after days of not seeing the sun shine (metaphorically and literally), i kept wanting to ask someone to go have lunch with me sometime. i don’t know, i guess now that i think about it, it seems quite cheesy and like something you’d see in an incredibly lousy and sappy movie about teen angst. picture someone who hasn’t gotten out of bed in nine days just calling up an old pal and saying, "hey, i haven't talked to you in months but do you want to have lunch with me sometime?" seems a bit overdone, but it was just an impulse i had i guess. i longed for company even though i couldn’t drag myself out of bed. i wanted someone to tell me all about how terrible i looked and to make me laugh and to listen to me complain about how cold my feet are all the time. i think things like that are important. i once told a boy that loved me very much that it is important to get things out there even if no one ever listens to them. those were not very sober thoughts, but i think it has been the most crucial thing i have ever said to someone. he told me that it’s important to know that someone is always listening to the things you think need to get out there. i think that’s true, but sometimes we just like to think nobody is listening to them and i'm not very sure why. Maybe there's a weird sort of reassurance in thinking that the words that matter the most will be as lost "out there" as they were "in here", as i like to call it. i think it’s important to still love things like warm cups of tea in the middle of the night and sitting on porches chain smoking and smiling no matter how cold it is outside and how it feels when someone slips their hand into yours and the sound of children laughing, even when you have to have someone remind you to eat every day. i think that even when it feels like somebody is stepping on your chest wearing spiked shoes, it's important to scan the room for a familiar smile and warm brown eyes and i think it's important to remember that the world is not as bad as we think it is.

there's a difference between listening and waiting to talk and it's important to be with someone who wants to listen to you as much as you want to listen to them, even if it means that someone is you, even if it means you only have yourself.
listen, you can spend your whole life talking and still not be heard.
how terrifying is that?
you can spend your whole life screaming at the top of your lungs and still not be heard.
HOW TERRIFYING IS THAT?
too often people stop listening before you stop talking and the most important things are lost in translation.
i love yous are cut off by the hurry to get nowhere fast,
by hanging up the phone two seconds too soon,
by shutting the door too quickly behind us.
we need to stop shutting the door too quickly behind us.
one day, there won't be anyone left on the other line to pick up our 2 AM calls.
one day, the phone will ring and ring and ring and nobody will ever call back.
one day, the door will be permanently bolted closed and you'll be left knocking on an empty house until your knuckles bleed. there will still be no answer.
our time is so limited.
so really, what's so wrong with saying all the right things at the wrong times instead of never saying them at all?
what's so wrong with moving too fast, with being desperate, with dropping i love you and i'm so sorry and i miss you as often as we drop see you later?
what's so wrong with knowing how permanent goodbyes can really be?
what's so wrong with knowing that when you're six feet under, no one will be able to pry your cold, hard lips open to spill all the words you took to your grave?

i think the sky has lots to say to us but we never care enough to listen.
i think that at least once in our lifetime, we need to step out of our bodies and into somebody else's.
the world holds a cacophony of deafening sounds
but don't you dare for even a second think that is a bad thing.
the sky keeps saying
LISTEN TO SYMPHONIES OF CATASTROPHES AND CREATIONS. LET THAT BE THE MUSIC THAT GUIDES YOU.

we have forgotten what's important in life and i think the sky keeps trying to remind us that money is worthless when you're dead,
that there is more good than bad inside of everything and everyone,
that fighting will never stick to our hearts more than the image of watching someone's eyes flutter open in the morning,
that the only times you should worry about the weight of the world is when the people you love don't pick up the phone anymore.

there's people who only realize they miss you after they spend three drunken years without you. there's people who will never miss you, no matter how much of you they took, no matter how much they make you miss yourself and your sanity, not even after nine years. there's people who miss you all the time, even if they just saw you yesterday, even if you're standing in front of them. there's people you'll never feel complete without.
we all have that one person that our stomach clenches for.
we all have that one person who ****** us up completely, who ruined us for anyone else who might try to get close enough to touch us where it hurts, and where it doesn't.
we all have that one person who we say, "i still love you to death and everything, but not in the same way, not like before," to when they say "i just know some day i'm going to want something with you again".
for some reason, we always want to go back to what we know. we fear the unknown. we crave comfort and familiarity. we go through our days looking for something to call a home, a safe structure to seek warmth in when the streets of our heads start freezing. something we know. a home. we look for one in books, in movies, in music, in places, in people. people are dangerous. people are toxic. it's ******* unhealthy, the way i'm always trying to find redemption in people. i can't tell you how many strangers i have woken up next to without remembering ever falling asleep. they were never home. they were never you.
for a long time, i didn't know what home was supposed be. everything -everyone- always felt so temporary. i led a nomadic lifestyle. i spent a lot of time with people with hazy eyes who laughed while blowing smoke between their teeth and woke up on floors. i spent a lot of time with people who didn't mind walking through graveyards in the middle of the night. i spent a lot of time with people who didn't mind me laying on their driveway and who were willing to let me wear their shoes when my feet got too cold. i spent a lot of time with people who didn't understand any of it. i spent a lot of time with people who didn't care to. then, i spent a lot of time on my own. i learned a lot about how to be with people when i was busy being alone.
there's comfort in lonesomeness,
not in the same way that there's comfort in waking up next to a person who loved you enough to lay on a bathroom floor with you after pinning you down to a bed and punching holes in the walls when you couldn't find the answers he thought he deserved, but in the same way that there's comfort in wanting to wake up next to a person who you love enough to let him touch you where it hurts, and where it doesn't.
a sense of home is something we create because it's something we yearn for. home is anywhere you want lay your head down to rest at night. home is anywhere your feet touch. home is the boy whose kisses linger, who smiles when he looks at you and traces star patterns on your back. home is safety.  home is what we know, and familiarity is strange.