Winter seems to pull us together, doesn't it, love? Its as if the times things seem to want to pull us apart we get stronger.

Last winter, I gave you my heart, and you haven't left since. This year it seems my cautionary head, always so untrusting of itself and others, has decided of one certain thing: it wants to spend forever with you.

Its funny to me, how I never go all googlie-eyed as my high school friends always told me it would be. They would ooh and ah over some boy, and I'd always roll my eyes. I always thought such cooing was silly. Their bitter response was often that I didn't understand, and once I really loved someone I'd feel the same.

But now here I sit, more certain than anything that I love you more than anyone else. And you know what I'm doing? I'm not cooing, I'm not boasting of your infinite wonder. I'm not getting at all googlied-eyed.

I'm sitting here shaking my head, laughing to myself, as if to say "****."

****, I did not know it would be like this. That you would be like this. That there could be rhythm and method to an unpredictable, spontaneous, messy relationship. That I would feel more connected and in sync with you than I feel adoration or reverence. You're not some hunky guy in third period, you're basically just the best tumor I've ever gotten attached to my hip. A tumor that I'm better off keeping.You make me better. And I, you.

They were right, I don't understand. But not because I don't how to love, its because that's not how I love. I love in nose kisses and **** grabs, in steamy texts and playful jabs at your brilliance. And yes, by god, you are brilliant. But I don't worship you. I just wish to be able to fall asleep to your face and stand by your side.

And those googlie-eyes are in no way how you love either. You don't rub my feet and call me princess. You kiss me hard and tickle my neck, read my writing and break me down when I'm irrational. But you do love me, still. You love me in the way that you try to understand and not be so stubborn. You love me in the way that you sing to me when I'm moody. And my favorite way you love me is the hand across the table when I'm fighting the tears I never want to let fall down my face.

Love isn't just about adoration and attraction and compatibility. Yes, we are attracted to each other, admire each other, and are compatible enough. But I guess our best asset is how stubborn we are to keep on loving each other that gets us through. And I think that's my favorite way we love each other entirely.

Maybe love works different for other people, and I'm fine with that. But these winters just seem to show me that we're different. We both know we've always been different. You're the lonely genius and I'm the unstable creative. But I help make you less lonely, and you help make me more stable.

And now I find it hard to picture a day without you.


So winter distance may keep us apart, but I think I've learned by now its going to take a lot more than a little distance to tear us apart. Or maybe its just the stubborn in me saying so.

Regardless, I hope the stubborn in you thinks so too.

My eyes hurt after I cry. Every time. Did you know that?

Its like my head is telling me to close them, and maybe I won't see the blood strewn across my childhood walls, my childhood hands, anymore. Their assailants were little secret cuts made each day, desperate to ask for help.

Years after they stopped, my eyes can still see them. My walls talk to my head and remind me how many times I wished I were dead. And I don't feel them, I can't fathom them, but they eat at the frays of my sanity, the few weak threads, and start tearing the life I've put together for myself apart. Who am I? I can't tell if I'm a death-lusting 15 year old or a stable and happy 20 year old woman. My eyes get so blurry here.

Its so hard with this picturing mind, to not remember how picture perfect we could be sometimes. I forget the calling and crying and cutting for those little snapshots that make me think I ruined all of it. That its my fault we're not picturesque enough to send perfect post cards for Christmas anymore. Its hard to convince myself it was never that way in the first place.

I mean, cmon, Grace, open those burning eyes of yours. You've felt like an outsider since you were young. Your father joked that with your starlight hair and sky eyes you were an alien that they adopted one day, but the odd part is you kind of understood why it could be true. Not just because of the celestial features, but you never belonged. The daughter they wanted and made you to believe you needed to be was never you. You walked on glass shards of your own shattered heart to try to reach the strange plain where your parents resided, but the more you bled the further you felt.

But they lied, you're their flesh and blood, that part can't be undone. They gave you special recessive genes to a T and made you suffer as a child for having them. To top it all off they gave you this ****** photographic memory that traumatizes you too well. Its like you can never leave the blood behind.

Yet tonight your eyes hurt, even too much to picture the blood, so maybe its time for some rest. The memories, the blood, even they can wait. For now what you need, god forbid you admit this, is some silence and rest. There has been enough clatter between your ears for one night. Who knows, some people might not even be able to withstand such clatter and chatter for a lifetime.

Guess your just a special recessive alien like that.

It seems in this day and age everybody expects so much of everything, and it all seems to be a disappointment. They are either too afraid of being disappointed, or expect the disappointment. Its like nothing is good enough. Its like entitlement to the best lies within our veins.

But maybe the best isn't what we need, or honestly in the end what we really want.

Every young person is expected to go to college, to be educated, to get a degree and then get large amounts of money and get the acceptance of those who expected so much of them. Maybe if we stop expecting so much we wouldn't have such hard burns from falling down the steep ice hill that is the "American Dream". And who says you need to want that anyway?

Expectations are an unfathomable dream in itself. I dream of a world of peace and everyone getting to do what they wish and all people mind their own business and hurt no one else. But some people wish to be better than others, to win, even to hurt others. There is no such thing as perfect, and no expectation will be perfectly met.

What if we just dreamed but took life as it was and be thankful for every left turn to happiness that rights all the wrongs? The light in the world, the dreams, are not real without the darkness. We try to shun it, to put the bad part of the world in a constructed part, name it the shadowy place we must never go. But the shadows are everywhere, and they tend to cut deeper when you refuse to see them.

Expect nothing, but hope. Hope things will get better. Expectations can be ruined. Hope can be everlasting if you keep your heart just that; hopeful. Expectations are specific and are therefore begging to be broken. But hope? Hope is a broad mist in a dark world, that can endure all the disappointments because it can change with time.

Hope is the greatest thing one can do to combat those expectations they may not fulfill; it is the one thing keeping ships afloat and religions alive and life from death.

Hope is a superpower not even expectations can take from you.

Its such a funny thing, isn't it? They can mean anything and everything under the sun as long as you have a different perspective on them. It could be work or exercise or mental stability or social life or family or whatever can be done.

But in the end it all seems to boil down to one thing: happiness. That seems cheap and simple, but its true. The only complex part is the balance between long-term and short-term happiness choices to work towards actual happiness.

Long-term obligations that you care about tend to not always make you happiest in the moment, but if used right, can make you so happy for far longer. And the opposite is true for short-term. Quick happiness traded for possible long-term pain, if abused too often.

No matter how spontaneous I enjoy life and how scared I am of that, it all seems to boil down to that one word. Balance. It never seems that anyone can or should ever completely erase a habit or trait from their life. Its finding a balance to sate yourself without killing it in the process.

This week has felt comforting and strange and new, but also very oddly omniscient, almost like a social experiment where I attempt familial relations. Good job team, this week has been a success. You can all go home now.

Obligations can be boring but important, and seem frivolous but be important as well. It depends on you and what keeps your boat afloat.

Life is strange, but its interesting to observe it and learn it and try to figure out just exactly how to live it without being hurt. And honestly there is no fool-proof way, but for now, a sense of balance and working towards that seems good enough.

I am thankful that I am not miserable, actually quite happy, and that my family is well, and that I am well, and that this break is unlikely to break me.

The last time I remember enjoying a Thanksgiving break so fully is relatively never. There are always terrifyingly large bursts of joy, but never a continuing follow-up. There has just always been something about my family that is overwhelming and, in the end, hurtful.

It seems this year after a long time of deep contemplation, I know. Maybe not all the intricate problems that behold my family, but it seems to be clear to me why I seem to be unable to handle this time of year. And it even seems silly now, looking at it, why I didn't see it before.

My family breeds contempt. Not utter hatred, we spend time together and love one another, but we hold micro-aggressions, we assume things of one another, we bicker and gossip about other family members and nitpick their actions until its hard to not give each person an endless "I love them, but", a fact that I find silly and even a little pathetic.

They spend every year cramming time together, acting like this big, fun, hysterical family when every five seconds someone turns their back they are turning on each other. I hate it. I hated it even before I realized it. Every year left me exhausted and frustrated and at some point in tears. I've never been exactly a follower in my family, and I was always torn between being like them and having as little as possible in common with their actions. And I can't put all blame on their shoulders, I was sheep when it came to them. I let myself be angry and hateful and spiteful because of stupid things each person had done.

Yes, my grandma gets jealous and out there. Yes, my dad is extremely homophobic and close-minded. Yes, many of the older family members are bitter about each other. And ******* yes is the majority of my family at least a little bit racist.

But you know what? Stupid opinions are not the problem, and they shouldn't be. Its the way we act towards one another. And yes my family literally acts like the characters from Mean Girls, but its the big picture things that are the problem.

I think my Grandma knows she's a little crazy, but I doubt she gives a **** anymore and still loves people just as deeply. And my dad is determined in his ways, but if he persisted to love a mentally ill daughter even when he didn't believe in it, I'm sure he'd get his **** together if my brother or I were gay as well. He doesn't understand, and he won't try, but love is still something that matters. And hell yes my family is racist, but they're more ignorantly and blindly racist than intently. They'd likely never say the things they say to someone they say these things about. Guess its a "I'm a privileged white person but I'm not mean" type thing. Though what they say is ******, I can't fault them for never attacking or hurting or working against these people either.

There are some I can't forgive, like those who don't even bother to try, but its not worth my happiness to suffer through their high school agendas.

So you guys can go gossip about Grandma being crazy. I'm going to write songs with her and talk about books. Complain about my Aunt being all messy after her divorce, I'm going to talk to her about our futures. Make fun of my cousins husband who is a little weird but he at least makes so very happy. I'm going to send her letters and learn more about the woman I lost touch with ten years ago.

They're probably yelling at football and being their difficult yet beautiful selves, but its enough for today, to spend most of the day with them and tonight for myself. Its all right to be the weird one. I kind of even want to be the weird one. I hope they question all day why I go on adventures and do crazy things and write novels and make art. Maybe I won't be as close to them anymore, maybe i won't understand their gripes and frustrations, but maybe at least this way they'll know me better when I'm crazy than the quiet girl who got frustrated with them but felt silent in the corner.

No one is ever quite certain they'll feel a moment where they can't stop uncontrollably crying just because they are so happy. Especially not in their aunt's dark and cold basement, but I guess I've always been different like that.

I just watched a movie I never thought would effect me so much, one about growing up and loving people and loving yourself. Normally I find them sweet, and this one wasn't even particularly spectacular, but after it I just started crying.

I was picturing all the wonderful things I would write, and the beauty I could create. What wonder the future may hold. About nights where I could fall in love with myself and writing all over again. Being alone terrified me, and having no one is so frightening, but the idea of spending time alone with someone merely a touch away?

I can learn to do that.

I can learn to paint. I can learn to be a mom. I can learn to speak other languages. I can learn to work in an office. I can learn to work from home. I can learn to love myself. And the best part is that if I work at it and figure things out, I have already found the person I want to show all my projects to like a little kid for the rest of my life and that makes me so happy I can't even fathom it.

Its like that fear that rides on my shoulders constantly has quelled. I know it never will be gone, but its like there's this calming in my head and I can see how wonderful my life just might be. I will do things I love, with a man I so very love, wherever we may see fit.

A moment like this is something I've never felt before. Where I don't feel perfect, far from it, but I feel I'm in the place I'm exactly meant to be. I'm so excited for the future, for the now, for everything.

I don't know who I was yesterday. Honestly I've probably changed at least three times today. but right now just feels right.

I can be stubborn and scared and complicated but in this moment, I feel so capable. Who knew a cheap teen-flick and a "*******" nightshirt would feel like the world has shifted.

I was crying on the toilet merely thinking about how much I love me and how much I love him and anything we might create or grow along the way.

I've always been paranoid and abandoned, but lately the fear has never been that they will leave. Its that if I take my eyes off of  them the person I love will suddenly be gone.

But I've been through a vicious fight with him, and I still woke up the morning after smiling at his sleeping face before dealing with the problems of the night before and coming out stronger.

And God knows the wicked fights I've been through with myself, and normally its hard for me to look in the mirror and be OK. But even with my annoying long bangs right now and a little more weight than I'd like, I know I'm changing. It'll get better. I can almost see it in my face, that things will change and be crazily new in such a better way.

I am aware there will never be no fights, but there's something magical about loving even through the ugly sides.

I am content. There is no mania in my veins about being godlike and perfect, or hyperactivity. There is only steady words matching the steady smiles and tears upon my face. I thought mania was happy, but this. THIS is happiness.

Maybe from now on I can have more moments like this. Moments of pure, unadulterated love that just fill me so to the brim I find it falling out my eyes and through my fingertips. Love that is so intoxicated in my veins that for a moment, I don't feel broken anymore.

I needed a moment like this, and it feels like a new beginning.

The best beginning I could ever wish for.

Funny when your own head is a double edged blade, huh?

I seem to find the imperfection of days to be the most beautiful. The goofy moments, the little mistakes, the figuring things out, the unexpected.

But those same moments sometimes lead me to the nights where I lay down with a little chip on my heart and concede, "Not all days will be beautiful."

I'm happier. I'm stabler. I must concede things are better.

So why can I not concede that I will never be perfect?

These days I end like this sometimes hurt much more than the ones I give up on. These are the days I did all I could and just accept defeat at the end of the day, knowing every day isn't perfect.

Why am I such a starving perfectionist that even stability cannot sate me?

I hate myself when I do this. When I keep on pushing and pushing my own mental ability until I crack. If I push harder the stability of my mental wall will not strengthen. It will only crumble all the faster.

I am never satisfied. I am selfish. I am wrong. There's this darker side to this pure, bubbly girl I show the world. The monster side. The side that I can never be pleased with, and the side that makes sure I can never be pleased with anything else.

I know this is one imperfect day with one imperfect night. But its hard not to be scared that this is a descent into darkness once more. I'm so scared of the dark by now. Please don't make me go back for too long.

This day has been long and disappointing and imperfect. But I just wish I could hate it a little less.

I know this doesn't get me any promises of forgiveness, and I know how much things have been a mess lately and I refused to deal with it. But there are things I should have said instead of counter-arguing and berating you.

I've forgotten to tell you how I've been so excited to learn coding because I like to think it gets me a little closer to you, maybe even lets me understand you a bit more.

I've forgotten to tell you how though I have trouble sleeping having you beside me really comforts me, and though its beyond creepy I'll look at you to feel better.

I've forgotten to tell you how I love going to the movies with you, and hearing you get excited and involved in the story, and its like you forget all your school troubles for awhile, something I seem to have forgotten to do.

I've forgotten to tell you how I'm stupidly afraid to ask you to do things, like kiss you til we're dizzy, giggle til our cheeks hurt, or have really good *** (thought about that a lot today, but I was too much of a ******* to say something).

I've forgotten to tell you that you light up my day, and though I'm a moody ******* even just being around you helps. I know I don't act like it, but it does, so I need to get some ***** and just ask you on a date like a middle schooler and get that out of the way.

I've forgotten to tell you how I started a new novel, and that my mood diary has been going up lately in moods. That I was really hoping that at least my time with you next week won't be so bad.

I've forgotten to tell you that I want us to play mass effect, even if it means I'll swoon over Garrus half the time. I promise all my kisses are reserved by you.

I've forgotten to tell you how worried I've been for you, about your friends being more distant. I've been trying to just let you do whatever, at my own expense. Alone time is great (especially for these poems and homework and figuring out that new novel) but I should have been more open about it. Communication is key, especially for us, and I should have been more open about things.

I've forgotten to tell you how afraid I've been of being lost without you after next fall, but I just need to get my ***** in place and enjoy my time with you. Its silly to ruin time you have for some separation in the future.

I've forgotten to tell you that you look so **** sometimes, but I don't want to bother you because I know school worries you. And I know that goes with the bad communication stuff again, and I need to get my **** together, because I know you wouldn't mind a **** time or two.

I've forgotten to tell you that I really love horror movies, especially bad ones, and I really love Photoshop, and I really love tech at the moment, and I really love Diablo 3, and I really love spending time with you and yes I agree alone time is good and I shouldn't get angsty at bad times and make you think I never want you alone. I need to get my afraid bar to cool its rollers.(PS that's my new favorite phrase) You are my favorite person and I should and want to tell you everything. I need to get this together.

I've forgotten to tell you I've been trying to lose weight again, less because I hate myself and more because I want to look hotter for you, and have been eating less sweets and less food in general.

I've forgotten to tell you I want to learn to make paper cranes and watch gargoyles and be more in-tune with you. I'll watch Super Troopers, I'll even watch Master in Disguise, if you truly want to. I can't just say no to everything you want to do together. Why? Because if I always say no to together things, you'll start always doing them alone.

I've forgotten to tell you that your scruff is adorable and its kinda hot you're a little taller and your hair is beautiful. That I love goofiness and tickles and nose kisses and **** grabs and making you smile. I know I've messed things up but I want to all I can in my power to get it together, because you are special. You once told me you were like a shooting star and hard to catch and I rolled my eyes, but you are. I love you and have never met someone like you before.

I've forgotten to share my stories and my life and all the things that made you love me and even me love me, and I'm going to fix that. I will not sit by and let you forget me.

One last thing.

I've forgotten to tell you I love you oodles, and that will never change.

Things aren't even bad. I really shouldn't even be freaking out. The papers are sorted and the kids are alright, but I know its incoming and I don't know what to do.

You see, I hate my birthday.

It gives my family another opportunity to disappoint and show that they don't understand me for one more consecutive year. I'd rather they send a simple note that they love me instead of things I'd never need nor want.

And the friends. Even my best of friends, or at least those who I thought were, can utterly wreck my birthday. Last year, my roommate moved out and barely anyone spent time with me. Every birthday party when I was young i spent at least some part of it crying. And when I stopped celebrating them, my friends would get me passive aggressive presents like getting me journals when they felt I needed to deal with myself more and talk to them less.

I hate birthdays.

I prefer the most meaningful five dollar trinket or hand-made thing over the three-hundred dollar jewelry that i will never wear in my life. I don't care if people don't go overboard for my birthday. Honestly I prefer they don't.

I just prefer they care and it really hurts when its pretty obvious by their present they more picked it to convenience them, to make them feel better.

No, Grandpa, sending me hundreds of dollars of makeup will not make me forget all the years you ignored me for my brother and the other cousins. It still doesn't. It doesn't make up for you tearing me down each time I have an idea that does not align with your ideals. When you are so pained by the thought of me having my own thoughts that don't coincide with yours you insist I am young and dumb and know nothing. Funny you act like you know everything when you don't even bother to know me.

And my high school best friends. You complained about walking on eggshells around me, and stressing about my feelings, while I felt you barely were treating me like a human being. So the perfect remedy was to hand me several cheap journals so that I can write things out. Of course I'm left-handed and writing things out on paper hurts after about five minutes, but awesome, thanks, I totally feel the love.

Why in the world should I care about my day when every time I try to, everyone else knocks it down?

Of course I stopped trying to make it special when it always went wrong. Of course I get uncomfortable about it now. Of course I feel more dread than excitement on the one day things are supposed to be nice for me. Of course I'm so scared about it incoming, because I don't want to spend another birthday with no memories, or ones bad enough to make me dread the next one even more.

At this point I don't even know if I care about my birthday. I wish it would disappear. I want to love it and feel special and feel loved but every one I can remember didn't manage to make anything better. I feel worse with everyone that comes.

Maybe this is why I love Christmas, because my parents and grandma get me such nice things and my family gets so cozy and cheery around Christmas, that even the painful reminders don't get to me as much, and even if they do I get to see my family's smiling faces when they open presents from me, and it makes me feel a little better about the whole thing.

I should love my birthday, but I don't. And I'm sad that after 20 years I'm so worn down that even the thought of it incoming makes me want to forget it.

I can feel it wearing on my skin, a deterioration of my bones, sandpaper on my heart, carving holes and smoothness in paces were they don't belong, polishing me into something it isn't. Inside my head I'm screaming but its hard when everyone knows better, everyone is telling me what to do, no one is willing to let me just do things my way, those ways are wrong, always wrong, and I need to stop them or else. Or else what? I'm not even sure I just know its bad and bad is bad and that's something I'm not supposed to be doing.

My body is caving in on itself, but I don't have the time for it, I'm late, so very late, for all the important dates and I can't let the axes fall and the queens to get angry for I can't waste any time with my head chopped off. I have to keep it together. I must keep it together. I have no choice but to keep it together.

I can't lose anything. I've built my mountain of progress and though my heart is being sandpapered into a mess and a circle of conformity and pain, I can't stop I can't breathe if I breathe a breath of my own air they reject it and my new lungs they gave me reject all air that is original. I can't breathe. I can't keep things together. Everything is a broken cacophony of madness and I cannot silence them and they fill my lungs and bleed me of oxygen until my body is panicking and I'm not breathing.

I want to feel better. I want the monsters gone and the fear and the shattered fragments to find their place somewhere safer than the tips of my fingers and the center of my heart. I'm so scared. I'm so tired.

I'm tired of trying and failing and having no time to breathe and when I try to give myself time to breathe I'm not better and things hurt more and everything spiraling down, down, down, and I can't stop it its like my brakes are broken and I'm careening into traffic and I'm trying to save myself but my airbags are broken and my windshield is shattered and my bones are brittle and my seat-belt is choking me and I know that if I don't get the brakes to stop soon I'll be dead but I know if I stop driving I'll hate myself more so I pray to unnamed gods and figments of my imagination to let me live past one more intersection so that I don't have to stop never stop and just keep on going forward.

I don't know if I'll make it, but I can't stand the idea of braking now. I could lose everything I've ever dreamed of, and I can't stand the thought of that.

I'm so tired and everything hurts, but I can't brake now, I can't sleep now. It might **** me but losing everything would **** me too. Stuck between a whirlpool and a seven headed *****, guess I'm picking the ***** and hoping I have enough marbles by the end to make it through.

Please stop being tired.

I've seen you in my past and in my memories, but now I see you reaping tears from my best friend's face. I've been like you, I've been in love with people like you, and funnily enough you're my friend so I hate to throw stones and things that have kept me afloat.

But get your **** together.

She is funny and understanding and lovable, and you cannot just throw her aside with no explanation and no sympathy like a rag doll. I want so badly to slap you, me, anyone who has done this to someone. People deserve to know why someone looks at them and doesn't think they're enough. People deserve to be respected and cared for. Hearts are heavy burdens to bear alone, and I'll be ****** if you let her stand alone in the rain with her shattered in her hands because she thought you could be someone to her.

Get your **** together.

I'm your friend, but I don't deal in being dishonest and confusing and never making up your mind about the important things. I don't want either of you hurt, but don't pull *******, don't string her along, don't keep changing your mind. Make decisions, act, and stop being so afraid for five seconds to do something for yourself that could make you happier.

Get your **** together.

You both deserve better than silly fears of change. I'm afraid of everything and I cry and get anxious but I get over it. I don't let them ruin me and the relationships I have created. I am not just critiquing you, I understand so well fear and doubts and pain, and I used to let it eat me until I wasn't me anymore. I'd make decisions based off safety and being alone rather than connecting with people and being a better me. But that left me suicidal and dead inside. Maybe you won't be so extreme, but don't be so **** afraid. It'll **** you far faster than caring.

Get your **** together.

Not just for her or me or anyone. Mostly for yourself. Because I see you, in the skeleton of my pain, in the shadows on my walls, and no one deserves that. I'm asking you to get it together because I care and I understand. I'm asking because I see you.

I'm trying.

Things are complicated and I have no medication nor therapy, but I'm trying.

The endless dial tones and hold music are my trickles of hope now, as I beg, I pray to the Gods I do not know that this call will be the one, this one will get me help. But each one ends with an empty "I'll call you back" and a tearful acknowledgement that they probably won't.

I want to be tolerable, I want to find myself. I am alive and I am breathing but my soul is drowning and gasping for air, suffocating under the tremendous pressure and the weight of the world.

My sanity is slipping, and the impulses are getting stronger. Its getting harder and harder to hold my marbles in my hands when my fingers are broken. I twitch and squirm and fell all my nerves ache for madness, and my rigorous order is struggling to keep my thoughts corralled.

I stare now at my empty hands and just wish to make it through the month. I don't fear dying, no, I fear ruining all the good things I have built up in the past year. I do not want to lose it. I cannot lose it.

First I wanted understanding, then control. But now, with understanding in my heart and control out of the question, all I want is to stay. I want wake up from this foggy dream of insanity and see the one I love lying beside me and a novel on my fingertips, instead of alone and numb because I pushed all that mattered away. I don't want to lose my memory of all the beauty I fell in love with in the past year. I found it and caught it and now that it has stayed I never want it to leave. I will not push it away. I cannot push it away. Not again.

They held my hand while I was crippled and alone, while the emotions were so strong I couldn't see straight, while all the people I loved faded into my memory. I don't want them to fade too. Never. I want my memory intact, I want to keep them for as long as I can.

Bipolar will always hold control over me, and I cannot control it. I realize that. But I want it to be manageable, I want to be a person, I want to feel real and together and I want to stay. I always was afraid of everyone else leaving, but then why was I the one running?

Thing are hard and they are complicated and its all pain and its all happiness. Things never will be easy, but as long as I can stay intact I can accept that. I just cannot lose me, not again, never again.

Bipolar may be here to stay, but I am too.

Nothing stays, nothing lasts, not even my moods. Funnily enough because that used to be the only consistent thing.

I want things to stay, I want to stay.

One moment I feel like crying, I feel like screaming, I feel like punching, I feel like dancing I don't even know the words in my head so I have no clue how I'm concocting any words on my fingertips.

I am so obsessed about my fingertips because of how I write. Probably because their motion keeps my heartstrings from breaking.

I want to go home and I want to spend all day with him. I didn't even intend on making this romantic but its all I want. I am so tired. so tired of these tears and pain and whatever the hell is going on with me. My impulses keep pulling me away and apart and left and right, but I know when I sit still for a second all I want is him but my synapses are trying to take that from me and I hate them.

I hate them for always ruining everything. Before I always just let them but I don't want this I want this to stay I want to see him thirty years from now lying next to me.

Its a twisted mediocre life when I want to stab myself, I have to destroy  my thoughts, just to live and that's sick.

I just want to go home. I want to cuddle up in bed and be safe. I need help. I need medicine. But no one will give me any of it and I'm so sick I'm dying. I'm losing me.

I need help.

Go to class, Grace.

Take your medication, Grace.

Learn to deal with your emotions, Grace.

Try to stay positive and it will all get better, Grace.

Why aren't you trying hard enough, Grace?

Why are you so quiet, Grace?

What's wrong, Grace?

I do everything. I call a psychiatrist, I take my medication, I try to hold myself together and be positive and strong and admirable. I do everything a little good girl should do. I don't listen to impulses, I stay quiet until I can't help but cry, I hold myself by threads until I can't hold on anymore.

Obviously I'm not trying hard enough. Obviously I'm being melodramatic. Obviously this is my fault.

*Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

My body's like a telegram, but nobody is listening to each other. Stop. The voices in my head won't let me think or express all I can hear is endless screaming as if an entire civilization is burning to the ground inside my synapses but no, its just me, only me. Stop. The words are whirling and winding down the rabbit hole and I don't know why or what I'm feeling but it won't go away I try so hard and it sits here, heavy, on my chest like a monster. Stop. Its not even sitting, no its burrowing itself into me, laying eggs, creating a colony of pain and anger and sadness that I can't push away. Stop. My fingers dig into my skin and my tears beg for reckoning, but I am fully aware there's not much I can do, I fought all day and here it is, taking up residence within me. Stop. Everything within me is fighting against me, my basic human nature is gone and all the instincts are dangerous impulses to hate, punish, ****** every cell within me. Stop. I want to learn how to deal with this and I want to get help but the universe seems to be against me and with every tick of my fingers it hurts all the more. Stop. They're inside they're everywhere, they're pulling on my hair and it all hurts and I don't know why and I have no one to blame but I just want it all to stop. Stop. Make it stop. Stop. I don't want this I hate it if I could stop I would but I can't make it, it won't let me and I hate it hate it stop please go away I don't want any of this. STOP. I think I get better I try everything I work hard I do things all day then it just creeps in and eats me and consumes my soul and I can't feel who I am anymore and I hate this monster I don't want it make it stop I hate it I hate it. STOP. STOP. STOP.

But I'm so afraid it never will. Stop.

I've been silencing myself in this matter, covering my mouth with colors and nails to hide the truth, painting the roses red so that no one can see what's really wrong beneath. But I've been banging my pretty red rose head against the walls and floors trying to get it to work how I want again, and I'm slowly feeling everything slip away between the blades dancing on my fingertips.

Come back, old friend. I feel so lost without you. The hours drag on and on and I forget time, space, existence. Am I real any longer? All I do is mundane tasks that may advance my pawn two steps but the soul is all gone.

My fingers have not constructed any stories or poems or the things that keep my heart beating in too long. Has been weeks or a month? I have no clue. It seems like forever. Forever since I could write. Come back to me, please, I am so lost without you.

I rock and smile and sit and spin like a normal girl with normal motions and emotions but none of it feels real, not without the words. They're not spinning in my head and when my head is not constantly racing and spinning in thoughts I forget who I am. Its funny that the less lost my head is the more lost I am.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

I want the fire the ashes, the fall and the fly, but I can't seem to get my sand-block feet to move their correct spaces. No fight nor fear can live here while the woman soldier sit on her head, on her hands, stuck spinning and spinning until the world falls apart around her.

I need the blue, the words, the stories in my head to be rushing and reeling once more. I need a new forever to sustain me for the next couple months. A new love to fall into before I let it go for the next. The blue has grown and become its own and is nearly over, and I must find anew before I can truly let it go. But what can I do?

The anger and depression has been dealt with. What can be new?

The silence, the guilt?

My Star Crossed Killer seems to be the best for such things. Possibly I could use her to save myself. Or anything. Just any and all stories. I want them all.

Perhaps this poem or whatever this is, an emotional dump, a monologue of madness, be it what it is, maybe it can be a beginning. A new one, where I won't feel so lost without the blue, one where I can find something new.

One can only hope that their mind can adhere to their desperate pleas.

Come back, please.

Insert possible Trigger Warning for my fuckity bluntness today*

God knows if you've read a lot of my work, you know I am all about the metaphors and symbolism and all of that, right? I twist everything into run on sentences of Wonderland madness and all of that.

Well, today, **** that.

You heard me. **** my words and my poetry, today we are being blunt, as blunt as a person who feels uncomfortable at the mere mention of some words when she's feeling down. But this isn't about me right now. Well it is, but not. Anyway, here we go.

You know what ******* *****?

Suicidal thoughts. And thoughts of cutting. And insane impulses. And moving vehicles and how nice it sounds to jump in front of one sometimes, even if its simply because you want to know what it feels like.

I lie a lot, ok? I am probably able to be diagnosed as a pathological liar at this point, if we want to be ******* honest for once, because I am so scared of terrifying people and hurting them and making them feel bad that I keep the truth inside. I tell snippets or water-downed versions, but I literally want to bash my skull in half the time from unwanted impulses or put myself in a straight-jacket for how nice causing myself pain sounds. Its crazy, I know its crazy, but its my head and its me and that's a hard thing to live with when saying 'I'm not like the other girls' stops being a fashion statement and turns into a curse.

Impulses and impulsiveness in general is not ******* cute, ok? I look at a car and I want to run into it. I see any attractive person and I wonder what it would be like to flirt and kiss and see their body naked. I see a train and wonder what it would be like to run away. I finish a book and I want to publish and quit school and be a full time author with half a writing degree. I see a knife and I wonder what it'd be like to stab someone with it. I am not suicidal or nymphomaniac or a murderer, and I don't truly want to do any of these, but the ******* impulses. In that moment its the only thing that sounds like a good idea, and I feel my body pull towards it. Just one step into the street, just a few hours of running away, just a little cut. I all ******* sick and I know it but its my head and though I control them better now I can't stop them.

I can't change people either. And because of my fuckity condition of moods and impulses if I get sad and get a suicidal impulse, it latches on like a *****. And I want it to stop and I want to feel better and I want help, but how do you tell your friends that the one little sentence they said turned you into a death-seeking mess?

I'm broken, and I'm ******* hella crazy, but I still want to be human. I want to be treated like I'm a person and not a ticking time bomb. I hate telling people anything going on in my head because I don't want to be treated like I'm some invalid. I am valid, I am real, and I don't deserve to be treated like a monster when I never do anything, I just have these ******* impulses.

****, ****, ****, **** impulses.

I hate impulses.

I am fully aware I'd feel empty without my range of emotion, but can the impulses go away, please? I don't want to even contemplate cheating on my boyfriend when its nothing that I want, I don't want to be afraid the impulses might get me to jump off the nearest bridge, and I don't want to cut my wrists.

I am fully aware people can't always get what they want, but why the hell do I have to fight a raging hell-monster that whispers all the things no one should do? Why do I get that special ******* pleasure? If this is some sort of 'gift' to make me stronger, guess what? I. Don't. Want. It.

I just want to be a normal quirky girl who's a little emotional and likes to write stories. Why is that such a hard dream?

And by the way?

I still ******* hate impulses.

Grace has made it through Wonderland, and has seemed to find peace with it for the time being, so where does she go from here? This would be easy if like in books things just ended, closed up in a neat little bow at the end of the story and there is resolution.

But there is no resolution here. Just a desperate craving for meaning again.

I guess since my Wonderland is stable, the only thing left wrong is me.

Not to say that the baubles and do-dads in my head are still broken, no, Wonderland is at peace, remember? Must get you checked for that memory of yours, good sir.

Regardless, my ducks are trying to row and I must follow their orders as to not rock the boat. Nonetheless, though, who is Grace? I've been working so hard to keep the Jabberwockys at bay and stop the wars from coming and protect the heads from rolling, that it's like some part of me is missing. I feel like a hodge-podge, a hedgehog, speeding around and around in lost wonder trying to find something but never quite sure what.

Is writing truly the only distinctive, certain characteristic I have, with no contradictions and carpenters and changes? Is it the only solid footing I have on the edge of tomorrow? Am I not much else, with as much substance as a sellophone?

Everything seems to cancel, make me some sort of odd creation of jumbled things that don't seem like they would fit right at all, but enough glue was pumped into me that practically anything seems to stick.

I'm covered in glitter and polish, getting thicker each day, making me someone new with each passing coat. I'm not gaining weight, so is my inner soul just melting away?

Can a person just become polish? A person who creates themselves instead of something made, genuine, and real? Am I even Grace anymore, should I adopt a new name as if to show the difference that has taken a hold of me since my name was born years ago? Will I reach the point that when someone wants to know me and starts to chip the paint away, that by the end there is nothing behind the color at all? Will I become nothing but choices and farces to the point they are me?

I have no clue how to get back. Can I? The paths behind are gone, the bread I've been crumbling to save my path was gone years ago, as the Chesire Cat promised I'd find my way if I had nowhere to go. But guess now I have no way and have somewhere to go, and he's not to be found. Typical.

Do I want to get back? Am I too attached to my polish now?

My polish was layered to make others happy, so who am I without others, without the affections and pleasing of others? I don't know. That's terrifying. I can't do alone, and I have led myself here more and more with each passing day. I don't think I can be alone ever again, or the Jabberwocky will certainly **** me. I wish it was a maybe, but for once I can't even rely on those.

Guess I better keep on layering the polish and glitter, trying to find a semblance of who I once was. Maybe a mix of now and who I am? Possibly that could work.

Now only if I knew who I was at all.

That would make choosing polishing colors much easier.

It came back.

It was gone for so long and I had straightened up everything and things were actually even better, and the second my back was turned too long, there it was. The Jabberwocky.

I knew the second I saw it how it had gotten in. I had been in the front, tending to my new garden that I had acquired, with beautiful roses all about. I had never been so happy. And while I turned away, and left my back door open to tend to the outside, it came in and ate all my reserves and made itself at home again.

Unlike before, though, when I went inside it didn’t coax me into letting it stay, letting it swallow me whole. It began to shriek at me and attack me and I was so scared and I kept on telling it to go away, that I didn’t want it anymore but it stayed and fought and chased me through the house, wrecking all the scars I had repaired and pretty new things I had put up since its last visit. It wasn’t until I let it scratch my legs that it listened to my desperate, hollow pleas. It went away, slinking back into the darkness it came from.

I stayed up in my room for a while, tending to my small wounds and thanking God, Gods, anyone for letting me live. I looked around and cuddled into my bed and thought it wasn’t so bad. I smiled and even laughed a little bit. No, the Jabberwocky could not get me now. Things were different. It knew I didn’t want it, that’s why it fought. That’s why it lost.

But eventually, as I finally descended back into the rest of my home, I saw the damage it had caused. The stairway was scarred and scratched, the living room was a terror, and the kitchen worse. It had left me bare, empty, raw once more. I had been careless, reckless, stupid. What had made me think it wouldn’t come back again?

I started to clean, to paint, to polish, trying to rid my house of any of its signature marks. Maybe not fully, leave reminders for myself of its danger, but tidy enough no one could tell just by looking at it. Everything was a dandy cleanup, until I saw my legs again. The Jabberwocky may not have destroyed me, but I had given it something. I had let it have a part of me.

The rage started to build. I had left the door open, I hadn’t made letting the Jabberwocky in a non-option. I had let myself flirt with its darkness a little bit every once in a while, letting it think it was welcome. I had let it scratch me instead of telling it to get out more forcefully, instead of pushing it and fighting it harder. I had given it a token, a present, to make it leave me alone. That only teaches any good monster to come back for more. I had made the mistake, I had made the choice, I had ****** up. I, I, I am selfish, stupid, wrong. It wasn’t long before I was screaming.

My rage was so strong as I angrily cleaned my house that the Bandersnatch caught the scent and almost stopped by. Bandersnatches convince you to take the fire out on those you love, at any drop of a hat. They play practical jokes that benefit them and them alone, laughing their souls off while you alienate yourself. They were good friends of Jabberwockys.

But when I saw it near my back fence, I silenced.

No. No more. I didn’t want any more monsters, not after how long I hid them in my basement and held them in my heart. They weren’t allowed here. This wasn’t their home. It was mine.

So I locked the back door, and closed the front gate, and bolted the first door, and never stayed up too late. When they barged in for my head I was at no fault, and had every right to call for help, but when I let them waltz right in like an old friend I had some blame in my heart. But those monsters of Wonderland, I had never loved. I had merely no memory of a life without them. Now that there is a fence and a door and they’re not allowed anymore, I must do all I can to keep them away. They don’t deserve my heart, nor my head. Though I am a person of Wonderland, I don’t deserve to be dead.

Dear Person I Despise Most,

God, I am on the brink of the best year of my life. I have just finished my first novel, and I actually think I might try to publish it. I have a gorgeous, ****, wonderful boyfriend of almost a year who deserves every bit of my love. I have great friends who don't expect me to be anyone but myself, and don't judge me when I get a little crazy. I am going to be in writing classes learning new skills that may not always help me write better stories, but make me more creative and bold and strong. I am starting my second year in a place that has made me such a better person, and I love all of it.

And on the eve of all that glory, I relapse.

Not those **** Jabberwocky thoughts, not even the little cuts that keep them away. But you. ******* you.

I don't know what I thought I'd expect when I told myself I'd just "check on you for a second". I should have known better. I should have known some sick part of me loves being angry and upset and hate you for thinking such stupid things all the time. For being so pretentious and entitled and sickening.

I was annoyed enough when I read your obnoxious posts about how gorgeous and hot and wonderful your boyfriend was. You guys break up every three minutes and still you fawn over him like a god.

But I digress.

I thought it was harmless. That nothing would come of it. That this would just be a little bit and probably the last time and no big deal.

Then you said it. You said you spent a year keeping someone alive.

If its me, then *******. You may have helped, but you did not ******* keep me alive. If I wanted to truly die, it would have happened. You are not the lone holy spirit that kept me afloat in my time of need. And in all honesty, halfway through you turned head and ****** me over, so please, kindly, shut your face.

And even if its not. What gives you that right to say you were keeping this person alive? If you truly were the only person they had, and they were in that much danger, go get them help. Tell people. Call the police or something. Don't just sit there and hold their hand so you can one day hold it over them that you 'kept them living' . That's ******* and manipulative and no one deserves that. And if they weren't that bad, if they had other people, don't take the credit like you are some righteous savior. Some pure soul who did nothing wrong. I spent a hell of a lot of time with you, and you are no angel, dear.

Funny thing is though, I keep on trying to get away from this. And I even keep on trying to protect you. I block you on things so you don't have to see this. So you don't have to see my stupid anger and hate because though you are no picnic and you were a manipulative ***** to me, it doesn't mean you deserve you to feel bad about my bad choices of seeking you out to look up. I'm also to blame in this, I looked for you again. But don't blame me if you searched this out when I made precautions to try that you wouldn't see this.

You know, I think the reason I still search you out is so that I can see if you're better and if you're not, to make myself promises to never be anything like you. Anger tends to fuel me a lot. I mean, my hatred for how people see love stories and suicides and depression got me to write my novel, which I adore. And your repetitive pretentious writing always did make me fight to write better, because though your type of writing was like candy to teens, I wanted mine to be the vegetables. ******* lame metaphor, but I am hyped up and its late at night, sue me. Regardless, I wanted to be the story people needed to read, that really made them think and grow, instead of what placated them as an easy read. Who knows, maybe if you could finish a story you could be a more popular novel. But I don't want to be popular, I want to matter. I want to make a difference. I don't want a quick buck, I don't want my writing to turn into some stupid marketing ploy to get me rich. I want to be classic. I may be shooting for ******* Pluto and I may not get what I want but at least I gave it one hell of a shot.

I do in a way want you to get better, to do something with your life and not be a mess. I'm happy you're trying. Maybe something will work out.

But I never want to be like you. And that has to be another reason I look, to fuel me and make sure I never sound like you, or think like you, because I know you are not who I want to be. I could never live with myself if I was pretentious and "tragically beautiful'. I'm just a regular person, with a few irregularities about her. I'm not some kind of epic heroine trying to write a tragically beautiful story for myself. I just want to live a nice life with people I love. My characters can live the beauty and/or tragedies that pull at heartstrings.

I'll never not be different, but I'm not letting that define me. Once, you got mad at me for letting my mental illness define me. Maybe it did then, but its certainly now true now. I'm not a crazy girl, I'm just a girl who happens to be a little crazy.

Make sure to take your own advice next time, and maybe next time I stupidly relapse I'll be a little bit proud, under all the annoyance.

I'm not meaning my opinion should matter in your life, though. And honestly yours shouldn't matter in mine. I'm slowly getting towards that. Maybe eventually we'll both get over this. Maybe you already are. I dunno. I don't talk to you. I sure as hell never will again. But for now, see you til next relapse.

Sincerely,

That Friend You Had Once A Long Time Ago

In my life I have had the very unpleasant experience of being attached to two manipulative, insane, selfish *******. Of course, these people I was attached to simultaneously so I was a bit of a crazed mess during that time. I was so desperate for attention and love I took it from people who would ultimately use me for their own personal gain. **** those two, specifically, thank you very much.

One I had a crush/****** attraction to, the other was my best friend. **** me, right? Well they certainly did. I may have put myself in those situations, but **** them for still taking advantage of it.

The first, I was fascinated by. He was a year older than me and seemed nice and funny and had my same humor and liked the same movies. i thought we could be compatible, who knew? So I tried it out. I hung out with him more at school, got his number, all that. We started to text a lot, and at first we just joked around and talked about things we liked,  then I started talking about him about my feelings and serious things and we got quite close.

I should have known something was up when he started getting ****** all of a sudden, and started asking for **** pictures, and trying to convince me into ****** things.

I dodged his ****** advances for some time, but eventually I caved and when we went to get ice cream once. I took off all my clothes in his car and he called me beautiful but it wasn't the type of beautiful a girl wanted to be called. He liked my body and my big ***** and my willingness to do this, not me. But still, I sort of gave him a half-assed ******* before he dropped me off at home.

Funny thing is I never even kissed that *******. Not even once. Kind of happy I didn't.

A week later, I decided to disclose to him that I was bipolar, so that he understood me better, and maybe our relationship could develop. But the second I said I was bipolar, he said he had a girlfriend. Of course the one second I'm not even caring about any romantic relationship with him, he decides to jump that on me.

I stopped texting him. I was ******. The girl he was now dating was someone he pretty much had told me was only his best friend, not anyone he was interested in, but that was obviously a lie. And the whole time he was getting closer to her and pursuing her, he was using me as his ****-talk and eye candy. Worst thing was she was a sweet girl who had some similar features to me, and I didn't want to ruin her world by telling her that her best friend and now boyfriend was a manipulative *******.

They're still dating to this day, and I know at this point it would be fruitless for me to try to stop it. She'd probably say I'm a liar or that I'm making stories up or whatever. I guess I just wish her the best of luck. The only good thing that came out of it was that he never became my boyfriend, so I didn't get lied to. I just got the occasional request for nudes or odd being hit on text that are easy to brush off. She wants to spend the rest of her life with him. I truly pity her for being stuck to that, and truly thinking he's a good guy.

Now the other. We collided as kindred souls who like writing, the arts, music, and are a little crazy. But hell did that go out there fast, and of course I didn't realize I needed to get the **** out until three years too late.

It wasn't long before the friendship turned into a competition. I'm competitive, so I won't say I'm not to blame at all, but she pretty much was the one to instigate most of it. By telling me she was better. That she was wonderful. That her work was revered by everyone, or she got special training, or that she was just so much more than me.

The girl honestly thought she was the second coming of Jesus sometimes, because she was so different and special. But also, she was tortured and misunderstood and needed loving. **** that, you needy *******. Everyone has problems. Get help and deal with them. Its cute and understandable for a few months. By three years you better get off your ******* *** and do something.

She always was the 'better' singer, because she was more trained. She was the 'better' romantic entanglements because she was so 'well-versed' in ****** things. She was always 'better' at being mature because she had gone through so much more than anyone else. She just thought she was better at everything, but at the same time would hate herself. It was awesome. She was basically saying "I'm a complete piece of awful ****, but I'm better than you!"

Sounds annoying, right? Well it was.

The one that really got me was that she always professed she was a better writer. That her writing was beautiful and poignant and tortured. Every longer story I read of hers she basically wrote about herself, used pretentious names, and every one of her protagonists was some madly tortured person who no one understood. Their lives would drastically change once they met this magical person that changed everything. That hit them just the right way. But honestly most of it was about being tortured and misunderstood, but somehow better than everyone else because of it. Ok, whatever, please sit down pretentious writer number 3,467. It just drove me nuts. She wasn't bad at it, but it was always the same thing. Being tortured, or bitter, or being grossly in love with someone. It was just so horribly repetitive and outlandish I couldn't stomach most of it. To this day every time I read some of her pretentious work i want to set her on fire and slowly watch her burn. She may be a better singer, she may be a better tortured soul, she may even be a better starving artist or whatever.

But actually writing variety and real people and not repeating the same thing over and ******* over again?

Please, honey, I got you beat.

I guess I'm just sick of them. I'm sick of what they did to me, what I let them do to me, and who I became with them. I was selfish and meek and competitive and always trying to prove myself to them. I know who I am, and they don't deserve my attention or even me. **** them.

I know writing will get me somewhere. I'm not the best writer ever, but I know how to write. I always have. I have finished novels. I'm working on more to come. I have the drive and ability to do this, and I don't want to be the cliched ******* starving artist. I don't want to be poetically tortured or whatever the **** pretentious ******* strive for. I just want to be a human writing stories for other humans. And maybe it'll mean a lot to someone one day. It already does to me.  


I don't need flaky ******* who want nothing from me but to use me for their selfish gains. I'm me. I'm happy. I can be a writer and artist without being a complete ******* about it. And I don't need them.

I got this.

I spend a lot of time worrying about what other people dream, what they want from life, and making it happen. I always try to play roles, like the good student, or the sweet daughter, or the funny niece, or the counseling friend, or the reliable sister. But what do I want? What do I dream?

For a long while it was three simple things. Kids, animals, writing, and I never questioned or developed any of it. I mean, I had a relative idea of dates or amounts of kids, and relative writing ideas, and relative animal ideas, but nothing solid.

But today, though it may be f little interest to anyone else, I'm going to flesh out my dreams. I owe it to myself.

I want to publish a novel. Particularly a social commentary. Particularly something important to me, like mental health, the environment, relationships, family, etc. And particularly something that people may like one day. I'd love to have a novel that people know. It would be really special.

I want to have kids. At least one, preferably two, livable three, pray to god no more. And you know what, I'll love any kids I have, but I really want a girl. I want a little ball of crazy who can be a pirate or a princess and follow me around and call me mommy and cuddle on my lap and let me read her stories and be my baby girl. Maybe I'm crazy superficial, but the cake topper for me would be the ability to name her Alice. My little hero of Wonderland. I mean, the white picket fence dream is to have one boy, one girl, but I guess we'll see. If I get no girls, I'll name something else Alice. If I get two girls, I better pick one super meaningful name for her, because only one is not fair.

I want to see Africa. The animals there have always been my favorites, and I feel they're just so wild and crazy and different. There are deserts, forests, savannas, lions, zebras, okapis, all of it! Its always just seemed so wonderful to me and I've always wanted to see it in person.

I want to take my kids to Disney World. I want them to feel the wonder I felt as a kid, and fall in love with the magic I loved as a kid and even now. Maybe like I fell in love with Wonderland and various other worlds Disney created, maybe they can find their own worlds that resonate with them and make them feel safe.

I want to find or build a house for my family and decorate with love. I have art skills, I can decorate everywhere. Disney rooms, book rooms, video game rooms, all of it. I just want our hearts to be strewn across the walls and be a place of comfort for them.

I want to get married to a man I am madly in love with. Obviously, I think right now I'm with a man I could easily love the rest of my life. I wish with every fiber of my being that the home I dream of, the kids I want, the books all over, can all be things I have with him. But I won't make promises to myself that I don't know what will happen. God knows that in this second I want no one else, but I cannot force myself on the person I will be in the next twenty years. I can only dream all of this will be with him.

I want to create art. Not atypical art, with paint or pencil, but with crafts and words. They are beautiful pictures that I'm good at making, and I'd like to not only make them for family and loved ones, but maybe one day sell them and do more than just be that ever-writing author stuck in their study. Maybe I'm crazy, whatever, but I want it all.

I want to graduate college. Not only because I'm already in it, and I will enjoy the time I have, but I do want it over with as well. I know everyone's going to yell at me and say shut up they are the best days of your lives, but people said that about high school too. I enjoyed my time, but I look forward to today and tomorrow much more than I enjoy looking back. I want to graduate and have a lovely time at college, but I also don't want to spend forever here. I want to learn what I can, make friends for life, make connections, and then start the rest of my life. Start being a professional writer.

I want to start keeping an open dialogue with my audience, not just here, but on other social medias, so there is a connection even before I publish my first book or the ones to follow. I want to be an approachable author. I want to seem human, not like some unattainable, far away thing for young authors to look at. I want to be real.

I want to publish a poetry book. Obviously I'll wait another year or two, and compile the best ones, but i think it could be fun. See me write novels? Well see me write short things too. I know most authors/writers pick a niche, but after years of trying to find mine, I don't think I want one. I just want what I want.

I want to write a memoir. Though I use a pseudonym, one day I want to grow the confidence and strength to write as me, and tell people not just the stories that go on in my head, but the stories that are going on in my life. Hell, maybe I'll call it something cheesy like "The Girl Behind Grace" or something super cheesy like that haha

I want to start a bipolar group wherever I raise my kids. I mean, I'm sure with the way I am and how the person I'm with is, we'll have quite a few years of adventure. A lot of years. But I will put my foot down and say for the sake of kids we need to settle, at least for a good twenty years. I want to be a leader and help others like me where I live, i want to help people feel better. This life isn't easy, and we deserve help and a group and a community just as much as any book club.

I want to work on my baking/cooking chops. I want to be so awesome at baking and cooking that all the kids want to come to my house for dinner and I can make my kids their own badass birthday cakes. Maybe even make cakes for friends and neighbors for a bit of money. It will be awesome.

I want to visit my family at least once a year. I know that may not work out, but I don't want to lose them in all my crazy life that I plan. They may be out there and need help but I do love them, and I want my kids to have a good sense that they have a huge family that loves them so much.

I want pets. Crazy pets. Turtles and dogs and pigs. Those are the ones I really want. Dream world says one turtle, one pig, two dogs. It'll be absolutely crazy cool. What kid gets to go to school and say they have a pet pig? my kids.

I want a garden. I'll work on fleshing out that idea. I just want to be outside more. I love outside.

I want to fall in love with my life more and more every day. I want to have fun with my family. I want to play video games, a write like a madwoman, and be a good mom, and take care of myself, and make my home and life beautiful. I want everything to be worth it at the end of the day, even when not all things are ok.

I want a lot, I know, but a girl can dream, right?

Haven't been here in awhile, have we?

So I know its stupid to be careless, and as a writer I should always care. Well I'm saying **** that for a night. I almost put please in that sentence, then I realized I care little what you or whoever thinks. Tonight I'm alone, and I myself will deal with that.

I hate being tired. If sleeplessness came along with no tired side effects for me, I would do it constantly. But no, absolutely ******* not, I cannot get what would be convenient for me. I'm yawning left and right but i can't seem to get tired enough to lay down and pass out. Awesome.

Even hallucinations are finding it easier to get on my mind than sleep. I mean thank god they only lasted about an hour but for Christ ******* sake's, really?  This is a highly important week of my life, getting the final strands of my summer ****-storm ******* before I let myself win d down the summer, and I get this ****? Insomnia, incessant depression/tiredness, only to go away enough to give me a few hours of peace before refusing to let me go to ******* sleep.

I don't need this.

*******, body. I'm getting up between the hours of 7-8 if you like it or not. I'm spitting in your ******* face and telling you to sit the **** down. You wanna fight me? You're getting one hell of a fun sleepless day. I am getting **** down tomorrow, including the **** you didn't let me do today. *******. May I repeat that in the clearest, loudest of tones. ****. YOU. BODY.

I refuse to let everything fall apart just as I think I've got it sorted. This is not, will not, happen to me.

Just when I think I got things going right for me, you like to **** it all up. Not only you, but the universe too. I think I've found a place I belong? I get moody and needy as **** and scare people off and push them away, and get attached to the worst *******. I **** up my grades so much I can only hope to salvage them into not failing grades. I finally seem stable and happy, got everything going right, and school ******* ends. And I think its smart to get off my meds. I am such a *******. Worse, I get blood clots in my lungs so there go all my meds and for a good month I go into deep spiraling depression that almost ends the best relationship I've ever been in ,and the only one I hope to ever have again. I start getting my ******* **** together, and at the pinnacle week where I need to finish sorting it all out, you decide to flake.

Well *******, you're not allowed to.

I'll probably hate myself for this soon, but I need to push through. I will not let you **** me in and ruin what I've been working towards. So buck up, deal with tomorrow as it comes, and stop being such a ******* *******. Thanks.

This isn't really a poem. Or it is. I'm not sure. Its something.

I'm tired and after this poem will go to bed. I need bed. Everything is so complicated. Life is so complicated.

Love is complicated.

Please shut up romantic twits, including me. Not just romance. All love.

I don't reach out to friends enough. This is my fault.

My friends don't reach out to me enough. This is their fault.

I should call my family more. That's a simple fact.

And yesterday I was constantly spewing internally about how perfect my boyfriend is. I mean, he's pretty great, but not perfect. No one is. He's perfect when it counts, and that's what matters. And he loves me. A lot.

I'm listening to sad love songs. I have no clue why. I felt compelled, even though I have nothing to be sad about really. Nothing is wrong, or at least I don't think. Is there?

I don't know with my head.

Its turns and winds and an endless staircase of confusion. Its Wonderland. Its a mess. Some days its crazily planning way ahead into the future, some days it can't even plan the next five minutes.

I mean what's nice is lately it tends to plan things with my boyfriend, but I digress.

My back hurts. My knee hurts. I'm tired.

I want magical important words to spew from my fingertips right now but i simply cannot find them. My heart is broken. I'm rejecting even the words' love. The end's beginning. Or the beginning is ending. I know nothing right now.

My head is cloudy, my eyes are heavy, but I feel there's more. That there's something important right behind my eyelids and I need to dig it out before I fall asleep. Should I get some knives, a scalpel, carve it out for my sanity's sake?

I was here.

I guess that matters. I tried. But ******, sometimes trying isn't enough. My boyfriend likes to say, there is no try, only do and do not. And i want to do. I  love to do things. Sometimes they just don't do.

Homework titles swarm my head. Broken Glass. Change. For Writing. Fat is not a Fairytale. Human.

Guess even the stories that have nothing to do with me have my heart in them. So why is my heart eluding me now, when I feel like I might need it most? I'm blowing this out of proportion. I do that. Someone once told me I feel too much for attention. Maybe I do.

Another said I didn't know true depression. One said if he can make himself will himself to be better I have no excuse. Several said I was selfish and a tiring person to be around, because I made everyone walk on eggshells. Because I was a burden. Maybe they're right. Maybe I've been stubborn and fooling myself this entire time. Maybe its all my fault.

I've been blaming genetics and events but ****, maybe the answer is attached to the brain I find so unruly. Maybe its me.

The people who surround me now make me think otherwise, but what if they turn out just the same. What if I **** up everyone I touch. What if I turn them all away. Life can do terrible things to people, you know.

If they want to leave, its ok. I'll remember them though. I remember everyone who leaves. They leave pretty scars on my heart that I like to count late at night, like battle wounds proving myself that maybe I'm strong, maybe I'm not what they say.

But who knows, according to them its all my fault.

Who knows anymore. I like to think I'm human, but after years of being told you're a monster, its pretty hard, right?

Makes sense that I get so close, so broken by those words. I am deformed, and I am ugly, and those are crimes for which the world shows little pity. I am a monster, only a monster, and I must obey and stay in here.

I put up a pretty front but eventually someone gets in. Maybe its brave of me, or stupid. They come in and they promise they see me and will not turn away, but they always do. They always defend me, but put me aside. They never pick me. A face as hideous as my face was never meant for heaven's light.

But then an angel smiled at me, and kissed my cheek without a trace of fright. I dare to dream that he might even stay for me, I swear it must be heaven's light.

But in the nights, when I'm alone with my thoughts, I'm so afraid that I'll push him away. That he won't stay, that I won't be enough, that he'll turn astray because I'm too broken.

But then I look at him and I realize though I loved those before, they have never been him. He is kind and understanding and makes me smile and makes me completely forget I am a monster. Maybe with him I'm not. Its beautiful and terrifying, because I know I love him, and i could love him forever. But if I push him away, if I ruin this too, If I can't love him then who?

I've never believed in soulmates, I always thought it was stupid and silly and still kind of do. But if that stupid, silly thing exists, I'd be almost convinced he was mine. Hell, three months in and we were talking about kids and love and nothing about it felt forced or too early. I was worried because of what others would think, how everyone else would find it rushed and crazy. But I guess we are crazy.

I'm crying out of joy and sadness and fear and all of it right now and I can't keep it straight.

I always thought home was back where my extended family was, where I was born and ripped from when I was young. And its still one of my homes. I was for years desperate to go back, but I found my college to be home too. My friends, my freedom, my life is there.

But the best home I've ever discovered is the one I have when I'm with him. I would follow his crazy, ******* to the ends of the earth.

I just want to be home. With him and at college. I love my family, but this isn't my place. This isn't where I belong.

I almost died here, literally. I'm ready to go back to living.

My joints all hurt. The night is threatening me, and my body is succumbing. But the ramblings were nice. They were reflective. They were something. They were complicated. They were love. They were me. They were you.

They were a snapshot of life.

I'm somewhere and nowhere.

Hear me out. This isn't meant to be profound or riddling, just me. Granted I throw up walls like a kid who ate too much cake on his birthday, but today its just me. I promise.

I know that can hard to believe, even for me. Some days I'm euphoric, some days I'm broken, or bitter or boisterous or batty. But today, I'm in between. Not in the extreme sense I'm used to, where I'm either depressed like crazy and happy like crazy and mad like crazy. None of me is crazy right now. And oddly enough that terrifies me.

I'm not happy, but I'm not sad. I'm not even feeling nothing. I'm ******* normal. I'm fine with where I am but at the same time I'm progressing forward, happily. Is this what it feel like to not be an alien?

My dad told me joking stories about how I was an alien dropped on the front yard when I was really young, but oddly enough he wasn't far off. I spent most of my childhood feeling incomplete, incomprehensible, like a human face hiding some sort of monster behind. I had a distinct instinct that the way I had to live through childhood was to hide, to keep secrets, to create parapets of stone around me to keep the people out, and to more importantly keep me in.

I grew up and hiding grew harder as the monster grew bigger, and I couldn't renovate fast enough for it. It eventually broke out of its stone home, and I was exposed. The alien girl was visible for all to see. It created chaos and it took a long time before I could feel human. I grew friends and a sewn together personality and threw my feelings into my writing, my work.

But today, something new happened. It was unlike any mood I had ever felt. I wasn't me anymore. Or, at least the me I had grown to know. I was exhausted but awake, and productive but not nearly as enthusiastic, and okay with who I was but willing to work towards something 'better'. I always considered better as something very subjective, but somehow today normal things seemed more... normal. Having a schedule, changing myself for the better even if I'm happy, setting random short term goals to make my life feel more... I don't know. Meaningful I guess? My life felt meaningful before but in this new body that feels so "normal" or "average", its like I'm working to be normal.

Its terrifyingly soothing. Its like the normal-ness lulls you into into thinking a normal life is ok. And not saying being normal is wrong. But I've lived a life being abnormal, being an outlier, an outsider, an oddity. This lullaby feels so wrong.

I always told I've learned to appreciate my condition because I don't think I could handle being normal, having less intense emotions, not understanding emotion so well. Its sounds stupid, it sounds like its glorifying mental conditions, but its not. I know the suicidal thoughts aren't good, and I know mania is danger. But I cannot help like feeling like I'm losing me.

I cannot even get myself to sob right now, or to even truly feel a suicidal thought. They won't stick. Not even for a minute. None of it. I;m ******* terrified but I can't feel I can't make myself feel who am I?

I can't be normal. I can't.

This is more maddening then the moods. Maybe I was hitting too close to home when I hypothesized a person from Wonderland would feel utterly insane in real life. Or worse, feel even crazier when sanity began creeping up on them.

I don't want to lose Wonderland. I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am. Who is residing in this body right now, whoever is containing my thoughts, it cannot be me.

I cannot let all of my insanity go.

Normal doesn't feel better, and **** all the people who think its the only way to go. Normal isn't an aspiration, its a cage, and I will not be imprisoned.

Al I can do is find a way back to Wonderland losing all control. I guess that's what I truly wanted. Not sanity, but control. Controlled chaos had always been a favorite of mine, after all. There is always a method to the madness, and I must find mine, because I certainly cannot live without it.

Who knew Grace would have to remember how to be crazy?

I refuse to be normal. I refuse to be in-between. I will always belong to Wonderland, to madness, and **** whoever says that's not a proper life.

Its the life for me, so frankly, I don't give a ****.

I know our lives will never be easy. I knew that before I met you, when you were just an idea in my head of that man I might marry. When I met you I didn't even know it. I spoke to you like I had known you for years, was comfortable like that, but didn't see until a month later that hey, maybe we have something here.

We met because of cheap college ***, which of course you would think would be a letter of doom from the beginning. But somehow it worked. It hasn't been perfect, but it works.

Don't tell middle school me, but she was totally right about you. Hard to open up, daring, risky, cocky, goofy, had trouble with friends, and somehow still my best friend. Of course she didn't exactly picture it like this, but somehow she knew you. She knew you'd come, even before she knew we were broken.

Of course, she got a couple things wrong. You're not as tall, and you don't have blue eyes, and we haven't been best friends since childhood, but most importantly you never left me. I guess instead of having the pain of losing you and finding you again, I had to live my teenage years without you. I don't exactly know what I'd prefer, but I know I prefer anything with you.

I know the way I am doesn't make things easy. I know we have had our rocky times. But god have I been such an *******. More than just this past month. I got myself in this manic stupor where I was convinced after winter break that all the decisions were mine to make. When you called me a child, I didn't worry about you breaking up with me. I thought it impossible. It was like all I saw was my emotion, and totally ignored yours.

But last week, when you revealed to me that a breakup had crossed your mind, it shattered me. I was already feeling like such a ***** for all I had done to you that past month, but that moment I knew it had been much longer than that. I forgot that I wasn't the only important one. I forgot that all the decisions weren't mine. They were ours.

Dealing with my bipolar lately has made me selfish and blind. Granted, I needed to be selfish to live through what happened to me first semester,  but after that I was just being greedy. My grades improved, I had all the friends I could want, I had a future, and I had you.

I loved you loving me unconditionally, but its time to be fair. Its time for you to feel, to express, to live. This isn't all about me. Its about you, and us. It wasn't fair for me to do that to you for so long, and now I'm here to make it right, but ******* do I love you. Not in the loud way, but the quiet way that creeps up on you and holds your hands and kisses your forehead and suddenly you realize you're in love.

When I told you I loved you for the first time, I loved the person who made me stop being scared and put me first. I loved the person who was my friend, and made me feel special, and made me feel wanted.

I loved what you did for me, and now, as I finally see you, I just love you. I love all of you.

And as long as I can, I will love me loving you, just like you deserve.

You know, for years I wanted nothing but to be your little girl. I mean, I guess I am. But in some ways, you didn't let me. When I was really small, before life started to really take its toll on you, we did a lot together. I'd sit on your lap and watch you play video games, we'd watch movies together mommy said I shouldn't watch but we did it anyway, and I would crawl in your bed every time I was scared and you would make me feel all better.

So what happened?

Now you don't even look at me when I watch you play your games, and you fall asleep or leave before a movie is even over. And worst of all, sometimes now you're the thing I'm most afraid of.

I fought for years to be just like you. I read your books, watched your movies, played your games, all in a desperate attempt to get you to notice me. Funny thing now is that I'm extremely terrified of you seeing who I am. You'd hate me. You of course would promise you wouldn't, and in some capacity you're not lying. You will never stop loving your little girl, your first baby. But who I am now?

You wouldn't love her.

She believes in emotions, and equality, and being open-minded, and being *****, and falling in love, and loving what you do, and knowing when things aren't right for me. I know its so much harder for you, jaded by the life you have been given. I realize having  **** up writer for a daughter, an introvert for a wife, and a lost little boy for a son aren't easy. Not to mention your pressure at work and how you never say no and you always get ****** over by your coworkers, I get it.

But will you ever look at me and comfort me instead of telling me all I believe in, all I am is *******? Will you ever ask me what's wrong instead why I'm crying when I have nothing worthy of crying? Will you ever love me the way you used to?

I don't think so, and that kills me.

I love you so much, but I will be honest I don't love who you are that much anymore either. We have no understanding of each other, and I think at this point we might be too different to ever go back.

I miss you so much sometimes it rips me in two. My childhood was painful enough and I feel like I'm losing all of it. I'm losing you, and I don't know how and if I can fix that.

So much of me is based off you. I wanted to be you. And now I'm terrified of that happening, though my condition is a pretty good fail safe to prevent it.

I love you. I always will love you. But its time to accept I'm not Daddy's Girl anymore. I don't think I ever will be again.

Its the modern day cliche for a teenage kid to say some form of music saved them. Its a messy statement, putting a lot of pressure onto something other than yourself, giving yourself the unhealthy idea that you must find salvation somewhere that's not you. Truth is, those outside sources only make you realize the strong desires in yourself to get better, and they spark the fire that chases you out of hell. Cheesy as it is, its still you though. You made the effort to get better, you saved yourself. That outside source just helped.

Which is why its so utterly ironic that when I was a young high school student, I was convinced music had saved me. Repeat on repeat I listened to certain lyrics, trying to enlighten myself to make a change. That repetition is half the reason I don't believe its the music itself that saved me. If it was the music, the first time I heard it should have changed everything. The meaning of the song never changed, I was the one who changed. I made it better. It took time, and a lot of pain and stress, but I came out of it.

So as I fall back into the depressed patterns, I find it oddly comforting to go back to repeat and play those same words over and over again until something gives. I can feel it building inside of me, the slow change, and I may not be fully there but its coming. I may not be happy right now, but i will be. I am no longer moping around and avoiding responsibilities, I am doing something. I may not feel that great and I may not be so utterly enamored with what I'm doing, but its something. Maybe it will help the process along.

Maybe I am not who I want to be right now, but the journey is just as important as the end result. Now all I have left to do is to keep going, because life starts now.

Being who I am I get obsessive. I get paranoid. I get utterly, shamefully, afraid. I lie. I lie a lot, even when I don't mean to or even when I don't realize it. The moods are like different people taking the reins, and they hardly acknowledge one another's actions. Happiness can do  thousand wonderful things that sadness will never remember. Mania will think a thousand thoughts stability can never fathom even pondering.

But I guess I'm getting off track. This isn't a movie about my head. Its a tale about my drugs, my loves, and my heart.

Its funny, trading drugs that stop you from suicide to drugs that stop your body from doing just that, but this time without your permission. At least let me say its ok before self-destructing, systems. Have some common decency before sinking the ship.

Even funnier, though, is now that my lungs stopped trying to **** me, my head totally decided it was time to take that title back for itself. Funniest has to be, though, is that my worst drugs aren't even the ones I pump into my bloodstream.

With the mood meds, I also stopped taking creativity and honesty and responsibility and ambition. Goodness has it been a messy den of deception I've been nesting in for the past month. This is the first time I've really written clearly what I've been thinking since I thought I was dying. Oh, sure, there was the one time I stopped breathing, but if I wasn't breathing I obviously thought I was still dying.

I guess its really today when I take a step outside my own vanity project and look at the mess I've made. I've done nothing, been nothing, but utter horror since I got out of that hospital. I've been a terrible girlfriend, student, daughter, and friend this entire time. I shut myself away, only exposing myself to those who I had to as to not raise suspicion. Hell, I've basically acted like a class act villain, hiding away in my lair plotting and thinking while ultimately accomplishing nothing. That's what villains do, right? Lonely, misunderstood, ultimately alone people who do not see the light the way the rest of society does ultimately never win, don't they?

I was someone, months ago. I had dreams, I had friends, I had a life. Now all I have is the shadows of my family and a boyfriend who I have done nothing to deserve this past month. But I guess the darkness has gobbled me up like a yummy cake and left me an ugly, unlikable crumb of my former self.

Time to **** it the **** up. Everything hurts, everything's broken, everything;s wrong. I don't have my drugs. I don't have the endless love I once had in my heart. I'm not the girl who once spent every day with her friends, called her mom three times a week, always excelled in class, and cried when she had to let it go.

Be honest with yourself, Grace. The true thing that's killing you is that you are empty. You do not care. You worry about your lies for the self-preservation tactic of not getting caught being the bad guy, but you are. You don't know if its a mental coping mechanism to deal with the torrential emotions or a survival tactic or for the sick selfishness of not wanting to feel anymore. You feign it, affection and love, but you can only muster it out in goofiness and weak "I love you"s.

Go back to your drugs, little girl. You're only strong with a security blanket. Otherwise you're a bitter ***** with a talent for lying. Get your mood stabilizers and your expressions and your friends and your hope back. Cynicism cannot keep them from you forever, unless it truly wants to **** you.

But that would ruin the lies of how fine you are, wouldn't it?

Make it ok, make your heart ok, and finally then it will be ok to lie just a little bit, maybe just to protect yourself from realizing this heartlessness, this period of nothing, was actually real. Go back to Wonderland, Grace. It missed you.

Maybe just as much as you missed it.

Less than a month ago, I lay on a cold slab in a dark room, convinced I was dying. Tonight I lay still in my soft bed and realize, maybe I still am.

Its like suffocating, you know? Being drowned in your own ******* emotions. Only fitting that the bad blood in my veins decides to clot right there, in my lungs, in the sickest poetic justice imaginable. I couldn't breathe. Am I even breathing now?

Don't get me wrong, the doctors filled me up with pills and good fortunes, telling me I would be fine if I was careful, cautious, a perfect little good girl. And I smiled and took deep breaths even though every breath killed me. So if my lungs are fine, then why am I not breathing?

Looking back, that morning I woke with sharp pains in my sides I told the doctors I had never felt something like that before. And in a way, I wasn't lying. It had never been so physical before. But the pain, the crying, the inability to breathe, well those were things I was far too familiar with. So doctor, if I'm going to live, why am I not breathing?

****, the writer of my story is one sadistic *******. I mean, that symbolism. Choking on your own lifeblood? **** near perfect. It would have been the perfect turnaround story. The mentally unstable girl finally truly stands at death's doorstep when she doesn't want to, and she realizes maybe life is worth it. That maybe even a **** up deserves dreams, deserves happiness. The tale should have ended there, right? I learned, I had that moment when I knew I didn't want to die. I felt changed. So if I am so changed, if that is my happy ending, then why am I not breathing?

Happily ever after doesn't exist. Life doesn't work that way. Tragedy is around every corner, particularly when your chemical makeup is in a constant struggle with your will to live. But everyone is so thankful, so happy I am safe and well and normal again. **** normal. **** safe. ******* **** well. If I am so well, then why am I not breathing?

Its great, you know, knowing that the "thankful for being alive" feeling will never last for me. My wiring won't allow it. All around me everyone is so proud. They say I'm strong and brave and better. Funny thing is they totally missed the metaphor. **** my facades, **** my brain, because my blood is thinning, and my world is spinning, and I'm not breathing.

I want to be a writer, an author, a name to be remembered when it comes to the art of literature. I want my work to make people think, to matter, to maybe make this world better, even just a little.

I want to be a mother. I don't expect to be perfect, no one is, and god knows I cannot be perfect, with my ramblings and sleeplessness and all. But I know how to love and to care and to put others before me. Granted, I may forget a few punctuation marks when I'm hyper but I can at least be a wonder to my children.

I want to be in love. I mean, I am. I mean, married. I mean, forever. I love the one I'm with so much and I wish to spend every day with him, but that's not an option yet. We have to grow though being ******* college students and deal with our ******* selves and hopefully come out in the end, utterly victorious. I would love to be victorious with him.

I want to never leave wonderland. I want it to grow kinder, more manageable, but I could not understand or fair well in a world without it. Even now my fingers flicker around the keyboard, just taunting me into the thoughts racing and hand thoughts thoughts hands ****. The madness is creeping and my fingers are flying but I can manage it, and I wouldn't be me without it so I must accept it. It is part of who I am, right?

I want so many things, yet I'm too young to have them. i have to suffer through more years of editing, of waiting, of being careful before I can attain my dreams. Dreams I want now, dreams I want to scream up into the heavens so I can have them right this second and hold my babies close and read them a story of wonderland while my love smiles at us from the doorway.

I feel this is truly who I am, and I can't be. Not yet, and I hate it.

Guess for now the best I can get is the manic midnight dreaming.

You know what, this is not a love story this time. In this case, it never was. I thought it was, but I was mistaken and lied to by my lonely heart. And For once, I am standing my ground and telling you what you deserve to hear.

*******.

******* for making me so dependent on you that I was scared to stand up to you, even though you were cruel to everyone I loved. You may have thought you were cute, you may have thought it was your odd way of love, but it was honestly just an excuse to be an utter ***** to everyone and none of us should have tolerated it.

******* for competing with me. I am not a competitive person, but you'd laugh and comment how you were better, smarter, more mature. It drove me wild. Not only because your arrogance made me want to drive you into the ground, but also because it made me feel like I had to prove myself to you, brag in front of you, compete with you to feel worthy.

******* for turning on me at my weakest. Over a boy for god's sakes. I was your best friend, the one you turned to and confided in, and you started to completely disregard me over a boy I had feelings for first. You had no respect for our friendship in any facet, and it made me regret letting you in at all.

******* for always being at the back of my mind, for being so infuriatingly insidious that I have to always check up on you and worry about you even though you don't deserve it. For doing things that don't make me feel anything but pity and concern for your life, instead of being proud and maybe thinking I could accept you.

******* for making me want to **** myself. For being the selfish catalyst who showed me the cuts on her legs and made me feel so guilty that I didn't deserve life. Everyone deserves life, even the cruelest of people, and to purposefully make me feel that worthless, just to try to win me back, was the most heartless, selfish, thoughtless thing you could have ever done.

******* for being similar to me in any frivolous way, because now I am utterly terrified to be anything like you. Obsessive, rude, cruel, thoughtless, and selfish. I fear for my boyfriend, my friends, everyone around me because I know being your friend has given me the capacity to be just as ruthless as you. And I hate you for it.

******* for making me forget anything pleasurable about our relationship. All I can feel is a burning frustration when I hear your name, or an overwhelming sadness, or endless anger. None of it is pleasant.

******* for everything you've done to me, and **** the dark part of my heart that exists now because of your knives stabbing me in the back.

******* for still making me think about you, and ******* for any part of me that is like you.

I'm done with you. This is the end. Its ******* over.

And just remember.

*******.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Basically I'm saying, babe, you're hot.  You know its funny, I adore Shakespeare but i could not handle writing like him. All proper and British and modern... I'm too old fashioned for his tastes.

Let's think about it. Shakespeare was a progressive of his days; making words, analogies, that are timeless to this day.

What am I using?

Old tricks of the old writers to quell my taste for old art. Gods knows I describe everything as if I were Dickens, all elongated and profoundly bloated in the most beautiful and adoring way.

But back to where I was. You.

This sonnet is for you. I did promise one this night, did I not? In my head I did, at least. Oh dear, this'll be a surprise in the morning. But at least it is a surprise just for you.

I at least hinted of a sonnet, a sonnet for you, telling of you and our love and how it makes me feel. So here we must go.

You are the moonshine to my midnight, the angel to my demons.

Too much? I dare say, it must be, you have simply gone giddy with giggles. Perhaps a different route should be approached.

If I were a murderess, which in all heart-related actuality I am, I will give this fair promise that in all my running around and cutting out hearts, that yours will simply be those one I keep closest to mine.

Alas, too dark? Oh, my love, but there must be some way to express my doting! Be in not in a dark sonnet, or an adoring sonnet, perhaps a comedic one?

There were two things I was certain of. One, that he was a vampire, and two, that I was irrevocably attracted to him.

Oh, perhaps too comedic. Perhaps too unkind. Perhaps a bit too much paraphrasing. But I digress. Anything I can do to please you, my dearest one? Anyway I can express how I feel without making you laugh, or giggle, or simply chuckle at me?

It cannot be as simple, as you say. It cannot be as easy as holding you close and whispering in your ear how much I love you. Can it?

Well I promise, then, that I will spend my nights whispering towards you my affections, and holding you tight until you can stand my embrace no more. Will that suffice?

Oh, I love you.

And I suppose that's the best way to put it.

He's sitting there, with that intense stare, forgetting about the world and daring to care. He's not prince charming, if anything he's Shrek, but the ogre stole my heart in the end. He's beautiful, I hope everyone can see, with his open brown eyes. He's a mess I must confess but what matters is inside.

When I fell in love with him, it wasn't a fairy tale. It was tears and laughter and lies and growth. Nothing kept me going except a solid maybe and an urging instinct to leap into his arms.

When I met him it was even worse, we were looking for benefits and nothing else. But instead we found each other and a possible forever. Who would have known a thief was in my midst? Who knew he could just be it? Not I. Even though before I was interested I felt comfortable and that our hearts just might share beats, I never imagined where he could take me.

Maybe years from now I will laugh at my young heart, but I pray I look back and smile and show our grandchildren this.

How daring am I in writing. I said that aloud in written form. I admitted it. Who have I become? Its crazy how crazy in love I am with him. He changed the romantically cynical and dead into a dreaming sap.

All because he was brave enough to steal my heart. He traversed Wonderland looking for a fabled girl named Grace, simply because I intrigued him, and found instead my heart. In a turn of events, he found it so precious that he decided to keep it. My heart turned an honest man into a thief, but I would have it no other way.

Well regardless, now I must speak straight to you, my ogre thief. I am madly mad over you and happy to be your partner in crime or your princess, whatever any given day suits us. I love you, and that's what matters to me.

So keep on looking off somewhere with that intense stare of concentration and determination, because that is the you I love most. Just you.

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.

So this is the end.

This conundrum, this series I have created has been swirling on the tip of my tongue for months, and I have devoted my heart to it. Time is running out on this singular year, and everything will change in a moment. For now I will cherish the moment I'm in.

Bagels and cream cheese and coffee shops will be my home, I will splendor in them for as long as I can. I just cannot believe everything is changing. I was well aware it would change, said that it will change, but now that I am on the precipice I just want to take three steps back and tell Grace not to jump.

The one who I never expected is now gone for summer, and it broke my heart a little. The others are almost gone as well, and that breaks my heart a little. I will be back in the realm of the white rabbit and, though I miss him, one white rabbit does not account for seven unexpecteds

Down the rabbit hole I go again, to find another new wonderland. Grace is always changing, evolving, and this time I must do it without the aid of my friends. I will survive, likely, its just the loneliness that scares me. After months of being loneless, I just am not quite sure how loneliness will fit on me.

Just promise yourself to not go back to the dormouse and the queen of hearts, Grace. Promise you won't stoop that low. They have bottled and broken you, and you deserve better. You have better. Don't let their honey words and fake apologies change who you are.

So now its over. But it will be renewed, the time will come again for Grace to be in this neck of wonderland.

And for now I will be a survivor. A survivor of old wonderland, in hopes of getting back to new wonderland. I can almost touch it, taste it. It is only months away.

Then, I will be home again.

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock.

What is our obsession with love? Now, I'm not absurd, I am human, I understand we need love to feel exactly that. Yet we are obsessed with not all love. We simply obsess over the romantics.

As a person in love, you'd think I'd be the most sympathetic. But I have a different view entirely.

General love is what you need. Not always mushy, cute, romantic, sappy love. You need the love that supports, the love that hold you high on broken ledges and let you achieve your dreams and reach for the stars.

You don't need the big things to validate your love, and you don't need validation constantly. Trust in love, you trust in your family, and your friends, so why not trust in your other half as well?

It drives me crazy so much around pertains to romance. Its not the romance, the wooing, that matters. its the love. Pardon me, but **** all this romance *******. I don't need a thousand roses or a fancy necklace to prove someone loves me. I need a paper crane and a promise, the little signs that remind me of what matters.

Funny enough, a thousand years comes to my speakers. Ignoring its romantic aspects, being brave is important. The brave gestures are what matter.

No one needs a significant other. They just need love, and love does not always come in such romantic forms. As the Beatles wisely said, all you need is love.

And I try to live by that, in the best way I can.

Its like tasting the tip of a sugar cone with your ice cream, and like finding the *** of gold at the end of your rainbow. You are already pretty astounding by the first thing, but then its like, POW, and it hits you, that this is what happiness feel like.

Its like falling in love with a book, or a person, and realizing that they speaks to you in just the right way. That their heart shares beats with yours and now you cannot imagine a day without them.

Its like a mild summer day, or a steaming one, depending on if you're near water or shade or not. But I'm rambling.

Its crying when you're happy, is squeaking when you even think about something, simply dying at its mention.

Its like being born, and everything is new and shiny and amazing and tremendous and terrifying and perfect all at once. You scarcely dare to categorize everything, because everything simply is a wonder to you. You live in a wonderland.

Its the best of times, and the cheeriest of times, when out of darkness comes light and out of sickness comes life. Its beautiful. Its maddening. Its everything you ever dreamed it to be and more.

Today, I feel happiness, in its pure unbridled form, and I haven't felt so alive. This is what makes the pain worth it. This is what transcends the tears. This is what I live for.

Happiness.

I took my meds today.

No one should get mad, but I'm still on fire. My limbs are mobile and vibrant and alive, and I want my fingers to pound and scream but I'm in a quiet room and that would be disastrous.

I cannot focus, my mind is only on the words, the little dancers in my head, the heroes in my horror story. If only typing was silent, I would flutter my fingers across the keyboard, making a frenzy of frightfulness that create my creative heart.

Shaky shivers spread on my shoulders, like too much butter on too little bread, the twitches are real, the quaking is real, disrupting my system and destructing my thoughts.

I want to write. These distracting classes with their loud voices and their incessant questions, I just want to sit back, type away, and write. I want to be happy, but I'm stubborn and manic and me. I'm happy doing what I want to do, and in the zooming car chase between the semi truck that is life and the little Prius that is me, the semi-truck is winning by magnificence.

Blue ring around my finger, beckoning me to do its will, do what it wants, be the me I want to be and forego all the consequences.

I'm tired and alert and a dying sun in a body made of stars, and I wish only to be a moon, changing and waning and growing and loving, just something different. That would be nice.

Guess pills or no pills, I will feel what I feel. Manic, depressive, level, whatever, its all muddled in the puddle that is my brain.

Time to fly and forget it all.

I forgot to take my medicine.

Don't freak out, but I forgot to take my pills.

My veins are not swirling and dancing and wait actually the pills probably slow them to stop swirling and dancing so I guess now is the time for said swirling and dancing, is it not?

I can feel a bit of mania in my head, so excited and so alive and so real. I can tell because there goes periods, out the window, never to be remembered or recollected or what was I talking about?

Its twitching and hopping and like Wonderland and here we go, no ashes, just painting the roses red, painting the roses red, here comes the queen of hearts and off there goes my head, we're painting the roses red, until we end up dead.

Am I somberly manic, or maniacally somber or am i even sad? I don't know its just the twitch, I can feel it, so Chesire under my skin, the smile is coming through and my head is racing and my focus is wasting away under the hot spotlight of my own personal theater. Bravo, Grace, take a bow!

Letters and figures and math and language, so different but so funny because people speak both, why do mathematicians not count as fluent in another language, because its certainly foreign to me.

Ooh, I probably should alert the one I never expected, tell him how my head's a twitching and my fingers a fluttering and all of it a maddening. I missed this, I'd hate to admit, with the progress and the productivity and the beauty and the wonder and the land and the magic carpet ride. What land am I in again?

How funny it would be to see an intoxicated me. Am I intoxicated now? I don't know, I act like it but nothing's in my veins to even the pills am I born intoxicated, am I intoxication incarnate, am I addictive, am I a problem?

I like my sweater today, its got words that I love and words that I feel, to be or not to be, that is the question, **** it feels like I'm on fire, my limbs are burning and I am flame reborn. Maybe I should take off my hat and let out some heat, but its a pretty hat and it might feel bad if I ignore it.

Time to go back to busy life, where the life is dull and i am the fire but I love the dullness and the normativity because it involves my wonderland friends and the one I never expected. They make me happy, which lets me fly like this. The flying fire is me.

I can't understand why my heart is so broken, rejecting your love...*

Every time I hear that line, it kills me inside because I cannot deny the obvious truth of it. I want to love you so badly, and I try to with all my being, but I always fall short of being good enough for you. I am not your perfect girl, I might not be your forever. And I want so desperately to be.

I cannot hide around you. Its a blessing and a curse, to always be myself around the person I love, but I curse for sometimes I'm so desperate to hide those uncovered emotions that I push you away. You deserve better than that, but I'm not sure I can be better.

My pills are running through my veins, begging me to be stable, yet here I am, weeping over my laptop wanting to be someone else, anyone else. Guess I can't run from the monsters inside my heart, the demons that course through my blood.

I can't promise forever. I can't even make that promise to myself. I want more than anything to be your forever, to be your soulmate. God knows I don't believe in those, but I want to, for you, and you only.

Is it disorder screaming or my fears or what that want me to doubt you, to hide from you, to run away. I've been running for years and each time I try to leave I come back. I don't want to reach a day that I don't, but I don't trust my own heart.

You deserve better. Its less of me being insecure and more of no one deserves this, not even me. Yet I am, and I don't wish it upon anyone else. It kills me that people care, but it would also **** me to be alone, so I cannot win. What do you do when everything you do leads to the end?

I love you. I can't change that, and I don't want to. But I don't know what to do. I'm not getting better, no matter how much you want me to. I will forever be a lost, broken, little girl. You're not perfect, but you're not this and I couldn't bear weighing you down forever.

But I'm too afraid to leave. I'm too afraid that I'll never find something like this again. I'm reaching twilight and I'm afraid without you I may get lost in blackness. That  this is my last chance of falling in love before I give up on it entirely.

I'll try not to run, and I'll try not to leave, but know no matter what I do I love you. I might even love you always.

For you only.

The fire's burning and down, down we go, ashes, ashes, we all fall down. But its a fire I started. Its a fire I like. And not a bad fire, either. Fire always gets the worst reputation, of death, of violence, of an unhappy ending. My fire, though, its a figure entirely different.

Its passion, love, renewal. After all, nothing can grow until the old is gone.

A forest fire has been set upon Wonderland. Grace is anew, Grace is young again, Grace is beautiful. Not particularly in the traditional sense, but in her own sense, in her own light. There is love in her eyes, and its strange, because for once its not only for others.

The fire has swallowed up the Jabberwocky and the Queen of Hearts and all those demons that used to plague Grace, the demons of her past. The past does not define you. I once whispered tick, tock, and how the mouse went dead, but the mouse is not dead, simply grown unto a bird, flying and free.

Grace is still imperfect, her heart is not free of darkness, But she is growing and evolving as human beings do. Funny, its been a long time since she saw her body as a human one. Guess things change with time in Wonderland.

Maybe that's why the White Rabbit always is worried about time. Its a fickle, strange thing,s that runs then stops then screams and never dies, no matter how much you wish it to. Kind of like the Queen, but yet again the fire killed her so who knows what can happen in Wonderland.

Once again Wonderland is Wonderland, at peace and right and dark but always whimsical, always smiling, always Cheshire, even when it wants to frown.

Things are as they should be, with those I love beside me. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. At last she sees.

I thought we were infinite. That the stars and suns could not rip us apart, even if their bare hands grasped our feet and pulled us from the earth unto another plane, I always thought I'd still find you in the darkness.

I thought we were forever, that I would outlive every boy and you would outlive every mood swing and our smiles would radiate so brightly that we'd set the world on fire.

I thought you were my soulmate. I didn't even believe in soulmates, but I was certain if they existed, you were it. My everlasting friend, the one with the random calls and the cute texts and the endless times of calling one another bae. Funny how fitting it was, but I did put you before anything else.

I thought you were my dream, the best friend that would last, the one I would never lose. Its been months since we've talked, but you seem so far away now. Further away than ever before.

I thought you were my future, the one for me, the one I'd sit on my porch with and laugh at old stories and shoo children off our lawn and force our grandchildren to be best friends until they loved it.

But now?

I don't even know if we're friends.

Its interesting to be in a home so different than mine. A home where almost always two people at least are in the living room, bonding. My family I love, but we are always in our respective corners; father in the basement, brother in his room, mother in the living space, and I around randomly, uncertain where and who to belong with.

This weekend I visit Hockey House, the affectionate name I'm giving my boyfriend's home. I mean it full of affection, because they are brought together by movies and food and especially hockey.

In my home we are only brought together by food and then we run to the hills for our alone time. Very odd entirely, because of the extroversion holding my heart.

I guess as I grow, I find a disconnect with the family who is so different from me. My mother, though the easiest to be with, can be a staunch, stubborn hypocrite when it comes to all things social. My father is a determined conservative who opposes all I believe in. Brother is being molded into the man my father wants as his son, which is slowly distancing me from him.

When I'm home, I'm a repressed me, who keeps her tongue latched inside her mouth, and keeps her head down as to not get attacked. Even the natural peanut butter I asked for became a battlefield of who was right and who was wrong, not just a happy cheer for me being healthier.

Its odd in a house I've only been twice I can be less afraid than in my own home. I guess things change when you become the person you want to be instead of the adult your parents want to be proud of.

Maybe its easier here because I care less if they judge me, while my parents judgment terrifies me. Parents tend to be scary gods who rule your life, and to let them topple in your eyes is something all more traumatizing to watch.

I still love my parents, as children do, but there's a disconnect between who we are that cannot be passed.

Love can exist everywhere, but it  cannot transcend all obstacles, and that, truly, is what terrifies me most.

I never want to lose my parents, but I cannot lose myself either.

Only time will tell, and I guess I'll just enjoy college and my times at Hockey House.

Its been a journey, Wonderland.

We have made it through this transitional time in which my tears lingered in my tear ducts, tentatively prepared for a turbulent tragedy. Often I did cry. For a long time I cried. But I don't cry as much anymore. I smile more, laugh more, love more. And I would have it no other way.

All my old Wonderland characters are gone. I have truly changed scenery,  gone to a place I have never known before, where my old friends can rarely follow. Except the white rabbit, of course, but I always knew, behind the fears, that I'd never lose him.

Now I am with my new friends, stronger friends, older friends, all led in a march by the one I never expected, who holds my heart more than any person ever has before.

I am content, Wonderland. I am content with you, with my life, even very content with this simple room I now sit in, typing away. Its all very pleasant. Imperfect, but pleasant.

For the first time in a long time, I believe I have found my place. I have found home, as I expressed awhile ago, I have found a place to be bare and true and me with my words and my letters and my nonsensicals.

This life is a Wonderland, and I live every day in affectionate wonder.

I love my name.

Well, my pseudo name.

The name I chose for myself, I am in love with it.

Not that I don't like my real name, that name is lovely. It lives in a palace with princes and stars ad magic, and I appreciate my mother for choosing it. It is magic, and I feel that fits me.

But my chosen name, my writing name, is a part of me too.

Grace Jordan.

It holds a pun and a dream and my heart all in one.

I always see myself as messy, clumsy, but not in the traditional senses. My mind is a mess and my actions are clumsy, sometimes even thoughtless. I am impulsive and too much of me for me to handle. I see myself as something far from grace.

Yet it is a dream. I would love to be poised and handled and stable and graceful. I want to live up to the name I have given myself, so in all honesty it is more of a hopeful promise than a pun, though I always write it off as one.

But I doubt I will ever attain that. Not being cynical, merely knowing myself. I love mess, I love spontaneity, I love the chaos that comes with living. I guess in a way I mean to find grace, find peace in the chaos, and be a stable mess. I know it all sounds like contradictions and complexities, but that's all I know, and all I will ever be. So I must work with that and make it my own.

Now the heart. Jordan was someone I lost long ago, and he holds my heart and always will. But I can still love, and I can still dance, and I know he would smile at that, so its all that matters. His happiness, and in turn, my happiness.

So self-centered, to write an entire piece about my name, right? Well maybe I am a little self-centered. Maybe I have actually learned to love myself a bit, and revel in my own glory. I love my writing self most, I think. And my writing self, in my heart, I will be.

Grace Jordan, reporting for life.

That's who I will be, secretly.

So here we go again, tumbling down a rabbit hole, insistent on trying to find something curiouser and curiouser.

Life is an adventure, and fortunately, or not so much, mine is a constant trip to Wonderland, through the Jabberwocky's lair and the Queen of Hearts' castle and the winding paths to the mad tea party, my favorite place to go. We're all mad here, and I revel in  it.

When I started this journey through Wonderland, I was certain it would be a place I hated, ahbored, feared, vilified. The wonder ****** me in, but once I was aware of my surrounding I didn't like so much anymore.

But now Wonderland is home, where my heart sets its beats and my brain rests its heavy head, where I sing goodnight moon to the stars and sleep in the soft glow of their shine. I love it. I love me. There is no one that this Grace would rather be.

I compare myself to Alice, but I feel more like a sister now, one going through her experiences but feeling differently than she ever would. True, we're both polite and curious and blonde and sweet, but her eyes shine blue while mine glow green, showing her sadness and my envy, causing a utter travesty to Wonderland between the two of us.

I was the girl who turned into the Jabberwocky, and it makes much more sense for her to defeat me. To lead me out of the darkness and into the light, making me remember who I was and who I want to be.

Anyway, Alice is a visitor of Wonderland. Grace lives here, knows nothing but here. She may traverse the human world every once in awhile, but Wonderland is where she has grown, where she will always belong.

For once I see Alice as my friends, my family, those I love. They curiously visit my Wonderland, they see its sights and its horrors, and they only come to visit when there is a great party or a great fear. They do not live here. Only I, only Grace, live here.

Maybe I should be less afraid of bringing another young girl into this Wonderland, for who better to help traverse it than the one who owns it? And if the daughter I bring only is a visitor too, that;s just as fine. As long as the love we have for each other is a shining beacon that lights up Wonderland even in its darkest hours. For her, Wonderland will try its best to be what it was made to be; Wonderful.

And to thank all those who have helped, those who have changed and been curious enough to enter my land so different from their own, I have but one name for the daughter, given I have her.

I'll name her Alice.

**** me.
Looking back on that predeceasing story, I regret I was ever so blind. I let myself go crazy for a boy who didn't care, who cheated and left me bare in the wilderness, alone. I look back and now wish I had waited, had wished I had cursed myself for falling for another, but in some ways I don't.
**** me.
I was right to be scared of falling for him, because he didn't fall for me. And even then, I fell for a relationship, for falling in love, for the first time since I was too young to be afraid for it. I did not really love him, I loved the idea of falling in love, finally. He was not the right boy, and I not the right girl, but now I think things are different.
**** me.
Because I think I might have found my right boy, the one who I never expected. I had decided after the last to stay single, stay free, for awhile to catch my bearings, but instead I met him and began to catch feelings. I only dream that I might just be the right girl for him too.
**** me.
But don't. But do. My sexuality blossomed with change and being thrown into the fires of adulthood, but at the same time, this phrase's initial intentions do not apply anymore. I'm not angry at myself for falling, not anymore. I love this crazy boy and I accept it and even adore it.
**** me.
No, that's not what I want. I thought it was, but its not the right words. Love me, hold me, are ones much better. He not only deserves me happy but deserves me honest, and honestly I don't hate myself anymore for falling in love. I love it. Falling in love, for once, might be the best thing to happen to me. Love is my kryptonite, and finally romantics are involved in that equation.
**** me.
For ever thinking that love was something to be afraid of.
For being so stubborn.
For not opening up to the idea of  loving and being loved for so long.
For not accepting you.
But now, I open my eyes and I see.
You love me.

Like always, Grace never can get it straight, as the girl from wonderland wonders if wondering is her fate. But here she is quoting love songs as if she truly understands them. For once, maybe she does. There’s a swelling in her chest and butterflies in her head and everything is all cabobbled in a cacophonous mess that she cannot comprehend.

The furthest distance she’s ever known was her head to her heart, they never seemed to work in tandem. One would act, another would scold, making her wary to be impulsive when it came to love. She had been hurt more times than she could count, and that unfathomable account made her fearful. From her head to her heart, it seemed like she was doomed to always run away.

Then you came along.

No doubt, the poor girl wanted to run the second she felt a hint of emotion towards you. There was many a time she could feel her heart starting to turn, starting to flee, away from everything she had ever been frightened by and all the love in her heart that had been rejected.

You scared her.

She looked into your eyes and knew your logical head and stubborn heart were things she could fall for, things so very unlike her that she could admire them, want them, love them. Between her flittering heart and emotional mind, she needed someone like you, and she knew it. But she also knew you could break her, and she could break you, and breaking had been done enough through years of falling through windowpanes.

For a good while, she resisted you. She tried not falling for you, she tried to not make it serious. Yet then you looked into her eyes hundreds of miles away and told her to not be afraid to fall for you. And what did she do that second?

Well, that scared little girl fell. She fell hard.

Ever since the age of four she was always a strong young woman externally, while her innards were stunted to that scared little girl who never could let go. It broke her, melted her, molded her into the woman you love today. Or girl. Depends on the day.

Beware, for you hold that scared little girl in your hands. She no longer holds that part of herself internally; it and her heart are now yours. You dared her to fall; she did. You begged with your eyes for her to stay; she did. You smiled and tricked her into those three terrifying words; I love you. But your daring and begging and tricking are things she does not abhor you for, rather, she loves you more because of it. Because only a lovable thief could steal such an iron locked heart.

There it is, master burglar. She loves you deeply and you have caught your prize, the safeguarded heart that many before thought they could lock pick. Never knew kicking down the door was an option, but you made it one.

So what are you going to do with it? I pray you hold it close to your ear, hear her whisper her love over and over again, hold it close to your mind, feel her feel the deepest way you will ever feel, and hold it so close to your own heart that you can acknowledge they share beats. Goodness knows she’s known for some time.

As you fall asleep before her, like you do every night, I hope your subconscious can feel her kiss your cheek and her confidently terrified voice say how much she loves you. She’d name the stars after your eyes but your eyes are too loving to be so far away. And even when the waters get rough, and the seas get salty, and the games get brutal, think of that occasional nighttime ritual you never knew about and hear her whisper silently,

*I love you

We met when I was very young, and I loved her in an instant. Everything about her was magical; the touch of her skin, the words on her lips, and particularly, the way I could talk to her. I could talk to her like I could talk to no one else.

My mother introduced me to her, in the playtime hours of my youth, and I was quickly enamored. She was fun and unique and something I could make all my own. We ran together for hours and hours, laughing and crying and feeling everything life had to offer. Even as I grew older, she was always there, making me squeeze out every bit of life I had in me and make me taste it. She was beauty in sadness, in a world other than my own, but I fought with all my might to spend if only day on her planet. We were not in love, but we loved as if in love, with all our hearts and all our tears. There was not a romance between us, but I was hers. I’d like to think that in some ways, though she was ethereal and grand and far too good for me, I held a little bit of her too.

I never quite knew what led me to her, be it fate or destiny, but once I found her, I knew she was where I belonged. She was home. I could walk a thousand miles, and maybe even a thousand more, but I’d still belong as long as I was beside her.

She’s had many who loved her, over decades and centuries, but somehow she was still innocent and new to me, and while we grew up together, she stole my heart more than I could ever fathom. She was there when my brother died, and those times when I was abandoned by the persons I loved most, and when the shackles of madness caved in on my soul, she was there. There are a few who love me and stand by my side, and I adore them for it, but none stood by my side like her. She has never left me, and I hope she never will.

When I lose my words, I look to her. She is the solace in insanity, the wonder of my wonderland. I can always feel the beating, the hands on the door, begging to break me, to shake me, to destroy all I have ever fought for. It’s in time with the beating my heart, because god only knows it’s my own hands beating. But in the darkness, she holds my hands tight and begs me to stop the destruction and saves me from whatever I am.

I’ve changed many a time throughout my time, hell, I’ve changed at least three times this morning, but she is always there to care for me regardless is I’m up or down, sad or mad, or simply insane. She is a rock, no, titanium, something not weathered much by time, just always there, always watching, always caring.

She is my purpose, she is my soul, and though those statements seem outlandish, I truly believe them. I never would have made it to today if it wasn’t for her. She is my love and my writing. And now, here we are. On the precipice of the universe, and she’s offering me all I could ever dream of. My future was always a mystery to me, but now with my eyes wide open, standing next to her, I know she is my future, and she was my past, and in an odd way she is everything to me, It’s been a complex voyage, true, and I’ve had much opposition to my affections. Many have spoken of how it is a selfish dream, a fanciful dream, a dream that will be unlikely to come true. But this is my choice.

Me and her against the world, and I wouldn’t have in any other way.