Television makes it sound like a fun, 30-60 minute adventure into the lives of our favorite comedy or drama characters. But not for me. For me, an episode swells up through my soul and eats me from the inside out. The story doesn't get a comic relief, or a satisfying arc.

All it gets is cyclical, depressed me.

Where creativity and dreams once thrived, there lives a barren waste of hopelessness. Its like my body is in constant phasing shifts between dimensions. One place, I'm normal. I'm a writer in a dry spot trying to figure out where to go from here. Another, the world and my mind are boundless and I could be on the precipice of becoming exactly who I want to be, whoever she may be. And the last, everything's been gutted and that shadow of a woman dreaming has been reaped of her happiness; there's nowhere good on the horizen, only desolation.

If my moods were a television series, they'd only leave fans dissatisfied and sad. They get to watch a hopeful stargirl dream of the universe only for her body to crush her mind from the inside. Its like watching her sharply get possessed, like watching a hopeful underdog tale with the ghost looming quietly in every shot. Before anyone would know it, this star story turned into a horror-fest.

Like this, I'm so tired. I'm not someone wanting to make the world better. I'm not a writer with big, celestial dreams. I'm not a woman on the cusp of adulthood and the truths of her future.

I'm a wanderer, lost in the nuclear fallout of her own head. And its exhausting.

That's not an episode anyone really ever wants to see.

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.

Well, its been two years since the night I sat up late dreaming of other worlds that seemed so far away.

Yet here they are, nearly before me.

Its crazy, looking between that moment and now. I was honest and hopeful, yet all those things I wished for seemed worlds away.

Well, worlds away just turned into 3 months.

I've finished my first real novel. I'm a third through my new one. The inevitability of me being a real author is sharp and bright and awe-inspiring. I've written things that make people think and feel and hopefully have the ability to make a difference.

I'm running across the country with that man I love. Its happening. I am in love. I feel forever in love. I no longer sit and question the maybes; I feel he is for me, as long as he is who he is and breathes on this earth and walks beside me. And I soon get to wake up to him every morning for as long as we're together. Its something else, I tell you.

Wonderland has gotten kinder. I have become stronger, and things are figuring themselves out. I'm figuring myself out. Its new and terrible and great and exciting. The world of Wonderland is before me, and I am no longer afraid.

I wanted these so many things, and I'm fingertips away from them. They're mine. Its jaw-dropping. Its nearly a surprise.

Except it isn't. It logically feels that way, but in my heart it only feels right. Now, I have my writing. I have my novels. I have my love. I have my wonderland. I have my future.

All the things I ever wanted are mine, and its more than I ever thought I would get. My dreaming isn't just dreaming anymore. Everything I dreamed of is real, and you know what?

Its better than I dreamed. Far better.

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.

When will I ever be satisfied?

Will the earth have to shake and the heavens burst open and the almighty whomever have to come down specifically to me and award me for my good improvement?

Will I have to become a perfect, ethereal being who feels nothing but strength and goodness and saves the entire land?

Will I have to not be me anymore?

What do I have to do to stop feeling so defeated by merely doing things that come naturally to my breathing self?

What do I have to think to stop hating myself at every ounce of weakness that i show, no matter how human?

What do I have to give up to ever not be inevitably dissatisfied with myself every once in awhile, having to accept this occasional misery or frustration to keep myself alive?

What does it take to be happy with who I am?

What is it like to be satisfied?

I don't know if I've ever known.

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.

There's a place between forever and a moment, a connecting pivot between all the other wheres from which every matter molecule descends. It is a place we marvel and question and dream, and feels irrevocably natural yet so logically unnatural that there is a quaking in your very bones at that place of reverence.

Stars.

A person can gaze up at them and give them names and tell them stories but the fantastical part is no one ever knows if they are actually listening.

If you close your eyes, you can almost feel their tremendous radiance. The type of glow and beauty that over-arches all. Its fascinating, when you make your sight dark and see them in your irises, how familiar they fee when they are thousands of dead miles away. How warm their touch is when they are surrounded by fatal coldness.

Night is seen as this terrifying conundrum, where darkness brings out the fear of the unknown and the dire. Yet stars, they give a calming eminence to these fears, sliding away the layers of mortality and lifting a soul to a place where for a moment, for forever, they can feel light.

Stars are a wonder to this world. Not because we are so important, but because we are the closest mirror they have. A bright faced world of change and glow in the dark coldness of a quiet universe. We are not singular in our celestial reflections; we are a wonder to each other.

Yet stars are becoming invisible to the human eye. In a bustling city night, the sky is bloated with electric light that brings silence to the darkness, but also to the sky.

The mirrored bodies up above are being blotted by our light, forgetting their beautiful power and our collected memories and leading our humanity into an existence of singularity. The world is more populated than ever, so then why do so many people feel so painfully alone?

They are waiting, the stars, for their earth to come back to them. To shine their light in each bright eye and confess the silent loneliness they hope their humanity shares. In the deepest of their burning heart,s they don't hope for our pain, they never want that.

But they just hope so dearly to not be alone.

So in the silent night, when things are quiet and dangerous, turn off every light and take a step outside to a place where your eyes can open for the first time. Look to the sky, use your boundless power to see the moments in between, and find a star. Open your mouth, whisper the truths you didn't know you were waiting your whole life to speak. Learn the truth that your ancestors forgot when they tried to burn away all the fears of the unknown.

In the starlight, you are never alone.

Heart: This is hard for me to say, and I hope you don't panic. Don't panic. Please don't panic. We always panic.

Head: Why would I panic? You're speaking with redundancy. Just express yourself already.

Heart: Well, I don't know how to say this, and I know this will be tough on both of us, but you've got to remain calm.

Head: What is it? For the love of all things holy-

Heart: We're in love.

Head: Love? I thought we were done with all affairs of the heart for the time being. I thought you were shutting yourself down for a bit, and letting us just be free of these binds for awhile. You know this just always causes us unneeded pain.

Heart: It's different this time. It has to be different.

Head: Has to be? What sorts of ridiculousness do you speak of, my friend? Love doesn't have to be anything, but a terrifying void in which we have fallen in once, no twice, and barely made it out unscathed. Correction, we were not unscathed, we were scarred. We are scared. What do expect to come of this?

Heart: Its different. He's different.

Head: You said that about the last one.

Heart: He actually cares. He wants all of us, not just a part. The first wanted our body, the second wanted our smile. This one? He wants all of it.

Head: You're delusional. It will be no different, the outcome is simple mathematics. Us plus a boy equals utter chaos.

Heart: Its so different. He's the smile upon our face when we fall asleep to his final texts late at night, he is the hands running through our hair, he is the body curled up next to ours keeping us warm at night, he is the lips that beg us to live again. He's so different. He might just love us too.

Head: He's dangerous. Don't be an incompetent fool. It won't end well.

Heart: I don't care. We are in love with him.

Head: Well snap out of it.

Heart: Love doesn't work like that and you know it.

Head: Why would you stick around him after all the rumors you have heard, after all the fears in you, after all you have been through? Its illogical.

Heart: That's love for you.

Head: Don't be dumb.

Heart: Love that turns you stupid is the best kind. It makes your toes unable to touch the ground and you're flying. Can't you feel it?

Head: But I'm scared.

Heart: I know. But its worth being a little terrified.

Head: He could hurt us.

Heart: You knew that the second you got into this mess. You didn't care then, why care now?

Head: Because its serious now.

Heart: Why do you say that?

Head: Because we are in love with him.

Heart: Exactly. There was no moment like the last times when we absolutely knew, it came slowly but surely, each time he called us cute and sent us a good morning text and held our fingers close and kissed us like we were special. And then one day I woke up and realized, my god, I'm in love with this boy.

Head: It is so different. Why is it so different?

Heart: Because he's different. So different. That's why we're in love with him.

Head: We are in love with him.

Heart: And there's nothing we can do about it. So might as well jump in headfirst, right?

Head: Stupid. But we are going to do it anyway, are we not?

Heart: Now you're catching on.

Head: Love is stupid.

Heart: We're stupid.

Head: And we are in love with him.

Heart: And that's how it will be.

Head: For now, as long as these moments lasts.

Heart: That's all that matters.

Head: I hope they never end.

Heart: Me neither.

I just want to relax and sleep. I want it to be comforting. I'm not exactly anxious but I'm not exactly calm. So what is up with my head.

I don't like my body much. But I don't hate it much. But I also don't know if I'll ever truly enjoy it.

I worry about writing and showing my boyfriend because last one he said was uninteresting. I'm scared of uninteresting. Was it my writing, my words, or me? He almist certainly means nothing malignant by it, but my head is still a recovering paranoia addict and writing is its worry kryptonite.

I worry on and off about my actual writing prowess. I worry more often about finding a new novel to write. If I tell everyone tht writing is like breathing to me, then why aren't I breathing more?

I'm a little stressed about this semester. Not class-load wise, but because of the wearing down in my bones I feel sometimes. I'm just doing so much. All things I love. But so much.

I'm trying not to worry about family stuff. Its not helping me and there's nothing I can really do. Its just hard.

I can see me again. That's something that's good though. In fixing myself I lost the goofy, selfless me that used to be and I am so happy to see her again.

I'm working on my abandoment problem. I think that's why bring alone bothers me so much now. Now that I have people, and I know what its like to feel like I belong, I'm so afraid of being alone and locked up in my head again. But I'm spending more spurts alone to deal with it, and I'm not dead or abandoned yet so something must be working.

I have a gorgeous sleepy boyfriend who sleeps next to me every night. That something that always makes me smile. I may be unique and fun and cute, but it still astounds me this adorkable, brilliant, funny man likes to spend his time with me. Not complaining, but with all the possible brilliant girls he knows he meets, he picks the crazy, writing obsessed dreamer who just happened to stumble upon him. I just can't believe I get to look at his face so much. His face, his mind, all of him, it just... He knocks me out.

Things are complicated. And I'm always weary and always a tad stressed and always busy. But I'm happy too. And I'm not alone; I'm out here, for far longer than just one day. I belong somewhere, and I am loved somewhere. I my still have a thousand miles to go, but I can't believe the thousand I've made it through.

Guess I'm not too shabby, even if I am Grace from Wonderland.

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.

Everything has to change, eventually. But I didn't expect to ever stand on the edge of the world with you of all people and have to realize things are changing far too rapidly for any of us to handle.

You're holding my hand, and making promises you probably can't keep. Its breaking my heart as you scream "Grace, you're the only one for me" when I know you've said it time and again before and they never were the one for you, were they?

Its ok, I thought your best friend was the one. That was until he wasn't. So maybe in this moment, you aren't lying, for this second, maybe I am your one. But who knows if that'll stay, if that will remain, for rarely anything remains the same.

Maybe I've made a mistake forging my heart in the shape of your name, and maybe one day it'll morph itself into another, but for now making memories with you is all the new I want.

And then there's you. We fight, we cry, we love. But I don't know if we're right anymore, and part of me can dream of a world without you. That kills me, because you were my everything. I spent every day with you and I hate myself for thinking of how it might be easier to be apart.

The hollow hallways of my heart once were filled with you, but now I don't know if you belong in every avenue anymore. Maybe your just a conditional love now, something that hurts even to admit. You were once a world I could orbit around, but now as my own planet I can see myself out of your solar system.

And finally, you. The one I cannot fathom losing.

I don't even want to talk about the thought of losing you.

God how I hate everything new.

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.

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.

Mind racing, heart stops pacing, cannot tell my toes from my fingers.

Its just a dance, a high price dance, where my body disconnects from my racing head.

Palms aching, legs shaking, my body cannot handle my mind.

Cannot, cannot the words pound in my head with an ever resounding Thwop that murders my cells all night.

Help, I cry, I want to scream but words can’t touch my mouth.

Acid mouth that poisons lips and drops them dead right here.

Poison, poison in my veins begging for some nourishment from the silence.

Beautiful is nothing that I say when I look in the mirror to see another’s face, missing my own from memories of heartless futures of nevermore.

Poe knew words that I do not know, wrote them more eloquently than this thirsty heart can ever wish to obtain

I wish I may I wish I might end this heartlessness tonight to burn my soul into  deadly resurrection.

Stop my toes from twitching stop this heart from beating stop my soul from  combusting in the hot sunlight juxtaposed with its secret darkness.

Help.

All I want is help.

Stop.

All I want is for it to stop, for the pain of a thousand years to jump off my shoulders and find a new host to **** dry.

Let me be new, renew my body and heal it from this wicked curse, and save me from killing myself from the inside out.

The sky smiles at me and I wonder why is something so cheerful so blue?
Why do fish not grin?
Why does pain exist?
Why do people believe in a God?
Why is that God so distant to me?
Why am I always alone?
Why?
And I keep on smiling at the sky, and forget.

For you, the one who I never expected.

For you, the one who holds me and makes me laugh and is so very close to my own heart sometimes I think they share beats.

For you, the one who believes in me more than I believe in myself, telling me I'm something even on my darkest days. That I'm special, that I'm worth it, even when I want to believe that I am everything but.

For you, the one who I am so afraid of hurting, but could not stand at this point to abandon out of fear. I find myself standing by your side and wanting to stay there and make you as happy as I can manage, because you deserve it.

For you, the one I fell asleep in front of, a feat not many can claim, for sleep has always terrified me more than it should and the fact I trusted you with unconscious me means the world, when I barely trust myself during slumber.

For you, the one who watched Lilo and Stitch the first night we spent together, and we kissed and laughed and simply were just us and I couldn't ask for anything more wonderful, even though at the time I hardly appreciated it.

For you, the one who was there for me when I thought no one wanted me, and promised you would be there for me even when I couldn't be there for myself.

For you, the one with almost tears in his eyes when you realized the gravity of my pain, of my problems, of my fears. The almost tears that I will never forget, and will make me want to fight for a better me every day.

For you, the one who I never expected, but now would not change for the world.

For you.

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.

My life and my eyes look so towards the sky that it scarcely notices the calamities within. I look inside the valley but there are years of rain, and I wonder how I could drain the plains again, to stop them from being so heavy. That beautiful blue sky was so unattainable, that now as my wings float me above I look below and realize they stark horror I was blind to. It seems only once I was above it that I could really see how everything is drowning.

But how do I change anything now? I'm not apart of the place I left long ago, and I have no ability to go back. The shadows of those deep waters are something I can't even picture anymore.

Sometimes, though, if I see a bright red ribbon or a piece of glass, I'm painfully reminded of where I can't go back. The place I ran from and forgot only to awaken once again. Nobody may have blinded me and after so long my eyes are clear once more. But I almost wish I were still sightless to save myself from the horrid landscape that was previously what I called home.

I may be equipped with my strength after so many years of jumping off cliffs until I couldn't fall. Yet it still doesn't make horrible things any less horrible. It only ensures I won't jump off again and this time refuse to fly.

I know my worn, hardened heart wishes only to push all of it away, to pretend none of it happened. But I know at its core, the softened part warmed by kind hands, that its something I must face and use to grow even more.

The misery of my land and the rain and the pain are hard to bear. Its more than any person deserves to bear. But perhaps it will only make me better. Perhaps it will only make me stronger. Perhaps, after I survive this too, this time I can fly to the stars.

Every inch of me sore from your touch and every heavy breathe between kisses, its all yours.

But I don't know if you give me the same courtesy.

When your face is in my face, when your face is in my hands, every fear melts away and all I want is to forever find myself imprisoned in your embrace, the first time this wild girl has ever wanted and willed to be caged.

Don't waste your heart on a wild thing, didn't your mother ever tell you?

I always fear my wildness my wilderness will cause the rift between us. But maybe I have been led astray by my own mistrust in my commitment dances, to be unable to see you are willing to take what you want from me and not reciprocate the less desirable moves.

Trip three steps backward and realize I am not just some girl, I am the wild girl, with a large, creative heart, who will rip you to shreds as quickly as I will hold you to me. Realize I am not to be trifled with. Realize I am too independent to accept less than the best version of you.

So one question, my love, something you don't know my head calls you when I forget to take things slow, are we exclusive? am I yours and are you mine?

This question could ruin us or make me fall more in love with you. Only time will tell what you do with this wild girl, if you make her fall in love enough to stay, or if you send me away.

You may break my wings, but wings can be healed.

Us, on the other hand, may be another story.

What's funny is under all  my anger and independence and ultimatums, all I truly want is to simply be yours.

Let you be mine. I promise I will love you like no other, because there is no other. Isn't there beauty in that?

Just let me fall in love with you, and maybe, for once, we can be something magical.

I'm yours.

Freedom feels like sore thighs and *** dreams, where the epicenter of forever lies in forgetting everything but now.
It makes you wonder sometimes if its just a sharper spike of ASMR or the tickling truths of your soul pricking you on the back of the neck, electrically, as you do all the things in the dark you only heard whispers of as a child.
But there's a real something about how a pair of tongues collide and a summer's day turns into a summer's night, where a young girl goes out to play but returns a grown woman back from partying with one hell of a bite.
How can't you feel like you're flying when just a little to the left and you're seeing starlight in broad day and all the lies you were told to protect your innocence, or womanhood, or whatever to protect the ego of elders and mortality hung over your education like a plague?
For me, I can't help but do the cliche bitten lip and think about all the words that jumble in my head to burn me up before bed.
Yet that fire, as I got older, became more wild and curious and burned without asking just starving for the answer to what was the surprise between my legs that was some sort of angelic kingdom to hide from the boys like they were pillagers and not people.
Funnily, I dragged some ****** boy into the fires and felt some expressive liberty I had never experienced, no one giving a **** about the **** in my head or the **** who I was, just ******* me.
My ****** renaissance led to a swift beheading of the boy, who to my knowledge has yet to grow into a man, yet that feeling of validating importance yet complete erasure of all of my fears and pains has made freedom one hell of a hot, three letter word.  
If I hold on tighter my fingertips feel grafted onto his skin, and without words or letters my whole universe has found some landing just from pleasure and a pinch.
If I kiss his lips and he smiles beneath, there's a roaring power of how letting him touch me brings my body the earth while also tossing it up like a kite, ready to fly the winds, for once careless.  
If my hair gets pulled a little harder I can nearly feel the Declaration of my ****** Independence on my lips and old society lady Great Britain scowling from its high castle, putting its hand together in judgmental prayer thinking it'll never last; I'll come back (I won't).
Freedom feels like forgetting to try to do anything right and ******* everything up, in the best and worst ways, only to come out strong and laughing and better than before.
Freedom is like *** because no one has the right to do anything to my body; not the educators who think I'm forever too young, not the boys who think my **** are rocking but don't know my name, not the parents who lock me up with a key only to find I was born to fit through the bars, not the girls who spell S-L-U-T like its their accusatory safe word against being alone in an unjust world, not anyone.
No one except the syllables between my lips and the brain behind the way I swing my hips, and they say: Hell Yes.

I've found it hard in my life to feel like I belong somewhere. Sometimes its just a person that makes you feel safe and comfortable, sometimes its the place. But eventually you find that one place with those people with the right environment that is just it.

Its home.

I found home in his deep brown eyes when he just looks at me and stares and it irritates me so much but I could never want anything else.

I found home in the snowy forest, where I can barely breathe I'm so cold, but my music is blaring and my cheeks are rosy and all I want to do is dance.

I found home in a phone call that matters so much, just because she's thinking of me, and its more than I could ever dream for.

I found home with new friends who smile and laugh and call me their favorite and a world destroyer, depending on the day.

I found home in the day at one place, and home at night at another, and some may find that hectic, but I find it perfect.

I found home away from the home I thought would always be home, and that astounds me more than anything else.

I found home in the company of writers and environmentalists, all dreaming big and wishing hard, all just like me.

I found home.

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.

Bones break
Bones melt under my touch
Monster inside me
Monster devouring me
Who am I?
The silver blade lays a heavy hand on my throat
but its all for good measure
It slides and it slicks in pools of cold blood
Guess I'm dead better

Always torn between two ideals, its the crazy person way of life. Is there a way to ever rid of the issue or is coping all I have?

The fact that since my fingers can't stop typing I know I will only allow myself 30 mins of intense late night creativity and then make myself shower because showering helps me calms my twitches only shows how deep into this rabbit hole I've gone.

Average idealist me would like to think one day I could really be normal.

Crazy idealist me/pessimist me would say I would not be me and hate myself without the disorder and I will never get rid of this thing on my back.

But hell, honestly, I don't even know if this is about the **** disorder in my head right now. It might be about how long I've spent on this godforsaken planet and felt like I've impacted barely anything. I want to do things, I want to get out there and make some difference that eventually makes me feel like I am doing something worthwhile. Not just spending too much time in my day just so I can convince myself to go to sleep.

I've always hated the concept of sleep; its so much waste. We only have, if we're lucky, 100 years on this planet and we are spending at least 8 hours of each 24 hours in a day on ******* nothing? Its such a **** waste. One of the few things I truly do miss about the ******* crazy, I barely needed sleep. But now that I'm medicated and sort of relatively sane, I need the 8 hours like every dumb recharging bloke. God, I hate sleep.

I guess the less I'm around people the more I feel like I need to work my *** off to do something to impact and help and connect with others. This summer has become more and more solitary and I know, I understand nothing can always be Grace's happy fun sunshine friendship land. But for ****'s sake no wonder I was batshit when I was younger. I had even less of an impact on anything.

I need to find something.  I need to find something that connect me to people, even if indirectly. I cannot spend anymore ******* time feeling like its never enough, only to drive my *** back hard towards the crazy ledge I teeter on. I'm going to ******* burn out if I only keep on pushing. I love working towards being an author, its my biggest dream that I cannot wait to make true, but....

I might have to take a break from it to keep myself steady enough to get there. I might need to find another all consuming creative outlet to keep me from feeling like a **** idiot stuck in a box just twiddling her thumbs away. I love writing, but without people around who inspire me and make me smile its hard to keep on going when I can't get the feeling I'm bettering something. I know I am, but with every word my beloved novel feels more stale. I can't let myself hate the novel I believe could actually do some good, especially if its only cause the crazy can't take care of itself.

**** me for having to take out my biggest passion to cope with my own stupid **** head. But for a summer that gets me ahead in literally every other aspect of my life?

The love of my life just might have to take the hit.

Its been a long while since I rambled in the night, while my head won't get tired and everything feels like lightening.

But two years later and its just like I remember. Makes my skin itch a bit less, but here I am, alone late at night, whirling about in my in-congruent thoughts. There's an electric peace about it, the mix of its familiarity and its origin.

Not surprising after my first big low of the summer that I have my first big high. Just kinda odd how easy it all feels. Its no pounding, screaming, kicking, biting. Its just like a neighbor stopping by.

I guess now to the ramblings. The expounding expression of my random, endless thoughts to get them out of my head and try to get me to bed.

I thought about love a lot on my way to work. Granted, I work only a five minute walk from home. But I remembered how the definitive point in time where I decided what kind of love meant most to me happened in the worst summer of my life, the most hopeless depression I ever felt.

Mom liked that I was quiet about it.

Dad was oblivious.

Friends forgot I existed.

Then there was him, the one I never expected. He was angry. So angry.

He was so upset he was losing the person he loved to my depression and he felt helpless to do anything about it. He needed me to fight. He needed me to get better. He couldn't stand watching who I was fade away.

He yelled at me.

I don't know where I'd be if he hadn't.

I'd been content to float, to hide behind my childhood walls and use the same tactics that hid my mental turmoil all of my life. If no one saw it, it was ok. Its what my parents always taught me.

Yet he looked at me, heard my mentions of pain and non-existence, and couldn't stand it. He didn't want me to change, or never be crazy. He just wanted me to have a will to fight it. To get better.

He didn't want to lose me just because it was so much easier.

I think its why I began to hate my parents, for awhile. Compared to wanting to set me on fire to save me? How could their naive complacence compare? I hid a lot from them, I grant. But that summer I told my mom I wanted to be hospitalized.

She said no.

If no one saw it, it was ok, right?

I couldn't stand all the years I spent trapped between those walls, feeling like I was hiding some mythic beast inside me, like I had to do everything right because everything in me was wrong. Outside, I was their cheery, sweet, smart, empathetic perfectionist. Inside, I was a passionate, dark humored, fireball of curiosity and imagination and limitless possibilities. The two never quite meshed, but I never got the chance to find a way to do that. Only the chance to force them apart.

Makes relationships hard when you've become two people. And once the other one shows up, everything changes. You're a lie, now.

Things are starting to mesh better, little by little. But its been a long journey.

Seems quiet acceptance isn't the love I like most. Fire is.

And its even wilder now that, after years of moving away from that isolation and pain, I'm finding a new belonging in the things that I used to cope. I thought they were all just silly things I did because I had nothing else. Now I prefer to do them instead.

As if on cue, I'm distracted by some writing and my head is slowly calming. I guess its my cue to bid this adieu. Always fascinating, how a thought-dump helps settle an insomniatic head.

I don't know what to say. I went into this not knowing what to say. I know it already yet I can feel a pound in the back of my skull very upset I have no real clarifying words for the things draining my head.

Am I empty? I don't know. I hate days where I feel like I know nothing and existence is a far off concept that seems alien to me. I can stare at my hands and pick up my fingers and type but for some weird reason they don't feel like mine at all. Is my body just like the land? Everyone tries to make a claim, but it belong to nothing but mother earth. Or perhaps, in my own hapless metaphor, it means I own it? I may have written myself into a corner. Perhaps this body is really mine. Just wish I could feel it. Every touch feels so dull and odd and foreign. I don't like feeling foreign.

Nothing's really being weighing yet a can feel my back bending, the muscles sore and tender from a weight I didn't realize they bear. Are they actually feeling the imaginary weight that eats my head away or are they just so very tired too? I understand if they're tired. I'm so very tired too.

I don't want to say I'm out of my mind, though, no. Not even with the oddity that are my nerves and skin. I'd rather say out of my head; I'm not unsane and I'm not deadly I'm just tired and worn and strewn across myself in such a fashion that my favorite limbs feel so strange. Perhaps because they can still function while the rest of my feels other-
wordly.

I've lost them. There were enough words swimming in my head to send them every which way but now I seem even too tired to keep my eyes open to see them. I feel out of my head. I know it won't last, and that keeps me sane. But it doesn't make me feel whole again.

You know, the better I get overall the worse my relationship with sleep gets.

I keep on trying. I know its healthier. I know its good for me. But no matter how hard I try, its so easy to forget. So easy to just keep going.

I'm not good at stopping. I don't like to stop.

I'm like a telegram with run-on sentences. Sometimes, innovative and brilliant. other times, incomprehensible.

I'm on the precipice of so much excitement and joy that, per usual, sleep takes a back seat. I'm bad at not letting it take a back seat. Its just so good at taking the back seat.

To be honest, I'm better with sleep with him around. And its less because he's some magic cure-all, and more he makes me calmer and I can't stay on my phone haphazardly or turn on the lights and write with another person in the bed.

More to be honest, this has less of a point and more a myriad of ramblings in hope to get myself sleepy and able to fall asleep. Because despite my rebellious mindset, I do wish to sleep eventually.

I even tried waking up early yesterday. Didn't work.

I dunno what to do. I'm pretty bad at this. If my insides aren't screaming I tend to question it less. But, perhaps, as an adult, I should question it a little more.

Maybe sleep's just heading in my bedhead.

The weight of the wait is a wear that I hate to wear.

Gives great alliteration, though.

I'm so ready for all the things only a tiptoe away, but I can't have them. Nine days, I repeat religiously in my head, like a prayer from my own personal bipolar bible to keep my head on straight.

I can have everything in nine days.

Its a madness and a sort of vibration of my slumbering monster, old and weak but still ever-present, to be so close but yet so far. All my dreams are literally at my fingertips yet I cannot touch them. Not my friends, not my family, not my love, not my blue. All the things that are things of greatness are stuck at the end of this pole dangling far away and I am no good at balancing. All I get to do is stare and wait.

He's less than that ever-looming 2,000 miles away.

The blue is 30 edits and a read-through away from being possibly a completed manuscript.

The loves of my life are so close and ******* Christ I want them so bad but...

The work needs to be done. The class needs to be done. The appointments need to be done. The dishes need to be done. The unpacking needs to be done.

Their is a sense of comfort in the whole thing, that everything is so **** close, that the longest weight of my life is almost over.

I need this. I need my fingers banging against a keyboard, and I need the man I love most banging against me. Yes, I said it. Banging. So what if its gratuitous, its been over four months. I deserve the things that make me happiest. I have learned how to be alone,  I have proven my ability to be a strong individual able to take care of her ******* self.

Now, stubborn world, give me back what is mine.

The blue can come back into focus next week, and he will come not long after. Their will be a quelling of the weary weight that I have been waiting to shed.

The summer has been hard. Good on me, I toughened up quite a bit, but hard nonetheless. I know its been a little ******* everyone. But the two things I love are adamant and strong, as am I, and we'll find each other again. Just was an annoying but necessary hiatus.

My mind can breathe in its home again, on the page and keyboard, and my body can be held in the arms of the most fantastic man I've ever met. The weight of my impatience and excitably and anxiousness is heavy, but it made my body and mind so strong my adamant nature is ready to take on the world, with partner in crime and writing in hand.

I got this, no matter the weight.

I was doing so well.

That's probably what makes this hurt so much. I had been pushing and pushing and exceeding everyone's expectations and doing great and...

I pushed a little too hard.

I forgot what it felt like to be burned out. Not exactly depression, though some self-loathing is swimming around in my head. No suicidal thoughts or endless tears. Just being so exhausted. Just being pushed a little too hard.

I don't even know what to write and that probably hurts the most. I love writing. I always have a thousand stories, more, dancing in my cranium and pounding inside my skull to get out. I am even thinking of some right now. But i just find it do hard to do it.

Why is that? Why do people sometimes struggle with the simple act of doing something?

I wish I had some prophetic response, but I don't. Not today. I'm lucky I've been able to get out of bed and attempt to write, let alone function normally.

I can write a bit better. My fingers can t least move and attempt to throw something out. Its just hard. That happens when you get burned out. You just need to lay for awhile and let your body do its fixing magic, even if it drives you a little mad.

The synapses can't exactly find their way back together if I keep on making them run in different directions.

I've been eroding myself. I didn't know, I couldn't feel it, but now I do. Its just this aching in my head as if it hurts to even think. I hope my brain has gotten pretty good at healing, because I'm willing to give it a couple more hours before I go stir crazy. I'll try not to erode it, but the less impatient and stressed I am the better chance I have.

I just want to be able to do everything. Why does that have to be so hard?

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.

There it is, in the corner of my eye. Or peeking around a nearby corner.

Either the shadows are alive or my madness has caught me, finally.

Over my shoulder I feel the monster, its breath on my skin, the heavy weight of its hands around my neck, suffocating me in my own paranoia.

Some days I wonder if its the fear or my mind breaking ever so slowly, melting each day within the poison known as my synapses. Am I imagining things because I am fearful, or fearful because I am imagining things?

I don't tell many a person about this. The mood disorder, they can handle. But seeing things? Oh, that tends to be a tipping point for most people. Even myself. I like to pretend I see nothing so that I don't have to admit maybe I'm worse off than I think.

I see you there, lurking in my peripheral vision, trying to **** me. But when I look I see my face, smiling that maniacal grin and showing off those sharp teeth, not my teeth, and all the blood, so much blood, my blood.

Suddenly my surroundings are uncomfortable, so prickling with my own horrific imaginings that they almost feel all too real.

Funny how my mind pictures all these terrifying creatures, all these monsters from beyond the grave, while the real monster was hiding all along in my mirror.

The monster, the shadow, is me.

Silver climbing up my arm,
Sharp and twisted brings me joy,
Twisted how it is so wrong,
Twisted how my heart races like a bullet through my head
Racing, racing, always racing
Blood calms me down, brings me peace when I’m alone
The ****** lullaby I sing in my head, is scorned upon by all I love
Funny how if it didn’t leave scars nothing could stop me from playing my ****** lullaby all night long
My fingers such masters at the keys, playing crimson notes on my skin and rectifying memories of days gone by
This is my music, my song, and I lose it because of them
They cause my pain, and I try to cushion it with my lullaby
But they don’t let me
Its funny how it hurts so good,
How one song can lead to so much trouble,
And its funnier how they see me cry,
And do nothing,
But one little cut and the fear gets turned on,
So I’ll keep on singing my ****** lullaby, in secrets small and invisible,
To one day feel joy again and for once feel at peace.

You see that phrase above? I always hated it. I hated it with every fiber of my being. But I could never deny that was the exact kind of living I always did.

Always convinced, even conditioned, to think people would leave. To think no one would be able to feel anything but temporary love for me. That I'd always be alone, that I'd always feel unworthy, that I'd always feel afraid.

Its weird to not be afraid.

I lived so many years of my life in fear. I had everyone leave me on and off for 18 years. I couldn't possibly fathom anyone would ever stay. Why would they? I was just broken, crazy Grace. Why would anyone really want me.

Here I am today though, not afraid.

I don't feel sane. I thought I'd need that to get here. But controlled crazy isn't so bad. I actually think I prefer it. My fingers can dance across a keyboard but also still and be human. I feel ok to be crazy when I also don't feel like its eating me away. Being eaten's always the worst part. Its much nicer to sit and have a cup of tea with it.

So yes, life isn't perfect. That's another fallacy I convinced myself of; if I stopped the crazy my life would be perfect. My head was a little funny like that. Of course things aren't perfect; family stuff is a bit messy and I have flashback moments of bad childhood feelings and I haven't been able to write much. But I'm doing well in class. I finished a novel. I have people who love me and I love them. I have the best boyfriend who I always love to see. Of course things aren't perfect. But they feel like life now instead of a painful sinkhole.

I need to read more. I need to write more. I need to publish my novel and I need to graduate. But I'm on my way and I m so happy to be somewhere. I'm not where I thought I'd be when I controlled the crazy. But there is no such thing as controlling the crazy.

Best you can do is sit right down and have a nice chat and know together that's really the best.

I was born under the earth in the eye of a blizzard, stormy from the first.
I took my first step off the edge of a rabbit hole and my next underwater.
I spoke first in melodies, finding the average tongue a little too heavy.
I breathed through flower petals, filtering the toxins of being human.
I made friends with the firelight that kept me and the shadows awake.
I watched soft skin of beating hearts hide under layers of organs, lonely.
I saved my fingerprints each time they fell off, to collect the marks of me.
I climbed pebbles to help them hope they could one day be mountains.
I screamed at the sky to see if it ever let itself be free to scream back.
I toppled ice cream sodas for their reign need make way for push-pops.
I slept in tide pools, giving my luminescent skin as a starfish nightlight.
I danced in the darkness of caves, making friends with bats over men.
I soared through bedrock, so the lava monsters had an ally with eyes.
I feared every twitch of life before me, but observed in stoic fascination.
I turned into a humming black bird to meet the leaves giraffes eat.
I wished on shooting satellites, because stars had enough burdens.
I dreamed of otherwheres, of thistle branches with tiger lily eyes.
I vacationed with fireflies when the moonlight asked me to care for them.
I wandered the world as a written ghost, hiding behind trees until I say:
I am.

My family and me are complicated, to say the least.
I spent childhood idolizing them.
Teenagedom questioning them.
College disconnecting from them.
And now I'm an adult and all I feel is that I miss them.

It took me awhile to realize that, but its far more complicated than just missing their presence. I miss the connections we had. I miss who we were together before the great big Jabberwocky of Wonderland waltzed into our lives. I miss the people they were when they were happier. I miss the person I was when I was happy with them.

I miss much more than this moment. I miss everything I've lost because of what's happened over the last few years.

I've spent a lot of time hoping to never be like them. Yet now I just want a way back to them. A healthy way.

It'll be hard. It might even hurt a little. But to be able to think I might have the parts of them that used to make me so happy?

I have to at least try.

I feel it in my bones, the oncoming storm and the incoming pain and the onslaught that will be had.

Why do I do this? Why do I lwt this happen?

I'm trying so hard to be better, to be happy, but my stumbling feet can never run from the beast lodged in my heart.

Only a few things keep me sane anymore, only those I love keep me afloat. Otherwise I would have lost it years ago. I hate admitting that. I hate admitting how breakable I am. I want to be strong, but I was born with weak genetics.

I'm broken.

Fragile goods, an imperfect present in pretty wrapping, attracting people into the mess that is me. Why do I keep on tricking people? Why do I do this?

Why am I even sad? i don't know why The tears are falling doen my face but they are.

I compared myself to broken glass a long time ago, and I feel so much like it right now. Stabbing those I care about who get too close and making thrm bleed, but they tolerate it, maybe even enjoy it in the end. Why do they do that? I'm not worth that pain. No kne is worth that pain.

I want to be better but I simply hate myself more if I crash when I want so desperately to be someone else. Should I just accept this pain, accept this madness?

I don't know anymore.

I might never know.

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.

The water slipped over my hands, through my hands, and I felt a chill run through my spine. Most chills left me with one or two shivers and  a cold disposition, but this one left me with a feeling as if the core of my soul had be realigned. My eyes closed. There was a unique serenity in how it remained moving, fluid, yet hard to the touch. Is this what its like to be apart of a river? Where your entire being is melded into an ever-changing ecosystem? Every droplet slipped through my fingers, yet I never found calamity in it. Only a sense of calm that is often forgone by my synapses. In the darkness behind my eyelids, one with a water wall, a chaotic mind was found at peace.

Its a ride, ain't it? Not just yesterday. Not just today. it will never end. Are you happy?

All the dark parts of me you hate have been exasperated by your selfish actions. Are you happy?

All the parts of me I love and am proud of you call a phase, and insist it'll be gone one day. That's exactly what I fear, and exactly what you hope. Are you happy?

The only person that makes me feel accepted and wanted just the way I am is someone you ridicule and dismiss, making me fear even more being who I am around you people. I feel that you hate me before you get to know me. Are you happy?

I always felt like a monster and in turn became a liar. My brother never feels safe to express so he is practically emotionally dead. My Grandmother showed who she was and tries to make up for her transgressions, and now is excommunicated regardless of her attempts. Everything different be something you squash and beg to hide away. Are you happy?

Now thinking of my past, my childhood only makes me sad and upset. I blocked out most of it until my head could handle it. The way you treated me wasn't acceptable. I shouldn't have been your secret, your emotional parent, your little monster. I was supposed to be a kid. That's something you can never give back to me. Are you happy?

I need space. You will feel me pulling away, and you won't be wrong. It breaks my heart but I need this. I need me. And I certainly can't spend my life cowering painfully beneath the height of my tremendous love for you or ultimately despising you for what you've done. I have to leave, at least for a little. Are you happy?

I never wanted this. I always wanted family, and I always loved you so strongly. But as I sit here and sob over the mere thought of trying to speak cheerfully about my childhood, I should not have to sob while asking myself questions. One keeps ringing in my ears. Are you happy?

I don't want to ever lose you. But I can't keep you right now either. The only way we can last is to part ways for awhile, and let me breathe and show you the things in my pocket and the heart I have grown. I can't love you when you love someone I only pretended to be. When I'm better, when you're better, then we can be a family. Then we can be happy.

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.

If I close my eyes I smell the butter of fresh popcorn and hear the whirring of a laptop powerful and bright. Can taste the dichotomy of the crisp melting of the popped kernel in my mouth, feel the happiness of being in a desk chair in front of a screen and surrounded by books.

Then I open my eyes and see I have to edit everything I've written to be even vaguely coherent.

Happiness is hard when you're never satisfied. When the childhood curiosity stapled to your youthful lips never unpinned as you aged. Neither did the idealistic expectations. Couple that with a pessimistic anxiety disorder and a mood disorder to swing things between the two disparities and it gets a little more complicated.

I've been my most relieved and anxious in this place of empty, of nowhere, that I've settled myself into for the next three weeks. A piece of me enjoys the rest and possibilities. The other hates it for those exact reasons.

I need to breathe, I tell myself. Being so separate is my fault, I insist.

But another voice in my head pipes up quietly, offering a new idea. I'm demonizing myself for not being ideas, for not being normal, for not being one.

But perhaps be bipolar, in more ways than just disorder, is exactly what concocts the human I like being.

Perhaps the great empathetic thoughtfulness yet great introspection work so well in tandem.

Maybe the assertive extroversion yet pleasured isolation balance in their own, special way.

In a way, I might just need to look back on the old Sunday afternoon specials and speak to myself the lessons of their half-hour programs. In particular, admit maybe its ok if I'm weird. perhaps its ok I just be the own odd balance that is me.

The Nowhere, the empty, can be itchy with the possibilities sometimes. Yet these moments, that help me breathe through my own neurotics and idiosyncrasies, may just be the best kind of nothing.

Maybe the bothersome nowhere can also be something grand and great for me as well.

There perhaps is another side of nowhere, and perhaps it is my favorite.

I used to be a little weaker.

You used to tell me all the little things you told no one else.

I used to need you more than anyone.

You used to, you still, tell most people to go to hell.

I used to snort with laughter only when I was around you.

You always snorted forever, but they were their realest around me, for it was one of the few times you let your guard down, and oh how I let you down, but it had to go down, and as captain I did not forsake my ship.

I always ruined everything, and I still believed that when I ruined you, well maybe not persay ruined, but carved a deep enough hole in both of us so that we'd never forget.

You always used to say I was special, and sweetheart and a saint for being your friend, but I caused those cuts and those tears, and you almost tricked my life to its end. Maybe the blame is more on ourselves. And not on each other, but the comradery that once saved us now led more to destruction.

I always thought we were forever, opposites and buddies til the end, but we both changed so drastically and grew in such a way that there was no way to go but to an end.

You will never be forgotten, and I will always care, but the daggers in my heart burn each time I cannot beware.

I never will know if we could have fixed it, if we had just started it openly, spoken the words we feared to say and changed as a pairing. We loved as if in love, a fact I'll never let go, but with time I'll stop missing you and the pain you made me grow.

You will never be my friend again, and maybe that's ok, as long as our teenage dreams die together, and their hearts never sway.

I've never heard more people in my life insist they are good at something more than driving. Nearly every person I know has insisted to me that they are a great driver. And when its an off day? "I swear, most days I'm great though". I'm never quite sure if its because no one is often there to judge them but themselves, or if its hard for them to accept they are only adequate at something they do day in and day out.

As someone who has only ever held a permit myself, I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Its as if its unthinkable to accept that you're only okay or average or even bad at something everyone does. I've found similar results with cooking. Anytime I tell someone I'm good at it, they burst in with their own stories of their good cooking, though I never was comparing them.

I don't understand the inability to accept inadequacies. They are a part of who they are. Mind you, I conversely also believe to accept greatnesses. But Doesn't it diminish those greatnesses if you don't fully accept your misfalls?

Myself, as an easy example. I can't legally drive. I love science but hate research and laboratory processes. I can't stop myself from questioning math long enough to understand it. I get really obsessive about making lists, and I have to do them before doing things, even if they end up wrong. I write novels inefficiently, because I prefer to write them out of order, which ultimately tends to lead to wasted scenes. I hate citrus. I'm near addicted to weird things. I'm fiercely independent and protective of it. I like to stay up late and get up early and struggle with enjoying sleep.

But I have greatnesses. I am a wonderful writer, particularly realistic fiction novels. I am great at technical writing, because I love science but understand rhetoric and audience-driven communication. I am super intelligent artistically, and have a level of creative innovation and drive that baffles even me sometimes. I am wonderful at questioning everything and giving good insight. I am adaptable. I like vegetables.

I feel like accepting these inadequacies makes me inadequate. I think they make me human. I would never try to tell someone I'm good at driving. I'm not. But i hope to be passable. I want to get better to the point of making me a better, functioning person, but good? C'mon. Inflating myself won't make me better. It'll just make me bloated.

Sometimes being inadequate is kinda okay, as long as you have your own personal greatness too.

I miss him.

Never did I thought the words would reach my lips, nor the feeling touch my fingertips, but now they repeat on record, I miss him, I miss him, more than I can know, for my heart meets my brain in nowhere at all.

I miss him.

His smile, his hair, the way he looked my way, the way he let me be me even if it hurt him.

But I can wait. Things will work out, I know it. He still looks at me like he wants me. I can swear it. I may be crazy but maybe he’s ok with crazy. Maybe he’s afraid of me, but I’m afraid of me too. We can cower together and hold each other’s arms and promise it will get better. It has to get better.

Maybe he does fear me. Maybe he sees demons in my eyes and bad memories on my fingers and doesn’t want to see me even though he does. Maybe he doesn’t want the horror in his heart once more.

   But that maybe. Maybes are what I live for, each lasting breath, every never-ending second, they all rely on maybes.

   The future relies on my trust in that maybe.

    He relies of my trust.  

  In the end of it all, he relies on me.

  I miss him.

There's something sweet, and almost kind, somewhere deep beneath the sarcasm on his lips and the laughter in his hips.

There is no moment here, nothing that tells me how I feel or how I should feel, just happiness. He makes me happy. That's more than I can ever ask out of a person who obviously is just as uncertain about what they really want as I.

He says he wants ***, he says he wants a friend, but when he grasps my hand and holds me close at night, I feel something else.

There's something there, but I'm not sure if I want it there yet.

I'm getting over the caterpillar, and we're all still mad here, so Grace is a little befuddled by her own heart and mind and soul, but he seems to see me and accept me and not treat me like a breakable little girl. He treats me like a young woman, full of life and laughter, even when I don't feel like that woman I want to be and he insists I am.

He called my annoying laughter wonderful and...

and there's something there. I just don't know how I feel about it.

Only time will tell.

Yeah its certain I'm an addict
And I think I'm going crazy
But my head is spinning circles
At the thought of you my baby

Can you hear it, my heart beating
As you circumvent your feelings
Could it be true
That you feel the way I do?

Yeah I'm reeling and unbending
At the the thought of you stuck mending
All the broken parts of me
The ones that I keep sending away
just so you'll stay

And I'm certain you are cautious
And you should be at the fact
That our Gone With The Wind romance
Is romancing too fast
My only suggestion
Is the closed eyed progression of our love
don't be scared just
Jump.

The wreckage is hard to stare at. I think some part of me knew I was flying a little too close to the sun, and that's what makes this even worse.

Picking up the pieces after a crash landing are some of the worst times, I believe. The crash itself is painful and confusing, but cleanup is just left with the pain and analytical assessment. How'd it fail? What went wrong? What should I have done better?

I've never loved crash landings, but as a person who's adept at doing them, at least they don't go too terribly. Doesn't mean I enjoy doing them, though. Doesn't mean I don't sometimes get the feeling I should get my pilot's license revoked.

Yet another crash landing, and my shoulders hurt and my hands ache. But its just another day.

I'm just tired today and I know its rational, but its so hard not to just throw all the blame on me and glare at this human vessel like its a disappointment. I should have known better. I should have worked harder. I should be the best pilot, not just the best crash lander.

But yet again, its just like any other day after a crash.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better.