I dropped out of school after my first semester of freshmen year. My parents had just gotten a divorce. I was in a state of perpetual, adolescent, hopeless confusion.
I've always loved stories. Fiction or nonfiction didn't matter. Just as long as it blew my mind. I, like so many before me, was going to be a writer. Not just any writer either. No, I was going to be part, Hemingway, part Kerouac, part bukowski, and part Thompson.
The decision was made. I only had one problem: I couldn't tell anybody my plans. I am a privately educated kid from England. My path was laid out before me. Hard work to college to minimal success to family life to riches I never knew existed. So I wrote up a fake class schedule. For some reason it contained multiple French classes... I don't know either.
So every week day I would "go to class". Which meant I was walking to the Bowe street starbucks with a pen, a journal, and a laptop. I wrote so much terrible poetry that year you could replace me with any teenage girl suffering from rejection and self-conscious body issues. But you know what? I put the ******* hours in. After a while I found something which I could pretend was my style. I started getting emails from strangers telling me how good my poetry was. I got a lot if reads - 100,000 before I knew it. My head was so big I had a hard time fitting through doors.
Have you ever got so high you forgot your own name? I have. The *** helped me ignore the constant whirring of anxious thinking. The drink helped me shed my politically correct layers of defense. The validation from my poetry ensured my needy feet would never touch the ground. My pride told me everything was fine. Better than fine.
So I started writing less and less. Started staying in more and more. *** fueled day dream benders became a regular thing. Icarus had never came so close to a fake sun.
People started to notice. Aggravating talks about my potential and intelligence. Horrendous awkward dinners with my family. My mum used to tell everybody that I was writing a novel. I didn't have the heart to say I was lucky to get one poem on paper everyday.
Friends stayed distant. Girls came briefly and left as quick as their legs could take them. I became a ghost, haunting the streets of Richmond with bohemian declarations of... "True freedom." Life had lost it's luster. My control was slipping.
The story I would like to tell is that I won. Conquered cultural wilds to paint myself a noble individual. But none of that happened. This isn't a story of my success as a voice of a generation. This is not a story of redemption. This is a story about a confused kid who gave into the temptations of spontaneous decisions. A kid who needed help and advice but was too proud to know how to ask. This is the story of coming to the brink, and not caring if you fall.
So where am I now? I'm back in school, dealing with feeling like I have severely underachieved. I am waiting tables for people I could care less about. I am catching up with my Friends and peers who have already surpassed me. But I am alive. I am still writing. I am here to tell you that life punches in no pattern. Haymakers come with jabs, and the bell always seems to far away. You don't beat life, not even on a technicality. You just give everything you can to try and go the distance.

i want to live my life slow
and sweet, high on your couch,
lana del rey on repeat

When you left a part of me was gone, so I looked for it in cigarettes & boys who didn't know my name
2. I still lay on my bed reminiscing the good memories & questioning myself where did I go wrong
3. I thought I saw you from across the field, heart started beating so fast, then I realized it wasn't you, for that boy had wore sneakers that you completed hated
4. I hear the sound of your voice all the time, replaying all the things you've said to me, my favourite one has got to be "I'll never leave" which was the biggest lie
5. I can't speak your name without feeling like I'm choking
6. I shouldn't have mistaken wasps for butterflies.
7. I still feel your embrace linger all over me
8. I crave your touch especially the nights where I feel most lonely
9. I miss you but I'm going to keep pretending that I don't.
10. Wide awake all night, contemplating if I should text you, but then again you'll probably think I'm insane for not moving on
11. I've burned all the pictures & things you've given me, instead I'm entertained of the burning flakes it makes
12. This time I swear I saw you. I knew it was you, because you looked right through me.
13. I think I'm moving on, waking up each day is starting to get easier & every thought of you is just burned into ashes
14. I'll still be there for you, even if you don't want me anymore.
15. I'm begginning to be happy again & got someone new to kiss me good night.

everyone says
that it's the lack
of sleep
that brings bruises
around our eyes

but really
we get the dark rings
from our thoughts
punching us
in the face

All it took was one gentle swift against the wind & I would be plummeting to a world where I would never get to swiftly take my feet off the ground & call it a night ever again.
It was scary thinking about the idea that life is just a code word for death & almost everything I have ever physically or emotionally touched has more significance than my touch ever will.
Life reminds me of all the ingredients a smile is made of & why it takes so long to perfect it.
My existential past, present, & future are all calling out for me now, but my vulnerable mind is nowhere to be found.
I have never trembled so drastically before.
I want to continue my stay to further my research on all of the reasons why humans have never picked me first in gym class, or why love has never reached out to give me a helping hand, or why my name was always at the beginning of the sentence that always ended with smiles turning into bruises & bruises turning into unwelcome memories.
Life is a joke, yet it has the only punch line that has ever terrified me.
The feeling of drowning has always made me think of what the true defintion of home really is.
I'm so scared, but these tears won't be around much longer & that's really the only happy thought i've had in the past few years.
A young boy once asked me what the meaning of life was, & my answer has haunted me ever since there was life before death & the only look I gave him was a look that even lightning would turn its back to; the only look in my life that has ever made someone other than myself fear the unknown; this is my apology to that young, innocent boy's eyes; this is my apology.

Writing this has made me realize 5 things:
1.) You can't run from air, no matter how bad you want to stop breathing.
2.) There is no such thing as being "fully gone", even after you think that you have found your escape route out.
3.) Writing your feelings down onto pieces of paper doesn't necessarily mean that people will all of a sudden come running to your rescue, apologizing for being themselves, & beg for your forgiveness out of pure love & regret.
4.) Not everyone can be the hero; but you must soon realize that just because you are not the hero doesn't mean that you are the villain.
5.) I'm not afraid anymore.

I was lost at sea.
You crushed against me like a wave.
You left me breathless.
Revived me with your lips.
You got me on your ship
and taught me how to sail,
my captain.

I fell in love like the way you fall asleep: like getting hit by a ******* bus that knocks you out of your senses and *In that moment I swear we were infinitely in love but ******* you left me on my own. I know love and lust don't always keep the same company but I find great companionship in your eyes and I'm quite hoping you'll stick around. May the odds be ever in our favor of falling in love again in the empty house we once called mine where i'm divergent and I can only be controlled by my fears (of losing you) that send me recoiling in your arms every night; I solemnly swear that I am up to no good and I spend every second wishing you'd love me like I love you.