is real as well? Call a jury, wake a judge, there must be a verdict on my elation. Am I a minor deity or are the synapses playing some cruel joke on my heartstrings?

Heartstrings, why did I bring them into this? I have shut them off for now, for they are dumb and deaf to honesty and logic and do whatever the hell they feel. Or is it whatever the heaven? I forget sometimes where the real misery is, or how the expression goes. I've never quite gotten everything right, being as upside down as I.

Insomnia brings out the manic in me, and I know its not real, but for a moment, just a moment, I belong. I am real, I am loved, I am powerful. Weak little Grace is no more, with her fears and contradictions. Just strength is left, and it is glorious.

Just remember not to let the heffelumps get you in the night, for they are the true evil behind your honey ***. Or am I a heffelump? I can't remember anymore.

This is going nowhere, everywhere, somewhere.

Wake me up inside before I destroy myself, or simply perpetuate my perfection with a caress of your hand. Whatever suits your fancy.

Call me Aphrodite and we'll call it a night after hours of mindblowing ***. But you expected that all along, of course you did, because you know my bones better than we both realize.

When you put your hands on me I feel ****. But yet again, right now I an perpetually **** and twitchy and awake and fake. Dare you to kiss me anyway.

Dare you to see me, psychotics and all.

Bet you'll run like the rest, yet like all good hiders its refreshing to be found every once in awhile.

Find me, and see. See the monster behind my beautiful eyes. That's the day when you'll see what true danger looks like; me.

Insomnia makes me odd, but yet again I'm always odd.

Little miss muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and craves, for a man betwixt her to tell her she's killer and make her a siren next day.

Forget, no, yes, its all I do. Its not how that goes, for sirens are certainly not temporary. I am certainly a black widow every day, not just each odd thursday.

Go to bed, Grace. I beg of you.

Close my eyes and say goodnight to the beloved moon, for the sun is nearly up and it certainly hates me, I am sure of it.

Just never forget all this is wrapped up in one little old me. No one seems to remember that until its far too late, so might as well run now, because otherwise little miss muffet here on her tuffet will be the death of you.

Its not love.

Now don't think I'm crazy. I swear I'm not, at least not mostly. But its true, its not love, it can't be yet, its been one night and I'd be a true psychotic if I thought it was.

Once I thought one night was love, but I was also high off the fumes of my own cruelty and didn't know left from right and Up from Toy Story.

But it matters.

Not in the way you think, God, I swear not like that. I am not mentally able to catch feelings right now as I stumble through the vacant halls of my own sanity, or better put, the filled asylum of my own insanity.

Still, though.

It was a night I could be me, a night I want to feel again, where I'm bare and broken and real and **** and that doesn't happen very often for me. My mask of smiles and lies tend to hide everything, but not that night, and not with you.

Here in this new sect of Wonderland I can be me , be Grace, with little to no question. Well, there's been some rejection and tears and pain and all the average Wonderland shenanigans, but its been magical. I feel like Wonderland is a place I can live in again.

In old Wonderland, I was beginning to suffocate, to feel the cold hand of stability take over me. But I am not ready for that, I'm ready for freedom and dancing in the rain and having *** until the moon goes to bed.

I wasn't ready to be in love with the Caterpillar. Crazy, considering I always thought it was he who was unprepared, but all along it was me.

Guess I can't live my life wondering what's just around the river bend, I have to investigate. I have to know. Things must get curiouser and curiouser, its how it goes.

Let my youth wash over me, let my childlike Wonderland wash over my eyes and let me be me for awhile. Its not normal for me to be this malleable. Everything used to be lies, but now everything is freedom, and for now I love it.

Thank you for that night. Its a beginning, a new one, for Wonderland and I. Why?

Because for the first time in forever, Grace of Wonderland is free.

Five. Cinco.

Half of the ten and a fifth of the twenty five. Mathematics are a funny subject, don't you think? Some man just made up letters to correlate with numbers to transcend to concepts that in all reality could mean nothing and the square root of a orangutan could actually be yellow.

I contemplate on that a lot, being the Grace that I am, wondering if what's real is real, if words are just words, or all they the pygmy hippopotamuses flying in my dreams. Anything is possible. Dreams could be reality, and reality could be a dream. Or maybe there is no such thing as realness, and everything is just madness.

I learned a lot from my friend the Mad Hatter, how to love, how to be disappointed, how to fall into a pit of despair and how to wear a hat like a ****** deviant and love it.

But the most important thing I learned is that sanity is very subjective, because what may seem totally sane to me, completely within the norm, may seem like complex incongruity to someone else. Maybe we're all mad. Maybe no one's mad. Maybe its just you, maybe its not you.

Special. That's another word that always got me, but I prefer to think in the realms that everyone is different. The world is in different shades and hues, none are ever quite the same, so why should people be that way?

But maybe yet again I'm only speaking in riddles and soliloquies and monologues and standing over all my conquests I am screaming my thoughts while they utter not a word, fearful of manic me.

I'd be afraid of manic me. She is quite the finger-twitching tyrant.

Words are words but are they real? Are they what you mean or are they just lies, lies, words that you scream until she dies, dies, and the world is at peace.

Oh, that's not right.

I once wrote a short poem similar to that I could recite by heart, but as my heart has changed the words become jumbled. Death creeps its way into lies, and heavy juxtaposition ***** with my meanings. Eating my words, until I am not a girl anymore, I am a leaf, or a bat, stuck in Wonderland until the end of my days.

Funny how Alice the savior became Alice the bat.

Wait, I'm not Alice, I'm Grace.

Oh, I do not know who I am anymore. And that is the tragic beauty of Wonderland. You just never know what, or who, tomorrow may bring.

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream.

But I also walked with you, and you, and you.

After losing my caterpillar, after sending him away, my dreams are a jumbled mess of maybes, from one boy to another, my mind swimming haphazardly in all the possibilities that I have no clue who I am falling for or who is most on my mind.

I just want to be close to people. I want to love people, and I want to be kissed, and I want to dance in the rain.

I don't even know if i want it to be real, or just one person, i just want to dream and want someones to hold my hand and make me feel like I belong.

You and Me and all other people and I can't keep my eyes off of you.

Make me feel that, someone, anyone.

Bueller?

Give it time, things will fall into place, like leaves onto water, stumbling through the air until they reach the place where they belong, calm and kinetic all at once.

Until things fall, until I land, I will fall and dance with all the people I love, holding so many hands and seeing where my dreams take me. Until I find You, until I find the one who makes me stop looking, I will never stop dancing. I will become the most vibrant, exciting, lovable me.

For you only.

"Wait a year, they said, wait a year and things will get better. They think one single lapse of a human’s concept of collected time can change anything. A year she waited, she listened; she had to. But the year came, and the year then went, and nothing had changed. The girl was left with nothing. There was a hole, a chasm, never to be filled and never to be touched. There was nothing left and soon she could not find words, syllables, even sound."

A year ago, this is what I expected. Funny how a character I created much darker than I, actually reflected the shadows of my soul. I never realized she was me, the darker me, the hidden me, the me I was after I lost Him.

The depression is real. Its is apart of me. The swirling vortex I'm so afraid of I have to accept. But it doesn't mean I cannot smile. The turbulent tremors of my aching heart will forever be apart of me, but they do not control me. I control me.

Control. That is something I thought I lacked, but I realize it is my strength. Without my strength, the dark wonderlands of my heart would have taken me already, to a place that would be darker than imagined.

I didn't want the world to see me, because I didn't think they'd understand. And when it came to him, I was right. He didn't understand why I couldn't just **** it up and smile, why my outlook wasn't so positive, why I was looking at the world so darkly.

Its a dark world, darling, if he knew me, he'd know its actually optimism most days. But no, all he saw was the darkness and how I could not overcome it and it broke me from him, like a rock from a shore.

I felt like a rock with him, not a season, that is until I met more people who could understand, who could see my face behind these broken eyes. It murdered my never-ending love for him, because I could finally see I could do better, I could be happier.

Bipolar 2.

That's me, but it doesn't control me.

Not anymore.